Chapter Text
Time. Everything comes back to time in the end. It is what defines Harry’s world. The very laws and inner workings of its power define who and what Harry Potter is. He thinks back to that first year with his family - he doesn’t remember it, of course, but he imagines what it was like. Warm and safe and collapsible. Steady and unbreaking but so very fragile in its integrity. Because he lives a contradictory life, tainted by what could’ve been - and what actually did. He believes the first year of his life was no different.
Harry has known of Voldemort’s wrath only twice. First when he was a baby, marked with darkness he would come to loathe. Second in his first year at Hogwarts in the form of Professor Quirrell. Now, he is being acquainted with it for a third time.
He only remembers the second time, so that’s what he has to go off of in the dimly lit chamber. Harry runs through everything he thought he knew from their first meeting, creating a list in his mind. Voldemort is disembodied, a wraith-like being with no human purpose or ideals, and his looks follow suit. Voldemort is not someone to be reasoned with. Voldemort can’t touch him, he can’t come within a foot of Harry without breaking into nasty blisters and burns. As the second's pass, Harry’s come to the profound explanation that this can’t be him, it transcends all reason and law, but it can’t be. He doesn’t follow any of his carefully thought rules and regulations, that thought alone is enough to make his blood run cold. It scares him because he doesn’t have his mother’s love to protect him anymore, he doesn’t have anything in the dark chamber to save him.
He’s frozen as he watches him approach, he waits for the anguish to ensue with a heavy heart and mind. Somewhere between the paralysing fear and anticipation, he realises that Voldemort’s younger now, handsomer. He looks about as old as some of the seventh years he sees roaming the halls or in the common room. Harry is acutely aware that he’s not in his right mind, but the thought sticks and he lets it because he doesn’t have the strength to banish it.
A flicker of hope ignites in his chest. He lets himself wonder because he’s exhausted, and he doesn’t have enough in himself to stop the thoughts from breaching his mind. It starts quietly enough: Perhaps this isn’t Voldemort, he doesn’t look like him, not in the slightest. He has dark hair and even darker eyes. He’s tall, but not incredibly thin and ghostly like in his nightmares. In some other world, where he isn’t who he is, Harry might even think him good-looking. It’s innocent enough at first, but it only gains momentum.
His long legs fold and suddenly he’s only a foot away from Harry, towering over where he’s holding a barely breathing, limp, Ginny. He reaches out.
He uses the last of his strength to scramble away from him, holding Ginny’s frail body in his shaking arms. Her skin’s cold now. He can barely feel the thready beat of her heart beneath his fingertips. He inhales shakily, thoughts of escape flitting through his mind. He wants to run.
Voldemort doesn’t come closer, he stays there, crouching. “He spoke of you often, Harry Potter.” He grimaces like it pains him to look at the boy. He stands fluidly, twirling Harry’s wand between his fingers. His wand, the thing that has given him comfort and security for the past two years being toyed with in the dark lord’s hands, it’s then that he realises the gravity of the situation.
Harry knows fear, he’s bathed in it for years. He’s felt the pull of the tide bringing him under. He knows it intimately, like a mother. Now? He feels closer to it than he ever has. It swirls and consumes him. Faintly, Harry’s aware that he’s close to hyperventilating.
“When he first learned of the prophecy, he was consumed by you, so sure that you were the key to his success. But in trying to remove you from the equation, he fulfilled the old woman’s babbling.” He sighs, stalking closer.
“Prophecy?” He says weakly. He’s frozen, scared. Harry Potter is scared. Harry Potter, who is hailed and looked up to as the chosen one, is shaking. When the hat first sat upon his head it told him that he was destined for greatness, that he was supposed to be somebody, someone amazing and courageous and strong like no other. Harry thinks that it was wrong.
“You know nothing.” Voldemort scoffs, and it’s so mind-numbingly human that Harry’s almost surprised. “You’re just a weak little boy.” He looks no older than twenty, but his words speak volumes to the mind behind the mask.
Harry can’t find it in himself to disagree. Harry’s only twelve now, he’s strong, he knows that, for his age he’s exceptional. He’s powerful, but less than sure of himself, magnificent, but too scared to show it. What little he does show, has made him the best in his year, even in the year above. So, he’s sure, realistically, that he’s only scraping the tip of his potential, a mere percentage of what he could attain once he comes of age. Voldemort looks at him with knowing eyes and Harry’s sure that he knows it too.
Voldemort swipes a hand down his face, annoyed. “Come here, child - If you would like your little girlfriend healed.” He beckons him over with the slightest crook of his finger. It’s simple, brain-numbingly simple, but it shows who he was in life, who he was before whatever he’s become. The slight mannerisms, the direct commands. Harry thinks that he was an influential person, even if he’s not Voldemort.
Against his better judgement, Harry stands on shaking legs. He tries to summon courage that he knows not. He’s unsure and feeble, but Ginny needs him, she needs this, so he tries. He reaches within himself and grasps the last threads of bravery that have managed to catch on his heart on the way out. He holds on to them like they’re his last lifeline, and he supposes they are.
Voldemort sighs like he’d rather be doing anything else.
Then, in that moment, he feels magic reach out to touch his. Intertwining and swirling with his. It’s soft and warm and slots perfectly with his. They’re so at odds, complete opposites, night and day, dark and light, but it seems that one alone is nothing special, but together? They define the world at large.
Voldemort’s eyes widen ever so slightly. “Interesting.” He runs a hand through his hair - Harry wonders if it’s because he’s anxious, but quickly banishes the thought. No matter how much men like him have ruined his life, torn up his very roots in such a way so that he can never regrow, he’s jealous. Because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be self assured like that - so strong in his own right and not afraid to show it.
He reaches out toward Harry, and this time he isn’t scared to take it, not as he’s being lulled into a false sense of security. His hand slots perfectly with Harry’s much smaller one, and it’s bliss. His skin burns and prickles from the tips of his fingers to the ends of his toes. He knows Voldemort should be in pain now and part of him is scared that he looks almost pleased, but the rest of him can’t manage to see anything wrong with their predicament.
He’s breathless and giddy as he feels his chest erupt in pain. It starts right over his heart, singular and potent, but it dulls and spreads infinitely until it comes to an abrupt stop.
Suddenly, he’s falling onto the cool stone beneath his feet.
Voldemort catches him, cursing under his breath. “This wasn’t meant to happen.” His skin is warm and very much alive.
Harry can’t help it: He laughs. It’s enough to banish some of the stress and misery as he leans his body on Voldemort. Simultaneously too close and not close enough. Too close because it’s Voldemort. Not close enough because his skin itches and Harry’s sure that the only one that can scratch it is him.
Mocking, Voldemort adds a drawling, “What am I supposed to do with a twelve-year-old?”
He clutches Voldemort’s robes with shaking hands. Harry looks up at him, openly, because he’s not scared now, his fear is a mere fever dream in the dark lord’s arms. He can hear his heart beating with Voldemort’s, and he’s caught by the sudden realisation that Voldemort does indeed have a heart, its very beating is proof of that fact.
He holds the younger boy’s hand kindly, his skin calloused and warm, but steady.
There’s tension in the set of his mouth that Harry know’s has everything to do with him as he begins to speak. “Do you know what’s happening?” Voldemort asks, his grip tightening impatiently.
With a shake of his head, Voldemort starts. “Of course you don’t.” He man-handles Harry into an upright position. “Stand, will you?” He keeps his hands firmly planted on his ribs.
He nods shallowly, doing his best to keep his knees from buckling.
He casts a backward glance, looking at where Ginny is splayed uncomfortably, her chest just barely rising and falling like there’s an invisible weight on her chest.
A sharp hand brings his face back to Voldemort’s. “You’re my soulmate, Harry.” He says, as though that explains the very secrets of the universe.
He thinks of the small matching birds on his Aunt and Uncle’s necks, how they’d first met when they were in university, how they wear matching scarves to cover them up. He thinks of that first moment on the trains when Hermione and Ron had accidentally brushed shoulders and ended up together. He thinks of the talk that all first years get from their head of house, explaining how soulmate’s work and to come directly to a professor if they happened to find their other half. Harry isn’t going to be telling anybody about Voldemort, about this night in its entirety. He’s never heard of a spell that could imitate a soul marking, but he hopes that it exists because if not, his life is very well over.
He shakes his head. “No.” Harry says, bewildered. He knew the moment he felt the burn, the pull, everything, but he still can’t come to terms with it. He can’t come to terms with it as he looks at the older, handsome boy. He can’t come to terms with it as he feels the very strings of his soul bond to his.
“Jesus Christ.” He runs a hand down his face in a quiet show of disbelief.
His eyes flash in recognition.
Brown to green. Green to brown. “Accept it.” He sighs. “For now, we’ll perform an unbreakable vow. Just don’t interfere with my plans, and I’ll let you pretend that you’re not my soulmate.”
As he says it, Harry’s world seems to dissolve and reform around him, impossible to ever solve or understand. He tries to make a list, because those always help, but before he can even get to number one, Voldemort intercepts.
“Give me your hand.”
Harry reluctantly does, even though he knows that it’s probably not the best decision. His skin is sweaty, he knows it is, but Voldemort doesn’t say anything.
He looks back once more to see Ginny.
Voldemort sighs. “I’ll heal her if you do this for me.”
“Anything.” He can hardly recognise his own voice in his ears.
***
Tom can barely believe his naivety as he utters the words. He can’t tell if he’s lucky or doomed. This boy, this child, is his soulmate, his other half. The one who’s supposed to kill him is also supposed to love him. Faintly, he thinks that magic is playing some sick joke on him.
Still, he can’t help but think that the world is much more vibrant with Harry in it. From the moment they touched, his bleak world became that much more vibrant and colourful. He’s addicted.
Tom’s all too aware that it’s been years, perhaps decades, since he’s had a real conversation with anyone other than himself. Even then, his conversations with himself or rather his mother soul were mere updates, check-ins.
There were times when he used to write daily, that’s how it was in the start, and once it stopped to weekly he merely assumed that he was getting busier and his plans grander. Then it stopped to only once a month. He found it odd at first, sure, but he simply reminded himself that he wouldn’t dare to leave him behind in the abyss. Half a year later, Voldemort came back. He spoke of fortune and following, his plans changing with the tide of population. Tom knew that he was living up to everything that he was meant to be, even if he had to watch from the sidelines of his own diary where he was forever encased, bound to the parchment like no soul ever should be. As the years progressed, as did the horcruxes. He felt more and more parts of himself fall away, sequestered by a doomed man. Each of his emotions tainted and ripped from his chest.
As the days continued to pass, Tom found the folly in his own ideals, own morals - or lack there of.
Each time, he could feel a small bit of his soul being ripped from his very essence and thrown into another vessel. That was when he truly realised his mistake. He had destroyed himself in an effort to make himself into something no human had any right being: a god.
He had come to resent himself, to resent the man that had been born from the childish dreams of a young orphan.
He had spent fifty years trapped in an endless void, a wasteland. Pain consumed and throbbed down to his very bones. Tom Riddle is the closest thing he knows to being ashamed.
He wraps his hand around the nape of the boy’s neck because he can, because he knows that Harry’s his.
Harry doesn’t flinch.
Tom looks at him, really looks at him in the dim chamber. He can’t see much, not even with his good eyesight, but it’s enough. It’s enough for him to decide right then and there that he would create a world where their bond was possible.
He’s performed the killing curse exactly once, enough for him to have the colour memorised and ingrained in his mind. Harry’s are the exact same colour. He almost wants to see the moment that he cursed the boy when he was a child, just to see if his eyes changed even slightly after he cast it.
“Anything?” He mutters. It’s too good to be true - almost scary because Tom is sure that the boy knows what he’s saying.
Harry nods like it pains him to do so.
“The vow is enough.” He can feel Harry relax under his hand.
He nods again without complaint.
He removes his hand because he’s not sure what he’ll do, given the chance. The orphan in him wants to kill Harry because he’s scared of what his very existence means. He cannot love, he cannot cherish, he can only own and control. Tom knows that would never be enough for Harry. Part of him - the sensible part - wants to become a better person for him. He’s young now, he has many years until he could ever pursue a romantic relationship with him, and he’s not worried about how long it will take.
“Do you know how to perform it?” He asks, this won’t work if he does.
Harry shakes his head minutely.
Tom looks at him, and for the first time in decades, he infiltrates a mind. He falls back into the familiar feeling quickly, like it’s not anything but natural. His mind is imposing, not because it’s carefully guarded and secured, but because it’s not. He has no protection. Anyone with half the idea could ruin him by only looking into his eyes and peering into his head. Tom finds nothing but blind loyalty and acceptance - that’s even scarier.
“Give me your wrist.” Tom resigns himself to only tie their magic to it - it’s the most he can do without a third party present to do the actual casting.
Harry complies quickly, looking back once more at Ginny.
He slips Harry’s wand out of the fold of his robes. It’s warm and pliant in his hands, just like his. A sister wand, he realises faintly.
Tom presses the wooden tip to Harry’s pulse point. An iridescent, golden string appears.
“Repeat after me.”
Harry’s still staring down at his wrist.
“I solemnly swear not to inflict any harm upon Tom Riddle purposefully.”
Harry mimics him tonelessly.
“I solemnly swear not to inflict any harm upon Harry Potter purposefully.” The thin, thread-like bit of magic finds its way to Tom, burrowing itself into his blood until all his veins turn golden.
The magic swells and lingers around them for a few moments longer before retreating into their bodies like it’d never left.
It’s beautiful, Tom thinks.
“Ginny.” His voice is awe-filled, even as he looks up to meet Tom’s eyes.
He nods once. Dutifully, he takes a step away from Harry, crouching over Ginny. The spell fires out of his wand before he has the chance to utter it. The soulmate bond, he realises faintly: It’s giving him some of Harry’s over-flowing magic through the bond. Her heart stutters back into pace immediately. He almost feels bad as he thinks about what life she could’ve had if he hadn’t stripped her of her magic. She’d live, but she wouldn’t be anything more than squib.
He can feel Harry through the bond and his sheer pleasure as he runs to Ginny.
He hates it.
***
Harry’s wrist is still tingling from where Tom had connected their magic. Each time he blinks, he sees the after-image of his arm, veins glowing and golden. Harry thinks it’s the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen - simultaneously, he thinks it’s the ugliest.
His heart is beating uncomfortably quickly as he lies on the sterile hospital bedsheets, his magic and adrenaline pumping through his veins, circulating like poison.
He thinks about how he could never tell Ginny how she lost her magic, what had truly happened that day in the chamber.
He’s sore - Madam Pomfrey explained that it was most likely because of the magic exhaustion, so when he turns his head to the left to look at where Ginny should be resting behind an opaque curtain, he groans.
“Harry!” A familiar voice yells in the periphery of his vision, dragging along a frazzled-looking Hermione.
Madam Pomfrey steps out of her office before he has time to answer and call him over. “What did I say? No visitation until tomorrow morning, so you can come back then.” She says sternly, looking only a mere patient away from retirement.
Harry struggles to sit up, but once he manages it, he feels instantly worse.
“Please.” Ron begs, fidgeting with Hermione’s hand in his nervously. “It’s almost curfew.”
She sighs, swiping a hand down her face. “I didn’t see you.” She steps back into her office, quietly shutting the door behind herself and closing the blinds.
“Ron.” Harry smiles at his best friend, knowing that he’ll have one more secret that he can never tell - one more thing between him and happiness. He stares down at where their hands are still firmly clasped together.
He pulls up a chair, sitting almost too close for comfort, but Harry can’t find it in himself to be mad at the boy who’s seen him cry and brought him soup when he’s sick.
Hermione sits delicately on the edge of his bed, almost scared of coming too close to him.
She’s the first to speak, breaking Ron and Harry’s staring contest. “What happened down there, Harry? I’m not trying to pressure you to talk about it, I know it’s hard. But…” She trails off, looking at Ginny’s bed.
Ron picks up the thread. “It’s just, no one knows what happened. We’re worried, mate.”
Harry rubs his scar, it barely burns anymore.
He can’t tell them about the unbreakable vow, or meeting his soulmate - or the way that Madam Pomfrey had looked at him when he’d finally been forced to take his shirt off, a large marigold splayed on his chest. He wasn’t sure the world wasn’t going to end in that moment - he still isn’t.
“I…” He stops, trying to collect himself and, simultaneously, his story. “I really just got lucky.”
Ron scoffs like he can’t help himself. “You didn’t just ‘get lucky’, Harry.”
Hermione nods along.
His eyes are starting to pound now. He takes off his glasses, swiping a hand down his face. “I really did. I’m not trying to save face or anything like that, I truly just got lucky.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” She says, a small smile on her face. Hesitantly, she put a small hand on his leg, right by his ankle.
Her touch is warm and much needed.
The world keeps spinning.