OTP AU Competition: Soulmate!AU

It happens when they bump together in the bathroom doorway. Dean apologizes quickly, because he's already gotten on Ron's bad side and doesn't want Seamus to be next, and just keeps walking. He doesn't think anything of the odd sensation burning around his wrist but to idly rub at it and shake it out. Only when he's at the sink unscrewing his toothpaste does Seamus shout at him, "Oi!"

Dean turns around and realizes that Seamus is still standing there, where he left him in the doorway. "I said I was sorry," he says, with a slight nervous waver.

But it is not about the stupid door thing. Seamus thrusts out his hand, palm up. "Do you have it too?"

Unsure what he's supposed to be looking at, Dean steps closer, until he notices the dark line of script drawn across his roommate's wrist. With a start he remembers the weird feeling around his own arm, just small tingles now. His hand flies to his sleeve and he lays out his hand alongside Seamus's to compare.

On his brown wrist the strange tattoo is less stark, but still there. He can read the words now that he's looking at it right side-up. Seamus Finnigan.

"Did you do this?" he asks.

"Of course I didn't!"

"Well, it's your name—"

"And I've got yours, you idiot; don't you know what soulmates are?"

This stops him dead. As he's squinting at Seamus's wrist—it is his name there, isn't it?—Neville appears behind them clutching his toothbrush. "I just woke up," he moans, trying to edge past them into the bathroom. "I really don't want to be late again today... Wow."

Seamus uncomfortably tucks his hand behind his back but there's no point. Neville gapes at them. "Are those real?"

It is apparent now that Dean is missing something very important. "Will someone tell me what's going on? Soulmates?"

The meeting takes place in the village of Hogsmeade, to accommodate the three of four Muggle parents who can't enter the castle itself. Dean has never heard of Hogsmeade. Seamus has. He goes on about things his cousin Fergus told him the whole walk down, and begs Professor McGonagall to stop for a bit of Honeydukes fudge.

Outside a place called the Three Broomsticks, Dean sees his parents. They look distinctly rumpled and a little stunned, the same expression they—and probably he—had in Diagon Alley. "Just took them by Portkey," Professor Sprout says cheerfully as they greet him with a shaky hug. "Don't worry. It can be a bit rough for first-timers, that's all."

"What's a Portkey?"

Nearby, Seamus's mother is fussing over her son too loudly for Dean to hear the answer. He sees her examine Seamus's wrist with wide, excited eyes. She searches the small knot of people, and Dean shifts nervously when he realizes she's looking for him.

"There will be time aplenty for introductions inside." Like he's some kind of magnet, every eye snaps to Dumbledore when he speaks. They bid goodbye to McGonagall and Sprout and he leads them into the warmth of the Three Broomsticks, some sort of pub. "Rosmerta was kind enough to arrange us a room upstairs."

Once there, he produces a set of squashy-cushioned chairs with a slow wave of his wand. The families tentatively sit. No one seems anxious to talk anymore. Being around Dumbledore, Dean notices, is an uncomfortable feeling of being scrutinized.

Dumbledore takes the chair beside the room's table and faces them. "I thank you all for coming."

"Er..." Dean's father speaks up beside him, but looks down the row for support before continuing. "I'm still not clear, exactly, why we're here."

"Ah." Dumbledore smiles. "You see, your sons have stumbled upon a rare, very old form of magic. Harmless," he specifies quickly, "but significant. I assume you are aware of the concept of soulmates, in some capacity at least?"

"Yes..." Dean's mother says hesitantly. "But do you mean to say that Dean, and another boy...?"

"With Muggles, it's usually a more romantic term," cuts in Mr. Finnigan to explain.

Dumbledore nods slowly. "Oh, I see." He steeples his fingers in his lap. "In the Wizarding world, 'soulmates' refers to a pair of souls that are, shall we say, each other's 'other half.' Each person has one, somewhere in the world, but due to the relatively small number of people that one has contact with in a lifetime, of course, it is very rare that they will meet."

"And Dean's is this boy? How do you know?"

"There is a magical reaction at the first touch of skin," he explains. "A mark is formed around the wrist."

Dean pulls aside his robe sleeve to show his parents. "See?"

"I don't see," his father says, confused. "There's nothing there."

"Muggles can't see soulmate marks, can they?" says Mrs. Finnigan. "It's like Dementors, they can feel it if it happens, but not see..."

"Dementors?" Dean asks curiously.

"We will leave that for your Defense Against the Dark Arts classes," Dumbledore says to him with a small chuckle before turning back to his parents. "But to address your concerns, the soulmate bond is not necessarily romantic. Your boys are young, of course, and there is no way of knowing how it will develop, but in fact, many of the known soulmate pairs are twins."

Dean glances over at Seamus at this, and they share a quick look of relief.

Dumbledore brings out a bit of parchment from his shimmering robe and conjures ink and quill. "There are two current students at Hogwarts who also share a soulmate bond. I will give you each the address of Arthur and Molly Weasley if you have any additional questions. They're very friendly and accommodating people, and I'm sure they would be happy to help." Finished writing , he duplicates the parchment and floats one over to each family. "And I'm always available, of course, for your concerns. It's been a pleasure."

They leave the Three Broomsticks and the parents depart, his own looking slightly reluctant to take another Portkey. He and Seamus are shepherded silently back to the castle. It doesn't seem right to talk to each other. Dean is reminded of play dates with his parents' friends' children when he was young, being forced to try and get along.

One of the Weasley twins winks at him over breakfast the next day and flashes his own wrist mark. Welcome to the club, he mouths.

It is only when he's alone and particularly restless, usually in the safety of his curtains at night, that he'll think about Dean Thomas's name on his wrist. The tattoo encircles his arm like a bracelet, the name elegantly twisted from the loop on the tender inner skin. The "T" is inscribed over a split in his blue vein. Under the "D" he can feel his pulse.

Seamus loathes it. He loathes the delicate girliness in the thin, curving line. He loathes what it represents. He isn't like the giggly little girls who run around touching every boy to see if anything happens; he never asked for this. He's sick of people pushing them together in the corridors like it was something cute, sick of his mother trying to have him over like they're married already, sick of stupid Dean Thomas and his stupid face.

But even in the midst of all this loathing, he catches Dean's eye sometimes. Someone says something stupid about them and he'll just have this look on his face, the sort of look that betrays all the familiar resentment bottled up in him, and Seamus will feel…connected to him in that instant.

He's the other half of his angry, little coin, the only one that can understand.

"Hermione?"

She is alone in the Common Room, monopolizing a table with three open books and a stack of notes. "I'm busy, Dean," she snaps.

"Oh," he mumbles, "er, sorry." It doesn't seem like a good omen for the conversation, but he presses on, too fast and awkwardly, before he can make himself regret this. "It'll only take a second; I was wondering if you'd go to the ball with me?"

Hermione looks up. Her eyes are wide and eyebrows drawn, like she's confused, and Dean wonders with a sinking heart if it'll be like Seamus and Lavender. He had hoped so much it wouldn't be; he chose to ask her because he thought she'd understand.

"That's alright," he says hurriedly, fighting embarrassment.

She shakes her head. "Oh, no, I'm really flattered, it's just that I've…already been asked."

"Okay," he says.

"I'm sorry."

Dean pauses, unsure whether the interaction is supposed to be over. It feels odd for something he worked himself all up for to end so quickly. "Erm…"

"Is there anything else?" Hermione asks.

"If you can't go with me…" he says tentatively, "could I ask your advice?"

She glances at her table piled with work for a moment, but gestures for him to sit.

He falls into the open chair. "Seamus asked Lavender to the Yule Ball today."

"Oh." Hermione raises her eyebrows, and he can tell she's pretending to care.

"She said it wouldn't feel right going with him, because of me."

"Oh."

Dean heaves a sigh. The jokes and insinuations and little assumptions about him and Seamus have just gotten so old. He was raised to ignore taunts and teasing, but after all these years, he's sick of trying not to let it get to him. "I mean, we're not dating, we're never going to date, just because we're soulmates doesn't mean we can't like other people—"

"I know," says Hermione soothingly.

"Yeah, you do. You've always stuck up for us." He looks away uncomfortably, still embarrassed by his earlier failure. "…That's why I asked you, you see. Because you get it."

She looks thoughtful for a few moments. "I understand, you know," she says. "Why people might be hesitant to get close to you two. After hearing so much about how a soulmate bond is supposed to be the strongest possible relationship, it's easy to feel like no matter what, you would be second best."

"That's stupid," Dean says immediately.

Hermione shrugs. "I said it was understandable, not right."

He sighs again.

"Do you want my advice?" she asks. "Just go alone. It doesn't matter."

"I know it's just a stupid school dance." He slumps forward over his elbows. "But I'm just tired of being alone, you know?"

Dean knows he's not alone, that he'll never be alone, but even now that they've become close, sometimes Seamus just feels like not enough. He wants a circle of friends, like he used to have when he was younger. He wants to fall in love someday.

Maybe the soulmate bond just works by isolating. They're so drained by the emotional starvation and there's no one else who'll have them.

He and Seamus wear long sleeves and dance with Durmstrang girls who don't know them from Adam, and it's almost fun. But the best part of the night is still when it's over, when they lean together on the way back upstairs.

The tattoo is just that. There's no magic in it. All it is is a signifier that he's touched his other half. Seamus knows, but it comforts him to imagine that something links them, anchors his wrist to Dean's. He traces the name on his pale arm, doing his best to believe that Dean can feel it.

The rest of them fret over him, like he's suffering from some unimaginable tragedy outside their realm of understanding. It makes him sick. He hates when people act like he and Dean have something Better and More Profound, when they undervalue their own relationships in comparison.

Like Ginny says to him, "I don't know how you do it. I feel like I'm going to go mad not knowing if they're alright, and we're not even soulmates."

"Well, so what?" he says, too roughly but not sorry. "You love 'em, doesn't matter if you've got stupid marks to prove it."

They all have their tattoos. Ginny wears Ron's maroon mittens, Hannah keeps a Muggle book that Justin lent her in her bag. Even Hogwarts keeps the beds of the ones who're gone, like somehow they'll know, wherever they are, that they're still wanted.

"Do you know," says Neville quietly across the empty beds at night, "what happens if, er, your soulmate dies? Would you know?"

"I don't know," Seamus replies.

After that he wakes up every morning more afraid than before. He has to check first thing whether Dean's name has scarred over, or whether it's gone.

After the war Dean finds himself obsessed with being normal. He shies away from magic: that power, that potential, makes him nervous. When it's really bad he can feel it flowing in him, crackling up and down his veins like he's a battery. He doesn't want to be like this. He wants to be normal, to go to Uni and get a job and meet Muggle girls and not have war flashbacks in his dreams sometimes.

He can find a flat outside of Magical London, take classes and make new friends. He can do the dishes by hand if he really wants. But the only magic he can't escape—that he doesn't want to—is that which bonds him to Seamus. That magic is the greatest comfort. After the last year, having him within arm's reach is the normal that Dean needs most.

Normal years pass. Evenings spent watching television and mornings reading the newspaper. He flirts and goes to clubs and sleeps with Muggles, but relationships are like trips abroad. He always ends up coming home.

"It's a curse," he says drunkenly to Seamus the night his girlfriend leaves him. "I can't love anyone like I love you."

They've seen George Weasley waste away since he lost his brother, his soulmate, and it makes the whole business seem a lot more sinister. The bond feels more and more like a trap. It's unfair, so monumentally cruel that their health and happiness be this tied to someone else's.

"I don't know about soulmates," his mother tells him, "but that's how love is. It's unfair and it's hard to care so much, but you have to put your trust in someone to care about you back."

He wonders on the sofa with Seamus in the evening, their feet entwined on the center cushion, maybe that's what the soulmate bond is. A given trust, a promise, to always care and always love.