Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine.

Summary: "It's the law. To marry your soulmate, I mean. It's illegal not to marry them. Or to marry someone else, 'cause then you'll be taking someone else's soulmate away." "I have to marry my soulmate?" "Well, they're your soulmate, so why wouldn't you?" Soulmate AU, no Voldemort.

Author's Note: I tried to do a purely dystopian 1984 setting, but couldn't do it. As a writer that specializes in writing funny stuff, you can imagine the look on my face when I saw my assignment :P. It was hard to find a good starting point to a story that's supposed to be angst/dystopian, but after that it got easier.
Wrote most of this while I was supposed to be studying for midterms. Didn't mean to, but, well, time :(

For The_Creeping_Shadow on AO3.

A Niggling Feeling

"Hey, can I see your soulmate mark?"

Harry raised an eyebrow at Ron, who fumbled with a particularly wriggly chocolate frog. The frog managed to escape Ron's grasp and jumped out the open window. "My what?"

"Your soulmate mark." Ron pulled up his sleeve and showed Harry his wrist. On the skin was a strange, glowing blue tattoo that looked a lot like a barcode with some runes on the bottom. Harry stared. It looked a lot like the tattoo that had appeared on his own wrist when he was younger, the one that his Aunt Petunia sneered at and ordered him to hide with a tattered wristband. "It's how you know who your soulmate is?"

"Soulmates?"

"Yeah. The Ministry of Magic invented the soulmate mark eighty years ago, and it appears the first time you've done magic. When it glows red, that's when you know you've found your soulmate. Here." Ron reached out, took Harry's hand, and shook it. The tattoo on Ron's hand didn't change colour. "See, if I was a girl and you were my soulmate the mark would've gone red."

"Soulmates," Harry repeated. "Like the one you'll love for the rest of your life?"

Ron shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's the law. To marry your soulmate, I mean. It's illegal not to marry them. Or to marry someone else, 'cause then you'll be taking someone else's soulmate away."

There was a niggling feeling on the back of his head. Something's not right, it said. Harry frowned. "I have to marry my soulmate?"

Ron looked at him, puzzled. "Well, they're your soulmate, so why wouldn't you?"

Just then, a bushy haired girl entered the compartment and asked if they had seen a toad. Both boys said no. Later, after the Sorting, Ron managed to shake hands with the girl, Hermione Granger, and found out that she was his soulmate. Ron was ecstatic. Harry was shocked. Hermione was suspicious.

"The British Ministry of Magic invented the Soulmate Law to keep wizarding families purely magical," Hermione explained, flipping through a book. She had taken over one of the library tables and dragged the two boys to examine the fruits of her research. "Look at these statistics, page 587. Marriage between magical and non-magical people, as well as same-sex couples in magical Britain are practically nonexistent ever since the Ministry introduced it."

Ron looked dubious. "So? Might just be that wizards aren't supposed to have muggle soulmates. And maybe gay people don't have soulmates?"

"RON!"

"Well, why would they?" Ron said defensively. "You can't make babies if you're gay. And didn't you once say the point in life is to have kids?"

Hermione was red. From anger or embarrassment, Harry wasn't sure. "From a biological, scientific standpoint, yes, but—"

"Then it's only right that only a man and a woman can marry, right?"

"RONALD WEASLEY!" Hermione thundered.

"WHAT NOW!" Ron thundered back.

"OUT!" Madame Pince screeched, popping up from nowhere and shooing them out of the library. "OUT! MERLIN'S BEARD, I EXPECTED BETTER FROM YOU, MISS GRANGER!"

Once out of the library, Ron was too upset to stay and ran off to the Great Hall. It was almost dinner. Harry stayed with Hermione and carried her books for her while she cooled down.

"Sorry," Hermione said. "No, not sorry, that was very homophobic of Ron—oohh, but I suppose that was how he was raised, living in this isolated, archaic society where the government endorses heterosexuality and everyone has a so-called opposite sex soulmate. Of course he'd think same-sex couples are unnatural, that's what he was taught, so does the fault really lay with him?"

"What about other countries?" Harry asked Hermione before she could go on. "Do they have soulmates too?"

"Some countries that are notorious for having large populations of pureblood and wizard supremacists, like Bulgaria and Romania, took up the same law and partnered with Britain to connect the spell. This way, a Bulgarian man, for example, can have a soulmate from Britain." Hermione scowled. "But as far as I know, other countries like France and Austria have no such thing. This only supports my theory that the idea of soulmates is socially constructed—probably by wizard bigots—and are not natural."

Harry met his soulmate the next year.

Ginny Weasley, Ron's sister, was quite shy at first, but opened up when Harry shook her hand and their soulmate marks turned red.

Harry's niggling feeling was drowned out by the sheer excitement and novelty of having met his soulmate.

The Soulmate Protesters for the Emancipation of Wizards was Hermione's idea.

The goal of the organization was to free wizards from the illusion of the Soulmate Law and to bring back the right to marry anyone they wanted, male or female, wizard or muggle, human or magical creature. Ron joined because he didn't want to leave his soulmate, although he kept sniping at Hermione about how she was delusional and should really just leave the soulmate issue alone. Harry joined because both his friends were there and he didn't really want to leave them either. Hermione approached the other Gryffindors and tried to get them to join as well, but they declined.

"But look!" Hermione showed an uncomfortable-looking Lavender Brown the book with the marriage statistics.

"Hermione, this is really interesting, but I really like my soulmate and I don't want to break up with him."

"It's all a sham! It's an illusion put forth by the government to promote—"

"Stop, please!"

Hermione was gone the next day.

Parvati Patil, one of Hermione's roommates, looked nervous. "I saw them last night, there were these people with masks in our dorms while everyone else was asleep and—and they took Hermione!"

"Serves her right," Lavender Brown said, wrinkling her nose. "Have you heard what she's been saying about soulmates lately? There is something wrong with that girl."

Harry shifted uncomfortably. The niggling feeling was back.

Hermione came back—two years later.

"Where were you?" Ron asked. He had been worried about his soulmate the entire time and was afraid he'd never see her again.

"I was wrong," Hermione said flatly, cracking open Hogwarts: A History and starting to read. "Ron, we are going to marry three months after we graduate."

Harry frowned. "What about your S.P.E.W.?"

"I was wrong," she repeated, flipping over a page and refusing to look anyone in the eye. "Wizards don't need emancipation from the Soulmate Law. Soulmates are absolute."

Ron beamed. "Glad to see you've come to your senses."

Harry wasn't as happy. This wasn't Hermione. Hermione was stubborn, persistent—she would have stood fast even if everyone from Ron Weasley to Merlin told her she was wrong.

The niggling feeling turned into a scream.

Harry went back to the library to check out the records. He went to the reference section and took out the book Hermione had shown them, the one with the statistics on wizard marriages. He set the large tome on the table and flipped to the marriage statistics.

And blinked.

No, that wasn't right.

He flipped to another page. Maybe it was the wrong page, but no, it may have been a while ago but he remembered that page, Hermione kept showing it to everyone to get them to join S.P.E.W., he was sure it was 587—

But all he had was a blank page.

When he came to breakfast the next day, Ron was disgruntled.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

"My brother's a criminal," Ron said moodily, poking at his pancakes.

"What?"

"My older brother Bill, he ran off to France and married someone who wasn't his soulmate!" Ron sounded disgusted. "It's all that girl's fault, she's part Veela, and you know how Veelas are, she probably enchanted him somehow, and the French don't even have soulmates—"

"Ron, I think Hermione was right."

"Hermione is always right," Ron said automatically.

"No, I mean about the Soulmate Law!"

"Harry, we settled this."

"But—"

"Look, I'm having a really bad day, can we not talk about this right now?"

Harry disappeared later that week.

He came back after four months and asked Ginny out on a date. They married after graduating from Hogwarts and lived a long, happy life.

All was well.

(And the voice at the back of his head never bothered him again.)

Author's Note: After writing this, I tried to figure out who is Winston and who is Julia, but no one definitively fits into either of their roles, I think. Maybe Hermione is Winston and Harry is... no, just Hermione is Winston. Harry is too passive to be Julia. Also neither Harry nor Hermione have be secretive due to Big Brother is Watching. (Although in the end it turns out Big Brother has been watching them all along, the O'Brien could've been anyone, and this is what gets them.)

I might go back and edit this later, but don't hold your breath.