Chapter Text
“Tell me what’s going on,” Harry demanded of the woman in front of him, pacing back and forth in her office and wringing his hands within one another. He had gone to his detention as was compulsory but had no intention to carry out any work that was set for himself. He had far too many questions, and he was sure that McGonagall was going to be the one who was going to be able to answer all of them. He noticed that Dumbledore was absent again. Maybe he was just giving him privacy, at this point.
“Mr Potter, sit down,” she ordered calmly, holding a hand out to the seat on the opposite side of her desk. Harry glared at the seat and shook his head defiantly.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on. He said to me before I left him that whatever you’re going to say, he’s sorry about it. It’s obviously something to do with me! What is it?”
“What happened to Mr Malfoy, Potter?” she asked, her tone still relaxed in a frustrating juxtaposition to Harry.
“I… think he had a panic attack,” he said.
“How did that come about?”
I’m meant to be asking the questions here, Harry thought furiously. “I went to… lightly hit him. As a joke,” Harry lied. “My arm got paralysed when I couldn’t do it - just frozen in midair. He touched it and it came back. He started to freak out after I touched his face and his bruise vanished.”
Her eyebrow rose slowly, dauntingly. “The one you gave him?”
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“I see.” She nodded. “And now..?”
“He’s sleeping. I managed to get him into the bed but he was just hysterical, telling me he hates me, but that he’s sorry too.”
She took a slow, long breath that made the hair on Harry’s arms stand up straight in fear. “Have a seat, Potter,” she said, her expression pitying and terrifying.
“Why?”
“You’re going to want to be sitting down for this.”
Harry gulped. Those words were never, ever a good sign and Harry could bet on Hogwarts that whatever news that she and Malfoy had been keeping from him had been kept for a good reason.
“Tell me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Please don’t stall, Professor.”
She shifted her eyes suspiciously, awkwardly, before asking him, “You’ve heard of bonds, haven’t you, Mr Potter?”
“Bonds?” Harry frowned. “Like, magical bonds? Like with Unbreakable Vows?”
“Yes,” McGonagall said. “Or life debts.”
“Life debts?” Harry queried, his head jerking back in surprise. “Malfoy isn’t indebted to me.”
“I think you’ll find that he is. And you, him. You see, Mr Potter, when you saved his life in the Room of Requirement in the War, he immediately became indebted to you. The same happened when he refused to turn you in at Malfoy Manor. However…” She waved her hand arcanely. “War brings different circumstances, and the magic understands that. People are saving and killing each other left, right, and centre. There was something about Mr Malfoy and yourself that the magic thought was acceptable.”
“I don’t understand,” said Harry, clenching his fists underneath the desk on his lap.
“It is often confusing to wonder about, is magic. But it seems as if the bond that Mr Malfoy and yourself have has developed far more than we could have expected.” She peered at him from over her glasses. “Or, it has been for far longer than we expected.”
“But it couldn’t have started before we saved each other. It can’t be that long beforehand.”
“I have seen many cases of many different kinds of bonds, Potter, and little were at all like this. One though, one springs to mind.”
“What happened?”
“A very… Similar scenario. The two had never gotten along. They were always quarrelling one way or another, but… something bad happened. After that, they learnt to tolerate each other, but found that only they could heal one another, nothing else would work.”
Harry looked down at his knuckles. Where there were previously bruises that should’ve faded a long time ago, there was nothing but smooth and flawless skin, and Harry recalled Malfoy’s hands all over his.
“They found that they, too, couldn’t harm one another. It hurt to even attempt such a thing. They soon found that they… were infatuated with each other.”
“Infatuated.”
“In love,” she clarified. “But not for long. One of them turned on the other, killed him, and then died in turn because of it. It was a dreadful thing.”
Harry took a sharp breath. “That’s horrible.”
“It was. But their spirits live on, unhinged by one another. Their bond was broken, though.”
“And you’re suggesting that Malfoy and I… we have this bond?”
“Stronger, if I may say. You and Mr Malfoy, you’ve known each other far longer than they had done, and they never saved each other. Not in the way that you’ve done, and you’ve done it in more ways than one. You two have been through a lot together. The fact that you two can even have a civil conversation with one another is already… outstanding.”
“So, what? What is it?”
“Potter, however odd this may sound to you, and it was quite odd to my ears the first time I heard it as well, Mr Malfoy and yourself… are soulmates.”
Harry stared and stared and stared at her until his eyes hurt so much he thought that they were going to fall out of his head. He waited for her to give him some sort of indication that she was joking around with him, however nothing at all came, and he was left feeling incredibly shaken. “What?”
“A soul bond is incredibly rare, but this seems like just that kind of magic.”
“Soulmates,” Harry repeated blankly.
“Would you like for me to mentor you on how to become a parrot animagus, Potter?”
“You can’t actually be serious.”
“Let me ask you this, what did you smell when you brewed your Amortentia in Professor Slughorn’s class?”
Harry clenched his jaw. “I wish everybody would stop talking about that goddamn potion.”
“Mr Potter,” she scolded sternly, and he flinched underneath her glare.
“I’m sorry, Professor.” He sighed deeply. “I know what you’re trying to get me to say.”
“I simply want you to answer the question.”
“I smelled him. Okay?”
She gazed at him for a while before nodding slowly, hooking her hands together on the desk. “I know this must be very overwhelming news for you, especially considering Miss. Weasley…” Harry flinched. She continued, “It was certainly a shock for Mr Malfoy, as well. He didn’t take it well at all.”
“That’s what you were talking about,” Harry realised aloud. “That time when I came back to the room and you were there, and he was shouting.”
“Yes.” The woman picked up her wand so suddenly that Harry wasn’t even sure where it had come from. She waved it in a rush and suddenly a door opened behind Harry. “I think you should have a discussion with him now, Harry,” she told him fondly.
“I won’t make it down for dinner if I do it now,” he said waveringly.
“I’ll make sure that two dishes will be sent to your room, and no interruptions.”
He took a shaky breath and nodded, still wanting to have some time to process all of this for himself. He understood now why Malfoy was so desperate for him to try and hurt him. “Miss?” he asked. “How come we could hurt each other all those years?”
“I believe it was the life-saving that triggered it. After it saw that you still hated each other, with you punching him, it wanted to sprout into action.”
Harry nodded, hesitantly rising to his feet and turning to the door that had opened behind him. He made for it, stepping very small steps and breathing very loud and heavy breaths, before he paused at the door, looking back at her. “Sorry, miss,” he said. “What was the name of the man who was killed?”
She smiled sadly at him. “Basil,” she told him. “Basil Davies.”
*
He knew what he had to do before he even left the Headmistress’ office. He was glad now that he and Basil had reconciled because he needed to talk to him more than he ever had before. He physically felt like he needed to know more about this… this goddamn soulmate thing.
“Harry!” That voice was like sweet, sweet music to his ears. “How have you been?”
“Er…” He wasn’t quite sure how to answer that one. Should he open with hi, think I’ve gotten myself a soulmate and I heard you’re experienced in that area, or a normal haha, everything is absolutely peaches and rainbows! “Okay.”
“Always a pleasure to hear.” He gave a toothy smile. “Apologies, am I keeping you from something?”
“Oh, no. Not this time, don’t worry.” He was certainly helping Harry stall seeing Malfoy, though, and that was just what he wanted.
“Brilliant!”
“How have you been, Basil?”
“Oh, you know how it is, being a portrait. Gets a bit boring sometimes. Not many to talk to!”
Harry smiled sadly at him. “I’m sorry I don’t get the chance to catch up with you often.”
“Not to worry, not to worry! I know that you’re busy with your student life. Very interesting, very interesting. How is Draco?”
He widened his eyes and awkwardly rubbed at the back of his neck. “That’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Professor McGonagall said that when you were alive… you had somebody special to you. Someone who was your… soulmate?”
The shock that Basil must’ve experienced was evident by the picture that was his face. It was as if he’d just witnessed an explosion. “Yes.” He placed two of his hands onto his chest. “Why was she speaking of such a time?”
“Because I think I’m in sort of the same situation as you,” he admitted to him. “McGonagall says that Draco is my… He’s my soulmate now, apparently.”
He watched the portrait breathe in in what seemed to be a wash of realisation and pity. He nodded slowly, solemnly. “I thought so. The magic is so rare, you see, it takes somebody who has experienced it themselves to recognise who else has a connection. The way you spoke about him was clear, the way you interacted. It reminded me so much of myself and my partner. Of course, that was before…”
Harry gulped. He didn’t even know he spoke about Malfoy differently to anybody else. “I’m sorry that I’m making you relive all of this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous now. It’s fine, it’s fine. I have no doubt, you see, that your fate will end far more happily than my own.” He took a seat. “You see, we went through a lot together, but I could tell that it was nowhere near as much as him and yourself. A war, I hear. On opposite sides. That’s tricky. And yet, you still manage to admire him.”
“Admire?” Harry felt his voice go hoarse.
“With your eyes. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.” He raised an accusing eyebrow at him. “But with your heart as well.”
“I… Don’t…”
“You do, Harry. Think now. Think to every moment you two have shared with one another and what it meant. What it meant to you, and what it meant to him…”
Harry tried not to. He really tried.
“Why did he do it? Why did he kill you?”
He smiled again. “Because he was afraid. He was afraid of who he was. Who we were.”
“I suppose that would’ve made sense back then, though?”
“Slightly more than nowadays, perhaps. But we loved one another deeply, I never would’ve expected such a… For him to do such a thing.”
“He couldn’t accept himself?”
“He was to be married. Pureblood, you see. He knew that he didn’t want to betray me with her and that the magic would become angry. It punishes the one person whilst the other is seeing another person, man or woman. He knew we’d be killed if the secret got out, and so he ended it with me, hoping that the magic would go away with it. It didn’t… It broke my heart. I threatened to tell people if he didn’t stop the marriage because it hurt every single time he thought of her.”
“It hurts?”
“Oh, terribly.”
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t use magic. That was most probably a good thing. It would have rebounded on him, and I perhaps would’ve lived. Dying by his hand would’ve been less painful than living without him. He used the knife that I gifted to him on our first anniversary of meeting.”
“I’m so sorry,” Harry whispered. “That’s horrible.”
“It was. But you, Harry…” He leant forward. “You and Draco could be remarkable.”