Black ink tattoo of the Deathly Hallows symbol, a triangle with a circle and vertical line, surrounded by curved lettering across a person's upper back.

Deathly Hallows symbol with quote on back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large Deathly Hallows symbol, formed by a triangle, a circle and a vertical line, sits at the centre of the image. Lines of text follow the triangle's edges and the curves around it, including the phrases Mischief Managed and I solemnly swear that I am up to no good. The linework is clean and fine, rendered in black ink on pale skin, with no colour or shading visible.

Lettering Geometric Back Deathly hallows Triangle Circle Line Quote Text Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The reunion is in the sports hall because nobody could agree on anywhere else, and by nine o'clock you have already been handed three name badges, two of them wrong. Mr Pascoe, who taught chemistry and once confiscated a whole year's supply of conkers, is pouring warm white wine into plastic cups with the air of a man who has never been surprised by anything. You find Imogen by the raffle table. She has not changed her laugh, only the number of children she is trying to keep track of.

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In Year Nine the three of you drew a map of the boiler room on the back of a geography worksheet and wrote a pact in biro: nobody goes down alone, nobody tells the caretaker anything. Imogen says she still has it in a shoebox. She says this in the tone of someone who has kept it there for twenty years, and you are not sure whether that is sweet or alarming. Tomasz arrives late with rain on his shoulders and holds out a folded square of paper before he has said hello.

It is the map, softened at the creases, with a fresh line drawn through the boiler room door in ballpoint. Beneath it, in his cramped capitals, he has written the old words: mischief managed. You laugh harder than you expect to. He taps the corner where a small triangle is sketched, a circle inside it and a single stroke down the middle, and tells you he finally had the thing done last spring, after a decade of meaning to. Then he says the sentence you all swore to in the lunch queue, and Imogen joins in, and for a moment the sports hall is full of thirteen-year-olds.

At half past ten the lights start to flicker, which was always the caretaker's signal, and the three of you slip out past the bins to the side door that was never once properly locked. The boiler room smells of the same dust and hot metal. Imogen unfolds the map under her phone torch and you see that someone, years ago, added a second line beneath the first in a different pen: meet again. You had forgotten writing it. Tomasz says it is about time somebody checked whether the door still opens. Imogen says it never did. All three of you go down anyway.