Chapter Text
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Harry was eleven when he met Hagrid, crashing heavily onto the settee in the hut-on-the-rock. It creaked alarmingly under his weight, and he began taking all sorts of items from the many pockets of his overcoat: a copper kettle, tea bags, a squashed packet of sausages, a poker, a floral umbrella, and a little pot plant.
Hagrid handed him the plant, and said, a little reverently, "This is fer you," surveying Harry closely through his beetle-black eyes.
The pot fit into his palm, and nestled inside was a green sprout, its leaves the size of his fingernail. "Um... Thank you. It's very nice."
"Bin keepin' your soulplant on me mantelpiece since you was a baby." He puffed out his chest. "Dumbledore's orders."
Hagrid managed to light the fire, and Harry learnt he was a wizard, his parents had not died in a car crash, and he was bound for magic school, in a castle, far far away from the Dursleys and everything he'd ever known. And that soulmates were real.
Uncle Vernon dismissed this as all tosh, though Aunt Petunia acknowledged Harry's mum had also received a 'stupid plant' with her Hogwarts letter. Harry wondered what his mum's had looked like. If it had flowers. What colour they were. Where the plant was now.
At King's Cross, Harry met the Weasleys, shaking hands with them all—according to Hagrid, this was good manners unless you knew they already had a soulmate. Ron and Harry didn't shake hands with Malfoy, Crabbe or Goyle. "I'd sooner marry Scabbers than one of them," Ron said, throwing Harry a Pumpkin Pasty.
Harry shook so many hands of Gryffindors he lost count. In the dormitory, they lined up their little soulplants on the windowsills. Apart from Seamus’s—he'd met his soulmate in Ireland—none had buds. Ron said that was normal; his brother Charlie's hadn't bloomed till seventh year.
*
Upon waking in the hospital wing—Dumbledore twinkling down at him, his bedside table swamped with sweets and get-well-soon cards—Harry anxiously sought out his soulplant.
"One of your many well-wishers brought it," Professor Dumbledore told him. "Madam Pomfrey's been watering it. It looks as healthy as it ever has been."
And it did; its leaves were a vibrant green. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He did not want Professor Quirrell as a soulmate.
Dumbledore explained the Philosopher's Stone, and got up to leave.
"Sir? Can I ask a question?"
"Oh dear," the Headmaster said, frowning at a Chocolate Frog card. "I've got myself. How gauche."
"What happens to your plant if your soulmate dies?"
Dumbledore didn't immediately respond, busying himself with tidying a stack of Sugar Quills.
"The plant withers, too," he said. "For a time, there's a sense of melancholy. I think we can safely rule out Lord Voldemort as your soulmate." Dumbledore smiled. "I look forward to seeing you alive and well at the end-of-term feast, Harry."
Later, Harry reflected that he'd asked a personal question for someone as ancient as Dumbledore.