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Tom was eleven and he was not crazy.
He said as much to the man with the long beard and the outlandish clothing, the one who had come calling for him at the orphanage. Tom was afraid at first, certain that he was a shrink, about to cart him away to the looney bin because he could do things.
…He didn’t always mean to do things.
Tom just had… dark thoughts. But they all did: the parentless, unloved children of an overpopulated city in a country at war. They were all miserable and bitter…
It just happened to be that Tom’s dark thoughts came true.
Albus Dumbledore was a peculiar man who was not merely a man at all but a sorcerer, and Tom was, too.
Magic.
Tom knew he was special.
“Like all magical people, you will get a soul mark when you get your wand,” the genial wizard explained after calmly lighting Tom’s wardrobe and sense of self-preservation on fire. “Unless, of course, your soulmate is younger than you. Then your soul mark shall appear whenever theirs does. Usually, this is no more than a few years later. The longest recorded age difference for a soulmate was twelve years, last I checked.
“They always appear on one’s chest, right over your heart. Usually, they are somewhat vague and take time to interpret correctly. Phrases such as ‘Rival to Lover’, or ‘Instantaneous Love’… But they always make sense in the end, and it becomes apparent who the great, wild magic intended you to be with.”
Tom nodded like such things made sense to him. Dumbledore left him with detailed instructions and enough gold to get second-hand school supplies and a wand of his own.
Yew, thirteen and a half inches, phoenix feather core.
Tom purchased a brilliant new wand, but did not get a soul mark.
So my soul mate is younger than me, and has not yet received their wand, Tom thought, shrugging.
That was fine by him.
Tom preferred to be the older one, anyway.
Years passed, and his soul mark did not appear.
This only slightly and secretly bothered Tom Riddle, who no longer went by Tom Riddle to his closest and most trusted peers.
I am Lord Voldemort.
He wrote it in his diary and had grand plans. Fortunately, a soul mate was not significant to any of them.
Five years, ten years, twenty years.
Tom Riddle transcended mortality and never once did a soul mark appear on his chest. Rather than distress him—
this did not fill him with dread and despair and he was not horrified by the fact that someone like him—someone whose filthy, muggle father had never wanted him, someone whose own mother could not bear to live for him, could never, ever be worthy of—
—this made him swell with satisfaction and pride.
He was Lord Voldemort, and Lord Voldemort did not love.
He conquered.
A man with wild hair and glasses crumpled under the power of his spell and was dead before his body hit the ground.
A woman with green eyes and red hair hid behind a bedroom door and threw old furniture against it; she cried and screamed and begged for mercy when her weak obstacles were so easily dealt with.
“Stand aside, silly girl, stand aside...”
She didn’t.
“Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead—”
“This is my last warning—”
"Not Harry! Please... have mercy... have mercy... Not Harry! Not Harry! Please — I'll do anything..."
Lord Voldemort ignored her pleas and killed Lily Potter without concern. How weak love made people. How fortunate he was to not suffer from such ailments.
He stared down into the brilliant, green eyes of an infant—eyes just like his pitiful mother’s. His supposed downfall.
It started to cry. Pathetic. Voldemort cringed at the sound; he never could stand the wailing of the young ones at the orphanage…
He raised his wand, resolute. He wanted to see the light fade from this one’s eyes.
The curse left his mouth, but the flash of green blinded him. Pain beyond pain wracked through his body until his body was no more, unfathomable agony tearing his bones and muscles to shreds. Lord Voldemort was rendered less than a ghost, forced to flee as a waft into the night.
The cries of an orphan never stopped haunting him.
“You’ll get yer soul mark when yeh get yer wand,” the friendly giant explained. “But don’ read too much inter it. Usually they don’ make much sense until you already know, anyway… or so I’ve heard.”
Harry could tell that the over-sized man must not have met his soul mate yet, based on how forlorn he sounded. Harry nodded like such things made sense to him, but honestly, he could care less about magical romance.
A wizard! He was a wizard!
Harry never knew he was special.
The bright-eyed, bespeckled boy ate his squished birthday cake and had never been happier in his life.
When Harry asked why he was famous, Hagrid had been unwilling to say the man’s name out loud. The dark wizard whom everyone still feared, who had murdered his parents and failed to murder him…
He scribbled the word ‘Voldemort’ on a napkin and allowed Harry only a moment to look at it before crumpling it up and throwing it away, begging Harry never to ask him to do so again.
Harry got his wand and rushed to the bathroom in Ollivander’s wand shop to check—just as all his young customers did, the man assured him. The shop owner had given him a peculiar look before he ran to do so, like there was something that unsettled him about the fact that Harry's wand was holly, eleven inches long, and had a phoenix feather core—but Harry was already down the hall and looking in a mirror before he could speak.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Well, that’s odd, Harry thought, frowning. Hadn’t Hagrid said they were usually ambiguous phrases? Not names. And…
And Tom Marvolo Riddle definitely sounded like a boy.
Harry swallowed thickly and made a quick, firm decision.
“It says, ‘Unlikely Love’,” he announced to Hagrid just minutes later.
Hagrid laughed in a hollow sort of way. “See? I told yeh—what does tha’ even mean? Don’ worry about it, Harry…”
Hagrid bought him a snowy owl, and Harry easily forgot about his own lie for a time.
His friend Ron’s said, ‘With perseverance.’
His friend Hermione’s said, ‘When you least expect it.’
Harry went on with his fib, and no one suspected a thing.
Harry was twelve and kneeling on a stone floor in front of a boy; no, a memory who had come from a diary… or so he said.
He was killing Ginny, and he told Harry that he would kill him, too.
He spelled out his full name, then.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
I am Lord Voldemort.
Harry refused to believe.
He refused.
With a guttural cry, he stabbed the book with a basilisk fang and had no idea that it was a fragmented portion of his fragmented soul mate he was murdering. He thought he was destroying a memory and nothing more.
The diary bled ink and Ginny survived.
When they all gathered in the Headmaster’s office to discuss Harry’s latest end-of-the-year-fiasco, he didn’t tell Dumbledore the truth about his soul mark. He’d never told anyone; Harry had never deviated from the lie he told Hagrid. Yet he somehow got the impression that Dumbledore could see straight through him. Snape too, with his black, bottomless eyes, gave Harry the feeling that he could read minds…
But if either of the older wizards knew that Harry’s soul mark did not say ‘Unlikely’, they chose not to comment on it. Harry explained that he’d defeated the basilisk with the aid of a phoenix and a talking hat, and when he handed over the ruby-encrusted sword Dumbledore smiled like he had known this would happen all along.
Those who had been petrified were woken up, Harry was proclaimed a hero once more, and even though a man had been mentally unhinged and two children were traumatized beyond recognition in a supposedly non-existent chamber that evening, the colors in the Great Hall sang red and gold, and all was deemed well.
Harry wore a fake smile and began to live a life in extreme, darkened denial.
Harry had dreams that belonged to a scarlet-eyed man far too often.
His scar prickled with emotions that were not his own, but he kept his fears contained, too afraid to consider the truth of what this meant.
He avoided mirrors.
A father figure was something Harry had pined for his entire life, and now, he finally had one.
Sirius explained that sometimes, soul marks really were meaningless.
“Just because your chest says one thing doesn’t mean that you’ll be with a person who fits that description,” he said. “And sometimes, one person’s is really obviously indicative of someone, while their intended’s says something totally at odds with it. For example, your father’s said, ‘Green Eyes, Kind Soul’, while your mother’s said, ‘Eternal’. One word! Eternal! What kind of soul mark is that?” He scoffed, clearly finding the whole notion of soul marks ridiculous. “Not everyone has a soul mate, Harry, despite what the words written on your heart may lead you to believe.”
Harry tried to find some comfort in his godfather's morbid beliefs.
Sirius didn’t tell Harry what his own soul mark said, and Harry didn’t ask.
One year later and Harry was tied to a headstone, fear coursing through his veins and blood dripping from his arm.
A man as thin as a skeleton with unnaturally pale skin rose from a steaming cauldron. His eyes were a livid scarlet that smoldered in the darkness, piercing through the haze from the potion… and they were fixated on Harry with a tangible hunger.
“Robe me.”
His cold, high voice made Harry’s hair stand on end. Pettigrew, still moaning from the loss of his hand, whimpered as he struggled to nonetheless obey. He pulled black robes over his master’s shoulders with one arm, shaking the entire time.
Wormtail slumped to his side once he was done. Voldemort ignored him, his crimson gaze locked onto Harry—the boy he’d been so desperate to acquire, to kill, finally here and bound and so, so vulnerable.
He smiled, thin lips curling into the cruelest of grins. Harry thought he might faint.
Voldemort began examining his new body. His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his arms, his face, his chest—
‘The Boy Who Lived.’
Harry barely caught sight of the thin, neatly written script before Voldemort secured his robes over it, a phrase written just beneath the Dark Lord’s protruding collar bones.
‘The Boy Who Lived.’
It became apparent at once that Voldemort had not seen the writing himself. He had pulled his wand out from the pocket of his robe, was examining it with reverence…
He did not know.
Harry realized everything with an abrupt and crushing panic.
Of course he did not know; when Harry—his soul mate—had received his mark, Voldemort had not had a body. He had probably gone his whole, long life believing that he did not have a soul mate; why would he think that he should suddenly have a soul mark, now?
Harry wasn’t sure what came over him, but some unknown part of his being was speaking before his rational mind could stop it.
“Tom Marvolo Riddle.”
Voldemort’s eyes flashed to Harry’s, his irises a fiery red at being addressed by his given name. “You dare call me that,” he seethed, advancing on him, and Harry had never been more terrified in his life. The massive snake resurfaced, spitting venomously at Harry’s heels.
Voldemort’s incensed expression, however, slid into one of amusement as he drew near. He was far too close to Harry, whose scar was burning viciously. “Such an audacious fool, so bold, even just moments before your death…”
Harry ignored the pain and, throwing all caution to the wind, said:
“It’s on my heart.”
Voldemort went perfectly still. A heartbeat that contained an eternity of silence, and then the newly resurrected Dark Lord was laughing, louder and more cruelly than before.
“Such lies, Harry… “Though I commend you for your… creativity in your attempt to cheat death.”
“Look for yourself,” Harry said, chin jutted forward despite his crushing dread. “Look at yourself.”
Voldemort’s eyes narrowed. Pettigrew continued to whimper on the ground, his blood pouring from his wound and covering the grass. Cedric’s corpse lay a few feet away, his glassy eyes reflecting the first stars as they appeared in a darkening sky.
Finally, Voldemort lifted his wand. Harry closed his eyes and thought, this is it. The Dark Lord was going to cast the killing curse, and the Boy Who lived would live no more.
He didn’t.
The tip of the yew wand was pressed against Harry’s throat, dragged down his sternum and incinerating the fabric there until his chest was laid bare.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Harry opened his eyes, his body trembling as he wondered precisely what was going through the Dark Lord’s mind. Voldemort’s expression was unreadable as he stepped away and conjured up a smoke-rimmed, reflective surface, staring at his own soul mark detachedly.
He vanished the mirror and turned.
“Avada Kedavra.”
A vivid flash of green, and Pettigrew’s whimpers came to an abrupt end as Voldemort killed the only other person to witness such a devastating truth.
“Well, Harry,” Voldemort said in an absurdly conversational tone. “As usual, you have absolutely… destroyed my plans.”
He advanced on Harry once more, whose scar lit up in pain at the proximity. “How fitting, that I should be obsessed with you since you were only an infant, that I should decide the prophecy meant you when another was more fitting… How apt, that I should feel the irrepressible need to use your blood for my resurrection, despite all logic…”
Harry had no idea what he was talking about—prophecy? His blood?—but his ability to dwell on such things was non-existent. Voldemort’s grin became far more twisted. Harry’s heart stopped when he leaned in closer, and closer still, lifting one pale hand and whispering in his ear in a dark, unsettling purr.
“…I can touch you now…”