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Oliver Wood woke up slowly, not opening his eyes just yet. It felt like a Hospital Wing bed, and it certainly smelled like a Hospital Wing bed, so by all odds he was probably in the Hospital Wing. Which meant Quidditch injury, since he didn’t really end up here for other things. Which meant they might have lost.
Groaning, he tried to sit up, still with his eyes closed, fumbling for the magical button on the side of the bed that raised it to the desired height. He tested each limb for functionality, determined that everything seemed to be working, and finally opened his eyes.
Staring at him from the end of his bed, looking rather uncomfortable beneath her no-nonsense veneer, was Madame Pomfrey. She was holding a clipboard and seemed to be mid-check, but now seemed to be studying him with slight fascination. He stared right back at her, and then fought and lost to the urge to look down at himself and see what she was seeing. Nothing out of the ordinary, although the gowns she always put him in were getting worse every time.
But then his eyes were drawn to a darting movement on his right arm, and he quickly turned it over to study it. There, bouncing around the underside of his forearm, was a small red Quaffle, no bigger than a Sickle and moving fast.
Oliver felt himself flush. A soulmark? Where the bloody hell had a soulmark come from? He hadn’t had one this morning, he had known for sure, because after he’d finally had a conversation with that cute Hufflepuff, he’d checked everywhere. No mark. And now--this. It was undeniably a soulmark, because they only appeared on your wand arm, and to get any other sort of tattoo there was at best in bad taste and at worst, a crime. But who--
He tried to think back to the game. Gryffindor versus Slytherin, the most contentious game of the year, and the stands had been stuffed and screaming. He remembered trying desperately to block Slytherin’s Chasers--they were rather good this year--and thinking they were so close to winning, just one more goal and then the Snitch--and then blackness. Someone had collided with him, obviously a disgusting bit of cheating, obviously a foul, who had it been? Oh.
Oliver looked back up at the Mediwitch, this time with disbelief and horror, and then glanced around the Hospital Wing, his eyes finally landing on the boy in the bed next to him, who was looking intently at his hands in his lap and nowhere else.
Marcus Flint, the rotten cheat, had he made Gryffindor lose? What had he--Oliver stopped as he saw Flint wince. Something about that wince made something in his chest twinge, and that hinted at something too strange to even think about. He looked back at Madame Pomfrey with desperation, and this time she took mercy on him and spoke.
“Well, boys, now that you’re both awake, I’ll explain the situation,” she said calmly, too calmly in Oliver’s opinion. Why was she always so bloody calm about everything?
“As you both have noticed, in addition to your injuries on the Quidditch pitch today, you have each developed a soulmark. Given the timing and the--theme--” she paused, and Oliver flicked his eyes over to Flint’s arm. A small golden Snitch was flying around his arm. Oliver felt his stomach drop a little more toward his knees.
“I would tend to believe they are connected to each other, although only you two can know that for sure,” Madame Pomfrey finished.
“How--” Oliver blurted. He had meant to ask ‘How could he and I be soulmates, this Slytherin who I’ve never talked to?’, but could only get out that much.
“As you know, Mr. Wood, for a soulmark to appear a strong moment of connection must occur.”
At that, Oliver burst out laughing. Flint, on the other bed, jerked his head toward the sound, staring at him with emotionless eyes, before dropping them back down to the blankets again. Madame Pomfrey, on the other hand, looked highly offended.
“Honestly, Mr. Wood, get ahold of yourself.”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just, we bloody well did have a strong moment of connection! There was a moment where his elbow strongly connected with my head! We didn’t have a conversation, or anything. We’ve never had a conversation, have we?” He turned to Flint for verification, and then wondered why he had automatically placed them on the same side. The Slytherin shook his head slowly, once, and Oliver looked away again. “Can it happen when people just...collide?”
“There have been cases, yes,” Madame Pomfrey said, even more calmly than before, but something about her tone of voice told him that she’d be trying to find actual cases of this tonight in her free time. She was using the voice adults used when they were sure of their point but don’t actually know why.
“Bloody hell,” Oliver summed up the situation, and fell back against his pillows. Maybe if he went back to sleep he could wake up in a world that made a bit more sense.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
As soon as he heard Wood’s breathing relax, Marcus let his thoughts wander. Bloody, buggering fuck, was basically where they wandered, and they stayed there for a while. He had read up extensively on soulmarks, and nowhere had it said that you could bump someone into having one.
Marcus had never wanted a soulmark. He’d gone out of his way not to, actually. Every new friend at Hogwarts was a potential soulmate, and the fact that he was attracted to men and women just made it twice as hard. Better to never really talk to anyone at all than to end up like his soulmarked parents, trapped in a vicious, loveless marriage. It didn’t matter that they had lovely little matching flowers on their upper arms, or that they’d had a deep, philisophical conversation about the rights of goblins twenty years ago. It didn’t matter that they were soulmates, because they hated each other, and hated him too.
Better to not love at all than to think you had it all and then lose it, completely, irrevokably.
And then he’d met Oliver Wood last year, nodded to him before a Quidditch match, and Wood had grinned back, a goofy grin full of joy and mischief, and Marcus had thought, Oh no.
Seriously, since when was running into someone with your broom cause for a fucking soulmark? Could he not get a break?
At least it was looking like they didn’t have a psychic connection. Some soulmates did. Some soulmates got hurt when their other half got hurt, some reflected each other’s emotions. It depended completely on the pair, or the trio, in some cases.
Bloody buggering fuck.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Oliver woke up a few hours later, once again testing his limbs before opening his eyes and staring at his arm. Yes, there was the Quaffle, moving quite a bit faster now, blurring a bit when it changed direction. Was it supposed to do that? He glanced to his right, but Flint’s bed--Oliver supposed he should probably call him Marcus, at this point--was empty and made, and Madame Pomfrey was nowhere to be seen. He slipped out of his own bed, getting dressed quickly, and headed out of the Hospital Wing. Hopefully, if she hadn’t pounced as soon as he was up and none of his limbs were broken, he was fine to leave.
Oliver had never really needed a soulmark, not like some people seemed to. He remembered when Fred Weasley and Angelina Johnson had gotten theirs, back in third year. Early, but not unheard of, and it had certainly taken Fred’s prankster nature down a few pegs. At least for a couple of months. But all of Gryffindor had rushed to the library, newly interested in soulmarks, desperate to read any book that even mentioned them. How young could you be? How old was too old? What did matching really mean? And the biggest one: how to get your crush to make a “connection” with you.
Oliver had gone out to the Quidditch field to practice.
Now, he was searching for anyone who might know the results of the game. It had somehow slipped his mind to ask, and the fact that he still didn’t know if he had lost Gryffindor the game was irking him deeply. He rounded the corner toward Gryffindor tower, sure that the reaction when he walked in would be telling, but a tug on his arm pulled his attention away from his goal.
The Quaffle, still moving at relatively high speeds, was now throwing itself at one side of his arm. If he turned it---yes, still the same direction, just a different place. Like a little compass. How strange. Well, he wasn’t a Gryffindor for nothing, Oliver thought, and went the way the little Quaffle indicated.
It led him down a series of hallways into an unfamiliar part of the castle, to a back set of stairs that he was pretty sure only Hufflepuffs used, and to Flint--Marcus--sitting on the top step with his head in his hands.
Well, honestly, where had Oliver thought the Quaffle was taking him?
He walked forward carefully and sat down on the same step, though he left a chunk of space between them. How were you supposed to comfort your newly found soulmate, who you’d never talked to before? He went with simplicity.
“Hi.”
Marcus glanced over at him, just for a second, but Oliver saw the Quaffle on his arm speed up even more, becoming a complete blur.
“Is this your heart rate or something, d’you reckon?” he asked, holding out his arm to Marcus, who looked at it with trepidation but didn’t speak. Oliver brought all the patience that he had put aside before to bear, and just looked at him. He was going to talk to this boy if it killed them both.
It seemed like an eternity before Marcus answered. “Yes, I think so,” he said slowly, his voice croaky as if from disuse. “That’s a common one.”
“A common what?” Oliver asked, maybe too quickly. He was talking! And his voice was nice, low and sort of soothing. He loved nice voices.
“A common symptom of connection,” Marcus said, glancing at Oliver’s face and then looking down at his own soulmark again, a pinkish tinge to his cheeks.
“Oh, cool!” Oliver said excitedly. He felt rather like a puppy bothering an older dog, but if the universe had said they’d be good together, then he should just be himself, right? “What are other symptoms?”
“Mirrored emotions, mirrored injuries--I’m pretty sure w-we,” he stumbled on the word before continuing, “don’t have that one, because of what was hurt in the Hospital Wing. Psychic connection which we definitely do not have. Tracking.”
“We have that one,” Oliver offered, and that word was weird for him to say, too. “Or at least I do, because the Quaffle led me to you.”
Marcus flushed deeper, if that was possible, and then he seemed to brace himself, scooting farther away and turning to face Oliver, though he focused his eyes on the wall behind his head. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t...want to. Soulmates aren’t automatically perfect, my parents have them and they’re not--” he cut himself off. He hadn’t meant to bring up his parents, to dump his tragic backstory on this boy who was happiness personified. To his surprise, Oliver laughed.
“I know they aren’t perfect. My parents both have them too,” he paused and shot a sort of sad smile at Marcus, perhaps knowing what he hadn’t said about his parents. “My mum has a star, and my dad has a bird.”
Marcus stared at him, trying to see a connection. Was there a constellation of a bird, perhaps? They were both things in the sky…
“They’re not connected,” Oliver said, more quietly now. “They don’t usually tell anybody, but I figure you’re an exception. They both have different soulmates. My mum’s is her best mate, and when they got theirs they tried dating, but they figured they were better off being mates. I’ve never met my dad’s, or maybe I have, he’s never told me who they are.”
Marcus was still just staring at him, looking almost Confunded, so Oliver went on.
“So we can try, y’know, dating, if you want,” and here he paused, momentarily glad his skin was too dark to show a blush very well, “and if it doesn’t work out we can be mates. Or nothing.”
“Ok,” Marcus managed, and his lips stretched into a smile, which Oliver copied quickly and energetically, grabbing his hand and pulling them both to their feet. Marcus was too preoccupied staring at their joined hands to even care where they were headed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The last day of the year, after finals had finally ended, a Slytherin and a Gryffindor sat in the sun by the Black Lake, watching the Giant Squid floating about. Their hands were twined together, a Quaffle and a Snitch both flying slowly and lazily on the skin of their arms. The Gryffindor was talking, and the Slytherin listening, a small smile on his face, like there had been ever since their conversation on the stairs.
“Y’know,” Oliver was saying, “I think I figured out why mine is a Quaffle. It usually symbolizes the other person, right?” He looked to his boyfriend for confirmation, like he did for most of his wild-and-crazy, or even mundane, theories. Marcus nodded, and Oliver went on. “Well, a lot of people think the Quaffle is the most common ball, or the most boring one, or something, because it’s the one that doesn’t fly around. But that just makes it a challenge, y’know? You have to hold on to it and pay more attention to it. And really, it’s the most important ball in the game. So that’s you, I guess. I dunno, I haven’t thought all the way through it.”
Marcus was beaming at him in a distracted sort of way, and Oliver recognized his thinking-through-things look and stayed silent, just leaning his head on Marcus’s shoulder.
“You’re the snitch because...you’re fast. You flit from thing to thing, always moving. You’re so hard to catch up to. But when someone catches you…” Marcus paused, leaning his head on Oliver’s and closing his eyes, soaking in the summer sun. “They win the whole game.”