Chapter Text
At 11:58 pm on September 18th, two minutes before her seventeenth birthday, Hermione stared at the mark on her arm.
Fine lines so pale against her skin that she has to angle her arm just right to see the rune that she’s never quite been able to make out.
11:59 pm her heart rate picks up, in under sixty seconds she will be seventeen, of age in the wizarding world, and the mark on her arm will spring to life, burn and tingle, and then she’ll know, she’ll know.
She stares and stares and stares, even as the numbers she’s magicked above her tick over and nothing happens, she stares and stares and stares as they keep ticking over 12:02…12:05…12:07…12:10…until finally finally something does happen. There’s a tingle, not the feather-light tickle she had been expecting but something unpleasant, something sharp and burning bubbling beneath her skin. She wants to itch it, to tear into her skin and dig into her flesh. The mark shines, for just a moment; the rune glows a bright silver, and then it dies. The lines turn a green so dark it’s black, they fracture and crack and the mark is a brand, not a soft glowing light, not a perfect calling card.
It's a dark wretched scab of a thing, the veins beneath tainted with the curse of a broken bond.
It hurts. Merlin, does it hurt down to the bone, it hurts so much her entire body shakes and sweat pools on her brow, and everything in her aches.
Her soul aches.