Word Count: 1721

Warnings: Captivity

Better Than Nothing

He pushed the food around the plate, uninterested in eating it. He managed a few bites, before he dropped the fork onto the napkin, and pushed the plate away entirely.

He felt nauseous, and the eggs benedict that the elves had served him weren't helping with that.

"Are you sure that you don't want to eat more than that?" Narcissa asked, her tone soft. "It's going to be a long day for you today."

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

She sighed, but nodded her head, and called for a house-elf to clear the table.

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

Harry pushed away from the table without answering her, and made his way back to the room that had been deemed his. He knew he was being rude to her, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

The bathroom smelled wonderful, but he found no real enjoyment in 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 himself quickly, using the bodywash and shampoo that the elves had laid out for him to use, rather than his own, and then climbed out, not even taking the time to soak.

There was no point in delaying the inevitable, after all.

The towel that 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 emerged from the bathroom, a cloud of steam billowing out around him. She guided him into a seat by the mirror.

Drying his hair with her wand, he watched as she applied three different potions to the strands. When she was done with it, it was still messy, but there was an artfulness to it that he'd never managed to achieve himself.

"Are you okay?" she asked, as she helped him into the complicated, layered robes that had been laid out for him.

He nodded silently, and she arched her eyebrow at him.

"You can trust me, Harry. I'm not going to tell anyone every little thing that you say. I'm not here to spy on you."

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

She sighed, but once more held her silence, and Harry was grateful for her restraint. She'd been nothing but nice to him, and he didn't want to be rude to her.

Once he was dressed—he'd hoped for more muted robes, but the silver and green weren't a surprise—she pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek.

"I know that you're scared of the unknown, Harry, but it will be okay."

Harry watched her leave, and then walked across the bedroom, 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 mostly confused by his continued existence more than anything else. 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, was the first time that Harry would see Lord Voldemort since he'd failed to kill him at Hogwarts. They'd fought hard, for hours, until Harry had been rendered unconscious.

When he'd woken up, he'd been in this room.

He'd rarely left it since, except for the occasional walk around the grounds with Narcissa, when the weather was particularly pleasant.

That wasn't to say that he'd been alone; he hadn't.

Narcissa was his most frequent visitor—he saw her almost every day—but Lucius, Rabastan Lestrange, and a man named Euan Scabior, whom Harry hadn't known before, were also fairly common visitors.

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

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, if Harry had to guess.

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

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

He titled his head slightly, brow still furrowed, as though he thought another angle might make it make sense.

Tom smiled slightly. "Hello, Harry."

…

A picnic in a flowered meadow hadn't been what Harry had been expecting when he'd been told that the Dark Lord had requested he be prepared for a day out.

He sat gingerly on the gingham blanket that had been laid out on the grass, 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 that you have questions," Tom said, as he 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 two champagne flutes. "You can ask them, Harry."

Harry blinked at him. The silence was awkward, but Harry couldn't quite pull himself together enough 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 beyond wary.

Understandably so, he thought to himself.

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

Tom's lips tilted up slightly, as though he'd been expecting the question.

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

"Confused," Harry corrected quietly.

He supposed that he was happy that he was still alive, though he couldn't really consider himself living, spending most of his time in the gilded cage that was 'his' bedroom.

"You're my soulmate," Tom answered softly. "I don't know how much you understand about Horcruxes, Harry, so forgive me if I'm repeating something that you already know. When a person splits their soul, it leaves behind damage to the piece still residing in the person. Given that I split my own soul seven times, the damage was… considerable. Quite an oversight on my part, but likely not one that I would have taken into consideration in my youth, 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 decadently edible, and partly because he was a little fearful of what would happen if he refused.

"With every Horcrux housing that you destroyed, the soul fragment was returned to me," Tom continued. He ran a hand through his dark, wavy 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 retreated from the school with you and my followers. I knew that 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. Only when he'd put it in his mouth did Tom continue speaking. "Since then, I've been researching the effect on me that having tore my soul apart has had, and also, the connection that I share 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 robes. "I didn't remember the attack at Godric's Hollow properly until the Dementors in my third year at Hogwarts, but I've always had a very clear memory of you looking at me over my crib. You touched my cheek with your finger." He shrugged. "I've always known that 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 about it 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 even if you did, 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 again, Harry replied, "It is what it is. I don't expect anything from you, if that's what you're asking me. 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 would prefer."

Perhaps it was the months that Harry had spent in the Manor, or even just the simple fact that he was being given a choice, but he didn't want to never see Tom again.

"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 of any other life, but he thought that, if he was to live in the new world, then being with his soulmate was, perhaps, not the worst thing.

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

Good or bad, it was better than nothing.