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Challenges listed at the bottom.

Word Count: 1545

Better Than Nothing

He pushed the food around his plate, eating only a few bite before he dropped the fork onto the napkin and pushed the plate away. He felt nauseous, and the eggs benedict the elves had served him weren't helping with that.

"Are you sure you don't want to eat anymore?" Narcissa asked softly. "It's going to be a long day today."

Harry shook his head. "I'm not hungry."

She sighed but nodded and called for a house elf to clear the table.

"The bath is ready for you, Harry. I'll come and help you get ready once you're out."

Harry pushed away from the table and made his way back to the room that had been deemed his. The bathroom smelled wonderful, but he couldn't bring himself to enjoy the heat of the water when he'd undressed and climbed into the large tub.

He didn't want to deal with any of this.

He washed quickly, using the bodywash and shampoo the elves had set out for him rather than his own, and then climbed out, not even taking the time to soak. There was no point delaying the inevitable after all.

The towel he wrapped around himself was heated, and had it been a normal day, he'd have been grateful for the thoroughness of the elves; they really did think of everything.

Narcissa was waiting for him in his bedroom when he left the bathroom, and she guided him into a seat by the mirror. Drying his hair with her wand, he watched as she applied three different kinds of potions to his hair. When she was done, it was still messy, but there was an artfulness to it that he'd never been able to achieve before.

"Are you okay?" she asked, as she helped him into complicated robes.

He nodded silently, and she arched an eyebrow at him. "You can trust me, Harry. I'm not going to tell anyone every little thing you say."

Harry smiled at that, he couldn't help it. "I don't trust anyone. It's not personal."

She sighed, but held her silence, and Harry was grateful for that. Once he was dressed—he'd hoped for more muted grey robes, but the green and silver weren't a surprise—she pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek. "I know you're scared of the unknown, Harry, but it will be okay."

Harry watched her leave, and then walked across the room to sit on his usual perch by the window overlooking the grounds. He hadn't been beyond them for months, not since the end of the war. Even now, he was confused about why he was alive at all, despite having questioned it multiple times. He'd never received a satisfying answer, perhaps because he was asking the wrong people.

Though, he hadn't seen the right person since the battle, so perhaps that was why.

Today though… today was the first time Harry would see Lord Voldemort since he'd failed to kill him at Hogwarts. They'd fought hard, until Harry had been rendered unconscious, and when he'd woken up, he was in this room.

He'd rarely left it since, except for the occasional walk on the grounds when the weather was particularly nice.

That wasn't to say he'd been alone; he hadn't. Narcissa was his most frequent visitor, but Lucius, Rabastan Lestrange and a man named Euan Scabior, whom Harry hadn't known were also fairly common visitors.

A knock sounded on the door, startling Harry, and he turned to see it swing open. He frowned when he saw the man standing there, not because he didn't recognise him, but because he was surprised by what he'd seen.

Tom Riddle had been handsome at sixteen—Harry had always tried his hardest not to acknowledge that, once the diary had been destroyed—and this man was undoubtedly him, though aged to around forty.

Gone was the waxy skin, and the slitted nostrils. Gone was the bald head and long, tapered fingers. Gone were the red eyes.

This man was Tom Riddle, and not Voldemort, and Harry was confused.

He tilted his head slightly, brow still furrowed.

"Hello, Harry."

…

A picnic in a flowered meadow hadn't been what Harry was expecting when he'd been told that the Dark Lord had ordered for him to be readied for a day out.

He sat gingerly on the blanket that had been laid out, and waited silently for Voldemort—Tom?—to speak. He tried to stop the tremble in his hands, but had to clench them together.

"I'm sure you have questions." Tom sat down on the blanket beside Harry and opened the basket, taking his time to take out plates of food, and a bottle of elf made wine, along with plates and champagne flutes. "You can ask them, Harry."

Harry blinked at him. The silence was awkward, but Harry couldn't bring himself to speak. He didn't know what he was supposed to ask, or what would make the other man's hand twitch for his wand, and Harry was wary.

Understandably so, he thought.

Eventually, he asked, "Why am I alive?"

Tom's lips tilted up. "I've heard that you've asked that a few times," he murmured. "I'd have thought you'd be happy that you're alive, no?"

"Confused," Harry corrected. He supposed he was happy that he was alive, but since the battle, he hadn't really been living, trapped in that house as he was.

"You're my soulmate," Tom answered softly. "I don't know how much you know about Horcruxes, Harry, so forgive me if I'm telling you something you already know. When someone splits their soul, it leaves behind damage to the piece still in the person. Given that I split my own soul seven times, the damage was quite severe. Quite an oversight on my part, but likely not one that I'd have taken into consideration even had I known about it."

He paused to offer Harry a plate made up of cheese, crackers and fresh fruit. Harry accepted it, partly because it looked beautiful, and partly because he was a little fearful of what would happen if he refused.

"With every Horcrux housing you destroyed, the soul fragment was returned to me," Tom continued. He ran a hand through his wavy, dark brown hair. "Only with the last piece—the piece released from you in the forest—did my sanity return."

Harry tilted his head. The man hadn't seemed much different during that final fight than he had before it.

"Instead of killing you, I knocked you unconscious and left the school with you and my followers. I knew there was something about you, but I didn't recognise the feeling, having never felt it before."

Harry bit his lip.

"Eat," Tom encouraged, gesturing to the plate. Harry complied, picking up a grape. He waited until Harry had put it in his mouth, before he continued, "Since then, I've been researching the effect on me that having torn apart my soul has had, and also, the connection with you."

Harry simply nodded.

"You don't seem surprised that I'm your soulmate," Tom murmured after a moment.

"I knew," Harry said quietly. "I've always known."

Tom frowned. "How?"

Sighing, Harry picked at a single loose thread on his robe. "I didn't remember the attack at Godric's Hollow until the Dementors in my third year at Hogwarts, but I've always had a clear memory of you looking at me over the crib, and touching my cheek with your finger." He shrugged. "I've always known you were mine, even from being so young."

"You never told anyone?"

"I didn't see the point," Harry admitted. "You were already bound and determined to kill me, so it made no difference."

"You could have told me at any one of our meetings, Harry. I invited you to speak in the graveyard after the tournament, did I not?"

Harry laughed, a little bitterly. "Would you have believed me? And would it have really made a difference?"

Tom paused and then shook his head. "Likely not."

Harry ate a blueberry, unprompted, while Tom watched him curiously.

"How do you feel about it?" he asked.

Shrugging, Harry replied, "It is what it is. I don't expect anything from you, if that's what you're asking. Like I said, I've been surprised to be alive, let alone anything else."

"Would you allow me to court you?"

Harry paused and then frowned. "Do I have a choice?"

"You do. I've done a lot of things over the years, Harry, many of them to you personally, but I won't force this. You're free to return to the Manor and never see me again, if that's what you'd prefer."

Perhaps it was the months Harry had spent in the Manor, or even just the simple fact that he was being given a choice, but he didn't want that.

"You can court me."

The smile on Tom's face reminded Harry of the sixteen year old in the diary, and he found his own lips tilting up slightly.

Perhaps it wasn't what he would have chosen given the option to have any life, but he thought that, if he was to live in the new world, being with his soulmate wasn't the worst thing.

And if it was… well, at least it was something.

Good or bad, it was better than nothing.

Written For:

Valentines or Palentines: Day 9: "You can trust me, Name."

365: 212. Tremble

Musical Yearly: 372. 10's: Sunflower: I know you're scared of the unknown

Insane House: 9. Eating