Close photo of the words expecto patronum in fine black cursive script running along the upper arm, with a sleeve of light denim at the top edge.

Script phrase along an upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the words expecto patronum written in a single continuous line of cursive script across the skin. The linework is thin and even, with a slightly uneven hand-drawn character. The ink is a dark blue-black with no other colours, and the lettering runs diagonally from left to right, filling most of the frame against a soft, warm skin tone.

Lettering Fine line Upper arm Script Phrase Cursive

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fog came in off the estuary on the turn of the tide, grey and soft as wet wool, and Nan was already out on the seawall with her sleeves pushed up past the elbow. She never ran from it. She said running only made the fog curious. She stood with her feet planted on the cracked concrete and spoke the words slowly, the way you'd read a recipe to someone who might burn the dinner.

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"Expecto patronum," she said, and the words came out thin and even, like a line of ink drawn without lifting the pen. Nothing happened for a long moment. Then a shape pushed out of the mist beside her, a silver hare the size of a sheepdog, and the fog flinched back from it as though it had been slapped.

I was nine that winter and I wanted those words for myself. She wouldn't teach me until I could write them without the letters wandering. So I practised at the kitchen table on a slate tile, looping the tails of the p and the r until my hand ached, because she said a guardian could smell carelessness from the other side of the sea.

The fog comes for me now. Last month it took the name of the boy who used to sell me bread, and I had to chase it down the lane to get it back. This morning I chalked the words on the kitchen wall so my hand would remember the shape. On the seawall I speak them in her rhythm, and the hare comes out of the grey, older than it was, ears bent at the tips. It looks at me the way she used to, waiting for me to be sure. I am sure. The fog pulls back like a tide going out, and I walk home with the hare pacing at my heel.