Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter thirty: Blame

"Will you tell me your secret?" Luna asked after a long moment where the only sound was Bellatrix's laughter.

The black-haired woman straightened up, seeming to get a control on her amusement. "Let's suppose," she began gleefully, "that your dear daddy, crazy old man that he is, happened to get one of his stupid stories right and knew where we are. What do you think he'd do?"

Luna froze. If her father knew where she was right now, knew how to actually get here, he'd come without thinking about it. He'd never been very good at taking care of himself. He lost so much weight while she was away during each school year because she wasn't around to make sure he ate properly. Of course he'd come barging to this place, wherever it was, if he knew. "But he didn't know, did he?" she managed to say after a moment, hoping that Bellatrix was trying to lead her on.

The grin on Bellatrix's face made Luna's heart skip a beat. "Turns out, all your daddy's 'informants' weren't so wrong. Guess who showed up a few hours ago?" Bellatrix said, clapping her hands with glee at Luna's stunned face.

Luna looked back to Voldemort for the third time, hoping against hope he would say something. But he was still as stoic as ever. "My dad's here?" she asked him.

Bellatrix answered, "Well, he was."

Still unable to move her eyes from Tom's face, Luna felt her mind slowing down as she realized what Bellatrix was so happy about. But she had to hear it, she had to have it confirmed. "What do you mean, 'was?'" she whispered.

"Not much left of him, I'm afraid," Bellatrix said with a low cackle.

Luna felt like she couldn't breathe. "You killed my father," she said accusingly at Voldemort. He stared back at her, his eyes burning red and somehow cold at the same time. Luna wrapped her small hand around the stone of her necklace, feeling her skin prickle at its warmth. She gave a sharp tug, snapping the chain at the back of her neck. She dropped the stone on the ground as though disgusted, feeling an overpowering need for it to not be touching her skin anymore. "You killed my father," she repeated.

"Well, actually, I did," Bellatrix added, quasi-helpful.

Finally, Luna looked back at the other woman. "No. He did," she told her. "You don't do anything. It's all him." Without another word, Luna turned away from Bellatrix's rather bewildered face and made her way back to the bathroom where she was sick all over again.

                                 •

"We've got to go back tonight!" Harry yelled, slamming his fist on the table. He glared at the Order members sitting around him. "Our best shot is to surprise them again while they're still off-balance!"

"Harry," Lupin said, trying to reason with him, "we lost members last night. Many are in mourning, and I haven't been able to get in contact with Xenophilius since two days ago. You can't ask -"

"The hell I can't," Harry interrupted. "We'll only lose more if we wait for them to regroup."

"You're being rash. Do you think Luna would want for us to risk so many lives over and over?" Lupin said.

Harry paused. Would she want that? No. But it didn't matter. At this point, it had become an irrational personal vendetta, with Luna simply being the rope in a match of tug-of-war. Whoever had her had a victory over the other. And Harry wasn't willing to let her go.

"I won't go tonight," Harry said slowly. "But I am going tomorrow night. You lot don't have to go with me. But I'm going."

Ron nodded resolutely, sitting at Harry's side. On his other side, Hermione took a deep breath. Tonks let her face drop into her hands. Kingsley Shacklebolt sighed, but said, "You know we'll be going with you."

Harry nodded. "Good. Then let's get ready."

                                  •

Luna lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling for hours. The two men who had been talking to Voldemort had brought her back to her cell after she'd finally finished vomiting. She had left without looking at Tom. She couldn't.

She felt somewhat separate from her body, as if the things happening to her were actually happening to someone else. She understood that her father was dead, but she couldn't seem to fully digest it. It seemed impossible to her that he was not out there somewhere, alive, doing something, thinking something, seeing something. That he was just gone. She hadn't cried, and she had a feeling she probably wouldn't. Some things were beyond tears.

She noticed the missing weight on her chest where the necklace usually lay, but she was glad it was gone. She wanted her thoughts to be for her father, for Harry, for Neville, for the Weasleys, for those who she loved and had actually loved her. For the ones who had brought light in her life rather than darkness. He shouldn't have changed his appearance. Such ugliness shouldn't come in pretty packages. She bit her lip to send a jolt of pain to her brain, to try to distract it from the pain in her heart.

She rolled over so that she was staring at the door. She had exhausted all the patterns in the ceiling. Perhaps there were some in the grain of the door.

Hours later, she finally fell asleep.