Chapter Text
The first time Harry felt the tickle of the Compatibility Magic, he was in his sixth year at Hogwarts. It was the beginning of the Opening Feast, and he could feel his magic under his skin, bubbling and effervescing like someone had opened a bottle of champagne inside of him.
He knew immediately what it was, having heard it described over and over. First by his parents, before he headed to Hogwarts at eleven. They knew it was unlikely that he would find a match right off the bat, after all, his father had sensed it more or less immediately, but it took six years before his mother felt it in return. But they’d wanted him to be prepared, so they’d described it so he could recognise it.
In fourth year, when Neville and Hannah danced at the Yule Ball, they’d both felt it as they twirled around the floor amongst the foreign visitors. Neville wouldn’t stop talking about it, and as he was the first in their dorm to have found his match, the others would question him over and over about whether he and Hannah could possibly have known beforehand, or if there was something about the Ball that had made their magic Compatible at that time and not before. Seamus reckoned it had to do with how much skin touched, but if that were the case, Ron would have discovered Compatibility with Lavender Brown long ago.
When Ron did finally discover his match, he and the others in their year were flabbergasted. For all his chatter of how much everyone needed to avoid slimy snakes, once Ron and Tracey Davis had found their Compatibility with one another, there was much less talk about how evil all Slytherins must be.
Harry looked around to see if someone he knew was also reacting to the newly sensed magic, but no one seemed to be on edge more than usual for the start of a new school year. Merlin, he hoped it wasn’t one of the firsties who’d just trouped in following Professor McGonagall and were now lined up in front of the Sorting Hat, looking around wide-eyed with wonder at the sights that were all new to them. That would be incredibly awkward. He knew he was one of the youngest of the sixth year class, but there would still be a troublesome age gap. Daisy would no doubt tease him endlessly, as sisters are wont to do.
Fortunately, none of the littles seemed to be looking his way especially. So who could it be, then? Unless someone was hiding their reaction, hoping he wouldn’t notice them, or he was sensing it before they were, he couldn’t fathom why his magic was suddenly active in a way it had never been before in his life.
At that moment, his eyes fell on the girl at the end of the line of tiny firsties waiting their turn to be sorted. She was clearly a transfer student, as she looked to be at least his age. He couldn’t see much of her face, as she was turned away, apparently examining the Great Hall curiously while she waited for her turn on the stool. Her voluminous light brown hair was tied back in a single loose plait that fell down her back, and he could see that she was slight of frame, but that was it.
She turned back, and her eyes locked on his, and he knew immediately that this was who his magic was pointing him towards. How was it possible this girl was Compatible with him, and he didn’t even know her name, or where she was from?
Attempting to avoid staring at her for the entire sorting, Harry turned to Neville. “Who’s the transfer?”
“Dunno,” Neville replied. “I don’t think she was on the train. I’m sure I would have seen her on patrol.”
Ron leaned over at that point. “A galleon says she ends up in Hufflepuff.”
“What?” Harry turned to him. “How can you tell?”
Ron just shrugged. “She just has a look to her. Maybe it’s the hair.”
“Huffle hair?” Harry laughed. “You’re on. Nev?”
“Dunno. Maybe here?”
“Willing to put money on that?”
Neville huffed. He wasn’t lacking for money, but he also didn’t spend it as frivolously as his friends. Which is probably why he didn’t lack for it. “Sure. A galleon on Gryffindor. Where’s your money, Harry? Slytherin or Ravenclaw?”
“Ravenclaw,” Harry said firmly.
“You seem sure,” Ron said. “Do you know something?”
“Never seen her before in my life, but look at the way she’s looking around. She’s not looking at the people, she’s looking at the Hall. Trying to figure out the enchantments, I bet.”
“Okay, I can see that,” Neville said.
“You wanna change your bet?” Ron asked.
Neville smiled. “No, I’m good. You’re betting on the Puffs, I’m betting on the home team, and Harry thinks she has the makings of an Eagle. What happens if she goes to Slytherin?”
“I’ll take that action,” a new voice joined in.
“Do you even have a galleon?” Ron asked dismissively.
“More likely to have than you,” his sister answered. “Besides, she looks conniving.”
“Oi,” Ron said, “Not all snakes are…” He broke off as he realised he’d been set up.
“Quite a turnaround from your first years, Ronald,” Ginny snorted. “Anyway, we’ll see. Her turn is just about up.”
They started paying more attention to the sorting just as “Upton, Nicole” sorted into Hufflepuff.
“And now we’d like to welcome a sixth-year transfer student coming from Beauxbatons to join us this year,” McGonagall announced.
“Was she in the group that came for the Tournament?” Ron asked quietly to Harry.
“No, if she’s our year, she wouldn’t have been eligible,” he replied.
“Hermione Granger,” McGonagall announced the new girl’s name. Hermione, Harry thought. That sounds familiar. It’s not a common name, but I’m certain I’ve heard it before. No, he thought, I’ve read it. But where?
The girl, Hermione, sat daintily on the stool and Professor McGonagall placed the hat on her head while it seemed the whole Hall held their breath waiting for the announcement of her new House. After a few seconds with no House announcement, students began to look at each other instead of at her.
After a minute, the students started murmuring. After three minutes, they were talking openly. At nearly five minutes, the rip in the hat that served as its mouth opened and a hush fell over the Hall. This was the longest hatstall many of them had heard of, and certainly the longest any of them had ever witnessed.
“RAVENCLAW!” the hat called out, and the table decked in blue began to applaud. Silently, Neville reached into a pocket to hand Harry his winnings, which Ron and Ginny begrudgingly added to.
“How did you know?” Neville asked as the Headmaster got up to speak.
“Just a feeling,” Harry replied truthfully. The tingling bubbly sensation had faded somewhat from its initial ticklishness, but hadn’t disappeared entirely. He wondered if Hermione had felt anything at all, or if this was like with his parents, where his dad had had to wait five long years for his mother’s magic to reciprocate. That thought stuck with him all through the Feast and up to the Common Room afterwards.
Two weeks into term and Harry’s curiosity about the new arrival had metamorphosed into frustration. He didn’t know if Hermione was deliberately avoiding him, or if it was just coincidence that excepting mealtimes, he rarely caught a glimpse of her outside of class. He considered briefly using the Marauders’ Map that his father and uncles had gifted to him after his first year, and possibly the Potter family invisibility cloak, but decided that would border on stalker-like behaviour. Frustratingly and apparently continually, Hermione simply managed to be at all times in places he was not.
He’d even resorted to asking Parvati to gather intel via her Ravenclaw sister, without spilling the beans on why he was so curious. The report from the Ravenclaws’ tower was singularly lacking in detail. According to her housemates, Hermione Granger was an enigma. Brilliant, as befit a member of their august house, but scandalously inept when it came to practical magic. And that was all the information they had. Of course they were curious too, but apparently Hermione kept to herself even in her shared dorm room.
Harry knew she was a genius-level intellect from sharing the NEWT Ancient Runes class with her, where she dazzled even Professor Babbling, who was notoriously stingy with her praise. A “good job” once a term was considered quite the accomplishment in her class. And yet, she’d complimented Granger not just once, but twice, on solutions she’d put forward in the two class periods Harry had shared with her.
He didn’t have any of the wand subjects with the Ravenclaws, so he wasn’t able to assess her practical skills, but if her housemates were to be believed, she was not just not brilliant, but downright pedestrian in her skills. It was a puzzle.
Normally, Harry liked puzzles. Puzzles were fun! Puzzles could be stimulating. But usually, he could see them to sort them out. An unseen, unknown puzzle was just a headache.
Finally, Harry confessed to Neville why, exactly, he was so hung up on the new girl.
“Well, that’s great news!” Neville responded. “For you, I mean. Not so much for all the other witches in the school who’ve been hoping that you would be Compatible with them. Ginny will be heartbroken.” Harry frowned at him, but Neville just smile beatifically. “Now you need to find out if her magic will respond to yours.”
“Kind of tough if I can’t ever talk to her,” Harry replied. “Pretty hard to convince her she might be Compatible when we’re never in the same room.”
“Have you tried waiting for her outside of Runes?”
“Gosh, Neville! What a grand idea! I’m so glad I keep you around to give me ideas like that.”
“Shove off, I’m just trying to help.”
“I know, sorry. As it happens, I did try to wait for her after Thursday’s class, but somehow she slipped by me, and I ended up late for DADA because I waited too long. Snape took ten points, as you might recall.”
“So why don’t you pair up with her during class then?”
“Can’t. Babbling sets the seating arrangement at the beginning of term and doesn’t let anyone change desks until Hallowe’en.”
Neville hummed at this. “Well, there’s always approaching her at mealtime.”
“Oh, that’d go great,” Harry replied. “Hi, can I sit here so we can see if you’re Compatible with me? By the way, I’m Harry Potter, as I know we haven’t been formally introduced.”
“Well, I don’t know then,” Neville shot back. “You’re just going to have to try and get her attention somehow.”
Harry considered this and sighed. He suspected Neville was right. If she wasn’t actively avoiding him, and he really didn’t think she was, then she might respond best to a non-confrontational overture. “What kind of conversational gambit might catch the attention of a reclusive genius?”
Neville did not have an answer for that.
An idea began forming in Harry’s head, but he wasn’t certain if he’d be able to pull it off without some assistance. He needed to get to the owlery and send a note to his mother. While his dad was certainly the more romantic of his parents, it was his mother’s upbringing that he needed right at the moment.
Another week and Harry had all the pieces he needed, except the courage to go through with his idea. He was vacillating between a big public declaration that would be more likely to catch Hermione’s attention, but might embarrass the both of them to the point where she would be unwilling to speak with him, or a more private attempt that would be easier for her to brush off but might be better for her reputation.
In the end, it was the likelihood of being able to talk with her again afterwards that decided him on the second option. He’d used the week to study where it was that Hermione disappeared to and, using the Marauders’ Map, discovered that she spent a fair amount of time in unused classrooms near to where the library was. It wasn’t stalking if he was just using it for information, right?
One evening after supper when he knew she was in one of the classrooms closest to the library, he decided to go ahead with his plan. He initially tried entering her chosen classroom to maximise the privacy it would afford them, but the door had been locked with some unique charm that didn’t respond to a simple Alohomora, or any other of the unlocking spells he’d learned. There was also no sound coming from inside the room, but he wasn’t sure if that was due to the nature of Hermione’s activity on the other side of the door, or if she was using a silencing charm in addition to the locking one.
He decided to wait her out, hoping she wasn’t planning on spending the entire evening before curfew inside the room.
After forty-five minutes of sitting on the floor of the corridor outside the classroom, reviewing his notes from Transfiguration, he heard the handle of the door rattle, then the door cracked open and there she was, hair in glorious golden disarray. His Compatibility fizzed up under his skin again with their nearness, but he pushed it down. He wasn’t here to convince Hermione of that yet, just to get her attention.
He tucked his notes back into his bag and scrambled to his feet, then caught a glimpse of her face. Astonishment and fear seemed to dominate, and his heart fell. Apparently, waiting outside a classroom for her wasn’t the right move.
His mind racing, Harry looked at Hermione for a long moment while trying to decide whether to go on with his plan. Oh, what the hell. What was the worst that could happen?
“Hermione, queen to the worthy Leontes, King of Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason to take away the life of our sovereign lord the King, thy royal husband.” He knew he’d cut some lines from the middle, but it didn’t seem appropriate to accuse her of adultery, like her famous namesake.
Her eyes widened even more, and Harry noticed for the first time that there were flecks of green and gold in her brown eyes. He was entranced. An interminable moment stretched between them as her eyes darted back and forth between his, searching out something. She seemed to come to a decision and opened her mouth to reply.
Hermione was not having an excellent month. She’d convinced her parents that a fresh start at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry would be just the thing she needed to sort herself out after the debacle that was her last year at Beauxbatons.
Growing up magical in the mundane world was always going to be challenging. Hermione and her parents had known about magic ever since hers started manifesting when she was young, as her cousins were magical as well, and had explained to her parents what the bursts of impossibility that happened around her were.
However, she’d also known from a young age that something was wrong with her magic. She was four when she’d summoned a book from a high shelf, but instead of flying smoothly to her hand, like her cousins described bouts of accidental magic, it had instead blasted right past her and left a dent in the wall behind her. When she’d summoned a jar of biscuits from the top of the refrigerator where her mother had put them out of the five-year-old’s reach, they’d floated gracefully halfway to her before her magic sputtered out and sent the jar smashing to the floor.
Her cousins had been unable to explain the instability in young Hermione’s magic, and had chalked it up to a lack of control that stemmed from the absence of a wand. She and her parents had been assured that once she bought her first wand and went to school to learn magic, she would gain the kind of control that was expected of a witch.
How naive that sentiment appeared now. Oh, they’d gone to La Place Cachée in Montmartre to buy her wand when she turned eleven, and she’d gone to Beauxbatons the following autumn, but her magic never seemed to settle. Instead, it manifested in fits and starts, sometimes much stronger than it had any right to be, and sometimes no better than a Squib’s magic.
Hermione’s brilliant mind, ceaseless dedication and intense concentration had been enough through the first three years of her magical education to get her by, and though she never achieved at the level she wanted in her wand subjects because of the lack of control she had of her magic, there was no denying her talent in the other areas of study. She was top of class in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy seemingly without effort, and her Potions and History marks were among the best in her year. She did fantastically well on the theory portions of Charms, Transfiguration and Defence, but the practical aspect eluded her continuously, to her great frustration.
Her fourth year had had her at her wit’s end. With a portion of the older students gone for most of the year for the Triwizard Tournament in Britain, she had hoped that the instructors who remained would have more time to work with her on mastering her wayward magic. Alas, they seemed just as interested as the rest of the student body in taking their ease while the Headmistress was away. Her frustration grew through the year, which led directly to the catastrophe in her fifth year.
Convinced that there had to be an explanation for her magic’s unwillingness to behave, Hermione had researched rituals designed to fortify the caster’s focus. Since most rituals were based on Runes, one of her best subjects, she thought she’d be safe. The ritual she’d found to try and resolve her magical control issues also involved a potion, which she’d had little trouble brewing.
She’d been in the ritual circle in the disused basement classroom in the Chateau, the potion already consumed, just waiting for the sun to set and power the ritual, when Patrice Petitchamps had discovered her. Patrice reminded her a little too much of the girls from her école primaire, who thought that since everyone paid them attention because of their looks, they must therefore be important. Logically, that meant that those without their looks, like Hermione, were less important, which meant that people should pay less attention to them. Hermione’s continued scholastic excellence did not fit in their constructed worldview, and must be punished for daring to contradict the truth they themselves knew.
Patrice had been delighted at first to discover Hermione Granger, child of non-magiques, rule-follower and general teacher’s pet, breaking about a half-dozen school rules in that classroom. Unfortunately, when Hermione was not appropriately cowed into submission by Patrice’s threats to let the instructors know what she was up to, Patrice had taken it into her own hands to disrupt the ritual and show Hermione how wrong she was not to bow to her betters.
Patrice’s knowledge of rituals was not as advanced as Hermione’s and while Hermione could have warned her of the dangers of breaking an outer ritual circle while the inner was in operation, she didn’t know until Patrice scuffed her shoe across the chalk runes what the older girl was going to do. By that time it was too late.
The magic contained in the outer circle blasted through Patrice’s body, wrecking her in an uncontained magical explosion. Hermione, protected by the inner circle, could only watch in horror as the girl’s body was grotesquely stretched and bent until it resembled a human being no more, before being thrown at the wall of the classroom, like a doll some maniacal child discarded after playing with it in ways that were never intended.
Hermione’s shrieks were enough to bring faculty members rushing to see what the matter was, and while she was never directly blamed by the school for Patrice’s condition, she was reprimanded fiercely for conducting a ritual without proper supervision, safeguards or testing. She’d served her detention for the entire third term without complaint, sat alone in class and at mealtimes while whispers about Dark Magic and ritual sacrifices of fellow students swirled around her, and when she returned home at the end of summer term, announced to her parents that she would not be returning to Beauxbatons no matter what her OWL scores were.
Hogwarts was supposed to be a new beginning, a fresh start, without all the baggage. Unfortunately, she’d never really mastered the art of making friends, and so while the conversations around her did not specifically exclude her, neither did they go out of the way to include her either. She fit in well enough in Ravenclaw, her housemates as bemused as the Beauxbatons students with the dichotomy between her theoretical knowledge of magic and her practical skills.
In fact, she was certain she could feel her magic settling at times while she went about her day. Unfortunately, those times seemed to centre around meals and Runes, times when it wasn’t especially useful to her. Why couldn’t her magic settle in Defence or Charms?
Her professors had seemed interested in her problems, and her head of house, the tiny Professor Flitwick, swore that he’d seen something similar before, and had gone to consult some of his more esoteric books on the subject, but that had been weeks ago, and in the meantime, she still had to get a grasp on that which had so far eluded her for her entire life. Control.
One of her dorm-mates, a gorgeous dusky-skinned girl named Padma, had told her one evening when they were getting ready for bed at the same time, that her sister and her sister’s best friend, both Gryffindors, were convinced that someone had laid a geas on Hermione, which was preventing her from using her magic correctly, and if only she’d permit a karmic cleansing, she’d be right as rain. Hermione had declined graciously, without explaining that she’d already been tested for curses, vows, bonds or any other similar magic that could be affecting her magic.
Her birthday had passed with very little fanfare, the only cards and gifts from her family, and a few days later, in the time after the evening meal, she found herself in a classroom practising basic summoning and banishment charms that most of her class had handily mastered two weeks previously. For some reason, she seemed to get the hang of it much quicker than in the classroom, and so she desisted after only an hour of practice, inordinately pleased with her progress, though it drove her half mad not to have an explanation for why.
And then. Then there was a wild-haired boy outside her classroom, clearly waiting for her, his piercing green eyes seeking out her own plain brown ones as she undid the locking and silencing runes, and stepped out of the classroom. That anyone at all might be waiting for her was a total surprise, but that it might be Harry Potter himself was a whole other level of astonishment.
Of course she knew who he was. There was hardly a person in wizarding Europe who didn’t know the name Harry Potter, whether they blessed it or cursed it. How, as a baby, he’d been the target of the insane Dark Lord Voldemort. How the greatest wizard of the age, Dumbledore, had used Voldemort’s obsession with the child to lure him into a trap where he thought he’d have a chance to kill the toddler, but was instead faced with the combined might of Dumbledore and his allies. Voldemort had met his end because he thought he should kill a child, and Harry became known as the Boy Who Lived as a result. His parents were wizarding celebrities in their own right, his father an influential reformer on the Wizengamot, and his mother a brilliant researcher in the field of Charms.
Harry himself had gained notoriety for his brilliant Quidditch skills, even as a first year student, and while he might not be top of his class in every subject, he was no slouch either. His younger sister Daisy, born in the post-Voldemort baby boom, was said to be a Transfiguration prodigy like their father, while Harry took after their mother in mastering Charms. His honorary uncles tutored him in duelling, so his Defence marks were the best in their year for five years running. All this she had overheard in her first week at Hogwarts. So why was Harry Potter waiting for her?
Her first thought was that he must have heard about what she did at Beauxbatons last year. Maybe he was even friends with Patrice’s family or something. After all, his family was rich and influential like Patrice’s was. Maybe he was here to hex her on behalf of a French friend.
But that made no sense. Why wait this long? Why do it here and now?
And then. Then, Shakespeare. Bloody Shakespeare! And not just any old Shakespeare, either. The Winter’s Tale, right before Queen Hermione boldly stands and defends herself against her King’s accusations. What? A member of the British wizarding Peerage quoting a Muggle writer at her? What was even happening? Hermione realised she was staring while her mind turned over what had just happened, but then her mouth started moving without asking her brain’s permission.
“Since what I am to say must be but that which contradicts my accusation, and the testimony on my part no other but what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me to say ‘Not guilty.’” What? Did she just quote back the Bard’s next lines? Harry’s eyes crinkled and his lips rose in a smile, and Hermione didn’t know what to do with any of it, so she spun on her heel and walked off down the corridor. Calmly. Not at a fast pace at all.
She heard footsteps behind her, racing to catch up. “Hermione, wait!” She didn’t. “I just want to talk with you,” Harry said from beside her. He was apparently much faster than her.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking that you’re doing,” Hermione said, “But you can’t just walk up to someone and quote Shakespeare.”
Harry didn’t say anything for a moment, just paced her as she stalked up the corridor. No, not stalked. That implied she was moving faster than normal. She was simply walking.
“I’m sorry,” Harry finally said, voice soft. “I was just trying to be friendly. I thought maybe you were named after her. Was it the goddess instead?”
Well, that was a surprise. She stopped and looked closer at the boy who’d been following her. A wizard who knew the classics as well as Shakespeare? “She wasn’t a goddess,” Hermione replied. “She was the daughter of Helen, before she was carried off to Troy to start the Trojan war.”
“My mistake,” he said, smiling at her. This close, Hermione noticed his bright green eyes had a depth of colour in them she’d never seen before, and after a moment of surprised silence, she pulled herself away from staring into them in embarrassment.
She huffed in annoyance. “Whatever you think you’re doing, just stop,” she said. “I don’t need your pity friendship, or whatever it is you’re offering. I just want to make it through this year. Please just,” she sighed, “Just leave me be.”
She turned and continued walking, and couldn’t decide after if she was relieved or saddened that his footsteps didn’t follow hers.
“She ran away?”
“No, she just walked off, and I let her,” Harry explained once more.
“She totally pulled a Cinderella at midnight on you,” Daisy said, cackling madly.
“Well, fortunately for me, I already know who the glass slipper belongs to,” Harry said.
“Good thing too,” his sister shot back, “since you’re clearly no Prince Charming.”
Harry shot her an annoyed look. “I think that was Snow White.”
“No, that was just ‘the Prince’,” Daisy said firmly. “Cinderella had Prince Charming.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge of animated Disney classics,” Harry smiled.
“As well you should,” Daisy replied primly. “Now, your actual problem. The girl you like, who appears to be Compatible with you, wants nothing to do with you.”
After the debacle in the corridor, Harry had caved in and brought his sister into his confidence. She might only be a fourth-year, but she knew things he didn’t. Like about talking to girls. Hopefully.
“I don’t think it’s personal,” Harry said. “She said she didn’t want pity friendship.”
“How is that not personal?”
“I have the sense that she doesn’t really do friendship with anyone,” Harry answered.
“Are you sure?” Daisy paused. “Have you seen her being friendly with any of the ‘Claws?”
“It’s hard to tell, since if she wasn’t avoiding me before, she certainly seems to be now,” Harry replied. “I only see her in Runes, since she seems to be skipping mealtimes. Or at least not eating at the same time as everyone else.”
“So you’ll have to talk to her in Runes,” Daisy said firmly.
“Are you nuts? Babbling is scary. Scarier than Snape. I don’t want to get on her bad side.”
“I mean, you could send her a letter,” Daisy said.
Harry paused a moment before answering. His first instinct was to dismiss the idea. Who sent letters to someone in the same building as them? But after giving it a moment’s thought, he smiled slightly. “You know, that’s not a terrible idea.”
“Really?” Daisy sounded surprised.
Harry glanced over. “What?”
“I didn’t think you’d take me seriously,” his sister answered.
“It makes sense to me,” Harry said. “I’ll get Hedwig to deliver a letter. You know how good she is at finding the person that she’s supposed to.”
“Yeah, that bird is not normal.” She paused. “Like you.” She smiled sweetly.
“Hey!”
“I call them like I see them,” Daisy laughed.
“I’ll let that one pass, since you’re helping me out and all,” Harry grumbled. Now, what to write?
The magnificent snowy owl was a surprise. Hermione had been hiding… no, that wasn’t the right word… she’d been in seclusion… great, that meant the same thing. In any event, she’d been alone in a hidden alcove of the Hogwarts library when her seclusion had been disturbed by the bird before her landing on the table between the mounds of books she’d been hiding behind. No, the books that she’d been studying.
The owl held out her leg, and Hermione spotted a letter attached with her name written in barely-legible script. She untied the parchment from the owl’s leg and ran her hand down the back of the bird’s head. The bird leaned into her touch, then nipped her hand and, spreading her wings, flew off in a gust that flipped some of the pages Hermione had definitely, one hundred percent, been reading.
Hermione looked back and forth from the letter in her hand to the books in front of her and huffed in annoyance. Even if she had been engrossed in her studies, which she absolutely had been, the letter would be a distraction until she’d read it.
She cracked the seal and unfolded the parchment.
Hermione,
I apologise for accosting you in the hallway the other week. It was never my intention to make you feel anything but welcome here. For what its worth, I do not do ‘pity friendships’. I really was just trying to be friendly. Apparently, I’m not very good at it, and for that I unreservedly apologise. I would try to do this in person, but I feel I have scared you off somewhat, and I apologise for that as well. Since I can’t find you myself, I asked Hedwig to deliver this note. I’m assuming if you’re reading this that she was successful. She’s clever that way.
Anyway, as I said, I’d like to get to know you. Maybe we could start over? Hi, I’m Harry Potter. I’m a Gryffindor, with all that entails. My parents were also Gryffindors, so it’s a bit of a family embarrassment that my sister is a Hufflepuff. The letter was Daisy’s idea, by the way, so if you don’t like it, I will happily blame her. If this was a good idea, it was totally mine and Daisy had nothing to do with it.
What was Beauxbatons like? We had some students from your old school here a couple of years ago for the Triwizard, but I was too young to get to know any of them, so I never really found out anything about that school or Durmstrang.
If you want, we can keep writing if that’s easier for you. Hedwig’s scarily good at knowing when someone has a letter for me, so if you want to write back, she would be happy to deliver it for you. If not, I understand. It’s a little weird, right? But in a good way, I hope.
I hope to hear from you,
Harry Potter
Hermione sat back in her chair as her eyes scanned over the letter once more. What was Harry hoping to accomplish by writing? Evidently, he felt like he’d made an error before, but why did he care? Should she even consider writing back? If he was sincere, it might be a good way to mend fences, but if this was part of some elaborate prank... No, she shook her head. It didn't feel like a prank, and while she might not be that well-versed in making friends, she did trust her instincts about people. They'd let her know when someone was untrustworthy before, and this didn't feel like those times.
She sighed. All she'd wanted was a quiet year to reset and focus on her studies. Being friendly, or whatever this was, with the Boy Who Lived, would absolutely not fit with that desire. Still, he had been friendly enough in his letter, without being as pushy as he'd been in the hallway. It might be worth it to write just a short note back.
Harry,
Thank-you for your apology. While you took me by surprise in the corridor the other day, I was more startled than anything else.
As to the rest of it, honestly, I don't know. I am looking for a quiet year of study, and don't need anything starting up outside of classes and the other essentials.
Thank-you, though, for your thoughtfulness. Thank Daisy as well.
Hermione
Hermione,
I know you said you don't need anything above or beyond classes, and please tell me to shove off if you feel like I'm being pushy, but that sounds terribly lonely. I would be willing to start with just studying together if you would be willing to accept that. You are clearly some kind of Runes prodigy, which I could use some help with, honestly. I don't know if you want any help in any of your classes, but I put myself at your disposal.
Harry
Harry,
If you have any tips for picking up which jinxes or hexes are being sent in Defence duels, I would consider that a fair trade for some Runes study. When would you like to meet?
Hermione
And so Hermione found herself outside another classroom near the library, trying to talk herself into actually going into the room and meeting with Harry Potter, of all people. She had mostly convinced herself that he would be alone, that there wouldn't be a group of students pointing and laughing at the new student who thought that Harry would ever want to be friendly with her.
Squaring her shoulders, she reached for the handle and opened the door.
She came! Okay, Harry, don't act like an idiot or you'll scare her off. Again. He'd turned to the door at the first sound of the knob rattling. Hermione had taken a couple steps into the room, then stopped when she spotted him staring at her, like a moron.
He quickly glanced away, and heard her close the door behind her. When he looked up again, she looked nervous. Even with the few lines they'd sent back and forth, Harry got the sense that she wasn't a very social person. It would probably be on him to take the first step, then.
He pointed to a couple of tables he'd pushed together earlier when he'd arrived. “Want to have a seat?”
“Sure,” she replied, looking around the room again while she moved over to the tables. Not that there was much to see. The castle had plenty of disused classrooms, and most were in worse shape than this one. Harry knew this one saw a little use for students who needed a place to practice outside of their class time, so there wasn't dust covering everything, like some empty classrooms had.
There were a few tables piled up on one side of the room, a chalkboard on wheels, and a very squashed-looking sofa pushed up against one of the walls. Other than that, there was a large empty space in the middle, which made it perfect for the kind of practice that Hermione had seemed interested in.
She sat down at one of the little tables, and he sat in the seat opposite her.
“So,” he started. “Um, I thought if we did a bit of Runes first, then we could do the Defence bit after?”
Hermione nodded without saying anything and reached into her bag to grab her Runes work. Harry did the same, and before long, they were talking about the latest assignment that Professor Babbling had set for them, and Harry was able to mostly ignore the champagne-bubbles feeling of being near her.
After an hour or so of Runes, Harry leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Did you want to try some Defence now?”
The two moved to the centre of the room, where there wasn't any furniture.
“So, you want to be able to spot which spell is incoming for duelling?”
Hermione nodded. “I know you can use colour to differentiate the major classes of spells, but I've heard that there are other ways as well.”
“Colour is certainly the most used,” Harry agreed. “But there are a couple of other ways. How good are you at sensing magic?”
When Hermione's face fell, he was able to accurately predict her answer that she had no facility for it at all.
“That's too bad,” he said, shrugging. “It's one of the most accurate ways, but it's also uncommon. You have to be both sensitive and skilled. Even Uncle Sirius sometimes has trouble with spell sensing.”
“So, what other ways?”
“Well, the obvious is hearing the incantations, but because duellers work hard at non-verbal casting, that's really only useful against other students. Wand movements are also good, and the more familiar you are with the spells in a particular opponent's repertoire, the easier that is, but if they start chaining them together, you can lose track of where one stops and the next one starts.”
“Chaining? Is that something that students know how to do?” Hermione asked.
“Not usually, no,” he replied. “Some seventh-year students know one or at most two spell chains, but they're all on the school duelling team, or at least in the club.”
“And you?”
“I'm a sixth-year, same as you,” he said, smiling.
“I notice that in no way answers the question,” Hermione replied.
“Clever girl,” Harry answered.
“Really? A Jurassic Park reference?” Hermione smirked at Harry’s astonished look. “Am I the velociraptor in this instance?”
“Sorry, you’re right,” he said. “You must have a Muggle parent to have gotten that one.”
“Two, actually. They’re dentists.”
Harry winced. His mother, being Muggle-born herself, had not skimped on Harry and Daisy’s education about the Muggle world.
“It’s not that bad,” Hermione said. “I just didn’t have much in the way of sweets growing up.”
“How can you say that’s not bad? That sounds terrible!”
“And you’re still avoiding the question,” Hermione huffed.
“Wow, you are persistent. Well, for your information, yes, I can spell chain.” He smiled at her. “I had some pretty fearsome instructors when I was younger.”
“Your uncles, right?”
“As good as,” Harry said. “They’re just really good friends of my parents. Who don’t knock when they come over. And stay over more than a few nights.”
“That sounds interesting,” Hermione said non-committaly. “I imagine growing up surrounded by magic gave you a bit of a leg-up on coming to Hogwarts.”
“Probably a little,” Harry admitted. “But my mum’s Muggle-born, so we had a foot in both worlds. My grandparents on her side are Muggles.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow at him. “So. Spell identification.”
“Right,” he answered. “Okay, well if you want to stand over there, I’ll fire some spells off in your general direction, and you can try to sort out what they are. Start with colour and wand movement, but see if you can feel them as they get near you.”
He walked over to the other side of the cleared space as Hermione got herself ready opposite him. He looked up at her and raised his wand.
“Ready?” She nodded. “Okay, try not to move. I promise I won’t hit you, but only if you stay still.” She nodded again.
Harry started with a silent Rictumsempra just to see what her reaction would be. Hermione held herself tightly, but not rigidly. It wasn’t as fluid as he’d recommend for a duel, but since she wasn’t firing anything back at him, it didn’t really matter.
“Um, rictumsempra, I think?”
“Yep, got it.” He shot off another, this time a Locomotor wibbly with minimal wand movement.
“Jelly legs,” Hermione called out, more confidently.
“Good call.” Langlock, silently.
“That one I don’t know,” Hermione said, sounding disappointed.
“Here I’ll cast it again.” He did so, making it fly by her left side about thirty centimetres away from her.
“Still don’t know that one, but I thought I felt it!”
“Really? That’s excellent! Not everyone can feel them.”
“I’ve never been able to before, but I haven’t really put much effort towards it either. First time for everything, I guess. That felt like a warm breeze.”
“Yeah, could be. Everyone feels them differently. You have to catalogue them for yourself because no one else’s description will work for you.”
“Can you sense magic?”
Harry nodded, “Some. I’m not good at non-combative spells. I can’t tell when someone’s using a healing spell, for instance, other than by looking.”
“Are there some people who can?” Hermione asked.
“Oh, yeah. One of my aunts is scary good at it. Andromeda. She can usually tell, even if she’s turned away. Her daughter apparently didn’t get away with anything while she was growing up because Aunt Andi could always tell when she was using magic when she wasn’t supposed to.”
Hermione smiled at the story. Harry wasn’t sure how much of his family’s story she would be interested in, but he liked bragging about his family members.
“So, what was that one from just now?”
“Oh, yeah. That was Langlock.”
“That might be why I didn’t recognise it. I’m not familiar with it.”
“I guess Beauxbatons teaches some of the spells in a different order than Hogwarts.”
“Could be,” Hermione replied. “Could you try the banishing charm next? We were working on that one in Defence earlier this year, so I assume I’ll see it in duels before long.”
“Sure thing,” Harry answered. “Depulso.” He didn’t have this one down wordlessly, so he spoke the incantation as he did the wand movement.
“Well, that one definitely felt different than Langlock,” Hermione said. “Can you try Summoning, too?”
“As the lady requests,” Harry smiled. Accio. That one he knew well enough to cast silently. He aimed it at the wall behind Hermione so the spell wouldn’t actually pull anything toward him.
“That one had a completely different feel,” Hermione remarked.
“Was it the opposite of Depulso?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t really know how to describe it.”
“Wow, a Ravenclaw speechless about magic? I never thought I’d see the day,” Harry teased.
“Oh, hush,” Hermione smiled. “Can you try a couple others?”
Harry continued casting spells to either side of Hermione, running through a fair amount of his repertoire of school spells. He held back on anything particularly dangerous, as he didn’t want to even accidentally clip Hermione with one of the more damaging spells.
After another thirty minutes of attempting to identify the spells and succeeding only about half of the time, Hermione called it quits for the time being.
“I think I’m getting the hang of it,” she said, beaming. “I’ve never been able to feel magic so differently.”
“And you’ve never sensed any magic before?” Harry was curious. She’d mentioned that she didn’t have a talent for this, but so far, she’d been able to sense every spell he’d sent her way, even if she didn’t know what it was.
“I mean, there are some that are inherently felt, right?” Hermione asked. “Such as a Patronus or a cheering charm.”
Harry scrunched his face up in thought. “Patronus yes, but I don’t know if the cheering charm feels like its effects or not.”
“Hmm, interesting question,” Hermione replied. “Could you send one past me, then hit me with one?”
Harry did as asked, still full of energy. For some reason, the spells today didn’t seem to take as much out of him as usual. He felt like he could keep going for hours.
After being hit with the cheering charm, Hermione declared that they had similar, but not the same feeling to the charm as to the effect.
After that, they quit for the day, both happy with the progress they’d made, although if asked, they might have had different answers about what they were progressing towards.
The weeks that followed were some of the most productive and frustrating of Hermione’s life. Some days, she finally felt like she was making the progress she ought to have been making in her practical magic all these years, with exercises coming easily to her, and her grades on the magic-making parts of her classes starting to match up with the theoretical magic grades she’d always excelled at.
Other days, she was right back to where she’d been at Beauxbatons, with no explanation as to why her magic seemed to operate on its own schedule.
It was the idea of a magic schedule that finally clued her into what was happening. She started tracking when her magic felt like it was working properly, and when it went back to “normal,” or what passed as normal for her.
When she looked for common factors on the days when her magic responded poorly to her, she was surprised to note that it had never happened at one of her study sessions with Harry. No matter how badly her magic was behaving on a given day, if she had a practice session with Harry that day, her magic settled down and did what was expected of it.
It didn’t seem to matter what it was that they worked on. After Defence, they’d moved on to Charms and Transfiguration, and while his tutoring wasn’t always the most clear instructionally, she was always able to use her magic more consistently.
Magic also behaved itself outside of the study sessions, too, but it was a little harder to track, since there wasn’t a consistency to it. Her usual instability would rear up in the middle of class after things had been going well at the beginning of it, or her magic would simply fail when she went to do some task that had just worked for her a day previously. It was very frustrating.
One thing she did note was that the periods where her magic was unstable seemed to be growing fewer and further between, and she had no satisfactory explanation. Maybe it was the environment at Hogwarts, maybe she was meant to have come here to study. Maybe if she’d started at Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons, she would never have had such problems with her magic.
She didn’t know and it was driving her slightly mad.
The end of term snuck up on her, and suddenly it was time to board the Hogwarts Express - a steam train, of all things - and head back to London before taking a portkey back to her parents in France. She was excited to see them, of course, but she couldn’t help but feel like the progress she’d made at school would be erased by being away from Hogwarts over the holiday break.
On boarding the train, she was surprised to be invited to join Harry and a few of his Gryffindor friends in their compartment. She’d met some of the people in his orbit over the last six weeks that they’d been studying together, but she didn’t feel like she knew them very well.
The tall red-headed boy and the athletic girl with the same colour hair were siblings, she knew. The broad-shouldered boy was Neville, from some pureblood legacy family, apparently. He was dating the bubbly blonde girl from Hufflepuff who’s name was either Anna or Hannah, Hermione wasn’t quite sure. Ron Weasley’s girlfriend was in Slytherin, so she was riding back with her friends, but stopped in for an hour or so and spent most of the time on Ron’s lap, much to the disgust of his sister Ginny.
Ginny was making doe-eyes at Harry, who seemed completely oblivious, much to Neville’s apparent amusement. For some reason, whenever she did it, Neville would look over at Hermione to see her reaction, as if he were in on some private joke that she might find amusing. She was more confused than anything else.
Harry’s own sister stopped by briefly to greet her, and was such a tiny ball of chaotic energy that Hermione felt tired when Daisy left to go back to her own friends. Hermione’s previous interactions with Harry’s sister had been limited in scope, as they were in different years and Houses, but she’d always come away from their encounters feeling like the younger girl had pulled something over on her.
The rest of the time was spent playing games, talking or eating treats from the trolley that came by about halfway through the trip. Hermione felt included for the first time in the group dynamic and spent more than a little time wondering why it was that she’d been invited. She finally decided that it was just part and parcel of being friends with Harry Potter.
Finally, they pulled into King’s Cross, and there was a mad rush for everyone to get off the train. Hermione waited until the crush of people in the corridor had cleared out before heading down to the platform herself.
She was walking to the bank of floos at the end of the platform when she passed Harry’s family. He called her over and introduced her to his parents. Hermione squeaked in embarrassment when Harry’s father dusted her knuckles with a kiss, but was more awestruck when Harry introduced his mother, the Charms researcher. Hermione had read some of Lily Potter’s papers and wanted nothing more than to sit down and pick her brain about some of the things she’d written, but she unfortunately had a scheduled portkey to catch and needed to head to the Ministry of Magic quickly.
Harry gave her a parting hug and whispered in her ear, “Look for Hedwig in the next couple of days. She’ll have your present for Christmas.” A shiver ran down her neck at the feeling of his breath so close to her, but she managed a nod back without looking like a complete idiot, and counted that as a win as she walked towards the floo and her own family waiting for her.
The next week passed more or less as she expected. Her parents were happy to see her of course, and delighted to hear that she had friends at school, but they were busy with their practices, and she played the understanding daughter as they slipped back into their comfortable roles.
She had a couple of days at the beginning of the holiday where her magic obeyed her, and now that she was of age, she was able to demonstrate to her parents what she’d been working on at school. Then, as usual, her magic faltered.
Except then it didn’t. Her usual difficulties with her magic only manifested for about a half of a day, then seemed to go away on their own. It was the evening she welcomed Hedwig and she’d thoughtlessly used a summoning charm on a bag of owl treats that were across the room, remembering only when they were in her hand that earlier that day, she’d smashed a plate doing the exact same charm.
Odd.
She fed and watered Hedwig and took Harry’s gift from her leg, replacing it with her own small gift to him. She put Harry’s gift under the tree and thought no more about it, but was not troubled by her magic’s usual instability until they went to visit her cousins on Christmas Eve.
There, her usual difficulties manifested themselves in spades, and she was at her wits’ end to explain it. After speaking with her cousins about the on-and-off nature of her magic, she caught them giving each other a knowing look over her head, but she was very put out when they wouldn’t explain, only telling her that it was for her to discover, as they didn’t want to ruin it for her.
They apparently had a word with her parents before they went back to the Granger household as both her mother and father looked at her differently the rest of the evening. Her mother seemed, if anything, excited and her father was resigned, as if some long-feared event had come to pass. Neither would tell her what her cousins had said, only infuriatingly repeating that she needed to discover it for herself. Her mother was at least sympathetic, but held fast regardless. “It will be so special for you when you do sort it out, ma chère,” she said.
Christmas morning brought the usual Granger family traditions. Hermione opened everything in her stocking first, then they had breakfast together, just the three of them, then her parents brought out their gifts for her, cleverly hidden away in the attic, a holdover from when she’d been a much too inquisitive five-year-old and had unwrapped and subsequently rewrapped all the gifts under the tree because she couldn’t stand the idea of not knowing. Older and calmer, she no longer needed to know everything, but the gift-hiding was part of the tradition, so she let it go.
Her parents had, as usual, bought her books. Rare ones and ones she wanted to read, to be sure, but it was no surprise. She’d gotten them things they needed, too, rather than things they wanted. Practical gift-giving was the norm in the Granger household.
So it was with no small amount of surprise that when she opened the gift from Harry, which she’d assumed was another book, given it’s roughly rectangular shape, she discovered instead a slim box containing delicate silver chain with a crystal pendant in Ravenclaw silver and blue. The accompanying note said that she had merely to hold it in her hand and squeeze lightly three times, and it would cast a warming charm on her.
She tried it immediately, of course, and was surprised that along with the warmth that now cocooned her, she also felt blanketed in a familiar magic. When she read the note again, she saw that Harry had enchanted it himself. That’s what felt so familiar about it. After having spent the better part of two months with him, both of them casting magic in the disused classroom that became their private study room, she was very familiar with the feel of his magic, and now it was wrapped around her as the charmed pendant kept her warm.
She didn’t notice her mother elbowing her father’s side and gesturing towards her, eyes slightly misty, but she did catch the tail-end of her father’s frown.
“Who was it who sent you that, mon p’tit chou?”
“My friend Harry,” Hermione answered. “I’ve told you about him.” And she had, writing that she was getting help with her studies with a friend. Only the look on her face told her father that this friend was also something more. And with the thoughtful guess his nieces had given him the day before, he wasn’t entirely sold on the whole thing.
Hermione seemed to sense this. “Oh, daddy, don’t be silly. He’s just a friend!”
Her mother smiled. “A friend who sends you jewellery for Christmas.”
Hermione huffed her annoyance. “He doesn’t see me that way. He’s got his pick of girls at school. Honestly, it’s a little shocking he doesn’t date more, what with the way they all bat their lashes at him whenever he walks past. He’s got this one friend, Ron, and his little sister...” and she was off, telling her parents a story about this friend of hers from school.
Both of them noticed, however, that her hand stayed firmly clasped around the pendant the entire time she talked.
The two weeks after Christmas were weirdly normal, in that they were normal, which was weird. No magic accidents at all, and all of her wand work flowed out like she’d been doing it that effortlessly for years instead of mere months.
Hermione was not called one of the brightest witches of her age for nothing, but it is certainly true that it is difficult to see the shape of something whilst you are in the middle of it, and so she can perhaps be forgiven for coming to the correct conclusion as slowly as she did.
She was determined to solve the mystery of her magic. She’d searched high and low for an explanation for its faulty nature for years before, so she knew that there were no answers to be found by rehashing all that research. But she had new avenues to explore now, and pursued them with the same relentless drive that had gotten her through her years at Beauxbatons.
It was two days before she was scheduled to go back to Hogwarts where she stumbled across the reference. She was reading a book on famous witches and wizards that had to overcome great odds and obstacles before achieving their fame. Buried in the middle of one of the stories of a witch from the 15th century who went on to develop several healing potions that were still in use, was a reference to an early difficulty with controlling her magic, and the subsequent discovery of her capital-letter Partner that had helped tame it.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get started with. Hermione dug into the books she had available at their house which, while not extensive, were chosen to give Hermione the broadest base of knowledge possible when she’d entered the magical world fully for the first time at eleven years old.
A couple more references to capital-P Partners were scattered across a half-dozen books. However, none of them had a definition or explanation of what that meant. Frustrated, Hermione realised that she would have to take up her quest to understand once she returned to Hogwarts and had access to the library once more.
She enjoyed the final day before the beginning of the winter term with her family and put up with the strange looks from her parents that they’d been sending her way ever since Christmas Eve.
The sixth of January dawned bright and clear in northern France. Hermione returned to the platform at Kings’ Cross on her own, her parents having to work. She looked around at the throng of people and realised that in order to find anyone, she would likely have to board the train and keep watch from there. She lied to herself that she wasn’t looking for one unruly mop of black hair in particular, but when she spotted it, she felt an odd sense of relief, like a piece of herself clicking back into place.
Harry had not had the most excellent of holidays. While he was glad to be back among family and their friends for the holiday, his magic felt incomplete. He knew why, but was uninterested in announcing it to anyone not already in the know. Not everyone had Compatibility magic, and some that did have it never triggered it. It wasn’t unusual in his family, but neither was it particularly common. His parents would undoubtedly understand, but would still use it as the basis to tease him. And he didn’t need to give his uncles more reasons to give him grief.
Also, for some reason, his magic was acting up. The champagne-bubble feel of his Compatibility had been put on hold for the time being, and it felt like that lack had spread to the rest of his magic. His spells lacked a certain “Oomph,” as his mother put it. It was like he’d gone backwards a couple of years in terms of his casting. Not in his finesse - that remained - but in endurance. It might not have been noticeable to anyone else, but he felt it keenly.
He missed Hermione terribly and realised that this was the longest they’d spent apart from one another since his magic had first been drawn to her at the beginning of the year. Even though it had only been four months, it felt like he’d known her for years. He knew that people found it difficult to be separated from their Compatible Partners once the Compatibility had been established on both sides. Ron, for instance, was visiting Tracey every couple of days over the holiday, and Hannah more or less lived at Longbottom Hall over the breaks, but as Hermione hadn’t acknowledged their bond, he didn’t feel it would be right to try to force a visit to her family in France, or drag her to meet his.
He felt like he sleepwalked through the week before Christmas, going shopping for gifts, and spending time with friends that he hardly remembered afterwards. The one thing he was happy about was the gift he’d gotten for Hermione. He’d spent a fair amount of time figuring out the enchantments he wanted to use while he was still at Hogwarts, so it was just the finding of the perfect piece of jewellery to hold the enchantments that was at issue.
On Christmas, he opened her gift to him and laughed out loud, startling his family, when he saw that she’d sent him a hand-crafted enamel pin of a lightning bolt crossed with a wand. He immediately pinned it to his shirt and wore it proudly for the rest of the holiday.
He was looking forward to the ride back to Hogwarts not only to reconnect with his friends he hadn’t seen in days, but just to be able to see Hermione again.
As he walked down the platform and had a momentary feeling of being watched, but it passed quickly. He made his way onto the train and was weaving between students cluttering up the corridor when his magic spiked and the feeling of champagne bubbles overwhelmed him.
That should have been warning enough, but he was still taken by surprise when a hand darted out of one of the compartments he was walking past and pulled him in. The rush of magic made him trip into his erstwhile kidnapper, and he felt the two of them teeter briefly before falling over.
His Quidditch-honed reflexes saved the day, and he turned over as he fell, so that when he landed on his back on the floor of the compartment and his breath rushed out of him, he was looking up at Hermione, who’d landed on top of him with a little grunt of her own.
“Whoa,” she said, blinking down at him. This close, Harry was once again struck by the flecks of colour in her eyes, and the richness of the colouration of her hair. It wasn’t all caramel-coloured. There were strands of tawny gold, some darker brown, and some auburn highlights that were only visible because the morning sun was shining in through the window and illuminating the riot of curls floating around her head.
“Hi,” Harry said weakly. Hermione seemed to be frozen on top of him, apparently incapable of rational speech for a moment. “Um. Not that I mind terribly, it’s just that the floor isn’t exactly the most comfortable.”
Hermione looked down at him, seemed to realise that she was more or less lying on top of him, and squeaked as she jumped off of him, managing to land a knee in his groin as she did so.
Harry curled up on his side with a groan, his hands shooting down to protect his bits, though much too late.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry Harry!” Hermione said. “I was just trying to get your attention, then you stumbled and we were falling and I ended up on top of you, and it suddenly felt like there were butterflies everywhere and I couldn’t move, and then you were... and I-”
“It’s okay,” Harry managed to wheeze out. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” Hermione said. “I’m so sorry! Can I help?”
“Help?” Harry asked.
“Oh, god, not- I meant, do you need- You know what? I’m just going to stop talking.” Harry couldn’t help but chuckle. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling of the compartment.
After a moment, he sat up and looked over at Hermione, who was sitting on the bench seat of the compartment, hiding her face in her hands. Harry wanted to reach out and reassure her, but wasn’t sure what was appropriate, so he simply sat down opposite her and waited.
After a minute or so, she lowered her hands and looked at him. “I’m so sorry, Harry.”
“Yeah, I caught that part,” he replied, smirking back at her. “Butterflies, though?”
“What?”
“You said you were covered in butterflies.”
“Oh. Right. Well, when I landed. On you, I mean. Um. Well, there was this feeling like a flock... A flock? A group? A crowd? Anyway, like a bunch of butterflies were all around me, brushing their wings against my skin, all over.”
“Really?”
“I know, you are probably wondering if I hit my head,” Hermione said.
“No, I’m wondering why you thought it was butterflies instead of something else,” Harry said, smiling.
“I don’t know,” Hermione answered. “It’s just the image that popped into my head.”
“So,” Harry continued. “Was there a particular reason you dragged me in here, or were you just wanting to say hi?”
Hermione’s cheek’s pinked adorably, and Harry felt a little bad for putting her on the spot again, but it was just so much fun to tease her. Particularly since he was finally feeling like himself again with her nearby.
“Um... I... Uh... mostly just wanted to say hi,” she stammered out, reaching up to clutch onto something around her neck, which seemed to ground her. “Oh, and also to say thanks again for your gift.” She opened her hand, and he could see that it was the pendant he’d sent that she was holding. “It was just about the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever gotten, and certainly the best one this Christmas.”
Harry smiled. “You’re welcome. And thank-you for the pin. I take it you made it yourself?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I learned how at a summer camp a few years back, and people seemed to like it, so I occasionally bring out the supplies to make one for someone now and then.”
“Well, I’m honoured to be one of the recipients of your craftmanship. Or craftwomanship, I suppose. Craftpersonship?”
Hermione giggled at his confusion, then looked slightly mortified. It was, as he was increasingly finding around her, adorable.
The next few minutes before the train left were spent catching each other up on their holidays, with Harry glossing over the full amount he’d missed her presence. His friends found them as the train was leaving King’s Cross and joined them, and the trip back to school passed enjoyably as they all got caught up on each others’ holidays.
The big news was that Neville’s grandmother and Hannah’s parents had agreed to a betrothal between the two of them. Hannah was showing off the ring that Neville had picked out of his family vaults for her, and all the girls were cooing at the romanticism of it all.
Hermione seemed a little surprised that betrothals were still a function of magical society, and Harry rushed to try to explain why two teenagers would be getting engaged so young, without talking about Compatibility. Neville helped out, since he was privy to the whole of the information, but some of the others, particularly Ron and Tracey seemed confused as to why he wouldn’t mention it. They knew him well enough, however, to not give up the game.
Later that evening, Ron and Neville joined him in a game of Exploding Snap and Ron asked the question that had apparently been on his mind since the trip on the Express. “Is there a reason that you didn’t want Hermione to know about Compatibility? I mean, that would have made the explanation about Nev and Hannah so much simpler.”
Harry sighed. He glanced over at Neville, who just nodded resignedly. “Okay Ron. You can’t let anyone know this. Hermione is my Partner.”
“That’s great, though, innit?” Ron looked back and forth between Harry and Neville. “Isn’t it?”
It was Neville who spoke up. “Hermione is muggle-born. She wasn’t raised on the stories of Compatibility.”
“So? Explain it to her. That doesn’t seem hard.”
Harry searched about for an explanation. “How would you feel if someone you’d just met told you that from now on, your favourite food was going to be chicken. And no matter what other foods you ate, you’d never be quite as satisfied as you would with chicken. Would you be happy with that person?”
Ron was silent for a moment, his brow creased in thought. “And you’re chicken in this scenario?”
Neville snorted and Harry laughed. “That’s what you got out of it?”
“Okay, okay,” Ron said. “I can see why that wouldn’t necessarily be the best outcome. So what’s the plan?”
“Well, sticking with the metaphor, it would be a lot better for you to discover on your own that chicken was your favourite food, wouldn’t it? If you came to that decision on your own, rather than someone forcing you into it?”
“Oh, I get it. If she’s Compatible with you, eventually, she’ll figure it out on her own.”
“That’s the idea, yes.”
“How are you going to keep people from spilling the beans?” Ron asked.
“Honestly, outside of you guys talking about how your relationships started with Compatibility, I’m not sure she’d necessarily put it together immediately. That’s why I tried to explain Nev and Hannah without talking about it. I don’t want her to feel pressured at all.”
“How noble, Heir Potter,” Ron said.
“Oh sod off,” Harry replied, maturely.
“Seriously, though,” Ron continued. “Do you think she’ll be mad that you knew when she finally does sort it out?”
“I asked my mum about that, and she didn’t think so,” Harry answered. “She grew up Muggle, too, and while there are certainly stories of ‘love at first sight’ among Muggles, there’s no direct analogue to Compatibility magic. Mum reckons she’ll be happy I let her make her own decision about the whole thing.”
“That’s surprisingly forward-thinking of you,” Ron said.
“Well, you have to remember, this was after two weeks of me moping around the house feeling like I was missing a part of me. Honestly, I don’t know how dad did it for years.”
“Maybe he’s just a better wizard than you,” Neville interjected.
“Oh yes, thanks for that,” Harry answered, and the conversation moved on to other topics.
The next morning at breakfast, Hedwig landed gracefully in front of him while he was assembling a bacon butty. He absently passed one of the pieces of bacon to her while he untied the scrap of parchment from her leg.
Dear Harry,
Ready to get back to studying? Tonight after dinner at the usual place?
Hermione
He smiled and scratched back an acceptance on the back of the parchment and retied it to Hedwig, who gave him an affectionate nip before taking off and sailing out of the Great Hall. Harry glanced over at the Ravenclaw table, but didn’t see Hermione there. Well, wherever she was, Hedwig would find her.
It took her six weeks, but Hermione finally tracked down a reference to Partner magic episodes, which turned out not be what she was really looking for, as it dealt mostly with marital celestial alignment for ritual magic, with which she was already tragically familiar. But that book did point her in a new direction when she started looking into enchanted artefacts that enhanced the magic of the wearer.
Her evening sessions with Harry had resumed seamlessly, but they felt less necessary now. Her magic was behaving like she’d always been told it should, and she was beginning to conclude that there was something about Hogwarts that might be the cause.
It was an unsatisfactory answer for numerous reasons, chief among which, if it were true, then her summers would go back to being more like what she’d come to expect from her magic while she attended Beauxbatons. Having now experienced what others took for granted in their magic, she never wanted to have to return to the instability that had plagued her since her earliest accidental magic manifestation.
Having Hogwarts be the reason her magic was finally behaving itself also didn’t explain how her magic had settled down partway through the Christmas holiday. After the one night she’d had issues while visiting her cousins on Christmas Eve, her magic had been quite tame. Her cousins had kept their word and hadn’t told her their suspicions about her magic, which made it all the more frustrating that they apparently knew something she didn’t.
Well. She would put in the work that those who grew up around magic didn’t have to, in order to figure it out.
Her newest suspicion was that something that she’d received for Christmas was responsible, and the only item that had any magical characteristics at all was the pendant Harry had given her. Of course she’d looked up warming charms, but none of those in any way explained how it could have an effect on her magic, just on her person if she was cold.
She chased down a reference to the person who enchanted it having an effect due to the use of their magic, and that seemed to be the most promising lead. She was going to follow that up next.
The study session that evening was ostensibly to help Harry with Professor Babbling’s latest assignment, but Hermione had found that with her help, Harry was excelling in the class and didn’t really need the extra time they set aside for studying. Just as she didn’t really need the extra time for Transfiguration with her magic now responding promptly and powerfully to her requests of it. She found, however, that she was loath to cancel the study sessions, and wondered if Harry felt the same way.
They weren’t in the same House, and so most of their classes were apart, so the sessions were one of the places where they could spend time together. They did talk about classes, but also their home lives, their families, their hopes and dreams for the future. Hermione was fascinated to hear Harry’s stories about growing up surrounded by magic, and she was happy to share the memories she had of growing up and discovering magic with non-magical parents. She felt like she was getting to know Harry the person, not just Harry the Boy Who Lived. And she was finding she quite liked getting to know him, and having him get to know her too.
They also studied in the library with their friends. And truly, the group around them now were her friends as well. She might not know them as well as Harry, as she’d only had months with them, rather than the years that he did, but they were friendly and generous and included her without her even noticing at first. She was beginning to feel, after five and a half years of studying in the world of magic, that she had a place in it.
It was during one of the library sessions that she noticed there were topics that they didn’t speak about. It was most evident when they were talking about the couples among them. Hermione had heard the stories of how Neville and Hannah had gone together to the Yule Ball held in their fourth year, and they came out of it as a couple, but there was clearly something that had happened at the ball that none of them were mentioning.
Ron and Tracey’s story was similar. It sounded like a classic opposites-attract kind of relationship, but Hermione had the distinct feeling she was missing a whole dimension to their relationship that everyone else was privy to. And maybe it was just because they were still getting to know her that they talked circles around whatever subject they were avoiding, but Hermione felt like there was something else going on.
When she asked Harry about it, he brushed it off and it was the first time she felt like he’d lied to her in their entire acquaintance. She was quite cross with him for a couple of days and cancelled one of their study sessions, but eventually relented when he sent her a note with Hedwig explaining that he would love to talk to her about it, but it was pretty personal, and he wanted to wait a bit.
Mollified, she went back to her research on magical instability and items enchanted with magic that retained something of the enchanter. And, as a side project, she started to look up magical relationships to see if she could figure out on her own what it was that the group wasn’t saying.
Of course things couldn’t last. And it being his life, things went sideways in the most absurd way possible. Luna Lovegood found her Compatibility. Right in front of Hermione.
Luna had joined them for one of their library study sessions. She’d been attending them on and off for the last three years, ever since Harry had discovered that she was being bullied by some of the older Ravenclaws and put a stop to it by more or less adopting the younger girl as another younger sister.
Daisy was overjoyed that Luna would help her drive Harry to distraction, and would often egg her on in talking about one of her imaginary animals just to see how long it would take before Harry either rolled his eyes or started laughing at their increasingly absurd descriptions of animals that only Luna could apparently see.
In fact, Harry partly blamed Daisy for what transpired that late February afternoon. It was a couple of weeks after Luna’s birthday, and she was still riding the high from the surprise party that the group had thrown for her, smiling and humming to herself as she worked on an assignment for Charms at the table in the back of the library with the rest of the group of mostly older students. Harry, Ron, Neville and Ginny represented Gryffindor, Hannah was there from Hufflepuff, Luna and Hermione were the Ravenclaws in attendance, and Tracey was the sole Slytherin at their table.
Daisy came up to the group to ask Harry something, and one of her friends came along. Daisy introduced her as Heidi Macavoy, and she nodded hellos to most of the group, but when she locked eyes with Luna, it was as if the rest of the world dropped away.
Harry, who’d seen this happen around him twice already, knew precisely what was going on when Luna got up from her chair and walked around the table as if in a daze to where Heidi was standing in shock. Luna took Heidi’s hand in hers and the two shivered simultaneously as their magic reacted to the other’s and Compatibility was recognised.
Luna was the first to lean in and kiss the younger girl chastely on the lips, but that apparently wasn’t enough for Heidi, who hungrily started kissing the airy blonde back.
Harry cleared his throat loudly to get Daisy’s attention, then nodded to the pair of newly Compatible Partners, then jerked his head to the exit of the library. Daisy, getting the hint, took Heidi’s other hand and pulled her friend and Luna along with her to find a spot where the pair could be alone for a bit while their magic settled into the new reality of the situation.
Harry glanced around the table and saw recognition in most of the faces there, but when he got to Hermione, she was wide-eyed in shock.
“What? What... just happened?” Hermione looked over at him. “What was that?”
Harry sighed. He knew there was no avoiding it. “That was Compatibility magic.”
“I’ve never... what? I mean... what? I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Hermione’s eyes were wide, and he could see a trace of fear on her face.
He huffed out a breath. This was going to be an interesting explanation. “I’m not that surprised that you haven’t heard of it. It’s not very common. In fact, it’s extremely unlikely that there would be this many Compatible couples at Hogwarts at the same time.”
“What do you mean?”
Harry nodded at the two couples at the table with them. “Neville and Hannah, and Ron and Tracey are Compatible.”
“But what does that mean?”
“Compatibility is...” he searched for the right words. “It’s a way for your magic to determine the best possible match for you. If you have Compatibility magic, and if you happen across the person who is Compatible for you, your magic will reach out to them and theirs to you. That’s what just happened to Luna and Heidi. Their magic recognised in each other the best partner for them.”
“But what happens if one of them doesn’t...” Hermione started.
“Sometimes people with Compatibility don’t ever find their match,” Harry said. “And sometimes one person’s magic will be ready before the others. My parents are Compatible, but my dad’s magic was reaching out a long time before my mum’s. He had to wait from first year until sixth year before hers reached back.”
Hermione thought for a moment. “So if you have Compatibility magic and you date or marry someone who’s not your match, what then?”
“Nothing much, unless you had already found your match. There are probably lots of people with Compatibility magic who never find their match who go on to live completely normal lives. Lots of people get married to someone who is a good match without being the ideal one for them. They’re happy, because they choose to be, and they don’t know that someone else might be matched more closely.”
“Does it ever happen that someone who’s already married meets their match after?”
Harry had to think about the teaching he’d gotten on it from his parents. “I’m sure it must. I don’t know what happens in that case.”
Hermione was looking at Neville and Hannah now. “Is that why they got engaged so young?”
“Partly, yes. Once you find your Compatibility match, there’s not much sense in keeping on looking.”
“I suppose. What happens if they do?”
“If they have acknowledged their Compatibility with each other, then it would be bad. Partners are weakened when they are separated for long periods of time. There’s actually laws on the books at the Wizengamot against separating Compatible Partners. They will feel like there is something missing from them, and their magic will be significantly weaker. On the other hand, Partners are always stronger together.”
“Partners are always stronger together.” That phrase kept rattling around in Hermione’s head. Was she… were they? Why wouldn’t he have said something if they were?
Of course, she’d looked it up once she had a name for it. And of course, it explained why her magic settled down when she was around him. It also hinted at why her magic hadn’t ever worked properly before. But if magic that was Compatible didn’t work properly until it found its match, why wouldn’t everyone who had it know about it immediately? Something else was going on.
She reexamined every interaction she’d ever had with Harry Potter, going back to the beginning of the year. Things that hadn’t made sense at the time suddenly clicked into place, like why her magic had been so well-behaved on the first evening he’d waited for her in the corridor outside the classroom she’d been practising in. Why the magic he imbued into the pendant he’d given her for Christmas had the same calming effect on her magic that being near him did.
Did it explain why he spent so much time with her in the first place? Had he recognised what they had because he heard about it from his parents? She had to know.
At their next evening study session, where it was just the two of them, she found him already waiting for her in their usual classroom. He was sitting on the sofa against one wall and had a look on his face that suggested to her that he already knew what she wanted to talk about.
Without beating around the bush, she pulled a chair over and sat down in front of him. “Are we Compatible?”
He didn’t say anything, but searched her face with those brilliant green eyes of his, looking for something. After a moment of searching, he nodded slowly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was trying to force you into something,” he answered her. She could see where he was coming from. If he’d come up to her initially and told her they were Partners, selected for each other by magic, she might have thought it was a line.
“But you kept it from me, even after I asked about Nev and Hannah,” she said, knowing she sounded somewhat petulant.
“I know,” he sighed. “And if I hurt you because of that, I am sorry. I just…” He looked down at his feet. “I just wanted you to come to the idea on your own without any pressure.”
Hermione sat quietly for a moment. She thought about what he was saying. It was kind of sweet, in a way. He was trying to let her make the decision. “How long have you known?”
“Since September first. The sorting. My magic bubbled up while you were waiting in line to go after all the firsties. I was just hoping it wasn’t one of them.” He laughed. “Daisy would never have let me forget it.”
Hermione smiled sadly. “Does she know? Daisy, I mean?”
“Yeah, since the disaster in the corridor.” Harry looked up at her again. “I wanted her help in getting you to talk to me again.”
“How many others know?”
“Nev and Ron. I don’t know if they told Hannah and Tracey. My mum. That’s it.”
Hermione sat back on the chair. All these people who’d known that Harry was Compatible with her. That his magic was reaching out for hers. Wait. “I think my cousins figured it out,” she said, eyes widening in realisation. “I think they told my parents.”
Harry smiled softly at her. “So, what do you want to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I still don’t want to put any pressure on you. If this is something you want, we can go ahead and link our magic, but if you don’t, it’s best if we walk away.”
Hermione could see something in his eyes as he watched her. A wariness, maybe. She had a sudden insight. “How much would it hurt you? Your magic, I mean. How much would it hurt if we didn’t go ahead with it?”
“Hermione,” he said softly. “I am not going to pressure you into anything. If you don’t want this, if you don’t want… me, I don’t want you to go through with it anyway out of a sense of guilt.”
“Harry Potter,” she said, huffing out her breath in annoyance. “I don’t- I want… damnit.” She stopped. Her eyes watered and she sniffed back a tear. “This has been the best year of my life.” She suddenly realised it was true. She had friends now. She felt like she belonged. Her magic obeyed her when she called on it to do something. And in the study time she’d spent with Harry, she’d gotten to know him and found she liked what she’d discovered.
“Harry, I don’t even know where to start. You know a little about my life before coming here. I don’t even know how to describe how different my life is since coming here. Since meeting you. I was on a path to repeating the same kind of year I’d had at Beauxbatons until you crashed into my life with your Shakespeare quotes and your owl-delivered notes and your kindness and friendship.” And just like that, she had her answer. “I do want this. I want it with you.” She looked back at him to see him beaming at her.
He reached out a hand and she placed hers in his, and he pulled her over onto the couch with him. A tingle was beginning to build across her entire body as they sat as close to each other as they’d ever been.
“So how do we-“ Her question was cut off as his free hand came up and cupped her cheek and he leaned in and gently, ever so gently, kissed her. The tingle she’d felt exploded into a full-blown swarm of butterflies all over her in a sensation she recognised and now welcomed as she understood finally what it meant.
As their kiss deepened, her magic swirled around her and around him, and she felt his reciprocal magic cocooning her in the familiar sensation she’d come to recognise through their study sessions. She leaned in and her own hand came up to Harry’s chest and she felt the last vestiges of her magic’s lack of control crumble under the new reality that she was Harry’s and Harry was hers and his magic bolstered her control and hers gave him endurance like he’d never had.
When they finally separated after what seemed like lifetimes, but was probably just moments, she opened her eyes and saw his emerald gaze on her, softer than anyone had ever looked on her before. His watery smile was a mere breath away, and what she saw in his gaze made her stomach swoop in joy as she recognised in him her Partner.
“Now what?” She heard herself asking, and he chuckled in response.
“Now, whatever we want. Though I have to warn you, Daisy is going to be insufferable.”
She intertwined her fingers with his and smiled back at him. “I think I can handle that.”
He grinned, and gave her another peck on the lips, which made her insides do funny things. “I’m going to remind you that you said that when she inevitably drives you around the bend.”
“I think we can handle it,” she replied. “After all, you did tell me that Partners are always stronger together.”
“Yes, I did. And yes, we are.”
“What do you want to tell people?”
“Well, everyone doesn’t need to know about our Compatibility, but I don’t think anyone would be surprised, given all the time we’ve spent together this year, if we started dating.” Her eyebrows rose. “So, Hermione Granger, would you like to go out with me? Be my girlfriend?”
“Absolutely,” she said, smiling. She leaned in and kissed him once more, and it was everything she’d hoped for. What a year this had been. From lonely and broken in September to powerful and desired. Her parents weren’t going to believe the change.
Her parents. Oh god, how was she going to explain that she was basically engaged to a boy she’d only met this year? Harry seemed to sense her distress. “Hermione, what is it?”
“My parents are never going to understand this,” she said, pointing back and forth between them. “I’ve never even gone on a date before, and now I’m more or less engaged.”
“I thought you said your cousins explained it.”
“It’s a little different to hear about it in the abstract. I’m going to have to explain to them that you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other over the summer or bad things will happen, and they’re going to think you’ve bewitched me or something and they’re not going to- mphf,” the beginnings of her panic were stopped in their tracks as she found herself lifted onto Harry’s lap and hugged tight.
“Relax, Hermione,” Harry spoke into her hair, kissing her forehead softly. “Your parents want you to be happy. Are you happy?”
She looked up at his face, beaming. “Yes, without a doubt.”
“Then there you go. Everything will be okay.”
And it was.
Fin