Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.
Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers.
Author's Note(s): This piece was written for a challenge in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments) on the FFN forum.
The Challenge Information:
House: Gryffindor
Claimed Pairing: Lunar Heroes (Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter)
Day 10: Matching Marks
Extra Prompt[s]: Fortune
Word Count: 1421
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A Thousand Silhouettes
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"Wherever there is you, I will be there, too." – Of Monsters and Men, Silhouettes
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It started slowly.
Looking back, Harry could say there were a thousand little things that didn't quite make sense. Looking back, he wondered how he had missed it for so long. All he could say is that the first few years after the Battle of Hogwarts were full of turmoil. In the midst of rebuilding a governmental structure and hoping that it wouldn't become corrupt like the last one, there were just more important things to think about than why he never had to shave.
The one thing that he couldn't so easily dismiss was the shadows. They haunted him, always keeping barely out of sight. If he turned his head quickly enough, he could see the outline of something. It didn't last long enough for him to identify it.
No one had any answers for it. Even worse was when Harry had shared the information with Hermione. She had recommended a therapist like he was mad. Oh, and apparently, his refusal to even consider going to one was paramount to telling her to be buggered by a house elf for all the yelling that it caused. Ron got upset that Harry had upset Hermione. Ginny was too busy breaking into professional quidditch to be on either side.
If it wasn't for Neville and Luna, Harry probably wouldn't have gotten the answers that he finally did. Neville helped him straighten out the Potter estate (and the fortune left to him by Sirius) in between both of them volunteering on the Hogwarts repair crew. Harry had never before been so grateful that Neville grew out the shy boy that stuttered phrases about his worth. As the Golden Trio began to drift apart, Harry found a steady friend in Neville.
Later on, the pair found Luna in a muggle bar. She had apparently drunk a magical alcohol that multiplies in the body if combined with straight water. After they nursed her back to health, she joined them on the repair crew and on the paperwork. When Harry made his confession about seeing things, they had immediately set about researching possibilities in the various libraries they had at their disposal. No one mentioned the lack of Hermione and Ron.
Luna was the one who noticed that the shadows were worse around places of high magic concentration. She was also the one to help Harry look for a suitable house in the muggle world. It took Ginny's tantrum to even realize that the role was something that a serious girlfriend or wife should be doing. Luna had just stood there, staring at the rising star of the Hollyhead Harpies. She didn't say a word, even when the names got vulgar. She didn't need to, as that was when Harry began his own angry rant.
The wedge that had been applying pressure to the relationship of the Golden Trio tore it asunder. Hermione joined the fight on Ginny's side. This brought in Ron, who sided with his sister. The fight might have resorted to blows if it hadn't been for Mrs. Weasley's quick wandwork and George's shrill whistle. As it was, Harry apparated Luna and himself away with every intention of never coming back to the Burrow.
When he had arrived at Thistlewood Manor, the shadows had swarmed him. After he regained consciousness, Luna had been able to explain what he was seeing: the bits of magic left over when a magus died. It was so obvious, but unlike Hermione, Luna didn't berate herself for having missed it. It was a fact for which Harry was doubly thankful. He had felt very fragile in the aftermath of losing his best friends for the final time.
They drifted together, the three of them. It was a quiet sort of thing. They became each other's best friends and dearest companions. The Daily Prophet was filled with stories of their former classmates as they paired off and began families, but the three of them preferred their mutual solitude.
It was Augusta who began the push that changed their dynamic. The Dowager Longbottom wanted two things before letting old age to catch her. She wanted to see Neville settled with his soulmate and her first great-grandchild, if possible.
It brought up a subject which Harry had never heard mentioned in the past. No one had mentioned the Marks or how strongly the magical world felt about them. The Marks were a promise from Magic—and while there was not anything particularly wrong with marrying someone other than one's soulmate, any child created within a bonding with one's soulmate was guaranteed to be more magically powerful than a child born outside of it.
For the first time, Harry truly began to fear the unchanging face he saw in the mirror. Fate had been so cruel to him over the years, and now it seemed that he was destined to lose one of his sources of comfort. Neville began to discreetly seek out the woman who had somewhere on her body while Harry and Luna watched from the sidelines. They loved him, and would support him in anything, but each date was a blow to their hearts. Neither one dared to ask to see the Mark that Neville kept hidden, and Neville never asked to see either of theirs.
All of them understood the determined silence to mean that it didn't matter, that they were always going to be there for each other, soulmate or not.
It was Hermione brought everything to a head, by becoming Minister of Magic, of all things.
Ten years since they had last spoken with the witch, but they couldn't ignore the invitation to her inauguration. They should have known that a decade was not enough to guarantee that a Weasley temper had cooled. They should have known that Ginny would have tried something.
The hexing should have been expected.
As should have been Harry's reaction to watching Luna scream as boils erupted over her skin.
Harry was a Gryffindor for a reason and without the shard of a Dark Lord's soul leeching off of him, his magic was almost unlimited. All his years at Hogwarts and fighting in the war had trained him into a weapon, one they had gladly pointed at Voldemort with the promise of protection of the tenuous relationships he had with the people around him. His love for Luna and Neville had had a decade to solidify into diamond-hard sharpness, and he had lost so many people that his protectiveness now knew no bounds.
Harry wasn't blinded by rage: he was hyper-focused with it.
All around him was the shadows, solid and horrifying. He summoned them into his hands, wielding them instinctively as daggers as he advanced on the youngest Weasley. Harry could feel it, the power running through all of the magi in the room. They had been wrong before—the shadows weren't just the leftover bits from dying wizards and witches. The shadows were the traces of lifeforce in general.
And for the first time, Harry realized that he held mastery over all of it.
He laughed, cold and broken, as the realization killed the last bit of hope he had held that he could ever have the happy ending that Neville was even now seeking with his unknown soulmate or that the silent promise would have ever meant anything. He knew sudden and completely that all of time stretched out before him. After all, what incentive did Death have to claim its Master?
Then Neville was between him and his target, his shirt undone and open with the pitch-black Mark fully on display for the first time. Harry's own Mark flashed a sharp tingle as he recognized the lines and circle of Death's symbol upon his best friend's chest. Neville's blue eyes burned when he met Harry's gaze, angry and protective and determined. Already loose and agitated, Harry's magic flared around himself and Neville, each magus a potential threat after Ginny's attack on Luna.
A small body pressed against Harry's side, easily slipping under his arm. As her arms slipped around his waist, Harry shuddered. His magic needed no prompting to curl around the blonde even as it struggled to do the same with the man in front of them. Luna carefully took Harry's wand-hand in hers and pressed it against the now-bared skin of her stomach. The touch made his Mark give another stabbing tingle. He didn't need to look to know that she bore a Mark to match his and Neville's.
Suddenly, Fate didn't seem so cruel.