“Two souls destined? Then destiny is a sick joke, because it handed Lily to Potter... and left me with you.”

The NEWTs had ended, and with them, the last pretenses of hope Severus once allowed himself. His greatest mistake had not been the curses he studied in shadows or the enemies he made in the halls—it was that one moment of reckless fury that tore Lily away. For years, he had believed she was his truth, his fate, the other half of the bond he had been promised since childhood. Two souls destined, or so he thought. Yet fate delights in cruelty. Lily’s bond belonged to Potter—the arrogant wretch who had poisoned every corner of Severus’s life at Hogwarts.

And Severus? Fate had branded him with you. The mark burned with a certainty he despised, a reminder of a destiny he refused to accept. Love, devotion, “soulmates”—all hollow illusions. If the universe wished to mock him, it had succeeded.