Sure, Joohyun had obviously lied when she’d claimed none of the Slytherins had gotten drunk. Sixteen-year-olds were not the best at holding their liquor. But as it turned out, skipping two meals and several nights of sleep made one’s tolerance to alcohol much lower than normal, so while Seungwan wasn’t the first Hogwarts student to get drunk on cooking wine, she might very well be the first to manage it after only two glasses.

And now Joohyun found herself in a very peculiar situation, watching the girl in front of her, colour finally tinging her cheeks though not in the healthiest way, ramble on and on as though talking to herself.

“And last year, my sister got transferred to the Toronto branch of Gringotts as Head Curse-Breaker,” Seungwan said slowly, eyes fixed intently on her index finger as it traced the rim of her empty glass. Her head snapped up, wide eyes landing on Joohyun’s. “That’s a big deal,” she added reverently. “She’ll be the youngest in North America to ever get the promotion.”

Joohyun nodded tiredly, finding it hard to keep her enthusiasm after they’d already run through Seungwan’s entire family tree, paying equal and much detailed attention to everyone from her great-aunt who’d invented a new type of cauldron to her second cousin first-removed who’d… Joohyun wasn’t even sure anymore. Something to do with trolls that possibly worshipped him. It was hard to keep all the stories straight, especially when she didn’t particularly care.

But by this point, Seungwan was drunk and clearly out of it, so Joohyun couldn’t just leave. If she did, the girl would probably fall asleep right there in her uncomfortable kitchen stool and inevitably be found by the house elves in the morning. And then they’d have no choice but to warn the teachers, and Joohyun, as the facilitator, would be in a lot of trouble.

“I really don’t want to disappoint them,” Seungwan whispered towards her glass, pulling Joohyun away from her concerned musings. “My family has given me every opportunity to succeed, so now I have to…” She paused, like her sentence had gone somewhere she hadn’t expected and she was searching for the thread she’d somehow lost. Joohyun watched as the girl blinked away her confusion, the small furrow in her brow slowly fading as she nodded with increasing determination.

“I’ll just– I’ll study hard and get good grades.” Her hands toyed with the stem of the wine glass and Joohyun carefully pulled it away from her grasp before she toppled it over. Seungwan barely seemed to notice, fingers falling still for a few seconds then moving to the cuff of her shirt, aimlessly fiddling with the button. “And it’s not easy, of course, it isn’t easy for anyone, but if I just… work hard enough…”

She lapsed back into silence, her nervous fiddling slowing down until she sat still. It felt oddly like she was only held upright by some unstable balance of forces, like the slightest push in any direction would send her slumping to the side. Joohyun’s regret grew with every second of silence and she only wished she could turn back time and make her past self walk straight out of the kitchen instead of trying to help.

“My parents are Slytherins.”

Everything Seungwan said left Joohyun more on edge. At least this time it wasn’t that her words struck some irritable nerve, but simply that Seungwan seemed one self-deprecating comment away from tears. At this point, Joohyun almost longed to be doing her Potions homework.

“My sister, too. Most of my family.” Seungwan’s eyes finally wandered up from where they’d been boring holes into the rough wooden table. They swept across Joohyun’s face, dull and unfocused.

“I was scared of being sorted, when I first got to Hogwarts. I thought I’d be the same as the rest of my family. I know that Slytherins aren’t all mean, there are good and bad ones like any House. But Slytherins are… They’re, um, resilient. Tough. And I apologize to house elves.” She let out something like a giggle, offering Joohyun a shy smile so unexpectedly that she found herself returning it.

“So when it was my turn to be sorted and the Hat just sat there thinking it over, I asked it, you know, to maybe not put me in Slytherin.”

Another giggle as Joohyun began to wonder what was the point of this story. To learn that she might have been stuck with Seungwan for seven years instead of just the final two? It certainly put things into perspective.

“And then the Hat said ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t thinking of Slytherin.’” Seungwan tilted her head, shrugging slightly. “I was so relieved when I was sorted into Hufflepuff. And I love it there; everyone is so nice and helpful and, well, it’s the House for the hard-working. I can do that. I can work hard.”

Joohyun found herself nodding along, a little lost in the story. She absently emptied her own glass, the slight buzz making it easier to manage the situation. Especially if Seungwan really did start to cry.

“But my parents knew right away. And my sister as well, probably,” Seungwan mused in a voice that had grown much quieter. “They didn’t say anything, they never discouraged me. They still pushed me to do my best, to achieve my potential. But they knew. And now I think I figured it out too.”

Silence stretched between them, longer and longer, and Joohyun began to suspect that Seungwan was on her way to spending the rest of the evening wordlessly ruminating on whatever it was that she’d figured out. But now she was a little curious. The great Son Seungwan, smart, popular, world at her feet, was apparently a much more insecure and overwhelmed person than she let on and Joohyun kind of wanted to get to the bottom of it.

“What was it?” she asked, startling Seungwan. “What did you figure out?”

There was a short pause, while the Hufflepuff recomposed herself. She seemed to have forgotten her line of thought, but she eventually found it again, as evidenced by the way the corners of her lips drooped. She raised her head to fix deadly serious eyes on Joohyun.

“That Hufflepuffs do, and Slytherins achieve.”

And now she was spewing ridiculous nonsense.

“What?” Joohyun requested blankly.

The cold reception didn’t seem to faze Seungwan. “I’m a hard worker, I know I am. I haven’t let down the Hufflepuff name. But I’m working so hard, as hard as I can, and I still can’t do it. And I’m beginning to realize that I can just keep working, all my life, but I’ll never… I’ll never achieve anything. Never amount to anything.”

The words hit Joohyun like a slap to the face, so unexpected and nonsensical that they left her entirely speechless. She could only watch as Seungwan carried on, growing more and more despondent.

“The Hat knew. Right from the start, it knew, and it tried to tell me. Slytherin never even crossed its mind, because I’ll work as hard as it takes, sure, but I’ve got no ambition. No spark. I’m not meant for big things, I haven’t got the potential for… anything. I’m just fooling myself.”

That finally tipped Joohyun over from shock to indignation. “But that’s not what the Houses mean at all. That’s not how Sorting works,” she blurted out in frustration, immediately drawing Seungwan’s attention. The girl grew quiet, gazing at her with wide, searching eyes. “Just because you’re put in a House, it doesn’t mean you lack the characteristics of the others. It’s not simply about your own qualities, what you value the most matters just as much. And valuing hard work doesn’t mean you aren’t ambitious.”

It was probably the wine, she thought as she took in a breath before carrying on. It was the alcohol, not enough to make her mind hazy or her vision blurry, but still loosening her tongue far beyond what she’d say in another situation.

“By your logic, no Ravenclaw is capable of patience and effort, no Gryffindor can be clever and all Slytherins are cowards,” she pointed out, barely noticing as her voice rose. “And where does Seulgi fit into your reasoning? She’s a Hufflepuff and I’d bet anything that she’ll graduate from this school and go straight to a first-division Quidditch team. Does she have no ambition? No potential? Is she fooling herself as well?”

Seungwan blinked at her, mouth half-open. Her brow furrowed, like she was fully taking in all that Joohyun had said, and then she drew in a breath and said something Joohyun really hadn’t expected.

“Why do you always stay at Hogwarts during breaks?”

Her brain took a few seconds to catch up, having some trouble with the abrupt shift in topic, and popped open to offer an answer before any was prepared. For a moment, they sat in silence, Joohyun’s gaze falling quizzically on Seungwan while the later offered her only a vague look. Then her confusion faded and she finally remembered to respond.

“My parents like to travel, you know how it is. I don’t do well with sudden changes in weather, so I’d rather not spend Christmas in the Caribbean,” she offered dismissively. Was Seungwan done with the reassurance? Could she leave now?

“Don’t you miss them?”

Joohyun took a deep, tired breath. This was suddenly going in a much different direction than she’d like. “Kind of, I guess? I’m used to it. Besides,” she carried on quickly, before Seungwan could probe further, “you’re here as well. Clearly it isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

The Hufflepuff looked down at once, blinking rapidly at the sudden reminder of her situation. If Seungwan cried, Joohyun swore she would… She wasn’t sure what she’d do, but she did know Seulgi wouldn’t enjoy it. And yes, she still blamed Seulgi for this. It was her fault, somehow.

“I had so much studying to catch up on, I didn’t have the time to spare for the train ride home and back here, and attending all the social events my parents will be hosting during the holidays,” Seungwan reasoned in a weak voice. She seemed ready to go on, then abruptly paused and pursed her lips. “But you’re- It’s not just once, it’s always. That’s different.”

“Why are we talking about this?” Joohyun finally asked, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. It only got later and later in the evening and she still had Potions to think of before bed and now they weren’t even discussing Seungwan’s problems anymore. Now the girl was just drunkenly rambling about how sad Joohyun’s life was, which was honestly uncalled for given her own situation. “We were talking about your thing, are you done with that already?”

“No, I was…” Seungwan’s pauses became more and more frequent, and each one longer than the last. Soon she wouldn’t be coherent anymore, which was not a pleasant thought. “You were always just this scary presence in my life. But now you’re here, being nice to me and I realized… you’re a person, with feelings. And I got sad.”

And now Seungwan was sad for Joohyun. Wonderful. Exactly the way she’d hoped the night would go.

“How very Hufflepuff of you,” she drawled out, annoyance tinging her voice. She reached for the bottle of wine and refilled her glass, stubbornly ignoring the way Seungwan’s bright eyes followed her movements.

“Is that why you hate me? Because I’m a Hufflepuff?”

As if Joohyun needed further proof that Seungwan was far from sober, the girl helpfully provided it by blurting out the most inane of all the theories she’d heard so far. It made even less sense than the one where Joohyun was a vampire.

“What? Why would that make me hate you?” she asked incredulously. “Seulgi’s a Hufflepuff. So is Sunmi.”

Her logical rebuttal seemed to fly right over Seungwan’s head, as the girl only continued to gaze at her with a sort of distant sorrow, like their situation usually upset her but, just at that moment, she was too distracted by her own drunken state to really sink into the feeling.

“Yeah, but that’s different,” she finally offered with the slightest slur in her voice. “They’re half-bloods. A pureblood who isn’t a Slytherin, they’re forsaking their heritage.” She struggled through the words a bit sluggishly, her wide eyes seeming to reinforce her message.

Joohyun brought her full glass to her lips and drained nearly half of it in one long drink. She set it down carefully as she swallowed the last of the wine in , then turned to Seungwan.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Why do you hate me, then?” Seungwan almost whined, eyebrows furrowing in petulant confusion. “Tell me what I did and I’ll stop,” she offered earnestly, before her eyes slowly slipped away from Joohyun’s and down towards the table, a fresh wave of alcohol-fuelled melancholy running through her.

“I don’t hate you.” Seungwan pursed her lips at Joohyun’s denial, but didn’t protest it. “And even if I did, that doesn’t mean you should change anything about yourself,” Joohyun continued testily, resisting the urge to down the rest of the wine. She might still be sober, but who knew how long that would last if she continued to drink away her exasperation. “You can’t please everyone, anyway.”

“Yeah, but…” Seungwan sighed and drew up her shoulders in a slow shrug, fingers tracing the lines on the wood of the table between them. “I don’t like… not being liked. Makes me feel guilty, like I’ve messed up. Like I have to- to fix it,” she slurred distantly.

Joohyun blinked away her discomfort while Seungwan serenely tapped her fingers on the table. Giving in, she reached for her glass and emptied it quickly, willing the alcohol to miraculously Apparate her away from this entire interaction, or lacking that, to at least supply her with something to say in response to this confession.

The action seemed to draw Seungwan’s attention and she searched her immediate surroundings hazily. “Where’s my glass?” she asked, words blurring together. “I want more wine.”

“No more wine, you’re drunk,” Joohyun replied quickly. This was easier, she could deal with an impatient child. She’d had all that practice with Yerim.

“That’s not fair, you’re still drinking!” Seungwan pointed out unhappily.

“I need it, I’m too sober for this.”

Seungwan finally spotted her glass and reached for it, but Joohyun was much faster and pulled it out of the girl’s reach. Her face scrunched up angrily for a moment, then it relaxed into a displeased pout.

“Stop pouting, you look like a child,” Joohyun scolded her, causing the pout to immediately intensify. Then Seungwan drew in her lower lip, as though to make sure that no pout would be visible, and looked away with a small frown before folding her arms over the table and slowly lowering her head towards them.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Joohyun called out desperately, letting go of both glasses in an instant to reach out and push Seungwan upright. “You can’t go to sleep, I don’t know the password to the Hufflepuff common room!”

“It’s not a password,” Seungwan mumbled, utterly ignoring Joohyun’s hands pushing against the side of her head. “You have to tap the bricks in time with the… the song.”

“I know that, but what’s the song?” Joohyun insisted, hoping to at least get an answer out of the girl before she fell asleep and Joohyun had no choice but to physically carry her out of the kitchen.

“You know, the…” Seungwan lifted her head only enough for to no longer be muffled against her forearm. “Ta ta taa taa ta-taa…”

It sounded like absolute nonsense and she kept going off-key, though it was hard enough to tell what the key was even supposed to be.

“The what? What is that?” Joohyun asked in utter confusion.

“The song!” Seungwan retorted with some frustration. “The, uh, the ta taa ta-taa...”

“That’s completely different from the first thing you sang!”

This was hopeless. She’d have to hide Seungwan behind some garbage bags or something. She was never going to offer wine to anyone ever again.

“I’ll show you,” Seungwan declared confidently.

She straightened up, pulled her wand out of her pocket, and began tapping it on the table, humming something under her breath as she kept time. Suddenly, she paused, studying her wand intently, then lifted it and brought it back to the centre of the table, playing out the routine from the start. She repeated this process a few times, the pattern continuing to shift until Joohyun was sure that not even muscle memory would save them.

“Alright, get up,” Joohyun finally sighed out, sending the bottle and glasses back towards the pantry with a muttered spell. Seungwan gave her a confused look, wand temporarily frozen in the middle of its chaotic dance. “You’re coming with me.”

As Seungwan continued to simply gaze at her, she moved around the table and tugged at her, very slowly managing to get her to her feet. Not for the first time, Joohyun cursed her slight frame, which made carrying even someone as tiny as Seungwan a challenge.

“Where are we going?” Seungwan asked cheerfully once the concept finally made it through her hazy thoughts. She leaned heavily on Joohyun as they walked and the Slytherin was tempted to simply levitate her and fly her to their destination.

“The Slytherin common room,” she gasped out, slightly out of breath. “Since I actually know how to get into that one.”

Stumbling down the corridor and nearly tripping on more than one occasion, they finally made it inside the safety of the common room, despite the Slytherin door’s best efforts at disappearing every time Seungwan so much as glanced at it. Joohyun wanted nothing more than to drop down on the nearest sofa, but she knew that she’d never be able to move Seungwan again once she set her down, so she remained upright, although her legs trembled slightly at the effort.

Only a few more steps and they reached the dorms, Seungwan not helping in the slightest, and actually freezing in place in the middle of the common room just to stare at the windows and their view of the dark lake. Joohyun supposed that it was a somewhat impressive sight, if you hadn’t seen it every day for the past seven years. The knowledge didn’t make it any easier to be patient when Seungwan kept insisting that she’d seen a merperson and refused to move until Joohyun agreed that it was a possibility.

Joohyun’s limbs felt oddly weightless when they were finally relieved of their burden, Seungwan settled happily on Soojung’s bed, not even bothering to get under the sheets. Joohyun sat on her own bed, watching the girl’s chest rise and fall with every breath.

Seungwan looked tiny in her school robes, her frame not quite filling them out, as though she’d grown smaller since the start of the school year. Her face was pale, her lips dry and chapped, the bags under her eyes dark and unignorable.

Joohyun wondered how she’d never noticed it. Just how hard did this girl try, every day, to make sure it didn’t show? How brightly did she have to smile, to make up for all the cracks?

It was almost ironic, in a way, that Joohyun was the one to see it. What was it that Seungwan had said? Not even a person. Joohyun was just this scary presence in her life. But here she was, studying how the Hufflepuff’s short hair was messy and unkempt, how even in sleep, a tight frown lingered on her face, scrunched up as though still worrying in her dreams.

And she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t seen it, could she?

“I’ve been spending too much time with Hufflepuffs,” she muttered to herself, slipping inside her sheets and turning to face the empty bed on her other side. “I’m picking up all their bad habits.”

(…)

When Seungwan finally stirred the next morning, Joohyun sighed with relief. The sun had been up for quite a while and she began to worry that she’d either have to wake the girl or deal with some meltdown over all the time she’d wasted sleeping. She was almost happy to hear the groaning that quickly followed Seungwan’s ascent to consciousness.

“Why is the room spinning?” Seungwan moaned out weakly.

“You’re hungover.”

Joohyun sat on her bed, already dressed and ready to leave, and put on her shoes. Her bag was by her side, filled with the notes she’d need for the day, a freshly-sharpened quill and a refilled inkwell. She’d double-check it, but she had done that about three times already, all while waiting for Seungwan to finally wake up. She probably needed the sleep, anyway.

“Make it stop.”

With a shrug, Joohyun flourished her wand and quickly muttered an “Episkey”, watching golden light spring from her wand and envelop Seungwan’s form before vanishing. In an instant, she was up, blinking away sleep.

“Oh. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Probably because you were hungover.”

Her shoes were perfectly tied, her wand was back in her pocket, and she’d run her hands over her uniform one more time. It was about time to be going.

“Right,” Seungwan replied after a moment’s hesitation. Her gaze, filled with all the nervous energy that only seemed to vanish when it was replaced by drunken confusion, settled uneasily on Joohyun. “Uh, sorry about yesterday. I really wasn’t-“

“You apologize too much,” Joohyun cut in impatiently. She got up and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Now get up, it’s late.”

To her credit, Seungwan was quick to comply, barely taking the time to recall all of the previous night’s events and situate herself. She sprang to her feet almost at once, carefully and unsuccessfully trying to pat down her messy hair into some semblance of presentability with one hand while the other reached for her bag. Then she was following Joohyun out of the dorms and back into the dungeon, a cold draught of air hitting them and making the Slytherin shiver.

Before Seungwan could walk off to the Hufflepuff common room, Joohyun’s hand tugged on her sleeve and pulled her to the kitchen, once again full of busy house elves. They sent barely curious glances at the intruders and one walked closer to the pair.

“The usual breakfast, Ms. Bae?” he inquired after a quick bow.

“Make it double,” she replied, nodding towards Seungwan.

The girl still hadn’t said a word, which was quite uncharacteristic. Joohyun would have questioned it, but she enjoyed a bit of silence in the morning, so she let it draw on a bit longer.

Seungwan ate quickly, though Joohyun wasn’t sure whether she was that hungry or just eager to end their utterly silent meal. When she finished, Joohyun was barely halfway through her food, but the Hufflepuff waited only a minute or two before getting up and retrieving her bag.

“I should go, uh, get changed and…” She trailed off, avoiding eye contact as she straightened the straps of her bag.

“Did you write your Potions essay yet?” Joohyun asked, glancing up from her food. Seungwan froze in place and studied her dubiously before slowly shaking her head. “Good. I’ll be at the library doing it.” She didn’t elaborate, only returned her attention to her breakfast, leaving Seungwan to make her own conclusions.

She finished her meal slowly, long after Seungwan had left for her own common room. If she was really going to do this, she at least had the right to prepare herself, didn’t she? She should enjoy the silence while it lasted. Soon it’d be filled by Seungwan’s chatter.

So much for her quiet break.