Changbin walked faster – he always had a harder time whenever him and Hyunjin moved at night to prepare a mischief, as he was considerably smaller and every step the 'long-legged' (as Changbin liked to call him) took, equalled to two or three of his own. During the day, that didn't really bother him, as Hyunjin would simply slower his pace and it also made for a great excuse for when they came late to classes; but at night it was a completely different story, because they had to act quick to avoid being caught by Prefects. 

"Could you please slow down!" Changbin angrily hissed at the friend, breaking into a little jog to reach him. "You know I can't keep up with your pace – you're too tall, it's unfair!"

"Oh, how inconvenient" sassed Hyunjin. "Our little ickle baby Changbin has trouble walking. Such a pity!"

"Brat", murmured Changbin, but loud enough for the friend to hear.

"Whatever you may like, sir" cut off Hyunjin. "Now, it's time to act. We should be in the right spot, miscalculations excluded".

"How do we make sure then?" asked Changbin. "I can't see anythin– ouch!"

The smaller guy stumbled on the other's foot, who exclaimed in a low but audible voice: "Pay attention, will you! Oh my gosh, I can't believe it! D'you really wanna get us caught?"

"I wouldn't have fallen, had you kept your filthy Yeti-lenght foot away!" snapped back Changbin.

"Well, what was I supposed to do? Keep walking, when we've already arrived? Be reasonable Binnie!"

Changbin carefully got up, ispecting the surroundings: it did in fact seem like the first-floor corridor they'd checked upon earlier that day, the one students had to walk through to get to History of Magic: walls of very hard and dark rocks, placed in what seemed to be an opulus incertum (he had learnt that in Muggle Studies), quite humid and – most importantly – very, very crowded during mornings.

"Do you have the rope?" asked Hyunjin, making the fried snap back to reality.

"Got it right here" promptly replied the Ravenclaw, handing over the thick rope his mother used to do climbing with.

"Should be perfect" analyzed Hyunjin, carefully placing it on the lower right-sided part of the wall. With one quick, almost unnoticeable wand movement, he secured one end of the rope to the spot perfectly – nothing but the counter-curse would be able to break it.

Changbin did the same thing with the other end – only, he was supposed to secure it on the high part of the left-sided wall (which he knew Hyunjin had left him on purpose, the asshole), so he was forced to use Wingardium Leviosa to lift it.

"Okay, part one – done" he whispered, taking a look at the work they'd done that far. "Now, it should be time for our water ball".

With a smirk, Hyunjin took the ball out of his pocket: he'd had to put it inside a small box so that he would be sure it wouldn't get squeezed.

Water balls, in fact, were a pretty tricky object: even the slightest or smallest squeezing or squishing would cause the small sphere to explode in a never-ending waterfall.

The friends were sure that it would work much better than any alarm for all the living zombies who'd be walking down that corridor to reach Professor Binns' classroom, the following morning.

Water balls were extremely expensive, however, so they still couldn't afford them, as their parents would've got too suspicious if they had suddenly started to ask them large amounts of money (although with time they had got very good at coming up with great excuses for their parents, all to justify their usually costly expenses to buy all the needed products. That had taken its time, though, and they had definitely had their deal of borderline embarassing ones; the funniest one being when Changbin had pretented he needed money to buy presents for his new girlfriend – the only reply the family Owl had brought back had been "Very funny sweetie, very funny indeed. Your father compliments you on your creativity! (a girlfriend!) Say hi to Hyunjinnie from us! Lots of love. Xx", which hadn't been particularly helpful, but had bettered Hyunjin's mood – the boy had just got a T on his Potions essay – considerably).

So, they'd had to find out how they worked on their own: it hadn't been easy, and had taken lots of trips to the Great Lake to avoid flooding the whole Castle at once, but in the end they'd managed to recreate it – and now, it was time to test if their experiments had indeed been succesful.

Another Wingardium Leviosa, and the ball was lifted lightly by Changbin's controlled hand movements. Then, once it was at about halfway alongside the rope, with a simple gluing charm Hyunjin secured it to the stripe: all it would take now was for a student to touch the cord and the sphere would explode immediately!

"One last step" announced the taller one, backing off to be at Changbin's level. "Ready?"

In perfect unison, they lifted their wands and sent two, very powerful disillusionment charms to the structure: a few seconds' work, and it was done.

"I cannot wait to see what will happen!" squeaked Hyunjin, clapping his hands excitedly.

"Yeah, me too" agreed Changbin, a meschivious smile on his face. "Now, our turn to get undercover", he added, because although excited he also didn't want to risk getting caught – not now that the hard part had been completed!

From his other pocket, Hyunjin took out their invisibility cloak: it was not of the best quality (that model usually wore off quite quickly – to afford at least three a year, they had to have their parents send some money their way, which they made it believe like it was being spent on the delicious sweets and chocolates only Honeydukes sold – and that tended to run out pretty quickly."Oh, I offered the sugary quills you just sent to my House-mates and they finished them all! Could you believe it? How inconvenient!"), but is was always better than nothing.

Cloak pressed onto their bodies, they made their way back to the Ravenclaw dormitory – oh, they were really looking forward to the following morning!

It tensed up immediately. Its skin was still tight, the small putty-green pool had not done enough to hydrate it. It felt wrong and uncomfortable.

It stirred once again, its body so crammed inside that little room it scratched the walls. It already had so many wounds, however, that it didn't even notice.

It sensed a water source – although, to be honest, it'd been feeling it for a while; but it was too far, high in one of the turrets, probably in some students dorm, and the orders had been clear: must non attack until it's time, must stay hidden.

But it didn't like being trapped in such an unfitting space, and it could feel the source being nearer this time, not too high, not too well-kept...

Making up its mind, it turned around quickly into the dim-lighted tunnel it'd itself created when during the first week of staying there it'd managed to open a hole big enough in the wall for it to slither through: it had been fun for the thirty minutes it had lasted, but then it'd been caught, and threatened to never cross again. But the Maester was not there now; so, in the meanwhile...

It didn't feel too good, crawling onto normal flooring, but it just didn't care: the source was close, ridiculously close, it was too good of a chance to possibly miss it.

The corridors were empty, which calmed it – it was too afraid it might be noticed, and consequently killed by the Master.

Then, finally, it reached the right corridor. Its little red eyes did non have to focus too hard to spot the source, floating mid air.

Moving always more quickly, it jumped to catch it, but failed – its body fell on the side, bouncing onto a thin strip of cord it hadn't noticed. The string held it back, causing another deep wound to form.

It clenched its eyes hard, trying to ignore the pain – but that was quick to go away, as soon as it noticed what his fall had done: water had already started to pour out of the red sphere, filling the corridors.

It felt nice to be back in water; and the level was already high enough for it to be able to swim again.

With fast, controlled movements it made its way back to its cave, vanishing as if it had never been there in the first place.

~🤍~

Things are starting to get spicy – what have the two idiots done? 😏

stay tuned for the next chapter on monday! we might find out what happens :)

Vic🌙.