1986.

She really, really hoped he didn't feel that.

1988.

Merlin she really, really hoped he didn't feel that.

1989.

Hermione told herself that it was alright that she hadn't felt much of anything from her soulmate since childhood. It had become clear long ago that her soulmate wasn't anyone she knew; it was common knowledge in their circles what had happened with Bellatrix Lestrange. Everyone saw the scar, everyone knew exactly how she got it. If anyone she knew had felt that pain in her teens, they would've said something.

Her only hope, then, was identifying her soulmate in the opposite direction: who had major pain that aligned with what she felt?

This would be much, much easier if she felt anything from him, ever.

All around her, her friends found their soulmates in their late teens and early twenties. They were lucky, she knew; they were anomalies. It didn't help the feeling that she was going to die without having felt the deep connection she knew her friends shared with their lovers. Harry and Ginny had known since fifth year when Ginny's hands became inflamed after every detention Harry had with Professor Umbridge. Ron had found his soulmate in a freak accident: another Ministry worker tripped and fell down a set of stairs and broke her leg. Ron saw the fall and felt like his leg was being cracked in two. Meghan was almost as clumsy as Tonks; Ron realized very late in life that not everyone lived with a dull pain in the background of life.

Between her desk job in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and years of childhood ballet lessons, Hermione wasn't prone to accidents or other identifiable pain. No, since the war her life had been… easy. So had her soulmate's, apparently. She felt bad hoping that he would get injured, but she didn't know how else to find him. And she really, really wanted to find him.

1999.

She was sitting at her desk when her arm spasmed and her shoulder felt like it was popping out of place. She speed-walked to the loo and locked herself in with wards she hadn't used since 1988 and sobbed until her face was splotchy and red and her throat was hoarse.

The pain was mild compared to the absolute elation of knowing her soulmate was out there somewhere, that she hadn't been kidding herself for the last decade, that there was still a chance. She only wished that she could have this assurance more than once every ten years.

2005.

At age 36, Hermione got her wish and collapsed in the middle of the Ministry lobby. When she came to, she was relatively pain-free and remembered nothing, but according to her colleagues and her nurse at St. Mungo's, she'd been convulsing and wouldn't stop groaning in pain no matter what they tried. It was the first time she'd felt a major injury – or whatever it was – from her soulmate and it was that bad. She prayed to a god she didn't believe in that Bellatrix's torture was nowhere close to this.

2006.

Scars down her arms criss-crossing over the letters of her own. Bruises around her aching neck.

2007.

Hermione broke into a coughing fit.

"Are you alright?" Molly asked, conjuring a glass of water and floating it in front of her. "Have a sip."

"Not me," Hermione managed to get out. It was a pain she'd never felt before, she couldn't place it. "Excuse me."

She ran to the next room over, sure she was stumbling, and spent the next minutes retching without anything coming up. Harry sat beside her rubbing her back, Ginny holding her hair back just in case. It was like burning and piercing at the same time, like something was ripping through her flesh.

Harry was the one to break it to her that her soulmate might be trying to kill himself (and she could see that he was very sure that he was and he was couching it with maybes to save her feelings).

She started recording the most intense or suspicious pain, carrying a little notebook on her person. Before she even healed, Hermione would note down the incident in meticulous detail: time, location, brief description of the pain.

It was productive, in a way. It seemed that he was in a completely different time zone, explaining why they'd never come across one another. Of course, that was sort of a miserable discovery.

2008.

The coming year was as difficult as the few prior. She was met with the familiar ripping sensation again and again, putting her out of commission so frequently that she was gently let go from her deputy assistantship. At least they gave her a pension as if she were injured on the job.

Bullets, she could finally admit to herself. For some reason her soulmate was getting shot at with some regularity (for he'd given up on shooting himself, she was glad to note). Who the hell was this man?

2012.

It was 2012 when Hermione had an idea. It was a slow creep from a wild notion to something realistic, although Ginny had been sure as soon as Hermione suggested it. Was her soulmate… one of the Avengers?

The 'Battle of New York' – and why did battles have to be named like that? It brought the 'Battle of Hogwarts' to mind – was heavily covered even as it was happening, and Hermione tuned in along with every other witch and wizard with a television or internet connection. Were witches and wizards going to reveal themselves? Was this the event that would tear down the Statute of Secrecy? Would it matter who was secret if the entire world was destroyed by aliens?

She saw bruises form and felt the now-familiar searing ripping of bullets while the Avengers fought that resolved when the battle was over. They must have access to some healing process that she wasn't aware of.

Hermione threw herself into research on them, narrowing the playing field. Captain America: allegedly frozen in ice until last year. Tony Stark, Iron Man: she would've felt injuries from his time in Afghanistan. Hawkeye, Thor, and the Black Widow (she had to consider some latent bisexuality she hadn't yet realized): lack of information, it could be any of them. But the Avenger who drew her eye was the Hulk, as he was called. He had an incident in 2008 in Harlem that aligned exactly with one of her 'bad days' as she'd taken to calling them.

At 41, the oldest of any of her friends and acquaintances, two weeks after the battle, Hermione Granger identified her soulmate.

"Ginny," she said, "I don't know what to do."

Ginny downed the full glass of wine she was holding and motioned for Hermione to do the same. "Yeah, you do."

Hermione dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin and said, "No, I don't."

Her friend grabbed her hands and said loudly, with the confidence of a wine-drunk mother, "Go find him."

So she did. She ran away, feeling like she was abandoning everything when in reality she wasn't leaving much behind: she could still contact her friends, and the wizarding world could make do without her. She needed to meet her soulmate.

It was slow and exhausting to Apparate to New York City, and she was ready to keel over by the time she got to MACUSA's designated Apparition point. It wasn't how she'd planned for this to go – she really should've just bought a Portkey but Ginny had her so excited last night that she hadn't really had time to plan or she'd have decided not to go – but she was in the city. Glad that she'd preemptively told her credit card company she'd be traveling, she holed up in a cheap hotel and dreamed of bruises around her ankle.

The next morning, she wished she'd brought better clothes. Or a hairbrush. She cleaned and ironed her work clothes (sans robes) with magic and left her combed hair to air dry in a braid after showering. She removed her makeup from the day before and wished that she'd brought some with her. Maybe a stop to a pharmacy? Then again, her soulmate was apparently giant and green…

Her heart was going to thump out of her chest; she was here, and she was doing this. She took a cab to a block near Avengers Tower and walked confidently through the metal detectors at the entrance to the building. Subtly, gently – guiltily – she confounded the security guard, who walked her to the elevator and kindly pushed the button for the Avengers' common area. From there, surely she'd be able to find someone and, well, figure out how to get to the Hulk.