Chapter Text
Harry’s first memory is one of scalding pain and shame.
In it, he’s three or four, skinny and naked in the tub with his Aunt Petunia scrubbing at his left arm. The water is so hot it steams around him. His skin is pink and raw as she scrapes the rough brush over his arm again and again. His nose and eyes burn from the stink of bleach. His shoulder aches from being pulled tight. His wrist hurts, and his fingers are numb from Petunia’s too-tight grip. Tears run down his cheeks, and he uses his other hand to muffle his sobbing because he’s already been backhanded once for being too loud.
Petunia’s breath was fast and harsh, her voice low and poisonous as she muttered mostly to herself. “We’ll get this freakish spot off of him one way or another. I’m not going to let anyone in this house have this kind of nonsense around. Just what would people think? Seeing a boy his age with such a thing?”
She scrubs for hours. She scrubs until his skin breaks under the chemicals, and he starts to bleed. She scrubs until his arm is inflamed and his body trembling. She scrubs until Vernon finally comes home, yelling up the stairs for her, and she swears—soft and low like she didn’t mean to do it—and she leaves him in the tub to go start cooking dinner.
It’s just one of many times when Aunt Petunia tries to wash away the mark on his arm.
It never works.
The only thing the Dursleys buy that is for Harry and Harry alone are the bandages. Not the little ones for scrapes or cuts. Those aren’t for Harry.
The bandages for him are the big kind, the patches that go over a large patch of skin. They’re to cover up the mark on his left arm, which had started as a small splotch of black and green and turned into something detailed, something strange as he got older. Harry would touch the mark on his arm while tucked away in his cupboard and wonder about it.
He knew no one else around him had a picture like his. He only saw people with pictures on the Telly, and they usually had them all over, not just on their one arm like Harry. He wondered what their pictures looked like as they grew. He wondered if he’d get more pictures than just the one on his arm.
He wondered what it meant that he had one and no one else in his family did.
He was obviously different from them somehow. That was why he got Dudley’s old things. That was why he wasn’t allowed to eat with them or much at all. That was why they put him in the cupboard instead of a bedroom like Dudley.
Harry wasn’t like Dudley. Dudley was a good little boy, and Harry was something else. Harry was a freak. He was cursed, maybe, with a scar on his forehead and a black and green mark on his arm that was blurry and strange and grew quite big. It didn’t take proper shape until he was six, and by the time he was seven, the skull was very clear, but the green part was still a strange wispy ribbon. Eventually, that ribbon turned into a snake of the most beautiful green, like jade or emerald, rich and shining like his skin gleamed.
And then, when he was about eight years old, he discovered the truth behind his mark in a marvelous way.
The snake spoke to him.
“Such jealous creatures. Do not listen to them, my chosen, my beloved, do not listen.”
Harry heard the soft whisper beneath Dudley’s mockery of him. He stood with hunched shoulders and his arms around his belly, waiting for Dudley to get tired of insulting him and to start with the real torment. It was so quiet he almost missed it.
He frowned, wondering who had said that. They were in the corner of the park, he and Dudley and his gang, so there wasn’t a radio or TV nearby to blame it on. It didn’t sound like any of the other boys, either.
And then Dudley got bored of yelling, so he shoved Harry to the ground and started pummelling him with his fists, and Harry forgot all about it.
He heard the voice again a few days later. While tucked into the cupboard, stomach twisting painfully with hunger and the smell of the delicious dinner still on his clothes and coming in from under the cupboard door, Harry lay on his bed in a tight ball, arms wrapped tight around himself. Sometimes, when he squeezed really tight, he could get his body to focus on the ache in his arms instead of in his stomach.
He lay like this for an hour before he heard the whispering sound, angry and sibilant. “How dare they. How dare they. Worthless muggles. Vile creatures. How dare they starve my soul, my chosen! How dare they! Do they not know who it is they anger? I will starve them and skin them! I will feed them their own roasted son!”
In the quiet cupboard, the words were surprisingly loud. And they sounded like they were coming from his belly. Harry looked down at himself, wondering what that could be. He knew he didn’t have any speakers on him. What was going on?
Now that he was paying attention to his arm instead of his empty belly, Harry could feel a strange tingling sensation on his skin. It itched, so he rubbed at it. Harry frowned. The itch was under his bandage.
Then the voice came again, softer and soothing. “Take comfort from me, my beloved, my soul. I will come for you, and the muggles will pay for all they have done. I will come. I yet live.”
Curious, Harry slowly peeled back the bandage on his arm. He didn’t look at his mark often and only ever in the safety and privacy of his cupboard.
In the light that came in from beneath the door, Harry looked at the mark that sat right in the middle of his left forearm.
The skull looked the same as he’d last seen it: eyeholes a black void, the black triangle for the nose, the jaw that was hung open just enough for the thick green snake to hang out like a tongue. However, the snake was different.
It still hung out of the jaw, but instead of dangling there, it curled back around the skull. Loops of coil circled the bone. The head of the snake was turned towards it, as if it were speaking to the skull. The snake was the same beautiful jewel tone that Harry remembered, though. He ran hesitant fingers along the coils, admiring how beautiful they were, green and shining and almost slick like real snakeskin.
Right before Harry’s eyes, the snake’s mouth opened, and its tongue flicked out. A soft hissing sound emerged from the mark, and Harry heard that soft voice again, “Yes, dearest beloved, dearest chosen, be comforted. I will come and set you free. I will treasure you as you have never been treasured before. I will care for you as no one has cared before. I live. I live. I will come for you!”
Harry wanted to believe, but he was eight now. He wasn’t a baby who would believe just anything that anyone said. He knew people lied all the time. He knew they lied to him all the time.
“But how?” he asked the snake, running his finger along its delicate head. “How will you come for me when you are trapped on my arm?”
The snake turned, and for the first time, Harry noticed that its eyes were blood red. They stared up at Harry, tongue flicking in and out. “You speak to me in my tongue? But of course, you do. We are destined, fated. We are a chosen pair, beloved. Do not doubt me. I am beyond death. I shall come for you.”
“But how?” Harry asked, “But when? How long do I have to stay here?”
The snake coiled and uncoiled, slithering in a knot around the skull, never moving away from it but instead moving in and out of the open jaw. “I shall come for you. I shall. My chosen, my soul, I will find you and come to you. I shall take you from this place. I will find you and take you with me, and you will be mine own forever.”
Harry squeezed his eyes shut. Of course, even the strange snake on his arm wouldn’t tell him the truth.
“Why are you lying to me?” he asked. He hated the whine in his voice; it sounded too much like Dudley. It sounded too much like he had believed the snake when he knew better the whole time. “Why tell me that? It’s not true.”
“It is, it is,” the snake insisted, “Time means nothing to the immortal. I am beyond such notions. I will come for you. My beloved, my soul, you will be mine forever.”
“Time matters to me,” Harry mumbled back. He twisted around on his bed, curling up so he could stare at the mark now on his arm. It wasn’t just in his head that the snake was watching him; he could feel it as well. The eyes were staring right into his soul. “I’m not immortal. I’m going to starve to death.”
“No!” the snake exclaimed. Its body rippled with anxiety. “No, you shall not die. I shall preserve you. I shall teach you magic, my chosen, my beloved. I shall teach you. You shall live, and then I shall find you. I will teach you.”
“Magic?” Harry whispered, wide-eyed. That was a banned word in the Dursley household. Not even Dudley was allowed to say it.
“Yes, yes,” the snake settled again, tongue flicking out quickly, “You have such potential, my chosen, my soul. You have such sweet magic. I will teach it to you, and you will become greater than all others. You shall be my equal. You must. You are mine, and I yours.”
“I don’t think I’m allowed to learn magic,” Harry said worriedly. If he couldn’t even say the word, he probably wasn’t allowed to learn about it! “Aunt Petunia wouldn’t like that.”
The snake hissed angrily. “I shall burn the muggles. I shall teach you to control them! They cannot take from you that which is rightfully yours! My soul, my beloved, you shall wield magic, and the muggles will fear you as they should. You shall rule over them!”
Harry didn’t want to rule over his relatives. He didn’t want to rule over anyone. He didn’t know the first thing about ruling! “Can’t I just make them like me? Can I make them be nice to me with magic?”
The snake curled tightly around the skull for a moment as if considering Harry’s words. Then, slowly, it admitted, “Muggles will never learn such a thing once they have known fear of you. You can command their respect, but they will hate you in their hearts even if they bow before you. They cannot be trusted. Listen to me, my chosen, my soul, there are those who are like you that are more valuable than these muggles. I will teach you everything you need to know; I will teach you so that they will fear and respect you and your power. You are my equal. It will be as I say.”
Harry worried his bottom lip. He ran his thumb lightly along the snake’s scales. He wanted to learn about magic. He wanted to learn about other people like himself. He didn’t think he’d do everything the snake told him to; some of it sounded weird.
“You will teach me magic?”
“I will. I will. My chosen, my beloved, I will teach you all that I know, and you shall rise to your proper station as mine. And I shall find you. And I shall care for you. And you shall be mine. It is my will.”
Harry smiled a little. Even if this was a dream, even if he was so hungry he was hallucinating talking to the snake on his arm, Harry thought it was better to agree than argue. If it wasn’t real, he wouldn’t lose anything. If it was…
“Okay. I want you to teach me magic,” Harry told the snake, “And I want to learn other things too. Like, what are you, and how are we able to talk? I didn’t know tattoos could talk!”
“I am more than a simple, silly tattoo,” the snake sounded annoyed, “I am that which shows our souls are connected, my beloved, my dearest one. You are my soul’s mate, and we are bound together.”
“What?”
“Have you not been told? Has no one taught you anything?” the snake sounded exasperated, and Harry immediately apologized. This got him another sharp hiss and the snake bared its fangs for a single second. “Do not apologize for the negligence of others. You are a child, my chosen, my soul; I can feel your core is developing still. I will teach you all things you must know. I will teach you magic. But first, I will teach you what you are and what I am to you.
“You are a wizard, my soul, my beloved, and you will be powerful as our souls are bound, and no one who shared their soul with me would be weak. We are bound, my beloved, my chosen. We are fated. You are mine, and I am yours, and together we will be unconquerable, unstoppable, unending. I am beyond death, and I will bring you forth as I am.”
Harry bit his tongue. He didn’t think the snake meant that he would become a snake on an arm, but it was confusing to understand. With the way the snake rambled and repeated itself, Harry had a difficult time following along. But he thought he might have figured something out. “You say I’m your soul; I’m your equal. You’re a mark that connects me to…to a soulmate? My soulmate?”
Harry had heard about soulmates. Sometimes, Aunt Petunia’s afternoon telly programs talked about soulmates. They were supposed to be perfect for each other and make each other happy and safe, and loved.
Even if they were real, Harry never thought he’d get one. Who would want to be soulmates with Harry, the criminal freak of number 4 Privet drive?
“Yes, yes,” the snake hissed in delight, “I am a soul’s mark. I bind our souls together. Yet I am more than others. I live. I live. I am a part of your soulmate’s soul, more than all other marks. We are bound. We are fated. My soul to yours. You are my chosen. Forever and ever. I am beyond death. We will be free from death. We shall be immortal.”
It sounded marvelous. It sounded too good to be true. Harry ran his fingers over the green scales of the snake, watching as it twitched on his skin.
“You’re not lying to me?” Harry asked quietly, “You mean it? You’re really going to come for me?”
“I will come for you. Even if my body is shattered, my will remains. I am beyond death. I will come for you, my chosen, my soul. My will be done.”
It was painful to hope. Harry had given up on the Dursleys lying about his parents being dead when he was six. He had given up on any of his Primary teachers helping him get away from the Dursleys when he was seven. He had given up on anyone ever helping him after that summer when even that nice new couple down the street had started to glare at him when he went past their house to go to the park. He had never met them, but he knew that Aunt Petunia had poisoned them against him.
He didn’t think she could possibly poison his soulmate against him. She would have to find a way to talk to the snake on Harry’s arm, and that was just impossible. Even if she could, she would never do such a freakish thing.
It might never come true, but maybe…just maybe.
Maybe his soulmate would come for him. Maybe they would save him from the hell that was his life.
Maybe they really would hold him and love him, the way that the snake told him they would.
“Can you tell me more,” Harry asked quietly. His voice felt thick in his throat, and he had to blink sharply in order to keep from tears welling in his eyes, “Can you tell me more about who my soulmate is? What they’re like?”
The snake coiled in and around itself several times before settling. Its tongue flicked rapidly in and out. “I am bound to you, but once was part of a greater whole. I am he; he is your soulmate. I am the most powerful, the most feared, the most respected, the Great Lord. I know magics that have been lost to time and forgotten by foolish wizards who turn their back on such magnificent truths. I am power. I am magic’s favored.”
Harry’s mind spun a little. That wasn’t what he was hoping to hear, of course. But at least he now had a gender for his soulmate. They were a he. They were a boy like him, or, well, they must be a man if they were a Great Lord.
He didn’t know what to think of that. He knew Vernon despised those who were unnatural and freakish. But if Harry was a boy and his soulmate was a boy too, Vernon would think even worse of him now. Now he was a deviant, a pervert.
Harry ran his fingers along the edge of the snake. He curled tightly around his arm, the gnawing hunger in the pit of his belly forgotten as he came to understand this new truth about himself.
His soulmate was a man. That meant Harry wasn’t just a freak; he was something even worse.
“Are you powerful enough to stop my uncle from hurting me?” Harry asked the snake on his arm, peering at it carefully, “Because if he finds out my soulmate is a man, he’ll beat me half to death. And then they might send me away to try and change me.”
The snake on his arm trembled and coiled itself tightly into a knot, hissing dark threats. “I shall strike him down. I shall flay his skin. I shall burn his home and consume all that he values. He will not touch you. He will not harm you.”
Harry shivered at the words. They reminded him of his darkest thoughts, of those times when he sat in the backseat of the car, hoping that a truck would drive into them and crush Vernon behind the wheel, or when he lay under the stairs and heard them thumping up and down and prayed that Vernon would fall down and break his neck. Maybe his aunt would like him better, be nicer to him, if Vernon wasn’t there, but probably not.
He brought his arm up to his face, pressing his cheek against the snake. His mark was cool and tingled faintly whenever the snake moved. Was it magic that made that so?
“I wish you were here now,” Harry whispered to the snake, to his soulmate’s soul, “I wish you would open up the cupboard door and take me away forever. I hate this place.”
He never said those words out loud, always afraid that one of his relatives would hear him. They were the worst when they thought he was being ungrateful.
“I will come for you,” the snake hissed back, gentle, promising, filling Harry’s chest with painful hope, “You are mine, and I am yours. I will come for you. I will keep you forever, my own, my soul, my chosen.”
Harry hoped beyond hope that that was true.
“Please,” he whispered, “Hurry up and find me, soulmate.”
There were two truths that Harry knew and would always believe in.
He could use magic.
He had a soulmate.
Those two things burned with certainty in the center of his chest day in and day out. They were the two things that kept him moving even when his body ached from the daily chores and starvation and Dudley’s ‘games.’
Ever since their first real conversation, Harry’s mark spoke regularly to him, the soft hissing edge to its voice a familiar buzz in his ear. He didn’t know how his relatives never heard the snake speak, but he figured it had to be magic since they never said a word about it, and he knew they would have.
It spoke to him as he did his chores, sometimes echoing the anger that he felt at having to do everything while Dudley did nothing and Petunia did next to nothing. Sometimes it guided him in feeling the ambient magic around him, especially when he was working in the garden. Sometimes it whispered threats toward people, especially if they were being cruel to Harry.
At night, when he was tucked away in his cupboard, it would tell him all about magic. It whispered of creatures Harry could only imagine, of dragons and unicorns and basilisks and manticores. It told Harry about spells he would one day cast, about runes that could make put up invisible shields of protection, about alchemy that could transform metals, about crystal balls that could reveal the future. It told Harry of magical villages, where people rode winged horses, where they lived in cliffside castles, where they danced in circles beneath the moon to feel the tide of magic in their blood.
He gave up trying to pry specific information about his soulmate from the snake eventually—it didn’t seem capable of speaking more directly about him, which Harry decided had to be caused by some magical effect. He could tell his soulmate wanted to be known and wanted to know him, but the snake would twist itself into complicated knots of frustration when he tried to get concrete information like what his soulmate’s name was or what they looked like.
So instead of asking about that, Harry asked about magic.
Long hours spent locked away left Harry plenty of time to learn how to meditate in order to feel his own core of magic. It gave him time to decipher the shapes of runes from the twists of his snake’s mark and to replicate them over and over and over with his finger in the dust on his cupboard floor. It gave him time to whisper the Latin words, carefully mimicking the snake’s pronunciation and pushing his magic through his fingers, again and again and again until it worked.
Until he cast his first spell.
Harry twisted his wrist and flicked his fingers, and whispered, “Lumos,” in a hiss just like the way he’d been taught.
A faint silvery light formed at the end of his fingers. He stared at it, heart hammering in his chest, a burning sensation on his arm that he knew meant his mark was aware of what he was doing and was so pleased.
“My soul, my beloved,” the snake hissed, and Harry somehow tore his eyes away from the magic light he had conjured, “You have done wonderfully. You have cast the spell perfectly. You shall become a great wizard.”
Harry flushed at the praise. He brought his glowing hand closer to his other arm, admiring the way the light glinted off the green of the snake’s scales and how the red eyes seemed to glow with their intensity. “Thank you, I would never have been able to do this without you.”
The snake coiled a little tighter around the skull. Its tongue flicked out so fast it tickled. “I will teach you another spell. I will teach you all magic that is known to me. This one will help you now, for it will give you freedom. Listen to me, my beloved, my chosen, and learn well.”
Harry listened and learned well.
Harry’s ninth birthday passed with him still living beneath the stairs, his soulmate mark as his only company.
And yet he was filled with hope, believing the whispering of the snake that his soulmate would come for him. He only had to wait a little longer.
Harry’s tenth birthday passed much the same way, with dust in his hair and dirt under his nails, though he could now cast the unlocking and locking charms that let him escape his cupboard and sneak food in the middle of the night.
He wished for one gift, for his soulmate to find him and take him away. He hoped and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Then it was the summer he was to turn eleven, and things changed once more.