a/n warning for copious use of italics, background hermione/draco (more to illustrate normal soulmate dynamics than anything else…) and ofc slash. also for some violence?
'soul' is sometimes used as slang for 'soulmates'
i'm going to skim through these first few years because harry is still too young... just make a couple of key changes and move on. if you have problems with the pacing, take it up with me. don't see much point in re-doing entire first few years with the main change being a not-as-hostile Malfoy

During the Welcoming feast Harry swore he felt her for an instant. Just a stir, in his mind, and he almost jumped out of his chair. He was fascinated with all the magic in the castle around him, he really was, but these words had been with him since day one. She took priority.

One bushy-haired girl he'd chatted a bit with on the train was the perfect companion to talk to about soulmates. Hermione appeared to have read every book on it already. Unlike Ron, she excitedly showed Harry her hand.

"Hogwarts isn't that impressive unless you're like my little Muggleborn…" The words were written in neat little curls and then they disappeared, making way for another sentence, unlike Harry's who would haphazardly coat his entire hand with single, detached words. "She ought to see the Manor one day... she will, and she'll probably redecorate the entire place." Hermione practically beamed. Harry swore even her hair puffed up with joy. It was strange, though. Her soul seemed to have surprisingly precise control over his thoughts.

"Yes, yes. I love her too and all. I wonder if anyone has ever told her she's terribly excitable…"

"I always thought I was just, you know, a Muggle. I didn't know what was wrong with my hands, but the doctors said it was nothing and it'd disappear after a while." Harry highly suspected these doctors were secretly wizards. "It didn't take me long to realise he was actually a person; he taught me all about magic! He's an Occlumens you know, so he's a lot more controlled than most... But he still told me I had to wait to find out his name, of course." Hermione said, glancing again at her right hand. "I can't wait to, well, match his face with the words. I mean, technically we've know about each other for eleven years... Enough about him! What's she like?"

Harry showed her his left hand. There was, as usual, just one elegant word repeated across the back of his hand. "Troubling," was written today. Hermione blinked.

"Wow– I– who writes their 'T's like that?"

Harry couldn't help but crack a bit of a sad smile at the girl before him. "Just her, I think. Everything she writes looks just like that… but she doesn't write often."

Hermione glanced up and spotted the longing flitting across her classmate's face. It was then, in a sudden impulse, that she decided to help him find his soulmate however she could. She took his hand and gave him the most determined look that she could. "In 1932 there was one wizard in a small village who was born bonded to a master of Mind Arts. He thought about sheep and the ranch all day long while his soulmate was wondering if he was, you know, worthy. She left him riddles and an entire trail to follow across the Pacific to test him."

"And he passed?"

"Of course." Hermione nodded with all her hair bobbing along. "Soulmates are always matched perfectly. Maybe not at the start, but whatever force bonds us always knows who we'll be at the end." Harry seemed to gain a hesitant hope at her words.

Just like that, the Golden Trio was formed.

–––

Hermione met her soulmate in some of the first few weeks of classes. The same snotty blond that Harry had bumped into at Diagon walked past them in the corridor sneering, "Nothing but a bloody Mu–"

Harry saw his expression falter and crumble as though he suddenly recalled another Muggleborn individual. The blond had opened his mouth to say something else, but a blur of red launched into the boy and suddenly Ron was there, breaking into a full out fist-fight. "Don't you dare finish that word!" Ron roared. A few passersby stopped to stare.

Both Harry and Hermione leapt forwards, grabbing for their enraged friend's shoulders. "Ron, lay off–" Harry gritted. "The hell? He didn't even say anything–"

"You're an absolute prick, Malfoy! I know exactly what you were going to say!" Ron shouted, blatantly ignoring Harry. The boy underneath had his hands up to block the red-head's blows.

"...Uncalled for!" Harry saw horrifyingly familiar words race across the pureblood's hands. "Hope he won't get into trouble."

Harry was fairly certain his world stopped. Oh gods, Hermione was matched with this pompous blond? This couldn't be happening. At least, Ron hadn't recognised the handwriting. That would've been a one-way ticket to hell.

He wasn't the only one startled. Grey eyes met brown and Malfoy faltered in his struggle against Ron, his eyes fixed on one person and one person only… but then a fist collided with his face with a sickening crack and blood began to run down the blond's pale skin.

Hermione screamed.

Harry threw pacifism to the wind and literally tackled his friend, bowling the two of them away, Ron cursing furiously.

"Mr Potter!" A voice cut through the din. Professor McGonagall came striding down the corridor and he felt his alarm ramp up. Oh, there went Gryffindor house points. And a couple of detentions for 'uncouth brawling.'

"Professor– I'm sorry–" he said, feeling Ron fall limp under him.

"The two of you, my office. Now. Mr Malfoy, you come along too."

Just before Harry was dragged away, Hermione let him catch a quick flash of her hand. "So sorry… so sorry… Can't believe it's her. Can't let people know, you understand? Library later?"

Despite all, he felt happiness well up inside him. Hermione would be fine, because git or not, she'd finally found him.

–––

Hogwarts was really an entirely different world. Harry was selected for the Quidditch team, discovered a three-headed dog, suspected Snape for attempted murder (which Malfoy protested vehemently against), went traipsing around the castle during late nights, helped cover up Hermione's relationship with the pureblood that was still a huge snobbish pain in class…

(Harry had honestly expected an explosion when Ron found out. Instead, one day his friend had sat down next to him in his favourite armchair, face slightly white.

"What's got you?" Harry asked absentmindedly, looking over a potions essay. He knew Snape would pick through it relentlessly so he really had to be thorough.

"You seen a couple who sits around like two peas in a pod?"

Harry paused, his quill halting. Was Ron referring to their friend and 'enemy'? He had probably seen Hermione curled up with her soulmate, reading. The two of them were such bookworms.

"I'm fine. I really am. Obviously he's still a giant prat, but I can't hate Hermione for it." Ron said. Harry let out an explosive breath, leaning back into his chair and looking up at the ceiling. "Okay, I might have blown my top a bit at first, but mate, I've learnt since– since I was five or something – that soulmates come first. Always. She'll probably actually be good for the bloody git."

Harry gave a weak smile. "He's afraid for his family name, so I don't think they'll come public soon. Maybe after 'Mione wins witch or the year or something. He and his entire family," he looked around to reassure himself that no one was listening in, "always knew she wasn't... like them. I mean, she'd think about microwaves or something and then somewhere in the Manor you'd see blond gits worrying about microwaves like mad. It probably tore them apart." Because Lucius was still technically a Death Eater, and what if the Voldemort came back to find that they'd taken in a Muggleborn? The Malfoy family had never been matched with someone who wasn't a pureblood.

He'd learnt that Malfoys always took family first, but obviously Voldemort would disagree: the tyrant himself was notoriously famous for living on with a dead soulmate and denouncing the entire soulmate system.

Then he looked down at his own hands and wondered when he'd meet the set that'd fit perfectly with his. "help," his hands read, "help, help help help help help help help–")

When Harry had come down from his latest match against Hufflepuff, the most strangest sight greeted him. Malfoy, cronies nowhere to be seen, was sitting on the plank-like bodies of Neville and Ron, both of which had locked legs. Ron looked utterly enraged whereas Neville simply looked a little down-trodden.

"Malfoy," Harry said, dubiously eyeing the Slytherin. He might've been Hermione's soulmate, but mutual acquaintance could only stretch so far. "Nice of you to greet us and all, but there are plenty of chairs around, you know."

"Oh, no, this was just to prove that I take down two blubbering Gryffindors on my own."

"–you're gonna pay for this, Malfoy–" Ron gritted from the floor.

"At least, unlike some, I can afford to," Malfoy said offhandedly. The thing about him was that he didn't even bother making an effort to insult Ron. It all just came naturally. Harry thought it was a little amusing sometimes, really. "But I need to ask," on his hand scrolled Hermione's neat print, "why are you looking for Nicholas Flamel, creator of the Philosopher's Stone?"

"Wait," the look on Ron's face from where he was pinned down by Malfoy's bum was of utter shock, "he made the Philosopher's Stone?!" he cried.

Harry couldn't help but laugh himself silly from the ridiculousness of it all.

–––

The year trudged on. Snape hated his guts, Quirrell ran away from students like the plague, Professor McGonagall was exasperated at the way he was always sneaking about at night, and Dumbledore seemed as barmy as usual. Slytherins kept talking about blood purity and how no one in their families had ever been matched with a Mudblood, there was the occasional moment in the Great Hall or the classrooms where someone found their match and everyone around them would whoop, Hufflepuffs were holding their traditional 'single's party' every month where all people of every year would mingle, and Harry only ever attended once. He just got attention for being a celebrity and knew, deep down, that his soulmate would probably hate those sort of parties.

Harry hadn't managed to get any closer to the sleeping dragon that was his soulmate, and he honestly didn't even know where to start searching for her. Everything she'd ever thought was so vague. Other people had vague thoughts, yes, (Ron still hadn't found his, who just seemed to be a typical girly girl with a fondness for flowers) but no one was as distant as Harry's.

Sometimes she'd stir and in the same instant his scar would flare with blinding pain. Then he'd try send her warm affection over the bond, but it seemed to peter out into nothingness. Harry mentioned these occurrences to Hermione, who roped Malfoy into scouring the library for information about Harry's strange bond with her. To no avail. It was easy enough, though, to distract himself with the everyday Hogwarts magical lifestyle and leave the worrying for later. She'd come. That was the main thing Harry had learnt about soulmates: you always found them.

It was actually kind of creepy now he thought about it.

Wizards and witches literally only had half their souls. If they had to wait too long, like ten years for their soulmate to be born (which hardly ever happened)... they went mad. If their soulmate died, they'd go mad too. The person who held the longest record for living after a soulmate died was actually Voldemort. But Harry supposed Voldemort was already nuts enough anyway. No one really knew who his soulmate had been nor how she'd died, but Ron had suggested one evening that, "You-Know-Who probably offed her himself."

"That wouldn't have happened." Hermione frowned. The three of them were settled in their respective armchairs in the Gryffindor common room, the room filled with a gentle buzz. Malfoy was off elsewhere doing pointy-faced things with the snakes of his house.

"Yeah, well, did you forget he's like number one mad murderer?"

"No," Hermione corrected him, "it's actually impossible to kill your soulmate. The spell backfires. I'm surprised you didn't know that, Ron. It's one of the first things listed in every book about the bonds–"

"It's not like we talk about killing our soulmates over the dinner table, 'Mione."

"Maybe his soul tried to off him," Harry said thoughtfully. "Although if really she was as strong as him, she probably wouldn't've made that sort of mistake."

"I'm guessing she died in an actual accident." Hermione theorised. "In any case, no one ever saw her. Ever."

Ron gave an exaggerated shudder. "He probably kept her locked up in some dungeon where she bloody starved to death."

Hermione had this rather strict look on. Harry suspected she was thinking about her miniature aristocrat and very much did not appreciate the thought of prisoners. "Soulmates would never do that to each other."

"This is You-Know-Who we're talking about. Normal people wouldn't start up cults about blood purity, either."

"It's, well, it's hard to explain." the bushy-haired girl said. "There've been all these studies about psychopaths and whether they feel empathy for their soulmates–"

Ron gave a "pah!" of disbelief and Hermione shot him a bit of a glare.

"–and they do, because their soulmate is basically them. If anybody, You-Know-Who is probably a psychopath, but he would've cared for her." Ron gave another snort and then changed the topic for something like whether they should kick down the doors to the forbidden corridor, to which Harry contributed to gladly.

They'd get back to that conversation one day in the future.

Life raced on, and they raced (Malfoy popping out from an alcove and sending Ron onto his bum in shock) to reach the Philosopher's Stone. It was with surprise that – just as Harry was planning to bust into the vault with the most convolutedly simple security system in the world – he saw a whole sentence spell itself across both his hands.

"Deep in the forest…"

He'd halted right in his tracks and that caused his three friends – although Harry wasn't quite sure if Malfoy quite counted as a friend – to glance back in surprise. All four students could make no heads nor tails of the sentence, so they dismissed it and went ahead anyway and tiptoed into the forbidden corridor.

"Roots gnarled and twisted…" The next sentence appeared beneath the first.

A three-headed dog slumbered to their awful tunes and they slipped down into the awaiting darkness.

"Canopy strangling…"

A blue fire flared and a plant shrunk away, allowing them passage.

"Swallowing all light…"

The four of them looked again at the growing paragraph on Harry's hands in slight alarm. With every slow, languid stroke, ominous jaws close in on them. Of course, the words made absolutely zero sense – Harry's soulmate didn't often make sense – but it was the fact that she was thinking so coherently that was frightening.

Could she have been capable of this all along?

"And the smoke…"

Did she know what they were trying to do? Or was it just coincidence?

The two Quidditch players hopped on brooms and snagged a battered key with ease. So they continued, feeling prickles creep down their spines.

"It rises miles high…"

Ron lay unconscious on the checkered floor, but they moved on. Harry could see mirroring sentences flickering across Hermione and Malfoy's hands, reassuring each other that they'd do anything to protect one another.

"That pyre of mine…"

Whereas Harry's soulmate was thinking something else entirely.

"Smoke eels. They squirm, writhe…"

The troll was already out cold, still filling the room with its stink. They hurried past knowing Snape, or whoever it was stealing the Stone, was ahead of them.

"You must see them. The flames… a blackened building…"

"A lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic. They'd be stuck here forever." Hermione said, pacing around the row of bottles.

Malfoy didn't even glance at the riddle. "It's that one." He pointed at the tiniest bottle.

"No, wait, let me solve this first. We have to be sure." Hermione said, looking terribly like she wanted to gnaw on the back of a pen as she stared at the piece of parchment.

"It's burning…" Harry couldn't help but continuously glance at his hands in distress while Hermione muttered to herself. "And there you are, water spilling from your hands… You are finally here…"

"I got it, Harry! Draco was right–"

"Of course I was." But he gave Hermione a smile anyway.

" –That's the one!"

"Too late." The sentence was capped off with a very precise, crisp, full stop.

After much deliberation, after much desperate arguing, only Harry's body was flooded with ice and he stepped through the flames.

"You!" he cried as he recognised the man standing before the Mirror of Erised.

"Me," Quirrell answered calmly without even a hint of stutter. "I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here, Potter." Ropes wrapped themselves around Harry. "Now, how does this last trick work?"

"...You are too late," his soulmate continued to write.

"You–" Harry spluttered. For a good long while, Harry struggled in his bindings while Quirrell paced back and forth, relaying his life story: how he'd travelled far, searching for his Dark master and promising to bring back the fabled stone.

"An eternity too late…" The words slowly traced their way across his hand, unfettered by Harry's panic.

Quirrell ordered him before the Mirror and as Harry stood there and looked into the glass, a man appeared behind him. His face was turned the other way so Harry could not see the identity he ached to know. But a pair of arms wrapped gently around the young boy, head of neat black hair bowing down to brush against Harry's messy own, and the man dropped a blood-red stone into his pocket.

"The stone, boy!"

"I don't have it." Harry lied.

(Harry had found the Mirror one day in his late night patrols. What he'd seen… He didn't like to dwell on it often.

His family, which he'd stared at with unbridled longing.

A stranger who Harry knew instantly as soulmate, a smile across– across his face. He had been unmistakably a man, any more features blurred by the magic of the enchanted glass.

Harry thought the Mirror must've been wrong.)

"He lies…" a voice whispered. "Let me see him…" Quirrell's turban fell to the floor and his professor turned around with a deliberate slowness.

Harry's stomach dropped as he realised Voldemort himself was here.

"I said goodbye when I stepped off that tower…" His soulmate continued his own haunting message.

"Give me the stone, Potter!" the mutilated face hissed.

Harry backed away, Quirrell spinning around to raise his wand at Harry's chest. His professor's face was filled with unfamiliar exaltation and his eyes were dancing with glee, "Give me the stone! Imperio!"

"When I faced the bombing, the fire…" Harry could not only feel the ink, as if burning, trace its words, but he could also feel a presence beside him as though his soulmate had followed him out of the mirror. Like a blanket of comfort had been thrown over him, the man in the mirror seemed to hold him close in invisible arms. Or maybe this was what Quirrell's curse did. Made Harry go absolutely nuts.

"Today I rise."

For a long moment, nothing happened at all. Quirrell's expression faltered. His eyes seemed to bulge. "Imperio!" He cast again, and then the chamber exploded in front of Harry's eyes. He felt his brain burst; his scar split open like it'd been stabbed – a lance straight through his head, out the other end, pain splattering like blood all over the floor. Quirrell took a step forwards while Harry crumpled to the ground. With his eyes clenched shut, Harry could just about imagine his soulmate protecting him, that man with dark, neat hair and effortless poise, crouching right by Harry, arm curled over his shaking shoulders and filling him with fiery strength–

"Hand it over, Potter." The man squatted down to look Harry's bleeding face up close. "Give it–"

And still the monologue continued, "What can a stream stand against an inferno…?"

The boy on the ground shot out a hand and grabbed hold of his professor, a yell of desperation tearing from his throat, the fire under his skin ripping free. His hand ignited in a blinding flash, flames engulfing his fingers with white hot fury. Quirrell lurched back with a cry of pain. His skin was blackened and burnt, robes smoking, and while Harry's was unblemished, even he felt pain like a thousand biting needles breaking his skin.

"Get the boy!" a high voice shrieked.

Harry was completely lost in his pain, head running with blood, but he knew one thing: Quirrell would burn at his touch. "Yeah, listen to your– your Dark Lord! Come get me– come on! You want your stone? I've got it!"

"Get the boy!"

Poor, stupid, Quirrell lunged forwards again, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as their lids began to blister. Harry's own vision swam through a curtain of stabbing pain. His hands seized both sides of Quirrell's face this time and the very air rippled with the heat that flared from his palms.

"A droplet, against Fiendfyre?"

His professor opened his mouth in a soundless scream, his hands still groping for Harry's pockets. How could one man be so desperate? Harry knew then, in that instant– Quirrell would be willing to die here. At his hands. Gods, how had he become so brainwashed?

He wasn't sure who was screaming. Him, the liar at his fingertips, or the pale white face of a snake.

"The building blazes."

Quirrell's skin peeled and his movements grew more and more frantic, scrabbling at Harry's robes as boy held on, horror etched on both their faces. The next howl rattled though Harry's bones, but his hands seemed to be stuck. Harry squeezed his eyes shut. The sight of Quirrell writhing was etched into his eyes. What was he doing? The heat was literally cooking the other man. How could be possibly be–

A charred body slipped from his hold and hit the floor with a thud. It did not get up again. Did not breathe. Did not stir. Harry could only stare in horror, still seeing images of Quirrell's face twisted in pain. And now his professor lay on the floor.

"Do you think you can 'love' me?"

Movement– but it wasn't from Quirrell.

"Do you think there is someone left to love?"

A pair of black lips shifted on the back of the man's head, barely parting. Voldemort's crimson eyes had been fused shut. His skin looked like melted wax with its mottled lumps and burns.

"Give up." Harry was just imagining that those charred lips were mouthing in time with the writing on his hands. He was just imagining it. It couldn't be real. Voldemort was just gasping for his last breaths, because oh gods, Harry had– he had killed Qui–

His scar tore his skull open and then with a cry he, too, fell.

–––

There was light all around. Light – dancing in from the windows across his bed in the Hospital Wing. It was like he'd woken to heaven. Harry came to slowly, like a child waking for the first time. His eyes automatically darted to his hands, which he raised. The ink passage still lay there innocuously.

Then the memories of fire – of screams – struck him.

"Oh gods," he gasped, shooting upright. "Quirrell, Quirrell– he–"

"Ah, good morning, Harry."

The boy nearly fell out of the bed because he had not seen Dumbledore sitting there. Where were his glasses? "Professor, sir, is Quirrell–"

"I'm sorry, Harry." Dumbledore said gravely. "I'm afraid that he gave his life up in the service of Lord Voldemort."

His heart was stuck in his throat. "So I... I–" He glanced back at his hands.

"You had no choice, Harry." his headmaster replied quietly. His eyes had followed Harry's gaze too, but the old wizard's face was unreadable. "But you can rest now. Nicholas is willing to give up the stone and Voldemort will not return for a while now."

"Flamel– he's going to die?" Harry asked incredulously.

Dumbledore fixed Harry with a look that made him want to look away. "It's much more difficult to live than to die, Harry."

He didn't know what to make of that.

"So Voldemort is gone for now." He tested the waters.

"Yes," his headmaster replied almost cheerily.

"And Quirrell is dead."

"Yes."

"And my friends are all fine."

"They happen to be right outside."

Harry hesitated. "...And you hired a teacher with Voldemort on his head, let him have a hand in protecting this stone you knew would attract his attention, left obstacles you knew both he and I could overcome, and basically set us up to verse each other?"

Dumbledore's face suddenly broke into a smile. "Yes, Harry, I did."

"Why?" he asked, suddenly aware of the fact that he was being incredibly demanding. "If… if you wouldn't mind sharing, sir."

"Oh, I merely set up a path that you could take, Harry." The headmaster replied genially. "You could've chosen to do anything. I wouldn't have stopped you."

That didn't really answer his question, but Harry supposed it would do for now. "Sir… in the chamber, when I touched Quirrell, he burned. Why?"

"That, Harry," his headmaster peered over his own spectacles, "was the sacrifice of a mother's love." The sunlight from the ward's windows illuminated the old man's face and Harry could map out every crevice, including one long scar that crossed the man's cheek. That mark had jumped out at him the first time they'd met. It was really the only scar Harry had ever seen on his headmaster. "The night Voldemort visited your family, your mother gave her life and that saved you. A man like Quirrell – whose sole ambition was power and greed – would never be able to touch someone so pure, protected by such unwavering love."

"You're saying my mum already saved me from the Killing Curse and she's saving me again." Harry said, meeting Dumbledore's solemn eyes with a frown. "My hands lit on fire. I don't think she would've wanted me to kill anybody."

"Lily would accept anything you do, as long as you were to remain safe." Dumbledore said seriously.

"I think–" He looked back at his hands, suspicion suddenly dawning as he recalled the heat from radiating from those words. "Do you know my soulmate, professor?"

"I knew many students, Harry."

"She must've come to Hogwarts…"

"He did." the old wizard said lightly. "He was truly a great young man, and I know you have just as much potential."

Harry felt like someone had just smashed a glass jug of ice cold water on his head. Dumbledore hadn't just said that. He hadn't... "Professor, you must be wrong." He said, mouth feeling awfully numb.

"I might be." Dumbledore conceded, his eyes never straying from Harry. "I do doubt it, though. I cannot imagine anyone more fitting as his, or your, match."

Harry felt like the world was dropping away under him. "Could you help me find him, sir? He's… he's hurting." The black words still rested there innocuously, spelling, "Give up."

"I'm sorry, Harry."

"Why not?" Harry asked. His soul was out there hurting, blocking Harry out, and bloody Dumbledore knew who he was! "You can interfere enough to have me kill Quirrell, but find one man and then you can't raise a hand?! He– He's out there, and I know that deep down, he does want me to go to him! Just help me get there, sir … why won't you help me?" He asked desperately.

"Harry," the wizard began gently, unfazed by the boy's outburst, "if Ronald had asked you where your friend Hermione constantly disappeared to, would you have betrayed her secret?"

Harry just stared soundlessly at the blur that was Dumbledore.

"If you had to assure him that she was safe, but you could not tell him where she was, what would you do?"

Guilt crept up his throat. "I… I'm sorry, sir."

"No, your reaction was perfectly reasonable." Dumbledore reassured him. "But you will not need my help to find him; Ronald discovered Mr Malfoy after all, didn't he?" Harry nodded mutely. "The one greatest thing you can do for him is give him exactly what your mother gave you."

Harry blinked. "I have to die?"

"No, rather, you must love him unconditionally."

"I don't think it'll be hard to do that." he admitted, feeling strange saying it out loud. He didn't even know anything about his soulmate. He hadn't even known his gender! But over the year that sleeping dragon and its rare graceful words on his hands had become familiar to him. They were made for each other, and that was fact.

"Then all will be fine." Dumbledore assured him. "That is all you will need to do. Now – I've taken enough of your time. I ought to hand you back to your friends, Harry."

"Wait–" Harry said, something else still dangerously hanging on the tip of his tongue. "Sir, I don't want to offend you, but…"

"Ask away, my boy. I do not take offence easily."

Mustering all his Gryffindor courage and suddenly a hundred times more nervous than he had felt when he walked into the chamber to meet Quirrell, Harry said, "The thing is… if Ron asked me about Hermione, I'd tell him she was safe and not to worry, and he'd just have to rely on his trust in me. If that still applies now, I do trust you right now." Because this was his headmaster, and because if Harry didn't trust this man out of everyone, he would be in deep trouble. Dumbledore – Hogwarts – had practically rescued him from the Dursley family.

Dumbledore blinked at him in some surprise, looking slightly taken aback.

"But," Harry could feel his nerves churning inside him, "if Ron was ever guessing and asked me if it was Malfoy, I think I would've lied and told him that it wasn't. Or just avoided the question. I get that. I get that we need to hide the truth sometimes. So it's on this trust that I have for you that I'm asking now…" He took a deep breath, fully expecting to be reprimanded, "How many times did you lie in this conversation we just had?"

Then his headmaster broke out in the biggest smile yet, and to Harry's shock, he began to chortle. "Ah, Harry – you are absolutely excellent – brave enough to ask, loyal enough to trust, clever and cunning enough to understand… The answer, my boy, is once."

"Once?" He was still shocked that the old man had actually answered the question.

"Yes, Harry – and I believe I'll leave it up to you to puzzle out which one it was." With an outrageous wink, the headmaster stood from his chair and swept from the room.

–––

The school year ended in a plethora of gold and red and grumpy Slytherins. (Minus Malfoy, because his soulmate's joy seemed to radiate over to him.)

Harry knew that, by returning to the Dursleys, he'd be cut off from all things magical, so he asked his loyal friend Hermione if she'd do a bit of research for him. He asked Ron to take care of his huge, grinning family and told Malfoy to kick his family into shape, or something along those lines.

He caught Dumbledore's twinkling eyes before he left the castle and wondered just what else the headmaster had in store for him. Their conversation in the Hospital Wing had given Harry a glimpse of the underside of the world, the strings that were tugged behind the scenes, and a whole other chessboard that he was unaware of. He couldn't step off the board and play like Dumbledore. He didn't have the skills, the knowledge, or the power to do that. He'd just have to be ready to prove himself worthy through all the trials his headmaster set him.

The platform arrived all too quickly, and with brief hugs, (again, minus Malfoy) Harry bid them all goodbye. It'd be too long a summer without them.

With one last goodbye, Harry waved and disappeared into the clutches of the Muggle world.

a/n kind of too much draco/mione in this chapter for my tastes but hey i swear they'll be out of your hair soon: i just needed to establish the change. you can guess why i'd need them later. Also might need to clarify Voldemort did not know harry was his soulmate. he just happened to be wishing his soulmate a happy goodbye because he thought he was going to get his body back, have Occlumency shields up, and cut all ties

did i mention i am stupidly proud of that 'T'?

dont expect an update leading up to the 23th bc SAT.