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Harry didn’t notice at first – the same way he didn’t notice anything about Wixen culture – until it happened to him. Harry would protest that if Wix would do even the barest sort of cultural education for Muggleborns, or at the very least, remember that he’d been raised by Muggles, these things wouldn’t happen to him. Or, they wouldn’t happen quite as often.
He didn’t notice when Hermione came down one morning with a wide-eyed grin and embraced Ron tightly, when Hermione lifted Ron’s shirt a few inches, when Ron peeked down the front of her blouse, when the rest of the day they giggled every time they locked eyes or their fingers touched. Honestly, these days he spent his eyes half-averted to avoid awkward public, life-affirming displays of their affection.
He didn’t notice when Malfoy caught him alone in an empty hallway after Charms, when Malfoy could barely look him in the eye when he muttered, “Harry Roger,” when Malfoy’s jaw locked and he stared at the floor as Harry laughed and said, “Is… is that an insult? Shouldn’t you at least suggest what it is I’m supposed to be rogering? Not your best work, Malfoy.” Though to be fair, he was more disappointed that the first words Malfoy spoke to him in the eight months since his trial had been utter nonsense.
He didn’t notice when the name first showed up on his skin. Again, Harry would point out that if you weren’t expecting for a name to appear suddenly on your skin, you wouldn’t think to go looking for it, and even if you did , it’s not often you look at the back of your upper thigh right below your arse. And that’s assuming you could be starkers in front of a mirror without worrying that your dorm mates were going to stumble in to take a piss. So yes, he hadn’t noticed, but he could hardly have been expected to look.
But when he did notice.
When he did.
Well, he wondered how hard it would be to find the other basilisk fang in the Chamber.
-o-
When he gained his sense, or some semblance thereof, the obvious occurred to him. So went stage one of Operation Why-The-Fuck-Is-There-A-Name-On-My-Arse: “Was it a new Wheeze, then?” he asked Ron as they slipped their robes on to go to breakfast.
“Was what a new Wheeze?” Ron asked, then answered anyway. “Nah, George hasn’t made anything new in months. Just keeping up with current products. C’mon, I’m starving.”
Ron, distracted by sausages, didn’t bother to follow up. Harry, wishing he could be distracted by anything, didn’t mind.
-o-
For stage two of Operation WTFITANOMA, Harry planned to ask a nonchalant hypothetical. It would need to be a calculated effort, given that he couldn’t lie worth shit, but he’d practiced enough to know how to even his odds. Step one: Remove Hermione from conversation – she was too sharp and too keen and he’d never been able to get anything past her. Ever . She was going make a wicked mum someday, but thank-fucking-Circe she wasn’t his . Step two: get Ron distracted – as easy as Quidditch, chess, or munch. Given that he didn’t fancy waiting until the end of May for the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match to get an answer to his question, and that Hermione was pretty much always present at meal times, Harry groped the goblin and sacrificed himself up to be slaughtered at chess.
He watched for Ron to smirk once he’d moved a pawn - a telltale sign of his upcoming defeat - and slipped the inquiry in as Ron moved in on his knight. “Saw a Ravenclaw with a name tattooed on his arm, what’s that about?”
“Eh, probably his soulmate.” Ron captured his rook – wait, when the hell had Harry left his rook open?
“Soulmate? Is that a wizard thing, to tattoo your girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s name on you? Or is it just temporary?” Harry slid his queen across the board to avoid Ron’s bishop.
“What? No, like his soulmate -soulmate. Like Hermione’s mine.”
“Careful mate, you know how she gets about all that cliche destiny bullshit.”
Ron looked up and Harry froze in his sudden attention. “No, not that Muggle nonsense. Like, she’s my actual soulmate, magic-destined and everything.” Ron reached down to tug up his shirt, revealing in a simple handwritten script the name, “Hermione Jean Granger,” above his left hip bone.
Harry’s stomach jumped into his throat, like a Wronski feint without the exhilaration nor the adrenaline. So, more like just falling off his broom in third year, then. He’d lost that game, just like he was beginning to worry that he was losing his damned mind. Which reminded him just exactly how bonkers magic could be. Maybe there was hope after all. “What’d you mean, magic-destined ?”
“This is one of those things you didn’t pay attention to, isn’t it?” Ron shook his head while Harry moved another pawn.
“I don’t know!” Harry's voice squeaked, “What sort of thing is it?!”
“Oh, for Godric’s sake,” Ron shook his head, pushing his own pawn to the end of the board and gesturing to the bishop Harry had just captured a few turns ago. “I’m surprised you even noticed You-Know-Who trying to kill you, oblivious as you are.”
“Oi! I was oblivious because I was focused on Voldemort!”
“So was Hermione, but she figured it out.” Ron retorted, then snorted as he thought better of it, “Never mind. That’s just Hermione. Okay, so it’s like this. Once you have matured to a certain degree and magic decides you’ve got a good match out there - someone who complements you, who could balance you out, who could be either the love of your life, or someone who just makes you the best version of yourself, then each of you gets marked with the other’s name.”
Harry’s heart stopped. It was an accurate comparison to the sudden shock in his chest, and no one could accuse him of being overdramatic – he’d literally died less than a year ago. So Harry knew heart-stopping panic. Because if Ron was right - if this was a magical declaration of soulmates and compatibility - then this was the final straw, the final proof, that magic utterly loved to fuck with him.
There was absolutely no way – not a snowball’s chance in Fiendfyre – that the love of his life, the man who could make him the best version of himself – was Lucius-motherfucking-Malfoy.
-o-
Harry locked the door with a complex locking charm Hermione had taught him. Not that he was terribly worried that someone would bust in during Advanced Transfiguration; but he was taking no chances. He figured he’d make up for missing class by transfiguring a towel into a stool, and the small over-the-sink mirror into a full body affair.
He got as close as his backside and the sink would allow. Still there, just under his arse, in a light grey script that forcibly reminded him of Malfoy-grey eyes was the name, “Lucius Draconi Emmanuel Malfoy,” embedded into his brown skin. The script was jagged and familiar and Harry wanted to carve it out with a rusty knife.
There was no way on Godric's green Earth that Lucius “My cane is so far up my own arse that I had to buy a new one” Malfoy was his soulmate. Lucius Malfoy, who abused the earnest and loyal Dobby, who press ganged his only son into practical servitude, who pawned off the darkest of artifacts to an eleven year old girl to avoid suspicion. Lucius Malfoy, who pledged his allegiance and life to a Dark Wizard, who at best had an eighth more of his own soul than Harry had. At worst, Hermione had assured him, Voldemort had all of one thirty second of his own soul before transferring half to Harry. What sort of brown-nosing, power-hungry arsehole looks at a mad man with one thirty second of a soul and thinks, What a lad! What a reasonable and thoughtful leader! I should commit my life and the lives of my loved ones to this wizard with all the strategic genius of a blind, starving hyena trying to gnaw off it's own paw!
A new thought forcibly violated his conscience: hat if Lucius Malfoy’s soulmate used to be Voldemort ? Harry shuddered; was he Lucius' soulmate because he was the only living thing that had held (part of) Voldemort's soul? How would Narcissa feel about that? Had Lucius actually had sex with Voldemort? How could anyone have sex with that corpse-pale, blood-eyed bastardized snake? Maybe Voldemort just fucked him from behind. Although Lucius seemed the type to ride some bloke's prick - it gave him all the illusions of control and power, but when it came down to it, he was still getting screwed. Honestly, it was hard to imagine Lucius doing any work at all; he was practically “pillow princess” personified.
Sweet suffering mother of Salazar, did he just imagine what Lucius Malfoy's preferred sex position might be? Was it possible to Scourgify his brain? He would never be clean again. If only he could self- Obliviate; getting Hermione to do it would require telling her exactly what he needed obliviated and he didn't want to expose his poor, sweet friends like that. Let alone live through those thoughts again himself. He didn’t want to expose himself to that.
This , Harry thought, was exactly what firewhiskey was made for.
-o-
Ron waved wands before words and started stage 3 of Operation WTFITANOMA without warning.
“So,” Ron said to Hermione as he leaned over the table to dish himself up some roast chicken, “Guess who just discovered that soulmates are a thing?”
Hermione gasped and flung up a Muffliato around them. “Did you get your name?!”
“What ?” Harry squawked, almost too quickly. “No, I saw a name tattooed on someone, and asked Ron about it.” The best way to lie to Hermione was to not lie .
“How did you not know ? Oh. Wait. Entire adolescence chased by a Dark wizard.” She dismissed the protest with a wave of her hand. “I suppose you’re excused.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Do you have any questions?”
Did he ever.
“Yeah - how can you stand it? Another round of this destiny bullshit? I'm surprised you bought into it - you hate Divination and all that rot.”
Her eyes lit up and Harry breathed an internal sigh of relief. There were plenty of times when he preferred Ron's brevity, but this soulmate business wasn't one of them. He wanted Hermione's thorough, researched-every-possibility-and-every-feasible-outcome knowledge to avoid being chained to the bloody blagging blighter that was Lucius Malfoy.
“But that’s just it! It’s not Divination! The magic involved in matching soulmates is one of the few instances of naturally occurring soul magic. Wands are another. Ollivander really is right - the wand chooses the wizard. Your soul naturally resonates with various magical plants and animals, but by making a wand, Ollivander is attempting to amplify those effects. However, he cannot change how the magic responds to your soul. If the wood or the core is close, but not right, you get weakened effects. And it’s why life changing events can weaken how your wand responds to you.”
“Like Charlie,” Ron said between mouthfuls of mashed root veg.
“What happened to Charlie?” Harry asked.
“Summer after 6th year, a cursed artifact sent him to the Romanian forests. He was lost for almost 6 weeks, but a broody dragon made sure he got food and kept him safe. Before, he was going to try out for pro-Quidditch, or work for the Department of Magical Games and Sports. After, he quit the team, started apprenticing with Hagrid, then when he left Hogwarts, went straight to Romania. It’s why I had his wand first year. His didn’t really work for him anymore.”
“Didn’t really work for you either,” Harry recalled.
“Who said Lockhart wasn’t good for anything?” Ron snorted. Harry agreed, Lockhart obliviating himself with Ron’s wand had done wonders for getting Ron’s parents to buy him a new one.
“The less said about him, the better,” Hermione sniffed.
“Yeah, only because you had such a huge crush on him.”
“I was young. And stupid.”
“You’ve never been stupid, ‘Mione.”
“Well, young and naive then. Moving on ,” Hermione glared at the both of them, then focused back on Harry. “Do you think you’ve already met your soulmate?”
“No? I don’t know? How would I know?” The balance between answering suspiciously fast or suspiciously slow was a hard one to keep.
“You don’t know, not for sure. Most Wix get their soulname tattoos somewhere between the ages of 20 and 50. However, during tumultuous times like Grindelwald’s war or say, the war we just finished, these names frequently appear at a younger age, as these stressful events are so impactful on young people's lives.”
“Knowing your luck,” Ron began, sopping up his plate with a bread roll, “Yours will probably be Draco Malfoy.”
“If only,” Harry muttered to himself - better Draco Malfoy than his father - only to cringe when Ron began to choke next to him.
“Harry! Is there something you need to tell us?” Hermione asked with repressed glee as she poured Ron a glass of water.
“What? No! I just mean, knowing my luck, I'll end up with a Death Eater or some creepy old fan who's been stalking me since I was twelve.”
“Mate, Malfoy is a Death Eater. Or was.”
“Not really. He was forced to take the mark. He had no interest in torture, and even on threat of death he was completely incapable of killing. He might have been an arsehole, but he was never really a Death Eater.”
Making an obvious show to look behind them, Hermione smirked. “And personality aside, he’s not too bad to look at either, is he?”
“Okay, sure. He's fit, and clever, and he can be witty, when he's not being a fucking bigot.” Would this make Malfoy his son-in-law?!
“Oh, he hasn't been vocally bigoted for a few years. Not since Voldemort camped out in his house and showed them what bigotry really could do. And this year he's just been…” She trailed off.
“He's been quiet,” Harry finished, dissatisfied. “No jokes, no snide remarks, none of the verbal sparring we used to get into. I kind of miss it; he was one of the few people other than you two I could count on to not treat me like the sodding Boy Who Lived.”
“So maybe you have already met your soulmate.”
“No,” Harry said firmly. “There is absolutely no way that Draco Malfoy is my soulmate.”
“No way of knowing, not until you’ve a tattoo.” Ron shrugged.
Harry glared at both of them, then angrily stabbed his roast.
“I’m so fucking sick of soul magic.”
-o-
“Greenhouses today, then?” Harry asked as Neville handed him dragonhide gloves and a trug.
“I was thinking the Forest, if that’s fine.”
“No problem,” Harry tossed his bag aside and grabbed his cloak for warmth. Tucking the gloves into his pocket, he and Neville walked in companionable silence towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where the sun peeked through the clouds. Last week during their shared free period, they’d hidden from the damp, stormy weather in the cozy warmth of the kitchens while house elves plied them with loads of butterscotch biscuits.
“I’m looking for cuttings of mallowsweet, plangentines, and spleenwort to replant,” Neville said as they approached the forest’s edge. “The new potions professor asked Professor Sprout to add them to her inventory.”
“Professor Avogadro.” Harry supplied.
“Yeah. She terrifies me.” Neville wasn’t wrong; Avogadro spoke exclusively in withering, weaponized witticisms.
“Here we go,” Neville set his trug on the ground and knelt before a pile of what looked to be a pile of yellow-orange bludgers wearing curly, moss-green wigs. “Plangentines. They’re flowers, but their spherical shapes let them capture rainwater, which is sweetened by the petals.” He plucked off the mossy wig, peeled a few layers of petals down from the top of the sphere, then took several gulps of the water inside. “See?”
Harry took the flower ball, sniffed the liquid and, not offended by the scent, swallowed the last mouthful Neville had left. It was watery and barely sweet, like extra weak tea with a drop of honey.
“I just found out about soulmates,” admitted Harry apropos of nothing, handing the empty flower ball back. Stage 4 of Operation WTFITANOMA was go.
“Okay,” Neville tucked the wig and the empty flower ball into the trug as Harry knelt beside him. “And what’d Hermione say?”
“Ron distracted us. And made it awkward.”
Neville laughed, “He does have quite the talent. Here, see this spot right here, beneath the leaves? That’s where you need to clip. Try not to spill the water, but it’s not a big deal if you do.” Moving the fresh cutting aside, he continued, “So what are you thinking? About soul mates?”
“It's ridiculous. I thought Hermione would hate this fate nonsense, but even she’s all for it. Just because it’s soul magic. Like soul magic wasn’t responsible for the hell our lives have been the last decade!”
“I could have done without the giant snake, myself.”
“Exactly! And to count on some magic tattoo,” Harry scoffed. “They do realize that Muggles have done tattoos for centuries, right? Millenia, even! What’s to stop some love struck nutter from pasting my name all over their nethers?”
“Well, that’s why we have our given name and our soul’s name, isn’t it? They can’t tattoo or glamour your soul’s name on themselves if they don’t know it.”
“My what?”
“Your soul’s name. The one your parents gave you in a naming ritual soon after birth, not the one on file in the Ministry.”
“I’ve only got the one name. What naming ceremony? Is this a pureblood thing?”
“Really ? How did you - Oh, right. Raised by Muggles, hunted by a crazy snake man. Okay, soul names. Yes, they are sort of a pureblood tradition, but only slightly. The European Wixen community came up with it centuries ago, just for the reasons you said: there were cases of Wix trying to glamour or paint on the names of the wealthy or powerful to enhance their own status.”
“How does a name ceremony help?” Harry asked, placing a leaking plagentine with the others, “And how does magic know which name to use?”
“It took decades for the time’s Unspeakables to figure it out, but eventually they discovered that the ancient naming ceremonies in which parents named their children technically assigned names to the child’s soul for magic to identify. This was always the name that magic used in soul name assignments. So in order to protect the family lines, wealth, power, what have you, parents began using an alternate name in daily life. The name you use every day is your given name, and the name your parents ceremonially blessed you with as an infant is your soul’s name.”
Neville stood. “This should be enough plangentine clippings. Let’s head over to that patch of spleenwort.” He pushed aside some branches to let Harry through to a rocky area littered with ferns.
“How’s it work for Muggleborns? Or people like me, who were raised by Muggles? What about people who change their name?” Harry was full of questions.
Resting a knee against a boulder to carefully pick out the roots of an embedded spleenwort fern, Neville continued his impromptu lesson. “Magic recognizes the full given name of Muggleborns as their soul’s name, the way it used to for Wix. Without knowing or asking, I can confidently assume that Hermione’s soul’s name is the same as her given name. And it adjusts if the person’s name changes. For some people, their name is so integral to who they are, that magic won’t assign the soul name tattoos until after the person changes their name. For example, Wood and Flint. They’d known each other since year one, but it wasn’t until Flint changed her name to Thessalonica and her family held a second naming ceremony did her and Wood’s soul name tattoos show up.”
“It’s possible to rename your soul?” Harry asked, impressed.
“As long as you do the ceremony correctly, sure. Now, remember how I said it’s only sort of a pureblood thing?”
Harry nodded, picking up a stick on the ground to help dig out the spleenwort’s roots from between the rock crevices.
“At this point, every Wix who has at least one Wixen parent will know to do this. So, your mom was a witch, but her parents were Muggle so they couldn’t have taught her. But your Dad was a pureblood wizard, so there is no way you don’t have a soul’s name that differs from your given name. Same with Seamus and Dean.”
“So what’s your soul’s name?”
“Ah.” Neville frowned and walked a few meters away to another rocky pile blanketed in spleenwort. “The thing is-”
Harry followed suit, scurrying after Neville. “I’m not supposed to ask, is that it?”
Neville grimaced, then apologized. “Sorry. I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but it’s terribly taboo to ask. It’s hard not to react.”
“Would dealing in hypotheticals work? Like, let’s say John Smith is a wizard. So John Smith’s soul name could be like, Michael Jones?”
“Well, no. So your given surname and soul’s surname will always be the same. I mean, it’s not magically mandatory, but lineage is too important to Wix to not do so. Most families will have traditional soul naming guidelines. So in John Smith’s case, his soul name might include his father’s name, his mother’s name, his mother’s maiden name- Oh! You got such a great root ball!” Neville exclaimed, seeing Harry’s most recent plantling, unaware of Harry’s wide, startled eyes and colorless face.
“Where was I? Right, could include mother’s maiden name, godparent names, old family names - and when I say old, I mean they could be from centuries or even millennia ago if the family roots can be traced that far. It’s common for the soul name to include a variation of the given name, so John’s soul’s name might be Jean or Juan if he’s got French or Spanish roots. If his given name is just John, his soul’s name might include Johnathan.
“So even though there are lots of common patterns to how soul’s names and given names are assigned, there is enough variation that it would be nigh-impossible to guess. And so attempts to glamour or tattoo or otherwise trick someone into believing you are their soulmate aren’t a thing.” Neville placed another fern in his trug and looked up, “Make sense? Harry? You okay?”
Harry was leaning against the sturdy rock pile, trug on the ground, staring blankly into the trees. Given everything that Neville said- and he was normally right, about herbology and magical culture at least, this meant- the name meant-
“What?” Harry asked, realizing Neville had asked him a question, then processing it on a delay, “Oh. Yeah. I’m okay.”
Harry was nearly certain what Neville’s explanation implied, but he had to ask. Had to hear it from someone else. “So hypothetically, just as an example, let’s say someone finds a name on their body and it says,” Harry took a deep breath, “‘ Lucius Draconi Emmanuel Malfoy. ’ That would mean this hypothetical person’s soulmate was not Lucius Malfoy, but…”
Neville's eyes were wide and his voice soft and kind. Harry’s hypothetical wasn’t fooling him in the slightest. “This hypothetical person’s soulmate is almost certainly, one hundred percent, Draco Malfoy.”
-o-
Harry noticed the way Malfoy’s grey eyes grew large when Harry saw him by the Great Lake and said, “Malfoy, a moment?” Harry would claim for years to come that this was when he first noticed those eyes, beautiful when they weren’t part of a wicked sneer aimed at him, when they were wide and waiting, but he’d be lying. He’d have been blind to not notice sooner. Hermione would remind him that she wasn’t blind, and hadn’t noticed Malfoy’s ‘brilliant, silver eyes’ at all, but Harry ignored her - how observant could she be, if she’d failed to swoon at such a shining sight?
He noticed how deeply Malfoy blushed when Harry sat on the grassy hill and tugged Malfoy down next to him. Harry thought achingly about the last times they’d touched - clinging to life over the roar of Fiendfyre, a brutish flailing over wands, Harry’s panicked hands trying to staunch the bleeding in Myrtle’s bathroom. He ran a hand down Malfoy’s arm where he’d pulled on him, soft and soothing.
He noticed Malfoy beaming, a euphoric smile gracing his face when Harry leaned close and said nothing more than, “Lucius Draconi Emmanuel Malfoy.” Harry would claim for years to come that this was when he first fell in love with Malfoy’s joyful, genuine laughter and this time he’d be telling the truth. He didn’t even mind when Malfoy smacked his arm and exclaimed, “You utter arsehole! I asked you months ago!”
He noticed the sadness on Malfoy’s face when he admitted he hadn’t known, not about any of it, then noticed Malfoy’s determination. “I’ll help,” Malfoy declared. “I’ll teach you everything they should have told you. Everything you've missed.”
He noticed Malfoy’s adoration when he asked for his own soul’s name, and a gentle, loving voice, Malfoy told him, “Hariraja Evans Potter. I knew it couldn’t have been anyone but you. I wouldn’t have wanted it to be.”
And when he did notice.
When he did.
Well, he wondered how he’d ever thought this could end - no, how it could start - any other way.