Jisung did not feel too good – he'd had a pretty rough night, with many nightmares to keep him company: and while not all were clear, there was one he remembered really well.

He was standing (apparently alone) in a dark room – if he had to take a guess, he would've said it was somewhere at Hogwarts, probably down in the basement.

Then, all of a sudden, a snake had appeared: it was long and narrow, with evil red eyes and a very wide mouth, filled with teeth as long as his thumbs.

Jisung wanted to scream, move, run away; but he just couldn't – some strange force was preventing him from doing anything that wasn't staring (helplessly) at the animal – which was quickly making its way towards the boy.

Then, once it had reached its target, the creature had started to slowly wrap itself around Jisung's legs – again, the boy was unable to move: it felt as if he was almost being forced to witness the snake's act.

Once he'd been trapped completely by the animal's body, the Gryffindor had looked away – he did not want to meet with the snake's hungry gaze: it was then that he noticed its tail, which was starting to shake uncontrollably.

Jisung, completely paralyzed, watched it as it transformed into something completely different – what seemed to be a black wand had appeared, and its holder was starting to take form as well.

A scream broke through the thick air that was filling the basement: It belongs to a woman, thought the boy, judging by how high-pitched the voice was. It was begging for mercy. 

Soon another scream joined – that time, however, it wasn't asking for anything: it simply expressed utter terror.

Jisung felt the blood in his veins freeze. What could possibly cause that pain?

With a quick, sharp movement the black-shadowed wizard sent two neon-green lights towards the screams, which had blended into an agonizing melody.

Silent took over, and Jisung woke up.

The guy rubbed his hands on his eyes: reliving the nightmare had not been his most considerate action, and now he was feeling even more pain than before, almost missing to notice the giant cup of coffee with extra sugar y/n was handing him.

"You really had to pull an all-nighter, uh?" she questioned rhetorically (Jisung was sure she was not mad at him). "We've got two hours with Mrs. Kim now, and y'know she's not going to take any excuse if you mess up".

"Don't remind me please" begged the boy, sipping on his coffee: it felt nice, almost as if energy was being restored in his exhausted body. "I feel like absolute shit. Chan's probably doing much better than I am".

"Wouldn't state stuff so quickly" warned the friend, her gaze fixed on the other end of the table: there was sitting the Head Boy, who – Jisung had to admit – was looking much worse than he was. The bags under the Gryffindor's eyes made such a sharp contrast with his pale skin that in the big picture he looked like a very thin, unnourished child.

Jisung's gaze shifted to Woojin, sitting right opposite the friend (the fact that the two always had meals together had surprised him at first, but he'd soon found out that no rules forbade students to sit wherever they wanted at meal times), force-feeding him a big plate of bacon and eggs.

"Poor thing, he looks awful", commented y/n. "I wonder what happened?"

"Guess we'll never know?" replied Jisung, adding the same questioning tone at the end of his sentence. He then quickly finished his coffee (as y/n was kind enough to remind him that they were late; again) and they were both off for the first lesson of the day – Potions.

The two friends walked so fast they even managed to get there a bit earlier, so they stopped in front of the classroom with all the other students: those two hours were together with the Slytherins, and the silver-and-green uniformed guys were all crammed around one boy – who Jisung recognized as the strange guy Y/n had told him about, Kim Seungmin.

"Your best friend's here", he mockingly murmured to the friend, although he knew perfectly well she'd already noticed him.

"Stop it!" she whispered, gently pushing the friend. "We're not best friends, I only ever got to talk to him once since the start of the year and-"

"Shhhh", suddenly said Jisung, placing his right index on her lips. "I'm trying to listen".
The boy suddenly seemed to be incredibly lively and energetic, for one who had spent the whole night trying to fall asleep and never actually managing to.

Y/n only had to fall silent to catch every single word Seungmin was saying: everyone else seemed to be listening to the story as well (and was participating with great interest), so there was no other chatting than to disturb her.

"So yeah, water basically filled the whole corridor the other Prefect and I were doing the patrolling in, and as soon as she noticed she immediately started to panick – it was quite annoying actually; I mean, she could've at least listened to my directions! But instead no, she went in full blank mode and hit the wall, so she fainted" Seungmin facepalmed, which – although Jisung didn't know the guy well – the Gryffindor imagined was a gesture the Slytherin did pretty often.

"The fuck is going on...?" asked Y/n, utterly puzzled. Jisung simply shook his shoulders, and they both went back to listening to the story.

"Luckily I knew how to swim", was saying Seungmin, "so I caster her a Wingardium Leviosa and started to swim towards the other side of the floor – y'know, where there are the stairs that lead to the second floor. I'd basically reached it when Chan, the Head Boy, came".

A group of Gryffindors jiggled foolishly at the Head Boy's name. Y/n thanked the Great Merlin for having had the luck to have been spared hving them as dormmates.

"He did not know who I was, obviously" explained Seungmin, and by the way he was saying it Jisung could tell he was not hurt by the lack of recognition. "But Yeji did, so in the end we came up with a solution quite quickly-"

"Wait – Yeji?" interrupted a girl from the jiggly group. "What was she doing there?"

"Well, she is a Prefect" replied Seungmin, quite sharply. It was clear he was very fond of the girl. "And she happened to be with Chan – I mean, the third Prefect who was patrolling the first floor with us was not there when it started to get really bad, so he probably had already gone upstairs and informed her-"

"Yes" cut in the girl, "but still, why her? Wasn't she already up to something with your Seeker, the good-looking one?..."

Jisung's heart almost crashed when the words came out of her mouth. It couldn't possibly be true, it had to be a joke, Minho couldn't be dating someone...

He felt Y/n's wrist gripping tightly on his, already prepared to support and comfort him in sight of the worst. The boy felt like he was about go numb at any moment...

"Minho is not dating Yeji!" replied Seungmin, who couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "Ew! She's even older than he is! I can't believe you thought they were!"

Air came back flowing inside Jisung's lungs. He suddenly felt the great urge to hug Seungmin.

"Well, they seemed pretty close..." justified the girl, clearly embarassed.

"Well, they are in the same Quidditch Team, aren't they?" analyzed Y/n, who'd let go of the friend's arm. "This is probably why, duh".

"Anyways", continued Seungmin, "they were both arguing on who should bring the fainted Prefect to the second floor, but couldn't come up with a decision, so in the end I ditched them both and carried her away myself. Then they found the problem and fixed it, I assume, since there was no water left when I came back-"

It seemed like he was about to say something else, but in that moment came the teacher, and they all had to go inside the classroom.

After the usual small-talk, Mrs. Kim finally gave them the instructions, whichthat time consisted in creating a quite difficult Fish-Philter – a liquid potion that made anyone who drank it able to breathe underwater.

Y/n had started to cut the ingredients needed to make the potion, but her head was somewhere else: she wanted to know why what Seungmin had explained had happened, why water had filled the corridors, and, most importantly, who had projected the joke – that to say, if it had been a joke.

Once she'd made up her mind, – the Fish-Philter could wait, but not that; the curiosity was literally eating her up – she got up and walked away from Jisung, and non-chalantly took a seat next to the Slytherin. Seungmin noticed, and his slight head tilt made Jisung worry; but it only lasted less than a second, and the Gryffindor soon was reassured the boy was not going to snap back at the friend, so he got back to work. Jisung was really looking forward to hearing the Prefect's reaction when Y/n would start with her never-ending questions – but the Philter turned out to be much more difficult than expected, though, so he had no choice but to focus solely on its recipe. He was about to find out whether his potion-making skills had failed him or not, when an explosion made him forget about turning the mixing spoon counter-wise.

"Y/N!", screamed Mrs. Kim, running over to the girl's table. The teacher was fuming with anger – everyone knew she hated it when students didn't follow her orders and risked putting the whole class in danger.

Jisung didn't think it'd get worse, but the best was yet to come: after she'd reached the friend station, in fact, Mrs. Kim let out another loud yell – "KIM SEUNGMIN, YOU ALSO?! I WOULD'VE NEVER THOUGHT-"

The poor Prefect was trying his best to explain what had happened – which Jisung didn't blame him for, as he was ready to bet it'd been Y/n to start the whole mess – but the Potions teacher just didn't want to hear it.

"YOU'RE BOTH GETTING DETENTION", she cried again, out of her lungs. "MY OFFICE, THIS AFTERNOON! I'm very disappointed with the both of you".

Neither Y/n nor Seungmin dared to reply, but the look the boy sent to the young Gryffindor was worth more than a thousand words; and was enough for everybody to understand who, indeed, had caused the explosion.

~🤍~
hullooo!
I was thinking & I am going to make this book around thirty/fourty chapters, so it's about time we got started with the drama ;)

Hope you enjoyed today's chapter!

Tell me what you think's going to happen next time👉🏻

Vic🌙.