Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter seven: Boundless

Beautiful, God, your lips were holy,
but you were always lonely still.
So much pain, it wasn't graceful.
Life can be distasteful towards you.
I want to lay my body down, sink into your ground,
press my lips upon your brow.
I want to lay my body down, I can't go without,
because I'm forever bound.
Forever Bound - Von Grey

•

Luna's mind had no sooner registered that Tom Riddle was once again standing in front of her across the pub than it had begun to race. She had not yet decided what she would do in the past. So many of her plans had gone awry. She had not yet decided what she would say to him, or if she would even seek him out. Certainly, she had not expected to see him so soon.

There were so many things - the truth of how they had come to meet, why she had left, what had happened since then, Violetta - oh, but Violetta. Above all else, she had to protect Violetta. But to see him standing there with his familiar frown, his tall, slender frame in robes as black as his hair, so solid, so real, after having to grieve him twice over, after having to settle for her memory of him for so long. Her heart ached. She took a step towards him before forcing herself to stop.

Tom was frozen by the door, staring at Luna. He then seemed to come back to life, though his movements were jerky and unnatural as he put his hands behind his back and stood straighter. Then he put his hands in his pockets. Then his hands came out of his pockets and clasped behind his back again. He cleared his throat. "Hello."

"Hello," Luna said back. She was failing to manifest anything appropriate to say to the occasion, and she saw a similar failure reflected back at her in Tom's fidgeting.

"You know each other, then?" Lazarus said in his gruff voice, disrupting the texture of the moment.

Both Luna and Tom started at his voice, having forgotten he was there.

"Old schoolmates," Luna said.

Tom gave a curt nod, then pointed to a table in the far corner of the pub, farthest away from Lazarus. "Shall we sit," he said, with no upward inflection to indicate a question being asked despite the words he had chosen.

"Of course," Luna said. She picked Violetta up under the arms and set her back down on the floor. Out of her shopping purchases, Luna pulled a stuffed toy unicorn that moved and whinnied when played with. She handed it to Violetta, who clapped with joy, and said, "Mummy's going to be talking to Tom here. Can you play for a bit on your own?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Luna caught Tom make a strange movement with his head, almost like a wince, when she said the word 'Mummy'. Violetta, on the other, was quite pleased with her new toy, and scampered behind the bar to show it to Lazarus, who was still keeping a suspicious eye on Tom.

Luna and Tom sat down at the corner table across from one another and inspected each other without pretense up close. Tom's face was older now, having lost the last remnants of boyhood that had still clung to him at age seventeen. A long moment passed during which she tried to count the dark eyelashes lining his eyes. Not for the first time, she wondered at how something so dangerous could be so beautiful.

"I've missed you," she found herself saying.

Tom's frown deepened. "Have you, now?"

"A great deal. I'm afraid I have so many things I would like to ask you that I'm struggling to choose the words. I'm quite discombobulated. Possibly Wrackspurts, although more likely just you. What are you doing in Knockturn Alley?"