Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter nine: Familiar

"Because they all know each other. This gala is only for the most exclusive group of rich Muggles. And they don't know know us. They don't know who the handsome young man and beautiful young lady at the gala are. We're gossip material."

Luna shot a sideways glance at him. "Do you think I'm beautiful?" Her tone was one of genuine curiosity rather than flirtatiousness, and as usual, her lack of ulterior motives in general annoyed him.

He rolled his eyes and did not look at her. "That's not of consequence at the moment. I was merely explaining why they were staring at us."

The usher indicated their seats to them and passed them a program for the evening's performance. Luna and Tom settled into their seats, and Luna peered around the hall, awestruck. Most of the audience was already seated, and the orchestra was already on stage warming up.

"These are quite good seats. How did you get these tickets?" Luna asked.

"I may have persuaded a Muggle couple to part with them," he replied with a smirk.

"Persuaded?" She settled that damn probing look on him, the same one that had caused him numerous problems as a school boy.

Tom leaned close to her to whisper in her ear, in part to not be overheard and in part to avoid her stare. "Don't worry, Lovegood, I didn't harm the filth. A simple Confundus Charm was sufficient to make them think they had alternative plans this evening which they simply couldn't miss. They were all too eager to pass on tonight's tickets to the charming young man they were chatting with in the café."

"Do you think you're charming?" she asked in the same tone she had asked if he thought she was beautiful, like a researcher from another planet.

"When I want to be," he replied.

"I see," she said with a thoughtful nod.

The lights in the hall fell as the lights on the stage brightened. A hush fell over the audience, and a moment later the conductor strode out onto the stage, followed by a middle-aged man holding a violin. All of the Muggles began applauding them, which Luna politely copied.

The conductor situated himself in front of his orchestra, and the violinist stood a few feet to the left of the conductor. With the rise and fall of the conductor's baton, the orchestra began to play, at first a dark sound dominated by the brass instruments. This subsided into tremulous woodwinds.

Luna scooted herself forward to the edge of her seat, her eyes wide and lips apart, enraptured. When the solo violinist began to play, the sound echoing through the hall in a chilling melody, Luna's eyes, to Tom's amazement, filled with tears, which she allowed to spill over her cheeks unimpeded. Tom found he was not watching the orchestra at all; instead, he could not stop himself from watching her reactions to the music.

He was startled when, following a few measures by the solo violinist which were then echoed by the rest of the orchestra, her small hand reached out to him, grasping his own where it rested on his knee. She was still staring with glistening eyes at the orchestra before them, even as she intertwined her fingers between his, her chest seeming to rise and fall with the swells of the music.

Tom waited, expecting irritation to rise in him at the familiarity she showed in touching him this way, but it did not come. She did not seem quite aware that she had taken his hand at all. And rather than anger, some other shameful, unnameable emotion twisted inside him. Glancing down at her hand lying over top of his, their fingers entwined, Tom did not pull away. Burying the memory of what her skin felt like against his, refusing to think of it for years except for in awful, aching, lonely moments at night when sleep eluded him...that was not true forgetting, whether he acknowledged it or not. He returned to watching her face out of the corner of his eye as she watched the orchestra.