Chapter Text
April 22nd, 1997
“Professor?” Harry asks, moments after he had already been dismissed after their latest discussion. He rubs his hands nervously down his trousers and glances at the pensieve, thinking. “Do you think… do you think we can find them? The horcruxes?”
“I’m afraid it’s not a matter of can or can’t, my boy,” says Dumbledore, smiling sadly in his direction. The man is sitting at his desk, sombered by what they had just learned—or confirmed, in his case—from Horace’s memory. “Tom must be stopped. And you had already destroyed one of his horcruxes. We must find the rest before it’s too late.”
“And then Voldemort will die?”
“He can die, yes. The horcruxes are tethers to this world; once they are all gone, he will become mortal once more.”
“And then.” Harry pauses. “And then I’ll have to kill him? Finish the job?”
Dumbledore takes a moment before nodding. “Yes.”
Harry exhales loudly. His eyes shift, before finally settling on the diary he destroyed in second year; a shell of what it once was: a cursed object. He keeps on staring at it, sitting so innocently on top of Dumbledore’s desk, and frowns. A flash of a young, handsome, kindly Tom Riddle assaults his vision, and he hisses, unaware of the way Dumbledore was staring at him with curious eyes.
“Is there something troubling you, Harry?” Harry’s head jerks up at being addressed, which, at the very least, summons a small smile on the weary headmaster’s face. “You look like your mind’s been running wildly for a while. Come take a rest, and tell this old man what’s on your mind.”
Harry ducks his head, flushing. “I don’t wish to be a bother—”
“Indulge me, Harry,” Dumbledore interjects gently. “What is it?”
Harry sighs and takes a seat, and stumbles a bit doing so. His knees had buckled on the way down, and Harry wonders for a moment why he’s so agitated. The Felix Felicis had long worn off, so the self-assuredness is no longer there. Maybe that’s it.
No, that isn’t it. Harry knows what’s bothering him, but he doesn’t know if he should… ask.
“You’ll never know if you don’t try, dear boy,” says Dumbledore, smiling when Harry’s eyes widen.
“Well, I was just wondering,” Harry begins after a few beats of silence. He fidgets with his hands on his lap, swallowing. “I just wonder… if it all could have been different, somehow.”
Dumbledore blinks. “Different?”
“Yeah. I mean.” He pauses, looking at the pensieve. “I mean I saw… all of those memories. I saw glimpses of his past, how he grew up… and I can’t help but think that it’s just—”
“Similar to your own?”
Harry jolts. “I’m—”
“Calm, Harry.” Dumbledore’s eyes, which had been dark and somber all night, soften, narrowing just slightly in assessment. “You feel that you and Tom have your similarities. But you have your differences, too: your choices, for one thing, and your ability to love. Tom had never loved anyone, or been loved, as far as I know.”
“But if he had,” Harry ventures slowly. “If Voldemort had learned to love, would he have been different, you think?”
Dumbledore sighs and leans back into his chair, pondering. “Love is a powerful force, Harry. Many die for it, live for it. It is a tool used to wage war, or a reason to end it. I have no doubt that, if Tom had ever been subjected to it, he would have… chosen differently.”
“Just like that?” Harry asks.
Dumbledore hums, his blackened, right hand rubbing at his left wrist in thought. Harry focuses on the movement immediately, because it is not only a tell of what his headmaster is thinking, but a reminder of what lies hidden under his bright, satin robes.
A soulmark.
(Harry glances at his woefully blank wrist and scowls.)
“Did Voldemort have one?” He can’t help but ask. At Dumbledore’s quiet, questioning stare, he adds, “A soulmate. Did he have one? A soulmate?”
He doesn’t know why he wants to know. Surely, a wicked, elitist psychopath like Voldemort, like Tom Riddle, couldn’t have been born with one. They’re precious in the wizarding world, and Hermione once told him that soulmates bring out the best in each other—including magical power. For that reason alone, surely, surely, if Tom had one, he would have tried finding them, would have kept them safe at the very least, and maybe he would have had grown up with love and care like he was meant to have. No orphanage, no fear of death, no magic-hating relatives and cupboards and being called a freak—
“He did,” Dumbledore finally answers, and Harry’s heart sinks. He stands up, slowly coming round where Harry is rooted to his seat, unblinking. “I saw it before. In the orphanage. You must not have seen it, my boy, but little Tom had been wearing ill-fitting clothing. I caught a glimpse of the mark—just the top of the little circle, the little hand peeking out the cuff as it cruises clockwise.”
Harry turns when Dumbledore shows him his wrist. The circle’s diameter was tiny—barely three centimeters, and smaller circles fill the hollow spaces inside. A line starts from the center and moves clockwise, steady, like a heartbeat. It resembles a clock, which is why some wizarding folk call it as such.
(But Harry thinks it looks more like a muggle radar, like in those spy films uncle Vernon likes to watch. And it makes more sense to think of it like one, considering how it really works.)
Then Harry swallows when his mind returns to the matter at hand, focusing on that singular shred of information that Harry shouldn’t be so fixated on, but is. “Voldemort had a soulmate.”
“Had one, yes.” Dumbledore’s eyes meet Harry’s, which had shifted to him, interested and alarmed all at once. “I saw it in class once. He was in his second year. I had them write an essay, and Tom’s inkwell had run out in the middle. He elected to use his left hand to open a new one, and I saw.”
“What did you see?” Harry asks.
Dumbledore hesitates. “It was white. Faded. Unmoving. It seemed that Tom’s soulmate had passed away before they could meet.”
Harry feels bile rise up his throat. Oh, Tom . No one deserves that. Harry’s hand instinctively reaches for his own blank wrist, and he morbidly wonders if Tom had felt it. His soulmate dying.
(Harry thinks Tom might have been devastated, if he knew.)
Harry jumps slightly when Dumbledore places his hand on Harry’s shoulder, which the boy realizes is shaking. He stares up at Dumbledore, whose eyes were soft and twinkling, a small smile on his face.
“We can pity him all we want, Harry,” says Dumbledore. “But it does not change what we must do.”
“Of course,” Harry says after a few moments, nodding. He looks down at his wrist, blank, and sighs. “I just wish it was different.”
Is he talking about Tom, or his wrist? Who knows?
Apparently, Dumbledore knows. “Sometimes being markless is a blessing, Harry. I will be the first to tell you that.”
Harry swallows. “Professor—”
“It is late, Harry. We must reflect on what has come to light, and prepare.”
“All right.”
Harry stands up, and when Dumbledore offers him a sweet, he moves to decline politely, as always. But this time, he stares at the tin thoughtfully, and takes out a sour, but sweet candy to pop in his mouth.
Dumbledore blinks once. Then he smiles. Harry nods jerkily and practically runs out of the office.
He pinches the skin of his blank wrist, frowning thoughtfully.
August 5th, 1941
The leaves crunch under Tom’s foot, useless and weak.
Summer used to be one of the more tolerable parts of the year for Tom, as most of the children were encouraged to go outside and play. This, for Tom, meant privacy and solitude—two of his favorite things that are, woefully, lacking in his dismal “home,” even now. The orphanage lacks many things, Tom thinks sullenly as he tries to ignore his rumbling belly, but that is how it is.
He grits his teeth, staring hatefully at the dying, decrepit building behind him. How it could have survived the air raids, when everything else surrounding them had been blasted to smithereens, Tom isn’t sure. The other children’s memories hadn’t been very forthcoming, and Tom is disgusted to know that the younger kids find the loud noises and flashing lights exciting.
Tom’s hand trembles as memories of falling bombs and grey skies assault him. Fools. Fools all of them. They will all die, like the inferior worms they are, but Tom will survive. Like the orphanage behind him, standing proudly among the wreckage of this insane muggle war, Tom will stand proudly over the corpses of his enemies. Respected. Revered.
But he cannot do that if he is stuck here!
What if there is another raid? What if the orphanage doesn’t survive this time? What if Tom dies?
‘I won’t die,’ Tom promises to himself vehemently, even as the rocks and sticks around him twitch and shake in fear. ‘I won’t die. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever!’
Tom hears glass shatter behind him, and he turns to see a hole in the middle of the window on the second floor. He looks down at his feet, at the small rocks that are no longer trembling. He scoffs and shrugs, uncaring, even as people investigate the noise; Mrs. Cole loudly demanding who it was that threw the rock at the window. Tom’s lip curls as he walks away, unwilling to be dragged into the farce of whatever this is.
Fools. Idiots. Useless waste of space, all of them.
And yet, Tom is here, living among them, like a polished diamond carelessly thrown in a pit of soil and coal. And all because what ? Hogwarts does not allow students to stay in the summer? Even in the middle of a fucking war? Tom is not the only wizard living amongst the muggles. Although he detests having to compare himself to pitiful muggleborns, he knows that they are also affected by the war, and Hogwarts could have welcomed and protected them all. Should have.
But no, they are all thrown to die out here, like disease-ridden rats. But Tom is not a rat. He is a snake, a descendant of Slytherin, and when he finds that blasted Chamber, he’s going to show all of them his true power! Just they wait and see.
Until then, no one cares. No one will come for Tom. Just the Germans and their bombs.
‘No one will come,’ Tom repeats in his head, sitting on a bench that would have fallen apart in his younger years, if he had not repaired it with his magic. It had been one of his rare, non-destructive displays of magic, he thinks, but who cares about that? A bench is meant to be sat on, and it cannot serve its purpose if it’s falling apart. Repairing it had been common sense.
It had also been the first time he felt it pulsing wildly.
Tom sits on the bench. He looks over his shoulder to make sure none of the dirty muggle children are spying on him, and unbuttons the cuff on his left wrist. His eyes gleam as he stares at his soulmark: a series of circles, growing smaller and smaller in the center, and a hand that flashes and moves steadily, or wildly, depending on his heartbeat.
Right now it is pulsing strongly, though not too much. When Tom first discovered it, and its connection to his heartbeat, he had learned quickly how to mask his emotions—how to fool everyone around him (even himself). No one had ever noticed the mark, which he later learned is because it is magical, and therefore undeserving eyes cannot ever see it. He still hides it though, because one cannot be sure.
This is his. His, his, his. And so is the person whose mark and magic pulses in tandem with Tom’s.
His soulmate.
At first, Tom had dismissed it. He had thought it foolish. Connections, friendship, love? All sentimental hogwash. Utterly unnecessary, and a fatal weakness. He had seen how it turns people into starry-eyed idiots, how it blinds their judgment, cements their demise. Tom had wanted nothing to do with pathetic emotions like that, for he knows it will only drag him down.
But then, in second year, Tom met him. And everything had changed.
Tom shakes his head, growling angrily when he feels his cheeks heating. This isn’t fair. Tom is meant for great things. He shouldn’t be tied down to something so—so plebeian. Sentiment is for fools, and Tom is no fool.
So why does Tom stare longingly at his pulsing mark—tangible proof of his living, beating heart? Why does he look forward to meeting this soulmate of his?
And why does he pray for it to be him?
‘Fool,’ he admonishes himself, even as his vision is filled with memories of bright, red-lipped smiles and kind, green, green eyes. He buries his warm face in his hands, muffling his snarl. ‘You’re better than this.’
Yes, he is. He’s better than this, wallowing in foolish dreams and desires. But he can’t help but imagine, and he blames himself for being so weak. One day, he hopes to conquer this human, mortal facet of himself, but maybe, for now, he can lose himself in the possibility of what if.
Then his wrist pulses. Hard. Tom jerks back and stares at it. Stares, and stares, and stares, until he can feel his eyes practically bulging out of his head. He stands slowly, mouth agape, as a tiny, tell-tale dot appears on the left hemisphere of the circle, very, very close to the center.
Tom knows what that means. He knows, from the moment his magic pulsed in his left wrist, what is about to take place. He turns around; eyes searching, and heart beating wildly in his chest and on his wrist. A bead of sweat travels down his temple, and he swallows.
They’re here. His person. They’re finally here.
(Take me away, save me, please!)
It is only due to years of conditioning and phenomenal self-control that Tom does not break into a run. No, running is for lovesick idiots and Hufflepuffs. Tom is a Slytherin—a true one, as the blood of his House’s founder runs through his veins—and therefore, he should act as such, soulmate or no. Instead, he walks briskly, wild eyes glued to the flashing radar on his arm—for that is what it is, not a fucking clock, stupid idiots—and on the dot that is drawing closer to the center of the circle, closer to him. Tom licks his lips as he makes a turn, vaguely aware that his soulmark is leading him to the front of the orphanage.
When the dot vanishes in the center, Tom stops. The line pulses wildly, his chest in pain. With mild trepidation, he turns his head.
And his eyes land on a very familiar figure. Tom would know, for that body, that face, those eyes, haunt him in his sleep every day for almost two years, and Tom’s chest hurts at the sight of him, haloed like a god by the setting sun.
Tom Riddle doesn’t wax poetic, but just this once… no, just for this person, he will. His mouth dries, and his heart almost leaps out of his chest as he breathes out a name: “Selwyn.”
Harford Selwyn, the first to acknowledge him, to care for him, is his soulmate. Tom Riddle really is meant for great things, after all.
The leaves crunch under his feet, but he pays them no mind. The grey, decrepit building provides far better sensory stimulation, and not because it was one of the few lucky buildings to have survived an onslaught of terror and destruction. Bright, green eyes survey the surroundings, and they are all at once bright and tired.
This orphanage is the beginning, the culmination of everything Harford—no, Harry has braced himself for. Will it be the marker of a brighter, better world? Or is it an omen for the inevitable, impending demise?
It will all be up to Harford, it seems. And he resolutely chooses the former.
He sighs, pinching the bridge of his slightly sharper noise. How had it come to this, he wonders not for the first time. Two years ago, he was marching to his death at the hands of his greatest enemy. Now, he is marching once again to face the same person—no, not the same person . Not yet. And he will never be him, if Harford has anything to say about it.
Still. What fucking bad luck.
‘Perhaps it was expired,’ Harford thinks ruefully. ‘The Felix Felicis.’
Along with the Resurrection Stone, Harford found a vial of molten gold potion inside the snitch, which he, as Harry Potter, knew very intimately to be luck potion. Dumbledore must have put it there, just in case, and Harry had downed it greedily, knowing that he needed all the luck he could get, considering what was to come.
But perhaps that had been damning; after all, why would a dead person need luck ? He isn’t sure, and he wants to strangle himself for being such an idiot, for of course a potion would have an expiry date, you twat! And what was that stint with the overpowered Tempus Charm? How on earth had that been a good idea?
(Harford doesn’t think that the expired potion probably meant Dumbledore had expected him to finish a lot earlier than he did. He also doesn’t think that it’s strange for Dumbledore to have given him a potion that isn’t charmed with a stasis, for is that not such a rookie mistake?)
Harford shakes his head and sighs. No matter. It’s no use bemoaning the past, as it will not change things. He should know; he spent the first month of his arrival here in 1939 lashing out, denying everything, and hoping against hope that when he wakes, he will be in the Forbidden Forest. But Harford had woken up every day to the same, elegant ceiling, to rabbits running in beautifully-woven tapestries, and to wide-eyed, clean house elves asking how is master be doing this morning?
It became clear right away that Harry—Harford is stuck here. And he might as well make the best of it. And it was, at first, decided that he can do just that by killing Tom Riddle. Nipping the issue at the bud, before it can bloom into something dangerous and irreversible. That had been the idea, the plan.
But then Harford saw him in Hogwarts, and his heart had melted.
The Voldemort he faced in the Forbidden Forest was cruel, unfeeling, inhuman. The boy Harford met in Hogwarts was lonely, bitter, and starved. Harry’s resolve had disappeared right away, and his mission had changed.
“I just wonder… if it all could have been different, somehow.”
Harford recalls, and he still wonders. He thinks he can risk it, just to find out.
Then, fortuitously, luckily, his soulmark—and didn’t having that in this life give Harford whiplash—pulsed on his seventeenth birthday, as it is meant to for all wizards and witches, almost a week ago. Harford had been busy with… family matters, and thus could not set aside time for it. But it had been very insistent today, so he relented finally. And now he is here.
He is Tom Riddle’s soulmate. Tom Riddle is his soulmate. This person, whose frail soul and body he had accidentally claimed, is Tom Riddle’s soulmate. And Harry Potter had become him.
Harford can’t help the hollow chuckle that exits his throat. Oh, oh, what really, really fucking bad luck, indeed.
His wrist pulses, and he watches quietly as the small dot steadily travels towards the center. Harford can’t help but smile, albeit sadly, wondering if Tom’s sedate pace is deliberate, as he does not want to seem too eager.
Harford’s heart weeps. Oh, Tom.
More leaves crunch, but not under his own feet. He looks up, green eyes settling on a slightly disheveled-looking Tom Riddle, who is already so tall and handsome, it hurts. This boy will grow up to be one of the greatest, most feared wizards of all time, but at a great cost.
(A cost that Tom will not have to spend, with Harford here to guide him.)
But right now, he is Tom Riddle, a dark-inclined, polite genius, who will start his fourth year next month. He is the Heir of Slytherin, who has amassed a horde of followers after years of bullying and isolation. He is Harford’s soulmate, who is staring at him with wide eyes.
“Selwyn?”
Harford smiles, and he moves for the first time since arriving at the gate. His fine, tailored robes don’t exactly billow, not like Snape’s would have, but they curtain elegantly over his matching trousers. Tom stares at him, avaricious eyes roving up and down his body, and Harford’s heart pangs. He must feel small and pathetic compared to Harford, who is dressed in finery while he is covered in secondhand clothes.
(Harford makes a note to take him shopping for new clothes soon. New everythings, in fact. That will make Tom happy, right?)
“Hello, Riddle,” he greets. He wonders if he should have said his given name, but he knows how Tom hates the name he shares with his muggle father. He smiles as gently as he can, as to not threaten the younger boy. “I suppose you know why I’m here.”
“Yes,” Tom says, squaring his shoulders, almost towering over Harford. His eyes bounce up and down his form again, and he licks his lips. “You’re mine. Aren’t you?”
Harford frowns and blinks slowly. He nods after a beat of silence, showing his pulsing soulmark. “I’m your soulmate, yes.”
“Of course you are,” Tom says, and suddenly the air shifts. The unsure, wide-eyed look is gone, only to be replaced by his usual, sweet and charming smile… though that can’t be it. Not exactly. It’s more dangerous somehow. More intense. It sets Harford on edge, though he oddly does not feel threatened by it. He is rooted to the spot when Tom approaches, and he doesn’t look away when the boy leans close. “Took you long enough, Harford.”
Harford, to his mortification, blushes. He backs away this time, clearing his throat and huffing. “I did just turn seventeen, Riddle. Though that was a few days ago, and I had—”
“I forgive you. You can always make it up to me,” croons Tom, smiling so beatifically that Harford’s brain just stops. He leans back and tilted his head towards the orphanage; his smile waning ever so slightly. “I will get my things. It will not take long; just a few minutes. You’ll take me away from here, won’t you? And you’ll be right here when I come back. Yes?”
Harford blinks and nods. Satisfied, Tom smiles wider and takes his left hand and, to Harford’s wide-mouthed horror, kisses the back of it, right where his Lordship ring sits. Tom straightens and smirks, walking back to the orphanage with a bounce in his step. When Tom disappears inside, Harford lets out the breath he had been holding in and stares wildly at the ground.
(He resolutely does not think about how warm Tom’s lips had been… or how warm his own cheeks are.)