WakaSeo Week, Day 6: Singing. Title from crushcrushcrush - Paramore. (It's another Hogwarts AU! Seo is a second-year, Waka is a first-year. Obviously takes place before Day 4 (Practice).)

"Hey... Waka... psst! Waka!"

Alright, some background: Wakamatsu Hirotaka, while he has lived with Muggles for eleven years, and while he has only just recently gone to study in this wizard school, he is still fairly sure that witches and wizards don't normally wake each other up by sneaking into one another's dormitories in the middle of the night and then whispering in their ear. He nearly falls out of his bed, but instead opts to immediately shift the blankets over his head. Maybe that will deter his attacker.

It does absolutely nothing. "Waka, come on!" His blanket is yanked away from him very rudely, and when he blinks his eyes open timidly, a pair of amber ones stare back at him. "That was rude, you don't just put your blanket up when someone's talking to you."

"It's also very rude to wake people up in the middle of the night," Wakamatsu retorts, trying not to quail under the gaze of Seo Yuzuki. "What are you doing here, Seo-senpai? I was just going to sleep!"

Seo rolls her eyes and straightens her back, having been leaning over to face Wakamatsu earlier. She stretches her arms a little, before looking back down at the still unmoving student. "Well...? Are you gonna get up or what?"

"Why should I!?" He sighs and looks around, making sure he hadn't woken anyone up. "What do you want, Seo-senpai? If you wanted something, surely it could have waited a little?"

"No, this is important," Seo says primly, drawing herself up to her full height. Wakamatsu supposes it must be the pureblood instinct in her. Then she glances around cautiously, before leaning over to hiss in his ear; "There's a three-headed dog in the school."

Wakamatsu almost, almost screams like a baby and ducks back under the covers, but he's fairly sure that if he does that, Seo would only pick on him more. So he manages a nervous, shaky laugh. "S-Seo-senpai?"

She shakes her head, seemingly having expected his reaction. "I'm not kidding. You wanna see? It's in the third floor corridor on the right side of the school, the thing ol' Dumbles warned us about."

"'Ol' Dumbles'?" Wakamatsu asks, aghast. Then he repeats what Seo had just said to him, and makes a frightened squeak. "T-The thing in the third floor..."

"Yes!" Seo all but squeals. "That's why we should totally head over there right now. C'mon, don't you want to go on an adventure? It's midnight! It's the perfect time to sneak up there!"

"We'll die!"

"Waka, come on," Seo persists, sticking out her lower lip and pushing her face closer to his. Wakamatsu just places his palm on her face and pushes her away in response. "Ah! Fine, I'll just take someone else with me, though none of my girl friends wanna go. Tanaka? Yamamura?"

"What? Hey, hold on!" Wakamatsu yelps. "Tanaka hates dogs, and Yamamura is super slow at running!"

"Best choice for me, right there, then," Seo muses, like she's simply talking about the weather and not which first-year to bring to a suicide mission. "Boosts the thrill."

"Stop! Stop it!" Wakamatsu whisper-shouts, springing up from his bed. "I-I'll go, geez!" Wait, he thinks, what am I doing? Am I actually agreeing to accompany Seo Yuzuki-senpai to go take on a three-headed dog with no information on how to subdue it? If this is really what his life is turning out to be, being a wizard and all, then maybe he'd be much happier going back to the Muggles.

Before he can take back what he had just said, though, Seo is already grinning and pulling her wand out from her cloak, clearly prepared. "Awesome! Alright, get dressed, come on come on come on. I'll make us invisible with this charm!"

Wakamatsu grabs the nearest cloak he can find, which also thankfully turns out to be his darkest cloak, and shoves it on. "Invisible?"

Seo nods, before tapping Wakamatsu on the head with her wand. Nothing seems to happen until a few seconds, when he winces at the feeling of a raw egg being cracked atop his head. When he looks down on his arm, there's nothing there - like he had turned into some sort of human chameleon.

"Isn't it cool?" Seo smirks, clearly pleased with herself. "It's the Disillusionment Charm, the Seo family specialty, and a seventh-year spell." She puffs her chest out. "Anyway, I didn't think it would work that well. I've never actually tried it and had it work on other people before."

"You mean I could have gotten hurt," Wakamatsu says.

"Well, yeah, but whatever, right?" She shrugs, then twirls her wand around herself like she's wrapping herself in rope. In a few seconds, she disappears too. "Aight, there we go. Just head over to the corridor, obviously - if Filch or that awful cat comes along, we'll split up. Got it? You might wanna put on some perfume that smells really bad, too, I don't know. Maybe it could make Mrs. Norris think it's just some dirt around the hallway instead of a person."

Wakamatsu, once more, reevaluates his life choices.

"How do you take down a three-headed dog, anyway, Seo-senpai?" Wakamatsu whispers, now thoroughly regretting ever having decided to be friends with the Slytherin.

She glances over at him, looking almost bored as she makes her way through the school hallways expertly. "You sing," she says, matter-of-fact. "It's not that hard. Just leave it to me!"

"Alright," he allows, trying not to think of the one time he had strayed near the Slytherin common room and heard the most awful singing come from there once Seo had gone in. "Well- why do you want to go in there, anyhow? It's a total suicide mission, really, and we're eleven-year-olds..."

"I'm twelve," Seo says defensively. "And anyway, the only one who's in any real danger is you, Waka. You're a Hufflepuff, the dog'll definitely come after you first."

"Thanks. Real reassuring," Wakamatsu says, blocking all the gruesome scenes that start flooding his head. "Well... really... how about I just stay outside? I don't need to go in, right? Just... outside? You know, moral support?"

"It's not as fun with no one but the dog around," Seo whines. She sounds a little further off, now, so Wakamatsu hurries forward while doing his best not to rush too much, lest he run straight into the girl. "Well, you can just stick near the door, but make sure you don't let it open or anything. Wouldn't want anyone to hear the thing, now, would we?"

He frowns, still not completely satisfied, but knows that's probably the best he's going to get out of her. "Okay, then." Then he stops abruptly, because they're there. They're right in front of the corridor that will most likely lead to their deaths if Seo isn't correct. He takes a deep breath. "You... You're sure you're going to be able to put it to sleep, right, Seo-senpai?"

"Oh, please," she says, waving her hand in the air nonchalantly. "Of course I do. As soon as I go in, you come in right after me and close the door, alright? It might start barking and everything and someone might hear and come running. Got it?"

"Yes," Wakamatsu answers timidly, wringing his hands together and praising God Seo can't see how much he's sweating right now. "C... Close the door. Yes, yeah, um, I understand... please just hurry up already, would you, senpai?"

"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya." And before he can do anything else to prepare himself for an inevitably gruesome death, Seo unlocks the door with a lofty alohomora and kicks it open. She darts in, leaving Wakamatsu with nary a second to stumble inside as well and shut the door just in time, as loud snarling suddenly fills the air. He gulps and backs away, feeling the urge to curl into a tiny ball and run away as fast as he can, even if the very, very large dog can't see him... unless Seo's spell had deactivated...

He looks down at his arms. They're still invisible, but when he glances over to the side, he notices that Seo's fully visible - her blonde hair is hard to miss, even with the minimal light. She's practically cackling, running circles around the dog while it snaps and lunges at her at every given opportunity. Wakamatsu has no idea how Seo manages to dodge each leap; it might have something to do with her small frame and practice from being in the Quidditch team, but she looks totally in her nature. Wakamatsu wants to yell at her to sing a song already, but he can't bring himself to say so. Maybe it's because he doesn't want that maniacal smile to go away. Most probably, it's because he doesn't want to risk revealing himself to the three-headed dog.

Just when he's fairly sure Seo is going to simply run around the dog for the entire night, she suddenly opens her mouth and belts out a tune that Wakamatsu is sure he's heard before. Or maybe it's just because his mind is suddenly clouding. Why was he feeling so sleepy? It's hard to keep himself focused, and he realizes he's curled up in his customary sleeping position when the dog crumples to the ground as well, causing a loud thud that Wakamatsu is sure should have woken up the entire castle. In a matter of seconds, Seo is in front of him and shaking him awake rather rudely. "Hey, hey, Waka! What's wrong with you? Did you get hit by the doggie or something?"

Belatedly, Wakamatsu notices the Disillusionment Charm had faded, as he can very clearly see his arm now. "Ah... uh... no, it's fine, I mean, I'm alright. W-What about you, Seo-senpai!? Are you hurt or anything?" He starts checking her for injuries as thoroughly as he can, like how his parents always used to do when he played with the other boys before he came to Hogwarts. He doesn't find anything worth dragging her to Madam Pomfrey for, except for the fact that she was out of breath. "T-That song..."

"Hm?" She cocks her head to the side, standing up, now that it's clear Wakamatsu isn't harmed. "I made it. But anyway, look at that!" She points excitedly to a trapdoor that had been unnoticed until now, running over towards it despite Wakamatsu's weak protests. (He vaguely notices she's limping slightly. Great.) "I didn't know this was here! I bet there's something super valuable down here. Let's go!"

"No," Wakamatsu says firmly, dragging her by the sleeve of her robe. Seo whines a number of complaints, but doesn't try wrenching herself free aside from a few halfhearted attempts. It's clear that, while her speed and agility is to be envied, her endurance isn't any better than that of a normal twelve-year-old as she's still breathing quick and fast. "You're tired, see, Seo-senpai? Let's get you to bed, alright?" He's about to ease the door open when his eye catches a small glint on the blonde's ankle that was half-hidden by the hem of her robes. "Seo-senpai..."

Seo shifts ever so subtly, bronze eyes remaining fixedly on his face. The problem is that Wakamatsu knows Seo well enough that she never exactly focuses on one thing for a very long period of time unless she's got something to hide. "... What?"

"Your ankle..."

"It's nothing," she says, perhaps a second too quickly for it to be believable.

Wakamatsu frowns. "You might be able to fool your housemates, but not me. There is no way you aren't getting that treated."

"It's, like, tiny, Waka! Come on!"

Before he can stop himself, Wakamatsu gets down on his knees and lifts the hem of Seo's robes quite ungentlemanly. She makes a mortified noise and automatically pulls herself away from him, but Wakamatsu had seen that large gash. He reckons she got it when she had miscalculated and one of the dog's sharp claws had grazed her. At the very least, she wasn't bleeding her pure blood all over the floor, which was a massive relief. Wakamatsu scoops her up in his arms, and pushes the door open with his foot slowly. There's not a person in the hallway, and he darts towards the direction of the infirmary as fast as he can manage.

Seo is kicking and screaming. Quite literally. Wakamatsu is praying to any god listening that Filch or Mrs. Norris didn't catch them. "Put me down, Waka! Put me down or so help me I will hex you to kingdom come-"

Something meows behind them. Wakamatsu freezes and turns to look at the cat, who looks almost smug. Seo pauses in her threats for a moment, before hissing, "Run."

Wakamatsu doesn't think he's ever run as fast as he had before. Seo, in contrast to just seconds before, is whooping and cheering him on, which he's pretty sure doesn't help with the situation. They hide out under the infirmary beds after Seo had alohomora'd their way in Wakamatsu repeatedly tells himself to never accompany Seo Yuzuki to dangerous tasks ever again.

Next time: AU/Free-For-All. (If you've read the HoriKashi Week fic, Day 6 (Teamwork), then it takes place right after the ending.) (Also: more notes about Witch!Seo on my AO3.)

Slacker, 7/5/14