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They’re somewhere in the woods of northern England when Mina jerks awake in the middle of the night, limbs trapped in the tangle of the sheets, eyes wild and afraid.
The buzz of cicadas wafts in from outside, muted and constant. It should be a comforting sound, but Mina can’t breathe at all. She’s pulled her arms free by the time Nayeon stirs beside her, fingernails raking harsh lines down her throat in an effort to claw out the phantom smoke in her lungs, still half-lost in a dream.
She must make some sort of noise, because Nayeon is up in an instant, out of her mattress and onto Mina’s: knees on the edge, leaning over her. “Hey,” she says, “hey, you’re okay.” Catches Mina’s hands and wraps them in her own, waiting for the violent shudder that runs down the length of her spine to settle.
“— Nayeon,” Mina gasps, the moment she has enough air to get it out. “Nayeon—”
Nayeon hushes her, squeezing her hands a little tighter, murmuring low reassurances into her ear. Her breath is hot and fluttery and breaks unevenly on Mina’s skin; under the lamplight, Mina can see the shine of her eyes. Nayeon looks like she might cry.
“It’s me,” she says. “Just me.”
(and how could Mina tell her, that Nayeon is hardly just anything? How hard would it be for Nayeon to believe her? In her first year at Hogwarts, when Mina had slid open the compartment door to find her sprawled in a grandiose manner over three of the seats, perhaps back then Nayeon had just been the girl who took one look at her clothes, her trunk, and spat at her an insult Mina didn’t yet know. But so much has changed— had changed, even before the onset of the war.
And there would never be anything just about Nayeon again, not to her.
Nayeon saved her. Mina owes her so much more than just her life, and now whenever she finds herself in this strange limbo between nightmare and reality, Nayeon is there to draw her out— hands steady around hers, tentative against her cheeks, and always, always gentle.)
Finally, when Mina’s heart has stopped thundering so painfully in her chest, when the terror has abated and given way to dull exhaustion, Nayeon relaxes her grip to card her fingers carefully through Mina’s hair. Slips into the bed behind her, arms around her waist and under her sleepshirt, pressing cool palms to the flat of her stomach.
For the first time in a long while, Mina surrenders to quiet, dreamless sleep.
ϟ
The summer before the second war was the hottest in years. An infestation of mosquitoes was driving Mina’s mother mad; she’d set lemongrass candles burning in every corner of their house in the hopes of chasing them out. Her father had his morning coffee on ice. Under the afternoon sun, the grass in their yard was turning golden at the tips.
Each day, Nayeon’s owl came tapping faithfully at her window, bearing short notes scrawled by an urgent hand, clippings of the Daily Prophet tucked into the envelope. The news grew worse by the day. It began as a series of disappearances— Ollivander gone from his wand shop, apartments of Muggleborn wizards left mysteriously empty— and escalated from there. A five-year-old boy killed by a werewolf. An Auror tortured into insanity.
The latest letter had begun, Mina, you have to tell them. Underneath, an obituary from the latest paper, bearing a surname she recognized: the mother of one of her classmates, a half-blood witch.
Mina’s own mother was calling for her from downstairs, oblivious to it all, the familiar scent of her fried rice drifting up through the cracks in the door. Mina could see it— Nayeon huddled over her desk in the middle of the night, lest her parents discover just who she’d been sending all these letters to; parchment illuminated by the light of her wand, pressing hard enough that the nib of her quill was close to snapping under the force of it— you have to tell them.
Mina had never meant to hide the war from her parents for so long. But each time she’d come close to telling them, she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Even if it was unrealistic, she’d thought that perhaps, just maybe, she could preserve this facade of normalcy for a few days, a few weeks, one month more. To keep things as they had always been.
But it couldn’t go on any longer. Things were already changing, no matter how Mina tried to pretend otherwise, and Nayeon’s letter was only a reminder of what she already knew.
So she’d gone down the stairs the following morning to find her parents, who were sitting at the kitchen table like every morning before, for the past seventeen years of Mina’s life— her father’s reading glasses slipping down his nose as he spread the weekly grocery flyers over the table, her mother sliding a bowl of freshly-washed blueberries over to her— and told them everything.
If Mina had known then how little time was left, would she still have done the same? Would it have mattered in the slightest? But maybe it would have made all the difference, to have kept secret the truth that would taint her home with fear, with the worry Mina could see in her parents’ eyes every time they looked at her afterward. To have held on tighter to those last few days under the summer sun, like a pocket of peace in the palm of her hand, a world apart. A world that could never last.
Five months have passed since Mina last saw her parents. Hogwarts had always meant distance, but never like this— her father may have laughed himself silly at the idea of using owls to communicate, but Mina had still received letters every week: her mother fretting endlessly over whether she was eating well, whether she was sleeping early, take care of yourself, Mina! But owls are rare in the suburbs of Tokyo, and even if her mother did happen upon one, it would mean nothing to her now.
What else has changed in the time she’s been away?
Mina has no way to know, these days. If her mother’s hair has begun to gray, or if her father’s laugh lines are etched a little deeper. If the two of them are adjusting well to the house in Japan, to this new and unfamiliar life of theirs that Mina has so carefully crafted, though to them it must feel as ordinary as the sunrise in the east.
She’ll go back to them someday. If she survives. She’ll go back, and reverse the spell, and put everything back the way it should be, when the war is over.
For now, Mina can only hope that they’ll forgive her.
ϟ
Out here in the forest, there’s little meaning to the passing of time. Still, Mina keeps track. It’s reassuring, somehow, to have some semblance of normality in the midst of the chaos that has otherwise upended their lives.
Today marks four months, two weeks, and six days. Which also happens to be—
“A very happy New Year to you, Minari!”
Nayeon is past tipsy: cheeks flushed, eyes unnaturally bright. Usually Mina would disapprove of the alcohol, which is an incredibly reckless choice for two people on the run. But it’s New Year’s Eve.
Tonight, Mina will indulge her.
“Happy New Year, Nayeon.”
Christmas had gone by without much fanfare, since they’d been snowed in by a sudden blizzard and could hardly leave the tent. Of the two of them, it had been especially disheartening for Nayeon— Mina knew she’d hoped for something better, something to brighten the final days of a terrible year— and she’d spent the next few days in a gloom, moping about sadly in a way that was painful for Mina to watch.
So Mina had done her best for the celebration tonight. She’d pulled out their spare jars and bottles to fill them with simple bluebell flames, hung them in the branches of every tree. Scraped together their remaining food to form some semblance of a feast, when Nayeon was down by the stream doing their laundry, and when she’d returned Mina had tugged her by the wrist into the firelit clearing, unusually forceful, laughing over her shoulder while Nayeon stammered in confusion.
That exhilaration has died down by now. The last of their dinner has been gone for hours. All that’s left is the cheap-tasting soju Nayeon had managed to transfigure from a bottle of water, which, if nothing else, has made her loose-limbed and unduly cheerful, more so than she’s been all week.
“To another year,” declares Nayeon, raising her cup for an imaginary toast— Mina had taken her last sip some time ago, and now her own cup lay discarded at Nayeon’s feet. “We’ve made it this far, haven’t we? Us. Can you believe it?”
She isn’t really looking for an answer. It’s silly; Mina is only half-listening, devoting the rest of her attention to idly tracing shapes in the dirt, with a twig they’d deemed too small for the campfire.
“Of all people,” Nayeon says, with a sort of wispy laugh that trails off as quickly as it came. “the two of us. A child of a Death Eater and a-a—”
Mina looks up. Nayeon has stopped mid-sentence, lips parted slightly, eyes gone wide. Mina can see the reflection of the firelight there, flickering uncertainly.
A child of a Death Eater— how could Mina believe it, that of everyone in the world, Nayeon was the one sitting across from her now? If anyone had told her this six years ago, she would have laughed.
Back then, Mina considered it fortunate that they were in different years, and a small mercy that Nayeon never sought her out when Mina fled the confines of the Slytherin dungeons for safer spaces like the library. Still, there was no way to hide forever. The worst days were those when Nayeon happened to be in a foul mood— Mina could provoke her with something as innocent as asking her Housemates for the week’s entry password, and if she overheard, then— don’t give it to her, Mudbloods don’t belong in here, anyway.
Here, Nayeon is leaning in, close enough that Mina can smell the alcohol on her breath; her hands braced against Mina’s knees, her own pressing against the earthen floor. A word she’ll never speak again, hanging in the air between them. A child of a Death Eater and—
“And you, Minari,” Nayeon says instead, so quietly, so gently. With wonder. They’re out in the woods in the dead of night, with the stars set free from city lights, and Nayeon is looking at Mina like she’s something straight from a dream. “Me and you. Who would’ve thought it’d be you?”
ϟ
When Mina returned for her second year at Hogwarts, something had changed. Mina had no idea what. Has never asked, even now. But Nayeon stopped, entirely, even when Mina slipped up and put herself in wide-open situations, tripping over someone’s cloak at dinner and nearly falling straight into Nayeon’s arms, and the older girl had merely brushed her off without so much as a harsh word.
The first time she spoke to Mina without malice, it was: hey, Myoui, want a Chocolate Frog? as Mina tried to sneak past the Quidditch afterparty in their Common Room, and the closest thing to regret she’d ever seen from Nayeon was the way her indifferent expression flickered when Mina jumped at the sound of her voice.
And they continued on in this way, for almost a year: awkward, stammered interactions in the bathroom, an occasional polite nod when they passed by each other in the hallways. Mina wouldn’t have minded, really, if things had stayed like this for the rest of her time at Hogwarts.
Except that one day, Mina had stepped into the dining hall, only to find that Nayeon was hovering at the end of the Slytherin table, where Mina ate every evening. And then when Mina had sidled past her, hoping to find a seat elsewhere, Nayeon had simply taken up her plate and followed.
Nayeon was persistent. Mina could give her at least that much. When Mina’s suspicions had been at their highest, and she’d found every excuse to duck out of the Great Hall upon seeing Nayeon there, waiting— those first days, Nayeon managed to track her down to whatever abandoned classroom she chose to flee to, casually wolfing down her food, somehow unaffected by Mina’s stoic silence.
Mina had always been shy in a way that came off as aloof, and of all people in the world she was least likely to open up to Nayeon, whose tormenting had only served to ostracize her further than her non-magical heritage already had. Even so, Mina could only take so much— could hardly continue to dodge Nayeon’s company at meals, in the library, even in the Common Room.
Nayeon could talk. Mina could give her that, too. Nayeon could talk, without reciprocation, without reason, without anything to talk about, and still she talked and talked to Mina in those empty classrooms, day after day, as Mina sat there quietly picking at her dinner. About the most mundane of things: a homework assignment half-completed, a Color-Changing charm gone wrong. She walked in one day with yellow eyebrows and Mina, who didn’t have the heart to resist any longer, couldn’t help but laugh softly. Covered her mouth, suddenly self-conscious, when Nayeon glanced over with a surprised smile.
From the beginning, Mina had found Nayeon’s smile endearingly charming, until she realized it would never be directed at her. But things were so different now. Weren't they? Even after all that time, Mina couldn't be sure.
But when she finally spoke for the first time, two weeks later, Nayeon smiled at her so widely that her eyes crinkled at the corners. All that for a hello, and Mina had known, with unshakable conviction, that something had changed.
ϟ
Nayeon never had been good with apologies, even when it was something as amusing as, Sorry, I shouldn’t have put that Babbling potion in Jeongyeon’s drink; I do know I’m a prefect; yes, I am being sincere— and it only grew worse the graver the mistake.
Mina used to think that pride was the explanation. That was the easiest thing to believe, that for Im Nayeon with her boisterous laughter from all the way down the dining table and her loud, Of course we won, just look at the Hufflepuff Chasers — naturally it would be unfathomable for her to even think of apologizing to someone like Mina.
In the end, it took her years.
Fourth year, Christmas holidays, was the first break Mina didn’t spend with her family, since her parents were dealing with an unexpected plumbing issue that had flooded the whole house and left them stranded at a nearby hotel. Nayeon stayed, too, as had become the usual— Mina knew things with her parents had been tense. Nayeon hadn’t used Mudblood in years.
Sometimes it felt like it was only the two of them, in the vast emptiness of the castle. Nayeon moved out of the fifth-year dorms and into hers, slept in until breakfast was long finished, and spent the evenings dragging Mina through hidden passages she hadn’t even known existed until minutes before curfew.
Hogwarts was beautiful in the winter. Mina wasn’t enthusiastic about heights but even she appreciated the view from the Clock Tower, the two of them bundled in layers and layers of fleece, the courtyard below blanketed in soft snow. Besides her, Nayeon’s hair flaked with white, and suddenly— to Mina, at least, Nayeon must have been planning it for ages— Mina hadn’t even been looking at her, when the words finally came tumbling out.
It hadn’t been pride that kept Nayeon’s apologies locked in her chest for so long, had it? Because Nayeon was looking at her like she was expecting anything but forgiveness. Like Mina was going to turn and run, or shout at her, or— push her off the tower. Mina didn’t know. Mina wasn’t sure about anything except that Nayeon looked more afraid than she’d ever seen.
It was a moment of unfamiliar and reckless bravery, brought on by the way Nayeon was watching her with wide eyes, her knuckles turning white against the railing, that brought Mina to slide her mittened hands along the metal to cover Nayeon’s own.
Nayeon’s sorry ’s come easier these days. In the early morning hours, when she steps inside the tent a little too carelessly and jostles the canvas— sorry, did I wake you? ; in the afternoon— sorry, Minari, I know you don’t like it when I steal but it’s your birthday, and I Reparo-ed the baker’s creaky door before I left so that should cover the cost. Mina didn’t have the heart to tell her off, only lifted her wand to split the cupcake into two, handing her half.
In the evenings, Mina’s head in her lap, listening to the crackle of the radio, the broadcaster’s tone heavy with grief and regret to inform you that Muggle-born— (an unfamiliar name, a sick feeling rising in her chest anyway)— was found murdered yesterday. Nayeon’s fingers stilling in her hair: oh, Mina. I’m so sorry. As if it was her fault at all. As if there was anything more she could do, to make up for something Mina had forgiven long ago.
ϟ
There are days when Nayeon is distant. She gets into these moods; Mina might wake after dawn to find the tent flap half-unzipped, fluttering in the wind, the other bunk left empty and cold.
The first time it happened, Mina was quick to panic, pulling on her boots and somehow missing the note on the counter in her haste. She spent nearly an hour searching through the woods, half-dressed and barely awake, stumbling over her own feet with the leaves crunching underneath.
Nayeon found her later, just as the sun was peeking over the crowns of the trees and casting dappled shadows over the bare skin of Mina’s knees and elbows, the light glinting off her hair, her head buried in her hands.
“Mina?” she’d said. “What are you doing out here?”
Mina’s voice was nearly gone from calling Nayeon’s name, over and over. And for the first time, when Nayeon tried to apologize, she couldn’t forgive her so easily. Nayeon could have been captured, could have left Mina behind. Nayeon could have been dead, for all Mina knew, and what would she have done if Nayeon had never come back?
“Minari,” Nayeon began, reaching out for her, and whatever was left of Mina’s restraint crumbled without a fight, torn down by some foreign feeling that had roared to life. Until she was grasping at whatever part of Nayeon she could reach, helpless to resist.
“Don’t you understand?” Mina had asked, her hands curled impossibly tight into the fabric of Nayeon’s shirt. Trying to pull her in. “I can’t do this without you. I can’t. Don’t you see?”
Mina knew how selfish she was being. That had Nayeon returned home, she would never have had to fear for her life again. But Mina had already lost so much, and now Nayeon was the only precious thing she had left. The only one she’d managed to hold on to.
Nayeon was staring down at her, unable to speak. Mina’s voice was breaking. “You’re all I have, Nayeon. Everything.”
At last, Nayeon gave in, surrendered to Mina’s insistent tugging and let herself be drawn closer. Sank to the ground before her and reached down to unfurl Mina’s fingers from the hem of her shirt, to lace them with her own.
There was hardly anything romantic about it. Just— desperation: Mina imploring, Nayeon on her knees. Even when Nayeon brought their clasped hands up, pressing her lips carefully to the back of Mina’s hand— even then, Mina knew it was meant as reassurance and nothing more. That Nayeon wouldn’t push further, not in a moment of such fragility.
Would you die for me? Mina wondered. Then: will you stay? What was the difference, anyway, in a time like this, when every minute that Nayeon spent with her could have been the last?
“I won’t leave,” Nayeon murmured, as Mina pressed her face into the crook of her neck, dampening the collar of her shirt. “I promise, Mina. That as long as I live—”
Mina would never be alone again.
ϟ
It’s a routine visit to some tiny Muggle town that almost becomes their undoing.
By all means, it should be an uneventful trip— restocking their food supply is hardly more than grocery shopping with a bit of extra caution. But as the two of them are heading to the outskirts of town to Disapparate, Nayeon grabs her hand and whispers with urgency, “Something’s wrong.”
They’re surrounded in seconds.
“Shit,” Nayeon says under her breath, her grip on Mina’s hand tightening. She turns so that their backs are pressed together, wands already drawn. “Snatchers. How did they find us here?”
It hardly matters now. Nayeon had warned her about these gangs, mercenaries after the gold bounties the Ministry is offering for the capture of runaway Muggleborns like Mina, and even the rare blood traitor like Nayeon.
“Drop your wands!” barks one of the Snatchers. “Hands up, now!”
Instead, Nayeon shouts, “Fumos! ”
The air fills with smoke. Nayeon tugs on Mina’s hand hard and hisses, “Run!”
Mina stumbles after her, tripping over her own feet, coughing and gasping for breath. Terror crawls up her throat, not only from the yells and curses of the men behind them, but also the thick, heavy odor of the smoke— it’s the worst possible time for this, Mina tries desperately to remind herself that it isn’t real, that it’s just a spell, but she can’t seem to get enough air, and—
A bolt of green light that narrowly misses her head snaps her back to reality. Nayeon’s voice is right by her ear, saying, “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I forgot that the smoke— just a little farther, Mina, come on— Stupefy! ”
Mina pivots on her heel, but nothing happens. Anti-Disapparition spells, she realizes with a flare of panic.
“We need to get farther out!”
Nayeon’s hand has slipped from hers. Mina grabs at the hem of her jacket and tugs her down onto the ground halfway through another curse. Spells fly wide overhead. “Go, go!” someone shouts, and Mina can’t be sure if it had been Nayeon, or a Snatcher, or maybe even herself, but they’re crawling through the dirt and the smoke is thinning already; it won’t be long before it’s gone entirely.
Nayeon’s getting to her feet, pulling Mina up with her. Mina cries, “Protego! ” and the shield expands, trembles under the force of the combined attacks—
Mina reaches blindly behind her and just manages to catch Nayeon’s wrist; thinks of a place her parents had taken her camping, once, when she was still little and could barely reach the top of the tent even on the tips of her toes— she holds on tighter to Nayeon and twists—
She falls onto her knees in a forest sixty miles from her childhood home. Nayeon is slumped unmoving against her shoulder, her blood dripping warm and sticky onto Mina’s skin.
“That shop owner,” Nayeon says through gritted teeth, after she’s returned to herself enough to speak. “I knew there was something off about her. Kept looking at us on our way out.”
Mina noticed that too, but she attributed it to the fact that they were two women traveling alone, which draws unwanted stares more often than not. And all of these observations are useless now, as she tears away the tattered fabric of Nayeon’s pants, forgoing magic out of the fear that her hand might slip and make things worse.
“Ugly old hag,” mutters Nayeon, though the woman in question couldn’t have been over forty. “Probably working with the Snatchers the whole time.”
Mina feels like she might faint. “Please stop talking,” she says. “Tergeo.”
Her wand is shaky, but it does the job. Nayeon tilts her head back, wincing as the dirt and grime sweeps off her wound, which only makes it look worse in the light. She’s been Splinched. Mina’s never seen it up close before, these sorts of injuries that occur when Apparition fails. The sight is unnervingly clinical, like a chunk of flesh cut out of her upper thigh with a surgical knife.
“I’m so sorry,” Mina says, fighting down the bile that threatens to rise to her throat. Every healing spell she’d ever learned at Hogwarts seems to be slipping from her mind before she can grasp at it. “I’m— Nayeon, how do I—”
Nayeon’s face is growing paler by the second, even as she presses down on the wound with one hand to stem the bleeding. Her voice is sharp when she speaks, words clipped. “Close the wound first, potions after. You know how.”
Mina bites her lip and steels herself, raising her wand again. She does. She’d been top of her class, once. If nothing else, she should be able to do this much for Nayeon. But her nerves are stubborn, her hands trembling, knuckles gone white from her grip on the wand.
She fumbles the motion for the first incantation, cursing under her breath, and Nayeon glances up with her brow furrowed— taken aback, maybe, by the crudeness. She doesn’t point it out though, only brings her free hand up to wrap around Mina’s wrist lightly, steadying it, her thumb soothing across the back of Mina’s hand until the magic comes to her at last.
Later, they’re watching her skin knit itself back together— the Essence of Dittany she’d thought to pack has served its purpose well— when Nayeon exhales a sort of wobbly little laugh, the thin purse of her lips relaxing into something more open, and declares, “Well, that could’ve gone a lot worse, all things considered.”
Mina doesn’t know how she can say such things so easily. How she can laugh, when Mina can’t even bear to think about all the ways things could have turned out worse. The failed Apparition, Nayeon’s Splinching— maybe it could all be forgiven, explained away by the urgency of the moment and the pressing danger of the wands pointed at them from all sides. But...
“Hey,” Nayeon breaks her train of thought, and she must have seen some sort of dawning expression on Mina’s face, a downwards twist of her lips or the tension in her jaw, because she sits up straighter and says, “Don’t apologize, Mina. You got us out of there alive.”
She’s still holding Mina’s hand, their breath fogging into short bursts of white in the winter air. The magic has finished its healing by now— there isn’t even a scar, where Nayeon’s skin had been torn open only minutes ago. Like it had never happened, if not for the blood smeared over her hands, the snow underneath them stained scarlet and starting to melt. Soaking through the thin fabric of Mina’s clothing and leaving behind the cold.
Nayeon’s palm is warm in Mina’s and a little clammy, her grasp steady and present. Anchoring her to the present, as it always has, on nights when Mina could hardly distinguish nightmare from reality. On days when one was no better than the other.
Even then, Mina feels like she might float away.
ϟ
Mina has always dreamed vividly. Of fantastical things, before the first owl had come tapping on her window and everything she’d once thought fantastical became ordinary.
Nowadays her worst nightmares are rooted in memory.
This is what Mina remembers from the day the Death Eaters came for her: the scent of smoke clinging to her skin, threading its way into her lungs. The unyielding sidewalk beneath her back, cement cool against the stinging burns trailing up her arms and legs. The fire, still roaring up the walls of the house behind her, licking up into the sky— Mina had been lucky that her parents were out on a walk with Ray, so lucky, even though every part of her hurt. And the sky itself, blue and marred by billowing gray clouds, illuminated by the serpentine green glow of the Dark Mark.
In her dreams, Nayeon never comes.
But that day, Nayeon was there: kneeling beside her, the gravel marking her skin, scraping up her legs. Nayeon had been the one to pull her out of the fire, to slash at the flames with her wand, forcing them to part, to stumble out onto the driveway with Mina half-slumped over her back. To lay her down, as gently as she could, running trembling fingers through Mina’s sooty hair.
The fire was finally dying down to a smolder; Nayeon had cast some sort of counter-charm that smothered them quickly. Mina had tried to put them out herself, but whatever curse they’d used had made the fire immune to the house’s sprinkler system, and she’d been Disarmed before she could try any magic.
Over Nayeon’s shoulder, Mina could see that half of the house was gone, the rest a blackened skeleton. Her bedroom with its potted cactus, the living room where she’d curled on the couch with her parents to watch movies every other Saturday, the photographs decorating the kitchen walls— all of it turned to the flecks of ash that drifted down, settling around them like dirty snow.
Mina didn’t even have the strength to grieve for it— everything that she had lost today, and after today, everything that she would have to let go.
There was light, startling and blinding. It came from everywhere and not just the sun, hanging low in the sky; it streamed in from the corners of her vision and blurred everything together.
Her sleeve was growing cool and wet, in the midst of the hot, dry air, over the scorched earth. There was no rain, not this far into summer.
Mina hadn’t seen Nayeon cry since fifth-year Potions, when she’d dropped in the foxglove one step too early and ended up dousing half of her face in boiling liquid, and Mina had been the one to take her to the hospital wing, to clean the tender skin gently with a damp cloth; to promise Nayeon with a surprised laugh, when she asked, that her “good looks” hadn’t been damaged at all.
But Nayeon’s shoulders were shaking, as she bent over and pressed her forehead to Mina’s chest, her tears already cool by the time they soaked through the singed fabric of Mina’s shirt. A brief respite from the heat of the world around them. She took Mina’s hand and clasped it between both of her own, clutching it like a lifeline, and Mina could have wondered at that, when she was the one who had nearly slipped away. But what was the point in wondering about anything, now?
In the ashes of Mina’s childhood home, Nayeon pressed their hands to her heart and wept.
ϟ
“—Mina! Mina, wake up.”
Someone’s calling her name, a hand on her shoulder shaking her awake.
When Mina comes to, the sweat on her heated skin is already turning cool, the thundering of her heart starting to ease. Nayeon is leaning over her, barely more than a formless mass in the dark.
“The light,” Mina manages, her voice raspy, “light, please.”
She hears some rustling as Nayeon fumbles for her wand, and then she says, “Lumos,” and Mina is blinking against the artificial brightness. It casts shadows, harsh and prominent, over Nayeon’s face and the concerned furrow in her brow. “Are you alright?”
Mina swallows, senses that the lingering panic of the nightmare has subsided. “I’m fine.”
“Was it the fire?” asks Nayeon, and somehow the gentle inflection of her words fails to calm Mina as it might have on any other night.
“It wasn’t— it wasn’t anything, Nayeon,” Mina says. “Let’s just sleep.”
But Nayeon doesn’t go. She’s looking away from Mina, lowering her wand slightly so that it casts light over the foot of the bed, the blankets tangled around her legs. “I got up for water and saw. You were thrashing around enough to shake the bed. I should have heard you, so why didn’t I?”
There’s a tightness in Mina’s throat, a burning sensation in the corners of her eyes. She pulls the blankets up to her chin and rolls over to face the wall. “I don’t know,” she says.
Nayeon is silent for a moment, the light of her wand wavering. “Mina...”
“Let’s just sleep,” Mina says again, knowing Nayeon will give in. “Can’t we talk about it in the morning?”
It’s a lapse of her judgement to admit that there’s something to talk about at all, but she’s so tired. Nayeon must hear it too, which is why she whispers, “Okay. Good night, Mina.”
Mina waits for the sound of retreating footsteps before she answers, “Good night.”
“Nox,” Nayeon mutters under her breath, and the light goes out. By the time Mina turns back around to look at her, Nayeon is already asleep, leaving only the quiet, slow rhythm of her breathing as a lullaby.
In the morning, they find that the sun has emerged brighter than the days before, turning the last caps of snow on the tree branches above to water. Mina plans on staying inside all day, to avoid the mess of treading through half-melted snow, and even Nayeon won’t be leaving the tent for her usual wandering, though that’s less because of the mess and more because of Mina.
“Let’s talk,” Nayeon says, as soon as Mina finishes dressing— Nayeon has never been one for patience, though she rarely presses Mina this way, but Mina knows she’s been delaying this for nearly a week now. “What was that, last night?”
“I had a bad dream,” says Mina. “It’s not unusual.”
Nayeon sits down on the bed beside her, still casual. “It’s not, but the Silencing Charm was new.”
“It was a precaution.”
“I thought the nightmares had stopped,” Nayeon says, carefully.
“What do you want me to say?” Mina tugs roughly on the hem of her shirt, irrationally and terribly frustrated. “That they haven’t? I thought they were gone too, Nayeon. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
Nayeon’s eyes go wide, but she doesn’t draw back. Instead she brings her hand up to rest on Mina’s knee, fingers brushing lightly against her skin. “I just want to know what’s been bothering you.”
“What if I said there was nothing?”
“Minari,” Nayeon says, the nickname slipping out carelessly, affectionately still, even as discomfort twists low in Mina’s gut, “I’d really like to believe you, but you look like— well, you look half-alive, to be honest. How much sleep have you gotten this week?”
“Enough,” Mina tells her, though she’d seen the shadows under her own eyes in the mirror earlier, and knows Nayeon must have too. The truth was that she’d set up the Silencing Charm around her bed as soon as she woke up in the middle of the first night after their run-in with the bounty hunters, disoriented and terrified, and that not a single night since has gone by peacefully.
“That’s not true and we both know it,” says Nayeon flatly, before she softens her tone. “You don’t have to hide things from me. When have there ever been secrets between us?”
Never, but Mina drops her head into her hands. “I wish you would just leave me alone.”
“The thing is,” Nayeon says, her fingers drumming restlessly against Mina’s knee, “I tried. I thought maybe you just needed space after what happened, so I gave it to you, but you’ve been going out of your way to avoid me. You have to know I’ve noticed.”
Of course she has. Mina hasn’t been subtle, pretending to sleep in when Nayeon gets up to roam around in the mornings, waking up early other days to leave the tent before Nayeon has even begun to stir. There’s only so far she can go, though, when they’re quite literally confined to the boundaries of their encampment, surrounded by their own protective wards, so she’s had to find other ways. Claiming to be tired when Nayeon suggested that they go for a walk. Busying herself by fiddling with the radio whenever they’re stuck inside together, under the guise of tinkering away the loud static that fills the background of every channel. Mina is almost ashamed to admit it.
“Just tell me what’s wrong,” Nayeon pleads. “I’m only here to help.”
“I don’t want you to help,” Mina snaps, all at once. She jerks away so that Nayeon’s hand falls onto the mattress and stands up, stepping back from the bed. “I said that I just want you to leave me alone. If you’re willing to do so much for me, can’t you at least give me that?”
Mina’s pulse is roaring through her ears. Outside, a bird sings plaintively.
Nayeon stares up at her, silent and still. Her eyes are dark. Mina wants her to speak, to open her mouth and let the bitter words spill out, the anger, the resentment, surely—
“Okay,” Nayeon says, “if that’s what you want.”
Then she stands up and goes.
ϟ
By twilight, Nayeon has yet to return.
The colors are just starting to fade from the sky when Mina finally sets out to find her. Nayeon won’t have gone far, this much Mina knows, won’t have Apparated away from the defensive enchantments that would prevent her from returning. Mina doesn’t know how far she would have to push for Nayeon to truly leave. She doesn’t want to find out.
It doesn’t take long to find her. Mina checks the westward clearing first, where the remains of an earlier campfire still litter the ground, then heads along the boundary wards until she comes across a narrow, meandering creek, frozen clean over.
A few more minutes of following its path and the water takes her to Nayeon. The stream widens into a small pool, just deep enough that standing in its center Nayeon is submerged to the waist, combing her fingers through her tangled hair, stripped down to her underwear.
The day after they’d arrived here, Mina had knelt by the side of this same pool with Nayeon’s discarded clothes bundled together in her arms, and she’d scrubbed at them under the water for half an hour, watching the murky clouds of old blood drift outward and disperse in the gentle currents of the stream. Then she’d given in and cleaned the rest of it with magic.
The water had been freezing cold that day. Nayeon must have heated it now; Mina spots several shards of shrinking ice floating on the surface. At the sound of her footfalls, Nayeon startles, hand darting to where her wand rests on a nearby rock.
“It’s me,” Mina says softly, just as Nayeon whirls around to face her.
“Oh.” Nayeon lowers her wand, sets it back down. Her expression is difficult to make out in the gloom. “What are you doing out here?”
“I was looking for you,” Mina answers truthfully. It’s not as if Nayeon doesn’t already know. Still, she hesitates before adding, “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Don’t bother,” Nayeon says. She isn’t looking directly at Mina when she does, which is good, because Mina can’t quite suppress a flinch at that. Even if she’d expected it. Even if she—
Nayeon sighs and relents. “I meant,” she clarifies, “that the water is getting cold.”
Mina says, “Oh.” Fumbles for her wand. “I can—”
Two seconds later a new sheen of steam is rising from the surface of the pond.
“Advanced nonverbal magic,” Nayeon notes, “you’ve been studying.” A pause, then, “Thank you, but there was really no need. I’m about done anyway.”
Mina makes her way to the edge of the water anyway, sweeping some of the residual snow off a rock before seating herself. She pulls off her boots, her socks, rolls her jeans up. The air is icy on her skin. She wonders how Nayeon can stand the bite of its cold, on the rivulets of water trickling down her back from the ends of her hair, the droplets shining against her skin.
Even as the thought comes to her, Nayeon is climbing out of the water, the lines of her arms flexing as she pulls herself up onto the same rock she’d set her wand on earlier. The expanse of her exposed skin is milky white under the light of the rising moon. Mina averts her gaze and waits.
When Mina looks up again, Nayeon has settled at last: her position mirroring Mina’s, the currents of the stream lapping away just below their knees.
Mina speaks. “What I said earlier. I—” (Didn’t she mean it?) “— I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t fair.”
Of all things. Nothing about this world, this time, this war, none of it has been fair. They aren’t the ones who made it that way, but now they’re the ones who have to fix it. Is that fair?
Nayeon’s silence, at least, is something that Mina can understand. She’s watching Mina intently, an unfamiliar glint in her eyes. The fierce shine of the stars above.
“Are you angry?” Mina asks, willing her voice not to waver.
Nayeon considers this, then shakes her head. Mina can breathe again. “I’m... frustrated. You asked me what I want from you. I don’t want anything besides for you to understand that. But you won’t even talk to me. How can I know what to do if I don’t even know what you’re thinking?”
Mina glances down at the rippling surface of the water. “I’m sorry.”
“I wish you would talk to me,” Nayeon says.
Mina lets the tips of her fingers dip into the water, watching the little trails they leave behind in the current, the warmth of her earlier spell already fading. Anything for a little more time.
“You were right,” she admits, finally. It could mean any number of things, but she chooses the easiest route. The least direct. “The nightmares had stopped before last week. I don’t— I don’t dream about the fire, anymore. I’m glad for that.
Nayeon’s eyebrows knit together. “Then why—”
Mina says, “Aren’t you afraid ?”
Nayeon doesn’t understand. Mina can see her confusion, how she swallows and opens her mouth as if to speak, shuts it again. Nayeon hadn’t expected that, and maybe Mina hadn’t either, with the way the question had tumbled out unbidden.
“I’m so afraid,” Mina confesses. “Every minute of every waking hour. And now when I’m asleep too. I’m afraid that I’ll wake up one day and you’ll be gone, or hurt, or— or dead. That’s what I dream about. It’s all I can dream about.”
Nayeon is motionless and unreadable. The distance between them is only a few feet, but Mina can hardly stand it, yearns to slip down into the water and cross the sea. She doesn’t move.
The silence stretches on. Nayeon is the one to break it. “If that’s what you’re afraid of,” she says, “I told you before. You won’t lose me.”
“But you can’t know that!” Mina says, overly aware of how her voice cracks at the ends. “When you made me that promise, I thought I could believe it. Then last week— you could have died, Nayeon.”
“But I didn’t!” Nayeon exclaims, frustrated. “I’m fine, I’m alive, however you look at it, I’m—”
“You could have,” Mina says again, and she looks away, “because you were with me.”
“Would you rather I run off and join them instead?” Nayeon counters. There’s an edge to the words, sharp and serrated. “Is that what you want, Mina? For me to go around torturing and killing, like I was always meant to do?”
“Nayeon, please,” says Mina, despairing. She pulls her legs out of the water and hugs them up to her chest protectively, paying little mind to the water soaking through her sleeves. “You know that isn’t what I meant.”
“What else could you mean? Where else could I go?”
“You could go home,” Mina says quietly.
Saying it aloud cracks something open, suddenly and terribly, in her chest.
The stars are smearing into streaks of light above. The frigid air burns through her lungs, cold and hot all at once. Like the flavor of toothpaste, of chewing gum, of the peppermint candies Mina’s mother used to sneak her after Christmas dinner, late into the night until Mina fell asleep bathed in candlelight, curled up under the pine tree like a gift; a gift to be warm, to be loved, to wake on Christmas Day in the safety of her own bed, the blanket tucked carefully around her shoulders.
“Mina,” Nayeon breathes.
Her name, again. Her name has always been safe in Nayeon’s mouth, the way Nayeon says it, the same way she’d cradle a child, hold Mina’s hand, every brush of fingers against her skin.
Mina blinks hard and makes her way back. The embarrassment is starting to spread hot under her skin, and Nayeon is calling her name again, more firmly this time.
“If I went home tomorrow,” Nayeon starts, and her words, her expression, the tension that had risen in her shoulders have all softened. Mina thinks she should resent being pitied, but she can find neither the strength nor the bitterness, and Nayeon, too, is saying, “If I went home tomorrow, I’d have a Dark Mark by the end of the day. I’m in this war either way. I won’t be on any side but yours.”
Mina says, “But you love them. Your family. I saw—” Nayeon had brought more things along than Mina, whose possessions had either burned or been deemed useless. A photograph, a necklace with the family insignia. Nayeon’s parents had never treated their own daughter badly, and Mina has never been one for willful ignorance. “You do.”
Nayeon’s face twists, only for a moment before it’s gone. “Yes.”
“Then—”
“I love you too,” Nayeon says, but it isn’t sentimental. “That isn’t the only reason. What my family wants from me is something I can’t ever be again. You wouldn’t expect that from me, I’m sure.”
Mina shakes her head. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Nayeon smiles wryly. “I wish I could say all of it was because of how they raised me. I know that’s what you think. For the parts of it that were, at least, I hate them for that. Even when I love them. Isn’t that sad?”
She’s quiet, and then: “But I’m still lucky. I had the choice to leave. And I know that not everybody...” Trails off. “I know that there are worse things.”
The ache in Mina’s chest only deepens under Nayeon’s gentle gaze. She says, if only to move the conversation along, “It shouldn’t be a competition.”
Nayeon laughs, and Mina is startled by the genuine note of humor. “You’re right. You’re almost always right, you know that? Myoui Mina, brightest in her year. Star pupil of Hogwarts.”
Mina won’t even have the chance to graduate. “I’m only ever right about silly things.” The fifth step for brewing a Draught of Peace. The best food for a bowtruckle. The fifty-three named moons of Jupiter.
“No,” Nayeon says. She stares down at her legs through the clear refraction of the water, swaying to and fro in the currents, her reflection silhouetted against the moon’s. When she speaks again, it’s no louder than the rustling of leaves in the wind. “I’m afraid too.”
When she doesn’t elaborate, Mina finds it in herself to ask. “Of what?”
Nayeon laughs again, helplessly. “That you don’t want me here.” Her hands curl into fists where they rest on her knees. “That you only asked me to stay because you were afraid.”
The cold is starting to get to her now, a bone-deep chill that makes her hug herself tighter, shivering. Nayeon is half-bare and pale in the dark, still beautiful. Even when she can’t seem to meet Mina’s gaze anymore.
Mina drops her arms and sits up straight, letting the tight coil of her body unravel. The truth, too, from the tangles within her chest. “I want you with me,” she says, clearly, “and not because I’m afraid to be alone. But I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t want this from you.”
Shouldn’t want her blood, blooming like spider-lilies on the snow, nor the cool touch of her tears in the light of the dying fire. How Nayeon had looked at her this morning, angry but also— certainly, undeniably— hurt.
“I shouldn’t want you to stay if all it brings you is misery,” Mina says, finally.
For a moment, all there is is the howl of wolves in some distant hollow of the forest.
Then Nayeon says, “Misery?” as if it’s the first time she’s heard the word.
Overhead, the shadow of a cloud falls over the moon. Mina has used up all her honesty.
“Misery,” Nayeon echoes again, the strangest lilt to her voice, and reaches for her wand.
And the clearing fills with a dazzling, silvery light, Nayeon’s magic bursting forth unrestrained. An animal that Mina can’t quite make out, not because it lacks shape but because of the blinding brightness, and then when her eyes have finally adjusted it isn’t until the Patronus has unfurled its sprawling wings that Mina recognizes it for what it is.
A swan.
Mina’s breath catches in her throat.
“Nayeon,” she whispers, reverent. Afraid to speak louder for the irrational fear that it would cause the Patronus to dissolve into nothingness. “It’s— it’s beautiful.”
“Do you remember?” Nayeon’s voice is uneven. She, too, is transfixed by the swan, which has settled itself in the water between them and is now gliding slowly towards Mina. Mina reaches out a hand and strokes her fingers through the silken feathers at the top of its head, her hand trembling, and the touch of Nayeon’s Patronus gives her a new warmth, a sense of courage, of hope, surging forward from somewhere inside her that she thought she had lost, or at least locked away.
“I do,” Mina says.
She remembers two things. The first: the day Nayeon had helped her put up the same poster she’d torn down the previous year in a fit of particular cruelty. How attentively she’d listened, as Mina tried her best to explain why Muggles enjoyed a type of dance that to Nayeon must have seemed rather bizarre, with its pointed shoes and strange-looking skirts; how Nayeon had sat back on the bed when they were finished, with a quiet and ashamed air.
Mina had found that unbearable, so she’d dug out from her trunk some older photos from the days when she herself still did ballet, ones that she’d been afraid to show earlier because they didn’t move the way magical pictures did. But Nayeon had only laughed after Mina did, and only at the way ten-year-old Mina was clearly on the verge of toppling, in some of those captured, frozen moments.
The second: three years later, when the sixth years had finally learned the Patronus Charm in Defense against the Dark Arts. Nayeon had been so excited to show her that she’d practically dragged Mina out of her own class at the first ring of the bell. But back then it had taken the shape of a hare, bounding across the room and pawing eagerly at Mina’s ankles.
Almost nothing from that time has survived. The swan is beautiful, elegant in its maturity, but part of Mina mourns the unabashed enthusiasm of its counterpart. All that has remained the same, the only constant, is that it’s still the two of them here.
Mina says again, “I remember. But I thought, well, I thought...”
“It changed,” Nayeon says, before she can finish, “last year.”
The swan raises its head to the river of the sky and spreads its wings, beating once, twice, to the heavy pulse of Mina’s heart. Nayeon looks up from her Patronus and straight at Mina, and Mina finds herself looking right back.
“Why?” Mina says, into the stillness.
All she can find in Nayeon’s eyes, when she answers, is certainty.
For you.
ϟ
Spring comes and with it better days. The last of the snow melts. The radio brings news of a shift, if not quite a turning tide, stories of resistance and of survival.
They change locations another two times. Where they are now, it rains more often than not— last night there had been a downpour, but it had ended by dawn, leaving the trees to dry their branches in the morning sun. Still, Mina knows there will be intermittent drizzles through the rest of the day.
Nayeon decides to stay in. Mina is secretly, selfishly glad, to have her to herself for the whole day, over whatever mysterious call it is that usually has Nayeon wandering out alone. Even though, of course, all they have in these times are each other.
They’re in bed together— just sitting, Mina’s back to Nayeon’s front as she toys with a block of wood she’d cut from some fallen logs, carving little shavings from it with her wand while Nayeon watches— when Nayeon asks, out of nowhere, “What do you think you’ll do, when this is all over?”
“Find my parents,” Mina answers automatically, “and then—” She stops speaking when she notices the nervous drum of Nayeon’s fingers on her knee. “What?”
“I meant,” Nayeon says, in a slightly embarrassed manner, “for a career. If we win the war.”
“Oh,” says Mina, and tries not to feel too silly.
Nayeon adds hastily, “You don’t have to have an answer. I mean, we don’t even know what the world will be like, after all of this.”
“No, it’s okay,” Mina says, biting back a smile that would be entirely inappropriate for the moment. Even if Nayeon’s flustered assurances never fail to amuse her, considering how much of themselves they’ve already bared to each other. “You first.”
Nayeon settles back against the headboard, locking her fingers around the flat of Mina’s stomach. “I’m not sure. An Auror?” She must sense the way Mina arches an eyebrow, because she laughs and says, “Maybe. Just to spite my parents.”
“A rebel,” Mina says, unable to resist the smirk tugging at her lips.
“You like it,” Nayeon says, and nips at the curve of her neck just to prove a point, tightening her grip when Mina squirms and protests. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
Mina hums, mulls it over. Looks down at the crude wooden sculpture of a hare that she’d managed to fashion. “How about a carpenter?”
“Ha, ha,” Nayeon says drily.
All that accomplishes is to make Mina laugh, louder and real, curling her hands over Nayeon’s until the last of it has settled. Then she says, more seriously, “I used to want to be a Healer. I took all the required courses and everything. But I don’t know anymore.”
“Why not?” Nayeon asks. “You could still do it. You probably have more first-hand experience than half of those nurses up at St. Mungo’s.”
Enough months have passed since that day for Nayeon to bring it up so casually. but Mina still can’t help but grimace at the reminder. “I never got to take my N.E.W.T.s, remember? Even if I could, somehow, after everything, I’d have to relearn half the courses with how much I’ve forgotten.”
“You could still do it,” Nayeon says again. She pulls back only to lean into Mina again, forehead pressed to the nape of her neck. “You’re the smartest person I know.”
Mina says, “Don’t flatter me.”
“It’s true!” Nayeon insists. Her hands are sliding under Mina’s shirt, pressing to her belly but no higher. Mina can’t find it in herself to mind, in the hazy afternoon heat, the added warmth of Nayeon’s presence. “Don’t think I haven’t seen those massive books you used to check out from the library. Sometimes I wonder how you didn’t end up in Ravenclaw.”
“Well,” Mina says, a bit drowsily, a bit too lost in the intimacy of Nayeon’s wandering hands, “the Hat did make that offer. But I turned it down.”
A beat of silence. “You what?”
“I turned it down,” Mina says again. “Well, it wasn’t really intentional. I just—”
Nayeon’s fingers have stilled on her skin. Mina turns in her hold, shifting so they’re face-to-face, and finds that Nayeon has tilted her head back to stare blankly at the empty space just over Mina’s head.
“...Nayeon?”
“I didn’t know the Hat let people choose,” Nayeon says, still not looking at her. “I was Slytherin from the moment they put it on my head. How can an old hat make that type of judgement?”
Mina watches her, the way her eyes flutter closed for longer than a moment, and knows that whatever answer she can give is not one that Nayeon will want to hear.
“I don’t know,” she says quietly, in the end, and nothing else. Still focused on the minute changes in Nayeon’s expression, the way her jaw tightens when she looks down at Mina at last.
“What did it say to you?” Nayeon asks, as casually as she can manage.
It seems like a lifetime ago, but her Sorting isn’t something Mina can forget easily. “That I’d have an easier time making friends in Ravenclaw. That Slytherin would be... difficult.”
Nayeon says, with utter disbelief, “Why would you choose Slytherin? ”
“I— I didn’t,” Mina says truthfully. “I barely even knew what each of the Houses were.”
That day, the Hat had continued to muse, what to do, what to do? until Mina could barely go on knowing that she sat before hundreds of watchful eyes. Then the thought had come to her, unbidden, there and gone in a second, and the Hat had seized it with glee and, before Mina knew it, was shouting Slytherin! to the entire hall.
“I didn’t make a choice,” Mina admits at last. “I just wanted to— to prove myself.”
“To prove yourself?” Nayeon echoes, uncertainly.
For a moment, Mina thinks she won’t understand. In the next, Nayeon blinks, her eyebrows furrowing, and all at once the realization moves into place behind her eyes.
The first time they’d ever seen each other, Mina had been in jeans and a t-shirt, Nayeon in her Slytherin robes. When Mina slid open the compartment door, she'd been surprised and a little to see someone there, but not scared, and she’d been about to take the seat opposite Nayeon when Nayeon had looked at her with nothing but disgust and said, People like you won’t ever belong here.
Under the Sorting Hat that day, Mina hadn’t thought, I want Slytherin, or even, I don’t want Ravenclaw. She’d thought of the girl on the train, her condescension, her conviction, and for a split second the humiliation of it had burned hot under Mina’s skin, the savage desire to show that she could be better, and in that moment the Hat must have found exactly what it was looking for.
Nayeon says, “Oh, god,” and moves as if to pull away.
Mina is already ahead of her, hands heavy on her waist, weighing her down. In this, Nayeon is too easy to predict, because Mina knows that she had never, not truly, moved past the guilt of it. That Nayeon has carried with her, all this time, the memory of who she used to be.
Had Mina been sorted into any other House, she would’ve escaped the year of torment Nayeon inflicted upon her. To find the only reason she hadn’t was because of her— it must be wholly devastating.
“Nayeon,” Mina says quietly, careful, “all of this— it was years ago. You can’t keep punishing yourself.”
Nayeon exhales, long and slow, her eyes flitting to the door. Mina holds on tighter, and she can sense the exact moment when Nayeon yields.
“It happened,” she says, soft.
Mina can’t take it any longer. “Listen to me,” she says. “I mean it.” She turns fully, climbing into Nayeon’s lap, knees on either side of her bare thighs. Cradles Nayeon’s face in her hands, forcing the older girl to look at her.
“For the longest time,” Mina tells her, “I thought I made the wrong choice. I hated Slytherin. I hated my Housemates. I hated you.”
Nayeon shudders against her, all the way down her spine, her eyes fluttering shut. But Mina’s grip, however gentle, is unrelenting. She forges ahead.
“But it doesn’t matter now. No, listen to me. It doesn’t. Do you understand? I haven’t hated you in six years now. I’ve loved you for half that time. I’ll love you for twenty times that, or until we die if it comes down to it, but I wouldn’t even have the chance if it weren’t for you.”
Mina is being tremendously and uncharacteristically forward. But if Nayeon still feels this way, after all this time, after all they’ve been through...
“I survived that House,” says Mina, and a rush of fierce, undeniable pride swells in her at the truth of it. “It was hard, but I survived. I proved that even someone like me—” An outsider. A Mudblood. “Even I could make it through.”
“Mina,” Nayeon whispers, and her eyes are wet. “Mina,” she says again, and it’s as if all the other words, everything she’d ever wanted to say, have been stolen from her, by the touch of Mina’s hands on her cheeks, the shine of her eyes. “You’re...”
“I am a Slytherin,” Mina says, when Nayeon stutters to a halt. With unwavering conviction. “And that brought me to you.” She takes a deep, trembling breath. “I don’t regret it. Do you?”
“No,” Nayeon breathes. “But, Minari, I’m not...”
“I think you’re the bravest person I know,” Mina confesses in a rush. Nayeon’s hands are hovering somewhere in the space between them. Her left forearm, unscarred.
“Gryffindor was never a choice for either of us,” says Nayeon, with a tiny, rueful laugh.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be brave,” Mina says. Then, overcome by the way Nayeon was looking at her, the uncertainty of tomorrow, and the star-bright flare of emotion in her chest, she surged forward and pressed her lips to Nayeon’s.
ϟ
“Mars is bright tonight,” Nayeon says, one night when the weather is warm enough that they've decided to sleep outside for the sake of the fresh air, dragging the mattresses out of the bunks and tossing them onto the forest floor. “You know what that means?”
In fourth year Divination, they spent five months studying astrology. Mina passed the class with flying colors, and still she answers, “No, tell me.”
“It means,” Nayeon says, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “that we’ve found a love meant to last.”
Mina smiles. Rolls over on her side so she’s facing Nayeon instead of the sky. “Then I suppose Mars must be the brightest of all the planets.”
Mars is the harbinger of war, which means this brightness has been long overdue. Mina knows for a fact that in her third year, Nayeon had deemed Divination an utter waste of time and dropped out of the class. But Mina has always loved Nayeon more for her tendency to drift into the fantastic, hitching Mina along for the ride, than any kind of rightness.
“We were—” Nayeon throws her arms out, one of them flopping onto Mina’s side of the mattress, “— FATED TO FIND EACH OTHER!”
She shouts it into the stillness of the night, the sky’s dome stretching vastly overhead. They’re both a little drunk on having each other, given the size of the world, and Nayeon is by far the louder of the two when excited, kicking her legs up and laughing wildly.
“Nayeon,” Mina clambers on top of her and pushes her down, helpless affection rising in her chest, “shush.” When that fails to quiet her, Mina succumbs to it, leaning down and kissing her firmly, until Nayeon has gone boneless and pliant beneath her.
“I don’t know a thing about astrology,” Nayeon confides in her, a while later, after the two of them have settled down, their mattresses pushed together, side-by-side.
“I know,” Mina says. Nayeon’s got it all entirely wrong, but she’s breathtaking in the moonlight. The stark lines of her face, the wide set of her eyes, sprinkled with light from the stars above.
And Mina has never cared much for fate, astrology least of all. The stars they see in the night sky are years old by the time the light has reached their eyes. Some of them might even be gone already.
She doesn’t want to live in a world where the future is determined by things of the past. Where the in-betweens— the choices people make between the starting point and the end, the first meeting to the present— are all in vain. How would they ever have arrived where they are?
Wizards don’t think of things this way. Just as Mina will never understand what it means to grow up with magic, to have it infused in every aspect of life from the very first breath, in the same way that Nayeon does. Some of these gaps between them cannot be closed, only bridged.
Mina doesn’t mind. Nayeon doesn’t either, not anymore, not as her hand finds Mina’s in the tiny space between them, her thumb brushing gentle circles over the back. When Nayeon turns away from the stars to look at her, her eyes are still bright, her smile slow and soft and sure.
“I’m lucky I found you,” she says to Mina, very seriously, and Mina only nods, moves closer. Tucks her head under Nayeon’s chin, pressing a kiss to the hollow of her throat, Nayeon’s hand settling over the small of her back.
Mars means nothing at all, Mina decides. They weren’t ever fated to find each other, but what does it matter? They have. They can make this a love meant to last.
Someday, this war will end. Until then, after then, Nayeon is here, by her side: her breathing evening out to a slow rhythm, her other hand still curled around Mina’s.
They sleep until the first light of morning.