Title: The Love Threads
Warning: Rated M for mild coarse language and non-descriptive suggestive adult themes.
Disclaimer: All original characters and canon events belong to J.K. Rowling and Marvel. This is a fanfiction story from which I'm not making any profit.
A/N: This is a short, nine chapters, finished, story about the Love Room in the Department of Mysteries. Grammarly is my beta, so any mistakes are mine. I will try to post every few days. For further notes about the universes I work on, check out my profile. Now, let's have some fun! Enjoy!
Chapter One
The Threads
Hermione did not notice the few curious stares towards her, the flapping of the flying memos over her head, or Luna's calming and unquestioning presence beside her. For a moment, her ears mutted the nearby chats; only the trepidant and panicky thrumming of her heart filled her mind.
Frozen for what seemed like eternity itself, she thought it absurd.
Better yet, what did it mean?
Theories then swarmed her brain; hypotheses, questions and possible answers that she felt terrified to ponder.
And yet, the evidence, the tall and blond evidence that calmly waited to enter Minister Shacklebolt's office, unaware of her inquisitive shock, restrained her will to move.
To run away.
Thankfully, her brain sprang from its slumber and started processing information, summarising the clues, the facts that would give some sense to that madness.
It all began a year and a half ago. During those painful, forgettable days, Hermione had asked Kingsley for a change, desperate to leave her previous failed career path in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Miraculously, two puzzling and vague vacancies had been published for the Department of Mysteries.
And she took the chance. Like a woman about to drown, she applied to become an Unspeakable.
Head Croaker was a meticulous and intelligent man, a workaholic, with the sole purpose of leading the DoM to new and glorious times. It had been quite obvious he had not passed the opportunity to have the Brightest Witch of her Year and War Heroine working for his department, despite her latest career detour and lack of connections.
And without much preamble, Hermione became one of the new unspeakables assigned to work in no other than the Love Room; to study the most dangerous magic there is.
Love.
On her first day, she opportunely learned about her predecessors' misfortune. After a miscalculation, two unspeakables had had a disastrous accident in the famous Love Room, one that had left them… well, for lack of better words, in blissful -and quite unsettling for viewers- ecstasy. Too... overjoyed to utter a coherent word, the unspeakables had been declared useless for life.
As if the news could not become any more auspicious, Hermione then learned who would be her new partner: Luna Lovegood, previously an Experimental Charms Expert.
The first time she entered the Love Room alongside Luna, she imagined herself being witness of a treasure only few would ever see. In her ignorance, she had thought it flowed with love potions. On the contrary, it was a spherical dome covered by white and red crystals of all shades imaginable.
Since it was conceived, countless unspeakables had embedded each transparent crystal with a single memory of what they comprehended to be love: friendship, companionship, sacrifices, laughs, reconciliations, understandings, caresses, making love… every action once defined as love was there, magically bestowing its characteristic colour and energy to the Love Room. A subtle energy Hermione recalled being overwhelming at first, soothing then.
But there was another characteristic that made this Room extraordinary: it smelled like the person that would represent true love during that specific life moment. Contrary to the smells the Amortentia Potion recalled -or really any other love potion- subjected to the person's infatuation/obsession, the Love Room reminiscenced those smells related to the emotion of pure love.
"Leather, wet animal, and sandalwood," Luna muttered after a deep inhale, her cheeks blushing and her eyes lost.
Before snorting, Hermione sniffed. The scents barreled her smelling sense, goosebumps covering her skin. She closed her eyes at the heightened feeling of rapture, which elicited a contentment breath. Nothing prepared her then for the burning arousal that took hold of her body.
"Soap, musk, and summer rain," Hermione whispered, the words like velvet to her mouth.
Every time Hermione entered the Room on further occasions, she became accustomed to the enveloping warmth of the scents, imagining it was like saying hello to a long-time friend. But never did she allow her heart or mind to go beyond that thought.
For the following weeks, curiosity and the power of knowledge, of exploring the most powerful kind of magic, thrilled Hermione to the core of her existence as nothing had since finishing Hogwarts. It gave her a floor to firmly stand on.
Quite surprisingly, Luna was brilliant, in all her quirkiness, with a work ethic that compared to none Hermione had worked with. And after years of barely crossing words, instead of exasperating her, Luna now enterteined her.
Working tiredlessly, she and Luna established the hypothesis that would mark her life since then: love is energy. Months came when neither left the famous and restricted Love Room. Quite ironic, really, because outside her research, Hermione no longer wanted anything to do with love.
So if love was energy, there had to be a spark. Safeguarded -not only by the Room's inherent protections but by individual, magical shields- the witches searched for a spark of love, a glint of visible energy that would prove their hypothesis. When, after long weeks, success finally stopped avoiding them, a tiny spark of love shyly illuminated the Room.
As she witnessed the pulsing of the gleaming spark, Hermione felt the urge to cry, yell, and dance in happiness but kept still, afraid a sudden movement of her wand would make it disappear.
"There it is!" Luna barely moved her lips, "A spark of love!"
The two unspeakables shared a glance of joy. As their protocol dictated, they attempted to contain the spark in a specially designed spherical vessel. But, not a second later, the two witches lost control of it. A powerful explosion ensued, one that shook the whole Ministry and forced the Muggle Liaison Office to work extra hours with their muggle counterparts.
Unconscious blackness enveloped them.
"Unspeakable Lovegood! Unspeakable Granger! Answer us!" Hermione heard behind a thick confusing veil that enclosed her mind; the mix of soap, musk and summer rain scents comforting her. Carefully, she opened her eyes, sprawled on the floor. Everything hurt. Her head moved slowly, looking for Luna, finding her stirring and murmuring a few feet away from her.
"Nargles… it was the nargles."
"Lovegood! Granger! The Room is blocked! We're working on opening it!" Hermione heard again. They had secured the Room in case an explosion occurred. And occurred it did!
Seating required all her focus, "We're fine!" she said, her voice coarse. Groaning, Hermione extended her legs and moved her toes.
"Thank Merlin! Keep going lads, we have to open this door!" Someone who sounded like Head Croaker ordered outside the room.
Eerily, Luna's torso jolted up from the floor, her blond hair covering her face like a curtain. She seemed to be intensely observing her chest. A curious thing to do and yet, Hermione inspected her chest as well. And that's when she noticed them. Sparkling threads sprouted from her shield, slithering outside the Room.
"Are you seeing them, Luna?!" Hermione exclaimed as loud as her pained voice permitted her while she started carefully raising herself to her feet.
"They're countless, coming from your and my shield." Luna's hand attempted to touch the threads, unsuccesfully however because there was nothing to physically hold. "Oh! We're connected!" And, indeed, there had been a silver-bright string, more like a thin rope, connecting both shields.
No explosion would stop them from experimenting that same night and the following day. It was fortunate because, if not for the accident, the two bright witches wouldn't have found the threads that did not sprout from their shields, as they had thought, but rather from them, specifically from their heart area. Except for one that came from their belly button, like an umbilical cord that floated up to the sky.
"Conclusion number one," started Luna back in their shared office as she conjured quill and parchment to write their conversation, tea in her left hand, "The threads are a manifestation of Love which is an energy that connects us all."
"I agree. Luna, I believe our next step is to study these connections and confirm that we all have them," smiled Hermione at the end.
"It's invention time!" Luna exclaimed and wrote objects that will help us see the connections like the shields do. Not many days later, such invention rested on each witch's nose: a pair of golden-wired glasses -with some multicoloured stars attached to Luna's rim- that copied the shield's properties.
And so, the exploration of an unfamiliar universe was at their grasp. First, it was the Department of Mysteries, then other Ministry Departments; no witch or wizard was free from their scrutiny, confirming that indeed all humans had threads born from their hearts and bellybutton.
One early morning, Level Five could not be avoided any more. Hermione did not dared to move beyond a wooden door that separeted her from the Department of International Magical Cooperation, her old life beyond those walls.
"Hermione, you are so brave," whispered Luna by her side, her hand on Hermione's shoulder, comforting her.
Yes, the slim thread that resembled Hogwart's ghosts still existed, coming out of her, bridging her to him. And it would always be there, like stagnated water, a testament of their previous connection.
She knew he liked to arrive early to work, that most probably he was reading The Daily Prophet while sipping his black tea. She could almost see his recently showered hair and neatly pressed robes; smell his powerful fragrance.
Luna's nudge brought her back and Hermione nodded, brown eyes and warm grins hiding behind her thoughts.
"It connects us to the people in our lives. All of them," said Hermione once in their secured office, carefully observing the almost invisible thread she had learned was his. Her heart clenched and, for a moment, her throat closed. After shutting her eyes, she couldn't stop a fierce, lone tear to glide down her cheek.
Luna walked the few steps that separated them and, with a swift movement of her hand, dried her tear. "You are almost out of it. Hermione, you are brave. Don't ever forget it."
With a thankful grimace, Hermione knew she sometimes still did.
The two witches noticed not all connections were romantic or friendly.
The visible strings that attached Hermione to Theo Nott and even Daphne Greengrass, who had worked with her in the Department of International Cooperation, had a distinct braiding and dull shining that made her shrug in acceptance. 'Acquaintances threads', Hermione and Luna catalogued them.
There were those shared by previous acquaintances. Hermione once saw from afar Cormac McLaggen in Level 2, one of his own threads grey and wispy, like a dying dark hole that sucked his energy. She wondered what had happened to him, that maybe he had deserved it. Not surprising, her own thread that connected her to Cormac was barely there.
What brought her joy, however, were the rope-like connections that attached her to her best friends, Harry and Ron. Strong, bright and thick. The three of them shared loving connections that mirrored their long friendship. And oh! how she enjoyed walking beside them, catching glimpses of their links.
"15. 16. 17." As Luna moved her wand one afternoon in their modest, wood-panelled office, the number appeared floating by her side. She was attempting to count the floating and diverse connections coming from her heart. "Hermione, I think it's time for our second hypothesis," Luna said, her eyes bigger than normal behind her enchanted golden glasses, the number increasing in value. 18. 19. 20.
Hermione, working on arithmetic calculations that would give them an estimate of the number of threads each person had, raised her eyes from her scrabblings and nodded from behind a tower of books. "The connections are as bright as the type of love they represent," she said before deciding to pace around their office, relishing the sunlight that entered through the enchanted window.
"Ok Luna, this is what we know so far," continued Hermione, unconsciously circling around the two wooden desks, "it's evident we're all connected through these threads, while it's obvious each one represents the type of connection two persons share. The brighter it is, the greater the love."
"Oh, yes! And the rumours are true," Luna said after finishing counting her more visible threads. She thoughtfully took a sip from her floating teacup and, with a swing of her wand, a bunch of parchments expeditiously came out of one of her desk drawers towards her hands. Luna thoughtfully examined her notes, "Mr Barber from the Charms office does have an affair with Mrs Margaret Thomas from maintenance, their thread more like a thick radiant rope as evidence. Which, by the way, I think she knows we know and that is why she's been charming sunny days in our window. Anyway, Mrs Thomas, on the other hand, barely tolerates her husband, poor Mr. Thomas, from the Muggle Liason Office who is oblivious to this. Merlin, their connection barely there! Only a whimsy mist is visible after five years of marriage!"
Luna shook her head and tutted before taking another sip from her tea. Hermione chuckled. Luna did not gossip nor did enjoy it, but it had been entertaining to watch the witch try to listen with no little discretion and parchment in hand to gossiping witches and wizards. Yet, Luna had raised an important issue. If Mr and Mrs Thomas did break their marriage, would their thread disappear? Would it change? Or, had it always been like it appeared?
"I'll let Croaker know we're taking the eyeglasses outside the Ministry," Hermione suggested.
With reticence, Head Croaker gave them the much-desired permission to take the articles outside the Ministry, only charming them -and absolutely making sure- to work for the witches alone. Hermione wasted no time and met her friends at Ron's house, golden eyeglasses on her nose.
Ron's connection to her was strong but not as bright as the one he shared with Poppy, his wife.
It warmed Hermione's heart and partly confirmed their hypothesis: the brighter the link, the stronger it was, suggesting also there was more love shared. Something caught her attention, however, when Ginny entered the room, holding her four-year-old son James. The string that connected James to Harry was bright and delightful. But Harry and Ginny's… it was weak, thin, and opaque, much like hers with him.
Hermione gave a double look to the wispy link, not believing what her eyes saw. Just barely squaring her face, she wondered if Ron knew? She observed both her friends only to realise that yes, Ron did know, his occasional sad eyes betraying him, while both Harry and Ginny tried not to show that something was wrong with their marriage.
She felt the sudden urge to grab Harry by the arm and question him. Ron, however, surprised her by pulling her arm and leading them back inside the house towards the kitchen.
"Blimey, Hermione. Now it's not the time to ask him."
"But Ron! Maybe, we can help. Maybe, we can do something," She whispered loudly, trying to exit his kitchen.
"No, listen to me. He doesn't want us to know. You bloody well know what that feels like," Ron gave her that look that made her shut her mouth and wait. That look that sometimes they shared, knowing that Harry needed their unspoken support. "He hasn't told me either so I reckon it's difficult for him to accept their problems," he whispered sadly.
"I.." desperate tears started flowing down from her eyes. Harry and Ginny were a symbol of love conquering all. Their love had been her lighthouse during her storm. Her hope.
Ron passed one comforting arm over her shoulders.
"Let's wait?" Ron said, more a compromise than a question. "Hermione, he'll tell us when he's ready. You know it."
She agreed. All to protect Harry and give him time. Some minutes passed as they both calmed their emotions, sharing a knowing, sad look.
"And what's with those eyeglasses? Is that how you knew? Are those super-powerful like those that muggle bloke uses?" Ron was smart, had always been. Not book smart but logical, street smart. It would be difficult to hide the eyeglasses from him.
"Er… James Bond? … No! No! Of course not!" Hermione preferred to say no more.
"Right." Ron chuckled, having seen Luna and Hermione wearing them, quill and parchment on hand, creepily trailing each employee in the Ministry. "So, how d'you know?"
Hermione replayed the scene in her mind. "Once Ginny entered the room Harry never stopped frowning and avoided her eyes," she lied. "You? Since when do you know?"
"About a fortnight ago. Heard Ginny talking with mum."
Hermione grimaced as she conjured a pair of trays to float to their guests. Molly and Arthur would surely be devastated.
Months passed and life continued. Her research took all her time, her mind and heart were finally and blissfully silent.
And that brought her back to her present, precisely to that same morning.
Luna and Hermione had been studying the nature of the love threads. Immersed in her work in the middle of the pink dome, casting complicated diagnostic spells at her own floating, glimmering strings, Hermione had not registered anything out of normal until something caught her attention.
By then, she knew by heart the threads that were important to her, the ones that were bright and strong like ropes, connecting her to the most important persons in her life, each with its own unique braiding and brightness. None had changed since they had observed the links for the first time. Not Luna's nor hers.
Except, that day, one had.
Hermione spotted a string that pulsed with new energy and life, ready to be pulled. Connecting her to someone. Her heart thrummed faster and faster. Who shared that thread with her? Why had it changed?
"Luna!" Hermione exclaimed, catching her friends' eyes, "A new one!"
Luna stormed towards her, "Which one?!", oggling her threads with her big bulgy eyes.
Hermione pointed towards it, unable to form any words.
"Are you sure it wasn't there before?"
Hermione would have scoffed if other rather than Luna posed the question. So she only nodded, her lips pursed.
"Its braiding is curious, and it's already brighter than my 'colleagues' ones, see? This one is Head Croaker's."
"Sadly for Mr Croaking, any thread of yours is stronger than any of his," Luna continued studying the threads from different angles. Hermione shook her head. Only one question hammered her brain: What did it mean?
"Hermione, don't let the wrackspruts fret you. It could mean anything," and then her blue eyes locked with hers with a certainty that punched Hermione in her gut, "We have to follow it."
Hermione loudly exhaled and nodded, letting herself be pulled by Luna's firm grip. The change in a thread was the confirmation of many of their theories and could not be ignored.
Wearing their almost matching glasses, the two Unspeakables followed the thread through the Ministry, level by level, like a pair of true detectives after a clue.
A clue that pulled her closer to her destiny, an unknown destiny that showed itself as they neared Minister Kingsley's office.
What did she expect? In the rush, she hadn't stopped to think.
And that's why there she was, shocked, gawking, ignoring the stares, the flying memos, and Luna's now comforting presence.
She could see the end of the thread and nothing had prepared her for the surprise.
Because the person connected to the end of her living, almost-pulsing thread was a tall, blond, wiry-haired wizard that sat comfortably, left ankle over his knee, outside the Minister's office.
He was Cormac McLaggen.