Work Text:
Hermione Granger hated the “Soulmate System”. When she was gifted her time-turner in year 3 (before it was quickly misused and taken away from her in the span of one school year), her first thought was to go back in time and murder the fucker who decided it was a good idea to create a magical system of “soulmate tattoos”. For as long as Hermione had known about it, she had wanted no part in the soulmate tattoos.
“In my day,” Molly Weasley had told them as she served her, Harry, and Ron pancakes, “it was a choice to get the tattoo or not.” Hermione didn’t fail to notice the small tattoo of five-pence coin carefully etched onto Mrs. Weasley’s right wrist. The magical soulmate tattoo shimmered in the morning light streaming in from the dusty windows. Hermione wished she existed in Molly’s day.
Another person Hermione Granger wanted to murder was whoever the hell thought it was a good idea to force children to get the soulmate tattoo. Or rather, they weren’t children when they actually got the tattoo, but even 15 seemed too young to find out who you were stuck with forever, for better or worse. Hermione would get hers soon.
Hermione Granger had decided that the soulmate system was shit in year 2 when she found out about it. She always knew she was never going to want to end up with someone just because she had a tattoo that represented them somewhere on her body. Hermione Granger decided her own goddamn destiny, thank you very much.
There were only two more days until Hermione, Harry, and Ron would go back to school (and get the dreaded soulmate tattoos), and the trio was sitting in Sirius’ old room at 12 Grimmauld Place. None of the teens knew what to say to each other as the golden sunset caught on the rim of Harry’s glasses, making Hermione squint when she looked up at him.
This was war. These three teenagers, still clinging onto the hope of a future they could never possess, were sitting uselessly in a room while adults downstairs discussed the fate of their world. None of those people asked these three. They had no say in this. They were just children. Too young for war, but not too young for a tattoo.
On the other side of England and nearly a lifetime away sat a girl in the rain of Withernsea. Her toes were dipped in the salty water of the North Sea. This would be the last time she saw it before it froze over in the winter.
Bitter wine she was not supposed to have found stained her tongue, matching the blood red color of her long nails. Pansy Parkinson would see that color more times than she could count before the sun set on May 2nd, 1998. This girl, the one with the dark brown eyes that resembled a shattered mirror after last night’s dinner conversation, was the one that would be the last to give up on the hope of a happy future. She didn’t fear what was to come. She feared what was here.
Sitting next to the girl made of stone was a boy with a matching taste in his mouth and all the same hatred towards last night’s dinner conversation. His platinum blond hair seemed to get brighter in the setting sun, but the rest of his features drooped to match Pansy’s. They had broken up earlier this week, both on good terms and mutually for the best, and pledged to remain best friends forever. While Draco confessed that it was the soft-spoken sister of Daphne Greengrass, Astoria, that he loved, Pansy had thrust upon him her biggest and darkest secret.
Pansy Parkinson was just about as gay as they came.
Draco took this well. Pansy knew her parents would take it less well.
Last night had proved that.
It began with a casual family dinner with the Malfoys at a restaurant that served both caviar and placenta, when, as most family dinners seemed to do these days, it went dramatically downhill.
Two girls walked into the restaurant holding hands. One pulled out the seat for the other, giving her girlfriend (Pansy could only assume they were dating) a soft kiss on the cheek. Pansy’s heart panged in longing of a scene she would never get herself. Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson had taken one look at the two girls clearly in love, turned to Pansy and Draco, and remarked that they “make sure you both never grow up to be like those two”. Pansy saw red, but Draco’s quick reflexes and surprising strength held her in her place. She wanted to cry, and he spent the rest of the dinner whispering to her that one day she would be okay.
Pansy wished she remembered what “okay” felt like.
Hermione Granger’s favorite book was “Hogwarts: A History”, which Pansy now wore the cover of proudly just above her left shoulder blade.
When a quidditch broom, the outline worn and frayed, sat on the right side of Harry Potter’s chest, just below his armpit, Hermione Granger knew that the freckly red-headed owner of that frayed broom would have the outline of his glasses and scar just behind her right ear. When Ron Weasley’s tattoo of a peacock quill shimmered to life on his inner bicep, Hermione did not scream, even though her least favorite type of quill was a peacock quill. She thought she would be hurt if she was not his soulmate, but she just felt empty as the tattoo deliverer readied her wand. Hermione closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened them to see a tube of lipstick, the cap off and the color an astounding red (she would later find out that this was a color by the ever-popular M.A.C. called “Ruby Woo”) glistening just below the crook of her arm. Now Hermione wanted to scream.
On day two of having her tattoo, she had yelled at two first-years, not apologized when she trode on a second-year’s toe, and had told Pansy Parkinson to go fuck herself when she tried to show Hermione her tattoo.
Pansy Parkinson wasn’t doing so well, and potions wasn’t the issue. Sure, instead of making the lovely pink shade of their newest brewing endeavors her cauldron had shifted to the stunning color of fresh vomit, but Pansy was much more worried about the fact that Hermione was in her class. This was the same Hermione who had told her to fuck herself not even two days ago, who seemed to hate Pansy’s questions for some reason or another.
She returned to her potion. If she couldn’t fix herself and Hermione, she could at least fix this mess.
Somewhere across the classroom, a bushy-haired girl felt Pansy’s eyes on her. Hermione knew that Pansy must have some shitty year in store for her, which now included both mocking Hermione’s tattoo and displaying her own, which was no doubt Draco Malfoy themed. That thought made her so angry that she tipped a small bit of dragon scales into her potion on accident, resulting in her entire thirty minutes of work being a complete waste. She would curse herself for this later, asking why Pansy of all people would be a distraction.
Draco and Pansy were the leaders of the “make Hermione miserable” club. Their annoying voices seemed to follow her around the school, haunting her like the nightmares plaguing Harry recently. Things were getting worse.
Draco had finally found Hermione in the library. “Hello, mudblood,” he said, laughing as if everything he was saying was just a big joke, and not the most hurtful word Hermione had ever been called in her life. She sighed in response.
“Talk much? Or are you too stupid to hear me?” Hermione opened her mouth to respond.
“Quit it Draco.” Pansy Parkinson had appeared, dressed in her school robes, her lips stained dark red from lipstick she had put on hours ago. Hermione would wonder for many months what drove the Slytherin to stand up for her.
When the middle of the semester came around, a bet was placed. Whoever found their soulmate first, out of her, Ron, and Harry, got to have the other two each buy them a sweet from Honeydukes, a perfect distraction from how awful the world had suddenly become. If Umbridge had found out, she would have surely banned it. War was brewing.
“What the fuck have I ever done to you, Granger?”
Hermione had run into the one person she kept wishing to avoid.
“If I started, Parkinson, we’d be here all night. But let’s begin with just being a general asshole to my friends. Why don’t you saunter back to your shitty, shitty, boyfriend?”
Draco took this time to appear around the corner, laughing, with Astoria Greengrass in his hand and the biggest smile Hermione had ever seen him wear. It was the biggest smile he would ever wear.
“Mutual breakup.” Pansy answered Hermione’s unanswered questions. “Why do you hate me so much?”
“You never choose the right side.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Maybe because you’ve never done it.”
Pansy Parkinson questioned if her soulmate tattoo had chosen the right person.
Hermione Granger knew she was fucked when Pansy Parkinson’s owl flew into the school one chilly November morning. A small parcel dropped onto the table in front of the black-haired girl. She tore it open to reveal a gleaming tube, which Hermione got a quick look of when Pansy raised it to her lips. It was a lipstick, the same design, company, and shade as the one sitting on Hermione’s arm, shimmering under her Gryffindor robe.
Hermione Granger was officially fucked when Pansy Parkinson’s loose shirt slipped down on Saturday afternoon. Hermione could see her and Draco talking next to the lake, both flicking water at each other using their feet. Hermione was just a little ways from them, reading a nice book. Pansy’s shirt slipped and much to Hermione’s excitement and dismay (at the same time, actually, which confused her more than anything) a monochrome cover of Hogwarts: A History tauntingly sat on Pansy’s upper back. Hermione looked down at that exact book in her hands. It was her favorite. Pansy Parkinson was her soulmate.
Hermione Granger had won the bet. Pansy in hand, she stalked up to the boys on the night before everyone departed home for the holidays. The Great Hall was decorated with lights and tinsel, a Christmas tree soon to be in the corner. Pansy was sad she would never see it this year. Harry and Ron were talking to Lee Jordan at the table when the girls reached them. Hermione held up their interlocked hands.
“I won the bet. I found my soulmate.”
Harry dropped his fork and Ron’s mouth nearly hit the floor.
The next day, both boys grudgingly handed over a piece of candy each to Hermione, saying their goodbyes (including a grudging hug, administered by Hermione, each for Pansy) before all of them departed their own ways.
Pansy placed a lingering kiss on Hermione’s lips. It was a promise. A promise that no matter how bad it got, Pansy would always be there.
They would remember this.
They would remember it when the suffering hit in two years. They would remember it when their friends, just kids really, fell to the cruelty of a war they should have never been in. They would remember when they saw two fifth-year boys discover they were soulmates right as they were both killed by a stray blast. Hermione would remember it when she was on the run, hunting down the only thing that could save the only world they had ever known. Pansy would remember it when she decided that turning in Harry would be better than having all of them killed, and voted with her fellow Slytherins to watch Harry die.
In the midst of battles and deaths, they would remember what it felt like to be okay.