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“Jamie Potter doesn’t have anything on her wrist.”
Lily rolled her eyes at her roommate. She and Mary were lingering over breakfast in the nearly empty Great Hall on a gloomy Saturday. “That’s impossible. Everyone has a soul mark on their wrist. That’s just—”
“I’m not lying. Next time you see her, look at her wrist. I swear to you, it’s blank.”
“Mary, we’ve lived with Jamie for six years now. There’s no way that she’s been walking around with a blank wrist this whole time.”
“That’s just what I was thinking! I’m sure she had something there before, and now whatever it was is definitely gone. Her wrist is blank, I’m telling you!”
Lily huffed and refused to continue the conversation on the grounds that it was perfectly ridiculous, but she couldn’t help the sudden surge of confusion and—what, was she upset about this? Surely there was no reason to be upset over Jamie Potter’s soul mark, because what did that have to do with Lily?
It was rude to ask about other people’s soul marks. Lily had discovered this on her first train to Hogwarts, when she’d asked the first two people she met about their marks, and found that she received nothing but glares in answer.
So when she came back to the dormitory early that night and saw Jamie sitting on her bed, carefully clipping the twigs on her broom, Lily glanced curiously at the girl’s wrist.
It was not blank. Every homework assignment they’d been given that day was scrawled there. The text crawled up her forearm. (Lily stopped herself just before her gaze could travel up Jamie’s chaser-trained bicep. She congratulated herself on the achievement.) The soft skin on Jamie’s wrist wasn’t blank—in the place of a soul mark, there was a small sketch of a flower.
A lily.
It’s just a coincidence, Evans. Get your shit together.
A LILY.
She didn’t manage to look away fast enough this time, and a smirk unfurled on Jamie’s face. (It was unfair, really, that she could look like that and also direct that expression at Lily.)
“Alright, Evans?”
“I was just admiring your homework planner.”
“Oh yeah." She grinned a little sheepishly. "I ran out of parchment and thought I’d save the last bit for notes.”
“Oh! Well I have extra if you need it,” said Lily, and before she could think better of it, she was grabbing a sheaf of parchment and handing it to her.
“Thanks, Evans.” Jamie’s smile had softened, and Lily could see the gold in her hazel eyes. She glanced away, and her gaze found the flower on Jamie’s wrist again.
“Jamie,” she said, and it came out in a whisper, “what happened to your soul mark?”
Jamie looked down at her wrist, and when she met Lily’s eyes again her ears were bright red under her wild black hair. “I vanished it this summer.”
“Really? Why?”
Jamie leaned her broom gently against one of the bed posts, and gestured for Lily to sit. She did, far too close. Their shoulders brushed. She wanted to touch Jamie’s wrist, to trace the lily there, to put her own hand in Jamie’s and—
“I just didn’t want it there anymore. It’s such a stupid thing. You’re born forced to know when your soulmate will die. It’s horrible. And I just—I don’t want to think about who’s going to have to die because I loved them.”
“I’ve never thought of it that way,” said Lily, frowning. “But whoever your soulmate is, they’re not going to die because you love them. It’s just a clue about who they are, isn’t it?”
“And you’ll know that someone was your soulmate when they die on the right day? What a load of rubbish. How many people live their whole lives after the date has passed, never knowing who it was? What difference does it make?”
“It doesn’t, you’re right. It’s a stupid thing. I hate my number too.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. It’s too soon. Just a few years from now. I hate thinking of it.”
Jamie took her left hand, covering the little number that had been etched on Lily’s wrist for as long as she could remember. “Mine too. It was awful to see the date come closer and closer. Fuck the soul mark.”
Lily smiled. “Fuck the soul mark,” she repeated.
“I think,” said Jamie, Lily was surprised to hear a tremble in the voice that was usually confident to the point of arrogance, “that all we can do is choose who we love. And not wait for terrible things to happen to tell us whether one person is our intended mate. That’s rubbish. We should choose who we want.”
“Nobody gets to choose who they love,” said Lily softly.
“Are you in love with someone?” said Jamie, and Lily thought she heard something like sadness there.
“I dunno. Maybe.”
“And you would choose differently? If you had a choice?”
Lily hesitated for a long moment. It would be more practical, she supposed, to love someone who was a boy. But she looked at Jamie now, with her brow furrowed anxiously, her impossible hair in a messy knot on her head with her wand stuck through it, her toes, nails painted scarlet and gold, peeking out from her pajama bottoms—and Lily thought that if she could sit here and look at Jamie forever, that would be enough.
“No, I wouldn’t choose differently,” said Lily, leaning closer, nudging Jamie’s shoulder with her own.
“That’s what I mean, then. Maybe it’s all written in our fate or whatever, but we get to choose to be with the people we love.”
And when Jamie turned to look at her, their faces inches apart, Lily couldn’t help but lean closer still. “You’re right. I’d rather make my choices than live in fear of what might happen.”
“Yeah.” Jamie’s voice was a whisper, and Lily felt rather than heard the word. She brushed her finger over Jamie’s hand, and she had to ask.
“On your wrist. Is that—?”
“A lily. Because I—because you're—”
"Because of me?"
Jamie nodded, and the movement made their noses brush.
Lily's heart was thundering, her stomach leaping, and she wanted to kiss the girl in front of her more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. Without looking away from Jamie, she pulled her wand from her robes, pointed it at her own wrist, and vanished the number there. Fuck the soul mark.