The sixth letter was dated 1 June, 2020. It was the longest yet, but in it, Cassia had given him the biggest clue as to who she was. More importantly, she had revealed that Hermione might be the key to solving the whole thing.
"Dear Harry,
Thank you for giving us what we need to create the potion. It's very simple, actually. We have created a perfume with it. Your soulmate calms down when he wears it.
Hermione has figured out who he is, and she thinks I should reveal his identity to you...
But first, I want to tell you a little bit about myself.
I belong to a pureblood wizarding family, one of the oldest. In Muggle terms, we would be considered aristocrats or royalty.
But I am not pureblood myself.
You see, my father had a very brief, but intense affair with a Muggle woman whom he impregnated. He disappeared barely days after I was born. As the story goes, my mother had just come back from the hospital with me to find that he had left a key to a bank vault and a letter – well, a note more like it – explaining that he was sorry, but that he could not stay.
My mother was devastated, of course. He had left us with a small fortune, enough to fund an extremely comfortable lifestyle, but we lived in extremely modest circumstances because she chose to spend a considerable amount of it on private investigators and detectives in a vain attempt to track him down. Little did she know that he was keeping an eye on us the entire time, sometimes even appearing right under our noses in the form of a cute little stray puppy!
Like you, I experienced odd, unexplainable happenings in my childhood – but since neither mum nor I knew anything about magic, we brushed them off as nothing more than "glitches", as she liked to call them. I only found out about magic when I received my Hogwarts letter. Unlike you, however, my father had a reputation to maintain, and he needed to keep me hidden from the wizarding world…
I would have never gotten the chance to ever experience magic for myself if not for Dumbledore. He helped me tremendously. I was given a potion that would give me the appearance of someone else - much like Polyjuice potion, except more permanent and easier to swallow! I took on a completely different identity and lived a secret life. No one, not even my own half-sister (my father's true pride and joy, the result of his marriage to a powerful witch from another old pureblood family), recognised me at Hogwarts - even though we shared the same common room and became best friends for a while! Dumbledore knew, of course, and he encouraged the friendship so that I could better understand the nuances of the pureblood family that I really belonged to.
When I graduated from Hogwarts, I decided to return home and visit my mother first before deciding on my next steps. I'd missed her dearly. After all, she was the only person who truly knew me – the real me. But when I returned home, I discovered that my choice to attend Hogwarts had set off a chain of unfortunate events.
The official story explaining my absence to my Muggle family and friends was that I had won a prestigious scholarship to a university in America. But I had been careless in hiding my Hogwarts acceptance letter, and my mother had stumbled upon it while straightening out my belongings.
One thing led to another, and the deeper she looked, the more she found about the wizarding world. She had even managed to sneak into Diagon Alley without any access to magic. Apparently, she got in by joining a secret society of Muggles and wizards who were championing some sort of underground Muggle-magic alliance.
At some point she uncovered my father's true lineage. This was the turning point. She became all the more determined to track him down and confront him…the closest she got, at least that I know of, was "accidentally" bumping into my half-sister at Hogsmeade.
She disappeared shortly after that.
The details are fuzzy, but all evidence points to my father or his family having her killed before she could go any further.
I was devastated when I returned home to an empty house. But I soon realised that, like most of the wizarding world, my father's family underestimated my mother simply because she was a Muggle. While sorting out her things, I found a large collection of files on her computer, all replicated and saved on several different hard drives in various locations. She had left behind her life's worth of research…and it was fascinating.
She had discovered magic. But it wasn't just our magic, with wands and potions and charms…
She had also discovered what she called "Muggle magic".
Muggle magic is unlike ours. They have no clue how to fashion a wand, let alone cast a spell with one!
But the beauty of it is that they don't need wands. I know this might come as a shock to you – certainly, it's a secret hidden from the wizarding community and even from themselves – but Muggles are really rather unique magical beings. I suppose you could compare them to goblins, or fairies...the magic is within them, innate as part of their being. However, only a very few of them know how to tap into it. It is subtle, and requires great awareness and self control to wield properly.
What has all of this got to do with you?
Well, your soul contract is unique because YOU were the one that cast it. You, being part Muggle and part wizard yourself, formed it both with Muggle magic and wizarding magic.
Your soulmate – the person I have been writing to you about – is related to me through my pureblood lineage. He himself is pureblood. But because of the nature of your soul contract, it is important that he understands how Muggle magic works, too.
As of late, he has been spending a lot of time with me because I have been teaching him all about this Muggle magic.
Your friend, Hermione, is aware of this and supportive. But she has her own reasons...The Ministry of Magic could benefit greatly from forging an alliance with powerful Muggles who are well-versed in Muggle magic. The great irony is that despite being a Muggle herself, Hermione has yet to figure out how to tap into Muggle magic.
Your soulmate, on the other hand…maybe it is because of his close proximity to you (energetically speaking, anyway) – your soulmate has shown remarkable grasp of Muggle magic.
I have only recently come to find out that he has been doing experiments with Muggles behind my back, trying to recreate the soul contract that you formed with the sole purpose of figuring out how he can break it without endangering himself.
He has recently tried to put his latest Muggle partner – a beautiful woman, but not a very smart one unfortunately – under such a contract. The whole thing backfired badly when he realised that it only strengthened his pull to you. The Muggle was easy enough to take care of (a simple memory potion fixed it) but your soulmate became incredibly withdrawn and depressed as a result of the botched attempt.
Which was why we needed your blood, to make that potion.
Hermoine has been incredibly helpful throughout this entire process and I am grateful to her for successfully concocting this potion.
It is rather unfortunate, however, that I now find myself working against her, instead of with her. While I remain convinced that I must do my best to uphold this soul contract, she has made up her mind that it is best to break it once and for all.
Hermione Granger-Weasley is exceptionally smart and I have no doubt that she will eventually find a solution. But she completely fails to understand what Muggle magic really is and how it works. It is up to you to make her understand that it is your life and happiness she is experimenting with here…
Your soulmate is already suffering the consequences of not being near you. Mark my words, Harry. Nothing good will come out of this. You must stop them from trying to break your bond.
Cassie"
Harry's hand was shaking as he placed the letter back into the folder. He remembered how Hermione had reacted when he had confronted her with it, months ago. She had denied knowing anything about Cassie or his soulmate, insisting instead that his blood was used for the cure for the mysterious virus spreading amongst Muggles and not in some "crazy made-up fairytale by a delusional witch somewhere". The Ministry needed the blood of a powerful wizard, she had said, and who was more powerful than him, who had defeated Voldemort?
To his surprise, Ginny had reacted very differently. She had suddenly become fiercer with her love, ever so protective of him and their children; ice-cold to both Hermione and Ron. "Have you ever loved anyone else, Harry?" she had asked one night, when they were both exhausted in bed after a long day.
Harry thought of Cho and laughed.
"What's so funny?" she asked, frowning as she looked up at him with big blue eyes.
"I've never loved anyone the way I love you," he'd replied, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ears before holding her close and inhaling her familiar, comforting scent. She felt small and warm in his arms, fragile even.
