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“Voldemort,” Harry says once he learns his letters. “Vol-de-mort.”
He likes the V the best, the way it curls around the side of his right wrist in red. The handwriting is nicer than any Harry has seen. Certainly nicer than Harry’s own letters, which come out big and blocky. Harry imagines his own name curling around his soulmate’s wrist twice like a bracelet.
It’s a foreign name and one word instead of two or three. Harry hopes he’s saying the name properly at least. Dudley’s name is far easier than the one on Harry’s wrist. Sarah Partridge sounds like she may live just down the street, not far away.
The first time Petunia hears him say the name, she snaps, “Don’t repeat that. Do you hear me?”
“But I—”
“That man,” she says, with rising anger in her voice, “killed your parents. He came into their house and he murdered them, and then he got what was coming to him from the police. There is nothing good in that name. That you have it on your wrist is an affront to my sister’s death. Do you understand me?”
Harry’s ears ring from her words, her tone, how close she is when she says it. There is only one answer. Harry falls back on it, familiar from each time she tells him to do his chores or to leave the room. “Yes, Aunt Petunia.”
When he looks back down at his wrist, the handwriting doesn’t seem so nice anymore. Harry settles onto his cot, oddly grateful for the cupboard’s small size. He feels small, the outside world suddenly too big and scary. He traces the name with his nail. It’s not like dirt. It’s not going to come off.
There is no refuge from the knowledge once he has it. Nowhere to go.
His castoffs are already too big on him, but now Harry deliberately lets his sleeves hang down over his right wrist. In daytime, Harry tries not to look at the word. At night, his fingers drag over the letters, tracing the curve of the V. He keeps thinking about that Halloween night. His aunt doesn’t talk about it more, so it’s his imagination filling the gaps, wondering why his soulmate would target Harry’s family. Had this Voldemort known?
Soulmates aren’t supposed to be able to harm each other.
They’re supposed to be good for each other. Voldemort hadn’t been good for Harry at all.
That doesn’t mean Harry doesn’t think about him. There are so very few people in the orbit of Harry’s life. The Dursleys, his teachers, Dudley’s friends, and Voldemort, an unseen presence who’s never far from Harry’s mind. It must be because they’re soulmates that Harry thinks about him so often. Somewhere out there is a man whose soul reflects Harry’s.
It scares him, the idea that one day Harry will go from being a delinquent to a murderer. Because what else does the future have in store for him if this is his perfect match? Harry knows it’s not a case of Harry getting all the good while Voldemort got all the bad; Harry doesn’t feel particularly virtuous and the Dursleys would laugh themselves silly at the idea.
Sometimes Harry wishes his soulmate would die, but his letters never turn from red to black. Occasionally, he wishes he had no writing on his wrist at all, but that would make him even more of a freak than the Dursleys already say he is. Everyone has words. It’s just that everyone around Harry has better words than this. Even Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, awful as they are, are suited for each other and deeply in love. When Dudley meets his soulmate, Harry wishes they could swap. Sarah is sweet and funny and one of the few kids in the neighborhood who doesn’t hate Harry. In fact, she makes Dudley a better person just by being around him.
It’s not until later that Harry learns just how bad his soulmate truly is. Not until he hears the words from Hagrid’s lips, sitting by the fire with a cup of tea and his very first birthday cake. Not only did his soulmate kill his parents, but he tried to kill Harry too before being mysteriously vanquished.
“No matter what other people say, I don’t know that he died,” Hagrid says to him. “I reckon he’s still out there somewhere, maybe without his powers.”
Closing his eyes, Harry tries to come to terms with the fact that his soulmate had not only killed Harry’s parents, but tried to kill Harry himself. It was already a bad situation. Now it’s just… worse than Harry expected. He didn’t think it could get any worse than Aunt Petunia’s harsh words, but has.
A terrible thought runs through his head: maybe Voldemort went after his parents because he wanted to wipe away the connection between himself and Harry. First Harry’s parents, then Harry himself.
“He’s not dead,” Harry tells Hagrid.
Hagrid peers at him. “Do you think so?”
With a nod, Harry glances down at his wrist. Under his sleeve, there are red letters that haven’t turned black. Voldemort isn’t dead. If he tried to kill Harry once, then he will try again and again.
It’s not a secret. It can’t be. Harry isn’t any good at keeping them and to hear Hagrid tell it, the whole wizarding world knows more about Harry than Harry knows about himself. Harry isn’t ashamed of the name on his wrist; he’s just angry in a bone-deep, restless way. Somewhere out there is Lord Voldemort and someday they’re going to meet. Harry is going to be ready.
Harry lifts his sleeve and brings his wrist closer to the light from the fire. Voldemort, it says, and the curl of the V is still beautiful. Uselessly, Harry says, “The name hasn’t gone black. He’s out there.”
“Harry,” says Hagrid, his voice breaking. “Come ‘ere.”
Harry can’t remember being hugged before. He loves Hagrid’s hug from the very first moment, warm and all-consuming, as sweet as the icing on his cake. What use is the name on his wrist when there’s people like Hagrid in the world, who don’t hate him even for a second?
“You’ll be just fine,” Hagrid continues, patting Harry on the back. “There you go. You’ll be just fine. This is— it doesn’t make sense, does it, sometimes. It’s cruel.”
Harry nods into Hagrid’s robes. He’s too angry to cry, but he thinks about it.
There is no time that he can give to this, no way to reframe the situation in a less ugly light.
If there is anything that can be done, it is to kill Voldemort before Voldemort can kill Harry.
That night, Harry looks down at his wrist. The word is more familiar to him than any other. Then he opens up his DADA textbook, the first of a pile of Defense texts, and gets to work.
It is harder than one might realize to kill the Dark Lord. Harry sends a fire spell after him in the Forbidden Forest and runs after him, only for him to escape. He refuses to hand over the stone to Quirrell, not for any of Voldemort’s empty promises. He knows too well that nothing good can come of it. When Quirrell screams, his skin blistering, Harry feels sick at the thought of his soulmate dying. In the hospital wing, Harry checks his wrist and finds his letters have not turned black. He is disappointed and relieved all at once. Somewhere out there, the wraith of his soulmate plots and seethes, and within Hogwarts Harry does the same. He stabs a diary with a basilisk fang, certain of his path the moment Tom Riddle reveals his identity. He does his best to stop Voldemort’s servant from fleeing in the night. He never trusts the goblet for a moment, knocking Cedric’s hand aside. The whole tournament is meant to kill Harry, but not if he kills Voldemort first.
It isn’t to be. Harry quickly finds himself bound to a headstone, once more facing a version of his soulmate. First as a small, withered thing, then as the man who rises from the cauldron, snakelike and looming. Upon being robed by Wormtail, Voldemort steps toward Harry.
As soon as he’s in range, Harry tries to kick him. He narrowly misses. “Get away from me! I’m going to kill you.”
“You’re a vicious one,” Voldemort says, not sounding worried about Harry’s threats. Harry can agree that they don’t mean much when he’s still bound, but one day they will. “Look at you now, my sworn enemy. How you shake before me.”
“I’m shaking out of anger.” Harry kicks again. This time, Voldemort is within range, but it’s like hitting a rock.
“Your anger is futile and dangerous. After all,” and Voldemort smiles at him with nothing good about his expression, “I can touch you now.”
He reaches for Harry now with long, pale fingers that drag against Harry’s scar. The thing that marks him as the Boy Who Lived, the mark that Voldemort placed on Harry’s head all those years ago. It’s not the only mark of Voldemort’s on Harry’s body. It’s just the most obvious one.
Unbidden, Harry’s gaze turns from Voldemort’s face—dangerous, to look away from his enemy, but he’s already too close for comfort—to Voldemort’s wrist. At first the angle is all wrong to see it properly, then Voldemort finally releases Harry’s forehead, moving his hand away.
Green letters catch Harry’s gaze easily against Voldemort’s unnaturally pale skin. The handwriting is so familiar it hurts. Harry scrawls his name like that at the top of essays and exams, and there it is on his mortal enemy, as though Harry took a quill to his skin. Ink sinking to the top layer of the skin, not vanishing like the diary but staying.
Voldemort follows Harry’s gaze. He twists his wrist to look at it and Harry is treated to a rare look of shock that displaces Voldemort’s customary anger. “What is this?”
Harry thinks Voldemort is much too old to ask that question. “It’s the soulmate mark. The one we’re stuck with.”
“Lord Voldemort does not have a soulmate,” Voldemort says, not looking away from the words.
“I’m not dead yet. Until then, you have a soulmate,” Harry spits out. But there is a strange sort of look on Voldemort’s pale, monstrous face. Never before has anger seemed so far away from him. There is something uncomfortably human about Voldemort now, even at his most inhuman. Carefully, Harry says, “Everyone has a soulmate.”
Voldemort meets his eyes. “I don’t. I suppose it would be more accurate to say I didn’t.”
“But that’s impossible. You should have still had my name, even if I wasn’t born yet.” It doesn’t make sense. Harry’s narrative of the night his parents died begins to break. Voldemort hadn’t targeted Harry because he was his soulmate. Voldemort hadn’t even known.
Reaching down, Voldemort cuts the rope that keeps Harry’s right arm tied, and brings it up to examine the name on Harry’s wrist. “In body, perhaps, I was not Voldemort until this very moment. What does it say about you, Harry, that your match is Lord Voldemort, not Tom Riddle? That your bond is with me, not some boy whose name has been lost for good.” His grip is light, his words heavy. “My soulmate. I find myself curious.”
“I hate you,” Harry tells him, just in case Voldemort forgot.
Voldemort looks at him with a measure of interest. “I don’t entirely hate you. Isn’t that strange?” With one motion of his wand, he snaps the rest of the ropes. “Return to Hogwarts. I’ll check on you occasionally to see if you become more interesting.” He looks to Pettigrew, who has stood by the entire time in shock. “We’ll postpone our little gathering. Come, Wormtail.”
Now free of the ropes, Harry scrambles for his wand, aiming a stunning spell at Voldemort’s back. It bounces off the shield that springs up wordlessly behind Voldemort.
Voldemort turns back to Harry. “You’re not interesting yet, Harry.”
“You aren’t, either,” Harry tells him, scowling.
It’s a lie. Harry has been fascinated by his mark his entire life, much as he’s tried not to be.
When Voldemort turns away from him again, Harry feels strange. Like he wants to get Voldemort’s attention again and not in a trying to kill Voldemort way. He still hates him, but… It’s hard to hate his soulmate as much as he wants to. It always has been, not that Harry has been able to admit it to himself.
Harry picks up the trophy again. It carries him far away, but there is a piece of him left behind on Voldemort’s skin. He faces the cheering crowd and the announcer who names him winner of the Triwizard Tournament, and Harry wonders if this is interesting enough for Voldemort.
Another title gets added to the list: winner of the Triwizard Tournament. Everyone keeps cheering and all Harry can think of is the red of Voldemort’s eyes.
After, Harry climbs the stairs to Dumbledore’s office, bypassing the gargoyle with just one name.
“He’s back,” Harry says to Dumbledore, and tells him the truth.
He feels the weight of the world, as useless as his kicks and his spells, like letters on skin that don’t mean anything at all. Or at least, they shouldn’t.
Harry is angry. He always will be, when the matter comes to his parents.
And yet, there is a strange sort of hope curling in the space between the letters. The betrayal of it rocks Harry to his core. Because if Voldemort hadn’t known Harry was his soulmate, if he let Harry go when he knew, then it’s not all so horrible, is it?
Dumbledore’s gaze is kind. Harry can’t bear it, and then Dumbledore says, “There is something I should have told you a long time ago.”
Harry leaves with a prophecy imprinted in his memory. He and Voldemort are bound by fate twice over; one way that could be beautiful if they were anyone else, another way that should be perfect if Harry could hold onto his anger. He wants to hold the prophecy against his heart. He wants it to be the only fate that matters.
But it’s not the prophecy written into his skin.
The rest of the school year is uneventful, as is the summer.
In the fall, the Defense post is occupied by Professor Adam Barty. Broken down to the essentials, his teaching style resembles Professor Moody’s. Harry doesn’t say anything, not even when Professor Barty invites him for an extra Defense lesson.
The man behind the desk isn’t Barty at all.
Harry sticks around anyway. He doesn’t make excuses for himself. He just stays, heart pounding, fists clenching, wand heavy in his pocket.
As the years pass, the world stays quiet. The Order meets a few times, aimless without attacks on muggles or muggleborns, and disbands once more despite Dumbledore’s warnings and Harry’s words. It isn’t quite believable, that a Dark Lord is out there, alive and powerful, and not doing a single thing. Harry thinks back to meetings, both coincidental and scheduled, and bites his tongue.
Among Harry’s gifts and congratulations on graduating Hogwarts is an invitation to dinner that Harry accepts.
He looks at Voldemort from across the small, intimate table, and says, “I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought you would go to war the moment you were resurrected.”
“You’ve had enough hardship, haven’t you, Harry? I am immortal. I have all the time in the world for war. You are my soulmate,” Voldemort says, as though that explains everything, anything.
Harry’s lips twitch, unable to keep from smiling just a little. “Yeah, I am.”
The future is uncertain. But in the moment, Harry reaches out to touch Voldemort’s hand, to rest his thumb against the words on Voldemort’s wrist.