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“Shove off, Granger,” Pansy sneered as she pushed past Hermione to get into the library.
Hermione rolled her eyes—one chocolate brown and one coal-black—and continued walking, ignoring the other girl entirely. She had work to do and she couldn’t focus on mean pretty girls doing their mean pretty things.
The library was quiet, as it always was at this hour. It wasn’t particularly late, but the general student body of Hogwarts preferred to study for O.W.L.S in the comfort of their own common rooms this far away from the actual examination date. Hermione wasn’t going to complain. In the library, apart from Madam Pince, was Hermione, Pansy and two other Hufflepuff girls. Very quiet.
Pansy had sat at the same table that Hermione always sat at. The same table that she was walking toward. Her body, purely through muscle memory, didn’t allow her to falter. She kept walking and sat easily at the table. Pansy’s head snapped up, black bangs fluttering with the breeze of quick movement.
“Parkinson,” Hermione said, a smug smile flitted across her features for just a second.
Pansy was silent for a few moments, calculating, and then: “Granger.”
They nodded once, and both turned to their respective revision work. Hermione’s first O.W.L. was for a specialised fifth-year class on the magic of soulmates. Each wizard is born with one eye their own natural colour, and the other the colour of their soulmate’s hair. It was rubbish, in Hermione’s opinion. (Ron says she thinks that because she’s the only one of the trio to not have touched her soulmate yet. Ron found Viktor the previous year, and Harry and Draco touched in first year. Admittedly, finding your soulmate by punching them in the face is quite hilarious.)
Their books and papers slowly migrated toward the centre of the table as they worked, mingling together into a mass of unrecognizable. Whose was whose? It didn’t matter much, until, then it did. They both reached out simultaneously. Their hands collided, fingers brushing in a manner that was both soft and hard, electrifying and numbing all at once. Hermione whipped her gaze from where it was trained on her reading. She focused on their hands, neither moving, still pressed together. She moved to stare at Pansy only to find her staring back. Her eyes, once multicoloured with a grey left and brown right, had faded to purely grey. Hermione could only assume that the electric zap was her own black eye fading to brown.
“You,” Pansy whispered.
“Eyes.”
Pansy snapped from her disbelieving trance.
“Eloquent, Granger.”
“Should have known, really. You have black hair, I have brown hair. I’m attracted to women. It makes sense, this soulmate lark. Should’ve known it’d be you. I always thought you were unfairly, delightfully pretty.”
Pansy pushed her chair out, stood and grabbed Hermione’s face in her hands.
“Shut up, Granger,” she said, and kissed her square on the mouth.
Hermione melted into the kiss, pressing back just as hard. Her now matching eyes slipped closed as she fell apart under her enemy, her soulmate. Soulmate magic wasn’t such a waste of time, then.