- Part 1 -

Tom stared down at his Mark at the edge of what was once his bed in Slytherin tower. He sat still, quiet as a mouse on top of the freshly-made mahogany four-poster bed covered in silky emerald green bedding, as his darkened green eyes glowered down at the horrid thing on his forearm. It was truth that he had been dreading, to this very day, the arrival of the Mark. He had been in denial his entire life up until now.

He knew there was no one out there for him, that the very idea of a Soulmate was just absolute rubbish. And he was so very certain that he wouldn't even receive a Mark. He had read stories of people aging without one and Tom, with the Darkest of all hearts beating, didn't even believe he could possess one until he woke up that morning and had felt that unwelcome sting in his forearm.

No, he refused to have a Soulmate. Absolutely refused.

His quick reflexes and sharp hearing allowed him to unroll the arms of his oxford to hide his Mark before Abraxas Malfoy, the platinum-haired boy who had just stumbled through the door Tom had sworn he locked, saw it.

"Tom! We're ready to head out. Are you?" Abraxas asked with a bright smile that made Tom sneer everry time he set eyes on it. He looked over at his packed luggage, huffing a heavy sigh as he got to his feet without a word, turning his back to Abraxas.

"Tell me, Brax," started Tom after he was at his luggage, wheels turning in his mind, "Do you have your Mark yet?"

Abraxas was quiet behind Tom for a second, his smile falling into a worried line as the color began to drain from his face. Nervously, he swallowed hard and looked away from his master, knowing there'd be consequences if he didn't answer.

"No," Abraxas answered after too long.

Slowly, Tom turned to face Abraxas, a look of chaos and something else that terrified Abraxas in his eyes.

"Hold out your left arm," Tom ordered in a dangerously soft voice.

Abraxas turned horrified when he heard the door of the room shut and lock behind him. There was no escape for him now.

"Tom…" Abraxas started, backing away until he felt the door at his back and Tom had him trapped.

"Hold out," Tom said slowly, "your left arm." Tom didn't like repeating himself.

A danger sparked in his tone and Abraxas literally flinched as he obeyed and held out his shaking left arm. He'd beg if he knew it'd help him. But this was Tom Riddle, the man who never knew mercy.

Tom ripped at Abraxas sleeve until his forearm was pale and bare for him. Tom raised his wand, silently placed a sound barrier around the room before he pointed it at Abraxas' forearm. What happened next, left Abraxas crying out in pain as a light filled the room and blood dripped to the stone floor.

10 Years Later

The bright sunlight of the early summer afternoon woke Hermione from her slumber. Her eyes blinked open and she stretched before she turned over and eyed the window next to her bed facing the grounds of Hogwarts. A smile appeared at her pink lips as an old nostalgic excitement bubbled in her stomach and reached for her lungs. She was back at Hogwarts. And although classes had gone on for a week now, she still felt the same excitement she felt when she first arrived here. It would be weeks until it'd fade away.

But something about this excitement was different. Excitement of graduation, of the curiosity that mixed in with it at what her last year at Hogwarts would be like. A year worth remembering, above all, I hope.

She sat up in her bed, pushing the covers off of her when a sharp sting in her left forearm caught her attention. Freezing for a moment, she blinked and all of a sudden, her heart picked up in speed. She knew what that sting meant. With an ecstatic, giddy smile that nearly reached from ear to ear, she turned her head, pulled up the sleeve of her pajama shirt, and eyed her new Mark.

What she saw made her smile completely fall off her face as her free hand grabbed her arm, her thumb angrily and profusely rubbing over the Mark to see if it'd fade, regardless of the fact that it stung like a burn with her doing so. She'd heard of people pranking others in their sleep of the fake Mark but…

"No...no...no!" Her voice was shrill in the close walls of the empty dorm room. Ginny, Lavender, and Parvati must have still been at breakfast. More so they were lucky to be there and not here.

And suddenly, tears were clouding Hermione's vision as she shakily made her bare feet touch the cool stone flooring of the room, almost tripping from being entangled with her red sheets in the process.

"No!" she cried as she shook her head, viewing the Mark in the bright daylight. This couldn't be!

Her eyes traced the black pattern of the skull with the snake twisting from its mouth, praying to find proof that this was just...somehow...a different Mark. Anything but the Dark Mark.

The Dark Mark was something completely changed from the understanding of the basic Soul Mark. The Soul Mark was supposed to vary from color to shape to size...each was supposed to have two owners only, to mark that they were Soulmates or in the words of a hopeless romantic, "meant for each other". But the Dark Mark was different. For ten years, it haunted the very lives of the Muggle-borns and half-bloods, showing up on the arms of the complete Dark witches and wizards. And ever since it had appeared up in the sky that one December night, the lives of Britain had been changed forever.

Hermione sat down on her bed slowly, in shock and shaking with tears pooling from her eyes as she remembered all the talk about that one night. She was only seven at the time, but she remembered vividly of the image of the Dark Mark in the sky on the front page of every single newspaper. Right on top of the building that sat above the Ministry of Magic was a large shape in the stormy sky, consisting of a skull with a snake twisting from its mouth. It was a warning. Hermione somehow knew that when she first heard word of it and watched her mother read the newspaper at the breakfast nook table, this was the beginning of something bad.

Hermione was cut from her thoughts when she heard footsteps approaching the door. Quickly, she reached for her wand beneath her pillow and aimed it at the door, locking it.

"Hermione? Is that you crying in there?" came Ginny's voice before the door handle jiggled.

"Have you seriously locked the door?" Ginny sounded annoyed, but to anyone who knew her well enough knew that was her way of being concerned.

The door handle jiggled once more before Ginny began knocking on the door. Hermione distinctly heard Ginny try a few basic spells, but the door wouldn't open.

"You better let me in or I'll get McGonagall," Ginny threatened. There was a fear in Ginny's voice, a helpless fear. She didn't know what to do.

Hermione suddenly stopped crying, forcing her tears to cease as she wiped all wetness away and quickly got to her feet again, rushing over and unlocking the door to a startled red-head Ginny.

"What the bloody hell-" started Ginny as she quickly looked around the room and stopped at the sight of Hermione's bed that looked as if Hermione had been thrashing about in it for hours. She huffed a sigh and relaxed, putting a hand on her hip as she gave Hermione an annoyed look. "I told you to see Pomfrey about those nightmares." She scowled and shook her head, her straight red hair shaking with her movements. "I thought something bad had happened to you…"

Deep inside Hermione, a part of her relaxed at the turn of Ginny's belief in the situation.

"Nevermind that, get dressed, we're heading to Hogsmeade early," Ginny said, eying Hermione's pajamas and cracking a smile that was supposed to lighten up the situation. "We'll be in the common room."

While Hermione faked a smile, she was ballistic on the inside.

She waited for Ginny to turn her back and head back down the stairs to the common room before she closed the door and leaned her back against it, letting out a deep breath after forgetting how to breathe. She spared one more glance down at her Mark before she bit her bottom lip and shook. Horror and confusion filled her up to the brim.

I'm a good witch. I've never cast a single Dark spell in my life before, she kept assuring herself. Maybe this was just some huge mistake.

Shaking almost violently, she walked over to her trunk and pulled out fresh clothes for the day, grabbing her brush and yanking it through her thick, untamed mess of brown curls a bit too quickly.

What do I do? Hermione asked herself as she looked down at her Mark for the hundredth time. All she felt at that very moment was a violent rush of confusion and curiosity. Confusion for what this meant for her and her future, and curiosity for what this could honestly mean.

Of course, should the whole story of the Dark Mark not be true because in all retrospect...how could it be? It defied all laws of the Soulmates and their Marks.

Only two people can have the same Mark. Only two. Yet ever since the Dark Mark, so many murderers, thieves, and psychopaths ran around baring the same Mark. Rumor says that it meant that their Soulmate was the Darkness. And ever since that one night on New Years Eve when she was seven, a part of her couldn't believe it. (More so refused, but still, couldn't.)

Some people said that the Dark Mark was a single person's doing, trying to overthrow the basic laws of the Soul Mark. They had to be right, because why else would Sirius, Harry's godfather, claim her to be the 'brightest witch of her age' and why was she put into Gryffindor and not Slytherin?

Hermione was an honest witch. She came from a family of middle-class dentists who had raised her to be a kind and fair person. Muggles, yes, but she had never forgotten her place in this world, not even all those years ago when Draco Malfoy, a popular Slytherin boy, had called her a Mudblood and she had cried about it. She was an honorable witch who worked hard for what she knew in her beating heart that she deserved, and she was best friends with two of the bravest men she knew. She had believed she was the brightest witch of her age, which was exactly why she had always refused to use any Dark magic.

Whoever was the owner, the true owner, of this Mark...had to have a bigger plan for all witches and wizards. They had to have had wishes to overthrow all understanding of the Mark with a decision to copy it...but that was only an assumption, maybe even just a theory.

It must have been so.

But what if they're wrong? The other part of Hermione whispered.

"'Mione! Let's go!" called Ginny from the bottom of the stairs. It reached the top of the hall and bounced off of the stone walls so Hermione could just hear her.

She messily made her bed and used a concealing spell on her Mark to allow her to wear a quarter-length sleeved jumper as she headed out of the dorm room and down to the commons where Ginny was shaking her head at something Luna had said.