#ame knows other witches. she knows that collaboration and sharing power is important

[thespoonisvictory]

so many of ame's problems can be attributed to the fact that one of if not her only models for interacting with the world is grandmother wren. and grandmother wren was lovely and wise, but she earned her right to act the way she did through decades and decades of experience and trial, and ame is a teenage girl with a fraction of her knowledge even with her memories uncovered.

[opaljm]

blood runs pure (m) – pjm

➻ written in collaboration with @fitaelity

➻ female reader x jimin

➻ harry potter!au + death eater/pureblood/slytherin!jimin + half-blood/gryffindor!reader + enemies to lovers

➻ genres: minor fluff, tons of angst, minor smut, romance

➻ length & status: 28k words ; complete

➻ rating & warnings: 18+; brief mentions of death, violence (there’s dueling/fighting/killing scenes), torture (Cruciatus Curse; in one scene: chains/starvation/captivity/etc.), smut (steamy kisses, cunnilingus/light nipple play/fingering/multiple orgasms/penetrative sex)

➻ summary: The 2nd Wizarding War was underfoot, with you and Jimin falling on opposite sides. This however, was not enough to stop the two of you from falling in love with each other over the course of your final year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. AKA this is a story of Jimin’s transition from the Death Eater’s perfect Pureblood poster child to the more redeemable man that you fell in love with.

➻ disclaimer: Also, I’m pretty sure we never made Jimin use the word “mudblood” but I’m sorry in advance for any of you who might get offended by the toxic and discriminatory behavior that Jimin sometimes exudes, but please keep in mind that this is a redemption story that is meant to follow and explore the growth of Jimin’s character and that he ultimately does realize the wrongs of that kind of behavior. um this was too long to edit rip, so we didn’t yolo.

⋆ my masterlist ⋆ interview ⋆

It was only to be expected that Park Jimin would have been the unlucky person to get that unfortunate letter, which essentially cursed him, delivered to him on that stormy August day by a completely drenched and sad looking gray owl. He had shown his worth, he supposed, shown that he could be trusted and put in that position of power. Perhaps the Lees, a pair of brother and sister Death Eaters who had been given positions on the Hogwarts’ staff by the Dark Lord, had whispered in Headmaster Snape’s ear that Jimin had spent the entire summer finishing an internship at the Ministry of Magic, a job which had been painstaking acquired by his father through transferring huge sums of money and exchanging many favors, under the tutelage of Jimin’s Fifth year’s Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Choi Jonghoon.

Perhaps the Lees, knowing how Jimin had reacted emotionlessly to the Muggleborns stripped of their Wizarding status in the courtrooms while he transcribed the trials during his wretched summer internship, had thought that Jimin would be an excellent choice to keep the students in line during the school year.

Or perhaps, the decision had been made by the Dark Lord himself, after he had met with Jimin and declared him worthy of championing the Cause. That meeting had ended with Jimin facing the long and painful ordeal that had ended with him getting branded with the gruesome serpent, that was the infamous mark of the Death Eaters, on his left arm. It appeared that that event and his new title had awarded him yet another one, the position of Head Boy at Hogwarts under the Snape administration.

In any matter the deed was long done; Jimin was now tugging his trunks across a train station which was much emptier than it had been the past few years that he had been studying at Hogwarts, fully aware that he had to play an important role in how the school year unfolded. His trunks were half filled with things Jimin was sure would have been contraband had this been any other year: books on the Dark Arts (and on torture), vials filled with disgusting potions with torturous and sometimes painful effects, and the Hand of Glory which allowed Jimin to spy and get around without being detected.

After Jimin heaved his trunks onto the Hogwarts’ Express and pulled himself up as well, he was pushed unceremoniously by a girl who was not looking where she was going. She was pressed against his chest, in the narrow hallway of the train, and looked up to gaze into Jimin’s dark brown eyes with her sparkling ones. He recognized her to be you; your name was Y/N and you were a Gryffindor in his year. He had never bothered interacting with you or acknowledging your presence before, but he knew that you had a Muggle father and a witch for a mother. His lips curled into a snarl, “Get off me you disgusting Half-Blood, before I transform you into the vermin that you share your blood with.”

“I am— I am sorry, Park. It was an accident,” you whispered, removing yourself from Jimin as quickly as bodily possible. You turned around to head back in the direction you had come from, deciding that it was better to hold your bladder until you finally arrived at Hogwarts than to risk running into more terrifying Purebloods who could scare you into wetting yourself, and no doubt thought they had free reign to do as they pleased now that the Dark side had taken over.

Once back into your train compartment, which was empty since the people who used to be your only true friends at Hogwarts were Muggleborns who had both had gone into hiding, you sank down into your seat to and dropped your face into your hands as you sobbed. The only reason you were attending school was because you and all of Hogwarts’ students were being forced. Under a new law, a Hogwarts education was now mandatory for all witches and wizards between the ages of eleven and seventeen in Great Britain. This was a poorly constructed scheme, by the Dark side, that would allow them to grab the Muggleborn students as soon as they arrived at the station to strip them of their wands and throw them into prison. For this reason, many of your Muggleborn classmates had chosen to ignore the law outright and elected to go into hiding. Your own father, whom you had not seen since you were five and whom had remarried another Muggle, had been forced by your mother to go into hiding with his new family. You hated being here since you doubted that you would learn anything at all to help you pass your NEWTs, which you thought were going to be rigged and ripe with cheating now that you were living in He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s playground, or anything that would help you become a better witch who was more adapt at performing magic and living in the Wizarding world as an adult. You wondered if the two new professors at school, the Lees, who were in charge of teaching the new Dark Arts class, that was replacing Defense Against the Dark Arts, and, the now forced graduation requisite: Muggle Studies, would be throwing you into detention at every possible opportunity, not only because of your so called ‘tainted’ blood but because you were a Gryffindor like most of the insurgents who supported the Chosen One’s cause.

At that very moment you made a promise to yourself. It was not a promise to succeed nor was it a promise to enjoy your last year of Hogwarts; it was a promise to survive and get the hell out of there as soon as possible and to escape to America where the Dark Lord’s reign had not yet quite reached.

…

The next time you interact with Park Jimin, it was because of what had happened in a Dark Arts lesson. You had honestly promised yourself to slip under the radar as much as possible, but there were just some things that you were not willing to compromise on: your morals, for one. The professor, Lee Seunghyun, had brought into the classroom a group of ten First Years on whom, he declared, you all would be practicing the Cruciatus Curse. You, knowing the ill effects that mispronounced and improperly casted spells could have, refused to utter the curse at all and stared at your First Year sullenly for the entire duration of the lesson, with your wand hanging from your right hand, as the child burst into uncontrollable and unstoppable tears in front of you. Professor Lee, being outraged by your act of defiance, said, with a dark scowl, that you would have a month of detention where the Unforgivable Curses would be practiced on you instead. He gave you the options of a month of detentions where he would use the Imperius Curse on you or a month with the Head Boy who would practice the Cruciatus Curse on you, which you had so valiantly refused to cast in class. Given the lecherous stares that Lee was sending your way, you knew you did not want to be placed under the Imperius Curse by him as that would allow him to control you like a puppet so you decided to take your chances instead with Jimin and the promise of torture.

On the unblessed Saturday that you had detention with Jimin, he stalked into the, otherwise, empty classroom at seven in the morning instantly throwing a venomous glare at you for ruining what would have otherwise been the first morning he could have slept in instead of having to run around the castle punishing students and being forced to keep them in line. “Y/L/N,” he barked, “I see that you have refused to use the Cruciatus Curse in class. What exactly did you think we would be learning in that class?”

“I didn’t know that we would be practicing on people,” you muttered. Jimin gave you a look that suggested that he thought you were an idiot of the highest order. You were inclined to agree, after all it was the Lees who were teaching, was it not. “I thought it might have all just been us studying the theory and not practicing anything.”

“Did you think, perhaps, that we were still getting taught by Choi Jonghoon?” Jimin laughed hollowly, “At best you could have hoped that you would be practicing on rodents or spiders and not humans. But as you can see, that is not the case.”

You stared at Jimin in surprise, “I thought you were a fan of Choi. You were in the Inquisitorial Squad and I know what you did this summer.” You wondered how Jimin could sleep at night after enduring trial after trial where Muggleborns were treated like vermin and stripped of their wands and Magical status as he stood by emotionlessly and was, all the while, transcribing the details of the cases in meticulous detail.

Jimin scoffed, “No one is a fan of that ugly toad. He pretends to be a Pureblood, related to the Kangs, and makes up lies about his father being a former member of the Wizengamot, as though my family has not worked at the Ministry for centuries. We know he has a Muggle mother and a Squib brother; her father used to scrub the floors at my grandfather’s office. I got that internship because she cannot afford to make enemies of the Parks. There is no lost love between us.”

“Are— are you going to be practicing the curse on me now?” you asked, kicking yourself in your head for sounding terrified.

Jimin stared at you; his dark brown eyes felt like they were piercing through your soul, “You are terrified of me.”

“N— No, I am not,” you protested half-heartedly.

He ignored you, “You are afraid of me and yet you chose to have detention with me. Why is that Y/L/N?” His eyes bore into yours as a thought about Lee Seunghyun being a disgusting piece of scum flitted across your mind. Jimin’s face contorted with disgust as he said, “Never mind. I’ll practice the Cruciatus Curse on you now.”

You moved to the center of the room, standing there uncertainly as you shifted your weight from one foot to the next. Meanwhile, Jimin enchanted the desks and chairs to be pressed against the walls. Though you did not expect him to, he spelled a dozen cushions to appear out of thin air and pad the floor. “Y/L/N do you remember our fourth year Defense Against the Dark Arts class?” he mused.

You had forgotten that you had shared classes with the Slytherins that year, which had also been the year when the Triwizard Tournament had taken place. “What about it?”

“You will see,” Jimin muttered before he pulled his wand out of his pocket and raised it in front of him, “Crucio!”

Immediately, the most excruciating pain you had ever experienced filled your body. You felt as though every single one of your bones was being splintered into a million shards. Your blood felt like it was on fire and like it was going to burn through your body and drip down to the floor before engulfing your seemingly melting body. You vaguely wondered if this must be what being in hell would feel like, if you were a Muggle who believed in a single superior deity, as you just wanted to die so that you no longer could feel the pain.

When you came back to your senses, you saw that Jimin was staring at you from where he was sitting cross-legged on top of a desk, his hand was on his cheek and he muttered, “You have a very low pain tolerance, Y/L/N, that will have to change.”

You croaked; your vocal cords were abused from you screaming your lungs out when you had been under the spell, “Why will that have to change?”

He gave you another look to suggest that you were an idiot, “How will you survive Y/L/N if you cannot withstand the pain? You need to build your tolerance up. And then perhaps one day, you can make your mind strong enough to resist and convince yourself to throw off the spell.”

“Why are you helping me?” you whispered.

He stared at you, “Am I helping you or am I telling you what you should have realized already? It is common sense, Y/L/N. There are a lot of times that you will be forced to endure things you do not wish to, but it is up to you to use those experiences to shape who you are. In any case, I highly doubt you will succeed since you were only under the spell for ten seconds, yet you screamed like the world was lit on fire. I find no harm in telling you anything; I highly doubt that you will be able to use the instruction I give you to your benefit.”

…

A few days after your first detention lesson with Jimin, you were reminded of the lesson you had in your fourth year with Professor Jung Jihoon. Well, he turned out to be a Death Eater named Baek Yoonchun according to The Boy Who Lived, but you digressed. There had been a lesson where he had covered the Unforgivable Curses. In the first lesson, Jung/Baek. had brought out three spiders on which he had used an enlarging spell so that you would all be able to see the effects of the Unforgivable Curses on the doomed creatures as he performed them. In the following classes, he would use the Imperius Curse on classmates until they could throw it off. Only two people had been successful, and it had only been for a few seconds; one of them had been the Chosen One, and the other, although it had been for a split second in contrast to the long interminable minutes the Chosen One had held it off,— the other had been none other than Park Jimin. Something told you though, that if anyone tried to place the Imperius Curse on Jimin now, they would not be very successful unless they were a very powerful individual or one who had used the Dark Arts to increase their magical prowess.

For the second detention, you showed up early with extra padding on your body because last time, even with Jimin’s precautions, you had ended up with bruises. This time, Jimin was even later than before, skidding into the room with an incorrectly buttoned shirt and hair that was drenched from his shower. “I am surprised you came back for more pain,” Jimin gasped, out of breath from his sprint, smirking sardonically to reassert his dominance. “Are you a masochist Y/L/N?” he asked as he magicked the blinds to open so that the morning’s light could be let in.

“No,” you answered. “But I hardly have the choice of not showing up, Park. This is detention. And there will be far worse penalties than this if I were to not show up.”

“I suppose,” muttered Jimin as he took a step into your personal space, “Have you prepared?”

“How am I supposed to prepare for the pain?” you asked, tilting your head upward to look Jimin in his dark stormy eyes.

“Strengthen your mind Y/L/N,” Jimin replied, “Your control over yourself has to be stronger than the person’s ability to perform the curse. You see, they have to really mean it when they utter it. Perhaps you will get lucky and they will utter it carelessly, in which case it will be easier for you to throw off the curse. But perhaps, they are a formidable witch or wizard who is extremely good at performing the Unforgivables; your mind and control over yourself has to be stronger than their ability to execute magic.”

“I don’t understand,” you murmured.

Jimin stepped even closer which caused you to take a step back; his eyes scanned your face, stopping on your lips for a brief moment before returning to your eyes. He finally responded; “Are you able to cast a corporeal Patronus?”

“I did. Once,” you answered.

Jimin looked momentarily stunned before he was able to collect himself, “In theory, if you have a memory that is so inexplicably happy and bound to your mind that you would never forget it, you could even scare off an army of Dementors with your Patronus.”

You felt like you were beginning to understand Jimin; you needed to be so attuned to yourself, have such strength and control over your mind that you could shake off even the strongest mental spells on yourself. “I see.” You said, “I am ready to be Cruciatized.”

Jimin scoffed, “One is not ‘ready’ to get Cruciatized but, fine, I will perform the curse on you now.”

…

On your last detention with Jimin, he was distracted; it had to be rescheduled to a Sunday, and he had arrived past ten. Jimin looked worse for wear with the bags under his eyes looking more prominent than ever, his cheeks appearing to have been hollowed out to the point of no return, and his collarbone sticking out sharply from underneath his sweater. And perhaps it was because Jimin’s mind was not entirely on making you endure the Cruciatus Curse, that you were finally able to throw off the spell for twenty seconds, screaming out, “Jimin! Jimin! I did it!”

Jimin’s control on the spell was snapped as his wand hand jerked at your unexpected outburst. He glanced down to where you were sprawled inelegantly on top of the cushions, your legs were still twitching slighting from the onslaught of torture, “And so you did,” he said monotonously, before his eyes shifted to the windows where he appeared to be looking for some type of disturbance in the skies.

You sat up. Your sides were screaming at the movement. You, then, braced your hand on the ground as you moved to go on your knees before you were slowly able to contort your body until it was able to stand upright. Your entire form was aching in response to the constant shifting. “For some reason,” you gasped breathlessly, “I presumed that you would be more excited about my success.”

Jimin’s eyes cut back to your shape, “Well you presumed incorrectly,” he answered coldly, “We are not friends; nothing you do excites me. However, it does not surprise me that you thought our relationship was changing to anything more than executioner and victim, given your background,” the last part was said scathingly, “but at least something was able to get into your thick skull before you went back to living your meaningless existence.”

There was a sudden rush of hot unwanted tears flooding your eyes; they were probably a delayed effect from the Cruciatus Curse you had been forced to endure, you tried to convince yourself. “I see,” you mumbled thickly, trying to hide the fact that you were now in tears from your voice, “Well, I will be going now. Goodbye, Park. If we are fortunate, we will not be crossing paths anymore now that the detentions are over.”

As you left the classroom, the door shutting after you with a loud click, Jimin finally looked behind himself and let out a heavy sign before unceremoniously grabbing his left arm and pushing up the sleeve roughly to look at the snake emblem that was throbbing and pulsating across the stretch of skin that covered his forearm, the sight of it making him want to upend his breakfast. The Dark Lord was angry and Jimin feared that a summoning was near in his future.

…

You did not see Jimin again for a very long time. When it happened, however, you were grateful for it. You had turned to spending all of your weekends at Hogwarts wandering around the place. Visits to Hogsmeade village had been banned while all clubs and sports teams had been coerced into disbanding after Headmaster Snape had reinstated Educational Decree no. Twenty-Four: “No student organizations, societies, teams, groups and clubs may exist without the knowledge and approval of the Headmaster.” He even went so far as to forbidding students from residing in each other’s companies in groups of three or more. It was like Choi had taken over Hogwarts, once again. And after dealing with the mess that Choi had left behind on your OWL examination year, you were less than enthused to deal with it while studying for your NEWT examinations

With so much being forbidden to the students, you took to spending your time looking for hiding places in the castle; the less you were seen by the new Professors, and the new wave of students running around with badges from the reinstated Inquisitorial Squad pinned to their chest, hell-bent on punishing students and making their lives miserable, the better.

It was on one such weekend that you were wandering around the sixth floor of the castle when you came across a space that looked like it used to be a medieval torture room. However, it looked as though it been recently been put to service again since, when you scanned your eyes around the room for a second time, you noticed that there were three students tied to stakes with cursed chains that were covered in black ichor that was turning their skins greenish and diseased. Bile started to rise up in your mouth as you watched the unconscious forms writhing and twitching intermittently. An overwhelming sense of horror and disgust overtook you as you immediately began to wrack your brain trying to figure out how to release the poor students from their bindings.

You decided against pulling at the knots that held them captive; you knew better than to let your bare hands come into contact with the chains since you had grown up around magic your entire life and had been taught better. You decided to, instead, test out all the spells you knew that would normally work in situations like this: concentrated unlocking spells, targeted explosive spells, and advanced transfiguration spells that would hopefully transform the harsh metal cuffs into something softer and more harmless, like putty, that you could easily break them out of.

The students did not notice your growing despair as you began to wonder if they were dying, after all, you had no idea how long they had been in that state or how many days they had gone without food or water, or even access to the facilities. After close to half an hour of struggling, wracking your brain for everything you could possibly think of, you sank down onto the dirty and dusty floor of the formerly unused room. You wondered if perhaps, you could come back here with food to simply keep them company until they woke up, if they woke up, and then you could offer them the food to see if they could keep anything down.

As you hastily got up to hurry along to the Kitchens and then return to the Sixth floor with a cornucopia of food, you belatedly realized that you never thought to ask the other Professors for help: not the head of your house, Professor Kim Taeyeon, or even the Headmaster, Snape. It was probably for the best, you decided; you did not know how much authority or sway they had over the Lees, even the Headmaster, and you did not want to get them into hot water with the Dark regime. A visit from the Dark Lord, or any of his followers, was the last thing that the students at Hogwarts needed.

The school’s kitchens were located on the basement floor of the castle, near the Hufflepuff common area although you did not know where the exact location of the Hufflepuff’s dormitories was. However, you did know where the Kitchens were; in your Fourth year, you had had to sneak down to the Kitchens with your best friend Im Nayeon to get food for the party the Gryffindors were having after the Chosen One had saved his best friend from potential drowning during the second Triwizard tournament. You had used it in your Sixth year, too, when you were always too busy completing the assigned coursework from your NEWT classes to go to the Great Hall during the assigned mealtimes.

You had not visited them once, however, since the current school year had started, and you did not know if there were now watchdogs watching the entrance to the Kitchen to stop students from sneaking extra meals. Thus, you decided to play it on the safe side and be a little more cautious as you used the castle’s most deserted hallways and secreted shortcuts to get down to the basement level. The password to enter the Kitchens had not changed as you quickly found yourself watching the painting of the bowl of fruits swing forward to reveal the portrait hole for you to climb through after you had tickled the plethora of fruits in a specific order to gain access inside.

Inside, however, the house elves were more subdued than you had ever seen them. They worked quickly, and efficiently, without conversation and did not pay any heed to your intrusion. In fact, they ignored you so blatantly outright that you began to wonder if they had been forbidden from communicating with the students. You still needed food, despite the setback, so you approached one of the elves and asked for a basket of food: fruits, bread, cheese, slices of meat loaf, chicken strips, roasted potatoes, and flasks of orange and pumpkin juice. The elves went to work hastily preparing your basket, piling up food in the hamper so high that you did not see how it would be possible for you to drag it up seven floors. You asked one of the elves, the one who looked slightly nicer than the others, and had been the first to spring into action, fixing up the food for you, if he could transfigure the basket for you so that it would be small enough for you to slip into the pocket of your black school robes. You figured that a simple enlargement charm later would be enough to return the food to its normal size later.

As you passed the head of the hallway that had led you to the Kitchens, you did not notice that there had indeed been a watchdog that was guarding the entrance. Fortunately for you, that person had been Jimin. And as he watched you traipse up the stairs, with a suspecting scowl gracing his face, he decided he had nothing better to do than to follow you to your destination.

Jimin burst into the room where you were watching over the three unfortunate students just after you had transformed the basket of food back to its normal size. “What are you doing, Y/L/N,” he panted breathlessly at your back; he had not known that following you would mean he would have to trek across half the castle. You jumped in surprise at the intrusion.

“Oh, hello Park,” you said glumly. “I don’t know how to free them,” you sighed as you gestured towards the captive students whose names you did not know. All you could see were the badges pinned to their school robes and their ties that dangled limply from their throats. They were two Gryffindors and a Hufflepuff, so you did not expect Jimin to care like you did. “I don’t understand what they could have possibly done to merit this punishment.”

Jimin strode towards you, his gaze flitting between the students who were chained to the crosses like some sort of pagan sacrifice to the gods. “You should not be here, Y/L/N, you will only get into trouble if you are caught. You cannot afford to be on the Lees’ radar.”

“I know that,” you muttered bitterly, “But I can’t just leave them here. I don’t expect you to understand. You probably don’t even have a fully functioning conscience. But I can’t, in good faith, leave them here like this. I have to try to help.”

“Leave the food here,” Jimin said abruptly. “Leave it here. I will ensure that they receive it. But you simply cannot be here Y/L/N. You are making it worse for everyone. If you get caught trying to free them, which I doubt you know how to do successfully, it will have disastrous consequences, not only for you but for them. And what of me? The castle is alive, Y/L/N. There is not a thing that happens within these walls that can be kept a secret. Once it is revealed that I found you here and did absolutely nothing about it, I will be in a heap of trouble as well. So, I am begging you, Y/L/N, use your brain for once. Don’t think with your goddamn heart, which is all you thickheaded Gryffindors know to do, and leave the situation to me. I will deal with it. And I know how to cover up my own tracks.”

“Why can’t I stay and help you?” you asked, feeling suspicious of Jimin and not trusting him to actually deal with the situation adequately.

“You cannot be my accessory, Y/L/N,” Jimin sighed exasperatedly, “Especially since you cannot cover your own tracks. How else do you think it is that I was able to follow you up here without your knowledge?”

“Fine,” you relented, “Get the job done Park, I am– trusting you,” you muttered, uttering four words you never thought you would use in relation to Park Jimin.

Jimin waited five minutes after you left to summon his house elf, Chimmy, into the room. “Master Park,” the house elf, in the pale-yellow pinstriped pillowcase, greeted, bowing deeply, “How may I assist you?”

“Go to my dormitory and bring the spell book with the purple leather cover and the silver gilded pages. Bring two of the potions in my potions case too. The pale blue one with the aluminum stopper and the lavender one with the rose quartz screw,” Jimin said, furrowing his brows deep in thought.

Once Chimmy was back with the potions and the spell book, Jimin grabbed them from the house elf swiftly. He slipped the potion vials into his pocket and flipped through the spell book rapidly; he was looking for the section on magical entrapments and bindings. He soon found the spell he had been looking for, four pages into the section, and marched towards the first unconscious student. The spell was a nonverbal one, so Jimin pointed his wand at the cuffs that were entrapping her, stiffly and recited the spell in his mind. The spell miraculously worked and freed her left hand from the chains. He then went to perform the spell at the bindings at her feet and other hand, moving to catch her when she fell forward after being freed completely. He sat her down, propped against the wall, before he went to do the same thing to the two boys.

It was then that he brought out the lavender potion from the folds of his robe. It was a healing potion, one that he had brewed in Professor Kim Heechul’s class last month. Most days Professor Heechul did not give them any real instruction anymore and instead told them to feel free to make whatever they desired; Jimin used the opportunity to brew potions that would be useful in a variety of situations, especially since Professor Heechul had made the all of the supplies in the Potions’ cupboards available to them. With a few drops of his potion on the surfaces of skin that had been affected by the black ichor, they began to rapidly heal before his eyes.

The pale blue potion was a rejuvenating one that would hopefully wake the three from their stupor. But before that, Jimin had to figure out what to do with the students; he could not just free them to send them back to the masses that roamed the castle when they were wanted personnel. They would only be brought back here or transferred to even worse holding quarters. Not only that, but with the Headmaster’s potion-making prowess, they could be force-fed Veritaserum and reveal that it had been he, Jimin, who had freed them.

He was thinking about how to get the three of them out of the school grounds without being undetected when he remembered the story that Kim Hanbin had told him of being trapped in the Vanishing Cabinets in the Room of Requirement in their Fifth year. He was pretty certain that that had been the way that Min Yoongi had gotten the Death Eaters to storm the castle the previous June, although he had not exactly been privy to his plans. He wondered if there were other methods of escape that could be sought in the Room of Requirement.

With his mind made, he took out the final potion from his pocket and dropped it underneath each of the three’s tongues. When they all awoke to see their Head Boy glaring at them for being put in this situation, they were all understandably a little scared. Jimin shoved the basket of food in one of their arms and told them to follow him through one of Hogwarts’ abandoned passages to the Room of Requirement that was located one floor above them.

In front of the Room of Requirement, Jimin strutted across it three times thinking, “I need a way to get out of the castle,” resolutely. The door that appeared, was one that Jimin was unfamiliar with, a small one made completely of brass with engravings of fairies and other woodland creatures covering it that seemed to be moving across the planes of the door as though it were enchanted. He unceremoniously pulled the door open and shoved the three of them into the Room of Requirement before sealing it and falling to the floor in exhaustion, his back pressed against the now empty stretch of beige wall behind him.

…

It would be too much to hope that no one had noticed what Jimin had done. Two days after he had led the insurgents to freedom, he was called into a meeting with the Lees and the Headmaster.

They asked him what he had been doing on that Sunday, more specifically, why had he left his post in front of the entrance to the Kitchens. They did not believe him when he said that he, feeling that he was going to collapse from exhaustion had felt that the best course of action for him would be return to his rooms to get some, what he felt was very deserved, rest.

They asked him if he had been anywhere near the sixth floor on Sunday. Jimin determined that the Lees were bad at interrogations as he skillfully waded through their questions. Even worse, they were far too impulsive, making rash decisions as they got exceedingly angry from their poor control of their tempers and their inability to get Jimin to revealed what they desired. They wanted to perform the Cruciatus curse on him to torture him into giving up what they thought was the ‘truth.’ When they were told that they could not perform such a spell on Jimin by the Headmaster, who reminded the Lees who Jimin’s family was and their power, they wanted, instead, to shove Veritaserum down his throat. This was also ruled against by the Headmaster who refused to supply the Lees the potion to use on any of his students.

The Headmaster instead suggested that he should apply Legilimency on Jimin and navigate through his mind. With a smirk at the Lees, Jimin readily agreed to have the Headmaster search through his mind. He insisted that he had nothing to hide and that he felt more than comfortable with the Headmaster probing his mind for the truth.

As he stared into Headmaster Snape’s eyes steadfastly, Jimin attempted to clear his mind and paint the scene of him walking from the kitchen straight to the opposite side where the dungeons were and where the Slytherin rooms were located under the Great Lake. He began to add in details: the temperature getting lower, the air feeling increasingly muggy, the gray of the stone walls as he passed through them, his black leather shoes with wooden soles making an echoing sound every time they hit the cobbled floor. He painted the picture of him stepping in front of the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room, of him uttering “Ophiuchus,” under his breath so that the stone wall in front of him was split in half, revealing a gigantic room.

The Common Room had seaweed colored walls; it was decked out with heavy leather furniture with iron arms, large side tables and ornate chairs. There was a truly massive silver chandelier hanging from the ceiling that looked as though it was made of nothing, but ropes of silver wrought snakes tangled with each other. Jimin stopped to stare at a tapestry in the vision that he was painting. He gazed at the woven masterpiece that has Salazar Slytherin, himself, directing a monstrous Basilisk into battle, before swiftly cutting across the room to climb up the stairs on the boys’ side to go to the uppermost landing, letting himself into the special dormitory reserved only for the school’s Head Boy. Jimin smirked as he imagined himself undressing and slipping in between his bed sheets while he was completely nude. For a moment his brow was furrowed, in the present; his gaze stopped on his bedside dresser, in his mind, where there was a piece of paper. It was a schedule of his Head Boy duties; Saturdays are clearly marked to oversee Y/N’s detentions in the morning.

He felt the Headmaster’s foreign presence retreating from his mind, and then heard Snape say snidely, “Mr. Park is telling the truth. Now if you two are done wasting my time, please excuse yourselves from my office.”

The Lees, chastised, rushed towards the doors, no doubt in a hurry to complain to the Chos or the Mins, someone higher up than they were, to report on their behalf to the Dark Lord a complaint about Severus Snape. Jimin moved towards the exit himself, his legs woodenly shifting towards the Lees when the Headmaster’s voice interrupted his thoughts silkily, “Mr. Park I would like to talk to you about your Head Boy duties.”

Jimin stopped in his tracks, and turned back to Snape, “Of course, Headmaster.”

“Take a seat Mr. Park,” Snape drawled, as he swept through the room, his hands tinkering with small magical artifacts. Jimin sat sullenly in front of the large desk Snape had left. His eyes traveled the space in front of him which was decorated with portraits of Hogwart’s previous Headmasters and Headmistresses. Majority of the paintings were empty, with only a murky backdrop remaining in the portraits that their owners had vacated. He saw that the previous Headmasters, including Lee Sooman and Park Jinyoung as well as Albus Dumbledore, were still in their portraits. The last wizard in question was smiling kindly at Jimin while he waited for the current Headmaster to lecture Jimin about how he had known Jimin was lying.

When Snape opened his mouth however, Jimin was surprised: “You need to become more proficient at Occlumency, Mr. Park. A Squib could have waded through your mind and discovered the truth with ease,” he snarled.

“I am sorry Headmaster,” muttered Jimin inclining his head in shame.

“You are entirely unprepared to ever go against the Dark Lord, should he ever seek to look in your mind Park. It is fortunate that you are not against the regime I suppose. But you still do have secrets you want to keep in under the wraps,” Snape drawled, tapping a long forefinger against his jaw.

“Severus, stop being so harsh,” Dumbledore’s voice rang out from the portrait, “I am certain that Jimin has an aptitude for Occlumency.”

“If he does, I have yet to see it,” sniffed Snape. “Park, you are now required to come to my office every Friday at 8pm, unless otherwise specified, for Occlumency lessons. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes Headmaster,” Jimin replied quickly, as he inclined his body into a fast, respectful 90 degrees bow.

“You may now leave,” Snape said, waving his hand in a careless gesture of dismissal, prompting Jimin to stand up and swiftly exit the room without a backwards glance.

…

It was November when you and Jimin crossed paths again. You had been, once again, on the hunt for the perfect location on the school grounds where you could seek solace and hide from the horrid conditions that had befallen on the inhabitants of the castle. You knew that Quidditch had been banned and thought that this would mean that the Quidditch pitch would be deserted and unkempt since it was no longer being maintained regularly.

The weather on that November day was a little chilly and you decided to seek refuge in the commentator box from the harsh and biting winds. When you had finally reached the top of the steps and swung open the worn-down wooden door to the little office, you found that it was already occupied. The Slytherin Head Boy that you were becoming too well acquainted with, despite your best efforts, was crouched on the messily nailed wooden beams that made up the floor to the office. His nose, red from the cold, was almost pressed against the glass wall he was looking into, out at the Quidditch pitch. His silvery gray hair was a windswept mess on top of his head, and he was bundled into a thick winter coat in Slytherin green, his Head Boy badge was pinned to his chest, and a well-used and well-loved Firebolt laid next to his booted feet.

“Sorry,” you muttered when he looked up at your intrusion, a sharp blast of wind entering the room notifying him of your entry. “I did not think that anyone would be here right now.”

Jimin straightened up and brushed off the dirt and dust from his charcoal gray pant legs. “Were you, too, looking for some place to seek solace?” he asked, not unkindly.

“These days I don’t feel welcome anywhere in the castle,” you admitted, “I had hoped to find some place that I could be alone for a bit and seek respite.”

“It has been hard,” Jimin agreed, “And you feel so entirely alone in the world. You don’t see a point of continuing to move forward.”

At that you turned your head sharply to face Jimin and gaze into his eyes, searching for you don’t know what, in his expression. You had not thought that Jimin could have also been having a hard time. He was a Pureblooded Slytherin was he not? His parents were even rumored to have Pureblood fanatical inclinations although they had never been tried for being Death Eaters themselves. The people who shared the same beliefs and principles with him were the ones that were in power.

But then you thought of the Jimin who had taught you, though unwillingly, how to throw off the Cruciatus Curse and to make the most of your punishment instead of treating you like you were less than human and just torturing you mercilessly for the hell of it. You thought of the Jimin who had helped you free those students. Perhaps there was more to Park Jimin after all: more to the Head Boy than the mask that he had chosen to don for all of the castle to see.

“It would be a shame if we had to give this place up,” you replied looking around the tiny mostly wooden and glass room, “I am content with sharing this place with you Park, for us to escape to when we have nowhere else to go.”

…

The winter holiday meant that on the first week of December, Jimin found himself packing up his school trunk with a large stack of textbooks in order to stay on top of his winter coursework over the holidays. He also put in his trunk a bundle of clothing and an odd amalgamation of things he was no longer regularly making use of to drop off at home in exchange for the new crap his parents had likely bought him to replace them.

Dragging his trunk with him to the front of the school, he boarded a Thestral drawn carriage. After the events of the spring and summer, he could unfortunately see the ghostly skeletal winged horses that pulled the school carriages.

The carriages could fit four but when Kim Taehyung, Jeon Jungkook, and Choi Yeonjun tried to enter the one Jimin was cozied in, he kicked the door shut in their faces and rapped his knuckles against the roof of the carriage to urge the Thestrals to a trot in the direction of Hogsmeade Village.

Jimin was not looking forward to patrolling the halls of the Hogwarts Express or conducting a meeting in the Prefects’ compartment with his co-Head Jennie Kim. He was exhausted and in no mood to talk to anyone. All he wanted to do was to get a little shut eye on the train ride before his parents picked him up to take him to the Mins’, where they had been invited for dinner, no doubt with countless other Death Eaters, and left his luggage to be dealt with by their house elves.

Dinner had been nothing special. The Dark Lord had not been there but his devoted servants Cho Sanghee and her husband, Cho Haseul, had been. Jimin knew them to be related to the Mins through Yoongi’s mother but as he watched the Chos strut around the Min Manor with satisfied expressions, that hinted at their cruel manner, on their decidedly ugly and inbred faces, that were a result of marriages amongst the 28 Pureblood families of England for the past 1500 years, Jimin thought he caught glimmers of contempt on the facades of Yoongi’s parents. Their son Yoongi sat blank faced throughout the dinner, much like Jimin, not joining any of the Death Eaters in conversation, and spent the entirety of the meal mindlessly prodding his dinner with his silverware.

Fortunately for Jimin, this was the most contact that he had to make with the Dark Lord’s most fanatical supporters for the duration of his winter holiday. His parents had apparently convinced the Dark Lord that Jimin was too busy with his NEWT studies, Head Boy duties, and post-graduation preparations to be of any use to him in the hunting down and capturing the outlawed protestors and vigilantes. But the Dark Lord took that to mean that Jimin was ready for even more grooming for a position in the Ministry of Magic after his culmination from Hogwarts. He wanted Jimin to follow Yang Hyunsuk, the Imperiused former Head of Magical Law Enforcement that had replaced Seo Taiji as the current Minister of Magic, around and keep watch to make sure he was not acting out of order.

It was two days after Christmas Day, that Jimin, who had flopped down in his bed at two o’clock in the morning after a long day of observing the Minister at the Ministry, had received your Christmas present. The owl that came to his window and rapped not five minutes after Jimin had finally been able to rest his eyes, reminded him of the owl that had intruded into his life that rainy summer night a few months ago and had changed his live irrevocably. This owl like that one had plumage that was a mixture of dark gray and black feathers, and unlike its long-lost cousin who had been drenched from the rain, had only the barest coating of snow covering its coat. Tied under its talon-ed feet, was a beautifully wrapped gift in black paper with silver stars that was tied together with a thick ribbon of Slytherin emerald green. The ribbon had a card attached to it. There was no name of the sender, but on one side the return address in Ilkley was visible. On the other side of the card, all that was written was, “I hope this gift finds you well. Happy Christmas, Jimin.”

Somehow, Jimin had instantly known that the gift had been from you. He supposed that you had omitted your name and entire address because you had been wary of the gift falling into his parents’ hands. Carefully pulling apart the wrapping paper, Jimin found a thin golden box within, the kind of box that typically used to hold jewelry inside. His guess had been correct: within the box had been a thin silver chain with a tiny circular disc that was maybe a tenth of the size of a Knut and had a J engraved in the middle and one emerald stone next to it.

He immediately took the necklace out of the box and unclasped it to adorn his neck. It fell to the top of his sternum and was low enough that it could be hidden by the collars of most of Jimin’s shirts. He wanted to Apparate to you immediately and ask you why you had given him a Christmas gift when he had given you nothing but the pain from more placements of Cruciatus Curses than either of you could be bothered to count.

His gaze dropped to the golden watch adorning his left wrist. It had stars instead of clock hands and had been given to him by his parents on his seventeenth birthday. Time had gone by swiftly as Jimin had examined your gift and it was now three in the morning. There was no way that you would be awake at this time if he had gone to bother you. Jimin could not find it in himself to rouse you out of bed to answer his questions though they were pressing him. He simply gave your pet owl some treats before ushering it out the window and going to bed himself. He would go visit you after he had arranged someone to take his place to trail the Minister and had secured a few days off for himself. Hopefully, if Jimin was successful, he would be able to have a real vacation until school started up again after the New Year began.

…

Apparating to the Ilkley parish in West Yorkshire, Jimin appeared out of thin air to stand on a meadow in the Northern English countryside. A thin coating of snow covered the field that Jimin was standing on and across from him, he could see a wooden fence caging in sheep to keep them from wandering over his way. It was likely that your mother was the Secret Keeper of your home so Jimin would be out of luck in trying to find you unless you went outside your home. He was confident in his belief that you would; after all, instead of staying cooped up in the Gryffindor dormitory, where you were undoubtedly the safest in the castle, you always chose to wander around.

After walking around the village for a bit, where it appeared that both wizards and Muggles lived together, Jimin noticed that everyone was rather subdued and stuck to themselves. The wizards were wary of interacting with the Muggles they shared their community with, fearful of being looked upon as Muggle sympathizers. And the Muggles stuck to themselves, suspicious about strangers after the increase in missing persons and inexplicable rise in deaths and murders all over Britain. Walking into a small but tidy ice cream shop, Jimin was reminded of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour’s in Diagon Alley. The ice cream parlor had been boarded up and remained closed since the Dark Lord had gotten his followers to drag off the owner, but in Jimin’s youth it had always been his favorite place to grab a cold treat with its extensive collection of eccentric and tasty ice cream flavors before he rushed over to Quality Quidditch Supplies to stare at the window displays of the newest professional broomsticks.

This shop did not have the multitude of flavors that Fortescue's did, so Jimin asked for a two-scoop cup of basic vanilla and plain chocolate. With his purchase made, he walked out of place to go find a seat at the park he had passed by earlier. Sitting on the slightly damp black iron bench, Jimin realized that getting ice cream on such a cold day was probably counterintuitive. However, as the creamy vanilla dessert dissolved on his tongue, and he tasted its rich and sweet flavor, he realized that sometimes good things have to hurt for you to understand and appreciate their value.

The park was not entirely deserted and as Jimin sat there watching families of Muggles build snowmen with their children and create snow figures on the ground with their bodies,  he saw a lone female figure wearing a fluffy white Sherpa coat with a scarlet and gold scarf wrapped around her neck.

For someone who had Muggle blood, you certainly did not know how to blend in with them. You stuck out to him so obviously, with the crimson and gold of your Gryffindor scarf acting like a beacon amidst the white of all the fallen snow that was surrounding the village. He doubted that you knew he was here now, in West Yorkshire, looking for you. He stopped twenty paces away from you, indistinguishable from the other patrons of the park with his dark long overcoat and his black hair that was tucked under a dark gray newsboy’s cap. You looked so peaceful, sitting on the icy metal bench as you took in the view of the frozen lake before the two of you. Unfortunately, Jimin could not let you remain in your serene state of tranquility. He had pressing matters to tend to that concerned you.

Hearing the loud crunch of snow beneath boots coming towards you, you looked up curiously and let out a quiet gasp when you saw Park Jimin standing before you. He stood wordlessly before you, glaring at you intensely as he took you in from head to toe. Clearing your throat nervously, you stammered, “What are you doing in West Yorkshire Park? Somehow, I imagined you living somewhere more refined and stylish like Surrey or Buckinghamshire.”

“Oh,” murmured Jimin letting out a low throaty chuckle, that made your face pinch with anxiety, “I’m visiting.”

“I wasn’t aware you really had living family outside your parents,” you muttered almost inaudibly.

Jimin raised an eyebrow at that, “Oh I am not visiting family, Y/L/N.” The same low snarky chuckle came again, “I am visiting the girl who thought it would be appropriate to give me the Christmas gift of an engraved locket.”

Your face burned so hot that not even the biting cold of the winter day could soothe your flushed cheeks. “My apologies Park. I did not mean to make a big deal out of it. I just wished to thank you. That is all.”

Jimin’s face hardened, his facial muscles tightening until there was a severe and harsh look on his face that had nothing to do with the weather, “You wished to thank me Y/N? For performing the Cruciatus Curse on you more than a hundred times? How unusual.”

Looking down, focusing your gaze on Jimin’s waterproof expensive Chelsea boots, which were undoubtedly steel-toed given Jimin’s personality, you forced yourself to reply to his needlessly cruel words, “N-Not for that Jimin. For what happened after.”

Jimin frowned, “Everything I do, is to save my own hide, Y/N. You can’t.”

“I can’t what?” you asked, your eyes watering from the sting of the cold weather, and something more, “I know what I can’t do Jimin.”

“Then why did you send me the gift?” he asked rudely.

“So, what if I did, Jimin?” you bit out, “Why did you come for me afterwards?”

“You know why,” he grated out, “I had to find out why.”

“Are you sure?” you asked looking defiantly at him, you gaze locked to the hollow of his neck, “Is that why you are wearing it?”

“You are a masochist,” Jimin whispered coming towards you, answering the question he had asked you at the beginning of that first detention. As you moved to stand up, he grabbed you behind the neck pulling your face close to his. As you moved towards him, your eyelids flickering shut and your lips moving towards his expectantly, you felt the most unpleasant sensation of everything pressing at you from all directions all at once. The pair of you were enveloped in darkness as your body felt like it was being compressed into a narrow tube with your limbs contorting to fit inside. Within seconds it was over, and you found yourself with Jimin standing outside of some place that was definitely not West Yorkshire, as you were standing on the cobblestones in a rather untidy alley.

“You,” your voice was filled with rage, “Where did you Apparate us to?” You could not believe his audacity. Immediately, you were reminded of how he was a Slytherin and in the back pockets of the Death Eaters that ruled over Hogwarts presently. Giving him the gift had been a mistake. Had he Apparated you to your doom? Was he going to turn you over to the Ministry and claim that you were an Undesirable? You had tried your hardest to slip under the radar and hide your sympathy for the Chosen One and his cause.

Jimin appeared unaffected by the caustic bite in your tone, “Paris. You wanted to be romanced by a man who is clearly not right for you. You’re obviously a glutton for punishment,” his voice rang out as he started walking.

You could not control your feet to keep from following him. You could have just as easily Apparated home, but for some reason you did not. “I’m not a MASOCHIST!” you protested as you chased after Jimin.

When you caught up to Jimin, the Slytherin looked more at ease and more carefree than you had ever seen him. He had tucked his dark gray cap into his coat’s pocket and had let his usually severe hair, that was normally stiffened by gel, get ruffled by the wind. His hair looked so soft, and there was a rosy flush on his cheeks that made you notice for the first time, the light scattering of pale freckles across the plump planes of his face. His thick plaid scarf dangled loosely around his neck instead of being meticulously wrapped around his neck and tucked into his coat. He raised an eyebrow at you roguishly when he noticed you staring at him with your mouth open in amazement. “What?” he asked lightly, “Close your mouth Y/N. You don’t want a Doxy to fly in it.”

“You look–” you paused, stopping before you had almost blurted out beautiful. “Different. When did you dye your hair back to black?” you said instead.

You tried to convince yourself that you were imagining that slight look of disappointment that appeared on his face before he opened his mouth to reply to you, “Apparently silver is an unprofessional hair color.”

“Is it?” you murmured, sneaking your hand around his right one and grabbing a hold of it.

Jimin stopped so abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk that the other passersby had to step around the two of you. He looked down at the joined hands, seeming to wrestle with something within the confines of his mind. After a moment, he seemed to have come to a decision. His hand tightened around yours and he picked up his pace, pulling you gently along with him. You thought he had forgotten that you had asked him a question until he answered five minutes later, “My parents want me to work as a Junior Assistant for Minister Yang when I graduate from Hogwarts.”

You frowned, realizing the harsh reality of the world the two of you were currently living in. Jimin was expected to go to work in the Ministry of the Magic after Seventh year was over. You did not think that he was a Death Eater, but as a Pureblood he would have to undoubtedly keep up certain appearances. Would Jimin be helping the Ministry pass even more laws that ensured the disenfranchisement of Muggleborns and other magical beings? As for you and what you would be doing in the spring after graduation? Your father had gone into hiding in North America, although your mother would not tell you where exactly, fearing that you would break down under one of the Lees’ extreme punishments and reveal it. You thought your mother would want the two of you to join him and his family; to create a new life for all of you there, where the effect of Europe’s warfare was still minimal.

“Do you want to go to the Louvre?” Jimin asked.

“I didn’t know that you were interested in Muggle art, Park,” you replied.

Jimin rolled his eyes, “I’m hardly going to take you to the Museum of the History of European Wizardry, Y/N. The point of this trip was to feel free to be ourselves without having to constantly look over our shoulders. Unfortunately, that means that we have to surround ourselves with Muggles. But I didn’t think that you’d mind.”

Your face tightened, a fraction, in displeasure. Park Jimin was such an asshole. He probably was not even aware of it half the time. You tried to convince yourself that this part of his character could be worked on and fixed. He had been raised to be an annoying bigoted asshole. You knew there was more to him, or else he would have never ‘debased’ himself to spend time with you and to see you as a romantic interest.

As you two walked closer to the Musée du Louvre, its glass pyramid structures came into view. You sighed wistfully, when would you have another chance to be in Paris again? If Voldemort’s plans moved on to France after he was done razing England to the ground, there was no saying that the impressive and centuries old structures of France would remain standing afterwards. You were just wishing that you could take a picture of yourself in front of the museum as a permanent record of this day when Jimin pulled his hand off of yours to reach into his front coat pocket to take out a small black pouch. You looked at him curiously. What was Park up to now?

He pulled his entire arm into the tiny pouch which made you gasp in mild horror before you realized that he most likely had bespelled it with an Undetectable Extension Charm. One would think that by now you would be used to sights of magic in front of you, but it still managed to surprise you every single day. From within the cavernous confines of his bag, Jimin pulled out a clunky Polaroid camera that made you stifle a small giggle when you thought of your father and his impressive Canon cameras. “Do you want a polaroid of you in front of the Louvre?” he asked.

Reaching for his hand and dragging him to a place where you were sure you would be able to capture both the massive building and the impressive pyramids behind you, you replied, “Only if we are both in the picture.”

Hours later when you were lying in bed at your mother’s cottage, able to hear her tea kettle making a loud whistling noise that carried its way into your room, you recounted the events of the day. You thought of the wine Jimin had stolen, since the two of you were still not adults in the Muggle world (you had left a 20 euro note at the register without him noticing) and the warm cheesy corniottes wrapped in newspaper you two had shared as you stared at the self-facing Polaroid he had managed to get the two of you in front of the Lourve. The tiny Y/N in the image was smiling brighter than you had in the past two years and the tiny Jimin’s smirk in the image could almost be mistaken for a smile if you squinted. Jimin had written in his spiky tiny handwriting on the white border of the Polaroid, “12/28/97 – I long to feel this calm for the rest of my life.”

Sighing, you sat up in bed and turned to tuck the photograph inside your pillowcase. You did not see how you and Jimin could ever have more than that one magical day in Paris, without magic, between the two of you. When the term started up again and the two of you returned to classes, you would have to pretend that the other did not exist for either of you, once again.

…

 You were a fool in love. That was the only thing that could explain why you had helped Jeon Jungkook graffiti the castle walls with red paint. The rebellious Gryffindors and you had taken to seeking out in the middle of the night to inscribe Dumbledore’s Army, Still Recruiting and other incendiary remarks that had irritated Headmaster Snape to no end. Sometimes you felt a little guilty. The others were putting their lives on the line because they truly believed in the cause and were fighting for all magical beings, no matter their background. And while you did believe the same, you were not as passionate or outspoken as your House mates. You were doing it to get the attention of the antisocial Head Boy who had gone back to pretending that you did not exist the moment the two of you had stepped back on to the Hogwarts’ grounds after the New Year’s holiday.

It was like Jimin no longer cared about you; that one miraculous day in Paris was so buried in the deepest fissures of his subconscious that he could not call it up to the surface. You had half the mind to Stupefy him and drag him to the Headmaster’s office where you had heard that Snape kept a Pensieve. Perhaps when he was forced to watch your memories with you, he would finally be forced to admit that what the two of you had shared on one of the last days of 1997 had been something special.

When it was finally time for the Easter holiday, you were forced to admit that perhaps you had to give up on Park Jimin. The war still waged on and the Light side was losing badly. You tried to keep up to date with the current events by listening to Goldenwatch radio broadcasts but the punishments for conspiring against Voldemort kept escalating. Kim Yerim had never come back after the Christmas holiday, taken because her mother, Irene, was a journalist who had become too outspoken on her publication, Red Velvet. With radio frequencies being controlled, the magazine Red Velvet being out of print, and every way of communication being watched, it was hard for anyone to keep up with the war in real-time. News of the Light side was hard to come by; the Dark Lord and his followers were doing everything they could to have their opponents scared, ignorant, and divided.

Every time you took a stand against the Headmaster or his minions, you were afraid for your mother’s life. What if the army of Snatchers, the wizards and witches that were not given the distinction of being worthy enough to be Death Eaters, which included the likes of the werewolf Kang Jihwan, came for your mother? You would never forgive yourself if your mother was attacked by werewolves, giants, or other dark creatures because of you. Furthermore, when the Lees started to chain students again, like the ones you and Jimin had saved, a Ravenclaw had gotten caught trying to release them. The torture they had put the male through had terrified you, even more so because his fate had been so close to being yours.

You had lost weight due to all the duress you had been under. All the students at Hogwarts were looking worse for wear. Easter could not come soon enough. And when it did, you were careful to leave the things that you could live without behind in your dormitory so that the Lees did not get suspicious of you leaving Hogwarts forever. The moment a student left, they were hunted down like a criminal. The crime? Not complying with the compulsory school attendance that the Ministry had decreed. When the time came for you to lug your trunk onto the Hogwarts Express, you found yourself reminded of the first day of the school year, when you had run into Jimin and almost pissed your robes. How things had changed so drastically in only a few months, you thought wistfully. Now you would do almost anything to run into him, to grab his attention.

Jimin was right, you thought bitterly, you were a glutton for punishment and absolutely a masochist. He was a pureblood enthusiast though he appeared to be mellowing and not so steadfast with retaining the Death Eater’s fascist ideas anymore. But it was embarrassing the way that you had fallen for a male who had literally compared you to vermin not so recently. To be fair, it was not like you used to have a good impression of Park or had held him to a high standard either. But sometimes you hated yourself for falling for someone who was literally associated with people who murdered people like your father for fun. It was a game for them. They got off on Muggle-baiting.

With your thoughts spinning around your mind like a turbulent tornado, and upsetting your stomach, you thought that maybe it was for the best that you had not caught a last glimpse of Park before you left him forever.

…

While you sat in a train compartment towards the end of the scarlet Hogwarts’ Express trying your best not to remain calm and nonchalant, so as not to raise suspicions about your intentions to drop out of school, fearful of getting hunted by the armed wizards that would be guarding Platform Nine and Three Quarters, Jimin sat alone in the Prefect compartment behind the teachers’ cabins. He had long kicked out the other Prefects and the Head Girl, removing them at the beginning of the trip, with them knowing better than to argue with Jimin and against his actions. Although it was rare for the Head Boy to lose his temper, it had been known to happen a few rare times in the past, and everyone at school was aware of how dangerous and volatile an enraged Park could be.

Jimin had spent the last two months going over to the Headmaster’s office late at night to practice Occlumency. Although he had thought he was improving, every lesson had ended with the headmaster snarling at him and calling him incompetent while throwing jabs at Jimin’s family tree. And if Professor Snape truly was right and Jimin was no better off than he was when he had started, then it had all been for nothing. Even more so for naught, because Jimin had been having a growing sense of unease and unsettlement, as the Lees whiffed around him every single day with increasingly harsh attitudes that were revealing of their suspicion surrounding Jimin.

He had no idea what was making them watch over him so carefully. He had no way of knowing if he had done anything to cause them to be wary over his motives, but it was exhausting trying to keep up the façade. The Dark Arts and Muggle Studies bored him, and although he could have gotten away with skipping half of the lessons earlier in the school year, citing boredom as his excuse, that was no longer the case as the Lees expected him to show up promptly to each lesson and put a hundred percent of his concentration into their teachings. The siblings also did not believe that he had prior knowledge of necromancy or curses like Fiendfyre, and thus felt that they were teaching him things that were truly worth knowing. That part was debatable; no one needed such an extensive overview of the Dark Arts. Every lesson left him feeling worse for wear mentally, physically, and emotionally. He would often find himself ducking into the girl’s bathroom on the second floor, where only the Moaning Myrtle could be found, to throw up the contents of his breakfast or lunch hunched over one of the many porcelain bowls. The Dark Arts were disturbing and criminal. No wonder they were outlawed, thought Jimin bitterly as he remembered the ordeal that was the winter term. Even more so than that, he remembered the portrait of Albus Dumbledore telling him, after one of his many Occlumency lessons, that every time Dark magic was used, it left an irremovable stain on a person’s soul. The previous Headmaster had cautioned Jimin’s usage of Dark Magic, telling him to only use it in the situations where he saw no other options. Jimin had scoffed at his providence at the time, but with every lesson with the Lees, he grew further apprehensive about the state of his soul and its uncontrollable deterioration. It was a little reminiscent of Dorian Gray who Y/N had told him about during their momentary bit of solitude away from the War a few days before the New Year.

Speaking of the two irritating nuisances in his life, before he had boarded the Express, Lee Seunghyun, the Dark Arts professor, had slipped a sealed, presumably cursed, envelope into Jimin’s hand. The note apparently contained directives from the Dark Lord on how Jimin was to spend his Easter holiday. If anyone other than Jimin broke the seal, they would be inflicted with whatever curse or hex the Dark Lord had bespelled it with. And with the Dark Lord being such a formidable and powerful wizard, even the Lees had not risked it and tried to see what was within the confines of the envelope. Now, Jimin bitterly took it out of the folds of his black school robes, slipping one of his fingers underneath the triangular flap to break open the dark green seal with the Dark mark imprinted on it. Within it, Jimin found a curt missive detailing his duties for the spring vacation which included rushing off to the Min Manor the second that he set foot on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Apparently, the Dark Lord would not be there, but Mins would give Jimin further instruction.

Because Jimin was loathsome to ever fall asleep in a public space and leave himself vulnerable to threats, he decided instead to rest his forehead against the cool glass of the train and watch as the trees and hills went by in a heavenly green blur and slowly turned into the gray and polluted landscape of London. Once at the platform, after he had transfigured his luggage to be a size that he could easily slip within the deep pockets of his coat, he Apparated a tenth of a mile away from the Min Manor. The narrow lane that lead to the entrance of the Min Manor had on one side of it, the formerly neatly manicured hedges that made up the perimeter of the Min property and on the other, wild low hanging brambles. As he approached the wide driveway at the end of the lane, thick high iron wrought gates suddenly became visible. With hardly a sidestep, Jimin confidently rose his left arm, the one disfigured with the emblem of the Death Eaters and went straight through the metal as though it were as thin and vaporous as smoke. The spell that the Dark Lord had casted over the entrance was similar to the magic which made up the protective barrier at the King’s Cross station.

The air within the manor was stiff with an almost grim and hostile silence surrounding it. When it was broken by the shrill cry of what Jimin thought was a screaming infant, he almost jumped in the air at the unpleasant intrusion. As he walked towards the magnificent dining room that the Mins had used to hold extravagant gatherings in the past, where Purebloods used to dance and rejoice in their wealth and magical abilities, he was once again struck by the change to the formerly grand home. The centuries old stunning furniture that furnished the room were pushed against the walls, harshly stabbing into the soft gilded silk wallpaper. The giant fireplace was unlit, and the room was filled with an uncomfortable chill. At the head of the table sat Min Yeonsoo, cradling a baby bundled in a clean swath of fabric with a spiteful look on her face. Jimin’s classmate Yoongi was nowhere to be seen. He had had a higher position with the Dark Lord than Jimin had and had stopped attending classes after Christmas. Jimin had to wonder however, if the reason Yoongi was not at Hogwarts was because the Mins had let the Golden Trio escape, and the Dark Lord had wanted to exact his wrath and displeasure on them.

Before Jimin could clear his throat to reveal his presence, Cho Sanghee entered the room in a furious flurry of billowing dark robes. She looked gaunter and more maniacal than ever, causing Jimin to take a step back. He quickly uttered a prayer begging the heavens that Sanghee was not the one who would be telling him why he was at the manor, but luck was not on his side.

With a crazed screeching laugh that raised the hairs on Jimin’s neck and instantly put him on guard, Sanghee crooked a long filthy fingernail at Jimin, gesturing at him to come closer. Stifling a shudder, he obliged her, stopping well over five feet away. “The Dark Lord wants you to take of a delivery for him little Park.”

Jimin clenched his teeth in response to the address but did not retaliate, knowing better than to antagonize the Dark Lord’s most devoted servant when he himself held such a low position in the Dark Lord’s eyes. “Of course, Mrs. Cho,” he murmured, “And where is this package I am to deliver?”

“I’m so glad you asked little Park,” cackled Sanghee flicking her unruly black curls away with an indolent sweep of her wand, presumably this was a wand that Sanghee had repurposed, or rather stolen, away from one of the Snatchers after the Golden Trio had absconded with hers. “The Dark Lord wishes for you to look over this package and deliver it to Snape at Hogwarts at the end of the week. It is right behind you, little boy.”

With sinking feelings of apprehension and doom, Jimin turned around and swallowed the scream that was struggling to escape from the confines of his throat. Nagini, the Dark Lord’s massive serpent, was slinking towards him through the air, trapped in a giant magical orb of her owner’s creation, no doubt. Jimin was not terrified of snakes. How could he be, as a Slytherin? That being said, there was something unnatural about Nagini that held Jimin back from ever relaxing in her company. The snake had an unignorable intelligence that seemed to be far greater than all the other snakes that Jimin had ever seen. And with the Dark Lord’s ability to converse with his pet in Parseltongue, Jimin had no doubt that Nagini often acted as a spy for him.

He felt trapped within his own skin; this was no ordinary task that was being asked of him. The Dark Lord wished to spy on Jimin and then to spy on the Headmaster. “How is it that the Dark Lord wishes for me to transport Nagini to Headmaster Snape,” Jimin murmured, “I can already imagine the panic on the train platform if I tried to board the Hogwarts’ Express with her in tow.”

A sharp voice cut across the room, “You will not have to deliver Nagini to Severus at Hogwarts,” Yeonsoo bit out acidly, “you merely have to deliver Nagini to his home.” She looked down at the child in her arm with contempt before maneuvering the babe around so that she could use her right hand to write down the Headmaster’s address on a scrap of loose parchment. The question clung to the back of Jimin’s throat, but he bit it down. Whose child was that? Did Yoongi get into even more trouble than Jimin had previously thought?

Jimin walked towards Yeonsoo so that she could easily slip the note into his open palm. After he retrieved it, both sisters walked away from him, leaving him alone in the formal dining room with Nagini. Furrowing his eyebrows as he thought of how to transport her to his home, he decided to just walk out of the manor for now. Nagini had been able to glide through the air of her own volition before, so he hoped that the snake would choose to follow him as he left the room. In times like this, it would have been convenient to have been a Parseltongue, he supposed, but as that was a mark of the noble house of Slytherins, and the Dark Lord was all that remained of the ancient house, he highly doubted that there would ever be more Parseltongues. The thought of someone procreating with the 72-year-old dark wizard made bile rise up in Jimin’s mouth.

Once he had made his way back to the outskirts of the Min property, he finally had the chance to look at the address that was on the now tightly crumpled ball of parchment due to his clenched fist. The Headmaster lived in Spinner’s End, which was unusual as Jimin had never come across the name once in his studies of the magical geography of Great Britain. Deciding to worry about that later, Jimin stood in place with his right arm wrapped tightly around his wand as Nagini slowly glided to a stop right beside him.

“I hope this works,” Jimin muttered to himself, before raising one arm to place his hand flush against the wall of Nagini’s cage before attempting to Apparate the two of them to the edges of his family property in Surrey. Fortunately he was successful in his endeavors, and as he slowly walked up to the front of the mansion, he was trapped within his swirling thoughts as he worried over not only Nagini watching over him, but owling the Headmaster to arrange for a time that he could drop by with Nagini, and most importantly, how to warn you to stay away from Jimin and maybe to escape from England and not come back. He could convince you that he would follow you after graduation, but you had to get away. Now, more than ever, Jimin knew with a sense of deepening doom, that the Dark Lord’s takeover of Britain was almost complete. It would not be long before he attempted to off The Boy Who Lived to end their wretched tango and moved on to extend his control and reach over the entire European continent.

He delegated Nagini to the empty bedroom at the end of the hall from his. The two rooms were both on the west wing of the house but far enough apart that he had a little privacy. But even that was not enough to shake away Jimin’s fears. Sometimes at night while he laid in bed, he thought that he heard the serpent’s heavy slinking body moving down the hall past his bedroom. His fear grew that one day he would happen upon his owl’s carcass or that of Chimmy’s.

…

The one weeklong break from school felt both unendurably long and ephemerally fleeting both at once. He had penned two short missives to both you and the professor but thus far had received no reply from either of you. The unbearable monotony of his days, as Jimin was fearful of Nagini reporting to the Dark Lord about his whereabouts if he ever left the Park mansion, were only punctuated by the meals that Chimmy served to his room (his parents were both off gallivanting across the countryside torturing Muggles or something of that sort so he rarely met them in the formal dining room for meals together), him taking out Nagini to the manor’s extensive gardens to hunt for her meals, and the unending revisions and studying for the NEWTs Jimin was currently preparing for. It seemed catastrophically ridiculous that the NEWT and OWL examinations were still taking place while the entire country as a literal warzone.

Unfortunately for Jimin, you responded to his letter before Jimin could drop off Nagini at the Headmaster’s. With your letter, where you had told him you would meet him near where he had eaten ice cream last time, you had included three chocolate eggs that, were closer to the size of dragon eggs than chicken’s eggs and, had on them messily scribbled icing depicting Firebolts, Bludgers, and Beater’s bats. You were always surprising Jimin with your gifts and generosity. For someone who had never received anything without stipulations, it was a welcome change for Jimin to receive your presents which did not have any strings or conditions attached to them.

Thus, midway through the holiday, Jimin found himself taking his neglected Firebolt out of its case and electing to fly out of the windows framing his bedroom’s walls rather than to come across Nagini or his parents (who would occasionally show up as mysteriously and unexpectedly as ghosts) in the hallways, if he had chosen to leave through the front door.

The brisk breeze was a welcome presence to Jimin, after being stuck indoors for a majority of the week. He swept through the air on his Firebolt, taking sharp dives and turns, whooping spiritedly as he flew by miles above the buildings in the uncongested sky that was wide open and free, aside from a couple of birds that flew by doing their own thing.

He once again stopped at the long open meadow he had Apparated to last time. As this was a Muggle neighborhood, he decided to transfigure his broomstick to the size of a matchstick he could slip into the breast pocket of his light linen shirt before he took off on his walk. He found the ice cream shop much more easily this time around and decided to get a cup with a single spoon of vanilla ice cream for himself. For you, he got a two-scoop cup of peanut butter and berries n creme ice cream. Once he reached the park, he sat again on the same iron wrought bench from last time, placing your cup besides his thigh as he splayed his legs out and took a bite of the rich vanilla ice cream. He was not going to focus on how he was recreating the last time the two of you had spent time together and how he was making slight changes so that this time would be better.

Like clockwork, you once again appeared in front of him. Stifling a wince, he noticed how you looked at least a stone lighter than you had been last time. Your face was sharp with harsh angles and your cheekbones were jutting out making your face lose the soft round planes that it had had previously. The chocolate eggs you had included with your letter had made Jimin hopeful, but now, looking at you and the hard glare you cut across his figure, he realized that he had to make up for more of his mistakes than he had realized.

“Why are you here Jimin?” you bit out caustically, “What was so important for you to say that you could not say it with a letter.” You were surprised with how easily his owl had found you in Austria. Returning to an empty cottage and a letter from your mother that she was running off to Asia to hide, you had been country hopping to places your mother had not been to confuse the Snatchers that were no doubt tracking your every move and attempting them to prevent them from figuring out your final destination, or capturing both you and your mother. You were mad at yourself for being swayed by Jimin’s letter and coming back to England. But in the end, you had decided to meet up with him if only to convince Jimin that you were still living in West Yorkshire and to throw off the Death Eaters from your trail. Casting a casual look around the park, you attempted to quiet the furious beating of your heart, although no one had realized it yet and raised any alarms, you were technically on the run and you felt very unsafe being back within the borders of England.

Jimin stood and placed the now slightly melted ice cream in your hand, the creamy brown, purple, and white colors were already running into each other and muddling the appearance of the dessert. With a bemused furrow of your eyebrows, you curled your hand around the cup and stabbed the plastic spoon through one of the scoops, dipping a spoonful of sweet, warm, ice cream into your mouth. “Perhaps we should have this conversation somewhere that is not as crowded,” Jimin murmured, walking away without pausing to see if you would follow.

He led the two of you to one of the communal fields that the sheep were grazing on before he turned sharply to gaze deeply into your eyes and say without so much as a preamble, “You need to leave England now.”

You stopped dead, choking as the melted ice cream went down the wrong pipe. That was certainly not what you thought he was going to say. You had thought, after the chocolates and notes were long gone and all you had was your regret to accompany you, that Jimin was going to lay into it today and detail all the reasons the two of you could not be together. After all, he had ignored you pretty thoroughly for all of 1998 thus far. You had thought that had meant he had changed his mind. “I beg your pardon Park?”

Jimin frowned when he noticed you using his last name, distancing yourself even further from him. “I am worried about the future Y/N,” he mumbled.

“You want me to leave? Right now?” you asked, seeking for more clarity.

“As soon as possible Y/N. I don’t want you to get hurt. You have to stay safe,” Jimin bit out vehemently.

“And why is that?” you asked, not giving into him so easily. You wanted Jimin to grovel. You were tired of always being the one who felt out of sorts when the two of you were together.

Jimin sighed. His dark brown eyes fluttered shut as he whispered, “I think I am falling in love with you. I don’t even know that I know what love is, and yet, I am convinced that it is the emotion I feel for you. I know we cannot be together, but all the while, I still long for a possibility that would allow for us to be together.”

Your cheeks felt like they were burning as your blood surged into them, making them a mottled red. You had thought you were infatuated with Jimin. Or perhaps, suffering from some type of Stockholm’s syndrome because like it or not, all of you were forced to attend Hogwarts and Jimin, outside of the few Gryffindors you talked to, was the only person who had noticed you and was kind to you, at times. But never had you considered that it might be love, anytime you got close to feeling anything of the sort, you had thought you were getting brainwashed. Not by Jimin per se, but you had thought that Jimin had had an unreasonable power over you when you contrasted him with all the other Purebloods and Slytherins that inhabited Hogwarts. But now that you knew how he felt about you, you were inclined to believe that you had also fallen in love with him. After all, it was being reciprocated, was it not.

Perhaps the reason why you took that step towards Jimin and tiptoed to meet his lips had a lot to do with you being a Gryffindor. After all, a move like that required a lot of courage, it was perhaps misplaced, but all the same it was courage. The male inclined his neck to make the kiss easier for you to lose yourself in, and you felt yourself getting swept away in his full pink lips. Jimin was a marvelous kisser, he met every swipe of your lips with his own thoroughly, even if he was moving at a patient pace. Slowly though, you felt him get bolder, wrapping his muscle corded arms, bulky from playing the Beater position, around your waist and pulling you deeper into his hold. When he bit your bottom lip to trick you into opening it so that he could slip his tongue into the kiss, you got daring as well. You tiptoed even further, pressing into the warm glorious heat emitting from his body, and reached up into his hair to do what you had always longed to do: to slip your hands into the long straight strands of his dark hair and luxuriate in its softness. You fisted his hair in your grip, your nails raking against his scalp, causing a pleased sound of contentment to escape from Jimin, as you tried to kiss him more soundly. When the two of you finally broke apart minutes later, Jimin was running his tongue over his swollen reddened lips as he looked down at you with want and you were leaning against his solid, reassuring frame, pressing your forehead against his chest as you attempted to catch your breath.

“Do you want to go for a ride on my Firebolt?” he asked abruptly.

You raised an eyebrow as you bit back a laugh, “Very forward Mr. Park.”

Jimin flushed crimson, “I actually flew my broom here instead of Apparating. I wanted to experience the freeing feeling of being in the air rather than getting suctioned into nothingness as I reappeared in a different location.” He patted along the front of his pale linen shirt, feeling around for something before he took out a tiny matchstick from the breast pocket triumphantly. Laying it flat on his left hand, he poked at it with his wand, uttering an enlargement spell as the stick grew to be the full-sized Firebolt you had seen only once before.

Quirking an eyebrow at you daringly, Jimin smirked as if to say, “So? What are you waiting for?” Unfortunately, Gryffindors had never been ones to ignore the ribbing of Slytherins and so you found yourself easily sliding behind Jimin as he sat on his broomstick, waiting for you to get comfortable before he kicked off into the afternoon sky.

You sat on the Firebolt with your arms wrapped tightly along Jimin’s waist and your chin resting on his shoulder as he expertly flew the two of you across the long expanse of cloudless British skies. Striving to impress you, Jimin would often take swift turns and break into complicated moves, maneuvering the two of you into various types of dives and even asking you if you thought you could hold onto him tightly enough for him to attempt a Wronski Feint. You had thumped him soundly on his back and told him you would immediately Apparate off the broomstick if he attempted any more dangerous Quidditch formations.

Subdued into submission, Jimin took you two on a relatively peaceful ride as you were left to wonder why he played the position of the Beater on the Slytherin Quidditch team when he was obviously qualified to play one of the positions that required more dexterity like Chaser or Seeker. When you asked Jimin why he had not played as Seeker he laughed and said that the Mins had paid for Yoongi to be given that position and it would never have been so easily relinquished to him. He also had bitterly added, that by the time Sixth year had rolled around, and Yoongi had left the team to work on his plan to have Death Eaters invade Hogwarts, the team had become accustomed to having Jimin be their star Beater who would always give the Gryffindors hell and did not wish for him to change positions.

You clung to him even more tightly after his admission, feeling sorry for Jimin as he was always surrounded by people who would not allow him to truly be himself. You also were a bit surprised at how readily Jimin had admitted Yoongi’s hand in the events that had led to Headmaster Dumbledore’s death. As Jimin felt your tightening grip around his middle, a soft smile graced his face and he slowly declined the Firebolt as he prepared for the descent to your destination. He stopped in an alley besides a row of townhouses that went down the entire length of the street.

Raising an eyebrow as you attempted to fix your windswept hair, you asked, “Jimin where are we?”

With a smile Jimin responded, “Give me a second,” as he searched his pockets for a scrap of parchment and a self-refilling quill. After biting at the nib of the quill to free the ink, Jimin quickly scrawled down an address in his thin spiky handwriting. “Memorize it,” he muttered, “I’m the Secret Keeper.”

You quickly memorized the lines: Park Jimin’s residence is 0613 Amaranthine Street, London. As soon as Jimin had seen you wordlessly mouth the sentence twice over, he set it on fire with a small incendiary spell. As the two of you made your way out of the alley, Jimin took your hand in his and gently pulled you along to the front of the houses. In front of the two of you, you could see 0612 Amaranthine with its beige exterior and 0614 Amaranthine with its gray walls, however, as you visualized the words on the paper that Jimin had written, 0613 began to materialize between the two homes, pushing them out of the way until it stood before you in its shining white and navy glory.

“So, this is where you live,” you muttered, following Jimin up the walk to the front door. As soon as Jimin’s hand touched the door handle, he was able to push it open with ease since the door was opening as though Jimin himself was the key.

“Not yet,” he uttered, looking back at you as he toed off his shoes at the entrance. Apparently Jimin liked to have a no shoes allowed household, which surprised you. You had always thought of him as the severe type of person who was meticulous about everything right down to the clothes that he worn. “It’s the bachelor lodgings my parents got for me for after graduation. But since I’m still splitting my time between my parents and Hogwarts, it’s been empty for months. Apologies in advance if it’s a little dusty.”

“No this is fine,” you answered him, stepping out of your own shoes and walking deeper into the foyer. You liked the welcoming airy style the house was made up in. The pale colors and expansive windows everywhere provided the home with tons of light that made it appear spacious and inviting.

Jimin let you go through the rooms of the house without interruption. He knew you were touring it trying to gain further insight about him but unfortunately, the home did not have a lot to offer. When his mother had asked him for his opinion on the furniture and décor, Jimin had delegated Chimmy to furnishing the place. You seemed to come to the same realization as Jimin after you finally paused your tour in the master bedroom, turning to face him with a wry expression.

“Are you hungry?” Jimin asked, not knowing how to make things move smoothly for the two of you.

While that day in Paris had been amazing, Jimin could not recreate it by being in public with you now. He was certain he was getting watched by the Dark Lord, although he did not know to which extent besides that of Nagini, but he knew he would be safe here at Amaranthine Street. The home had the same level of protection and security that the Park mansion did; it had been historically used as the first-born Park’s bachelor pad until they got married and moved back to the family mansion. Perhaps the two of you could play Wizarding board games or something, Jimin did not fucking know. He had never really dated anyone, choosing to spend most of his time with the opposite sex cozied in broom cupboards or deserted classrooms for heated make out sessions.

With a mocking laugh, you pulled Jimin into you, “I hardly think you brought me to your home when there’s no adults to sit around and eat together Jimin,” you murmured, threading your fingers through his thick black hair and pulling him down for a kiss.

With slight groan, Jimin deepened the kiss, his teeth nipping at your warm plush lower lip as he strove for the dominance that you, as a Gryffindor would not give him so easily. You fought against Jimin’s warring strokes of tongue and lips against your mouth, not wanting to relinquish your control, as he roughly held you up to elongate the length of the kisses. You were sure that without Jimin gripping you, you would have sunk to the floor as you felt strangely boneless.

Deciding to give you a respite and a chance to catch your breath, Jimin moved his lips to trail heated open mouthed kisses along your jaw and throat with firm pressure from his plush lips as he maneuvered the two of you so that you were pressed up against a wall. Your eyes closed at the pleasurable nips and pecks, the warmth from Jimin’s form taking over you as your senses his scent washed over you. The slightly bitter and sharp scent of orange blossoms that was so quintessentially evocative of Jimin filled your lungs as you ran your hands over his muscle corded back. Playing as the Beater had bulked Jimin up; he had enticingly broad shoulders and thick veiny arms that were holding you up while he did not even break a sweat. As your fingers slipped under his linen shirt and fluttered against his back, Jimin stilled. Shaking his head slightly, he accidentally scrunched his nose at you when he attempted to wink, rather, both of his eyes shut close for a second. Fixing his grip on your thighs, he pushed you even higher and tighter against his body as he maneuvered the two of you towards his bed, which fortunately had clean sheets due to Chimmy coming back and maintaining the house weekly.

As you toppled onto the bed with Jimin falling over you, you gasped, your breath getting knocked out of you although Jimin tried his best to keep from crushing your frame with his body. You had been wearing a pair of white jeans shorts and a pale blue baby-doll T-shirt to battle the early heat of the English spring, and Jimin was now taking advantage of your easy to slip off clothes to unbutton your shorts and slip them down your thighs as he caged you underneath him. The shorts hit the hardwood floors with a resounding thud when Jimin tossed them behind the two of you.

You started to blush when you realized that you only had your daisy printed cotton panties and T-shirt, that had already been sliding up your stomach, to shield you from Jimin’s gaze. With a light laugh, Jimin murmured, “Come on Y/L/N, don’t get shy with me now. You wouldn’t want me to tie your hands up so that you wouldn’t cover yourself now, would you?”

You glared at him, his palm was lying comfortably on top of your clothed mound, hardly realizing the overpowering effect he had on you. If Jimin crooked his finger into the juncture between your thighs, he would find the crotch of your panties soaked from your want. “Aren’t you going to take off your clothes Park?” you bit back.

Jimin scoffed, “That’s a little too easy isn’t it?”

Instead, he hooked his forefinger to the ribboned edge of your panties, pulling it almost entirely off your body. At the last moment, he had gotten distracted by your glistening rose petaled folds and had left it dangling from your left foot. He took out his wand to summon a large selection of cushions and pillows for you to prop your ass on. It was weird having your head resting against the bed’s mattress while your ass was elevated to be level with Park Jimin’s mouth. In fact, just now, he was propping your thighs on his shoulders as he moved closer to your heated core, wanting the sopping wetness of your femininity to be flush against his eager mouth.

As his tongue stabbed through your highly responsive cunt, brushing against the nerves that lined the walls of your hypersensitive core, your nipples stiffened against the cups of the built-in bra of your shirt. In frustration, you found yourself pulling off the material entirely to let the cool air in the bedroom wash over your hardened nipples. Jimin paused in his overzealous adoration of your cunt as he stared at you writhing against his cream-colored bedsheets. “Touch yourself, Y/L/N,” he murmured silkily, “Do it Gryffindor, or I won’t let you come.”

Hesitantly, you moved both of your hands up to cup your breasts. They were heavy and swollen from desire, spilling out of your palms. But staring Jimin down, you rolled your nipples in between your thumbs and forefingers, letting out a loud moan when you pinched them both simultaneously. Deciding to reward you, Jimin added a finger into the mix as he continued to eat out your pussy enthusiastically. You had never had anyone pay such fervent attention to your own pleasure before. The Gryffindor boys that you had usually hooked up with were all focused on the main course. And not only that, but they were all the “one and done” type, never checking to make sure that you had come, much less bothering to give you multiple bouts of pleasure.

After Jimin had brought you to your first screaming orgasm, he knocked the pillows out of the way so that you were in a more comfortable position. He made his way up your body with deep punishing kisses that were full of teasing love bites that you knew would leave your body dotted with bruised purplish hickeys and marks afterwards. Having finally reached your face, he threaded his fingers through your messy unbound hair, pulling your mouth tight against his for a kiss with a deep growl. His body pressed against yours, his heavy cock finding your hidden softness easily, pleasurably unyielding against the juncture of your thighs. He rocked his hips as he deepened the kiss, your lips meeting his feverishly as the two of you battled for domination, your tongues intertwining frantically as moans and pants slipped out both of your lips. His hard, persistent erection had your pussy aching for it, and you found yourself rolling your hips and grinding your enlarged and overly sensitive clit against the hard metal zipper of his pants, eager to have the thick throbbing length trapped against the zipper within you.

Deciding to ignore Jimin’s snarky comment about it being too easy from earlier, you found yourself unbuckling and unlooping his leather belt from his pants so that you could free his cock. You could feel Jimin frowning into your kiss, so you distracted him by sucking his tongue in between his lips as you clenched your fingers around his pants and underwear to push it down past his hard ass cheeks so that you could finally free his monstrous cock. You immediately put your hand on it, wrapping your fingers around it, eager to finally feel the warm heat of his long smooth length. His balls felt huge in your palm as you gently tugged on them causing Jimin to let out a loud moan that had him instantly grabbing your hands and quickly pulling them over your head as he held them tightly in the grip of his left hand. With his dominant hand, he pushed off his pants completely, kicking them off the bed. “Don’t test me Y/N. Or I’ll take my pleasure and not even think about giving you yours.”

You protested loudly at that, causing him to let out a husky laugh, “Okay, okay, vixen, I’ll let you have your pleasure and take it too.”

Still holding your arms above your head, he sank to his knees in between your widespread thighs. His dark brown eyes sought yours as he fought to hold your gaze, staring into your eyes resolutely while he gripped his reddened cock in his hand and maneuvered it to the entrance to your pussy. The head of his cock was glistening with precum as it sought the slit that led to your empty womanhood. After a moment, he succeeded, his thick unyielding cock forcing you to surrender as he easily slipped in between your folds. He started slow, with shallow pumps, testing your limit before he increased the force, jackhammering you with hard, vehement thrusts.

Your lovemaking had been a zealous and passionate affair that had left the two of you breathless in rapture besides each other after the tingling aftershocks of your orgasms had subsided. You played absentminded with the cuff of the left arm of Jimin’s long sleeved shirt as he rested beside you with his other arm thrown over his eyes. Unlike him, you were not exhausted after the sex. If anything, you felt even more energized. Your mind was running a mile a minute as thoughts flitted across your head with incredible swiftness. For one, you kept coming across a number of questions that you wanted to ask Jimin now that you two had irrevocably changed the nature of your relationship. Your eyebrows furrowed as you grew stuck on what Jimin’s middle name was. Your eyes flitted across his form, getting caught on the bit of his forearm that had become exposed after you had been fiddling with his shirt’s cuffs. The pale skin was marred by a dark inky tattoo that you could not fully see since the majority of it was still covered by his sleeve.

Growing curious, with a sinking feeling of premonition that you did not understand fully, you reached once more for his left arm. You paused with your hand wrapped around his wrist before you decided to bite the bullet and shove up the arm of his shirt all the way up to his elbow. The tattoo that was revealed had you gasping in horror and backing away from Jimin in a rush. Jimin’s eyes snapped open at the sound and he stared at you in confusion when he saw you backing up against a wall with your shirt clutched to your chest as you attempted to find the rest of your clothes and wand so that you could get out of there.

“Y/N, what’s wrong?” he asked getting up and trying to approach you. Your eyes inadvertently flickered to his left forearm, where his sleeve was still pushed back, as you moved away even more, your eyes sweeping across the room desperately seeking your wand.

“What are you looking at?” Jimin asked, his gaze following yours until he caught sight of his revealed Dark Mark. “Y/N,” he whispered, pleadingly.

“No!” You shouted, when he once again tried to get closer to you. “Stay away from me, you Death Eater! I can’t believe I trusted you,” you cried hysterically, as you finally found your shorts and quickly stuck your legs through them, slipping them on over you, sans underwear.

“Y/N, I can explain,” Jimin begged, holding up his palms in surrender.

“No, you fucking cannot!” You grated, slipping your hand into your shorts’ pocket, finding your wand in the back right pocket. Before Jimin could blink, you let out a roaring scream, belting out “Stupefy!” to stop and Stun him in his tracks. As Jimin quickly went down with a thud, you could not find it within you to be remorseful.

You hurriedly slipped your T-shirt over your head as you ran down the hallway and down the stairs to jam your feet into your shoes. You opened the front door with a resounding bang and thought that Jimin should have just been thankful that you did not have an evil or vindictive bone in your body. It was a good thing that you were not a pyromaniac like Choi Soobin, because in all honesty you had been two seconds away from setting the entire house on fire with the FiendFyre spell, the Lees had taught, with him still in it.

You ran down the street until you made it back to the alley that Jimin had landed his Firebolt in earlier and quickly uttered the Apparition spell once you were fully enmeshed in the shadows of the buildings making up the alley. This time you would be running away to somewhere that no one could find you, not the Snatchers, nor the Death Eaters, and especially not one Park Jimin, whom you now considered to be dead to you.

…

It took Jimin four hours to wake up from the powerful Stunning spell you had hit him with. He had found himself lying on his back on the hardwood floors of the master bedroom to 0613 Amaranthine Street with a pounding headache and a large bump on the back of his head. Although he was disoriented, the memories from before slowly came back to him and his heart sunk with devastation when he recalled your reaction to the Dark Mark that was marring the length of his left forearm.

He stayed on the floor, with his knees up and tucked under his chin, resentfully suffering through his splitting headache until Chimmy came to him long after night had fallen with a bowl of kimchi fried rice and eggs for dinner. Sullenly, he asked Chimmy to Apparate them back home, not in the mood to fly the massive distance when he still felt so queasy. Once at home, he bitterly walked past the room that housed Nagini behind its door, and rushed towards his own bedroom, in no mood to make conversation. For a second, he was tempted to take his wand to his arm and use it to cut through the mark and destroy it, but something told him that the Dark Mark was more than just a tattoo, that the Dark Lord had somehow bound all his servants to himself, and that his control over them would linger even after the Dark Mark was cleaved. The only thing that brightened Jimin’s mood was the folded letter waiting on the top of his bedsheets. Written in the Headmaster’s spidery script was a missive that told Jimin to bring the giant serpent, that was currently slithering around the Park Mansion, to Spinner’s End tomorrow at noon.

As Jimin got ready for bed later that night, his chest ached with a resigned sense of emptiness. Although he had not exactly come to terms with losing you, he did get the feeling that the end was near. There were no seers or oracles in Jimin’s family; the gift of foresight was not one that was passed down in Jimin’s family, yet he could feel with clarity and conviction that the culmination of the war was coming rapidly. He knew that Kim Namjoon would not be content to remain in hiding for much longer, and that when he was ready (and Jimin sensed that that might be soon if the events that had taken place at the Min Manor were anything to go by), he would come for the Dark— no for Voldemort, and end the wretched limbo that the entire country was stuck in, waiting for the two to finally kill each other.

After breakfast the next day, Jimin found himself Apparating to the address that Yoongi’s mother had written down. As Jimin found himself walking through the riverside town, that was slightly modernized from the time that the city had attempted to gentrify it and then left abandoned, when no one new moved in, and was now broken down and depilated, he found himself wracking his head around the oddities of Apparation. Nagini floated besides him covered by a Disillusionment Charm cutting through the air easily while Jimin had to watch his step on the loosened and upturned pieces of gravel and stone on the cobblestoned street. It had been plaguing his mind all night as he drifted in and out of a fitful sleep, it was strange that wizards could Apparate to locations they had never been in as long as they could imagine the destination with excessively detailed clarity, and Jimin was wondering if the laws of Apparation would still hold true if he attempted to Apparate with a person in mind as his ultimate destination and not a physical location. His musings eventually brought him to the row of houses where the Headmaster lived. The bricks were old and worn down, the iron fences rusty and bent, the board of governors that set the salary for Hogwarts’ instructors were obviously not paying Snape a livable wage.

As Jimin walked up the steps that led him to the front doors of the Headmaster’s home, the disgusting stench from the filthy river went under his nose as a gust of wind carried the smell with it. At his knock, the door opened up a crack, so that Jimin could see a sliver of Professor Snape’s face and soulless black eyes looking back at him. Hidden behind the door, Jimin knew the man was armed with his wand in his hand. With furrowed brows, Snape threw open his front door wide enough so that Jimin and Nagini could pass through.

Expecting this to be a simple drop off, Jimin did not step too deep into the house, lingering at the entry way. As Nagini freely floated through the air in her bulbous entrapment moving deeper into the home, now visible as the professor had removed Jimin’s Disillusionment Charm with a simple sweep of his wand, Snape turned back to Jimin.

“Thank you for the delivery, Park, but your job is now complete,” he murmured. “You should focus on your studies. The NEWTs are coming up. Stop running after the Death Eaters’ coattails, hungry for approval and admiration. Leave the tough jobs for the adults, boy. Enjoy your youth while you can.”

Jimin glared at him, “Focus on my studies? I don’t think good grades will serve us well now Professor, not while the Ministry is under his control. He already had me keeping watch over Yang Hyunsuk. I think my future has already been decided and is far from under my control.”

Snape’s eyes sought Jimin’s, hard inky black ones seeking his warm chocolate brown eyes. Jimin could feel the Headmaster prodding through his mind, invading it. He tried to put up a wall to keep Snape from learning too much, but he was still weak from being Stunned the previous day. Snape’s presence in his mind felt overpowering and unwelcoming but the Headmaster did not linger in it for long, only sharing a thought that could be heard with a booming resonance within the walls of Jimin’s consciousness. You are a fool if you think that the Dark Lord will win, Park. Stop now before you ruin your future irreversibly. He left Jimin’s mind as quickly as he had entered, cutting their shared gaze and walking deeper into his home, following in the path Nagini’s aimless drifting. “Do you wish to stay for lunch?” his voice rang out to Jimin as he walked into another room.

“No thanks, I’m good,” Jimin grunted, still clutching his abused head. Suddenly, why Voldemort had chosen to watch over Snape with Nagini made sense to Jimin. There were larger things that were afoot than Jimin had the privilege of being privy to. It was better, like Snape had said, for him to back off while he still could. He would just ask his parents to plead his case so that he was no longer deeply enmeshed with the goings, comings, and doings of the Death Eaters. “I’ll just be going now,” he called out, exiting the home speedily.

Perhaps he could move to South Korea and find work in the Department of Mysteries in their Ministry of Magic. If he became an Unspeakable, he would never be allowed to leave the country as well and he would be guarded at all times both by the spells that bound Unspeakables from ever revealing confidential information and by the country’s Department of Magical Law Enforcement from ever leaving the country. Although Jimin would never be getting his happy ending with you, he would be damned if he was going to let Voldemort or the Death Eaters rule his life anymore. He would study the Asian magical archives until he found the way to get rid of Voldemort for good, if Namjoon failed to be up to the task.

…

For all its glitz and glamour, America was boring. You came to that realization by your second week in Brownville, Nebraska, a small town that was home to about 500 muggles. Your mother and you had settled in the same large farmhouse that your father had rented out for his new wife and your half-siblings. But even the tension between the two great loves of your father’s life, past and present, did not provide enough diversion from the boring mundaneness that encompassed life at Brownville.

There had been several rules that your parents had both implemented once you had joined them. Amongst them were absolutely no speaking of magic or life in England, no performing of magic, and no use of magical objects. Your pet owl had been moved to live in the barn that took up the back of the property your father had rented, and you were only allowed to visit her with treats in the dark of the night. As it was, you thought your pet was already diverting back to her more undomesticated side as she was preferring the small rodents, she could hunt on the property, to the owl treats you placed out for her.

You were grateful that the adults had given you the large open structure of the attic to be your room, where you would often stay up for most of the day, only coming down for meals, avoiding everyone else in the house. Your half-siblings, who were much younger than you were confused and resentful of the move to Nebraska and blamed you for it although they did not know the details as to why. Your father had never felt the need to tell his Muggle family that once upon a time he had fallen in love with a witch and, with her, had had a daughter who was also a witch. After all, being a Muggle himself, the chances of one of his newer children being able to perform magic were minimal to zero.

As April came to an end and May began, you had resigned yourself to fully living a life as a Muggle and had even considered the benefits of such a lifestyle. For one, the Muggles had increasingly advanced as a society and had come up with inventions that were, in your opinion, just as magical as the things that witches, and wizards could come up with. In fact, you were highly impressed by televisions and telephones. One evening, in between looking through catalogs for different tutoring services you could pay for to acquire a GED, you were trying to set up the black box television set your parents had surprised you with in your attic bedroom. You were struggling with the antenna when you felt a burning sensation the size of a Galleon against your chest. The DA coin you had attached to a chain, to dangle from your neck, was warm to the touch, lightly heating your skin with its summons. Jeon Jungkook, the de facto leader of the group since Kim Namjoon, Jung Hoseok, and Kim Seokjin, the three members of the Golden Trio, had gone on the run, was using it to summon members of Dumbledore’s Army to fight.

Immediately jumping up, you grabbed your wand where it was hidden, tucked inside one of your many pillowcases. Before you could get too excited, you noticed that you were still in your pajamas with a robe hanging off your frame haphazardly and mismatched socks covering your feet. As you hurriedly threw off your clothes to pull a pair of jeans over your legs and a sweater over your pajama shirt, you searched the top of your messy desk to find a scrap of paper you could write on, to let your mother where you had gone. Knowing that there was a chance that your note would fall into the hands of your half-siblings, you were careful to be vague. You wrote quickly with your pen running across the page, blotching the sheet with spots of ink. You wrote: Mother, I had to do it. I had to leave to show the strength and perseverance of Godric’s friends. I’ve gone to meet Hogwarts to do what has to be done. It is my time now to do what you had done 20 years ago. I love you Mother, never forget that.

Blinking back tears, you prepared yourself to Apparate straight into the Hog’s Head pub, as you tried to resign yourself to the idea that there was a chance that you would not be coming out on the other side, alive. But you had lived the entire year as a shade. In all honestly you were a little embarrassed of yourself. Proud, brave Gryffindors did not act like this. It was time for you to stand up for what was right. It was time for you to defend all the Muggleborns and everyone who had been persecuted and treated like vermin as He-Who-Must, no, Voldemort forced his will upon everyone throughout all of Britain.

If you died, you hoped that your mother would be able to sleep at night knowing that she had raised a strong and fearless daughter who defended and protected those who could not fight for themselves. As you hurried through your room, looking for what else you might have needed, your eyes got caught on your Gryffindor House badge tittering on the edge of the nightstand. Grabbing it swiftly, you stabbed it through the fabric of your sweater before raising your wand in front of you and Apparating to Hogsmeade Village.

Once you found yourself in the bar, you were immediately pushed to the side as the large group of people that had congregated tried to squeeze everyone in the small space. As your gaze flickered over the wizards and witches who had all come together to help Namjoon fight Voldemort, you thought you even saw members of the Order of the Phoenix and students who had already graduated in the mix. As you stood there awkwardly and alone, watching Kim Kibum get tackled by Lee Taemin as the two of them started to talk over each other, you thought you heard Kibum yell when Taemin announced that he did not have a wand. Further away, you saw Bang Sihyuk quietly talking with Kang Hyowon and Kwon Dohyeong, who had gone by PDogg and Slow Rabbit on the Goldenwatch broadcasts, about how to get the younger students safely away before the main fighting began. Adora was talking to Shin Donghyuk about how to defend the castle and block off the exits and entrances to the school, waving her wand around to cast a three-dimensional diagram that floated above their heads and changed to depict her plans.

You were so overwhelmed, taking in everything that was happening all around you at once, that you did not notice your best friends Nayeon and Jeongyeon until they both barreled into you, hugging you tightly. The tears threatened to overtake your features once more, but you held it in, knowing that you had to stay strong so that you could fight with a clear head. “I’ve missed you two so much,” you mumbled into their hair.

“We’ve missed you too,” Jeongyeon said, grabbing your hand and squeezing it tightly in hers.

“But it’s okay,” Nayeon declared, “We’re together now. And we’ll fight together too.”

You nodded energetically at that moving towards Mr. Bang who was gesturing you all over to get into orderly groups to go upstairs and exit into the castle, one group at a time. Once you were rushed up the stairs to a room, the likes of which you had never seen before at Hogwarts, since it had been designed by the Room of Requirement, you all were furtively pushed out into the corridors to make your ways down to the Great Hall where everyone was gathering so that Hog’s Head would have enough room for all the wizards and witches that were traveling to Hogwarts to fight.

The Great Hall was looking more haphazard and disorganized than it had looked the night that Azkaban’s prisoner had escaped onto the school’s grounds and the Dementors had been dispatched. All the tables were filled, there were First, Second, and Third Years who had been pulled out of bed in their pajamas sitting only feet away from battle ready, hardened witches and wizards who were all still holding up their wands up in a fighting move. Even the castles ghosts had all congregated at the Hall, looking at Professor Taeyeon who was speaking at the front of the room, on a raised platform where the Professors’ table usually was. Behind her, the other Professors could be seen, Kim Heechul, Eric Nam, Lee Sumni, and Tiffany Young, with the members of the Order standing behind them.

Professor Taeyeon was explaining that the evacuation of the students would be taking place immediately, “If you are of age, you are allowed to stay behind and remain to fight if you desire,” she continued as Nayeon pulled you down to sit next to her at the Gryffindor table.

As you stared at the Deputy Headmistress who was speaking about how the Headmaster had taken a permanent leave of absence, her voice was drowned out by a terrible inhumane voice that rang out through the space, chilling and clear: “I know that you all are preparing to fight. But you must know, your efforts are in vain. It is futile to go against me. You cannot fight me and expect to win. I do not wish to kill you. I respect the institute of Hogwarts greatly, the instructors and what they teach and represent. I do not want to spill any magical blood. I have a great love for our kind.”

Screams had erupted across the Great Hall, as panic-stricken students clung to each other in fear, their fearful gazes darting across the room trying to make sense of where the voice was coming from. Voldemort continued, “Give me Kim Namjoon and no one will get hurt. Give me Kim Namjoon and the school will be left standing and whole. Give me Kim Namjoon and I will reward you for your labor. You have until midnight to give him up, after that I will offer no mercy to a single soul.”

Silence overtook the entire Hall, broken minutes later when Jennie Kim stood up on the Slytherin table and shouted, “He’s right there,” pointing to the entrance to the Great Hall where Namjoon stood next to Yeri. “Get him! Someone quick! Before we all have to die for his actions!”

All at once, there was a rush of sound as people began to push up against the House tables. You stood up with the Gryffindors, reaching for your wand as you all stood to face Jennie face on to defend Namjoon from her. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had stood up with you all, also reaching for their wands, targeting the table that was at the far left of the room who all had students that were stiffly sitting down. You tried to see if Jimin was with his mulish Housemates, but you could not see him anywhere. Now that he had gone back to his natural black hair, it was no longer easy to spot the Head Boy in a crowd.

With an acerbic, tight bite to her words, Professor Taeyeon grated, “Miss Kim cease your foolishness. You will be the first to leave the Hall, if the rest of your House could follow. Ravenclaws, once the Slytherins leave, follow them.”

The tables were slowly vacated, with only the adults who wished to fight remaining behind. To the absolute surprise of no one, the Slytherin table was completely deserted. The Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables however had about half of their Seventh Years still staying seated. However, when it came to the Gryffindor table, everyone was reluctant to leave their place, with even the First and Second Years putting on a brave face as they nervously clutched at their almost brand-new wands. Professor Taeyeon had to abandon her post at the platform to come and deal with her house, shouting, “Huening Kai, Kang Taehyun! Get going! You two absolutely cannot stay!” when the two were reluctant to part with the Chasers of the Gryffindor quidditch team: the Choi’s, Soobin, Yeonjun and Beomgyu.

As Professor Taeyeon took care of the Gryffindors who were leaving, arranging evacuation protocols with the Prefects, Mr. Bang took the stage to order you all to take up post all over the castle. You listened to him with your mind drifting wondering about Jimin. Would he be allowed to leave with the students or would Voldemort force him to return to the castle to fight after midnight when the school inevitably did not give up Namjoon.

…

As you were getting ready to fight, Jimin was getting ready too. He had slipped away in all the ruckus, casting a Disillusionment Charm over his form. He had to find the Headmaster. He did not believe what Professor Taeyeon had said. He needed to find the Professor to know if there was a way for him to get rid of his Dark Mark. He had no idea the magnitude of its power but he knew that if he wanted to make a break from the Death Eaters, it would have to be a clean one. He could not risk being in the fray, getting attacked by both the Light side and Voldemort’s followers who would both be seeing him as the enemy.

He stalked through the halls, walking through the halls determinedly, seeking the Headmaster’s studies where he knew that Professor Snape would be, licking his wounds after his brawl against Professor Taeyeon. Soon, he was in front of the gargoyles that would split to reveal the way to the Headmaster’s rooms. But what would the password be? Surely Snape had changed it after Taeyeon had attacked him to keep her from accessing it. Wracking his brain, Jimin’s memories paused on the portraits of Headmasters, past, cheering him on as he struggled to fight against Snapes attacks on his mind, striving to improve his Occlumency. His focus kept lingering on the portrait of the Albus Dumbledore with the sparkly vivid blue backdrop. “Dumbledore!” Jimin shouted, hardly pausing to feel the full extent of his astonishment before rushing up the stairs, into the circular chamber, where Professor Snape was slumped over his chair like a comic book villain, rubbing the pads of his fingers into his temple.

“Professor!” Jimin blurted, “You have to help me. Please. You’re the only one who can.”

Snape’s gaze flickered to Jimin distractedly, his eyes were glazed and unfocused, “I am a little busy Park. You could not have come at a more inopportune time,” he grated, standing up and clutching at his left arm, which must have been burning as hotly as Jimin’s if not more so.

“Is there a way to get rid of the Mark? Please Professor,” Jimin begged.

For a second, there was the cunning clarity, that Jimin knew Snape to have, taking over his person as his beady dark eyes focused on Jimin. “Come here Park and roll your sleeve up.”

Jimin rushed forward, swiftly shoving up the left sleeve of his school robes to expose the Dark Mark that stood out against Jimin’s pale skin with its black ink to Snape. Wrapping his clammy pale hand around Jimin’s wrist, he pulled Jimin’s arm forward, and with a whispered, “Sectumsempra,” cut a controlled gash over Jimin’s arm, going over the path he was tracing with his wand. The pain was blinding. It lacerated through Jimin’s flesh, cutting right to the bone, creating hemorrhages and causing Jimin’s vision to go white at the blood loss. As it cut through the ink of the Dark Mark, however, with the pain Jimin felt a sense of release as though his link to Voldemort was finally being broken. As quickly as he inflicted the curse on Jimin, Snape muttered a songlike chant, incanting the counter-curse. His wand was tracing the same path it had made earlier, only this time it was in reverse. The blood flow seemed to stutter and stop and then Snape was repeating the counter curse a second time and a third to stitch the flesh back up.

A disgusting mottled patch of flesh took up the entire length of Jimin’s arm, it looked like someone had dipped a sword into acid and ran deep horizontal lines through his skin, with the healed lines standing up in ridges against his arm, but the mark was entirely gone. The pain however lingered. If he was to fight in the war after this, he would have to be careful not to reveal that he was already nursing a wound.

“I can give you Dittany to ease the pain, however it is unlikely that the scar will fade. I had to use a dark spell on a mark that was already created by dark magic. We are just lucky it worked,” muttered Snape, getting up to go to the potions cabinet at the opposite side of the room where he kept his stash of powerful and intricate potions.

As Jimin stood still staring at the long white scars that had the heterogenic patterns of chemical burns, waiting for the Dittany to kick in, Snape rushed to the window on the far side of the chamber. Instantly he flung the two panels of glass open and stood at the sill, peering down eight floors to where the green of the Hogwarts’ lawn was still visible in the dark of the night. Without so much as a pause, he instantly stepped off of it, causing Jimin to yelp, thinking that he had just watched his Headmaster plunge to his death after a suicidal jump. Rushing to the window, Jimin could see in the distance a huge bat-like figure flying through the air, rushing towards the darkness that laid beyond the outer perimeter walls of the school grounds.

However, Jimin could not stay here forever. He had to get out to where the fighting was taking place. He had a job as the Head Boy of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to serve them to the best of his abilities. And that meant, that whether the Lees or Voldemort had intended when they had given him the title, that Jimin had the duties of being a good leader for the students, along with protecting the castle and its inhabitants, and doing anything else that was asked of him. As he made his way back into the fray, he saw Death Eaters fighting with students half their ages, some of their hoods and masks having come off in the heat of the moment.

The corridors were filled with a rainbow of brightly colored bolts as each side hurled defensive spells at each other. The Death Eaters fought with no compunction, having the Unforgivable Curses spill from their lips, with each wave of their wand. Jimin went through the crowd, running swiftly, sending targeted Stunning spells through them, aiming at what could have even been his own parents under those disguises. But suddenly, the air exploded with a deafening blast. The corridor cleaved itself, the walls shattered into a million fragmented pieces and the roof began to cave in. Jimin coughed at the sudden explosion of kicked up dust and plaster. He did his best to get out of the rubble, pitching his arm under the shoulder of a struggling student with a cut on his forehead and a tear in his black school robes. The boy’s red tie looped around his neck, tightening like a noose.

Once they had made it to the edge of the corridor that had not been impacted by the explosive spell, he was finally able to look at the person whose life he had saved. Kim Taehyung stared back at Jimin in confusion, wiping the back of his left hand across his mouth to wipe away some of the blood from a cut lip. As his brows furrowed and his mouth opened with the beginnings of a question painting his lips, a terrible scream from a female could be heard as a gigantic spider, the size of a Volkswagen beetle crawling in through the monstrous new hole in the wall that made the outside of the castle visible.

Sprinting away from each other, the two shot spells over their shoulders at the spider. None of the spells seemed to have an effect, as the spider crawled its way in, however when it was struck by both of their spells at the same time, it flipped in its back, struggling to make itself upright again. Jimin dared to look back into the direction of the hole. He yelled, “It brought its family,” as he sprinted away.

Soon, both students, members of the Order, and Death Eaters were all running, all attacking the spiders with jets of red and green lit spells, as they ran to save themselves. As Jimin reached the end of the hall where the staircases were, he took flight, leaping over the railing of the walkway to the moving stairs that were shifting ten feet below it. As his heart jumped to his throat, as he made himself a vulnerable target flying through the air for both Death Eaters and Hogwartians, he wondered if you were here too, or if you were long gone, hidden wherever it had been that you had fled to, making a new life for yourself away from war and political uprisings. He thought maybe it would be safer for him to fight out in the open on the Hogwarts’ grounds where there were not as much landmarks that could be weaponized to explode or collapse, crushing and hurting everyone in its path with its debris.

As Jimin made his way towards the ground level of the castle, running and leaping from staircase to staircase, He crossed paths with several Death Eaters who would give him a nod of acknowledgment before turning their backs and targeting Jimin’s classmates. Was it unchivalrous of Jimin to attack them when they had their backs turned? Perhaps. But Rome was not built in a day and Jimin could not unteach everything he had been taught. After all, he was not a self-righteous Gryffindor, he was a cunning Slytherin who took the chance when he saw it.

Jimin had finally neared the bottom floor, he took the stairs four at a time as he hurried to get out of such a vulnerable position. The staircase that connected all of the stories of the castles were death traps for not only the people using them, but the ones underneath or nearby them. After direct hits from powerful spells, they were liable to collapse into giant pieces of stone and marble that could crush the crowd below it or plunge the ones on it to a painful death. His mind’s musings came true a moment later when someone screeched “Glisseo!” causing the stairs under his feet to flatten to a smooth ramp, making Jimin who had been rushing down the steps to hurtle down it so quickly, unable to control the momentum his body had gained, that shots of red and green light went over his head, narrowly missing his body by a hairsbreadth.

As Jimin lay at the foot of the staircase, resting his weight on his hands as he struggled to get the feeling back in his legs, the shattering sound of glass being blasted erupted to his left. With a quick glance, Jimin was able to see that the Slytherin hourglass that kept track of their house points had exploded with only part of its bottom half remaining. The tennis ball size emeralds were spilled, the gems rolling around haphazardly, causing everyone to trip and slip over them. Jimin could not help but think of the previous June when the previous Headmaster had died, and the Gryffindor hourglass had gotten shattered in the carnage that the invading Death Eaters had left behind. The magic of Hogwarts worked in mysterious ways, often revealing omens that had grim outcasts. Had Headmaster Snape fallen and died?

With his heart pounding so furiously that he could not hear anything but the rush of blood moving behind his ears, Jimin ran towards the front doors of the castle. Everywhere he looked, there was chaos and destruction. There were enormous spiders climbing the walls freely, their pincers snapping erratically as they looked for victims to envenom and eat. The giants that Voldemort had created alliances with had come now, to play. They were attacking the castle with their monstrous clubs, sending the stone bricks that shaped the castle flying.

As soon as Jimin stepped onto the grounds, an unearthly chill entered his body. The air was frozen around him. His heartbeats slowed and quietened until he could no longer hear them, feeling leaden and immobile. Dementors. Those malevolent wraiths glided through the open sky of the castle, their multitude covering the brightness of the full moon that shown over all of the grounds. Already, the dark morose thoughts began to permeate Jimin’s minds. He was never going to be able to gain penance for his sins. He would never be able to make up for what he had done, and for what he had not done as he stood by and let terrible things happen. Headmaster Snape was most likely dead. There was no way that Kim Namjoon could beat Voldemort. It was futile, it was all futile and perhaps Nagini was the key. But as long as she remained in her enchanted protective cage, there would be no saving for the rest of them. They were all damned and doomed to die in this pointless futile fight. Voldemort would soon discover that Jimin had forsook him and would torture him until he could break into Jimin’s mind with ease and destroy everything that Jimin loved or cared about. And what about you, Y/N, Jimin would never be able to ask for your forgiveness or be given the opportunity to make up for his mistakes. His breath came out in smoky white vaporous streams, he tried to raise his right arm to create his Patronus, but it would not move.

He had resigned himself for the Kiss from the Dementor that was closest to him, and seemed to be targeting him specifically, when a massive silver tiger, soared over his head, joined by its mercurial companions, a silver squirrel and hare. The Dementors scattered, backing away from Jimin, but they still caged him in.

“Come on Park!” came the shout of Jung Hoseok from his right. “I know you can do this. You are easily the most brilliant wizard in our Year, excluding Namjoon.”

“Just think of a happy thought,” murmured Jeon Jungkook, coming over to Jimin’s left. “Come on, I know you’re not as bad as everyone paints you out to be. I saw you targeting those Death Eaters back there. You can do it Jimin. We will fight and we will win.”

A happy thought? A memory, uninvited, came rushing forward.

“Are you able to cast a corporeal Patronus?”

“I did. Once,” you answered.

Jimin looked momentarily stunned before he was able to collect himself, “In theory, if you have a memory that is so inexplicably happy and bound to your mind that you would never forget it, you could even scare off an army of Dementors with your Patronus.”

The memory of you had a bitter sting to it. Jimin knew that he would never have his happy ending with you; he was undeserving of it. And yet, it was you and the memory of that one magical day in Paris that had the silver stream of magic shooting out of the end of Jimin’s wand, casting a fully corporeal swan to join the others. As the four Patronuses glided through the air, protecting their owners. The dementors finally dispersed, fracturing away from each other.

Jimin turned back to his classmates, people he had barely spoken to over the past seven years. “Thank you for saving my life,” he muttered gruffly.

“Yeah well,” said Kim Taehyung casting an unimpressed glance at Jimin, “An eye for an eye and all that. But I’m not convinced, Park. So, don’t expect me to save your life again.”

…

The fighting had continued for hours. Voldemort’s voice had come once again, bodiless and macabre, thundering across the space. An unwelcome and unnerving sound that licked the ears of everyone, making them shudder, as it spread the news that he would be giving them an hour to dispose of their dead and to heal their injured before he would be entering the fray and fighting himself, killing everyone in his path until he got Kim Namjoon.

You had been patching up Kim Seokjin’s arm with bandages. There was only so much your healing spell could do and the school Healer, Madame Shin Suran, was being stretched thin, having already enlisted a group of students to help her take care of the wounded. The healing and rejuvenating potions had long run low, even after Professor Heechul had added to the infirmary’s supply. That had been when it had happened.  

The Death Eaters were lining the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Accompanying them at their backs were the Dementors and giants. They walked with Voldemort in the middle, it was the first time that you had ever seen the terrible evil that he was. The sight that met your eyes was far worse than you could have ever dreamt of him to look like. He made a tall figure in his voluminous dark robes that revealed a rail thin figure as he cut through the lawn, sweeping forward. He could have been seven feet tall and was entirely deserving of his boogeyman status with his bone pale skin and demon red eyes, the glint of which you could still make out 20 yards away. As he neared, you were able to see that he was completely hairless, with not a strand on his scalp or even his brows. The hairlessness and slits of his nostrils made him look terribly similar to a frightening serpent.

When Voldemort had crossed to be what he deemed was sufficient amount away, he stepped to the side, revealing the school’s groundskeeper Hagrid to be holding a bundled figure in his arms. Your heart stopped as your eyes cut on the tear tracks that had been left on Hagrid’s cheeks. You had the terrible feeling that it was Namjoon in his arms.

“NO!” bellowed Taeyeon letting out an unearthly cry of anguish, “NAMJOON.”

“Namjoon!” you heard the shouts of Mr. Bang and Mr. Kang, who you knew were like fathers to Namjoon join in. Hoseok was being restrained by Seokjin and Taehyung, yelling desperately for the male he considered to be as good as a blood brother to him. You could even feel tears streaming down your own face. With Namjoon dead, all hope seemed to be lost.

“SILENCE!” bellowed Voldemort. “The Boy Who Lived is finally dead. And at my hands. Hagrid, why don’t you put the boy where he belongs, at my feet.”

Hagrid placed Namjoon’s crumpled form on the ground. He looked so broken and small that bile was rising up in your throat. You had to swallow it down as you bitterly sniffed at the injustice.

“Do you see this?” Voldemort asked, circling Namjoon’s body, prodding it with the toe of his shoe and a maniacal smile painting his face. “Do you finally understand, you deluded fools? He was never anything more than a boy who counted on others to sacrifice themselves for him! But he, himself, never had any skills or strength. No, that is why I was so easily able to kill him with a simple snap of my wand.”

“You’re lying! He beat you!” Seokjin yelled, grabbing his bandaged shoulder with a wince as he talked back to perhaps one of the most vile and deadly wizards in existence. However, Seokjin’s retort was able to do the job. The Silencing Charm Voldemort had casted over the castle’s inhabitants broke and they were able to shout and protest once more.

Voldemort once again hit them with a Silencing Charm, this one more powerful than the last. His voice got even louder, “Kim Namjoon was killed while he tried to escape the grounds like the coward that he is, leaving the rest of you to die for him. He was killed while his self-preserving ass tried to flee for safety…”

Voldemort’s voice trailed off as a figure burst out from the line of Hogwartians, charging towards him. It was poor Jeon Jungkook who had idolized Kim Namjoon and seen him as his best friend. None of the other Gryffindors had thought to restrain him as well. With a laugh and a sweep of his wand, Voldemort easily disarmed Jungkook. “Ah, young Jeon Jungkook. How poorly misguided you are. Why do you defend that dirty Half-Blood whose blood is tinged with the filth that comes from his Mudblood mother? You are a Pureblood yourself, young man. We could do with your kind, Jeon. Brave, spirited purebloods.”

“I would never join the Death Eaters,” Jungkook bit out caustically, “Dumbledore’s Army forever!” His call was meet by shouts from the crowd, including yours, who Voldemort seemed unable to control with his Silencing Charms.

Angered, Voldemort turned to Jungkook, “If that is how you want to play things, young man. We will do it your way.” With a powerful wave of his wand, Voldemort incanted a nonverbal summoning spell. A deformed brown bundle swept through the air, falling onto his outstretched arm. It was the Sorting Hat, “There will be no more Sorting at Hogwarts. You all will be united under one House: the noblest one of them all, the House of my ancestor Salazar Slytherin.”

He then pointed his wand at Jungkook, instantly immobilizing him in a rigid, upright position, “Jungkook here will show you all what happens when you attempt to go against Lord Voldemort.” The hat was shoved onto Jungkook’s head forcibly with another snap of his wand, and then with a third flick, Voldemort had caused the Sorting Hat to burst into flames while still atop Jungkook’s head.

Just then, there was a disruption from the Forbidden Forest when two giants seemed to be attacking each other. All at once, commotion reigned and pandemonium struck. The giants laid into each other, hitting each other with powerful punches and kicks that shook the ground with so much force it felt like unnatural earthquakes were occurring. The castle’s protectors were no longer held by the power of Voldemort’s spells and both sides rushed towards each other. Voldemort had lost his grip on the situation and now everyone was attacking each other.

From the sidelines, Jimin had been watching impartially, but when Voldemort’s focus was no longer on Jungkook, he rushed forward. It felt like he was the only who saw Jungkook break free from the Body-Bind Curse that had been placed on him. The enflamed Sorting Hat fell off his head as he shifted, falling with its pointed tip facing downwards, and Jimin was able to watch as Jungkook thrusted his arm into the hat pulling from within its depths the glinting ruby encrusted handle of the Sword of Gryffindor. Jimin rushed forward towards Jungkook, staring at him with panic-stricken widened eyes. Jeon, look at me dammit, he thought as he ran forward. There was still ten yards between them when Jungkook’s eyes met Jimin’s and Jimin hit him with the powerful burst of his own thoughts, Behind you. The snake. Use the sword.

Jungkook swung the sword around purposefully, he caught sight of the snake that was now slithering around freely since Voldemort had thought that Namjoon was dead. With a single powerful stroke, Jungkook brought the sword down, beheading Nagini with one fell swoop. Voldemort let out a shrill unhuman cry at his pet’s death. Charging forward towards Jungkook and Jimin purposefully.

All at once, the two of them were fighting the evilest and most powerful wizard that was alive, struggling to hold their own even in a two on one match. When a killing spell narrowly missed Jungkook, singeing the top of his already static and burnt hair from earlier, a voice bellowed behind them.

“Stop, Voldemort!” shouted Namjoon, who apparently was not dead after all. Jimin did not take the opportunity to check where the voice had come from since Voldemort had not ebbed his assault on the two boys. “It’s me that you want so why don’t you come and finish the job!”

…

At the end of the duel between Kim Namjoon and Lord Voldemort, only one of them remained standing. Fortunately for everyone, that had been Kim Namjoon. As the people of Hogwarts dealt with the aftermath of the battle, rushing to put the remaining Death Eaters who had been alive into custody, Bang Sihuyk had been temporarily instated as the Minister of Magic; apparently Minister Yang had fallen during the battle which Jimin could not feel himself feeling at all torn about.

Jimin’s parents had been amongst the ones who were being rounded up. They had attempted to implicate him along with themselves when Jimin had scoffed and said, “Me, a Death Eater? Hardly, Mother. Why on earth would I have dueled against Voldemort himself then?”

His mother had been shocked into silence while his father had sputtered at his disrespectful tone and how Jimin had had the audacity to call Voldemort by his name. But now, Jimin was wondering throughout the castle looking for someone. He needed to see you, to make sure that you were alright. His new friend Jungkook had assured him that you had returned to Hogwarts to participate in the battle. And according to Jungkook and his friends, the last they had seen of you you had been alive. However, they had all seen you before the second bout of fighting had started. However, Jimin had made his way through all of the fallen bodies, from both sides, that were laid out on the courtyard, both as a type of penance and to make sure that you were not among them. Jimin would remember the faces of all of the dead for the rest of his life, taking care to never be prejudiced or intolerant ever again.

He was finally making his way into the Great Hall, where the separation of the Houses no longer persisted, and everyone was sitting at whatever space was available next to their family members, strangers, or even other magical creatures who did not have a drop of wizarding blood. It was a strange but welcome sight of equality and tolerance. After his rounds about the tables had taken him past Yoongi and his parents who were sitting in a corner all to their own feeling awkward and distant, he finally found you. You were sitting in between two girls and talking to them animatedly.

Clearing his throat nervously, Jimin asked, “Y/N can I talk to you?”

You turned around, your eyebrows almost disappearing into your hairline at your surprise. After debating about it, for what seemed to Jimin had been long interminable moments, you nodded and stood up. The stroll the two of you were on led you eventually to through the castle out towards the Quidditch pitch.

Jimin finally spoke up after the lengthy silent walk. He stopped in his tracks and turned to you, “Y/N, if I could. I would redo everything, from our first meeting. I’m so truly sorry for everything I put you through this entire year. I hope you can feel the depths of my sincerity.”

You stared at him wordlessly. After a moment you parted your lips and said, “I wouldn’t.”

Jimin stared at you in shock.

“Jimin I wouldn’t change a single thing about our history, as painful as some of those moments have been. The moments we shared cannot be undone, the things we said cannot be unsaid. But I understand what you are hinting at. You want us to have a fresh start,” you carefully gauged Jimin’s reaction to your words.

He had been initially panicked when you had started to talk. But now, he bit his lip before saying softly, “Yes please, let us start anew once more, Y/N.”

With a soft smile gracing your lips, you reached out your hand towards him, “Hi, I’m Y/N.”

Jimin met you halfway, his arm stretching forward, and his fingers wrapping your hand in his grip. “Hello, Y/N,” he murmured, “I’m Jimin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License

©OPALJM 2020 ©FITAELITY 2018-2020

[chocolate-witch-cookies-blog]

Interviewing Shadowscapes

Ahhh! So I finally got my first tarot deck, which gives me something to actually blog about, and I am so excited to connect with this beauty. I was in a bookstore and felt this need to go to the witchy section. There she stood proudly on the shelf just waiting for me to take her home. After looking at all the different cards and shuffling the heck out the deck I dove into the first interview. I used @matchatofu 's spread for this. 

Oh boy so here's what I pulled. I was very intimidated when half the spread was reversed considering I vaguely know the upright meanings! This will be a very in-depth reading, mostly for myself, but for those who would like a brief summary please scroll down to the bottom! Okay, let's begin! 

1.) Tell me about yourself: XVIII The Moon

2.) What are your strengths as a deck?: Reversed Nine of Wands

3.) What are your limitations as a deck?: Reversed XIX The Sun

4.) What are you here to teach me?: Ten of Pentacles

5.) How can I best learn and collaborate with you?: Reversed V The Hierophant 

6.) What is the potential outcome of our relationship?: Six of Pentacles

XVII The Moon -

Pulling The Moon first took my breath away. Yes, this is the deck for me, I thought. With this card, the deck assures me of its magic. Even though I am a witch, I can still be a bit skeptical of my own power and intent. She presents herself as mystical and boasts her psychic abilities. She illuminates secrets invisible to the sun blinding my vision. With a heart etched into her left hand and a comical mask in the other, I feel as though she see's love to be funny, ironic almost. A white bird looms overhead signaling a leaning towards peace rather than violence. With her I will step into the mushroom faery ring, trusting only my intuition and her guidance to keep me safe. She demands respect and gratitude for her gifts. 

Reversed Nine of Wands -

Her strength is knowing when it's time to pack up your belongings and leave. When I have done my best and all there is to do is done, she'll let me know. However, this card is not to be taken negatively. Instead, she'll tell me to start a new chapter in my life or when to go a different direction. I personally really like that this is her strength. Sometimes I don't know when to stop digging my heels in because of my stubborn nature. I have a feeling that this will be a nice wake-up call from time to time.

Reversed XIX The Sun -

First of all, let's take a moment to appreciate The Sun and The Moon popping up in one reading. I don't know about you but that seems cool as heck. Anyway, this was very hard for me to decipher. The limits of my deck is The reversed Sun, huh. Quite the head-scratcher. Here is what my noobie brain came up with. She is telling me that following her guidance will not guarantee happiness. She will not let my judgment be clouded by greed and glory. It's a reminder that life is a total gray zone, filled with ups and downs. She cannot give me everything under the sun, only I can do that. It's okay to have a mundane outcome.

Ten of Pentacles -

When I learned the meaning of the oh so magical Ten of Pentacles, I wanted to jump for joy. Of course, then I remembered the lesson of The reversed Sun and settled my ass down. My deck is here to teach me how to soar to unimaginable heights. She knows of my anxieties of not being financially stable and feeling unfulfilled in life. She knows how much hard work, determination, and dedication it will take to reach such a place. Thankfully, she is willing to teach and guide me through this process while always remaining humble. 

Reversed V The Hierophant -

My interpretation of The Hierophant is an all-knowing spiritual figure. The deck would like me to know that, yes, she is wise, but that does not mean to listen only to her. I do not have to follow her advice if I feel it interferes with my desire but to only respect her wisdom. My heart wants what my heart wants and she knows this. It's really funny that she knows this about me. As an Aquarius, I respect authority figures but as soon as I disagree with them my mind automatically says "rebel, rebel, rebel!" I am very happy with how understanding she is of this. 

Six of Pentacles -

The potential outcome of our relationship is everything I ever wanted. It's the opportunity to help myself and others through my abilities and resources. To obtain mutual happiness. 

Summary -

My deck has a very regal attitude. She gives off the presence of a young yet wise queen. She wishes me to be humble in my travels and to be successful in whatever I wish to do. Even though she would like me to reach for the stars, she knows it is important not to be so naive. Not only will she remind me to rub the gold coins out of my eyes, she will also tell me it is okay to start anew. Her knowledge is for me to take into consideration and to never rely solely upon. In the end, our relationship will bear the fruit of mutual happiness and give me the ability to help myself and others. 

Overall this is an incredibly beautiful and symbolic deck. I am so thrilled she chose me to be her reader. I cannot wait to bond even more with her and to gain more knowledge and experience in tarot. 

Also, I am always open to help! If you would like to share your interpretations of the cards I pulled please do!! I would love to hear from you and any feedback you have. :D Thank you!!

Deck Used: Shadowscapes Tarot by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law 

[white-queen-lacus]

The Originals 4x12

My God!! What an episode!! I’ve been missing for few weeks so I haven’t had the chance to comment the previous two episodes of The Originals, but now here I am. I’ve just finished watching 4x12 and, guys... really, this season has the potential of a final season well, I remember that the finale was thought like it was a series finale because the renewal was still uncertain, but the good news is that we now for sure that in the next season we’ll have a teenager Hope.

I want to say just a few things regarding this story: I ABSOLUTELY LOVE SUMMER FONTANA. She is a perfect, brilliant little child with an amazing talent. The way she portrays both Hope and the Hollow is extraordinary. I know that she won’t be in the next season and this makes me really sad because not only she has proven to be the core of the cast and a wonderful little actress, but also this will mean that, unless JP does the Academy spin-off with Hope, Lizzie and Josie as children, the only way we could see her will be by flashbacks. Anyway, there is still an episode left, but I really hope and wish our littlest wolf Summer a brilliant career after this experience! <3

Well, coming back IT, in this episode we have seen how the power of Inadu is beyond every expectation. I have already said that I don’t like her at all. She is PURE EVIL, no more no less. The way she didn’t even blink when Vincent announced her that her own mother had given him the spell to trap her eternally made my spine chill. This is the very first time in both The Vampire Diaries and The Originals that we see a character who is utterly evil. Because more or less all the villains in the show had a background story which explained their actions. Inadu is basically Kai Parker with the Devil’s power. And Kai was a self-admitted psycho who didn’t hesitate to slaughter his whole family, pregnant twin sister, siblings, almost killing her nieces, only because his mind was f?cked up. At least Kai was hilarious... Inadu is not funny. When I read the early scripts about her character, she, as Samir, told Vincent that she was a god. I was curious because after having had the Hell and the Devil in TVD, it seemed to me that in TO we would have had another kind of supernatural beings. Now, I am perfectly fine with the mythology of wolves, because we have finally known how the curse was created, but Inadu is a boring child with an insatiable hunger. She has not a definite goal like the other villains, she wanted to be reborn in the real world and being worshiped. Now, using the body and powers of Hope, who is the strongest witch ever seen, what? I don’t know the sense of her actions. Also, not that she has been saying something more about her motivations... Idk, like “Fine, I want to make my bloodline to pay for the sins of who killed me”, like Cade in TVD... no, she isn’t interested in this, she is madly fine with destroying everything, everyone, being worshiped and satisfying her endless hunger for power. Well, but dearie... what are your motivations?? She is only pure evil and she enjoys it. Well, this makes her a boring character, to me. I don’t know, I was expecting more... that’s why I am not satisfied with her character... and the only thing I want is her to be annihilated once for good, no matter what. 

Also... connected to this: I honestly thought that the Hollow’s existence was somehow related to Vincent’s unborn child, but this was a red herring. Perhaps originally her intention was to use the child to be reborn, but she failed because of Vincent... mh... anyway, Vincent’s character is amazing! I am not a huge fan of him, to be honest, but he is one hell of a witch, guys. The way he pronounces his spells, his posture and gestures... wow! My only regret is that he has never wanted to collaborate with Freya. But one thing I admire about him is his integrity. He is strong-willed and determined to do whatever has to be done in order to protect his city, scheming plans even risking his own life.

Speaking of which, I have absolutely adored seeing the Mikaelsons, Marcel and Sofya working together under Vincent’s orders. They have finally understood that the only way to face this danger is working together.  I am very happy for Sofya and Marcel (yes, the fact that Marcel and Rebekah are fantastic together doesn’t help but Marcel has become wiser and realistic and his words are foreseeing that Rebekah will always choose her family first). I’ve never been a great fan of Sofya, but I think that she and Marcel deserve happiness and they’re truly in love (I’ve never seen Marcel so determined *only for Davina* and Sofya’s tears when she awoke were really sincere ç_ç). Let’s pray this to be not a death flag... ç_ç JP, this is for you:

BTW, let’s talk about a story... WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO HAYLIJAH?????? Ok, I’ve read many Klayley comments happy with what happened to them, but guys... mh... I dare say to wait for another episode before talking. MN once said that Elijah and Hayley are crossed lovers (I’ve always said that they are the Yume of TO) and they would have been through many difficulties in this season but he never said that they aren’t one for each other. I’ve always liked thaet fact that both Klaus and Hayley share a very good relationship and go along well, but they are more very good friends. I can’t see tension between them, but more a mutual, silent understanding. Is this love? Perhaps it is a form of love, but we have seen Klaus in love and it was with Camille. Now, I’ve been Klaroline since season 2 of TVD, but Klamille was love. On Hayley’s side, she admitted that Jackson would have been better, nor Klaus. In her mind, she saw Jackson, not Klaus. But apart from this, Hayley said that she is not scared of Elijah, because she knew his nature, his impulses, she knew his dark nature and she loved him because/despite this. This is a very important fact to consider, because Hayley has never refused this side of Elijah. She knew what he was, she had always known. But seeing and feeling herself his true nature is another fact. She is not scared for herself, she is scared because she doesn’t want her daughter to feel that being in love with a monster capable of doing inenarrable atrocities is normal. To be honest, this sounds quite odd, especially when everybody in the Mikaelson family is that kind of person, and the fact that Klaus talked to Hope with his heart on his hand about his past is indicative of how Hayley hasn’t realized how strong her daughter is and how Elijah loves both.  Speaking of this... ç____ç My heart hurt so much when I saw Elijah’s attempts to talk to Hayley... and I really appreciated that both Klaus and Rebekah tried to persuade Hayley of his goodness. Because Elijah is good. And no matter what, if the situation requires him to step back, he is ready to do it, in order to let Hayley and Hope be happy. His discourse to Klaus about taking Hope and Hayley and going away from NoLa... ç___ç I wonder how and what will happen.... I have the feeling that the spell will require more than the end of Always and Forever... perhaps it will erase the memory of everybody? This is the only way I can imagine Hayley and Klaus let their daughter go to Mystic Falls and the four of them (hello Kol, I am happy with your happy ending but.. -_________-”) to forget who they are (in terms of being relatives)? OMG.

Anyway... final part: “Before you were born, I was a very different creature. I was cruel and I would revel in the terror which I inspired in others. But Hope, from the moment I saw you, I wanted nothing more than to be worthy of being your father. But I’m afraid, Hope, I am afraid without you I’ll return to the darkness. So I need you. I need you to fight”. This is Klaus Mikaelson and Hope is his heart and soul. I can’t say how much I was happy to hear these words... I bet that Camille would be proud of him. And I am quite sure that these words will help Hope (who seems totally lost in Inadu now) to re-awake and re-taking control of her body, mind and soul. Because she is connected to her parents and to the undying and infinite love that they have for her. ç_ç<3 

Let’s wait for the final episode!! >__<

[sherrydramsey]

Author Interview – A. L. Butcher (Eclectica Bundle) http://bit.ly/2GAF8vK

Hi everyone, we’re back with some new interviews this week! Today I’m chatting with Eclectica Bundle author (and curator!), A. L. (Alex) Butcher.

Sherry: Hi Alex, and thanks for stopping by for a chat! To begin, would you tell us a little about the story/book you have in the current bundle?

A. L.: “Tears and Crimson Velvet” is a short historical fiction based on characters from Phantom of the Opera; set in 19th century France the story follows Madam Giry and Erik (the phantom). She first meets him when he is a performer forced to sing and humiliate himself for the paying public in a travelling fair. They then meet again later, and Erik is in a desperate situation. Giry is the first person to show the confused and disfigured young man kindness, and he never forgets it. This is her story, and their story.

Sherry: That sounds like a fascinating exploration. Do you remember what sparked the idea for this story? What was it?

A. L.: I’ve been a Phantom fan since I was 11. My mother took me to see the stage show in London and I was enchanted. The original book, by Gaston Leroux is a masterpiece of tragic horror/mystery. There are dozens of adaptations of the story – some better than others. Madam Giry is an important character in a few, but a rather comical figure in the Leroux original. I wondered what if – what if she had met Erik before? What was she like as a young woman? What made her the lonely widow we meet? That was the basis of the story. I also have another ‘Legacy of the Mask’ Tale featuring Raoul De Chagny set twelve years after the events at the opera house. It’s sad, haunting and lyrical.

Sherry: I love how you’ve spun so much from this one theme. :) Now, imagine you’ve been kidnapped or trapped by a natural disaster. Which of your own characters (from any work) would you want to rescue you? Why?

A. L.: My Archmage Lord Archos. He’s a powerful sorcerer, and handy to have around in a crisis.

Sherry: Yes, I expect he would be! Why do you write short fiction? Love, necessity, marketability, or something else?

A. L.: I write novels, poetry and short fiction. It depends on the stories wanting to be told. Some start as shorts and grow and some reach their peak as shorts. I like reading short stories, and they are fun to write, but in many ways more challenging than a novel. The author only has a short word count to introduce characters, build or describe the world, and get the adventure done.

Sherry: Do you belong to any writer’s groups or communities? Do you think these types of social interactions are important for writers?

A. L.: Lots! The indie author community is, for the most part, supportive and welcoming. Every author is different, and his or her work is different and many of us don’t have a broad skillset. There are some great writers out their who know nothing about marketing, or networking, for example. Or have the talent but not necessarily the technical skills. Communities and groups can offer support, ideas and teach a new (and experienced) writer some of the skills he or she doesn’t have. Networking is really important – you might have written a great book but if no one knows it’s there then no one will buy it. You may not know the proper genre, or key words, or how to source or make a suitable cover. You may not know that a particular group of readers is really keen on this genre or that.

I’ve made tons of friends, not just people I follow on FB. People I chat to, we share ideas and likes and dislikes, we compare sob stories and successes and we support it other.

Sherry: I have to say I love the collaborative idea behing BundleRabbit and these bundles, and the chance to meet and interact with other writers, as we’re doing now.

Have you had to deal with bad reviews? How do you manage them?

A. L.: Yes. I’d say most writers have at least one bad review. It happens. At the time I was upset – but now I am not that bothered. I have good reviews as well. Not everyone likes my work – and that is fine. I don’t like every book I read either. I may not necessarily agree with what a reviewer says or thinks but arguing over it is NOT going to help, if anything it will make things worse. It happens. Move on.

Sherry: Agreed. Do you think there were early influences as a reader that have guided the stories you create as a writer? What were they?

A. L.: Oh yes. I loved to read, and still do. My father and grandmother would make up stories to tell us, and I think that was a huge influence.

I think CS Lewis – Chronicles of Narnia helped to fuel my love of fantasy, and the classics such as Dracula, Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights gave me the darkness of my own books. Not to mention Phantom – that has been a huge influence on my life – not least a ten-year career working in theatre after I worked on that tour.

Reading to children and story telling is so important. Kids have a vivid imagination and it is great if they are allowed to indulge that.

Sherry: Tell us about your other works, projects, publications, and what’s on the horizon next. This is the shameless self-promotion portion of the interview. ;)

A. L.: Let me see: I have the Light Beyond the Storm Chronicles series (currently three novels and working on a fourth.) These are fantasy/fantasy romance with a touch of erotica (i.e. sexy scenes), they are dark – elves are slaves, and magic is illegal so my female lead who is an elven sorceress is in big trouble. Elves have no rights, women have few rights, mages have no rights. The land of Erana is run under martial law by the feared Order of Witch-Hunters and my gang have to avoid their machinations and heavies, whilst trying to bring some good – albeit beyond the law. It’s a dark world.

I also have several short stories set in Erana – the Tales of Erana series; a collection of short family-friendly fantasy stories; a book of poetry, two Legacy of the Mask Tales, and historical fantasy novellas in Heroika: Dragon Eaters and Lovers in Hell from Perseid Press.

I curate bundles too – so I have work in half a dozen bundles and curator only for a few more.

What is next? I am working on a story for Perseid Press, book 4 of the Chronicles and several short stories.

Sherry: Thanks so much for chatting, Alex! I look forward to reading more of your stories!

British-born A. L. Butcher is an avid reader and creator of worlds, a poet, and a dreamer, a lover of science, natural history, history, and monkeys. Her prose has been described as ‘dark and gritty’ and her poetry as ‘evocative’.  She writes with a sure and sometimes erotic sensibility of things that might have been, never were, but could be.

Alex is the author of the Light Beyond the Storm Chronicles and the Tales of Erana lyrical fantasy series. She also has several short stories in the fantasy, fantasy romance genres with occasional forays into gothic style horror, including the Legacy of the Mask series. With a background in politics, classical studies, ancient history and myth, her affinities bring an eclectic and unique flavour in her work, mixing reality and dream in alchemical proportions that bring her characters and worlds to life.

She also curates for a number of speculative fiction themed book bundles on BundleRabbit.

Her short novella Outside the Walls, co-written with Diana L. Wicker received a Chill with a Book Reader’s Award in 2017 and The Kitchen Imps won best fantasy for 2018 on NN Light Book Heaven. Alex is also proud to be a writer for Perseid Press where her work features in Heroika: Dragon Eaters; and Lovers in Hell – part of the acclaimed Heroes in Hell series. http://www.theperseidpress.com/

Remember to grab the Eclectica Bundle while you can for stories from all these great authors!

[cursewoodrecap]

The Hunt for the Teal Deer

Due to some changes in our player lineup, I figured our party’s newest member might want a tl;dr of the Campaign So Far without having to read the enormous bricks I put out on a highly irregular basis. HENCEFORTH, A SUMMARY. (Contains spoilers for stuff I haven’t properly recapped yet. I mean...I’m pretty sure this blog is mostly read by the players? But fair warning nonetheless.)

It’s still kind of a brick but here have a couple thousand words instead of fifty billion.

ARC 1: THE WITCH OF OVRUCH

Near the tiny Valdian trading village of Ovruch, four adventurers meet:

1. Kyr Valeria Argent, a paladin of the Order of the Rose, who is here to investigate a Beggar Knight going missing. Silver dragonborn Paladin, Oath of the Crown.

2. Sgt. Clementine Haxan, a former soldier of the Kevan empire turned soldier-of-fortune who is investigating a Beggar Knight going missing. Drow Fighter, Battlemaster.

3. Gral “Joybringer” Omokk’duu, an orc bard who serves Duke Shieldeater, here because he’s trying to recruit translators to help Orc/Valdia relations. Orc Bard, College of Whispers.

4. Shoshana bat Chaya, a local who’s been outcast from her village since a close run-in with the curse that left her with dark powers and a mildly inhuman appearance. Half-elf Sorcerer, Shadow Magic.

The three foreigners interrogate the young witch, who was interrogated yesterday by the Beggar Knight. They realize the Beggar Knight, Ser Balderich, went to investigate the place where Shoshana had her Curse accident. 

They are interrupted by the village being attacked by a group of bandits and wolves, led by a werewolf, who seem to want to capture Shoshana as some kind of Chosen One. They defeat the bandits and head into the woods to find Evil Wolf Guys HQ.

In the spooky dark ravine of Wolf Guys HQ, they find a) the imprisoned Ser Balderich, who they free; b) a shadowy nasty guy who has direwolves, who they beat up; and c) a trail of corpses and some diary fragments from a mysterious huntress who had been one of the evil-wolfguy leaders before she rebelled against them. The letters clearly indicate she had some kind of close relationship to Shoshana before Shit Went Down.

Shoshana is like, “alas, they shall believe I am forever tainted by evil magic and it’s only a matter of time until I turn evil, they’re probably going to execute me” and the rest of the party is like “wtf no we’re not gonna do that. Stop being emo.”

ARC 2: THE MISTS OF HOLZOG

The party heads to the town of Holzog to meet up with Ser Quentin Morozov, a Cursebreaker Knight who’s a friend of Ser Balderich’s. On the way, they meet Flynn and Fiona Fairgold, a dramatic, theatrical knight and his practical, mute sister. They also find out that in Holzog, strange mists come out of the lake every couple of weeks, filled with strange noises and creatures.

Gral recognizes that shit and tells his backstory: Duke Shieldeater’s son, Bullbreaker, led an expedition into the heart of the wood to try to defeat the Curse. Gral was part of Bullbreaker’s party. Strange, warped creatures seemed to appear out of nowhere and attack, and most of the orc battalion vanished into the mists, no bodies ever found. The takeaway: Gral believes that the Curse isn’t random; it’s coordinated and it has leaders and commanders.

Our investigations lead us to a former artists’ colony on an island in the lake. Turns out the artists had been tempted by some strange power to open a portal to a weird space between dimensions. The portal keeps closing and opening, causing the mists. Like idiots, we hurl ourselves into the portal, and find Weird Shit inside. Doors to other dimensions that are different story genres! Weird eyeballs everywhere!

We find out Gral’s old commander Bullbreaker has been lost in one of these other dimensions, and is trying to Samurai Jack his way home.

Most importantly we get some info: The Curse is caused by four entities, who are Prisoners. We’re unsure what imprisons them. We’ve figured out two so far: The Hunt, which is the werewolves and bandits and murder and stuff; and the Key, which is the pursuit of knowledge and the bending of reality. 

Anyway we escape and close the portal. Also we met some mad scientists from Sturmhearst University, which was fun.

ARC 3: THE DEAD OF MORNHEIM

Our Cursebreaker friend hires us to investigate why a squad of elven war veterans seemed to turn to the dark side while fighting the curse in Mornheim, a city which is experiencing a zombie apocalypse. Turns out the squad is Clem’s old unit! Drama!

Mornheim is really Tim Burtony. It used to be a place where undead could not rise, so everybody buried their dead there. And then the Curse happened, and now ALL the dead are rising. Welp, fuck.

We meet up with Lady Aubrey von Mornheim, Ser Balderich’s daughter (there’s family drama there), who gives us the inside scoop on the local lore.

We fight through the catacombs and investigate the old manor house. We find three important things: 1) Lady Aubrey’s mom, who’s haunting the shit out of the place; 2) a SECRET WIZARD LAB with a MYSTERIOUS SPELL SCROLL; and 3) some cultists.

The mysterious spell scroll, which is weirdly druid-y, seems to be a ritual for purifying a water source. The local lore implied that the undead curse began/stems from the source of the local river. HMM.

Meanwhile, there’s cultists, led by...A MEMBER OF CLEM’S OLD UNIT. One who she hates; she accuses him of getting their beloved Captain killed. He’s like “it’s cool we’re gonna bring her back from the dead!!! The Pale King says we will get eternal life if we serve him!!!” and Clem is like “okay that sounds terrible” and stabs him. We kick his wight ass and the ass of another of their squad, who “came back from the dead” but was actually possessed by a dybbuk, a malevolent spirit that takes over corpses and impersonates them.

Seems like this “Pale King” is Prisoner #3, in charge of Undead Shit.

We fight some other cultists and find an aaaancient corpse that indicates some kind of ancient collaboration between the old Aquilian Empire and the Valdians, which is a Fun Lore Mystery.

Clem’s old squad also has an assassination plot going against their former commander, who they hate.

Valeria the paladin really wants to do the spell scroll ritual to protect the town, but we need several rare plants as spell components. We decide to go to Bad Herzfeld, where we hear there’s lots of plants.

ARC 4: THE ROOTS OF BAD HERZFELD

Our concerns going into Bad Herzfeld:

1. We need spell component plants.

2. We know about this evil fungus that infects people and makes them into Evil Fungus Monsters.

3. We hear there’s about to be a huge gathering of trolls. Valdian trolls are generally peaceful, but, like. A fuckton of trolls + evil brain fungus that makes you evil = BAD.

We fight an evil circus, but that’s more of a side quest.

We get to Bad Herzfeld and it’s a jungle out there, folks. We manage to get all our spell components even though we have to fight various angry plantmonsters and hallucinogenic fungi. We also meet a very nice troll who is a Doctor for Trolls, he is one of our favorite NPCs.

We have a brief encounter with one of the reclusive druids who resides in the forest. The druids seem to be fighting the Curse as well, with sporadic guidance from the old gods of the Greatwood, but it turns out they don’t have many more answers than we do.

A former druid, however, has become the spiritual leader of the local farming community. Which is a problem because she has turned it into a cult that infects people with the Evil Fungus Spores. It’s a very “Insiders Good, Outsiders Evil” mindset. They are planning to wait until more trolls show up for the big troll gathering, then infect them all with fungus. This is Prisoner #4, The Growth.

We burn down their temple with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, guarding the temple is a plantmonster that was once Valeria’s beloved mentor, Kyr Marius. We destroy him but it’s tragic.

The trolls are like, “oh evil fungus? Aight we’re out.” Also we met more of those mad science doctors, but botanist ones this time.

ARC 5: PENITENTS SUCK

On the way back to Mornheim we go through the crossroads trade stop of Three Oaks Junction, which has been taken over by Penitent Knights, who are very into inquisition, and self flagellation, and persecuting the hell out of anything that even blinks the wrong way. Sinners must be purged from among the faithful!!! Anyway they’re violent jerks and we free the town. Penitents suck.

ARC 6: THE TROLLSTONES

Back in Mornheim, we go to the source of the River Morn to do our fancy ritual. Turns out there’s an ancient troll-king buried there, who rose as an undead. His demigoddess mother blessed the waters there so that no undead would ever rise. That blessing is gone now, of course. Problem is, there’s ancient Aquilian ruins that indicate the blessing was later used as a Containment Zone for something super evil, and whatever evil thing was there has now escaped. Hella lore, though.

We do our fancy ritual, which doesn’t restore the No Undead blessing but does provide some protection for the citizens. Yaaay!

ARC 6: HOESKA

We jet off to Hoeska Castle, HQ of the Cursebreaker Knights, because we have hella knowledge about how the Curse works now and we should probably, like...let the experts know? Turns out Hoeska Castle is owned by an ancient vampire, who has teamed up with his longtime nemesis - the vampire hunter Ser Brigid Koenig, who is now trying to solve the dang curse and has founded the Cursebreakers. We share our information and also fight a big nasty wolfmonster who’s been eating the knights. There’s a professor from Sturmhearst the Mad Science University, who confides in us that the Dean keeps vanishing and leaving strange otherworldly gifts. Sounds like Key nonsense; we’d better go check it out!

Clem’s player decides to leave the campaign at this point; in-story, Clem has gone to prevent her former unit’s assassination plot while we confront threats closer to home.

~AND THAT’S WHAT YOU MISSED ON THE CURSEWOOD~

[connorrenwick]

Where I Work: Alex Daly

New York City-based Alex Daly has been a driving force behind some of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns over the years, including three books from Standards Manual (here, here, and here), Today clock, TLC’s new album, Neil Young’s audio player, and Joan Didion’s documentary, earning herself the much-deserved nickname, Crowdsourceress, and a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30 class of 2016. She is the founder of Vann Alexandra and DalyPR, which eventually morphed into Daly, a company that was spun from crowdfunding clients looking for guidance post-campaign. Now, Daly brings the knowledge learned from running these massive campaigns and offers PR, events, and crowdfunding consultation services. This month’s Where I Work goes behind the scenes to see the colorful offices where Alex Daly does her best work.

What is your typical work style?

Our company, Daly, just relaunched this year as a modern marketing and PR company that offers publicity, crowdfunding, and events services. Before that, I had founded a company that took a soup-to-nuts approach to launching and managing crowdfunding campaigns for designers worldwide. We were very successful, but it was high stakes, 24/7 work and team members were dropping like flies from burn out. Beyond that, our crowdfunding clients were asking for PR after their campaigns ended. Both factors ultimately forced me to rethink our goals, and I realized it was time to pivot.

When we managed crowdfunding campaigns full-time, it was about keeping up with the daily crises; now, our PR and marketing work is about planning ahead and ideating ongoing stories in a diverse, community-driven, untraditional way. This means that the work / life dynamic is inherently more balanced. It’s important to me that my team comes in and works hard, but can also turn off at the end of the day and live their lives. I’ve literally written this into our company handbook, to make sure this is an ingrained and observed part of our company culture.

Overall, our relaunch has allowed us to begin working with clients in a longer term capacity. It’s been a really exciting shift so far—and we are partnering some of the best creators in the world, like Pentagram, Freitag, Standards Manual, and Doberman. It’s a massive privilege to grow and evolve with them.

Personally, I feel like I am always working, and I like that! I get up early and send emails from home; after work, I have drinks or dinners with writers and potential collaborators. On weekends, I am constantly talking to my boyfriend (and frequent collaborator) about creative ideas or ways to make the company better. I meet with people I admire and try to learn from them (with the goal of working with them, too!). I don’t care for vacations, but enjoy traveling frequently to introduce myself to even more people and projects. Working provides me with motivation and direction. It makes me feel good.

What’s your studio/work environment like?

We worked with my brilliant boyfriend Hamish Smyth’s company, Order, to design our new office. While Order typically does branding jobs, they are beginning to offer interior design services.

Hamish and his excellent designer Nicholas Stover planned out the space to work as a beautiful office and showroom, picking out and arranging every single piece of furniture and all the decor––from the signage on the door to how the posters are positioned against the wall and our lamps are angled on our desks. We are such lucky ducks.

How is your space organized/arranged?

The layout of the space lends itself to exhibiting our client’s creations. Right when you walk in there is a cozy area in front of a towering Vitsoe 606 shelf that is efficiently filled with all types of special objects from our clients: Standards Manual books, a Today clock, Anicorn watches, Keap candles, Freitag bags, AIGA Eye on Design magazines, Greenery NYC plants, AstroReality planets, and Duane King’s Pioneer Plaque replicas.

Behind that is a Saarinen Tulip table for client and team meetings, and on the opposite side is our work area, where we spend most of our days. Hamish painted the back wall to match our branding’s dark gray color, and leaned our favorite posters against that wall.

The space has lots of natural light, and we have filled it with color, which represents Daly. We are an upbeat, sunny bunch, and collaborate with bold, exciting companies.

How long have you been in this space? Where did you work before that?

Only since January! Before that we were in Gowanus, Tribeca, and Greenpoint. We have moved around a lot, but are ready to park for awhile.

If you could change something about your workspace, what would it be?

I love the open office layout. It feels collaborative, and I get lonely quickly otherwise. While we have a cool phone booth tucked next to the kitchen for privacy, it’s still not possible to have private meetings, which is the only thing I would probably change. I wish I had some magic powers to conjure up a meeting room when necessary (*witch emoji*).

Is there an office pet?

No, but we love sharing doggy pics (especially Mr. Bubz!) on Slack constantly.

Do you require music in the background? If so, who are some favorites?

Music is a necessity for me, and we have an awesome teenage engineering OD-11 speaker that does the trick. I am obsessed with NYC rock from the early aughts, so there is a lot of Interpol and TV on the Radio, mixed with stuff like Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, and David Bowie. We are listening to The Strokes right now. Go figure.

How do you record ideas?

Our client and friend Aron Fay is both a wonderful designer and composition notebook obsessive. We kickstarted his elevated version of a composition notebook, comp, and that’s where you can find all my chicken scratch notes.

Do you have an inspiration board? What’s on it right now? 

Our inspiration comes from sitting together at the conference table talking through ideas, or discussing things on Slack. We don’t need a bunch of sticky notes all over the place to make things happen––just sayin’.

What is your creative process and/or creative workflow like? Does it change every project or do you keep it the same?

Last year, I brought on a stellar business consultant, Holly Howard, who was instrumental in helping us restructure and relaunch the business. In addition to putting company culture systems into place, we also created an employee handbook and operations manual. The manual documents everything from what we do from receiving new business inquiries to kicking off a new engagement, where we build a master database that houses all our contacts, agendas, call notes, and more. We have been able to take on many more projects because of this level of organization. There is no other way.

What kind of art/design/objects might you have scattered about the space?

Our Vitsoe 606 shelving houses a lot of our clients’ projects. Next to it, against the wall, we have also hung up a bunch of Freitag bags. We like to showcase work from pals of Daly, too, like our friend Aelfie’s rug and pillows.

Are there tools and/or machinery in your space?

Just a bunch of Macs.

What tool(s) do you most enjoy using in the design process?

Luckily, Order does our design work. They use all the typical design tools—pen and paper, Adobe Suite—and newer tools optimized for digital that are emerging, like Figma.

Let’s talk about how you’re wired. Tell us about your tech arsenal/devices.

I really am not tech savvy. I do love my iPhone 7, and use it for music, podcasts, emails, reading. I love the OD-11 speakers—we have some at home too!

What design software do you use, if any, and for what?

Some of us use Adobe InDesign for proposals and presentations. Other than that most of our work is written. Does Apple Mail count!?

Is there a favorite project/piece you’ve worked on? 

There are too many to pick a favorite, but I am proud of publishing The Crowdsourceress, which was a massive undertaking to accomplish on a tight timeline while also running a company.

Do you feel like you’ve “made it”? What has made you feel like you’ve become successful? At what moment/circumstances? Or what will it take to get there?

I don’t know if I will ever feel like I have “made it”––and that’s what compels me to get up and keep working every single day. I do know that I wouldn’t be here without key people in my life: Hamish, my parents, my business consultant Holly, my team, my clients, and my therapist. It really does take a village.

Tell us about a current project you’re working on. What was the inspiration behind it?

Our clients energize us every day.

We are currently working with a women-operated vanilla company, Heilala, that employs and empowers hundreds of women workers to cultivate the world’s most awarded vanilla, grown on the Vava’u islands of the Kingdom of Tonga. Amazing, right?

We also just began working with Pentagram in New York, which is an absolute dream.

What’s on your desk right now?

Some of our beautiful Daly pens. Otherwise, it’s nice and clean. Having a clean and organized office is incredibly important to me; so at the end of the day, all desks and surfaces are cleared. It makes for a clear head!

Do you have anything in your home that you’ve designed/created?

I am not a “creative,” even though I always wished I was. I compromised this desire by working to bring creators’ ideas to life, and promoting the shit out of them. (I do enjoy writing though! Can you tell?)

It makes sense that I live with a highly creative individual, and I am inspired by how he can sit down and actually make something. When we moved into our new home we had a bunch of empty walls, so he began painting. I am so jealous!

Photos by Julia Hembree.

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