Summary: Harry/Voldemort soulmate AU.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
AN: It hasn't been beta read, or even really double spell checked, so yeah, if you find any mistakes I truly truly apologise. Also, this is a two shot.
Fated, for Better or Worse.
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Ninty one days, exactly, after Voldemort dies, Harry gets his Soulmark. It is a snake within a skull, and is so very small, just below his wrist, and he understands immediately. It is so very obvious to him, and his heart breaks into a million different tiny pieces and scatters in the winds. He doesn't even have to see, doesn't have to notice, that it is all black, that it is uncoloured, signalling that his mates death has already come to pass. Doesn't have to witness it to know the person, the person that his mark symbolises, is already gone, and is now burried beneth the ground. For, in all honesty, Harry knows, with the abrupt perfect kind of horrorfying clarity, that only a soulmate can, that he is the one who put him there.
And, in all honesty, he does not know which is the greater shame; knowing, now, that he has killed his soulmate, or knowing that he still believes it was the right thing to do.
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Hermione sees his wrist without him meaning to, days later, and she breaks down crying for his sake, and for Tom's. "I'm so sorry, Harry!" She says, hand on her heart, before she wraps her arms around him, solid and fierce.
"I guess we know why the prophecy states you're his equal, now..." Ron murmurs, uneasily, when he stumbles upon then, and hears her sobbing mutterings, but he has an odd type of compassion and sorrow in his eyes, as he does.
Harry cries too, he thinks, slowly at first, as he remembers the image of a small boy, alone and bullied in an orphanage, reacting with rage, and then harder once he remembers another truth, the most painful one of all.
He cannot help but hope, and not only for Tom's sake, that where ever he is now, that someone is there with him to help him fix up his tore apart soul.
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"Do you think Dumbledore knew?" Harry asks one evening, fire whisky craddled in his hand, as Aberforth, his chosen barmen and friend, spits on a rag, and eyes the Mark.
"...It wouldn't surprise me if he did. Or had an idea about it, at least." The man replies, and the words are bitter and sorrowful, and his eyes stare at Harry as everyone else has been, minus one part. It is a mixture of sadness and pity in Abe's bright blue gaze, and Harry can only think, that at least they do not hold the horror that everyone elses does.
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He is drunk, he realises, and is for the forth time that week.
The question he has asked Abe still echoes in his head, along with the older mans answer.
"What does it even matter?" Ginny eventually hisses, as he mubbles it, again, aloud. "He's gone, Harry. I'm sorry that you're hurting, but there is nothing you can do about it! And, to be honest, I'm rather glad you can't."
But there should be, Harry thinks, a little brokenly, as he hears as she sighs, painfully, hurting for his lack of love, and leaves. Why she is even there, at all, though, he does not know. She has her own mark to come, on her eighteenth birthday, and her fate will surely be kinder than his. And with that thought, even though he knows it is a foolish endevour, really, his drunken mind still hauls his body up, and staggers him over to the Black family library, where he begins pulling of books, any and all, on time travel, necramancy, soul bonds and magicks.
No one, he knows, aside from Hermione, Ron and Abe seem to understand, even a little, why it is hitting him so hard. Why he feels, felt, so bad for Tom Riddle, in the first place. Why he is letting the man ruin his life, according to some, even after his death.
As if they would walk away so calmly and easily if it were there own soulmate, torn apart and destroyed, and by their own hand, as well.
He has to fix it, he thinks. He has to! Has to at least fix his soulmates soul, if only so he can see his other half in the after life.
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He spends days and nights reading. He reads, and reads, and reads, and doesn't stop until he has something to go on.
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It hits him in his sleep, in truth, only it doesn't feel like an idea, or a dream, or really anything other than a slight flickering image that momentarily colides in his mind and wakes him, painfully, surely, gasping with understanding.
A part of thinks, the part that has seen past the veil, has witnessed first hand the other side, thinks that maybe it is a gift, or perhaps simply a reminder, from someone on the other side, or even from Death itself.
Either way, he is thankful, more than thankful, as he climbs from his bed, shakey handed, and dresses, not caring that it is clothes do not match, that it is only 3am, and that it will technically be another breaking and entering incident if he is caught.
He only cares that he has a lead, and that he goes, and goes now.
He apperates with the help of Kreacher - and they really should correct that loophole in the warding scheme, Harry thinks - and lands in the Forbidden Forrest. He lights a lumos, bright yet close, and attempts a quick "Accio.", before settling in for a manual search.
He gets to his hands and kness, and he looks, and he looks, and he looks, until eventually, when dawn approaches and darkness gives way to light, he finally sees it, shining slightly, black in colour, off-shaped, and utterly perfect to Harry.
One third of the Deathly Hallows, he thinks, and the third that he truly coverted more than any other.
He picks it up, and pauses for a couple of seconds, if only to ask Death to forgive him for calling back one of the souls, broken as it may be, even for a moment, just incase he might accidently annoy the entity for doing so.
Then he spins it three times, and calls Tom, Voldemort, to him. He does not know what he really expects; what he expects to see, hear, or what he truly really hopes for.
He definitely does not expect what he gets, though.
The appearance of a sixteen year old Tom Riddle, pale and beautiful, holding, almost lovingly, a tiny golden piece of himself, while the other parts, some black, some grey, but all torn and scattered, appear at Harry's feet, with the Deathly Hallows symbol attatched in gold on his neck, and gasping out the words, "I thought it meant Gellert Grindlewald."
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