P: Death Eater!Sunghoon X Fem!Reader (MDNI 18+) PART 1
Warnings: Hogwarts!AU, Obsession, Possessive Behavior, Emotional Manipulation, Minor Jealousy, Psychological Manipulation, Angst, Explicit Content, Corruption, Oral Sex, Fingering, Marking, Dom/Sub Dynamics, Kinda Needy!Sunghoon, Dub-Con, Praise Kink, Degradation, Mind Break.
Wordcount: 17,1k
Synopsis: At Hogwarts, you were golden. He chose darkness and shattered you. Years later, you hesitate to kill him. He kills for you instead. Now you teach at Hogwarts, trying to forget him. But Park Sunghoon never forgot you, now he has decided he won’t lose you twice.
a/n: Welcome to the first part of this series. It occured to me very late that it became too long to be a oneshot, so i had to cut it up. Now this first part is.. almost like an epilogue, but more detailed. So enjoy! REBLOGS AND COMMENTARY IS APPRECIATED!
Your father always called you a handful.
Not cruelly. Never cruelly. It was usually said with a tired sigh and the faintest hint of pride in his eyes, like he couldn’t decide whether to scold you or applaud you.
“You’ll go far,” he’d tell you, hands clasped behind his back as he watched you duel older cousins twice your size. “But that appetite for danger of yours will drag you down if you’re not careful.”
You always brushed him off, always laughed it off.
Because you were extraordinary.
Top marks. Impeccable wand control. A natural duelist. Pure-blooded and well-bred, raised with old magic. Professors at Hogwarts praised your essays, your reflexes, your instincts. You wanted to be an Auror — and you had the discipline to get there. Your grades never slipped. Your ambition was steady, focused, sharp.
But there was that other side of you.
The side that liked testing spells just to see how far they could stretch. The side that found creatures with too many teeth fascinating instead of frightening.
You liked teeth and claws and things that could kill you if you made one wrong move.
You liked danger. And yes, maybe you liked chaos just a little too much.
You were exceptional with hexes — quick, creative, controlled. You knew the difference between harmful and humiliating, and you preferred the latter. There was an art to embarrassment. A craft.
Filch and Mrs. Norris simply happened to be easy canvases.
Their patrol routes were predictable. Their reactions were theatrical. Their paranoia made everything better.
And then there was Peeves.
Peeves adored you.
You were one of the few students who could keep up with him — who could invent chaos instead of merely react to it.
Tonight’s prank had been meticulously planned.
You had enchanted one of the suits of armor near the third-floor corridor — the one Filch always passed during his late-night rounds. A simple trigger charm. Once activated, the armor would screech accusations at him in a booming, dramatic voice while releasing a cloud of bright purple smoke and a cascade of glittering sparks that clung stubbornly to fabric.
Harmless.
Humiliating.
Perfect.
You crouched behind a stone pillar, wand tucked into your sleeve, heart beating with anticipatory delight. Peeves hovered beside you, vibrating with barely contained excitement.
“He’s coming,” Peeves whispered, grinning wide enough to split his face. “Oh, this will be delicious—”
Footsteps echoed.
Measured. Even.
Not the shuffling, irritated stomp of Argus Filch.
But you were too excited to notice.
The suit of armor detonated into sound.
“FIIIIILCH YOU MISERABLE CAT-OBSESSED—”
Purple smoke burst outward in an impressive plume. Sparks rained down like cursed confetti.
And instead of wheezing outrage—
There was a sharp intake of breath. A cough. And a distinctly masculine voice snapping in surprise.
Peeves vanished. Just—gone.
“Coward,” you muttered under your breath, heart plummeting straight into your shoes. You stepped out immediately, because unlike poltergeists, you had dignity.
“I am so sorry — that was not meant for you, I thought you were Filch, I swear I would never—”
The student turned.
Your apology died mid-sentence.
Park Sunghoon.
He stood in the fading smoke like something carved from it — tall, composed, dark hair slightly mussed from the magical blast. Purple glitter clung to the shoulders of his robes and dusted the sleeve near his wrist. The torchlight along the corridor caught in his eyes, sharpening them into something almost metallic.
You had seen him before. Everyone had.
Pure-blooded. Ravenclaw. Top of the year in nearly everything. Brilliant. Ruthless. Quiet in a way that didn’t invite pity but demanded space.
You had seen him across the Great Hall, sitting alone at the Ravenclaw table with a book open. You shared—what? Two classes? Advanced Charms and Ancient Runes. You were almost certain you had never actually heard his voice before.
Not properly. Not directed at you.
And now he was staring at you. Not angry in a loud way. Just… displeased. Assessing.
Your pulse began behaving very unprofessionally.
“I’m sorry,” you repeated, softer now, suddenly hyperaware of the distance between you — or lack thereof.
He blinked once.
“It’s fine,” he said.
Merlin.
You had not been prepared for that, not prepared for how the sound slid down your spine.
You had not expected that voice.
“It was meant for Filch,” you added quickly, because for some reason you felt compelled to defend yourself.
“I gathered,” he replied dryly.
There it was.
A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not amusement. Not quite. Something restrained.
Up close, he was unfair.
Sharp jaw. Dark lashes. Eyes that looked like they held thoughts he would never share, like they held too much thought and too little mercy. There was something composed about him, something restrained — like he was constantly holding something back.
And he was tall.
You had to tilt your head slightly to maintain eye contact, and that realization alone sent your traitorous heart into a frenzy in a way that was deeply inconvenient.
He didn’t fidget. He didn’t brush the glitter off his robe. He didn’t even look embarrassed.
He simply stood there, taking you in like you were the unexpected variable in an equation he hadn’t planned for.
“You’re in Advanced Defensive Theory,” he said.
Not a question.
You blinked. “Yes.”
“You argue with Professor Whitmore.”
“I contribute,” you corrected immediately.
“You interrupt.”
You scoffed softly, folding your arms over your chest like you were in the middle of a casual debate instead of standing inches away from a boy who made your pulse behave irrationally.
“In my book,” you said breezily, “that’s the same thing.”
His eyebrow lifted slightly.
You pushed on, brushing him off with a careless tilt of your head. “If someone is wrong, I correct them. If someone is vague, I clarify. If Professor Whitmore insists on explaining defensive counter-curses like we’re first years, I improve the lecture.”
A faint curl of satisfaction settled in your chest. You were used to winning arguments. Used to people reacting — either with amusement or exasperation.
Sunghoon did neither. He just stared at you.
It wasn’t a blank stare. It wasn’t empty. It was sharp and focused, like he was dissecting your words instead of responding to them. His gaze didn’t flicker away when you shifted your weight. It didn’t falter when you met it head-on.
If anything, it deepened.
“You’re not going to argue back?” you asked lightly, attempting to reclaim some of your usual confidence.
He didn’t answer. He just continued staring.
And Merlin help you, but that was worse. Because it felt like he was waiting for something. Watching for something. As if he already knew how you would react and simply wanted to see it unfold.
Your fingers fidgeted slightly at your side before you forced them still. “Anyway,” you said, shifting gears, “I really am sorry. That wasn’t meant for you.”
Still nothing. Just those dark eyes, steady and unrelenting.
For someone so quiet, he had a presence that was almost suffocating. Not loud. Not overbearing. Just… intense.
It made your skin feel too tight.
“I didn’t expect anyone else to be walking through here,” you added, softer this time.
His gaze flickered — just barely — to the enchanted armor, now standing innocently against the wall as though it hadn’t just screamed obscenities.
Then he looked back at you.
“How did you do it?”
You blinked.
“…What?”
“The trigger,” he clarified calmly. “How did you bind it?”
For a second, you simply stared at him.
That was not the question you expected.
“I—” You faltered, thrown off. “I’m sorry?”
His expression didn’t change. “The suit of armor. You hexed it to respond. How?”
Confusion washed over you, followed quickly by something like surprise.
He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t offended. He was curious.
“You’re asking about the enchantment?” you said slowly.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it unsettled you.
You glanced back at the armor instinctively, as if expecting it to answer for you. “It’s not complicated,” you said after a moment, though your tone lost some of its usual teasing edge. “It’s a layered charm.”
He didn’t interrupt.
You found yourself explaining before you consciously decided to. “I used a modified auditory trigger,” you said, gesturing vaguely with your hand. “The armor only activates when it detects ‘Filch’ spoken within a certain radius.”
“And the smoke?” he asked.
“Basic dispersion charm. Non-toxic. Stains fabric for about an hour, though.” You winced slightly. “I may have overdone the glitter.”
His gaze flicked to his shoulder again. Then back to you.
“You stacked the enchantments,” he observed.
“Yes.”
“In sequence?”
“Of course.”
“You’re not supposed to be able to layer that many minor charms without destabilizing the trigger,” he said evenly.
You blinked at him, surprised despite yourself.
“I stabilized the core,” you replied automatically. “Anchored it to the armor’s existing ward structure.”
His eyes sharpened. “How?”
“Why do you care?” you asked quietly.
“Because it worked.”
It shouldn’t have felt like praise. But it did.
Your pulse skipped.
“I adjusted the matrix,” you admitted after a beat. “There’s a binding symbol carved inside the base. It redirects excess magic back into the object instead of letting it disperse.”
Another stretch of silence.
You expected him to challenge it. To critique it. To tell you it was inefficient. Instead, something shifted in his expression.
Interest.
“You modified the runes yourself,” he said.
“Yes.”
“How long did it take you?”
“Like one minute.”
His gaze lingered on you in a way that made your stomach flip.
“It was just for fun,” you added. “I wasn’t exactly writing a thesis.”
“You shouldn’t waste that on pranks.” There was no condescension in his tone. Just a fact.
Your chin lifted instinctively. “I don’t waste anything.”
His lips twitched almost imperceptibly. “I can see that.” He glanced once more at the armor, then back at you. “Next time,” he said calmly, “tell me before you try something like that.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So I can see it up close.”
You stared at him, thrown off balance in a way you didn’t appreciate. “You want to supervise my rule-breaking?” you asked lightly, trying to regain control of the moment.
“I want to see how your mind works when you’re not being graded.”
That did something to you. Because most people liked you for what you produced. Your scores. Your boldness in class.
But Sunghoon wasn’t impressed by results. He was curious about process.
You tilted your head, studying him the way he’d been studying you.
“You’re strange,” you decided.
A faint flicker of something — almost amusement — passed through his eyes.
“So are you.”
And somehow, that felt like agreement.
After that night, he didn’t disappear back into quiet observation.
He sought you out.
The next time you entered Advanced Defensive Theory, the seat beside you was occupied.
By him.
He didn’t acknowledge it. Didn’t look at you when you sat down.
He never made a spectacle of it. Sunghoon didn’t do spectacle.
He existed beside you like a shadow that chose to stay.
You found yourself looking for him.
In the Great Hall, your eyes would drift to the Ravenclaw table without permission. In the library, you’d pretend not to notice him already seated near the section you favored. In corridors, you’d sense him before you saw him.
By fifth year, people had started noticing how Sunghoon was always there. Always just slightly behind you. Or beside you. Close enough that the space between you felt claimed.
He didn’t touch you often in public. But when he did, it was obvious.
A hand at the small of your back when a corridor grew too crowded. Fingers brushing yours briefly before class began. Standing half a step in front of you when someone he didn’t like tried to linger in conversation.
He never raised his voice. He never made scenes.
He didn’t need to.
People felt the quiet warning in his stare. The calm certainty in the way he said, “She’s busy,” without asking your permission — but somehow knowing you didn’t mind.
And you didn’t.
Because it wasn’t suffocating.
It was grounding.
You liked knowing someone that sharp had chosen you.
The Yule Ball was when everything shifted.
Until then, whatever existed between you and Sunghoon had lived in the spaces between words — in shared glances across classrooms, in late-night study sessions that stretched a little too long, in the way he always seemed to appear at your side without being asked.
But the Yule Ball made things visible, bringing it to the light.
You had agreed to attend with a boy from your house — charming, well-liked, perfectly acceptable. The kind of boy your parents would approve of. The kind that smiled easily and didn’t carry storms behind his eyes.
He’d asked weeks in advance, red-faced but hopeful. You had said yes because it was simple.
Because Sunghoon hadn’t asked.
In fact, he hadn’t said anything at all when invitations began circulating. No jealousy. No claim. Not even curiosity. Just that same unreadable expression he always wore when he was thinking too much.
You told yourself it didn’t matter.
The night of the Yule Ball, the Great Hall was transformed — floating candles suspended beneath an enchanted winter sky, snow drifting lazily along the ceiling, frost-kissed trees lining the walls. Music swelled from the corner where instruments played themselves in elegant harmony. Students glittered in dress robes and jewel-toned gowns, laughter echoing against marble floors.
You felt beautiful. Confident.
Your date was attentive, polite. His hand rested at your waist as you danced, guiding you through the rhythm.
And yet— You felt it.
Across the room. A weight.
Your eyes found him without trying.
Sunghoon stood near one of the ice sculptures, half-shadowed by flickering candlelight. Dark robes tailored perfectly to his tall frame. Hair pushed back just enough to reveal the sharp lines of his face. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t dancing. He was watching.
Not the room though. No he was watching you.
You looked away first.
The music shifted into something slower. Your date’s hand slid lower on your waist — just slightly. Enough to be noticeable. Enough to feel presumptuous.
“You clean up nicely,” he murmured near your ear, breath warm against your skin. His fingers pressed a fraction too firmly against your hip.
You stiffened.
It wasn’t overtly inappropriate. But it wasn’t respectful either.
Across the ballroom, Sunghoon went very still. The kind of stillness that meant calculation.
You barely saw the movement. Just a subtle shift of his wrist. A controlled flick.
Your date’s foot caught on absolutely nothing. He pitched forward, balance vanishing beneath him as though the floor itself had betrayed him. Robes tangled. Shoes scraped uselessly against polished marble.
He went down hard.
A ripple of gasps. Then laughter.
Your date scrambled upright, face burning crimson, muttering something about slick floors.
You excused yourself with an apologetic smile and crossed the ballroom, ignoring curious stares. The music swelled behind you, but it felt distant now.
You found him near the edge of the Hall, partially obscured by the silver branches of an enchanted tree.
“You hexed him,” you said quietly.
“Yes.” No hesitation. No attempt to deny it. “He was inappropriate.”
Your brows lifted. “I could’ve handled it.”
“I know.”
That answer threw you.
You expected defensiveness. A justification. Instead, his voice remained calm.
He stepped closer. Close enough that you felt the warmth radiating from him despite the winter air drifting through the enchanted doors.
“I didn’t want you to,” he said. “He touched you like he thought you owed him something.” The possessiveness wasn’t loud. It was precise.
“And you think I owe you?” you challenged softly, though your voice lacked bite.
His gaze locked onto yours.
“No.” A pause. “I think you’re mine.” The words weren’t playful. They weren’t flirtatious.
Your heart hammered so loudly you were certain he could hear it.
“You don’t get to decide that,” you whispered.
“I already did.”
You should have stepped back. You should have bristled. Instead, warmth flooded your chest. It wasn't like he wasn’t claiming control over you, but like he was claiming commitment to you.
The difference mattered.
He leaned down slowly — giving you time to move if you wanted to.
You didn’t.
When his lips met yours, it wasn’t rushed. It was controlled intensity. Like he was memorizing the feeling.
Your fingers curled into the front of his robes, pulling him closer without thinking, while his hand slid to your lower back, anchoring you there.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.
“You should’ve told me,” he murmured.
“Told you what?”
“That he asked you.”
Your heart skipped.
“You never asked me.”
His jaw tightened slightly. “I don’t compete,” he answered quietly.
You smiled faintly. “That’s arrogant.”
From that night on, there was no ambiguity. You were together. And together, you were formidable. You loved him. Not because he was gentle. But because when he chose something — or someone — he never did it halfway.
You didn’t see the warning signs. You didn’t question the intensity.
You were young and in love.
And completely unaware of how dangerous it would become when the world outside Hogwarts demanded something darker from him.
The change began in the summer before sixth year, subtle and insidious, like ink bleeding slowly across parchment.
You didn’t notice it immediately — how could you, when you were separated by distance and the obligations of separate worlds? Letters had always been your bridge. His used to arrive heavy with detail: sharp observations about Ministry decrees he found illogical, notes on experimental charm variations he’d tested in the quiet of his family estate, even the occasional dry remark about a tedious pure-blood gathering where politics masqueraded as polite conversation. He wrote in that precise, slanted script, filling margins when the page ran out, as if he couldn’t bear to leave anything unsaid.
Then the replies grew shorter.
Not colder, exactly. Still polite. Still him in their careful construction.
I’m well.
Studying.
Family obligations are tedious.
Don’t do anything reckless.
You stared at the sparse lines, turning the parchment over as though more might appear on the reverse. You told yourself it was the pressure of summer — pure-blood families demanded appearances, alliances, endless dinners where every word was weighed like galleons. You knew that life. You lived echoes of it yourself. So you wrote longer letters in response: the Kneazle at your creature assessment internship that nearly took a chunk out of your sleeve, the new hex variation you’d been perfecting (more elegant containment, less backlash), how the days felt longer without him near.
He never acknowledged those parts.
The train ride back to Hogwarts should have felt like returning to solid ground.
The platform at King’s Cross thrummed with familiar chaos — trunks clattering over stone, owls hooting indignantly from cages, students calling greetings across the steam. The scarlet engine huffed impatiently, ready to pull away.
You stepped onto the Hogwarts Express with that old thrill sparking in your chest, scanning the corridor instinctively.
There he was.
Sunghoon stood near the far end, posture rigid, dark robes immaculate. He looked… honed. Leaner, sharper, as though the summer had stripped away anything soft. His features stood out more starkly — high cheekbones, jaw set in quiet tension, dark hair pushed back.
Your heart lurched forward before your feet did.
You wove through the crowd.
“Sunghoon—”
He turned.
For the briefest instant, something flickered in his eyes — relief, perhaps, or recognition so raw it almost hurt to see. Then it disappeared.
“You look well,” he said. The words sounding practiced, like lines from a script he didn’t entirely believe. No smile. No step toward you.
You tried for lightness. “You look like you forgot how to write more than two sentences.”
His gaze flicked down the corridor — scanning faces, checking distance — before returning to you.
“I was busy.”
“With what?”
“Things.”
The train lurched into motion. Compartments filled with chatter. You reached for his hand out of long habit.
He let you take it. But his fingers didn’t curl around yours the way they used to. The grip was there — present, but restrained. Distant. Like he was permitting contact rather than returning it.
You told yourself it was nothing.
The first weeks of sixth year unwinded in small fractures.
He still walked beside you to classes. Still claimed the seat next to yours in shared classes. Still dismantled questions with that same surgical intelligence. But he no longer lingered.
After lessons, he rose quickly. “I have something to handle.”
“With who?” you’d ask, keeping your tone casual.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
The phrase settled between you like a wall, repeated often enough to feel rehearsed.
He stopped the small touches, no idle tracing of your wrist while you read side by side, no hand at the small of your back when corridors grew crowded. He stood near, but the space between felt hollow. Air where warmth used to be.
When another student flirted with you — bold, harmless — he didn’t react. No sharpened stare. No quiet step forward. He simply watched, detached, expression unreadable.
That detachment cut deeper than any flash of jealousy ever had.
One night in the library, the air thick with dust and candle smoke, you couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“You’re distant.”
He didn’t lift his eyes from the page.
“I’m studying.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Silence.
You reached across the table and gently closed the book in his hands.
“Talk to me.”
His jaw flexed, then he looked up at you. His eyes weren’t cold. They were exhausted — shadowed beneath, darker than you remembered, as though sleep had become optional. His shoulders carried perpetual tension, braced for impact.
“You’re overthinking,” he said quietly.
You searched his face for the boy who once told you he didn’t underestimate you.
“Are you pulling away from me?” The question landed heavy.
For a heartbeat, vulnerability cracked through, then it vanished, sealed behind composure.
“No.”
But he didn’t reach for you. Didn’t soften the line of his mouth. Didn’t offer the reassurance you ached for. The absence of those things hurt more than any denial.
You began noticing the edges of something larger.
Whispers among certain pure-blood circles. Quick glances exchanged in corridors. Conversations that broke off when you approached. Sunghoon spent time now with people he once dismissed — sons of old families, names that lingered in the darker corners of wizarding news.
“You’ve made new friends,” you said once, trying to keep it light.
“They’re useful.”
Useful. The word landed like a curse.
You worried. But pride and trust kept you from chasing.
Sunghoon had always been intense. Maybe this was simply… evolution. Family pressure. Sixth-year expectations. The weight of futures already mapped out.
You decided to give him space.
You stopped reaching first. Stopped asking where he disappeared to. Stopped pressing when he drew the line with “It doesn’t concern you.”
You smiled in public. Threw yourself into studies, into Auror training, into anything that filled the hours without requiring you to name the growing silence.
At night, though, alone in your dormitory, the questions returned.
You would lie awake, staring at the ceiling as moonlight spilled through the window, replaying every small shift: the way he flinched — just barely — when your fingers brushed his forearm once; the way he scanned corridors before speaking your name; the gradual cooling of his voice.
Love didn’t vanish overnight, you told yourself. People changed under pressure. Brilliant minds bent strangely under strain.
But distance, once offered, sometimes refused to take root.
You tried. Gods, you tried. In the weeks that followed, you became an expert in finding ways to avoid most interactions. You arrived to class three minutes late so the seat beside him was already taken by someone else—usually a wide-eyed third-year who didn’t know better when you smiled apologetically and claimed the far end of the row. You lingered in the library only until the candles burned to half-height, then packed your things with brisk efficiency before he could suggest walking back together. In the corridors you kept your eyes forward, chin high, laughter a little louder when your friends surrounded you, as if volume alone could fill the hollow space he used to occupy.
You told yourself it was kindness. Space. The gift he seemed to want.
He never thanked you for it. Instead, the opposite began to happen.
At first it was small things, easy to dismiss as coincidence. He appeared at the entrance to the Great Hall just as you were leaving breakfast, falling into step beside you without a word, his shoulder brushing yours once, twice, before you could widen the gap. When you chose a different table in the library—tucked and out of sight—he was already there the next evening, book open to the exact page you needed, as though he’d known your research schedule better than you did.
You tried harder.
You stopped going to the Astronomy Tower at midnight, the place that had once been yours without discussion. You joined a study group for NEWT-level Potions that met three evenings a week in the dungeons—loud, crowded, safe. On the fourth night, you slipped out early, expecting an empty corridor.
But it wasn’t.
He was leaning against the stone wall opposite the dungeon stairs, arms folded, silver prefect badge catching the torchlight like a warning. The same unreadable expression, but something sharper beneath it now. Tension in the line of his jaw. A muscle ticking once, twice.
“You’re avoiding me,” he said.
You paused mid-step, heart lurching against your ribs. “I’m giving you space. You said—”
“I didn’t say disappear.” His answer came faster than usual.
The corridor felt suddenly narrower. Torch flames flickered as though the air had shifted. You swallowed. “I’m not disappearing. I’m… respecting your boundaries.”
His eyes narrowed fractionally—the only crack in the composure. He pushed off the wall in one fluid motion and closed the distance until only a handspan remained between you. Close enough to see the faint shadows under his eyes, the way his lashes cast spidery lines across his cheeks in the low light.
“My boundaries,” he repeated, tasting the word like it was foreign. “Is that what you think this is?”
You lifted your chin. “You flinch when I touch you. You vanish for hours and come back smelling like rain and smoke. What else am I supposed to think?”
For a moment he said nothing. Just looked at you—really looked, the way he used to when the whole world narrowed to just the two of you. Then his hand moved, slow enough that you could have stepped away. His fingers brushed your wrist, then closed around it.
“I don’t want space,” he said. The words were barely above a whisper, but they landed like a spell. “I never asked for space.”
“Then what do you want, Sunghoon?” Your voice cracked on his name despite every effort to keep it steady. “Because you’re pulling away and holding on at the same time and I can’t—I can’t breathe in the middle.”
His thumb traced once over the pulse point at your wrist, feeling the frantic beat there. Something fractured in his expression—brief, almost invisible, but you caught it. The same flicker you’d seen on the train platform the first day back. Relief edged with pain.
“I want you here,” he said. “Even when I can’t… even when I shouldn’t.” His free hand lifted, hesitated, then tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear with a gentleness that contradicted every sharp line of his posture. “I need you close enough that I can still see you. Still know you’re safe. Still—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Still feel like I’m not completely gone.”
You could feel the tremor in his fingers against your skin, the way his breathing had shallowed. This was the boy who never made spectacles, never raised his voice, never admitted weakness—and yet here he was, confessing in a dungeon corridor that smelled of damp stone and old potions, that the distance you’d offered was carving him open.
You should have pulled away. Should have demanded answers. Instead your free hand rose of its own accord and settled against his chest, right over the place where his heart hammered beneath layers of wool and restraint.
“You’re scaring me,” you whispered.
“I know.” His forehead dropped to rest against yours. “I’m scaring myself.” His gaze traced every line of your face as though he were memorizing it again: the arch of your brows, the curve of your mouth. He looked at you like you were the last solid thing in a world that had begun to slip through his fingers.
His hand—the one still wrapped around your wrist—lifted slowly, until his fingertips grazed the edge of your jaw. He tilted your face up the barest fraction, the gesture was so careful it almost hurt.
Then he closed the distance.
His lips brushed yours once—soft, testing, almost a question. When you didn’t pull away, didn’t push away, he pressed again, firmer this time. Still slow. But the restraint was fraying; you could feel it in the tremor that ran through his fingers, in the way his breath hitched against your mouth.
You didn’t kiss him back.
You let him have this—let him pour everything he couldn’t say into the careful press of his lips, the way he lingered at the corner of your mouth as though afraid to demand more. His other hand came to your waist, fingers splaying wide, anchoring you against the cold stone wall at your back without caging you. He kissed you like he was apologizing. Like he was asking permission with every slow slide of his mouth over yours.
And then—he pulled you closer.
One decisive tug, erasing the last sliver of space between your bodies. Your chest pressed flush to his, the hard planes of him meeting the softer give of you, and something inside you simply gave way.
You melted.
The resistance you’d been clinging to dissolved in a rush of heat and want and relief so sharp it bordered on pain. Your lips parted on a soft, involuntary sound, and you kissed him back.
Your arms moved without conscious thought. Up. Around his neck. Fingers sliding into the dark silk of his hair at the nape, threading through the strands he kept so ruthlessly neat. You tugged—just enough—and he groaned.
The sound vibrated against your mouth, low and rough and wrecked. It sent a shiver racing down your spine. His control snapped another fraction; the hand at your waist tightened, the other sliding up to cradle the back of your neck. Long fingers curled around the column of your throat, guiding your head exactly where he wanted it so he could angle deeper.
The kiss turned molten.
His tongue slipped past your lips, slow at first, exploratory, tasting you like he was relearning every inch. Your fingers tightened in his hair, pulling him closer still, and he answered with a low sound that made your knees threaten to buckle.
His free hand began to wander, skimming up your side, thumb brushing the underside of your breast through fabric before continuing, mapping the line of your ribs, the dip of your waist, the sharp edge of your shoulder blade. You arched instinctively into the touch, and he took advantage—pressing you harder against the wall, thigh sliding between yours just enough to make you gasp into his mouth.
Your palms slid down from his hair to the broad span of his shoulders, feeling muscle that hadn’t been quite so defined last year. He’d always been lean, elegant, precise. Now he felt lethal. Like a blade that had finally been sharpened to its full edge.
Another groan rumbled through him when your nails dragged lightly down his back. He retaliated by sucking your bottom lip between his teeth—gentle, then firmer—until you moaned, the sound swallowed by his mouth.
Sunghoon’s mouth left yours only long enough to drag hot, open kisses along your jaw, his teeth grazed the sensitive spot just below your ear and you arched.
You retaliated by sliding your hands under his robes, over the crisp white shirt he always kept buttoned to the throat like armor, his abdomen contracted under your touch, a sharp inhale escaping him when your nails scraped lightly just above the waistband of his trousers. He was breathing unevenly now. You felt the evidence of how much he wanted you pressing insistently against your hip, and the realization sent a fresh wave of heat pooling low in your belly.
His fingers found the first button of your shirt—popped it open with a deft flick. Then the second. Cool air kissed the newly bared skin of your collarbone, your sternum, and he followed it with his mouth—kissing a slow path downward until your head tipped back against the wall with a soft thud. Your shirt hung half-open now, one side slipping off your shoulder with your robe. His hand slid inside, cupping the soft swell of your breast through the thin fabric of your bra, thumb brushing over the peak until it hardened under his touch and you whimpered his name.
“Quiet,” he murmured against your skin, voice wrecked, but the command lacked its usual steel. It sounded more like a plea. “Someone could—”
You cut him off by tugging his shirt free of his trousers and dragging your nails down his sides, harder this time. He bucked against you once—instinctive, helpless—and then his mouth was back on yours, tongues sliding together in a rhythm that matched the frantic press of hips. His free hand dropped to your thigh, hitching your leg up around his waist so he could settle more firmly between them. The friction was devastating. You rocked against him without thinking, chasing the pressure, and he groaned so deeply it felt like it came from the center of his chest.
His belt buckle clinked softly as he shifted—fingers fumbling for the zipper of his trousers with less grace than usual. You helped, impatient, your hand brushing over the hard length of him through fabric before he managed to free himself. The sound he made when your fingers wrapped around him—low, broken, almost pained—sent a shiver racing through you. He thrust shallowly into your grip once, twice, forehead dropping to your shoulder as though the sensation had short-circuited every thought he’d ever had.
You were both lost in it now—clothes askew, breaths mingling, bodies straining toward the same desperate edge. His hand slipped beneath your skirt, fingertips teasing along the edge of your underwear, pressing just enough to make your hips jerk—
A sharp, indignant meow.
High-pitched. Close. Too close.
You both froze.
Mrs. Norris stood at the end of the corridor, tail lashing, yellow eyes gleaming with accusation in the torchlight. Her thin, mangy frame was silhouetted against the flickering flames, ears flattened, mouth open in another warning yowl that promised Filch wasn’t far behind.
Reality crashed in like ice water.
Sunghoon swore under his breath—vicious—and released you so fast you nearly stumbled. You scrambled back against the wall, hands flying to your shirt. Fingers shook as you fumbled buttons back into place, missing the first one twice before managing to close the top enough to look halfway decent. Your bra strap had slipped down your shoulder; you yanked it up, cheeks burning.
Sunghoon moved with the same frantic efficiency. He tucked himself back into his trousers with a wince, zipped up, fastened his belt in one swift motion. His shirt was still untucked, hair mussed beyond repair, lips swollen and glistening. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like that could erase what had just happened.
Mrs. Norris hissed again, louder.
“Bloody cat,” Sunghoon muttered, voice hoarse. He grabbed your wrist and tugged you toward the nearest darkest alcove, pressing you both into shadow just as distant footsteps echoed from the stairwell. Filch’s wheezy voice drifted down, calling for his infernal pet.
You held your breath, heart hammering so loudly you were sure it would give you away. Sunghoon’s chest rose and fell rapidly beside you, his hand still locked around your wrist like he couldn’t bear to let go even now. His thumb stroked once—unconscious, soothing—over your racing pulse.
The footsteps paused. Mrs. Norris yowled once more, then trotted off toward the sound of her owner’s voice. The corridor fell silent again.
Neither of you moved for a long moment.
Then Sunghoon exhaled—shaky, almost a laugh.
“We’re going to get expelled one day,” he said quietly, voice still rough around the edges.
You turned your head just enough to meet his eyes. They were dark, pupils still blown, but the corner of his mouth twitched in something dangerously close to a smile.
“Worth it?” you whispered.
He looked at your mouth then back to your eyes. “Every damn time.”
He leaned in, pressed one last, slow kiss to the corner of your lips—soft this time, almost tender—before stepping back and straightening his robes with shaking hands. “Come on,” he murmured. “Before they return.”
You followed him on unsteady legs, shirt still crooked, hair a disaster, skin still burning where he’d touched you.
From that night onward, he kept you close.
It felt, at first, like a gift. Like the calendar had flipped backwards, to when every glance carried promise and every brush of shoulders felt like a secret. In the days that followed, he was there—always there—whenever you came to him.
You slid onto the bench beside him at the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall one morning, still half-asleep, and before you could even reach for the pumpkin juice, his arm had already draped casually around your shoulders. Just close enough that the warmth of him seeped through your robes, close enough that anyone looking would see the claim without him ever needing to speak it.
In the library, he had already claimed your usual table, you came and sat beside him, greeting him lovingly. When your quill rolled off the edge, he caught it mid-fall and set it back. When you leaned over to point out a note, his head tilted toward yours until your temples nearly touched, breath warm against your cheek. Perfect. Attentive. Exactly the boyfriend who once memorized the rhythm of your pulse.
It should have felt like coming home.
But the more it happened, the more you noticed the pattern beneath the perfection.
He never came to you first.
Never.
Not once.
You were always the one to seek him out. You were always the one to slide onto the bench beside him, to claim the chair across from him, to walk the extra corridor to where he usually studied. If you didn’t—if you waited, testing—he simply… wasn’t there. He didn’t appear at breakfast looking for you. Didn’t linger outside your common room. Didn’t send an owl asking where you’d gone. He existed in his own orbit, precise and self-contained, and only intersected with yours when you crossed into his path.
And when you did, he became flawless.
Strategic.
The word lodged in your chest like a splinter.
You began to watch him more closely.
His social circle hadn’t changed since the summer. If anything, it had tightened. The same cluster of pure-blood students—tall, pale, impeccably dressed— always murmuring in low voices when professors passed. Names that carried old weight: Malfoy, Zabini, Nott, Greengrass, even a Lestrange boy two years above who’d returned for his NEWTs with a permanent sneer. They spoke of blood status the way other people spoke of Quidditch scores—casual, dismissive. Half-bloods were “adequate, at best.” Muggle-borns were “a temporary inconvenience.”
Sunghoon sat among them.
Not loudly. Not performing. But he was there—listening, nodding once in a while, offering the occasional dry comment that made them laugh in that sharp, knowing way. When one of them sneered at a Gryffindor first-year who’d tripped over their own robes, Sunghoon didn’t join in. But he didn’t correct them either. He simply looked away, jaw tight, and changed the subject.
You hated it.
Every time you caught him at their table, something cold twisted in your stomach. You hated the way their eyes slid over you when you approached—like you were an interesting specimen rather than a person. You hated the way Sunghoon’s posture shifted fractionally straighter when you were near. You hated most of all that he still let you pull him away from them—let you thread your fingers through his and lead him toward the doors—without ever once apologizing for where he’d been sitting.
Because he was smart. Brilliant, really.
He should know better. He did know better. And yet he stayed in their orbit.
You told yourself it was survival. Pure-blood politics were a chessboard, and Sunghoon had always played three moves ahead. Maybe he was gathering information. Maybe he was protecting himself. Maybe he was protecting you.
But the doubt had taken root now, small and poisonous. Because when you weren’t there—when you didn’t cross into his path—he didn’t reach for you. And when you did, his perfection felt less like love and more like compensation. Like he was trying to keep you tethered with touches and kisses and murmured promises so you wouldn’t look too closely at the company he kept when your back was turned.
One evening in the library, you watched him from across the stacks.
You hadn’t meant to hide. Not really. You’d come looking for a specific volume on advanced counter-curses and the section had offered the perfect vantage. You could see without being seen. Or so you’d thought.
Sunghoon sat at the long oak table near the center of the room, flanked by Nott and Zabini. The three of them formed a closed triangle: heads bent over the same length of parchment, quills moving in lazy unison. From this distance their voices were a low murmur, punctuated by the occasional soft scrape of ink on paper and the rustle of turning pages. They looked like any other group of sixth-years cramming for NEWTs.
Except they weren’t.
You noticed it in pieces.
First, the way their eyes flicked outward—not randomly, but with purpose. A Hufflepuff girl with ink-stained fingers and a second-hand robe walked past, head down, hurrying away. Nott’s lip curled, just enough. He leaned in and muttered something. Zabini’s shoulders shook once in silent laughter. Sunghoon didn’t laugh. But the corner of his mouth twitched—small, almost imperceptible. Then he added something under his breath. Whatever it was made Nott snort outright and Zabini cover his mouth with the back of his hand.
Next came a Ravenclaw boy—lanky, glasses perpetually slipping, the kind of student who always answered questions too eagerly in class. He passed within ten feet of their table, arms full of books. Zabini tilted his head, murmured something about “eager little half-bloods thinking they belong here.” Nott smirked. And then, almost casual Sunghoon spoke.
“Careful,” he said, voice carrying just far enough for you to catch it. “He might hear you and start crying to McGonagall again.”
The words were dry. Detached. But they landed like a spark on dry tinder. Nott barked a short laugh. Zabini leaned back in his chair, eyes gleaming. The Ravenclaw boy faltered mid-step, cheeks flushing, then hurried faster without looking back.
You felt your stomach turn over.
Sunghoon had instigated it.
Not in the theatrical way some Slytherins liked to perform. But he’d fed it. A single sentence—perfectly timed—and the others had latched on like wolves scenting blood. He didn’t join in the laughter. He simply returned to the parchment, expression serene, as though he’d commented on the weather.
You pressed your back harder against the shelf, heart thudding unevenly. The candle closest to you threw long shadows across your hiding place. You told yourself to leave. To walk away before you saw anything else that would make the splinter in your chest dig deeper.
But you stayed.
Another student passed—a Muggle-born Gryffindor fourth-year, red tie askew, laughing too loudly at something her friend had said. Zabini’s gaze tracked her like a hawk. He opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, Sunghoon lifted his head slightly.
And looked directly toward you.
A tiny, involuntary squeak escaped you, barely audible, swallowed instantly by the library’s hush—but it felt deafening in your own ears.
He couldn’t see you… could he?
You were hidden. Well hidden. Tucked behind two rows of towering tomes on goblin rebellions, half-obscured by a ladder and the angle of the shelf. Your robes blended with the shadows. There was no way…
And yet his gaze had locked exactly on your position.
For one frozen second his eyes narrowed—searching, assessing—then softened in recognition. The faintest curve touched his lips. Not a smile. Something private. Something that said I know you’re there.
Your pulse roared in your ears. Why would he look here? How could he possibly—
Nott’s voice cut through the silence, casual and amused.
“Oi, Park. You’ve gone soft staring at the shelves again?” He followed Sunghoon’s line of sight, squinting into the gloom. “Or is that your little flower lurking back there?”
Sunghoon didn’t flinch. Didn’t look guilty. He simply leaned back in his chair, arms crossing loosely over his chest, and let one brow lift in mild interest.
“She’s not lurking,” he said evenly. “She’s studying.”
Zabini chuckled low. “Studying us, more like. Must be thrilling, watching the future of wizarding society at work.”
Nott grinned, sharp and lazy. “Lucky bastard, though. Perfect girlfriend, isn’t she? Loyal. Pretty. Doesn’t ask too many questions.” He nudged Sunghoon’s elbow. “Bet she melts every time you look at her. Must make the rest of it easier.”
Sunghoon’s expression didn’t change.
But you saw it—the micro-second tightening at the corner of his eye. The way his fingers flexed once against his sleeve. He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was quiet. Almost gentle.
“She’s more than that.”
Nott opened his mouth for another quip, then closed it again when Sunghoon’s gaze slid sideways to him. Something cold and unreadable passed over Sunghoon’s face.
Zabini cleared his throat, suddenly very interested in the parchment again. Nott shrugged, smirk fading into something more neutral.
Sunghoon’s eyes returned to the shadows where you stood. He didn’t beckon. Didn’t call your name. Just held your gaze across the distance until the weight of it became unbearable.
Your heart hammered against your ribs so hard you were sure the sound would carry.
You sighed.
It slipped out before you could stop it—soft, defeated, the sound of someone who had already lost the argument with themselves. Your shoulders dropped a fraction. The book you’d been clutching like a shield felt suddenly ridiculous in your hands.
And then you stepped out.
One foot, then the other. Candlelight caught on the edges of your robes as you emerged from the alcove’s gloom into the open aisle. You kept your chin up, eyes locked on his, refusing to shrink even as heat crawled up your neck.
Sunghoon’s gaze sharpened the instant you crossed into the light.
It wasn’t the soft, private look he’d worn a moment earlier. This was something else—something honed, possessive, almost predatory. His eyes narrowed fractionally, with the faintest tilt of his head, like a predator acknowledging movement in the grass.
Then he lifted a hand.
Slow. Elegant. Palm up, fingers relaxed—except for the index one.
He crooked it.
Once.
A single curl of his finger.
Come here.
The gesture was small. Insignificant to anyone watching who didn’t know him. But to you it landed like a spell—silent, binding, impossible to ignore. Your feet moved before your mind could catch up. One step. Another. Crossing the open floor toward their table as though pulled by invisible thread.
Nott and Zabini noticed. Nott’s smirk widened into something lazy and approving. Zabini leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, watching the exchange like it was private theater staged just for him.
Regret hit you like cold water the second your body obeyed.
Why did you do that?
Why did you let one crooked finger pull you across a crowded room like a summoned house-elf?
You’d walked to him. In front of them. Because he crooked a finger.
Like you were his. Like you’d always been his.
Nott let out a low whistle, soft enough not to draw Madam Pince’s attention. “Merlin. That was almost poetic.”
Zabini chuckled under his breath. “She comes when called. Convenient.”
Sunghoon didn’t acknowledge either of them.
You however turned your head just enough to side-eye them.
Nott first—lounging with one elbow propped on the table, chin resting on his fist, dark eyes glittering with amusement. The smirk hadn’t faded; if anything, it had deepened into something smug, satisfied, as though your obedience had confirmed some private bet he’d made with himself. Zabini was worse in his stillness—arms crossed over his chest, one brow arched in faint, mocking approval. Neither of them said anything more. They didn’t need to. Their silence was loud enough: Look at her. Look how easily she folds.
Heat crawled up the back of your neck—anger, embarrassment, a sharp twist of something you refused to name. You let your gaze linger on them a second longer than necessary, letting them see the edge in your expression. Not fear. Not submission. Just cold, quiet warning: I see you too.
Nott’s smirk only widened at the challenge, lazy and predatory, like he found your defiance amusing rather than threatening. Zabini tilted his head, dark eyes gleaming with detached interest, as though you were a particularly interesting exhibit in a glass case.
Before either of them could open their mouths again, Sunghoon moved. Without looking away from your face, without so much as shifting his shoulders, he extended one long leg under the table. The motion was casual, almost lazy—until the toe of his polished shoe connected with the side of Nott’s bench. A single, firm push.
The bench scraped back and Nott’s balance vanished.
He pitched sideways with an undignified yelp, arms windmilling for half a second before he hit the floor in a sprawl of robes. A soft thud, followed by the unmistakable clatter of ink bottle rolling under the table. A few nearby heads turned; someone stifled a laugh behind a book.
Nott scrambled up almost immediately, face flushed crimson, mouth already opening on a retort.
“Enough,” Sunghoon said. Voice low. Flat. Final.
Nott recovered quickly, righting himself with exaggerated nonchalance, but the smirk faltered for half a second. Zabini raised both brows, amusement flickering, though he said nothing.
Sunghoon’s attention never wavered from your face.
“Sit,” he said. Low. Quiet.
You glared at him.
The look you gave him was pure venom—narrowed eyes, lips pressed into a thin line, every line of your body screaming don’t you dare think this fixes anything. You wanted to turn on your heel. Wanted to leave him there with his smug friends and his carefully curated distance. Wanted to prove you weren’t the girl who came when called.
Your jaw tightened. Your hands curled into loose fists at your sides.
He didn’t flinch.
Instead he reached out and hooked two fingers through the belt loop at the side of your skirt. One gentle tug. The impact was soft. Cushioned. Because the second you were close enough, his arm slid around your waist. He drew you in until your side was flush against his, until the length of your thigh pressed along his, until there was no space left for doubt. His hand settled at the dip of your waist—then drifted lower. Dangerous. The heel of his palm rested just above the curve of your ass, fingers splayed wide enough that the tips brushed the upper swell through your skirt. Not groping. Not crude. Just a claim so blatant it made heat flare low in your belly despite everything.
His scent washed over you in the next breath—cedarwood, clean parchment, the faintest trace of winter air that always clung to him after flying. It curled into your lungs like smoke, familiar and devastating. Your shoulders wanted to drop. Your spine wanted to soften. You hated it.
You let yourself halfway melt anyway.
Your head tipped—just a fraction—until your temple brushed his shoulder. Not forgiveness. Just exhaustion. Just the bone-deep relief of being held when everything else felt like it was slipping.
Nott, back on the bench now, robes askew and pride clearly bruised, let out a low, mocking whistle.
“Merlin, Park,” he drawled, leaning back with renewed amusement. “You’ve got her trained better than a Cruciatus curse.”
Zabini leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin resting on laced fingers. His voice was silk over steel.
“She looks good like that, though. All flushed and obedient.” His gaze slid over you—slow, appreciative, lingering a second too long on where Sunghoon’s hand disappeared against your side. “If you ever get tired of the brooding Ravenclaw routine, love, my bench has plenty of room.”
You stiffened.
Sunghoon’s arm tightened around you, then his head turned. When his eyes met Zabini’s, the temperature in the immediate radius dropped ten degrees.
“Shut. Up.”
Nott opened his mouth—probably to push, because that was what Nott did—but Sunghoon’s gaze slid to him next. One look. That was all it took. Nott closed his mouth again. Shrugged. Picked up his quill like nothing had happened.
Zabini exhaled through his nose and leaned back, pulling his own book toward him.
“Fine. Touchy tonight, are we?”
They both bent their heads over parchment.
They weren’t studying. Not really. Quills moved in lazy strokes. Eyes flicked sideways every few seconds—watching, waiting for the next crack in composure. But they kept their mouths shut. Kept their teasing leers to themselves.
Because the message was clear:
She’s mine. Back off.
You felt the tension in his frame—the way his fingers flexed once against your side, the way his breathing stayed even despite the storm you could sense coiling beneath his skin.
His thumb stroked once—slow, soothing—along the line of your waist.
A silent promise. Or maybe a silent apology.
You weren’t sure which.
For weeks you tried—really tried—to give him the benefit of the doubt. You told yourself the library incident was a one-off, a momentary slip under pressure from Nott and Zabini’s goading. You reminded yourself that Sunghoon had always been sharp-tongued when cornered; it was part of what drew you to him in the first place. The way he could dismantle someone with a single sentence and never raise his voice. You loved that about him. You still did, in the private moments when it was just the two of you and the rest of the world felt far away.
But the moments weren’t private anymore.
You watched it happen again and again.
In the corridors between classes, when a nervous Hufflepuff fourth-year dropped their books in front of him—Sunghoon didn’t help pick them up. He stepped over the scattered parchment, glanced down at the trembling kid, and murmured something low enough that only the cluster of pure-bloods around him caught it. Whatever it was made them laugh loudly. The boy flushed scarlet and scrambled to gather his things alone.
You loved your boyfriend.
You did.
You loved the boy who once hexed your date at the Yule Ball because his hand had rested too low. You loved the boy who kissed you like you were oxygen in a room without air. You loved the way he memorized spell structures and shared them with you in late-night whispers, the way his fingers traced protective runes on your skin when he thought you were asleep.
But not when he was like this.
Not when he let those words slip so easily. Not when he chose silence over correction. Not when he fed the cruelty instead of starving it.
You tried to bring it up.
The first time was in the empty Charms classroom after curfew, moonlight spilling through tall windows, turning the desks silver. You’d waited until the castle quieted, until it was just the two of you and the faint hum of sleeping portraits.
“Sunghoon,” you started, voice low. “The things you say—the things you let them say—”
He turned from the window where he’d been staring out at the dark grounds.
His expression was unreadable.
Then he crossed the room in three strides.
Before the next word could leave your mouth, his hands were on your waist—lifting, turning, pressing you back against the nearest wall with controlled force. Your breath caught. His mouth crashed into yours, hard and claiming, swallowing whatever protest you’d been forming.
You tried to push back—palms flat against his chest—but his body caged you, pinning you in place. His hands roamed. Under your shirt. Along your ribs. Cupping your breasts through fabric until your nipples peaked and you gasped into his mouth. Fingers digging into your hips hard enough to bruise. Drowning every coherent thought.
When he finally pulled back—just enough to let you drag in air—your mind was already fogging. Eyes glassy. Lips swollen. Knees trembling.
He looked down at you, smirking—slow, dark, victorious. “Can’t even finish a sentence without melting for me.”
The words should have stung. Should have made you shove him away. Instead heat flooded your core. Your thighs clenched around nothing. A soft, broken whimper escaped before you could stop it.
He chuckled—low, cruel—and kissed you again. Slower this time. Deeper. One hand sliding down to palm your ass, squeezing hard enough to make you arch. The other fisted in your hair, tilting your head so he could devour your throat—teeth grazing, then biting, marking you in places your collar wouldn’t hide.
By the time he let you go, you couldn’t remember the exact shape of your argument. Only the taste of him. The ache between your legs. The way your body betrayed you every single time.
It happened again the next week…
And the week after…
Every time you tried to confront him—about the comments, about the company he kept, about the way he let poison seep in—he turned it into this. Into something so intense it erased everything else.
Into him winning. Always winning.
You started coming to class late.
Lips bruised and swollen. Shirt buttoned crooked, collar barely covering the fresh hickeys blooming purple along your collarbone, the faint crescent of bite marks peeking above your tie. Your hair mussed in ways no brush could fix. Eyes still glassy, cheeks flushed, walking with that careful, slightly bow-legged gait that made your friends exchange knowing glances and then look away.
One of them caught your wrist once in the corridor, voice low and worried.
“Are you okay?”
You forced a smile. Nodded. Lied.
“I’m fine.”
You weren’t.
You were exhausted.
Torn between the boy you’d fallen in love with and the one who was slowly disappearing into something darker. Torn between the way your body still craved him and the way your heart ached every time he chose silence over standing up.
You stopped trying to bring it up. Not because you agreed. Not because you stopped caring.
You told yourself one day you’d find the strength to surface. One day you’d make him listen without letting him turn your body against your mind.
One day.
But for now…
For now, you just tried not to look too closely. Tried not to hear the quiet cruelty in his voice. Tried not to notice how the boy you loved was slowly being replaced by someone colder.
Tried not to notice how the relationship tilted, into something slow, insidious, and toxic at the edges. Not broken. Just… off-balance. Like a potion left too long over flame—still drinkable, still sweet in places, but with a bitter aftertaste that lingered no matter how much honey you tried to stir in.
And then the showing-off began.
It started small. A hand on the small of your back as he steered you toward the Slytherin table during free study. Sunghoon didn’t ask if you wanted to stay. He simply guided you to the center of the group, sat you beside him on the bench, and rested his arm along you back like a king displaying his favorite trophy.
“Look who I brought,” he said, voice smooth as polished obsidian. His fingers traced idle circles on your shoulder, right where everyone could see. “My girl.”
The title landed like a claim. Not girlfriend. Not even your name. My girl. Possessive. Proud. Delivered with that quiet, effortless arrogance he wore so well now.
You flushed instantly—cheeks burning, gaze dropping to your lap. You wanted to shrink. To disappear behind Sunghoon’s shoulder. But he wouldn’t let you. His hand slid lower, fingers splaying across your ribs, pulling you closer until your thigh pressed flush against his.
Whenever you tried to pull away—whenever the discomfort crested and you’d whisper, “Not here, Sunghoon, please”—he’d turn it around so smoothly you almost believed him.
“You’re ashamed of me?” he’d ask, voice low and wounded, eyes wide with feigned hurt.
You’d shake your head, throat tight, but the words would tangle. Because part of you did want the dark thrill of being claimed so publicly by the boy everyone else feared a little. And he knew it. That's why he used it.
He started taking you to their private gatherings. He’d walk in with you tucked under his arm like a living accessory, robes slightly askew from the way he’d kissed you breathless in the corridor beforehand. He’d seat you on his lap in front of everyone, one hand resting casually on your thigh under the table, fingers pressing just enough to make you squirm while they discussed bloodlines and loyalty and power.
You wished you could have spoken up.The words had burned on your tongue. This is wrong. They were right there, heavy and sharp: Blood doesn’t decide worth. Everyone at Hogwarts has the right to be here. To learn. To become something greater than the families that birthed them. Muggle-born, half-blood, pure-blood—none of it matters when a spell lights up the same way in every wand.
You wanted to say it out loud. Wanted to cut through the laughter when they sneered about “mudbloods cluttering up the good seats in Potions.” Wanted to look them in the eye and ask how many generations of “superior blood” it took before cruelty became tradition. Wanted to stand up—literally push Sunghoon’s hand off your thigh and stand—and remind them that the castle didn’t check blood status at the gates. How the Sorting Hat never asked for a family tree.
But Sunghoon wouldn’t let you.
It was like he could read the exact moment the rebellion formed behind your eyes. Every single time. His fingers would tighten, a hard press against the inside of your thigh under the heavy oak table, thumb stroking once, twice, right where the hem of your skirt met skin. A silent don’t. His other hand would slide up your spine beneath your robes, fingertips tracing the knobs of your vertebrae until you shivered, until your breath caught and the words dissolved on your tongue.
Or worse—he’d kiss you. Right in the middle of someone else’s sentence. His tongue sliding against yours until your mind blanked and your fingers curled helplessly into the front of his shirt. When he pulled back, your lips would be glossy, your cheeks flushed, and the conversation would have already moved on. The moment was gone. Your courage with it.
He always knew.
Sometimes he’d rest his chin on your shoulder, eyes half-lidded, and murmur against your neck, “You’re thinking too loudly again.” As if your thoughts were something he could taste in the air between you. As if he’d already mapped every moral line you were trying to draw and had decided, long ago, exactly where to blur them.
You started falling down the rabbit hole.
Late at night, alone in your dormitory, the questions gnawed at you like gnats.
Were you even better than them?
You were pure-blood. Old family. Wealth that meant your vault at Gringotts had its own dragon on retainer. Your parents had rooted connections at the Ministry, kept a summer manor where portraits of ancestors sneered down. On paper, you belonged in their circle. You had the blood, the money, the connections.
But your family had never spoken like that.
Your father valued the house-elves with please and thank you. Your mother hired Muggle-born tutors for advanced Arithmancy because “talent is talent.” You had grown up believing Hogwarts belonged to everyone who could make a feather float on their first try. Blood status was a footnote, not a verdict. You had never looked at a first-year with patched robes and thought lesser.
Never.
Yet here you were.
Complicit.
Every time you watched a Hufflepuff girl fall when Nott “accidentally” tripped her in the corridor, you said nothing. Every time Zabini drawled about how “certain bloodlines dilute the magic,” you bit your tongue so hard it bled. Every time Sunghoon added his quiet, cutting remark, you felt the guilt coil tighter in your stomach like a serpent.
You told yourself you were protecting the relationship. That if you spoke, he’d pull away harder. That you couldn't make him choose. That love meant standing beside him even when the ground turned to quicksand.
But the truth was uglier.
It was getting harder to meet your own eyes in the mirror.
You started avoiding your friends entirely. Started walking the long way around the Great Hall so you wouldn’t have to see the Muggle-born students laughing together, unaware of how their joy was being dissected at another table. Started excusing yourself from study groups when the conversation turned to “why some families still cling to old prejudices.”
Because every time you opened your mouth to defend someone—anyone—the memory of Sunghoon’s voice in your ear, his mouth swallowing your protests, would rise like a tide. And you would stay quiet.
You hated the person you were becoming.
You hated how easily your body still arched into his touch even while your mind screamed this is wrong. You hated the way shame and desire had started to braid together so tightly you couldn’t tell them apart anymore.
And still, Sunghoon would turn to you in the empty room, eyes dark and soft all at once, and kiss you like you were the only pure thing left in his world.
“I need you,” he’d whisper against your swollen lips, hands already sliding under your clothes. “Stay with me. Please.”
And you would.
Because loving him had become a kind of drowning where you sank a little deeper into that rabbit hole—questioning your own goodness, your own courage, your own right to judge.
The rest of the year passed like that—slow, suffocating, a quiet erosion.
Exams came. You aced them—both of you did—because brilliance was the one thing neither of you ever lost. But the victories tasted hollow. You celebrated in empty classrooms instead of the common room, his mouth between your legs while your notes lay scattered on the floor, his name the only word you could remember when he finally let you come. Afterward he would hold you against his chest, and whisper how perfect you were. How no one else could ever understand what you had.
You believed him because believing anything else would have broken you.
End-of-year feasts passed in a blur of house banners and golden plates. You sat beside him at the Ravenclaw table, his arm draped over the back of your chair, fingers occasionally slipping beneath the collar of your robes to brush the fading hickeys he’d left the night before.
Then slowly the castle emptied. Trunks rattled down staircases. Owls screeched farewell from the Owlery. You said goodbye to friends with smiles that didn’t reach your eyes, promising letters you already knew you wouldn’t write. Sunghoon vanished into the crowd the morning of departure—gone before breakfast, no note, no goodbye kiss. You told yourself it was better this way. Cleaner. You told yourself the distance might give you space to breathe, to remember who you were before his hands and his voice rewrote you.
The Hogwarts Express carried you back to King’s Cross in heavy silence. You sat alone in a compartment near the back, forehead pressed to the cool glass, watching the countryside blur past. Your reflection looked older, eyes shadowed in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep.
Platform 9¾ was chaos when the train finally hissed to a stop. Families reuniting, house-elves scurrying with trunks, parents calling names over. You stepped onto the platform last, suitcase heavy in your hand, heart heavier still. You scanned the crowd once—half hoping, half dreading—and saw nothing.
You sighed and adjusted your grip on the handle.
Then arms came around you from behind.
Strong. Familiar. Unmistakable.
You froze for half a heartbeat—then melted.
Your suitcase slipped from your fingers with a dull thud. Your back pressed into his chest, head falling back against his shoulder as though your body had been waiting for this exact moment all year.
He kissed the top of your head, then his right hand lifted in front of your face.
A small velvet box rested on his palm.
He flicked it open with his thumb.
Inside lay a ring.
Sleek black metal—almost obsidian in the dim platform light—shaped like a slender serpent. Its body coiled once around an invisible axis, head raised, tiny navy blue eyes glinting with captured fire. Beautiful in the way only dangerous things can be.
“For you,” he murmured against your hair, voice rough with something you couldn’t quite name. “To show you my love. My devotion. That no matter what happens—no matter who tries to pull us apart—you’re mine. And I’m yours.”
The platform noise faded to a distant hum. The crowd blurred into watercolor. All you could see was the ring. All you could feel was the steady rise and fall of his chest against your back, the warmth of his arms caging you in the gentlest prison.
You turned in his hold.
His eyes were unguarded for once, with zero calculation. Just raw need. Just him.
You surged up and kissed him.
Hard. Desperate. Months of silence and guilt and drowning poured into the press of your mouth against his. He groaned—low, wrecked—and kissed you back with equal force.
When you finally broke apart, gasping, foreheads pressed together, he lifted the ring between two fingers.
“Do you accept it?” His voice cracked on the last word—barely, but you heard it.
You stared at the serpent. At the blue eyes that seemed to watch you back. Then you looked up at him.
“Yes.”
The moment the word left your lips, the ring moved.
The black snake uncoiled in a fluid ripple of metal, slithering across his palm like liquid shadow. It glided onto your waiting finger—cool at first, then warming rapidly to match your skin temperature. The serpent’s body wrapped once around the base of your finger, before coiling around. The blue eyes flashed once—bright, alive—then stilled. But you felt it: a faint pulse, like a second heartbeat against your skin. Binding. Eternal.
You stared, stunned.
Sunghoon only smiled before he lifted your hand to his lips. Kissed the ring. Kissed the knuckle just above it. Then pressed another kiss to the inside of your wrist, right over the racing pulse.
You didn’t know yet what the ring truly meant. You didn’t know yet how tightly its coils would one day bind you.
The holiday passed in a fever dream of snow and silence.
Your family’s manor was as it always had been—grand, glittering, suffocating in its perfection. Crystal chandeliers refracted firelight across marble floors. Portraits of stern ancestors murmured approval when you passed. Your parents asked polite questions about NEWTs and future prospects, never once mentioning the black serpent coiled around your finger like a living tattoo. They noticed it, of course—they always noticed everything—but they said nothing. Pure-blood etiquette demanded discretion when it came to marks of devotion, especially when the giver came from a family as old and shadowed as Sunghoon’s.
And before you knew it, the calendar had turned.
September 1st arrived cold and sharp. The Hogwarts Express waited at King’s Cross like an old promise, scarlet engine huffing steam into the September sky. You stepped onto Platform 9¾ with your trunk levitating behind you, heart hammering in a rhythm you couldn’t name—anticipation, dread, braided together so tightly you couldn’t separate them.
You found an empty compartment near the middle of the train. Seventh year. Last year. No time to mess around. NEWTs loomed like storm clouds. Auror applications waited in Ministry offices. The war whispers that had once been background noise now felt like thunder rolling closer every day.
The door slid open.
You didn’t need to look to know who it was.
Sunghoon looked… insanely good.
Taller, somehow, though that was impossible. Dark hair pushed back just enough to reveal the clean line of his brow. Charcoal wool hugging shoulders that had broadened another inch, sleeves rolled once to expose the pale skin and the faint shadow of veins. His tie was loose, the knot imperfect, silver-and-blue stripes against crisp white.
Before you could open your mouth—before you could say hello, or I missed you—he surged forward.
Three strides. Door slamming shut so hard behind him that the curtains followed with a flick of his wand. The locking charm snapped into place so fast the air crackled.
Then he was on you.
Hands framing your face, thumbs brushing your cheekbones as though mapping something he’d dreamed about all summer. His mouth crashed into yours—hard, desperate, tasting faintly of peppermint. You gasped against him; he swallowed the sound, tongue sliding in without preamble, claiming every inch like he was reminding you who you belonged to. You clung to the front of his sweater, knuckles white, body already arching toward him like gravity had reversed and he was the only solid thing left in the world.
The kiss turned frantic almost immediately.
Sunghoon’s breathing grew ragged against your lips, little hitches and low groans vibrating between you. His hands slid from your face to your waist, fingers digging in with bruising force, urgent, like he needed to feel solid proof that you were real, here, his. He kissed you harder, deeper, teeth catching your bottom lip and tugging until you whimpered. The sound seemed to snap something inside him.
He broke the kiss just long enough to mutter, hoarse and wrecked, “Fuck—I can’t wait.”
Before you could process the words, his arms banded around your ribs. In one fluid, effortless motion he lifted you. Your legs instinctively wrapped around his waist for balance; your skirt rode up your thighs as he turned, dropped heavily onto the cushioned bench seat, and pulled you down with him.
You landed straddling his lap, knees sinking into the worn velvet on either side of his hips.
The compartment rocked gently with the motion of the train, but neither of you noticed. Sunghoon’s hands were already everywhere—sliding up your thighs, shoving your skirt higher until the fabric bunched uselessly around your waist. His palms were hot against your bare skin, calluses from Quidditch broom handles dragging deliciously as he gripped the backs of your thighs and yanked you forward until your core pressed flush against the hard ridge straining against his trousers.
You both moaned at the contact—low, broken sounds that tangled in the air between your mouths.
He surged up to kiss you again, but this time it was messier, hungrier. His tongue stroked yours in filthy imitation of what he wanted to do lower. One hand left your thigh to fist in your hair, tugging your head back so he could drag open-mouthed kisses down your throat—sucking hard enough to leave fresh marks over the faded ones from last term. You felt the sharp sting of teeth, then the soothing lap of his tongue, and your hips rolled forward without permission, grinding down on him in helpless little circles.
“Fuck,” he hissed against your collarbone, hips bucking up to meet yours. “You have no idea—how many nights I thought about this. About you like this. On me.”
His hand slid between your bodies, fingers hooking into the waistband of your underwear and tugging the fabric aside. Cool air hit slick skin for half a second before his fingertips found you—sliding through your folds, circling your clit once, twice, then pressing inside with no warning.
You cried out—sharp, needy—and he swallowed it with another bruising kiss.
“Shh,” he breathed against your lips, even as he curled his fingers deeper, stroking that spot that made your thighs shake. “Someone might hear. Though…” He smirked, dark and dangerous. “Maybe I want them to. Maybe I want the whole bloody train to know exactly what I do to you.”
You clenched around his fingers at the words; he groaned like you’d punched the air out of him.
“Still so tight… Still so fucking perfect.” His thumb found your clit, rubbing circles while his fingers pumped slow and deep. “Ride my hand, baby. Show me how much you missed me.”
Shame burned somewhere distant in the back of your mind, but it dissolved under the heat of his touch, under the way his eyes devoured every twitch of your expression. Your hips rocked forward, chasing the pressure, grinding down until the heel of his palm pressed hard against you with every roll. Your hands scrambled for purchase—fingers threading through his dark hair, tugging until he hissed.
He watched you fall apart, eyes blown black, jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. The hand not buried inside you gripped your hip hard enough to leave fingerprints, guiding your movements when your rhythm faltered.
“That’s it,” he rasped. “Just like that. Let me feel you come all over my fingers before I fuck you properly.”
The filthy promise tipped you over.
Pleasure snapped through you like a whip, sharp and blinding. You buried your face in the crook of his neck to muffle the cry, body shaking as you clenched around his fingers, hips stuttering, thighs trembling on either side of him. He worked you through it, murmuring praise the whole time.
“Good girl. So good for me. Missed this—missed you clenching around me like you never want to let go.”
When the aftershocks finally eased, he withdrew his fingers slowly, letting you feel every inch. Then he lifted them to his mouth and sucked them clean—eyes locked on yours the entire time—tongue swirling around the digits like he was savoring something rare and precious.
You stared, dazed, lips parted, chest heaving.
He smiled and leaned in to kiss you again. You tasted yourself on his tongue.
“Welcome back to Hogwarts,” he murmured against your swollen mouth.
The train whistle blew somewhere distant—long and mournful—as though warning the world what was coming.
But neither of you cared.
The year had just begun.
And Sunghoon was already claiming every inch of you like he intended to keep you forever.
You really thought—foolishly, desperately—that this could be a normal year.
Seventh year. Last year. The one where everything was supposed to fall into place: NEWTs, career counseling sessions with McGonagall, late-night study marathons that ended in exhausted laughter then desperate kisses against cold stone. You pictured it like a photograph from someone else’s life: you and Sunghoon walking side by side to breakfast, shoulders brushing, sharing notes, stealing quiet moments in the library without the weight of eyes or expectations pressing in. Normal. Safe. Achievable.
It wasn’t like that at all.
Classes started unforgiving. You threw yourself into them with the kind of single-minded focus that had always carried you through. Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts—you aced every practical, every written essay, every drill. Professors nodded in quiet approval. Your classmates whispered that you were “Ministry material,” that the Auror Office would be fighting over your application.
Herbology was the exception. The greenhouse felt like a different world—humid, alive in ways that refused to bend to logic alone. Mandrakes screamed when repotted; Fanged Geraniums nipped at your fingers; Venomous Tentacula wrapped around your wrist once and left a bruise that bloomed purple for a week. You struggled. Badly. So you found a tutor: a quiet Ravenclaw fifth-year who spoke to plants like they were old friends and never once looked at you like you were failing. Twice a week in the empty greenhouse after dinner, you repotted, pruned, fertilized. Progress was slow, but it was progress.
Potions, though…
Potions should have been easy. You’d always been competent. But seventh-year NEWT-level was brutal—complex brews with thirty-seven ingredients, timing measured in heartbeats, cauldrons that could explode if you so much as breathed wrong. Your first Draught of Living Death came out the color of weak tea instead of smooth pearl. Slughorn raised one brow and gave you an Acceptable with visible disappointment.
You needed help.
And the person who could help best was Sunghoon.
He was brilliant at Potions. Always had been. Precise, intuitive, the kind of student who could identify a misstep in someone else’s brew from across the dungeon just by the color of the steam. Last year he’d tutored you through sixth-year theory in between classes, his voice low and patient. You thought—hoped—that seventh year could be the same. But it was impossible.
Because you barely saw him.
Now he wasn't like.. gone, no he simply… just wasn’t there. Wasn't present.
One morning he’d kiss you goodbye outside the Great Hall, lips lingering, promising to meet you after lunch for Potions revision. By dinner he was gone. No owl. No sighting in the common room or corridors. You’d wait—first patiently, then anxiously— asking his housemates if they’d seen him, but nothing.
He’d reappear two, sometimes three days later. Tired. Paler. Shadows under his eyes like bruises. Hair mussed in a way that wasn’t your fault. Robes slightly wrinkled, as though he’d slept in them.
You’d corner him immediately—heart in your throat, voice shaking despite every effort to keep it steady.
“Where were you?”
He’d look at you for one long, aching second. Then the mask would slide back into place.
“Sick,” he’d say. “Nothing to worry about.”
You didn’t believe him.
Not the first time.
Not the fifth.
Not the tenth.
Because the absences grew longer. The excuses stayed the same. And every time he came back, he came back… further away.
He touched you less in public. No more casual arm around your shoulders in the corridors. No more hand at the small of your back when crowds pressed too close. When you sat beside him at meals he’d let you lean against him, but his arm stayed on the table instead of around you. His smiles were smaller. His kisses—when they happened—were quick, almost perfunctory, like checking a box.
Conversations became clipped. Surface-level. He asked about your day, listened to your answers, but never offered his own. When you tried to press—about the absences, about the shadows in his eyes, he’d shut it down.
“Not now.”
“I’m fine.”
“Stop worrying.”
Each refusal landed like a small cut. Shallow at first. Then deeper. Until the worry became something constant, something that lived under your ribs and made it hard to breathe when he wasn’t there.
You started crying in the shower so no one would hear. Started gripping the ring on your finger until your knuckle turned white, as though the serpent could somehow summon him back. Started lying awake at night staring at the canopy, replaying every disappearance, every excuse, every time he’d looked at you like he was memorizing your face before walking away again.
It broke you. Like ice cracking under too much weight.
You still aced Charms. Still smiled in the Great Hall when friends asked how you were.
But inside, the drowning had returned. Colder this time.
Because the boy who once claimed every inch of you like he intended to keep you forever was slowly slipping through your fingers. And every time you reached for him, he gave you the same soft, tired lie:
“Nothing to worry about.”
You worried anyway. You worried until the worry became the only thing that felt real, it clung to you like damp robes after a storm—persistent, chilling, impossible to shake off no matter how tightly you wrapped yourself in denial.
It followed you through autumn’s golden decay and winter’s brittle frost. Every morning you woke with the same hollow ache in your chest, checking the foot of your bed for an owl that never came, scanning the Ravenclaw table at breakfast for the familiar dark head that was increasingly absent. Sunghoon became a ghost in his own life. He still appeared—enough to keep the rumors from exploding—but never for long. A quick kiss in an empty corridor before vanishing again. A hand brushing yours under the table in the Great Hall, then gone before you could lace your fingers through his. Notes left on your pillow in that precise, slanted handwriting: Library tonight? followed by nothing when you arrived.
When he did speak to you, his voice was flatter, stripped of the warmth that once lived beneath every word. He answered questions with single syllables. He stopped initiating touch. Stopped pulling you onto his lap in the courtyard. Stopped whispering filthy promises against your throat until you were trembling.
You told yourself it was the war whispers growing louder. The disappearances were Order business, or family business, or something he couldn’t share yet. You told yourself that the distance was temporary. Protective.
But the worry didn't go away. It lived in your throat like a stone. It woke you at 3 a.m. staring at the canopy, replaying every half-smile, every excuse, every time he’d looked at you like he was saying goodbye without words. It made your hands shake when you brewed potions, your cauldron bubbling over more than once because your mind was elsewhere.
By March the castle felt colder than the grounds outside. The snow had melted into gray slush; the sky stayed low and leaden. You were going crazy thread by thread, and Sunghoon was the only one who could have stitched you back together—but he was never there long enough to try.
You finally had enough on a Thursday afternoon when the sun broke through for the first time in weeks, weak and watery, turning the courtyard into a patchwork of pale light and long shadows.
He was there—miraculously—sitting on the low stone wall near the fountain, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing. Robes open at the collar, tie loosened, hair falling into his eyes. For one stupid, hopeful second your heart leapt the way it used to.
You crossed the courtyard without thinking. Grabbed his wrist—harder than you meant to—and pulled.
“Come with me.”
He looked up, startled. Opened his mouth—probably to brush you off with another I’m busy—but something in your expression stopped him. He let you drag him away from the curious stares of a few lingering fourth-years, through an archway, down a narrow passage lined with dusty tapestries, into a small, forgotten study room that smelled of old books and forgotten ink.
You slammed the door behind you then you turned to face him.
“What is your problem?”
Your voice cracked. You hated it—hated how small you sounded, how desperate—but the dam had broken.
Sunghoon leaned back against the nearest desk, arms crossed, expression carefully blank.
“There’s no problem.”
“Don’t!” You stepped closer. “Don’t lie to me again. You disappear for days. You come back looking like death. You barely look at me, barely touch me, barely speak to me. You’re pulling away and I can feel it every single second and I’m—” Your voice broke again. “I’m losing my mind, Sunghoon. Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
He looked away—jaw tight, throat working once. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Stop it!” The shout surprised even you. You closed the distance until you were inches from him, hands fisting in the front of his robes. “Stop treating me like I’m stupid. Like I can’t see it. Like I don’t feel it every time you leave without a word. I’m your girlfriend! I—” Tears burned hot behind your eyes; you blinked them back furiously. “I love you. And you’re letting me drown. Just tell me. Whatever it is. I can handle it. Just don’t keep shutting me out.”
For a long moment he said nothing.
Then something cracked.
His hands came up—fast, almost violent—and gripped your wrists, yanking them off his robes. His eyes—those eyes you’d once thought held entire galaxies—were stormy now.
“You want the truth?” His voice was low at first, dangerous. “Fine.” He stepped forward, forcing you back until your spine met the wall. He didn’t cage you with desire. This was different. This was anger. This was something breaking.
“I fell out of love with you.”
You froze. Breath stopped. Heart stopped. Everything stopped.
He stared down at you—chest rising and falling too fast, eyes glittering with something that looked dangerously close to tears.
“I tried,” he said, quieter now, voice cracking on the edges. “I tried so fucking hard! Every time I came back I told myself I could still feel it. That I could still want you the way I used to. But it’s gone. It’s just… gone.”
You shook your head—small, helpless jerks.
“No...”
“Yes.” He laughed once—harsh, hollow.
The tears were falling freely now—hot, unstoppable, dripping from your chin. You didn’t bother wiping them away. What was the point? He was already looking at you like you were something he used to care about. Something he’d outgrown.
Sunghoon stepped back. Just one step. Enough to put space between you that felt like miles.
“You think I like this?” His voice dropped lower, colder. The warmth that once lived in it had frozen over completely. “You think I enjoy watching you cry every time I walk away? You think I don’t see how pathetic it’s become? How you cling to me like I’m still the same boy who kissed you in the Great Hall like the world was ending? Newsflash—” He spat the word like venom. “—that boy died the first time I came back and realized I didn’t miss you. Not the way I was supposed to.”
Each sentence landed like a slap. You pressed your back harder against the wall, as though the stone could absorb some of the pain.
“You’re suffocating,” he continued, merciless now. “You hover! You wait! You look at me like I owe you answers I don’t have. Like love is a fucking contract I signed and forgot to renew! I can’t breathe around you anymore. Every time you open your mouth to ask where I’ve been, every time you touch me like you’re scared I’ll vanish again—it just reminds me how much I don’t want this. How much I don’t want you.”
The black serpent on your finger pulsed—sharp, frantic, like it was trying to protest. You looked at it, but your vision was blurring.
Sunghoon followed your gaze. His jaw tightened.
“That ring?” He laughed again—bitter, empty. “I gave it to you because I thought it would keep you. But it didn’t work. Nothing works. You’re still here, still begging, still crying, and I still feel nothing… It’s over, don't bother trying to change my mind.”
He didn’t wait for your response. Didn’t give you time to argue, to plead, to scream. He simply turned away, robes swirling once, and walked out.
The door shut behind him with a loud slam.
Your knees hit stone. Your palms pressed flat against the cold floor. And then the sobs came—ugly, wrenching, tearing out of your chest like something alive. You curled in on yourself, forehead to knees, arms wrapped tight around your middle as though you could hold the pieces together.
You cried until your throat was raw. Until the tears ran dry and left salt tracks on your cheeks. Until the room felt too small and too big all at once.
You didn’t know—couldn’t know—that Sunghoon hadn’t gone far.
He’d walked blindly through corridors, past startled portraits and flickering torches, until he reached the seventh-floor corridor. The blank stretch of wall opposite a tapestry. He stopped. Pressed his forehead to stone. Closed his eyes.
The door appeared almost instantly.
The Room of Requirement opened for him like it had been waiting.
He stepped inside and the door sealed shut behind him with a soft, final thud.
For one heartbeat there was silence.
Then he shattered.
A loud shout ripped out of him, furious and broken. He spun and slammed his fist into the nearest surface—a wooden table the room had conjured, already cluttered with potion vials and spellbooks he didn’t want. The table cracked. Vials exploded in sprays of glass and liquid. He didn’t stop.
He grabbed a chair and hurled it against the far wall. Wood splintered. He kicked over a bookshelf—tomes and books tumbling like dominoes. He picked up a heavy crystal orb the room had provided (for what purpose he didn’t care) and smashed it against the floor. Shards flew. He stepped on them, grinding them under his heel.
He then sank to his knees in the wreckage.
The first sob came quietly—almost surprised. Then another. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes like he could force the tears back inside. His shoulders shook. His breathing came in ragged gasps.
“I lied,” he whispered to the empty room. “I lied—I lied—I lied—”
The words dissolved into another broken cry.
He curled forward until his forehead touched the cold stone floor—shards biting into his palms, blood smearing across his skin—and cried like something inside him had finally ruptured beyond repair.
Because he hadn’t fallen out of love with you.
He’d fallen so far into it—so deep, so violently—that the only way he knew how to keep you safe was to make you hate him enough to leave.
The war was coming. The mark under his sleeve had burned hotter every day since summer. The disappearances weren’t sickness. They were initiations. Tasks. Orders.
He couldn’t drag you into that darkness. He couldn’t watch you burn because of him.
So he’d burned the bridge himself.
And now—alone in a room full of broken things like him—he paid the price.
He cried until his voice gave out.
Until the room, sensing his exhaustion, softened the floor beneath him into something almost like a bed.
Until the last sob faded into silence.
The first weeks after the breakup were a suffocating collapse.
You didn’t speak. Not to your dormmates, not to the professors who asked why you were missing from class, not even to the house-elves who timidly left trays of food by your bed because you hadn’t appeared in the Great Hall for days. Words felt like glass in your throat, useless, sharp. So you stayed silent. Curled under your blankets with the curtains drawn tight, staring at the dark canopy until your eyes burned. Sleep came in fits and when you woke, the ache in your chest was still there, heavier each time.
You skipped classes. The ones you’d once aced without effort. You told yourself you’d catch up tomorrow. Tomorrow never came. Food lost all taste; the house-elves’ carefully arranged plates went untouched until they vanished again. Your robes hung looser on your frame. Your reflection in the dormitory mirror looked like a stranger—hollow cheeks, shadowed eyes, lips perpetually chapped from biting them to keep from crying again.
The first bad grade arrived like a slap.
An Outstanding in Charms had become an Acceptable in Transfiguration. Professor McGonagall’s note was polite, concerned, but the howler from home arrived the next morning, your owl dropping it right in front of you with an apologetic hoot before fleeing.
The scarlet envelope exploded open the second your fingers touched it.
Your mother’s voice—cold, furious, magnified tenfold—filled the room.
“—disgraceful! You are wasting your potential! After everything we’ve sacrificed? After the tutors, the connections, the expectations? You will pull yourself together this instant or so help me you will spend the summer scrubbing cauldrons at St. Mungo’s until you remember what ambition looks like! Do not test us further! Me and your father are ashamed—do you know what this looks like to the Ministry?—fix this, or don’t bother coming home for Easter!”
The parchment shredded itself mid-sentence, scraps fluttering to the floor like dead leaves. You sat frozen, face burning, tears stinging fresh behind your eyes.
But something else ignited too.
Rage—not at your parents, not at the howler, but at yourself. At the version of you who had let Sunghoon hollow you out until there was nothing left to fight with.
That afternoon you dragged yourself to the library.
You sat at the same table you used to share with him. Opened every textbook you’d ignored for weeks. Summoned every scrap of willpower you had left and channeled the pain—the sharp, jagged thing in your chest—into focus.
From that day forward, you rebuilt.
You went to every class. Sat in the front row. Took notes until your hand cramped. Asked questions when you didn’t understand. You met the Ravenclaw girl in the greenhouse twice as often as before; the plants didn’t judge, didn’t leave, didn’t stop loving you just because you were hurting. You brewed potions until your cauldron sang perfect colors again. Your grades climbed steadily.
You rejected everyone who tried. A Hufflepuff sixth-year left a note in your bag confessing he’d liked you since fourth year. You ripped it at the first word. A Ravenclaw boy from your study group asked you to Hogsmeade the following weekend. You looked him in the eye and said, “I’m not interested.” Polite. No explanations. No room for hope.
You locked everyone out.
Housemates were allowed small mercies—quiet good mornings, shared chocolate frogs during late-night revision—but nothing deeper. The world narrowed to your dorm, the library, the great hall, the classrooms. Anything beyond that felt like risk. Like vulnerability. Like another chance to break.
You tried to erase him.
The scarf he’d once draped over your shoulders after Quidditch—into the fire. The charmed quill he’d given you that never ran out of ink—snapped in half and discarded. The tiny vial of Amortentia-scented perfume he’d gifted you one Valentine’s poured down the drain, vial shattered against the sink.
You tried to take off the ring.
Every night for a week you sat on the edge of your bed, gripping the serpent between thumb and forefinger, pulling.
The first time it hissed—low, warning, almost hurt. The metal tightened like a shackle, coiling so hard your skin turned white and pain shot up your arm. You gasped, released it immediately. The snake loosened again, almost apologetically.
You tried again the next night. Same result. Hiss. Tighten. Pain.
By the third attempt you were crying—quiet, furious tears—yanking until your skin bruised and the ring refused to budge. You screamed into your pillow. Punched the mattress. Cursed him in every language you knew.
Then you stopped.
You stared at the black serpent curled around your finger, pulsing faintly with something that felt dangerously close to a heartbeat—and whispered, “Fine! Stay!”
You told yourself it was because the snake didn’t want to leave. That it was enchanted loyalty, nothing more. That you were keeping it out of stubbornness, or spite, or practicality.
But deep down—bone-deep—you knew the truth.
You were relieved.
Relieved that something—anything—of him refused to let go. Relieved that one small piece still clung to you the way you still, traitorously, clung to the memory of him. The ring was the last tether. The last proof that he had once looked at you like you were everything.
You left it on.
Sunghoon, meanwhile, became a stranger in every way that mattered.
He walked the corridors like a shadow wearing his face. Head down. Shoulders rigid. Robes immaculate but eyes dull. When you passed in hallways he didn’t glance up. Not once. Not a flicker. Not even the accidental brush of eyes that strangers sometimes share. You might as well have been invisible. A ghost he’d already exorcised.
You told yourself it hurt less this way.
Yeah… you were a liar.
The lie was necessary. It was the only thing that kept your feet moving through the corridors when every instinct screamed to stop, to turn, to force him to look at you even if it was only to see hatred in his eyes instead of nothing. You repeated it like a mantra during the long, hollow weeks that followed: It hurts less if I pretend he never existed. You whispered it while brushing your teeth in the dormitory bathroom mirror, avoiding your own gaze. You muttered it under your breath while walking past the Ravenclaw table and forcing your eyes straight ahead. You clung to it in the middle of the night, when you had to press your palm against your mouth to keep from crying out.
But pain has a way of becoming fuel when there’s nothing else left to burn.
It pushed you forward.
Through the endless revision sessions in the library. Through the practical exams where your wand hand shook for the first five minutes until muscle memory took over. Through the nights when sleep refused to come and you stared at the canopy, tracing the ghost of his touch along your collarbone until the memory turned sour and you rolled over to bury your face in the pillow.
Before you knew it, NEWTs arrived.
And passed.
You walked out of the last exam—Potions, ironically—feeling nothing at first. Just the dull throb of exhaustion behind your eyes and the faint metallic taste of adrenaline fading on your tongue. Results came by owl two weeks later while you were home for a brief break. The envelope was heavy, official, sealed with the Ministry crest. Your parents watched in silence as you broke it open.
Top percentile, the accompanying letter said. Auror recruitment had already flagged your name. An interview was scheduled. A training position awaited—if you accepted.
Your mother’s eyes glistened for the first time in years. Your father actually smiled—small, restrained, but real. They hugged you. Told you how proud they were. How you’d honored the family name. How the Ministry would be lucky to have you.
And you were proud too.
Not the bright, shining pride of someone who’d won without scars. This was quieter. Harder-won. The pride of someone who had been cracked open, hollowed out, and still managed to stand upright long enough to cross the finish line.
a/n: 6AM. I say thank you. I go sleep. Part 2 will be posted soon. <3 REBLOGS AND COMMENTARY IS APPRECIATED!
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HOLY PEAK it's just the intro but it's already so good, i'm glad we got some backstory. i already know death eater!sunghoon is going to have me drooling
