Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's a wonder neither of them have been expelled. 

Nobara isn't supposed to be at the hospital wing. Really, it was Megumi's fault if you think about it. If he hadn't stopped her from casting an igniting spell on the cheat sheet—by pulling on her collar, by the way, which is no way to treat a lady, especially not one so mindful as to get rid of evidence!—her aim wouldn't have been so abysmal that she singed one of Professor Yaga's decorative plushies. Luckily, it was enough of a distraction that she was able to shove the (unburnt) cheat sheet into her bag without Yaga noticing.

Unluckily, it was hard for Yaga to not notice the jet of flames that had streamed from her wand.

And now she's here, on a full-day detention that had her missing the Quidditch match, having to listen to Yuji's half-brother arguing with the Slytherin golden boy.

"Can't believe they still let you play," Gojo says, scratching at the bloodied green collar sticking to his skin. "You targeted me all game and I still caught the Snitch. So embarrassing."

"And yet Ravenclaw still took the win." Sukuna sneers down his nose at the boy on the bed opposite him. "Patience has never been your strong suit, so of course you couldn't wait for your Chasers to get their points in. As long as you look good, right?"

"Please! I know what I'm doing. How is it my fault that our Keeper couldn't keep our lead in the split second it took for me to get the Snitch?" 

"That Zenin fuck with the piss-colored hair? It's your fault for keeping him on the team. Then again, I'm not surprised Slytherin has a shortage of talent."

They're still in their Quidditch gear, caked in mud and blood and sweat. The mud is the real head scratcher. How the hell did they manage to be covered in it when Quidditch is played entirely in the sky? 

Nobara is putting off giving them their meds so she doesn't have to subject herself to the fatal stench. They can clearly handle a bit of pain.

But she glances at Madame Tenshi sorting her medicine cabinet and blanches when the woman raises an eyebrow pointedly. Sighing, Nobara takes the tray of prepared medicine in hand and stomps over to the two boys. 

Merlin, she wishes she knew the spell for magically plugging her nose.

They don't even see her coming, too busy arguing to look her way. She has to shove the bottle of Skele-Gro into Gojo's face to stop his rant blaming the Slytherin keeper, Mai’s, Maki’s, and Megumi’s cousin. There are a lot of Zenins in this school, but he is undoubtedly the worst one. Nobara hopes he gets a lashing from the rest of his team for their apparent loss.

"Drink," she tells Gojo, before she slams the bottle and a little glass on his nightstand and makes a beeline for Sukuna. 

To her surprise, he hums in recognition as she approaches. "You're Itadori's friend, right?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

He raises an eyebrow at her, probably disliking her abrasive tone, but Nobara doesn't care. He and Yuji don't hang around the same circles and barely get along anyway, so there's no point in being civil.

In the end, he lets it go, scoffing and nodding towards Gojo, who is now twisting the medicine bottle this way and that and staring at the instructions as if they're written in runes.

"He's not gonna drink that. You're either gonna have to hold him down or spell the liquid straight into his gut."

"Well, I'm not doing either of that. What is he, a baby?"

Sukuna guffaws. "You could say that. Anyway, you've got no choice. I've had Skele-Gro—the fool would rather heal his bones the natural way than have something as bitter as that in his mouth.”

Nobara looks at Gojo, who has never looked more distressed than in this moment. He’s definitely pretending to read the label to stall, even peeling off parts of it in agitation. She has to resist the urge to laugh at him lest she be scolded for bad bedside manner.

Well. Worse bedside manner.

“Not my problem,” she huffs, walking away.

Sukuna snorts, but doesn't say anything more, and Nobara leaves them be.

Even though she declared it to be not her problem, it still kind of is—she has to make sure, at least, that the medications they need to take are taken and their limbs and organs are working as they should. And, with these two, that they don’t end up killing each other. At least not in the hospital wing on her watch. Imagine dying in a literal magic medical ward.

How embarrassing would that be? she thinks, chuckling to herself as she fucks with the bottles and bits and bobs to make it seem like she’s doing work. Since it’s been a slow day—a miracle, for game day—her ears don’t even strain to pick up the two boys bickering once more.

“Ugh, the smell alone makes me wanna barf!”

“Plug your nose and down it, idiot.”

“Do you know how hard it is to swallow with your nose plugged?”

“I’m sure you’ve swallowed under worse circumstances.”

“Oh, nice, real mature, Sukuna. And you’re the pride of the smart house?”

Teenage boys. The House doesn’t matter—they’re the same everywhere. Bratty and immature and hypercompetitive and unable to have a vulnerable moment a day in their lives—

“Fuck’s sake. Pass it over.” 

The metal bed frame squeals in a way that makes Nobara’s teeth chatter something awful, and when she peeks around the corner to look, expecting the boys to be giving each other even worse injuries, she instead finds Satoru Gojo pouting as Sukuna snatches the bottle out of his hands. Oh, he glares at him, sure, big blue frog eyes narrowed in such an unnatural way he looks like he’s trying to read something some distance off, but he doesn’t even flinch when Sukuna’s wand slides out of his sleeve and into his hand.

Nobara isn’t sure if it’s arrogance or a weird sense of trust.

Sukuna pours Skele-Gro into the little cup, holding it up at eye-level presumably so he can get the measurements right. He’s quite the potioneer—even Nobara knows that, despite being two years his junior—equipped with a steady hand and the eye for perfection. Gojo watches him as enraptured as she is, and does a very bad job of hiding it.

With a practiced, almost lazy flick of the wrist, Sukuna taps the cup once. The bone-white liquid glows. Sukuna mutters an incantation, taps Gojo’s stomach, and the liquid disappears.

“Oh!”

“There. Now quit whining. I’m going to sleep this off.”

Nobara watches the unflappable Satoru Gojo flush a dusty pink, blue eyes somehow open even wider, a hand on his belly. 

“That feels… strange.” He opens and closes his mouth, tongue flicking against the roof, the way you would when you’re trying to figure out the aftertaste of something. Then he beams. “Wow! I can’t taste it at all!”

“Obviously. It’s in your stomach.” Sukuna lies down and closes his eyes, both hands clasped on his sternum like a corpse in his casket. If that’s the way he sleeps, then he sleeps like a fucking psychopath.

Gojo grins. “Aw, Sukuna. That was awful nice of you.”

“Can it.”

“I’m just saying. I didn’t know you had a sweet bone in your body.”

“Ugh. I did it so you’d quit bitching, and yet you’re still incapable of keeping that mouth shut.”

“Maybe I’m your exception, huh? Maybe you actually like me more than you—ack!”

A pillow flies from Sukuna’s side of the room straight towards Gojo’s head. The Slytherin boy is too immersed in his little performance, fake-swooning with a hand over his chest, to notice it coming, and oh boy, does it come. Nobara whistles—hell of an arm Sukuna has—as the pillow smacks Gojo so quickly and violently that his head whips back and hits the metal of the bedframe behind him.

“Ow!”

“Are you gonna cease your senseless yammering and let me sleep or am I gonna give your Skele-Gro more to work on?”

“Fine. But I’m keeping this. You can be miserable with your single pillow.” Gojo grumbles like a child, hugging the offending pillow to his chest for a second only to then toss it away. “Blech! This reeks! Madame Tenshi, Sukuna needs a sponge bath stat!”

“As if you don’t smell just as wretched, asshole!”

Nobara spends the rest of her detention watching them like she would a telenovela—Saori back at home is obsessed with them, and would often have one on whenever she hosted girls’ nights—or even a wildlife documentary. Posturing, she figures, like domestic cats that make themselves look as big as they can, or birds that fight over who has prettier feathers. 

In this case, it’s a more cerebral battle—Gojo continues to talk just to talk, not even to Sukuna but at him, and Sukuna pretends to ignore him, eyes shut as if sleeping even though Nobara can see the twitching of his brows when Gojo says something particularly outrageous. Strategies developed over years of petty annoyances and intense competition. Neither of them bend nor break. 

Anyway. It becomes background noise, like Saori’s telenovelas, after a while.

When she finally gets to leave, hours later, after the sun has already kissed the horizon and the moon has woken for her shift, the last thing Nobara sees before she’s out the door is Sukuna by a sleeping Gojo’s bedside. That same knot on his brow, he measures the right dosage of Skele-Gro and spells it into Gojo’s gut, just like before. 

The boy’s white eyelashes do not even flutter, and he sleeps through his shattered bones mending themselves, none the wiser.

Huh.

✦

She’s not proud of this, because it’s honestly embarrassing to be, in any way, boy-obsessed in this day and age, but Nobara keeps a close eye on Sukuna and Gojo from that day on. Call it morbid curiosity. Hell, maybe it’s even reality TV withdrawal—which she prefers over telenovelas, by the way. Isn’t it so much juicier when the drama is real?  

All this to say: she’s been aware of her seniors more than she has ever been, or frankly, ever wanted to be.

If she could be bothered, she could probably fill up a notebook with her observations by now. Surely it’s enough evidence for a dissertation, if she so chooses. What the thesis statement would be is anyone’s guess.

Observation one: Sukuna and Gojo are partners for their current Transfiguration assignment. She’d gathered this piece of information when she overheard them in an empty classroom practicing. Something about shifting into inanimate objects? 

Observation two: they practice Quidditch together. It’s strange. There’s nothing wrong with training with students from another House, of course, but nobody really does it with any regularity on account of the fear that the other team would know all your moves. But Nobara has witnessed this herself on the rare occasion that she keeps Megumi company on the stands while they watch Yuji’s team practice.

Observation three, and a fact of life everybody in the school must know: they loathe each other. Hogwarts is a large castle, built upon a larger land still, but it often seems too small for the likes of the two of them. Everything is a competition. It wouldn’t be so bad, and the professors would have otherwise been delighted by the passion and eagerness with which they treat everything like a challenge. But they are also the school’s most talented students who give everything their all whether or not it warrants that amount of dedication, which means that when their teasing comes to blows, it takes a small army to part them.

Literally. Nobara shudders, remembering her first Dueling Club showmatch. Only third years and older are allowed to join the Club, as it is too dangerous for the younger, less experienced mages, but it’s a great pride when you're chosen to be a part of the end-of-the-year tournament, even when the only offensive spells you know are third-year level. 

Nobara and Maki put on a show that year, and to this day, it’s a match she looks back on with fondness. (Especially since that’s when Mai says she became enchanted with her.) But it was completely overshadowed—as was the rest, even the eight-year duels—by the sixth-year Sukuna and Gojo showmatch. They had annihilated the arena and without missing a beat, continued outside of it. It took several members of the faculty to make them stop.

No winner between them had been crowned then nor since, because they were never allowed to face each other again.

That doesn’t stop them from raising their wands or their fists at each other, though, and that’s kind of the point. In a vacuum, she gets it. She does! She understands each observation as they are, individually. What Nobara doesn’t get is how it all fits together. 

“Mai,” Nobara says one day, her eyes trained on white hair and bubble tea across the courtyard. “You live in the same common room as Satoru Gojo.”

“Weird way to phrase that, but yes. What about it?”

“Is his whole thing with Ryōmen Sukuna for real? Like, is it a bit?”

That gets Mai to look up from her notes, frowning. She watches Nobara for all of a second and sighs, putting her stack of parchment paper away so she can give Nobara all her attention. “Alright, babe. Explain.”

“They hate each other. So what’s with… all that?” Nobara gestures to where Gojo and his friends are sitting under the wych elm tree. Sukuna, who’d just arrived, his Hufflepuff friend Uraume in tow, struts right up to him, takes his bubble tea, sips it and recoils, then gives it back. He says something, leaves, and Gojo ceases his yelling long enough to say goodbye to Suguru Geto and Shoko Ieiri before following him. 

Mai watches the same scene unfold and answers, “They don’t hate each other.”

“What! They obviously do, babe! They can barely be in the same room without hexing the shit out of each other.”

“When we first met, you said I had open pores and eyebags that could weigh me down if I swam. Did you hate me then? It’ll break my heart if you say yes, by the way, so choose your next words carefully."

Nobara is silent. Isn’t that different?

✦

Potions class is different today. Oh, it’s still a dreary business—it’s not like Professor Kenjaku bothered to cover up the disgusting ingredients and samples lining the walls,  but he’s rearranged the tables so that they form a semi-circle around his own desk where a cauldron sits, lightly simmering. The room looks like an imitation of a Greek amphitheater, and from the writing on the chalkboard, it seems that entertainment is abound.

They’re all in the front, huddled around the cauldron. A pearlescent sheen on top of the pink concoction makes it look like candy, tempting Nobara to drink it down or jump in it. 

Yuji barges in, fourteen minutes late, and races to her side. He sniffs the air. “Did you steal Megumi’s shampoo again?”

“It happened once, and no.”

“Then how come this place smells like Megumi?”

“That,” Professor Kenjaku interrupts as he steps out of the side door, “would be the Amortentia. Thank you for joining us, Itadori-kun. You just barely made it within the grace period.”

Everyone looks at Yuji, some snickering behind their hands, others with knowing smiles. But the boy in question only smiles back, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Ah, that makes sense.”

“Indeed. You are fortunate to have no need for such a potion, Itadori-kun. Though, in truth, some might argue there is no need for any love potions at all. That is why you will not be learning how to brew this pure, undiluted version today. Now, can anyone tell me…”

The next half hour is the boring bit—all the disclaimers and the history and the elements and facets of the potion. Then again, Nobara isn't into the actual brewing part either, preferring to use potions rather than make them. It's too exact of a science. 

Fortunately, her partner is actually good at them. Yuji likes the precise instructions, likes the simplicity of following them to a tee. So Nobara can afford to space out while they work.

“So I smell Megumi's shampoo, morning dew on fresh cut grass like on the Quidditch pitch…” Yuji lists, sniffing the cauldron rather than wafting like Professor Kenjaku instructed. “...smores and a log fire? What about you, Nobara? What do you smell?”

“Metal, um… perfumed soap? Like they have in those bath bombs? Wet pavement… and gunpowder.” 

“Huh. It’s so freaky that a potion can smell like all those things at once. And all that’s in it are a bunch of flowers and like, eggs.”

Nobara’s fairly certain there’s a lot more to it than that, but she says nothing. Instead, she stares at her reflection in the sheen of the potion, so shiny that it’s staggering, and thinks about jumping in. What would happen to her, she wonders, if love were not just in the air but in her veins? 

Isn’t it already? Doesn’t she kiss hands sometimes stained with gunpowder without this pink monstrosity to guide her? It isn’t luck like Professor Kenjaku suggested. Whoever needs potions to get the girl must just be miserable.

Yuji bottles their finished sample and hands it to Professor Kenjaku, who gives him a nod and words of praise. On a whim, Nobara bottles a vial of it herself. She sneaks it into the inner pocket of her robe once she thinks nobody is looking. But oh, is Kenny always looking.

The professor’s eyes meet hers, and she could swear he sees what she’s done. Not another detention, she thinks, sweat on her brow from both the fumes and the nerves. But he just smiles, winks, and carries on.

Nobara gets away with her little crime, one she has no real motives for in the first place. What the hell is she ever gonna use this for?

Who knows? Maybe it’ll make for nice perfume in a pinch.

✦

“I don’t know why you’re so mad at Gojo-senpai,” Yuji says through a mouth full of lamb chops and potato skins. “It was a nice thought at least, wasn’t it?”

“It was humiliating. He thinks that just because he was my babysitter for a while that he needs to protect me or whatever. Hana was only asking for help with her classwork.”

Immediately, Nobara knows she’s walked in on something equally stupid and hilarious. She must be a part of it. With a pep in her step, she plops down next to the boys on their little picnic blanket. No worries about third-wheeling, Mai and Maki and the rest will be here soon.

“Pump the brakes. What’s he done this time?” she asks.

Yuji answers when it becomes clear that Megumi doesn’t want to. “He scared Hana away by pretending to be Megumi’s homoerotic violin instructor. I guess he thought she was making a move and was doing it for my sake?”

Nobara can’t help it, she laughs. 

“Yes, yes, my humiliation is so funny. Hana didn’t deserve it,” Megumi grumbles, scraping the red bell peppers on his plate onto Yuji’s. “I’ve already offered her my notes for the next three Charms classes to make up for it, but Yuji isn’t being helpful in thinking up ways to get back at Gojo. You idolize him too much, you know.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll be serious now, promise. Gojo-senpai may be cool, but he’s not cooler than you.”

Yuji throws an arm over Megumi’s shoulder and nuzzles into his hair. Just like that, tension melts off of Megumi’s form and he leans into the hug, the blunder forgiven. The vial of Amortentia sits heavy in Nobara’s pocket.

Ardor and all that comes with it suits Nobara and her partner quite well. It’s easy for them. Even easier still for the boys before her. She wonders what form it takes for Gojo. If he's this brazen when he isn't in love with the person…

An idea blooms.

“Humiliation, huh?” Nobara mutters, catching the boys’ attention. It’s a tough ask when it comes to Satoru Gojo. He’s devoid of shame; Nobara can remember only one time in recent memory that he’s looked even close to flustered. The image comes to her like a long lost friend: hospital beds, disgusting medicine, and a pink-haired boy with snake bite piercings. “Have you ever seen him infatuated, Megumi?”

“Infatuated? Gojo?” The ensuing snort, so unlike the boy, is answer enough.

A sinister smile splits her face from ear to ear. “Well… do you wanna see?”

✦

Nobara has to wait for the next time that Gojo and Sukuna are in the hospital wing together to put the plan into motion. Luckily, she really doesn’t need to wait that long. No, not because of Quidditch this time, surprisingly. 

More surprisingly, Satoru Gojo now has six eyes. A pair above his furrowed brow and a pair resting along his cheekbones. They move in a synchronized fashion, and she can’t quite decide whether it would be creepier if they didn’t or not. His pupils are larger too, taking up almost the entirety of the sclera, and that is definitely creepy. Gojo looks like a doll.

Nobara doesn’t say so out loud lest he take it as a compliment.

Sapphires—all six of them at once—turn toward her as she approaches, a tray in her hand carrying several vials and bottles. Sukuna doesn’t even bat an eye, doesn’t acknowledge her at all as he reads the heavy-looking leather tome he’s holding open with one hand.

“So,” Nobara drawls. “Can I ask something?”

“No.”

“Lighten up, Sukuna. Go ahead, girlie, ask away.”

“You guys know that Polyjuice doesn’t work with animal parts, right?”

“...Nevermind. Get her out of my sight.” Gojo turns away, pouting. “Of course we knew that! This was a calculated risk!”

“Wow, you’re bad at math, then—”

“Risk implies there was a chance of success. There was none.” Sukuna sounds bored with the conversation already. Why he’s even here is anybody’s guess, but he leans back on nothing and his eyes do not stray from the page. “He needed to know what it feels like to alter your body into something it is not. Or so he says.”

“Exactly, exactly! We failed on purpose.”

If Gojo thought that this… plan sounds less stupid when phrased that way and said with his usual braggadocio, then he is sorely mistaken. Nobara thinks it’s stupider than ever. But she is not here to question his sanity; if anything, she is here to drive him further to its brink.

“Well, in any case. Unless you plan to look like that forever, drink these.” She holds her hand out and hopes they don’t notice the way the tray threatens to slide out of it because of the clamminess of her palms. 

Four vials sit on the silver tray, each as colorful and mystifying as the last. One dose is barely a shot, but the thing about potions is that they command attention and demand respect. Nobara’s pocket is empty, its lightness just as notable to her as the weight of the vial of diluted Amortentia now on the tray, hidden in plain sight.

“Why so many?” Gojo questions. 

“One for each extra eye.”

“Ha-ha.”

Madame Tenshi rounds the corner, staring down at the three of them through her spectacles. “Sometimes, Gojo-kun, it takes three potions to offset one. For what other reason, would you suppose, is the consumption of Polyjuice forbidden?”

“...Identity theft?”

“Ha-ha,” she mirrors, and remarkably, there is something mocking about the stoic woman’s tone. She slinks back to her office and leaves Nobara to deal with the situation on her own again. Gotta earn her keep somehow, right?

Nobara pointedly thrusts the tray into Gojo’s space again. As part of her detention, she actually has to know what each vial does. It takes a lot to transform a body—one is for skeletal structure, another for the muscles, and the last for his nervous system. Mediwitches can and do facilitate the process, but unfortunately for Gojo, who is glaring at the collection of vials like they are a personal slight against him, medicines are necessary for every affliction.

He grabs the vial of Amortentia. The pink liquid sloshes inside, shimmering and glittering with the movement. “What’s this then?”

“It’s—” Nobara struggles with an excuse. “It’s a painki—”

“Ugh! It smells like fire and blood! Are you sure this isn’t for him?” He juts a thumb in Sukuna’s direction. “The rumors are true, you know, about him being a vampire. So I’m sure we can strike this one off the list and—”

“Fucking hell.”

Before Nobara’s eyes, without her even needing to urge him, after all, Sukuna tosses his book on the foot of the bed and snatches the vial from Gojo’s hand. With a swish and a flick of his wand, he empties its contents. Nobara knows she’s won when Gojo blinks, slow and steady, as if trying to taste the addition to his stomach. Sukuna does the same with the rest of the vials.

She nods her thanks to Sukuna, gathering three of the vials and pocketing one once she’s walked out of his eyesight. That was terrifyingly easy.

And now she waits.