Chapter Text
Harry Potter was eleven years old when he found out he was a wizard, found out the truth of what happened to his parents, and found out what the two peculiar marks etched into his skin meant.
Harry had had these marks for as long as he could remember, both of them very unique and quite special. The one on his forehead was a scar shaped like a lightning bolt, which his aunt told him he got in the car crash that supposedly killed Harry’s mum and dad when he was a baby.
The mark on his inner wrist, however, was even more special and important because for the longest time, it seemed like nobody else could even see it except for him. When he was very little, he’d tried to ask his aunt and uncle what the letters meant since he couldn’t read yet, but had gotten nothing other than blank stares from them both when he tried to show them—although Aunt Petunia’s lips had also pursed and she’d crinkled her nose at him like she smelled something rotten, then barked at him to get back to his chores and stop asking silly questions.
(“She’s just bitter and jealous that she didn’t get one since she’s not magical, Harry, that’s all,” his godfather would one day explain to him several years later. Harry didn’t say that he almost thought it would have been better if he hadn’t gotten one either, though a part of him wanted to.)
Once he did learn to read, he realized that these letters spelled out a name, one which he didn’t recognize nor did his relatives seem to either when he’d asked, being careful this time not to mention anything about his “invisible” mark and framing it as though he’d just heard the name somewhere in passing. He was pretty sure they were telling the truth when they said they didn’t know who Tom Marvolo Riddle was since they didn’t seem any more particularly upset than normal about the question, just annoyed in general as always that he was asking them about anything at all.
Harry thought the name was very pretty nonetheless, not just because he liked the sound of it but because of the way it was written on his arm, in an elegant flowing script in pale, faded white letters that were only really visible to him because of the faintly golden shimmer they also seemed to have, like a shadow made of light.
For a time during his lonelier moments growing up, he’d sometimes pretend Tom was the name of his imaginary best friend and he’d sit out in the garden, pulling weeds from Aunt Petunia’s flowerbeds while muttering under his breath about anything that happened to be on his mind to another boy who wasn’t really there, who wasn’t even real at all. For a time it helped, and there were even some of these odd quiet moments, sitting out in the sun or lying down at night on his little cot in the cupboard under the stairs, when he almost felt like there was someone…not quite listening exactly, but still somehow indefinably there.
Sometimes it felt like they were a little lonely and trying to talk to him too, though he never actually heard any words spoken, never got anything more than a vague impression that somehow, somewhere very far away, there was someone out there in the world who missed him, though he was quite certain they had never actually met. He would certainly remember if he had ever met anyone who cared about him that much, and he’d run as far and fast from the Dursleys as he could if he just knew how to find them. It was still an almost comforting thought nonetheless. He’d often fall asleep thinking about his imaginary someone, often while unconsciously tracing the name on his wrist with the tip of his finger.
Then Hagrid came on his birthday with the letter admitting him to Hogwarts, and on that same day a lonely little boy learned all sorts of wondrous things about a world he’d had no idea he was a part of. He also learned a thing or two that shattered certain illusions he didn’t even remember daring to pin some of his secret hopes on once, not until they were suddenly dashed for good.
The first and best thing he learned about was magic, and that some of the things he’d experienced growing up that he thought were just luck or a few strange coincidences piling up were actually instances of him doing magic. He was a wizard, and soon he would be going to a school for people just like him. It was like something out of a storybook he would never have believed had Hagrid not shown proof of this by pulling out a wand and briefly turning his cousin into a pig before changing him back, to the loudly shrieked terror of his relatives who ran and locked themselves tight into the only bedroom in their rented seaside hut for the rest of the night.
The next thing he learned about was how his parents had really died, and that as wondrous as this new world he had just been introduced to was, it could also be equally as terrifying.
His parents had fought in a war before Harry was born, and had many times gone toe-to-toe directly against an evil Dark wizard and miraculously survived each encounter save for the last one, when the Dark Lord ambushed them at home and murdered them while Harry was still just a baby.
Voldemort—a name Hagrid would only ever utter once, both then and throughout all the years Harry would come to know him afterwards, forever after always referring to him simply as You-Know-Who—had started a campaign against the rest of the wizarding world with the intention of taking over and ruling over all other magical beings. He had many allies already, not just amongst wixen but with all manner of Dark creatures too. He was quite successful at recruiting these latter even though such beings were usually not easily swayed by the promises of wizards, in part because of his immense power and wicked charm, but also because he was, in fact, also a Dark creature himself. Not just a Dark Lord but a lord over vampires as well—the Lord of All Vampires.
“Now, I don’ like bein’ the one to tell yeh all this, lad, sourin’ yer first day learnin’ about magic and all by heapin’ on all this ugly business too,” the half-giant had told the boy hanging onto his every word with rapt awe. “But yeh need to understan’ why this fella’s such bad news. He ain’t like normal vampires, see? The normal ones, they’ll live forever and they can be dev’lishly fast and strong, sure, but there’s all these drawbacks to gettin’ turned too. Can’t go out in the sunlight no more, got’s to follow their sire—that’s the one that turned ’em—and do whatever they say all the time, and o’ course there’s the need to always be drinkin’ blood from humans. But most important of all, witches and wizards that become vampires lose all their magic just as soon as they get turned.”
As Hagrid paused to take a breath, Harry’s mind had reeled from all this wealth of new information. He knew a little about vampires from muggle stories, in spite of the Dursleys’ best efforts to keep him away from ‘any and all fantastical superstitious nonsense,’ and had even seen an old silent film one Halloween when the Dursleys left him at home to take Dudley trick-or-treating. As Hagrid told him about Voldemort, Harry’s mind went back to that frightful creature he’d seen creeping around in black-and-white on the telly, with its ghastly pale inhuman face and unnaturally long distorted limbs and sharp claws.
“You-Know-Who,” Hagrid continued gravely after a moment, “he took all the ‘good’ about bein’ a vampire, if yeh can call it that, but he ain’t got none of those drawbacks, ’cept for needin’ to drink blood to sustain himself. Nobody knows how he done it, but we can take a guess. Before all this, back when he was jus’ a regular human, he apprenticed under another Dark Lord, name of Grindelwald.
“They say he jus’ followed him fer awhile cuz Grindelwald was also after findin’ a way to cheat death, so You-Know-Who learned all that he could about the Dark Arts while workin’ fer him and then some, takin’ his own studies farther, down even darker an’ twistier paths than even his old master did til eventually he outgrew him. Now he must’ve found somethin’, cuz after he left Grindelwald he went straight to this great ol’ vampire lord him and his master had worked with a time or two before and convinced him somehow to turn him, and then he…well, he, uh—”
“He what?” Harry asked impatiently, breathless with excitement. Even knowing that this was the man who killed his parents didn’t change the fact that this was the most interesting tale he’d ever been told before in all his life. The boy was hooked and eager to find out how the story ended.
Hagrid cleared his throat, looking mightily uncomfortable. “Well, as soon as his transformation was finished, he turned on his sire right on the spot and killed him, jus’ drained him completely dry before the dusty ol’ fool even knew what’d happened.” The way Hagrid said this gave Harry the impression that even by ‘normal vampire’ standards this was apparently something very taboo.
“An’ that only made him even stronger than he already was, strong enough to start goin’ after the other ancient vampire lords and suckin’ ’em dry too, one after another. By the time they wised up to what was happenin’ and put aside ol’ feuds to band together against him, he was already too powerful for ’em to take on, even with the last of ’em all grouped together in the end. Hell, I reckon by that point, way he saw it was as if they’d just got together to put on a grand ol’ buffet jus’ for him.”
Harry shivered, eyes widened in amazement. And this was someone his parents had somehow fought and escaped from with their lives multiple times before he caught them off-guard in the end? How??
“Anyways, just a’soon as he was done solidifyin’ his power base with all the other vamps, establishin’ himself as the new ruler over all of ’em—somethin’ that ain’t never been done before given what notoriously solitary creatures they are—he went back fer his ol’ master Grindelwald and finished him off too. Then he started in on his plans for takin’ on the rest of the world, overrunnin’ some smaller countries ’fore he eventually set his sights back on Britain, where he’s rumored to’ve come from in the firs’ place.”
Hagrid then went on to explain that it was actually his ruthless and brutal attack on the Potters that rallied the rest of the wizarding world on this side of the pond back into action, fighting more fiercely than ever against their would-be invaders. This in turn helped also stoke the fire within some other nations around Europe into confronting Voldemort’s forces more boldly themselves, until eventually the Vampire Lord chose to tactically retreat back to his fortress at Nurmengard and a tentative peace was brokered between him and those countries not already under his rule.
“Hagrid,” Harry tentatively spoke up once this incredible tale was finished. “About my scar,” he said, rubbing his forehead lightly with his right hand. “My aunt said I got it when my parents died in the ‘crash.’ What…what really happened?”
The towering wizard let out a big gusty sigh. “Well, lad, I don’ rightly know all the details but what I do know is this. On the night yer parents died, the wards that was hidin’ the house from intruders fell down and Albus Dumbledore—tha’s the headmaster at Hogwarts you’ll remember I was tellin’ yeh about before—took off straight away to help however he could. Unfortunately he was too late to save yer mum an’ dad, but he got there jus’ in the nick o’ time to stop You-Know-Who from doin’ yeh harm as well.
“I don’ know what he did to get the evil bastar—eh, pardon me language, er, to get him away from yeh, but yeh ended up with that scar somehow once the dust’d settled an’ the headmaster was able to whisk yeh away to safety. He brought yeh to yer folks here where’s you’d be safe—somethin’ ’bout blood wards or some such, I don’ rightly know either—and You-Know-Who, he was banished back to the continent not too long after that.”
After they were done talking and finished with their birthday cake and tea soon afterwards, Hagrid insisted they should get some rest and that if there was anything else Harry wanted to know about, he should wait until morning to ask. The boy had such strange dreams that night, what he might normally have called nightmares except he wasn’t all that frightened, his unconscious mind a whirlwind blur of clashing colored lights, crunching bones, and the taste of blood in his mouth.
With daylight streaming in through the windows the next morning so they no longer had to rely on the hut’s dim lamps and the small fireplace to see by, Harry caught a glimpse of something at the edge of Hagrid’s sleeve, what looked to be the tops of letters written in periwinkle blue. He immediately sat up straighter and craned his head eagerly trying to glimpse it again. “Hagrid, what’s that on your wrist?”
“Oh, heheh, forgot to tell yeh about that last night, aye, didn’t I?” the half-giant chuckled good-naturedly, rolling his sleeve back to allow the boy a better look, revealing the name Olympe Maxime written in a flourished cursive script that looked even fancier to him than the one on his own wrist. “This here’s called a soulmark, Harry. See, just about every witch or wizard in the world’s born with one cuz they got a soulmate o’ their very own, somebody special jus’ for them who’s said to be yer soul’s perfect match. Muggles don’ see ’em since they ain’t got the magical sight for it. Bet yer been wonderin’ about that for a long time, haven’t yeh?”
The boy nodded enthusiastically, immediately holding his left arm out to show Hagrid his own. He had a soulmate! Tom was his soulmate! It made so much sense now why he always felt such a tug in his chest whenever he’d look at his mark.
So excited was he that at first he didn’t notice how Hagrid’s face suddenly fell once he’d looked at the boy’s mark. “I always wondered what it meant! Who’s Tom Marvolo Riddle, do you think? Have you met them before? Do you think he’ll be going to Hogwarts too in the same year as me? How will I know him when I see him? Do you think he’ll like me even though I’m new to all this and didn’t know anything about magic before yesterday? Does his mark look like mine? Does he—”
“Lad, s-slow down, alright? Let’s…let’s just…h-how long has it looked like that, Harry?” The boy shrugged.
“Dunno, it’s always been like this, long as I can remember.” The older wizard suddenly choked up upon hearing this with a tremendous, hiccoughing gasp, hiding his eyes for a moment behind his hands.
“H-Hagrid, what’s wrong?” The boy’s chest clenched tightly. “Are you crying? Why are you so upset now?”
Although it took a minute, Hagrid pulled himself together enough to finally pull his hand away and look again. His eyes were a bit red but not quite as wet and teary as Harry would have thought from the sounds he had made, though his bottom lip trembled a bit before he spoke.
“Ahh, lad, I-I’m so sorry. Seems I can’t tell yeh about one good thing without followin’ it up with some bad news straight after.” He sniffled. “The…the color…look, different colors usually mean different things dependin’ on the person yer mark’s s’posed to represent, yeah? But there’s two of ’em, shiny ones like that, they always mean the same thin’ no matter what. Silver jus’ means that yer soulmate hasn’t been born yet, but gold—g-gold means, it means tha’…”
The man paused again to hide another gasping sob behind his hand, but deep in his heart which he could feel sinking down into the pit of his stomach, Harry already knew how that sentence was supposed to end.
“I’m sorry there’s not a nice way to say it. It means that yer soulmate’s p-passed away.” Hagrid sniffed again. “Must’ve happened while yeh were still just a littl’un. I’m so, so sorry, lad,” he repeated.
“Oh…I see.” Slowly, Harry lowered his arm again, staring down into his lap.
The older wizard suddenly scooted closer to him on the couch, taking both of the boy’s small hands into his much larger ones, looking at him now with a solemn but resolute expression. “Now, yeh listen to me, Harry,” he said. “There’s plenty o’ witches an’ wizards out there who go on to have happy, normal lives even without a soulmate. It’s a wonderful thin’ to have if yeh’ve got it, but it’s not the end o’ the world if yeh don’t. There’s even some folks out there don’ choose to be with their soulmate, fer whatever reason, and some folks is only friends with ’em, it doesn’t have to be romantic neither.
“I also wanna make sure you know that it doesn’t mean yer bad or wrong or that any of it’s yer fault. There’s nothin’ yeh coulda done, Harry, an’ the sad thing is tha’s just life sometimes. You understand me?”
Harry nodded, not trusting himself to actually say anything. The older wizard squeezed his hands gently for a moment before standing up and finally began tinkering around in the little kitchenette area to make them both breakfast.
After breakfast, Hagrid took him to Diagon Alley to buy his school supplies, pointing out all the most interesting shops and places to grab another bite to eat later as they went. He also told Harry a few lovely stories throughout the day about his parents and how much everyone who knew them really liked them a whole bunch. The boy listened attentively and tried to absorb it all, smiling often as Hagrid spoke, but inside his thoughts always kept going back to one name over and over, especially whenever he’d see it glinting at him in the sunlight each time his eyes caught their reflections in storefront windows as they walked by.
A lot of people on the street had their names out on display like he and Hagrid did, but there were plenty of others who also wore cloth or leather bands over one of their wrists, the other one left bare. Hagrid explained that lots of people kept their marks hidden until they’d met their soulmate, and sometimes even afterwards if they didn’t want others to know about them. Rarely, there were even some people who went by different names in public than the one their soulmate would’ve been born wearing, though he didn’t give a too satisfactory explanation for why that was.
The colors of the bands were usually the same as the colors of the marks underneath, although, Hagrid admitted quietly, there were some people with gold ones who wore black instead for mourning. He explained to Harry that it was his choice whether he wanted to wear a band too or leave his wrist bare. Most of the time people would politely avert their eyes from other people’s marks anyway, especially the shiny ones.
While Hagrid went to buy him a birthday present even though Harry insisted he didn’t have to, the boy went into Ollivander’s to pick out his wand, and there again he encountered another reminder of what could never be.
“Curious, how very curious now... It’s not too often we Ollivanders see brother wands leaving the shop within the same century as each other. Most soulmates don’t even end up with them, though it’s said they must be an extraordinarily well-matched pair on the rare occasion it does happen. Yes, I believe I can recall the lad I sold this one’s brother to many, many years ago…”
“Was it him?” Harry asked with a low sinking feeling as he held up his wrist. The elderly shopkeep’s face drooped a bit as he looked, suddenly making him seem less scary and strange as Harry had thought earlier. He now simply looked old instead.
“Ah, I do believe that was the boy’s name, yes. Well, that’s a shame then, isn’t it?” he said, clicking his tongue. With a more kindly expression, he added, “It must have been quite a special bond you two shared. May you always look back on your memories of him fondly, Mr. Potter.” Harry did not have it in him to tell the old man that he had no memories of Tom because the two of them had never got the chance to meet.
It was with a heavy heart which only lightened a little when he saw the beautiful snowy owl Hagrid had bought him that Harry left Mr. Ollivander’s shop. Hagrid noticed how down he seemed once more and took him to Fortescue’s for ice cream, where Harry asked him again if he recognized the name too. The older wizard considered this thoughtfully as they ate.
“Y’know, the name Tom Riddle does kinda ring a bell actually. Now let me think on it a moment here.” His face perked up a bit as he finally put it together. “Yeah, y’know what, I think we must’ve gone to school together, matter o’ fact! Think he mighta been Head Boy or somethin’ around, er…let’s see, maybe it was my Fourth Year, or Third? Can’t says I rightly recall now, it’s been such a long time and I doubt we’d’ve had any reason to ever speak to each other to be honest. Pretty sure I remember him bein’ handsome though, real friendly and helpful type too. Could be his band was silver too, but I don’ wanna steer yeh false here if I’m misrememberin’ something.”
Harry hummed quietly as he listened. “So he was older than me then. By like, a lot.”
Hagrid chuckled at him heartily. “Yeah, I got a good number o’ years on yeh, kiddo, tha’s definitely true.” He gave a half-shrug. “Age gaps that wide aren’t too common, I s’pose, but they’re not all that unheard of either. An’ there’s always a right an’ proper understandin’ that if yeh’ve got a soulmate who’s a lot younger than yeh like that, there’s gonna be a lot more scrutiny to make sure things between yeh stay on the up and up at least til yer both of age.”
Harry smiled, actually feeling a bit better now that they were talking about this. Now that he knew for sure that Tom had been real once, that he’d existed, and according to Hagrid was apparently somebody really nice. He still wished he’d gotten the chance to meet him and find out for himself though. He wished he knew what had happened to Tom after he got out of Hogwarts and if they would have really gotten along as well as the wand shop owner seemed to think they would have.
Harry licked up a bit of melted ice cream that had dripped onto his fingers and watched his new owl groom her feathers with her beak, feeling something tight in his chest finally ease up a little as he sat there. His new life in the wizarding world wouldn’t be perfect perhaps, but at least it would be much better than where he came from, wouldn’t it? Hagrid was right. There were some things you just couldn't change.
It’s not as if he wasn’t already used to disappointment anyways, to missing out on things he really wanted that only other people ever got to have. He would just have to make do with what he did get and make the most of it for however long he could.