Chapter Text
ACT ONE
It had taken years before Harry could finally read the words ingrained on his right wrist.
Technically, it hadn’t been his fault, not at all; especially since Aunt Petunia hadn’t taught him how to read when he was at the age where other kids were able to. She probably would have never, because Harry had heard more than once—an eye peeking out of the thin opening in between the hinges of his cupboard's door, chasing the small slither of light in his otherwise dark world—for darkness was his world on most days, the small, cramped space feeling both like a home and a prison all at once—how Aunt Petunia thought that teaching was a job unfit for her, unless, of course, if it was for Dudley's sake.
Harry had always been curious, and especially so to the every-changing string of words on his skin, the ink morphing like a dance which Harry had imagined to smell like the old books in Dudley’s room upstairs, the ones he had taken peeks from whenever the rest of his family were out for movie nights, not that he knew what any of them meant. (He had kept himself entertained still, the illustrations drawn on paper proving to be more than enough for a child to pass the time, even if some had been too much for his small brain to decipher. Harry had dreams of owning books in the future, ones that were as colorful as Dudley’s and not at all like Uncle Vernon’s boring collection; dreams of bookshelves towering him with books that could keep him more accompanied than anyone could ever do.)
He had been a little over 5 years old when he could read, because Aunt Petunia had finally relented and sent him off to a kindergarten after their very nice neighbor had asked of Dudley’s smaller sibling’s (not that the very nice neighbor knew that both of them were just the same age) supposed education.
The kindergarten had taught him how to read the alphabet, how to morph them into words he would use every day, and his teacher had also helped him read the words on their wrists, since everyone on Earth had them.
Soulmate marks, his teacher had explained only for Harry, because everyone else seemed to have had their families explain to them at home. When he had asked what it meant, his teacher had told him that a soulmate was the person he was bound to be with for the rest of his life, the person who the Fates had decided would work the best for him, whether if it was romantically or not. The words on his wrist were just little clues for them in this worldwide scavenger hunt, shaped by their soulmate’s current goal inked on their skin.
Learn how to fly, his teacher had read for him out loud, smiling as she did so. “How cute.”
“Fly?” Harry had repeated, head cocked as he made a vague motion similar to the birds that were outside the classroom’s window sill.
“Fly,” she agreed. “Maybe they want to touch the clouds in the sky.”
“Or the stars at night,” Harry chimed. There had been multiple books on the night sky in Dudley’s collection, from the ones slightly off in the corner of his room and dusty from disuse.
His teacher had smiled at him again in return, and it was with that knowledge that Harry walked with a slight spring in his steps on his way home. (He had to walk home, something Uncle Vernon had established early on since he would be using the car to pick up only Dudley from the more expensive kindergarten a few blocks away, not the standard public kindergarten Harry was currently attending.)
In a way, his soulmate mark had been the first thing that truly felt his. All of his possessions had been hand-me-downs and other junk that his family hadn’t really bothered to throw away just yet. His soulmate mark, however, had been different.
His soulmate mark had felt, and would always feel like it was a part of him, an extension of his heart and an extra limb to his name. Something the Dudleys could never take away. It served as a reason for him to go on, because there would be somewhere out in the world waiting for their inevitable moment of meeting, gravity’s pull working on bringing their hearts together, opposite magnetic poles uniting at last.
That night, curled on the small mattress inside of his cupboard and holding Dudley’s old tattered blanket in his arms, Harry had wondered what sort of goal was written on his soulmate’s wrist.
*
Third year was the time where everything went to shit.
It was the first time that Harry was utterly, terribly sure who his soulmate was.
Sure, he had gotten a few hints before, things like meet the Savior, which hadn’t made any bloody sense to his childhood brain but made perfect sense now that he was older since almost everyone wanted to meet him, (making it clear that when his soulmate wanted to fly, they literally meant flying on a broomstick,) and study hard pre-Hogwarts, which meant that they could be in the same age-range as Harry.
However, none of these goals had struck as much as it did revenge on Buckbeak.
What the fuck, Harry had thought in horror the first time he saw those words etch on his skin.
It was, probably, a cruel cosmic joke planned out by God himself or maybe the Fates, because they had seen how Harry had reacted to his new (celebrity first, wizard second) life and wanted to amp it up by a few hundred thousands by pulling this genuinely, near to heinous prank just because Harry had lost the only gamble he had participated in his life—the world-wide gamble which everyone partook in in the beginning against their best wishes.
His soulmate was Draco Malfoy.
And the worst part?
The worst part was that Harry couldn't find anything in him to outright refute the ridiculous notion, because now everything seemed to be clear as bloody day with no clouds in sight and the sun shining mockingly, haunting him with this new revelation because nothing, nothing in Harry's life seemed to be going to right path. (Except Hermione and Ron and the rest of his friends, of course. Harry would say with absolute certainty that he had taken the right path in befriending them in the beginning, and he would never ever trade them for anything else like, God forbid, Malfoy.)
Fuck.
So in the end Harry hadn't told anyone close to him, a decision he had chosen due to the fact that he would be doing them all a favor, actually, one that didn't allow them to experience the horror of Harry being inevitably fated with a boy who he would rather be dead ten times over.
Still, Harry had decided to take a visit to the Hospital Wing late at night out of pure curiosity, with only moonlight being his companion as silver lit up old ceramic tiles and hallways, going through the clear, transparent shimmering fabric of his cloak and landing right where his shadow was supposed to be. He arrived not long after midnight chimed, casting a silent Alohomora at the doors and smiling when they opened with a subtle click, the sound echoing just barely throughout the silence that veiled the long, empty Hogwarts hallways at night.
He walked a bit to reach the only bed that was occupied in the Wing, heart drumming just a little too fast for his own liking—anticipation coiling tight around his guts like a snake waiting to strike; the feeling dangerous and horrible, for the confirmation he was seeking for would wound up being either the final nail in the coffin or the (unlikely) unexpected freedom he would receive.
Although—
Although Malfoy wasn't sleeping unlike what Harry had been expecting.
He was reading.
Harry noticed him sitting up even when he was still a couple beds away; moonlight tinted white-blond hair like a beacon from afar in the dark, as though Malfoy was using every moment to flaunt his heritage and his general Malfoyness for the whole world to see, the view just enough to spark familiar annoyance in the back of Harry’s mind.
Just because of that alone, Harry let his footsteps be heard in the quiet.
Malfoy jerked his head up at the sound, but Harry couldn't find it within himself to feel satisfied by the reaction when Malfoy was… raising an unimpressed eyebrow at what should be nothing but empty air in his vision.
“You're free to show yourself, you know,” Malfoy drawled, all posh and grating, chin tipped up almost condescendingly as if his arm wasn't in a fucking sling.
Harry, scowling, pulled down his cloak with a little too much force.
Malfoy blinked, gray eyes unnaturally bright from the silver streaming through the windows, before having his mouth twist, expression closing off into something Harry couldn't read—not even after the few years he had been obsessing over the other. It was like staring into a blank paper, and it was genuinely eerie how easy it was for Malfoy to slip into that (Slytherin or pureblood?) mask of his.
“I'm going to assume you're…” Malfoy trailed off, raising his good right hand and turning it around so Harry could see the words engraved on pale, porcelain skin. “Them,” he finished. “Are you really my soulmate?”
Confront him, it read, and Harry felt it resonate in his very being—echoing and bouncing in between the empty space he had between his brain and skull, refracting like light on broken glass in its mission to tell Harry that it was confirmed, genuinely speaking, and Harry's soulmate was really Malfoy and his haughty smirks and terrible attitude.
“Fuck you,” Harry spat, rage choking him before he could think any better. “Fuck you.”
Because soulmates were supposed to be the thing that was his. Because he was supposed to meet his soulmate and adore them immediately, to save himself from a failing marriage like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's, since he couldn't be bothered to search and hers had died from an early age. Because his soulmate was supposed to be anyone else other than Draco Malfoy.
Now all Harry could do was to watch each and every single childish fantasy he had since young crumble into fine dust before him, slipping in between his fingers in his poor attempt on catching them through the haze of rage and incredulity in his head.
“Do you think I'm happy, Potter?” Malfoy said, emotions rising to meet his as always, a growing crack on his stupid mask, allowing Harry to see the same incredulity mirrored back at him. “I didn't ask for this either!”
“You wanted to befriend the Savior,” Harry shot back. “I've seen it tattooed on my fucking skin since I was a kid and you're telling me that you don't want it?”
“Of course I don't—” Malfoy ran his hand through his hair. “I don't because you're apparently an attention-seeking jerk!”
“And you're a snobbish spoiled brat,” Harry finished, the vitriol in his voice like a bullet aimed for destruction. He felt worse compared to how he usually felt in their normal spats, like there was betrayal brewing, shimmering underneath his skin and crushing his heart. He didn’t know where to direct his anger more: at Malfoy’s own disbelieving glare or at the clearly muggle book on the sheets next to him despite constantly preaching his bigoted, pureblood ideals.
Thankfully, Malfoy chose the moment to sneer at him.
“Fuck you, Potter.”
And Harry didn't know any other appropriate response than pulling his cloak back over his head and turning around, slipping away from the Hospital Wing as though he had never been there in the first place—as though in doing so he could somehow turn back time and stop himself from going on such an elaborate, stupid midnight plan.
When he reached the Gryffindor tower, crawled up to his bed and hid behind red-gold curtains, Harry spared a glance to his right wrist, the words had apparently changed during his quick escape.
Never fall in love, it read, and Harry tried not to think about how it hurt.
(In a way, it was no one’s fault but God’s. Neither of them had asked to be placed in such a predicament and while there was momentary satisfaction from pinning the blame on Malfoy, Harry knew how unfair he was being—surely Malfoy was suffering the same thing as him, the righteous indignation at the world at large and, and somehow, deep under the covers of his duvet, staring up to the ceiling of his poster bed, Harry knew that Malfoy’s wrist were spelling out the same words as his. Never fall in love, not if it was Malfoy.)
*
“Wish my soulmate’s someone pretty,” Dean sighed wistfully into his honest-to-God awful lunch he called a sandwich which could more or less be called a troll-killer instead. “Someone hot and smart and someone I actually like but no, the world’s just being unfair.”
Next to Harry, Ron snorted into his drink. “Are you still on about that thing where you're not that older Ravenclaw’s Keeper soulmate?” He grinned, swiping at the formed condensation around his glass. “You’re not, mate. Face it. Maybe you’re soulmate’s someone closer like - like bloody Seamus or something—”
From across the table, Seamus crossed his arms, brows raised. “I take offense to that,” and when Ron asked “Why?” He said, “If we’re keeping up with the Quidditch theme, I would rather have Oliver Wood, not Dean Thomas for the rest of my life.”
Everyone sniggered in answer. Well—everyone but Harry, who was trying his best not to grimace and ignore the hurt that had been branded upon his chest. It was then that he found himself missing Hermione; Hermione who appeared and disappeared in between their breaks, who excused herself to study alone in the library during mealtimes and was on a personal investigation on Harry's soon-to-be possibly-insane murderer, Sirius Black. At least, Harry thought distantly, he wouldn't have to deal with this conversation if he was with her—death by boredom seemed to be a lot better than having to nurse this growing mold of a parasite within him, infecting him with what ifs and what could've beens.
Ron must've noticed his lack of reaction, for the boy scooted closer on their wooden bench, arm slung around his shoulder as he dipped his head, whispering conspiratorially but not without worry:
“You okay mate?” He said. “You seem out of it.”
In turn Harry didn't know how to explain. He didn't even know where to begin—that he felt free, in a way, since he had already cracked the code to the biggest secret in his life sooner than most of their peers? That he felt disappointed and lost, now that he knew his soulmate is an asshole who bullied them since the beginning? And Ron wouldn't understand—Harry didn't think so—because Ron was Ron, one of the many humans who held to the belief that their soulmate would be the perfect person to finish the puzzle that was their life, and it would take years until Ron could see how terrible this gamble in the world truly is—that soulmates, like Harry's, could just not be the beauty you were waiting for.
(Then again, maybe Harry was just being dramatic. Uncle Vernon had told him so multiple times ever since he was a kid.)
“Peachy,” Harry answered—a beat too long—but the quickest he could do after his mouth began tasting like lead, his tongue too-heavy and his throat in knots.
“Fine,” he tried again when Ron didn't seem to be convinced. Harry elbowed him in the side gently. “I'm okay - really. The day's just dragging on for no reason.” He mock-complained, not that it wasn't any less true. ”Why do we still have two classes after this?”
Ron nodded solemnly, returning back to his drink. “That, you're right. Well, at least we're not fifth and seventh years yet. They have classes until six.”
“A prison,” Harry muttered, though his eyes were already moving away, across the Great Hall as though magnetized.
There sat Malfoy in the Slytherin table, animatedly gesturing about something he was talking about. A story or maybe blackmail, perhaps, and Harry didn't manage to deduce which one Malfoy was doing before Malfoy's eyes landed on his—storm-clad gray meeting verdant green, a tornado drawn to the lands of Earth, a collision and a wreckage waiting to happen.
Harry held his gaze for another second before breaking away.
His wrist seemed to scald at that, letters morphing and morphing and, in the end, Harry couldn't bring himself to read what it possibly could have changed into.
*
Fourth year, however, was different.
While, yes, having your name offered up into the Goblet of Fire and having your magic literally bound to the tournament until it was seen to be completed was genuinely the biggest disruption one can have in their life—this coming from the Boy Who Lived, who would rather live a completely normal life instead of being thrown into one threatening life-and-death situation into the other—things were different because of… well, everything.
Ron was mad at him—jealousy like an obvious vice around his neck every time he stood face-to-face with Harry, as though Harry was the one who had the insane idea of cheating the age restriction and joining a bloody tournament that could very well be the end of him. Harry was reckless. He was brazen. But he is not anything close to suicidal.
The problem was that Ron didn't understand. He didn’t understand him.
At least Hermione was still with him. She was always reliable like a rock he could anchor to, saving him from the ocean's brutally crashing waves, for Hermione was someone he could rely on ever since the beginning—a wise, wonderful girl which Harry would confide in without any hesitation, even seeking her sharp advice and wake-up calls. But. But,
Harry couldn't even talk to Hermione like he used to. She was absent for the most of his previous year, the time-turner adventure still fresh on his mind, (a small, small part of him couldn't help but wonder how things would be if someone decided to use a time-turner just moments after his parents’ death to fix the present—) and it had shifted a few gears in their relationship; just barely. Just enough for Harry to see the change in their friendship, caused by a year more so separated than together, and now there seemed to almost be like a thin, invisible wall separating them—something they needed to destroy but haven’t because the Triwizard Tournament and the genuine fuckery that was going around in this school.
And there was Malfoy.
Draco Malfoy.
Fuck.
The problem was, ever since the Goblet had so kindly spat his name out for the world to see, Malfoy had been sending surreptitious glances his way. They were discreet enough so that nobody else noticed, and even Harry, who’d wasted years training himself to turn Malfoy’s briefest glances into vivid technicolors that marked his life, took a few days to finally notice them.
Then again, those few days were spent trying not to die in the next challenge, but the point still stood.
(Do something, his soulmark had been saying in the past few weeks. Harry dreaded what it could possibly mean.)
“Spit it out, Malfoy,” Harry had muttered to a persistent shadow in an empty corridor after classes.
With that Malfoy gracefully stepped out from the dark, arms folded across his chest.
“Potter.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “What do you want?” He said, and despite having most of his mind burdened by the upcoming second challenge, Harry was still genuinely curious of this fact: why Malfoy hadn’t done a single thing towards his current predicament even though Harry knew this was the biggest chance he could have ever; bringing Harry’s name through the mud and laughing at his struggle on having to compete with three older students—mainly in his struggle not to get bloody maimed by the end of the school year.
(Malfoy hadn’t done anything to him. That was what made fourth year so different.)
Instead of sneering at him or pulling out a terrible artifact sure to ruin his day, Malfoy instead brought up his wrist—right wrist—letting the words fall into Harry’s line of sight despite being too far to be able to be read clearly.
“What, is this about the soulmate thing again?” Harry asked, and there was no time for this. He needed to get to the library and figure out a way to crack the damn egg, he needed to—”God, Malfoy, let it rest. I don’t need you laughing at me on top of the Tournament shit.”
He hadn’t been expecting Malfoy to raise his eyebrows in surprise though, bafflement morphing his expression as he lowered his hand. “I was about to help you, you berk,” Malfoy sneered. “The words on my skin have been changing like mad so I thought—” he shook his head, sighed. “Nevermind.”
Whatever Harry had been expecting, it wasn’t that.
Before Malfoy could turn away and break this weird, unlikely barrier of truce they’d placed on each other, Harry said, “Wait.”
Malfoy stopped in his tracks.
Evening sunlight colored his vision, washed-out orange growing duller by every minute that passed between them, dust motes dancing idly where light fell. Malfoy was drenched in the same orange, changing his normally vicious sneer into something less.
“What do you mean,” Harry started, cautiously, “you wanted to help me?”
Malfoy clicked his tongue. “It means what it means. Are you daft?”
“Are you out of your mind?” Harry countered—because none of this made sense. Not in the slightest.
“The price of trying to act good,” he heard Malfoy mutter underneath his breath before: “Like I said, you were practically begging for help, Potter.”
Harry bristled.
“I did not—”
Malfoy waved vaguely to his soulmark. “Your goal has been changing from trying to survive, study, and find allies for the Tournament. Your goal has been not dying, as if you actually fear for your literal life. Merlin - is the Weasel even feeding you right these days?”
Harry’s hands were clenched into fists, nails digging into his palms just enough to draw pain. His magic veiled the air heavily in a response to his growing anger, hanging thickly and churning static to eat through oxygen. He knew that Malfoy could feel it too, if the mirroring reply of another surge of magic was anything to go by, this one like autumn's chill and a frigid winter; crisp and sharp and dangerous when underestimated.
“I didn’t mean I wanted your help,” Harry said, steadily, quiet annoyance bleeding into his words.
Malfoy shrugged, and Harry hated it. Hated this soulmark and soulmate business. For something he thought was incredibly magical, now it just made him feel flayed open—naked to the eyes of his supposed soulmate, all of his nerves cut open and rubbed raw at the edges, embarrassment and most importantly shame building up, up, up from within him like a crescendo so that it could encompass his senses wholly. It was a breach of privacy, a false intimacy in a tango for two; mockery hiding under the guise of matchmaking.
Harry didn’t want Malfoy to see how he was holding up.
He didn’t want him to take pity on him.
“Whatever you say, Potter,” Malfoy said, finally, the sun dipping beneath clouds and the world colored gray, the same as Malfoy's eyes. “I tried.”
“I need to go,” Harry said.
“The library.”
“The library,” Harry agreed, unsure of how he had known but—fuck, probably the library were the only words engraved on Malfoy’s skin for the past weeks.
He found himself rooted to where he stood still, gaze never really leaving Malfoy's in their old battle over ego. The one who broke away first was always the loser, but this time, Harry was desperately trying to move, to the library and away from this conversation that was tilting the axis of his life, from Malfoy's insane, blatant admission that he wanted to help Harry in the Triwizard Tournament just because a couple of words had given him the initiative to.
In the end it was Malfoy who broke first, turning his back to his but not without saying:
“Speak with Krum. Some Slytherins overhead that he managed to crack that egg of his.”
And he left Harry who was still standing shock-still, staring at the shadows of a long-passed boy with white-blond hair.
Harry thought: what the fuck.
*
Malfoy wasn't lying. Viktor Krum really had cracked the egg, and apparently he was more than willing to share how he did it with Harry.
*
The next time they talked—or, rather, interacted, for Harry couldn't bring himself to call these as talks, not yet—was in the farthest most point in the library, the table that was more secluded than the others where Harry was currently poring over books on water-based or water-related spells.
Hermione still had a class, and Moody had fucked to who knows where earlier, so here he was, speed-reading through everything until his head spun. No matter how much he loved the old, second-hand books back in the Dursleys, Harry couldn't read this much in one go. That was really the main reason why his grades always suffered whenever he decided to cram his studies in a day or the night before.
That was when Malfoy had him cornered and sat on a chair next to him before Harry could go anywhere.
There was a tome held in his hands. With the flourish of his wand, the mess of sprawled books on Harry's table arranged themselves into a neat stack on the side. Harry watched dumbly how Malfoy opened the tome and went through the lots of pages in what was a Herbology masterlist.
“Gillyweed,” he drawled, leaning back to let Harry finally see the page he had opened.
“Why are you doing this?” Harry asked, motioning to Malfoy as a whole. The question was too soft for his liking—too genuine for the kid who wanted to do nothing more than to hide how lonely he was after his best friend had been ignoring him and also after three quarters of his house believed that he had joined the Tournament out of free will, despite him trying to convince them otherwise.
(The fact that Draco Malfoy was helping him when only Hermione,and occasionally Moody, did—it was really throwing Harry off the rails. Off-balance: gravity let loose and unchecked.)
Malfoy, in return, regarded him with a small dismissive wave, but something in his stance was consequential; enough for Harry to understand the severity of his words that were soon to come, an honest admission answering the lonely child's question.
"Like it or not, you're still my soulmate,” Malfoy began, eyes moving to everywhere but Harry. “I would - I would hate to see you drown in the Dark Lake despite how overrated you are.”
“They're not going to let me drown,” Harry said, following Malfoy's gaze until it landed on the page about Gillyweeds, not entirely sure whether he was trying to convince Malfoy or himself.
“Can you even swim?” Malfoy probed, “I'll learn,” said Harry, and somehow this time Malfoy's haughty scoff didn't seem to be as antagonistic as usual, more akin to a mockery directed at someone else.
“You were,” Malfoy said again, “the one thing I’ve been proud of since I was a kid. Mother always said to keep your soulmates close. She used to tell me stories after stories: the special bond between soulmates, her own marriage with Father, and I had held soulmark in high regard until - well, until you came in so rudely in the Hospital Wing. Despite all that, you’re still my soulmate, and I’ll be damned if I lost you to a stupid tournament. A soulmark disappearing from your skin is nothing but a problem in the pureblood society.” Then, he added, “If you even care, that is.”
“That was a very elaborate way to say that you're doing this only out of necessity,” Harry said, summing it up, feeling too high-strung and bewildered to actually say anything else. He couldn't even bring himself to stick to his principles and kick Malfoy away from the table because, in truth, this situation was both insanity at its finest and the light at the end of a tunnel. Malfoy's help alongside with this… acquaintanceship felt enough to fill out the weird gaping hole in his heart Harry had been harboring like a parasite ever since the new school year had started. He felt sated, as though a gnawing anger had stopped plaguing his life.
(Distantly, he understood how it could probably be due to Malfoy being his apparent forever-fated; puzzle pieces finally coming together at last like what God intended—not that Harry was that religious, mind you, especially when all Harry knew about God were from the masses the Dursleys would very rarely bring him to just to keep up with appearances—and the thought just felt so right that Harry hated everything more; it really wasn't fair how normalized matchmaking was despite doing nothing but to chain you to a person which you didn't have free will on choosing.
And Harry didn't know if he should get any angrier, since he could very well choose to ignore Malfoy's existence and live on with his life—it wasn't like everyone had to follow the Fates—and yet still chose to sit tight and do nothing about it.
Like he was expecting things to actually change between them.
In a way, maybe. Maybe, things were, and—)
And, truly, Harry had no idea how to face this sheer amount of feelings head-on.
“How did you find me here?” He asked after the brief lapse of silence they had shared.
Malfoy shrugged, grinned, sharp like the devil, gray eyes glinting off the only light in their secluded corner.
“I have my ears open,” he answered, which didn't make any fucking sense at all.
There were too much feelings growing and tearing like savage beasts inside of Harry’s chest, a deadly concoction of Things that he knew would be too much for his mental capacity to handle right here and then, thoughts of soulmates swirling with anger and desperation and loneliness turning themselves into a terrible mess of tangled knots. But, really, what was Harry if not determined?
He leaned over the open tome, beginning to read about Gillyweeds.
“Severus has some in his inventories,” Malfoy said, unbothered. “I could ask him to fetch you some if you want to go with this instead of the Bubble Head Charm.”
Harry was determined enough to unravel the knots one by one, to figure things out no matter how intimidating they were. No matter how disconcerting Malfoy was as a person; for Harry had spent years building on the empire of obsession he had over Malfoy, for he had dedicated an exclusive corner in his mind only to pick and prod at all of the other’s jibes as though they could mean something more, tearing through layers of flesh and expensive silver-green decorations just so Harry could place himself on the same pedestal as Malfoy, to make them equals in his eyes.
All in all, it would work out.
And it would (hopefully, honestly,) make things a lot less confusing.