a/n edited for errors someone pointed out already present in this short chapter.

Punctuation now decided as as "italics"

warnings now in place for story as a whole: copious use of italics, background hermione/draco, and ofc slash. also for some slightly graphic violence?

Young Harry Potter sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands. It was quite strange, really. There was one sentence that curled over and over again across his skin, coating every inch with blackness.

"You are finally here…" it said. It read the same thing every night. Just that. "You are finally here, you are finally here, you are finally here…" Over and over again. It crowded his hands, filling them both with the ever-disappearing and reappearing loops. Harry stared at it as he did his chores, as he went to bed, as he was supposed to be weeding the garden.

Once they realised he wasn't doing it of his own volition, the Dursleys told him to cover his filthy hands up with bandages. Harry took them off whenever he could. He was so fascinated with the writing. Whose was it? It clearly wasn't his own hasty scrawl. Why was it there at all? It certainly added onto the list of odd things about him.

One night all the ink, like a dissipating cloud, cleared away for two elegant words. One on each hand.

"You are finally here…"

"...Too late."

–––

When Harry met a certain half-giant, the first thing he did was badger him about the writing on his hand. The answer left him slightly surprised, but mostly pleased: these were the thoughts of his soulmate? What sort of woman would she be?

Now that he thought about it, he thought he could feel her, distantly. He couldn't quite pinpoint if he sensed her in a physical location or just… a place in his heart.

It was all very sweet, he thought. Although it did seem to mean that falling in love wasn't a random set of happy coincidences, but rather predestined, he wasn't too deterred. Love did always seemed a little fated.

He smiled to himself as he followed Hagrid through Diagon Alley. He bumped into some snotty blond while he was buying robes, ate some ice cream, was gifted a beautiful owl, discovered the wild and unimaginable world of magic, and all was well.

A close eye was kept in his hand in the following few days. The words had started changing, now. And if Harry concentrated especially hard, he swore he could feel his soulmate in the back of his mind, curled there peacefully like a dragon.

His soulmate seemed to be a particularly irritable lady. "Idiot." he had seen cross his hand a few times. "Incompetent." came up a few times, too. Nonetheless, Harry couldn't help but feel warm towards the writer. Those words in their elegant hand were proof that the magical world had been there all along, and they were proof that someone out there would really accept Harry, unlike the Dursleys.

He'd been pouring over his new books, too. One thing he noticed was that his soulmate's behaviour didn't quite fit the descriptions. She seemed to repeat words across his hands a lot, and he'd only really ever seen two whole sentences: "You are finally here," and "...Too late." Was his soulmate illiterate? No, the writing was far too beautiful to be illiterate. Was their bond just weak? Harry prodded at the dragon in his mind again. It would be stronger once they met, apparently. Harry really couldn't wait to go to Hogwarts… even if just to escape his world for another.

When Harry met a freckled, red-haired boy on the train, they'd taken to each other like fire. After their initial stumbling blocks about Harry's scar and the whole Boy-Who-Lived thing, at least.

The topic of soulmates came up and Ron practically gushed. "I know she's in our year somewhere! This morning she was thinking about how excited she was. She's definitely on her way." The boy flushed to the roots of his hair.

"Mine never really says anything." Harry said with a frown. "She–" He broke off when he glanced at his hand.

"help." The ink was a little less steadier than usual.

"–always seems to be hurting." he half-whispered. "I think our bond might be a bit broken."

Ron looked at him a bit critically. "Well, can you at least feel her on the other side?"

"Kind of."

"Close your eyes," Ron instructed, doing so and leaning back himself. "And you can feel… she's still excited right now. She's so happy…" The boy said a little dreamily.

Harry tried reaching for the sleeping creature in his head, but she did not stir. So he simply put his imaginary arms around her and thought it will all be okay.

The word on his hand did not change.

a/n i have pretty much two chapters + tom's interlude written but i just really need to get this formatting sorted first because changing it all is a pain