[summary] – Sirius/OC (sort of; it's mostly just Sirius) [Soulmate!AU] He couldn't remember when he'd first noticed the thin red thread tied around his little finger, it might have always been there, though he couldn't be sure.

A/N – This is written for Darkness' Embrace. I'm not really sure which Soulmate Theory you wanted, but I ended up writing about the red string of fate. I've never written a Soulmate!AU, and I've only read a couple, and I had absolutely no idea where I was going with this until I sort-of got there. Also, I didn't pair Sirius with anyone specific as you had him listed on his own; I hope that's okay.

A lot of time progresses between the beginning and end of this, so Sirius' views on certain things do change. But I'm very tired, so if I missed some glaringly obvious mistakes please let me know. I'm sure there's loads of them...


"Mama?" He looked up at his mother, seeing a brief flicker of annoyance cross her face as she turned her attention away from the book she was reading.

"What?" she asked, tone harsh. He hesitated briefly before responding.

"What's this?" He held up the little finger on his right hand for her inspection.

"There's nothing there," she snapped, only giving his finger a cursory glance.

He looked down at the thread tied neatly around his finger, followed its path across the room with his eyes and looked to where it somehow managed to go through the door. He then turned his attention to his mother's thread, more faded in colour than his own and tangled. It, too, led out of the house.

"The string," he tried again.

"I don't have time for your games," she said, and picked up her book, effectively ending the brief conversation.


His aunt had caught him playing with the string, one day; tugging on it, testing to see if it would break. Every knot he tied simply slipped out, and he couldn't fathom how his mother's had become so tangled. No knife could break the string, either; it wasn't that the thread was strong enough to withstand steel, but that it went through the metal. He didn't understand. He could touch it, so why would nothing else affect it?

"You shouldn't play with fate," his aunt said, startling him.

"I wasn't doing anything," was his immediate, defensive, reply. She couldn't know about the strings; no one else could see them.

"I think you know exactly what you were doing." She sat next to him at the otherwise empty table, taking a sip from the glass of water she'd brought over.

"Can you see them, too?" he whispered, almost hoping that she didn't hear.

"Yes," she replied simply, seemingly not willing to give any further information. Or, perhaps, she was just waiting for him to ask.

"What are they?" he asked, still quietly but with more confidence than before.

"They are the red strings of fate," she said, as if it were something special. He looked down at the red string tied around his little finger; the name was somewhat anticlimactic, in his opinion.

"What's it for?" He hoped it would be something good.

"The other end of the thread is tied around your soulmate's little finger." She continued to elaborate at his blank expression. "The person you are destined to be with."

"To do what?" It didn't sound particularly interesting, and his aunt was already starting to look irritated at his lack of understanding.

"To marry, have children. To spend the rest of your life with," she said.

"Mother's doesn't connect with Father's." And he knew they would be spending the rest of their lives together.

"Yes, well it's not a proper marriage then, is it?" his aunt snapped.

"But if you can't see then, then how will you know?"

"You'll just know." She had clearly reached the end of her patience; it was a look he was more than familiar with on his mother.

"How?" He'd lost interest in the conversation some time ago, but he continued to question her, regardless.

"You just do. It's a feeling."

"What kind of feeling?"

"A feeling. But not everyone waits until they find the right person. That's what happened with your parents, and you see how that turned out."

"They got me," he said.

"Yes." Perhaps he'd taken this game a little too far.


He'd touched Peter's string once, back in First Year. It had been cutting through his bed on its way out of the dorms. The other half was connected to a quiet Ravenclaw girl – he couldn't remember her name, but he'd seen her around the castle a few times and her presence never ceased to make Peter blush.

He supposed he could have told them, helped them in some way, but he'd tried it once before – with Bellatrix and that Lestrange bastard – and it hadn't worked out well at all.

But lying there, with Peter's string barely an inch from his face, he couldn't help but wonder what would happen if he were to touch it. Would he be able to move it in the same way as his own? Would the thread bend at the press of his fingers, before returning to its original track?

He reached out a hand, fingers barely touching the string, when it started to blacken slightly under his touch. Peter let out a pained shriek, waking up instantly; Sirius could see him through the gap in the curtains, sweating and breathing heavily, looking around for the source of pain. He looked guiltily at the still darkened thread before feigning sleep.

He'd watched the string carefully for the rest of the night, as it slowly changed back to its original colour. Peter didn't seem to be affected at all, beyond the initial pain it had caused, so he tried not to let it bother him. And if there were a few extra tangles in Peter's string, he pretended not to notice.


Sometimes he wondered who his string was connected to. Once, he'd tried to follow it. He'd walked for hours through streets he knew, but mostly those he didn't, and had wound up hopelessly lost with the string no shorter than when he'd left Grimmauld Place.

He didn't understand. There weren't many knots in it, and it wasn't as hopelessly tangled as his mother's, so where was his soulmate?

Other times, he tried to run in the opposite direction to see how far he could stretch it out before it snapped. It had to break at some point; everything had its limits. But no matter how far he tried to stretch it, it always remained intact; it never even frayed.

Most of the time, however, he ignored it. He had long since gotten used to seeing it tied around his little finger. He was used to seeing them wherever he went, twisting around each other and some more tangled than others, but each connecting two people.


He'd tried dating a couple times, even though he knew it could never work out. Their strings had been attached to someone else, but that wasn't really what bothered him. He knew that there was someone at the other end of his own string – someone who was supposed to be perfect for him – and no one he'd tried dating could match up to that promise. No one could come anywhere near this person who he had yet to meet.


He was the least surprised out of anyone when James and Lily had finally got together. But then, he could see the strings that connected their hands. He'd watched as, over the years, each knot and tangle had carefully worked itself out.

And, yes, maybe he could have done something more to help, but he'd known they would reach this point eventually. What was the rush?


He hadn't really noticed Remus' string until he'd taken his friends 'round to his cousin's house once. (When you saw so many criss-crossing red threads every hour of every day you learnt to focus elsewhere; it was probably some sort of coping mechanism he'd subconsciously created.) He'd watched as it shortened, and at first he'd thought it was connected to Dromeda or her husband, but then Dora had walked into the room, and...

He hadn't spoken to Remus for nearly a week after that incident, though it had only been an incident to Sirius. And Remus had barely noticed her.

He'd started speaking to Remus again once he started dating a Ravenclaw girl – Peter's girl, in fact – and he realised that maybe it didn't happen straight away. Like with James and Lily. Prongs had noticed her, but she'd practically hated him from almost the moment they'd met.

Maybe it took time and, maybe, when they were all older, he'd be okay with it.


Leaving Hogwarts had been both a blessing and a curse. The strings weren't so tightly packed as they had once been. He had thought that he'd managed to ignore them, but they were always there in the corner of his mind, and he hadn't realised just how oppressive that had felt until it was gone – or, rather, reduced.

Out of Hogwarts, there seemed to be enough room for the threads to subtly cross his path. People weren't forced to share such tight quarters, and when it all became too much for him he could easily find his own space.

But Hogwarts had protected him from one thing. There were just so many threads out there, each joining two people, and it just seemed so impossible that even a fraction of these people would manage to reach the person on the other end. And it had become clear to him that even if they did manage to beat the odds, they had no way of realising that they had just met the one they were destined for.

That girl hadn't even learnt Peter's name, after all, and they would probably never meet again.

But maybe knowing was the hardest part. Knowing and watching as people walked away from that one person, time and time again.


He lay staring up at the dark shadows crossing the ceiling, the whisperings of a mad woman in the cell next to his the only sounds he could hear. He kept his eyes away from the other prisoners. He didn't particularly care who they were or what happened to them, but he didn't want to see what their strings had become.

He could feel them – the Dementors – tugging at his own twisting it, tangling it, and singing it, turning parts burnt and blackened, until it was something unrecognisable.

He wasn't sure how long he had been here. He got glimpses of the world outside sometimes – during a routine inspection where their bored chatter inadvertently hit upon something useful; the date on a newspaper, tucked under one of the ministry-worker's arm; the new prisoners, sometimes, would mutter things to themselves in an effort to remember. It never worked. And he didn't want to be witness to their threads snapping, destroying what little of their own future they had left as well as that of the unsuspecting person on the other end.

The threads, though – or, his at the very least – seemed a lot more resilient than they had first appeared. He had thought that the Dementors would have more power over them than the steel of the knife he had used so many years ago, but even their abilities to take a person's very soul didn't seem to affect the strings.

It was true that he'd never seen someone who's soul had been eaten, but his own string... Yes, it was blackened and frayed and tied with so many knots and tangles that he was sure that whoever had the misfortune of being on the other end could feel it, too. But when he reached out to touch it, it pulsed like blood – the original red of the thread shining through the charring from the Dementors – seemingly with two rhythms.

He had to be careful not to do this, however tempting it might seem, as the Dementors would be inexplicably drawn to the purity of that pulse, beating in time with his heartbeat and the heartbeat of another. They would reach for it, touch it with their darkness; at times, the pain was so great that he would wish they'd just get it over with. Just cut the thread and spare him from this agony.

There were times when he felt that it would snap just from this pain, shooting through him and causing every inch of his body to seize up and writhe in agony as his thread was manipulated by their unclean hands. Desecrated.

But still it never broke.