Chapter Text
Chapter One
Saturday, June 19th, 1999
Walking along the quiet London streets, Hariel ‘Harry’ Dorea Potter was enjoying the shortcut through the park on this delightful summer morning. The wind was twirling through her midnight black tresses which had fallen out of her bun and were now caressing her shoulders.
A light breeze kissed her face, making her close her emerald hued eyes and relieving her of the constant tension in her neck. The pleasant buzz helped her current state along, leaving her perfectly at peace.
Fred and George had kidnapped their favorite sister, but don’t tell Ginny and honorary twin for a night of mischief, drinking and dancing.
They had apparently decided that one Hermione was enough for the Weasley family and Harry turning herself into a second one was not acceptable. Snorting at the face she must have made when they stormed Grimmauld Place yesterday afternoon, willing to drag her out kicking and screaming if necessary, determined to put a stop to her self imposed exile.
It wasn’t as bad as they made it sound, but they were her brothers and were worried about her.
After the war ended, Harry had hoped to be free.
Free of people’s expectations and their assumptions on her character. On who and what she had to be and what she had to do. What her duty as the Girl-who-conquered was. What her opinion on politics, magical creatures and magic was without asking her.
So Harry had started to pull back. Turning down invitations from the ministry, the high society and in the last months even from her family.
Instead she had focused on one single topic. Traveling through dimensions.
D evouring one book after another, cross-referencing any information she came upon, looking up time travel and something called the mirror world - desperately searching for a way into a different world - the world of her soulmate to be exact.
Soulmates are a phenomenon that have existed since humanity began. Archaeologists found references to soulmarks in old Egyptian tombs as well as hieroglyphic writing in ancient Mayan temples depicting people with marks on their bodies.
In recent history children learn about soulmates in elementary school. It’s a wonder that has been studied by many researchers over the years, but no one knows the origin or understands exactly how they work. The only thing that’s known is that starting from one's sixteenth birthday, the name of your soulmate can appear anywhere on your body in your own language. The official title for this sign is “Kindred Spirit Registration Imprint,” but most people simply call it a soulmark.
This mark connects two people who are perfectly suited for each other, be it romantically or platonically. It emerges simultaneously on both partners once the younger of the pair turns sixteen years of age. Unfortunately, the appearance can either take quite a while - if there is a significant age difference - or it doesn’t manifest at all.
It is assumed that death is the cause for the non-emergence, either because the younger of the pair died before turning 16 or the older one died before the younger's birthday. If one partner dies after the mark appears, it turns gray instead of the black it became visible with.
Statistically, many people never find their soulmates. More than seven billion people live on earth, and as the name appears in one's own language, it doesn’t give a hint to the partner's nationality.
Long-distance travel has only been possible for a few decades now, and the internet is an even newer creation, though many hope that it will smooth the way to find one's soulmate. Nonetheless, finding your significant other is still seen as a miracle.
Harry herself proved to be an oddity as usual. Even though she belongs to the lucky ones whose mark presented itself on her sixteenth birthday, making her the younger of the pair, it isn’t the regular imprint.
Instead, on the inside of her left forearm, the name Shanks Akagami is written in blue, a beautiful ocean blue to be fair, but still in blue.
The names always appear in black and turn grey after death, no exceptions.
For a second she ponders if her name turned grey on his body when she died in the forbidden forest. Vincing at the thought as that must have shocked and hurt her soulmate, so she hopes he didn’t see it.
Of course he did. Made him stop in his tracks and stare incomprehensibly at his last remaining forearm, Heart hurting at the realisation that he lost her before he even met her.
Hariel had used the past year to look into it.
After Voldemort was permanently defeated the previous May, she used every free minute to research her mark.
The first thing she did was asking Minerva for access to Hogwarts’ library in the hope of finding a magical reason for the blue scripted imprint, as such an imprint has never been documented in the Muggle world. She found a few references, but they all turned up empty. Books on time and dimension travel were a bit more helpful but not as detailed as she had hoped.
Once the ministries and the public's demand for Harry’s attendance to various events became too much she started declining invitations and avoided leaving Grimmauld place.
She was simply exhausted.
Hariel had, maybe naively, assumed that once Voldemort was dead, everything would change for the better. In reality, very little had actually changed.
Yes, Voldemort was dead, but so were many other people, including Remus and Tonks, leaving little Edward ‘Teddy’ Lupin behind. Andromeda was raising him. Having a little bundle of joy that depended on her living with her, gave her the strength to recover from her loss and to start healing.
Teddy had just turned one a few months ago and Harry made sure to visit him from time to time, which wasn’t all that often recently. She last saw him on his birthday over two months ago. Deciding that she'll have to pop in tomorrow and join them for dinner, Harry resumes her walk home.
Severus had managed to survive Nagini’s bite, and the surprising appearance of Percy saved Fred’s life, but Colin Creevy, Vincent Crabbe and so many other students, aurors, order members and death eaters died fighting for their beliefs, leaving the magical world in shambles.
While everyone was busy rebuilding their lives, the government, shopping districts and repairing Hogwarts, Rita Skeeter researched Dumbledore’s past, publishing her findings in a book called <<The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore>> which, while shocking, was only the beginning of the truth behind Dumbledore’s manipulations.
In the last nine months a plethora of information came Harry’s way, throwing many of her beliefs into question - the origin and history of magick , the division into good and evil, black and white, dark and light magic, plus the aforementioned manipulations. Her world view was shaken quite heavily, and she still isn’t sure what to believe.
It felt like she learned something new every day. For her research into her blue mark, she had to read up on the origins of magick and how it was viewed in the past. While it was interesting, it didn’t aid her in finding the cause of ocean blue color.
Then in the last six to nine months wards started falling and people started remembering memories that had been buried.
The unspeakables were consulted and were able to detect a magical signature in most cases…Dumbledore’s signature.
Apparently, rituals and wards that used to be maintained by his magic had started to weaken after his death. Dumbledore, being Master of Transfiguration, not a ward-smith or even curse-breaker, hadn’t deigned to follow the recommended steps to construct them as self-maintaining but had anchored them to him instead.
These happenings were detected by various people in different countries, but mainly in Britain, where Dumbledore reigned over the wizarding world and their future for the last fifty years.
One of those incidents was a forbidden ritual Dumbledore performed on an unaware Severus Snape. This ritual blocks the victim’s connection to their soulmate and has to be performed prior to their sixteenth’s birthday as it stops the emergence of the imprint.
Influencing a soulmark is unreservedly forbidden and comes with a minimum sentence to Azkaban prison for fifteen years. There have only been a few cases in the history of the wizarding world and the Wizengamot is known for being very harsh on the offenders.
The last known case was in 1775, when Lord Boughton used the very same ritual on his daughter, not wanting her to leave her home at sixteen to be with her soulmate. He assumed that it would be her childhood friend, a boy from the local village and, according to Lord Boughton, a dirty Muggle peasant. The Wizengamot did not share his opinion and convicted him to twenty years in Azkaban without parole.
A soulmate is considered a gift of mother magic herself, and manipulating it comes close to betraying her. Imprints in the wizarding world are a confusing mess for Harry.
On the one hand they are cherished beyond belief, but if your soulmate is a Muggle... well bad luck for you. Keeping the statue of secrecy is considered more important for purebloods. At least that’s their official reasoning. The truth is probably closer to them not wanting to ‘dirty’ their bloodline by mating with a muggle.
Statistically speaking, soulmate muggle partners are very open-minded and accepting of the wizarding world and their magical partner, as countless halfblood and muggleborn couples can attest to. There are even a few theories that it’s magick’s way of staying strong and preserving itself.
Half a year ago a new study was published stating that some imprints connect squibs who were dropped in the muggle world, resulting in muggle-born witches and wizards.
Hariel remembers how excited Hermione was at the idea that her ancestors were magical, dragging Harry to go with her to Gringotts to check their background, arguing that Harry’s mother was a muggleborn and might have been part of a wizarding family as well.
While they couldn’t find anything on Lily, Hermione’s great-great-grandfather was the potioneer Hector Dagworth-Granger, the founder of the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers, supporting the study’s theory.
Harry had spent the last five months holed up in Grimmauld Place after finding a reference in the journal of a student at Hogwarts, mentioning her classmate's blue mark.
Two months ago she finally had a breakthrough.
Ella Black, born Max, wife of Cygnus Black I and Mother of Phineas Nigellus Black, possessed a blue soulmark and documented her research on it.
While Betrothal contracts exist, they always have a clause to easily get out of the contract if the soulmark appears and points to another pureblood. It’s more difficult to get a divorce if you’re already married, but ignoring a soulmark, mother magic’s gift is also not possible.
As stated, it’s a complex topic that Harry is happy she doesn’t have to deal with. In modern times it’s getting better, but especially back in Ella’s time when travelling was a tough task, finding your soulmate was even rarer.
In her diary she mentioned doing a ritual that used the connection in her imprint to show her an image of her soulmate. Back in the 1870’s magic wasn’t as restricted as it is today and less magic was considered forbidden. Through this ritual Ella learned that her partner lived in a different world, a completely separate dimension.
Harry could still kill Sirius for throwing so many books out of the library, just because the current ministry views them as dark. Now here she is, researching rituals that have been outlawed, translating runes - a subject she never took at Hogwarts and deeply regrets that decision (because even though it is really complicated it’s so, so interesting and useful) - figuring out arithmetic schemes with elementary school math and mixing a time-consuming potion. It’s not going well, to put it bluntly.
Sure Hermione had offered to help her, but Merlin be damned, she wants to do this by herself. This is HER soulmate they are talking about. She won’t sit by while others solve her problems for her. No, she’s a Gryffindor, damn proud of it, and she refuses to back down.
Hariel was so immersed in her thoughts that she neither noticed the car speeding towards her nor the driver losing control over it. “Oh bloody hell,” was her last thought, before her head impacted with full force on the ground.
Waking up without feeling pain was not something Harry had expected. Neither is not waking up in a hospital, or to be honest, waking up at all.
Looking around she realises she is in an old-fashioned office of some kind. Seeing a black-cloaked person with their hood pulled up sitting behind the ancient oak desk, she knows what happened.
“I died, didn’t I?” is the first thing Harry says to him, her, it?
“Yes, you did,” Death responds. “I probably don’t need to introduce myself, but you may call me Death. Welcome to the in-between, Ms. Potter.”
Nodding in acknowledgement, “So what happens now?” Harry questions him.
“Well, there are a few choices,” Death offers. “First, you can pass on to the afterlife and meet your parents, Sirius and all your other loved ones, before being reborn in a few centuries. Second option, you take up your Master of Death title, meaning you’ll help me with the paperwork and ferrying the souls from the different dimensions to the afterlife. Option three, you officially refuse the mantle of Master of Death and in exchange may return to the time when you were a child. I’ll even throw in better instincts to help you along.”
‘Well Option two is out,’ Harry muses, ‘I never wanted to be Master of Death, and doing paperwork for eternity does not sound like fun. Option one could be a possibility, but I just found out about the ritual to see my soulmate.
Besides, I finally have the time to find myself and to see the world. Throwing on a good disguise should be enough to confuse the majority of the wizarding world. I don’t want to give up this chance right away. But only having better instincts sounds like a bad deal. It won’t change much, especially with Dumbledore being the master manipulator he is.’
“Would it be possible for me to travel back with my memories intact?” Harry asks instead.
Seeing Death thinking about it, she waits for him to respond.
“No, normally that is not possible, but you have never been normal, have you Harry?” Death smirks at her, making Harry flush a bit in embarrassment, but not enough to make her lower her gaze.
“I will make you a deal,” Death continues. “You may keep your memories if you give up the Horcrux in your head. It’s an abomination and not something I can accept the existence of.”
That sounds like too good a deal. “What’s the catch?” Harry asks.
Death wickedly leers at her and asks rhetorically, “Not so stupid, are you? The catch is that there is no Master of Death title for you afterwards and the hollows will lose their powers as well. The elder wand will just be a powerful wand, the rock will be a normal rock and the cloak will turn into a normal invisibility cloak that will lose its capability over time like all other invisibility cloaks. Your next death will be permanent as well. No more second chances, just like everybody else, when you die. You're dead and you move on.”
Harry doesn’t have to think about it for long and accepts Death’s offer. Seeing his smirk widen, she damns her Gryffindor impulses.
She should have used this chance to ask more questions. Before she could do anything, everything turned white.