Chapter Text
For as long as Harri Potter can remember, her first memory is not a lullaby but a curse: a sickly green light splitting the dark, a red-haired woman falling without sound, and a man with eyes red as coals.
And through it all — before she can even form words — there is a voice.
It curls in her bones when she is small enough to fit beneath cupboard stairs. It follows her out into Dudley’s fists, into Petunia’s sharp-edged scolding, into the heavy tread of Vernon’s boots. The voice is always there, steady as breath, impossible to ignore.
Sometimes it is mocking, sharp, sardonic — a drawl that bites but steadies, telling her stories of forests and rivers that run red, of siblings who love and betray in the same breath, of a family that devours itself and still clings together.
Sometimes it is crueler, hungrier, a whisper with no warmth at all. That one tells her of orphanages and cracked plaster walls, of snakes hissing secrets in the dark, of prayers and punishments, of death feared and sought in equal measure.
Two voices, yet one presence. She cannot tell the difference. She only knows she is never alone.
By five, Harri already understands that she is unwanted. The cupboard is her cradle and her coffin. The word freak is her name. When she dares ask, “Why don’t you love me like you love Dudley?” the answer cuts sharper than any switch.
So she stops asking. She learns to want elsewhere.
At night, when loneliness gnaws holes through her chest, she whispers into the dark: “Tell me a story.”
And the voice answers. Always.
Not with princesses or happy endings, but with kingdoms that burn, men who cannot die, women whose love turns to poison, children who carve their names into history with blood.
Harri listens, wide-eyed in the dark, and learns. That love is sharp as teeth. That survival is victory enough. That family is as likely to wound as to save.
It frightens her. It steadies her. It becomes hers.
The Dursleys cannot take it from her. They can strip her of food, warmth, dignity. They can set her to endless chores until her body aches.
They can laugh when Dudley chases her through the streets. They can sneer when strange things happen — Petunia’s hair turned blue, a window shattered without touch, Dudley lifted by invisible force.
But the voice remains.
Sometimes she hates it, hates the laughter that mocks her tears.
Sometimes she clings to it, desperate, when she cannot bear the silence. Either way, it is hers alone.
By seven summers old, Harri hears whispers in the world outside. Soulmates. Words drifting in playground chatter, in overheard gossip at school gates. She does not know the meaning, only that children speak of voices and dreams, of strangers who belong.
For her, it is no gossip. It is life.
She does not dare believe it. She does not dare speak it aloud. But she begins to wonder: what if this voice, sharp and cruel and constant, is not a curse but a thread? What if she is not mad?
And when she asks, trembling, “Who are you?” the voice only laughs, low and knowing.
By the time she is eight, Harri Potter is thin and sharp, with hair that refuses to be tamed and eyes too green for a world that despises her. She has learned that happiness is fleeting, that love is rare, that dreams are dangerous.
But she has also learned she is not alone.
Even if she cannot tell whose voice keeps her company.
On the morning of her eleventh birthday, the letters begin. Heavy parchment, emerald ink, addressed not to the house but to the cupboard under the stairs. Her name written with care, as though by someone who saw her.
The Dursleys rip them, hide them, burn them. Still, they come: through windows, down chimneys, in the very air itself. Until at last the doorframe buckles with the shape of a man too large for it, his voice rough but kind.
“You’re a witch, Harriet.”
The words fall heavy, inevitable.
She does not gasp. She does not cry. She laughs — sharp, unsteady, jagged as glass. Of course she is.
The voice inside hums smugly, amused. Did you think I lied, little one?
//
Diagon Alley is not a dream but déjà vu. The crooked shops, the cobbled stones, the owls perched in rows — all of it exactly as described to her in the long, sleepless nights of childhood.
It should be wonder. It burns instead.
Because every word the voice spoke is true. Every detail is real. Which means she has never been speaking to herself.
She walks the Alley in silence, hands brushing cold stone, and knows: somewhere in the world, the voice belongs to someone living. Flesh and blood.
And the thought terrifies her.
Hogwarts rises against the sky, vast and lit by torches. At the Sorting, the Hat’s voice coils in her mind like a serpent. Slytherin. Cunning, ambition, power — you would be great among them.
She hesitates. She remembers nights filled with stories of serpents, of brothers and betrayal, of ambition carved into bone. The voice inside her laughs, approving, urging.
But she refuses. Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin.
The Hat sighs, then shouts Gryffindor.
The table roars. A red-haired boy named Ron claps her on the back, grinning as though they are already bound. For the first time, Harri feels a sliver of belonging.
The voice in her mind chuckles low. Bravery over survival. Predictably foolish.
But he does not leave.
Hogwarts whispers of soulmates.
In the common room, older students swap stories: voices heard in sleep, phantom hands brushing theirs, names inked into skin. In corridors, parchment scribbles pass hand to hand: Have you heard yours yet?
Harri listens but does not speak. She knows if she admits it, they will ask who, and she cannot answer. Because the voice is not kind. Because sometimes it soothes, sometimes it mocks, sometimes it hungers.
Because sometimes she cannot tell if there are two of them.
Her first year spills into chaos. Flying lessons where the wind cuts her hair into wild ribbons and for a moment she is free. A troll in the dungeon, her heart hammering as rubble rains down. A dog with three heads, its growl rattling her bones.
At Christmas, a jumper knitted with love she has never known, a flute, and a cloak that belonged to her father. She presses the cloak to her chest and feels a pang — a relic, not a man.
The voice murmurs, sardonic. Relics cannot love you back.
Her throat tightens. “Then I’ll make my own family.”
He does not answer for three days.
The Mirror finds her in winter.
It shows her what she longs for most: a mother’s arms, a father’s laugh, a family that should have been hers. At first.
But with each visit, their outlines blur. Their shapes twist. Behind them stands another figure — tall, elegant, eyes red as blood. A stranger and yet familiar.
The voice hums, pleased. You see me now.
Her stomach knots. “You’re not him.”
Silence. Then a chuckle. And who am I, little one?
She runs from the room. But she cannot run from the voice.
At year’s end, Quirrell drags her before that same Mirror. His hands are clammy, his breath sour, his words frantic as he babbles of a master and a Stone. He demands she look.
And there he is again. The stranger in the glass, holding the Stone.
“What do you see?” Quirrell hisses.
“My parents,” Harri answers, defiant.
The voice laughs, low and cruel. Liar.
Another hum follows, softer, amused. But clever.
The Stone slides into her pocket. Quirrell rages. The fight tears through her, burns her, but she survives.
And when the master flees, when the chamber stills, she realizes: there are two voices in her mind. One sharp, mocking. One hungry, cruel.
For the first time, she feels the split.
By twelve, Harri Potter knows she is haunted. Not by one voice but two. Not by madness, but by threads of inevitability she cannot cut.
The world sees a Gryffindor girl with a scar.
Her housemates see a friend.
Her enemies see a threat.
Only she knows the truth whispered in the dark.
You are bound. You are mine. You will never be alone.
Whispers of soulmates bloom louder in her second year.
It starts in the common room, in laughter and ink-stained notes passed across the fire. Students compare stories: the brush of phantom hands, the echo of a stranger’s laugh, dreams that linger when morning breaks.
“They say you can hear your soulmate’s voice when you’re alone,” one girl murmurs, eyes wide with longing.
“They say it feels like belonging,” another sighs.
Harri listens, silent, her heart tightening. Because she has always heard a voice. Voices. And never once have they sounded like belonging.
The school year darkens. Words appear on walls, blood red: The Chamber of Secrets has been opened.Students whisper, grow afraid.
And in her bones, the crueler voice hisses. Heirs and serpents. Blood cleansed with blood.
It sickens her.
The other voice only chuckles, sardonic. Children playing at war. You’d think they’d learn.
She feels caught between them, one tugging her down into hunger, the other mocking but steadying.
The diary falls into her hands, blank pages that bleed ink when she writes. A boy’s name answers her: Tom Riddle.
For a moment, she feels relief. Proof that she is not mad. The voice has a name.
But the more she writes, the more she realizes this Tom is not the whole of it. His words echo the hunger, the cruelty. Not the sardonic steadiness that has kept her afloat all these years.
There are two, she thinks, ink blotting under her grip. I have always known, but now I see it.
The Chamber swallows her in stone and shadow. Tom stands before her, pale and smiling, his diary-self sharpening into life.
“You’ve carried me all along,” he says.
She laughs, bitter. “Not only you.”
His smile falters.
And in the silence that follows, the steadier voice murmurs in her bones: Good girl. Tell him nothing.
It steadies her enough to survive. To fight. To live.
When the Chamber is sealed again and the diary destroyed, Tom’s voice recedes, thin and ragged. But not gone. Never gone.
And the other voice remains, sharp and mocking, present as always.
That night, in the quiet of Gryffindor Tower, Harri stares at the ceiling and listens to her friends whisper of soulmates. Of bonds that promise love, safety, future.
She does not speak. She only thinks: If this is my soulmate, then destiny is cruel indeed.
By thirteen, Harri Potter has begun to understand.
There are two voices in her.
One that is hunger.
One that is steel.
And she is bound to both.
By thirteen, Harri Potter is also certain of one thing: one of the voices in her head belongs to Voldemort.
The diary proved it. The Chamber sealed it. His hunger thrums through her like a scar that will not fade. She knows him even in silence, a presence that coils and hisses at the edge of thought, promising power, whispering blood.
But the other voice — mocking, sharp, sometimes cruel, sometimes oddly steady — is not him.
Which makes her cursed in ways no one else is.
By fourteen, soulmates are no longer whispers or fairy-tales. They are real, tangible things happening around her. Dean Thomas wakes one morning grinning, claiming he heard laughter in his sleep that was not his own.
Parvati Patil blushes when a name blooms faintly on her palm. Hermione dissects her dreams with meticulous detail, certain they are a bond beginning to take shape.
Harri listens, silent, while envy twists inside her.
They have one voice, one bond, one promise. She has two.
And neither is sweet.
When she’s still fourteen, she knows the difference.
Voldemort’s voice is hunger, coiling sharp and venomous, pressing her toward cruelty, promising her a crown of ashes if only she’ll reach for it.
The other is no gentler in tone — sardonic, amused, cruel at times — but its cruelty is never hunger. It cuts, yes, but steadies. It mocks, but sharpens her spine.
She knows, without knowing how, that one voice means her harm and the other means her well.
And she tells no one.
That year, Sirius comes into her life. A godfather. A man with wild hair, a crooked grin, a love that feels fierce enough to anchor her. For a while, Harri tastes what it is to be wanted. She lets herself hope.
The steadier voice grows quiet when Sirius is near, as though watching. The crueler one hisses, resentful.
She chooses Sirius. Again and again, she chooses him. Until the night he is torn from her arms at the Ministry, the veil swallows Sirius whole.
The grief hollows her. She does not cry where anyone can see. She saves her tears for the dark, where the voice waits.
You see now, it murmurs, mocking. Love is fleeting. I am not.
That other voice comes soon after, almost gentle and soft — not mocking, not sharp.
I will give you one gift, little one. One hope.
Her breath hitches. She waits.
When your war is finished, find me. New Orleans. Niklaus Mikaelson.
For the first time, the voice gives her more than cruelty, more than steadiness. A name. A place. A promise.
She clings to it with the desperation of a drowning girl, clutching the syllables like driftwood in a storm.
A hope to keep her alive.
By fifteen, envy has sharpened into ache. Her peers lean into bonds that promise love, belonging, inevitability. She clings to hers because she cannot cut them free. One is a parasite. The other a companion she does not want but cannot lose.
And the war sharpens around her. Cedric dies in the Tournament. Voldemort returns, flesh restored, his voice stronger than ever, pressing against her thoughts until she can scarcely breathe.
Still, she fights him. She clings instead to the other — mocking, steady, cruel but never hollow. The one that tells her, Stand. Survive. Do not yield.
Sometimes she whispers, bitter: If this is you meaning well, then you are crueler than you know.
The answer comes, low and amused: Cruelty keeps you alive, little one.
And she does not disagree.
By sixteen, the war devours her days.
The world shrinks to blood and ash, to battles fought in corridors and forests, to names read aloud in memorial. Harri runs herself raw, fighting, leading, surviving. And in her mind, the voices war as fiercely as she does.
Tom is louder now. The Horcruxes scream through her veins as one by one they are destroyed. His voice lashes, cruel, furious. You think you can cut me away? You think you can live without me? You are me, Harri Potter. Who are you, if not a remnant of Lord Voldemort’s soul?
He mocks her in every silence. Two voices, two soulmates — tell me, which is curse and which is gift? Tell me, broken girl, who will ever love you whole?
She does not answer. She cannot.
Because part of her fears he is right.
Nik’s voice does not soften — it never has — but it steadies. When she falters, when her grief is too heavy, when she wants only to close her eyes and not open them again, it is his laughter that cuts through.
Stand up, little one. You are not finished.
Cruelty is love when it keeps you breathing.
He mocks her, teases her, berates her. But beneath it is a constancy Voldemort cannot mimic. She clings to it, even as she hates herself for it.
At seventeen, she walks into battle with both voices screaming in her skull. Tom rages, desperate, clawing for control as his Horcruxes burn away. Nik chuckles, low and sharp, urging her forward.
When Voldemort falls, when his body collapses at last and the curse breaks, the silence inside her is a thunderclap.
Tom is gone.
The absence is so sharp it feels like pain. She stumbles in the hollow of it, disoriented, as though a limb has been severed.
And then, in the quiet, the other voice hums.
He may have told you love is fleeting, and perhaps it is, but I am not. I am here Harriet.
The war ends. The dead are buried. Her friends fall into the arms of those assigned for them. Hermione’s dreams have turned into a face. Ron clasps a hand not his own. Even Ginny blushes at whispers only she can hear.
Harri listens, smiling, hollow, but not lost.
Because she has a promise.
A name. A place.
New Orleans. Niklaus Mikaelson.
And when mundanity settles like ash after fire, she clings to it — not a dream, not an illusion, but a thread tied through her very bones.
The war ends, not with triumph, but with silence.
Hogwarts is rubble and smoke, its halls filled with ash and whispers. Bodies are carried out in white sheets, names inked in ledgers that blur beneath Harri’s tired eyes. She stands among the mourners, her scar burning faintly as though mocking her, and feels only hollowness.
They call her savior. The Girl Who Lived. The Girl Who Won. But she does not feel like either. She feels like a ghost, still walking, still breathing, when too many others are not.
Funerals blur together. Fred’s laughter remembered in sobs, George’s face hollow as if half his soul has gone with his twin. Colin Creevey’s small body lowered into the ground, far too young to be placed among the heroes. Lavender Brown, Dennis Creevey, nameless faces who fought beside her and died for a world they barely had time to live in.
Each funeral is a weight pressing down on her chest. The speeches blur — stories of courage, of sacrifice, of lives remembered — but Harri hears only the silences that follow, the gaps where laughter should have been.
It is at Remus and Tonks’s funeral that the weight breaks her.
The ceremony is quiet, windswept, filled with faces streaked by grief. Andromeda holds the child in her arms — Teddy, hair flickering from brown to turquoise, as if even sorrow cannot keep magic at bay. His tiny fists curl against her robes, his mouth opening in a yawn too soft for this hard world.
Harri stares, throat tight.
Remus, gone. Tonks, gone. Sirius, gone. All the adults who should have been anchors in her storm — stripped away. And here is their son, orphaned before he can even speak.
Her chest aches as if she’s staring at herself. Another child left behind. Another cycle repeating.
The voice curls sharp in her bones. You know what it is to be left behind, little one. Don’t let him be.
She nearly breaks then, not at the graves, not at the hymns, but at the sound of that voice — mocking, sardonic, but steady, always steady. A tether in her grief.
She swallows hard, steps closer, and whispers to Andromeda: “Let me help. Please. He’s all I have left of them.”
Andromeda looks at her with eyes too weary to argue. She nods.
So Harri takes Teddy in her arms, cradles him against her chest, and for the first time since the war ended, feels something like resolve.
The days that follow are a blur of mourning. She carries Teddy through ruins and wakes, through kitchens filled with Weasley grief, through nights that smell of smoke and bitter tea. She rocks him when he cries, though her own eyes stay dry.
Yet in those nights, she notices something she has not felt since childhood. Silence.
Tom is gone.
The hunger, the cruelty, the parasitic hiss that had coiled in her veins for as long as she can remember — gone. His voice is ash in her bones.
And for the first time, she has only one.
It frightens her at first, that absence. But then relief blooms. For all her envy, for all her difference, she is like everyone else now. She has one soulmate, one tether. Not two. Not broken.
The voice that remains is sharp, mocking, cruel at times, but steady. Always steady. Hers.
Life at the Burrow should comfort her. The house is warm — too warm — filled with laughter that strains to be genuine. The Weasleys cling to one another, weaving their grief into something almost bearable. Ron and Hermione drift closer, shoulders brushing, words exchanged in silences too tender for her to intrude.
It should feel like home. Instead, she feels like a ghost haunting their hearth.
She helps Molly with the washing up, listens to Arthur ramble about Muggle plugs, watches Ginny practice Quidditch in the yard. She holds Teddy while George sits in silence, as if the baby’s hair changing colour is the only thing left that can make him smile.
And yet, in the quiet moments, she feels apart. Removed. Their grief is shared. Theirs bends them closer together. Hers isolates.
The Ministry summons her often. Photographs, interviews, speeches she does not want to give. They dress her in robes she never chose, sit her before cameras and quills, call her savior, heroine, chosen one. Her name is printed in headlines she cannot stand to read.
She smiles when she must. She nods when they expect it. But when she goes home to the Burrow, strips away the heavy robes, rocks Teddy against her chest, she feels nothing but exhaustion.
At night, when the silence stretches too far, the voice comes.
Look how quickly they forget you when the fire burns low.
She clenches her fists. “They haven’t forgotten. They’re just—”
Living. Moving on. The voice cuts in, amused. And you, little one? You don’t know how.
Her throat tightens. She hates that it’s true.
She drifts between houses. Sometimes the Burrow, sometimes Grimmauld Place, sometimes Andromeda’s quiet flat with its faint smell of old books and baby powder. She helps where she can. She cooks, she cleans, she sings to Teddy in a voice too soft to be her own.
None of it fits.
Mundanity is heavier than war. In battle, every breath had purpose — fight, survive, save. Now her breaths feel wasted. Too many, too empty.
The voice hums in her bones. Peace was never meant for you.
She presses her forehead to Teddy’s soft hair. “Then what was?”
Silence stretches. Then, low and certain: Me.
At Grimmauld, the shadows still whisper Sirius’s name. She lingers in his old room, fingers brushing over the carvings on the wall. Teddy gurgles in her arms, oblivious, and she whispers promises into his hair. You’ll never feel this kind of loneliness. I won’t let you.
Hogwarts is rebuilding, but she cannot bring herself to stay long. The broken walls, the half-mended halls — it feels like walking among ghosts. She lays flowers where names are carved into stone, then leaves quickly, as though chased.
By autumn, the world has begun to stitch itself back together. New laws are drafted, shops reopen, children laugh in rebuilt streets. Even grief finds ways to soften into routine.
And everywhere Harri turns, she sees soulmates.
At the Burrow, Ron and Hermione drift into each other’s orbits with a tenderness so natural it almost hurts to look at.
Their laughter is softer now, steadier, stitched with inevitability. Ginny writes in her journal with a blush she cannot hide, words spilling from dreams she dares not say aloud.
Once, Harri overhears Hermione whispering to Ginny by the kitchen fire: “It’s strange, but it feels like he’s always been there. I can’t imagine being without him now.” Ginny sighs, resting her chin in her hands. “I hope mine feels the same when I finally meet him.”
Even Neville, awkward and earnest, admits to hearing a voice in his sleep — one that steadies him when doubt creeps in. He says it quietly, as if afraid the bond will vanish if spoken too loudly, but there is hope in his eyes.
The world is filling with bonds. With belonging.
Harri envies them still. Their soulmates are near, tangible, voices and touches they can reach for. Hers is far, distant, sharp as a blade.
And yet, beneath the envy, there is relief. She is not broken anymore. She has one voice. One soulmate. One thread.
And she clings to that as tightly as she clings to Teddy.
At night, when Teddy stirs against her chest, she whispers to him: “You won’t be like me. You won’t grow waiting for scraps of love. You’ll know it without doubt.”
The voice hums, sharp amusement threaded with something she almost mistakes for gentleness. Cruelty carved you strong. He will not need it. You will be his shield.
She closes her eyes, rocks Teddy until he sleeps again, and wonders if promises spoken in the dark can break the cycles written into blood.
Still, the weeks stretch long, and mundanity sits on her like a weight. She is tired of drifting, tired of envying, tired of watching life move around her as if she does not belong to it.
The world turns, everyone finding their bonds.
And Harri sits apart, cradling a child not her own, with two voices stitched into her skull. One is gone now, quiet as ash. The other remains — mocking, cruel at times, but steady, always steady.
And when she remembers the promise given once — a name, a place — she knows she cannot stay here forever.
New Orleans. Niklaus Mikaelson.
A tether. A vow. A hope that is hers alone.