Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter seven: Boundless

"I work here. At Borgin and Burkes. What are you doing here?"

"We're staying upstairs."

"No. I mean, what are you doing here." Again, his words were more of a statement or demand than a question.

"I...," Luna started, then her voice trailed off. She glanced to Violetta who was bouncing up and down, showing Lazarus the unicorn, then back to Tom. A niggling doubt formed in the back of her mind and ate at her: that Violetta might not be any safer here than she was in Luna's own time, that Tom was a potential danger, that he had already murdered four people - at least - and that at no point in their time together had he ever expressed significant remorse for what he had done. When she was sixteen, she had been able to trust him anyway, somehow. Or if she did not trust him, she at least was not afraid. She saw something in him that she had deemed more important.

Now, she was not sure. She was afraid. She had been betrayed and hurt in a million different ways. She had lost enough. Now, there was Violetta. And the words of the Prophecy echoed in her mind.

"Let me guess," he hissed in her silence, "you can't tell me. Lots of secrets. It's all very mysterious. And you're so sorry, Tom, but you simply can't say what's really going on."

His words stung. Memories of that day, that seemed so long ago now, when they had both been seventeen and she had told him she was leaving, echoed in her head at a painful pitch. She couldn't bring herself to lie to him, even if she couldn't bring herself to tell him the truth. "Yes," she whispered.

He let out a derisive scoff and looked away from her, as if he couldn't look at her anymore, and his entire body seemed to shake with barely controlled rage. "Ridiculous."

"I'm sor-"

"Do not say you're bloody sorry to me."

"What have you been up to the last few years?" she tried.

"The last five years?" he said, turning a withering stare back at her. "A great deal."

"Do you -"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Lovegood," he spat, the words dripping with contempt. "What do you think is going to come from this conversation? Are we exchanging pleasantries now like old friends who lost touch? Is that what you think is going to happen?"

Luna stared right back at him. "Then what did you follow me in here for?" she demanded in a quiet voice.

"To see if it was really you," he said. "To see if you really just thought you could turn back up here, as if you didn't...." This time, it was his voice that faded to silence.

Before Luna could respond, a pattering of small feet announced Violetta's arrival at the table. Violetta carried her stuffed unicorn with her and approached Luna. The little girl held her unicorn out to her mother. "Look, Mummy. Tom!"

Luna stared at the unicorn. "You've named your unicorn Tom, have you?" she asked.

"Yes," Violetta said, then began clambering her way into Luna's lap.

Luna glanced at Tom to see his reaction to this, but he seemed to be determined to look away from them. Helping Violetta into her lap, she said, "A very good name, my love."