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Hermione knew two things for certain. One: souls were a fact, not some esoteric concept as she had always thought before that whole horcrux business. Second: since souls were a fact, so were soulmates.
She asked Mrs Weasley if all wizards and witches knew this growing up, and if that was why they got married so young, because it was easier for them to find their other half compared to muggles who had no idea all of this was real.
In answer, Mrs Weasley laughed so much and so hysterically, Mr Weasley came in to investigate the problem. When Hermione repeated her question, he, thankfully, only smiled sadly.
“No, no, child. We may be more informed than muggles, but soulmates are rare, and the magic to find them dangerous. So we, like muggles, rely on hope and chance to find true love. When we’re lucky enough, we find our other half,” he added as he squeezed Mrs Weasley’s hand.
“How do you know?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, you know.” Mr Weasley had never sounded so much like Dumbledore than in that instant. “And I hope you and every one of my children, know that feeling too one day.”
“Ron…” Hermione hesitated, not knowing how to tell him that if it was so obvious when you had found your soulmate, then Ron was not it for her.
Mr Weasley chuckled.
“He’s not the one,” he agreed. “We all know that. Even him.”
From that day forth, Hermione applied and was received as a Ministry worker, far underground with the other Unspeakables. Further even, as she worked in the soul chamber, the oldest and most mysterious of all the departments. She made a few discoveries on soul magic now and then. Enough to keep her overseer happy. But she spent the rest of the time searching for her soulmate.
She didn’t tell anyone. She shouldn’t be doing it, and felt quite foolish for making it her goal, both professionally and personally. It was something people would expect from Lavender or Parvati. Foolish girls whose only interest was fashion and boys. Not her. Which only proved to show how little anyone knew her.
Because Hermione longed for a companion, an equal, someone to talk to and come home to, someone who would make her feel special and loved... Someone who would pick her out of the pit of loneliness and despair she had dug for herself by being who she was: an overachiever, a workaholic, too serious to take a joke, not fun enough to invite to parties, too enthusiast, but not about the right things… she could never get it right. She still didn’t fit in.
Sure, she had Harry and Ron as her best friends in the world, but they were drifting away, little by little, finding their own way, their own half… Hermione, for her part, was still drowning in solitude.
Until one day, as she was working in the soul chamber, Hermione found a solution, a metaphorical key to unlock the their ability to find their soulmate. It was so simple, like a big red button staring her in the face. With this, everyone could find their other half! Everyone could find happiness!
She hesitated when Mr Weasley’s words came back to her, as if he had spoken them just yesterday, ominous and full of warning.
“Even if there was an easy way to find your soulmate, would you use it if there was a chance you would find nothing? If you were denied your other half for whatever reason? Death, distance, time… The universe is not perfect, and if the two halves undeniably exist, they might not be in a position to co-exist.”
But Hermione was a Gryffindor. She would not cower now that an answer was finally at hand. Would she be destroyed if she were denied her soulmate? Without a doubt. But could she live with this longing and uncertainty? No. Absolutely not.
So, wand hand trembling just slightly at the enormity of what she was about to do, Hermione stepped in the middle of the chamber and used all her hard-earned skills to unlock it. Because that was it, the whole room was the prison keeping soulmates apart, and she was the key. With a whisper and a sigh, the soul chamber was no more, and the whole world changed.
Hermione was fired on the spot, of course, for destruction of Ministry property, of all things. Because what she had done wasn’t illegal, it just… wasn’t done. From one day to the next, soul-links appeared on everyone’s left wrist, where the pulse beat stronger. Stranger yet, the muggles had them just like wizarking did, which pleased her immensely. But that was all she had been told and all she had learned from her own observations from the confines of her holding cell a few floors up in the Magical Law Enforcement department.
What she had done wasn't illegal, but the wizarding world did not like change either, and Hermione had just shaken it to its very foundations, thrown glitter at it, then set it back upside down. As a result, she had been arrested despite not having broken any laws, and now, everyone who was anyone was trying to decide what to do with her. Hermione didn’t care, she just wanted to figure out how this link worked, and she wished she had her wand to cast a few spells at it to figure out what it was made of, what it reacted to and how it could be used. At first glance, it merely looked like a ribbon had been tied around her wrist, short enough that it didn’t go beyond her fingers, and looking frayed along the edges, but what was truly fascinating was that the link was not really in their reality, or dimension, with them. You couldn’t touch it or feel it. It was there without being there.
Hermione watched her own sway from left to right, as if it was caught in a pleasant breeze, the colour changing from a deep forest green to a brilliant gold, somehow managing to be both colours at the same time. The knowledge that her soulmate carried the same, that he was at the other end of this semi-visible link made her heart beat faster.
Of course, not everyone would be happy about it the way she was. Already, Harry had visited her, one of the few who could because he worked on this level. But he didn’t come with good news. His link and Ginny’s didn’t match. They weren’t breaking up, of course, but their wedding had been postponed until they understood the implications better. He wasn’t mad, but he wasn’t very happy either and he wasn't the only one, he explained, pointing out all the many people who had a limp, black ribbon hanging from around their wrist, looking as sinister as a noose around a hangman’s neck.
“I know you meant well…” Harry said, the "but" unsaid, yet heard all the same.
Then her lifelong friend just sighed, and left.
Later, Mr Weasley managed to sneak in and right up to her holding cell, looking for all the world as if he belonged there. Maybe he had worked in the Ministry for so long, people simply assumed he did. He passed a couple of Mrs Weasley’s cupcakes to her through the bars and told her to keep her chin up. As he did, she saw his soul-link, a brilliant glittering red which ondulated lazily around his wrist as if trying to snuggle with him.
“They match,” Hermione deduced, or she was sure he would not be cheering her up right now.
“Of course they do. I didn’t doubt it for a second. I knew since the day I first laid eyes on her.”
Hermione smiled.
“Bill and Fleur’s match too,” he said happily. “And Percy’s and Penelope’s.”
He paused, shuffling on the spot.
“I'm sorry about Ginny,” Hermione offered, guessing the reason for his unease.
“I always had a doubt about those two,” he confided with a shrug.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t get any more news out of him because Kingsley Shacklebolt, who knew Mr Weasley better than most, also knew he had no business being there, speaking to a prisoner.
“Chin up!” Mr Weasley shouted once more over his shoulder as he was dragged away by two wizards.
Hermione chuckled, catching Kingsley's attention. Unnervingly, they both glanced at the other’s soul-link. His was purple, striped with yellow, the stranger combination she had seen yet, and the ribbon seemed to be dancing too. She rose her eyebrows in surprise, and the auror gave her lopsided smile before resuming his work.
Hermione wondered if glancing down at people’s wrist would become a common occurence upon meeting with someone new from there on out. And she had yet to see how two similar links reacted when coming into contact, but she doubted she would have the chance any time soon. As usual, the wizarding world offered little rights to prisoners, and she could be detained in her small holding cell indefinitely for all she knew…
On the second day of, in her opinion, unlawful detainment, Hermione threatened, pleaded and cajoled the various ministry workers passing her cell to at least get her a lawyer, but of course her pleas went unanswered. If this were the muggle world, she would already be out of there. Why was it taking so long? It's not like she had committed a crime. Or had she? Inadvertently? She wasn’t all that knowledgeable of wizarding laws, as much as it pained her to admit. She stiffened when she recalled what Harry had told her of his own hearing when he was a student… Could they do that to her? What if they were doing it right that instant? What if they decided to throw her in Azkaban to get rid of the problem? Like swiping the dust under the carpet.
“Pssst!”
Hermione looked up, not seeing anyone even paying attention to her. She shook her head and sat back, hoping she wasn't going mad.
“Pssssssssst!”
This time, she had not imagined it. She walked up the the bars and gripped them, feeling a familiar fabric brush against her fingers on the other side.
“Harry?” she whispered.
A sliver of the cloak opened, revealing her friends frantic green eyes.
“It’s not looking good,” Harry whispered with so much urgency, the words almost came out as a hiss. “Some of them are trying to accuse you of dark magic.”
She could guess who those people were. She had stepped on a lot of toes during and after the war. Now was the time for payback.
“Take this,” Harry added, and her wand appeared through the cloak, sliding slowly towards her.
Her eyes grew wide, glancing around her. She could have sworn Kingsley had seen them and promptly turned his back.
“You have to go,” Harry told her. “At least for now. Let everyone get used to it.”
“How? Even with a wand, I can’t escape from here on my own. Security…”
“The link. It acts like some sort of portkey. It will take you to your other half,” he smiled.
A real, warm, goofy smile which told her he had done just that himself and met his own soulmate.
“I hope he, or she, will take good care of you in the meantime. Good bye, Hermione.”
With that, the clock's flap fell back into place, and Harry disappeared.
“Harry?” she hissed. “Harry!?”
But he was gone and several people were now looking at her. She stepped all the way back into her cell, but a couple of suspicious aurors approached to investigate. She couldn’t lose this one chance. Heart beating madly, because she had no time to prepare for her escape or for meeting her soulmate, Hermione placed the tip of her wand to her fluttering ribbon, her need and desire fuelling her intentions instead of words.
Wherever her soulmate was, it was far . She could feel the strain of the trip wearing down her magic and body, until she suddenly arrived. The where was still a mystery, but the who was not. As soon as she laid eyes on him, she knew . His mischievous eyes and the proud tilt of his chin, the way he seemed to read her like a book with just a glance and the ribbon straining at his wrist towards her, the same mesmerising colours as her own.
Her own soul-link seemed to want to meet its other half too, and who was she to refuse her soul. He must have had the same idea because he walked up to her, his strides long and sure. He held out his wrist, so she mirrored him, and the ribbons grew, reaching for each other, melding into one another and becoming one. Hermione sighed at the feeling of contentment that fell over her, like a warm blanket in winter. His smile was smug but just as content.
Unfortunately, the peace was broken by the door being kicked open.
“Loki!” roared the angry, blond giant that followed.
“Ah,” her soulmate said, as if this was an everyday annoyance instead of the terrifying attack it appeared to be “That’ll be me.”
Then several aurors apparated, wands pointed at their group.
“Hermione Granger! Surrender your wand!”
“And that’ll be me,” she sighed.
Loki appeared pleasantly surprised, but when the aurors sent stunners at them, the wrath etching his face frightened even her. Next thing she knew, they had moved without moving, and the red lights hit the blond giant, but the stunners merely slowed him down. He seemed happy enough to attack them in return instead of his soulmate though.
“There. Problem solved,” Loki said, chest puffing out.
A laugh escaped her. It had been smart. Devious, even. To be sure, she was already in love.
“Shall I take us somewhere else?” she offered as she mentally went through her option, picking a location which was both secluded and furbished with a large bed.
She would make sure her apparition was untraceable this time too.
“It would be my pleasure,” Loki replied, brushing his lips against her temple, linking his hand with hers as sure as their ribbons were.
They disappeared with barely a noise, completely unaware they had left behind a diplomatic incident of such epic proportions, the wizarding world and Asgardians almost went to war.