xXx
It must have been the cosmic cock-up of the century. No, Harry thought. The fuckin' millennia. Perhaps even in an eon. When God, if he existed, had wrote the names on her wrist, he must have thought himself a real silver screen jester. Silent as God often was but laughing at the poor peasant below. A Laurel with no Hardy or a Buster Keaton who got hit by the train right at the opening credits. Harry, of course, didn't get the punchline until she was old enough to read, old enough to realize that, once again, she was the butt of the joke, to recognize that the marks were meant to be different.
Everybody else's were.
No one, scholars, scientists, fuckin' Greek hermits from era's long lost, knew exactly why or how the marks came to be, only that they were, clearly, being. Children were born from the womb with them, and if you were very, very lucky, you'd take them to the grave with you at a ripe old age. They never changed, they never shifted, they were never wrong.
Names brandished on the wrists of an individual, Muggle and Magical alike, that, according to all the popular literature of a romantically crazed populace with more than a hint of nihilism lurking under the surface, decreed one a soulmate the other your worst enemy. One would bring you happiness, the other sorrow. The yin and the yang of your life, there for you to see and not know which.
Just like destiny to fuck you right over while whispering sweet nothings in your ear.
Some had it hard, like poor Hermione who got her hopes up on the wonky Ron scribbled on her left only to realize, after the war, the stylishly pencilled Draco hadn't spent the six months total of their relationship sleeping his ginger-haired way through Gryffindor and half of Hufflepuff with plans of pit stopping in Ravenclaw, and perhaps he did look kind of handsome even if he still resembled a bloody ferret. Some other's had it easier, like Neville with Bellatrix on his right and Ginny on his left, because of course it was never going to be Bellatrix for him.
Even the universe wasn't that sadistic.
Maybe.
Harry's own story not withstanding.
That, nevertheless, all came later.
The only thing Harry had from her soul-marks was deep, intense dread and confusion from that first day at primary school where the school nurse broke the news to the nervous little class of first years all gathered around the white-board about what the marks they were born with was for. Why, you may ask?
Both of Harry's wrists said Tom.
Fate really did have a full hard-on for her, didn't it? It couldn't just let her have one thing, one measly little thing, that would go smoothly, could it?
No.
xXx
From a young age, from before she could remember, Harry was called Harry because she looked like a little boy, or so her cousin told her. Knobble-kneed and pointy-elbowed and in Dudley's clothing five-times too big for her, with her ginger curls shorn short in spite from Petunia who had always envied her mother's red hair, you wouldn't be mistaken for confusing her as a runaway from a stage play of bloody Oliver Twist.
It didn't help the fact that she was malnourished, a bag of bones with bruises and welts from Vernon's belt.
It's not the name on her birth certificate, however.
Sirius had told her when she was older that her real name was the result of a lost bet Lily had gotten into with him one night, and on the grounds he could name the seven-month baby still gestating in her stomach anything as long as it flowered if she was born a girl, a tradition in the Evans family, he had gone, in the only fashion Sirius ever went anywhere, to the fuckin' extreme. Lily however, as much a Gryffindor as anyone else, wouldn't back down, James found the whole thing rather hilarious, and so there it was.
Horseradish Potter.
Cosmic cock-up indeed, fuelled by Sirius bloody Black thinking himself a comical genius with one too many firewhisky's in his gut.
It brings comfort to Harry, though. The idea that somewhere, somewhen, the two bastard Tom's on her wrist had Horseradish on theirs was an idea enough to bring a smile to Harry's face most days. Most days before she learned in her first year of Hogwarts that a Tom Riddle had murdered her mother and father on that fateful Halloween night.
Harry doesn't laugh much about her marks after that. Instead, she spends most of her days wondering which one was which, left or right, over or out, the good or the bad or the fuckin' ugly. knowing her luck, maybe all three.
And that was the problem, wasn't it?
Harry didn't have a lick of luck.
Terribly, on the very worst days, she wonders if they might not be the same, that she was doomed from the beginning, that there had somehow been a misprint in her skin, a double-spaced tragic-typo, that God had gone and copy-and-pasted her bloody soul match because he wasn't paying attention, that the thundering of her heart was actually the universe laughing at her.
Always bloody laughing, that one. Sirius might have started the joke, but it seemed destiny would close it for him.
Tom or Tom.
Harry fuckin' hated that name almost as much as she hated her own. Horseradish. What a joke.
This is going to be a relatively short fic, I have 10 chapters planned so far but that might grow a little, and bordering on a little crackish if you couldn't already tell lol. It's mainly comedy and romance, Tommy/Fem!Harry, quick to the point, and heavy with the smut towards the end. If that sounds good to you, here we go!
I will just give a quick heads up that this fic will have an age gape. By the time the romance happens, Harry's seventeen heading towards eighteen, and Tommy's age is twenty-nine. If that squirks you, please jump ship. This will also take place mainly in the middle of season 1 of Peaky Blinders and after all the Harry Potter books.
P.S: Sirius Black is definitely the type of Rumpelstiltskin character to name a poor child Horseradish as a joke, and you can't convince me otherwise. Plus, it's kind of funny to think of Tommy Shelby of all people running around with Horseradish chicken scrawled on the inside of his wrist wondering who the hell names their kid that.
Next chapter is in Tommy's P.O.V, and is quite a bit longer than this one.
Thank you all for reading!