Xiang went into his second year at Hogwarts with bigger plans and higher expectations. He felt certain that this year, he was going to make something happen. Something big. Setting off those firecrackers at the professors' private Christmas feast had been cool and all but now that he was no longer a lowly first year, he knew he could do more. He could definitely make top prankster by the end of the year if he worked for it, and make his brother good and ashamed.

It was also better to be starting school again with a best friend already in tow. Xiang was going to have Emil right from the start, and going into that year, he was eager to hear from him again. Despite promises, they hadn't kept in touch as much as they'd said they would. The letters from Emil had come steadily for the first few weeks but after that, Xiang hadn't heard anything from him, which was weird. Emil was usually good about keeping up with assignments. He wasn't going to bug him about it though. Writing letters was a pain in the butt and Xiang was almost glad for the excuse to not have to write this. It meant more for them to catch up on in person, anyway.

Except, Xiang didn't really get to see him in person for a while. He didn't see him on the train. Emil didn't approach him at the sorting feast. He didn't even wave hello when they passed each other on the way to their dorms, even though Xiang was certain he noticed him, which meant that Emil had ignored him.

Which did not sit well with Xiang one bit.

After the feast, he felt seriously annoyed and cheated. Emil was supposed to be his best friend. What did he think he was doing, ignoring him half the summer and blowing him off to hang with the other Slytherins? Emil hardly even knew any of his housemates. It was like he was trying to annoy Xiang on purpose.

The young Gryffindor decided this warranted some payback. Maybe setting all the bacon at the Slytherin table on fire. Xiang had spent a good portion of his summer researching incendiary spells and now would be the perfect chance to try them out. It was a great opportunity to show off for Emil too, and if Lukas got hit in the face with a fat, flaming slab of bacon in the crossfire, then that was just a bonus.

That plan, however, went awry, as many plans concocted by young wizards do. Xiang failed spectacularly in his attempt to grab Emil's attention. Not only did he set his own robes on fire instead of the Slytherins' bacon, but Emil didn't even look at him as the prefects were shooting water spells at him. In fact, he was distinctly looking away. That was the first hint that something was wrong.

Xiang spent the next several weeks on stunts like that; doing anything he could to attract Emil's attention. He made tiny, paper puffins and tried to charm them to fly over to Emil.

They mostly caught on fire.

He tried to enchant Emil's knives in Potions so they would always cut his ingredients to the right lengths.

They mostly caught on fire.

He even tried asking Emil straight forward what was wrong once, but that only resulted in Emil getting frustrated with all of Xiang's attention-seeking behavior, calling Xiang a pushy jerk, brushing him aside, and causing him to bump an elbow into a candle which – surprise, surprise – caught his sleeve on fire.

None of his attempts were really successful, but Xiang was beginning to think he could have a great career in dragon taming, what with how much he was getting used to these burns.

No matter how hard Xiang tried, he could hardly get his Slytherin friend to so much as look at him. Even when they were sitting right beside each other in class, Emil would never talk to him about anything but classwork, and this behavior bothered Xiang to no end. He didn't have a clue what it was about and he never seemed any closer to finding out. Not to mention that as time went on, Xiang began to feel less annoyed and frustrated with the whole situation and more just upset. More and more, he just wanted his best friend back. He didn't want Yong Soo, his fellow second year Gryffindor who didn't know how to shut up for two seconds. He didn't want Raivis, the quivering Ravenclaw who could never stop stammering long enough to say anything useful. He wanted Emil, who knew about Mario Kart and digital music and would write the last few inches of his composition for him if it was due in ten minutes and was his best friend, Slytherin or not.

Xiang wanted to hang out with him again, and he'd do whatever it took to make that happen. So, he made one more plan; this time, involving something he knew he could do right.

One day in October, after Charms class, Xiang cornered Emil in the hallway and spoke to him, although he did so with some difficulty. As usual, when confronted by the Gryffindor, Emil began to look uncomfortable and tried to dodge away. Xiang easily blocked him, though. He was a quick fellow with good reflexes and he stepped in Emil's way every time he tried to get away. Seeing Emil get frustrated over his efforts was one of Xiang's happiest moments of the year so far.

"What do you want, Xiang?" Emil demanded, glaring at the smirking Gryffindor. "I have to get to Transfiguration, and you've got Herbology."

As much as Xiang would've liked to gloat about how Emil still knew his schedule, even though they hadn't spoken all year, he guessed that he wouldn't have much time to talk to him. Emil would find a way around him eventually. And Herbology really was a long way away. He made sure to get right to the point. "Alright, listen here, Emil," Xiang said. "For some reason, you've been ignoring me lately, and for some other reason, you haven't told me what that reason is, and I don't really expect you to. I know you Slytherins love your secrets and all."

Emil's expression softened to one of uncertainty as he stared at him. This conversation was quite different from the other ones Xiang had tried to force on him this year. He listened to him, even though he head and his brother's advice told him otherwise. "So, what do you want?" he asked, a little less harshly.

Ha, Xiang thought victoriously, gotcha. "I only wanted to tell you to skip your next Potions class," he told him, giving Emil a solid pat on the shoulder. "It'll do you good."

"What? Skip Potions?" Emil echoed, surprised. "I've never skipped class before, and Beilschmidt will have my head if I do."

Rolling his eyes, Xiang cursed Emil's inability to think outside the box. One advantage of being a Gryffindor was that you learned that it was okay to break the rules for a good cause, which this definitely was. "Tell him you got a stomach ache or something. Beilschmidt'll believe anything you Slytherins say. Just, get out of class. If you trust me, you'll get out of class."

Eyeing him warily, Emil demanded, "And why should I trust you on this?"

"Because," Xiang explained in simplest terms, "I'm still your best friend, whether you like it or not."

The two boys stood together for a moment, Emil with his pile of spell books clenched to his chest and Xiang with his wand – ash, phoenix feather, eight and a half inches – tucked behind his ear. They ignored the rest of the young witches and wizards passing them by in a hurry and the fact that every moment they wasted on staring at each other brought them closer to being late and landing in detention. They stared at each other to see what they could see. Xiang saw his best friend, the silver haired boy who loved licorice and helped him with his compositions and wouldn't know how to be cool to save his life. And Emil, he saw –

"So, you gonna skip Potions?" Xiang asked before Emil could reach any conclusion about what he saw and what he believed.

His concentration broken, Emil blinked. Then, he spun around and hurried away to his Transfiguration class.

Knowing he'd done everything he could, Xiang did the same, heading to Herbology. All that was left to do now was wait.

Emil trusted him. To Xiang's immense delight, when he turned up for Potions class that Thursday, he found that his silver haired friend had not. No explanation was given. Professor Beilschmidt asked after him, but none of the other Slytherins were able to give him an answer about his whereabouts. Being one of the Head of Slytherin's precious students, Xiang just knew that Beilschmidt would chalk it up to sickness, while any Gryffindor who behaved in such a manner would get detention for a month, but he didn't care. Instead, he was happy. Maybe happier than he'd been all year because of the simple fact that Emil still trusted him. It was good to know that his best friend still looked at him in the same way.

It was also a good thing for Emil that he did trust Xiang, because near the end of the class, when the students had their rat draughts nearly prepared, he tossed a few wet-start fireworks into Yong Soo's cauldron and quickly ducked under his desk. This sheltered him from the blast, but everyone who wasn't in on his plan – in other words, everyone, including the professor – ended up covered in a potion meant to help small rodents regrow lost limbs. In pet shops, it was very useful to shopkeepers, to help keep their stock in shape. In a second year potion class, it just made everyone start sprouting rat tails all over their bodies.

Even if it had been for the sake of his friendship with Emil, Xiang couldn't help but feel proud of himself. The chaos after the blast was incredible. Gryffindors and Slytherins alike running about with ugly, naked rat tails pointing every which way out of their bodies, screaming and hollering in a panic. Better yet, Liam ran into the case containing all the rats they were going to test their potions on, knocking them to the ground and setting them all free. They not only had students with rat tails running around, but dozens of rats without tails as well. It took Professor Beilschmidt and Professor Donia, the Transfigruation teacher, over four hours to properly remove all the tails and for several days afterwards, all the victims of the blast would carry red marks of wherever their tails had been.

It was absolutely beautiful.

It also landed Xiang in detention for two weeks straight. Emil as well. Xiang, for obvious reasons, and Emil, because after having spent four hours covered in wriggling rat tails, Beilschmidt was not in a good mood and decided it was just too convenient that he'd been missing from class on the day of that awful incident. When given his punishment, Emil tried to do what Xiang had told him and said that he'd been sick but Beilschmidt didn't buy it for a second. Both boys were sentenced to two weeks of scrubbing the worktables, the floors, and all the equipment in the Potions classroom by hand. Everything was going according to plan.

Naturally, Emil was less than pleased with the situation. He'd been stupid enough to trust Xiang, and all he'd done was get him into trouble. Up until their first detention, Emil didn't just continue to ignore him; he was cold. He glared at the Asian boy whenever their eyes met by accident. He let out a disdainful huff every time they walked by each other and made sure to move away if Xiang sat within three seats of him. He was determined to get through these two weeks of detention without saying a word to Xiang and then never have anything to do with him again. Emil even showed up for his detention early so he could start work without having to pay him any attention.

When Xiang showed up at their first detention in the dungeons, he found everything set up for him to get to work. On one table, there was a number of buckets of warm, soapy water and clean towels for scrubbing the floor, as well as some scrub brushes for the cauldrons. At first, Xiang thought that Beilschmidt had made an uncharacteristically kind gesture and prepared all their supplies for them, which would be cool, because he absolutely hated cleaning the muggle way. It was just about the single most boring activity in the history of existence. And apparently, there were muggles who actually made a career out of it. Xiang didn't understand how they didn't die of boredom every day they went to work.

Anyway, he realized after a second that it wasn't the harsh Potions professor who had made the kind gesture. Xiang noticed that Emil was already there in the dungeon, on his hands and knees, scrubbing furiously at the floor. He didn't look up when Xiang came in, or acknowledge him in any way. He just went on trying to scrub some squashed toad eyes off the old, brick floor. From the way he kept moving the offending eyes around instead of really cleaning them off, and glaring at them for not doing what he wanted them to do, Xiang could tell that Emil was even worse at this than he was. He was from a pure blooded family, after all. He'd probably never had to lift a finger for cleaning.

At least he'd have lots of time to practice. Fourteen two hour detentions would surely help put some callouses on his hands. And Xiang would have all that time alone with Emil, to try and get him to talk to him.

Now, if he wanted to get Emil to talk to him, Xiang could have done something sensible. He could've gotten to work and scrubbed the floor beside him, and talked to him until he finally talked back, but that seemed like a very long and boring process. Instead, Xiang simply grabbed one of those buckets from off the table and dumped its contents over Emil's head. That achieved roughly the same effect.

It was a lot more fun to watch as well.

Dripping wet with a head covered in suds and a fire burning in his eyes, Emil sprang to his feet. He let out an annoyed growl when he saw Xiang holding the bucket, and when that growl only made Xiang chuckle, he even gave the other boy a shove. "Xiang, what the hell was that for?" he demanded, clenching his fists.

Xiang shrugged, still finding this mostly amusing. "For fun," he answered.

"You," Emil growled, practically boiling over with his frustration, "you jerk! Why can't you just leave me alone? Just take the hint! I don't want to talk to you anymore!"

He pretended to consider this for a moment before dismissively saying, "Nah, I don't think so. Because, like, a year ago, you might've gotten mad if I threw a bucket of water on you, but you would've thrown one right back at me, because that'd be fun. And now you're just mad, which is weird. And you don't want to be friends with me anymore, which is weirder. I mean," Xiang snorted and smirked cockily, "it's me. Why the hell wouldn't you want to be friends with me?"

"Because I don't," Emil snapped. "I just want to get these detentions over with, whether you help me or not."

"Hey, I'd help you if you'd tell me what your deal with me is," Xiang offered. "Then we'd be friends again, and I wouldn't mind helping a friend out."

Fed up with his games, Emil turned away and attempted to simply go back to work, but Xiang didn't accept that any more than he'd accepted Emil ignoring him the rest of the year. He pulled on Emil's hand and Emil pulled away. They said, "Let go of me," and, "If you'll stop being a brat," and, "You're the one being a brat!" And then a raspberry was blown in Emil's face. All of which led to a little muggle tussle between them, which ended with another overturned bucket of filthy water, Emil lying on the ground with his clothes slowly soaking up that filth, and Xiang sitting on his back, feeling rather pleased with himself and thinking, Maybe not all muggle activities are totally boring after all.

"Okay Emil, here's how it's gonna go," Xiang explained as Emil struggled in vain to escape from beneath him. "We can either keep this arrangement for two hours, get nothing done, and have Professor Beilschmidt even angrier at us at the end of the day, or you could tell me what the matter is and get on with our lives." He gave his friend a little condescending pat on the head and finished, "Your choice."

For a moment, Emil continued to resist. He tried to sit up. He tried to push Xiang off of him. He tried to remember the curses he'd read about in Lukas's Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook and when he realized he'd left his wand in his robes, lying on the worktable so they wouldn't get dirty, he settled for plain old muggle cursing. Of course, none of this was effective in getting Xiang off, so when his moment of resistance was over, he took another moment for banging his head against the grubby floor in resignation. It was frustrating enough, being put in this situation, but worse than that was that Xiang was right. All Emil wanted to do was throw a bucket of water back in his face.

He gave in.

"It was something my brother told me this summer," Emil admitted at last, "something about Slytherins and Gryffindors."

Xiang blinked curiously and looked down at Emil, who had calmed down and was wearing an unreadable expression. He was pretty sure that was the most straight forward Emil had been with him all year, and for that, Xiang released him and allowed him to continue his story sitting cross legged on the floor beside him. Both were fairly grubby at that point, so they didn't care anymore if they squished a few more toad eyes beneath them.

Emil went on speaking with his head bowed, as if he would rather not be admitting this. "Lukas, over the summer, told me why Slytherins and Gryffindors shouldn't be friends," he began. "He told me about how you guys really think of us. You think that we're all bad guys, just because a lot of dark wizards came from Slytherin and you think we're jerks, just because we're smart and ambitious and we look after our own. You might like me now, but Lukas told me that when you get older and become more like the other Gryffindors, you'll start to resent me too, and I won't want a friend like that."

Or, at least, Lukas had told him he wouldn't want Xiang for a friend. He'd been very serious about all of this, telling Emil to avoid Xiang and Gryffindors like a mama bunny would tell her baby bunnies to avoid big cats. Emil, personally, hadn't felt the same way about Xiang but Lukas's words had frightened him, as they were meant to. The idea of his best friend turning on him someday, just for being who he was, was a scary thing and Emil hadn't wanted to face it. That was why he'd been avoiding Xiang. He'd been looking out for himself. He was afraid of Xiang hurting his feelings. Although, in reality, Emil had been just as upset as Xiang about them being separated.

Emil explained this to Xiang as well as he could and finished with, "So, you see, we just can't be friends anymore. We'll just end up too different and-"

"Alright, I'm gonna have to stop you right there," said Xiang, who had listened to his speech with an indifferent look on his face, as he slapped a hand over Emil's mouth. "You're starting to sound too stupid for me to keep believing that you're actually a Slytherin." Emil tried to object but Xiang kept his hand pressed there to keep him quiet. "No, you listen to me now, Emil," he instructed him. "I'm gonna ask you some questions and you're gonna answer yes or no. So, first off, do you still like me and want to be my friend?"

He frowned slightly. When Xiang lifted his hand, he slowly answered, "Yes, of course I-"

"That's good," Xiang said, quickly replacing it, causing Emil to look slightly indignant, "because I like you and still wanna be your friend too. So, secondly, have you, as a Slytherin, ever been mad at me for being a thoughtless, reckless Gryffindor?"

Emil had certainly been mad at him before. It was just in Xiang's nature to do pointless things that got others mad at him. That was part of who he was. Hell, he'd been mad at him two seconds ago for dumping a bucket of water on him and sitting on his back. However, he'd never been mad for very long, and Xiang being a Gryffindor had never been part of that. He said, "No." Xiang smiled at that, just a little.

"Also good, because I've never resented you for being a smug, sneaky Slytherin either," he said. "In fact, I think it'd be best if you kept being smart like you are because I could really use some help with this composition of mine." He shot an oh-so-charming, toothy grin Emil's way and, seeing how phony it was, Emil couldn't help but give a small, sincere one in return.

"History of Magic, Werewolf Outbreak of 1409?" he asked knowingly.

Patting him on the shoulder, Xiang nodded and said, "You know me so well." He felt a warm, little bubble swelling up inside of him. It felt good, falling back in step with each other. "Anyway," Xiang went on, "what I'm saying is, can you see, like, any reason we can't be friends?"

"Well," Emil said uncertainly, "well, Lukas said-"

"No," Xiang snapped, narrowing his eyes, "not what Lukas said. Your brother hates fun and is literally a killer of joy. I wanna know what you have to say, Emil."

After a moment's consideration, Emil came to the conclusion that no, he didn't have any reason of his own, and that was more than good enough for Xiang.

"Okay, so, we're friends again," he nodded. "Cool."

For some reason, Emil had a harder time simply accepting that. Staring at his apparent friend in dumb surprise, he stammered, "B-but what about-" only for Xiang to shush him.

"But Slytherin-"

"Sh."

"-and Gryffindor-"

"Sh."

"-and Lukas!"

"Sh! Sh!" Xiang shushed him as loud as he could, throwing his arms up in exasperation. "What do you not understand about sh? When I say "sh" I mean "sh" and that means "shut your mouth because we're friends again". End of story." Honestly, he didn't get what was so hard about this. They wanted to be friends, and they were. Why did Emil have to keep looking at him like he didn't know what to do? It was starting to make him feel bad. He quickly tagged something on to help Emil out. "And if it makes you feel any better, we can just, like, keep it a secret. If your brother doesn't see us together, he won't bug you about it anymore."

"Really?" Emil asked, brightening up a bit.

"Yeah, sure," Xiang insisted without much thought. "It could be fun, you know? Like spies, sneaking around under everyone's noses." Xiang had heard of wizarding spies before; people who specialized in undetectable disguises, camouflage spells, and information gathering. In industries where creating new spells and magical items before others was the goal, having as much information as possible could be very useful. It was one of Xiang's top career choices, along with going into research in order to breed cat-sized pandas that came in a variety of colors. Oh, and dragon tamer.

He was a boy with ambition, after all.

Over Xiang's suggestion of a secret friendship, Emil was finally put at ease and gladly accepted it. Little did they know that this would define their relationship for the next four years. That, however, was a matter for another time. With things resolved for the moment, the two boys finally got to work on what they were meant to be doing: cleaning the dungeons. They didn't get much done, partly because they were both very bad at muggle cleaning and partly because they kept wasting their time dumping soap and water on each other, rather than on the floor. Of course, Emil had to dump one on Xiang, in revenge for the original bucket, and a second one was soon to follow, because Emil felt the second bucket, the one with the dirty water, which had spilt over him had been Xiang's fault as well. Xiang, who disagreed on this point, felt the need to retaliate. This cycle of revenge continued on for a while, because they could never agree on which bucket satisfied it.

They had a good time, despite the fact that they ended up walking back to their dormitories sopping wet, the most cleaning they got done was mopping up the water they'd spilt in the first place, and afterwards, Beilschmidt was still angry enough to assign them another detention to make up for that night. They were just glad to be back with each other. After all, a twelve year old's best friend was worth more to them than all the gold in Gringott's. Because they were together, the rest of their detentions passed much more enjoyably than they'd ever thought detention could.

There was just one little hitch on the third day. Emil was having a particularly hard time scrubbing up some potion spilt by a fifth year which was meant to act as an adhesive. Even though the potion had been a failure, and would not have been able to cement an elephant to a ceiling, as it should have, it was still pretty well stuck on the floor. Feeling sorry for his friend who looked so determined to rid the world of that spill but whose continued scrubbing was only succeeding in tiring him out, Xiang offered to take care of it for him with magic.

"We might as well," he explained, when Emil reminded him of the nature of their detention. "If we can't get it off, Beilschmidt'll just use magic to get it up anyway."

And that wasn't so bad. Emil could see the logic in that, and ever since their argument, he'd decided to put more trust in Xiang's judgment. The hitch came when Xiang helped him up off the floor and added, "Besides, it'd be a waste if your pretty, little hands got all banged up because of this."

The word "pretty" fell between them like an anvil, landing with a loud clang in the silence that fell between them immediately afterwards. Xiang hadn't meant to say it. Emil hadn't wanted to hear. They were just twelve year olds, after all, and they didn't even want to hear the word "pretty" in regards to their best friend. They had no idea how it'd managed to make its way into the conversation, just that it'd suddenly made them acutely aware of how awkward it felt for Xiang to hold Emil's hand when he helped him up. Xiang quickly let go and they left the moment behind. Emil just made sure to slosh a bit of water on him later, to lighten the tension.

Also, the spill caught on fire when Xiang tried to magic it away.

The rest of Emil and Xiang's second year at Hogwarts was a trial run for their secret friendship. While they continued on with their classes, slowly becoming more adept at wizardry, they also began to learn the ins and outs of maintaining a relationship like that. That was the year when they began to really explore the castle and find the best hallways and little nooks and crannies where two small boys could hide away together and help each other with their homework. That year, they learned to appreciate those little glances from across the Great Hall and that fighting a duel was always a great excuse when they were caught together.

As far as they knew, their brothers and housemates never caught wind of their friendship and so, not a single lecture on the evilness of Slytherins or the stupidity of Gryffindors was heard that year. Emil and Xiang carried their friendship on in peace, except in those times when words like "pretty" and "cute", and other phrases like that entered their minds in regards to the other. To their discomfort, those times came more and more often as the year carried on.

But those times were just a few more matters to be resolved in their third year. For the moment, everything was simply accidental fires and buckets of soapy water to put them out.