the amor files: lumos || jaemin na

year five - and yet, you always land us in trouble.

unsurprisingly, year four wraps up in a flurry of emotions. between the new members of the moonlight protection squad (coined by kannika and acknowledged by no one) and their fourth year exams, the group did not have much time to dwell on the tensions in the inevitable creation of the coalitions.

on surface level, everyone was just as close as they had been prior to any issues but anyone who spent more than twenty minutes with the group could mark the distinct divide between them. and yet, every single month, when the moon was full, every single one of them would show up without fail.

there would be a beautiful parakeet which would dip and dive precariously, her bright colors attracting the sensory driven werewolf. alongside her would be a dusky falcon, wings beating powerfully as he would ensure that the werewolf never went further than the edges of the forbidden forest, for his own safety and for the safety of those around him. then there would be the husky and the fox. the fox would duck in between the werewolf's feet, causing him to become disoriented, never once managing to land a blow on the sly fox. the husky, on the other hand, would face the werewolf head on, and from time to time, it seemed as though they were merely playing around with each other.

and then there was the panther. she was the quietest, choosing to engage only rarely and that too, very carefully. she was well aware that in size and power, she was the only one who could engage with the werewolf on equal footing, meaning that the werewolf would see her as a competitor (as opposed to perhaps just a mere plaything) and she would really only step in actively if the werewolf was more aggressive than usual.

those days always ended with jinah chugging a pain-relief potion alongside donghyuck the next morning.

donghyuck hated every moment of it. he hated the feeling of losing control, only to wake up and see the bruises on his friends. he hated the fact that he knew they would do it no matter how much he tried to dissuade them and he hated that he needed them to do it.

he especially hated how jinah would limp on the days he had been especially brutal. donghyuck hated seeing her get hurt because he knew that she would always, always, take the brunt of the impact whenever he became like that.

and he hated the most that there was nothing he could do about it.

+++

"donghyuck, can you please pay attention? professor binns has been up my ass about this paper and if i don't write it, i'm afraid i'll never live to see my sixteenth birthday," jeno complains, waving his scroll in his friend's face. donghyuck blinks repeatedly as he's brought back to reality, where his friends are gathered around the kitchen island once more, just like they were last year and just like they had for all of their fifth year so far.

"it's not donghyuck's fault that you've got chocolate frogs for brains," kannika snorts under her breath, winking at jinah when the younger twin leans over to give her best friend a high-five.

"you have been spending way too much time with jinah," renjun says, never looking up from his scroll.

"yeah, nini, you sound like a true slytherin now," jinah says and that gets a laugh out of everyone, even if jaemin's laugh is most definitely forced.

"laugh at me all you want but when you lot need front row seats to the montrose magpies and the puddlemere united game, don't even think about asking me," jeno harrumphs, handing his parchment over to donghyuck.

jaemin shakes his head at that, clasping his hands together and faking the most horrendous looking puppy eyes known to mankind. "oh please no! anything but the quidditch game!"

jinah rolls her eyes, patting jaemin's arm with mock sympathy. "don't worry jaemin. i won't let the big bad jeno take your tickets away."

donghyuck loves his friends, he really does, but in that moment, he wished that they weren't quite so good-looking. he's practically burning holes into jaemin's arms when he sees renjun raise his eyebrows out of the corner of his eye.