Chapter Text
But in love
our hearts have mingled
as red earth and pouring rain.
— excerpt from the Kurontokai translated by Ramanujan
Harriet Potter had never seen a table laden with so much food in her entire life—and she’d grown up in a household with a kitchen that had always been busy. Not a day had gone by when the stove and counters of Number Four Privet Drive hadn’t been crammed to the edges with trays of meats and biscuits and puddings and pies so her rotund cousin could waddle in and grab a snack whenever he felt peckish.
…Which had been nearly every two minutes.
Well, okay, maybe not every two minutes. Maybe every ten minutes.
Anyway, the point was that it hadn’t been often Harriet saw Aunt Petunia out of her apron or straying too far from the kitchen. For all her slaving away to make her little Duddypopkins happy, she had never managed to whip up anything close to the spectacular feast stretching from end to end upon the Gryffindor table.
Under the floating candlelights, a cornucopia of hearty dishes steamed and glistened in front of Harriet and the rest of the ravenous students: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, flaky croissants and buttered sourdough rolls, spicy sausages, crispy bacon and pepper steak, mashed potatoes, cheesy roast potatoes, curly golden fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs.
Her stomach rumbled.
“Potatoes, Harriet?” Percy Weasley solicitously asked, pushing an enormous silver bowl of mash towards her.
“Oh, yeah! Thanks!” the girl beamed, eagerly helping herself to a couple of heaping spoonfuls and making sure to drown them in gravy.
Since she wanted to try some of everything, soon there wasn’t any shimmering gold of her plate left to be glimpsed. Her relatives hadn’t starved her, exactly, but she hadn’t ever been able to eat as much as she would’ve liked either.
The tender pork chop crackled beautifully as she cut into it, the juices and butter melting on her tongue. With a blissful sigh, she closed her eyes as she chewed, momentarily savoring the rich flavor before she dug enthusiastically into her gravy-flooded potatoes. The mash was fluffy with hints of garlic and buttermilk, and the gravy itself was everything its appearance promised it would be: fatty and salty and creamy.
Reaching over, Harriet snuck a couple more spoonfuls of the heavenly stuff onto her dwindling potato mountain, grinning unabashedly when her eyes met those of the watchful, bushy-haired witch sitting across from her. “I think gravy is my new favorite food,” she said to excuse her greed before happily taking another bite.
The other girl—Hermione, Harriet recalled from their brief conversation on the train, Hermione Granger—smiled, her expression both amused and assenting. “It really is quite good, isn’t it?”
At the bespectacled witch’s avid nod, Percy commented, “The house elves have certainly outdone themselves this year.”
“House elves?” Harriet curiously asked, pouring herself a goblet of pumpkin juice before offering the heavy flagon to Hermione, who took it with a grateful bob of her head.
“House elves are magical beings and are about a metre in length, with thin bodies, bald heads, bulbous round eyes, and bat-like ears,” Hermione explained, sounding as if she were reading from a wizarding encyclopedia. “They are immensely devoted and loyal to the one designated as their master.” Then a slight frown puckered her brow as she glanced inquiringly at Percy. “I didn’t know house elves lived at Hogwarts. I’ve read Hogwarts, A History and it didn’t mention them.”
“Indeed they do!” the boy said with an air of pomposity that Harriet found hilarious, and she bit her lower lip against a giggle. “Approximately two hundred are beholden to Hogwarts. They clean and cook for us all.”
“An’ goo’ thing, ‘oo!” Percy’s lanky and freckled brother Ron chimed in around a mouthful of roast chicken. Apparently he had been listening in on their conversation. At Percy’s reprimanding look, Ron quickly swallowed before adding, “Otherwise, we’d probably starve to death! I mean, it’s not like the professors would cook for us!”
One of the Weasley twins snorted into his goblet while the other snickered, “Can you imagine Snape cooking anyone food, George?”
“I think I would pay actual galleons to see him wear a ruddy chef’s hat and apron!”
“He’d probably incinerate them before they could touch his esteemed person.”
As one, all the redheaded brothers surreptitiously looked at the staff table. Harriet followed their line of gaze curiously. “Who’s Snape?” she asked a little too loudly, for one of the twins quickly shushed her.
“Blimey, Harriet, keep your voice down! Don’t call his attention to us.”
“Yeah, the last thing we need is to be incinerated like a chef’s hat and apron.”
“Professor Snape,” Percy shot a disapproving scowl at his guffawing siblings, “is the tall man just there, to the far left. The one with long black hair and black robes.”
As the bespectacled witch turned her inquisitive attention to the wizard, she immediately agreed with whichever twin had said Snape would set a chef’s hat and apron on fire rather than wear them. The man was the very embodiment of the word austere—everything about him, from the cut of his clothes to his hooked, angular looks, screamed relentless severity.
“He looks…errr…strict,” she hedged, staring at the professor’s pale, grim face. She couldn’t imagine him ever laughing or cracking a smile—even a small one.
“That’s putting it too nicely, Harriet,” Fred chided. “He’s bloody ruthless.”
“He hates Gryffindors,” George added in a dark undertone. “Really has it out for us. He’ll take points away for any reason, real or fake, the biased git. So watch out.”
“Don’t let them scare you.” Percy glowered at Fred and George before eyeing Harriet, Hermione, and Ron, who all looked rather apprehensively back at him. “If you keep your head down and do your work, you’ll be just fine in his class.”
“What does he teach?” Hermione asked politely.
“Potions. He’s a right genius over a cauldron.”
“He’s a right berk is what he is,” muttered George.
Harriet snuck another glance over at Snape—and felt her heart catapult into her throat when she found herself staring directly into his hard eyes.
Was it possible he had overheard their conversation? No, it was much too loud in the Great Hall, with all the clinking and clanking of dishware and all the chatter and laughter. There was no way he could’ve heard them from all the way over there!
…Right?
Flushing, for it wasn’t as if she had called him names, she raised her chin and stared right back at him, ignoring the nervous little voice inside of her squeaking at her to look away. Such an action would imply she was guilty, and she wasn’t!
Snape’s eyes were piercingly cold. Assessing. Calculating. And his expression was inscrutable, completely devoid of any emotion Harriet could easily understand. Then, in the next instant, his dark gaze flicked away from hers and he returned his attention to the stammering, turbaned wizard on his left.
The girl let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in a low, slow whoosh before glancing around at the table. No one seemed to have noticed Snape studying her for those brief few seconds. Maybe he had only looked at her like that because she was…well, who she was. It wouldn’t be the first time a wizarding adult had paid her such attention.
It was still a bit startling—not to mention disconcerting—to be scrutinized, especially since she’d been mostly ignored in the Muggle world for the past ten years of her life. There, she hadn’t been anyone of consequence, just an odd, orphaned girl existing in obscurity. Here, literally everyone knew her name because she was the Girl Who Lived. To be frank, she didn’t much like that title, or all the attention that came with it. All it did was remind her that her parents hadn’t died in a car accident—they’d been murdered by the one of the Darkest wizards ever born.
I guess I better get used to the attention though, she thought with uneasy determination as she swallowed her pounding heart back into its proper place. This is my world too, now.
Although, she supposed it always had been.
“Right, you lot!” prefect Cora Daly called, sticking her head into the first years’ dormitory. “Lights out in ten minutes!” Then she disappeared to yell her good-natured warning at the second, third, and fourth years living on the floors above theirs.
“Wonder if I’ll even make it ten more minutes. I’m knackered,” Harriet yawned, shimmying out of her robes and uniform.
“I can’t wait for classes to start tomorrow,” Hermione remarked, her excitement prevalent even in her sleepy voice as she pulled her nightgown over her head. “I wonder which one will be first.”
“Harriet!” Lavender Brown squealed suddenly.
Harriet was pulling the other leg of her pajama bottoms up her calf and nearly toppled over at her dormmate’s excited shriek. Utterly bewildered, she settled her trousers around her waist and gaped at Lavender, who was pointing dramatically at her. “What?”
“You have a soulmate mark!”
“I have a what?”
“You do?” gasped Parvati Patil, nearly tripping over the hem of her nightdress as she rushed around her four poster to goggle.
“A soulmate mark! Right there!” Lavender all but jabbed Harriet’s skin, the look on her face a curious blend of shock and envy.
Flushing, Harriet awkwardly tugged her shirt over her head and down her torso to hide her navel—and the mark just below it. “What are you on about?”
Parvati arched an incredulous brow at her from over Lavender’s shoulder. “Don’t you know what a soulmate mark is?”
The bespectacled witch ignored the question, quite uncomfortable with the way they were all staring at her, and protested, “It’s a birthmark!”
“Actually, Harriet…it’s not,” Hermione said quietly, and when Harriet frowned, the bushy-haired girl gave her an apologetic half-smile. “I’ve read a bit about them. You see, it’s the silver sheen that gives it away as being a soulmate mark rather than, say, a birthmark, or an old scar.”
“My uncle has one,” Lavender shared. “It’s silvery, just like yours. But his is a different shape. Can you imagine if my uncle and you were soulmates?” she giggled.
Harriet plopped down on the edge of her bed, huffing up at the three of them. “Okay…so I grew up with Muggles, yeah? That means I’m still playing catch up with all this wizarding society stuff. Just what is a soulmate mark?”
“It means that somewhere out there,” Lavender waved towards the arching window and the wide world beyond, “you have a soulmate,” she explained dryly, but she couldn’t seem to help the rather dreamy expression crossing her face as she clasped her hands over her heart.
“A soulmate,” Harriet repeated dubiously. “As in…what? Someone I’m supposed to—to love?” It sounded bloody stupid, like something out of a fairytale, or—worse—a lame plot from one of those cheesy soap operas Aunt Petunia loved to watch during weekday afternoons. But since Lavender and Parvati nodded fervently, she supposed she had to take this seriously, even when she wanted to laugh her disbelief.
“But, really, there’s more to it than that,” Hermione ventured at the same time Parvati exclaimed enthusiastically, “And you’ve already met your soulmate! The mark only shows up when you touch them for the first time. You know, like if you shake hands, or brush against them on a crowded sidewalk…”
“I’ve read it burns when it appears,” Hermione murmured.
“Yeah, my uncle told me his did,” Lavender nodded sagely. “So, since it’s hard to miss who your soulmate is…” her eyes gleamed with sly eagerness, “who is yours, Harriet?”
“I don’t know,” the bespectacled witch shrugged self-consciously. “I grew up with Muggles, remember? Can Muggles get soulmate marks?”
Hermione shook her head, her expression thoughtful. “You definitely ran into your soulmate somewhere though. And, honestly, it’s really none of our business who it is.” She glanced pointedly at Lavender, who suddenly had wherewithal to look somewhat ashamed.
Harriet looked from Hermione to Lavender and wondered if asking about one’s soulmate was taboo. God, she still had so much to learn about her own culture. “Well,” she said in a tone that let everyone know she hadn’t really taken offense but was ready to move off the subject, “I don’t remember ever meeting anyone that caused any, errr…burning.”
Lavender and Parvati looked sorely disappointed by this revelation.
“And besides,” Harriet suddenly grinned, a thrill of exhilaration running through her as the realization of where she was hit her yet again, as it had been doing intermittently all night, “I have the rest of my life to figure out who it is, don’t I?” Who wanted to worry about soulmates and love and all that ridiculous adult stuff when one was only eleven years old and a witch and starting school to learn all sorts of magic in a real medieval castle with talking portraits and moving staircases and hidden corridors and secret rooms, all surrounded by a lake home an honest-to-God giant squid and a sprawling forest actually called the Forbidden Forest, anyway?
“I thought I said ten minutes, you lot!” Cora sternly hollered from the doorway, and all four girls started guiltily.
“Sorry!” they chorused, Hermione, Lavender, and Parvati springing away to their beds while Harriet flopped down onto her mattress.
Clicking her tongue, the older witch swished her wand and the bright sconces along the walls all went out at once, plunging the room into darkness broken only by a beam of moonlight shining in through the window.
“Good night, Cora!” Harriet cheekily called after the departing prefect.
“Go to bed, brats!” she called back, her tone more amused than annoyed as it drifted down the stairwell.
Before Harriet fell into a deep, dreamless sleep buried under soft sheets and a plush crimson coverlet, it didn’t occur to her to ask the girls to keep the fact she had a soulmate mark to themselves. Hermione, she found out the next day, wasn’t a nattering gossip. But Lavender and Parvati definitely were.