Chapter Text
“I’m poisoning your food if you don’t get up right now,” Woonhak grumbled to Jaehyun, who was still blinking away any traces of sleep. He never thought he would be threatened by an unproductive fifth year student who just looks like he’s gone through 5 potions periods back to back. Jaehyun stared at Woonhak with a raised brow. “You're acting like you could ever do that to me.” Jaehyun got up anyway, and slipped on his robes before fixing his red and gold tie. He ran his hands through his hair, as though purposely making it askew before nodding to himself and turning to look at an unamused woonhak. “Are you finally done? Can we go now? I’m so hungry,” Jaehyun laughed at that “it’s not even breakfast time yet, you woke me up early on purpose.”Woonhak didn’t even hear that, he was too busy grabbing whatever book he had (which was very unlike him, mind you) and walking straight out of Gryffindor common room. Jaehyun sighed and ran to catch up to him.
“Who are you and what have you done to woonhak,” an orange haired boy from Hufflepuff, lovingly called Riwoo by all his friends, frowned at the sight of the boy actually reading his charms textbook. “What? I have OWLs this year, not my fault my mom threatened me to study over the summer,” Woonhak grumbled while shoving a sausage into his mouth. Jaehyun stared at Woonhak weirdly before sighing and continuing to focus on his breakfast. Leehan, another hufflepuff, pointed out, “you may love your mom, but you never listen to her, like ever. She constantly complains to me you never study enough,"Woonhak looked up from his charms textbook at last. “It’s just…” he sighed, slamming his textbook. “I just want to take my studies seriously this year alright?” He finished before stealing a muffin and stuffing it in his mouth woonhak-style. Riwoo just sighed at that and stared at Jaehyun, as though he thought Jaehyun had an inkling of whatever life-changing stress Woonhak was going through, that caused him dark circles and drinking coffee that looked like depression.
Leehan dropped the subject after that, deciding to turn his attention to the table filled with students wearing green robes and snarky grins. He then found his subject, a guy with jet black hair, black frames and a weird library book in his hand. Leehan always liked observing him, he didn’t know why. But seeing him by himself, at his own pace just made Leehan smirk a little. It made him more amused when the other caught his eye and started to turn red with embarrassment (that was his favourite) he snapped out of his daily observation by woonhak, who looked like he repeated what he said twice already. “Ready to head to Herbology or not?” Leehan immediately clambered out before starting to walk with woonhak towards the greenhouses, not even aware of the heart attack he gave the boy he was staring at.
“… Get a grip for goodness sake taesan,” Yujin scrunched his face up in disgust. Taesan just flicked a sausage at him in retaliation.
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Jaehyun had a free period first thing, and decided to head to the library to catch up on the god awful astronomy homework he had. He groaned a little in his head. He never forgave himself for taking astronomy, although he enjoyed the subject, he often sacrificed hours of sleep for it. Which meant in between quidditch, late night lessons, early mornings, yeah, he was getting no sleep at all.
What he expected was a quiet library, no one yet again, a perfect environment to sit down and focus. What he didn’t expect was a blond ravenclaw who looked as though he went through the same potions lesson as woonhak. Jaehyun recognised him as Park Sungho, sixth year prefect, Riwoo's friend. He seemed to be scribbling out arithmancy formulas by how his parchment was filled with numbers. He sat a little further from sungho, which caused him to look up from his parchment, and send an acknowledging nod towards his way. After that, there was a silence between them, not one of them speaking. Only the scratching of quills against parchment could be heard. Jaehyun carefully plotted points in his map while Sungho solved equation after equation and soon enough he heard the bell chime, signalling the next class which unfortunately for him, was transfiguration. With the ravenclaws. He slowly packed up his things before hesitating for a moment. Sungho was in his class, and he was just about getting ready to move to transfiguration. He gathered enough courage to walk up to sungho and smile “we got class together, want to walk there together?” Before short circuiting when sungho looked up to him. His big, brown eyes were sparkling in the dim light of the library, which made him look soft and tired. “Oh, um, I’m not your friend though? You don’t even know me,” he laughed awkwardly, still arranging his books. “Of course I know your name Park Sungho,” he tried to smile and took half the stack Sungho was carrying, which took him aback. “I mean, if you’re already taking my things, how could I refuse?” He smiled before stepping into a calm pace with jaehyun, in no rush to head to transfiguration so early. He could hear him humming to a song he couldn’t recognise, which put his mind at ease for once.
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Leehan quickly sprinted to a random spot in the potions chamber, he had no time to pick and choose his partner for the lesson. So he braced himself for the worst before turning to the person next to him, only to be met with the same jet black hair and black glasses he stared at every morning. The male seemed to recognise him quite well, considering he immediately flushed upon meeting eyes with him.
“I’ve met you before, you’re the guy always reading a weird book at the Slytherin table,” Leehan smiled at the guy before introducing himself “I’m Leehan,” he held out a hand to shake which the other took hesitantly. “Taesan,” he muttered before snapping back to attention by the booming voice of their potions professor. Taesan was hyper-aware of every movement from Leehan. From the way he brushed off his hair from his face to write, to the tapping of his quill against the table. Everything was calm, in a controlled manner.
“Go ahead and start on the potion with your partner. I expect 0 failures for this,” the professor warned, eyeing a few students. Leehan then turned to taesan and sheepishly informed him he wasn’t the best at potions, which taesan acknowledged, and told him to cut up the ingredients first. Leehan proceeded to take whatever they needed. Arrowroot, ginger, peppermint. Taesan guided him gently, careful not to stay too close to him, in case he accidentally got a heart attack. But instead of a fluttering heart attack, he got a panicked one. As Leehan accidentally nicked his finger on the cutting tool. He cursed under his breath. “Shit… can’t even use wands in this damn classroom,” he frowned. Taesan felt his mind grow fuzzy “Are you okay? Do you need a bandaid? I can discreetly cast an episkey for you or something!” He worriedly grabbed leehan’s finger.
“Dont worry about me, focus on the potion. Zero failures remember,” he smiled before casually, putting his finger in his mouth, sucking it. To be fair, taesan has heard about such methods from gunwook before, apparently the pressure stops bleeding or something but taesan barely recalled that as blood slightly trickled down leehan’s mouth, completely unbothered by it. Goodness gracious did he look absolutely gorgeous doing anything at all. Taesan quickly cleared his throat before returning his focus back to the potion, although the image burnt vivid in his mind. God, he was done for.
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“For a guy who claims to not like studying, you’ve been doing a whole lot of it,” Yujin raised an eyebrow while staring at whatever notes Woonhak has made for revision (in which he helped with.) Woonhak flushed slightly in embarrassment before responding to him “I just take my studies seriously this year okay?” He sighed before taking back whatever parchment he wrote on. Yujin scoffed a little. “Yeah, and Professor Hao isn’t my uncle,” he commented with a sarcastic undertone, which woonhak immediately got thanks to hanging out with sungho one too many times. “Hey! It’s true,” he frowned. Okay, to be completely honest, woonhak wasn’t studying for his OWLs just to get good grades and make his family proud. He’d made a stupid agreement over the summer with Yujin. Woonhak barely allowed himself to recall it, as doing so resulted in Woonhak possibly having to scream in his pillow and turn red.
“Whatever, Woonhak. You’re sure damn lucky I’m giving you Hao’s notes, I don’t share them with just anyone you know,” he darted his eyes towards Woonhak. Yujin noticed the small changes Woonhak had. Deeper eye circles, messier handwriting, tired eyes yet he still carried his smile. It tugged his heart a little. God knows what he’s doing in the Gryffindor tower. He still tried so hard. And slowly he could see improvements. He got way more Exceeding Expectations than ever before.
But the sentiment was soon ruined after Woonhak commented something that made Yujin chuck a book at him. “So you give such sacred notes to people you snog?” He smirked and then yelped when Yujin hit him with a book. “For goodness sake woonhak, I do not snog you,” Yujin huffed at him. “You give light pecks on my lips. Is that better for you?” He slung an arm over yujin which he gruffly allowed and he placed a small, light peck on yujin’s cheek. Woonhak, although he initiated the small act, melted and sighed softly, “you really make this terror worth it.” Yujin hummed and said, “ I seem to tolerate you even more when you’re unbearably sappy,”
Woonhak grinned at that, whatever he had with Yujin, simply was theirs. No one else knew, and had to know. Because it wasn’t their business anyways.
Riwoo just sighed while eating lunch. Jaehyun looked like a kicked puppy in love. Goodness knows what happened to him when Riwoo was away for lessons. Leehan was way too pleased with himself, he would have to strangle the reason why out of him later. Woonhak kept stirring his pumpkin juice, looking dazed. God, he was in for a long, long year.