how to lie like lovers | part 2
pairing: slytherin! na jaemin x gryffindor! fem. reader genre: hogwarts au, fake dating, fluff, smut, angst wc: 17k summary: A Gryffindor prefect and a Slytherin golden boy fake a relationship to avoid an unwanted marriage pact, but as staged kisses turn real and secrets unravel, their hearts end up tangled in ways neither expected. Now, with love and pride on the line, they must decide if risking everything is worth the truth. content warnings: explicit sexual content, loss of virginity, protected sex (contraceptive charms), oral sex (fem receiving), fingering, cursing, alcohol consumption, miscommunication, emotional hurt/comfort, anxiety, self-consciousness, emotional manipulation (though not malicious) lots of harry potter references (obvs), hogwarts setting, slytherin/gryffindor stereotypes and prejudice, pureblood politics, brief mention of emotionally distant/cold parents. a/n: finally!! i’m so sorry this took forever, i really meant to post it the same day as part one, but i kept adding more (like… a lot more), so i really hope it was worth the wait. i had so much fun writing it though and i’m actually really proud of how it turned out. this fic fully consumed me for months lol😭 i hope you guys enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it. please feel free to scream in the comments/inbox, i wanna hear all your thoughts <3 ps: if anyone cares for a bit of music while reading i made this playlist for the fic.
Read part 1 here
In the wake of that catastrophic lapse in judgment at the Three Broomsticks, you had spent the remainder of the weekend engaged in a heroic attempt at total social erasure. Under the flimsy pretext of Prefect patrols, you’d spent twenty four hours haunting the castle’s most desolate corners and developing an encyclopedic, almost intimate knowledge of the drafty corridors behind the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and the specific, rhythmic drip of the second-floor lavatory.
You lived in mortal fear of a confrontation, your brain a frantic pinball machine of panicked justifications. How does one even begin to explain away the fact that you’d essentially tackled Jaemin with your mouth in front of half the student body? You couldn't even blame the butterbeer; no one was that much of a lightweight.
All that strategic hiding, however, proved to be a spectacular waste of time.
Because Monday morning arrived and with it, the unavoidable horror of Double Potions. Jaemin, of course, decided to plop down next to you, looking both freshly pressed and utterly unbothered by recent events. All the while had to physically force yourself not to bolt in the opposite direction.
“Morning, Y/N,” he said pleasantly. “Fancy another go?”
You nearly slid off the stool. “I—beg your pardon?”
His mouth quirked as he leaned closer, lowering his voice until it was a secret shared only between your skin and his lips.
“Just a thought,” he drawled, “since the entire school has already watched us snog, we might as well get our money’s worth, don’t you think?”
You gaped at him, your indignation warring with a sudden spike of heat. Jaemin just watched you, a picture of insouciant grace, clearly having decided that his new favorite hobby was seeing exactly how many shades of scarlet he could make you turn before Slughorn even called the roll.
“I—well—” You faltered, the sentence dying pathetically in your throat. There was no good exit strategy here, no witty retort that could dismantle the sheer smugness radiating off him. “Wasn’t that a bit… much? In the Three Broomsticks?”
His gaze turned positively feral with glee. “I believe the many witnesses there that night will say that you started it. I was merely an innocent bystander, swept along by the current of your passionate improvisation.”
You pressed your lips together, an exercise in sheer willpower to deny him the satisfaction of a reaction.
“Swept along, my arse. You’re the one who—” You clamped down on the thought before it could manifest, but the phantom sensation of his fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of your neck flashed through your mind.
Jaemin tilted his head, a lock of blonde hair falling over his brow, as if to punctuate how useless your walls were against him now.
“Look, if we’re going to commit to this performance, we might as well aim for the stalls,” he said. “The school already has us pencilled in as the frontrunners for ‘Best Couple’. It would be a tragedy to disappoint the fans now, wouldn't it?”
He slipped his hand into yours, as if nothing at all had changed. But now you were horribly aware how your skin prickled with nerves and the pulse in your wrist kept skipping whenever he brushed his thumb along the side of your hand.
Slughorn, bless his velvet-clad heart, seemed absolutely determined to overwhelm the gloom of the dungeons with his boisterous goodwill. He was in rare form today, circling the room like a parade master, “Today, my dears, we will be brewing Amortentia! The mother of all love potions! Now, who can tell me its greatest danger?”
You raised your hand with perhaps more enthusiasm than Slughorn's question warranted, if only to reclaim it from Jaemin's grip.
“It can’t create real love, sir” you said, voice admirably steady. “Only a very strong infatuation. A kind of obsession, really. And it’s different for everyone who smells it, the scent changes to reflect whatever attracts you most.”
“Excellent! Excellent!” Slughorn beamed. “Ten points to Gryffindor! Now then, pair up, everyone, pair up! Today we brew!”
Naturally, this was when things went from bad to infinitely worse.
Brewing Amortentia while in the throes of whatever this mortifying situation with Jaemin was? Spectacularly poor timing. Working close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him, to have his fingers brush yours with every ingredient passed between you? Absolute torture of the most exquisite variety.
“Pass me the pearl dust, would you, love?” Jaemin murmured, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate in the scant space between you.
You passed it quickly and focused back on the cauldron, determined to at least finish before him. You added the frozen ashwinder eggs, stirring counter-clockwise until the liquid began to shimmer.
“You’re quite good at this,” Jaemin noted. “Almost as good as you are at improvisation”.
“Focus on the potion, Jaemin,” you bit out, though you could feel your face go scarlet.
After almost two hours of gruelling labor, the potion was perfect. The steam rose in characteristic spirals, and the surface gleamed with a lustrous, opalescent sheen. You smiled at your technical triumph.
But the smile died on your lips the moment the scent hit your nose.
You'd hoped—prayed, really—for something ordinary. Like the comforting smell of old books, perhaps. Or the woody scent from the fire in the Gryffindor common room. But what you got instead was far more specific, and infinitely more damning.
Expensive cologne that smelled of bergamot and beneath that was the distinct, slightly oily musk of broomstick polish. The exact olfactory combination that seemed to have permanently infused itself into the fibers of Jaemin’s robes, the scent that enveloped you whenever he pulled you close in the corridors.
Godric save me, you thought, your stomach performing a sort of sickening swoop.
Your mind scrambled for a rational explanation. It’s just a common scent, it argued desperately. Half the Quidditch players use that polish. And any posh tosser could wear that cologne.
But the Amortentia didn’t lie. Your Herculean attempt at self-delusion was failing utterly in the face of the irrefutable truth spiralling out of your cauldron.
Fear metastasized across your body, becoming a cold weight anchored in the hollow of your sternum, pulsing in time with the frantic thrum of your heart. If you acknowledged the bergamot and the broomstick polish, you were surrendering the only fortress you had left. To speak it would be to dismantle the safety of the 'fake' and leave you standing raw and defenseless in the debris of your own design.
You were terrified that the moment the truth escaped your lips, the delicate, agonizing balance of your world would tilt, sliding you both into a reality from which there was no clever improvisation to save you.
“So?” Jaemin’s voice was suddenly right at your ear, making you flinch. “What are you getting, Y/N? Freshly bound books and new parchment, I’d wager.”
The proximity forced your lungs to pull in the real version of the bergamot you had just been mourning.
“Yeah, uhm…I smell old books,” you said, the lie ashen on your tongue.
Jaemin turned to look at you, and it was as though he were reading the very thoughts you were trying to bury. Beneath the table, out of sight of the professor and the prowling eyes of the room, his hand found yours again
“Is that so?” he murmured, his eyes visibly darkening as they swept over your face. “Well. I’m getting a very distinctive note of vanilla. And that floral soap you use in the Prefects’ bathroom.”
His words were so utterly devoid of the frantic panic currently hijacking your nervous system, that for a moment, you simply stared. Your brain suddenly tripped over his transparency. He’s joking, you realized, a hysterical sort of relief blooming in the wake of the shock. Of course he is. If he actually smelled that from the potion, he would be guarding that secret with his life, burying it under ten layers of Slytherin steel.
“Aha!” Slughorn crowed, making you both start. He peered into your cauldron, his face shining with delight. “A perfect brew! The spirals are unmistakable. Tell me, Mr. Na, is the aroma potent?”
Jaemin didn’t take his eyes off you. “Distractingly so, Professor,” he said, his lips curving into a smile that made your entire body go on high alert. “It’s enough to drive a man to madness.”
Slughorn clapped his hands together, mercifully oblivious to the silent conversation happening right under his nose. “Splendid! Simply splendid. Ten points to Slytherin and Gryffindor. Now, for your homework, I want a foot of parchment on the dangers of Amortentia and why its use is so strictly regulated. To be handed in next lesson!”
As the class descended into the frantic clatter of copper stirring rods and the rhythmic scrubbing of stone, you moved through the motions in a total sensory daze. What were you supposed to do with this knowledge? How were you meant to deal with the fact that the scent of your Amortentia, the very distillation of your most primal desires, was inextricably tied to Jaemin?
Right before you exited the room Jaemin’s fingers brushed against your own so briefly it should have been negligible, yet it sent a jolt of fire anchoring itself in the marrow of your bones. He leaned in, his shadow eclipsing you for a fleeting second.
“Think about what I said earlier, yeah?” He murmured, the words ghosting against your skin before he deposited a soft kiss on your temple.
You stood frozen as he merged into the tide of students. A sinking, leaden certainty settled in the pit of your stomach, making your breath hitch in your throat. You were well and truly doomed, there was no more room for clever denials. The Amortentia had stripped away the artifice, laying the raw, pulsing truth bare against the cold dungeon floor.
You liked Na Jaemin, and Merlin help you, there wasn't a potion in the world that could fix it.
Part of you was almost giddy about the novelty of actually fancying someone, of feeling your stomach swoop when they walked into a room. But mostly you were terrified. When had Jaemin stopped being an inconvenience and started being this?
Maybe, you reasoned, you could indulge it. Just a little. Lean into the dating act a bit more and let yourself feel it without examining it too closely.
That’s how the boundaries started dissolving.
Slowly at first, then all at once, every rule you’d established became negotiable. Jaemin would pull you into empty alcoves where no one could possibly see you, press you against cold stone and kiss you until you couldn’t breathe. “We’re not in public,” you’d manage between kisses. He’d just smirk against your mouth. “Practice makes perfect.”
No one batted an eyelid at the sight of him pulling you into empty rooms. Even Giselle had stopped questioning you, and became rather repulsed by your sudden displays of affection.
Meanwhile, you walked around feeling as if you’d lost the original plot of this whole thing. Your brain became a pinball machine: every glance from Jaemin sent the ball ricocheting wildly, every brush of his fingers over your knuckles set your whole body on high alert. He, on the other hand, seemed to delight in turning up at the least convenient moments—snagging you between classes, kissing you in the shadow of the greenhouses, catching your hand when you tried to slip past him on your way out of the library and kissing you against the stacks.
You coped by remembering it was all for show, the same way you might recite lines in a play. Only actors didn’t typically wake up thinking about the curve of their co-star’s mouth or lie awake at night replaying every touch of their calloused fingers.
You ran into him outside your common room one evening, just as curfew loomed. Jaemin looked up from a parchment he was pretending to read, tucking it away as you approached.
His eyes seemed to visibly darken at the sight of you. It would have been easy to walk past, make some excuse about homework or an early morning. Instead, you hovered, dithering between the impulse to run and the urge to close the gap.
Jaemin broke the stalemate, stepping forward and catching your wrist. “I was hoping I’d see you,” he said and then pointed at the portraits on the walls that watched you silently. “Thought we might keep the neighbors entertained.”
He didn't wait for an answer. He tugged on your wrist to guide you forward, and then his hand was sliding upward, fingers tangling deep into the hair at the base of your neck. He tilted his head, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before he leaned down to claim them.
His lips moved against yours with devastating confidence. As the kiss deepened, his other hand found the small of your back, pulling you flush against him until there was no space left between you. He made a low sound in the back of his throat, a private noise of satisfaction that seemed to echo against your own heartbeat.
High above, the painted figures in the frames whispered and tittered. The Fat Lady let out a bright, trilling giggle that rang through the hallway, but Jaemin didn't stop. He only pressed closer, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw as he turned the kiss slower, more rhythmic, and infinitely more distracting than any textbook could ever be.
When he finally broke away, he didn't pull back more than an inch. His breath hitched against your lips, and the dark intensity in his eyes seemed to catch fire.
He had just begun to trail his lips from your mouth to the sensitive line of your jaw when a shrill, cackling whistle echoed off the stone walls.
"Ooh, lookie here! Little lions in a knot! Or is it a tangle? A right royal muddle!"
Peeves the Poltergeist swooped down, hovering upside down just inches from your faces. His wide, malicious eyes darted between you and Jaemin, his tongue poking out through a jagged grin.
Jaemin didn't let go of you, but he let out a long, frustrated exhale against your skin. He slowly turned his head to glare at the spirit. "Not now, Peeves. Go find a first-year to pelt with ink pellets."
"Ink pellets? Boring! Stale!" Peeves blew a loud raspberry and started spinning in a dizzying circle. He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of stale, rock-hard Cauldron Cakes. "I’d much rather watch the lovebirds try to coo while I practice my aim!"
With a wicked flick of his wrist, he tossed a cake. It whistled past Jaemin’s ear, narrowly missing him and thudding loudly against the frame of a disgruntled landscape painting.
"Jammy and the Pouter, sitting in a hall! Kissing 'til the portraits scream and the ceiling falls!" Peeves sang at the top of his lungs, his voice shrill enough to wake every sleeping student in the nearby tower.
Jaemin finally pulled back fully, though he kept a protective arm slung low around your waist. He looked up at the cackling poltergeist, a dangerous, tired sort of smirk playing on his lips. "You’re going to get Filch up here, you menace."
"Filchy-poo? Even better!" Peeves shrieked, preparing another handful of projectiles. "Double the trouble, double the fun! Run, little students, run-run-run!"
Jaemin’s jaw tightened, and the last traces of the kiss's softness vanished into a look of sharp irritation. He reached into his robes and flicked his wand upward with a lethal grace.
"I warned you," Jaemin muttered dangerously. “Waddiwasi!"
The Cauldron Cake Peeves had been preparing to throw suddenly zoomed upward, propelled by an invisible force. It jammed itself straight into the poltergeist’s left nostril.
The poltergeist let out a high-pitched scream of outrage, spinning wildly in the air as he tried to claw the stale pastry out. Realizing he had lost this round, he zoomed through the nearest wall, leaving nothing behind but the faint sound of his frantic thumping as he retreated toward the floor below.
Jaemin let out a huff of a laugh, finally tucking his wand back into his sleeve. The intense look returned to his eyes as he turned his full attention back to you, his hands sliding back to their previous spots on your waist.
"Now," he whispered, pulling you back against the wall. "Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?"
You pressed a hand to his chest before he could close the distance. “Wait—did you hear that?”
“No.” The word was muffled against your neck, which he’d apparently decided required immediate attention.
“Jaemin, I’m serious. I think that’s Filch—”
He went still, listening. Sure enough, the shuffle of uneven footsteps echoed down the corridor.
“Your common room,” Jaemin said immediately, tugging you toward the Fat Lady’s portrait. “Come on—”
“Wait! She won’t let you in!”
He stopped short. “What? Why not?”
“Because you’re a Slytherin? We’ve been over this.”
“I thought you were drunk when you said that.” Jaemin stared at you incredulously. “So you’re telling me she won’t let any Slytherins in? And we’re the prejudiced house?”
“I mean she could, technically. But then she’d absolutely tell Filch about it.”
Jaemin made a sound of disbelief as Filch’s footsteps grew louder.
“Fine. Come on.” He grabbed your hand, pulling you in the opposite direction.
“Where are we going?” you hissed, jogging to keep up as he led you through several corridors and down the stairs.
“The dungeons.”
“What?! I am not going to your common room—”
“Oh, come on.” He threw you an exasperated look over his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Slytherins actually mind their business when it comes to sneaking people in. Unlike you lions, apparently.”
The further you descended, the more aware you became of where this was heading. You’d never set foot in the Slytherin common room, and now you were sneaking in at night to… Well. The thought alone was enough to make your heart ricochet against your chest.
“Right, here we are.” Jaemin stopped before a blank wall.
“That’s it?” You stared at it with a raised brow. “Kind of underwhelming, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, did you expect a giant fanged mouth?”
“Alright, ease up on the attitude.” You glared at him.
He smiled, and spoke to the wall: “Serpensortem.” Then, catching your eye: “Feel free to use that. You know, if you ever need to find me.”
The hidden door (which did, in fact, have serpents carved into it) swung open to reveal a narrow corridor of stairs descending even deeper. How Slytherins didn’t lose their minds being this far underground, you had no idea.
Inside, the common room was both exactly what you’d pictured and nothing like it. Dark stone, high ceilings, and a green-filtered light casting everything in a sort of underwater glow. Because…Oh. The ceiling was glass. There were actual panels looking straight up into the Black Lake’s murky water and the shadows of the occasional creatures drifting by.
Stunning. Also deeply unsettling if you thought too hard about it.
“Nice view of the Giant Squid you’ve got.”
Jaemin was right, his housemates truly didn’t care. The handful of students still up barely registered your presence, offering cursory glances before returning to whatever they were working on. Apparently a Gryffindor in the Slytherin common room wasn’t that much of a strange sight.
“Want to go up to my dorm?”
You gave him a look. “Where all your dormmates are?”
“They’re at the Three Broomsticks getting properly pissed.” He shrugged. “We’ve got the place to ourselves.”
“It’s way past curfew. How’d they even get out?”
“There are secret passages that lead straight to the village. They’re all over the castle.”
“How am I only just learning this?”
His smile turned wicked. “Well, you’re such a good girl.” He pulled you closer by the waist. “A very good girl who owes me a kiss.”
You were completely out of your depth. Although the flirting had become familiar, the fact that Jaemin seemed to want you with the same desperate intensity you felt for him was uncharted territory that left you dizzy and unmoored.
So you didn’t fight when he led you upstairs. You let him pull you into a kiss on the steps, let yourself kiss him back with abandon until you stumbled into the warm sanctuary of his dorm. Only then did you surface long enough to catch your breath and actually take stock of your surroundings.
There were four four-poster beds with dark emerald hangings, the standard Hogwarts setup, but each corner had been claimed and personalized by its occupant.
You recognized Jaemin’s immediately. The one nearest the window, if you could call the glass panel looking into the lake a window. His Quidditch gear was piled carelessly beside his trunk: broom propped against the bedpost, leather gloves draped over the footboard, a jersey with “NA” embroidered on the back slung over his desk chair. The nightstand held an impressive collection of cologne bottles and a few books stacked messily beneath them.
But it was the wall above his bed that caught your attention. Photographs pinned in no particular order of what looked like his family, him and his Quidditch team, a few older shots of him with other friends you didn’t recognize.
“Snooping already?” Jaemin’s voice came from behind you.
You turned to find him leaning against the wall, watching you with a raised brow.
“Just… observing.”
“Mhm.” He pushed off the post and crossed to you in two strides. “And what have your observations concluded?”
“That you’re messier than I expected.” You gestured to the Quidditch gear. “But also weirdly sentimental.” You nodded toward the photographs.
You turned to the other sections of the room and caught on a collection of what appeared to be hand-drawn comics pinned above one bed, surprisingly good actually, depicting what looked like Quidditch matches gone horribly wrong.
“Are those—did someone draw these?”
“Renjun.” Jaemin followed your gaze. “He’s got a thing for documenting Donghyuck’s Quidditch failures. It's quite therapeutic for him, apparently.”
“Donghyuck and Renjun—wait, I thought you roomed with Changmin and Sungchan?”
“I used to. Merlin, don’t remind me.” Jaemin collapsed onto what was clearly his bed—the one nearest the lake-view panel.
“That bad?
“They both snore like bloody dragons. Together it was—” He shook his head. “I got about three hours of sleep a night for two years. Finally cracked in third year and begged the head boy to switch me.”
You laughed. “So who’d you end up with?”
“Jeno, Donghyuck, and Renjun.” He gestured vaguely around the room. “They’re a nightmare in different ways, but at least they sleep quietly.”
“Sounds like a ringing endorsement.”
He got up and started slowly towards you. “I didn’t bring you up here to psychoanalyze our dorm though.”
“No?” Your hands settled against his chest when he pulled you to him. “What am I up here for, then?”
His smile turned wicked. “I believe we established you owe me a kiss. Several, actually, if we’re keeping count.”
“Are we keeping count now?”
“I am.” He leaned in, mouth barely brushing yours. “And you’re severely in debt.”
You could’ve pointed out the flawed logic, could’ve reminded him that you’d just spent the last several minutes kissing him senseless on the stairs. Instead, you closed the distance between you, letting him walk you backward until your legs hit the edge of his bed.
“This okay?” he murmured against your lips, even as his hands slid up your sides.
Your heart was hammering so loud you were sure he could hear it. This was different from the corridors, from the alcoves and the performances. Just you and him and the choice to cross whatever line you’d been toeing for weeks.
“Yeah,” you breathed. “This is okay.”
His smile was soft before he kissed you again. You reciprocated with much enthusiasm making him sigh against your lips. His hands slid into your hair as the kiss deepened, and you let yourself get lost in it .
Your fingers found the buttons of his shirt, fumbling slightly, and he made a sound low in his throat that sent heat racing through you. His hand slipped beneath the hem of your sweater, palm warm against your ribs, and—
Suddenly you heard voices. Loud and slurred, echoing up from the common room.
“—telling you, Hyuck, you can’t just Accio the entire bottle—”
“It almost worked though… I’m just— hngh— a bit wet”
“Shit.” Jaemin pulled back. “They’re early. Fuck.”
“What—…” You scrambled into a sitting position, trying to finger-comb your hair into something less incriminating. “How do I look?”
He looked at you and tried to hide a grin behind his hand. “Like I’ve been kissing you for the past ten minutes.”
“Jaemin!”
“Right, sorry—” He reached out, gently attempting to smooth down your hair. It was possibly the sweetest thing he’d ever done and absolutely not helping your emotional state. “Okay, just act natural?”
The door banged open and three boys tumbled through in various states of inebriation— a muscular lad with short black hair barely keeping another upright, while a third brought up the rear looking significantly more sober than his friends.
The first one stopped short when he spotted you. “Oh, shit.”
“Jeno, move, you’re blocking the—” The one being held up peered around his friend and broke into a massive grin. “Na Jaemin, you absolute legend.”
“Shut up, Donghyuck.” Jaemin stood, positioning himself slightly in front of you.
The sober one closed the door with considerably more care than it had been opened with. “We can go back down if—”
“No, it’s fine.” You stood as well, acutely aware of how warm your face felt. “I should probably get back to Gryffindor tower anyway.”
“Gryffindor!” Hyuck crowed, stumbling further into the room. “So you’re the Gryffindor. Jaemin’s been—ow! What the fuck, Jeno—”
Jeno had elbowed him, hard. “Subtle as a brick, mate.”
“I’m just saying, he’s been in a better mood lately and now I know why—”
“Hyuck, I will literally hex your bollocks off.” Jaemin’s tone was pleasant. His expression was not.
The sober one gave you an apologetic look. “Ignore them. They had approximately five Firewhiskeys each at the Three Broomsticks.”
“Five and a half,” Hyuck corrected proudly.
“Right. Well.” You smoothed down your skirt. “I should go.”
Jaemin caught your wrist. “I’ll walk you out.”
“I think your friends need more help than I do .”
“They’ll live.” His jaw was set and you could tell he was still annoyed about the interruption.
“Awww, he’s being chivalrous,” Hyuck stage-whispered to Jeno. “That’s so—ow, fuck, Renjun—”
Renjun had slapped the back of his head. “Please excuse Donghyuck. He becomes aggressively annoying when drunk.”
“Just when drunk?” Jeno muttered.
You bit back a smile despite yourself. “It’s fine. I can find my way out.”
“You sure?” Jaemin was still holding your wrist.
“I’m sure.” You gently extracted your hand, very aware of three pairs of eyes tracking the movement. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
You made it approximately two steps toward the door before Hyuck piped up again. “Hey, Gryffindor girl?”
You turned. “It’s—”
“Oh, we know who you are,” Jeno said, grinning.
“He’s absolutely miserable when you’re not around, you know,” Hyuck announced cheerfully, ignoring Jaemin’s death glare. “Like, genuinely unbearable. So thanks for that. You’re doing Merlin’s work, truly—”
“HYUCK—”
You escaped into the corridor before you could hear the rest, but their laughter—and Jaemin’s protests—followed you all the way down the stairs.
By the time you reached the common room, your face was burning and your heart was still racing and you had absolutely no idea how you were going to look at Jaemin tomorrow without remembering the weight of him above you, the heat of his hands, the way he’d looked at you like—
No. Not thinking about it.
Except you absolutely were going to spend the entire night thinking about it. You shook your head sharply as you climbed back through the castle, taking a different route to avoid Filch.
The interruption was probably for the best. It had stopped you from doing something you couldn’t take back, from crossing a line that would make the whole “fake dating” excuse completely untenable.
“Wow, he’s even convinced you to go to a Quidditch game?” Jo said as she observed you putting on the green scarf you’d borrowed from Jaemin. “And wearing his colors? Okay, who are you and what have you done to my best friend?”
You rolled your eyes. “It’s just one game. Plus, he’s been asking me to go for the past few weeks and I’ve already rejected him too many times. What kind of girlfriend doesn’t go support her boyfriend at a game?”
“A fake one?” She offered with a knowing look.
“I’m already committed to the bit, Jo. Cant back out now.”
“I just want to remind you that there are only 2 more weeks of this arrangement. Personally, I haven't even seen Yuna bother Jaemin in a good while, so there’s really no need to keep extending this thing.”
She was right. Yuna had been conspicuously absent lately. No more pointed stares across the Great Hall, no more appearances in places you and Jaemin frequented, no more saccharine interruptions during your library study sessions. You’d been so caught up in the elaborate fiction of your relationship that you’d stopped monitoring the very threat it was meant to neutralize.
Had she given up? Moved on to easier prey, perhaps? Or had the performance been so convincing that she’d accepted defeat?
And if the threat had dissolved, what justified the charade’s continuation?
More pressingly: did you want it to end?
The thought arrived unbidden, unwelcome, and stubbornly refused to leave. Two weeks. Fourteen days until you’d presumably sit down with Jaemin and declare mission accomplished, shake hands like business partners concluding a transaction, and return to being polite strangers who’d once played at intimacy for an audience.
“I’ll leave it to Jaemin to decide,” you said finally, the words emerging more brittle than intended. You avoided Jo’s reflection in the mirror, suddenly fascinated by the intricacies of your braid. “It’s his arrangement, technically. His problem we were solving.”
Liar, your reflection seemed to whisper. Coward.
Because the uncomfortable truth you’d been studiously ignoring was that you had no idea what Jaemin wanted anymore.
When he kissed you in empty corridors with no witnesses, was that practice? When his thumb traced absent patterns on your hip during meals, was he performing for distant onlookers or had it simply become habit? When he looked at you like that, was he acting or had the fiction begun consuming the actor?
You didn’t know. And you were terrified to ask.
Jo made a small noise of sympathy. “Just… be careful, alright? I know you think you’ve got this handled, but—”
“I’m fine,” you interrupted, perhaps too sharply. “Everything’s completely under control.”
The lie hung between you, obvious and ignored.
At the Quidditch pitch you headed to the Slytherin side of the stands. Thankfully, the finale was against Ravenclaw and not Gryffindor, otherwise you would feel like a horrible disloyal witch by not supporting your own house.
The place was already packed by the time you arrived. You’d expected to sit with the general crowd, but before you could even start climbing the stairs, you felt a hand on your arm.
“You’re with us,” Giselle said, appearing out of nowhere. She was dressed head to toe in green and silver, her house pride on full display. “Come on. We’ve saved you seats.”
“Saved me—what?”
Giselle led you to a prime spot right at the front of the Slytherin stands, where Changmin and Sungchan were already waiting.
“There she is!” Changmin grinned, as if this had all been planned.
“Jaemin’s good luck charm,” Sungchan added with a wink.
You blinked at them, too stunned to speak. These were the same boys who had barely tolerated your presence a month ago. Now they were scooting over, offering you the best view on the pitch, as if you belonged there.
“Jaemin said if we didn’t make sure you had the best seat, he’d hex us into next week,” Sungchan continued breezily. “And I quite like having my kneecaps intact, so.”
You sat down, feeling extremely self-conscious about being front and center in the Slytherin section wearing Slytherin colors. People were definitely staring. You could feel their eyes on you, could hear the whispers starting up.
"Wait," you started, your voice slightly breathless as you looked between their relaxed postures and the players currently mounting their brooms on the pitch. "Why aren't you two down there? Don't you both play?"
Changmin let out a dry snort, adjusting his sleeves. "Suspended," he said, "the Ravenclaw Beaters didn't appreciate my 'aggressive' tactical maneuvers during last week's scrimmage."
"And I'm on the bench today with a 'mysterious' wrist cramp," Sungchan added, though he looked entirely too healthy for an injury. He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a murmur. "Truthfully? Jaemin didn't want us on the pitch. He wanted us here. Guarding you."
What?
"He’s a bit possessive over you," Giselle noted, settling in on your other side and smoothing her skirt. "He didn't trust the general Slytherin population to behave themselves while his head was in the clouds. Consider them your personal gargoyles for the afternoon."
Before you could process the idea of Jaemin hand-picking his friends to act as your shield, the teams flew onto the pitch, and the crowd erupted in cheers. You spotted him immediately. He was easy to pick out, even among the other players in their green and silver robes. He was a Chaser, and even from a distance, you could see the easy confidence in the way he handled his broom.
He did a lap of the pitch, clearly scanning the stands, and when he saw you sitting front and center in the Slytherin section wearing green his entire face lit up. He changed direction, flying closer to where you were sitting, and the crowd around you started screaming louder.
“Watch this,” Changmin said, grinning. “He’s showing off.”
Jaemin pulled up right in front of the Slytherin section, hovering there on his broom, and blew you a kiss. An unsubtle, utterly ridiculous kiss blown in your direction in front of the entire school.
You felt your face go absolutely scarlet, but you couldn’t help smiling. He looked so happy. So genuinely, completely happy, and it was directed at you.
"Salazar's ghost," Giselle groaned, pointedly looking toward the sky. "The two of you are going to make me sick."
The whistle shrieked, a sharp, piercing herald that set the game in motion. You quickly discovered that Quidditch was an entirely different ordeal when your attention was tethered to a Chaser. It was no longer a sport but a grueling exercise in cardiovascular distress. Every time Jaemin’s fingers curled around the Quaffle, your breath hitched, trapped in the tight column of your throat. Every time a Ravenclaw Beater sent a Bludger whistling toward his skull, your stomach performed a sickening, leaden drop into your heels.
You were on your feet more often than not, screaming yourself hoarse, your dignity dissolving with every reckless maneuver he pulled. Your knuckles were white, clutching the edge of the railing as if you were the one hanging onto a broomstick three hundred feet in the air.
“Look at you,” Giselle observed during a brief lull in the carnage. “You truly have it bad, don’t you? You’re vibrating.”
“I’m simply—invested in the match,” you ground out, refusing to look away from the green-and-silver blur circling the hoops.
“You’re invested in him,” she corrected, a smirk playing on her lips that was equal parts amused and knowing. “It’s a bit pathetic, really. But I suppose he deserves someone who watches him with that level of frantic devotion.”
Whatever biting retort you were preparing to mount was violently incinerated by the roar of the crowd. A deafening, earth-shaking thunder erupted from the Slytherin stands as Jaemin executed a barrel roll that seemed aerodynamically impossible, slamming the Quaffle through the center hoop.
Slytherin dominated the match with embarrassing efficiency, their Chasers running rings around Ravenclaw’s defense, and Jaemin in particular seemed determined to make a personal statement. Then their Seeker caught the Snitch about an hour into the match, ending things decisively. The moment it was over, the Slytherin section erupted in celebration, and before you quite knew what was happening, people were pouring onto the pitch.
“Come on!” Giselle grabbed your hand, pulling you along with the crowd. “We’re going down!”
You let yourself be dragged down to the pitch, caught up in the excitement. The Slytherin team had barely landed when they were being mobbed by supporters, everyone screaming and hugging and celebrating.
You were just trying to stay upright and not get trampled, when suddenly hands grabbed your waist and you were being lifted, spun around, and then you were looking directly into Jaemin’s face.
He was sweaty, and disheveled, and grinning so wide it looked like it might hurt his cheeks.
“We won,” he said, as if you might not have noticed.
“I saw,” you said, laughing despite yourself. “You were brilliant.”
“You wore green,” he said breathlessly. “You actually wore green for me.”
“Of course I did. I’m your—”
You didn’t get to finish the sentence, because he kissed you.
He kissed you like you were the only two people there, like he’d been waiting all day to do this, like winning the match was secondary to getting to kiss you. His hands cupped your face, angling your head to deepen the kiss, and you forgot about everything except the feeling of his mouth on yours.
People were cheering. You could hear them, distant and muffled, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You just kissed him back, your hands fisting in his Quidditch robes to pull him impossibly closer.
When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard. “That—” Jaemin said, thumbing sweat and hair from your cheek, “was the best part of the whole day. Actually, my entire bloody year.”
He kissed you again, quick and fierce, before setting you down.
The chaos of the pitch threatened to sweep you up—Haechan was flying mockingly around the dazed Ravenclaw Keeper, who looked two seconds away from swearing off Quidditch forever. Jeno was being hoisted onto someone’s shoulders while holding the Cup, still in his gear, a lopsided grin plastered across his face as a small army of younger Slytherins began a chant.
You barely had time to process anything before a dozen Slytherin hands were clapping you on the back, dragging you into the noisy throng. Jeno slung an arm around your shoulder, while Haechan bowed with the sort of exaggerated flourish only he could get away with.
“Oi, Y/N! You’re practically the Slytherin mascot at this point,” Haechan crowed, earning a fresh round of chanting. Jeno nodded and said, “We’ll need you at every match. Jaemin plays like he’s got something to prove when you’re here.”
Jaemin slipped an arm over your shoulders, fitting himself between you and Jeno. It wasn’t the casual sort of touch affectionate boyfriend would do but rather the kind of grip that signaled territorial intent, both “look at me” and “hands off, Lee Jeno.” Jeno raised his brows, smirked, and stepped back with a dramatic sigh as if to say, “I know when I’ve been outmaneuvered.”
Jaemin lead you out of the crush, across the pitch, past the green-robed ruck of his teammates still shrieking and high-fiving each other senseless.
You found yourselves in the lee of the stands, momentarily invisible to the hooting masses. Jaemin bent over, hands braced on his knees, still catching his breath. The flushed tips of his ears glowed through sweated hair, and when he looked up at you, his eyes were shining, open, utterly unguarded.
“I’m sorry if that was too much,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “We agreed—no more public spectacles.” He grinned, sheepish and shameless at once.
You laughed. “That was entirely your fault. You were the one who just put on a whole air show out there.”
“Had to impress you,” he said, then he straightened, hands on your hips. “Did it work?”
The question was clearly rhetorical, but Jaemin’s voice always lilted up at the end, as if the answer mattered even if he already knew it. Your heart did the embarrassing somersault you’d tried to train it out of, and you could only nod, which made him gloat without mercy.
“Good,” he said, and tugged you in for another kiss, backgrounded by the muffled roar of the stadium and the granular crunch of pebbles underfoot.
Suddenly a broomstick whirred to a stop nearby and Jaemin loosened his grip on you, letting you sway back ever so slightly. You barely had time to school your features before Madam Hooch’s voice rang out.
“Na, what in Merlin’s name do you think you’re doing back here?” She hovered just above, her yellow hawk’s eyes narrowing as she took in the flush on your cheeks and the state of your hair. “This isn’t the broom shed, though you two seem determined to treat it as one. Save the snogging for after hours—if you must.”
A mortifying heat swept up your neck. Jaemin simply grinned at her. “Just appreciating my good luck charm, Professor.”
Madam Hooch sniffed, unimpressed. “If you’re quite finished, the rest of the team would like their Chaser back for the cup photo.”
She fixed you both with one last look that could have stripped paint from the stadium, then gestured briskly for Jaemin to join the others.
He shot you a look over his shoulder, and winked “I’ll meet you in a bit for the celebration”
As the door to the Slytherin common room opened, you were met with an emerald-hued wonderland teeming with giddy, flushed-faced revelers. It was like being inside a shaken bottle of champagne, the air practically fizzing with elation and an infectious sort of glee.
Despite wearing green, you felt distinctly out of place. Like a single rose petal that had somehow fluttered its way into a bouquet of silver-tipped ferns. But Jaemin’s hand was warm and sure in yours.
“Stick close,” he murmured. “Wouldn’t want you to get lost in this snake pit.”
“And here I thought you’d be eager to feed me to your housemates. Y’know, as a victory sacrifice.”
Jaemin’s laugh was a rich, dark thing, like molten chocolate. “Tempting. But I think I’ll keep you to myself a bit longer.”
The wicked glint of his gaze as he said those words made heat rush to your cheeks. But before you could think much of it, you were swept up in a whirlwind of backslaps and high fives, the team descending upon their star Chaser in a giddy mass of sweat-damp robes and Firewhisky-fueled cheer.
You found yourself passed from embrace to embrace, your hair mussed and your face peppered with exuberant kisses. It was overwhelming, dizzying, this sudden immersion into the tight-knit camaraderie of Jaemin’s world.
But through it all, his gaze never left you. Even as he was jostled and jolted by his teammates, his eyes remained locked on yours, a searing, steady connection that made your pulse stutter and your knees go curiously weak.
As the night wore on and the festivities showed no sign of waning, you found yourself gravitating closer and closer to Jaemin, drawn by some irresistible magnetism. The heat of so many bodies packed into the subterranean space, the buzz of one too many Butterbeers, the maddening drag of his fingers along the small of your back as he steered you through the crowd…it was all blurring together into a delicious haze.
And then you looked up at him in a sudden moment of perfect clarity amidst the chaos, and everything else simply…fell away. The noise, the crush of bodies, the very air seemed to shimmer and warp, narrowing down to the electric pulse of connection stretching taut between you.
In that suspended sliver of time, you knew with bone-deep certainty that there was no going back. No more pretending, no more lines in the sand. There was only this, only him, only the truth of what had been building between you from the moment this mad charade began.
You crashed together like colliding stars, mouths and hands and hearts falling into desperate alignment. Jaemin kissed like a man possessed, like he wanted to crawl inside your skin and make a home there, and you matched him beat for beat, pouring months of pent-up longing and frustration and fierce, helpless wanting into the slant of your lips against his.
When you finally surfaced, gasping and glassy-eyed, Jaemin’s face swam into focus, his usually sharp features softened by a look of tenderness.
“Come with me,” he said, his voice a rasping, wrecked thing.
You could only nod, mute and dizzy with want, and let him lead you out of the common room and into the labyrinthine tangle of the dungeon corridors. You walked in silence, the only sound the ragged counterpoint of your breathing and the distant, muffled thump of music.
When he stopped at a stretch of unremarkable wall and began to pace, you knew with a jolt where he was taking you to The Room of Requirement.
Where else would one go to tumble headlong into inadvisable, paradigm-shifting passion?
Jaemin reached for the handle, but then he turned to you with a question in his eyes and an uncharacteristic hesitance in the set of his shoulders…you knew that stepping over this threshold would change everything.
“Y/N,” he said, and there was a whole universe of unspoken things layered into the shape of your name. “Are you sure…?”
“Jaemin,” you said. “Kiss me.”
In the next instant, his lips were on yours again, and you stumbled backward as the hidden door swung open. You didn’t spare a glance for the room that bloomed before you. Couldn’t focus on anything beyond the heat of Jaemin’s body against yours, the desperate, reverent drag of his hands over your curves. The room could’ve been an empty Quidditch pitch, for all you cared.
Every romance you’d ever read and even scoffed at came to life in that moment—the world receding, time slowing to a molasses crawl. There was only sensation, only feeling, only the drugging slide of his lips along your jaw, your throat, the dip of your collarbone.
Your pulse was fucking riotous. You’d talked yourself into this, hadn’t you? Marched up here on legs so wobbly you could’ve blamed the many stairs, convinced yourself you could handle it because it was Jaemin.
His calloused hands roamed with urgent purpose, fingers digging into your hips as he backed you against the nearest wall. He broke the kiss only to yank your shirt over your head, tossing it aside without a second thought. You immediately turned to flame when his gaze tracked all over you. From your swollen lips, to your flushed cheeks, down to the way your chest stuttered with every shaky breath. His hands found your jaw. Steady, so steady.
“We can stop whenever you want to.” he murmured against your ear.
You managed a nod because your speech simply wasn’t coming. Every nerve was pulled taut with both anticipation and terror at the realization of what you were about to do for the first time in your life.
His fingers unclasped your bra carefully, and when the straps slid down your arms, you tried to fold into yourself, awkward and too aware of skin and imperfections. Jaemin’s eyes caught yours; they were dark but promising patience even as he bent to take your nipple in his mouth.
You arched into him, a gasp escaping as his teeth grazed your nipple. “Jaemin,” you breathed, threading your fingers through his hair to hold him there.
He growled low in his throat, the sound vibrating against your skin. His hand cupped your other breast, thumb rolling the nipple between his fingers, pinching just hard enough to send sparks of pleasure-pain shooting straight to your core. You’d never been touched like this before. There’d been secret snogs, awkward fumbles in broom closets that had never gone further than shirt buttons, never left you feeling more than flustered and underwhelmed. This was different.
Your body reacted in ways you hadn’t expected, hips twitching, thighs pressing together, the ache between your legs suddenly urgent and embarrassingly obvious. You could feel yourself clenching around nothing desperately. The sensation was almost alien, and you had to fight the impulse to cover yourself, to pull his hand away and to say wait, let me catch up.
Thoughts scattered in all directions. Was it supposed to feel this good? Did he know how much you were trembling? Could he tell this was your first time? Did he care? Did it matter? You worried you might be doing it wrong by making too much noise, arching too eagerly into his hands, looking foolish and overeager. But his gaze fixed on you, pupils blown, jaw tight with want.
He suddenly straightened, fingers smoothing back the hair from your face. “Hey,” His voice was softer than you’d ever heard it. “Still with me?”
You nodded, a little wild-eyed. “I—yeah. Sorry. I just—” You swallowed, eyes locking on the bland pattern of the carpet. “I haven’t…”
When you looked back up, his eyes flashed with a kind of darker satisfaction. “I know,” he murmured. “I thought so.” His hands slid down your waist. “We’ll go as slow as you need.”
You responded by tugging at his shirt, nails scraping against the hem until he chuckled low in his throat and let you have your way. He pulled back just long enough to strip it off, revealing the lean, muscled planes of his chest and abs. His sun-tanned skin bore the faint ghosts of bruises from Quidditch, a testament to the fact that he played rough today.
You stared shamelessly, hands twitching at your sides, before you finally gave in and mapped every line with your fingertips. The kiss that came next was messier, his tongue thrusting into your mouth in a rhythm that promised what was to come.
Jaemin's fingers worked at the button of your trousers, and you remembered with mortification that your knickers did not match your bra. Cool air hit your bare skin, but his body heat chased it away as he pressed closer, his clothed erection grinding against your thigh. You could feel how hard he was, the thick length straining against his trousers.
“Fuck, Y/N,” he murmured against your lips, voice rough with desire. “I've wanted this for so long.” His hand slid between your legs, fingers parting your folds to find you already slick. He groaned at the discovery, circling your clit with his thumb while a finger pushed inside you, drawing out tiny sparks of pleasure. Hehen he slipped two fingers inside, your hips jerked in startled delight. He moved slow at first, letting you get used to the stretch, his other hand splayed over your hip, grounding you, steadying you.
You moaned, hips bucking into his hand as he pumped his fingers in and out, stretching you, preparing you. The wet sounds of your arousal filled the room, mingling with your ragged breaths. He added a third finger, scissoring them to open you wider, his thumb pressing firmer on your clit until you were trembling, on the edge.
“Merlin, remind me to–… to read a book on this before next time,” you blurted breathlessly.
Jaemin stilled, and for a second, you wondered if you’d killed the mood entirely. But then his mouth curved into a wolfish grin, and he pressed a slow kiss to your cheek, trailing down the line of your jaw.
“Oh, I think you’re doing just fine,” he murmured, voice gone gravelly. “But if you want me to demonstrate…”
He kissed a path down your throat, across your collarbones, pausing to worship each new inch of skin revealed. It seemed like there was no part of you he didn’t want to learn. When his lips brushed the top of your breast, you gasped, the joke you’d been about to make dying on your tongue.
“Jaemin—what are you—?”
“Trust me,”
You whimpered in protest, but he silenced you with a kiss, guiding you toward the bed. He stripped off his own pants and boxers, his cock springing free, long and thick, the tip glistening with pre-cum. Your eyes locked on it, pulse racing at the sight.
He pushed you down onto the soft sheets, following you immediately until his body was covering yours. His mouth trailed lower, kissing a path down your stomach to the apex of your thighs. He spread your legs wide, settling between them, and looked up at you with eyes dark with hunger. “I need to taste you.”
“Wait—” you started, nerves rearing again.
He glanced up. “I promise you’ll like this.”
Then his tongue flicked out, lapping at your core in one long stroke, and the sound you made barely qualified as human. He sucked your clit into his mouth, alternating with broad licks along your slit, his fingers returning to thrust inside you. The combination of his relentless tongue and his fingers fucking you deep and steady was overwhelming.
“Okay, wow, that’s—oh—bloody hell—”
Right. So. That was new.
In fairness, you thought you were reasonably experienced. You had been alone with yourself often enough. You knew what you liked, had your own routines abd methods. A careful system involving muffled pillows, and a great deal of optimistic trial and error.
This was definitely not that.
This was like discovering you’d been trying to play a symphony on a recorder and Jaemin had just sat down at a grand piano and casually dismantled your entire understanding of music.
Your hips rolled against his face instinctively, chasing the building pleasure. He held you down with one arm across your waist, not letting you escape the onslaught. You gasped, the coil in your belly tightening unbearably.
“Jaemin,” you gasped. “Please—”
You weren’t entirely sure what you were asking for.
For him to stop. For him to continue. For him to explain how this was happening. For him to never leave this exact position.
Suddenly he added another finger, and wow…. that was certainly not how it felt when you did it. It probably had to do with the fact that his fingers were way longer and he seemed to know what to do with them.
He hummed against you, the vibration along with his tongue and fingers enough to push you over. Your orgasm crashed through you and you clenched around his fingers as waves of pleasure ripped you apart. He didn't stop, licking you through it until you were shaking.
Only then did he rise, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and a dumb smirk on his lips. “How was that?”
He looked far too smug for your liking, and you—who had spent years pretending to be unflappable—actually giggled. Like a third year after her first Butterbeer.
“It was—” Your cheeks burned. “Brilliant.”
His smile widened. “Alright. Just one more thing before we…” He trailed his wand through a complicated motion. The tip shimmered blue, a faint ring of light settling across your pelvis.
He caught your eye. “Contraceptive charm. Unless you’d rather I hexed my own bollocks off instead, but I hear Madam Pomfrey’s got enough on her hands.”
Another nervous laugh broke from your lips, but Jaemin just pressed a reassuring hand to your thigh and leaned in.
“Tell me to stop if you want to. I mean it.”
You shook your head, want eclipsing every doubt you had. “I want to,” you said, the words tumbling out so fast they nearly tripped over themselves. “I want you.”
Jaemin lined himself up and watched your face as he eased forward slowly. The stretch stung at first—your body fighting to accommodate the unfamiliar width. It hurt more than you’d expected.
Your walls stretched, burning, fluttering around him, the ache gradually giving way to a dizzying pressure as he bottomed out. He stayed perfectly still, forehead resting against yours, both of you shuddering through the intensity of it.
“Alright?” Jaemin asked thickly, as if it cost him everything not to move. A low groan escaped him as your inner muscles clenched involuntarily around his cock, the sensation clearly testing his control.
“Yeah, it’s just… a lot,” you admitted, your breath hitching.
He let out a soft, breathy laugh, his hips twitching slightly despite his efforts to stay still. “Yeah, I know. I’m quite big.” The joke pulled a surprised giggle from you, the tension in your chest easing just a fraction. His eyes crinkled with warmth at the sight.
“You feel so fucking good,” he murmured, a whimper threading through his words, his fingers digging into the sheets beside your head. “It—it’s taking everything not to just pound into you right now.”
He was flushed, hair damp with sweat, the strands sticking adorably to his brow and temples. His cheeks were tinged rose-pink, his jaw clenched tight as if the effort of holding himself back was an actual battle. His lips, swollen from kissing you, parted as he panted, every exhale ghosting warm across your face. A single bead of sweat trickled from his hairline, skimming down to the curve of his cheekbone. You couldn’t help but reach up, tracing it with a shaky finger. He caught your hand, pressing his lips to your palm, and the gentleness of it nearly undid you.
You’d never seen him look more beautiful. All that cockiness and swagger stripped away. This was just Jaemin, undone, desperate, trying to be gentle for your sake and barely managing.
A sudden warmth loosened in your chest, chasing away the last of your tension. You wanted this. The pain ebbed slowly, replaced by a deeper need. You shifted beneath him, hips rolling tentatively, and found the sting softened, yielding to a heady pleasure that made your toes curl.
“Merlin,” Jaemin groaned in response.
You squeezed your eyes shut for a moment, focusing on the sensations: the fullness, the way your inner muscles clenched involuntarily around him, sending little sparks across your body. Your hands roamed his back, feeling the tense muscles under your fingertips, and you whispered, “Please Jaem, move.”
Jaemin pulled back slightly, just an inch or two, and pushed in again slowly. A deep groan rumbled from his chest at the drag, his eyes fluttering shut for a second. “Shit… so good,” he panted.
The motion made you gasp, the initial burn fading into a deliciously pleasant heat. He repeated it, shallow at first, giving your body time to adapt. Each gentle thrust coaxed a soft whimper from your throat, your nerves firing in ways you’d never even imagined. It wasn’t seamless or effortless like in the stories you’d read; there were awkward pauses, a slight shift when he slipped a bit, both of you chuckling breathlessly to ease the tension.
Then he started moving faster, pulling out almost all the way before thrusting back in. Each stroke hit a perfect angle, his hips grinding against your clit with every push. You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, nails digging into his shoulders as he fucked you harder.
The bed creaked under the force of his thrusts, skin slapping against skin. Jaemin's hand found yours, lacing your fingers together as he drove into you, his eyes never leaving yours. There was tenderness in the way he held you, even as his pace turned brutal, chasing release.
“You’re doing so well, princess,” he murmured, brushing your temple.
A jolt of pleasure shot through you as the head of his cock nudged a deeper spot. “There… right there,” you breathed, your voice shaky but sure.
Jaemin pinned your hand above your head gently. His eyes bored into yours. “I’ve dreamed about this so many times,” he confessed between thrusts, voice punctuated by a whimper as your walls gripped him.
“Me too,” you breathed.
He released your hand to slip between your bodies, fingers finding your clit with unerring accuracy. He circled it slowly at first, matching the tempo of his hips, then faster as your moans grew louder. “Come on, let go for me… you’re so close, I can feel it,” he urged, his own groans growing more frequent.
The added friction served its intended purpose. Your orgasm built fast, coiling tight before exploding, your walls fluttering around his cock, milking him.
He followed you over the edge with a broken cry muffled against your neck, burying himself deep as he came. He collapsed onto you afterward, both of you panting, hearts pounding in that particular post-coital unison that poets find romantic and medical professionals find concerning. He stayed inside you as he softened, pressing kisses to your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth.
You lay tangled in Jaemin's arms, limbs pleasantly loose from exertion and spine somewhat less pleasantly compressed by the world's most questionable mattress.
The Room of Requirement, in its infinite wisdom, had conjured a heap of velvet blankets to cover yourself with. You suspected Hogwarts's taste in romantic furnishings had been shaped by decades of adolescent fantasy and the castle's own flair for the dramatic. Regardless, your back ached, your hair was a catastrophe, and you found that you didn't mind at all.
Jaemin, for his part, seemed content to lounge beside you like a Renaissance painting of decadent youth, one hand idly tracing the curve of your hip beneath the sheet. It was all terribly calm—if you ignored the thunderous panic building in your own chest.
You propped yourself up on one elbow and regarded him in the low light. In repose, the sharp edges of him softened into the boy you now knew existed underneath all those sneers. You'd always been rather undone by his eyes, if you were being honest, but now, seeing them half-lidded and so unguarded, the usual sardonic glitter banked to embers, you felt something dangerous clawing its way up your throat.
Don't, warned the sensible part of your brain. Don't you dare.
"I love you," you said.
The words escaped before you had a chance to wrap them in plausible deniability or cushion them with caveats.
Jaemin went very still.
For one absurd, hopeful moment, you thought perhaps he simply needed a second to process. That was reasonable, wasn't it? People usually needed time to absorb emotional declarations. Any moment now, he'd turn to you with that devastating smile and say—
He rolled away. Sat up. And began an unhurried search for his shirt, which had vanished somewhere beneath the bed during earlier, more optimistic proceedings.
Ah.
Ah.
"Jaemin?" you ventured. Your voice sounded strange to your own ears.
He didn't turn around. His shoulders, you noticed, had gone rather tense. "It's getting late. We should probably head back to our dormitories."
Your heart, so stupidly full just moments ago, plummeted somewhere in the vicinity of your stomach. "What?"
"It's late," he repeated, to the floor, or perhaps to the shirt he'd finally located. "We have classes tomorrow. We should get some sleep."
You felt as though someone had upended a bucket of ice water directly over your head. You sat up, pulling the sheet around yourself with hands that had begun, rather inconveniently, to tremble. You'd been pleasantly naked in front of him not five minutes ago, and now you couldn't bear the exposure.
"Jaemin." You hated how small your voice had become. "Did you hear what I said?"
He finally looked at you. His expression had shuttered completely, all the warmth and softness of moments ago locked away behind those dark eyes.
"I heard you."
"And?"
He exhaled. "This... what we just did... it doesn't change anything." A pause. "We had an arrangement. A deal. It was never supposed to be more than that."
The silence that followed was the loudest thing you'd ever heard.
You stared at him, vision blurring treacherously, and thought: of course. Of course he didn't love you back. How could he? You were merely a solution to a problem. The fact that you'd been foolish enough to fall for your own charade—well. That was your fault entirely, wasn't it? No one to blame but yourself and your own ridiculous heart.
"Right," you heard yourself say. "Of course. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—that was too—I'm sorry."
"Y/N..." He reached for you, and you flinched away so sharply you nearly toppled off the bed.
"No, it's fine." Your voice had gone brittle, the way it did when you were trying very hard not to cry. "You're absolutely right. We should go."
You stood on shaky legs and began gathering your scattered clothes with trembling hands. Your jumper had ended up draped over a candelabra, and you couldn't find your left sock, but you decided that you didn't care. You needed to leave. You needed to be anywhere but this room that had witnessed your greatest vulnerability and your most thorough humiliation.
Jaemin dressed in silence. His movements were impersonal, as if the tender lover of minutes ago was replaced entirely by a distant stranger pulling on his trousers like this was simply another Sunday. Perhaps, for him, it was.
When you were both clothed, he cleared his throat.
"I'll walk you back to—"
"I know the way," you interrupted, shoving your single sock gracelessly into your back pocket.
His jaw worked, as though he were chewing over some final, unsatisfying thought. You found you didn't want to hear it.
"Goodnight," you said finally.
You turned on your heel, crossed to the door, and walked out of the Room of Requirement with your chin held high and your heart in approximately seventeen thousand pieces, wishing desperately for a Time-Turner and the sense to use it.
You walked back to Gryffindor Tower in a daze, barely registering your surroundings. Your mind was reeling, trying to process the abrupt shift from blissful intimacy to cold rejection. You stumbled through the portrait hole, ignoring the Fat Lady's concerned look. Thankfully, the common room was empty at this hour. You stood there for a long moment, staring into the dying flames, feeling the weight of your own foolishness pressing down on you.
You'd let yourself imagine it, hadn't you? A future where this thing between you and Jaemin was something real. Something that would survive the end of your little arrangement, that would unfold into late-night conversations and stolen kisses in corridors and his hand finding yours under the table at breakfast. You'd let yourself believe it so thoroughly that you'd forgotten it was never real to begin with.
A beautiful lie. A fairy tale you'd spun for yourself, heedless of the inevitable unhappy ending that had been written into the story from the very first page.
And now you were alone in an empty common room at half past midnight, with nothing but the cold truth and the aching, echoing space in your chest where your heart used to be.
"Y/N? Is that you?"
You turned to see Jo descending from the dormitories. She was in her pajamas, hair piled in a messy bun, face still creased with sleep. But the moment she saw you properly, whatever drowsy inquiry she'd been planning died on her lips.
Her eyes went wide. Understanding flooded her features, followed swiftly by something fierce and protective.
"Oh, love," she breathed, and crossed the room in three quick strides to pull you into her arms. "Oh, no. What happened? What did he do?"
And that was all it took. The dam broke, and suddenly you were sobbing into her shoulder, great heaving gasps that shook your whole body. She held you tightly, stroking your hair, murmuring soothing nonsense as you cried.
"I t-told him I l-loved him," you managed between sobs. "And he... he just..."
"Shh, I've got you. Breathe."
"He said it didn’t change anything." You choked on the words. "That it was never supposed to be more than that. And I just—I stood there like an idiot—"
"You're not an idiot." Her arms tightened around you. "You're not. He's the idiot. He's a complete and utter prat, and I'm going to hex his bollocks off, see if I don't—"
A small, inquisitive mrrp interrupted the proceedings.
You both looked down. Whiskers had appeared from somewhere behind the sofa. He blinked up at you with large, knowing eyes, then began weaving between your ankles with pointed determination.
"Oh, Whiskers," Jo murmured. "Good boy. You tell her."
The cat, apparently agreeing that emotional support was required, rose up on his hind legs to bump his head against your knee. When that failed to produce adequate acknowledgment, he meowed again and began climbing your leg in pursuit of a better vantage point.
You laughed, it came out watery and hiccupping and rather awful, but it was a laugh nonetheless.
"See? He thinks Jaemin's a prat, too." Jo said solemnly, scooping Whiskers up and depositing him into the narrow space between you both. The cat immediately began purring and butted his head against your chin.
You wiped your eyes with the back of your hand, still trembling. "I feel so stupid, Jo. I knew this was how it would end. I knew from the beginning it wasn't real, and I just—I let myself—"
"Hey." Jo pulled back to look at you properly. "Falling in love isn't stupid. It's brave. Even when it's messy and terrifying and the other person is a monumental coward who doesn't deserve you."
"He's not…"
"He is." Her voice brooked no argument. "Anyone who looks at you the way he does and then pretends it's nothing? That's cowardice. That's someone too scared to admit what they feel, so they make you feel like you’re imagining it instead."
You opened your mouth to protest, because surely it wasn't like that, surely you'd simply misread everything, surely the fault was yours for wanting too much, but Jo cut you off.
"No. Don't do that. Don't even try to make excuses for him." She softened, just slightly. "I know you love him. And I know that doesn't just... switch off. But you deserve someone brave enough to love you back out loud, yeah?"
A fresh wave of tears came, because she was right. You did deserve that. And you’d thought, for a few perfect hours, that maybe you’d had it.
“I really thought he—” You couldn’t finish.
“I know.” Her voice was gentle. “I know you did. And maybe he does, somewhere under all that stupid hair. But maybe isn’t good enough.”
You pressed your face into Whiskers’s fur, trying to breathe through the ache in your chest.
"Right," she continued. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to sit here, and you're going to let Whiskers work his magic, and you're going to cry as much as you need to. And tomorrow, we're going to eat an absolutely obscene amount of chocolate at breakfast, and you're going to ignore Na Jaemin so thoroughly he'll wonder if he's gone invisible. And if he tries to talk to you, I'll hex him. I’ve gotten really good at Bat-Bogeys."
"Jo, you will get detention."
"I don't care," she wasn't smiling anymore. "No one gets to make you feel like this and walk away unscathed. Not while I'm around."
You leaned into her, letting your head drop against her shoulder. Whiskers purred on.
"I really love him," you whispered. "Even after tonight. How pathetic is that?"
"It's not pathetic at all." Jo's voice caressed your heard, all the protective fury banked into comfort. "Love just doesn't care about timing, or logic, or whether the other person deserves it. It just is." A pause. "And for what it's worth? I don't think he's as unaffected as he's pretending to be. I've seen the way he looks at you when he thinks no one's watching."
You didn't answer. You weren't sure you believed her at all, to be honest. But you let her hold you, let Whiskers purr and let the fire burn down to ash while the ache in your chest slowly, slowly dulled to something almost bearable.
Jaemin had never felt more like a prat in his entire life.
No—that wasn't quite accurate. Prat implied mild social incompetence. A tendency to say the wrong thing at dinner parties, forgetting birthdays, laughing at funerals. The sort of harmless foolishness that people forgave with a fond eye-roll and a muttered oh, that's just Jaemin.
What he had done went rather spectacularly beyond that.
He had taken something fragile and rare, something most people spent their entire lives hoping to stumble across, and placed it directly under his own boot. Deliberately. With malice aforethought, or at least malice afore-panic, which hardly seemed better.
He had watched you gather every ounce of courage you possessed. Had felt you trembling against him, breath shallow, voice catching on the edges of words you clearly hadn't planned to say. You had offered him something honest and unguarded and terrifying in its vulnerability, and he had responded by retreating behind technicalities and arrangements like a child hiding behind a curtain and insisting, with full conviction, that he was invisible.
We had a deal.
Merlin. He wanted to reach back in time and throttle himself.
It was never supposed to be more than that.
What a thing to say. What an absolute masterwork of emotional cowardice, delivered with the sort of cool detachment that would've made his father proud. He could practically hear the old man now: Well done, son. Keep them at arm's length. Never let them see you bleed.
Coward.
That was the word. The only word that fit.
A coward with decent grades and a Quidditch record impressive enough to distract people from the fact that, emotionally, he possessed all the sophistication of a flobberworm. Less, actually. Flobberworms at least had the excuse of being invertebrates.
He replayed it in his head for the forty-seventh time that hour, the way your voice had softened when you said it. I love you. Three words, plain and graceles, tumbling out like they'd escaped against your will. Your fingers curling against the sheets and the tiny pause afterward—that breath of suspended time where you had waited for him to meet you there.
And he hadn't.
He had stood on the very edge of everything he'd wanted for six years—six years, which was roughly forty percent of his entire existence and one hundred percent of his adolescence—and he had convinced himself that stepping forward was more dangerous than falling back.
He had finally kissed the girl who'd haunted his thoughts since he was eleven years old and too stupid to understand why her insults made his chest feel strange. He had finally heard you say you loved him to his face, with your whole heart in your voice.
And instead of recognizing it for the bloody miracle it was, he had panicked.
As though being loved were a trap. As though affection were some elaborate con, and you were merely waiting for the right moment to spring it.
As though you, of all people—brilliant, stubborn, infuriatingly principled you—were something he needed protecting from rather than running toward.
He laughed under his breath. The sound came out thin and joyless, startling in the empty corridor.
Afraid of being loved.
Such a stupid thing to be afraid of. It ranked right up there with afraid of winning the Quidditch Cup or afraid of someone handing you precisely what you've desperately wanted and asking nothing in return.
He had spent years wanting your attention.
Years engineering excuses to speak to you, picking fights in the corridors because negative attention was still attention, stealing your quills, hexing your textbooks, memorizing your class schedule so he could accidentally-on-purpose cross your path between classes.
He had told himself this behavior came from an innocent rivalry or perhaps even house pride, just the natural antagonism between Slytherin ambition and Gryffindor recklessness.
He had watched you from across the Great Hall, the way you laughed with Jo, the way you chewed your quill when you were thinking, the way the light caught your hair in the morning, and convinced himself it was harmless curiosity. Academic interest. The detached observation of a worthy opponent.
What a spectacular amount of bollocks he had fed himself.
He had wanted you persistently. Recklessly, in a way that would've horrified his younger self, who had been very committed to the aesthetic of cool indifference.
And when he finally had you, when you were warm and real and trusting in his arms, when you'd given yourself to him completely and then offered your heart on top of it like some undeserved gift—
He had recoiled.
Because being loved meant being seen.
It meant showing up. Being present. Letting someone witness all the parts of himself he usually kept buried under six layers of charm and sarcasm and ambition. It meant responsibility. Knowing that someone else's happiness was now tangled up in his own choices, his own failures, his own capacity to be something more than the sum of his defense mechanisms.
He had spent years telling himself he was being sensible.
Protecting people, he'd called it. Keeping them safe. As though his emotional unavailability were some sort of public service, a kindness he performed by keeping parts of himself locked away where they couldn't do damage.
He lived by three rules: feelings were liabilities, distance was safety, and caring too much was the fastest way to hand someone a weapon and hope they didn't use it.
It had been easy to believe that, growing up in a house where affection came with conditions and approval came with expectations. Where love had always been something that could be revoked at any moment—a privilege, not a given. A reward for good behavior, withdrawn the instant you failed to meet the mark.
So he'd learned early how to ration himself. How to care quietly, in ways that couldn't be measured or weaponised. How to want without asking. How to feel without admitting it, even to himself.
And it had worked. For years, it had worked.
He had been fine. Perfectly content in his carefully constructed fortress of emotional self-sufficiency.
Until you.
You, who had looked at his defenses not as walls to be respected but to be climbed. Who had called him out on his nonsense and refused to be impressed by his posturing and seen through him with a clarity that terrified him.
You had dismantled his entire system without even trying.
And now you were crying in the Gryffindor common room, probably being comforted by Jo who rightfully thought he was the worst sort of person, while he stood alone in a dark corridor with nothing but the wreckage of his own making for company.
He pressed his palm flat to his chest, as if he might physically restrain the ache there.
It didn't work. The ache remained, steady and insistent, a bruise that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat. He had been given exactly what he wanted and he had thrown it away because he didn't believe he was allowed to keep it.
Because somewhere deep in the foundations of himself, in all the places his parents' voices still echoed, he had decided that love was not something people like him got to have. Not permanently. That wanting something too much was the surest way to lose it, and the safest course was to let go before it could be taken.
He had pre-empted his own heartbreak.
And in doing so, he had guaranteed it.
The realization settled over him slowly, and Na Jaemin—Slytherin Prefect, Quidditch star, heir to a name that opened doors across the wizarding world—had never felt more utterly, unforgivably small.
He thought of you, somewhere in Gryffindor Tower, believing you had been foolish to love him.
And he thought: No.
The only fool here is me.
Jaemin spent the next few days turning it over. You saying those three words and him saying it didn’t change anything. What a lie. It changed everything and he could feel every new fault line spider out beneath his feet, threatening to split him open.
At first, he tried to convince himself he needed this: to have the edge. He thought of the next two weeks as a sprint, a countdown to the end of the deal, a chance to reset before anyone saw how scrambled he’d become. But the more he tried to hold that line, the more he found himself drifting. A wordless longing in his veins, a kind of hunger not easily starved out.
He looked like hell at breakfast. Sungchan greeted him with a commence-the-mocking whistle and immediately began recounting every detail of the party—especially the part where Jaemin had “dragged his girlfriend off like the end of a Victorian bodice-ripper and nobody saw either of them again until morning.”
Jaemin grunted in response. He’d hoped that the Slytherin table’s perpetual ruckus would drown out his mood, but word had apparently traveled at broomstick speed that he and his Gryffindor paramour had disappeared into the night and returned separately.
“Did you see Y/N?” Giselle asked, low-voiced as she slid onto the bench next to him. “She didn’t come down yet. Jo said something about a headache, but you know what that usually means.”
Jaemin played dumb. It was one of his most reliable talents. “Hangover?”
Giselle’s lips thinned into an unimpressed line. “Try again.”
He almost managed a laugh. “What, mid-semester flu, then?”
Changmin leaned across the table to whack him on the forearm. “Knock it off. You know what she means.”
For a second, Jaemin's lip curled with the beginning of a sneer. Then he caught the genuine concern in Changmin's eyes, and something in his chest constricted painfully. He knew he was being intolerable, but couldn't seem to stop himself. Besides, when had his friends developed this sudden interest in your wellbeing? Just weeks ago, they'd barely concealed their disdain whenever your name came up.
He shrugged. “Didn’t realize you lot were so invested in her.”
Sungchan, mouth full of toast, said, “Are you thick? She’s basically our in-law now.”
Giselle, who had never in her life let a moment of vulnerability pass unremarked, pinned him with a look sharp enough to cut. “Stop pretending you don’t care,” she said quietly. “It’s pathetic.”
Jaemin tried to brush it off, but her words dug in. The table fell into a brief, uncharacteristic silence, broken only by the scrape of utensils and the dull roar of the rest of the Hall. His eyes betrayed him, sweeping across the Great Hall in search of your face. It was four minutes to the start of first period when you appeared, rumpled as a stray leaflet, hair yanked into a bun with a quill, the red in your eyes unsoftened by any attempt to conceal it. You didn’t look in his direction. Not even once.
Jo steered you to a seat as far from the Slytherin table as possible, and for the first time in living memory, you didn’t have a book open with breakfast. You just sat there, picking at a single triangle of toast, the very opposite of the person he’d chased across the halls for half a decade.
He watched you, hating himself for it but unable to stop. Any moment now, you’d look up with a tiny smile and mouth, “What are you looking at?” and the axis of his world would correct itself by one degree. Instead, you slipped out before the first bell.
At least he was reliably consistent. Second period hadn't even started and Jaemin had orchestrated a trinity of fleeting, meticulously planned collisions. He'd spent the first break loitering by the Charms corridor, just to see your profile as you debated something with Jo. You never saw him. Or if you did, you made a point of acting as if he were invisible—a feat that, for someone as volatile as you, must have taken immense restraint. Still, his pulse hammered at the mere proximity, the knowledge that you occupied the same ten-meter radius.
Then, after Defense, he'd shadowed your route to the library, walking the long way around just so he could pass you by the statue of Dymphna the Dazed. He’d spent so many hours studying your gait, the bounce in your step, the way you always fiddled with your wand as you walked that he could predict, to the second, when you'd arrive at the oak doors. The actual moment was almost an anticlimax, though: You breezed right past, not even a flicker of recognition in your gaze.
By the time he wandered into the stacks, he’d convinced himself that running into you was serendipity and not the carefully plotted vector of a moth to its own funeral pyre. He saw you perched at the edge of a reading table, surrounded by towers of books and an aura of such prickly concentration that even Madam Pince hovered before daring to approach. He pretended like he needed something from the Potions section, just adjacent to your fortress of solitude, but when you looked up and caught him standing there, he nearly dropped his armful of textbooks.
But you simply returned to your reading, jaw tight, quill moving in furious dashes. The rejection was as comprehensive as any hex, and it landed him two rows over, staring blankly at a shelf of moldy periodicals and trying to pretend his hands weren't shaking.
This was how the day went: Jaemin planning collisions, you dodging each one with exactness. He wondered if you knew you could destroy him just by looking his way.
You didn’t bite either way. You only spoke once to him, and it was to offer one brittle “Excuse me” as you slid past. He caught a whiff of your hair then and realized he’d missed that scent. It filled his head, left him dizzy. He didn’t turn around as you disappeared down the aisle. He only stood there, polysyllabic apologies crowding the back of his tongue—and not a single one fit to say aloud.
You knew the aftermath would be the hardest part, but nothing could’ve prepared you for the days that followed. They stretched out, elastic and punitive, filled with silences so loud you imagined they could split the castle at its seams.
In a fit of what you would later call “productive despair,” you doubled down on your schoolwork. Every study hour became a refuge, your textbooks a bulwark against thinking. Whiskers responded to your newly-acquired hermitage by laying siege to your lap at all hours, claws lightly sheathed, tail flicking in his sleep like he was chasing the very feelings you’d tried to outrun.
You became an expert at avoiding Jaemin. You timed your arrivals to classes, hung back until the corridors thinned, and made peace with the fact that every now and then, you’d have to let a Slytherin Prefect dock you house points for lateness. Sometimes it was even Jaemin himself; he’d hand you the slip with his eyes fixed somewhere behind your left ear.
Even the Slytherin first years who’d once delighted in blocking your path seemed to shrink away from the tableau, as if the story of your heartbreak had filtered down through the stone like cold water, softening even the nastiest traditions.
Jo, goddess among friends, never pressed. She introduced you to a new array of comfort snacks and developed a proprietary cocoa recipe that she claimed could “reanimate a troll.” She helped you with Charms and let you rant about nothing in particular. When you occasionally faltered—when your hand shook during practicals or you lost your place reading out loud in History of Magic—she’d bump your knee under the desk and say, “We’re almost there, kitten. Keep your chin up.”
You kept your chin up. It hurt but you did it, because Jo was watching, and because Whiskers was watching, and because you refused to let him have any more of your dignity than you’d already handed over.
Four days before the end of the arrangement, your N.E.W.Ts loomed like a darkening storm. You’d just finished revising for Arithmancy when Jo spoke, “We’re doing a girls’ night tonight. No arguments.” She produced two vials of Smuggler’s Pumpkin Spice Spirit (questionable provenance) and a deck of Exploding Snap. “And we’re inviting Yuna.”
You nearly choked. “Yuna?”
Jo nodded seriously. “I saw her crying in the North Tower last Tuesday. She needs it. We need it. Besides, she’s been relentlessly normal lately.”
The idea felt so surreal that you couldn’t bring yourself to object. At exactly ten, Yuna appeared outside your dormitory, balancing a tray of suspiciously glittery shot glasses. She wore pajamas patterned with tiny cats and a hesitant smile, both of which seemed calculated to defuse ancient hostilities.
The three of you sprawled on the floor of the dormitory. You, cross-legged and trying not to look like your entire emotional landscape was scorched earth; Jo, already red-cheeked and deploying her patented “I’m-not-drunk-you’re-drunk” strategy; and Yuna, who poured drinks for everyone.
The first round was vile. The second was marginally less vile, or perhaps your tongue had simply given up. After a few more, your nerves had been numbed enough that you no longer cared if anyone brought up the name “Jaemin”. Or maybe you wanted them to.
Eventually, Jo passed out. She did so with Whiskers pillowed on her belly and her arms flung overhead.Yuna watched her for a long, pensive moment. Then she poured each of you one last shot and raised hers in a slightly wobbly toast. “To stupid boys,” she said. “And to the girls surviving them.”
You clinked glasses. The spirit went down like molten pudding and settled somewhere near your spleen.
A companionable silence fell, the pleasant, boozy sort that felt safe enough to say things you would otherwise never let see daylight.
Yuna was the first to break it.
“He’s terrible at hiding it, you know,” she said. “Jaemin.”
You blinked. “What?”
“What he wants,” Yuna clarified. “It’s…not subtle.” She swirled her shot glass, watching the dregs coat the glassy bottom. “I think he makes things hard for himself, but harder for the people he cares about.” She flicked her gaze up. “And you must know. You’re the only one he’s ever actually cared about.”
You tried to laugh, but it came out flat. “I think you’re mixing up ‘care’ with ‘use as a convenient shield for his own problems.’”
Yuna’s expression shifted to puzzled. “Convenient shield?”
You blinked at her, a little dizzy, a little stunned that Yuna, one of Slytherin’s most preternaturally well-informed gossip, didn’t already know every miserable detail. “You—oh, come on. The arrangement.” You mimed air quotes with your fingers, nearly upending your glass in the process. “We only did this to get you off his bloody back.”
Yuna opened her mouth to say something,but then just burst out laughing. Not even a sly titter but a full-throated snort that startled Whiskers off Jo’s belly and into an escape beneath the bed.
“Oh—oh, Merlin’s balls—” Yuna gasped, clutching her ribs. “You—wait, you actually believed—oh, this is precious.”
You felt yourself flush with irritation. “What’s so funny? That you lost your shot at Jaemin?”
“No, you adorable idiot, not that.” Yuna shook her head, wiping away a tear of mirth. “Are you serious? I’ve only ever talked to Jaemin because he’s Changmin’s best friend, and Changmin—well…”
She trailed off, her cheeks going very pink, then, as if you weren’t present at all, she laid her head back against the bottom bunk and stared at the ceiling, a contented smile on her lips.
You waited for more context, a swirl of confusion tangling up your tongue. There was a thud as Whiskers landed on the foot of the bed, followed by the faintest prickle of claws as he padded up beside you.
Finally, the implication of her words hit your tipsy brain. “Wait. You’re not—I mean. You weren’t even—?”
“Into Jaemin?” Yuna finished for you. “Merlin, no. Not since third year at least—and even then, only in the way you want a new pair of boots.” She shrugged, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger. “He’s nice to look at, but a nightmare to date. Total self-saboteur.” She glanced at you, curious. “You really thought I was after him?”
You felt lightheaded. “I mean you were everywhere—”
“I was following Changmin, you dolt.” Yuna’s face went even pinker if possible. “I set this whole thing up to make him jealous. I mean, it worked, he finally asked me to Hogsmeade, but—” she broke off, suddenly shy. “Sorry for the collateral damage. Truly.”
You stared at her, the pieces of the last months threatening to explode through the air. All that plotting, the drama, every humiliating emotional contortion you’d endured, and all this time… Jaemin hadn’t been fighting off Yuna. He’d just, what?
Did he just want an excuse to be near you, because he was pathologically incapable of admitting how much he needed it, even to himself? Every ounce of dignity you'd sacrificed, every moment of your life spent embroiled in this nonsense, and the object of his supposed self-sacrifice had been pining for Changmin the entire time.
You took a long, bracing inhale, thumping your head once hard against the edge of the bed frame.
“Unbelievable,” you muttered.
Yuna, to her credit, had the decency not to gloat. She nudged Whiskers toward you. “He’s always liked you, you know,” she said. “Even before. He used to ask me how to get you to stop hating him, like I had some kind of… girl code manual.”
You eyed her. “Did you?”
Yuna nodded, propping her chin on her knees. “I told him to try being honest for once. Clearly, he didn’t listen.”
You rolled your eyes. “That’s the understatement of the century.”
“You know, out of everyone, I think you’re the only person who makes him utterly lose his composure. He’s usually… impossible to fluster. Kind of his thing. But around you it’s like—you light a match and throw it into his brain.”
“Well, I certainly managed to set something on fire,” you said, and surprised yourself with a half-laugh. “Just not in any useful way.”
Yuna scooted a little closer, lowering her voice. “I know you probably don’t want my advice, but… maybe give him a chance to fix it. He’s genuinely bad at this stuff.” She shrugged. “You don’t have to forgive him, but if you’re waiting for him to say the right thing, you might be waiting forever.”
Her words slotted into place in your exhausted brain, like the last piece of a hopelessly complicated puzzle. Horrible, giddy amusement bubbled up your chest: all this time, you’d been fighting the wrong war, arming yourself against an enemy who’d never even taken the field.
You left Jo and Yuna asleep in each other's arms, Whiskers curled into a protective gray-striped crescent at the foot of the bed. Every portrait squinted with suspicious half-lidded eyes, and every suit of armor clattered medieval disapproval as you ran past them.
You didn't think much about where you were going, but the probability was as precise as Divination could ever muster: the Slytherin common room. Because if there was a single neuron left swimming in your firewhisky-addled brain, it was firing like a desperate flare directly toward Na Jaemin.
You padded soundlessly through the dungeons, fingertips trailing along the cool stone walls for balance, only to round a corner and nearly collide with a tall silhouette legging it up from the other direction. Jaemin, hair disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it for hours, shirt untucked with three buttons misaligned, and eyes wild as a cornered hippogriff, skidded to a halt so abrupt you both nearly toppled over.
You just stood there, staring, every cell in your body screaming and also quite possibly vibrating. Through the haze of fatigue and shame and liquor, you registered every heartbreakingly specific detail of him: the spike in his breathing, the way he braced one hand against the wall as if he needed it to hold up the rest of him, the deep crease between his eyebrows that only appeared when he was actively terrified.
The words queued up, fighting to be first out. “I—” “Listen—” “Can we—” “Please—”
A jumble, then an accidental harmony: “I need to talk to you.”
For one second, you considered turning around and running. But the way Jaemin looked at you pinned you to the spot.
He spoke first. “Come to the broom closet? I think I saw Mrs Norris nearby, which means… ”
“Filch,” you finished for him. “Okay, let’s go.”
You followed him in silence, down the corridor to the oversized closet that Slytherins had used for centuries to hide everything from illicit liquor to first-year snoggers. He held the door open, then closed it behind you, which left you not even three feet apart.
Jaemin propped his back against the door and exhaled so slowly it sounded like the last breath of a dying man. You tried not to notice that his hands were shaking. Or that he looked, for all his composure, completely lost. “I, um.” He looked down at his own shoes. “Y/N, I fucked up.”
You blinked. You’d come here to yell, maybe. Or at least to interrogate some truths out of him, like why he had so thoroughly detonated your entire sense of self. But he’d opened with the guilt and you weren’t ready for it. Unpracticed, unbuffered by the ice of pride or wit. It landed inside you with an unexpected warmth that left you unable to launch the first missile of your prepared invective.
He tried again. “I said things I didn’t mean. Or… didn’t say things I was supposed to.” He scrubbed a hand down his face, and for the first time in your long and bitter acquaintance, he looked his age. Not the chiseled, archvillain Slytherin but a seventeen-year-old boy who’d just spent the last week eating his own heart.
You pressed your back to the shelving, feeling a bristle of ancient brooms poking into your shoulder. It was easier to focus on the physical discomfort than the absolute riot of feelings inside you. “Why did you do it, then?” you asked, voice trembling but louder than you felt. “Why pretend? Why go through all of it if you didn’t—”
He looked up then, and the world stopped. You'd always known Jaemin had pretty eyes, almost stupidly so, but you'd never seen them this stripped of showmanship. There was nothing left in them but the need to be understood.
He ran both hands through his hair, almost laughing at himself. “Growing up, love was like a… currency. My parents, they’d dole it out in rations, make you earn it, then yank it away when you needed it most. Every hug, every ‘I’m proud of you’—it was an investment, and nothing was free. I don’t want to do that.”
He broke off, looking at you as if every word took a year off his life. “But then you—fuck, Y/N, you just loved me. Out loud. Not because you had to, or because I earned it, but because you wanted to. And I didn’t know what to do with that, so I panicked and did what I always do, which is ruin things before they can ruin me.”
You might have laughed, if it hadn’t stung so much. “You could’ve just said it back, you know. Or at least not torched me on the way out.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I wanted to. I do. I just—” He exhaled again and met your gaze. “I actually love you so much, and it scares me so bad I’d rather light the whole thing on fire than tell you to your face.I thought if you ever knew, if you ever saw how fucking much it was, you’d run for the hills. I was scared.” He huffed a laugh. “I’m still scared.”
You stared at him, the old defenses rising out of habit—sarcasm, skepticism, the impulse to twist anything freely given—but something in his voice made them shrivel away. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t even posturing. He was sweating through his shirt in a freezing stone corridor, admitting in the most un-Slytherin way possible that he wanted something enough to break himself for it.
He took a faltering step toward you. “I love you. I love you so much it makes my head hurt, and every time you look at me, I feel like I’m being given something I’m not allowed to keep. You’re so smart, brilliant really, you make everything feel less small and stupid, and I like how you argue even when you know you’re wrong, and sometimes I go out of my way just to hear you laugh at me, because when you do it I feel like maybe I’m not a total waste of oxygen—”
He broke off, eyes wild and shining. “You make me better, from the inside out. And I was so terrified that if you ever saw the real me—if I let you in even a little—I’d ruin it. Or you’d hate me.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “But I ruined it anyway,didn’t I?”
You listened in shock, because this was the Jaemin you’d believed existed only at the very edges of his brittle, cocky mask. The one who’d made a study of you, who’d learned all your favorite spells and matched your every move. You weren’t sure you knew how to reply. The gravity of his confession pressed you to the wall.
"I'm not going to say it was fine," you whispered, voice cracking. "It felt like you'd reached inside my chest and—" You pressed a trembling hand to your sternum. "God, Jaemin. I couldn't breathe for days. But even then, I never—" Your voice broke completely. "I never really hated you. Not even when I probably should've."
He breathed out. “You’ve no idea how much I wanted you to hate me properly. Would’ve made everything simpler.”
“Why spend all that time and effort in this charade? You could've just been honest... You had no idea how I would take it.”
He squeezed the bridge of his nose as if the pain of the question might physically rupture his skull. “Because I didn’t know how else to have you, and I thought the only way you’d let me close was if it was an act.”
You wanted to spit something cruel, but it collapsed against the lump in your throat. “You incredible, galloping idiot,” you said instead, mostly to yourself.
You were about to speak again when he slipped a hand inside the folds of his robes. A familiar spine emerged, its dark leather cover worn soft across the creased corners, the gold lettering faintly dulled by time.
Wuthering Heights. It was the very copy you’d pressed into his hand weeks ago, at Tomes and Scrolls, half in jest. You’d expected him to snort and set it aside unread, or skim a few florid passages, shrug, and call it melodramatic nonsense. But now its pages were dog-eared, edges curling; a thin gold ribbon marked a specific chapter. The paper around it was so softened that you could almost see the imprint of fingertips pressed into the margins—tiny scrawled notes in cramped handwriting, evidence of long, late-night wrestling matches with Emily Brontë’s tempestuous souls.
Jaemin’s fingers trembled as he thumbed to the ribboned page. He cleared his throat, that quiet catch sounding louder in the hush around you, and lifted his gaze. The brown of his eyes locked onto yours so fiercely your ribs felt oddly vulnerable, as if he were staring right through your chest. Then, he began:
“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you.”
Your pulse thundered in your ears. You stared at the book, at the margin notes, at the little crease in the paper where he’d returned again and again.
“You read it,” you whispered shakily. “You actually read it.”
He tucked a stray lock of dark hair behind his ear and offered you a shy, sheepish smile. “I got about three pages in and thought, ‘This is the most overwrought melodramatic nonsense I have ever encountered and she’ll never let me live it down if I admit I liked it.’”
Your breath caught, and you laughed softly. “So the Slytherin prince secretly studies Muggle love tragedies for—what? Sport?”
“For you.” His words fell simple and straight, but you saw in the tense set of his shoulders how much it cost him. “I remembered what you once said. That words could be more powerful than any spell. That some stories could make you feel things magic never touches.” He swallowed, eyes flicking away for only an instant. “I wanted to understand. I wanted to see the world the way you do. Even if… even if you never spoke to me again, I needed something of how you think.”
Your throat tightened around all the things you wanted to say.
“I love you,” he said suddenly. “I know I don’t deserve another chance. I know I hurt you, and I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been. If you want me to leave you alone, I will. I’ll resign as a Prefect, stop dining in the Great Hall… never speak to you again, if that’s how it has to be—”
“Jaemin—”
“And if you think I’m not worth the effort, if you find some sensible bloke that's smarter and more emotional available instead of—” He gestured at himself “—a stupid prick with a habitual avoidance of feelings, that’s fine too, I unders—”
“Jaemin.”
He stumbled to silence, eyes wide, braced for your anger or dismissal. Instead, you stepped forward. “I think,” you said softly, “I’d rather take my chances with a Slytherin who panics at his own heart.”
His whole face broke into a tentative, trembling smile that brightened by the second, like dawn’s first light spilling over the lake.
“You don’t hate me, then?”
“Oh, I do,” you teased, closing the distance between you. “Just not enough to stop wanting to kiss you.”
He laughed a breathless, disbelieving sound that left him momentarily speechless. “That’s… a very low bar.”
“It’s the bar you set,” you said, reaching up to smooth the crease by his temple. “I’m just acknowledging it.”
He was so close now you could see the faint shadows under his eyes, the restless hours he’d spent reading. His breath hitched, and his fingers, still warm around your forearm, shook.
“One condition.”
“Anything.”
“No more schemes. No more elaborate lies to keep me close. If you want something from me, you ask. And if you ever feel like sabotaging yourself again, you write it in a journal like every other teenager, and you keep me out of it.”
His eyes shone with relief and determination. “Deal. I swear it. Honest to Merlin, I’ll be so transparent you’ll beg me to tell a little white lie.”
“Unlikely.” You tousled his hair affectionately.
“I’ll be boring and straightforward and—”
“Now you’re just making things up.”
“—and I’ll read every book you recommend, even the ones you hate, so at least we can hate them together. I’ll tell you if I’m scared instead of running away, and I’ll—”
“Jaemin.”
He stopped and blinked up at you, a hopeful question in his gaze.
“Shut up and come here.”
He closed the last few inches between you, cupping your face as if it were made of spun glass. His thumbs traced the damp paths of your tears, his eyes pleading.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the soft curve of your lips. “For all of it—for the lies, the running, the… spectacular emotional incompetence. I’m so sorry.”
You rested your hands against his chest, feeling the rapid thump of his heart. “I know.”
He drew a shaky breath. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you, if you’ll let me.”
You pressed your forehead to his “I will.”
"Yeah?"
"Don't let it go to your head."
"Already there."
And then, finally, his mouth found yours.
The kiss was unhurried. A little clumsy. Both of you slightly out of practice with each other, slightly hesitant, slightly afraid this might still evaporate if you moved too fast.
But it was real.
You could taste the years of wanting and the weeks of pretending and the days of heartbreak. The sharp edge of pain, slowly dulling. The first green shoots of something that might, given enough time and care, grow into something lasting.
You smiled against his lips. Let your fingers curl into the collar of his robes. Kissed him back with every ounce of mortifying hope you'd sworn you'd bury.
There was nothing staged here. Only the press of his mouth saying yes and sorry and I love you and please, over and over, until the words became simpler.
Stay, his kiss said. Stay, and I'll spend the rest of my life proving I deserve it.
When you eventually separated, both breathing heavily, your foreheads touched.
"Let's see how long it takes you to mess this up," you murmured.
He laughed, eyes bright with joy. "Reckon I've got until dinner at best."
"Don't push your luck."
You kissed him once more, simply because it was possible. Because you wanted to. Because for five endless days you'd believed this door closed forever, and now finding it open seemed too precious to ignore.
Gossip would explode anew, inevitably. By evening meal, whispers would spread about you two emerging from an empty classroom, looking thoroughly kissed. By morning, a dozen conflicting stories would circulate. Within a week, the castle's most creative rumormongers would have you practically married.
But in this moment—his hand entwined with yours, his smile against your temple, your future sketched in pencil rather than vanishing ink—the entire castle seemed beautifully uncomplicated.
For a pair of hopeless liars, it made for a surprisingly honest beginning.
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