[HPxTR|LV] The Stain On My Skin

stained

Everyone had soulmates, his primary school teacher explained. It meant that there was someone special out there for you - for only you - and they'd love you no matter what. Harry rather liked the sound of that, but he hoped desperately that he would be enough for his soulmate - that Mrs Meadows was telling the truth and that whoever had his words stained on their skin would be happy to have Harry. That they wouldn't mind that he was a freak. Or that he still hadn't learnt how to tie his shoelaces properly.

Dudley wasted no time on tugging on Aunt Petunia's sleeve come home-time, badgering her about his soulmate – 'Who is she? Will she be pretty?' – ignoring the tuts and titters from the other mothers in the playground, and so Harry hung back, staring at the green words on his arm – the ink that flowed across his skin, from the crook of his elbow to the base of his palm, the familiar letters but the strange, confusing words.

"Foreign. Or gibberish. Makes sense, doesn't it boy? Freaks tend to stick together, eh?" Vernon had laughed, when Harry had asked him and Aunt Petunia one night about the words. That surely – as a soulmarked couple themselves – they would understand his need to make sense of such strange words. Despite Vernon's harsh – true – words, Harry had information. He could work with foreign. Or gibberish. Or even another freak, and that thought was perhaps more comforting than Vernon had intended – that there was someone else like him.

The school nurse had squinted at his arm, as if expecting the letters to jump around and rearrange themselves to something more palatable to the English tongue. "Nevermind," she said brusquely, holding Harry's arm in a firm grip as he struggled not to squirm, "at least you'll know who your soulmate is. Others aren't so lucky."

Harry nodded, eyes unconsciously drifting over to the 'Got the time, luv?' that marched along her collarbone. If the nurse noticed his stares, she didn't mention it, instead moving to stick a plaster onto Harry's knee, which he'd scraped (running from Dudley) and he was made to promise to be more careful next time.

(Be even faster next time.)

No disillusions that there wouldn't be a next time.

He wondered sometimes, what his words meant. When he was locked in his cupboard and the bulb was flickering, in those brief moments of darkness – when he couldn't see his hand in front of his own face – he could swear that the letters glowed – a bright, luminous green, and he felt himself tracing the loops of the 'a's and the sharp upward spike of the 'k' and the 'd's with his fingers, mesmerised.

He wondered, more than once, what sort of language it was. Whether it was Hebrew, or French, or perhaps a language spoken by people from far off, eastern countries where there was sand instead of grass and people travelled on the backs of camels.

In the end, he didn't mind. He'd love his soulmate no matter what - if they were foreign, mad, or barely able to string a sentence together. He'd be special to them, and they to him. He promised that – to them, to himself, to a future that only manifested in his dreams.

But what strange words. It was like the nurse said – at least he'd know who his soulmate was. He'd be sure to remember if anyone said that to him.

Avada Kedavra. So odd... but beautiful in its own way, Harry privately thought.