Chapter Text
Park Jimin’s List of Things to Achieve in 6th Year
- Win the Quidditch Cup!
- Spend as much time as possible with the 7th years before they graduate :(
- Be the best prefect in my house!!!
- Not blow up a potion the entire year
- Learn how to Apparate?
- Finally ask out Kim Jongin? (haha yeah right)
Park Jimin was running towards the end of the summer. Most students fled from it, sensing their freedom slipping away from them with each sinking of the sun past the horizon, but Jimin had watched the past few sunsets with a giddy awareness that summer was ending. In this particular moment, however, he was not running buoyed by the knowledge that school was once again about to begin and he would be with his friends once more—nay, he was running because he was late and the train was about to leave.
“Excuse me!” he huffed, sprinting through the train station. His trolley rattled frantically, his owl’s cage teetering on top of his mound of suitcases. People leapt out of his way, and he swerved to avoid a particularly slow and elderly lady. Gisteol screeched in warning, ruffling his feathers.
“Sorry, sorry,” panted Jimin. There—he could see it: the innocuous brick column of Platform 9 3/4. The plainclothes Ministry of Magic employee, perched casually nearby with a newspaper in hand, looked up and saw Jimin running at full speed.
“Almost late!” said the other wizard disapprovingly, gesturing at the clock, and Jimin offered a sheepish smile before sweeping through the barrier. The train was already gearing up, the platform almost empty of children and entirely filled with parents, and Jimin wasted no time in shoving his belongings onto the train, much to Gisteol’s loud complaining. He leapt onto the train himself—and not a second too soon, as it started to move slowly along. As his adrenaline subsided, he put his hands on his knees and sucked in deep breaths.
He couldn’t stay here for too long, however. He had to go to the prefects’ meeting. And so, adjusting the shiny badge on his new robes, he coughed slightly. Ignoring the shocked expressions of the first years around him who had just seen him throw himself onto the train, he walked to the prefect’s carriage, chest heaving for breath the whole time.
The Head Boy, a 7th year Gryffindor, looked up when Jimin opened the door. He took in Jimin’s bedraggled appearance: the sweat plastering his hair to his skin, the redness in his cheeks from exertion. And then he sighed. “Every year, Jimin.”
“Sorry Seokjin,” said Jimin, taking a seat next to his fellow Hufflepuff prefect, Jung Wheein, who was very carefully stifling laughter. She tugged him into a hug, whispering into his ear, “Thanks for the five galleons. Chanyeol and I had a bet going on.”
“I don’t know how it happens,” whispered Jimin back.
“As I was saying,” continued Seokjin. He was too professional to give Jimin an exasperated glare, but Jimin could feel it. “This year, Headmaster Bang agreed with me that prefects should have more training days. So that means that once a month, we will all convene and practice our prefect-ing.” He grinned, sudden and blinding. “Perfect the prefect in you.”
“How long did that take you to come up with?” asked seventh-year Slytherin prefect Kim Minseok with a sneaky sort of smile.
“No time, I’m a natural born genius,” shot back Seokjin.
The Head Girl rolled her eyes and stepped forward. Former Slytherin prefect, Bae Joohyun a.k.a. Irene, was cool and collected where Seokjin was indignant and emotional, which, in Jimin’s mind, made them a good leadership duo. It also helped that both of them were almost superhumanly attractive. (Maybe a little veela blood? Jimin always suspected it in Seokjin.) “Are there any questions?” she asked.
Shoot. Jimin really did miss the whole meeting. He felt the paper in his breast pocket almost burning, accusingly. So much for being the best prefect in his house.
A quiet, tentative voice piped up. “I have a question.”
Jimin turned his head slowly, trying not to attract more unwanted attention, but with the desperate need to see. Because the voice belonged to the closest version of a god walking the earth: sixth-year Kim Jongin, a Ravenclaw prefect with a face so sculptured that Jimin couldn’t even fathom how it was real. Kim Jongin, of the jawline that could cut diamonds.
Kim Jongin, the love of Jimin’s life, ever since third year.
He was so busy thinking about Jongin taking him on a Hogsmeade date that he missed out entirely on Jongin’s actual question, only snapping back to reality when Jongin said: “…possible to choose someone not from your house to be your hallway patrol mate?”
“That’s an excellent point,” said Seokjin, thoughtful.
Pick me, said Jimin’s brain, which was dancing at the idea of long, uninterrupted strolls down the hallowed halls of Hogwarts with the handsome Jongin.
“Generally, we pair you with your fellow prefect to promote bonding between the two of you,” Irene explained. “But we’ll discuss it with the Headmaster. Any more questions?” When there was no movement or sound in the room other than the rustling and breathing, she inclined her head and continued. “Thank you all for attending the meeting,” she said. “Please remember to attend the first meeting of the year, but right now, get some rest and catch up with your friends.”
She cracked a smile, a small one but lovely nonetheless, and Jimin heard one of the younger prefects sigh longingly.
“Meeting dismissed!” said Seokjin, handsome as well but decidedly less poised than Irene, waving his arms at them as if he were trying to shoo away pigeons. “Shoo.”
There was a flurry of activity as people stood up to leave, muttering and inevitably stepping on each other’s robes, searching for their wands. Jimin, rather than to get trampled by the lot, remained seated—several of the prefects, like Jennie and Jongdae, stopped by to greet him briefly and promise to catch up.
“Hey Jimin,” said Jongin as he passed by, eyes crinkling in a smile.
“Hey Jongin,” Jimin said in a way that attempted to be casual and instead came out as horribly creaky and embarrassing, something of a cross between a donkey’s hee-haw and a bird’s warbling cry in the morning. Jongin grinned at him, promised to catch up with him later, and left. Jimin suppressed the urge to slam his own head against the side of the wall.
Once the crowd had ebbed, he walked over to where Seokjin was talking to Irene. They were just wrapping up their discussion and Seokjin, without stopping his sentence, pulled Jimin under his arm into a tight hug that Jimin gratefully returned. “We’ll talk about the training days later,” he said.
“Yes, sounds good,” agreed Irene. Though she wasn’t smiling, her eyes were friendly and she turned that gaze on Jimin. “Nice to see you, Jimin.”
“Nice to see you too,” croaked out Jimin from where he was currently being slowly suffocated by Seokjin.
As she left, Seokjin smacked Jimin lightly upside the head. “Yah!” he complained. “Why are you always late? It’s been six years Jimin, have you not yet learned how to set an alarm?”
“I would just like to point out that my first year, I was an hour early,” said Jimin. “I feel like the amount of time I spent sweating on the platform makes up for the few minutes I’ve been late every other year.”
“It really doesn’t.” Seokjin shook his head, but he was smiling. “Come on, I know where the others are sitting.”
“Oh, great. On the way, can you fill me in on what I missed at the meeting?”
“I will actually murder you this year if you make me give you a recap of the meetings every time you’re late,” said Seokjin, warningly.
“You know, one of my goals for this year was to be the best prefect,” mused Jimin.
“Well you’re doing a splendid job.”
But, like the great and kind Head Boy he was, Seokjin filled Jimin in on the details of the meeting he’d missed while he was sprinting through the train station. Jimin had been so proud when Seokjin sent him a letter over the summer with the news that he had been chosen as Head Boy, and he was proud now, looking at the shiny badge on Seokjin’s chest. Impulsively, he threw his arms around Seokjin, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“Hey,” complained Seokjin over the interruption even as his arm came up around Jimin in response, hugging him back tight.
“This is my hello-I’ve-missed-you-this-summer hug,” Jimin informed him. “Patent pending. I intend to test it out on all of my friends.”
“Yoongi’ll bite your face off.”
They walked through the train compartments, the hum of machinery under their feet a pleasant constant. Old friends and acquaintances greeted them, and often they found themselves sidetracked into conversations to catch up. As a result, it was a solid half hour until they could work their way to the compartment where their other friends remained.
“Finally,” muttered Seokjin, and pulled open the door. And the first thing Jimin hears from his best friend Kim Taehyung in over two months is: “And that’s how I temporarily lost my toe to a Kappa.”
Jimin blinked. Seokjin frowned. Four faces in the compartment turned towards them.
“I’m not even surprised,” said Jimin, and the carriage erupted in noise.
The first person to hug Jimin was, unsurprisingly, Taehyung. Best friend since first year, sixth-year Ravenclaw with glasses perpetually placed on the back of his head and pants loose enough to fit a whole extra human. He crushed Jimin to himself, crowing in delight. “Jiminie,” he crooned, practically lifting Jimin off the floor with the force of his joy. Jimin hugged back just as tight, laughing into Taehyung’s chest before banging on his arm to let him free.
“I gotta greet the others,” he said, and pouting, Taehyung obeyed and launched himself as Seokjin.
Next was Kim Namjoon, a 7th year Ravenclaw with dyed silvery-brown hair, who gave Jimin a perfunctory one-armed hug and a smile. “I’ve missed you over the summer, Minnie,” he said, ruffling Jimin’s hair in that absently paternal manner he unconsciously affected. “Missed you too, Joonie,” Jimin replied.
And then there was Jung Hoseok, whose smile was just as bright as Jimin remembered. His fellow Hufflepuff, his Captain, his Friend—Jimin latched onto him in his most suffocating manner, beaming up at him.
“I hope you didn’t forget your broom,” said Hoseok. Like that was even a possibility. Jimin rolled his eyes and turned away.
The last person in the carriage stood away from everyone else, which Jimin had expected. Jeongguk was the last person to go charging into a fray of hugs. He was a fringe kinda guy, something that Jimin knew after years of being a professional Jeongguk handler—in mobs, expect to find Jeongguk on the outside. He’d done it almost on purpose, not seeking out Jeongguk, so he could savor their encounter for last. And so he turned, smile already blossoming on his face—
“Hey,” said the person in front of him, and Jimin’s smile fell off his face.
He and Jimin and Tae were all in the same year, albeit in different houses: Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin. The Jeongguk Jimin remembered was a skinny twig of a kid wrapped up in a silver and green tie, just about Jimin’s height and all gangly limbs, his smile big and sheepish and bunny-toothed. This was not Jimin’s Jeongguk. This Jeongguk was taller than Jimin, by at least an inch, if not two. This Jeongguk had a filled out form, muscles that moved underneath the fabric of his shirt and—were those rolled up sleeves? Those forearms were practically illegal.
He’d stood there gaping for too long, because the smile dropped off Jeongguk’s face. “Uh, Jimin?” he asked, uncertainly. Had his voice gotten deeper? It was possible.
“Hi,” Jimin croaked out. His throat was suddenly too dry. “H-i.”
“Jeonggukie’s all ripped now!” cheered Taehyung, draping himself over Jimin.
“I can see that,” said Jimin. Pull yourself together, he told himself and then forced a smile. “Wow, Gukkie! What’d you do, lift all summer?”
“I was working on my uncle’s farm,” said Jeongguk, like it was no big deal, like his shirt wasn’t practically straining at the seams to accommodate his new frame. “Guess that’s what happens when you lift stuff around a farm all summer.”
“Lift?” Taehyung made a face. “Why wouldn’t you just use magic?”
“Because he’s a muggle, remember?” Jeongguk explained patiently. “So he doesn’t know. So, I lugged around rocks and plants and stuff.”
Jimin had to shake his head to get out the thoughts of Jeongguk, shirtless in the summer heat, arms straining to lift heavy objects. The very thought of it did queasy things to his stomach—jealousy? And then, suddenly, he became aware of one, glaring fact.
“Guys,” he said, and the others turned to look at him. “Where’s Yoongi?”
Because where was Min Yoongi? Short 7th year Gryffindor, with dyed white-blonde hair and a gummy smile, with a knobby wand to match his knobby knuckles, often found grumbling behind Hoseok or Namjoon, or out to dinner with Jeongguk.
The four who had been in the carriage previously exchanged a look among themselves.
“We don’t know,” said Namjoon, finally. “We talked about it for a while.”
Jimin frowned. “Did anyone get any letters from him over the summer? I tried, but he never responded.”
“Same with me,” said Seokjin, and the others chimed in their affirmations (except for Taehyung, who allegedly did not believe in letters).
“I thought perhaps it was best to give him his space,” said Hoseok, who knew Yoongi the best out of all of them, but who was also looking uncertain in the moment. “After…, you know. What happened. I floo’d to his house one time but was gently turned away, so I thought maybe it would best to give him some time to himself.”
There was a moment when they all realized that they were still standing up. (This moment was when the train swerved and they all nearly toppled over each other; Jimin fell against Jeongguk’s very solid chest and dragged himself upright spluttering and mortally offended at the karmic forces of nature.) Upon seating, Jimin found himself squished between Taehyung and Jeongguk, Taehyung’s arm casually looped over Jimin’s shoulders and Jeongguk’s arm pressed up along Jimin’s side.
Jimin cleared his throat. “Maybe he’s late. Maybe he just…overslept.”
That gained him some chuckles, for all of them knew of Yoongi’s sleeping tendencies. But it was nervous laughter, for that, because though Yoongi loved his sleep, he never overslept for anything he deemed important. So then, the question was begged: was it Hogwarts that he had decided was no longer important?
(Or was it them?)
“We’ll send his estate an owl when we get back to Hogwarts,” said Namjoon decisively. “There’s no use worrying about it. I’m sure he’s fine.”
“Is he, though?” Taehyung asked, with the gravity he only whipped out when he was actually seriously concerned about something.
Because last year, Yoongi had been the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, its star Chaser and the snarky, dominating force behind Gryffindor’s two consecutive Cup wins. And then the accident had happened, his shoulder shattered beyond even the Healers’ abilities to repair. He was in the Hospital Wing for weeks. All of them visited him regularly, but Jimin thought with every passing visit that it seemed like the whiteness of the hospital, the very blandness of it, leeched the energy out of him the longer he remained there.
It was the news that he would never again be able to play Quidditch that squashed any hope in his eyes and Jimin couldn’t forget the soulless look. He thought maybe the summer sun would warm it up, return the Yoongi that they all knew and loved but now…
Jimin rested his head against Taehyung’s shoulder and hoped that Yoongi was okay. The others were talking around him, Jeongguk and Namjoon discussing something muggle and Hoseok and Seokjin talking about a recent novel that had been released. Taehyung was humming, his deep voice relaxing and the tune familiar: some ditty about a frog and a fairy. Jimin fell asleep between one note and the next.
He woke up some time before the train actually stopped moving. At some point, they had all fallen asleep or quiet: Namjoon was reading, glancing up and smiling briefly at Jimin before returning to his book; Seokjin and Hobi were asleep on each other; and Taehyung was puddled on Jimin’s shoulder. Jimin turned his head slightly, looked at Jeongguk, who was looking out the window.
For a moment, Jimin allowed himself to look at the profile. It was near sunset and the golden light bathed Jeongguk like he’d been gilded. And then Jeongguk sighed and turned back to Jimin and their eyes locked.
Jimin froze. Jeongguk did too, and then he smiled, just slightly, and it sent a zing, all the way down Jimin's spine. “Almost there,” he said.
“Yeah,” breathed Jimin, and then the train turned and the castle swung into sight.
Seeing the Hogwarts after summer vacation was like seeing the first snow of the year. There was always something magical about it, even six years later: the dark spiraling towers, with their peaked turrets; the shining of the Great Lake fringed by the Forbidden Forest; and the sunset, backlighting all of it, limning the outline of the castle in shimmery copper. Jimin wanted to press his face up against the window and breathe the magic into his lungs, turn his blood into molten gold. Another year at Hogwarts, he told himself. Make it count.
When the train finally stopped, it was from one transportation to the other. Jimin and Seokjin joined the prefects herding the second years who didn’t quite understand what was going on into the horseless carriages.
“But I liked the boats,” protested one of them, and Jimin smiled his most eye-crinkly smile and resisted the urge to bodily pick him up and throw him into the carriage.
After they were done, he looked around and saw Taehyung murmuring to empty air, hand outstretched. The students around him who didn’t know Taehyung gave him a wide berth, and the ones who did know him smiled in a pitying manner. And Jimin did nothing, just looked at his best friend from afar. It was sometime in third year that Taehyung had come up to him, pale-faced and stammering, and told Jimin the horseless carriages were perhaps not quite as horseless as they had thought.
Threstals, that’s what they had discovered. And now Taehyung visited them every week. “I started seeing them after my grandmother died,” he said, like that explained anything. “It’s like talking to them brings me closer to her.”
“Tae,” called Jimin, now. “Let’s go before you miss one of the carriages!”
Taehyung looked up, smiled beamingly at Jimin. “We’re over here,” he called. “Come on and join us.”
“All right,” said Jimin, beginning to jog over before he caught a flash of platinum blonde hair in the corner of his eye. He turned around, automatically, and saw Min Yoongi climb into a carriage.
He stopped. And before he could tell himself otherwise—perhaps it was someone else who had dyed their hair over the summer, or maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him—he was walking to the carriage and pulling the door open.
And there Min Yoongi was, sitting lazily on the bench, his Gryffindor tie loose around his shoulders in that heartachingly familiar Min Yoongi way.
“Yoongi,” he breathed, and Yoongi’s sleepy eyes widened.
“Jimin,” he said.
Jimin cast a quick glance at the rest of the carriage. Seo Janghoon, Lee Soogeun, Kang Hodong, Min Kyunghoon and the rest of that whole group…all people from different houses but with one thing in common: their general indifference towards friendliness. They were infamous in Hogwarts for their droll, snarky comments on the people around them—Jimin was glad that they were graduating this year, if it meant they weren’t terrorizing the halls anymore.
So what was Yoongi doing with them?
“You uh. You weren’t there in the carriages,” Jimin said lamely.
“Oh no, he was,” said Kim Youngchul with a hint of a vindictive smile. “Just, you know. With us.”
Yoongi was still staring at Jimin. His face was half-cast in darkness; it was hard to see his expression, but what little Jimin could see of it was cold, unemotional. Jimin’s mouth worked as he searched for words and ended up coming up with nothing. He didn’t understand. At the very worst, Jimin thought that perhaps Yoongi had decided to take a gap year, or not come to school. He hadn’t anticipated this—this flat rejection of the past six years of friendship.
“Are we done here?” asked Kim Heechul impatiently. “You’re letting in the cold air.” He reached over and plucked the door handle from Jimin’s unresisting hand and slammed the door shut in his face.
He didn’t know what else to do other than to turn around and head back to Taehyung, but he walked like a ghost, wide-eyed and drifting.
“What was that all about?” Taehyung asked when Jimin finally worked his way over. “You just wheeled around and went the other direction.”
“I saw Yoongi,” said Jimin and Taehyung stopped walking, turned and stared at him. Jimin wrapped an hand around the other boy’s arm and dragged him along. “Come on. Let’s get to the carriage.”
By the time the carriage touched its wheels to the smooth cobblestone of the pathway in front of Hogwarts, they were still discussing what possibly could’ve coerced Yoongi into befriending what Seokjin called “the bad apples of every house.”
“Confundus charm,” Taehyung said decisively. “Extended one.”
Jimin shook his head. “He didn’t look confused to me.”
“Imperio charm.”
“Taetae, that’s illegal.”
“Well at least I’m offering ideas,” huffed Taehyung, crossing his arms and flopping back, half-onto Jeongguk, who lifted his arm for easier access. “Hmm, you’re a much better pillow, Gukkie, now that you’re not a bag of bones.”
“Bag of bones—! You elbowed me in the head when we were thirteen!”
Jimin rolled his eyes. The carriage had stopped by then and students were flooding the pathway outside of them. “Well, what are we going to do?” he asked as they began to gather up their things, preparing for exit.
“I don’t know, but I’ll try to talk to him at dinner,” said Seokjin. “Or at the dorms. Whichever one is more convenient. Right now, we all have to go to our tables.”
“Jiminie, let’s go.” Hoseok tugged Jimin away, a smile plastered on his face that dropped away once they were far enough. His expression melted to pensive, brows slanted down and together. It was a look Jimin only saw when Hoseok was in full Quidditch captain mode: serious, calculating.
“What’s going on, Hoseok?” he asked, somber in response to Hoseok’s mood.
For a moment, Hoseok said nothing. His radiant smile returned when several of their Quidditch members called out greetings to their captain, and then he turned to Jimin with that same look on his face. “Jimin,” he said quietly. “I think we should prepare ourselves for an eventuality where Yoongi may have just…gotten tired of us. Maybe we’re not what he wants in friends anymore. It happens.”
Maybe it happens, but it happens to other people, Jimin wanted to argue—because Jimin hadn’t wanted it to happen with Yoongi. He couldn’t understand it.
“How could you say that?” he asked, voice just a decibel too loud, frayed with emotion. “You’re his best friend!”
“Yes, and that’s why I’m telling you,” said Hoseok. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I lied to you guys. He didn’t gently turn me down when I floo’d over to his house. He and I had an hour long fight.”
“You what?”
Hoseok sighed. “He basically told me to fuck off and I wasn’t wanted or needed here.”
From the slight downturn in Hoseok’s mouth, Jimin could tell those words had burrowed their way into his psyche. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” said Jimin, but his voice was hollow even to himself.
Hoseok laughed, unconvinced. He opened his mouth to say something and then his megawatt smile snapped back on when several small second-years came up to ask him, in trembling voices, about the upcoming Quidditch tryouts. And then there was no time to continue talking, with the dinner already appearing, and they rushed to find seats.
Jimin found it harder than Hoseok to remain smiling through the sorting ceremony, though he did greet the new Hufflepuff first years with loud applause and a critical eye. “I can’t believe we were ever that small,” he whispered to Park Chanyeol, sitting next to him.
“I never was,” replied Chanyeol, who was a good three inches taller than Jimin even while sitting down. “Maybe you.” Jimin pinched him.
He couldn’t help it when his eyes darted over to the Gryffindor table to see Seokjin sitting with the Quidditch team and Yoongi sitting way on the other side of the table, talking determinedly to a bewildered-looking Kang Younghyun. Both Jin and Yoongi looked very, very unhappy every time Jimin looked over.
On perhaps the fifth or sixth time he glanced over at Yoongi, Yoongi looked up and their eyes met. Jimin held their gaze, his breath catching in his throat. It was Yoongi who first looked away, a tiny scowl appearing on his face.
It wasn’t a good sign, Jimin thought as the meal drew to a close and he and the other prefects got up to help direct the crowds to their common rooms and to help out the first years. It wasn’t a good sign at all.