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lomonaaerenTitle: Pariahs
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of Albus/Gellert, Ron/Hermione, Draco/Astoria, Lucius/Narcissa, and other canon pairings, but mostly gen
Content Notes: AU, soul-marks, slavery, angst, violence, bullying, present tense, homophobia, racism, revolution, extremely bitter and jaded Harry
Rating: R (for violence)
Wordcount: This part 4800
Summary: AU. Soul-marks are everything in the magical world; you can only ever marry or date your soulmate, every person has exactly one mark and match, and even house-elves are slaves because of their lack of marks. The Killing Curse, Unforgivable because it erases the soul’s mark as well as killing the body, has no known survivors. Until it does, and Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts bereft of his mark, the subject of furious debate as to whether his presence dirties the school or if it should be allowed at all. As Harry learns more and more about the underpinnings of the magical world, his fury grows, and he allies with other outcasts to bring down the corrupt system.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s a massive AU, as you can see from the summary, and will likely have between three and six parts. Please don’t read this unless you’re in the mood for a very dark fic.
Pariahs
Albus stands before the Wizengamot and prepares to sell his soul.
They’ve been meeting for the last three days, debating what to do about Harry Potter. He should be just another sad casualty of the war, like his parents, who died on Halloween in Godric’s Hollow. But somehow, he lived when Voldemort’s Killing Curse struck him, instead of dying like all the other victims.
He is alive. And he has no soul-mark, which the Killing Curse erased in its passage.
Such a thing has never been known before.
Albus stands, and attention shifts to him. He can see the sneers from every direction. His magical power hasn’t allowed the purebloods to ignore him, and his defeat of Gellert earned him the love of the populace threatened by the war, but the purebloods know that Albus was Gellert’s soulmate, and fought against his magically-declared mate, another thing never known before.
They like to pretend, too, that the marks never match man to man, woman to woman. They claim that those who have such marks must have dabbled in the Dark Arts. Soulmates are meant to reproduce, they say, and not exist in sterile companionship.
Albus knows it is all pretense. He has struggled for years to remain Headmaster of Hogwarts, to maintain a small island of sanity amidst the prejudiced sea. He cannot ensure that the truth is taught, because there are too many people who blindly believe otherwise for that, and working for the muddled truth would have ended his career long since. But he has, he hopes, kept some open minds and ears and hearts, enough that the purebloods have not managed to entirely dominate the Ministry and their world.
That has to end today. Because, as much as Albus weighed the decision in his mind and knows that he could do more good to more people by remaining in his current position, he cannot countenance what the Ministry has been debating. Cannot.
They would kill the Potter child, or perhaps take him into the Department of Mysteries and let the Unspeakables, who are always trying to understand the mysteries of soul-marks, experiment on him.
“I propose that we let Harry Potter live with his aunt in the Muggle world,” Albus says. “And see if he will even survive or not. Keeping him in the magical world would cloud our perceptions of his survival, would it not? He might live simply because of the intense magic around him. We cannot know who he really is without letting him grow up in a non-magical environment.”
“What is this nonsense, Albus?” Griselda Marchbanks demands. Albus gazes evenly back at her. He is one of two people in the world who knows that the mark on her arm is not the one she was born with. “The child will have nothing but a half-life without someone beside him! It’s kinder to kill him now than to subject him to the intense loneliness he will feel.”
“I presume that you have a different definition of kindness than I do, Madam.”
Marchbanks frowns and prepares to make another demand, but Lucius Malfoy coughs and shifts in his seat. Albus turns to him. Malfoy’s eyes meet his, gleaming for a second with intense enjoyment.
Malfoy is one of the allies that Albus made by promising to step down from the Headmaster’s position and let the Board of Governors put whoever they want in his place. Malfoy only has to support leaving Harry Potter in the Muggle world, and he will. Albus knows he will. What is the fate of a random child to him, even one who brought down a powerful Dark Lord with a fractured mark, next to the chance to order the political affairs of Britain to his will?
“It’s true that the child will probably only have a half-life,” Malfoy drawls, shrugging his shoulders. “But what does that matter? He’s no more than a Muggle without his mark. He probably won’t have magic. We don’t kill random Muggles. We leave them be.”
That is another thing those like Malfoy would change if they could; they want to bring back Muggle-hunting and the like. But he is far more invested in controlling his little pureblood world, ensuring that his children find their matches and that soul-marks are respected and the world remains pure.
The word etches itself in acid letters in Albus’s mind.
“He’s dirty,” Marchbanks says flatly.
That makes some of them stir and murmur, although Albus is sure that he still has the numbers to win the debate. Dirtiness is abhorred in the pureblood world. It’s why they make sure that their children’s marks don’t match them with Muggles (although Albus is one of the few who knows how they do that). It’s the reason the purity of marks is prized and enforced; not even a kiss takes place unless between those with matching marks. It’s even the reason that house-elves serve. They have no marks, which covers them in dirt, and they can only atone by cleaning the homes of purebloods, none of whom is born without a flawless mark on his or her skin.
It is all bollocks. All of it.
But Albus has conceded that there is little he can do without sacrificing an innocent child to a horrible fate, and he will not do that. He is not Gellert. He is not Voldemort, or Malfoy. He is himself, and this is his choice.
“What does that matter?” Malfoy lifts his hand for a moment and examines his nails, as if inviting everyone to notice how short and neat they are. “Hogwarts is a home for those of less than pure lineage. We tolerate house-elves there. We tolerate Muggleborns. Why should we worry even if Harry Potter does come there? And as I said, he probably won’t. The Muggle world is filled with filth. We need not attempt to clean all of it up.” He looks up from his nails and smiles sweetly at Marchbanks. “Unless that’s a pet project of yours, Madam Marchbanks? I wasn’t aware—”
Albus doesn’t bother listening as the squabble dissolves into a more familiar political kind of infight. The Marchbanks and Malfoy families have cordially despised one another for generations. He looks around the room, silently counting the people on his side.
Yes. It is enough.
And when the vote comes, it does come down on the side of leaving Harry Potter with his Muggle aunt, his fate deliberately ignored. It doesn’t matter how he survived the Killing Curse, not when his soul-mark is gone, Albus says, and persuades others to agree. If anything, he would only taint the Department of Mysteries if the Unspeakables brought him there. Much better to let him live in a cesspool with all the other cess.
Albus hates himself as he mouths the words. He doesn’t believe a single one of them.
But that’s what he has to do. And that evening, as he places Harry Potter on the doorstep of his aunt’s house and slides a letter into the wrappings of his blanket to explain the situation to Petunia Dursley, he kisses the child’s head, the lightning-bolt scar that’s there, and fiercely wishes him good luck.
Then he goes to announce his abdication as Headmaster of Hogwarts, wondering darkly all the while whom they will put in his place.
*
Harry Potter knows what it’s like to be despised, to be hated, to wish that things were different with every fiber of his being.
He survives, anyway. To his knowledge, it’s the thing he can do that will most annoy the Dursleys.
They tell everyone in the neighborhood about how awful he is, how he steals and bullies other children and lies constantly about what he can do. Harry holds his head up throughout it all. Yes, they’re the awful ones, and Dudley is the bully and the thief, and they lie about him. What can Harry do but live? What can he do but rejoice in the oddities that separate him from the Dursleys, and encourage those oddities?
No one else he knows can grow their hair back overnight. No one else somehow flew to the top of the school building that one time. No one else can turn a teacher’s hair blue, or shrink a jumper, or sometimes wish really hard that their cupboard door was unlocked and reach out and find that it is.
And no one else can look down in their garden and see a snake and talk to it. Or set a boa constrictor from the zoo free accidentally and have it knock down their bullying cousin.
Harry doesn’t know what he is, but he clings to the oddities, and on his eleventh birthday, a letter arrives that tells him what he is.
Magic.
*
“Your name is Harry Potter? Oh dear, oh dear…”
Harry thought Madam Malkin’s reaction was odd when he went to get his robes, as was the fact that she didn’t want to touch him, but he didn’t think much of it. Maybe wizards don’t get their clothes made in the same way, just like they don’t wear the same things Muggles do. It was Professor McGonagall, who came to explain things since Harry couldn’t send an owl back, who taught him the word Muggle. Harry savors it. A lot.
But then he runs into the same problem in Ollivander’s shop, where the man gestures the measuring tape to take care of him and averts his gaze from Harry as he searches through the wand boxes in his shop. He seems utterly surprised when a holly-and-phoenix-feather wand greets Harry as though they’ve always been best friends, staring at Harry before uttering some kind of dire warning about Voldemort.
“What is going on?” Harry demands when he comes out of the wand shop and sees Professor McGonagall waiting for him. “Why does everyone hear my name and act like I’m some kind of pariah?”
(Well, all right, not everyone did. The goblins just looked at him with curiosity and interest when they heard his name, and then they took him down to his vault. Maybe Griphook looked at him a little too long, but it’s not as though that’s unusual. Maybe Harry did something that showed he was a human barbarian or something).
Professor McGonagall compresses her lips and takes a long breath. “All right, Mr. Potter. This will take some explaining. Why don’t we have an ice while we do?”
*
They take a table at Florean Fortescue’s shop, and Professor McGonagall raises a series of spells around them that she says are Privacy Charms and will keep anyone from eavesdropping or seeing what they do closely. Harry immediately wants to learn them. He loves magic. He loves it so much.
Professor McGonagall draws her sleeve back from her left arm, slowly, reluctantly. Harry catches his breath. There’s a painting on her arm, almost like a (Muggle) tattoo, but done in much more detail, in glowing shades of green and gold. He can make out a crouched cat under a golden tree in the moments before she drops her sleeve back across it.
“What’s that?” Harry whispers.
“A soul-mark.” Professor McGonagall glances a little to the side as she talks, her face looking old. “Every magical person has a mark that binds them to one other person on the face of the earth who carries the same mark. It shows they are meant to be together, each other’s perfect complement. Soulmates are the only ones who can date, kiss, or marry each other. You can’t have children except with your soulmate.” She seems about to say something else, hesitates, then goes on. “My soulmate was my husband, Elphinstone Urquart. He unfortunately died some years ago.”
“When do soul-marks appear?” Harry asks, already anticipating what his is going to look like. And the person it’ll link him to! Someone out there, a perfect match, just for him.
“With birth, Mr. Potter.”
Professor McGonagall’s voice is so soft, so gentle. Harry blinks and looks up at her. “But—I don’t have one.”
“I know,” Professor McGonagall says quietly, and then she tells him the tale.
Harry hears for the first time how his parents—soulmates—died, for standing in the way of the Dark Lord Voldemort. How Voldemort used the Killing Curse on them and on Harry, which erases someone’s soul-mark as well as kills them. But Harry lived, somehow, and that means he has no soul-mark. No one waiting for him.
That he’s intolerably dirty. Professor McGonagall doesn’t say that last part, so much, but it’s there once Harry wends his way among the thickets of her words.
“Why did I live?” Harry asks, one hand clenched beneath the table. His joy in this new world is falling to pieces around him. He’ll be dirty and unwanted here, just like he is with the Dursleys. People will think he’s lying because of something he can’t control. And it’s not even the way he was born, it’s just the way that things are because things happened to him! It’s so unfair.
The unfairness of it all sinks down like a second sun into Harry’s chest and heats everything inside him up.
Professor McGonagall sighs. “I’m sorry, Mr. Potter, but I don’t know. Perhaps your mother did something to protect you. That was Albus’s speculation.”
“Albus? Who is he?”
“He was the previous Headmaster of the school,” Professor McGonagall says, lowering her eyes for a second. “He was the one who argued that you should be allowed to grow up in the Muggle world instead of—instead of being killed or—shut away. Other people agreed because they thought it possible that you might not even have magic. Muggles don’t, you know, and they also don’t have soul-marks.”
Harry grips the side of his new robes. He’s not a Muggle! He’s not! He’s going to prove it!
“He stepped down as Headmaster over the scandal of his championing you,” Professor McGonagall continues in a subdued tone. “The Headmaster who took his place is Horace Slughorn, who was once the Potions professor.”
Harry breathes out slowly. It seems he owes this Albus a debt, although Harry has no idea whether he’ll ever meet the man. “And Voldemort? Why did he come after me?”
“You-Know-Who had fractured his soul. He sacrificed his soulmate and the wholeness of his soul to do it. I don’t know exactly how. But it was related to the rituals that made him immortal. I don’t know exactly why he attacked your parents, either, except that they were both involved in research into soulmates. He might have thought they could reverse the magic he’d used and make him mortal again.”
Harry closes his eyes. “Is he gone?”
“He hasn’t been seen since the night that he died, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall gives him a soft smile. “Yes, he’s gone.”
Harry shakes his head and stares down at his blank arms for a second. “What was my soul-mark like before the Killing Curse hit me? Do you know?”
“I am so sorry, Mr. Potter, but I do not. You would have been born with one. All magical children are.” Professor McGonagall’s voice is warm and reassuring. “But your parents were in hiding from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named for several months at least, and I never saw you when you were an infant. There were a few people who might have, but one of them is dead and one of them is in prison for betraying your parents.”
“What?”
*
Harry is very quiet after he’s heard the tale of Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. Professor McGonagall, when she takes him home and drops him off at the Dursleys’ doorstep, notices.
“Listen to me, Mr. Potter,” she says, bending down in front of him. She doesn’t touch him and keeps some distance between them, but at least she’s not flinching away like the people in the robe shop were. “You are magical. Never let anyone tell you that you aren’t. You have as much right to be in our world as anyone with a soul-mark.”
Harry takes a deep breath and looks up at her. “But not everyone thinks that, right?”
“No. I’m sorry. It’s likely that you will face much opposition when you’re Sorted at Hogwarts.” Professor McGonagall hesitates. “I recommend that you read your textbooks closely and decide which House you’d like to be in. It might be that you’ll find some sympathetic souls in the one you’re Sorted into.”
“You can choose your House?”
“You have the option to ask. The—mechanism of the Sorting may not listen. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Harry manages to force the words past numb lips. “Thank you for the warning.” At least she believes that he deserves a place in the magical world, unlike what sounds like some people.
Professor McGonagall squeezes his shoulder once, and departs with a little rush of air that she told him earlier was called Apparition. Harry is determined to learn it as soon as possible. He squares his shoulders and goes into the house.
*
The Dursleys still hate him, but they’re terrified of magic, too. It only takes a glimpse of Harry’s wand—and the white cat, Bast, that Professor McGonagall bought him as a birthday gift—and they give him Dudley’s second bedroom and don’t look at or speak to him. Harry does manage to wrangle a ride to King’s Cross Station on the morning of the first of September out of them, and that’s all he really cares about.
Harry spends a lot of time petting Bast, and reading his books, and practicing the wand movements—Professor McGonagall said that he couldn’t perform magic during the summer holidays without getting in trouble, but the Dursleys don’t need to know that—and staring out the window. And turning over the things that he learned in his head.
What he thinks is this:
People who have soul-marks have done stupid things. They betrayed his parents. They fractured their soul-marks so they could be immortal. They were afraid of him as a baby and wanted to kill him. They flinch away from a kid who didn’t even know he was a wizard until this week and can’t hurt them. They stare at him and babble nonsense. In fact, the only person he’s met with a soul-mark who’s kind is Professor McGonagall, and probably this Albus who fought for him to live, too.
Having a soul-mark doesn’t make you a good person, or right, or truthful, or less gullible than the Dursleys who believed that he could hurt them once they saw his wand. It just means you have a soulmate.
And yes, it would be wonderful to have someone out there who’s perfect for him, and if he ever wants to date or even kiss someone—right now, Harry doesn’t think he wants to—than he’ll have to do it with a Muggle. But not having a soul-mark doesn’t make him a bad person. He’s not going to let other people wear him down.
He wants to change things, to show them all that he isn’t the dirty outcast they think they see. And if he can’t do that through being polite and kind, which doesn’t seem to make a difference to anyone, then he’ll do it by making himself so strong that they can’t ignore him.
There’s only one choice for his House, really.
*
Luckily, he doesn’t have to convince the Sorting Hat otherwise, because he doubts he could have. It shouts out the name of his House the minute the brim brushes his head.
“SLYTHERIN!”
*
Harry picks himself up slowly from the fetal ball that he’s curled into when the taunting laughter has faded. He looks at the torn books in front of him, and anger moves slowly through his stomach, hotter than the ache of the bruises where the older Slytherins kicked him with their boots and jinxed him with stinging spells.
They tore up his books. But that’s okay. His parents left him a lot of money, and even though Professor McGonagall told him there was apparently some debate over whether he would be allowed to inherit it at all, he has. He can replace the books.
Some of the Slytherins he rooms with tried to hurt Bast, but she has sharp claws and she leapt straight onto Draco Malfoy’s head and raked down with her claws, and that took care of that. And Harry has learned how to stare pointedly at people and speak threats in a quiet voice, which he always did when he caught members of Dudley’s gang by themselves. It won’t work in every single situation, which is why he’s studying magic as hard as he can, but for now, it does.
Honestly, the purebloods around him strike Harry as pretty soft. They think they’re special because of their blood and their soul-marks? Things they were born with? They don’t even act as if how magically powerful you are matters, because they’re just so used to other people respecting them automatically.
Harry doesn’t want to be bullied, but he wouldn’t want to be like them, either.
But the way they sneer at him, and hurt him, and one of them tried to take his wand and snap it, except he was holding onto it too tightly and they would have had to touch him with their bare skin? Yes, that upsets Harry.
No, correction: that makes him furious.
He remembers the faces and voices of those who were there with him today. And someday, he’ll pay them back.
*
“Mr. Potter, stay after class.”
Harry turns around, his hands tight around his satchel and his wand. He knows that his potion wasn’t good today. It never is, because Malfoy or someone else always manages to bang into him or throw something into his cauldron, and he doesn’t have a partner because no one wants to work with him.
According to the Gryffindors, they’re the kinder House, but even they flinch and draw back from Harry when he walks between the tables. A few of them, a pale, shivering boy named Neville and a Muggleborn girl named Granger, look at him with pity, but they still won’t talk to him or touch him or work with him. Harry thinks Granger might have, but she found out her soul-mark matches Ron Weasley’s on the train ride, and ever since then, they’ve been inseparable. And Granger seems to have decided that Harry’s lack of a soul-mark would make hers less special or something.
But the real problem with Potions is Professor Snape. He hates Harry, and on the rare days when someone doesn’t throw something into a cauldron or bump into Harry, he comes up behind him at the worst moments and startles Harry into ruining his potion.
Harry hates him, but he hates a lot of people, so that doesn’t matter so much. Snape will pay for this someday, just like everyone else.
Now, though, Snape is staring at him as if Harry is some kind of complex puzzle that he has no hope of solving. Harry puts his chin up and stares back, and Snape finally shakes his head and says, “You have to move out of your bedroom.”
“Because of my lack of a soul-mark?”
Snape pauses, as if he didn’t think Harry would name it so bluntly, but then nods. “Your roommates don’t want you there.”
“Should I live in an abandoned classroom, then?” Harry is already thinking about it, turning memories of the various rooms he’s seen in the castle over in his mind and wondering which one would be best to sleep in. He can’t Transfigure things well yet, but maybe he can borrow a bed from somewhere. There must be beds and chairs in private places of the castle, mustn’t there? There’s six Slytherin boys in his year and only four in the year above, so they had to get two extra beds from somewhere, even if the furniture is otherwise the same.
Snape blinks and looks at him. “No,” he says slowly. Harry is apparently made of puzzle pieces. “You will be moved into one of the rooms that are usually used for students who have contagious diseases. Off the hospital wing.”
“Okay.” Harry shrugs. It will mean that he has longer to walk to the Great Hall and some of his classes, but honestly, that doesn’t matter so much to him. At least he’ll still have a bed without worrying about having to find or Transfigure one.
“Does nothing matter to you, Potter?” Snape demands abruptly. “Why do you act as though you are above it all? Your native arrogance, or something else?”
Harry looks at him curiously. “What exactly am I supposed to do? Spend every day falling on the floor and apologizing for my lack of a soul-mark? You know as well as I do that that isn’t my fault.” Harry hasn’t found anyone in the castle who doesn’t know his story, or who doesn’t recognize his name.
“Stop being arrogant, brat.”
“Shan’t,” Harry says, enjoying the way that Snape’s face turns red. Sometimes it’s fun to imitate Dudley.
Snape leans down towards him and tries to glare him into submission. Harry just looks at him. The same thing that carried him unbroken through his years with the Dursleys rears inside his chest now, and he wonders if he could use it to power magic that would lash out at Snape.
But probably not. And it’s best to wait until he’s ready to strike, not do it too early and give Snape a warning of his intentions.
“How does it feel,” Snape hisses between his teeth, “to know that there is no one out there for you, that you shall be alone as long as you live?”
“I imagine how it feels to know that your soul-mark is unfulfilled and always will be,” Harry says blandly.
It’s only a guess. It’s not like many of the professors are married, if any, and maybe Snape had a wife who died. Professor McGonagall did talk about her husband dying years ago. But no one has mentioned anything of the sort for Snape, and Harry thinks it’s more likely that he bullied his soulmate until she ran away.
Snape flinches wildly backwards from him, nearly toppling over the table behind him. Harry stares. He knew his words would probably produce a reaction, maybe more bullying or a yell, but not that.
Snape straightens up again, one hand resting on his left arm in a way that makes Harry wonder if he’s hiding his soul-mark there. He came to understand after a few days in the magical world that showing him the mark like Professor McGonagall did is very rare. People seem to think that their soulmate is the one who first deserves to see it. (Weasley and Granger got together only because her mark was on display and Weasley saw that it matched his, apparently).
“You have no idea what you are talking about,” Snape whispers, but his voice sounds hollow. “Everyone knows that each person has only one soulmate, that the mark matches only one person in the entire world. And everyone knows that soul-mark matches are always fulfilled. There is no such thing as being turned away by the person who shares your soul.”
“Unless they die, I suppose. Did your soulmate die, Snape?”
“Get out.”
From the look in Snape’s eyes, he’s about to start throwing curses any second, so Harry turns and does. He goes to fetch his things from the room in Slytherin, calmly pleased to notice that Bast has blood on her claws and that there’s a single blackened line on the lid of his trunk, meaning that someone tried to break past his wards but wasn’t able to.
They have marks, everyone else. They have matches. They’ll never be alone.
But they won’t be able to do what Harry can do, either. He’s sworn it.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of Albus/Gellert, Ron/Hermione, Draco/Astoria, Lucius/Narcissa, and other canon pairings, but mostly gen
Content Notes: AU, soul-marks, slavery, angst, violence, bullying, present tense, homophobia, racism, revolution, extremely bitter and jaded Harry
Rating: R (for violence)
Wordcount: This part 4800
Summary: AU. Soul-marks are everything in the magical world; you can only ever marry or date your soulmate, every person has exactly one mark and match, and even house-elves are slaves because of their lack of marks. The Killing Curse, Unforgivable because it erases the soul’s mark as well as killing the body, has no known survivors. Until it does, and Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts bereft of his mark, the subject of furious debate as to whether his presence dirties the school or if it should be allowed at all. As Harry learns more and more about the underpinnings of the magical world, his fury grows, and he allies with other outcasts to bring down the corrupt system.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s a massive AU, as you can see from the summary, and will likely have between three and six parts. Please don’t read this unless you’re in the mood for a very dark fic.
Pariahs
Albus stands before the Wizengamot and prepares to sell his soul.
They’ve been meeting for the last three days, debating what to do about Harry Potter. He should be just another sad casualty of the war, like his parents, who died on Halloween in Godric’s Hollow. But somehow, he lived when Voldemort’s Killing Curse struck him, instead of dying like all the other victims.
He is alive. And he has no soul-mark, which the Killing Curse erased in its passage.
Such a thing has never been known before.
Albus stands, and attention shifts to him. He can see the sneers from every direction. His magical power hasn’t allowed the purebloods to ignore him, and his defeat of Gellert earned him the love of the populace threatened by the war, but the purebloods know that Albus was Gellert’s soulmate, and fought against his magically-declared mate, another thing never known before.
They like to pretend, too, that the marks never match man to man, woman to woman. They claim that those who have such marks must have dabbled in the Dark Arts. Soulmates are meant to reproduce, they say, and not exist in sterile companionship.
Albus knows it is all pretense. He has struggled for years to remain Headmaster of Hogwarts, to maintain a small island of sanity amidst the prejudiced sea. He cannot ensure that the truth is taught, because there are too many people who blindly believe otherwise for that, and working for the muddled truth would have ended his career long since. But he has, he hopes, kept some open minds and ears and hearts, enough that the purebloods have not managed to entirely dominate the Ministry and their world.
That has to end today. Because, as much as Albus weighed the decision in his mind and knows that he could do more good to more people by remaining in his current position, he cannot countenance what the Ministry has been debating. Cannot.
They would kill the Potter child, or perhaps take him into the Department of Mysteries and let the Unspeakables, who are always trying to understand the mysteries of soul-marks, experiment on him.
“I propose that we let Harry Potter live with his aunt in the Muggle world,” Albus says. “And see if he will even survive or not. Keeping him in the magical world would cloud our perceptions of his survival, would it not? He might live simply because of the intense magic around him. We cannot know who he really is without letting him grow up in a non-magical environment.”
“What is this nonsense, Albus?” Griselda Marchbanks demands. Albus gazes evenly back at her. He is one of two people in the world who knows that the mark on her arm is not the one she was born with. “The child will have nothing but a half-life without someone beside him! It’s kinder to kill him now than to subject him to the intense loneliness he will feel.”
“I presume that you have a different definition of kindness than I do, Madam.”
Marchbanks frowns and prepares to make another demand, but Lucius Malfoy coughs and shifts in his seat. Albus turns to him. Malfoy’s eyes meet his, gleaming for a second with intense enjoyment.
Malfoy is one of the allies that Albus made by promising to step down from the Headmaster’s position and let the Board of Governors put whoever they want in his place. Malfoy only has to support leaving Harry Potter in the Muggle world, and he will. Albus knows he will. What is the fate of a random child to him, even one who brought down a powerful Dark Lord with a fractured mark, next to the chance to order the political affairs of Britain to his will?
“It’s true that the child will probably only have a half-life,” Malfoy drawls, shrugging his shoulders. “But what does that matter? He’s no more than a Muggle without his mark. He probably won’t have magic. We don’t kill random Muggles. We leave them be.”
That is another thing those like Malfoy would change if they could; they want to bring back Muggle-hunting and the like. But he is far more invested in controlling his little pureblood world, ensuring that his children find their matches and that soul-marks are respected and the world remains pure.
The word etches itself in acid letters in Albus’s mind.
“He’s dirty,” Marchbanks says flatly.
That makes some of them stir and murmur, although Albus is sure that he still has the numbers to win the debate. Dirtiness is abhorred in the pureblood world. It’s why they make sure that their children’s marks don’t match them with Muggles (although Albus is one of the few who knows how they do that). It’s the reason the purity of marks is prized and enforced; not even a kiss takes place unless between those with matching marks. It’s even the reason that house-elves serve. They have no marks, which covers them in dirt, and they can only atone by cleaning the homes of purebloods, none of whom is born without a flawless mark on his or her skin.
It is all bollocks. All of it.
But Albus has conceded that there is little he can do without sacrificing an innocent child to a horrible fate, and he will not do that. He is not Gellert. He is not Voldemort, or Malfoy. He is himself, and this is his choice.
“What does that matter?” Malfoy lifts his hand for a moment and examines his nails, as if inviting everyone to notice how short and neat they are. “Hogwarts is a home for those of less than pure lineage. We tolerate house-elves there. We tolerate Muggleborns. Why should we worry even if Harry Potter does come there? And as I said, he probably won’t. The Muggle world is filled with filth. We need not attempt to clean all of it up.” He looks up from his nails and smiles sweetly at Marchbanks. “Unless that’s a pet project of yours, Madam Marchbanks? I wasn’t aware—”
Albus doesn’t bother listening as the squabble dissolves into a more familiar political kind of infight. The Marchbanks and Malfoy families have cordially despised one another for generations. He looks around the room, silently counting the people on his side.
Yes. It is enough.
And when the vote comes, it does come down on the side of leaving Harry Potter with his Muggle aunt, his fate deliberately ignored. It doesn’t matter how he survived the Killing Curse, not when his soul-mark is gone, Albus says, and persuades others to agree. If anything, he would only taint the Department of Mysteries if the Unspeakables brought him there. Much better to let him live in a cesspool with all the other cess.
Albus hates himself as he mouths the words. He doesn’t believe a single one of them.
But that’s what he has to do. And that evening, as he places Harry Potter on the doorstep of his aunt’s house and slides a letter into the wrappings of his blanket to explain the situation to Petunia Dursley, he kisses the child’s head, the lightning-bolt scar that’s there, and fiercely wishes him good luck.
Then he goes to announce his abdication as Headmaster of Hogwarts, wondering darkly all the while whom they will put in his place.
*
Harry Potter knows what it’s like to be despised, to be hated, to wish that things were different with every fiber of his being.
He survives, anyway. To his knowledge, it’s the thing he can do that will most annoy the Dursleys.
They tell everyone in the neighborhood about how awful he is, how he steals and bullies other children and lies constantly about what he can do. Harry holds his head up throughout it all. Yes, they’re the awful ones, and Dudley is the bully and the thief, and they lie about him. What can Harry do but live? What can he do but rejoice in the oddities that separate him from the Dursleys, and encourage those oddities?
No one else he knows can grow their hair back overnight. No one else somehow flew to the top of the school building that one time. No one else can turn a teacher’s hair blue, or shrink a jumper, or sometimes wish really hard that their cupboard door was unlocked and reach out and find that it is.
And no one else can look down in their garden and see a snake and talk to it. Or set a boa constrictor from the zoo free accidentally and have it knock down their bullying cousin.
Harry doesn’t know what he is, but he clings to the oddities, and on his eleventh birthday, a letter arrives that tells him what he is.
Magic.
*
“Your name is Harry Potter? Oh dear, oh dear…”
Harry thought Madam Malkin’s reaction was odd when he went to get his robes, as was the fact that she didn’t want to touch him, but he didn’t think much of it. Maybe wizards don’t get their clothes made in the same way, just like they don’t wear the same things Muggles do. It was Professor McGonagall, who came to explain things since Harry couldn’t send an owl back, who taught him the word Muggle. Harry savors it. A lot.
But then he runs into the same problem in Ollivander’s shop, where the man gestures the measuring tape to take care of him and averts his gaze from Harry as he searches through the wand boxes in his shop. He seems utterly surprised when a holly-and-phoenix-feather wand greets Harry as though they’ve always been best friends, staring at Harry before uttering some kind of dire warning about Voldemort.
“What is going on?” Harry demands when he comes out of the wand shop and sees Professor McGonagall waiting for him. “Why does everyone hear my name and act like I’m some kind of pariah?”
(Well, all right, not everyone did. The goblins just looked at him with curiosity and interest when they heard his name, and then they took him down to his vault. Maybe Griphook looked at him a little too long, but it’s not as though that’s unusual. Maybe Harry did something that showed he was a human barbarian or something).
Professor McGonagall compresses her lips and takes a long breath. “All right, Mr. Potter. This will take some explaining. Why don’t we have an ice while we do?”
*
They take a table at Florean Fortescue’s shop, and Professor McGonagall raises a series of spells around them that she says are Privacy Charms and will keep anyone from eavesdropping or seeing what they do closely. Harry immediately wants to learn them. He loves magic. He loves it so much.
Professor McGonagall draws her sleeve back from her left arm, slowly, reluctantly. Harry catches his breath. There’s a painting on her arm, almost like a (Muggle) tattoo, but done in much more detail, in glowing shades of green and gold. He can make out a crouched cat under a golden tree in the moments before she drops her sleeve back across it.
“What’s that?” Harry whispers.
“A soul-mark.” Professor McGonagall glances a little to the side as she talks, her face looking old. “Every magical person has a mark that binds them to one other person on the face of the earth who carries the same mark. It shows they are meant to be together, each other’s perfect complement. Soulmates are the only ones who can date, kiss, or marry each other. You can’t have children except with your soulmate.” She seems about to say something else, hesitates, then goes on. “My soulmate was my husband, Elphinstone Urquart. He unfortunately died some years ago.”
“When do soul-marks appear?” Harry asks, already anticipating what his is going to look like. And the person it’ll link him to! Someone out there, a perfect match, just for him.
“With birth, Mr. Potter.”
Professor McGonagall’s voice is so soft, so gentle. Harry blinks and looks up at her. “But—I don’t have one.”
“I know,” Professor McGonagall says quietly, and then she tells him the tale.
Harry hears for the first time how his parents—soulmates—died, for standing in the way of the Dark Lord Voldemort. How Voldemort used the Killing Curse on them and on Harry, which erases someone’s soul-mark as well as kills them. But Harry lived, somehow, and that means he has no soul-mark. No one waiting for him.
That he’s intolerably dirty. Professor McGonagall doesn’t say that last part, so much, but it’s there once Harry wends his way among the thickets of her words.
“Why did I live?” Harry asks, one hand clenched beneath the table. His joy in this new world is falling to pieces around him. He’ll be dirty and unwanted here, just like he is with the Dursleys. People will think he’s lying because of something he can’t control. And it’s not even the way he was born, it’s just the way that things are because things happened to him! It’s so unfair.
The unfairness of it all sinks down like a second sun into Harry’s chest and heats everything inside him up.
Professor McGonagall sighs. “I’m sorry, Mr. Potter, but I don’t know. Perhaps your mother did something to protect you. That was Albus’s speculation.”
“Albus? Who is he?”
“He was the previous Headmaster of the school,” Professor McGonagall says, lowering her eyes for a second. “He was the one who argued that you should be allowed to grow up in the Muggle world instead of—instead of being killed or—shut away. Other people agreed because they thought it possible that you might not even have magic. Muggles don’t, you know, and they also don’t have soul-marks.”
Harry grips the side of his new robes. He’s not a Muggle! He’s not! He’s going to prove it!
“He stepped down as Headmaster over the scandal of his championing you,” Professor McGonagall continues in a subdued tone. “The Headmaster who took his place is Horace Slughorn, who was once the Potions professor.”
Harry breathes out slowly. It seems he owes this Albus a debt, although Harry has no idea whether he’ll ever meet the man. “And Voldemort? Why did he come after me?”
“You-Know-Who had fractured his soul. He sacrificed his soulmate and the wholeness of his soul to do it. I don’t know exactly how. But it was related to the rituals that made him immortal. I don’t know exactly why he attacked your parents, either, except that they were both involved in research into soulmates. He might have thought they could reverse the magic he’d used and make him mortal again.”
Harry closes his eyes. “Is he gone?”
“He hasn’t been seen since the night that he died, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall gives him a soft smile. “Yes, he’s gone.”
Harry shakes his head and stares down at his blank arms for a second. “What was my soul-mark like before the Killing Curse hit me? Do you know?”
“I am so sorry, Mr. Potter, but I do not. You would have been born with one. All magical children are.” Professor McGonagall’s voice is warm and reassuring. “But your parents were in hiding from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named for several months at least, and I never saw you when you were an infant. There were a few people who might have, but one of them is dead and one of them is in prison for betraying your parents.”
“What?”
*
Harry is very quiet after he’s heard the tale of Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. Professor McGonagall, when she takes him home and drops him off at the Dursleys’ doorstep, notices.
“Listen to me, Mr. Potter,” she says, bending down in front of him. She doesn’t touch him and keeps some distance between them, but at least she’s not flinching away like the people in the robe shop were. “You are magical. Never let anyone tell you that you aren’t. You have as much right to be in our world as anyone with a soul-mark.”
Harry takes a deep breath and looks up at her. “But not everyone thinks that, right?”
“No. I’m sorry. It’s likely that you will face much opposition when you’re Sorted at Hogwarts.” Professor McGonagall hesitates. “I recommend that you read your textbooks closely and decide which House you’d like to be in. It might be that you’ll find some sympathetic souls in the one you’re Sorted into.”
“You can choose your House?”
“You have the option to ask. The—mechanism of the Sorting may not listen. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Harry manages to force the words past numb lips. “Thank you for the warning.” At least she believes that he deserves a place in the magical world, unlike what sounds like some people.
Professor McGonagall squeezes his shoulder once, and departs with a little rush of air that she told him earlier was called Apparition. Harry is determined to learn it as soon as possible. He squares his shoulders and goes into the house.
*
The Dursleys still hate him, but they’re terrified of magic, too. It only takes a glimpse of Harry’s wand—and the white cat, Bast, that Professor McGonagall bought him as a birthday gift—and they give him Dudley’s second bedroom and don’t look at or speak to him. Harry does manage to wrangle a ride to King’s Cross Station on the morning of the first of September out of them, and that’s all he really cares about.
Harry spends a lot of time petting Bast, and reading his books, and practicing the wand movements—Professor McGonagall said that he couldn’t perform magic during the summer holidays without getting in trouble, but the Dursleys don’t need to know that—and staring out the window. And turning over the things that he learned in his head.
What he thinks is this:
People who have soul-marks have done stupid things. They betrayed his parents. They fractured their soul-marks so they could be immortal. They were afraid of him as a baby and wanted to kill him. They flinch away from a kid who didn’t even know he was a wizard until this week and can’t hurt them. They stare at him and babble nonsense. In fact, the only person he’s met with a soul-mark who’s kind is Professor McGonagall, and probably this Albus who fought for him to live, too.
Having a soul-mark doesn’t make you a good person, or right, or truthful, or less gullible than the Dursleys who believed that he could hurt them once they saw his wand. It just means you have a soulmate.
And yes, it would be wonderful to have someone out there who’s perfect for him, and if he ever wants to date or even kiss someone—right now, Harry doesn’t think he wants to—than he’ll have to do it with a Muggle. But not having a soul-mark doesn’t make him a bad person. He’s not going to let other people wear him down.
He wants to change things, to show them all that he isn’t the dirty outcast they think they see. And if he can’t do that through being polite and kind, which doesn’t seem to make a difference to anyone, then he’ll do it by making himself so strong that they can’t ignore him.
There’s only one choice for his House, really.
*
Luckily, he doesn’t have to convince the Sorting Hat otherwise, because he doubts he could have. It shouts out the name of his House the minute the brim brushes his head.
“SLYTHERIN!”
*
Harry picks himself up slowly from the fetal ball that he’s curled into when the taunting laughter has faded. He looks at the torn books in front of him, and anger moves slowly through his stomach, hotter than the ache of the bruises where the older Slytherins kicked him with their boots and jinxed him with stinging spells.
They tore up his books. But that’s okay. His parents left him a lot of money, and even though Professor McGonagall told him there was apparently some debate over whether he would be allowed to inherit it at all, he has. He can replace the books.
Some of the Slytherins he rooms with tried to hurt Bast, but she has sharp claws and she leapt straight onto Draco Malfoy’s head and raked down with her claws, and that took care of that. And Harry has learned how to stare pointedly at people and speak threats in a quiet voice, which he always did when he caught members of Dudley’s gang by themselves. It won’t work in every single situation, which is why he’s studying magic as hard as he can, but for now, it does.
Honestly, the purebloods around him strike Harry as pretty soft. They think they’re special because of their blood and their soul-marks? Things they were born with? They don’t even act as if how magically powerful you are matters, because they’re just so used to other people respecting them automatically.
Harry doesn’t want to be bullied, but he wouldn’t want to be like them, either.
But the way they sneer at him, and hurt him, and one of them tried to take his wand and snap it, except he was holding onto it too tightly and they would have had to touch him with their bare skin? Yes, that upsets Harry.
No, correction: that makes him furious.
He remembers the faces and voices of those who were there with him today. And someday, he’ll pay them back.
*
“Mr. Potter, stay after class.”
Harry turns around, his hands tight around his satchel and his wand. He knows that his potion wasn’t good today. It never is, because Malfoy or someone else always manages to bang into him or throw something into his cauldron, and he doesn’t have a partner because no one wants to work with him.
According to the Gryffindors, they’re the kinder House, but even they flinch and draw back from Harry when he walks between the tables. A few of them, a pale, shivering boy named Neville and a Muggleborn girl named Granger, look at him with pity, but they still won’t talk to him or touch him or work with him. Harry thinks Granger might have, but she found out her soul-mark matches Ron Weasley’s on the train ride, and ever since then, they’ve been inseparable. And Granger seems to have decided that Harry’s lack of a soul-mark would make hers less special or something.
But the real problem with Potions is Professor Snape. He hates Harry, and on the rare days when someone doesn’t throw something into a cauldron or bump into Harry, he comes up behind him at the worst moments and startles Harry into ruining his potion.
Harry hates him, but he hates a lot of people, so that doesn’t matter so much. Snape will pay for this someday, just like everyone else.
Now, though, Snape is staring at him as if Harry is some kind of complex puzzle that he has no hope of solving. Harry puts his chin up and stares back, and Snape finally shakes his head and says, “You have to move out of your bedroom.”
“Because of my lack of a soul-mark?”
Snape pauses, as if he didn’t think Harry would name it so bluntly, but then nods. “Your roommates don’t want you there.”
“Should I live in an abandoned classroom, then?” Harry is already thinking about it, turning memories of the various rooms he’s seen in the castle over in his mind and wondering which one would be best to sleep in. He can’t Transfigure things well yet, but maybe he can borrow a bed from somewhere. There must be beds and chairs in private places of the castle, mustn’t there? There’s six Slytherin boys in his year and only four in the year above, so they had to get two extra beds from somewhere, even if the furniture is otherwise the same.
Snape blinks and looks at him. “No,” he says slowly. Harry is apparently made of puzzle pieces. “You will be moved into one of the rooms that are usually used for students who have contagious diseases. Off the hospital wing.”
“Okay.” Harry shrugs. It will mean that he has longer to walk to the Great Hall and some of his classes, but honestly, that doesn’t matter so much to him. At least he’ll still have a bed without worrying about having to find or Transfigure one.
“Does nothing matter to you, Potter?” Snape demands abruptly. “Why do you act as though you are above it all? Your native arrogance, or something else?”
Harry looks at him curiously. “What exactly am I supposed to do? Spend every day falling on the floor and apologizing for my lack of a soul-mark? You know as well as I do that that isn’t my fault.” Harry hasn’t found anyone in the castle who doesn’t know his story, or who doesn’t recognize his name.
“Stop being arrogant, brat.”
“Shan’t,” Harry says, enjoying the way that Snape’s face turns red. Sometimes it’s fun to imitate Dudley.
Snape leans down towards him and tries to glare him into submission. Harry just looks at him. The same thing that carried him unbroken through his years with the Dursleys rears inside his chest now, and he wonders if he could use it to power magic that would lash out at Snape.
But probably not. And it’s best to wait until he’s ready to strike, not do it too early and give Snape a warning of his intentions.
“How does it feel,” Snape hisses between his teeth, “to know that there is no one out there for you, that you shall be alone as long as you live?”
“I imagine how it feels to know that your soul-mark is unfulfilled and always will be,” Harry says blandly.
It’s only a guess. It’s not like many of the professors are married, if any, and maybe Snape had a wife who died. Professor McGonagall did talk about her husband dying years ago. But no one has mentioned anything of the sort for Snape, and Harry thinks it’s more likely that he bullied his soulmate until she ran away.
Snape flinches wildly backwards from him, nearly toppling over the table behind him. Harry stares. He knew his words would probably produce a reaction, maybe more bullying or a yell, but not that.
Snape straightens up again, one hand resting on his left arm in a way that makes Harry wonder if he’s hiding his soul-mark there. He came to understand after a few days in the magical world that showing him the mark like Professor McGonagall did is very rare. People seem to think that their soulmate is the one who first deserves to see it. (Weasley and Granger got together only because her mark was on display and Weasley saw that it matched his, apparently).
“You have no idea what you are talking about,” Snape whispers, but his voice sounds hollow. “Everyone knows that each person has only one soulmate, that the mark matches only one person in the entire world. And everyone knows that soul-mark matches are always fulfilled. There is no such thing as being turned away by the person who shares your soul.”
“Unless they die, I suppose. Did your soulmate die, Snape?”
“Get out.”
From the look in Snape’s eyes, he’s about to start throwing curses any second, so Harry turns and does. He goes to fetch his things from the room in Slytherin, calmly pleased to notice that Bast has blood on her claws and that there’s a single blackened line on the lid of his trunk, meaning that someone tried to break past his wards but wasn’t able to.
They have marks, everyone else. They have matches. They’ll never be alone.
But they won’t be able to do what Harry can do, either. He’s sworn it.
