#Wizard of Haze | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nezuscribe · 11 months ago

Text

𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞

pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader

summary: six years ago, when they placed that sorting hat on your head, nobody expected for it to assign the muggleborn to the slytherin house, but it did. six years later, you find yourself as alone as the day you walked through those doors. little did you expect the prince of slytherin, the pureblood maniac himself, gojo satoru, to be the one to coincidentally fill your empty hours.

warnings: gojo is a pureblooded slytherin, slight angst, slight messy makeout

word count: 12.6k

note: part two is out now! comments and reblogs are always appreciated! thank you to @jadeisthirsting for beta reading as always!

part two

slytherin!gojo masterlist + jjk masterlist

When you were little, all the strange and peculiar things that happened to you, such as Ms. Bromsely, the awful maths teacher's desk going up in flames, or Patricia Gallaghers rings disintegrating after she teased your dress, were chalked up to chance or just something else.

Your mother was too busy covering extra shifts down at the pub to worry about it, so she rarely made an occurrence to the meetings your headmaster had scheduled, resulting in very awkward meetings with just you as you were explained how peculiar it was that you always seemed to be in the middle of all these weird occurrences.

So when that brown spotted owl almost crashed into your bedroom window at the ripe age of eleven, explaining that you were chosen to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you suspected that one of your classmates was playing a cruel joke on you, but alas, it turned out to be very real.

You were whisked away soon enough, stumbling your way in some sort of haze through Diagon Alley, and then in a blink of your eyes, you found yourself waving goodbye to your mother from that red train, on your way to a life you may have only imagined when you were younger, dreaming of a place far away from where you were.

And you loved it.

The feasts, the history-soken steps that you walked on every day to get to class, the little town that was within walking distance that you could go to every weekend.

While most of the students here had been introduced to this early on in their lives, you hadn’t. Your mother was just as shocked and as bewildered as you were all those years ago, and given your special circumstances, sometimes you wondered if you were yet to see the thick of it, wondering if some things were hidden from you given your upbringing, given your blood.

But you blinked out of your stupor, being brought down from your daydream to the sound of quills scratching, the smell of faint smoke burning in the background, and the quiet sounds of different animals in their cages. All of these tall-tell signs of the transfiguration classroom.

After years of spending time in this classroom, it slowly became one that you’d look forward to, and despite most Slytherins having an aptitude for potions or defense against the dark arts, transfiguration was where you shined the best.

The light that carded through the high arching windows illuminated the desks, and you were glad seeing how the back of the classrooms was usually the most poorly lit place. Unfortunately, they’re the only places you found yourself sitting throughout the years, which is just another reason why this specific classroom in itself brought you a slight sense of comfort.

“...cross-species and inter-species transfiguration is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, sort of transfiguration to achieve. Even the most accomplished witches and wizards find themselves struggling with it,” you watched as Professor McGonagall walked around the front of the classroom, her graying hair pulled into a tight bun behind her head, her emerald robes swaying behind her like green waves, “The only way we were able to replicate this form of magic is through ancient runes.��

Her eyes raked over all the students of the class, to make sure that everybody was understanding the weight of her words. As seventh years it was expected that you all would be ready to face the challenges of such a high-level class. But especially with Professor McGonagall, seeing just how difficult her classes usually were.

“Of course, this was all covered during your fourth years, so I hope that some of you,” she gave a knowing look over her glasses, “Remember your lessons.”

You momentarily caught her eyes.

You squirmed in your seat, knowing that her displeased look was directed to the Gryffindor’s sitting next to you. The boy to your left had his mouth open in a large yawn, promptly shutting it when McGonagall looked at him, and the girl to your right was busily finicking with a piece of parchment, trying to figure out how to enchant it so that it could turn into a swan to send to her boyfriend who was sitting across the class.

You loved Hogwarts. Most of the time.

The reason why you usually found yourself at the back of class, sitting with people you barely knew, and the reason why you were yet to experience most of the core memories other witches and wizards your age experienced was because you weren’t welcomed the way other would be by their assorted houses.

Nearly six years ago, when Professor McGonagall placed that sorting hat on your head, you didn’t know what to expect.

You had heard from some of the people that you sat near on the train that Gryffindor was best. Of course, the boy who said it came from a family of Gryffindors, but his friends seemed to agree with him. Ravenclaw was only for the smart people, which you hoped you might be sorted into and Huffelpuffs were known for their loyalty, which, judging by your mother's statement about how you dared to leave home, you didn’t have much of.

But the Slytherin house seemed…forbidden.

At least for you, anyways.

“And what about that girl we saw?” One of the boys pointed outside the carriage window into the little hall outside, pointing to a much older girl wearing green robes, walking with some other friends who wore adorning colors, “What house is she in?”

The other boy, who seemed to have the most knowledge out of anyone, scoffed, shaking his head.

“Not for you, sorry,” he leaned in closer as if he were telling a secret. You tried to listen in, not making it obvious seeing how you weren’t any of their friends and how this was the only cart available with space, “That’s the Slytherin house.”

“Why’s it not for me?” The other boy argued, his face pulled into a scowl.

“Well, Slytherins are many things. Ambitious, cunning,” the other boy said but shook his head disapprovingly, “But above all else, they’re all purebloods. Some are half-bloods, but even that’s rare. You’re coming from a muggle family. My father works at the ministry, and he says that some of the people in his department who were Slytherin still despise muggle-borns and muggles even long after they’ve left.”

So you had a basic understanding of what to expect. Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Gryffindor.

But when the hat cried out “Slytherin!” you almost jumped in your seat, looking behind you at the professor, your face of hesitancy surely mirroring hers.

And you soon found out that the boy on the train (who was sorted into Gryffindor, big shock), was right. Word spread quickly that a muggle-born was sorted into Slytherin, the first in centuries, and that it surely must’ve been a mistake.

But the sorting hat doesn’t go back on its word, and what was said was done. So six and a bit years later you found yourself as the pariah of your own house and were forced to fade into the background to avoid any further trouble.

“...and this is the one project in which I’m having you work with partners, picked by me, of course. The research that is needed to go into this is too much to be done alone.” Professor McGonagall continued, and you perked up in your seat a little bit, your brows furrowing at her words.

You felt a part of your heart race at the thought. Normally when professors assigned partners, it either left you with a fellow Slyhterin who hated your existence and forced you to do the project on your own, or somebody from another house who didn’t know you and forced you to do the project on your own.

Your tongue felt heavy as she began reading off the paired names on her list, your hands becoming clammy.

“Miss Finnegan and Mister Belton. Miss O’Shea and Miss Adan,” The girl next to you, who you quickly pieced together was Leila O’Shea groaned, her face depleted as she realized she wasn’t going to be paired with her boyfriend, and you watched as she sulkily went to the other girl's desk.

You listened in anticipation as she went down the list, your heart beating loudly and comically in your chest the closer it seemed that she was getting to the end.

“Mister Reeve and Mister Thompson,” she paused momentarily as she watched the two boys clap each other on the back, her lips threatening to quirk up into a smile, just waiting to read what foolishness they were going to write, “Miss Ward and Mister Green,” you felt like you might be getting off the hook, that maybe she took pity on you but it all came crashing down when she looked at you, a knowing look in her eyes far worse than pity as she read your name along with perhaps the singular person you would’ve paid all your money to not be paired with,

“…will be with Mister Gojo,” you heard some of your housemates laugh out loud, some of them pushing at the boy and ruffling his hair as if he were the one that was going to face the brute of everything. He sat near the front, and you could see a flash of his white hair as he begrudgingly began to pack his things up, having no choice but to sit next to you seeing how the seats next to him were filled up.

You watched as she rolled the piece of parchment back up as if she hadn’t just sentenced your public execution, and she raised a singular thin brow at the faces that were looking back at her, “Well? Get a move on. This essay is due in a month.”

You tried to take in a deep breath, your eyes trained on the blank piece of parchment in front of you as if you couldn’t hear his footsteps getting closer and closer to you, as if you didn’t just feel his robes brush up against your legs as he sunk into his seat.

This can’t possibly be happening.

Anybody would’ve been better than him. Even Marley Petterson and her constant poking and teasing about how your clothes were held together by scraps, and how you must’ve lived with mud people before you came to Hogwarts would’ve been better than him. Being forced to be a partner with the Prince of Slytherin was torture, and you wonder if after all these years Professor McGonagall was just now starting to show her distaste towards you.

That day on the train was the first time you heard his name.

“You see that boy? The one with the white hair?” The boy discreetly pointed out the window to one of the kids standing outside your cart. All the other boys hurriedly nodded, each craning their necks to get a better look at him, “He’s a Gojo. He comes from a line of Slytherins, each one worse than the one before. They’re purebloods, obviously. You wouldn’t find a speck of anything else in them. They’re rich too, filthy rich. They could buy this school if they wanted to.” All the other boys guffawed, but he seemed serious as if this stranger's family was nothing to be taken lightly.

“When it comes to Slytherins, there are four families to be wary of. There’s the Gaunts and the Malfoys. There’s the noble house of Black, but lastly…them. House Gojo is one that every other wizarding family steers away from.”

After the day you were sorted you also quickly realized why most wizarding families stayed away from them. His word seemed to be law, and all the other Slytherins, especially those in his inner circle, held him to it.

You peeked from the corner of your eye, watching as he unpacked all his supplies, his face contorted in obvious anger and disgust, and you thickly swallowed. You had done a good job in staying away from him these past couple of months, fortunate enough to only be called a mudblood and an offense to their ancient house a couple of times by him and his posse.

His left-hand ring finger almost caught your eye in the sun, the gold ring with his house emblem shining brightly, a clear reminder of your difference with him, and you tried to hide your old school bag, riddled with holes and stains, something you just couldn’t replace.

When he was done unpacked, he sat there for a couple of seconds, the silence between the two of you thick and heavy. You felt like you could choke on it, your fingers twitching to do something, to leave.

“...this is insulating…” he was talking to himself, shaking his head in disbelief as you sat awkwardly, not knowing what to do.

Gojo Satoru wasn’t one for many words. You had observed him from afar, long enough to see that aside from the occasional words he’d exchange with his closest friends or the few times he’d mutter traitor under his breath when the two of you locked eyes, he was a more brooding type of person.

When he was angry, he hid it well. His cheeks might’ve flushed a bit, his nose flaring, but he never made an outburst. Which is why, at this moment, you could tell that he wasn’t in a particularly elated mood.

“I…” you started, your mouth going dry at the way his eyes snapped to you, cold and cruel, “I can do the essay. I’ll get it done in time…if you want.”

Most times your partners would just tell you to do the work, expecting (and knowing), you’d just say yes and go along with your day. But here, you couldn’t afford to let your guard down, rather having your pride be bitten at rather than your overall self.

You heard him snort, his nose wrinkling in disgust as he rolled his eyes.

“What? And have you do everything wrong?” His voice was hushed and clipped as if talking to you a second longer than needed would ruin him and everything he and his family stand for.

He unrolled his piece of parchment, opening up his book as he kept his head down.

“Well, I’m fairly decent with transfiguration,” you spoke up, trying for a smile that quickly fell when you felt his eyes burn into yours. For most of your time at Hogwarts, the only times you’ve ever really spoken to Gojo was when he was hurling insults at you, his words spurred on by his group of friends behind him.

Gojo Satoru knew his worth. He knew that his family name would last through centuries and that the gold his family owned could buy out the entire ministry if they wanted to. Those around him treated him as such; as if his word was law. It also didn’t help that he was incredibly charming, growing into his looks over the years.

You watched as he grew taller, his lanky figure now filled out with muscles that you could sometimes see through the baggy uniform. His eyes were always a topic of conversation, the infamous Gojo blue. His arctic white hair grew a little longer, sometimes falling in his face when he wasn’t aware. He was gorgeous, and you couldn’t even lie to yourself that he wasn’t.

Aside from his looks, he was also freakishly smart. If he hadn’t been sorted into Slytherin you were sure that Ravenclaw would’ve been fitting for him as well. He was always top of the class with O’s on every exam.

Above all else, he knew his difference from everybody else. Even his closest (pureblooded) friends weren't even near his level. Even before he could walk, he’s been told of this. Not only that but he’s been told of the vileness of muggleborns. How their nature threatens the very fabric of wizarding society, and how muggles who have somehow been blessed with magical abilities are below humans, that they don’t deserve the rights every other witch and wizard has.

Which means that you, the sole muggle-born in Slytherin, stood against everything Gojo Satoru believed. You were an abnormality, inhuman, somebody that he should resent for even existing.

“Well, we could always divide the work…?” You offered, your feet anxiously bouncing on the ground as you waited for his response. One of the blessings of sitting so far away from everyone else is that sure, they looked over to see how this was going, but at least they couldn’t listen in as you embarrassed yourself even further.

His eyes darted over to your paper, blinking once, deep in thought.

He sighed deeply through his nose, swallowing thickly as he gave you a singular, curt nod.

“Hm,” he hummed, not even sparing you a glance as he began going to work, his pen scratching against the paper as his eyes began reading over the page, “But I’ll read what you write,” he said quickly, “I refuse to have my rank tank just because you mudbloods can’t do your work properly.”

Mudblood

After six years of it, you know you should’ve gotten used to it, but the stinging in your chest would argue otherwise.

Your shoulders sank, eyes falling to the ground as your fingers fidgeted. You murmured something inaudible as you opened your book to the page McGonagall instructed you to.

—

The days moved on and everything continued as it always did.

The essay you had to write with Gojo was a slight hindrance in your usual schedule, but the two of you worked in silence in class and never interacted outside of it. Sometimes when his elbow would accidentally bump into yours as the two of you were busy writing he’d make a sort of noise in the back of his throat, his hand snatching back quickly as if you had somehow burnt him, but that was the most of your interactions.

Sometimes when you were in the common rooms, late at night, you could hear him talking with his friends, talking about how heinous and ridiculous it was that McGonagall paired the two of you together, but you tried to ignore it.

That following week you found yourself back in the transfiguration classroom, working away quietly as you tried to understand the scriptures on the pages you had to read. You found yourself lucky that this subject was the one you might have some sort of talent in, seeing that this sort of ancient magic was just as difficult as McGonagall made it out to be.

You heard some mumbling next to you, your eyes discreetly looking over at your partner, only to find his head in his hands as his brows furrowed in both annoyance and confusion.

“...what does this…?” You heard him say to himself, watching as he flipped the page back and forth as if he was missing something.

You looked back at your work, the talking around the room drowning out whatever it was that Gojo was saying to himself.

Or at least you tried to drown out the noise, if not for the fact that your partner made some sort of sudden movement that managed to knock his ink bottle down, spilling ink all over the table. You moved your work to the side, watching as some of the ink soaked into your robes.

“Fuck,” he snapped, moving suddenly from his chair so that the ink would drip onto his clothes, “damn it,” he looked around almost helplessly, his hands clenching in anger after seeing all his hard work soaked up in black.

“Wait,” you suddenly say, your arm outstretching over his body, watching as his head snaps over to you, “Stop moving for a second.”

He didn’t have much time to bite back at how dare you order him around because you had already begun to pull out your wand, flicking it on a quick movement as you murmured “tergeo,” watching as the ink slowly yet surely began clumping up in the middle of the table, going back with snake-like movements into its bottle.

There was a beat of silence.

Gojo sat still in his seat, his lips pursing as he finally let out a deep breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing at his eyes.

“Thanks,” he said, but it seemed like he had to bite the word out, choking on it as if thanking you was taking too much of his mental willpower to do.

You nodded briefly, still watching him as he settled back into his seat.

“Uh,” you scratched at the back of your neck, knowing that you’d probably regret asking this in a matter of seconds, but somehow not able to stop yourself as you continue talking, “I don’t mean to be rude, or intrude, but is everything alright?”

You hold your breath as you watch Gojo sigh, his eyes shutting briefly. You braced yourself to be snapped at, to be victim to yet another reminder of how much you’ve tarnished the Slytherin name, but he just shakes his head.

“No,” he seethes, but when he peeks over at you he licks his lips, gnawing on the inside of his cheek as he grabs his papers, moving it over to the middle of you two as he motions to it, “Everything is not alright. Something’s wrong with the book…and I have no idea what. I’ve read this page at least twenty times and it makes no bloody sense to me,”

You try to hide your surprise.

That’s probably the most he’s ever spoken to you without any mention of your muggle heritage.

You move in a little closer to look at what he’s pointing to. You try not to heat up under his stare, squinting your eyes as you try to make sense of what it was he was writing, trying to hide your reactions when you realize that he was doing most of it wrong.

The point of this essay was to learn about the origins of cross-species transfiguration, and eventually an animagus transformation and how it even came to be.

You had to reference at least five other books and scrolls to piece together the correct herbs and spells needed to even begin the process. McGonagall honestly probably told everybody to reference the textbook because there was nothing in it. This essay was a testament to how many people went out of their way to learn about the true nature of transfiguration.

What Gojo had written was something you were sure almost everybody else was writing as well, a mistake you almost made. His research was simple and black and white, and he was getting everything wrong because he was missing at least ten different very important points.

“So,” you swallowed nervously, chewing on your already chapped lips, “You have the main ideas down,” which was a lie, “But there are just some things-” Before you could even finish your sentence the bell tower chimed once, twice, and then a final time, telling everybody that their class was over.

All around you people began hurriedly packing up, surely excited for lunch, the chatter of conversations growing in volume, and you didn’t have to look at Professor McGonagall to know that she was irked by her student's sudden enthusiasm to leave.

Gojo sat motionless, still looking over at you, waiting impatiently for you to finish.

“I…” you scratched at your hands, “I can’t go over everything right now, but tomorrow I’ll bring in the other-” He raised his hand, packing up his bag as he cut you off.

“No, not tomorrow, I’m already behind,” you watched as he shoved his papers into his leather bag, “Just explain it now.”

You wanted to laugh, not knowing how long it might take to explain your twisted thinking process to him and you doubted he wanted to stay in this classroom with you for a minute longer.

“Well, there’s quite a bit of things,” you searched for the right word, “Missing. I have to study for the potions exam right now, but I’m going to be in the library tonight anyway. I could show you then…?”

You stood at your chair, your eyes looking up into his, wavering.

What did you just do? Surely he’d laugh now in your face, roll his eyes at how absurd it was that you could even suggest such a thing, just as he usually does.

Instead, he looks at you, then at his paper, and then at yours, which is at least three pages long at this point. He’d never admit it out loud, but you were understanding this assignment better than him and nobody in his group seemed to understand it as well as you were.

“Fine,” he runs a hand through his hair, the white sticking out between his fingers like snow perched on grass.

Your brows furrow, your lips pursing together in sudden confusion.

“What, okay,” you fiddle with your fingers, tugging on them in that anxious way you always do, watching him tighten the straps on his bag, “But wait, what time…” You try to call out but he has already left, his robes swaying behind him as you stand alone at your seat.

You slowly begin to pack up, your thoughts running at what you have just done.

—

The potions exam went well enough, but you couldn’t stress out about it too much right now.

After dinner (which you ate earlier than most, too anxious to be late), you made your way to the library, found a table near the back, somewhere that didn’t get a lot of foot traffic, and set up your workstation for the time being.

Amongst many of the amenities Hogwarts had, the library was one of them you loved dearly.

It wasn’t usually too busy, but it filled up quickly the night before some exams. But you didn’t mind it, you liked being surrounded by people. In the Slytherin common rooms, you usually had to wait until everybody had filtered out or had gone to bed before you could make your way down, not wanting to face their icy looks or the way they’d talk behind their hands when you were near, so you opted to be in the library above anything else.

The muted sounds of pages turning, of people talking in hushed whispers, and the books that would sometimes rearrange themselves were calming. You liked the candles that were lit carefully around the large room, illuminating it deep into the night.

You made sure that the work you had already written was set out, your quill resting straightly adjacent to it, your ink pot above it. Your pile of books sat neatly to the left. You wanted to seem as organized and as composed as you could, this might be your one chance to show the prince of Slytherin that you weren’t the slob he must imagine you as.

The clock on the wall ticks, and you note that it’s nearly ten minutes till five. You chew on your lips, cracking your fingers as you keep your eyes trained on the door, waiting for the familiar mop of white hair to appear.

After the first ten minutes, you begin fidgeting again, moving your papers centimeters above where they were as if they could appear any straighter. You weren’t wearing the usual house robes, and you hoped that your decision didn’t cause him to walk in, scan the area, and leave because he didn’t see what he expected to see.

But you pushed those worries aside, just doing your best to watch the people who filed in and out of the large double doors.

After the clock struck six, you began to stop looking at the doors, instead choosing to just get some work done while you were here, and opened up one of the books. Of course, he probably just lied just because he wanted to. There might be some of his friends standing outside, snickering as they watched you wait stupidly.

You felt your cheeks heat up in embarrassment, feeling like an idiot.

For the next half hour, you busied yourself with reading about the start of the animagus process, about the mandrake leaf, and the strenuous process of keeping it on your tongue for an entire month.

Around you, you could hear the scrapping of chairs on the floor, and how most of the people were beginning to leave seeing that it was getting pretty late. The library closes promptly at eight, and although it was an hour till that happened, most people left till then.

Your eyes flitted to the door, not seeing anybody, and deflated.

Stupid, you repeated in your head.

So you began shutting the books strewn out in front of you, packing them all up in your bag as you rubbed at your tired eyes. Madam Pince also made a deal if you left any ink splotches on the table, so you cast a quick tergeo charm to clean up any spots you might’ve missed.

“You’re leaving?”

You looked up from the table, eyes squinting to see his tall figure standing in front of you, his face flushed red, sweat dotting on his brow bone as a bit of his hair stuck to his face. Gojo was panting, his chest heaving up and down as if he had just run across the entire castle, and his brows were creasing in the middle, looking down at you as you seized your packing.

You note his green quidditch robes and muddy boots.

“I, um,” you looked at the nearly empty table in front of you, and you shook your head, giving him a small smile, “No, no, I just got here.”

He looked at your bag, as if not believing you, but not caring too much as he hummed in the back of throat, rounding the table, and plopped himself down in the seat in front of you.

Wordlessly, Gojo began taking out his supplies, and you figured you might as well, setting everything back up to where you initially had it. You watched as he slyly looked around the two of you, his shoulder becoming less tense when he realized it truly was just the two of you left in the library.

“Practice took up too much time,” he mindlessly explains, a clear explanation for why he looked so different from the put-together self he usually is. He pushed some of his hair out of his face, his breathing still a little erratic.

You nod, swallowing thickly as you pretend to understand the ins and outs of quidditch.

You were aware that amongst one of the many things Gojo could do, on his long lists of talents (which if there was a list would consist of his ability to speak five languages or his incredible ability to calm any creature down), was that he was an amazing seeker.

While you weren’t very familiar with how quidditch worked, despite trying to best to follow along with others' conversations as you listened in, you could understand that his forte on a broomstick wasn’t talked about just because he was Gojo Satoru.

He was fast on his broomstick, and thought it could be chalked up to the fact that every year he came to practice with the newest model, he could whize past anybody. He was nimble as well. With how large his hands were, larger than the other house seekers, he was able to secure a win for almost every single match ever since he got recruited. Last year he was named captain of the Slytherin quidditch team, so you were able to piece together that he got held up with the recent tryouts.

“That’s um,” you scratch at your arm awkwardly, “That’s alright…okay so I’ll try to be as quick as I can, but there’s a lot that McGonagall wants us to do,” you start slowly, letting his get situated as you push forward the first book that helped you out, “Oh, that textbook doesn’t help…right now,” you quickly said as you saw him pull out the assigned reading, saw how he looked at you for a second, his face scrunching up in an unreadable emotion.

“This one is good, though,” you motion to the one in front of you.

Gojo’s movements are slow as he takes it, eyes scanning over the title until he looks back at you.

He doesn’t do much talking, you decide.

“This book covers cross-species transfiguration, but it briefly mentions inter-species transfiguration. But the author referenced this one,” you pull out the other hefty textbook, sliding it over to him, “And this covers all things related to inter-species transfiguration and then goes into animagus transfigurations.”

You pause, biting your cheek to stop you from rambling on. Transfiguration was something that you could talk about forever and ever, and you’d never really talked about out loud to anybody else up until now.

“McGonagall said that the essay was on inter-species, she never mentioned animagus transfiguration,” Gojo said suddenly, pushing the two textbooks back, letting out a heavy sigh as if this was all a waste of his time.

You nod slowly, picking at some of the skin around your nails.

“R-right, and you’re right,” you quickly sputter, nodding, “But because cross-species and inter-species transfiguration are so close together, I doubt that this was what she wanted our month-long essay to be about. Which is why,” you pull out some old essays you had done earlier in the year, “I referenced back to these animagus essay’s we had done. I mean, she wouldn’t introduce us to the topic and then drop it for no particular reason, right? I suspect she wanted us to piece the two and two together.”

Gojo gently took the papers from your outstretched hand, his eyes raking over your words, and then back to the textbooks. He seemed to read it intently as if things were slowly starting to click for him.

“Which is why the textbook she gave us isn’t really helpful, because it resembles more of an herbology textbook rather than transfiguration. So I think that this textbook, if anything, should be referenced at the end of the essay, seeing how it mentions the mandrake leaf and the properties of the chrysalis of a Death’s-head Hawk Moth. It’s all instructions on how to become an animagus without saying it.”

His eyes, a different shade of blue in the candlelight, watched your every moment. He listened carefully as you eventually did end up rambling, watching the way your face, on its own accord, twisted into a proud smile at your clever handiwork.

You abruptly stop to catch a breath and glance up at him apologetically.

“I’m sorry, I went too fast,” you shake your head, rubbing your temple in your hands, tired from staring at textbooks for as long as you’ve had.

“No…it made sense,” Gojo murmurs suddenly, his lips pulled into a thin line as he quickly looks away from you, back down to his work which was now surely long after your in-depth analysis, twisting and turning that gold ring on his finger, the one he always wore, the symbol of his family crest as he looked through the books you had offered him.

You stay silent, not knowing what to do, resting back in your seat, picking your nails.

“Well, that’s all of it,” you rub your hands against your pants, your dry eyes blinking a couple of times, yearning for sleep.

“You could’ve said this during class,” he said, still reading, his attention preoccupied, as if this was a hindrance to him.

You wet your lips, trying not to clench your hand in anger, frustration, and years of pent-up emotions, as you slowly nod, pulling the leather strap of your bag over your shoulders as you begin to stand up.

“Right, sorry,” you apologize quietly, taken aback when he suddenly looks up at you, as if startled but you didn’t feel like spending any more in the presence of someone who despised you anyways, “goodnight,” you bid farewell, not noticing how he had opened his mouth to say something, scurrying out of the library as you make your way back to the common rooms before he could.

—

The next day at transfigurations, the two of you didn’t speak to one another at the beginning of class, like normal.

You took out your books like normal, as did he, and began writing silently, like normal. Everything was going normally until he suddenly paused, his hand wavering above his essay as he set his quill down, turning his head over to you.

“Can I see what you’ve written?”

You stop writing, eyes darting to the side as if you had misheard him.

Gojo points to the papers you’ve been working on as if you didn’t understand his first command.

Wordlessly, you pass it over to him.

He reads it over a couple of times, flipping through your endless pages, muttering some words to himself now and then. You would wager that compared to other people you had made far more progress in terms of how much you’d compiled, so you weren’t necessarily worried about the time restraint on this essay.

You couldn’t say the same for him, however.

You’ve never seen him look so intense, his brows furrowed and his lips pursed in clear concentration. He almost seemed frustrated, and it was a strange thing to see from somebody so usually put together.

“Our work together is too divided, it looks like we haven’t been working with each other,” Gojo says as if that wasn’t purely what was the issue.

You didn’t say anything, wanting to see what idea he’d propose.

“I need to finish the rest of these texts,” he jutted his chin to the textbooks you had given him last night, “We can work on the essay after classes are over, in the common room.”

A part of you wanted to laugh at him as if he had just joked.

But Gojo Satoru was not a joking sort of person. You rarely saw him smiling, even when with his friends, and it was even rarer for him to say something of any comedic value. Which could only mean that he was being serious and that he truly was proposing to work in the common rooms with…you.

A little snort escapes your lips, looking at him as if he were crazy. He looked at you as if you were the crazy one.

“I don’t go to the common rooms after class, it’s too busy,” you explained slowly to him, wondering if he was daft and even after all this time didn’t take the time to understand your situation.

He blinked, eyes narrowing.

“...and?”

Your head tilted to the side, confused.

“Well…there’s people there,” you explain even further.

He scoffs, rolling his eyes as if you were stupid.

“Ironically, that is the point of a common room.” Gojo looks back to his essay, picking up his quill as if he were done with this conversation, but you pushed.

“Right,” you say more curtly, nose flaring, “For you, it might be. But people don’t want me there.” You say, a truth that you had to stomach, something that you grew used to after too many unsavory encounters with other Slytherins when you tried to come down to the common rooms during social hours.

“So during the hours of two to eight, you don’t go to the common room?” He didn’t even look up, his voice sarcastic, not believing such an insane thing.

“No.” You reply as if it was obvious as if he should at least know that this is why you rarely ever make an occurrence unless it’s early in the morning or late at night.

That finally gets him to stop and look at you, confusion woven into his expression.

“What?” He set his pen down again, and you noted that his eyes seemed a different shade of blue when he was confused, a little bit lighter than usual, he seemed like he was the only one not in on some sort of joke, “So from two to eight you just stay in your room?”

You shake your head, playing with your fingers.

“I’m not always in my room,” ignominy clear in your tone, “Most days I either go outside and do my homework or go to the library.”

You hate the attention this brings to you from him. You’ve never had such a long conversation with somebody in your own house, let alone Gojo. You hated the way he looked at you as if you were either lying your arse off or even worse…pity?

But you almost shook your head at that thought. The great Gojo Satoru pitying you?

“What if it’s raining?” He asked, pushing you to see if you were telling him the truth.

“Then I go to the library,” you said as if it was obvious, mainly because to you it was. This was the usual schedule that you’ve become used to over the years, something you’ve just forced yourself to become used to despite wanting everything in your soul to go to the common rooms like everybody else, to laugh at their stories, to talk about your lives, like you were supposed to.

“What if the libraries closed?”

You squirm under his heavy gaze, wondering how the topic of transfiguration got turned around to him interrogating you.

“Um, well, right now, because of the weather, I’d probably just go up to the astronomy tower if the library was closed. They don’t have lessons during the day. Or I’d probably just find a broom closet and do my work in there.”

His head tilts just a bit, his lips quirking up into a disbelieving smile as if he just caught you in your lie.

“In the dark?” Gojo presses, and you can hear the people around you already beginning to pack up their supplies, the class nearing its end. Had you spent this much time talking that you wasted nearly half an hour?

“I’d cast a lumos spell,” you argue, packing up your things as you break eye contact with him. You take your paper back, making sure the ink has dried before putting it in your bag.

“I’ll be in the library,” you say finally, making sure that was the end of it, “See you there.”

—

In some strange way, meeting up with Gojo in the library became part of your routine.

Every night at seven, after his quidditch practice would end, he’d run all across the entirety of campus to work on your transfigurations essay together.

The two of you still didn’t talk much, but it was different nonetheless.

“I’m tired,” Gojo suddenly announced, the candlelight flickering on and off from his face.

You could visibly see the dark circles that were under his eyes, how he slouched (which was uncommon for him, seeing how he usually sat as straight as a ruler wherever he was), and how he couldn’t go four minutes without letting out an exhausted sigh.

“You should take a break,” you muttered, not paying attention, head still stuck in your book as you continued to read the rest of the paragraph you were reading.

Gojo snorted, rolling his eyes at the prospect.

“I can’t take a break,” he dragged his hands across his face, “I need to finish this essay, the quidditch games in two days, and Snapes up my arse about that potion exam.”

Your eyes flickered up to his, startled at how much he had spoken, but then tried to mask your surprise by looking back down to your book.

“Potions wasn’t too bad,” you offer, “And I can finish the last bits you have,” you look back up, putting your hand out, a silent ask for him to give you whatever it was that he had written so far.

He clicked his tongue against his teeth, silently passing over his stack of parchment, and you scanned through it quietly, shrugging as you nodded once more.

To be honest, the two of you were far ahead of the other students in your class. He had eventually concluded on his own that you’d be wasting more time not working together, so you guessed that he just had to suck up a bit and bite back on his pride and work with a muggle-born.

His rush to finish the essay was spurred on by the plethora of other things he needed to do, a drawback of being the prime and perfect Slytherin prince everybody made him out to be.

“You don’t have much left,” you deduce, “I can just write about the Scalivier trials,” the trial in which a man refused to register with the ministry that he was an animagus, “I’ll have it done by Saturday, I’m nearly done with my bit.”

You slide his essay back to him, but stop when you see the perplexed look on his face.

“Saturday’s the quidditch game?”.

Your eyes dart to the side, squinting a bit as you try for a laugh.

“…and?”

He scratches at his temple, tilting his head to the side. After these past couple of days working with you, he’d be wrong to say that he became more and more increasingly perplexed with you. Six years he spent watching from afar, muttering words to his friends about the absurdity of your existence, but now that he was able to see you from up close, a part of him has to agree that you’re an enigma he’s never been able to crack.

You don’t say much during class, you don’t talk to many people, and if he was being honest, in that sense, you mirrored him. You were reserved, but the times he picked and prodded at you, you seemed to open up. You don’t have any friends from what he could tell, often eating at the end of the table during the meals. He watched sometimes to see you during the common rooms during the times in which you said you never came, a part of him thinking he’d be able to catch you.

Gojo Satoru would never admit it, but in a way, he had become interested in you.

“Well,” Gojo didn’t like to be the one confused, hating being perceived as if he didn’t know everything, which is something he prided himself on most of the time, “After the game, there’s the usual…party,” he bit out, hating the word, because it was so unruly from the usual balls and galas he was forced attend, too many people sweaty and jumping, “In the common room.”

You blink owlishly at him, fidgeting with your quill, twisting and turning it around in your hand.

“Right…so I’ll be here.”

Now it was his turn to blink slowly.

Was this really that hard to understand?

“Coming to the library after a quidditch game seems a bit anticlimactic, don’t you think?” He leaned back in his chair, playing with the green and silver tie around his neck. You wondered how he could bear to wear it even after classes were over, that even his most posh friend ditched their formal wear the moment they got back to their dormitories.

“Thankfully I don’t go to quidditch games, so for me, it’s just climatic,” you said, smiling at your little joke, covering your mouth as you yawned, tired and longing for your bed.

He sat up in his chair suddenly, looking even more shocked than before. This was the most emotion you’ve ever seen him emmett before and you didn’t know what to do with it.

“What? Why not?” He seemed so startled that you almost wanted to laugh. It was strange seeing somebody you had regarded as stoic look like he did now.

You shrug, rubbing your fingers across your eyes as you let out another yawn, resting your chin on your palm.

“I went once, during my first year, but everybody seemed rather annoyed that I was there, and they crowded in front of me so I couldn’t see anything,” you recall back on the memory, one that you could remember vividly, “and I don’t know,” you’re suddenly very thirsty, your cheeks heating up the more he stared at you, laughing uncomfortably, “I don’t really understand…quidditch, so it works out in the end. And I also get to have some time to myself in the common room to do my homework, you know, unlike usual.”

Gojo didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, and you tried to pretend that you had read something interesting to not embarrass yourself any further with your mindless babbling. Sure, he might be willing to work with you now, but that didn’t mean that Gojo Satoru was up for a friendly conversation with you.

You looked at him briefly, feeling your stomach churn a bit to see that he hadn’t stopped looking at you.

“Everything alright?” You asked.

He nodded, biting on the inside of his cheek as he picked up his quill, a wordless agreement that the conversation was over.

—

Transfiguration the next day went by oddly silent.

Gojo didn’t talk to himself now and then, he didn’t sigh his exasperated sigh, and he didn’t peek up every once in a while to check how much you’d written since the last time he had looked over.

You didn’t pay it much attention, keeping your head down, your eyes to yourself. Silence was better than being reminded of your muggle heritage, which even then, Gojo had yet to remind you these past weeks.

Briefly, you looked up from what you were doing to see if Professor McGonagall was walking around or sitting at her desk, but in doing so you felt Gojo shuffle a little in his seat as if he had felt your sudden movement.

“Tonight…” he started and you quickly nodded, waving off any of his worries. Of course, you chided yourself, he’s anxious about the quidditch match, nothing else.

“Yes, yes, I know, you have quidditch tomorrow. I’ll finish up what I have left and then start reading about the Scalivier trials tonight,” you finished for him, tracing some of the wood grains of the table with your finger.

He shakes his head.

“Not that - and I’ll finish up the trials by Sunday,” he’s avoiding eye contact, and if you didn’t know any better it seemed like he was trying to find his words, as if they had slipped from his tongue and were dangling in the air for him to grab, “Tonight…tonight, don’t go to the library.”

You purse your lips, trying to smile to see if that was his goal, maybe he was trying to be funny.

“Would you like to meet in one of the broom closets then?”

You felt even more lost after it seemed like he was debating taking up your offer, but his eyes shone a bright shade of aquamarine, and his cheeks twinged a slight shade of pink.

Strange.

“No,” he chewed on his lip, as if he were anxious, a preposterous thing to even think, “No, come down to the common rooms around eight.”

The cursed clock tower chimed, three loud rings, and it cut the two of you off once again.

“Look, I told you-” you go to say but he cuts you off.

“I know, just come down.” He was being so cryptic, and he looked so on edge that it was starting to freak you out. He was already beginning to pack up, his eyes snapping to his group of friends that were nearing the two of you, and he quickly looked back down at you, his head dipping down urgently.

“Eight. Be there.”

—-

You couldn’t say you weren’t at least a little apprehensive.

You were so nervous that you just stayed up in your room, not even coming downstairs for dinner as you waited for the clock on the wall to read eight.

Why were you so nervous? You first asked yourself, but then asked the more logical question, what did Gojo want with you?

The minutes on the clock seemed to take hours to pass, and the hours seemed to take days. It was such a slow process, and you knew it would be going faster if you were doing something more productive with your time until it was necessary, but you couldn’t.

The other girls in your dorms could come in and out, sometimes exchanging glances with their friends when they saw that you hadn’t moved from your spot, but they didn’t ask any questions, opting to just leave you be.

You were picked at your fingers, cracking your knuckles, and finally, finally, the small hand pointed to the eight on that ancient clock.

Funnily enough, even though you had been mentally waiting for this to happen, you waited for a couple of seconds, trying to calm yourself down, nodding to yourself that this wasn’t anything big and that you were just overreacting.

Slowly, you rose from your spot on your bed, a little dent in the mattress from just how long you’d been sitting there. You turn the handle of the door, taking in yet another deep as you take a tentative step outside the safe sanctity of your room.

The common rooms are usually more busy on Friday nights, and that might’ve been a blessing in disguise as you’re able to slip past most people, keeping your eyes peeled for a flash of white hair.

You scan the couch area, the sitting area, and the large window that looks into the black lake, but you don’t see him. It’s only until you look near the entrance to the common room, the large oak double doors, do you see him.

It seems like he’s scanning the area as well, blue eyes looking everywhere until they fall onto yours, and you’re able to sneak past some people watching as he cocks his head in the motion of the doors, and before you could do anything else, he leaves, and you take it as your sig to follow him.

You’re glad that nobody’s looking your way as you push the two doors open, looking to your right to see him waiting for you.

You go to open your mouth to speak but he beats you to it.

“Follow me, and be quick,” he’s already walking and you have to nearly jog to get to him, walking at a much faster pace seeing how his legs were abnormally long, “Put these on over your clothes.”

Gojo throws you a pile of ratty-looking uniforms, but the more you open up the folded mess you come to realize that they’re old quidditch uniforms. In fact, when you’re finally able to get a good look at him you realize he’s wearing adoring green robes.

You don’t say anything, multitasking as you walk and shrug over the (huge, it was practically dragging on the floor) robes, buttoning them up as quickly as you could without tripping over your feet, the quidditch uniform, or over the stones.

He looks at you briefly, and he’s glad that you’re too busy trying to figure out how the robes are supposed to fit over you to notice the way his lips quirked up slightly at the look of you at the moment.

“Put this on too,” he says once you're finally done, handing you another huge helmet, and you take it silently, pulling it over your head.

The helmet is way too big for you, as it nearly hangs over your eyes, and you can barely see anything with it on, and you pause, a smile making its way onto your face as you push it up only for it to fall again.

You stop walking for a second, and when Gojo looks back he sees the helmet masking most of your face up until your nose, the only thing he can see is your large grin, the sleeves of the uniform enveloping your hands, reaching to your knees, and for the first time, he hears the softest sound,

You’re giggling as you try to figure out how to tighten the straps on the helmet, not able to see where Gojo is because you have your head tilted down, struggling with the buckle until his boots come into your field of vision.

All of a sudden you feel a hand tip your helmet upwards, and your smile falters when you now see his face, the way his eyes are swirling with different hues of blues, something you notice that happened when he was battling multiple emotions at once. You can tell that there’s a small, barely noticeable smile on his face, surely from how insane you look right now.

You’ve never seen him look so at ease. His shoulders seem more relaxed, his jaw not clenched. It helped that he looked like he was smiling for once.

But there’s no time to think as you feel the brush of him on your skin, his slender and swift fingers working fast and expertly at tightening the strap under your chin. He looks focused, his white brows scrunched up the way he always does when he’s trying to figure out a transfiguration rune. You feel your breath lodge in your throat. When he’s satisfied with how it was resting on your face his hands drop to his side, and his eyes slightly widen, as if he just realized what he had just done.

He cleared his throat, looking around the hall to make sure that nobody was around, and he turned his back as he began his brisk pace out to wherever it was that he was taking you.

You walked, corrected, ran with him for a little more until he brought you to one of the openings of the castle, the one that led directly to the quidditch fields.

“Where,” you were a little out of breath, noticing how the sun was nearly about to set, and also knowing that you sure as hell didn’t have a pass to be out this late, “Where’re we going?”

“To the field,” he said, which was the answer you were most dreading.

“Right, I can see that,” you feel hot under all these layers, despite the fact that it was late October and the weather was biting at best, “Why are we going out to the fields.” The breeze that was hitting your cheeks was stinging, so you were at least glad in that aspect that the quidditch robe offered you some sort of warmth.

“Ravenclaws practicing right now,” Gojo said, turning around to look at you for a fleeting second, “I need to see what Nanami’s strategy is, and you need to learn quidditch.”

You almost trip.

And you need to learn quidditch.

His words were ringing in your head, possibly even louder than the blood rushing to your ears. He had to be lying, or have some sort of cruel prank planned out. He must be waiting for his friends to run out from behind one of the stands so that they could tie you to a tree. Not that he’s ever done that, but also not the first time it’d be happening at the hands of other Slytherins.

Because sure, while you might’ve offended him in saying you didn’t understand how quidditch worked, that wouldn’t mean that he, Gojo Satoru, the Prince of Slytherin, hater of all muggle-borns alike, would be taking time out of his life to fix this wrong.

You should’ve just run the other way, ditched the scratchy uniform somewhere, and ran back to your dormitory, somewhere where you’d at least be safe from experiencing any sort of humiliation.

But the closer that the two of you neared the stands, the more you felt confused. Because nowhere could you see any other Slytherins, and he was right, the Ravenclaw team was practicing right now, if the flashes of blue and white from above you meant anything.

Which could only mean that…?

Gojo finally stops at the stairs that lead you up the stands, his hand on the wooden railing.

“We’re going…up?”

He snorts, nodding as he ushers you to move.

“Obviously,” his voice now seems more amplified with his small and cramped winding staircase, “I’m not going to be observing them from the ground.”

You’re the one that’s ahead, so you try to go even faster so that he won’t be held up behind you, but everything is moving too fast. Did he give you these robes so that you’d seem like another player? So that you wouldn’t be marked up if you were seen out of your dormitory so late at night?

When you finally got to the opening, you were able to hear the yells that the Ravenclaw players were enhancing with one another. You hold the tarp that acted as the door above your head, heading over to one of the seats in the far back, feeling Gojo right on your tail.

It had been years since you were here since you looked out into the fields. The stands were high, and the winds were stronger up here. Gojo sat where you were, to your right, and you waited silently to see what he was going to do.

Nanami was the Ravenclaw seeker as well as the captain. You could see the flash of blonde hair as he flew by, the other team members either watching him or practicing with their respective posts.

Gojo rested his elbow on his thighs, leaning in as he observed intently.

Eventually, after a minute or two, he sat back up, leaning in closer to you. You could feel his hair ticking your temple, his nose inches away from your cheek as he began to talk.

“In quidditch, you have seven players on each side. One seeker, one keeper, three chasers, and two beaters.”

You nod, following along.

“You see number seven?” He points to the guy flying around near the three tall hoops, and you nod again, “He’s a keeper. He makes sure that the other team doesn’t get any balls into the hoops.” Gojo is leaning even closer to you now, and you can feel half of his body pressing up against yours. You feel like you're heating up, and not because of the excessive quidditch uniform you’re wearing.

“The beaters, number four and two,” he then points to the boy and the girl flying around, holding wooden bats, “try to protect their team from the bludgers; which is this black ball that sort of follows around team members, trying to knock them off their brooms. Those bats ward off the bludgers.”

You make a mental note of everything he’s saying, trying not to be distracted by the fact that you’re being given a quidditch lesson from Gojo Satoru.

“The chasers, which are the rest of them, aside from Nanami, throw around the quaffle to each other. Every time they get it through the other team's hoop, they score ten points…do you follow?” Gojo pauses, looking at you and you push your helmet up so that you can see him, giving him a confident nod.

“All that’s left is the seeker-”

“Which is you, right?” You cut him off, rubbing at your nose which was now freezing at this point.

Gojo pauses, eyes flickering to you as he raises a brow.

“I may not know quidditch but I’m not daft,” you tell him.

For a second there, you swear you could see the start of a smile play on his lips.

“Yeah,” he says, almost softly, “I’m the seeker.” You’re too busy looking ahead to notice that he’s busy looking at you, so you continue to talk.

“...plus, Kento was telling me about it a while ago. He said you were really good.”

This time, his brow raised even further.

“You know him?”

You shrug, your eyes following the quick and hurried movements of all the players, too focused on their practice to notice the change in Gojo’s voice, or overall, the change in his entire demeanor. You must’ve missed how he slightly tensed up, or the way his eyes narrowed.

“We had potions with Ravenclaw last year, remember?” You turn slightly to look over at Gojo before you go back to watching, “He helped me with some of my brews, but we talked about other stuff!” You had to raise your voice, the wind was getting stronger, “And Quidditch came up!”

Gojo’s nose flared momentarily before he swallowed thickly, his jaw ticking as he tried to focus back on the practice as well.

“A-anyways,” he cleared his throat, not remembering that last time he choked on his words, “The seeker catches the snitch. I can’t see where it is now, but once the snitch is caught, the game is over.” He tried to push some of the hair out of his face, getting annoyed at how it kept getting stuck in his eyes.

“I need to get something, I’ll be back,” Gojo murmured in your ear, pushing himself off of the seat as he walked in front of you disappearing down the stairs within seconds.

You glanced at where he left but found yourself looking back to the players, your face breaking into another excited smile when you began to piece together what Gojo had just told you, finally able to understand quidditch after all these years.

The sun had set and the stars were peeking out through the sky, and you watched the players as they furiously rode around, each one tense and stressed for the match that would be happening tomorrow.

You tried to hide yourself in the background as much as you could, now feeling a little more out in the open with Gojo gone.

The minutes ticked by and yet Gojo didn’t come back. Now and then you found yourself looking at the stairs, eyes darting back and forth from those on their broomsticks to where you had first entered from.

Slowly yet surely, you found yourself in that position the first night you saw him at that library.

When the Ravenclaw players slowly began dissenting from the air, running off the fields as they went in from shelter from the old, you felt a part of your stomach twist.

This was all part of his plan, you concluded, shivering to yourself as you tried not to feel let down, or even worse, like an idiot for thinking anything had changed, that you had maybe actually begun to have a friend after seven years.

You feel your eyes water, either from the wind or from everything, and you make your way for the stairs, your lips trembling as you suddenly start to feel claustrophobic under all the clothes you're wearing, your fingers slipping and sliding as you try to take that wretched helmet off of your head.

You feel like if you go any faster you’re going to trip and tumble down the stairs, and it doesn't help that you’re already too distracted with trying to take the helmet off. You sniffle, your eyes blurry as you feel your heart beat rapidly in your chest.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

You couldn’t even tell if you were thinking that in your head or saying it out loud as you neared the end of the never-ending stairs, unbuttoning the buttons of the scratchy uniform as you bundled everything up in your hands, wiping at your wet cheeks with your palm.

Amongst all the things people have done to you over the years, this wasn’t the worst. You’ve had your room ransacked, your trunk thrown into the river, your shoes stolen on multiple occasions. You’ve been called a mudblood more times than you’ve been called your own name, and none of these things were actually done by Gojo.

Perhaps you thought that deep down, maybe he could change. That maybe after all that time spent in the library, talking to you, controlling some of his laughs at your awful jokes, he saw that maybe muggle-borns weren’t as bad as he thought they were.

And yet tonight you suffered your first prank, if that’s what this could even be called, at his hands. It didn’t hurt because of its nature, but because a naive part of you actually thought that he could’ve been your friend.

But none of that mattered now, not that you-

“Where are you going?”

You stop in your tracks, your head whipping around to the voice.

It was now fully dark outside, the moon and the spare candles that were lit around the castle and the stands were the only sources of light. You could see his figure standing a couple feet away from you, his white hair like a beacon in the night.

He takes a couple tentative steps closer to you, close enough so that you can see the furrow of his brows and the small pout on his lips. Damn it, you wanted to curse, you could hate him more if he didn’t look so pretty.

“Back to the castle,” you snap, wiping at the corners of your eyes, throwing down the old uniform and the oversized helmet on the ground near his feet. You sniffle, looking to the side so that you won’t have to see his face.

“What?” He steps closer to you and you take a step back, your head still turned, eyes trained on the dewy grass, “Why?” You try not to think too much about the two sets of brooms in his hands, or how for some strange reason, he actually sounded dejected that you were leaving.

Letting out a shaky breath you laugh curtly, crossing your arms over your chest as you look up to the sky, counting the stars, wondering if that could calm you down.

You hear the grass crunch under his feet, the warmth of his body as he comes in close to you.

Why does he care?

“I brought you a broom,” he holds it to you so you can see the outline of it, “Here,” he bends down to pick up the helmet you had thrown to the ground, “At least put this on,” he’s already securing it on your head, not noticing the way your lips were trembling, his fingers brushing up against your chin once again but you don’t him faster it, smacking his hand to the side as you rip the helmet off your head, throwing it with more force on the ground.

“S-stop,” you murmur harshly, wiping at your cheeks, “Stop, stop whatever it is you’re doing-”

“I’m not doing anything,” he snarls, his eyes a dark shade of navy blue, “So stop crying, I don’t know what it is you think I did.”

He’s angry now, good, it’ll be easier to yell at him if he’s just as amped up as you are.

But when you finally look at him and get to see his face, it’s not the kind of anger you’re feeling. His eyes are narrowed, his eyebrows pulling together down the middle the way they do when he’s confused, the way you often see him looking like when he’s frustrated at your cursed transfigurations essay. He’s not angry at you because of you, he’s angry because he doesn't understand where your frustrations are coming from.

He’s at least a head taller than you, looking down as his chest heaves slightly, waiting for you to say something, anything, so that he could explain himself for whatever it is he’s done wrong. His cheeks are a little pink, either from the cold or…something else, and his hair is messy, no longer kept the way it usually is.

Gojo looks different.

And you don’t know who it was that moved in closer, whose rational mind slowly turned irrational as you two took another step towards the middle, but all you do know is that the two of you didn’t care as you roughly grabbed him by his robes, tugging him in as you slammed your lips to his.

It happened in an instant, your lips moving against his soft one, your hands gripping onto that fabric for dear life. And for a second, you begin to pull away, your eyes opening in shock, but there’s no use, because Gojo slams his lips down onto yours as he pulls you into his chest.

It’s rushed and messy, your teeth clash against one another, your hands going up from his chest as they intertwine around his neck, your fingers tugging on his long white strands and you hear him groan into your mouth.

He moves fast, biting at your lips, one hand sprawled on the expanse of your back, the other one behind your neck, almost cradling the back of your head, tilting your head upwards to meet him. His tongue prods at your lips, and somehow, mindlessly, you part them a little more, moaning quietly at the way his tongue explores your mouth.

Gojo leads you a little back, so that you’re up against one of the wooden pillars of the quidditch stands, offering you more stability, a good thing, seeing how you feel like you're becoming lightheaded, soon about to faint.

“Fuck,” he whispers, heavy on your lips as he dips down again to kiss down your chin tilting your head up to expose the column of your neck, “Fuck,” he says once more, diving down as he sucks and bites at your skin, his movements growing faster and more erratic once he hears the soft and sweet mewls that escape your swollen lips.

“G-gojo,” you whine, feeling hot as his hands travel across your chest, cupping your tits through your thin sweater as he continues to kiss down your neck, tugging some of the material down so that he could leave even more marks across your collarbone, “G-god, oh my god,”

His pants tighten at your voice, his pupils dilate at the way you're pawing at him, pulling at him, needing him.

“Satoru,” he says against your skin, “Not Gojo. Not you.”

He’s delirious, he kisses you like you’re the air he’s been missing his entire life, and holds you to him as if you’re the only furnace in a land barren with snow. He needs you.

Your fingers are lost in his hair, pulling and tugging, hearing the way his breathing stutters when you do so.

One of your hands drops down to his chest, feeling at the skin that’s exposed from where his uniform was pulling up, and when your cold fingers make contact with the skin resting taunt on his stomach you swear you could hear him almost whine, his head momentarily dropping into the crook of your neck as he urges you to continue, holding your wrist tightly, pushing it up further.

Your eyes find his, your breathing coming out in short spurts, and he seems so far gone, so transfixed with how you look under him, that the two of you fail to hear the footsteps that come near where the two of you were.

“Who’s there?”

A voice calls out, and you see somebody behind him standing with a lantern.

You push Gojo off of you, but he stays put, looking over his shoulder, shielding your body with his.

“Oh, fuck off Taylor,” Gojo calls out, anger and irritation laced into his voice.

The boy's eyes widen when he realizes how it is, the blue and white Ravenclaw robes dashing away into the distance, the lantern long gone in a matter of seconds, but it’s no use.

When Gojo looks down at you, you’ve been given too much time to come back to your senses.

You push him away from you, and this time he moves.

You take a deep breath, not looking at him as you wipe at your spit-soaked lips, blinking rapidly as you try to make sense of what happened.

He didn't say anything, but you could hear the quiet pants that escaped his lips, trying to catch some air.

You open your mouth to say something but close it promptly, shaking your head in disbelief.

You don’t think twice as you make your way back to the castle.

---

(part two)

taglist (CLOSED): @satorusemepls, @mokonasenpaiposts, @kao-ri, @rinxgojo, @notsochillnerd, @astral-hydromancy, @holylonelyponyeatingmacaron, @tedbunny333, @13-09-01, @mynameislove1, @hyunsuks-beanie

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thestuffedalligator · 1 year ago

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The wizards said the orangutan would be able to lead them back to the dungeon in a couple days.

What a sentence, Chilchuck thought. It seemed to him that he’d been saying a lot of things with full sincerity that weeks ago would’ve been total gibbering nonsense.

The others had wandered off into the city like tourists. Laios was spending the day in some kind of pet shelter for dragons. Senshi had mentioned bringing Izutsumi to check out the local dwarven cooking. Rats were apparently involved, to his total lack of surprise.

He had decided to hole up in the nearest bar that would accept a fistful of foreign coins. He was at the stage of buzz that felt as though someone was wrapping a woollen blanket around his head, and it was loosening his tongue.

“And he’s a good kid,” he was saying. “He’s a good kid, he’s even a good fighter, but he’s got all the social skills of a dead donkey. This is a guy who hears that he has to eat part of his sister, and the first thing he says is-”

THE EGG IS PLACED ON TOP OF THE BACON?

He paused mid-ramble and blinked stickily at the stranger seated next to him. “Sorry?”

WHAT STRUCTURAL SUPPORT DOES THE BACON OFFER THE EGG?

He blinked again. “It’s for,” he tried. “You know. So you can eat the egg and bacon at the same time.”

INSTEAD OF CONSUMING THE ELEMENTS OF THE BREAKFAST SEPARATELY.

“Right.”

BUT IN THIS EXERCISE, YOU WISH TO REMOVE THE EGG FROM THE BACON.

“Right — right! The idea is if we take away the half of Falin that’s a dragon, we can resurrect the human half of her.”

THUS UNFRYING THE EGG.

He screwed an eye shut and tried to make out the face of the stranger through the three images swirling in the hot, lightheaded haze. It looked like a very skinny face.

“I’m starting to lose the food metaphor,” he mumbled. “My point is, the further we go to fix this problem, the worse it gets. And it’s not that i have a problem with resurrection — have you ever been resurrected?”

NO, BUT I HAVE BEEN WITNESS TO PART OF IT.

“Some people are weird about it. Senshi’s weird about it too, but he’s the one who suggested it. Anyways, it’s not that I have a problem with resurrection, I just don’t like the idea of eating an old coworker.”

Another sentence that would have been nonsense barely a week ago. He tried to shrug and missed. “I guess they say, ‘Eat to live, don’t live to eat.’”

A STRANGE THING TO SAY. A PARADOX OF SOME KIND, I’M SURE.

He was beginning to feel a slight headache. “No, it means, like — treat food as a fuel, a necessity, don’t get fussy about the experience of eating it.”

THEY ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. The stranger plucked a paper umbrella out of their drink. They twirled it thoughtfully between very skinny fingers. I WOULD RECOMMEND A CURRY, they said. I’VE ALWAYS BEEN FOND OF A CURRY.

#discworld #dungeon meshi #fanfiction #crossover #short story #death discworld #chilchuk tims #didn’t really know where i was going with this #just something dumb and fun #narrativia

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moonlightcycle571 · 7 months ago

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Getting run over by a train: a guide to how to

Do you know how The Wizard summoned Billy by running him run over by a magic train. What if that was the trains way of giving you permission to enter the rock. Like, once you got run over once, you can go in to travel if you have The Wizard or Billy’s permission.

So now imagine Billy summoning The Train when his colleagues need to go to the Rock of Eternity.

*at the train tracks*

Zatanna,: Thank you so much for letting me visit, this really means a lot to me.

Captain Marvel: oh don’t worry about it. Do be mindful of the train though.

Zatanna: the what

*gets run over by the train*

It becomes sort of a hazing ritual among the close circle of magic friends who visit the Rock. Zatanna had fantastic footage of Constantine loosing his mind before during and after the event.

And don’t think Train-kun is limited to train tracks. Captain Marvel needed to bring Hawkwoman to the Rock asap cause there was a situation where he needed her to check a Thanagarian artifice kept at the rock. She agreed whilst they where both flying. Footage of a random train hitting the both of them and all three parties disappearing.

Yes Billy has to get hit by the train when he brings someone knew that doesn’t have users access. It’s normal.

Clark: so you get hit by a train in a regular basis to go to your … rock?

Marvel: only when I get new people that the train doesn’t really approve of. And when we first met. But we’re cool.

JL: *concerned noises*

Batman adds magic train to his conspiracy board.

Bonus points if he uses the train to capture high end villains to put them in the dungeons / monster lands / prison of eternity.

Super powerful magical entity villain: AND YOU SHALL TUE THE DAY YOU EV-

*gets hit by a truck*

Marvel, whistling as he picks up the villains grimoire: well that was a close one. Good thing they were monologuing, otherwise that wouldn’t have worked as well as it did.

Reporter nearby: Captain did you throw a train at them????

Marvel: Train does what Train wants. Train wants speedruns.

Just fun little thoughts :D

#billy batson #shazam #dc captain marvel #dc #clark Kent briefly #hawkwoman #my beloved #Zatanna #jl #Batman probably: Captain did you cause vehicular manslaughter #Billy: nuh uh

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simp-for-love · 3 months ago

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Yours

Mattheo Riddle x Reader

What starts as another night getting high with your best friend Mattheo takes a turn when his usual teasing reveals something deeper.

Warnings: substance use (weed), brief swearing, friends-to-lovers trope, mutual pining, fluff, the reader has hair (don't know, maybe it'd a trigger for sb)

The moon hung low, casting silver streaks across the castle grounds. Somewhere beyond the Forbidden Forest, a distant howl echoed, but up here, tucked away in the Astronomy Tower, everything felt quiet. Peaceful. Just the two of you.

Mattheo leaned against the stone wall, rolling a joint between his fingers with the kind of ease that suggested he’d done it a thousand times before. You watched him, amused at the concentration furrowing his brows, the corners of his lips twitching in satisfaction when he finished.

"You know," he said with a proud smile, holding it up like a prize, "we’re really too smart to be doing this."

You laughed quietly, drawing your knees to your chest as the cool night air brushed your skin. "Since when are you the voice of reason?" you teased him softly.

Mattheo gave a mock scoff, flicking his lighter open with a click. "I’m just saying we could be doing something productive right now — like studying, or saving the wizarding world, or whatever it is Potter’s lot are up to."

"Yeah, well," you exhaled, leaning back against the wall. "I’d rather be here." With you, you didn’t say, but the words hung somewhere on your tongue, warm and unspoken.

You weren't surprised by this thought. Mattheo was your one and only best friend. Despite having other friends and acquaintances, he was the one constant in your life. It didn't matter what happened — whether you had a bad day, got an 'Outstanding' on your essay, lost your quill before the exam, or felt like partying — he was always there. Through every high and low, he never wavered. And you couldn’t even begin to describe how grateful you were for it.

But somewhere along the years of friendship, you realized you weren't only thankful, you were in love.

It was silly, really. You felt attracted to him even before you knew what being attracted to someone meant. You craved his attention, too greedy to share it with anyone else. You needed his cheeky smiles and the teasing remarks that made you chuckle. You wanted to be the one he looked at with that playful yet affectionate gaze, the one that made something warm and fuzzy bloom inside you. But you were too scared to do anything about it. The thought of losing him, of making things awkward — or worse, having him pity you — was unbearable. So, if staying quiet meant keeping him by your side, you were willing to live with it.

He passed the joint your way after his first slow inhale, his face tipping back toward the starry sky as smoke curled from his lips. The first hit burned your lungs the way it always did — sharp and sweet. You let your head fall against the cold stone behind you and sighed. "Better already."

Mattheo laughed quietly, the sound low and rough. "Always does the trick, huh?"

It wasn’t the first time you’d done this together. Far from it. The two of you had a ritual — a quiet rebellion against the chaos around you. Whenever the weight of expectations or the noise of the world became too much, you’d find each other here. Safe. Free. No need to be anyone but yourselves.

"You know," he mused, nudging your knee with his. "We really should talk about how I’m a terrible influence on you."

You snorted. "You’re not that powerful, Mr. Riddle," you said, a smirk tugging at your lips.

His grin curled slow and dangerous as he took another drag. "I’m not?"

"Nope." You popped the 'p' and took the joint back from him, the tips of your fingers brushing his in the exchange. "I do what I want."

"Mmm." His eyes darkened just a little, but you told yourself it was probably the haze creeping in. "And yet, you keep ending up here with me."

"Maybe you’re just lucky," you teased.

"I’m very lucky," he agreed, his voice softer than you expected. It lingered between you, thick like the smoke hanging in the air.

Minutes passed in easy silence. The weight in your chest loosened, and the stars above blurred at their edges. It was always like this — simple and warm, the rest of the world falling away when it was just the two of you.

Mattheo’s voice broke the quiet. "If you could be anywhere else right now," he asked, his tone lazy and curious, "where would you go?" You both liked talking about hypothetical things and random stuff while smoking together. Once, you even debated what you’d do if one of you turned out to be Merlin reincarnated.

You thought for a moment, passing the joint back. Tell him the truth, or tease him? The weed was already kicking in, nudging you toward honesty. "Nowhere else."

He hummed, a satisfied sound that made warmth curl in your stomach. "Good answer."

A breeze swept through the tower, brushing strands of hair against your face. Mattheo reached over without thinking, tucking them behind your ear. The touch was brief, but your skin buzzed in its wake.

"You’re always so soft," he murmured, half to himself. Then, as if realizing what he’d said, a crooked smile stretched across his lips. "Or is that the high talking?"

"Maybe." Your heart stuttered slightly as you met his gaze, your breath catching at how intensely he was looking at you. "Maybe not."

His hand lingered on your cheek a second too long, thumb brushing against your jaw before he pulled back. "Dangerous game you’re playing," he warned, but his voice lacked any real bite.

You laughed softly, tilting your head back against the stone wall. "I thought you liked danger."

"Only when I’m the one causing it," he shot back, but there was something in his expression — something raw, unguarded — that made your stomach flip.

You could feel the high settling deeper into your bones now, softening the edges of everything. Your limbs felt light, but your chest felt heavy, too full of something you didn’t want to admit out loud.

Mattheo stretched his legs out, leaning back on his palms as he tilted his face toward the stars, looking as they shine and sparkle quietly. "Y’know," he started, almost too casually, "I used to think you’d run off with someone else one day."

You blinked, the haze in your mind briefly clearing. "What?" you asked a bit baffled.

He laughed, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. "Yeah. Someone safer, probably." He glanced at you, his lips twitching into a smirk. "Can’t blame you, really. I’m a lot."

You gaze softened when you realized what he meant. "I like 'a lot'," you said quietly, surprising yourself as much as him.

His smirk faded, replaced by something warmer, something almost hesitant. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." The word hung in the air between you, and this time, you didn’t try to tease him or dodge the topic.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The only sound was the faint crackle of the joint as Mattheo took another slow drag. Then he added in a low voice, "That's why you're mine."

You raised a brow at his words, ignoring the warm flutter in your chest. You weren't ready to say something real in response. "Since when am I yours? The last time I checked, I was my own."

He chuckled, shaking his head, a slight smirk still playing on his lips. "Oh, please. You’ve been mine since the day we met, darlin'. Don’t even try to deny it."

You looked at him from the corner of your eye, brow raised at his words. "Since we met? Like, from the first year when we were eleven years old? A bit much, in my opinion," you murmured with a small chuckle, taking the joint from his fingers and inhaling slowly.

Mattheo laughed softly, leaning his head back against the stone wall. "Hey, a man knows when he finds something precious. And I found you. From day one. Maybe I was a bit younger, but my instincts were sharp even at eleven." He smirked again, watching you take another drag.

You giggled quietly at his cheeky words. "Sharp instincts at eleven? You're an arrogant fucker," you said with a grin, passing the joint back to him.

"Still. You’re mine, even if you don’t know it," he said casually, shrugging his shoulders slightly as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He finished the joint, stubbing out its butt on the stone floor.

The words struck something deep inside you, something you’d been trying to ignore. Your heart pounded, but you managed to keep your voice steady. "So I’m yours, huh?"

"Always have been." He exhaled, not bothering to hide the weight behind his words. "And always will be."

You should’ve laughed. Teased him. But you didn’t. Instead, you let the warmth spread through you and leaned closer, your shoulder brushing his. "Good."

He froze, just for a second, as if he couldn't believe you accepted it so easily, before his hand slid along your jaw, tilting your face toward his. "Good," he echoed, a wicked gleam in his eye. "Guess you’re stuck with me then."

For a few moments, he just looked at you, something unreadable swirling behind his gaze. He was waiting, giving you time to turn it into a joke, to pull away, to say it was the high talking.

But you didn’t, too entranced by his eyes, his words, and the warmth of his body so close to yours. You parted your lips to say something. "Mattheo—"

He kissed you before the words fully left your mouth — soft at first, like he was savoring the taste of a truth he'd wanted for too long. But when you didn’t pull away, when your fingers tangled in his curls, urging him closer, he deepened it, pulling you against him until there was no space left between you. It tasted like weed and hopes you weren’t quite ready to give up on.

He only pulled back when you were both breathless, resting his forehead against yours, his breath warm and a little ragged against your skin. "You’re mine, aren’t you?" he murmured. "Tell me I’m not misreading this."

You smiled softly, your fingers tracing gentle patterns along his cheekbone. "You’re not."

His thumb traced slow circles along your jaw as he whispered, "Good. Because I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you want me to. And maybe even if you do."

And in that quiet, hazy moment, with the world far away, you knew one thing for certain: wherever you were, as long as he was there, you’d never want to be anywhere else.

A quiet, breathless chuckle escaped your lips before you leaned in, stealing another kiss with a soft smile.

#kat's write #mattheo x reader #mattheo riddle x reader #mattheo riddle

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cornishpadfoot · 13 days ago

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Siriusly

MARAUDERS AND WHAT SPECIFIC COLOR (why the fuck did dark mode just turn on what) I THINK THEY ARE

jam: Red. Obviously, but like a warm red that could lowkey be brown in some lighting, like really reddish mud on a field, or blood orange tea energy.

Serious: Blue so dark it's almost black and millions of little silver stars. Or like neon sign in a dark room purple energy.

PETE MY BOYY: Periwinkle or light green. Like one of those mad house green grass blue sky pictures (yk the ones)

Romulus: Burnt orange, like my failed attempts at baking. lowk getting Yorkshire tea with a lot of milk and sugar in it energy, but also like a dying sunset orange.

Lilith: strawberry tea on a red and white picnic blanket on a grassy field. Very aesthetic. There's a picnic basket too!

Marieaeaeeae: HOT FUCKING PINK on a black background. GLOWINg. NEON.

marlen: Red in the dark cherry way, mixed with like a darkish blue that looks a bit like the summary heading on my water bill.

(d)orca: dark green and silver. think snake. think pine trees. think cliche. Also getting some deep purple in the royal way energy.

(r)egg: Grey in the stainless steel way. like black and silver in a thermos kind of way.

barry: Yellow and green, but make it neon. Very sharp and harsh, lowkey an assault on the eyeballs.

Even: Cerulean. and white so bright that it blinds you a little. OR amethyst purple.

Pandora: Very light pink, very light blue, green grass, and also like a kind of neon toxic green. radioactive vibes.

Xeno: marijujuiana green

#sirius black #dead gay wizards from the 70s #purple haze #and stars and ****

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heliosunny · 4 months ago

Note

Hi hi! I really like your fanfiction style and plots!!

Can you write fanfic with a magician!reader and a crown prince!Phainon? Like, in their world, wizards are feared because they wield great power because of magic and can become a serious threat, and therefore they are wanted.

Phainon and his guards get into trouble and the prince is seriously injured. Reader finds them and, despite all the risks, brings them to their shelter and treats them. They intrigued Phainon, because he expected the reader to leave them to die. He was not going to leave, but he had to, because his guards did not want to be near the reader for more time.

After a while, when his wound has completely healed, he returns to the reader's house, but discovers that reader has left it. However, this did not prevent him from finding a reader and bringing him to the palace as his partner, to the horror of his parents and the nobles.

And no pressure! Take as much time as you need!

Yandere!Crown Prince Phainon x Wizard!Reader

The night was thick with mist, curling between the skeletal trees like ghostly fingers. The moon hung high, its silver light barely piercing through the dense canopy. You had learned to tread these woods without a sound, a necessity, really, for a wizard like you.

Magic was danger. Magic was hunted.

You kept to yourself, a mere phantom in a world that would sooner see you burned than thanked. Yet tonight, fate had different plans.

A low groan shattered the silence. The sound was close, just beyond the brambles lining your hidden path. Carefully, you stepped forward, parting the branches to reveal a scene of carnage.

A group of armored men lay scattered like fallen statues, their gleaming armor dulled with dirt and blood. Some still breathed, but your attention snapped to him, the figure at the center of it all.

The crown prince beloved by his people.

Even wounded, he was an imposing sight. A gash split across his side, the crimson staining his once-pristine attire. His grip on his sword was weak, yet his expression promised death to any who dared approach.

His men were conscious enough to move, barely, but none had the strength to rise. A group of assassins, perhaps? Or a botched ambush? Whatever had happened, Phainon had fought like a beast to keep them alive.

And now, he was dying.

You should leave.

But you hesitated.

Perhaps it was the sheer absurdity of it all. The prince, the future ruler of this land, bleeding out in the dirt like a wounded animal.

With a whispered incantation, the shadows thickened around you, concealing your presence from prying eyes. You stepped closer.

One of his guards stirred, his gaze sluggishly finding you through the haze of pain.

“W-Who…” he rasped, struggling to raise his weapon.

You lifted a hand and muttered a single word. His eyes rolled back, body sagging as unconsciousness took him. A simple sleep spell—one that drained you more than it should, given how careful you had to be. The others were too far gone to notice.

That left only him.

Phainon’s head snapped up at your approach. Even on the brink of death, his presence was suffocating. His lips curled into something between a sneer and a grimace.

“You…” His voice was hoarse, but sharp. “You are not one of mine.”

“No” you murmured. “I am not.”

His fingers twitched around his blade, but you had no intention of giving him the chance to use it. With a swift motion, you knelt beside him, already pressing your palm against his wound. His body tensed like a bowstring, every muscle coiled.

“What—”

Warm light pulsed beneath your touch, the air thrumming with unseen power.

Realization dawned in his blue eyes.

Magic.

The fear did not come, not like it did with most. No, Phainon did not fear you.

He was intrigued.

“Why?” he demanded, voice laced with something between suspicion and fascination. “You could let me die.”

“Because I choose not to.”

The warmth of your magic pulsed beneath your fingers, light seeping into the torn flesh at Phainon’s side. Golden runes flickered to life, weaving over his wound like threads of starlight, sealing torn skin and knitting muscle together.

“You wield powerful magic”

You ignored him, focusing instead on the lingering damage. It was deep, and healing him entirely would drain you too much. This would have to do.

The final rune faded, leaving behind only smooth, unbroken skin. You pulled back sharply, wiping your blood-slicked fingers against your cloak.

“You’ll live” you muttered. “Unfortunately.”

Phainon exhaled, shifting experimentally. The pain was gone.

Time to go. You stood, already murmuring the incantation beneath your breath. The ground trembled softly as a gust of wind whipped around you. Shadows curled, lifting you gently off your feet as your broom shot into your waiting grip.

His men stirred, one of them blinking awake with a strangled gasp. “P-Prince—”

But Phainon wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at you.

You didn’t give him the chance to speak.

With a sharp kick, you soared into the night sky, the forest shrinking beneath you as the wind carried you higher. The chill bit at your skin, but it was nothing compared to the weight that lifted from your chest.

You should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

You didn’t have to look back to know.

He was following.

You cursed under your breath. What was he thinking? His men were below, weak and vulnerable, calling out for him. He had a kingdom to return to. A duty to fulfill. And yet—he pursued you.

You spun midair, broom jerking to a halt. Your voice rang out.

“Go back.”

Phainon didn’t falter. His silver hair glowed under the moonlight, his eyes burning like ice set aflame.

“Why?”

“Because your men need you. Because your people do. Because I do not want to be followed.”

Below, his guards called for him again, their voices frantic.

A flicker of something crossed his expression—annoyance, reluctant acknowledgment.

For a moment, you feared he would refuse.

Then, with deliberate slowness, he exhaled and shifted away.

“Very well” he said. “For now.”

The last two words unsettled you.

But you didn’t wait to decipher them.

With a final, sharp glare, you turned and vanished into the night.

The temporary spell had done its work. Phainon had survived, but his wound still required proper treatment once he returned to the kingdom. His men had been too relieved to question how their prince had been saved, too eager to leave the forest and return to safety.

But Phainon had not forgotten.

Even as he lay in his gilded chambers, the finest physicians tending to him, his thoughts drifted back to you. To the warmth of your magic. The sharpness in your voice. The way you had looked at him—not with fear, not with awe, but with annoyance.

Once his wounds had fully healed, Phainon wasted no time. He demanded his parents search for you. The king and queen only exchanged weary glances before shaking their heads.

“You ask us to reward a wizard?” his father scoffed. “You should be grateful we do not send hunters after them.”

“Grateful?” He leaned forward, fingers tapping idly against the gilded armrest of his chair. “You would prefer I let the one who saved your heir vanish without a trace?”

“They did not save you out of loyalty” his mother interjected, her tone gentler, but no less firm. “They helped you and left. Be grateful for that.”

He heard the unspoken words beneath her breath.

Be grateful they did not finish you off.

But Phainon had never been one to accept things so easily.

The moment he was able, he searched for your hidden home.

Only to find it abandoned.

No trace of you remained. No remnants of the magic that had once lingered in the air. It was as if you had never been there at all.

That should have been the end of it.

But for Phainon, it was only the beginning.

He would find you.

---

Life in the shadows suited you.

After leaving your old home, you settled in a new place—far from the reach of the kingdom, hidden among the wild forests where few dared to tread. Your days were spent in quiet solitude, gathering herbs, tending to your spells, and ensuring your presence remained unnoticed. You moved often, never staying too long in one place. It was safer that way.

You had no interest in the affairs of royals. But even in the most remote corners of the land, rumors had a way of finding you.

Whispers of the crown prince’s survival had spread like wildfire. People spoke of it with reverence, how their beloved prince had returned from the brink of death, stronger than ever. How even the finest physicians had been baffled by his miraculous recovery.

Some said it was divine intervention. Others claimed it was his sheer will to live.

But one rumor, in particular, made your blood run cold.

The prince was searching for someone.

At first, the stories were vague. He had taken an interest in an unknown savior. A healer, perhaps, or a skilled mage who had vanished without a trace.

Then, the details sharpened.

He sought someone who wielded forbidden magic. Someone who had left him when he was too weak to follow. Someone who had defied him.

You stiffened when you first heard it, your fingers tightening around the basket of herbs you had been gathering. You had always known the risk of saving him, but you had thought that once he returned to his kingdom, he would forget you.

Clearly, you had been wrong.

----

The gathering was always held in secret, deep within the wilderness where only those attuned to magic could find it. It was a rare chance for wizards to convene without fear—a fleeting moment of safety in a world that sought to burn them.

You had never attended before. Too many eyes, too much risk. But this time, you had a reason.

You needed ingredients for a new spell.

The air buzzed with magic as you moved through the market stalls draped in enchanted fabrics and glowing sigils. Wizards of all kinds were here—some veiled, some bold enough to show their faces, all of them powerful in their own way. Incense and dried herbs filled the air with an earthy scent as you carefully examined a bundle of moonshade petals, their silver glow faint under your touch.

You didn’t notice the presence behind you.

Not at first.

A sharp inhale.

A breath against your hair.

Your muscles locked. No one got this close. Your first instinct was to lash out, to summon the wind and shove the intruder away. But before you could react, a voice brushed against your ear.

“I’ve finally found you.”

Stiffly, you turned your head.

The man standing behind you was different from the one you had last seen bleeding in the dirt. The pristine prince, dressed in silver and royal blue, was gone. This version of Phainon was something else entirely.

His white-silver hair had grown longer, strands falling over his forehead. His usual noble attire was replaced with something more discreet; a dark cloak, simple leather armor, a sword at his hip. But no disguise could ever hide him.

And as he leaned in ever so slightly, drinking in your scent once more, his lips curled into something between a smirk and a sigh.

“Did you think you could run from me?”

The moment Phainon reached for you, whether to grab your wrist or simply to keep you from fleeing, you moved. A sharp pulse of magic burst from your body, the force of it sending Phainon staggering back. The nearest stalls rattled violently, enchanted trinkets shattering upon impact. Gasps rippled through the gathering as wizards turned to watch, their whispers sharp with unease.

The scent of scorched air filled your lungs as you raised your hands, power thrumming at your fingertips. You should run. But something in you rebelled at the thought of simply letting him take you.

Phainon chuckled, his stance shifting as he caught himself. His blue eyes gleamed with something unnervingly fond.

“You’re still as breathtaking as I remember” he murmured, brushing off his cloak as if you hadn’t just blasted him. “But surely you knew this was pointless.”

“Stay away from me.”

He tilted his head, considering you. Then—he lunged.

You barely had time to react. You shot your hand forward, magic crackling in the air as a gust of wind slammed into his side, knocking him off course. He grunted, boots skidding across the dirt. The ground trembled beneath you as you pulled more power into your grasp, ready to strike again—

But he was fast.

The moment you blinked, he was upon you again, forcing you to jerk back just in time to avoid his outstretched hand. But he wasn’t trying to strike. No—his fingers curled, reaching for your waist.

You twisted away, fury igniting in your veins. Fine. If he wanted a fight, he’d get one.

The air around you shimmered as you sent another pulse of energy directly at him. This time, he wasn’t fast enough.

The spell struck him square in the chest, sending him flying backward. He hit the ground hard, coughing as dust billowed around him. A thin trail of blood dripped from the corner of his lips.

The gathered wizards scattered. Whatever curiosity they had harbored was now outweighed by the risk. A prince—a royal—fighting a wizard was dangerous. No one wanted to be caught in the crossfire.

Within moments, the ceremonial grounds were nearly empty. Only you and Phainon remained.

“You hurt me” he murmured. Not with anger. Not with resentment.

With delight.

Your fingers twitched, and the air around you shifted. With a whispered incantation, your broom shot into your grip, magic thrumming beneath your palms. You were ready to leave.

But so was he.

Phainon moved just as you did, his speed forcing you to take an extra step back, your heartbeat spiking. He was injured, yet still too fast.

You scowled, gripping your broom tightly. “What do you even want from this?”

His eyes never left yours. “You.”

“You should be grateful” you snapped. “I saved your life, and this is how you repay me? Ruining my work?” You gestured to the ruined ingredients scattered across the dirt. The delicate petals, the crushed herbs—all useless now.

“I’ll find more for you.”

You gritted your teeth. “I don’t want you to.”

You were done with this.

Without another word, you gripped your broom and prepared to take off again, but—

A glint of light. A flicker of magic.

Phainon lifted a stone between his fingers.

The sight of it made you pause.

Dark veins of power ran through its surface, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. A rare artifact, used only for temporary enchantments—but at what cost?

“Where did you get that?”

“Does it matter?”

It did. He must have taken it from someone—or worse.

But Phainon only watched you, waiting.

The moment the stone’s power wrapped around you, you knew something was wrong.

It was subtle at first—a numbness in your fingertips, a sudden silence where your magic should have been. Then, the realization hit.

Your magic was gone.

Temporarily, maybe, but it didn’t matter. That was all he needed.

Phainon wasted no time. He moved swiftly, catching you in his grip before you could even attempt to fight back. Without your magic, your broom was useless. Your strength alone was nothing against him.

The next thing you knew, you were here. Locked in the prince’s chambers, high above the kingdom you had spent your whole life avoiding.

You had tested the door the moment he left—locked, of course. The windows, too, were secured with enchanted glass. Even if you could break them, the fall would be too great. You were trapped.

And Phainon?

He was preparing.

You could hear the water running from the adjoining room, the faint splash of movement as he bathed. You didn’t have to see him to know what he was doing—cutting his hair, washing away the dirt of travel, shedding the rugged disguise he had worn just to find you.

You had to try.

Even if your magic wasn’t back yet. Even if the fall could kill you.

You pressed against the window, fingers searching for a weak point in the enchanted glass. It wouldn’t budge.

But he had underestimated desperation.

With a sharp inhale, you struck. A hard blow against the glass, then another, until finally—a crack. A surge of hope rushed through you. You struck again, harder this time. The glass shattered.

The wind howled against your skin as you gripped the windowsill. This was it. You would have to jump before Phainon—

A hand clamped onto your wrist.

Pain. A sharp gasp. A warm drop of something splattered against your skin.

Blood.

Phainon’s grip was ironclad, but his other hand—the one he had used to catch you—was cut deep, a jagged shard of glass slicing into his palm.

He didn’t seem to care.

With one fierce yank, he pulled you back into the room, his breath hot with frustration as he slammed you against his chest.

“Are you out of your mind?!”

You barely registered his words—because suddenly, you felt it.

A spark. Like a fire reigniting after being smothered for too long.

Your magic was back.

Instinct took over before you could think. Your hands, still trembling from the shock, moved over his bleeding one. A soft glow pulsed from your fingertips as the wound began to mend, closing rapidly as though it had never been there.

It was then that you noticed—the damp heat of his skin, the lingering scent of soap.

And the fact that he was only wearing a towel.

The sound of your struggle hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Footsteps—several of them. Voices murmuring outside the door, uncertain but growing louder.

“Your Highness?” a man called. “Is everything—”

The door cracked open, and you caught a glimpse of not one, but three men peering inside. Soldiers, perhaps attendants, all of them pausing in shock at the sight before them.

Phainon—barely covered.

You—flushed and breathless.

It took them less than a second to misunderstand.

For a long, agonizing moment, no one spoke.

Then, unable to help yourself, you raised an eyebrow. “Are you holding a bath model contest or what?”

One of the men choked.

Deciding you had more than enough of this, you snapped your fingers, letting your magic slam the door shut in their faces. A flick of your wrist and a rush of energy later, Phainon was fully clothed, his usual regal attire appearing in place of the towel.

Your work here was done.

“Right” you muttered, dusting off your hands. “This has been an experience. But now that my magic’s back, I think I’ll take my leave—”

A hand caught your wrist.

Again.

But this time, Phainon didn’t try to pull you closer. He just… held on.

“Don’t go.”

“…Why?”

He swallowed. “I need you to cure my sister.”

You hadn’t even known he had a sister. You crossed your arms, giving Phainon a skeptical look. “I’m not a healer.”

He didn’t hesitate. “It’s not an illness. She was cursed.”

That made you pause. Curses were a different matter entirely. If that was true, then perhaps—

“…Fine,” you muttered. “I’ll take a look.”

Phainon exhaled, as if relieved, and led you through the palace halls. He stayed close, but you ignored it, focusing instead on the task ahead.

Soon, you arrived at a dimly lit chamber. A woman lay motionless on the grand bed, her breathing faint, her complexion pale. Even from the entrance, you could feel it—lingering magic.

A real curse.

You stepped forward, examining her carefully. The energy clinging to her skin was thick, unnatural—a spell cast with intent, not by accident.

Phainon hovered behind you, silent, watching.

Minutes passed as you traced the curse’s signature, considering your options. Then, with a sigh, you straightened. “I can break it” you said simply. “But I’ll need time to prepare the spell.”

Phainon gave a slow nod, as if he had already expected that answer.

You left, mind already racing with the components you’d need.

Meanwhile, in the chamber you had just departed—

Phainon remained. Alone, save for the girl.

His expression shifted. The moment you were gone, the warmth vanished from his gaze, replaced by something else—something cold.

He stepped closer to the bed, his voice a low murmur.

“Make sure to play your role well.”

The girl flinched, unable to move much under the weight of the curse. Fear flickered in her wide eyes.

Because she wasn’t his sister.

She wasn’t anyone.

Just an unfortunate soul he had plucked from the streets. Just another piece in his carefully laid plan.

And you, his true goal, still had no idea.

The days that followed were suffocating.

Despite being assigned a maid, Anna, and a knight, Brant, to check on you and provide whatever you needed, Phainon was always there.

Even now, as you prepared the spell to lift the curse, he sat beside you, idly crushing the herbs you had handed him. His presence was oppressive, his knee brushing yours far too often to be accidental.

“…Why are you still sitting here?” you asked, side-eyeing him.

Phainon didn’t even look up. “I just love the warmth of people.”

You stared at him for a long moment.

“Is that so?” you muttered.

Fine. You’d test that.

You glanced toward Anna, who was tidying up nearby. “Anna, come here. Stand next to the prince for a bit.”

Anna blinked in surprise but obeyed, stepping closer. You moved away.

Phainon frowned. His hands, previously steady, hesitated over the herbs.

But just to be sure—

“Brant,” you called, turning to the knight. “Your turn. Stand beside the prince.”

Brant, ever dutiful, wordlessly approached. You took another step back.

Phainon’s entire expression darkened.

He barely glanced at Brant before abandoning the herbs altogether and standing—immediately closing the distance between you.

You exhaled, half-annoyed, half-amused. “You sure you like the warmth of people?”

“I do.” His gaze locked onto yours, unwavering. “But you’re the only one that matters.”

At this point, you were convinced that Phainon would literally do anything you said.

No hesitation. No complaints.

So, naturally, you decided to push it.

You plucked a random leaf from your ingredients and shoved it into his mouth.

"Chew" you ordered.

Phainon, without a second thought, did. His jaw moved, grinding the leaf to pulp, his blue eyes fixed only on you.

You narrowed your eyes. "That could be poison, you know."

He kept chewing. Unbothered.

It wasn’t poison, but he didn’t know that. And yet, there he was, completely unfazed, still obediently chewing like it was some kind of sacred duty.

"Spit it out" you snapped, reaching forward.

Phainon tilted his head slightly, waiting until your fingers were inside his mouth—

Then he shut his lips around them.

What.

You glared at him. "Let go."

He just stared at you, mouth stubbornly shut.

You tried pulling your fingers free. No luck.

You pressed his jaw. Nothing.

He wasn’t biting down, but he wasn’t letting go either.

Oh, for the love of—

Fine. Desperate times.

You took a deep breath, reached forward—and tickled his sides.

Eventually, pinching his side finally did the trick.

Phainon flinched, jaw loosening just enough for you to yank your fingers free. You scowled, wiping them on your sleeve before storming off to wash your hands.

“Handle the rest yourself” you muttered over your shoulder.

He just sat there, utterly unbothered, still chewing the remnants of the leaf like some devoted fool.

You exhaled, tired beyond belief. “I’m going to sleep.”

Phainon perked up.

“I want to stay here and sleep too” he said easily, like it was a completely normal request.

You turned to him slowly. “No way in hell.”

You had changed your mind. Without another word, you grabbed your broom, fully intending to take off and leave him behind.

Phainon, undeterred, followed. “Let me on too.”

You shot him a deadpan look. “It won’t hold us both.”

But before he could start another argument, you sighed and flicked your fingers, casting a spell to summon a second broom.

“There. Now go away.”

Phainon examined the broom for a moment, then climbed on.

Watching him struggle to stay balanced was the most satisfying thing you’d seen all day.

The two of you eventually landed on a tall tree, its thick branches sturdy enough to sit on. From here, the kingdom stretched out beneath you, its golden rooftops glimmering under the moonlight.

Phainon sat beside you, his usual cloying presence somehow softer in the night air.

“The kingdom has always feared wizards” he murmured, gaze fixed on the city below. “Power that can’t be controlled terrifies them.”

You stayed silent, listening.

“But now that you’re here,” he continued, turning to look at you, “I want to change that.”

You snorted. “Good luck with that.”

His brows furrowed slightly. “You don’t believe it’s possible?”

“I don’t care.” You leaned back against the trunk, stretching your legs. “I’m only here for one thing. When I’m done, I’m out.”

Phainon’s hands curled into fists, but he said nothing.

Satisfied, you pushed off the branch, summoning your broom with a flick of your wrist.

Without another glance at him, you flew back to your room.

Morning came too soon.

You were still half-asleep when Phainon dragged you out of bed.

Dazed and irritated, you barely managed to register your surroundings before you found yourself standing in an ornate hall—filled with too many people.

It didn’t take long to piece it together.

Phainon stood beside you, grinning. His parents—the king and queen—sat before you, their expressions frozen in shock. Nobles lined the room, their whispers filling the space.

He was presenting you.

To his parents.

To the nobles.

As his partner.

You sighed, rubbing your temples. You should have just stayed asleep.

The king was the first to recover. His sharp gaze narrowed on Phainon.

“Phainon,” he said, voice cold with disbelief, “what is the meaning of this?”

Phainon didn’t hesitate. “I’m introducing my partner.”

The room erupted into murmurs. Some nobles looked scandalized. Others glanced at you like you were a wild beast about to attack.

You? You barely cared.

The queen’s lips parted slightly, her grip on the armrest tightening. “This is sudden. You never mentioned—”

“I didn’t need to,” Phainon interrupted smoothly. “It was only a matter of time before we stood here.”

A noblewoman to the side scoffed. “A wizard? You cannot be serious.”

Your gaze flickered toward her—briefly. She flinched, looking away.

The king exhaled sharply. “This is absurd. You expect us to simply accept this?”

“I expect you to respect it.”

The tension was thick. The nobles muttered amongst themselves, their expressions ranging from outrage to uneasy calculation.

You, meanwhile, were just waiting for this nonsense to end.

A nobleman sneered, crossing his arms. “A wizard in the royal family. How ridiculous. Who’s to say they won’t curse us all in our sleep?”

Your patience was already thin.

You turned to him, “Watch your mouth.”

He tensed.

“You should feel lucky,” you continued, smirking. “I’m not a grumpy wizard, or you’d already be a pile of ashes.”

The room fell silent. Some nobles stiffened, others shifted uncomfortably.

Not wanting to waste another second in this mess, you turned on your heel and strode toward the exit.

If only Phainon had found someone else to obsess over instead.

That thought lingered.

Fine. If he wouldn’t let go, you’d make him.

You’d craft a love potion and set him up with someone else.

Back in your room, you wasted no time.

You gathered your ingredients—rose petals, moonlit water,.... Carefully, you mixed them in your cauldron, stirring with precise intent. The potion had to be subtle. Strong enough to shift his affections, but not suspicious.

The thought of finally being free from his overbearing presence fueled your work.

A few hours later, the potion was ready.

A single vial of shimmering, rosy liquid.

Now, all you needed was a target.

Phainon was constantly surrounded by nobles, maids, attendants—surely, one of them could do. Someone beautiful, someone obedient enough to make him lose interest in you.

After some observation, you set your sights on a noblewoman—Lady Elnora. Sweet, well-mannered, and conveniently harboring a quiet admiration for Phainon.

The plan was simple: slip the potion into his drink, then let nature take its course.

You prepared everything, waiting for the perfect moment.

But as you would soon learn—nothing ever went as planned when it came to Phainon.

Slipping the potion into his drink was the easy part.

A gathering had been arranged that evening—a small banquet among the nobles. Phainon, of course, had dragged you along, refusing to let you out of his sight.

You’d use it to your advantage.

While he was distracted speaking to his father, you subtly poured the shimmering liquid into his goblet. It dissolved instantly, leaving no trace.

Now, all you had to do was steer him toward Lady Elnora.

As planned, you struck up a conversation with her, making sure Phainon was close enough to notice.

She was warm, polite, charming. Exactly the type he should fall for.

And then—he turned toward her. His blue eyes softened.

It was working.

You let out a slow breath, feeling something close to relief. Finally, freedom.

But just as quickly, that relief vanished.

Because instead of stepping closer to Elnora—he turned back to you.

With the same, unwavering obsession in his gaze.

He reached out, his fingers grazing yours with sickening devotion.

"You look beautiful tonight" he murmured, voice softer than it had ever been.

The potion had worked.

But not on Elnora.

It had made him fall even harder for you.

Panic shot through you like lightning.

Without thinking, you shoved Phainon away.

His eyes widened slightly, but he barely stumbled. Before he could react further, you turned on your heel and ran.

You needed space. Distance. Sanity.

Your feet carried you through the halls, past startled nobles and confused servants. You didn't stop until you reached the room of the cursed girl.

The air inside was thick with lingering magic, but her condition was nearly resolved. The spell you had been working on was almost done.

Good. The sooner you finished, the sooner you could leave.

You didn’t dare return to your room.

Not when Phainon was undoubtedly searching for you.

So, for the next few days, you did your best to avoid him entirely.

You switched locations frequently, using whatever magic you could to mask your presence. The palace was vast, but not vast enough when the crown prince himself was actively hunting you down.

Every time you turned a corner, you half-expected him to be there—waiting.

The potion would wear off eventually. It had to.

Until then, you just had to stay hidden.

When the effects of the potion finally faded, you cautiously emerged from hiding.

You expected Phainon to come storming after you the moment his mind cleared. Maybe demand an explanation, maybe double down on his obsession.

But what you didn’t expect—

Was to find him collapsed in the bath.

His silver-white hair floated in the water, his breathing uneven. His usually sharp, possessive gaze was absent, unfocused.

With a sigh, you pulled him out of the bath, his body unnervingly cold.

Dragging him to a nearby chair, you grabbed a towel and started drying his hair with little patience. "You really don’t make things easy, do you?"

Phainon didn’t respond right away.

Once you were sure he wasn’t about to collapse again, you leaned back. "The curse is nearly lifted. A few finishing touches, and I’m done."

His blue eyes, now clearer, met yours.

"And once that’s over, I’m leaving."

Phainon blinked slowly, as if his mind was still catching up.

Then, he exhaled sharply. “...Leaving?”

You crossed your arms, leveling him with a firm look. “Yes. That was always the plan.”

His grip on the towel tightened. “And if I say I won’t allow it?”

You scoffed. “Then I’d say that’s not your choice to make.”

“We’ll see about that.”

You narrowed your eyes but didn’t engage further.

Instead, you turned to leave.

You had work to finish. And if he wanted to fight you on this?

Let him try.

----

You didn’t expect the cursed girl to bolt the moment she was free.

But the second the last traces of magic dissolved, she barely spared you a glance before sprinting out the door, fear in her eyes.

Weird. But not your problem anymore.

What was your problem, however, was what happened later.

You had been watching from a distance, blending into the crowd as Phainon stood before the entire kingdom.

Then, he spoke. Loudly. Boldly.

"I declare myself the right-hand man of the wizard!" His voice echoed through the square. "And with their power beside me, I shall take over the kingdom!"

You went full mode: WHAT.

The crowd erupted into chaos. Nobles paled. The king and queen looked moments away from passing out.

And Phainon? Phainon looked entirely too pleased.

Without thinking, you stormed forward, pushing through the gasping spectators.

You reached him just as he lifted his sword—probably seconds away from actually beheading someone.

“NOPE.”

You grabbed him, yanking him back before he could do something irreversible.

Because clearly—this man had lost his mind.

The teleportation spell worked—kind of.

Instead of your current home, you landed in your old one.

Dust floated in the air, untouched furniture sitting exactly as you had left it. Clearly, something had gone wrong with the spell, but that didn’t matter right now.

What did matter was the crazy man in front of you.

Phainon stumbled slightly from the sudden shift, but instead of looking confused or angry—

He grinned.

“Running away with me?” he mused, tilting his head. “How romantic.”

“You absolute lunatic.”

The fight had been explosive.

"You have no idea what you just did!" you had shouted.

Phainon, still ridiculously pleased with himself, had only smirked. "On the contrary, I knew exactly—"

You had silenced him with a spell, shoved a leaf in his mouth, tied him up, and gagged him with another cloth for good measure. Then, with a deep breath, you transformed into him.

The plan? Fix this mess.

You returned to the kingdom, adopting his mannerisms, his voice, his smirk. Before the stunned court, you apologized, claiming you had been forced under a spell.

It was going smoothly.

Until it wasn’t.

His parents, their expressions unreadable, finally spoke. "We have no such son."

Oh.

Then came the swords. The arrows.

Instinct kicked in—you cast a defensive spell without thinking.

The room gasped.

And just like that, Phainon had magic in their eyes.

Now the kingdom believed their once-beloved prince was a wizard.

This was not how this was supposed to go.

So, you did the only logical thing.

You ran.

Back to where you had left the real Phainon.

You yanked the cloth away and retrieved the leaf from his mouth.

Before you could step back, he bit your ring finger.

You hissed, but before you could retaliate, he simply smirked.

“That’s like a wedding ring” he mused, tone infuriatingly casual. “For you.”

You nearly punched him.

Instead, you shook your hand free. "No. Absolutely not. And you are not coming with me, either."

He tilted his head. "Unless—" he dragged out the word, voice full of mock innocence.

"Unless you want me to return to the palace," he continued smoothly. "Start a little wizard hunt. Maybe collect a few as slaves."

Your jaw tightened.

"They’ll blame you, not me," he added, watching you. "You did impersonate me, after all."

He was baiting you. And worse—he wasn’t bluffing.

You barely had time to react when the door slammed open.

A ragged figure stumbled inside, looking around like a starving beggar.

You froze. “Princess?”

She barked a laugh. “Hell no.”

Your stomach dropped as she grinned, eyes glinting with something wild.

“Ahh, Prince Phainon” she drawled, turning to him. “Lemme tell you a secret. I ain’t no princess.”

Then she spilled everything.

Phainon. The curse. His plan.

You turned to him, “Is that true?”

Before he could answer, the girl suddenly lunged, a dagger flashing in her hand.

Snap

Her body slumped to the floor.

Phainon flexed his fingers, watching her lifeless form. Then, he turned to you with an easy, unbothered smile.

“Oops,” he said. “Sorry to let you witness that.”

You shoved Phainon aside, heart pounding as you crouched beside the girl.

No pulse. Dead.

Phainon stretched, completely unfazed. “Well,” he mused, “you can kill me, if you’d like. As long as it’s you, I don’t mind.”

You barely processed his words before—footsteps.

People. Coming closer.

You forced yourself to stand, hands trembling as you muttered the teleportation spell. The air around you twisted—

Then, darkness.

You woke up days later.

The scent of food. Soft sheets. A familiar ceiling.

Your house.

And Phainon, sitting comfortably nearby—completely at home.

You blinked blearily as Phainon extended a plate of food toward you. “You should eat,” he said, his voice almost gentle. “You were out for days.”

You took the plate, but your gaze narrowed. “You’re still here.”

He smiled, completely unashamed. “Of course. You’re here.”

You sighed, pushing yourself up. “I should just use you as a specimen” you muttered. “A homeless like you would be perfect for wizard experiments.”

His eyes lit up. “Gladly.”

Fine. You’d call his bluff.

With a flick of your fingers, a dagger flew from a nearby table into your grasp. You grabbed his hand. “Alright,” you said coolly. “I’ll cut your finger off for a potion. Deal?”

Phainon’s grin widened.

“That would be amazing,” he murmured, leaning his finger in closer. “As long as I can stay by your side.”

Without hesitation, you brought the dagger down.

A sharp slice.

His ring finger hit the floor.

Phainon barely flinched. His breathing hitched—eyes widening in thrill rather than pain—but he didn't pull away. Instead, he let out a breathy chuckle.

"Ah…" He stared at his bleeding hand, then at you, voice soft with awe. "You really did it."

You ignored him. Carefully, you picked up the severed finger.

But instead of using it for a potion, you placed it in a jar, sealing it tight.

"You're keeping it?"

"If you ever turn your back on me" you murmured, "I’ll make you suffer in the worst way possible."

He exhaled, almost giddy. "That just makes me want to stay by your side even more."

You sighed, grabbing a clean cloth and pressing it against his bleeding hand.

Phainon didn’t flinch.

“You really are kind”

You scoffed, tying the cloth tighter just to make him wince. “Don’t mistake this for kindness.”

He only laughed.

The room fell into silence as you finished dressing his wound. When you finally let go of his hand, he didn’t move away.

You ran a hand through your hair, exhaling.

“You can stay.”

His eyes brightened.

Whatever this scenario was—whatever twisted bond had formed between you and Phainon—you knew one thing.

It wouldn’t end anytime soon.

#yandere x reader #yandere #hsr x reader #honkai star rail #hsr x you #yandere honkai star rail #yandere hsr x reader #phainon honkai star rail #hsr phainon #phainon hsr #phainon #phainon x reader

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malfoyscoffee · 2 years ago

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call me theo ౨ৎ theodore nott

pairing theodore nott x fem!slytherin!reader about fluff, angst | 1.7k words | exes to lovers warnings mentions of time skip, use of y/n, and a dumb theo

“Friends?”

“Friends.”

That marked the end of your two-year relationship with Theodore. As he said his final word, you turned away, walking down the winding steps of the Astronomy Tower, holding back the emotions until you returned to your dormitory.

The night blurred into a haze of tears, finding comfort in Pansy’s shoulder as both of you nestled on the dorm floor. Hours passed in a cocoon of sadness before Blaise, Mattheo, Lorenzo, and even Draco appeared with snacks and muggle movies, trying to lift your spirits.

Wrapped up in your distress, you didn't think to ask how they found out about your breakup. Unbeknownst to you, amidst his own pain, Theodore asked his friends to comfort you instead of him.

Three weeks had gone by since the breakup. As promised, you and Theodore went back to being friends, just like before, merely two friends within the same tight-knit circle. But beneath the surface of friendliness, your friends noticed the underlying tension between you and Theodore, silently wishing for a reunion.

It was a random morning in the Great Hall when you announced to your friends that you would be occupied before dinner to take on the extra credit assignment for Herbology. Your friends looked at you strangely, the assignment was unnecessary for someone with such high marks, but inside you wanted a distraction from everything.

Back in the common room, the attention shifted to Theodore, the elephant in the room finally about to be addressed.

“So, what led to the breakup?” Blaise relaxed in his chair while Theodore sighed, looking at the ceiling.

“She didn’t say why, but she mentioned that you initiated the breakup,” Draco said casually, trying to hide his interest in the situation.

“I told her she deserved better.”

Silence.

Suddenly, Lorenzo burst into laughter.

“Salazar, Enzo,” Pansy stood, disregarding Lorenzo's reaction. “So, let me get this straight,” she pointed her finger at Theodore, “You're saying the reason the group has been down is because you decided she deserved someone better?”

Mattheo set aside his cigarette, “Didn’t expect you to be so naive, mate.”

Blaise nodded, “Thinking that's an explanation. Y/n adores you, where will you find a girl better than her?”

Theodore’s face paled, “She’ll find someone better and eventually leave me. I couldn’t handle that.”

Draco stayed composed, “So you ended it first. Well done, Theo.”

Theodore buried his face in his hands, letting out an exasperated groan. “You all know she has a promising future after graduation. Why should she stay with me and be held back?”

“Did you talk to her about this, or did your insecurities make the call?” Lorenzo’s words made Theodore freeze, lost in thought.

Pansy packed up, checking the time. “Dinner’s soon. Let’s go.”

The boys followed Pansy, leaving Theodore alone, contemplating if his decision was right for your relationship.

"I got the job!"

Strolling around Hogsmeade with Blaise and Pansy, you stumbled upon a new place—a wizarding coffee shop. Your liking for muggle coffeehouses sparked your curiosity, pushing you to ask about potential employment.

Excitement bubbled as you shared the news with your friends in the Great Hall.

“We’ve got a place to visit now.” Lorenzo grinned, aware it might bring some joy after a while.

Pansy nudged Draco, "Let’s study there. OWLS are coming up and some muggle coffee might help."

Draco glanced at Theodore, who sat in silence, unsure of what to say. “That sounds like a plan. I could use some muggle coffee.”

They all knew Draco was convincing Theodore to join.

"When do you start?" Mattheo asked between sips of hot chocolate.

You remembered your upcoming schedule, “Next week, Wednesdays and Saturdays? Once I’m trained, next Saturday, I’ll treat you all to some amazing muggle coffee."

The group agreed, planning to meet at your workplace next Saturday.

“Five cups of regular iced coffee, please.” You operated the muggle machine, engrossed in fulfilling the order.

“Oh, hey, Theodore. Are the others here?” You looked around, causing Theodore’s shoulders to slump slightly.

“They're at the big corner table. Enzo insisted the natural sunlight would help with studying…”

A soft chuckle escaped, “You can go back, I’ll bring the drinks over when ready.” Theodore nodded, returning to the café’s corner.

Blaise grabbed the first cup but stopped when Pansy teased him. “Don’t hog! Share!”

“How does it taste?” you asked, turning to your friends.

“Y/n, muggle coffee is amazing.” Mattheo praised, soon followed by Blaise signaling he finished his drink.

“I should tell my father about this place,” Draco chimed in, and before you knew it, all the cups were empty.

“I should get back to work, see you at dinner.”

“What time do you finish?” Theodore's sudden interest surprised everyone.

“Y/n?”

"I'm done around six," You said while feeling a bit overwhelmed inside.

Theodore nodded, indicating your return to work.

Numerous customers kept you busy. Though you didn’t need money, the experience was enriching.

While your friends left at five, Theodore stayed. He moved to a quiet spot facing the counter where you worked.

Ignoring his shift, you focused on the new customers who walked in.

“Y/n, it's six, you can leave,” your boss said, offering a pastry.

“Thanks,” grabbing your coat, you started to leave the kitchen.

“Are you done?” Theodore was poised by the counter, waiting for your response.

“Theodore, did you wait?”

Signaling to walk together, he said, “I had a few assignments that I wanted to finish early so I stayed longer.” His nervous fidgeting gave away his lie, his habit you remembered from your past relationship.

You hummed, touched by his waiting.

“I might visit often. I didn't mention earlier, but the coffee’s great.”

Walking back to Hogwarts, feelings for Theodore surfaced since the breakup.

How could you move on when he acted this way?

For two months, Theodore kept his promise, visiting the café every Wednesday and Saturday, bringing schoolwork, and leaving with you.

You felt the emotions returning but you were scared to get hurt. After all, he initiated the breakup, right?

Your friends noticed Theodore’s absence on your workdays, understanding where Theodore was without verbal explanation.

“One large iced coffee, please.” You prepared a cup, “And your name?”

“Theo.”

“Oh,” You looked up at Theodore. “One large iced coffee for Theodore.” You repeated his order and placed the cup down.

“Why don’t you call me Theo anymore?” His disappointment was evident.

Meeting his gaze, you explained, “Because we’re just friends.”

Theodore observed the cup, then you.

“You know what, I think I forgot something at my dorm. I’m going to go.” His tone was sharper than he meant, leaving the café abruptly.

“Now you're the clueless one. Salazar, why do I have two of them?” Lorenzo dramatized, earning an eye roll from you.

Theodore disappeared after the café meeting. Unaware of his whereabouts, your friends gathered in the common room, waiting for his return.

“I mean, Y/n, Enzo's right,” Pansy said, sipping the muggle coffee you brewed for the group.

“He ended things months ago. I don’t see why you're all on his side.” Frowning, you didn’t grasp their empathy toward Theodore.

“Y/n, listen,” Blaise interrupted, “Regardless of who initiated the breakup, Theodore has come to your café twice a week for months, just to spend time with you.”

Draco echoed Blaise’s sentiments. “OWLS were done a month ago, yet he still visits. Give Theo credit for trying.”

You sighed, “I care for him, but I don’t want to be hurt again. He should just tell me. His actions are misleading if he doesn’t want to reconcile.”

Lost in thought, the warmth of the common room enveloped you, the crackling fire providing a soothing ambiance.

As evening approached, your thoughts circled Theodore’s sudden exit from the café, leaving you unsettled, your mind in disarray.

Unnoticed, the common room door creaked open. Theodore entered, visibly anxious. His eyes met yours, a blend of hesitation and resolve painting his expression.

The room fell silent as Theodore approached you, a mix of emotions playing across his face. Without a word, you got up and led him out of the common room.

The two of you reached the Blake Lake, facing each other, as the tension filled the air. Theodore struggled with his thoughts, torn between holding back and speaking up.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” he started, a hint of regret in his tone. “I didn’t mean to leave abruptly. I've been struggling, Y/n.”

“Struggling? With what, Theodore?”

Gathering his thoughts, he spoke earnestly. “With everything between us. The breakup wasn't about not caring about you. I was scared.”

“Scared?” Your voice softened, understanding blooming within.

Theodore nodded, his eyes never leaving yours. “I was scared that you would realize I was holding you back and leave me. So I thought if I let you go, you would be better off.”

Your heart ached, his honesty striking a chord with your own doubts. “But, Theodore, you never gave me a chance to choose. You made that decision for me.”

“I know, and I regret it every day.” Remorse filled his words, and his vulnerability was evident. “I visited the café because I wanted to be near you. But I understand if it’s been confusing for you.”

Silence hung, emotions swirling like a storm.

“I never stopped loving you,” you whispered, emotions stirring within.

He met your gaze, “I don't want to lose you again, Y/n. I want us to start over, I'll do everything to make things right.”

“Let's take it slow, Theodore. Start over and let's see where it takes us.”

A soft smile appeared on his face, relief in his eyes. “I promise, I'll do everything.”

"I've missed this," Theodore confessed softly, his eyes reflecting a mixture of emotions.

You gently squeezed his hand, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips. "Me too. I think we both needed this time to figure things out."

Theodore stopped walking, turning to face you with resolve. "I want us to try again, to be together, properly this time.”

Your heart skipped a beat, warmth spreading through you at his words. You looked into his eyes, seeing a depth of sincerity that reassured you more than any words could. "I want that too, Theodore. Let's give us another chance."

With that shared agreement, a sense of relief and joy washed over both of you. Walking hand in hand, Theodore smiled for the first time in months.

“Now, will you call me Theo?”

4K notes · View notes

admiringlove · 4 months ago

Text

➵ pairing. gojo satoru x fem! reader.

➵ summary. a trip to hogsmeade. a hidden passageway. secrets slipping through the cracks like candle wax left too long in the heat. when everything unravels at once—whispers in the dark, truths half-spoken, tensions simmering beneath frostbitten fingertips—what do you do? arguments, stolen glances, and the weight of something inevitable, waiting just beyond the door.

➵ warnings. detailed descriptions of bodily injury; angst; mentions of death; mentions of alcohol; mentions of sex; etc.

➵ genre. wizarding world au; academic rivals to lovers; enemies to lovers; angst; fluff; adventure; etc.

➵ word count. 17.2k.

➵ author's note. big thanks to @gojofile for proofreading. have fun reading, and i hope slytherin prefect gojo warms your hearts <3 also also, taglist is no longer open. tysm if you signed up!

➵ navigation. previous, masterlist, next.

The next few days pass in a strange, muted haze.

You drift through the corridors like a ghost, present but not entirely there. The world moves around you, but you don’t feel yourself moving with it. There are things you know you’ve done—managing the Dueling Club, fulfilling your prefect duties, attending classes without missing a single lesson—but none of it sticks. Your body carries you through the motions, hands turning pages, mouth forming answers when professors call your name, legs taking you from one place to the next without hesitation. You follow a routine, something structured, something predictable, something that keeps you from slipping into the spaces between.

At night, you move through the school’s secret corridors, fulfilling the students’ requests with an efficiency that is almost mechanical. You sneak into offices, slip potions into waiting hands, retrieve lost items from places they shouldn’t have been in the first place. And then, for the first time in what feels like years, you sleep when you’re meant to. Properly. You let the exhaustion pull you under without fighting it. No lingering in the common room, no staring out of windows, no pacing the halls in the quiet hours of the morning.

You don’t know if you’ve been talking to people properly. You don’t even know if you’ve been talking at all. Words feel like an afterthought, like something distant, like a spell that takes too much effort to cast. You float past conversations, answering only when necessary, and even then, your voice sounds different. Detached. Almost unfamiliar.

And you haven’t spoken to Fushiguro or Gojo. Not once.

You aren’t sure what to make of that. You aren’t sure if it’s strange, if you should have sought them out, or if they should have sought you out first. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it means everything. You tell yourself you don’t care either way, but you know that’s not entirely true.

The library is quiet in the way it always is—hushed murmurs slipping between bookshelves, the faint scratch of quills against parchment, the distant rustle of pages being turned. The lamps flicker low, throwing long, shifting shadows over the wooden tables. Dust floats in the lantern light, suspended, moving in the slow, unhurried way that makes the air itself feel heavier.

You sit with Utahime and Kento across from you, and Shoko next to you. The four of you are buried in stacks of parchment, quills poised over half-written essays, ink smudged at the edges of your fingertips. The air smells like parchment and candle wax, like the faintest trace of something old, something forgotten, something that lingers in the bindings of books that haven’t been touched in years.

The words on the page blur together after a while. You blink down at your parchment, fingers tightening around your quill as you try to focus, try to summon the same ease that had carried you through everything else this week. But the more you try, the more it slips away.

"Gosh, I haven't been to Hogsmeade at all this year. Neither have you, right, [L/N]?" Utahime asks.

You nod absently, yawning, as you trace over the same line in the textbook again. The Elixir of Life—the potion created from Nicolas Flamel’s Philosopher’s Stone. The promise of immortality, of endless years stretched out over time, of something that should be unattainable. Your mind latches onto the thought for a moment, wanders through the weight of it. What would it be like to exist outside of time? To live through centuries, untouched, unchanged? To watch everything move forward while you stayed the same?

The quill slips from your fingers, rolling across the table.

"We should all go," Utahime continues, not noticing your distraction. "Even though I loathe your two best friends, Shoko, I think it’ll be more fun with all of us."

"Yeah, I’ll ask," Shoko says, tilting her head, "They’ll probably say yes. Although not for this weekend, remember, we have those tests for DADA and Potions next week. And the Potions paper is to be submitted this week."

Utahime groans, long and dramatic, slumping over her parchment. The corners of Shoko’s mouth twitch, amused.

The words slip past you, distant, muffled. You can feel Kento’s gaze on you—steady, thoughtful, the kind that lingers just long enough to mean something. You glance up, forcing a smile, quick, practiced, something light enough to brush away any concern before it settles. He raises a brow, skeptical, but doesn’t push.

Somehow, that makes it worse.

"I might head in," you mumble, stretching out your fingers before pressing your knuckles into your palm, letting them crack one by one. The sound is small, almost lost under the rustle of parchment and the faint, rhythmic tapping of quills against wood. "I can’t focus anymore."

Kento looks up from his book, studying you the way he always does—like he’s weighing something, like he’s waiting for an answer you haven’t given yet. "Want me to come with?"

You shake your head, already reaching for your things, shoving loose parchment and ink bottles into your satchel without much care. "No, but would you cover my prefect patrol tonight? I’m too tired to even stay for dinner. I’ll be sleeping."

He watches you for a moment longer before nodding. "Alright."

You don’t look at him when you murmur your goodbyes, don’t look at Utahime or Shoko either, even when Utahime says something about overworking yourself again and Shoko mutters a half-hearted agreement, distracted as she scribbles something onto her parchment. The words slip past you, barely registering.

You step out into the corridor, and for a minute, your mind feels heavy, fogged over. Your limbs move as if by instinct, taking you down the familiar stone corridors, but you don’t really feel the weight of your body, don’t feel the movement. Your eyes stay fixed on the floor, on the flickering candlelight stretching shadows against the stone, on the way your own silhouette wavers with every step.

It’s quiet, and you let yourself sink into that quiet, let it settle over you like a thin veil. Everything weighs down.

"Skipping dinner, are you?"

You don’t need to look to know who it is. His voice is easy to recognize—low, lazy, a little rough around the edges, like he’s always amused by something only he understands.

You glance up just as Toji falls into step beside you, hands stuffed into his pockets, moving with that unhurried confidence of someone who knows exactly where he’s going, even if he’s got nowhere to be.

"You creep," you accuse, narrowing your eyes at him. "You were listening to our conversation?"

Toji only laughs, shaking his head, completely unfazed. "I was quite literally sitting at the table behind you," he says, voice light, easy. "Was there before you lot even came in. Not my fault you didn’t notice." He stretches his arms above his head, exhaling, like this whole exchange is nothing more than a casual amusement to him. "Got to send in applications to the Ministry soon, y’know. The Auror program. Entrance exam’s coming up too."

"Ah," you mumble.

Something about it—about the way he says it, about the way he’s so quick to explain—makes your chest go tight for reasons you don’t want to name. Maybe it’s true. Maybe he really has been busy. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t spoken to you at all these past few days.

Or maybe it’s just an excuse.

You glance at him, studying his expression, but there’s nothing there that gives him away. He looks as relaxed as ever, hands still in his pockets, walking beside you like the past few days haven’t been filled with silence.

"Didn’t peg you for the type to want to be an Auror," you say instead, tilting your head slightly.

Toji hums, a small smirk tugging at his lips. "Oh? And what exactly did you peg me for?"

You shrug, feigning nonchalance. "Dunno. Something a little less... structured. You don’t strike me as someone who follows rules."

"Maybe I like a challenge," he muses. "Besides, who said I’d follow them?"

You roll your eyes, but there’s an undeniable fondness creeping into the edges of your exhaustion. "That sounds about right."

"Don’t worry, princess," he drawls, smirking. "If I make it in, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for troublemakers like you."

"Yeah, sure," you deadpan. "That’d be a first."

He chuckles, and for a second, just a second, it almost feels normal again.

"You doin’ okay?" His voice is softer now, like he’s treading carefully, like he’s testing the weight of the words before letting them settle between you. "Really. Haven’t seen you at all this week."

Your fingers tighten around the strap of your bag. "U-uh, yeah," you say, nodding a little too quickly. "Just busy, I guess."

It’s not a lie. Not really. You have been busy. You’ve been drowning in schoolwork, in prefect duties, in Dueling Club, in everything else that lets you keep moving without having to stop and think. But that’s not what he’s asking. Not really. He speaks like this whole thing is some game of Quidditch, and he’s the Keeper, knocking the Quaffle away before it ever gets too close to scoring. Keeping it moving. Keeping it out of reach. You watch him for a second longer than you probably should, trying to decide if he’s doing it on purpose or if it’s just muscle memory by now.

You say nothing. Just turn down the corridor, heading for the staircases.

"Let me walk you up?" he asks as you take the first step upward.

"You really don’t have to," you say, pausing, looking back at him. "Your common room is the other way."

"Yeah, but this gives me time with you," he murmurs, licking his lower lip as he steps closer, into your space, head tilted just enough to meet your gaze.

It’s the only time you’re taller than him. The only time you can look down at him like this, with him standing a step below you, chin tilted slightly up. You’re almost tempted to take another step, just to see how much more height you can gain over him, just to see what it feels like to have the upper hand, even for a moment. And maybe it’s that. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. But you exhale, slow, measured, and nod. "Yeah," you say. "Okay."

His smirk is lazy, self-satisfied. "Good choice, princess."

"You just like bothering me," you mutter, turning back to the stairs.

"True," he concedes easily, falling into step beside you. "But you like it."

You scoff. "I really don’t."

"You do," he says, grinning now, the kind of grin that makes it feel like he knows something you don’t. Like he’s already won whatever game you didn’t even realize you were playing. "C’mon. Admit it."

You shake your head, exasperated, and keep walking. But your lips twitch, just slightly, at the corners.

A week passes. Then two days.

The Room of Requirement shifts to accommodate your needs, as it always does—its towering shelves rearrange themselves at your command, its long table is scattered with parchments, and a fire crackles faintly in the hearth, keeping the air comfortably warm against the late autumn chill. You flip through the latest requests, sifting through the scrawled handwriting of students who have come to rely on you and the others for things they cannot obtain on their own.

Nothing particularly interesting this time. Someone needs a book Pince keeps locked in her desk, another has lost their pet, a third wants ingredients they aren’t allowed to have. Last week, you'd stolen a vial of Draught of Living Death from Snape’s stores, nicked Gillyweed from Sprout’s greenhouse, and smuggled out something particularly valuable from Filch’s cabinet. Business as usual.

All is well—until Gojo Satoru bursts into the room.

The door slams open with a force that rattles the hinges. You flinch, snapping your head up, and immediately, you know something is wrong.

Something in the way he moves.

The usual ease in his gait, the careless arrogance that drips from every step—it’s absent. Instead, there’s a stiffness to him, like he’s trying too hard to appear normal, like every shift of his body pulls at something raw and aching. His jaw is clenched, his hands curled into tight fists at his sides. His uniform is disheveled, his tie loosened, the collar of his shirt rumpled.

"Who pissed in your tea this morning?" you ask, eyebrows furrowing.

You haven’t spoken much since the fight. He’s been keeping his distance, and you’ve been letting him. You’ve had the Marauders’ business to handle, while he spent the past weekend away from school, excusing himself under the pretense of family obligations, though you both knew he was secretly working on the genealogy portion of your little escapade.

Now, though, this is different.

"I really don’t want to start right now," he mutters, shaking his head. His voice is low, frayed at the edges.

You catch it again. The unnatural way he moves, the hesitation in his steps, as if every motion costs him something. A deep, instinctual unease settles in your stomach.

"Are you okay?" you ask, your voice sharper now. "Something isn’t right. Why are you walking like that? Are you hurt?"

"It’s not like you care," he scoffs, moving toward the long table. His usual bravado is still there, but it feels forced, like he’s holding it together through sheer stubbornness. "The ancestry part—it’s going to take more time."

"No, wait," your eyes narrow, tracking the way his torso subtly twists as he moves, the almost imperceptible grimace that flickers across his face before he smooths it over. "Let me see what’s wrong."

"Absolutely not," he snaps, voice pitching slightly higher, as if the very thought is offensive. When you reach for him, he swats your hand away with more force than necessary, stepping back. "No. Stop it."

"Gojo," you warn, your patience thinning, "let me see what’s wrong. You might need to go to the Infirmary—"

"Since when do you care?" he demands, louder now, a biting edge creeping into his voice. "You’ve never given a shit, so why now? You were going to foul me in the Quidditch game a week ago. I could’ve fallen and broken my bones or something, but you were fine with that, right? What’s different now?"

You step forward and grab the front of his robes, and whatever words he was about to say after that die in his throat.

His whole body stills under your touch. His eyes, narrowed in irritation just moments ago, go wide, startled, as if it has just occurred to him that you’re close—too close. His breath stutters slightly, and for once, he is completely, utterly dumbfounded. He doesn’t even resist when you guide him away from the table, doesn’t have a quip ready, doesn’t pull away like you expect him to.

When the backs of his knees hit the couch, he sinks into it without argument, blinking up at you in stunned silence, his mouth slightly open like he can’t quite process what just happened. The moment stretches between you, heavy and uncertain, before he exhales sharply, wincing as he shifts.

And that, more than anything, makes you pause. Because Gojo Satoru never winces.

Your hands, still braced against his shoulders, feel the tension coiled beneath the fabric of his robes, the way his body is drawn tight with pain. You frown, fingers instinctively pulling back.

"Is that where you’re hurt?" you ask, watching him closely.

His mouth presses into a thin line. He doesn’t answer.

"Do I need to call Madam Pomfrey?"

"No," he blurts, shaking his head too quickly. "N-no, don’t call her."

"Gojo," you say again, his name a warning on your lips, "I hate your existence, yes, but you can’t work in this condition."

His mouth twitches at that, as if he wants to argue, but his body betrays him. His shoulders are rigid, his breathing uneven, and up close, you can see it. How utterly drained he looks. The fight is there, as it always is with him, but it’s losing ground against whatever has happened to him.

"Let me help?" you ask, your voice quieter now. "I don't hate your guts as much as you think I do."

Gojo doesn’t answer immediately. He stares down at his lap, his hands curling and uncurling against his knees, fingers tightening like they need something to hold onto. His face is unreadable at first—blank, composed, the kind of carefully controlled mask you’re used to seeing on him when he wants to act like he’s above everything. But then, you see it.

The slight furrow of his brow, like a loose knot being pulled just enough to show the tension beneath. The way his eyes flutter shut for a fraction of a second too long, as if bracing himself. There’s something fragile in the way he holds himself, a hesitance that makes your stomach twist. And the fear—it’s there, too, small but unmistakable. A flicker of something buried deep, an instinctive flinch before a blow that never comes.

You’ve known him too long not to recognize it. It’s rare, so rare, that he lets anything slip. But this? This, he is making obvious to you. Or maybe he’s too tired to hide it.

He exhales slowly, something inside him caving as he looks up at you, his usual sharpness dulled by something heavier. And when he finally speaks, his voice is quieter than you’ve ever heard it.

"Don't tell anyone," he mumbles. He says it carefully, like the words might crack if he’s not careful, like admitting them out loud is already too much. "Only Suguru knows. Shoko might have an idea, but she hasn’t seen it."

"Seen what?" you ask, blinking. You don’t understand. Not yet.

Gojo clears his throat, blinking up at you almost hesitantly, and then, he starts to move.

You don’t register what’s happening at first. His fingers go to his tie, loosening it with practiced ease before pulling it free completely. Then, he shrugs off his robe—fluid, almost effortless, as if it’s second nature to him. Even though you know that every motion must be pulling at something beneath his skin.

You take a step back, a little confused, your heartbeat climbing against your ribs. His hands move next to the buttons of his shirt, and immediately, your palms fly up to cover your eyes.

"Satoru, what are you—"

"I'm not trying to shag you, Fawkes," he cuts in, and there it is, that dry, sardonic humor, slipping in like armor. Like a last line of defense before something breaks apart completely.

It doesn’t sit right with you. The words are light, but the air between you is heavy, suffocating. You peek through the gaps in your fingers, your breath catching in your throat just as he pulls the fabric of his shirt aside. And then, you see it. Your hands fall away from your face as horror floods through you.

Scars.

They stretch across his torso, stark against pale skin. Some old, faded into silvery remnants of pain long since endured, while others are newer, still pink, still angry. A latticework of healed wounds, of places where his skin has been split open and sewn back together, over and over again. A map of injuries that do not belong to someone like him.

Gojo Satoru—the most brilliant Seeker of your generation, the most untouchable student in your year, the epitome of effortless arrogance, of perfection bred into blood and bone—is covered in scars.

Your stomach twists violently, the image searing itself into your mind, refusing to let go. You don’t understand. You don’t understand how this is possible, how someone like him—who laughs so carelessly, who walks through life like nothing can ever touch him—has been hurt this many times. How no one knew.

How you didn’t know.

Gojo exhales, slow and steady, watching you carefully. As if gauging your reaction. As if waiting to see if you’ll flinch, if you’ll recoil, if you’ll say something that will make him regret showing you.

But you can’t say anything at all. Because all you can do is stare at him, at the evidence of something that feels too big to process, at the proof that there is a part of him—this hidden, wounded part—that you have never, ever seen before.

"Say something," he whispers. His voice is uneven, as if he’s barely holding himself together, as if the wrong word might be the final push that sends him spiraling. "I know what you're thinking. It's ugly, and disgusting, and you're probably judging me—"

"Where does it hurt?" you ask, so softly it almost dissolves in the space between you. The words barely exist, barely form, like speaking too loudly might make another wound appear, another scar etch itself into his skin. The thought sickens you. You couldn’t risk that. You wouldn’t.

He swallows thickly, his throat bobbing. He looks down at himself, at the war mapped across his body in raised lines and bruised skin. His hands tremble as he lifts them, hesitating before gesturing toward his shoulder—the same place you had grabbed him earlier, unknowingly pressing into a nasty bruise. Then, slowly, his fingers trail lower, to the deep bruising along his stomach, to the side of his ribs where fresh gauze is haphazardly secured. The sight makes something in your chest twist.

You step forward. Carefully. Slowly. Like he's the most fragile thing in the world. And maybe, right now, he is.

He doesn’t flinch when you kneel in front of him. He doesn’t move when you lean in, close enough to examine the wounds but not enough to crowd him. You hold your breath, not wanting to disturb the silence between you, not wanting to make this moment anything more than what it is.

Then, you see it. The bandaging. The gauze. A foreign, unfamiliar thing in the world of magic.

"Why is there gauze on this?" you ask, barely above a whisper. Your voice is steady, but there's something behind it—something careful, something that wavers. "Nobody in the wizarding world uses this. This is Muggle medicine. We have enchantments, spells, things that heal without leaving a trace."

You look up at him, and you wish you hadn't. Because when your eyes meet his, you see it. The fear. Not of pain, not of the wounds themselves, but of you. Of your reaction, of what you might think, of whether or not you’ll look at him and see something broken.

But all you feel is the ache blooming in your ribs, sharp and relentless, because how had he let it get this bad?

How had he been living like this?

"You wanted to be more like me, right?" he says, voice taut, not with anger but something bitter, something exhausted. "This is what it's like. Being a pureblood. Especially in the Gojo bloodline."

You blink. The words are leaden, settling heavy in the space between you. "Your parents did this to you?"

"More or less." He exhales, shaky and uneven, reaching for his robes, his fingers curling into the fabric like he’s suddenly aware of how much of himself he’s revealed. You see it in the way his shoulders pull inward, in the way his throat bobs. He can’t stand for you to look at him any longer. And just as he's about to cover himself, you reach for his wrist, firm but not forceful. "Can I help?"

He hesitates. A long, weighty pause. "I can't let you. I haven't let Suguru help, either," he murmurs, voice quieter, more fractured. "If the scar's gone, they'll—"

"It won't be." You squeeze his hand, gently, reassuringly. "Trust me."

Another pause. Then, softer, more careful: "Is it still bleeding?"

He nods, swallowing hard, gaze dropping to the gauze, the dark stain spreading over the white. You sigh, nodding once as you pull your wand from your boot. "This might hurt a bit, okay? Let me help."

You move carefully, peeling the gauze away from his skin. It sticks at first, the dried blood clinging stubbornly, and you wince at the sound it makes as it pulls away. Beneath it, the wound is ugly—deep, angry, raw. Blood wells up sluggishly from the broken skin, glistening under the dim light. The stitches are an atrocity. Uneven, poorly spaced, almost haphazard, thread pulled too tight in some areas and too loose in others, as if they were done in a hurry. You blink, glancing up at him, but he's already looking away, his mouth pulling into something almost sheepish.

"House Elf. Dobby," he says, giving a weak smile.

"Right," you murmur, exhaling sharply. "I'm afraid I have to undo them."

He nods once, eyes fluttering shut as if steeling himself. You whisper, raising your wand over the stitches, "Dissuo."

The effect is immediate. The sutures unravel, pulling apart like an unseen hand is gently tugging the threads loose. Blood beads at the surface again, the punctures from the stitches still visible, dotting his skin in cruel little half-moons. You work quickly, removing the strings where they’ve fully unraveled. He flinches when your fingers graze his skin, and you mumble an apology, to which he waves you off, his expression unreadable.

You swallow, shifting onto your knees, steadying yourself. The next spell—it's rare. You aren’t even sure you can do it properly. But once, you overheard Snape speaking of it to Dumbledore, back when you were in his office. It’s powerful. More powerful than anything you’ve ever cast before.

Taking a slow breath, you whisper, "Vulnera Sanentur."

Your wand moves in slow, fluid arcs, tracing delicate circular motions in the air. You speak the incantation again, then a third time, voice quiet, almost reverent. The blood recedes, as if retreating back into his veins, and the torn flesh begins to knit together. It’s not instant, nor painless—you see the way his jaw tightens, the way his fingers dig into his knees, white-knuckled. But it works. The wound closes, leaving behind a pale, raised scar. Healed. Not erased. Never erased.

Gojo exhales, a breath he had been holding onto for too long, his eyes flickering down to where the wound had been. His fingers twitch, hesitating, before pressing lightly against his side, testing. You watch him, and he watches his own hands, as if unsure whether to believe what he’s seeing.

"It’s done. Although, it only healed the tissue. If you want the scars to go away, you have to use Dittany," you say, voice barely above a whisper.

For a moment, he just blinks at you, his expression slack with something unreadable. Then, slowly, as if his mind is catching up with his body, his lips part, and his brows lift. His entire face transforms, shock spilling into every crease and line. He looks at you like you've just rewritten the laws of the universe.

Then he laughs. Not loud, not his usual bright, careless cackle, but something quiet and disbelieving. A little breathless. A little awed.

"Where in hell did you learn that?" His voice is hoarse, but there's a familiar lilt to it now, teasing, even as the remnants of surprise still linger in his gaze. "More importantly, can you teach me?"

Something in your chest eases, uncoiling like a knot that had been tied too tight for too long. He looks like himself again. His eyes aren’t dull with exhaustion or wary with fear. They’re alight, searching, full of something that almost looks like hope. And for the first time tonight, you feel like you can breathe.

You shake your head, your lips tugging into a grin. "Only if you tell me how you made our trusty map."

His eyes narrow immediately, and just like that, the moment shifts. His mouth twitches, and he reaches for his shirt where it’s draped over the armrest, pulling it toward him with a lazy sort of defiance.

"Keep your secrets," he mutters, slipping one arm through a sleeve. "I'll keep mine."

You roll your eyes but don’t push, don’t pry. Instead, you rise to your feet, brushing the dust from your knees before reaching out. Your fingers barely ruffle through his hair as you place a hand on the top of his head.

"Don’t worry too much about the ancestry list, yeah?" you say, voice softer now. "You can take your time. I know it's hard, what you're doing."

Something flickers across his face at that, too quick to catch. He shifts, his posture stiffening for the briefest second before smoothing out again, but the hesitation lingers in the air between you. He knows something. Something he's not telling you.

But you don’t press. Not tonight. Not after this.

You exhale, turning toward the long table, toward the stack of parchment and the requests still waiting to be sorted through. "I'm gonna get started on Marauders' business," you say, glancing at him only briefly as he tugs the hem of his shirt into place. "I'll see you later."

He’s quiet for a moment. Then, softer than before, "See you later."

And for the first time in weeks, you believe him.

You're on patrol the next night, taking the list of duties from the Head Girl before heading up the stairs to the next corridor. It’s a quiet shift this time. No long treks across the castle, no winding through the dungeons or climbing the Astronomy Tower. Just a few dimly lit hallways to check, a stretch of silence to exist in. You are alone for a moment, waiting for your assigned partner, when you hear hurried footsteps—quick, uneven, like someone is running up the stairs two at a time.

Then he appears, breathless and grinning, hair askew as if he’d been racing against time itself. Gojo.

You frown. "I thought I had Patricia from Ravenclaw with me on this side of the castle. What are you—"

"With a lot of charm and my face, I can do anything," he cuts in, nudging your shoulder with his own. "Including switching patrol duties with other people."

You roll your eyes, but you don’t argue. You could, but it wouldn’t change anything. Gojo always finds a way to get what he wants.

The two of you walk side by side through the corridor outside the Great Hall, the hush of the castle wrapping around you both. Your footsteps echo in tandem, the sound rhythmic. The torches flicker as you pass, their glow casting long shadows against the stone walls. You scan the dark corners for movement, ears pricked for the sound of someone sneaking through the halls, but the night is still.

Being a Prefect has its perks. If you weren’t, your work as a Marauder would be so much harder, more inconvenient. You wonder if Gojo ever thinks about that—if he ever feels the weight of secrecy pressing down on him the way you do.

Then, quietly, almost hesitantly, he says, "I never really said thanks, did I?"

You glance up at him, brow furrowing slightly. Gojo doesn’t thank people. He doesn’t apologize, either. Not really. Not in the ways that count.

"You don’t have to," you murmur. "Anyone else would’ve—"

"No," he interrupts. His voice is softer now, edged with something unfamiliar. "No one else did do anything, did they?"

"That’s because you wouldn’t let them," you say, shaking your head. "I’m sure Suguru would’ve found a way to help if you’d just asked. He’s the only one other than me that knows."

Something shifts in his expression, just for a second. A flicker of something unreadable.

"Exactly," he murmurs. "That’s why I didn’t ask."

You don’t know what to say to that. The words settle into your bones, leave a strange feeling behind, like a splinter just beneath the skin.

Gojo nudges you again, his voice lighter this time. "You were right, though. About me being stubborn."

You scoff. "I’m always right."

"And humble, too," he teases. "Truly a rare combination."

"You’re one to talk."

"Yeah, but you like me anyway," he grins.

You don’t respond. You don’t need to. The warmth between you says enough.

"Did you hear about it?" you ask after a few beats, voice low in the quiet hallway. "Everyone wants to go to Hogsmeade together."

Gojo's lips curve, that familiar glint sparking in his eye as he turns to you. "I am so going to spike Utahime’s butterbeer with firewhiskey." A pause, then, almost as an afterthought, "Or hex her. Haven’t decided yet."

You let out a laugh, shaking your head. "Why are you always at odds with her?"

He clicks his tongue, as if the answer should be obvious. "I’m at odds with you, too. All the time. Some people are just more fun to irritate than others."

"You are… insufferable," you mutter, rolling your eyes as the two of you finally reach the library. The heavy wooden doors loom ahead, and you lean against one of the stone pillars outside, exhaling softly. It’s a moment of respite—just a breath—before Gojo shakes his head, something more serious settling into his features.

"I really do have to visit the Ministry again this weekend," he murmurs. "I should—"

"Don’t do that," you cut in sharply, eyes locking onto his. "I don’t want to see another gash on you."

His gaze softens, but there’s something unreadable behind it. "Listen, Fawkes, this is serious, right? We can’t just… do things like this. I have to get into the Ministry somehow, use my father’s connections. Maybe say I’m writing a paper for school. Those foolish receptionists see me and melt, anyway. My father won’t know. I won’t go home at all this time."

Your arms cross over your chest. "And if your parents find out you were snooping around at the Ministry, God knows what will happen to you."

His expression doesn’t change. He just watches you, like he’s weighing something.

"Isn’t that how it went last week?" you push.

"No," he says, shaking his head. "This is a usual occurrence. Although that gash was… rare. It never gets that bad." A beat, then, quieter, "Something is happening. I’m sure of it. My parents have been more and more stressed lately. Dobby said tensions are high at home in his last letter."

Your brows furrow slightly. "I ought to meet this elf," you muse, half-joking. "He seems like a real treat."

Gojo huffs a quiet laugh, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. "He’s shit at listening to me. Never obeys properly. But he’ll make sure no harm comes to me." He hesitates, just for a moment, then, in a voice so low you almost miss it. "He even puts himself between my father and me, when…"

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to.

You swallow. The words sit heavy between you, unspoken but understood. You shift slightly, peeling yourself away from the pillar, standing just a little closer to him now.

"You really should be more careful," you murmur.

Gojo tilts his head, a wry smile tugging at his lips despite the weight of the conversation. "What, worried about me, Fawkes?"

You scoff, turning toward the library doors. "No. I just don’t want to have to patch you up again."

"Mm," he hums, as if he doesn’t believe you. Then, teasing, "You should come with me. Make sure I don’t get into too much trouble."

You shake your head vigorously. "Absolutely not."

"Then at least admit you’d miss me if something happened."

"Gojo."

He laughs, full and bright, the sound stretching down the empty corridor, lingering in the hush of the castle’s late hours. You roll your eyes, pushing open the heavy library door, the familiar scent of parchment and old books greeting you as you step inside.

Gojo follows, glancing around, hands tucked into his pockets. His voice drops to a conspiratorial murmur. "Doesn’t look like there’s people snogging each other in here."

You huff a quiet laugh, shaking your head. "You sound disappointed."

"Not disappointed. Just relieved." He grins, nudging your shoulder. "Would’ve been awkward. For them."

You roll your eyes, already moving toward the librarian’s desk to check if there’s anything left to be locked away before closing up. The library is empty, save for the faint crackling of the enchanted lanterns floating near the bookshelves, casting long, flickering shadows against the high-arched ceilings.

"Come on," Gojo says after a beat, leaning against the desk like he owns the place. "Let’s close up and head to the Room. We’ve got an hour. We can work on requests for tonight instead. Keep it lighthearted."

You sigh, shaking your head, but the exhaustion in your limbs is already giving way to the familiarity of routine—the quiet, effortless ease of mischief shared between the two of you.

"Alright, fine," you mumble, shooting him a look. "But you’re doing most of the work."

When you’re headed for the Great Hall the next morning, a hand catches your wrist and pulls you sharply to the side. A breathless yelp escapes you before another hand covers your mouth, warm and firm, silencing you before you can cry out. Your heart stutters, a rush of panic prickling along your spine—until you hear the voice, low and amused, so close it sends a shiver down your neck.

"Shh, princess. Just me."

Your pulse slows, but only slightly. You shove his hand off, scowling as you step back, glancing around to make sure no one else saw. "You cannot sneak up on people like that," you whisper, voice sharp, "Gosh, with everything I’ve been dealing with, I thought I was actually in danger."

Toji tilts his head, studying you with sudden interest. "What things?"

You hesitate. The weight of secrets presses against your ribs, the things you can’t tell him, the things you shouldn’t. "Things I can’t tell you," you say eventually, folding your arms, "Same reason I sneak around all the time."

"Ah." His mouth quirks, the expression unreadable. Something shifts behind his eyes, though. Like a thought just out of reach, a puzzle piece clicking into place. Then he nods, stepping back, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Alright. Meet me near the Black Lake tonight?"

You pause. The Black Lake. You haven’t been there since everything changed—since the first pieces of the mystery began unraveling, since you and Gojo began putting things together, since the cryptic notes led to something far darker than you had anticipated. Your stomach twists. You exhale. "How about the Astronomy Tower?"

Toji raises an eyebrow, smirking. "Getting romantic, are you?"

You roll your eyes. "Filch won’t catch us there."

"How do we know that?"

"Prefect duties end at eleven. Filch can’t stay up past midnight, and Mrs. Norris is the only thing we need to be wary of. I usually carry treats with me," you murmur. "So, midnight. Astronomy Tower."

He watches you for a beat, eyes dark, considering. Then he nods, leaning down slightly, just enough for his breath to ghost against your ear. The movement is slow, deliberate. Almost teasing. "Alright, sure."

You don’t let yourself react. You swallow down the odd flutter in your chest, school your features into something neutral, and push past him toward the Great Hall.

The warmth of the Great Hall greets you like a familiar embrace, the golden morning light spilling through the enchanted ceiling, dappling the long wooden tables. The smell of fresh toast, eggs, and pumpkin juice fills the air, and the low hum of conversation surrounds you, grounding you back into something normal.

You spot Utahime and Kento immediately—Utahime waving her hands animatedly, Kento looking as unimpressed as ever, though there’s a small, patient smile at the corner of his lips. You slide into the seat next to Utahime, sighing as you reach for the nearest platter of toast.

"You just missed Shoko," Kento informs you, flipping through the pages of a book beside his plate. "She left early for the Hospital Wing. Something about Pomfrey needing help with something."

"Of course she did," you mumble, biting into your toast.

"You’re late," Utahime says, nudging you with her elbow. "Almost thought you were ditching breakfast."

"Almost did."

"Yeah, yeah." She waves you off before pulling out a small notebook from her bag and flipping through it. "Anyway, Hogsmeade. I need to plan properly. I refuse to get distracted this time."

"By what?" you ask, raising an eyebrow.

"Sweets." Utahime sighs dramatically. "Last time, I spent all my money at Honeydukes and had to borrow from Shoko to get actual supplies. This time, I have a strategy. First stop: Scrivenshaft’s. Then, Zonko’s. And then, only then, I will go to Honeydukes. That way, I won’t spend everything at once."

"You act like that’ll stop you," Kento says dryly, turning a page.

Utahime glares at him. "Shut up, Kento." Then she turns to you. "Oh! I was also thinking, I want to send some sweets home. My mom loves Honeydukes’ Fizzing Whizzbees. What do you think I should get for my dad?"

You hum, chewing absently. "Chocolate Cauldrons, maybe? They last a while. My dad likes those. My mum's more into Chocolate Frogs, though. She thinks they're cute—until the enchantment wears off. Then she feels too guilty to eat them, says it’s like killing a pet."

Utahime snorts, not looking up from her notes. "Right. Because clearly, the ethical dilemma only kicks in once it's stopped moving."

You roll your eyes, nudging her. "Shut up."

She grins, scribbling something down with newfound determination.

You let them chatter then, let the noise of the Great Hall settle over you like a soft blanket. But somewhere, beneath the warmth of the moment, your thoughts keep flickering back—to the pull of everything, to the weight of the night ahead, to the quiet, nagging feeling that things are shifting, and you aren’t sure in which direction yet.

Classes slip by in a blur, the hours folding into one another until they are nothing more than a string of half-remembered lessons and the scratch of quills against parchment. In Potions, you answer correctly—something about the precise brewing time for the Draught of Living Death—and Snape, after a long pause, begrudgingly awards you five points. The question had been difficult, one of those deliberately obscure ones he liked to throw at students to watch them squirm. Only Gojo might have known the answer. But Gojo, of course, was asleep in the back, head propped up on his arm, hair falling over his eyes, utterly undisturbed by the world around him.

The day drags until your last class—Magical Theory. The final bell has rung, students are already filing out, their conversations rising into an indistinct hum as they shuffle toward the corridors. You close your book, tuck your quill into its case, slip it into your bag with careful, practiced motions. You should be leaving with them. You should be thinking about dinner, or about the plans Utahime had been prattling on about all morning, or about anything other than what you are about to do.

The thought has been clawing at the edges of your mind, insistent, restless. You can feel it, curling its way into your thoughts, taking root like an unspoken thing waiting to be acknowledged.

You clear your throat. "Uh, professor?"

Professor Fig pauses by his desk, glancing over his shoulder. His robes are different from the other professors'—layered, flowing, more reminiscent of the old-world wizards you’d read about in Muggle fantasy books. It suits him, you think. It suits the way he teaches, the way he speaks of magic not as a set of spells and incantations, but as something vast and ancient, something stretching beyond the limits of what you understand.

He tilts his head. "Yes?"

Your fingers tighten around the strap of your bag. You shouldn't be asking this. You don't even know why you're asking it, not really, except for the fact that it has been gnawing at you ever since the pieces began to slot together, ever since you started looking at magic differently—at everything differently.

You inhale, slow, measured. "How did... dark magic originate?"

There’s a beat of silence.

You shift, adjusting your grip on your bag. "Just out of curiosity," you add quickly, as if that will somehow lessen the weight of the question. "You talked about ancient magic today. And all of it was just... good magic. None of it was dark."

There. The words are out. They linger in the air between you, heavier than you expected. You brace yourself for his reaction, for the way he might look at you differently now. For the way you might not be able to take this back.

He almost smiles. As if he’s been waiting for this, as if the question was always meant to come from you. Then, with the careful patience of a professor who has had to explain something a hundred times but never tires of it, he says, “There isn’t one. Not an exact origin, anyway.”

He leans back against his desk, folding his arms, watching you—not unkindly, but with that knowing glint in his eye, the one that says that he knew it was coming. His voice is even, measured. “Some believe the first true forms of dark magic were the Unforgivable Curses—spells crafted not to protect, not to heal, but to control, to torment, to kill. The complete opposite of what we might consider ancient magic, the kind that nurtures and restores. It’s a bit like philosophy, in the Muggle world.”

You shift, straightening your spine, as your fingers curl around the strap of your bag. “Philosophy?” You tilt your head. “Like Hegesias? Kant? Socrates?”

A small chuckle leaves him. “You know your Muggle theorists well.” There’s no condescension in it, just the simple amusement of someone who’s surprised and impressed in equal measure. “Not many Muggleborns keep reading up on Muggle history once they find out they’re wizards. It’s like they forget the world they came from.”

He exhales, thoughtful. “But yes, some magical historians argue that dark magic has always existed. That it had to exist, an inevitable counterpart to light. Just as nature balances creation with destruction, magic manifested in dual aspects—healing and harming, shielding and cursing. Maybe the first wizards didn’t invent dark magic. Maybe they just... stumbled upon it. The same way humans stumbled upon fire and learned it could both warm and burn.”

He watches you carefully, gauging your reaction, but you only blink at him, absorbing.

“The Egyptians,” he continues, “were known for resurrection spells and curses meant to guard tombs. The Greeks and Romans experimented with necromancy, with magic that could bind souls, tether them. That kind of magic was never meant to be used—only studied. But people always push boundaries, don’t they?”

“So...” you hesitate, weighing your words, trying not to sound too eager. “The origin of magic itself is unknown?”

“In simple terms? Yes.” He shrugs. “No one knows where it began. Only that it did. And over centuries, it was shaped, rewritten, controlled.” A pause. “Outlawed, even.”

Your fingers twitch at your side. You glance at your shoes, then back up at him. “Is there any reading on that? On how it was outlawed, how it was regulated?”

His lips twitch, not quite a smirk but something close. “Plenty. I can recommend some books, if you’re interested. Though I should warn you—it’s not light reading.”

“That’s fine.” You huff out a breath, pulling a notepad from your bag. You don’t know why you feel oddly breathless, as if something is settling over you, pressing against your ribs. “Actually, I’d like a list of famous dark wizards or witches, too. If possible.”

Professor Fig watches you for a moment, weighing something unspoken, and then he nods. “Alright.” He reaches for his quill, begins scrawling titles onto a piece of parchment. You listen to the scratch of ink on paper, the slow pull of silence settling over the emptying classroom.

When he hands it to you, his fingers brush yours—fleeting, accidental.

“Personal research, then?” he asks, his voice light, but his gaze sharp.

You grip the parchment, curling it between your fingers. “Yeah,” you murmur. “Something like that.”

Professor Fig exhales softly, watching you with an unreadable expression. Then, just as you turn toward the door, he says, almost gently, "I hope you're being careful, dear."

The words catch you off guard, settling like a weight in your chest. You hesitate for half a second—too long, too telling—before you school your face into something neutral.

“Always,” you say, but the lie feels thin, stretched.

And then you’re gone, slipping out of the classroom and into the dim-lit corridor, the weight of the list burning in your hands.

"Gojo, you there? I have something to show you!" you call out, stepping into the Room, voice bouncing off the enchanted walls. The space is dimly lit, shifting, alive in the way only the Room of Requirement ever is, molding itself to their needs—high-backed chairs, an ancient fireplace smoldering low, the long table pushed to the center. A place of careful plotting.

Silence answers you.

You exhale sharply, closing the door behind you. The weight of the parchment in your hand feels heavier now, the inked names and titles pressing into your skin like something alive. You cross the room, your footsteps muted against the worn wooden floors, and pin the list onto the board with a sharp flick of your wrist. The paper flutters for a moment before settling.

You stare at it. A list of books. A list of names. Names that mean nothing to you. Titles that might as well be written in an entirely different language.

Your eyes flicker across them, searching for something familiar, something to grasp onto—but there’s nothing. A deep, clawing frustration wells in your chest. You shut your eyes, pressing your fingers to your temple, before running a hand through your hair, gripping at the roots. How long is this going to take? How much more do we have to unravel?

The genealogy is Gojo’s burden. This, however, is yours. It won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. But it has to be done.

Most of these are in the Restricted Section.

You exhale sharply through your nose, tapping your fingers against the edge of the parchment. Typical. Nothing useful ever comes easy. But then—your eyes catch on a title. Magick Moste Evile, by Godelot.

Your brow furrows. You've seen that book before. You're sure of it. Not just listed in passing, not buried in some forgotten bibliography. No—you’ve seen it physically. On someone’s desk, or left open on a table in the library. You can almost picture its spine, its heavy, dust-coated pages, wedged somewhere near Hogwarts, A History.

It isn’t in the Restricted Section. Which means it’s within reach.

A flicker of urgency sparks in your chest. If you hurry, really hurry, you might be able to catch Pince before she stops letting students check out books for the evening. You don’t think twice.

Your feet are already moving, propelling you out of the Room of Requirement, through the winding staircases and dim-lit corridors. The castle hums around you, torches flickering, portraits murmuring as you pass. A suit of armor creaks as you dart past it, and somewhere behind you, Peeves lets out a delighted cackle—but you don’t slow.

The library looms ahead, its great doors still cracked open. You push through them, breath unsteady, scanning the aisles for movement. Madam Pince is still there, standing at her desk, her mouth pursed as she skims through a massive tome, quill tapping against the page.

You press your lips together, straighten your robes, and step forward.

“Madam Pince,” you say, voice even. “I’d like to check out a book.”

She barely spares you a glance, her quill stilling for the briefest second before she continues marking the margins of the book in front of her. "You're cutting it close," she says, her voice thin, clipped. "What book?"

You hesitate, your fingers curling slightly where they rest on the polished wood of the desk. Magick Moste Evile is not exactly light reading. Not something a casual student would check out before bed. If she asks why, if she pries even a little, you’ll need to have an excuse ready.

But she doesn’t, when you tell her. She doesn’t even blink. Instead, she lets out a long-suffering sigh, waving her hand toward the stacks. “Well, go on then. Find it quickly.”

Relief rushes through you so swiftly it makes you dizzy. You nod, turning on your heel, forcing yourself into a calm, steady stride.

The library is nearly empty at this hour, the last few students packing their things, the only sounds left behind the faint rustling of parchment, the occasional scrape of a chair against stone. The air is thick with the scent of ink and old paper, the dim glow of lanterns casting long shadows between the towering shelves.

You weave through the familiar aisles, heart pounding just a little too fast, eyes scanning the spines with practiced precision. You know the section—near Hogwarts, A History, somewhere in the dense, dust-laden row of historical texts. Your fingers brush over bindings, some cracked and peeling, others smooth with age. And then, there.

Magick Moste Evile.

It’s thinner than you expected, its cover dark, the title embossed in dull silver. A chill prickles at the base of your neck as you pull it free from its place, the weight of it settling into your palm. You don’t stop to think. You tuck it under your arm and head back toward the desk, each step measured, controlled.

Madam Pince barely looks up as she takes it from you, her long, bony fingers flipping it open to the front page. She hums—disapproving, maybe. Then she plucks a stamp from her inkpot and presses it firmly onto the parchment inside the cover.

“Due in one week, you can renew it if you'd like. Although, I suspect you probably won't,” she says, sliding it back across the desk. Her gaze flickers up to you, sharp as a bird of prey. “Mind how you treat it.”

You nod once, murmuring a quiet, “Thank you,” before turning on your heel and making your way toward the doors, the book clutched tight to your chest.

Only when you’re back in the corridor, the heavy doors creaking shut behind you, do you let out the breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

You have it. Now you just have to figure out what the hell you’re going to do with it.

It is nearly midnight, and the castle is draped in silence. Shadows stretch long against the stone walls, the torches burning low in their sconces. The halls smell of old parchment and melted wax, the cold seeping through the cracks, curling at your ankles. You walk with measured steps, quiet, cautious, the weight of the book still heavy in your mind. It’s tucked safely beneath your pillow, as if that would somehow keep its secrets contained.

You wish you had the Marauders' Map. The thought flickers unbidden through your mind as you scan the corridor, watching for the telltale flicker of lantern light, the soft pad of Mrs. Norris' paws against stone. But asking Gojo would be a hassle. He would never let it go, would press too much, would grin like he already knew what you were up to before you even said a word. And you don’t have the patience for it tonight.

The stairwell to the Astronomy Tower is steep, winding, each step a whisper beneath your weight. The wind meets you before the night sky does—sharp and biting, threading through the seams of your cloak. You draw it tighter around yourself as you push open the final door, stepping onto the tower’s open balcony. The sky yawns vast above you, endless and dark, studded with stars so bright they seem like pinpricks in fabric, light bleeding through.

You make your way toward the edge. The stone is cold beneath your fingers as you lower yourself down, legs swinging over the side. The drop beneath you is dizzying, an endless stretch of darkness broken only by the faint silver sheen of the Black Lake far below. The rush of it makes your pulse stutter, just for a moment. It’s a reckless kind of thrill—this feeling of being right on the cusp of danger, of letting yourself lean too far just to see how close you can get before you tip over.

You breathe in deep. The cold air fills your lungs, clears your head. For the first time in hours, maybe even days, the tension bleeds from your shoulders, the nerves settling. Up here, it is quiet. Removed from everything. There is nothing but the wind and the sky and the way the night stretches endlessly before you.

And then—

Footsteps.

Your spine stiffens before you can stop it, the moment of peace rupturing like glass cracking under pressure. You don’t turn immediately, but you feel it—the presence behind you, the shift in the air.

Then his voice, low and easy.

“Didn’t peg you as the reckless type.”

You glance back. Toji stands a few feet away, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, head tilted just slightly. There’s something unreadable in his expression, something caught between amusement and curiosity.

You swallow. Your fingers flex against the stone beneath you.

“I’m not,” you say, turning back toward the sky. “Just needed some air.”

“Astronomy Tower’s a bit extreme for fresh air, don’t you think?” He steps closer, slow and deliberate, until he’s right beside you. He doesn’t sit, not yet. Just watches. “We could’ve gone to the courtyard.”

“Too much of a risk.”

“Or the owlery.”

“Too many owls.”

He huffs a quiet laugh, and you hear the rustle of fabric as he finally lowers himself beside you. His presence is solid, warm even in the cold.

There’s a pause. A long one.

Then, his voice, quieter this time. “You alright?”

And it’s that question, the simplicity of it, the weight behind it, that makes your stomach curl.

"Yeah," you murmur, the word slipping out with the breath you exhale, dissolving into the cold night air. "I think so."

Toji shifts beside you, his coat rustling against the stone. He leans back on his hands, tilting his head toward the sky, as if he’s counting stars. His voice, when it comes, is quiet, threaded with something unreadable.

"Care to tell me anything?" he asks. "Or are you just gonna keep hiding behind those secrets of yours?"

A soft, fogged breath escapes him, barely visible in the chill. It’s colder now—cold enough that you can see each exhale lingering for a moment before fading. You watch it instead of answering right away, your fingers curling over the stone ledge.

"I'm stressed," you admit finally, voice small but firm. "Some things are happening here. Bad things."

A slow, amused exhale. “Bad things,” he repeats, as if testing the words on his tongue, like they might taste different if he says them himself. Then, after a beat— "That why you've been so distant?"

You turn to him then, eyes steady on his profile. His gaze is still cast outward, toward the Black Lake, the stars, the sloping silhouette of the Forbidden Forest in the distance. The sharp line of his jaw is softened by the moonlight, and for a moment, he looks entirely at ease.

"I'm not the only one who's been distant," you say simply. "You are, too."

At that, he glances at you. His mouth curves, half amused, half something else. "You keepin’ tabs on me?"

"Maybe," you say, tilting your head, teasing, but your words are quiet, careful. There’s no accusation there—just an observation, something truthful.

He exhales through his nose, a sound that could almost be a laugh, then leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. "Happens this time of year," he mutters, his voice lower now. "Quidditch, classes, life. Too much shit to keep up with."

You hum in response, your gaze flicking out toward the grounds, where the lights of Hogsmeade flicker faintly in the distance. A thought tugs at the corner of your mind, small but insistent.

"Speaking of keeping up with things," you say, nudging his boot lightly with the toe of your own, "we’re going to Hogsmeade next weekend."

Toji raises a brow. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Me, Utahime, Kento, Shoko. Gojo, obviously," you say, rolling your eyes. "Saturday."

Toji snorts. "Sounds like a loud group."

"You know Gojo," you say, exasperated. "Everywhere he goes, the volume increases."

Toji chuckles, shaking his head. "True." Then, after a beat, he glances at you. "What, you askin’ me to come?"

"Not exactly," you say, shifting slightly, nudging a loose pebble off the ledge with your fingertips. You feel the moment stretch between you, hanging in the cold air. Then, finally, "I was thinking, if you're free, we could grab a Butterbeer together. While we're there."

You don’t look at him when you say it, but you feel his gaze on you. Then, a slow, lazy grin spreads across his face. “You asking me on a date, sweetheart?”

You scoff, shoving his shoulder lightly, but there’s warmth in your face that you hope the night disguises. “It’s just butterbeer, Toji.”

"Yeah," he says, stretching out the syllable, like he’s considering it. "Yeah, alright. Could use a Butterbeer. Maybe you’ll even pay for it."

You scoff, rolling your eyes, pushing off from the ledge. "Absolutely not."

He laughs, the sound low and warm, following you as you stand, stretching out the stiffness in your limbs. "Figures."

"Smart of you," you say lightly, shaking your head as you move toward the stairs. "I think we should get going. It's late."

"Yeah, yeah." He stands, brushing imaginary dust off his robes. "See you Saturday, then?"

"Looks like it."

And as you both slip back into the darkness of the castle, the wind still howling outside, something uneasy stirs in your chest. Not quite relief, not quite comfort—just a fleeting moment of warmth, fragile and uncertain. Because even as you walk beside him, even as the night air lingers on your skin, the weight of your secrets presses heavier than before.

You finish Magick Moste Evile in two days. The words claw at your brain, settle in the crooks of your mind like an itch you can’t scratch. You don’t even need to look at the pages anymore—whole passages loop in your head, phrases heavy with meaning, with implications that sit thick in your chest.

You read another book, too, one detailing the rise and fall of dark wizards, their obsessions, their downfalls. Their desperation, their genius, their cruelty. The ink on your fingers is permanent now, smudged into the cracks of your skin, stained like the thoughts pressing against your skull.

It’s almost the weekend. You’re sitting in the Room of Requirement, the longtable before you covered in parchment, scrawled notes, half-formed thoughts. Candles flicker in their sconces, casting long, wavering shadows across the stone. The air is warm, thick with the scent of old books and melted wax, but there’s something else, too. Something heavy.

You don’t know why you feel so tense.

Gojo walks in half an hour later, quiet in a way that is wrong. The sound of the door creaking open, the steady footfalls of his boots—these things are familiar. But the silence that follows isn’t.

You look up, and he isn’t looking at you. He’s clutching a few books, knuckles white, gaze fixed on the pinboard. His face is unreadable, his usual glibness absent, replaced with something you can’t quite name.

“Hey,” you start, hesitant, “I wanted to talk to you about some things. And some people. I spoke to Professor Fig about dark magic. Its origins, how it evolved, all of that, and—”

“Fawkes, hold on a second—”

“No, wait, I have questions,” you press, the words rushing out now, like if you don’t say them now, they’ll slip through your fingers, “Look. There are things in these books that don’t add up, contradictions that—”

“Fawkes.”

The way he says your name is different this time. Sharper. Final.

You blink at him, thrown off by the sudden shift in his tone. He’s still not looking at you, his jaw set, tension coiled tight in his shoulders.

You try again, softer this time. “Just.. let me finish, and then I’ll let you say your bit.”

And then he laughs. A short, hollow thing, entirely humorless.

“I don’t want to say my bit,” he snaps, and before you can process it, he slams the books onto the table. The sound is deafening, echoing off the stone walls, sharp as a slap.

You flinch.

There’s a beat of silence where neither of you move. Your pulse is pounding against your skull, the room suddenly too bright, too suffocating.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” you say, staring at him.

Gojo presses his hands against the table, exhaling sharply through his nose, head tilting forward, white strands of hair falling into his face. His jaw clenches.

“You never shut up about things, do you?”

The words hit harder than they should. Something sharp twists in your chest. Your grip on the quill tightens, breath coming in a little faster now, shallower. The tension in the air is thick, suffocating.

And then you laugh. Short, bitter, disbelief curling into something hot.

“How are you such a two-faced person?” you snap, voice rising. “One day, you’re thanking me for helping you not die, and the next, you’re screaming in my face!”

Gojo exhales harshly through his nose, shaking his head like he can’t believe you. “Oh, come off it—”

“No, seriously, what is your problem?” You slam your hands onto the table now, matching his stance. The parchment in front of you shifts, some falling to the ground. You don’t care.

Gojo finally looks at you. Really looks at you. His eyes are bright, electric, furious.

“Have you ever considered,” he says, voice low, dangerously controlled, “that maybe I don’t want to hear you be annoying all the damn time?”

Something inside you goes very, very still. The room feels different now. Like something just cracked, and you don’t know if it can be put back together.

For a moment, neither of you speak.

“Fuck you,” you say, voice trembling with rage. “You know I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t important. You know I wouldn’t be looking into this if I didn’t think—”

“Oh, please,” he interrupts, scoffing, running a hand through his hair, “you’re looking into this because you can’t help yourself. Because you always have to stick your nose in things that aren’t your problem.”

“It is my problem,” you snap, voice loud, cracking at the edges. “It’s all of our problem, Gojo! Do you think this is just fun for me? Do you think I’m doing this for a fucking hobby?”

“I think you’re doing it because you don’t know when to stop.”

You shake your head, exhaling harshly, hands clenched into fists. “You really think so, huh? That I’m just- what, doing this for shits and giggles?”

Gojo laughs again, incredulously, running a hand down his face, like this conversation is physically exhausting him. “Merlin, you just don’t get it.”

“No, I don’t,” you snap. “Because you never tell me anything. You just- you just shut me out—”

“Because I have to!”

He’s yelling now. It echoes off the stone walls, the candles flickering from the sheer force of his voice.

Your breath catches in your throat.

Gojo takes a step back, running both hands through his hair, his fingers pressing against his scalp like he’s trying to contain himself.

He’s breathing hard. “I figured it out.”

His voice is raw. Rough. Like it physically hurts to say. Your chest feels too tight, your heartbeat a dull roar in your ears.

Gojo swallows hard, staring at the ground. His fingers twitch at his sides. His jaw clenches, then unclenches. He shakes his head, exhaling sharply through his nose.

“I figured it out,” he says again, quieter this time. And then, voice cracking, as he continues, “And I can’t fucking tell you because it’s going to hurt me.”

The silence that follows is suffocating. Your pulse is a violent thing in your throat, too fast, too uneven. Gojo doesn’t look at you.

The weight of his words presses down on your chest, and you don’t know what to do with it. Something is breaking.

“Who is it, Satoru?”

Your voice is barely above a whisper, but it cuts through the thick silence between you like a blade. Your chest is heaving, breath unsteady, fingers pressing into the worn wood of the longtable. He won’t look at you. His head is bowed, eyes downturned, his fingers gripping the edge of the table like it’s the only thing keeping him standing.

“Who is it?” you repeat, softer this time, but no less insistent.

The candlelight flickers, casting shadows over his face, deepening the furrow in his brow, the tension in his jaw. You step closer, your palms flat against the wood now, the heat of frustration curling up your spine. He’s standing on the other side, rigid, trying so hard not to speak. You can see it—the war raging inside him, the way his throat bobs as he swallows hard, the way his fingers flex like he wants to reach for something but doesn’t know what.

Then, a quiet curse, hissed through his teeth, barely audible. And when he finally looks up at you, his expression knocks the breath from your lungs.

You’ve never seen him like this before. He looks… small.

Like he’s been carrying something too heavy for too long, and now, under the weight of your gaze, he’s starting to buckle. His eyes are glassy, but his mouth is twisted, regret pooling in the corners of it.

“I’ve known for a week now,” he admits, voice hoarse, like it’s scraping against his throat. “Since I went home.”

Your breath catches. The meaning behind his words settles over you in an instant—thick, suffocating, cold.

“And you didn’t care to tell me?”

The anger snaps, sharp and sudden, breaking through the thick fog of silence. Your voice is louder now, a sharp contrast to his broken whisper. He flinches. You don’t give him time to recover.

“I’m going to ask you again.” Your voice is shaking, but it’s firm, stronger than before. You straighten your spine, wipe the dampness from your temple with a trembling hand, forcing your breathing to steady. “Who is it?”

Gojo takes a step back. Just slightly. Barely noticeable. But you see it. You feel it.

“I-I can’t—”

“Who is it, Satoru?”

You’re pushing now. You know you are. Your voice is something authoritative, something fierce, something that doesn’t feel like your own. It’s cutting around the edges of the room, filling the spaces between the bookshelves, the stone walls, the towering ceilings.

He’s fighting it.

You can see the battle waging in his mind, the way his hands twitch at his sides, the way his lips press into a thin line, trembling at the corners.

You exhale, long and slow, trying to keep your voice steady.

“I want a name.”

You lower your tone, grounding yourself, pulling in every ounce of control you have left. “I promise you,” you say, softer now, slower, like you’re offering something fragile, something real, “we won’t do anything stupid. I won’t go to any professors. I won’t go to anyone for help. We’ll figure this out, yeah?”

For a long moment, he says nothing.

The only sound in the room is the distant flickering of candlelight, the shallow inhale of his breath, the way your pulse roars in your ears.

And then, finally, his shoulders cave. His hands press into the table. His head dips forward, a sharp inhale ripping through his lungs, like the very act of saying it is physically painful.

And when he speaks, his voice is so quiet you almost don’t hear it.

“…It’s Suguru.”

It’s a whisper, barely carried through the air, but it crashes over you like a tidal wave. Your heart drops, and your body goes cold.

Your fingers tremble where they press into the wood.

Gojo keeps his head down, his breathing uneven, like the words have stolen something from him, something irreversible. His entire frame looks smaller now, hunched inward, like he’s trying to make himself disappear.

He won’t look at you. You don’t know if he can.

"You've known for an entire week that your best friend is practicing dark magic at school, and you didn’t think to tell me?"

Your voice barely registers above a whisper, but it lands between you both like a weight. Heavy. Sinking. Pressing down on the silence, crushing what little air is left in the room. He doesn’t react at first. Not outwardly. But you see the way his fingers twitch, the way his throat bobs as he swallows thickly.

"You knew this whole time," you continue, the words slow, deliberate, coated in something cold. "And you just… let it happen."

Gojo exhales sharply, scrubbing a hand down his face, but it does nothing to soften the sharp edges of his features. His jaw clenches, his eyes squeeze shut like he’s bracing for something.

"I needed proof," he says, his voice strained, the words barely pushed out through gritted teeth. "That it was actually him. I had a hunch before, but I confirmed it during the weekend—"

"So you knew before anything," you cut in, your tone sharp, slicing through his words like a blade, "and you didn’t fucking tell me."

Gojo’s head snaps up, his eyes flashing with something dangerously close to anger, but you don’t stop. You step forward, closing the space between you, your chest rising and falling too fast, too uneven.

"Are you an idiot? Seriously?" The frustration curls hot in your throat, bubbling over, words spilling faster now, sharper, crueler. "Did you think he’d just stop, out of nowhere? After starting to practice dark magic?"

Gojo flinches. Just barely. But he does.

"I did!" His voice cracks as he shouts it, the sound ricocheting off the stone walls, making the candles flicker wildly in their sconces. "He’s my best friend, okay? I thought—fuck, I thought he’d stop if he realized what he was doing was dangerous!"

"You’re an idiot," you say, voice dripping with disbelief. "You think someone who has already started practicing dark magic will just- what? Randomly fucking stop one day?"

The room feels too small now, the air too thick. The space between you and Gojo crackles with something volatile, something on the verge of shattering.

You take another step forward, and he steps back.

You grab the parchment off the table—the one you had been writing notes on just moments ago, before this whole mess unraveled—and shove it toward him, jabbing it against his chest with enough force to make him stumble slightly.

"Take this," you demand, voice clipped, breath still uneven. "Clear out every question I’ve written on it."

Gojo stares at you, blinking like he doesn’t understand, his expression unreadable.

"What?" His voice wavers slightly, but you don’t care.

"We’re going to learn what he’s doing," you say, your voice leaving no room for argument. "And then we’re going to figure out how to stop him."

Gojo swallows. His fingers tighten around the parchment, knuckles paling.

"You’re not…" he hesitates, his voice quieter now, unsure. "You’re not going to report him? To Dumbledore?"

"You think I’m as stupid as you?" you snap, eyes narrowing. "No. We’re going to fix this. Make it right."

Something flickers in his expression. Something you can’t place. Fear, maybe. Hesitation. Or maybe, just maybe, relief.

The next morning, the carriages roll through the frostbitten grounds, wheels creaking against the dirt path. The sky is an expanse of dull gray, thick with the weight of oncoming snow, and the cold seeps through every seam of your coat, burrowing deep beneath your skin. You tug your gloves higher, flexing your fingers inside the worn leather, but the chill lingers.

Inside the carriage, Utahime sits across from you, arms crossed, wrapped in a thick woolen scarf. Shoko leans against the window, breath fogging up the glass, tracing something absently against the frost before wiping it away. The ride is bumpy, the wind cutting through the cracks in the wood, but inside, it’s warm enough—cozy, almost. A stark contrast to the tension pressing against your ribs.

Nanami had grumbled about his seating arrangement this morning, less than pleased at being forced to share a carriage with Gojo and Geto. Something about how Satoru would “eat his brains out” before they even reached Hogsmeade. You had barely listened, mind elsewhere, preoccupied with the thoughts that had been gnawing at you all morning.

"You’re going to see Toji at the Three Broomsticks?" Shoko’s voice is light, teasing as she pokes your side. "How scandalous."

The corner of your mouth twitches, but the expression doesn’t quite form. You turn your gaze back toward the window, watching the trees blur past.

"It doesn’t feel like I’m doing right by him anymore," you admit, voice barely above a murmur. The words feel foreign, strange on your tongue, as if saying them out loud makes them more real.

Utahime tilts her head, curiosity sparking in her dark eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You don’t like him?"

"I don’t know." You exhale, a slow, measured breath, watching it cloud in the cold air before dissipating. "It just… feels wrong. Like I rushed into everything, and now I’m having second thoughts."

Shoko hums, blinking in thought. The carriage jolts slightly as the wheels roll over uneven ground, and you grip the edge of your seat.

"Well," she says after a moment, voice thoughtful, deliberate, "you were pretty occupied when you got involved with him."

Her eyes flicker to you, gaze sharp despite the lazy tilt of her head.

"Have you ever thought about the fact that you probably just needed some stress relief?" She pauses, watching your reaction carefully before adding, "And that’s where he came in?"

The words settle into your chest like a stone. Heavy. Unforgiving.

You press your lips together, looking away. The distant hum of chatter from the other carriages drifts through the cold air, mingling with the steady crunch of hooves against the frozen ground.

You don’t answer.

When all of you reach Hogsmeade, the cold is sharper, cutting through the layers of wool and leather wrapped around you. The air smells of damp stone, chimney smoke, and something sweet—melted caramel from Honeydukes, maybe. You step down from the carriage with a sigh, your boots sinking into the frost-bitten ground, and pull your cloak tighter around you.

The village is alive, filled with the kind of careless, easy chatter that makes your skin prickle. Students scatter in different directions, voices rising over one another as they debate where to go first—Zonko’s, Scrivenshaft’s, The Three Broomsticks. The usual. There’s a lightness to it, a kind of mundanity that feels almost foreign to you now.

You glance over your shoulder, and your stomach turns when you catch Gojo’s eyes already on you. He’s watching, silent, gaze unreadable behind the winter glare of his glasses. He looks... too calm. Too collected. Like he’s trying too hard not to let anything slip.

You slow your pace as the others move ahead, letting Utahime take the lead, watching as she and Shoko disappear into the crowd toward High Street.

“You look like you’re suspicious of him,” Gojo murmurs beside you.

You blink, startled by his voice so close, turning to find him walking in stride with you, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. His tone is even, almost lazy, but his words are precise. Calculated. Shit. You hadn’t even realized you were being so obvious.

“Sorry about that,” you say, voice tight, shoulders tensing. He laughs, light but not quite amused. “It’s alright. I did the same thing when I first found out, too.”

You glance at him, brows furrowing. “Really?”

He tilts his head slightly, a ghost of a smirk on his lips, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I find that hard to believe,” you say. “You seem unfazed by everything all the time.”

Gojo exhales through his nose, the breath curling into the cold air between you. “When you find out your best friend is up to things you can’t even say out loud,” he murmurs, voice dropping to something barely above a whisper, “it becomes as difficult as breathing underwater.”

The words settle over you, thick and suffocating. You don't speak. Because what can you say to that?

A pause. Just long enough for the weight of the conversation to settle. Then, like clockwork, Gojo’s shenanigans begin again.

"Man, is she really dragging us all to Scrivenshaft’s?" he groans, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets. "What a load of crap. I don’t wanna go." He swears under his breath before perking up, mischief lighting his face. "Hold on, I’ll fix this. Let me just get up there and take us all to Honeydukes."

You snort as you watch him bound ahead, zeroing in on Utahime like a predator on its prey. He tugs at her coat collar, leaning down to mutter something about her scarf being atrocious, how she has the taste of a grandmother, how she’s leading them to the most boring shop in all of Hogsmeade. Utahime glares up at him, swatting his hand away with the kind of practiced ease that tells you this is routine, a well-rehearsed play between the two of them.

You shake your head, laughter slipping from your lips, before your gaze flickers sideways. To Suguru.

He’s quieter than usual. Not that he was ever particularly loud, but there was a time when he spoke more freely, when he matched Gojo’s ridiculousness with an easy smirk and a sharper wit. Now, though, he lingers at the edge of the group, shoulders slightly tense, expression unreadable. His humor—when he does engage—is dry, quick, sometimes cutting. You’ve always thought he might be funnier than Gojo, in a more effortless way. Gojo is all spectacle, all loud and attention-seeking. Suguru? Suguru picks his moments.

"You alright?" you ask, keeping your voice light. "You look stressed."

He glances at you, then hums, a vague nod. "I think so." Then his mouth quirks, just slightly. "I felt you eyeing me. You should be doing that to him."

He tilts his head ever so slightly toward Gojo, and you blink, thrown by the implication, your brain stuttering for a second before you whip your head up to meet his gaze. Suguru chuckles. Not mockingly, but teasingly, his dark eyes alight with something unreadable.

You scoff, crossing your arms, huffing out a breath. "Don’t make jokes like that. They’re not funny."

He hums again, but this time, it sounds more amused.

"I’ve seen your face go red twice now because of him," he muses, his voice low, even. You narrow your eyes. "And?"

"And," Suguru continues, shrugging, "I didn’t think you’d be the type to deny yourself something."

You exhale sharply, crossing your arms tighter over your chest, ignoring the way your heart skips, the way your pulse stirs beneath your skin.

"Don’t be ridiculous," you mutter. Suguru only smirks.

"Alright, everyone," Gojo announces, clapping his hands together like he’s about to deliver the most important decree of the century. "All those who want to buy boring things like quills and ink, go ahead and shuffle on inside to Scrivenshaft’s with the one and only ogre of our group, Iori Utahime."

Utahime, unimpressed, smacks his arm—hard. "Why do I even bother with you idiots?" she grumbles, pushing past him toward the shop, her long scarf whipping behind her.

You giggle as she disappears inside, shaking your head. You’re not in need of anything, anyway. Your mother had sent you a fresh set of supplies just last week, so there’s no point in wandering in just to stare at parchment and overpriced quills. Kento, ever the responsible one, follows Utahime inside, leaving the rest of you standing on the cobbled street.

Gojo exhales dramatically, spinning on his heel to face the remaining three of you. "Now that the boring ones are gone," he says, clapping a hand on Suguru’s shoulder, "who wants to go to Honeydukes?"

Suguru barely glances at him. "You’re buying," he says flatly, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. "I’m not spending even one galleon in there."

Gojo gasps, affronted. "The audacity," he mutters.

"I have to exchange money first," you chime in, stretching your arms over your head. "I’ve run out of wizard money."

Gojo turns to you, scandalized. "'Wizard money,' she says," he mocks, nudging your shoulder. "You should really work on your lingo, L/N. It’s been six years, and you still talk like a Muggle."

You scoff, rolling your eyes. "Six years, and you still manage to get on my nerves."

Shoko and Suguru exchange a knowing look, both of them shaking their heads as they laugh.

Utahime, unimpressed, smacks his arm—hard. "Why do I even bother with you idiots?" she grumbles, pushing past him toward the shop, her long scarf whipping behind her.

Suguru barely glances at him. "You’re buying," he says flatly, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. "I’m not spending even one galleon in there."

Gojo gasps, affronted. "The audacity," he mutters.

"I have to exchange money first," you chime in, stretching your arms over your head. "I’ve run out of wizard money."

Gojo turns to you, scandalized. "'Wizard money,' she says," he mocks, nudging your shoulder. "You should really work on your lingo, [L/N]. It’s been six years, and you still talk like a Muggle."

You scoff, rolling your eyes. "Six years, and you still manage to get on my nerves."

Shoko and Suguru exchange a knowing look, both of them shaking their heads as they laugh.

Utahime steps out of the shop just as you finish speaking, Kento following behind her, adjusting the strap of his bag. She claps her hands together, eyes bright. "Alright, next stop, Honeydukes!"

"W-wait," you stammer, taking half a step back. "You guys go ahead. I have to exchange my cash first, and then I have to meet someone."

"Meet someone?" Gojo parrots, spinning on his heel to look at you, eyebrows raised. His gaze is scrutinizing, a little too sharp. "What, you got a hot date?"

You shake your head quickly, swallowing hard. "Nothing like that, I just—"

"Yeah, she has a date," Utahime cuts in before you can finish, her voice loud enough to make passersby glance over. She grins, hooting obnoxiously, "With the one and only Fushiguro Toji."

Silence. Everyone stops.

All three boys turn to you at once. Six eyes—three very different expressions.

Kento, whose jaw was practically on the floor, fixes his face when you glance at him nervously, clearing his throat like he wasn’t just gaping. Suguru, ever composed, only raises a brow, his expression unreadable, though there’s something amused at the corner of his lips. And then there’s Gojo.

You don’t look at him. You can’t. Your fingers curl into the sleeves of your coat, your heartbeat hammering a little too loud in your ears. You force yourself to swallow past the dryness in your throat, to move your feet, to do something.

"I-I should go," you mumble, already turning away.

And then Gojo scoffs. Loudly.

"Don’t come back if you’re shagging him."

The words hit like a slap, sharp and flippant, dripping in sarcasm. Your breath catches.

Suguru smacks him on the back of the head, not too hard, but hard enough to make Gojo roll his eyes. "Ignore him," Suguru says, voice smooth, a little exasperated. He looks at you, softer now. "Come to Honeydukes after, yeah? We’ll do other things until then. Let’s save sweets for last."

You nod, but your face feels too hot, and you don’t trust yourself to say anything. You turn on your heel, leaving before Gojo can say anything else.

The Three Broomsticks is warmer than outside, but you don’t feel it. The moment you step in, the air folds around you like something alive—thick with the scent of butter and spice, the burn of firewood curling in your nose, the low thrum of conversation rising and falling in waves. The warmth presses against your skin, but the cold lingers in your bones, an ache that won’t shake loose.

The pub is crowded, as it always is on Hogsmeade weekends. Students in scarves and woolen coats cluster around heavy wooden tables, their voices overlapping, laughter curling toward the rafters like smoke. Someone knocks over a mug, and the sharp clatter cuts through the noise before disappearing into the din. The walls glow amber in the firelight, flickering against brass sconces, shadows stretching long and soft against the wood.

You glance toward the door, but Toji isn’t here yet.

Your fingers tighten around the strap of your bag, pressing against the leather. It’s fine. You’re early. He’s late. No big deal. But still, the weight in your stomach doesn’t ease. You move toward an empty booth near the back, slipping into the seat. The wood is cold beneath your palms, and you rub them against your thighs, trying to quell the jitter in your hands. Your gaze flicks to the door again, watching with a quiet, creeping kind of dread.

He arrives fifteen minutes later. No urgency in his step, no apology in his face. He slides into the booth across from you, unhurried, like he belongs here, like time bends for him. Like he isn’t even remotely sorry for making you wait. And you think, absently, that he probably isn’t.

"You waited long?" he asks. His voice is low, smooth, carrying over the noise of the pub like it was meant to be heard.

You shake your head. "Only fifteen minutes."

"That's a while for just butterbeer," he murmurs, not quite an apology. "Sorry about that."

The words are weightless, effortless. And then he grins—sharp, lazy, a flash of teeth that is more knowing than amused. One arm slung across the back of the booth, completely unbothered. "You keep checking the door? Lookin’ for me?"

You huff, rolling your eyes, but you don’t deny it. He knows you won’t.

He only laughs, tipping his head toward the passing barmaid. "Two butterbeers."

You watch as she nods and disappears into the crowd, leaving you alone with him again. He tilts his head slightly, watching you the way he always does—like he can see straight through you, like whatever he finds there is more amusing than it should be.

"Nervous, sweetheart?"

Your spine stiffens, but he catches it. Of course he does. The smirk pulls wider.

"Not at all," you lie.

"Yeah?" He leans forward, resting his chin against his knuckles, eyes glinting. "You ever been on a date before?"

You roll your eyes again, but you feel it—the heat creeping up your neck, betraying you. "It’s not a date."

His grin stretches, wide and wolfish. "That’s not an answer."

You make a face, turning your head slightly, but he doesn’t let up. He never does.

"You’re serious, huh?" He whistles low, shaking his head. "Six years in school, and not one single date? What, you too busy with your books?"

You don’t take the bait. Just shake your head, pressing your lips together before exhaling. "I had other things to focus on."

"Like what?"

"Like my future."

The words come easy. A practiced response. Something you’ve always had tucked away, something neat and safe, something that keeps you from having to think too much about what you never let yourself want.

Toji snorts. "Yeah, yeah. Big dreams, big plans. You always been like that?"

You shrug. "And you? Always been like this?"

"Like what?" he asks, tilting his head, leaning back against the booth, watching you with that same unreadable expression.

"Like," You search for the right word. "Like you have it easy."

For a moment, nothing changes. But there’s something there—a flicker in his gaze, gone before you can place it. Then, he chuckles, shaking his head.

"I don’t have it easy," he says, like it’s a joke, like it’s funny. "I just don’t try too hard. I don’t have to."

And that’s the difference, you think.

"Right," you say, though your voice comes out quieter than you intend. There’s something needling at the edge of your thoughts, something sharp and insistent, a sensation like the point of a knife pressed just against the skin.

And then, there it is, the thing that’s been gnawing at you all along. It’s been there from the moment you stepped into the warmth of The Three Broomsticks, from the moment you saw him waiting at the table, his fingers drumming idly against the wooden surface, the way he always does when he’s waiting for something he already knows is coming. Shoko’s words have been running in your mind like a song stuck on repeat, one you were too distracted to hear properly. Until now.

Your stomach twists, a slow and unpleasant sensation, like you’ve eaten something that doesn’t sit quite right. You suddenly feel too aware of everything—of the hum of conversation around you, of the scent of butterbeer thick in the air, of the way your hands feel awkward and misplaced on the table, as if they don’t quite belong to you.

And then the drinks arrive, placed before you with an ease that feels almost cruel. The foam rises in the glass, golden and thick, threatening to spill over the rim. You wrap your fingers around it instinctively, the warmth pressing into your skin.

"I should tell you something," you start, but the words stick in your throat, as if your body itself is resisting. You clear it, try again. "I'm... I'm not really sure if we should—"

"You don't have to say it," he interrupts, and there is something too easy, too practiced in the way he says it. He lifts his glass to his lips, takes a slow sip. "I know, already."

You blink. The room feels like it tilts, just slightly. "Wait, what?" You put your own drink down without taking a sip, barely registering the way the liquid sloshes dangerously near the edge. "What do you mean, you know?"

"I know, princess," he says with a shrug, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Like it doesn’t matter at all. "I know these things. I've done them before. But I was the one in your position, you know."

There’s something about the way he says it that makes your throat tighten, something about the way his words slip so easily from his mouth, so unaffected, as if they don’t belong to him at all.

"No, it's not like that, I swear," you say quickly, shaking your head. The words feel desperate, urgent, like if you don’t say them fast enough, they’ll disappear before they can be understood. "I just… I think I was so occupied with everything I was doing. Quidditch, the Dueling Club, Prefect duties, assignments, and well—"

"The thing you supposedly can't tell me," he finishes, and his voice is light, almost teasing. "’S alright."

"Is it?" Your voice is softer now, unsteady. There’s something fragile in the way you say it, in the way you look at him, searching for something you don’t quite know how to name. "I feel like I hurt you. Or used you."

His lips twitch—not quite a smile, but close. And then he laughs, a soft, quiet sound. "You?" he says, shaking his head. "If I remember correctly, I'm the one that closed that curtain around you and stepped closer. If I had simply stayed where I was, nothing would've happened."

You stare at him. The room around you feels too full, the air too thick, the butterbeer in your glass already cooling to something unappealing.

"It’s okay," you mumble after a long moment, dropping your gaze to the table. "I didn’t mind."

He doesn’t say anything to that. You don’t look up to see what’s in his expression. The butterbeer between you remains untouched.

When you step into Honeydukes, the warmth inside is almost suffocating, a sharp contrast to the late October chill outside. The air is thick with the scent of caramel and chocolate, of spun sugar and the sharp tang of citrus peels dipped in honey. Shelves overflow with every imaginable sweet—levitating sugar quills, fizzing whizbees that crackle like fire embers, licorice wands that twitch in their boxes like living things. The shop is alive, humming with laughter, the sound of coins clinking, the soft rustle of paper bags being filled.

You let yourself get lost in it, at least for a moment. You laugh at something Utahime says without really hearing it, the sound slipping out of your mouth as if on autopilot. You reach out, touching the hem of Shoko’s scarf—plush, cashmere, a deep burgundy she supposedly purchased today—before making some half-teasing remark about how indulgent she is. It’s easy, slipping into this, letting the motion of it carry you forward, like stepping into a river and allowing the current to take you.

And then Gojo appears. As he always does—like a disruption. He waves something small in your face, his grin sharp and boyish, his fingers curled around a handful of miniature fireworks, the kind that crackle in midair before spelling out crude words. "Swiped 'em."

"You’re such a twat," you say, unimpressed, narrowing your eyes at him. "So rich, but you still steal things like a shithead."

"Did you not get snogged?" he retorts immediately, flicking one of the fireworks against your arm. "Is that why you’re so pissy?"

You shake your head, exhaling sharply before stepping away, putting distance between you, though the warmth of his presence lingers in the air around you. You make your way to a shelf stacked high with Saltwater Taffies, the wrappers gleaming in bright, candy-colored hues under the shop’s golden light. You reach for a few, fingers brushing the waxy paper, already moving to pay when Gojo’s hand closes over yours.

"It’s on me this time, yeah?"

You blink up at him, momentarily thrown off by the casualness of it, by the ease with which he says it. The kind of ease that makes it feel deliberate. Your brows knit together as if you’re waiting for the punchline, for the inevitable quip that always follows whenever Gojo does something seemingly selfless. But none comes.

He shakes his head, almost amused, then takes the taffy from your hands, walking toward the counter with an unhurried, effortless stride. And just like that, he buys them. Without a single word, he returns, slipping them into your bag so seamlessly it almost feels like an afterthought. His voice is lower when he speaks again.

"Consider it a thank-you gift. For everything."

Your breath catches. There’s something in his tone—something careful, something measured. Something that doesn’t belong here, in a crowded shop filled with laughter and sugar and warmth.

"You can’t be that nice to me in front of everyone," you whisper, voice almost frantic, fingers tightening around the straps of your bag. He’s standing too close now, inches away, and it makes your pulse skitter, your chest tighten.

His lips curl into something that isn't quite a smile, barely there at all. "Everyone’s busy entertaining Utahime’s shenanigans. Look." He tilts his chin slightly, eyes flicking across the shop. "The only person who probably saw anything was Suguru."

You swallow. Your heartbeat kicks up a little, stumbles over itself. You don’t look at Suguru. You don’t look at Gojo, either. Instead, your gaze drops—to your hands, to the floor, to anything but the way Gojo is looking at you.

Then he says it.

"I’m going back."

The words don’t settle in right away. At first, they don’t even make sense. "What?"

"The One-Eyed Witch Passageway. Cellar. Straight to the courtyard at Hogwarts." He says it all too smoothly, as if he’s done this before. As if it’s just another part of the evening, another thing as simple as slipping stolen fireworks into his pocket. "I’ll wait. Come along."

And then he’s gone, slipping past you, disappearing toward the cellar door before you even have the chance to process it.

You freeze. Your palms are damp. Too damp. Your breath stutters as you try to make sense of what just happened, of how quickly the moment shifted, of the fact that Gojo just left, as if he knew you would follow. As if he expected it.

You shake your head. Vigorously. You can’t. It’s too dangerous. The others would notice. The air suddenly feels stifling, too thick, too warm, like you can’t quite catch your breath.

And then you feel it. A stare.

Your eyes lift.

Kento.

He’s looking at you. You don’t move. You don’t blink. Your body is locked in place, frozen in the space between two choices, and you don’t know what he sees when he looks at you. But you know this—he saw. He saw everything.

Your throat tightens.

Kento’s gaze flickers past you, to the cellar door Gojo disappeared through. And then—slowly, deliberately—his eyes return to yours.

And he nods.

He nods.

Your stomach drops. Your heart stumbles over itself. For a moment, you don’t understand. You look at him, then back at the door, then at him again. Your mouth opens, but no words come out.

Until, Kento’s brows furrow. A quiet exhale. And then, his gaze shifts—one last time—to the cellar door.

You understand, then. He’s telling you to leave. With Gojo.

Your breath stills in your chest. Your fingers clench at your sides. You hesitate for only a moment longer, the world pressing in around you, the weight of the decision settling heavy in your bones.

And then you move.

You slip past the shelves, past the others, past the warmth of the shop, toward the door that leads down to the cellar.

Now you know. Who sent the notes.

It was Kento.

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