Author notes: Finally my computer is working again! I was having a panic attack as I thought I would have to completely reinstall windows and me being not to bright never made any back-ups from my files. Thankfully it suddenly started working again, I had tried everything I could think of and was just pushing some random buttons on the keyboard while praying it wouldn't explode or anything, when it suddenly went back to normal. No idea what was wrong with it in the first place.

Anyway, my appologies for the long wait for this chapter, I was sick for a whole week and when I was finally doing better my computer acted up.

Once again I'm begging everyone reading this to just review! Come on people! It's not that hard! Even a short review will make me happy!

9.Of gods and myths

Harry sat down on the bed next to Ron and Ginny curled up against him on the other side, Hermione sat on the ground again, already absorbed in her book.

Ron sighed and stared forlornly at the books, looking like he'd rather pet Aragog, Hagrid's giant spider, than start reading. Ginny seemed to think the same thing as she started shuffling some cards.

They played three games, which Harry all lost, before Harry's cards exploded with a particularly loud "snap!", finally drawing Hermione's attention.

"Honestly!" She scowled, "it hasn't even been an hour since we started!"

She jumped up and Harry half-expected her to hit them or something, but instead she grabbed Harry's face and started rubbing it with a napkin out of her pocket.

"Wha..." Harry spluttered, "Hermione!"

"Hold still, Harry!" Hermione said sternly, "you've got root all over your face from that stupid game."

Resignedly Harry let her clean his face, feeling rather ridiculous.

"Soulmates?" Ron meanwhile read from the cover of the book Hermione had been reading, "you're still reading this crap!" He said appalled.

"It's not crap, Ron! Did you know everybody has 7 soulmates instead of just one?"

"Well, yeah," Ron said shrugging, "everybody knows that, but the changes that you find even one soulmate is next to nil, let alone two or more. I don't think I've ever heard of three or more soulmates finding eachother."

"That's not true," Ginny disagreed, "remember the story mum used to tell us? About the Silva sisters?"

"That was a fairytale Gin," Ron scoffed.

"The muggles have fairytales about witches flying on brooms and making potions in cauldrons," Ginny pointed out, "lots of those stories are rubbish but there's still some truth inside."

"Even if it was true it was still more than 2000 years ago, and since than it has never happened again."

"What does it matter?" Harry impatiently interrupted the arguing siblings, "I don't see what is the big deal about soulmates."

"If two soulmates find eachother their magical powers are miraculously doubled, at least according to an old myth," Ginny explained and shrugged, "I don't really believe it, mum told us her parents were soulmates and I've never heard of them being extraordinary powerful."

"It's not really that simple," Hermione said, "but all the books I've read say it's possible. The story goes that in the very beginning, when the gods created the world, they made a copy of themselves and placed them on the earth as the very first humans. However they soon realized they had made a mistake, the humans were far too powerful, they had gotten the same powers as the gods but their minds weren't strong enough to handle that much power, they all went insane and in their hunger for more power they threatened to destroy the entire world. There was a very big war that caused the death of the biggest part of the first animals as the humans fought the gods so they could rule over the world. In the end the gods defeated them, but only because they, unlike the humans, were able to work together and bundle their powers. To make sure nothing like that would ever happen again the gods divided the souls of the humans in 8 pieces, dividing their power in the progress. The gods decided to stop meddling with the earth and let nature take it's course. So after thousands of years the humans were reborn on earth, thanks to the evolution process, but even now our souls are looking for their 7 counterparts to become whole again."

Hermione paused for a moment and Harry quickly took his change to say something, "I didn't even know wizards believe in gods."

"They don't, not really anyway. Some think that the gods are asleep and no longer bother to interfere with our lives, they believe they will wake up when they are given something very valuable, there's actually some sort of cult, I think it's in France, where they make sacrifices to the gods in the hope one of them will tempt the gods to wake up. For the most part the gods are forgotten though," Hermione sighed frustrated, "I couldn't find any information about them, not even their names or how many there were."

"Do you believe they actually exist?" Harry asked curiously, as he couldn't imagine her believing in something as vague as that.

Hermione hesitated, "I'm not sure really, it seems a bit unlikely but... Well, I used to think it was unlikely magic was real as well, so maybe..."

Ron rolled his eyes, "please, you don't even believe in the, what was it called? Crumple-Horned Snorwack."

"Snorkack," Ginny corrected, she had traded her spot on the bed for the floor and was now busy building a card-house, with her tongue out of her mouth in concentration.

"Whatever," Ron shrugged, "I'm just saying that it seems a hell of a lot more likely that they exist than those dumb gods, I've heard about that cult you're talking about, only nutty people join that."

Hermione glared, put her hands at her hips and took a stance that Harry recognized as an upcoming lecture sign.

"Well it doesn't really matter," he quickly said, "what were you saying about soulmates?"

Hermione huffed but dropped the subject, "if two soulmates would meet, recognize eachother, meaning they know they are soulmates, and love eachother unconditionally they can unite and become one. And no, Ron, I don't mean becoming one in that way," she snapped at Ron.

"I didn't even say anything!" Ron protested loudly.

Hermione sniffed in a dignified way, "I saw you were thinking it."

"So if they become one their powers are doubled like Ginny said?" Harry asked.

"In theory, yes. Their souls merge together as do their powers, so they are doubled."

"But wouldn't their power only double when they're together?"

Hermione shook her head and furrowed her brow, trying to explain, "it's a bit like potions," they all shot her sceptically looks but she didn't notice, "there are 8 ingredients that, if put together, form a potion. But if you only put two of those ingredients together there is still an chemical, or magical reaction. Soulmates that have become one no longer have raw ingredients as soul but the beginnings of a potion that has twice as much power, even when not together."

"But you said 'in theory'," Harry said, "so has it actually ever worked before?"

"I don't know," Hermione admitted, "according to the books it has worked before, but their examples are all very old with very little proof or actual facts to back them up."

Ron snorted and rolled his eyes, "figures."

Hermione threw him a truly poisonous look and Harry and Ginny shared a look, it seemed they weren't even going to last until dinner this time.

"That is all very interesting, Hermione, but unless one of us runs in his or her soulmate it's not important anyway," Harry tried to distract her from her anger, giving Ron a warning look not to say anything stupid, he was not in the mood to listen to them fight.

"I've found some interesting things that might help us, that is if the whole thing actually works, I still need to do some more research. It has been classified as dark magic but as far see I could see there was no real reason for that, basically we could fool our souls into thinking we are eachothers soulmates but there might be some danger to it. I need to look it up once we are at Hogwarts, this library has no more information about it."

"Fool our souls?" Harry repeated in amazement, "so you're saying we could all become four times as powerful?"

"If it works," Hermione warned him, "don't get your hopes up, but yes, we could be even16 times more powerful if working together."

"Wow," Ginny breathed, forgetting about her card-house that promptly collapsed, "nobody could possibly beat us then!"

There fell a silence as they stared at eachother, each contemplating the possibilities, Ron got a dreamy look on his face, "just imagine..." he sighed wistfully.

Hermione rolled her eyes, "honestly, having more power is useful but not that great, and it's completely useless if you don't have the knowledge and experience to use it properly."

Ron opened his mouth to say something when he was interrupted by a sudden loud "BANG!" coming from outside the room.

Downstairs Mrs Black started screeching.