Chapter Text
“We have to be able to figure this out,” stated Hermione as she lowered the hot drinks onto the coffee table in the living room. Passing a mug each to Ginny, Luna, Fleur, and Tonks, she picked up the last for herself and took a sip. “Why us specifically? There must be a logical reason for all of us to have these symptoms. As far as we know, no one else does, and I can’t find any mention of it in my books on magical ailments.”
“Emotionally driven accidental magic, spontaneous miscasting of spells, and strange… erotic dreams, shall we say?” Ginny listed, setting her own mug back on the table. “All appearing simultaneously in witches that were previously more than competent. Ignoring the fact that we all fought in and won a war, we’ve got a Triwizard Champion, one of the youngest accomplished Aurors ever and a witch bright enough to equal Dumbledore.”
Hermione turned a deep shade of red, and began to shyly mumble a response. “It was just a couple of exams, I dont think-“
“Come off eet, “ermione.” Fleur interrupted, flicking her head slightly to toss her brilliant silver hair over one shoulder. “Eet was seven N.E.W.T.s, all wiz Outstanding. Most people dont even get zat many O.W.L.s, nor at zat high a grade, and you matched Dumbledore’s own record at ‘ogwarts.” She threw Hermione a victorious smile. “We are all proud of our resident bookworm.”
“Yes, well, it hasn’t helped has it?” returned Hermione, her own embarrassed smile fading as she hung her head, focussing intently on the steam rising from the tea. “I just wish I could find a correlation.”
“You already have one.” Four heads turned towards the younger blonde in the group. Luna’s gaze was cast across from the group at the fireplace, and her eyes stared blank and unfocused, as though mesmerised by dancing flames, despite the fact that no fire was lit in the first place.
“What d’you mean, Luna, luv?” enquired Tonks, her head tilting slightly to one side and her spiked pink hair transitioning into a bright yellowy-gold, almost mimicking Luna’s. “Hermione said she hasn’t found anything in her reading.”
Luna’s gaze wandered to her right where Tonks sat, but remained distant. A small smile appeared on her lips. “Not in any books, no. But where do we always find correlations when the information isn’t publicly available knowledge? I imagine Hermione didn’t think to ask Harry to use the Black library for this.”
Luna leant forward to pick up her tea, slowly adding five sugar cubes before stirring them in. After blowing gently and taking a sip, she noticed the confused looks the others were sharing, before a spark of recognition arose in Fleur’s and Tonks’ faces, immediately followed by worried looks of anticipation.
“You mean it’s old pureblood magic, don’t you?” said Tonks, her hair automatically taking on some of the natural genetic traits of her Black ancestry, rapidly darkening in shade, growing in length and beginning to form curls from root to tip. After a moment of scowling at the thought, Tonks caught the change from the corner of her eye before picking up a lock from her shoulder as the scowl deepened.
“Ugh, of course! Trust those bigoted bastards to hide important information in books which normal people can’t buy. Hiding knowledge like that is criminal .” Hermione stopped herself before she devolved into one of her usual rants on the injustice of the wizarding world. “Well, I’d better go and ask Harry, then!” She immediately jumped from her seat, all notion of hosting her friends for the evening vanishing from her mind as she rapidly pictured all the dark magical tomes locked away in the darkness of Grimmauld Place. She was already at her coat rack by the front door when Luna piped up again.
“There’s no need.” Hermione froze before turning back to the group, looking inquisitively and somewhat confused at Luna.
“But you just said-“
“I already know what this is. I grew up a pureblood as well, and while we might not have practiced dark magic, daddy was well versed on the intricacies of the old arcane ways.” Luna turned to look at Ginny, Fleur, and Tonks. “I imagine all four of us were warned about this, but most families aren’t aware of some of the rarer cases that can evolve under more extreme circumstances.”
“What are you talking about, Luna?” Ginny asked, first to respond when it became clear that her friend was volunteering no further explanation to this apparent insight, more used to her rambling nature than the two older witches beside her. Luna took one more sip of tea before turning to meet Ginny’s questioning gaze without her usual aloofness. Ginny was shocked to see her friend so forward and focused in such a calm, friendly setting. Then Luna spoke once more.
“Life debts.”
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THUMP.
Three of the witches flinched in their seats as Hermione slammed a thick tome onto the table. At her insistence, and despite Luna’s claim that is wasn’t necessary, the same group of five women now sat in the dimly lit study area of the Black Library, where Harry, or rather, a reluctant Kreacher at Harry’s instruction, had laid out comfortable spaces for research purposes after Hermione’s insistence. The witch in question dropped aggressively with a huff into her own chair and quickly flipped the book open, scanning for the relevant page, before spinning it round and shoving it towards her companions while beginning her rant.
“So to summarise, the five of us have each at some point been directly and unquestionably saved from deadly situations by one Harry James Potter, in circumstances under which he was put in significant danger himself, was under no obligation to step in, and had no part in the causation of the events.”
Lune interjected. “Not all of the debts were because we were saved directly. It was Fleur’s sister who was saved in the second task, but between magic itself deeming the underage Gabrielle too young and Fleur’s own belief that, as champion, it was her responsibility, the debt was passed to her. Although, I expect there might have been other instances later which did incur more, direct, life debts.” The sole calm occupant of the room ignored the remaining four’s wide-eyed staring as she offered her insight.
“You mean we could each owe more than one debt?“ cried out Ginny before her head slumped into her arms resting on the deck in despair.
“Right,” said Hermione after a moment. “So as a result of these circumstances, we all owe Harry one or more life debts according to the ancient magics which only purebloods know about, because why would us mudbloods and blood traitors have any need of knowing about mysterious, unspoken, invisible, magically binding, all powerful contracts that can impose rules we literally cannot risk breaking less we forfeit our own lives!” With barely a second to take a breath, Hermione continued.
“And to throw a further spanner in the works-“
“What’s a spanner? Is it like a wrackspurt?” Three pairs of eyes blinked at Luna while Hermione continued blustering, her cheeks going red with frustration.
“- magic itself has also deemed that nothing we as witches are capable of could ever be enough to satisfy these debts in a tit-for-tat nature. Harry is so powerful that no matter what situations he was, is, or will be placed in, our actions could never settle the debts because his own power dwarfs our own in such a manner that magic can only assume he would have survived anyway, rendering our actions irrelevant in regards to his survival, meaning that in order to calm our frantic magical cores-“
“And hormones! I’ve told you the best way to fix this is to mate with-“
“YES, THANK YOU, LUNA.” exploded Hermione. “Our free will no longer belongs to ourselves, and we must either sacrifice it to Harry himself or- or-“
“Or to the people or beings from which Harry saved us when accruing these debts,” finished Tonks, thus giving them what they tried to take in the first place and negating the deed that triggered the whole thing. Kind of ironic that you can go either way and both will…” Tonks trailed off under Hermione’s withering glare.
The group argued well into the night about what they would do, the option put forward by Tonks resulting in all but Luna falling silent in embarrassment and disgust, and the idea of surrendering to Harry almost equally unacceptable to all except for Ginny. Eventually they came to the conclusion that since they could not agree on a group course of action, they would simply each settle their own debts alone.