Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter twelve: presence

All that of that hurt and all of that pain,
it's growing inside of my mind,
and all that I've done runs in my veins.
It's growing inside of me.
After Dark - Oliver Daldry

•

"You're being irrational," Tom said.

It was a low blow, and Tom knew it. Walburga Black prided herself on being rational to the point of wickedness. He didn't care. He could be a thousand times wickeder.

"I'm being irrational?" she said, her voice half an octave higher than usual, her eyes narrowed into a glare. "You're gallivanting halfway around the world with your lunatic ex-lover, and I'm being irrational?"

"Your jealousy doesn't make her a lunatic."

"Don't play dumb with me, Tom Riddle, it doesn't look good on you. I can admit when I'm jealous, but there's something wrong with her."

Tom felt a prickle of irritation. He folded his arms and leaned against the back of the couch in the drawing room of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. The couch was upholstered in emerald green velvet, but it was currently covered in a white sheet to protect it as Walburga tore the drawing room apart to redecorate in anticipation of receiving the Stradivari violin. "There's nothing wrong with her." He paused. "Well, there may be something a bit off with her, but she isn't mad. And don't nag me."

"I'll do whatever I bloody well please," she hissed. "'A bit off.' Honestly." She looked uncharacteristically disheveled, her black hair piled in a messy knot. There were smudges of the dark paint with which she was refinishing the enormous curio cabinet on her face.

"As will I." He met her glare dead on and was pleased when she dropped her eyes first. "Why don't you just use magic?" he asked, nodding toward the curio cabinet.

"Don't you ever just enjoy doing things by hand?"

"Not particularly."

Walburga stepped closer to him, her dark eyelashes fluttering. She grabbed one of his hands with her own, then placed it on waist. She threaded her arms around his neck. "You never enjoy using your hands for things?" she asked. "Just reaching out and...touching?" The flirtatious lilt had returned to her voice.

Tom stared at her full lips and the gentle curve of her jaw, tried to focus on the way her breasts and hips were pressing against him, for once willing himself to feel something other than annoyance. Nothing came. He remembered the hunger he had felt when it had been Luna's body against his, her face hovering in front of his own, and his frustration only grew. Why was Luna the only witch who made him feel so imprudent? His frown deepened.

A disgusted huff escaped Walburga's mouth, and she shoved herself away from him. "Fine," she spat. "Go with her, and take her brat with you. Anything to keep you from looking at me like a particularly misshapen grindylow."

He found himself sighing. His ties to the Black family went beyond Walburga at this point, and he suspected their game had played itself out. He was tired of it, anyway. But it would be easier if he didn't leave her loathing him. "Walburga - "

"No! Don't 'Walburga' me! I have been monstrously patient with you. I have waited and waited and waited the last few years, and still, you can barely touch me. And now Luna Lovegood waltzes back into your world, and all of a sudden you're going on holiday together? I'm no fool, Tom. Don't take me for one."