Soul mates had been just another example of some magic Hermione had noticed asides to in Hogwarts: A History and she had followed that curiosity to the library after arriving at school. It was a bond that formed between two people-however, they had to be witches or wizards-and the first and most obvious sign was that the other person's name appeared somewhere on their body. The wrist, the arms, back and hip were the parts of the body these names usually appeared on, but it wasn't unusual for names to appear on other places. That was just the start, as time passed and the bond deepened wizards could sense the presence of their other half, could feel their (strong) emotions, and could even share thoughts to a limited extent.
There was some other reference to effects of a er more intimate nature but Hermione's face started burning the second she realized what it was talking about and she quickly shut the book.
Ron had been surprised when Hermione had brought it up and when Harry frowned in confusion. "You didn't know?" he asked, glancing up from the chess board he and Harry had been bent over when Hermione had gotten back to Gryffindor dorm. He asked in that tone of voice that grated on her sometimes, the tone that implied she'd looked shocked that the sky was blue. To his credit, the back of Ron's ears had reddened after he realized how he'd just sounded and quickly said, "I'm sorry I forgot it's not something that happens to muggles. But yeah it's some kind of magic that no one really knows why or when it started, except it's supposed to show the other half of your soul or something."
It had all sounded perfectly lovely until Ron mentioned almost off-handedly: "Except sometimes it can end bloody badly. Just because you're supposed to be with that person doesn't mean it can't blow up in both your faces." Something most have shown on her face because he finished, "I mean that's rare when it happens. Most people don't have anything to worry about."
Thank you so much, Ronald, for that new anxiety.
But like with other magic once the initial surprise wore off, it just became something normal. She noticed around the older students when a name appeared on someone because there was a literal buzz of excitement and then a whirlwind of new couples or an explosion of drama. It would have been hard to distinguish from romance in muggle schools except for the implication of permanency that came with it. Hermione often heard other girls, like Lavender and Parvarti chatting and giggling about it in their shared room, but her friendship with Harry and Ron usually meant that she had other concerns on her mind. Including, but not limited to: a giant three-headed dog who guarded a trapdoor on the forbidden third floor corridor, or a monster secretly living in the school attacking people, or most recently an escaped criminal wanting to track down and kill Harry.
And that wasn't even counting the amount of focus she put into her classes, with or without the Time-Turner.
While Hermione couldn't say she never thought about who were soulmate ultimately would be, it was hardly something she put much effort into speculating on. The downside to this meant that when it actually happened, she was completely blindsided by it. To make it even worse, it had happened when she was so exhausted from her use of the Time-Turner and so angry that almost all rational thought had been blocked out and she slapped Malfoy across the face. Hermione was yelling, hand stinging from the force of the slap, and she was being pulled back by Ron-
-and suddenly froze in Ron's arms when Malfoy turned his head back to look at her in shock and she saw the letters of her own name forming on his right cheek, right where her palm had first hit.
The silence was deafening as Hermione wrenched out of Ron's grip and, out of some instinct, she looked at the palm of her hand and saw the name Draco Malfoy written across it. Whatever magic behind this bond clearly had a sense of humor, because Hermione had no idea who could look at her and Draco and think they were soulmates. She was so tired and angry and disappointed, she barely held back the urge to just burst into tears but she had her pride so instead turned on her heel and stalked off to her next class, Ron and Harry at her heels.
Her day hadn't improved from there but Fred and George did try and make her laugh later. "Blimey, Hermione," Fred had said as he dropped into the seat on her right, and George took the one on her left. "Is it true you slapped Malfoy so hard you turned him into your soulmate?"
George had nodded in a way that he probably thought made him look serious and world-weary, "We call it the 'you break it, you buy it' method of soulmate finding."
"Just please don't spread how you did it around," started Fred.
"You don't want to go around giving the other girls ideas," continued George.
"Cause us blokes would never be safe again."
Hermione did laugh, though if anyone else at the Gryffindor table heard the edge of hysteria in it, they didn't say anything.
The end of third year hadn't been great. Merlin, if Sirius hadn't managed to escape on Buckbeak, it'd have been a downright tear-jerker. He was still a wanted man though and Lupin had to give up being their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor despite being the best one Ron had thought they had since he started at Hogwarts. Alright the competition wasn't high, what with the loony who let You-Know-Who share a body with him and the bloke who'd been going around Obliviating people and stealing credit for things they'd done until Ron's wand backfired on him, but that didn't make Lupin less good.
Of course, it was much worse for Harry, since both Sirius and Lupin had been best mates with Harry's dad and Sirius had been his godfather. What made it even worse was finding out that Pettigrew, the man who'd stabbed them and Harry's parents in the back, had been Ron's pet this entire time before the rat bastard escaped. (Pun definitely not intended.)
Just thinking that Scabbers, the rat Percy had handed down to him, the one Ron had liked more than he ever admitted, had been a bloke using them to hide out this whole time. Ron had let him sleep on his pillow for fuck's sake. He still shivered from time to time just thinking about it. He tried not to focus on it though.
Just like how he tried not to focus on Hermione having to be soulmates with that utter prat, Malfoy. It pissed him off and made him disappointed in a way that he didn't want to acknowledge. So he made himself not think about it. He had things to look forward to: his dad had gotten tickets to the World Cup, Bill and Charlie were coming home for it, and Harry and Hermione would be going.
Everything was going to be fine.
Until the morning he woke up before they were supposed to get Harry and he noticed something on his right wrist. Turning it over, he saw a name, paused, and then read the name again. And read the name a third time for good measure, because there was no way he could be seeing the name he was seeing. But no matter how many times he reread the letters on his wrist, they didn't magically rearrange to form a new name, a name that would actually make sense.
Instead, he kept seeing: Pansy Parkinson.
Pansy fucking Parkinson was his soulmate.
Ron let out a series of swear words that were so harsh and so loud that his mum burst into his room in a shocked fury and only stopped the lecture she'd been mentally preparing when she saw that he now had a name on his skin. His mum just let out a loud sigh, before taking a seat on the edge of his bed and said, "It's not the end of the world, Ron. I promise. Arthur and I were lucky when we got each other's names, but not everyone likes their soulmate at first. When I was still at Hogwarts, there was at least one set every year who seemed to hate each other, but then I'd see them years later and they were happy."
The expression on his face must have really been something because she just sighed again at him and said, "If worse comes to worse, no one's going to force you to be with this girl. You could both just walk away from each other, find other people, and be happy with them." His mum was conveniently leaving out the part that a witch or wizard would never be completely happy with someone other than their bonded.
Ron tried to just focus on the World Cup after that, but this was always in the back of his mind, the name mocking him.
The only satisfaction that he could get from this was that somewhere Pansy -the same Pansy who fawned over Malfoy and liked to mock Hermione-had to be hating this just as much as he was.
Harry had felt bad for his friends. They'd really drawn the short straw when it came to soulmates (Merlin, even nearly three years after he'd learned about that bit of magic and he still had trouble wrapping his head around it) and he sympathized with them. Sure, he'd been preoccupied by worrying about Sirius, the dream he'd had, and his scar hurting, but he still sympathized with them and acted like a sounding board if they'd had to vent to him.
Well, the venting was mostly being done by Ron. Hermione was more the type to just think and worry about things until she stressed herself out.
The World Cup had been a great distraction until a bunch of old Death Eaters-he'd just learned that was what Voldemort's followers had been called-started attacking the camp and using magic to humiliate the muggle owners of the campsite. They'd only stopped when someone had used Harry's wand to cast the Dark Mark-something else he'd just learned about and, Merlin, he wanted to stop learning things for at least a couple days after this. Oh and they had to watch Barty Crouch act like a bastard by firing his House-Elf, Winky.
At this point, Harry couldn't see how things couldn't have ended worse.
Oh, how wrong he was.
Only a few nights before they were meant to go back to Hogwarts, he found out who his soulmate was. And to really understand why this upset him so much, you really only had to look at his parents: James and Lily Potter, soul mates and completely and happily in love according to pretty much anyone who'd met them. Right up until the night they died protecting him from Voldemort, they could have been the very picture of a successful bond.
Harry didn't think of this sort of thing very much (unless it involves a certain Ravenclaw seeker) but if he had, he knew he would have wanted what his parents had. He wanted his soulmate to be someone he could like, someone he could see spending time with, someone he could really love. Again besides Cho, he hadn't really liked any girls that way, at least not strongly. The girl whose name he now had on his skin would definitely have not made that cut.
Daphne Greengrass.
The Slytherin Ice Queen.
He could picture her in his mind: tall and pale with long, dark brown hair and blue eyes. Objectively, she was pretty, but she'd look a lot prettier if she didn't seem to always be standing off to the side, looking down on anyone not in the same house as her. If he was being fair, and he was really not in the mood to be fair, he would have to admit that he really couldn't say she was looking down on everyone with a hundred percent certainty. Despite the fact that they had been at the same school for nearly four years, in some of the same classes, he really couldn't name one time they'd had anything resembling a conversation outside of being paired randomly together for some lesson. That didn't make him exempt from sarcastic commentary coming from her direction.
("You know my family made the snitches used at Hogwarts. Please try not to choke on another of them next time," she said, dryly, as they passed each other on the stairs after his first Quidditch match.)
Beyond that kind of thing, he'd never had a confrontation with her like he had Malfoy, or even Parkinson. She wasn't technically part of Parkinson's gang either, though he'd seen the two of them, laughing and talking together, so he knew they were still friends. If she wasn't with Pansy or by herself, then she could usually be seen near Zabini, another Slytherin who acted as if he was too good for everyone else.
The worst part of this, even beyond the name itself, was the fact that he had her name on his chest right where his heart was. If he'd actually liked the girl, maybe he'd think it romantic (alright, not bloody likely even in that situation) but with Daphne's name, it was just an insult on top of injury. Scowling, he'd pulled on a t-shirt and finished getting dressed, before stomping down the stairs to where Ron and Hermione were sitting and sharing breakfast. They both looked up, startled, at both his sudden appearance and bad mood, before he muttered, "Daphne Greengrass is my soulmate."
Both of them winced in sympathy. Ron, frowning deeply, leaned back and announced: "We're all fucked." Hermione narrowed her eyes at him and hissed, "Ron," but Harry was in complete agreement.