the amor files: lumos || jaemin na

year one - christmas and honeydukes (ft. weed)

things move relatively stable for a couple of months. jinah starts speaking a little bit more each week, with the latest success being that she had volunteered to demonstrate a transfiguration during class the other day. the other slytherins in the class had looked at her as though they were really seeing her for the first time (as if they had forgotten that she was with them in the first place). kannika had drawn a little smiley face (with a pen, whatever strange muggle conception that was) and professor mcgonagall merely gave her an approving nod with kind eyes.

christmas rolls around but jinah declines to go home, writing home that she was so fascinated by the things at hogwarts that she didn't really want to part with them.

"are you sure, jinah? mother and father aren't going to be upset or anything like that. you know that, right?" jeno says, eyebrows furrowing when he collects the letter from her, so as to mail it with his own. jinah pauses for a moment, and for a split second, she considers scrapping the letter and just say that she was coming home.

but then she accidentally makes eye contact with jaemin, who was staying a good distance away from them - away from her - and she thinks that she's made the right choice. jeno doesn't notice, which is no surprise, given that jeno also had the social awareness of a literal sock, but it hurts jinah nonetheless that her twin brother's best friend hated her. and that her brother had done nothing to convince him otherwise. she shakes her head, fighting the urge to burst into tears right then and there, unable to keep up a brave front any longer.

"alright then," he says with a sigh. "i'll save you some of father's peppermint pasties."

jinah gives him a tight-lipped smile and immediately turns back to the work she was doing, so as to escape the vicious stare of jaemin na. jeno, thinking her actions to be a way of telling her that she no longer wanted to talk to him, turned and walked away without even looking back. she watched him as he leave, averting her eyes quickly when jaemin turns back to look at her, much too afraid of what she might see.

as her relationship with aisha grows, jinah's relation with her brother falls at a much steeper rate after christmas. she isn't quite sure what had happened at christmas dinner, but whatever had happened had clearly left jeno with a terrible impression of jinah, merely acknowledging her with a nod when he sees her for the first time. she's sure that her parents had spoken in her defense, as they always did. but with the presence of jaemin at christmas dinner, and not jinah, she had no doubt that it had served as the catalyst for this new treatment.

and that's that, jinah thinks. first jaemin, now jeno. that's what being a slytherin gets you in a world that worshipped gryffindors.

guiltily, she realizes that she had also been one of those people, but she elects to push it out of her head, deciding that things that would offer a blow to her ego were no good to dwell upon. especially when those blows were dealt by boys who couldn't tell their right from their left.

kannika just says that that makes her more of a slytherin, and to be honest, jinah has no idea how to take that. she isn't quite offended, like she would have been in the past, but the sentiment still sticks with her a little bit. like honey on her skin. sticky, but never filled with malice, and a little sweet.

"what's that supposed to mean?" jinah asks, more out of curiosity than ill-intention. kannika shrugs, laughing happily when her cat stevie (named after something called a stevie wonder, whatever that is) nuzzles into her chest. it had taken jinah nearly the entire school year to agree to hang out with kannika in the hufflepuff common room (for fear that someone might look at her strangely due to her green and silver tie) but everyone in the common room barely even batted an eyelash. someone had even offered her a honeydukes chocolate bar but kannika had warned her against accepting, saying that that particular hufflepuff was known for lacing his sweets with skunk. muggles were weird.

"it means that you're meant to be a slytherin, whether you like it or not. and it also means that you're starting to find a home in something that you used to hate so much," kannika says, handing her a piece of chocolate that didn't have any questionable substances in it. how someone managed to put a whole skunk inside of a chocolate bar was still confusing to jinah.

"that's just a poetic way of saying 'you're turning back into a jackass', isn't it?" she jests, but this time, there's no self-doubt in her voice. she was a slytherin - whether she liked it or not. all she could do now is embrace her qualities and make sure that she was the best, most morally upright slytherin there was.

a/n: very very short, i'm sorry. i hope the sheer chaos in this makes up for it :D also we love that jinah is finally growing more confident in her identity! kannika best girl 😤