He’s done it. He’s done it he’s done it he’s done it.

He’s antsy; though he was far from the last to shake the headmaster’s hand and take their scroll it hardly means he has to wait any less than the other hundred plus students around him. It’s been exactly nine months and 28 days but it feels like much longer (even more if one wanted to count the summer before that), feels as though it’s dragged on longer than any other year of his life. While others had terrible cases of the last-years, having hardly the drive to make themselves work through to their N.E.W.T.s, preceded only by a furious few weeks of studying. For him it served as a welcome distraction- anything would do for a change from the lonely fog that had lowered itself in a perpetual attachment to his person.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t have any friends anymore; Youngbae and Seungri and Daesung were still around, still filled his days with antics even when he really didn’t need them to (though their distractions were often a welcome respite). It was just- different. Less fulfilling, almost. Like there was an empty space.

Which, truth be told, there was.

Granted, his N.E.W.T. scores were astounding, but the weeks dragging on after them held their own little eternity. Now though- now everything is falling into place. When he finally reaches his boat to take him across the lake along with Youngbae (who’s teasing is relentless, though Jiyong has long grown numb to it), he can feel his skin prickling with anticipation. The boats can’t move fast enough for him it feels like, his fingernails chewed to the quick already but in danger of falling prey yet again. By the time the other shore is within sight his muscles are tense, eyes scanning the rows of those waiting for the new graduates on land. The last letter had promised, and Jiyong had every right in the world to believe it.

There.

Almost as soon as the boat makes contact with the soft earth, rooting themselves in place, he’s off, legs carrying themselves as fast as they would allow. His hat flies off somewhere behind him but he can’t really bring himself to care. Moments like these are rare and he’ll probably be teased endlessly for it later, though he can’t really bring himself to care much about that either when his arms encircle a broad, warm torso. There’s a laugh in his ear.

‘Congrats.’

‘I missed you.’