#poets are wizards and they put. curses in their words sometimes. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silkandconvalescencerpg · 6 years

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I’m honestly a little in disbelief that this has finally made its way into the light, and I apologize for how long it took for me to simply put this together. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this little look into ballast and may it spur on any of your own musings!

001. OUT OF CHARACTER,

NAME/ALIAS + AGE. ↳ I’m Dea, eighteen, and my three favorite films are The Mummy, Moulin Rouge!, and Dead Poets Society (with Brother Bear rounding out as my closely-lagging fourth). I like to think they adequately spell out my character, if anything, representing the very core of my soul. (Evie O’Connell was my first crush and forevermore the love of my life, if that makes my personality any clearer.)

TIMEZONE + ACTIVITY. ↳ PST, and as for my activity, I try to be online as often as I can, and that’ll be a lot easier now that we’ve transitioned into the summer season. However, I still have work and that’ll take up a decent portion of my time, though I try to be as transparent as I can in terms of letting you all know when I’ll be absent from the main and such, and will continue to be so when game-play begins. Hopefully I manage to achieve the right balance between the main and James’ account!

TRIGGERS + PRONOUNS. ↳ I go by she/her, but have no problem with being referred to as they/them. Regarding triggers, visuals of excessive gore are pretty much the worst of what I can take.

002. IN CHARACTER INFORMATION,

MUSE DESIRED. ↳ Ballast & James Sirius Potter.

JAMES, a gentle curse, an exhale, soft and affectionate and incapable of being said without a smile tugging at the corners of one’s mouth. spit in vexation, cursed in crimson-tinged anger, sighed in misled adoration, hiccuped in between gut-wrenching laughs. your mother whispers it (worry creasing lines on her otherwise youthful face, fingers twitching, longing to reach out to stroke your head like you loved when you could still fit in her hands) when she thinks you can’t hear and yells it (anxiety toppling into frustration, showering you in the spitfire that scorches in the center of her belly, distinct to the windswept fire of ginny weasley) when she knows you can’t hear anything but. your father, eighteen years of experience hardly denting the habit, sounds out the syllables of your name with a reverence (half respect for the father he never knew and half tender disbelief for the son he still can’t believe he had a part in creating) and groans them with an age-old tiredness (his scar may not pain him any longer, but you sure do). the very utterance of your name is followed by an exuberant eye roll, high in fashion with both your sister and brother. james, james, james. does it belong to you?

SIRIUS, a bullet of a name. there are more legends than facts surrounding your namesake, and god, when did they become yours to swallow? you may not carry his blood (pure, black, rotten to the core) but your pout is sculpted from the same lips as his; your hair is as monstrously notorious and decadent; that gruff bark of laughter rings oh-so alike, except he was the grim and you’re a puppy; a leather jacket, illusory with the phantom heat of his flesh, and you can’t quite decide if the weight is a comforting warmth or if it burns, heavy and scathing. i mean, really ⏤ is it still just as funny when your telltale “sirius is my middle name” line is matched with a wince?

POTTER, both a tragedy and a blessing. out of your unlucky lot, perhaps this is the worst card. your blood is tinged with the greats, the giants of wizarding lore, potters, and weasleys, and evans’ (singularly gifted witch that she was), and just about everything fucking else in between, because sometimes practically the entirety of the wizarding world wants to snatch their own piece and more the pity, you let them. resentment curls in your belly, curdling and hot, warring with the warmth of your love, the kind that seeps tender heat into one’s aching muscles, like the gentle caress of curling inside a bath, of a candle’s gentle flare in the center of your darkened home, rain softly wailing outside. it makes you want to weep; it makes you want to cry and scream and claw yourself inside out; it makes your heart want to burst from love, from bone-chattering laughter, from adoration, from responsibilities to ghosts, from the weight of it all.

( B A L L A S T ), the solid stone beneath, the foundation everyone can’t help but stand upon. (and that’s it, folks, lmao.)

FACE CLAIM. ↳ Xavier Serrano.

GENDER + ORIENTATIONS. ↳ Cis male, he/him, and bisexual biromantic.

DATE OF BIRTH + BLOOD STATUS + YEAR. ↳ Born OCTOBER 30TH, 2005, as a HALFBLOOD, and currently enrolled as a SEVENTH YEAR at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

This birth date falls under the SCORPIO star sign, in addition to being the day before Halloween, also known as the death day of his grandparents. Irony is a sharp bite to the ass, and this one particularly stings. He’s on the very edge of spilling into the sorrowful night, one brimming with the ghosts of old, beasts of legends, terrors lurking in the encompassing shadows. What is better: to be on the precipice of disaster (everyone sharply aware of just how close he came to being a masochist’s wet dream: firstborn son of Harry Potter emerging into the world on the night of his parents’ anniversary of being murdered; oh, our hearts are positively aching in bittersweet agony) or to narrowly miss another chance to align himself with the ghost who will forever haunt him?

The exact date was chosen carefully, for the image of James being born in the high tide of the ever-haunting month, on the edge of leave-strewn and rust-tinted November and swarmed in the absolute magic that encompasses October, is one that is so wholly him. One might imagine him in the sweetness of spring, chaste and rosy and so heartwarmingly raw. Or perhaps in the heat of summer, where he is gold, gold, gold, and so unnervingly bright, it blinds you with its scorching radiance. Even winter could be his home, with its stark bitterness and empty promises of warmth and protection in a candle-lit home, cold snow blanketing all life. Yet, the season where leaves dance in the swirling winds and ugly beasts emerge into the night with the beauty of the divine is the one that holds his heart in its grip; fall, fall, fall, and he does.

Moreover, this analysis cemented his star sign completely ⏤⏤ attracts people by: depth and allure, emotional bonding, safeguarding and undying protection, intellect and mystique, loyalty and slowly revealed vulnerability, ability to inspire inner confidence & loses people by: antagonism, control and possession, withdrawal and reactivity, emotional coldness and emotional paralysis, self-righteousness, disconnecting privacy, staunch defence of personal ideologies.

HOUSE + ANALYSIS. ↳ GRYFFINDOR, and it almost seems a disservice to the gods above, to the spite burning in his blood and scorching his mind, begging to be contrary just for the sake of a rebellion, a piece of him that deviates from the path he was destined to crawl. Why couldn’t he be different? Why did his heart burst with the same roaring pound of a lion’s and bleed with the same passion and obnoxious sense of self? Courage was a pillar he conquered within his first breath, and nerve was the fire to his blood’s gasoline, lighting up with a stunning vengeance. But, oh no, these are not the grounds upon which his sorting was based on ⏤ if anything, his undying belief in morality, of all stupid things, is what so clearly planted him within the lions den. Even more so, it’s the fact that he values morality above all else, not the details of his beliefs. That dogged perseverance has the capability of swallowing him whole.

FUNCTIONS. ↳ DUELING CLUB & THE BONES CLUB, both sought him out, and though resistance tasted sweet, a part of him was soft for it, the idea of being apart of something other than within the barracks of his family. There’s a feral part of him, hunger aching in his bones, and it’s sated, buzzed on a high, when he’s in the midst of dueling for the fucking hell of it (spells teasing, a flirtatious back and forth of fatal proportions, a dark curiosity licking its paws in the corner, waiting to pounce, and god, does it fill him) or scheming in the dark, four heads weaving together, morbid mischief and jest galore reigning in their souls. The day that a bewitched note appeared in every page of every book he touched, flirting with him to join a club of bones (stupid fucking name, was the first thing out of his mouth in that beginning meeting of his, some years ago now) and daring him to chase (something? anything? everything?) was the day that some fragile chip of him sealed its way back on.

003. WRITING + EXTRAS,

INTERNAL ⏤ CHARACTER ANALYSIS. ↳ Because I’m lacking in time (entirely my fault, yikes, I know), I’ve chosen to highlight three individual aspects (headcanons) of his character as a whole in an attempt to puzzle together a tangible picture of who he is, and through the evulsion of these facets, other details and factors of his persona will become present (or at least that’s what I’m angling for, fingers crossed). Essentially, these are the corners of his character that breathed something a little more divine than life into him, conjuring him in a different light and contorting that light into something blindingly magnificent.

RELIGION, something that struck me as i was writing some part of the application above is my constant use of the word god, spitting out in my writing with a vicious ease. this isn’t my own, natural, guttural utterance of the word, but rather the voice of james, spilling out like an unwelcome grease. it started out as a small rebellion, more to himself than anything else, for isn’t it always? ⏤ something to distract himself, purge himself, from the person he is. he’s not a complete idiot, you know; he knew of a god, several of them, upon which muggles called upon, prayed upon, ached upon. magic was his god; his father, his mother, his grandparents, all of his blood family and all their friends; the titans of the wizarding world boiled down to human form, glorified and shining beyond belief; they were gods, or at least, they were treated as such. merlin was the force above them all; and circe and nimue and the founders of hogwarts and everybody else deemed a little bit special. well, perhaps the muggles had something better, and so, he checked. a copy of the bible was snatched by his hands, and the pages were devoured. greek myths were no longer fantasies, but reality; after all, if magic could existed, why couldn’t they? he scoured for any and all gods, learning the way of the old world and diving into cultures and religions with a swimmer’s finesse. he stuck to the idea like an indulgent tar, clinging to the idea with no small desperation; perhaps if there was a god(s), as the muggles proclaimed and spat, then who he is was no mistake ⏤ he was meant to be the firstborn of harry potter, meant to carry the weight of ghosts on his back, meant to feel a crumpling in his bones, meant to burn with a love for his family and yet freeze over with most others. it was out of his hands, yes, finally, thank god. for nearly the first time in his fifteen years of life, he breathed with ease, unfiltered and soft and free. and then, short of a blissful month later, he fell. not unlike a fallen angel, nor unlike a star toppling from the sky, crashing and burnt and dust. there was no fate or destiny of god above, watching and waiting and pulling strings like a grand and demented puppeteer. now, he spits the words, sarcasm denting every syllable, even in earnest.

JEWELRY, ever since he can remember, he’s liked the glint of jewels. the way they encompass a color, almost swallowing you alongside with it. the intricacy is unfamiliar to his own fingers, and yet they still grasp to hold it. there’s no explanation or reason behind it all, transparent and easy to receive. a cut, blood red ruby adorns a gold chain on his chest, and a sister piece sits on his finger as a ring, both a gift from his mother. he loathe to take either off in any case, and often treasures them as closely as his wand. moreover, he’s not been known to reject a little smear of matching lipstick, though on occasion it’s been used as a paintbrush for some doodle on his cheeks rather than lined on his lips. he has no qualms with revealing that shard of himself, and the swarm of deep red on golden flesh is quite the sight to behold, anyway.

GOTTA DO MORE, GOTTA BE MORE, not all characters have an original muse, but mine was definitely charlie dalton from dead poets society, as well as the more obvious character parallel of neil perry. james was written and created for this verse with neither in mind, and a great part of my entire outlook and analysis of him was already set in stone by the time i rewatched the film, but then, it just hit me. the specific mannerisms of charlie’s character are so apparent in james, from his facial expressions to the false bravado and desperation to seek something a little more in life and shatter himself in the process, and of course the advice that would strike james just as severely as it did charlie: “sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean chocking on the bone.” moreover, this entire scene perfectly encapsulates a part of james that simply cannot be said through words, which is why it works so well. the loyalty that charlie holds, gritty and strong and unparalleled, is one that lives on within james as well. and then there’s neil perry, who is the brightest light with a heart of gold, passion and soul simply dripping off him in excess, yet is shackled down by the weight of his parents, though not in the same way as james. a darkness feeds off of him, deep inside and caving him in, and that is so true to james’ character. there are plenty more parallels to go over, but those can be dissected at another time (an actual detail-by-detail parallel analysis has been in the works, i can say).

(And because I haven’t said much else, I’ll just add in this snippet of his character that I wrote a little while ago in response to a question!) To me, James is a highly emotional character who nearly bursts from the zest that breathes within him, but can almost be accused of being a masochist because he so forcefully attempts to swallow that down and play the role of one unbothered by life in whole. He has a great respect and fierce loyalty toward his family, yet this is what so severely hurts him, for in the times that he can’t help but resent the expectations that so massively fall on him, it tears him up inside, which just creates and perpetrates a vicious cycle. The Burrow is one of his favorite places to be, for sure. He’s at a standstill in life where he has no idea what he’s bound to do once he leaves the life he’s known for seven years, desperate to both leave and stay. He isn’t committed to academics in any way (for now), but that doesn’t account for his caustic wit. He’s wonderfully complex and contradictory, but he’s also a massive sweetheart, and I can’t help but simply think of heat in relation to him. Like he’s just That Person that constantly has warm, almost hot, skin and you don’t know how in the dead of winter that’s possible. He’s definitely an anchor, and that’s where my decision of ballast originates from.

EXTERNAL ⏤ CONNECTIONS + POTENTIAL PLOTLINES. ↳ I’m going to wait on divulging on any specific skeleton character connections in mind for fear of inducing any bias, though here are some plotlines I’d like to uncover.

Something that I’m very eager to explore is the contrast that James feels in relation to his family, and how that positively tears him up inside. It’s likened to a battle of the heart versus the mind: who he truly is and who he feels he can’t be, in fear of sacrificing his soul in the process. Essentially, I want to push him to the breaking point, shattering his senses into some mangled ball of shit that he must sort out. He’s in desperate need a breath of fresh air, and he’s been suffocating for years. Moreover, he’s never really faced this mass of contradiction within him, always turning a blind eye and swallowing it down, scorching his throat in the process and nailing his heart right through the center. And when he must, all hell will break loose, and what can I look forward to, if not that?

James is a golden light that may dim, but has never been blown out. Until now. I want to see him untethered and catastrophically scratched, the golden, youthful and scarlet blush of his flesh waned and stark against the image of who he is. What will cause this, lead to this, pioneer his destruction? Furthermore, he’s a seventh year as this school year starts, and that means his ass is out in less than a year, and he is absolutely unsure of what awaits him once he’s left these halls. I want to plant the seeds of possibility, and what may come of them.

EXTRAS, EXTRAS. ↳ (Uh, I’m enlisting admin privilege?? Once game play begins, trust that there’s going to be loads of unnecessary edits flooding his account, but for right now, it’s a little bare.)

#sample application #so this is what one calls ... hmm... Lazy Writing & The Result of Endless Procrastination #i think what i'm going to do is rewrite this sometime into the beginning of the group to include more details and such bc it's lacking a lot #but i just wanted to get something out for you loves #(when the only part you had done before today was the ooc section rip)#religion tw

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blacklilyqueen · 7 years

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Hiiiiiii :) I love your Next Generation Aesthetic and was wondering if you could share some of your next gen headcanons with us?

Thank you so much😘 ofcourse I’ll share some of my headcanons with you :) I’ll do them oneby one and go from oldest to youngest. Oh and sorry it turned out so long

Teddy:

He was born on 13th April, the day after the full moon

When he was a baby/toddler he used to change his hair depending on whatever mood he would happen to be in

Molly and Arthur always saw Teddy as their first grandchild

Even though he lives with Andromeda, he still spends a lot of time with the Potter’s or at the burrow

Because he often changed his appearance without even noticing, he couldn’t go to a normal kindergarten/preschool

This lead to Victoire being his first real friend

“Why does Vicky call Bill ‘Dad’, but I’m not calling you ‘Dad’, Harry?”

He’s four when he asks this and it’s the first time someone tells him

He cried, he felt sad, but he still didn’t understand completely, because how could a four-year-old understand that

But he wasn’t alone

He had his grandma, Harry and Ginny

And they loved him

From this day on he always made three cards each Mother’s Day: One for his grandma, one for Ginny and one for the woman who loved him so much that she died for him

When he was six and James Sirius was born he had a little bother

He was nervous when he left to go to Hogwarts

Would he be a Gryffindor like his dad and his expanded family?

A Hufflepuff like his mother and his grandfather?

A Slytherin like his grandmother?

Or the first Ravenclaw in the family?

It didn’t take long for the sorting hat to put Teddy into Hufflepuff

And it that moment his hair turned bubble gum pink

For his 13th birthday Harry gave Teddy the Marauder’s Map

When people met Teddy as a teenager it didn’t take long for them to realize that the word ‘Hufflepunk’ existed because of this boy

Is just as clumsy as his mother (Oh wait that’s canon)

He was 15 when he realized that he had fallen in love with Victoire

He was 16 when he told her

He was 17 when Bill found out and was glad that he knew how to disapparate by the time

When he left Hogwarts (with excellent grades) he became a healer at St. Mungo’s

Victoire:

Looks like a mini version of her mum

Followed Teddy around everywhere when they were little

Hide and seek champion

Is one of the few Weasley’s that would rather die than sitting on a broom

Teddy mocks her about this sometimes

“You don’t like flying either!”

“Yes, but I didn’t scream that I would die, when I was only two feet off the ground.”

She was the first Weasley to get sorted into Ravenclaw

Perfect and Head Girl

Speaks perfect French, but likes to hoax people

“Can you say something in French?”

“Tu es un abruti.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re really beautiful.”

Looks like an innocent little girl, but if you make her angry you better run

Wears a different flower in her hair everyday

On Halloween she however always wears lilies

After the other girls were old enough to understand the meaning behind this, they started doing this too

Fred II:

If you think that his name is everything he shares with his uncle you’re terribly wrong

Is in the same year as James Sirius and this is a combination Hogwarts was not prepared for

Proud Gryffindor

Is the only student to never be pranked by Peeves

George never tells him why, because the memory still hurts

Is one of the Gryffindor beaters since his second year

After he finished school “Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes” finally becames “Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes” again

Once created a potion that jumped out of the cauldron and disappeared through the wall

No one knows how that happened

Molly II:

Is also in Fred and Sirius year

The sorting hat was already confused after he had to sort a James Potter and Fred Weasley again, but when he heard Neville calling out “Molly Weasley”, he thought they were making fun of him

He however realized that this one was different after he sorted her into Ravenclaw after 14 minutes

Perfect and Head Girl

She is a rather quiet girl

But if she wants something she will do anything to get it and is a lot like her father in this point

Even though Molly isn’t as big of a prankster as her two cousins she still helps them often

When Percy got a letter from McGonagall telling him that Molly got a detention, he couldn’t believe what he just read

Molly was also the one who figured out how to add new things to the Marauder’s Map, like the Room of Requirement

Molly still is one of the kindest people you would ever met and has a heart out of pure gold

James Sirius:

Just like Fred II this boy lives up to the legacy of his name givers

And with his messy black hair and his brown eyes he looks a lot like his grandfather

Each year on Harry’s birthday James rendered Ginny’s poem

Is one of the Gryffindor beaters

Became team captain in his fourth year

There were some protests once, because at one point the Quidditch team was Potter and Weasley only

Is extremely good at charms

Teddy gave him the Marauder’s Map at the beginning of James’ third year

Is always super protective when it comes to his siblings and cousins

One time he and Fred had to sort out old detention slips, when he had THE idea

The two of them spend days counting how many pranks the marauders and Fred and George pulled throughout their time at Hogwarts

After they counted all of them together they had a new goal

They would beat them and pull more pranks then all of them together

In their seventh year they were worried that they wouldn’t be able to beat them

But they did

Their last prank was after their N.E.W.T.s

And it was the ultimate prank

This was also the only day McGonagall truly thought about retiring

Lucy:

Other than her sister Lucy hates her red hair

She started dying it when she was 14 and changed its colour all the time

At first because she thought it was cool, later to annoy her dad

Even through blood status wasn’t important to her, she was still kind of proud that she and Molly were the only pureblood Weasley kids

Is super curious

Often eavesdrops on other people

Loves gossip

Is one of the chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team

Super smart and loves playing chess

Likes to be alone sometimes, but still can’t be too long without her two best friends/cousins

Great at Divination

Dominique:

Was born on the first May which lead to problems between her and Victoire, because they both hated to have their birthdays so close together

Rebel heart

The only thing she has in common with her sister is her blond hair and that she will kick your ass

Amazing artist

Like really, that girl has some talent

Wears black 99.9% of the time

She, Lucy and Roxanne share a dorm in the Gryffindor tower

When it comes to friendships between the Weasley kids, theirs is the strongest

These three are the gossip queens of Hogwarts

Kind of hoped that she would be sorted into Slytherin, but knew that she belonged into Gryffindor

Refuses to speak French, when people ask her to

Gryffindor Chaser

Roxanne:

Loves that she has naturally red hair and dark skin

Is an awesome singer and loves music more than anything

She is the other chaser of the Gryffindor Quidditch team

Always wears a choker necklace

Ripped jeans

Is gay and has a crush on this cute Hufflepuff girl in her year

Sassy as hell

Shares the love of her grandfather for Muggle things (she prefers the old ones)

Lucy and Dominique are the only ones who are allowed to call her Roxy

Leader of the “Pluto is a planet” society at Hogwarts

Activist, literally will start a demonstration if she really wants something

Scorpius Hyperion:

Really quiet

Sometimes hates it to be a pureblood, because of the prejudices

Loves his father AND HIS MOTHER, WHO IS STILL ALIVE AND LIVES HAPPILY WITH DRACO!!!!!!!!!

Will never feel ashamed for his father and will defend him every time someone tries to talk bullshit about the Malfoys

Is totally gay for Albus

Reads a lot, spends more time with books than with people

Only person whose character was good in Cursed Child

Is Narcissa’s “little prince"

Had a happy childhood

Is always welcome at the burrow and at Potter’s

Does not give a f*** about whether someone is a pureblood, half blood, or muggle born thing

Slytherin Perfect

Rose:

Of all the Weasley’s Rose is the best at Quidditch

She’s a keeper

Is the only one who got into the team in her first year

Became captain after James graduated

Is super smart like her mom

But will procrastinate for as long as possible

Oh, what was that? You were insulting someone I like? Let me just PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE!

Biggest Scorbus shipper of all time

Looks like Hermione, but with red hair

Is super close with her dad

Ron was the one who thought her how to be a perfect keeper

But sometimes she asks Ginny or Angelina for Quidditch advice

Albus:

The hat actually wasn’t sure whether to put Albus into Gryffindor or Slytherin

He wanted to be in Slytherin

Doesn’t play Quidditch, but loves to watch

When its Gryffindor vs. Slytherin he will cheer for his house, but won’t boo on his family

Loves his little baby sister and his idiot brother ;)

Is totally gay for Scorpius

Also rather quiet

Smart, he knows what he’s doing and always thinks before acting

Once found Snape’s portrait at Hogwarts and talked with him all night

Oh, and just a reminder that Neville is canonly Albus’ godfather

Louis:

Went to Beauxbaton till his fourth year

He came back, because he wanted to be with his family after all

Is the only other Wotter Slytherin

Is a poet

When he lived in France he used to write many long letters to his family

Needs his time alone

Knew he wanted to be an author when he was 13

Published his first book with 19

Is the only person to publish a Harry Potter biography

Well at least the only authorised person

There is this one book written by Rita Skeeter, but that’s a different story

Lorcan and Lysander:

Identical twins

Lorcan is still older

Lorcan is a Ravenclaw like his mom

Lysander is a Hufflepuff like his dad

Newt always told them stories about his creatures when they were little

The two of them love to listen to their great-grandfather

They also love grandpa Xeno’s stories about all these weird magical beings no one ever saw

Are full of love and will offer help to anyone who needs it

The two of them, Lily and Hugo were always seen together at Hogwarts

When Louis came to Hogwarts he joined them

Do the Quidditch commentary in turns (sometimes together)

Hugo:

Is really shy

Will let Lily or Rose do the talking most of the time

Has probably read more books than his mother when she was his age

Doesn’t play Quidditch, but loves to box

Great at Transfiguration

Thinks a lot about becoming an Animagus

Even though he is one of the youngest Weasley’s he still acts like some big brother forwards younger students

Is a Perfect

Lily Luna:

Has Lily’s eyes (I don’t give a f*** about canon when it comes to this)

Luna is her godmother

Is Harry’s little princess especially when she was younger

Could do anything and he just couldn’t be mad at her

Puppy eyes

This scene could happen at Potter’s

Loves her whole family, but if she had to pick a favourite it would be Teddy

He’s also the only one she will listen to

When she was young she was the cutest little girl you could imagine

Is the seeker of the Gryffindor team

After she joined the team it was all Potter and Weasley

From all three potter kids she is the one who is the closest to Harry’s personality

She really loved being like her dad until she was older

She didn’t like people comparing her to him

She didn’t like only being “The Chosen One’s daughter”

She just couldn’t stand that people were seeing her just as his daughter and nothing else

“The new Gryffindor seeker is Harry Potter’s daughter, just like her father.”

“The best student in DADA is Harry Potter’s daughter, just like her father.”

And even when she did something that had nothing to do with him she was still just his daughter

“The new member of the Gobstone club is Harry Potter’s daughter.”

She even just joined, because she wanted to be NOT like him

That was when her rebel phase began

At some point she even stopped to talk to Harry (even though she knew it wasn’t his fault) and it broke his heart

And this was worse than James or Fred or Dominique or anyone else

She learned to deal with it in her sixth year (people also started to see as an own person)

But the relationship between her and Harry was still tensed

Even after she started to talk to him again

In her last year she found an old motorbike

When she asked Harry why he had a motorbike, but never used it, he started to explain that is was Sirius

For some reason they bounded over this moment

Lily was the only person with who Harry talked about Sirius after the war

Like really talked, not just a little bit

He gave it to her after she graduated and it was the best present she ever got

The only thing that was left from her rebel phase was the fact that she still refused to use Expelliarmus even though she became an Auror

She only used it one time again, after some dark wizard tried to kill Harry and she was the only one to notice it fast enough and disarm him

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gukyi · 7 years

Text

interconnection | myg

⇒ summary: you can never trust anything in the wizarding world. not even your own goddamn journal.

⇒ {hogwarts!au}

⇒ pairing: yoongi x female reader

⇒ word count: 8k

⇒ genre: fluff

⇒ a/n: all poetry in y/n’s journal written by yours truly! obviously, anything written in yoongi’s journal is written by him. also, i know the word count’s pretty short in comparison to my seokjin fic, but a majority of this fic is in messaging format, which explains both the great physical length and the shorter word count. inspired by this drarry fic, which rocks and u should read. edit (04.20.18): the poems in this fic are now formatted strangely because tumblr mobile took away the foundation for this entire piece: the indent. thanks, tumblr mobile, for absolutely nothing.

“all art is quite useless.” — wilde, 1890.

The first thing your mother bought you in Diagon Alley, age eleven, was a worn, brown leather journal, its pages tinted and stained but empty nonetheless. She got it off of the highest shelf in the top corner of the crowded bookstore, stretching her arms and legs to reach it, the last of its kind.

“What’s this for?” You asked as she placed it in your open, waiting palms.

“For you to write in while at Hogwarts,” she said. “I find that words always seem to have a better way of flowing when on paper rather than out loud. Don’t you?”

“I dunno,” you responded, shrugging your little shoulders as you placed the journal in your cauldron along with the rest of your required schoolbooks. “Isn’t it dumb to keep a journal?”

“Only if you treat it as such,” your mother replied, as sage as she always was. “Come, let’s get you a wand.”

With the mention of a wand, your mind wandered far from the beaten leather journal in your cauldron as you skipped out of Flourish and Blott’s, unaware of how significant the journal would end up being in your later years at Hogwarts.

When you first opened the journal on your first night at Hogwarts as an empty-minded eleven-year-old, the blank pages frightened you. A world of words only you could come up with was millions of miles away, and staring at the tan pages wasn’t going to make it come closer. That night, you shut the journal roughly, cursing your mother who wasted her money on a journal that would never be put to use.

Six years later, eleven-year-old you wouldn’t know that journal like you do now, know the feeling of its worn pages and smooth, wrinkling leather, what you have become so keenly familiar with over the years. Sure, this journal doesn’t hold your deepest, darkest secrets nor your wildest dreams directly, but the allusions never end, forever continuing on in each poem you write.

You’ve always been a fan of poetry, ever since your mother taught you about the greatest works of the great poets as a child. Wordsworth, Poe, Keats. They are names you know, names you admire. There was never anything spectacular about Wizard poets, not when everything is easy and everything is simply done with magic. No, people like Poe and Keats and Wordsworth wrote about life like it was a struggle, like there was always something you were missing in it. In a sense, there always is.

Perhaps your Muggleborn background is another factor in your love for poetry, but verse knows no blood status and even the greatest Wizards need to sit down and read a little bit of Eliot once in awhile, you think.

The poetry you write is mundane, nothing compared to the greats that they were, but it is home and it is an odyssey all the same, the words flowing off the page and smeared from how frantic you were when you wrote them.

You cart the notebook around with you wherever you go, knowing that keeping it in the confines of the common room will likely lead to its exposure one way or another. Gryffindors were never really good at keeping out of other people’s business. The journal is as precious to you as your wand, never letting it out of your sight.

It’s not uncommon for students to keep a journal, especially for their first couple years as they adjust to the school, to the sleepless nights and forbidden hallways. What is uncommon is the fact that you’re fast approaching graduation, merely a few months left before you’re thrust into the real world and treated like adults with responsibilities and taxes, and the journal has never left your side, staying with you through every standardized test and every Hogsmeade visit. You are, dare you say, the last of your year to hold onto something as menial as a diary.

“Are you going to keep writing in that after Hogwarts?”

You look up at the sound of the voice, knowing that it’s directed towards you. Your fingers are still holding onto the pages of your open journal, lying on the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, as you pause, mid-browse.

“This?”

“Yeah.”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“I want to keep it as my school journal. A specific time in my life.”

“But surely, if you’ve written in it for so long, you might as well want to keep going?”

“I feel like seven years is a pretty substantial amount of time to write in a journal.”

“You’ve never run out of room?” Another friend butts in, her potions homework forgotten in front of her. No wonder she’s failing the class; she lets herself get too distracted.

“I asked the librarian for spells to add pages.”

“Oh,” they say.

“Yeah,” you say.

Your journal is not often the topic of conversation between you and your friends. Your friends have long known that the journal is not theirs to look through, so they don’t bother asking, but occasionally they will have questions as they see you scribbling down something before your next class period. It’s strange to see you writing in it so out in the open like you do sometimes, since you often reserve your writing time for when you are curled up in the common room, sitting by the fire as you guard the pages from view. Inspiration, however, strikes at the most inopportune moments.

“What do you write about?” They ask you whenever they catch you jotting something down.

“Art. Love. Work. Emotions. You. Me.”

“Us?”

“All of us.”

“That’s lots of people.”

“Not everybody. Just people that interest me.”

“Who interests you?”

“Those that don’t try to.”

If there’s one thing that your friends complain about, it’s the fact that, whenever you do talk about your journal, your sentences become clipped, fragments of full phrases lacking in conjunctions. It’s not that you don’t want to make your sentences, well, actual sentences, it’s just that you never really want to say too much about your journal. It is yours, after all.

“Well, who are you writing about now?”

“I don’t know.”

Truth is, you don’t. The boy that’s caught your attention this time is nothing but a stranger, someone you’ve never spoken to, a face lost in the sea of students. From his build, he doesn’t look to be much younger than you, meaning he might even be in your year. He’s got platinum bleached hair, the mop the only thing you can make out as he snoozes on some textbook. Next to him is a boy a couple years younger—you recognize him, he’s the Quidditch commentator for most of the matches—prodding him gently with his pointer finger. The platinum boy does not budge.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“You’re a real mystery, you know that, Y/N? A goddamn mystery,” one of your friends comments, scoffing.

You chuckle to yourself, closing your journal and smiling. “I sure hope so.”

he sleeps to forget or, maybe he sleeps to remember but in his dreams he is somewhere and nowhere and he is everything and nothing all at once. zzzz… his brain says do not let me leave… for i am finally at peace.

You had originally believed that after writing about a person, a stranger, in your journal, you’d go on to forget about them, but that doesn’t seem to be the case this time. Since you wrote that single poem about the platinum-haired boy, fast asleep on a textbook in the Great Hall, you can’t help but notice him everywhere you turn. He’s in the library, in the hallways, in the bleachers of the Quidditch field. It’s his hair—or maybe it’s that soft, hazy smile he has permanently etched onto his lips—that makes him stick out, makes him so easy to spot even in the oceans of students that surround the both of you.

He’s in your year, you’ve found out that much, but you can hardly remember anything about him. You don’t remember him on the train, nor at the Sorting Ceremony, nor in any of your classes. It is only now that he’s left a mark on you, made a wrinkle in your brain that you can’t seem to forget about.

If you were brave, you would speak to him. If you were brave, or daring, or unafraid, you would approach him and say hello, introduce yourself. But you are none of those things, and so all he is is another boy you’ve written about, another student lost in the haze.

Perhaps in a perfect world.

Though, you suppose, if it was a perfect world, you would never have anything interesting to write about.

Shit begins to hit, pelt, the fan while you are eating supper in the Great Hall, surrounded by your friends as your journal lays forgotten on the sidelines, open to a blank page as you happily chat about nothing and everything in particular.

“How’s tutoring going?” You ask your one friend, the one who’s not doing so hot in potions.

“It’s going,” she jokes. “I have a good tutor, I’m just shit at applying myself.”

“Story of my life,” you chuckle.

The chatter goes on like this, friendly banter between buddies as you swallow down the meal in front of you. This is the only time after classes end that you actually get to spend socializing, before you bury yourself under layers and layers of schoolwork. It’s just another night, the days always flowing by like clockwork, no variation with each passing hour.

It’s just another night, until your ridiculously clumsy self somehow manages to elbow a discarded cup of tea, knocking it onto its side and spilling its contents all over your opened journal.

“Oh no,” you declare, not even making to try and clean up the mess, watching the liquid stain your blank pages with futility.

“Y/N! Aren’t you gonna do something?” Your friends exclaim, watching as you stare helplessly at the mess beside you.

“Me? What?”

“Y/N!”

It’s then that you finally come to, shaking your head as the panic overtakes you. You stand up quickly, rushed as you dart to the closest napkin, dabbing it on the spill to soak up whatever hasn’t already damaged your journal.

Your friends are all the help, gathering the disregarded Daily Prophets from that morning and running over. Once you’ve let the tea take its toll, you place your relatively damp journal on top of the newspaper to dry, pushing it down the table so it can get the most air, away from your scraggle of friends as you continue to chat as if the whole incident lay forgotten.

You’re knee deep into a conversation about whether having dragon heartstring or unicorn hair is more beneficial to doing transfiguration, you, a firm believer that dragon heartstring reigns supreme, when a foreign voice invades your discussion.

“Do you write all this stuff?”

You whip your head around to find a Gryffindor by the name of Namjoon, holding your dangling journal between his thumb and his pointer fingers as he shuffles through the pages with his other hand. You can see the tea dripping slowly from the corner of the cover to the newspaper below it. You recognize Namjoon quite well, he’s a tutor, sort of a know-it-all as far as you’re concerned.

“What?” You snap, beginning to feel yourself seethe.

“Do you write this stuff? It’s really good, you know. Very interesting,” he comments like it’s nobody’s fucking business. The problem is, it is very much your goddamn business.

“Were you raised in a barn?” You ask incredulously, rushing up to him and snatching your journal from his fingertips. “Who on this godforsaken Earth taught you that it was perfectly fine to fish through someone else’s journal?”

Namjoon merely smirks, and it makes you frown, disgust lacing your features. “So it is yours, eh, Y/N? Didn’t know you were so deep.”

“Stuff it, Namjoon. I never fucking asked,” you say. Namjoon’s gotten absolutely unbearable, ever since his Head Boy friend graduated last year, leaving him to completely his own devices without anyone to keep him in check. You miss that Head Boy. He was nice.

“But your journal did. I mean, it was lying out in the open, far away from any person who displayed any signs of ownership. It was practically begging to be read.”

“You’re a goddamn piece of shit,” you spit, and he chuckles at your comeback. “Go shove a textbook up your ass.”

“Not a fan of people reading your writing, I get it,” Namjoon says, hands up in surrender as he begins to back away, the cheeky smile still drawn on his face. “I, for one, think you are an excellent writer, Y/N. You should let people read your stuff. They’d like it.”

“Not a chance.”

He walks away, leaving you breathless and boiling.

“He’s such a tool,” your friend says, hand rubbing your arm to calm you down. “That’s why I didn’t want him as my tutor. I couldn’t stand being around him.”

“I think Y/N needs some time to calm down. Look at her. She’s practically overheating.”

Your friend pulls your journal from where you’re clutching it to your chest, smiling awkwardly as she places it back down on the newspaper, pushing it over to where you sit so you can have a better eye on it.

You’re never dealing with this again.

You spend the rest of the night shuffling through the innumerable books in the library, desperate to find a spell that will prevent anyone besides you to fish through your personal, private journal. Anything to prevent the Namjoon Situation from ever happening again. God, what an asshole. Has he never heard of respect? Personal space?

Admittedly, doing this instead of your homework is a terrible move on your part, because not only are there no spells designed to resolve this type of predicament—which you find outrageous, especially because aren’t wizards supposed to come up with solutions to every problem? That’s why they have magic, obviously—your search takes up a good few hours hunting through the table of contents of each library book that piques your interest, and by the time it’s nearing curfew and you’ve collected a grand total of zero spells, all of your homework lays incomplete on your bed, begging to be finished. But you are determined, and the librarian is trying to shuffle the last scraggle of students out of the room so they don’t miss their curfew, so you merely pick up the pace.

You and the librarian are mutual friends at best, since she’s always helping you out with your journal and recommending her favorite wizard poets, but when she peeks her head down the aisle and sees you frantically shuffling through a dusty old thing, she hisses.

“Ms. Y/L/N! Do you know what time it is?”

And just as it so happens, that dusty old thing that your fingers speedily flip the pages of happens to have the one spell you think will work, a little scrawled piece of handwriting that sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the book’s printed text. At least someone tried.

“Can I take this, Professor?” You ask hurriedly as she walks over to you, a hand on your back as she gently shoves you towards the exit.

“Yes, sure, whatever,” she waves off your request, waiting until you’re outside the library before she brutally shuts the door in your face, but you couldn’t care less.

You’ve finally found what you’re looking for.

The door to your common room creaks closed, and then the curfew bells sound, echoing along the stone walls as you sigh a breath of relief, grateful you and Filch will not be meeting in the darkness of the empty hallways tonight. Most of the other students in your house are also lounging around in the main lobby of the common room, chatting amongst themselves or struggling to work in the quietest place they can find, which isn’t very quiet to begin with—Gryffindors, to put it nicely, don’t know how to shut the fuck up—anyway. You’re pleased about this, because this means you can go straight up to your dormitory without anyone bothering you, perform this slightly sketchy spell on your journal, and begin the daunting task of finishing all the homework you refrained from doing.

“Y/N!”

You whip your head to the source of the sound and see Namjoon waving you down, nursing a bottle of Felix Felicis in his hand, a telltale sign that you should avoid him tonight. If he’s awful when he’s sober, imagine how much of a nightmare he is drunk.

In hindsight, turning around was an abysmal idea, because now Namjoon knows you’ve acknowledged him, and he’s going to capitalize off of it.

You keep walking, pushing through the conglomerations of students and making for your dormitory, hoping he won’t try to engage you any further.

There’s a hand grabbing onto the sleeve of your robe, and you’d rather die than have another conversation with him, but you look at him regardless.

“Can I help you?” You ask, trying to make your voice sound as ticked off as possible.

“I wanted to apologize for earlier,” Namjoon says, and suddenly, you’re starting to like drunk Namjoon a lot better than sober Namjoon. “I didn’t know. My friend schooled me on it.”

“Cool, apology accepted,” you spit quickly, desperate to get his grubby fingers off of the edge of your sleeve and your body up to your bedroom, where your journal waits to be protected. “Leave me alone?” Even though it comes out as a question, it’s more of an order.

Namjoon is much easier to get rid of tonight than he normally is. He backs away from you, leaving you with a pleasantly friendly smile as he makes his way towards where he was chatting with his friends, letting you scurry up to your room in peace.

Once there, you grab your journal from where it was locked up in your trunk and place it on the floor in the middle of the dormitory, since you would like to avoid lighting yourself or your bed aflame should this spell go horribly wrong, thank you very much. Shuffling back to the page in the book with the scrawled little handwriting in faded quill ink, you hold out your wand tentatively. For some reason, your hands are shaking. The professors always told you never to perform spells not taught to you, and only use the ones from a trustworthy adult or a renowned book. Well, you’re already in your last year, so what’s the worst that could happen?

You know you have to get this spell over and done with, especially because you can’t have someone walking in and seeing you screeching unfamiliar magic at your inanimate journal, so you take a deep breath, focus all your energy on the journal, and read out the words written on the page, loud and clear. A burst of purple light flies out from the end of your want, hitting the journal square in the center of the cover. For a mere moment, the journal looks to be levitating, sparkles flickering around it, before it hits the floor with a thud, like nothing happened to it in the first place.

You shut the book in your hands, throwing it on your bed carelessly as you step towards the journal, hand stretched out to grab it but the rest of your body as far away from it as you can go, just in case you happen to electrocute yourself or something. That’d suck.

When your fingers finally gloss over the leather and nothing happens, you smile to yourself, pleased. Picking your journal up and making your way back to your bed, you quickly finger through the pages, and all of your poetry seems to be perfectly in tact.

One of the other girls that shares your dormitory traipses up the stairs, significantly worn out, and you rush towards her, journal in hand.

“Hey,” you say, catching her by surprise. “Could you open this for me?”

She doesn’t even question your request—no wonder why, people ask some strange favors in this school—and does what you ask, opening the journal with no effort as all. However, before you let yourself deflate in disappointment that the spell was simply a dud, you see that all of the pages before her are blank, your words erased entirely, like they were never written in the first place.

“Is that it?” She asks you, holding your notebook out in front of you.

You take it gladly, smiling to yourself. No more Nosy Namjoon, as far as you’re concerned. “Yes, thank you.”

Only the next day do you learn why teachers always told you never to use spells not taught to you properly. You’ve been spending the whole day boasting to your friends that you found a spell that makes your journal your journal, for your eyes only, letting them bubble with friend-anger and envy, anger at the fact that now they, truly, won’t be able to snoop through your journal (though it’s not like they were evil enough to be planning on doing that), and envy at the fact that you solved your issue with a single wave of your wand, easy as that.

You’re skipping around campus, very delighted with yourself and your superior problem-solving skills—that’s what being a witch is all about, right?—when you look around for a bit too long and make eye contact with the boy with platinum hair, the one that is incessantly present in your brain, seeing him sitting on a log in the courtyard, writing his homework, probably. He looks up at the same time that you look at him, and you stop in the middle of the hallway you’ve been happily gamboling down, and you stare at each other.

It’s actually not staring. It’s more like, gazing. You gaze at each other, and he doesn’t make a move and neither do you, but you’re finally meeting his eyes for the first time and even though he’s so far away it looks like he’s lived a lifetime—no, several—already, aged and wise and experienced. It looks like he has the secrets of the universe hiding out in his irises, his pupils, and he’s waiting to find someone to share them with.

You’re a bit more daring today, so you wave, cracking an awkward smile as you raise your hand, shaking it ever so slightly. A small, puny little smile grows on his, or maybe you’re just imagining it, but that’s all you see before you turn, skipping off to the library, where you have a feeling you know what your next poem is going to be on.

the universe. it is not in the sky where it should belong but rather it rests in the eyes of a boy who is too young, too innocent to have seen such a lifetime before him and every time he blinks he sees another story, another tragic end and he hopes that the next time he closes his eyes this story will be a happy ever after.

And now, the realization that you should usually always listen to your professors because they tend to know what’s best for you soon comes to fruition, because you’re about to close your journal, when you see handwriting that does not belong to you, scrawling itself on the bottom of the page where you wrote your poem about the boy.

nice poem

Excuse me?

[you] WHO ARE YOU

[stranger] WHO ARE YOU

[you] WHY ARE YOU IN MY JOURNAL

[stranger] WHY ARE YOU IN MINE

[you] ???? this is my journal???

[stranger] i believe this is my journal.

[you] i fuckin hate wizards.

[stranger] are you a muggle?

[you] no, i just hate us.

[stranger] relatable.

You’ve filled up nearly an entire new page, but you’re noticing your words fading as you write them, disappearing into thin air on the parchment in front of you, like invisible ink, but only backwards. Every word that pops up onto the page from whoever is on the other end of your weirdly transcendent journal disintegrates about ten seconds after you’ve read it, the speech literally sinking into the paper.

[you] how did you get into my journal?

[stranger] pretty sure this is still my journal.

[you] but i can see you writing.

[stranger] well, i can see yours.

[you] this makes no sense. how can you see my writing when you don’t have my journal?

[stranger] it’s not like i know.

[you] i literally cast a spell on my journal so people wouldn’t be able to read it.

[stranger] and how trustworthy is said spell?.

[you] …

[stranger] well, that explains that.

[you] are you judging me behind a goddamn journal cover?????????

[stranger] i’m not not judging you.

[you] can you read what else i’ve written?

[stranger] i can see your poems, if that’s what you’re asking.

For fucks sake. This is all totally against anything and everything you wanted from Sketchy Book Spell. You don’t know if the Namjoon incident is worse or better than this, a random stranger that you can’t even visualize, access to every single thing you’ve written down in your duration of Hogwarts attendance.

[stranger] can you see my stuff?

[you] you write?

[stranger] can’t you see it??

You flip backwards a couple of pages, and printed right where your poems used to reside are words that do not belong to you. It looks like poetry, when you see it from a first glance, artsy and cut off and short, but when you investigate a little further, it’s not poetry. It’s lyrics. The stranger writes lyrics, and holy shit, they are good.

give me some drinks, i want to get drunk today please don’t stop me anything will be fine alcohol is a luxury for a bum but i can’t stand it sober everyone else is running why am i the only one here

You suppose that in exchange for inadvertently sharing your entire life story in the form of verse, it would only make sense for the person on the other end to have their private lyrics revealed. Neither of you are getting much out of this, other than a nice, jovial chat.

[you] i can.

[stranger] guess it goes both ways then.

[you] yes, i guess it does.

[stranger] do you know how to fix this?.

[you] no, i found the spell that caused this in the first place in an old book.

[stranger] okay, but wouldn’t that book have the counterspell?

[you] no, someone wrote in the spell at the bottom of the page.

[stranger] didn’t your mother ever tell you not to use spells not put in print?

[you] i’m not very good at following rules.

[stranger] clearly.

[you] hey! it’s not like i WANTED this to happen.

[stranger] well, it happened.

[you] no shit sherlock.

[stranger] so can you fix this?

[you] i’ve never been very good at solving problems.

[stranger] ?

[you] that’s literally why i have a journal. because i can’t solve my problems.

[stranger] so you write about them instead?

[you] yes.

[stranger] i do that too.

[you] do you mind telling me why you write the lyrics you do?

[stranger] what goes on in my mind isn’t necessarily stuff other people want to hear.

[you] i have the opposite problem. everyone wants to see what i put in this thing.

[stranger] and that’s why you cast that spell?

[you] precisely.

[stranger] well, no one else can see it except me.

[you] i don’t know if i prefer that.

[stranger] you’ve read my lyrics. i won’t judge you.

[you] i won’t judge you, either.

[stranger] do you trust me?

[you] i’m not sure.

[stranger] i trust you.

It’s not like you can get any more personal with whoever is on the other end of your messaging journals.

[you] i guess i trust you too.

[stranger] i’m suga.

[you] i’m Y/N.

[suga] nice to meet you, Y/N.

[you] nice to meet you too, suga.

And for some strange reason, as you sit in the quietest corner of the Gryffindor common room, scribbling away on your journal, wasting ink as you watch it disappear on the page before you, you feel like whoever this Suga person may be, you are comfortable with them. It’s as if you were meant to share your writing with them all along.

Keeping the majority of your identities offers some sort of security blanket between the two of you, a safe haven, where neither of you have to specifically worry about the other finding out who you are, or where you are, or why it was you who chose to write in your respective journals. When Suga doesn’t know who you are, and you don’t know who they are, it’s easier, because you feel like you can say anything without worrying about repercussions.

[suga] i never asked you,

[you] hmm?

[suga] are you a she?

[you] do i seem like a she?

[suga] your words definitely read like one, not to be gender stereotypical. i don’t mind if you’re a he, or a they, for that matter.

[you] you read well.

[suga] so i’m right? you’re a she?

[you] got it.

[suga] i’m a he. in case you wanted to know.

[you] i didn’t, but thank you for telling me.

[suga] i’ll tell you anything you want to know.

You’ve refrained from informing your friends that the reason you’ve been so engaged with your journal recently is because there is a mystery man on the other end, responding to you like he’s know you his whole life. You don’t really think they need to know this.

What your friends have noticed is your particular affinity for trying to sneak glances at a certain boy, because they know you and they watch you look around each room you enter, like you’re searching for someone. You’re not exactly very good at being discreet, especially when it comes to the boy with the platinum hair and hazy smile.

“Hello? Earth to Y/N?” A hand waves in front of your face, snapping you out of your mindless trance. When you look down, the inked quill in your hand has drawn a squiggly line all across one of the blank pages of your journal, but this time, it vanishes.

“What?”

“Were you looking at someone?” Your friend asks, an eyebrow raised in something that looks like curiosity and excitement.

“I think so!” Another chimes in. “I think it was him.” She points towards the boy, who’s currently sitting quietly, a quill pointing towards his textbook. He’s surrounded by other boys, all from different houses, and they’re chatting away, tossing bits of food at each other.

“Jungkook? Isn’t he the commentator?”

“No, not him, the Slytherin boy.”

“Yoongi?”

Yoongi. The boy finally has a name. You glance up at the mention of his name, smiling to yourself as you think about him. There is something that makes him stick, something about him that keeps him afloat in your mind, refusing to sink.

“Aha!” One of your friends shriek, making some of the younger students in the Great Hall look towards you, trying to find the source of the exclamation. “You do like him, don’t you?”

Your cheeks heat up furiously, and you scowl, bested by your friends. “No comment.”

“I knew it!”

No point in trying to dig yourself out now. The only thing that you can do is prevent yourself from getting buried any further. “I’ve never even spoken to him before.”

“That’s ridiculous,” your friend says, at the same time another one speaks, saying, “That’s understandable.”

“Why?”

“He’s a quiet kid. He’s in our year, but I never notice him anywhere. He’s always writing something down—doing homework, probably—he’s got fantastic grades—or sitting amongst his friends, that rowdy group of boys from all different years and houses,” your friend explains, and suddenly it all makes sense, why you never see him. It looks to you like he doesn’t want to be seen for whatever reason he may have.

“Trust you to have a crush on him,” your other friend jokes, nudging you with her shoulder as she smirks.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You act exactly like him,” your friend spells it out for you. “You’re quiet unless you’re with friends, and you’re always writing shit down in that spell-ridden journal of yours.”

“Don’t bring my journal into this,” you say, hugging the book to your chest tightly, like a security guard.

“All I’m saying is that you should go talk to him.”

Like that’s going to happen.

[you] how old are you?

[suga] eighteen. you?

[you] 17.

[suga] you write well for a seventeen-year-old.

[you] you write well for an eighteen-year old.

[suga] do i, now?

[you] i don’t know what it is, but you write like you’ve already lived a life, and you’re looking back on it.

[suga] like a sad old person?

[you] yes.

[suga] -_-

[you] i’m kidding! you just seem sage. mature mind for an immature body.

[suga] that’s one way to put it. who’s the boy you keep writing about?

You were going to get there eventually. Yoongi, whoever he is, has become somewhat of a recurring character in your poems, the same platinum boy who keeps making a comeback in your writing as he slowly overtakes each crevice in your brain.

[you] just some boy.

[suga] doesn’t seem like ‘just some boy’ to me.

[you] my friends think i have a crush on him. how juvenile.

[suga] do you?

[you] not you too!

[suga] i just wanted to know! it doesn’t seem like you do. it just seems like you’re interested in who he is.

[you] at least you’re not as persistent as they are.

[suga] your poems don’t exactly scream ‘unrequited love with fellow schoolboy’ to me, if it’s any consolation.

[you] at least you’re on my side.

[suga] you haven’t given me a reason not to be.

[you] i don’t know how i feel about him. he just won’t get out of my head.

[suga] in a bad way or a good way?

[you] both? neither? god, i don’t know.

[suga] judging by your poetry about said boy, it must be in a good way. you don’t really write about boys and universes if you’re thinking that they’re a piece of shit.

[you] yes you can! what if i had written something like ‘i wish the universe eats you up so i don’t have to see you again’? that’s not very positive.

[suga] haha i guess you can, then.

[you] i mean, you’re right, i’m not bothered in the slightest with his presence in my head. it’s quite comforting, actually.

[suga] let me guess, you’ve never talked to him?

[you] HOW CAN YOU TELL?

[suga] not hard to. if you had spoken to him, you would’ve written something else, something about his voice. maybe his lips.

[you] what are you, some sort of psychoanalytical journal whisperer?

[suga] shit, you’ve revealed my true identity. i hide out in worn leather journals so innocent, unsuspecting schoolgirls like yourself can come chat to me, then i take their souls and make myself immortal by consuming them.

[you] creep.

[suga] haha. listen, i don’t really know who this boy is, but i, for one, think he’d be lucky to chat to someone like you.

[you] you do?

[suga] you’re witty, sarcastic, well-spoken. i don’t see why any boy would turn down a conversation with you.

[you] thanks, suga.

[suga] hey, i might be a serial killer whose primary method of soul-extraction is via journal, but i’m always here to help.

And alright, so maybe you’ve never met Suga before, but revealing all of your concerns with your crush-not-crush on Yoongi to him doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. In fact, you just might take Suga up on his advice. He seems to know what he’s talking about.

Your subsequent interaction with Yoongi happens the day after Suga told you to actually talk to him, and he’ll be very pleased to know you do just that. Your friends were right—he is always writing something down, even as he’s lying flat on the lawn of the courtyard, textbooks and scrolls of parchment decorating the area around his strewn-out hair, inkwells and used quills among the mix. He looks, for one thing, irrevocably photogenic, and a little bubble of envy pops in your brain. How dare he always look good. That is Not Allowed.

You tentatively approach him, journal resting in your hand by your side, almost blending into your black robes if it weren’t for the difference in the fabric. He’s craning his neck as he writes something down, in some sort of notebook, as he occasionally glances to the side, stretching to see the tiny little font in the textbook to his left. It looks like the most uncomfortable position you could ever somehow warp your body into, but for some reason, he looks perfectly fine.

“Hello.”

Yoongi shoots up, quickly shutting his notebook as he turns to you, eyes blown impossibly wide. Clearly, he’s not used to people talking to him.

“Hi,” he says, short and sweet.

“I’m Y/N.”

“I know.”

It makes absolute sense that he would know who you are, but not you him. It just seems so cliche, how you’ve hardly noticed him throughout your schooling but he’s already seen you in the hallways, his classes, a name easily put to the face.

“Oh, of course you do,” you say awkwardly, chuckling to yourself as you fiddle with the journal in your hands, switching it between your left and your right so you don’t look stiff as a statue.

“Can I, uh, help you?” Yoongi asks. His voice is a little rough, but still smooth, like ice cream with cookie bits crushed into it.

“Me? No, I just wanted to say hello, you know. Get to know you,” you reply, your hand gestures wildly out of control. It seems that you can’t keep still in front of him, fidgeting and squirming like an impatient child, desperate for some sugar.

“Oh,” Yoongi says, hands behind him, propping his body up. “Well, I’m Yoongi.”

“I know.”

Yoongi grins to himself. “Glad we’re on a first-name basis, then, Y/N.” He motions to the journal getting tossed back and forth between your hands, an eyebrow raised in curiosity.

“This? Oh, um, just homework. You have one too, don’t you?” You say, desperately trying to get the conversation off of your journal. You don’t really want to discuss it with him, especially not when there are poems inside of it about him.

He looks to where you’re pointing, the black book beside him, and he chuckles awkwardly, a forced laugh. “Guess we got one thing in common, then.”

“I’m sure we have more in common than that,” you insist.

Yoongi begins to gather up all of his belongings, shoving them into one uneven pile, quills and parchment alike, holding it with both of his hands, his little black book sitting neatly on top. He looks at you, grinning a smile that’s gummy and sweet. “I guess we’ll have to find out about that, won’t we, Y/N?”

With the last word tucked under his tongue, he’s off, walking in the opposite direction from where he was facing you, leaving you embarrassingly breathless in the middle of the courtyard.

That night, when you open up your journal to write down your thoughts of the day, you see that Suga has already beaten you to it, claiming a fresh page for a new batch of lyrics, as beautifully wistful as always.

the awkwardness was only for a moment, i touched you again even though i was gone for a long time without repulsion, you accepted me without you there’s nothing after the dawn, two of us we welcomed the morning together don’t let go of my hand forever, i won’t let go of you again either

You decide to add to the mix, letting the words leave your brain and engrave themselves on the page before you, soft and gentle.

his grin he may have the universe written amongst his eyes but his grin oh, his grin it has hell and heaven all across the outline of his lips. it’s lopsided, like he knows something i don’t, and of course he does, after all, there are nebulas in his irises, comets on the inside of his eyelids, a galaxy painted across his vision, and i see stars.

It’s only a matter of time before Suga opens his journal to see your addition to the mix, sappy words of love, making the both of you terribly hopeless, terribly romantic.

[suga] i take it you spoke to him?

[you] what gave it away?

[suga] all the universe references. i feel like i’m reading a young adult romance novel.

[you] you sort of are, aren’t you?

[suga] it’s a very well-written young adult romance novel. lots of verse, little prose. i’m not good with prose.

[you] is that why you’re a lyricist?

[suga] one of the reasons.

[you] why else?

[suga] to hide behind my words.

[you] hmm?

[suga] i’m a new person when i’m writing. i’ve created an identity for myself.

[you] am i currently speaking with this identity?

[suga] you are.

[you] you’re fascinating.

[suga] that’s the last word you’d use to describe me if you knew who i really was.

[you] i already find it fascinating that you, whoever you decide ‘you’ is, have channeled such emotion into your lyrics that you’ve shaped a new persona out of it. that takes true dedication.

[suga] it’s more of an escape, actually.

[you] tomayto tomahto.

[suga] did you realize halfway through writing that that you couldn’t necessarily emphasize the different enunciations via written text?

[you] maybe.

[suga] you’re fascinating, also. how’s the boy?

[you] don’t tell my friends, but i think they’re right.

[suga] i kind of already figured they were.

[you] hey!

[suga] it’s not hard to tell. only a person in love would start comparing their lover’s body parts to falling meteors.

[you] did my poem scream ‘unrequited love on fellow schoolboy’ to you? well, what do you suppose said person in love should do about it, love expert?

[suga] love expert, huh?

[you] you seem to know what you’re talking about. ever dated someone, suga?

[suga] can’t say i have, but i could offer you some words of wisdom.

[you] fire away.

[suga] do your best.

[you] my best?

[suga] i can’t imagine why this boy wouldn’t want to talk to you. there’s no reason why he would avoid you.

[you] isn’t there?

[suga] no. there isn’t.

With great practice, your conversations with Yoongi slowly transition from awkward, empty small talk to mindless chatter you don’t mind listening to, not when you find yourself lost in the haze of his voice as it settles around you, invading your senses. Listening to him speak is like listening to the white noise in The Three Broomsticks, soothing and peaceful. It is so difficult not to drown in the sound.

“How long have you known about me?” You ask him one day as you’re secretly camping out in the Slytherin common room, completely immune to the confused and snarky looks the other Slytherins are sending your way, you, a Gryffindor with that obnoxious red collar of yours.

Yoongi tilts his head back on the edge of the couch, revealing that beautifully smooth neckline that you want to do things to, but you won’t mention that. “Since first year, I suppose. I remember your name.” He looks at you, a cheeky smile on his face. “You didn’t remember me, though.”

“Hey! You were a quiet kid,” you defend yourself.

Yoongi chuckles heartily at your indignation.

Perhaps this is crossing the line, but every marker has been blurred over the past few weeks that you’ve been talking, the border between you two nothing more than fuzz, so you reach over, twirling a bit of his platinum bangs in between your fingers. “When’d you do your hair?”

“This summer. Can’t you see my roots?” He asks, tipping his head forward to reveal the most beautiful blend of ivy black and lightning blonde atop his head.

“It looks good.”

“I need to dye my hair again,” Yoongi huffs. “What color should I do?”

“Green? Like your robes?” You suggest jokingly, and he scrunches his nose up at the thought of him, with bright green locks.

“Maybe not. How about pink, like yours?” He contemplates.

“My robes aren’t pink.”

“Close enough.”

“You’d match all the Gryffindors,” you remind him.

He shakes his head. “No, I’d just want to match you.” When you look at him, his cheeks are tinted the same shade of pink you’d imagine would decorate his hair, a soft rose color that makes him glow in the morning, afternoon, and evening.

[you] is suga the only identity you’ll allow me the pleasure of meeting?

[suga] i wouldn’t exactly call it pleasure.

[you] i find it pleasurable. you’re wonderful to talk to.

[suga] i feel like you’ve become too trustworthy of me.

[you] maybe you’re right. i mean, i haven’t heard of many pedophiles who write crushing lyrics about loneliness and the loss of youth, but you never know. you could be a serial killer.

[suga] and you’re making jokes about it?

[you] you’re not a serial killer, suga, though it would be nice to know who the person holding the quill is.

[suga] i’m not so sure you’d like to know.

[you] what’s not to like?

[suga] most things.

[you] you say you’ve created an identity for yourself, but i highly doubt that identity varies much from who you really are. we don’t have to meet or anything. i’d just like to know who you are.

[suga] i feel like meeting is the only way we could do this.

[you] i’m in school, i can’t just up and leave. i don’t even know where you are.

[suga] i’m in school, too.

[you] are you, now? where?

[suga] i don’t imagine i make it difficult to guess.

[you] let’s see. you write in english, which could mean nothing considering lots of foreign schools are teaching english anyway, but you write lyrics in english, which means you have a greater understanding of the language, so you’re a native speaker. this could put you in america, england, or australia, for the most part. if you said you were in school as any sort of consolation, then that means us meeting isn’t at all implausible, which places you in england, at hogwarts. and judging by that, you definitely know who i am.

[suga] who’s the sherlock now?

You wish you could say it would surprise you that you’ve narrowed it down so well, and that the very person you’ve been messaging via journal has known you this entire time, but it doesn’t. And in the dusty crevices of your brain, there lies a sneaking suspicion as to who you’ve been speaking to, and it both excites and terrifies you.

[you] where do you want to meet, fellow hogwarts student?

[suga] the courtyard?

Suspicion confirmed. Guess you are quite the Sherlock, after all.

When you turn the corner of the hallway and the courtyard comes into view, a certain platinum-haired boy with unruly roots and a lopsided smile catches your eye as he sits on the ledge of the wall, foot tapping on the ground to some imaginary song, probably one of his own. You walk up to him happily, your arms swinging by your side, the journal resting in your hands.

He sees you, too, and he stands up when you near him, mouth open to offer some sort of explanation, but you beat him to it.

“Suga, huh?” You say somewhat loudly, your voice unwavering, filled to the brim with confidence.

Yoongi’s eyes widen, the same look he had on his face when you approached him but a few weeks prior. “You knew?”

“Not until yesterday,” you admit. “But I had a feeling.”

“What gave it away?”

You grin. “I hate to break it to you, Yoongi, but you and Suga speak the same way, an aura of concern and disregard lacing your words. If you were trying to run from the police by hiding under a different name, you’d be absolute shit at it.”

“Wow, thanks for telling me that,” Yoongi says, chuckling. “I guess I better work on my soul-sucking tactics.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Can I—can I see that, for a second?” Yoongi asks, motioning to the journal in your hands.

You hold it out for him, and when he takes it from you and opens it up to compare it with his, sure enough, your messages, poems, and lyrics cover the pages of both of your journals, the scrawl completely mirrored. He gives it back to you almost instantly, shoving it into your outstretched hands as he fumbles in the pockets of his robes, pulling out a quill with a bit of dry ink on the end. Quickly, he flips his journal open to a clean page, untouched by the both of you, and wets the end of his quill with his tongue. When you look down at that exact same page, you watch him draw on one page, curving the line to reveal half of a heart, split right down the middle where the books are bound.

“May I?” You ask in response, and he lets you grab hold of the quill in his hand. You look down, finishing the heart out on the opposite page, and the both of you look down at your respective journals, watching the ink fizzle into the journal like it was never there in the first place.

“Good to know we’re both on the same page,” Yoongi jokes, shooting his beautifully gummy smile your way, making your cheeks heat up at the sight.

You shut your journal and hold out your hand, a symbol of peace, friendship, romance, or all of the above. He takes it gladly. “Haven’t we always been?”

When you go back to your dormitory that night, you open up your journal to find a message from your one and only, written in the same spot where that heart once was.

[yoongi] i love you.

[you] i love you, too.

⇒ leave any feedback/requests here and check out my masterlist here!

#bangtanwriters-net #kwriterskollection #yoongi fluff #bts fluff #bts scenarios #yoongi scenarios #bts hogwarts #bts hogwarts au #bts imagines #yoongi imagines #suga imagines #suga fluff #w: interconnection #w: sorted #thiS WAS SUCH A BEAST AND I RUSHED TO FINISH IT SO IT'S A LIL SHAKY #but i think she turned out pretty not terribly #i am so tired. it's nearly midnight here. and im crying

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fabermemorialrink · 7 years

Text

some mistake, part 7

Last part of chapter two! Chowder’s back, and we meet some new friends!

Also, a quick PSA: if I ever screw up with regards to race/gender/sexuality (or anything else), please don’t hesitate to let me know so I can do better! I want everyone to have a positive reading experience. Thanks!!

Chowder’s reaction to Dex bleeding on his shoes was a complex cocktail of fascination and disturbed worry: the cherry on top of a very informative face journey that Derek studied like visual poetry as Dex caught him up to speed. Like Derek, Chowder emphatically refused to stop visiting, which they proved so often that Dex had to kick them out after they skipped a team game night.

More often than not, Derek and Chowder head over to see Dex together, though there are times when one of them is too busy with work to go. Derek loves being part of a trio, but he also appreciates the time he gets to spend with each of his friends individually. Chowder’s roomie is often out and about socializing, so Derek takes to setting up a base camp on C’s floor, where they study and philosophize together. Most questions are open-ended and profound (who would win in a fight, Mr. Rogers or Elmo? would you rather sleep on legos or have a splinter in your tongue?), but the most important question of all cycles back into rotation every few days:

What’s up with Dex and the forest?

Chowder thinks it’s better not to prod, but Derek can’t leave it alone. It’s a secret, but the kind that Dex is willing to entertain guesses about. He archly shoots down Derek’s suggestions that he might be a woodland nymph like the girls, and repeatedly insists that if he had any kind of therianthropy, he would have already shifted and eaten one of Derek’s limbs in annoyance.

It comes up again in conversation when Derek’s helping Dex cut up invasive vines again. Knowing that the forest is alive puts this activity in a new light; Dex tells him that he knows which plants belong to the woods, and which ones the forest considers a threat, so Derek just follows suit and rips out the roots he’s instructed to. There was a lingering uneasiness at the thought of touching the plants again at first, but they’re in the outer ring, where the light filters in, and Dex promises that if anything tries to grab Derek again, he’ll hatchet it right off. Maybe he should be more freaked out, but he can almost feel the truce between himself and the forest now. At the very least, Dex’s presence always makes him feel at ease.

“How’s it going? Not too tough for your delicate poet’s hands, is it?” Dex calls over across the grove. The sleeves of his plaid shirt have been rolled up, and his hatchet and lantern have been put aside next to Derek’s calc homework that Dex was looking over - dangling from the lantern’s wire handle are his crab keychain and a small bottle filled with a rainbow of miniscule origami lucky stars that Chowder gifted him. There’s dirt all over Dex’s knees and hands, but his posture is loose and he seems content. It's a good look for him.

Derek makes an obscene gesture in his direction. Dex wholeheartedly refuses to believe that Derek would ever drop his gloves during a game, citing Derek’s chill masquerade and elegant piano student fingers which would surely shatter on some goon’s cheekbones. Derek’s not big on fighting either, but he resents the implication that he couldn’t at least hold his own to defend his teammates.

“What, you wanna have a go at me?” Dex says with a grin, straightening up to his full height, which is still obnoxiously taller than Derek.

Derek snorts, kicking a clump of roots and dirt toward him. “Don’t go crying to Chowder when I whoop your ass, you skinny bastard.”

“Right, like you wouldn’t trip over your own head while trying to throw a punch. I’m not going to fight you, pretty boy.”

The way he says those words isn’t much different from the Wicked Witch of the West calling Dorothy ‘my pretty,’ but it causes a curl of embarrassment in Derek’s stomach anyway. Dex does this sometimes - calls Derek pretty in that wry tone of his. But it’s not pointedly sarcastic, like the way he gets when he’s intentionally needling Derek about rich people stuff, so Derek is left wondering what it’s supposed to mean. He knows he has nice eyes, and that he’ll hopefully grow into the good facial features he inherited from his parents, but currently, he’s just kind of plain, and full of teenage awkward. Nothing close to pretty.

Still, when Dex says it with a hint of smile Derek’s dumb guts do a strange twisting thing where he thinks they might turn inside out, accompanied by a tightness in his chest from being put on the spot. Not chill. But it's probably good for him to get it out of his system now, in preparation for the far future when someone really does compliment him so he doesn't look like a total loser.

Still, it always gives him a second of pause, throwing a hiccup into his thought process and leaving him scrambling for words, like now. “Are you a witch?” he winds up asking, apropos of nothing, still stuck on the thought of Dex zooming around on a broomstick and cursing young girls from Kansas.

“Am I a witch,” Dex repeats, raising an eyebrow. Derek almost goes to change the subject, then thinks on it a moment, and decides he actually does want to hear the answer to this.

“Yeah, or a wizard? Or whatever the preferred terminology is.”

Dex’s brow wrinkles, and he shakes his head like Derek is a particularly foolish child. “I’m not a witch, Nursey. Where’d you get that idea from?”

“Never mind. Are you a cryptid?”

“What-”

“Animals or creatures known only through anecdotal evidence, like the sasquatch, or-”

“I know what a fuckin’ cryptid is, you dope, but I’m not some kind of goat man-”

Derek chuckles at the expression Dex is sporting. He looks utterly offended. “I was thinking more like the Dover Demon? Glowing orange eyes, weird-ass hands…”

“You’re dead to me,” Dex laughs. And he pointedly ignores Derek for the next ten minutes until Derek literally jumps on him. He successfully catches him, arms wrapped tight around Derek’s middle, but keels over when his knees give out.

So, no progress on that end, but Derek isn’t going to forget about it anytime soon.

Winter is wild and blustery this year, and Dex decides they can’t meet his friends until after all the snow has passed. Derek tries asking a few times, but Dex always buries his face in Derek’s latest history essay and starts commenting loudly in order to ignore him. There finally comes a day in February where Derek and Chowder show up on Dex’s figurative doorstep bundled to the nines and freshly brewed bribery hot chocolate. The snow isn’t anything more than a crisp flatbread layer under their boots (which Dex has also bled all over) but he still glares crossly at them nonetheless, trying to shoo them back to the dorms until they force feed him some hot chocolate.

“Dex. Bro. French Vanilla Truffle. Extra marshmallows.”

“Alright, fine, fine, get in here.” Dex finally concedes after he swallows three boiling marshmallows whole.

They stop by a spring that begins in the inner ring, though the other end of the water seems to disappear into a haze of shade and foliage. The water is frosted over in shattered panes of ice; Dex crouches down at the embankment and cards his fingers through the weeds as he peers under the surface, but stands shortly after and waves them along.

“She’s not in right now. We’ll have to catch her another day,” he says, and switches on his lantern.

Derek and Chowder link arms when they enter the heart, taking care to follow Dex carefully. Today, the heart is less terrifying, giving off just an aura of general unwelcomeness, but Dex’s steps are sure as ever, like he’s walked this unmarked non-path over the roots and through the maze of trunks a thousand times. They have to readjust to the wildlife noises again, but what’s even weirder is the sound that Derek finally notices coming out of Dex.

It starts off as a kind of uneven hum, but builds up to faint words he can hear when he concentrates.

“Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl…”

“Are you singing Schoolhouse Rock?” Derek asks, trying not to sound as horribly giddy as he feels. He can get Dex to sing with him sometimes: mostly classic rock and Beyonce and pop hits from the mid-aughts. But Dex rarely begins on his own, no matter how much Derek waxes lyrical about his nice voice, which aggrieves Derek to no end.

Dex freezes for a split second, then keeps walking like it never happened. “Uh. It’s been stuck in my head for a while.” Probably since Chowder first started complaining about his independent science paper about new planets, Derek guesses.

“Oh, the grammar ones are the best! I like the adverb song,” Chowder says, starting to hum the starting notes.

Derek can practically see the shock of discomfort running through Dex’s spine, like electricity through a live wire. “It’s catchy, but a little too barbershop for me…”

“Oh my god, they’re not even a quartet,” Derek says in exasperation.

“Still…”

“What about Conjunction Junction?” C suggests next, which Dex agrees easily too, and then they’re off, Dex in a pitchy falsetto and Chowder’s tenor lowered to a raspy growl. Derek holds his breath, not trusting himself not to say something dumb and provoke them into stopping. Chowder has a way of getting Dex to do things that Derek never could in a hundred lifetimes, probably because C has secret mutant powers of persuasiveness and friendship and undetectable bullshittery.

Their duet continues into “Do the Circulation,” complete with Chowder spinning Dex around on his arm in a sloppy swing-dance, and Derek curses the forest gods and anyone else listening for not letting his fucking phone work out here, because when else will he ever get the chance to record this masterpiece? They both just look so charmingly happy, and Derek’s heart swells with it.

He almost forgets where they are until the darkness lightens slightly and the smog of flora opens up into a tiny clearing with a cottage nestled right in the center. It’s the very picture of a stereotypical fairy-tale cottage, covered in climbing ivy and magenta blossoms, built of gray stonework and wooden accents, complete with curved roof tiles and wall mounted lanterns that light the area with a homey glow.

“Uh,” Chowder says, mouth falling open. “So how many houses are hidden in this pocket dimension forest?”

“Not as many as you think,” Dex says, releasing Chowder’s arm, and turning to make sure he doesn’t lose Derek before they enter the house. “Bits? You home? I brought my friends,” he calls, rapping his knuckles against the heavy wood door.

“Come on in!” comes the response, with a slight southern lilt.

Dex pushes the door open and lets the other two in first. The inside is just as adorably quaint as expected from the outside, with a fireplace in the den, cacti on the windowsills and bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, and an enormous kitchen where a very busy blond is hustling back and forth, his arms cradling a glass bowl. The scent of peaches and sugar fills the brightly lit room, and Dex directs Derek and C to sit on a plump gingham couch in front of the fire. Right after they sit, Derek catches sight of three strange objects bobbing their way through the air toward them.

“Um,” Derek says. “I’m not imagining that, right?” He elbows Chowder, who turns to gape at what is apparently a few glasses of iced tea floating their way.

“Y’all like tea, don’t you? And I don’t mean that gritty, bitter nonsense you serve up here-”

“Sweet tea sounds great,” Derek says automatically as a glass settles into his confused hands. Dex catches his own, and guides the last glass into Chowder’s grasp, the other boy being too dazed still to do anything but stare in the direction of the kitchen, where whisks and butter and sugar are spinning in a waltz around Bitty. On the counter, peaches fall neatly into segments, pits falling to the side. Flour begins threading through the air like a curtain of snowfall, obscuring their sight for a moment before it settles down into his bowl, the whisk still dancing.

“Thanks, Bitty,” Dex says, jolting Chowder back to reality. He calls out a thanks as well, before chugging half his glass in one go, and sinking deeper into the couch.

Derek sips slowly at the tea in silence as he starts to piece together the scene before them. Flying objects usually means magic. And magic means...

“Wait a second- Bitty’s a witch? Didn’t you say witches didn’t exist?” he asks, whirling on Dex, who’s leaning casually against the wall.

Dex and Bitty share a look, then a short laugh at Derek’s expense. “I just said I wasn’t a witch. You made your own inferences from that. Wrong ones.”

Bitty shakes his head, sending his bowl to settle gently on the counter with a wave of his hand. “Oh, Dex, you didn’t tell them? Wait just a second, I’ll be right over,” he says while hurrying to wash his hands at the sink.

“Nah, Bits, I thought maybe you’d wanna show ‘em yourself. Though, I think you kinda already have.”

Dex smiles briefly as Bitty dashes around his kitchen in a flurry, before turning back to Derek, who makes meaningful Eye Contact with him, but all he does is scrunch his mouth and shrug.

“What?” he mouths silently back, and Derek throws his hands in the air. Chowder continues to be slowly absorbed by the couch.

Bitty finally arrives, holding three pies in his arms. “Now, Dex never did tell me what your favorite pies are, so we’ll have to make do with these for today, but I promise I'll have something special for you boys next time you come around.” He places the pies - French silk, lemon meringue, and apple - on the table, then waves his hand absently toward the kitchen, summoning plates and silverware.

“I didn't want you flipping out and making a thousand pies. You know you always over-bake when you know guests are coming. Anyway, it's rhubarb for Nursey and honey walnut for Chowder.”

In short order, Derek and Chowder learn that Bitty is much, much older than looks, definitely a witch, and quite possibly the greatest piemaker in all of New England. Bitty preens under their compliments, and has no trouble answering the barrage of questions they pelt him with, or dodging them with practiced southern flair, but he’s much more interested in learning about “Dex’s darling little friends.”

Dex has to finally excuse them so they can leave the forest before it gets dark, but they don’t escape without each of them taking a pie for the road and the promise to return again soon. Bitty starts rattling off all the sweaters and birthday mini pies they’re going to get, and Dex has to physically drag Chowder out the door, since he’s too amiable and polite to know how to leave Bitty’s orbit.

Derek is stopped on his way out by a strong hand to his elbow, and he’s afraid (slash hopeful) that Bitty is going to try and unload another pie on him, but he only gives Derek a smile.

“I just wanted to thank you two for being such good friends to our Dex. I know he can be a bit cantankerous, but I think you’ve really brought him out of his shell, Nursey. All of us in here have noticed just how much he talks about the two of you. I’m glad we could finally meet.”

His approval feels significant, like Derek’s passed some sort of test. Derek swallows, and offers his sincerest smile back. “Thanks, Bitty. He’s- he’s one of us. He’s my best friend.” There’s more he wants to say, but from the way Bitty nods, it seems like he understands even without words.

Dex introduces them to The Falconer and her boys a few days later. She lives in a house on a small outcropping at the edge of the heart, her flock scattered in trees and small satellite houses nearby, except J, who resides with Bitty when he isn’t transformed.

She shakes Derek’s hand with a firm grip, and he trusts her instinctively. Something about her brown eyes and messy bun give her an aura of put-together trustworthiness, and from the way she handles Tater when he swoops down to land on her shoulder, it’s for good reason.

“Only J is actually a falcon,” Dex explains as they sit on her porch watching J and Tater circle each other in the air in the more open space of the inner ring. “Tater’s a white-tailed eagle. Snowy’s a snowy owl.”

“Wow, wonder where he got the nickname,” Chowder snorts, and Dex grins.

“Yeah. There used to be a few others - Thirdy, Marty - but their curses ended, so they left. Marty, at least, was also a falcon, so that’s where she gets the title, I guess.”

“So they’re just cursed? For thirteen years? Because of some old family bullshit from like a zillion years ago?” Chowder tries to clarify, and Dex nods.

“Something like that. I never really got the specifics, but yeah, it’s like some primogeniture fairy curse thing. The Falconer’s been watching over them in here for decades now, so they always send the next in line back here to roost when he transforms for the first time.”

“And no one’s ever looked into breaking this curse?” Derek asks, raising an eyebrow when Dex just draws his knees up to his chest and makes a non-committal noise.

“Some curses can't be broken.”

“No way, dude. Every clause has a loophole. Every bad deal has a way out. And every curse should be breakable. Otherwise, how could we ever hold onto hope?”

“How could we,” Dex echoes, staring up at the loose feathers that flutter down like errant flakes of snow.

They meet the flock over the course of several days, since their human hours don’t always align with daylight. J, as a human, is reserved and broadly Canadian, but there’s a quiet warmth in his eyes that really comes out when he’s with Bitty. Tater is gregarious and friendly, Snowy more calm and settled, but none of them hesitate to gently chirp Dex when he makes introductions, spouting off things like “finally, we are meeting Dex’s frogs!” and “so this is who you’ve been skipping flight practice to hang out with, eh?”.

“I can’t even fly!” Dex exclaims, and J laughs, leaving the room to help Bits in the kitchen.

“That’s why you shouldn’t skip practice,” Snowy says through a bite of honey walnut pie, and Dex flings a fork at him. It stops in mid-air, accompanied by a “what did I tell you about throwing my good silverware?” from Bitty.

Dex mumbles an apology and sinks back into the couch between Derek and C.

“Hey, why are we your frogs?” Chowder asks, and Dex coughs awkwardly and takes a sip of his tea before explaining.

“Uh, there was a year I rescued some frog eggs and watched over them that spring.”

“Dex watches tadpoles like mother hen, every day sitting at Lardo’s pond,” Tater says, crouching on the rug to imitate Dex staring into the water.

Dex ignores Chowder’s “d’awwww” and mutters out, “Yeah, so now they call any of my rescues ‘frogs’. And you guys are, like, the frogs, I guess. The rest are just people I helped back out.”

“That’s mad adorable. Frogs, C, how about that?”

“It is adorable,” C agrees. Dex buries his face in his hands and they slide in toward him to sandwich him on the couch more securely.

“This was a terrible idea,” he mutters as Chowder rests his head on his shoulder and Derek steals the rest of his coconut cream pie.

Terrible idea or not, Dex does reluctantly bring them to meet the nymphs when winter starts to fade into spring. Camilla, an athletic blonde dryad with a wry sense of humor, shows them her tree: a towering, conical red spruce. Dex points out the nearby tree that J accidentally damaged that time he changed back to a human while perched on a thin branch.

April’s grove of yellow birches is located in the far end of Lardo’s spring, the bare grass underfoot dotted with translucent violet flowers. She regards them sternly as Dex introduces her as a nymph of groves, “not a dryad,” as she emphatically insists.

“Oh, like an alseid?” Derek asks.

“Yeah, actually,” April says, looking almost impressed, her pretty mouth curving with a hint of a smile.

“Of course you would know that,” Dex says.

And Lardo, she whose bro-itude holds no parallel, they finally meet on a slow afternoon after midterms. She emerges halfway from the water to meet them, resting her arms on the bank.

“Your old frogs were cuter,” she says brightly, leaning her cheek against one hand.

“They're plenty cute,” Dex tells her automatically, then pauses, squints, and changes his mind. “No, sorry, you were right. These two are...eh.” He makes an ambivalent motion with his hand, and Lardo nods sagely.

“Disrespectful to say that,” Chowder scoffs, “when you have two of Andover’s most eligible bachelors gracing you with their presence all the time.”

“He’s been over-exposed,” Derek says. “Kinda hurts my feelings, honestly.”

“Well, when you two dreamboats are done complaining, Lardo can give us a tour.” Dex rolls his eyes when Derek tries his best smolder on him and gives him a gentle shove.

Lardo is sweet and sharply funny, and much more knowledgeable about art and literature than Derek would’ve expected from a naiad. Dex explains after another visit that almost all of the forest’s denizens can leave, though whether they want to varies from person to person. The flock tends to travel together, just in case one of them transforms out of cycle. None of the nymphs can travel more than a few miles from their true bodies, but it’s enough to be able to go to the library or the movie theater. They never do meet Jenny or Mandy; all Dex will tell Derek is “they’re around somewhere” whenever he asks.

Over the remainder of sophomore year, they hang out with Dex’s friends several more times. Derek doesn’t know when he starts noticing it, but it feels like he understands Dex better now, after seeing who he is when he’s with the others. It’s not that Dex is a different person, but some of that always present distance that even Derek can’t close disappears when they’re in the heart with his friends.

It’s to be expected, he supposes. They’ve known him longer than Derek has, but still, he wonders when they’ll reach the day when Dex will feel as free around him. Not as long he feels he has secrets he needs to keep, but Derek won’t press it. As it is, he appreciates how much more open Dex already is, now that he and Chowder know about the woods. It feels like they've grown closer.

“What is it? My hair weird or something?” Dex asks when he catches Derek looking one day. He'd just been laughing about something April muttered under her breath as J walked by. Derek had been transfixed for a moment, watching the soft lamplight of Bitty’s porch lanterns casting bronze over Dex’s face while a wheezing cackle escaped his mouth. It's an extremely stupid noise, but it's endearingly free, and Derek feels for a moment like there are no more walls standing between them. Here he is, light-hearted and golden in the darkest part of the woods, and Derek can almost see all of him.

“Nah, just thought I saw a bug,” Derek lies, and Dex frowns.

“Ugh, mosquitoes,” he says, annoyed. “You might want to start wearing bug spray; they're relentless out here, and you have a scratching problem. Better to prepare now, or we’ll have to spend all summer slathering calamine lotion on you.”

Derek agrees absently, thinking about how odd it is that a flower can bloom in the darkness.

When the year ends, Derek returns to the city with a promise to come back with cotton candy, since Dex hasn't had any for well over a decade.

Over the summer, Derek finds himself missing them more than usual. He's overseas with mama for a good chunk of vacation, and doesn't have the chance this year to visit Chowder. August feels like it drags on, and though he loves hanging out with his New York friends, he can't help but wonder what Dex is up to for the summer. At least he can call and skype C, though their time zone difference and Chowder’s bizarre summer sleep schedule make it difficult sometimes.

But Dex could be doing anything. On the nights when no one else is in the apartment but himself, Derek wishes more than ever he could convince Dex to come see him. Maybe he could help cure that guilty brand of loneliness that afflicts Derek even when he's surrounded by people.

Maybe Dex will finally feel like he can be all of himself around Derek.

#nurseydex #nursey #dex #chowder #omgcp fic #some mistake #hey i love the frogs #cw: blood

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