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Harry Potter’s soulmark is on his forehead.

There’s endless speculation in the papers about where Harry Potter’s soulmark is and what Harry Potter’s soulmark is.

Because Harry Potter’s soulmark is also his scar.

Harry Potter doesn’t even know it. The only person who knows it is the person who has the match, who looks at Harry Potter’s forehead and recognizes the same lines from the inside of his hip, covered by his trousers and his robes at all times.

The only other people who know are his parents, but his father is in Azkaban, serving his fifth year of ten, and his mother is thankfully keeping her mouth shut, though Draco can’t fathom why. Perhaps because she thinks it is pointless—however close Draco and Harry have become as friends over the past couple years, it’s clear it’s never going to become anything more—or perhaps she actually has a bit of her heart left.

Whatever the reason, Draco’s content to not poke at it.

“So you just don’t care about finding him?” Harry asks. He’s tapping his quill incessantly against his paper, just as he always has. Draco hasn’t dedicated himself to memorizing Harry’s studying habits, it’s just that he’s spent so much time studying with Harry that he knows: Harry’s just not going to stop until he finds something to write. And then he’s going to write like the wind in that horrid handwriting for five minutes and fill half the paper. And then he’s going to do some more tapping.

They’re in a shared office in Hogwarts—after going through teacher training together, per terms of new adopted Muggle practices—Harry and Draco had reluctantly admitted that they were capable of tolerating each others’ presences enough to share a space, since there were a couple new teachers coming on who needed offices. They had been roommates in teacher training for a bit, even. It had made showering, changing, and anything related to it difficult.

Harry came away with the idea that Draco was a major prude, and Draco had let him believe it. It was better than saying he didn’t want Harry to see the shape on his hip. Or on his chest.

But. The point being: Draco couldn’t escape the tapping if he wanted to. He’s just had to learn to live with it, to think around it.

And he has, mostly.

Except for now.

Right now, Harry’s being extra-distracting, because he’s trying to talk to Draco.

“We have lesson plans to finish,” Draco says without looking up from his own scroll. The paper is about how to go about managing the now-mandatory Health Ed lesson given by all teachers, regardless of what they teach, to the Fourth Years. Each subject has a different subsection of this.

Longbottom, Herbology: Puberty.

Harry, Defense Against the Dark Arts: Safe sex.

Draco, Potions: Soulmates.

Everyone says Draco got off easy.

“I’ll have to talk to fourteen-year-olds about sex,” Harry said, his face scrunched up and his ears red.

Draco scanned over the main points of the lesson again: soulmarks, types of soulmates, unrequited soulmates… “You know how I feel about soulmates,” he said.

And Harry nodded and clapped him on the shoulder sympathetically. “Me too,” he said.

They both hate soulmates. But for very different reasons.

“I just don’t get it,” Harry’s saying now. “You could go find him, and if you don’t like him, so what? Get on with your life.”

Draco still doesn’t look up from his paper, but he knows from the creak of Harry’s chair and the ceasing of the tapping that Harry has abandoned his paper all together and is leaning forward to peer at Draco. Their desks are on opposite sides of the room, facing each other, but Harry always sits on the wrong side, despite Draco’s constant jabs about it, so that he can scoot over and look at Draco’s work whenever he feels like it.

“I’m skipping the first part and getting on with my life.”

And here he comes in three… two…

“You’ve made so much progress.”

Draco can practically feel Harry across the two inches between their foreheads, like Harry’s surrounded by a forcefield. Even after all this time, Draco can never quite be sure whether the prickling he gets all over his skin whenever Harry gets close, stupidly, tinglingly pleasant, is the effect of Harry’s ridiculously powerful magic or the effect of Draco’s ridiculously powerful feelings.

“Possibly because I’ve been working while you have been wasting your time attempting to start a conversation with me.” Draco dips his pen in ink again, willing himself not to look up. It’s exceedingly hard when he knows if he does, Harry’s eyes will be so, so close, his mouth will be so, so close. If he looks up, he’ll be able to see the smudges on Harry’s glasses, the curve of his eyelashes. “You should give up and actually plan your lessons, for once.”

“Flexibility is important,” Harry says in a low voice. Or maybe Draco’s just imagining it’s lower than normal. Harry’s fingers trace the top of Draco’s paper absently, wide brown fingers with blunt nails cut short, more nimble than they look. “No matter how tightly you plan, you’re going to have to loosen up when the time comes.”

Definitely not imagining the low voice. “You’re just throwing sex words around,” Draco accuses, trying to keep his voice as neutral as he can. Trying not to flush. It doesn’t really work. “You’re not actually saying anything significant. Stop shirking your responsibilities, Potter. Eyes on your own paper.”

He writes under types of soulmates: Platonic—a soulmate with whom you are bonded tightly in a completely aromantic way, who fits you perfectly as a friend. Much more common among aromantic people.

Romantic: Most common type of soulmates…

Harry reads slowly, upside down, as Draco continues writing. “A person whom you are made to be in love with and who is made to be in love with you.” He sounds… well, he sounds the way he always does when he talks about soulmates: wistful. The tiniest edge of pain. They’ve had this conversation so many times. “I just don’t understand. How can you just… sit here when there could be someone out there made to love you?”

Draco’s heart aches again. Draco is made to love Harry. There’s no doubt about that. It’s written into every bone in his body, into every breath he takes, every time he closes his eyes at night and opens them in the morning. And he knows Harry didn’t have the most loving childhood, that Harry longs and longs for what other soulmates have: open, giving love. He wants to give Harry all the love just building in him so bad, like water pressure getting higher and higher behind a dam. Draco’s drowning in it.

Draco finally looks up at Harry for a minute. He has ink on his cheek, the color of his hair. Draco reaches out, as casually as he can manage, and swipes it away with his thumb. He gives Harry an exasperated look, but he’s holding his breath until his hand, still warm and tingling, is safely around his quill once again.

“I’m happy where I am,” he says.

He dips his quill again and moves on.

Harry’s chair screeches away, back to his own desk, where he once more sits on the wrong side. “You could be happier,” Harry says quietly, but Draco pretends not to hear it over the tapping of Harry’s quill.

Dissonant: a type of soulmates in which the bond is Romantic one way and Platonic another way. Commonly featured in classical tragedies. Real, but uncommon.

xxx

“Okay.” Harry kicks his feet up and folds his hands behind his head. He’s wearing deeply unprofessional Muggle clothes—T-shirt and jeans—and Draco has to pull his eyes away from Harry’s forearms. Harry plays too much Quidditch for Draco’s sanity. “Teach it to me, Professor Malfoy. What say you on the subject of soulmates and soulmarks?”

Draco wants to get this right. However he feels about soulmates, he’d like to teach soulmates to the kids as well as he possibly can. He wants them to find the happiness that he aches for. Someone should have it.

And Harry, of course, has volunteered to be Draco’s practice class of one. Anything for you, he said when Draco asked. Entirely playfully, but still.

It’s going to live in Draco’s head all week, along with the smile he gave Draco when he spotted him in Diagon Alley unexpectedly, the way he asked Draco if he’d like to go to dinner after, hands awkwardly in his pockets, since they were both already there. To talk over their lesson plans for feedback. But. Still. Draco lives in a world of but still…

“Get your feet off of my desk.” Draco raises an eyebrow and waits. “Detention, Potter.”

“Eh.” Harry brings his feet down, grinning back unabashedly. “You’re all bark no bite, Malfoy.”

“I’ll show you bite,” Draco mutters. He shoots off a quick Cleaning Charm pointedly and gives his lesson plan one last glance before he folds it neatly into the pocket of his robes. He expects Harry to shoot something back in return, but Harry’s looking at him with flushed cheeks, uncharacteristically unresponsive.

Draco clears his throat. “As you all know, we are all… born with soulmarks.”

Harry winces. Draco winces. This is off to a wonderful start.

As far as Harry Potter knows, he’s special because he’s the only person in history to not die after getting hit by the killing curse. Twice. Draco got another soulmark, a rounded shape right over his heart, during the Battle of Hogwarts. He had thought he knew what it meant: Harry Potter was dead. He’d been so, so happy to find out he was wrong, he thought he might die of it. Now he can’t take off his shirt around Harry either. But Harry’s also special because he is the only person in history to not have a soulmark.

As far as he knows.

Harry’s raising his eyebrows at Draco, mouth tipped up in bemusement.

Draco pulls his gaze from Harry and charms a piece of chalk to write a bulleted list of the types of soulmates. Merlin, this is going to be a breeze to present to the kids. The real battle is the practice round.

“These identify your soulmates, most commonly known as someone you’re romantically destined to be with, with who you will live a happily ever after with—but this isn’t always the case. Sometimes soulmates can be platonic. Sometimes they can be platonic one way and romantic another way. Sometimes they can be unrequited altogether. These last two can be the source of great emotional pain and suffering.”

Harry laughs quietly, leaning forward to prop his chin on his hand, gazing at Draco with exaggerated earnestness. “Are you always this pessimistic with your kids, Professor Malfoy?”

“I’m not—” Draco splutters. “You’re throwing me off. This is just how it is.”

“One might even think you’d already met your soulmate and he was severely disappointing,” Harry jokes. He’s teasing. It’s scary how close and how far he can be from the truth at the same time.

“I was getting to the positives. If I may.”

“Oh, please,” Harry waves a theatrical hand, overly-gracious. “Be my guest.”

Draco fights to keep his expression in control. He wants to smile at Harry. He always wants to smile at Harry. “Behave yourself. However. The most common kind of soul-bond is a requited romantic bond, and it’s very likely your soul-bond is of that type. The wonderful thing about it—” Harry snorts. Draco shoots him a quelling look. Harry beams back at him. “Is that fate will put you into a path of meaningful collision with your soulmate very early on—usually before you’re sixteen. Almost always before you’re twenty—so you don’t have to go searching every last corner of the world for them, if you want to find them.”

“Oh, yes. If you want to find them,” Harry echoes, rolling his eyes. “Unless you just would rather not find the person meant for you.”

“Shut up, Harry.”

“Yes Professor Malfoy. Whatever you say, Professor Malfoy.” Harry’s tipped his chair backwards, balancing on its two back legs. None of Draco’s kids are like this, and Harry knows it—he teases Draco all the time about how he terrifies the children half to death.

“Please be a realistic audience,” Draco groans, letting a tiny grin escape. It can’t be helped; it was fighting too hard to be let out.

Harry hums. He pushes off the wall and sets his chair back on all four feet, his bicep flexing as he makes sure to land gently.

Draco swallows.

He refocuses.

“There’s a common myth that soulmates are extra-special if their soulmarks are in the same place. False. There are no credible accounts of this ever happening—they are always in different places. At least one of the soulmates’ soulmarks will be easily visible: on the hand, face, neck, or forearm. There is a myth that all scars are soulmarks. False. Only very significant scars—near death, emotionally significant, so on—will transfer as a soulmark. That is why scarmarks are so rare.”

“Sharp teaching style,” Harry says quietly.

Draco can tell it’s meant to be teasing, but it’s not exactly coming off right. His heart tugs.

“You don’t… have to do this,” Draco says. “If it’s…” He almost says painful, but that would sound tactless. Difficult?

Harry’s furrowed brow eases, and he smiles. False cheer. Draco can tell. “I’m alright,” he says. “It’s not like I don’t know all this stuff.”

It’s true. These are the basics, and Harry’s done some research on scar-marks. Draco wants to reiterate, but he can tell Harry doesn’t want him to push the point, so he takes a fortifying breath and continues on. He talks about how people can have multiple soulmarks which always all point to the same person—save for some polyamorous people and the rare friendship mark—and these are often scars. How scars are never the first soulmark, because everyone is born with a soulmark.

Almost everyone.

He doesn’t say almost everyone.

But Harry hears it. Draco sees Harry hear it.

“Maybe it’s because you were fated to get that scar,” Draco says, “So you didn’t need a soulmark because you were going to get one so young, it was basically the same thing.”

That’s what he believes, anyway.

But Harry shakes his head. “I hate to mention it, but I’m Harry Potter. And my scar is—” He pushes up his hair with a jerky, forceful hand. “—Prominent. If this was my soulmark, my soulmate would’ve found me by now. Not to mention we’re fated to find our soulmates.”

Soulmarks are a manifestation of magic. Everyone with magical ability knows of Harry Potter. The statement is almost foolproof: it doesn’t account for the possibility that the one with the matching soulmark is Draco Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy happens to not be interested in getting his heart broken.

They have this conversation over and over. They go in circles, but they always end up here.

“Who needs a soulmate, anyway?” Draco says, in attempt to console Harry.

“I’d like one,” Harry says.

Draco hates himself.

xxx

Draco looks up as Harry takes his seat next at Draco’s side in the Great Hall for breakfast, his hair even wilder than it normally is—at night, Draco always swears Harry’s hair can’t get any messier, and then in the morning, it’s even more out of control. It curls every which way, and if Draco hadn’t seen Harry run a comb through his hair every morning when they roomed together, he’d be sure Harry had never met a comb in his life.

“Morning!” Harry says cheerfully, as he always bloody does, serving himself a couple pancakes and double the appropriate amount of syrup for them. “Today’s the day!”

He’d said the same thing last night: they were in their shared office, tired and rubbing at their eyes. Draco didn’t want to go back to his room because he’d have to say goodnight to Harry and he loved late-night Harry, bright eyes, tired smile, stretching his arms up high enough that Draco could see a bit of his stomach. He’s not sure why Harry didn’t tuck in earlier.

But up they were, at eleven at night, both of them done with their work. Tomorrow’s the day, Harry said, with no enthusiasm. Health week, here we come.

I wish you the best of luck, Draco returned, and Harry had laughed, quiet and breathy, leaning over Draco’s desk yet again. Draco forgot how to breathe.

“Draco.” Harry’s head is tipped to the side.

“Hmm?” Draco looks quickly back at his plate, feeling a flush crawl up his neck.

He rubs his eyes, trying to play it off as sleepiness, but it probably doesn’t convince Harry; Harry knows Draco, though not a morning person, forces himself up early enough that he’s fully awake and functioning by the time breakfast rolls around. On the occasion that he spends the night with Draco, Draco shakes him awake, per Harry’s request. Harry hates getting up early even more than Draco does, but he seems to find spending the early morning hours with Draco enjoyable, though why Draco can’t fathom.

“Pass the butter,” Harry says.

“Sorry.” Draco passes the butter. “Are you ready to teach kids how to put a dick into a vagina?”

“Mmm.” Harry looks unflustered. “And a dick into an arsehole. Especially if you really need to shut them up.”

Draco ignores this comment, though his cheeks burn red. Harry’s joking. Friends make jokes. But he’s imagined it too many times for his brain not to go there: Harry, golden-brown skin and nothing over it, his fingers tracing the soulmark on Draco’s hip, his mouth on the soulmark over Draco’s heart.

“Do they really teach gay sex, too?”

“If you peeked at my paper half as much as I peek at yours, you’d know.” Harry passes the butter back. “Have you gotten enough practice yet?”

Another joke. He’s always teasing Draco about “over-preparing” (which is not a real thing).

“Yes,” Draco says.

No.

No he was not.

He realizes this the moment he starts teaching—Harry was right. Dammit. Preparation does not account for what’s actually going to happen in class, which was unforeseen and unprepared for.

In this case, questions.

“Who’s your soulmate, Professor?” asks a Hufflepuff. In their defense, they seem honestly interested in finding out, genuinely curious, which Draco can’t say about all the kids in his class. Some of the Ravenclaws hear the question and immediately start twittering among themselves.

Oh my god, he’s not married, though, right? At twenty-four? Is he dating someone? Imagine Professor Malfoy dating someone.

“I don’t know,” Draco lies.

The class twitters some more.

“Didn’t you say you meet your soulmate before you’re twenty?” a Ravenclaw points out, eyes narrowed.

“Almost always,” Draco corrects stiffly. “Asking about someone’s soulmate can be a rather invasive question. I am going to move on to talking about soulmarks, are you ready?”

No one is brave enough to say no to him, but there are whispers in the back that Draco can hear: I bet it’s Unrequited. Why else would he not want to answer? Maybe it’s Dissonant…

“What does it feel like when you meet your soulmate?” one of the students asks shyly, when Draco’s halfway through the soulmarks. “Don’t you feel something? Do you have to see their soulmark to know?”

Draco remembers the feeling of meeting Harry for the first time. He was cute. Draco was ten; it wasn’t like he was capable of falling madly in love. But he was cute.

“You might feel drawn to them,” Draco answers, picking his words. “The textbook answer is no, you can meet each other as strangers for the first time and part as strangers without knowing it at all. You can feel anything from love to indifference to hate for them and end up falling in love with them in the end.”

Or you can be in love with them from the moment it’s possible to. From the moment you’re capable of it. From the moment you know them well enough for it to be love. You can adore them until then. You can always want them from the moment you meet.

That happens, too.

“But you can often feel like they matter to you an irrationally significant amount.”

The students seem momentarily placated by this answer, and they settle enough for Draco to continue the part on soulmarks without having to threaten anyone with detention.

And then of course. What he should’ve seen coming from the very beginning.

The scar section.

The same Hufflepuff from before, curious blue eyes, skinny arm in the air, asks what the whole class is trying to ask: “Who’s Harry Potter’s soulmate, then?”

“We don’t know,” Draco says. Is it a lie? He’s using we as in the public, and the public does not know. His fingers itch to trace the shape of Harry’s scar under his robes.

“If I was Harry Potter’s soulmate, there’s no way I’d keep it a secret,” one of the Ravenclaws says. He’s one of the loud ones. Draco doesn't like him too much. “Why don’t they just come forward? The world would go wild.”

“Harry Potter is not a prize to be claimed,” Draco says sharply. “Professor Potter is a person, and if he wants to keep his soulmate a secret, that’s his business. Especially since the press is so hungry for any scrap of news about him.”

“So you think he’s in a secret relationship,” says a boy in the corner. “He’s already found his soulmate.”

No and no, Draco thinks. “I don’t know.”

“You’re his best friend!” objects another kid. Apparently, Draco’s intimidation does not apply where Harry Potter is being discussed. “Wouldn’t you know?”

“You’ll have to ask Professor Potter.”

“What does it feel like,” asks the Hufflepuff in the front, “when you get to be, you know, together with your soulmate?”

Draco thinks for a moment she’s talking about sex, and he’s about to say, again, You’ll have to ask Proffessor Potter, because Harry would absolutely have his head.

“Like, dating.”

“Oh,” says Draco. “I don’t know.” This time it’s actually true. The soulmark over his heart aches. Or maybe it’s his heart that’s aching. Same difference. “You probably feel really, really happy.”

xxx

Draco takes his lunch in his classroom, because he always has papers to grade, potions to bottle, cauldrons to clean, kids in detention to watch over, and the like.

But Harry usually comes by, carrying a plate full of his own lunch—and “lunch” is a loose term that, according to Harry, encompasses an unspeakable amount of sweets for a midday meal—and chats with Draco. About lesson plans, about students who are doing very well (or students that aren’t doing so well, but only when Draco has no one in detention to hear), about what sort of quills Draco uses and how is his mother doing and about the scarf Harry saw in the shop that reminded him of Draco and about will Draco come to dinner with him again, it’s been ages since they’ve eaten out together and eating out is no fun alone.

It’s one of Draco’s favorite parts of the day. The absolute favorite remains after classes are over, and he can sit with Harry in his chambers or in Harry’s and do… whatever. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes they play card games, or chess, or anything else, all of which Draco consistently wins. Sometimes they simply exist in the same space, and it’s so nice, Draco ends up staying the night because he doesn’t want to go back to his own rooms.

But lunch, lunch is a close second.

Today, though, Harry doesn’t come in.

Sometimes he doesn’t.

It’s fine.

Harry’s the brightest part of Draco’s life, but it’s fine. The feeling isn’t mutual and the thing is, Draco doesn’t even mind because he can’t begrudge Harry Ron or Hermione or Teddy or the students that Harry genuinely adores. He can’t begrudge Harry anything. Harry should have it all.

Draco misses Harry like a limb, like an internal organ, when he isn’t there. He makes sure to always be in his classroom, so he doesn’t miss a day with Harry, so Harry knows where to find him.

Part of this means he doesn’t go looking for Harry, or else they might just end up looking for each other.

At the end of the day, it becomes rather clear Draco should have gone looking for Harry.

“What’s wrong?” is how Draco greets Harry when he finds him.

Harry’s sitting in an armchair in his quarters, staring into the fire with this unhappy look on his face that breaks Draco in two. His shoes are up, and he’s brought his feet up on the armchair, his arms wrapped around his knees. He looks like a kid.

He doesn’t look up when Draco comes in, but he looks up when Draco speaks. “Nothing.”

“Harry, you weren’t at dinner. The only other time you’ve missed dinner is on Halloween.” Draco kicks the armchair lightly. “Put your knees down.”

He’s got a plate for each of them.

“Oh,” Harry says, something warm coloring his voice. He puts his knees down and accepts the plate. “Draco—thank you.”

Draco would’ve given Harry a respectable meal, but he thought perhaps now was not the time to push his proper-eating agenda on Harry, so Harry’s plate has far too much food, and much of it is sweet. It gets a real smile out of Harry, and Draco thinks he could burst. He could fly. He could kiss Harry right on the mouth.

“You’re welcome,” Draco says, careful not to let his heart out into his voice. “I’m the best.”

“You are,” Harry agrees, so earnestly that Draco has to clutch his metal fork tightly enough to hurt to stop himself from doing—something. “These are my favorites.”

“Yes.” Draco feels uncomfortably warm and fluttery inside. He brushes past it as best as he can. “What’s wrong?”

Harry shakes his head, curls tumbling, and pokes his mashed potatoes. “Stupid.”

No, Draco thinks. No, it’s not.

Harry does this a lot. Thinks what’s upsetting him is stupid. Thinks that being upset is stupid. As if he isn’t entitled to feeling discontent just because some people have it worse, as if he isn’t entitled to feeling discontent because he’s always been upset about big things before: impending doom, abuse, Death Eaters. Voldemort. He doesn’t know how to deal with the little things, things that don’t have to do with physical harm.

But it’s not stupid. It’s just different.

“Probably, yeah,” Draco says lightly. “Tell me.”

Harry laughs quietly, his gaze affectionate. In the light of the fire and the last scraps of the sunset through the window, his eyes are electric green. “Same thing as always,” he says finally. “I just don’t usually get asked flat out so much, you know?”

Of course. Draco has been an idiot.

“The kids have been asking you who…?” Draco trails off. Harry doesn’t like talking about his soulmate—or rather, his lack of one. His perceived lack of one. He likes to talk about Draco’s soulmate, because Draco has a soulmate, and he wants Draco to go find him and fall in love and get married and grow old. Because he wants Draco to be happy, he says, and Draco can tell he means it. There’s no possible way in the entire world that you can be more firmly friendzoned. “They’ve asked a lot?”

Harry’s silent for a moment, looking at the fire.

It’s your fault, Draco thinks. It’s your fault, you stupid coward.

And it’s true. Draco’s whole being hurts because of it, every inch of him: if Harry thought he did have a soulmate, if he knew, he wouldn’t feel… like this. But then he’d pity Draco, and he’d feel bad, and their friendship would fracture—it happens to nearly all Dissonant soulmates.

And Draco has always been selfish.

“Do you ever think,” Harry says, in this thoughtful, detached tone that makes Draco’s stomach go cold. He doesn’t answer Draco’s question—the answer is obvious. “When I came back the second time, maybe I wasn’t meant to. Maybe I wasn’t meant to match anybody. Because I was supposed to die.”

Unspeakably, horrifically, impossibly selfish.

“You weren’t meant to die,” Draco says. His voice shakes. He doesn’t try to fix it. “Don’t ever fucking say that. You’re not some fucked up mistake of the universe—” He’s leaning so far forward in his chair across from Harry that his plate is about to fall off of his lap. He sets it on the floor and kneels in front of Harry, right in his line of sight. When Draco meets Harry’s gaze, Harry drops his eyes. “You’re Harry. You’re a person. Just like everybody else.”

Harry’s eyes fix on Draco’s face again, and Draco realizes they’re… very close. Harry raises his eyebrows just a little, giving Draco an incredulous look.

“Not really like everyone else,” he says. “I’m an orphan, survived a Killing Curse, and I was abused all my childhood. I was destined to kill a great dark wizard, and he was in my mind growing up, and I almost got killed a dozen times, and then I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to die in only a couple minutes, only to end up coming back after surviving another Killing Curse.”

So you’re the strongest person to ever live, Draco thinks.

“So I’m off-the-charts fucked up,” Harry says. “Maybe that’s just too much for someone to love.” And the way he says it, Draco can tell he’s been thinking it for a long time. A long, long time.

“As if.” Draco fights to keep his voice from cracking. His soulmarks scream at him. It feels like the skin under his soulmarks is peeling off. I don’t belong here, they’re saying. “You’re not special.”

Harry laughs, a short, gasping sound. “Yeah, thanks, Malfoy.”

But Draco hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t done anything but hurt Harry, over and over, every minute of the day. And he knows he’s temporarily thrown Harry’s mind off of the misery, not healed it.

It’s still there, in Harry’s mind.

Maybe that’s just too much for someone to love.

You’re more wrong than you could possibly imagine, Draco thinks.

But of course, he doesn’t say it.

xxx

“Anyone who asks Professor Potter about his soulmate—anything to do with his soulmate—gets detention with me,” Draco tells every class that comes through his classroom for the next couple days, but he has no way of actually enforcing it, and talking to Harry proves that it’s not working particularly well.

Harry puts on a bright, fake smile when he teaches, but when he returns to their rooms, his shoulders slump and his smile falls off his face as if it’s made of lead. “Stop it,” he tells Draco. “It just makes them more curious.”

Draco agrees to stop. “I don’t…” he begins carefully.

He just wants Harry to stop being so sad. He’d give anything, do anything to make Harry even the tiniest bit happier.

Almost anything.

“I don’t understand why your soulmate matters to you so much,” he says finally. Instead of his usual who needs a soulmate. “You’re obviously loved. Granger… Weasley… The girl Weasley, their whole family, really… What does it matter if there’s one more person somewhere out there who could love you too?”

I love you.

Harry’s got his feet up on his own desk this time, staring at the grey ceiling. “When I was growing up,” he says, slow and careful. “My aunt and uncle adored Dudley.”

Draco has heard this story before.

“I thought… I thought. Growing up like that—I didn’t make very many friends. Didn’t talk to many people.”

Because people were bullied off of talking to him, but Harry doesn’t say it. Harry doesn’t really talk about bullying with Draco. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why not.

“So I always thought it was normal, or something close to it. I thought, okay, there are people who are loved and there are people who are not. And I wasn’t.”

The cold feeling in Draco’s gut comes back full force, clawing icily up his spine, closing fingers around Draco’s heart.

Harry drops his feet back down to the ground. Thump. “Now it’s like that all over again. Except this time, I know it’s not even close to normal. I’m the only one.”

The fingers around Draco’s heart squeeze tight.

Draco’s frozen in his seat. Stuck behind his desk. Just… stuck.

And Harry, he’s hurting.

Harry. Is. Hurting.

He’s pretending like he doesn’t hurt, and Merlin, that makes it even worse—he smiles and shrugs it off and teases Draco, and sometimes he’s really good at it, throwing Draco off track, so much so that it’s not until Draco’s alone in his bed that he realizes they never actually finished their soulmates conversation. For two people who hate talking about soulmates, they talk about soulmates kind of a lot. It’s a subject they circle back to over and over and over, as if drawn in by some magnetic force.

“No you’re not,” Draco says. Before he thinks.

He should have thought.

“I am, yeah.” Harry looks over at Draco, gaze questioning. “Have you heard of any other magical person born without a soulmark?”

“You have…” Draco swallows and looks down, watching the tip of his quill make a bigger and bigger ink spot on the paper he’s supposed to be grading. He hasn’t been processing what’s on this student’s page for a while now, but he can’t look at Harry while he speaks. He can’t. He’s not even sure that he’s going to say it until he says it: “You have a soulmark.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, though he makes this sort of huffy breath sound, like he’s not sure if he’s supposed to laugh, so he’s doing it half-way. Draco understands why he would be confused.

Nothing about what Draco’s saying makes logical sense.

The truth probably hasn’t occurred to Harry, not once. Because why would Draco be this… heartless? The Draco Malfoy that Draco has tried so hard to be after the war would never do this—but this is the one thing. The one thing, he just. He couldn’t do it.

He’s doing it now. Five years into the best friendship he’s ever had.

Somehow, he figures out how to stand, using both arms to steady himself against his desk, heart pounding. It feels like his whole body is trembling. “I… should show you something.”

Harry’s looking at him. Watching him.

As Draco slips off his robe.

Underneath Draco’s robe, he’s wearing a crisp white button down and a pair of black trousers, every day, always. Harry teases him about them—and about how he won’t so much as take off his shirt to change in anyone’s presence.

Draco tugs up the hem of his shirt from where it’s tucked neatly into the waist of his trousers, his fingers careful, his movements almost inappropriately steady, as if he’s acting on autopilot.

The top half of Harry’s lightning scar comes into view.

He pushes down just one side of his trousers and pants, enough to expose the rest of the scar and nothing more, and then… then he just stands there. The whole of Harry’s scar imprinted on his hip, the evidence that Draco was made to love Harry Potter, that Harry Potter was made to be loved by Draco visible. Visible to Harry Potter.

For the first time, the only time, in his five years of friendship with Harry, for the first time in his ten years of loving Harry, for the first time in his fourteen years of wanting Harry, for the first time in his twenty-four years alive.

Harry’s face is blank, completely, utterly devoid of expression, as if the message his eyes are sending him has simply not yet reached his brain.

Draco cannot speak. He cannot breathe. He cannot move. He is still, in the center of the room, his robe on the chair behind his desk, his fingers still clenched around the fabric of his shirt and the fabric of his trousers, his soulmark still out. He can feel his heartbeat like it’s a living thing trapped inside his chest, trying to break its way out, pounding against the walls as hard as it possibly can.

Harry runs a hand halfway through his hair and fists it in his curls, pulling. He doesn’t look like he’s thinking about it; it’s just something his body is doing. It’s the first movement either of them have made in a long, long moment.

“Huh.” That’s what Harry says. Huh. It comes out strangled and hollow. And then, “Wow. Okay.” Hurt, angry, scraping.

Draco has spent his whole life watching Harry, learning as well as anyone can learn how to read him. And Harry is on the edge of a breakdown, the edge of an explosion, he is seething and bursting and screaming inside. His eyes are fiery and his body is taut, his mouth a tight, pressed line.

Draco wants, aches to say anything, do anything, anything, anything at all. Anything truthful. But he tucks his shirt back in and picks up his robe from the back of his chair, still steady, and puts it on. Is there anything he can say that will help? Is there anything he could possibly say that could make it worse than it already is?

Harry shoves back from his desk violently, his chair screeching against the floor.

Draco winces.

“I’ll go, then,” Harry says.

“I’m sorry,” Draco says helplessly. It’s all he has. “Harry, I’m so so—”

“It’s fine,” Harry snaps back so harshly, he’s almost growling. He’s standing now, shoving his papers into a bag almost hard enough to rip them. “I’m sure you have your reasons for not telling me all this time that I’m not broken—”

“You’re not broken,” Draco gets in, his heart breaking and breaking and breaking. The rims of Harry’s eyes are getting red and wet, his jaw clenching tight. “I never said—”

“You let me think it.” Harry gets in Draco’s face, his bag all packed, his voice shaking. “You stood there and you listened to me research, you listened to me wonder and you listened to me convince myself that I’m not—that I didn’t deserve—”

Deserve?

“Deserve?” Draco echoes.

Deserve was never on the table.

Deserve was never, never, never on the table.

Harry deserves every single last thing in the entire world, every smile, every spark of happiness, every moment of hope and of joy and satisfaction and content.

“Love,” Harry practically shouts in Draco’s face, as if it were obvious. His green eyes are wild and his cheeks shine with tears. Draco thinks he should be crying, but he’s numb. He’s numb to it entirely. “Deserve love.”

Harry deserves every single ounce of love every person on the face of the earth has the capacity to give.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Draco murmurs, barely getting it out around the lump in his throat. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

Harry laughs, loud and harsh and humorless, and steps back, heading toward the door with his papers in his bag. “It would’ve hurt less if you’d told me at the beginning you were my soulmate and you didn’t want me than to find out after all these years and all the things I said—”

“Didn’t want you?” Draco’s shouting now, too, his voice shrill, fighting to be heard over what Harry’s saying.

Harry turns. His expression is so hurt, so pained, it stamps any last pieces of Draco’s heart to dust. “Didn’t want me, yeah—who needs a soulmate, huh? Don’t tell me you’re going to try to spin this one—”

“Harry—” Draco thought this was obvious, that this was a given, that this information was a package deal that came with the soulmark. That came with Draco’s helpless smiles and his endless flushing and the way he can’t help looking at Harry as if Harry hung the moon. “I do want you.”

Harry’s expression twists. He shoves his way out of the office door. “Oh, fuck you, Malfoy.”

“No—” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Draco chases after him, out the door, seizing the sleeve of Harry’s robe and holding onto it as if it’s a lifeline. It is. “I do.”

Draco needs Harry to know, needs Harry to understand, needs Draco Malfoy loves Harry Potter to be pressed into every inch of Harry’s body, his mind, his soul the way it’s pressed into Draco’s. Something that is part of the world, the way water is essential to life and the sky is blue and the way Harry’s hair looks in the mornings is different every time.

Draco must look like a maniac to Harry: hair in disarray, hands scrambling to press against Harry’s warm cheeks, still wet, his breath coming in gasps.

“I do,” Draco says again, forcing Harry to look at him, as if he could somehow get Harry to believe him with a little eye contact.

Harry’s sharp green eyes flash at him. There are tears caught in his eyelashes. I’ve hurt you so bad. Draco can feel tears start to sting the back of his throat now, too.

“I do, you have to believe me. I love you more than you can imagine, I—” He sucks in a breath, and then another. “I can’t even begin to—there are no words for it. Harry.” He presses his heart, every last piece of it, into Harry’s name. “I’m out of my mind in love with you. You don’t have to—forgive me. For not telling you, I—”

“I’m not going to,” Harry swears, and Draco can see in Harry’s eyes that Harry means it. And he knows, he hopes, he prays that that will change. He’ll wait. However long it takes, he’ll wait.

“Don’t, then,” Draco says, and his voice breaks. “But you have to understand—tell me you hear what I’m saying. I love you, I love you like I was made to love you—because I was. And I do.” He can feel his tears, running hot down his face. “Believe me, please.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, then?” Harry demands. If he believes Draco, he doesn’t show it. “All this time, you knew. It’s on my fucking forehead, Draco.” He shoves Draco’s hands off of his face and pushes his curls off of his forehead again, and there it is, Draco’s soulmark. Harry’s scar. “That’s so fucking unfair.”

It is. It is unfair.

If it was the other way around, if Draco’s was visible and Harry’s wasn’t, Harry would’ve told Draco. He has honor. He’s less selfish by leagues.

Draco has nothing for Harry. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m sorry. I know.”

“Why?” They’re lucky it’s late at night, and most of the teachers are probably asleep. Draco is a loud crier.

“Why?” he repeats back at Harry, his voice breaking again, “Do you know what happens to Dissonant soulmates, Harry? It breaks them, knowing they can’t be what the other person wants from them.”

Harry’s speaking before Draco even finishes his sentence. “You just said you were in love with me.”

“I am! You have to believe me—”

“We’re not fucking Dissonant!”

...No.

It can’t be.

Harry… Draco Malfoy?

Draco sucks in a breath to speak, but nothing comes out.

Not. Dissonant.

It doesn’t make sense.

There’s only one thing that can mean, and it can’t mean… he can’t mean…

“I’m going to bed,” Harry says abruptly, and he turns on his heel.

Draco moves to follow, but he’s distracted and empty and it feels like the whole world is upside down; there’s no way he can chase after Harry.

Not Dissonant.

xxx

“Harry.”

Draco has waited.

And he has waited.

And he has waited and waited and waited.

Days turned into weeks turned into months, and all Draco and Harry did was pretend they were just colleagues. Eat, teach, eat, teach, eat, sleep, repeat. Harry doesn’t bring Draco lunch. Draco doesn’t go to Harry’s quarters to coexist.

Draco aches and he aches and he aches.

Harry looks miserable. He has always looked miserable, every time Draco looks his way, and Draco has been boring holes into the back of Harry’s head for months.

“You thought we were Dissonant,” Harry says, not looking up from the papers he’s grading on his desk. Draco’s sitting on the other side of his desk, peeking at his paper. Leaning close. Hoping against hope, acting against what he knows he deserves. “You thought I didn’t…”

Fake, light laughter at the back of Draco’s throat; an easy quip is on the tip of Draco’s tongue. Instead, he says quietly, “How could you?”

Harry’s restless tapping stops. He puts his quill down and—Merlin, dear Merlin—looks up with those electric green eyes of his. Draco can see the familiar shape of Harry’s scar peeking out from under his curls. “I was… what did you say? Out of my mind in love with you.”

“Was?” Draco echoes. He’s falling apart under Harry’s gaze, his hands trembling on the desk. So are Harry’s.

“I am…” Harry trails off. “Pissed to hell at you.”

Draco has learned Harry inside and out and back and front. He knows, the way he knows that the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a but to that sentence.

“But I am,” Harry says. “Still. Present tense.” He says it to his paper. He says it quietly, as if after all the time he’s had to process how Draco feels, after months of Draco tiptoeing around Harry and making it clear, so clear that Harry could ask him to swallow a Muggle bomb and he’d do it, Harry is still afraid to say it.

“I do too,” Draco says immediately. He can’t help it, he has to say it, he feels full to bursting with the words. “I love you.”

Harry’s eyes fix on Draco’s face. “I love you,” he says, as if trying out the words.

Draco drags in a shaky breath and lets it out, his heart thundering in his chest. The edge of the desk bites into his hand as he grips it too hard. I’m sorry, he wants to say, but Harry has heard it hundreds of times, enough that he’s not sure the meaning of the words even register in Harry’s mind anymore.

Instead: “Harry.”

Harry’s throat bobs, his chair screeches, his face gets closer. Unfathomably close. “Draco.” He says it again. “I love you.”

The kiss is as fleeting, gentle, Harry’s hands pressing warmly over where Draco’s fingers clutch at the edge of the desk for support. Kissing Harry isn’t a wild, screaming affair. It’s quiet and sure, like a promise. There’s a pounding on Draco’s chest again, but it doesn't feel like his heart is trying to escape—it feels like his heart is cheering.

A couple weeks later, Harry tells Draco he’s been asked who his soulmate is again. “Secret,” he answered.

“Only if you want it to be,” Draco says.

By the next day, Draco and Harry have made international wizarding news. They decline to comment. They sleep in the same bed for the first time since everything and wake up curled around each other, their bodies fitting like puzzle pieces. As if they were cut to fit. Which, of course, they were. Instead of sorry, Draco says things that he hopes make Harry happy, things he means with all his heart that Harry needs to hear.

“I have this one,” he says, tracing Harry’s scar on his hip. Harry reaches out and runs his fingers along it, so lightly that it sends shivers up Draco’s back. “The night when you first got part of Voldemort’s soul lodged in you.” He pulls up his shirt, traces over his heart. “I have this one. The night you not hit by the Curse again, and lost the part of Voldemort’s soul you had. It makes me love you more, the things you’ve been through. I’m made to love all the versions of you that there are.”

“Even…” Harry’s fingers trace the chest scar. “The fractured versions of me?”

“None of you is fractured,” Draco says quietly.

And Harry smiles.

Draco would sell his soul to see him do it again, but he doesn’t have to. Harry grabs Draco’s hand and smiles, he takes Draco to dinner and he smiles, he catches Draco’s eye while they’re grading and he smiles.

“I understand why you kept it from me,” Harry says one day. “If you thought we were Dissonant. I just… was so obvious.”

Draco feels himself flush. “Say it,” he demands.

“We’re Romantic soulmates,” Harry says, no small amount of pleasure in his words. “You were right—I’m not special. We’re a dime a dozen.”

Draco has never been so glad to be ordinary.

“So?” The Hufflepuff girl asks Draco in class, her smile soft. “What’s it feel like, being together with your soulmate?”

Draco shrugs, smiling without thinking about it. The class twitters. “I was right,” he says. “I’m just… Happy. Really, really happy.”