Rebooted as of 5 October 2016, for better flow and variety.

One

On the first of May in the year 1999, something interesting occurred in the magical communities of Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. You see, witches and wizards had all forgotten an old lesson from Charms class. In their defense, they were busy worrying about what they thought were more pressing matters—like the population crisis (which was Lord Voldemort's fault), the systematic elimination of corruption in the Ministry (which was many other peoples' faults on top of Voldemort's), and the rebuilding of magical communities (which was Voldemort's fault).

So it wasn't the public's fault that they didn't remember residual magical buildup. In further defense of the public's ignorance, professors domestic and abroad hadn't stressed the lesson very much either and had mentioned it in a most offhand manner, but that's beside the point, eh?

Magic lingers. In the same way that people stay on the earth long after their deaths by virtue of their impact on those who remember them, so too can magic remain in its effects on the atmosphere. Oftentimes, the residue isn't significant enough to warrant consideration. However, the strength of leftover magic is frequently combined with the atmosphere created by the people themselves.

Think of Hogwarts, which boasts the biggest collection of potential magic, literal and figurative. The magic each and every student carried into the school and expended in their seven years within it remained in every grain of stone and wood. The enormous magical buildup gave the castle a certain amount of life. Disappearing rooms, secret passageways, hidden charms at every corner? And honestly, what right-minded founder would create moving staircases, which would only be detrimental to punctuality but also a safety hazard? No, that bloody castle is alive.

Think of the British Ministry of Magic, with nine levels packed with witches and wizards who deal with every facet of running a magical country, from its global face to its deepest secrets. Owls and paper memos soar through the air as the bustle of men and women ebb and flow on the ground. Faulty magical objects were repaired in one department while new spells, charms, and potions were made, verified, and sanctioned in another.

Then think of an ancient, magical manor, which housed generations of a magical family, fraught with centuries of intrigue that only made the structure as cold and mysterious as those who've inhabited it. Though made with basic architectural processes, the magic imbued upon the house in the form of protective wards and camouflage charms gave the manor life enough to construct a labyrinthine appearance to those unwelcome.

And now think of the happenings between the years of 1996 to 1998, and what occurred within the walls of these three structures. Hogwarts suffered two major attacks, one being the final battle of the war. The Ministry fell thrice—once to willing ignorance and cowardice, once to a group of Death Eaters and several bold teenagers, and once more to a madman and his followers. The sprawling manor in Wiltshire weathered centuries of Malfoys before crumbling to the sheer power of evil that used its old walls as headquarters.

Honestly, it wasn't at all surprising that these three sites became privy to the strangest magical phenomenon only several months after the bells of the new millennium.

"…and the third floor corridor—"

"Always the third floor corridor."

"Quite right, Severus. I fear that I began an unfortunate trend when we stored the Sorcerer's Stone there. Apologies, Phineas, please continue."

"Thank you so much, Albus. So the third floor corridor, the faculty lounge, and the Room of Requirement. Still."

"Nine areas left!" chimed Armando Dippet. "Wonderful!"

"Yes, we've made good progress," said Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, setting down her quill and closing her logbook of repairs. "But we've still a long ways to go even after rebuilding the castle."

As McGonagall sat back in her chair and pulled off her spectacles to rub the bridge of her nose, a massive, brown leather-bound book materialized in the air, hung for a moment, and then landed on the desk with a soft boom.

"Oh, dear. Is the library malfunctioning again?" asked Dippet.

"And we're back to ten areas," muttered Snape.

"This isn't from any shelf in our library," said McGonagall, already holding her wand aloft as she rose from her chair and examined the book.

It was as wide as her shoulders and thicker than her thigh, its cover a bit worn and plain. She approached the book with all the caution of a veteran of two wars and forty years' experience as a teacher, casting precautionary spells left and right. The most fascinating result from testing was the conclusion that no one in existence had previous touched the book, nor did it have any lingering traces of another's magical signature upon it. if McGonagall put a finger on it, she would be the first.

"Well, what are you waiting for, woman?!" demanded Dippet impatiently as the book levitated before her, turning over and over with each subtle swoop of her wand. "Open the bleedin' thing!"

With another decisive flick of her wand, the cover flipped open to reveal two columns of beautiful, flourishing calligraphy. The black ink slid across the page like ribbons rather than stains.

"Are those lists of names? Is this the new book of potential Hogwarts students?" asked Phineas.

"No. I haven't been a student of this school in many years," answered McGonagall, finding her name in one column.

Every flick of her wand turned the page until they were about an inch through the book's thickness, whereupon it was revealed that the list was still in the process of being written. The flowing script wrote wet in gold filigree and dried a shiny black, shimmering like burning paper before moving onto the next name, which happened to be that of Harry Potter's. The next name appeared beside his, on the adjacent column—Ginny Weasley.

"It's not just a list of names," said Dumbledore. "It's a list of couples."

Snape snorted, and Phineas's agreeing scoff followed immediately after. McGonagall glanced up at the portrait behind her, meeting the gaze of her longtime friend and colleague, and sighed. His blue eyes did not twinkle, but they did warm sympathetically.

"It's only been a year," said McGonagall wearily, summoning another quill and a blank parchment. "A year, and now this."

"That's not the only thing," said Snape. He jerked his chin at her hands, which had begun to pen a letter to Acting Minister Shacklebolt.

At first, she was confused, but a second later, she saw the silver dots and lines that formed a ring around her left ring finger.

Dumbledore hummed. "Oh, my."

Padma Patil had only worked in the Department of Mysteries a grand total of a month and a day. She'd only been working in the Love Chamber for a month. Studious and dedicate, characteristics overshadowed only by that of Hermione Granger's obsessiveness, she spent most of her free time trying to catch up to the centuries of research done concerning her field. So for the last four weeks, she'd logged in hours at the Department of Mysteries's Archives, reading up on old literature.

True, it was late and on a weekend, but her work meant she kept strange hours, as Unspeakables were encouraged to work when they felt their minds were at their best. Her mum and Parvati had always joked that she was the embodiment of a night owl, and so the sentiment persisted. She spent evenings researching about everything magically related to love.

Such was her life for the time being, and she was quite all right with that, thanks. Padma understood the importance of being familiar with the material before attempting to fiddle with it, for Merlin's sake. So what if she hadn't done any hands-on work and the only strange, mysterious thing to live up to the rumors were the explosions and incessant ticking emanating from the Time Room?

As she sat at one of the long tables, lit up by the two lamps on either end, surrounded by neat stacks of books, scrolls, and loose parchment, Padma did not expect a single strange thing to happen—even in the secret bowels of a magical building. Clearly, she'd grown a bit complacent.

The soft boom of something heavy hitting the cold marble floor echoed throughout the empty library, and nearly upsetting the ink pot into which Padma had been dipping her quill.

"Hello?" she called immediately, firmly. That'd always been her strategy when things literally went bump in the night—anger and hostility to dispel the fear. "Come out now. I know the spell to have your guts for garters."

When no one stepped forward and the silence persisted, she finally stood from her chair, wand aloft and a hex resting on her lips. Even in a place that was warded against unwanted intruders—and further reinforced after the events of 1996—to the literal nines, she had to be careful. Constant vigilance was a hard lesson to learn and certainly not easily forgotten.

Yet even when she cast a powerful Lumos, all she found was a gigantic book sitting on the floor. No Death Eater, no monster, no mischievous coworker. Just a bloody book to scare the hell out of her.

A bloody book that had fallen but didn't have a shelf off of which to fall within a five foot radius. She looked up at the high, vaulted ceilings and the arms jutting out to grip a section that could very well function as a balcony for rodents.

Knowing better than to willy-nilly pick up a book that might've materialized out of thin air, she levitated the tome, wondering how much it actually weighed if she picked it up herself. She cast her own arsenal of spells—ones quite similar to the ones being cast a few hundred miles away in a castle in the Scottish highlands—and determined the book's relative innocence. Only then did she finally open the book with a soft flick of her wand.

At first, the pages fluttered slowly as she tried to take it in with a meticulous eye, but after the tenth blank page, they all rushed past until she hit the end cover. She let it hover in front of her for a moment as she wracked her brain for any sort of reference to empty, magical books materializing out of thin air. Why would a giant, empty book appear out of nowhere, with neither trace nor tell of another magical signature upon it?

She sighed and closed the book and then winced.

It was a rookie mistake, one many an Unspeakable made during their early days. The last level of analysis of artifacts were always tactile; hands were not meant to be used until the very final step.

Fortunately for Padma, it did the trick. As she wrenched her hand back from the smooth leather cover, her handprint reflected in glowing copper before the metallic mark swirled out of form and scattered across the surface. Glyphs, runes, and symbols flashed up at her while she frantically waved her wand to open the book again, upside down so she could see the entirety of the cover.

There was no need for an adjustment or processing period. Padma had quite literally seen it all before—in her research.

Taking a deep breath, she raked her hands through her thick, black hair, wincing when she caught a tangle that yanked out a few of her shoulder-length strands. When she picked her hair off her hand, she froze for the third time that night. On the ring finger of her left hand sat a silvery, sweeping pattern that shimmered in the dim light. She hadn't felt it appear, but it certainly hadn't been there before she found the book.

"Oh, bugger."

The very same words were uttered miles away by a platinum blond-haired man who looked up from where he was reading a book in his hands in front of a book shelf in his library of his ancestral home and saw a large, brown book toppling off a shelf and onto his face. He saw neither names nor markings—only big, dusty brown and then an all-encompassing black.

Almost simultaneously, several miles closer to the Ministry of Magic, a muffled explosion had the customers of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes pausing briefly in their perusal of the plethora of products before turning back to their companions to mutter excitedly about what new invention the Weasley twins planned to release. In the basement workroom of the shop, the twins in question waved their wands to funnel away the blinding, dark violet smoke that had enveloped the room, the fallout of another experimental charm gone awry.

"Any tingling?" asked George, scratching the top of his head. Half his hair stuck out to the side while the other half stuck straight up, the ends dusted with shimmering violet powder.

"Negative," said Fred, tilting his head to brush the same fine substance from his own hair. "Any cooling sensations?"

"Nein," answered George, brushing off his shoulders and flicking his wand to sweep up the rest of the lingering smoke. "Warming sensation perhaps?"

"Nyet," replied Fred, reaching for the parchment with their revised instructions. "What about the presence of any musical ambience?"

"Iie." George sighed and tapped the end of his wand against his nose. "Do you smell food?"

Fred frowned. "Are you asking if I had a stroke or do you think that's a side effect we hadn't considered?"

George grimaced, eyes wide. "Both?"

"That'd be a strong óxi on both fronts, mate," said Fred. He crumpled up the list and tossed it back onto the table, sliding onto a stool and resting his elbow on a free space of the worktable. Something sparkly caught his eye and he looked down. And then he cocked his head to the side and frowned. "Er, did we have strange silver tattoos on the list?"

George paused and then looked down at his own hands, and there it was—a silver curlicue twined around his left ring finger. "What is this?" he asked. "Is this ink?"

Fred turned his hand over and over to study the geometric pattern on his own finger. "D'you think it was the hemlock?"

"Hemlock shouldn't fuse metal into your skin. And it wasn't even part of the charm," said George, shaking his head and trying to rub it off.

"And neither should it have caused pixie wings to sprout, but it's done it before," countered Fred. "We have a whole supply of it close by—do you think it could've had an effect?"

"It can't have been," said George, shaking his head. "It looks too artistic—too deliberate."

"And why's it only on our ring fingers?" added Fred. "This makes no sense."

"Did we accidentally just marry each other?" asked George, eyebrows shooting up. "Is that even possible?"

Fred gagged. "Merlin knows we have enough weird shite sitting in here to have some sort of insane effect."

The door to the workroom burst open, and Verity poked her head in. "Oi!" she barked. "What're you two doing in there? You just gave me and bunch of customers some weird tattoo-thing on our fingers!"

The twins slowly turned to exchange horrified looks.

"Did you—"

"But it shouldn't have—"

"We couldn't have!"

"But we just did!"

"Hey!" snapped Verity again, glaring at her two bosses. "What've you done?!"

"I think we all just got married to each other," said Fred. George smacked the back of his head.

As the twins practically crawled over each other to escape the responsibility of addressing their befuddled customers, a soft snore thrummed from a lump of periwinkle bed linens and duvet in a darkened bedroom several miles away.

Overworked and sleep-deprived, Hermione Granger had passed out upon returning to her flat and stripping off her work robes to flop onto her bed. Immersed in dreams as she was, she was unaware of the sudden spike of panic that lashed through the community as witches and wizards all over Great Britain demanded to know why they'd suddenly had silver or gold tattoos appearing on very important fingers. Hermione's own familiar, silvery geometric design sparkled in the moonlight filtering in through her window.