cum te amo tota anima mea; or, i love you with all of my soul

Draco Malfoy is curious.

He has known practically from birth of the existence of soulmates, those who complete you, make your heart whole. His parents are each other's, Auntie Bella and Uncle Rodolphus too.

Even Uncle Sev has one, even if he doesn't like to talk about her.

Draco has a clock of his own, counting down to a date far, far away to his five-year-old mind, some sixteen years in the future.

He hopes his soulmate is Pansy. She's full of adventures, always with scraped knees and messy hair, to the constant detriment of her mother. To a quiet boy like Draco, she seems alive in a way his house, full of empty rooms and cold splendor, rarely sees.

Draco wishes that whoever they are, his soulmate has that same sparkle of perpetual wonder in their eyes that Pansy does.

Draco Malfoy is angry.

How dare that nasty Potter brat show such a blatant disregard for what Draco knows to be the order of things? He just wanted to save him from himself - associating with Weasleys is social suicide, everyone knows that.

It doesn't help that he knows that when he writes home for the first time later tonight, his father is going to pace his study for a long time, silently fuming at his son's incompetence at what should have been so easy, Draco, Merlin, how could you possibly bungle up something that simple, pathetic, honestly, how did I ever get so unlucky to get saddled with you as a son, the Dark Lord-

Draco flops back onto his new bed in the dungeons, seething with resentment and not crying at all. His clock has a little over ten years left, and he still doesn't know who his soulmate is, not that it matters-

Crabbe shifts heavily in his sleep, startling Draco from his thoughts. He rolls over and covers himself in the heavy green comforter, losing himself to sleep.

Draco Malfoy is not panicking. Not at all.

It's just that how dare Potter keep looking at Cho Chang with that dopey expression, as if she (that boring sap of a Ravenclaw with dreadful hair, honestly) had managed to hang the moon without anyone else noticing.

And he wasn't at all happy that Pansy tried to kiss him last week at Hogsmeade (not one bit, even if her dress robes did set off her eyes), even if Theo and Greg would eagerly murder him for the same opportunity. Not that there is anything wrong with Pansy, it's only that whenever he ...thinks about ...kissing, there's always green eyes and golden, muscled limbs, and-

Okay, so there may be the ever-so-slight possibility that Draco doesn't like Pansy because he doesn't like women like that. Which is entirely irrelevant and has no bearing on his future. Because he's still going to marry a nice, rich, pureblooded girl from a nice, rich, pureblooded family, and have nice, rich, pureblooded sons to carry on the Malfoy line. No matter how good Potter looks in a Quidditch uniform.

Draco is fifteen, his clock is constantly ticking down to somewhen, a little less than six years away, and Merlin why doesn't he know-

But Blaise is calling him, and he turns away after one last lingering look at Potter's messy shock of hair.

Draco Malfoy is terrified.