Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter fourteen: Revelations

Don't go, you're half of me now,
But I'm hardly stood proud.
I said it almost.
Oh, I've been low,
But dammit, I bet it don't show.
It was heaven a moment ago.
Oh, I had it almost.
We had it almost.
Repeat Until Death - Novo Amor

•

For a long moment, Luna and Tom stared at one another. Luna would have thought time had stopped except that the fire was still crackling beside them and Violetta was still laughing with a snake in her hair. Tom seemed to be preternaturally still, and Luna wondered what would happen when he shattered back apart over her.

"I knew it!" Tom hissed, pointing at Violetta, and there was a strange gloating in his voice even as he started to shake, something Luna could see very clearly with his arm extended in the firelight. "I knew it! I couldn't figure out how it could be, but part of me knew it was true! She's mine! She's a Parselmouth, and she's mine!"

Luna continued to stare back at him. She wasn't sure what she had expected him to say, but it wasn't this, and he was looking at her with a wildness in his eyes that she had rarely seen before, the fire playing across the planes of his face in a way that somehow made him look dangerous in the way only a man coming apart at the seams can look. And he was looking at her as though she had been the one to pull out the stitches.

Tom took a shuddering breath and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. This did nothing to alleviate the unhinged look about him. A moment later, he blinked, as though a thought had just occurred to him. He spun towards Violetta and spat out several words in Parseltongue. A moment later, the viper was dropping from Violetta's shoulder, landing on the ground with a soft thud, and slithering away from her as quickly as it could.

Violetta started after her friend, but Tom scooped her off the ground to prevent her from chasing after the snake. She began kicking and crying at being denied, fighting against Tom's arm with the vigor and violence of a cat being trapped against its will.

Now Luna stood from where she had felt frozen beside the fire. "Give her to me, Tom."

"That snake was venomous, and you weren't going to do anything," Tom accused Luna as he struggled to keep Violetta in his arms.

Luna supposed she had a right to take offense at being called a poor mother when she had tried to make every decision with Violetta's wellbeing in mind, agonized over them, when she had kept Violetta safe all this time while he was out making Horcruxes and being hateful, but she didn't see the purpose of offense when it would make no difference to Tom and it wouldn't get the fear out of Violetta's eyes. "Stop it, you're frightening her."

"I'm keeping her safe!"

Crossing to them, Luna held out her arms for her daughter. "She was safe the whole time. Did a snake ever bite you when you were a child?"

Tom still did not hand over Violetta. It was as though he couldn't understand the words Luna was saying, even though he was responding to her. "No, of course not."

"Mummy!" Violetta screamed, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

At the same time, blood started to drip out of Tom's nose, which he ignored.

"Just a moment, darling, you're all right," Luna said in a soothing voice to her daughter, then looked back up into Tom's wild eyes. He looked madder than ever with blood on his face. "If they didn't hurt you, then why would they hurt her?"