Chapter Text
Were Harry to have Snape’s words written across his skin, they would be, “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” But Harry does not have Snape’s words upon his skin. In the end, Harry has only ever had three marks.
“Welcome!” The first proclaims. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts!” Harry likes this mark, even though he is no longer quite so fond of the the rather eccentric headmaster. The second is much starker.
“Avada Kedavra!” It proclaims, simple and supposedly deadly. Harry has never liked this mark. If there is one thing he could say about his lacking upbringing, it would be that he never found out what it meant until he had friends that he could trust to hold him as he cried. The third is an instruction.
“Now don’t forget to speak very, very clearly,” it says. Harry smiles when he thinks about Molly Weasley, who showed him what it was like to have a family, to give out love for no better reason than love was a wonderful thing. He is lucky that soulmarks require direct communication, or all he would have is her shouting at Fred and George immortalized on his skin. Harry winces. He has enough reminders of the dead and gone.
But there is no phrase from Severus Snape’s lips. It’s just as well, Harry thinks. He could do without a question that was designed to both apologize to him and humiliate him at the same time.
But Harry also knows that he leaves many more marks than he receives, and he doesn’t know what to do with that information. It mostly makes him feel vaguely apologetic, and confusedly angry. He tries not to think about it.
He’s seen more of his words than he can count, though. It mostly just makes him incredibly awkward, that so many people are immortalizing the really stupid shit that comes out of his mouth whenever he meets new people.
But it is interesting, the parallels that pop up in the people that he talks to. He asked Draco, once everything was over and done. In hindsight, that had been a terrible idea, but he learned a lot about things it had never occurred to him to ask about. Apparently, his words were on a lot of Death Eaters.
Draco’s lips had twisted into a sneer, but he had pulled back his own sleeve so that Harry could see more of his own handwriting, this time a simple, “Yes.” It was scrawled on his forearm, an unfortunate mirror to what still remained on his other arm.
Harry still remembers his first encounter with Lucius Malfoy in great detail. Mostly he’s just embarrassed now, but he’s pretty sure that the older Malfoy has been walking around with the sentence, “Voldemort killed my parents,” for longer than Harry has been alive. What a thing to grow up with. It weirds him out, that his mark was on the Death Eater long before he ever took the Mark.
He’s left a mark on Narcissa, too. “He’s alive,” it says. It is the only thing that he has ever said to her.
It occurs to him later, when he’s drunk perhaps a bit too much, that he probably left a mark on Snape too. He doesn’t remember what he said to Snape’s first question. Something like, “I don’t know?” He winces. This is why he doesn’t like to think about soulmarks, it always makes him feel inadequate.
He doesn’t feel inadequate when he’s with Ginny. She’s far too fierce, always looking towards the future and making sure that he doesn’t get mired into the past. Some of the many things he loves about her.
He’s seen Ginny’s mark. She only has one, and it’s not his. She doesn’t hide it, but neither does she flaunt it where her brothers can see. He sees it every night, though.
“Hello, Ginny,” it says. “I’m Tom Riddle.” It’s innocuous in a way that Avada Kedavra will never be, but whenever Harry considers having her mark instead of his, he wants to take a shower and never come out.
She must have been so happy when she met him, is all he can think. How amazed, that she has only one soulmate and she’s met him so early. How lucky she must have felt.
Harry needs to stop drinking. It was Remus’s funeral, yesterday. They buried him next to Sirius, but there is nothing in Sirius’s grave except for the sandbags used to weight the coffin. Harry can go visit all of their graves now, James and Lily and Remus and Sirius. They’ve all been laid to rest in the same graveyard. They would have liked that, he hopes.
He hopes that the mirror of Erised has been destroyed. He doesn’t want to see how many more people will be staring out at him from behind the glass.
As is traditional, the morticians had recorded Remus’s soulmark when they were preparing him for burial. It’s the second time that Harry has ever seen his father’s handwriting. The first time, of course, was in Snape’s memories. Harry considers how bitter Snape must have been, having two generations of Potters on his skin without a reciprocal mark to show.
Remus Lupin had had four soulmarks. One from James, one from Sirius, one from Peter, and one from Harry. Harry is pretty sure that Sirius had much the same. He doesn’t know, though. Sirius was gone before Harry ever managed to work up the courage to ask.
Harry stares at the empty cup in front of him. He needs to get home, and he is far too drunk to safely apparate anywhere. Home he thinks, and smiles helplessly. He has a home, and a family that loves him. His parents are proud of him, and he is, against all odds, still alive. He’s still meeting people who have his words scrawled across their skin, and that will probably never stop even when he’s an old geriatric.
All in all, he thinks, toasting his empty cup to the dead, he could have done much worse.