Close-up of a teal fine line script tattoo reading Expecto Patronum on skin.

Expecto Patronum script on skin

Lettering · Other · Colour · Photo

The tattoo is the words Expecto Patronum in flowing cursive script across the middle of the frame. The linework is thin and even, rendered in a single teal ink with no shading. The lettering fills most of the image against a plain, softly lit area of skin.

Lettering Other Phrase Script text

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marjorie, you asked me last Christmas what the words meant, and I told you it was Latin for a sort of hopeful spell, which was true as far as it went. The whole truth is that I wrote them on a card in 1997 in my own hand, the night the power went out across the whole of Harrowgate, and I was fourteen and certain nothing bad could reach me while I had something to say out loud. My mother found the card in the bread bin. She never once asked me what I meant by it, only put it back where I'd tucked it and said the kettle would take a minute.

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You will want to know whether it worked. The honest answer is that the cold came off the moors anyway, and the lights stayed off until Thursday, and Mr Haskell from the chemist's went out in his slippers to see about the generator and didn't come back for two hours. But the card stayed dry in the tin, and the words kept their shape in my head the way a good coat keeps its shape on a hook.

So when Dev asked me, on the train back from Leeds, what I'd do if I had one wish left, I found I didn't want anything grand. I wanted the words on my own skin where I could see them without going through the bread bin. The lettering is in a teal that Dev's cousin swore was the only colour that wouldn't fade, and the artist let me sit with my back to the mirror while she worked, which I thought was kind of her.

I'm writing this down because you have started looking at things the way I used to, Marjorie, with that little frown, as though the world might be about to say something rude. Say it anyway. Say the words back if you like. Nobody in this house has ever been too old to try.