A/N: Originally posted on my tumblr in response to all of the soulmate AUs that seemingly every author I'm following was partaking in. Written for the soulmate Au in which you don't know who your soulmate is until you first touch, and gifted to Eveiss for being such a fantabulously thorough (and surprise, even) beta.
Please tell me what you think? It was an exercise in my writing muscles as I was writing-without-editing (something I rarely do), but I had a lot of fun doing so, and Eveiss definitely helped me clean up the resulting mess.

Disclaimer: I own nothing-except for the things I do.

Rating: T
Word count: 750
Pairing: Harry/Voldemort
Genre: horror, suspense (?)
Warnings: blood mention; general Voldemortness (if just for a moment).

In hindsight, Harry felt that he should have come to this conclusion before now; his luck dictated that just when he thought things could not get any worse for him, they invariably did.

Yet it seemed so impossible, so contrived, so ludicrous of an idea that it had never even occurred to him for one moment.

He wished it had.

There must have been a reason that he reacted so strongly to Professor Quirrell's touches, after all—even if it wasn't Voldemort's true body that he had come into contact with all those years ago. Maybe his mother's protection had played a part in him not being able to parse the information that came from sweaty fingers brushing against his, or a body—blood rushing through its veins—contorting in agony and burning beneath his hands.

But he had just been thankful to be alive, really. When the headmaster told him that the power of love was what had vanquished the Dark Lord, Harry had no reason to think too deeply about it—or maybe no desire to do so, if he was being honest with himself.

Still, he should have known better than to think that he was truly done with Lord Voldemort.

Even in his first year, when Harry had been given the option to join him, his consent would have just been another sequence of events that would lead him back to the Dark Lord—another reality in which their lives would be joined together even more so. It was this, then, that should have made him realize that no matter what option he would have taken, their lives were too governed by fate for one of them to end this prematurely.

He had so much time, so much time in which he should have come to realize this. He had seen the young Tom Riddle in his second year, when by all rights, he shouldn't have even been able to go near the teenage Dark Lord until his plan to regain his body had come to fruition.

And even despite the year in which seemingly nothing had happened with Voldemort, Harry should have been more conscious of the fact that his scar had started hurting again soon afterwards—truly paining him and showing him dreams of things he did not understand or had ever even dreamed of before now. He was just a teenager though, and if there had been any possibility that Voldemort was finally dead—really and truly dead—he had wanted to believe it.

He should have thought more, understood more, been more attentive to the things that Sirius had told him; the increase of the Death Eater activity had just been rumors before now, true, but it was obvious to him now that there was credence to the words. And every rumor had a spec of truth embedded in it. He knew that.

It was definitely evident now—with Voldemort standing before him, exceptionally tall and exceptionally pale and exceptionally thin. It was definitely evident now, with masked and robed figures surrounding him in a graveyard located in who-knows-where, with Harry bound too tightly to the tombstone, and blood trickling down his right arm.

Here, right now, Harry was absolutely positive that his luck could not have been any more rotten. He should have known better than to think as much, however, and when the Dark Lord finally reached forward and laid that pale, almost skeletally thin finger upon Harry's cheek, he knew two things to be true.

The first was that Voldemort had not been bluffing throughout his monologue; he could touch Harry. The touch was all-intrusive, pain beyond pain, an agony that made him want to rip out his nerve-endings or do anything—anything at all—so he could be rid of it.

But the second realization that he came to was much, much worse than the first, because along with the agony that he was feeling now, there was something else. It was not a feeling, or an emotion, or anything of the sort; it was more akin to knowledge being transferred straight into his mind. It was an epiphany that came to him with such suddenness that if not for what he was already experiencing, he would have jumped.

He knew now, with every molecule, every part of himself, that the dark lord was his soulmate.

And if the slow blink of satisfaction of those piercing, scarlet eyes was anything to go by—

Voldemort knew it as well.