Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter twenty-seven: Rage

"What was once thought can never be unthought."
-Carl J. Friedrich
•

As soon as she had left the room after the first encounter, his face fell slack. He slowly returned to his chair in front of the fireplace. Sinking down into it, his mind wandered.

Due to magic, mostly dark, and the way his humanity had waned from him over the years, Voldemort rarely felt his age. Occasionally, however, there were times when, whether brought on by physical fatigue or mental duress, he was forced into remembering that he was no longer a young man, but a wizard very nearly seventy. This was one of those times.

He had never supposed he would see her again. Oh, he had guessed some time ago that she had been from another time, but he had actively avoided searching for her. That would have meant admitting he needed her. Admitting that lead to weakness, and weakness lead to failure. So even though he had heard the name Lovegood from time to time, he had refused to look into it. And, truth be told, he had convinced himself he wouldn't find her. He had spent hours forcing himself to believe that, if she had indeed travelled from another time, it was not this one. And everything had been going splendidly, with the exception of Potter – ah, but it always came back to Potter, didn't it? Potter was always the one upsetting Tom's plans.

If it hadn't been for Potter, he was certain he would not feel so old as he did now. And if it hadn't been for Potter, he could have gone right on believing that the Lovegoods he heard about had nothing to do with the Lovegood he had known.

How stupid he had been to allow himself that fantasy. To let himself believe she wasn't there – it was foolish. Of course it was her; he suspected that he really knew this the whole time. But his mind was like a cave: things got lost in it, if he sent them down the correct path. A sufficiently dark and gloomy one, where preferably the things he sent would never find their way out again.

His fingers gripped the arms of his chair tightly, the knuckles growing a slightly whiter shade than the rest of his hand.

He had known what he would see, hadn't he? He had known, somehow, that if he poked at Potter's mind long enough (and what a discovery it had been, to realize he could enter Potter's mind!), he would find what he was looking for.

Of course he had known. A friend named Harry. A wizard war. And bizarre comments about me and my future, he mentally ticked off. Of course he had known.

And yet...when he had entered Potter's mind that time, how surprised he had been to see those eyes again, to smell that smell... Perhaps he was too successful at convincing himself.

Her smell...he felt his grip loosen on the chair as he thought of that. But then he recalled the concern in her eyes, the concern that had not been for him but for Potter. And while remembering how it had felt when she had been hugging Potter (hugging him?), with her small body pressed up against his, fitting like a glove, was not altogether unpleasant, it nearly sent him into a fit of fury thinking that it was Potter who had her now.

His lips came up in a sneer. But Potter didn't have her now did he?

Suddenly roaring with anger and perhaps a little bit of an old, dull pain, Tom stood from the chair and grabbed an ancient vase on the mantle of the fireplace. Pitching the vase into the fireplace, which was suddenly ablaze, he let out another feral sound like an injured cougar.

Of course Potter still had her, of course he did, of course he did.

You can put her in a cage and throw away the key, but that doesn't make her yours again, he thought furiously. Isn't it perfectly natural that she should be Potter's now? Because isn't it perfectly natural for him to take everything from you? And isn't it natural – and this thought pained him the most – for her to want him? For her to want the hero?

Oh, he had seen the way she looked at him, he had heard the spite in her voice, and smelled the fear seeping from her pores. In many ways, it only angered him, made him more convinced of the path he had chosen – and yet still, there was that dull ache, like a long-ignored pain.

Then Bellatrix had knocked on the door again. Immediately the emotion left his face and there was no trace of his turmoil in his voice when he bid her to come in.

He barely heard her as she simpered apologies, holding out a familiar piece of jewelry for him to take.

Tom was suddenly disgusted with her in a way he had not been in a long time. He summoned the stone, rather than take it from her directly and risk touching her. The moment the red stone touched his palm, he realized that he had never stopped thinking of Luna. Just because he hid things away in his mind did not mean they were no longer there.

He waved Bellatrix out without speaking to her. He once again returned to his chair, his eyes never leaving the necklace. It felt preternaturally warm in his hand. Gazing into it's dim glow, his mind wandered again, this time alighting on what would happen the next evening when he saw her again.

                                 •

"Enter," came the low, cold voice Luna was already relearning to anticipate and dread. She was standing outside the same heavy door from the night before, flanked by another pair of Death Eaters. She was wearing the same clothes she had been kidnapped in, but a female Death Eater had come earlier and lead her to the bath. Luna had reveled at the feeling of being clean again, though the water had been icy. She had imagined tiny, miniscule water snakes nipping at her bare skin all over.

After her bath, Luna had returned to her room – or was it a cell? - and had discovered her necklace lying on the foot of her bed, the chain neatly laid out. She felt a glimmer of hope in her heart just at feeling the warm stone in her palm again, admiring the way it fit so perfectly there. Her heart then had leapt in fits and starts as she had realized that the stone was glowing as always. Though she was unsure if she wanted this new man to be thinking of her, she nevertheless draped the necklace around her throat with a kind of ardent exultation.

But that had been several hours ago, and this was now, and now she was standing in front of the damned door again, waiting to have the all-important DINNER that he had requested. She fingered the necklace nervously, glad to have at least something familiar in a place where she was alone and scared.

"Enter," he had said. It amused and amazed her how much just one word could make her shiver and recoil. And it was such an innocent word, really. Enter. There's nothing conspicuous or threatening about that, she mused. But it did make her shiver and recoil. Yes, and while it did make her do that, it also made her feel a certain eagerness that made her wonder if she had any sense of self-preservation at all.

The door swung open, like the mouth of a beast waiting to swallow her up, because people like her (the ones without any sense of self-preservation) must taste so delicious. She had expected to be terrified. She had not expected the lovely table set before her, and it looked as though all her favorite foods were there. There was, among other things, a dish with asparagus in balsamic vinegar; a platter of sweet rolls; silver goblets filled nearly to the brim with sparkling grape juice; and a plate piled high with bacon, sitting next to an elegant pitcher of syrup. It was the strangest dinner she'd seen, but that was what made it so lovely.

The only thing missing was the man who had invited her here.