→ [ word count ] :: 1138

"KIM!"

You didn't particularly care for the judgmental stares from the paintings dotting the dark hallways as you stormed through the castle in the middle of the night, earning a good couple of disgruntled grumbles as the ghosts and paintings and other sentiment beings were disturbed by your rage-filling storming, but nothing could be done for it now.

You were only grateful it was too far past curfew for any of the student population to hear you yell about how badly you were going to whoop Kim Seokjin's ass.

"What did he do this time?" the amused chirp of a oil-painted woman dressed in a painter's garb settled in front of an easel broke the thunderous, dark cloud surrounding you, the angry slash of your eyebrows lightening for just a moment. You glanced up, blue and silver robes glimmering in the moonlight from the latticed windows along the moving staircases.

You smiled tightly at one of the kinder paintings in this castle, one you remembered helping you from your student years when you routinely got lost when absorbed in a book, one who always said hello to you when you past and one you'd had comfortable conversations with in the past. A soothing relief to the usually-snippy attitudes of the glorified moving acrylic on the wall.

"Oh, nothing much," you pursed your lips, voice dipping into a dangerously sarcastic huff, making the young, beautiful woman laugh lightly, "just the fact that he thought it would be funny to place a levitating charm that enchants my furniture to start floating in midair every single night, you know? Otherwise, nothing much!"

You could tell the painter tried to hide her giggle as she ducked her head and fixed you with a forcedly sympathetic look.

"Every single night?" a more grating scoff caught your attention from yet another painting, this one with a man kicking his feet up on a desk, cigar between his lips, "And you're only taking care of it now, miss?"

You fought the urge to roll your eyes. You knew this painting too— and sometimes, you wished you didn't. He was a very... interesting character.

In that you hadn't know him to say or do anything, ever, that didn't have a snide or chaotic double meaning for good measure.

"I've been lenient for a while," you muttered through gritted teeth, not really in the mood for wasting your anger-spurred sarcastic remarks on anyone but Kim Seokjin at the moment, "I'd thought it would stop eventually, but clearly not."

"Dear, you know Professor Kim," the first painting sighed and smiled comfortingly at you, brushing off her apron as she tried to settle your nerves, "he only means it in good fun—"

You shot her a severe, quelling look that made her cough, snapping her mouth shut.

Usually, those looks you passed were only reserved for your most tiresome of students (the younger Kim brother instantly came to mind), but frankly, you weren't in the mood to be appeased right now. The assignments you were supposed to be grading were currently floating in a mess in midair, and it was going to take you ages to sort out, and this was all Kim Seokjin's fault.

With a scoff, you turned away. "I think I'll hex him to have jelly legs for the next month," you mused, dangerously calm, already shifting into that thoughtful mode brought along when you had to be creative with what you were going to pay Professor Kim back this time with, "or, oh! Maybe I'll set a niffler in his dorm! It'll be nice for him to have a roommate as vain as himself."

"Do you think we should stop her?" the sweet painter lady whispered under her breath to the cranky middle-aged man next to her, who simply snorted and flipped his feet off his dark oakwood desk.

"And miss out on free entertainment? I think not."

"Richard we've been having 'free entertainment' for the past two years—"

You hummed, thumbing the blackthorn wood of your wand in your pocket as you stormed with a purpose towards the Gryffindor dormitory. Fine, maybe this was retribution for the box of pixies you'd owl-mailed to him last week, or, but in your defense, he'd been purposefully interrupting your classes for the most petty of reasons, really, he deserved it.

Usually, you took his pranks with a slight twinge of irritation that would inevitably blossom into a wicked idea for your next act of retribution. However this time? Your assignment papers due to be returned to your 7th-years tomorrow were currently floating all over your room, graded and ungraded all mixed together like flotsam, and curse Kim Seokjin's talent for placing impenetrable and unnoticeable curses because without him, there was no getting any of it down.

"Oh, hang on, Professor!" the slightly sarcastic lilt of the man in his office rang out behind you, making you pause for just a moment before you got on the moving staircase that would bring you directly to the Gryffindor dormitory (so you could preferably set it on fire and let the bane of your existence deal with the screaming until the children realized it was just an apparition).

The image made your mouth curve into a sadistic smirk before you glanced back over your shoulder.

You turned meet the decidedly mirthful glint of the man from the desk painting, the grained wood of the frame a smooth, dark brown. With a cocked eyebrow, you hummed, slightly impatient, as your fingers were already itching to wrap around Seokjin's throat. "Yes?"

"You're going the wrong way," he drawled cheerfully, noting with no little amusement the flash of confusion in your irises, "Professor Kim isn't in the dormitories tonight."

"Richard, really, its as if you want there to be a new ghost initiated in the castle tonight—" the more mild-mannered painter lady beside him shot him a scolding look at that snippet of information, crossing her arms over her chest in dismay when you perked up, instantly curious, but he quickly shushed her.

"Now, don't go getting all soft on him for his pretty face," Richard snickered before smiling widely at you, "and yes, miss, you won't find him in the Gryffindor tower if you go looking."

You raised your eyebrows, slightly skeptical. After all, where would the notoriously lazy Kim Seokjin be wandering in the middle of the night as opposed to being nestled comfortably in his perfectly tailored, feather-stuffed bed? It just didn't add up.

"It's 1 in the morning, where else would he be?" you stared at the painting, baffled, and the man within it just shot you a wide, wide smirk— you'd seen it before. On your brothers, when they were gloating over having hid your wand in a place you couldn't find it when you were little. On your colleagues, when they thought they were a step ahead of anyone else. On fucking Kim Seokjin, at every waking moment you caught sight of him, so much so that you were beginning to think that incorrigible grin was his preset, raw form.

Ugh, just the thought of him made your blood boil.

You shook your head, already beginning to turn away from the rather distracting paintings, but a snickering call behind you made you pause once again.

"You can go check the Gryffindor Tower, darling, but he won't be there," the painting named Richard laughed obnoxiously, making his neighbor facepalm into her paint-stained hands, fixing you with a rather exasperated look.

"These days," Richard chirped, undeterred and capturing your attention as you turned away once more, piquing your curiosity to awfully high levels, "these days, Professor Kim seems to prefer the kitchen."