Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter ten: Christmas

Pick apart the pieces of your heart, and let me peer inside.
Let me in where only your thoughts have been.
Let me occupy your mind, as you do mine.
Your heart's a mess, you won't admit to it.
It makes no sense, but I'm desperate to connect,
and you, you can't live like this.
Heart's a Mess - Gotye

Are you deranged like me? Are you strange like me?
Lighting matches just to swallow up the flame like me?
Do you call yourself a fucking hurricane like me?
Pointing fingers because you'll never take the blame like me?
Gasoline - Halsey

•

Luna woke on Christmas morning to find a small pile of presents at the foot of her bed. She smiled and leapt out bed to open them. The first package she opened was from Lorraine, who had sent her a slightly smashed homemade chocolate cake. The second was from Lucinda, who had sent her a pair of earrings that Luna found rather boring, though she would wear them to be nice, as well as a book on Transfiguration methods of the twentieth century. Cat had sent her a book as well, called Unproven Magical Species by Ravidius Fibber. Luna gasped with joy at this and immediately began flipping through it, pausing for quite some time to read the entry on Dabberblimps.

Finally, Luna got dressed and left the dormitory to go have Christmas breakfast. The singular table from the night before was still present, and Tom's black hair shined under the cold, morning light beaming down from the enchanted ceiling where he already sat. He was wearing his crisp grey school uniform with his Slytherin tie even on Christmas, though he had gone without his black robes. Luna clucked her tongue at him, glancing down at her own outfit. She was wearing a blouse and below-the-knee length skirt that was appropriate for the decade in which she found herself, but her skirt was a vibrant pink and patterned with white unicorns.

She plopped down beside him immediately. "Happy Christmas, Thomas," she said, helping herself to some eggs and bacon.

Tom closed his eyes, exhaling heavily and steeling himself for conversation with her. When he opened them again, he said, "Don't call me that."

Luna appeared not to notice his retort and began to pour copious amounts of maple syrup onto her bacon.

"That's for the pancakes, you know," Tom said, watching her.

She peered closely at the syrup dispenser. After a moment, she announced, "It doesn't say anywhere on it that you have to use it on pancakes."

Tom rolled his eyes. "Of course not. I'm sure they assume most people have enough sense to know what it's for without putting a sign on it."

"Who's they?" Luna asked curiously as she took a bite of syrup-drenched bacon.

"Nevermind."

"I have a Christmas gift for you."

He looked down his nose at her, dialing his arrogance up as high as it would go. "A gift? From you?"

She nodded and pulled a rectangular box with a velvet emerald green bow around it out of her skirt pocket. "I got it for you in Hogsmeade."

Still seeping smugness, he nevertheless took the box. He turned it over in his long fingers and inspected in from all sides with a look of disdain that did not completely block out his curiosity. "In Hogsmeade? But that was weeks ago."

"Well, I was thinking of you," she said, inducing a momentary interval where Tom stopped turning the box over and stilled.

Luna made a point to busy herself with her bacon again, allowing him freedom to open it unwatched. As she appeared uninterested, Tom pulled on the velvet ribbon to untie to bow. He slipped off the lid of the box to reveal an elegant, luxury quill the same emerald as the velvet bow on the box. On the feather barbs, there was a painting in the finest silver lines in the shape of a serpent.