lomonaaeren

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Part Six

“Have you found anything yet?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

Astoria slumps. Hermione sighs. For all that Astoria keeps saying she didn’t expect Hermione to find anything and knew that there was nothing that could be done to change her fate of marriage to Malfoy, she ‘s obviously miserable every time Hermione has to announce that she hasn’t found a thing.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione repeats, helplessly, and pats Astoria’s knee. They’re in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, where no one ever comes. Moaning Myrtle screamed at them at first, but now she mostly ignores them and goes off to bother someone else. “I would do something if I could, you know. But there really aren’t any books that talk about soul-marks in any detail. I don’t know if someone removed them from the library or if they never existed.”

Astoria stares at her. “But what about the journals?”

“What journals?”

“Journals written by your ancestors that talk about their soul-marks and the way that they—” A light flush slides over Astoria’s cheeks a minute later. “Of course. You’re Muggleborn. Sorry. You wouldn’t have ancestors who wrote books like that.”

Hermione leans forwards. “Does your family have journals like that, Astoria?”

There’s a long moment, while Astoria twists her fingers on her knee as if debating whether to answer. Then she nods.

“Could you,” Hermione asks, trying not to sound as excited as she feels, “maybe bring me one?”

*

“And here we have the meeting of two very impressive champions! Mr. Harry Potter, who has won every duel he has fought so far at Hogwarts, and Mr. Viktor Krum, who as well as winning his every duel so far at Hogwarts is also the youngest Seeker on any international team!”

Harry raises his eyebrows a little when Krum stares silently and intently at him from the other side of the dueling platform instead of stalking around and showing off and waving to the crowd the way most of the contestants have. Maybe this is going to be his first serious competition here, then. Krum seems to know something about dueling.

And he’s definitely not from Hogwarts. Even with as little attention as Harry pays to Quidditch, he would have heard about someone from the school being chosen to play on an international team.

So that means he’s probably from Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. Harry’s interest sharpens. Since the tournament at Hogwarts is technically international, there have been some people from the other European schools here, but Harry hasn’t dueled any of them so far.

“Mr. Krum is in his seventh year at Durmstrang,” Bagman natters on, unwittingly answering one of Harry’s questions. “And what a prodigy he is! Highest marks in Charms and Transfiguration in the exams in the last several years running…”

Harry watches Krum’s eyes. The wizard continues to stare at him. He’s weighing Harry, Harry supposes, maybe wondering how much of a challenge a fourth-year will be to a seventh-year.

Harry doesn’t smile, but he can feel the corners of his mouth wanting to lift. Well, they’ll find out.

“And then Mr. Harry Potter, what a talented duelist he is! Winner of three international championships this summer, the youngest candidate ever to be allowed into the Ring of Fire in France…”

“You have not lost?” Krum asks softly, speaking English with a heavy accent that might be German.

Maybe it’s stupid, but Harry thinks it would be nice to have a seventh-year opponent respect him rather than underestimate him. “I don’t lose,” he says.

To his surprise, Krum just nods, his face thoughtful, as if he suspected that, or maybe suspected that Harry would say something like that. It makes Harry more cautious. Why would Krum know that much about him? It’s not as though they’ve ever interacted before.

The bell clangs.

Harry sprints straight for Krum, who starts and doesn’t move out of the way in time. Harry jabs his wand into Krum’s stomach and casts the Airless Hex, which makes you feel like you’ve been hit in the solar plexus. Krum cries out and folds around his wand.

But given that he’s a talented and experienced duelist and a “prodigy,” it isn’t that simple to defeat him, and Harry didn’t think it would be. It’s a good thing that he’s already jumping when Krum tries to trip him with a thrust-out leg.

Not so good that Krum hits him with a jinx as Harry comes back down that ties his ankles together.

Harry crackles magic through his skin, something the elves have been teaching him to do, and breaks the jinx as soon as he realizes what happened. He looks up to see Krum staring at him in shock.

Did he recognize what Harry just did? Not that it matters much, Harry thinks. His magic is humming in happiness to have a real opponent, a real one at last.

He spins and leaps, and lands close enough to Krum to kick him in the kneecap. Krum is already rolling backwards, though, and while Harry’s blow lands, it probably doesn’t do much damage.

This time, a wordless purple curse is coming at him. Harry doesn’t recognize it and doesn’t know if his shield could stop it, but he doesn’t take the chance. He’s already on the floor of the dueling platform by the time it sizzles past overhead.

He carefully casts a certain hex that Albus taught him on Krum’s feet, and then has to raise a shield and hope for the best as green and purple and red spells all stream towards him. Most of them are stopped by the shield, but one of the green ones gets through.

Harry grunts breathlessly as it dislocates his shoulder. And it’s his wand arm. At least, Harry can read that dawning hope and smugness on Krum’s face, the way he starts forwards, but not fast, as if he’s already won.

Harry tosses his wand to his left hand.

Again, Krum stares at him in shock, and just about then, the hex Harry cast on his feet takes effect. Krum falls to the floor of the dueling platform as water replaces his ankle bones.

Harry is standing over him in seconds, wand extended and lightly jabbing him in the breastbone. Krum glances up at him and nods once, his hands spreading. His wand hits the floor of the dueling platform.

“And in this final duel for the championship, Mr. Potter wins again!”

Harry has to admit that he enjoys the applause breaking around him, for all that it’s lighter and more reluctant than he would expect either for a Hogwarts student winning or for a fourth-year defeating a seventh-year. The international visitors and Albus applaud hard enough to make up for that, though.

In the chaos of the win, putting his shoulder back together, and scooping up Krum’s wand, Harry is sure that he is the only one to hear Krum say in a low voice, “Look to me, please.”

Harry glances down. Krum is pulling back the sleeve on his right arm. Harry wonders for a second if Krum hasn’t heard that he’s markless and is trying to show his own mark in the idea (or hope) that it matches Harry’s.

Then he sees that the mark on Krum’s arm is very faint, a scribbling of colored lines that outline a patch of bare skin, and his eyes snap back up to Krum’s with a hiss from between his lips.

Bagman comes up to shake their hands, then, and Harry had to reverse the jinx on Krum’s ankles, so he doesn’t get a chance to talk to Krum. But from the way the older boy presses his hand and nods to him as they complete the more ritualistic parts of the duel, Harry is sure that he’s going to be hearing from him.

And Harry needs to talk to Albus as soon as possible.

*

“Are you sure it looked like a crayon outline?”

“Very. And that the skin inside it was blank? Yes.”

Harry’s voice is low and breathless. Albus will admit that he nearly feels that way himself. He has never heard of any magical person having a mark that looked like that. Only Squibs do. It’s one of the things that often sees them adopted out into the Muggle world so young. Their parents can tell from birth who they are, and it’s much easier to pass that kind of mark off as an odd birthmark than it is with the intricate painting most wizards’ and witches’ soul-marks are.

Albus racks his brain for any explanation as to how Krum could have a mark that looked like that and also do magic, but in the end, he shakes his head. They’re speaking through the Floo in the Hogwarts kitchen, and he sees the elves behind Harry also listening intently. Of course Harry told them what he learned from the ritual magic he did with the goblins, and since then, they pay close attention to any mention of unusual soul-marks.

“I don’t know,” he finally admits. “Is there any way that you can speak with Mr. Krum in private? Or did the delegation from Durmstrang already leave?”

“I think they might have, with the conclusion of the tournament,” Harry begins, but one of the elves standing next to him shakes her head. Albus searches his mind for clues as to her identity, and finally thinks he remembers that this one is called Alissy.

“No, no! They are still being on the grounds, Harry Potter! They came so far that their Headmaster said they would be staying here a few days and exploring Hogwarts.” Alissy’s voice lowers. “Alissy can sneak Harry Potter into their tents.”

“Alissy will not be overstepping her boundaries.”

Albus snorts a little as he watches Misty step up to Harry’s side. She glares at Alissy for a moment, and then turns to Albus. “Master Albus should be helping Harry Potter come up with questions to ask young Master Seeker.”

Albus finally realizes the answer to a question that has been puzzling him. The elves keep calling him Master Albus, even though they know Albus is fully aware of the coup they’re plotting with Harry. It’s as if they have no choice.

They can call Harry by his name, because he does not have a soul-mark, thus making him their equal, not their master.

Albus buries his sadness as they begin discussing questions to ask Krum. They know the truth behind this, now. They’re going to do their best to destroy the soul-marks and set the elves free. There’s no point in worrying about the small manifestations of the binding.

*

Hermione finds the journal that Astoria smuggles to her from the Greengrass house after the Easter holidays fascinating.

It’s written by a woman named Leda Greengrass, who chronicles her thoughts on her mark as a child, what it looked like as she grew up, and why she decided to—

Change it.

The first time that Hermione reads that, she’s very still, and sits with one hand splayed out over the journal. She’s in the middle of the Gryffindor common room, listening to the cheerful shouts that come from Fred and George Weasley, and their soulmates, Angelina Johnson and Katie Bell, urging on some fifth-years in a chess tournament. No one is likely to look over at the moment and see what Hermione is reading, or they’ll just think it some other old, handwritten book from the library if they do.

But Hermione feels the need to hide the journal anyway. Sharp shivers are making their way up her spine, and she finds herself gasping, breathing as if she’s running a race. She only narrowly avoids the temptation to bury her head in her hands and shudder.

Soul-marks can be changed.

There’s no one to tell Hermione for sure, but she’s suddenly sure that that’s what happened to Astoria. Or maybe to Malfoy. It’s impossible to say for sure what their marks originally looked like, and which one was changed. Or maybe they were both changed. Leda Greengrass did say that she altered her mark to be the exact match to that of the man she desired, when before they looked only vaguely alike.

Astoria likes girls. Her soul-mark might have matched her to a girl. And Astoria’s parents knew that, and changed it. Or maybe they just did it because they wanted their daughter to marry Lucius Malfoy’s son. Thinking about it, Hermione decides that’s a more likely motive. Astoria probably didn’t know she liked girls that young, and her parents couldn’t have, either.

Astoria can’t have read this journal, Hermione realizes, her hand stroking over the pages and trying not to clutch at them. Or she wouldn’t be in so much despair. Probably her parents are keeping it for when she’s older, and will “understand” why marks need to be changed. Astoria might be more hopeful if she did know about it, thinking that where a mark could be changed, it could be changed back.

Or she might feel what Hermione does.

Which is burningly angry, the rage cutting through her like lightning.

“Hermione?”

Hermione looks up and smiles weakly. Ron is coming towards the couch where she’s sitting, his face wrinkled in a concerned frown.

Does he know? Did he somehow change his mark—

But no, Hermione is sure that she would have remembered meeting the Weasleys before that day on the Hogwarts Express. And why would they have wanted Ron’s mark to match some random Muggleborn girl’s, anyway? It’s not like they could know Hermione would be a strong witch or a good match for Ron.

Which means that it’s probably the other possibility that Leda Greengrass mentions.

“Are you all right, Hermione?” Ron sits down on the couch beside her and pulls her into him with his arm around her shoulders. “You look pale.”

“Oh, I’m just thinking about OWLS and realizing how difficult they’re going to be. They determine our whole future! It’s scary to know that that much rides on one set of exams. Of course, if I was a Muggle, it sort of would, too. Did you know that Muggles have similar exams they need to pass to go to university? They—”

Ron lays his finger on her lips, his expression fondly amused, and Hermione realizes she was babbling. She ducks her head, and this time she probably has as much color in her cheeks as Ron could wish for.

“It’s all right, Hermione,” he whispers. “They’re just exams. I know you want to do well on them, but believe me, you will. And anyway, they don’t determine our whole future, you know?” He squeezes her shoulder. “We’re together. We have that part of our future safe, no matter what the OWLS or NEWTS say.”

Hermione barely nods. She will let Ron assume she’s embarrassed to have forgotten, or to be discussing their future soul-bond in public with everyone else potentially able to listen. Her heart is clenched tight in her chest. It’s hard not to reach out and claw something.

The only possible distraction she can think of is…

“Please,” she whispers, and rearranges herself a little on the couch so that her left arm is as close to Ron’s as possible. “Let’s put our marks beside each other. I’m so upset right now. I need a reminder about that part of our future.”

Ron kisses her forehead and inches his sleeve back, carefully angling his arm so that she’s the only one who can see his mark. Hermione pulls back hers, too.

She looks down, and compares the marks.

And sees the differences.

Why did she never notice them before? Hermione’s eyes travel obsessively back and forth between the painting on her arm and the painting on Ron’s, both of them bright, fiery dragons with spread wings flying through what looks like a tangle of white thorns. But she can see now that the background of her own mark is more green, while Ron’s is more red, and that details on the dragons’ heads, such as the number of horns they have, are different, and even that a fleeing rabbit is running for its life in the corner of Ron’s mark. That’s certainly not on hers.

Hermione feels her eyes well with tears. She drops her sleeve back and leans her head on Ron’s shoulder.

She hasn’t found anything in Leda Greengrass’s journal yet about soul-marks compelling feelings, making people change their minds on who they love or hate because they have no choice. But at the rate she’s going, she almost wouldn’t be surprised to run into that.

She doesn’t know how much of her bond with Ron is real anymore, and that future he’s so certain of seems to be pouring through her fingers like ashes in the wind.

*

“Thank you for coming, Harry Potter.”

Harry nods and sits down across from Krum. They’re inside one of the spectacular, gigantic blue tents that the Durmstrang delegation was allowed to set up in the corner of Hogwarts’s grounds. Whether because he seems to be the only Durmstrang seventh-year here or. Because of his Quidditch fame, Viktor has this one to himself.

They’re in a sitting room at the moment, one with high walls, a peaked ceiling, and chairs everywhere. Harry is tempted to look around, since it’s definitely one of the most luxurious wizarding rooms he’s ever been in, but then Krum pulls back his sleeve from his mark and he once again latches onto the most interesting thing in the room.

“Why does your mark look like that?” Harry asks. “I thought only Squibs’ marks looked like that.”

Krum barely nods. “My parents, they are thinking the same,” he said. “They nearly adopted me out when I was baby, but my grandmother, she—persuaded?—yes, persuaded them to wait. She was having a similar mark. And then I be having the accidental magic at one year old.”

“Do you know why it looks like that?” Harry asks. That was the question that was uppermost in both his and Albus’s minds, although Harry didn’t know if it was for the same reason. Albus thinks that many more people, especially outside Britain, might have “Squibs’ marks” than is generally acknowledged, and he wants to study it as a point of esoteric magical theory.

Harry wonders if it means that these are weak points in the house-elves’ binding, and ones that he can attack.

Krum sighs slowly. “You are being markless yourself. I thought you would understand.”

Harry almost smiles. That answers the second most urgent question, why Krum showed it to him, but Krum is dancing around the question Harry originally asked. Harry leans back with his legs crossed and stares at Krum. “I’m waiting.”

Krum scans Harry from head to foot, as if looking for signs that Harry is going to attack him. Then he swallows and admits, “My parents saw a—I do not know the word in English. Someone who can sing the future. Someone who sang the future in front of them. She warned them that I would be born without a mark completely unless they worked an alchemical ritual before I was born to make sure that I was having one.”

“A prophet,” Harry whispers. “In English, that’s called a prophet.”

“Thank you,” Krum says gravely.

He says something else, but Harry doesn’t hear it, his mind whirling. Marks can be altered before birth, too. Albus has a specialty in alchemy, but he’s never mentioned this, and Harry is sure that he would have once they started looking into soul-marks as the source of the house-elves’ binding, if not before. He must not know about it.

If not for the alchemy ritual, Krum might have been born exactly like Harry. Without a mark, with magic, but not part of the house-elves’ binding. Someone who could have befriended house-elves, and been an outcast, and set himself to changing the world.

Suddenly Harry wonders if he was born with a mark, after all.

He looks up, and meets Krum’s eyes. The man has stopped speaking, but leans forwards a little, his hand clenched into a fist on his knee. Harry eyes it, and then Krum’s face. Krum looks almost agonizingly calm.

“You know,” Harry whispers.

“Yes,” Krum whispers back. “I have met a few others, in my travels, people who were eager to show me their marks in case they matched with a famous Quidditch player. That happens much. And of course, not so many people are as private about their marks as they are in Britain, in other countries.”

Harry nods. He feels a kinship to Krum that he never has with any other human being, not even Albus. Albus was born with a mark, and he pursued the path if thinking that it would bind him to his soulmate, even if he suffered for it.

“If I asked you to swear an oath,” Harry says slowly, “could I trust you? Would you want to know damaging things about the marks? Damning things? True things?” Krum already knows one of the secrets—that people can change their marks—and knows two other things that until today even Harry didn’t—that “Squibs’ marks” happen to more people than just Squibs and that markless people can be naturally born.

Krum doesn’t hesitate. “I have been looking for people like you all my life,” he says hoarsely. And he waits until Harry gives him b ack his wand, then lifts it and swears.

Harry turns to the shimmer at his side. Misty manifests and studies him in silence. Krum jumps at the sight of her, then sits very still.

Harry asks Misty with his eyes, both if she thinks it’s a good idea to bring Krum into this, and then if they should make the test. Misty visibly thinks about it for a long time, and they both wait, Krum hardly seeming to breathe.

Then Misty nods twice, and turns to Krum.

“Misty is greeting Viktor Krum,” she says.

From the way Krum breathes out, he recognizes the significance of a house-elf being able to speak his name without the title. Harry bends down so that his hands rest on Misty’s shoulders and smiles at Krum.

“You have to be capable of working with house-elves and goblins,” he says. “House-elves we’re going to free, and goblins we’re giving wands to. If you can’t do that, then I’ll have Misty Memory Charm you, and we’ll forget this conversation happened.”

Krum’s eyes have a fierce, happy glow. Harry wonders if that’s that the way he looks when he’s diving after the Snitch.

“I swear,” Krum whispers, “I have never wanted more anything than the truth about these marks, to spread it around the world.”

Harry smiles. Krum is going to fit right in.

*

“Granger, what are you doing?”

The voice is weary, and Hermione jumps and spins around, already fumbling for her wand. Potter is standing behind her, watching her with bored, blank eyes. That creepy cat that always follows him around is standing next to his ankles, hissing at Hermione.

Hermione wipes her eyes as best she can. She just came from a meeting with Astoria where Hermione showed her the journal, but it only seemed to break Astoria’s spirit, not help her. They’re trapped, after all, because Astoria doesn’t know how to confront her parents about it when they probably changed her mark and didn’t care if it messed up her future, and Hermione knows no one will believe her, or help her, or support her, if she tries to explain the truth.

Potter raises his eyebrows and glances at the books on the shelf behind Hermione. Hermione shuffles out of the way. She thought crying in this quiet, out-of-the-way corner of the library would go unnoticed, but Potter is always in the library, obsessively researching something.

Hermione’s eyes widen a little as Potter walks past her to the shelf and pulls out several books, all of them on ancient history.

Obsessively researching…

It’s a slim reed to grab hold of, but Hermione doesn’t know anything else she can do. And she’s bursting to tell someone besides Astoria, and Potter is outside of everyone and everything, because he’s not marked.

Are you sure you should be trusting a Slytherin? a voice whispers in the back of her head, but Hermione has to disregard it, because it’s Ron’s voice, and everything he ever said to her is suspect, now.

“Potter?”

“Yes, Granger?” Potter has the same weary tone as he glances up from the book at her.

Hermione rubs her hands together, thinking he could be nicer, and then stops. She’s one of the people who shrank away from him because he didn’t have a mark, after all.

When she should have seen that people can have magic without the marks, and act—not nice, but relatively normal. She’s certainly never seen any sign that Potter hates Muggleborns or hexes people like most of the Slytherins do. He just trains incredibly hard and studies incredibly hard.

“What, Granger?” Potter says, sounding impatient this time.

Hermione tries not to let her lip tremble as she looks at him. He’s probably the kind of person who despises weakness, if he’s managed to survive on his own this long without the guarantee of a soulmate waiting for him.

She whispers, “I found out that people can change their soul-marks. And some people are trapped by having the changed ones. Their soulmates aren’t really their soulmates. I want to tell someone and tell people, but I don’t know how. I need your help.”

Then she holds her breath, and waits to see what Potter will say.

*

Triumph howls like a wolf in Harry’s chest, and Bast’s purr sounds like a song as she leans against his leg. Harry nods slowly, thoughtfully, and decides that he can speak the truth, without revealing everything to her yet, in case she’s the sort who will turn tail and run when she finds out how deep this really goes.

“I think I might be able to help you.”