Who's seen Jezebel?
She was born to be the woman we could blame.
Make me a beast half as brave;
I'd be the same.
Jezebel - Iron & Wine
I got a bad heart, got a mean streak,
a good way of leaving you weak.
Got time to kill, but time don't equal love.
It just reminds you of the water we can't get above.
Sirens - Daniel Ahearn & The Jones
•
On Halloween, a Sunday, Tom entered the Great Hall for breakfast to find the by-now familiar decor of hundreds of carved pumpkins and a similar number of black bats flying around in clouds. Some of the students, taking advantage of the fact that the holiday was on a weekend, had playfully donned masks and were busy complimenting or trying to startle one another.
Tom had dressed as usual, without a mask, black hair smoothed carefully back, clothes impeccably wrinkle-free. He was surrounded by Malfoy, Lestrange, Nott, and Avery at the Slytherin table, listening with mild amusement as Lestrange whispered a story about how he had terrorized a Muggle-born first year the day before by conjuring hundreds of spiders to crawl all over him while in the bathroom. Lestrange himself had hid carefully out of sight in another stall while the boy had panicked in fear.
"Swear I thought he was going to piss himself," Lestrange whispered with glee. "Lucky for him he was already in the loo."
Nott, Avery, and Malfoy howled with laughter, slapping the table and wiping tears from their eyes, while Tom smirked in silence.
A girl with dark hair wearing a sequined black mask sat down next to their group. "I see you're all having a good morning. But where's your Halloween spirit, boys?" she asked, lifting her mask up and revealing a pretty porcelain face with thin lips and arched brows.
"Walburga Black, you're too lovely to be wearing a mask over your face," Nott said, leaning towards the girl.
"Watch out, Nott, she's only for her cousins," Malfoy quipped.
"Ah, in the future maybe," Nott said. "But for now, I've got to try, haven't I? And I'm pure-blood, besides, darling." He grabbed one of Walburga's hands and planted a kiss on it.
Walburga tittered in a way that made bile rise in the back of Tom's throat. "Oh, don't be so naughty," she said. Her dark-lashed eyes shifted to Tom, who gazed back with an emotionless face. "I'm free as bird right now, anyway."
Suddenly, Tom's eyes were covered from behind by two small hands. Restraining himself from responding violently in the middle of the Great Hall to whoever had dared to sneak up and touch his face, he tensed.
"Boo!" said a dreamy voice behind him. "Guess who?"
The hands were removed, and Tom opened his eyes to see his fellow Slytherins snickering. He took a deep, steadying breath and turned around. Luna Lovegood stood behind him, wearing an enormous hat shaped like a phoenix that had been enchanted to flap its wings and look around.
"Happy Halloween!" she said.
"You have to be kidding me," Malfoy said sullenly. His pride had not yet recovered from the Hogsmeade incident.
Walburga looked Luna up and down with her lips pressed together in a sour expression. She had not missed the casual way the odd Ravenclaw girl had approached Tom.
"Oh, excellent charmwork, Miss Lovegood!" Professor Slughorn had appeared at his House's table and was admiring Luna's hat.
The group of Slytherins, including Tom, sat up a little bit straighter, their expressions losing their open hostility in the presence of a teacher. "Good morning, Professor," said Tom.
"Good morning! And happy Halloween!" Slughorn said. He chuckled as Luna's phoenix hat extended its wings out, requiring him to duck to avoid being struck in the face. "You boys are all going to make it to my Slug Club party tonight, won't you?"
"Of course, sir," Tom said as Avery, Malfoy, Nott, and Lestrange nodded unctuously.
Slughorn clapped his hands. "Excellent! I shall see you all at seven o'clock sharp, then. And Miss Lovegood," he added, turning back to her, "if you keep up the excellent work in Potions, I might just have to invite you to the next Slug Club party! What with being Dumbledore's, er...."
"First cousin, twice removed," Luna supplied in an airy voice.
"Precisely! Well, I'd best be off. Have a happy Halloween, you all!" Slughorn bustled away.
The conversation amongst the others quickly returned to Nott flirting with Walburga, intermixed with talk of Slughorn's upcoming party. Tom watched in silence as Luna's eyes glazed over. He shook his head in vague disbelief as she began to slowly drift away from their table, walking backwards while gazing up at the enchanted ceiling, clearly uninterested in the conversation.
That night, as he was the last one to leave the Slug Club party, Tom spun the ring on his finger as he paced through the corridors towards the common room.
Slughorn hadn't provided him the precise information for which he had been hoping. The foolish man knew little more than Tom himself already knew about Horcruxes; less even, perhaps, since Tom had a piece of his soul already stored carefully in his old diary. Slughorn had, however, been of some use. His very resistance to the idea of multiple Horcruxes indicated that he thought it was at least possible, and the fact that he had never heard of it having been done before was no deterrent to Tom. If anything, it was fuel on the fire.
Tom chuckled softly to himself, and the sound mingled with his footsteps in the stone corridor. Not that it had mattered. Unless Slughorn had surprised him with a story of multiple Horcruxes having gone horribly wrong, Tom had already made his mind up. And Tom Riddle's mind made up was quite a difficult thing to change.
•
The next few weeks passed rather uneventfully for Luna. She was excelling in her classes. Cat had taken it upon herself to loudly talk about her perfected Bat Bogey Hex and glower menacingly at anyone who teased Luna ever since the Malfoy incident had occurred, leading to a rather peaceful existence in the castle.
As for Tom Riddle, he had become increasingly reclusive and moody as winter approached. He not only avoided Luna, but also seemed to be spending less time with his Slytherin gang than usual. He continued to turn in impeccable work in class, but otherwise was often nowhere to be found. This worried Luna a great deal. A young Lord Voldemort hiding himself up somewhere was probably not a good sign. She shuddered to think what he might be up to.
Fortunately, as Christmas approached, Luna found it more and more difficult to dwell on Tom too much. Decorations flew up around the castle the last week of term, and the suits of armor were enchanted to sing carols in rusty voices, though they often forgot most of the words. Fairy lights and Christmas trees were everywhere, and Peeves had taken it upon himself to zoom around with mistletoe and harass random students until they kissed or managed to get away.
The Heads of Houses went around to their students as usual and collected the names of those staying behind over the holiday break. Luna signed up immediately, as she had no place to go, though she was one of very few. Cat, Lucinda, and Lorraine - indeed, all the girls in her dormitory - were going to go home for the holidays. They were anxious to see their families, given the near-daily stories about Gellert Grindelwald in the Daily Prophet.
"Now, Luna," Lucinda began just before the girls left, "try to stay out of trouble while we're gone, alright? I don't want to return to find out you've - turned the entire dormitory into a snow globe, or run off to search for Snuckle-Horned Cornsacks, or something."
"Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," Luna corrected with a light smile as Cat and Lorraine laughed. She hugged the three of them goodbye, and then off they went.
The first day of break she had to herself, Luna meandered down to the library. She had half a mind to try to find a clear reference to a Blibbering Humdinger, since Tom had so adamantly dismissed them back in Hogsmeade. She had found a reference written by Edric the Weird a couple of years ago, but something told her Tom was not likely to believe Edric the Weird anymore than he believed her.
Additionally, as the holidays inched closer, she began to more acutely miss Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny. Even more persistently than before were worries about seeing her father again. Had she already spent her last Christmas with him? The distraction of the library would be welcome.
Upon entering the library, Luna was pleasantly surprised to see Tom himself seated at a table, surrounded by books. Luna paused in the doorway to watch him for a moment, cherishing the opportunity to observe him when he didn't know he was being observed. She was convinced that there was some degree of uncertainty introduced into any of her observations she could make when he knew she was looking. He was the least reliable narrator.
As she watched, she once again caught flashes of the fatigue he had revealed at breakfast several weeks prior. Shadows under his eyes, shoulders rounded over his work. He was already lean and it looked like he may have lost a bit of weight, his high cheekbones even more pronounced than usual. Then he yawned, and it was such a vulnerable, human action - his eyes shutting, mouth covering his hand in habit, his chest rising - that Luna felt a strange surge of protectiveness for him, as though the boy in front of her and the man he would become were two separate beings.
Then he spotted her as he opened his eyes from the yawn, and immediately the moment was lost as he set his face. Brushing his hair out of his eyes with one hand, he used a single finger of the other hand to beckon her over to him.
"What are you doing here over break, Lovegood?" he asked.
"I didn't want to go home," she replied.
"Didn't we make a deal you wouldn't lie to me anymore?" he said icily.
"Alright, then. I didn't have anywhere to go."
Tom furrowed his brows at her, but didn't question her further.
"Why aren't you home for the holidays?" she asked after a beat.
His smug demeanor further hardened. "Hogwarts is my home."
"I suppose I wouldn't want to go back to an orphanage for Christmas, either," she said.
He glared at her. "What would you know about it? I'm sure you always had perfect little holidays with your family."
Luna pulled out a chair at the table with him, then twirled a strand of her hair in thought. "My mum really did die, you know."
Tom's eyes lost some of their narrow glare. "Did she?" he asked.
"Yes," Luna said with a faint nod. "She was brilliant, very interested in experimenting. I was in her laboratory with her when it happened. I was nine."
"Oh." Tom shifted in his chair, a nearly imperceptible tell of his discomfort. "I see."
"I know I'll see her again, though. Someday."
"How do you know that?" he demanded.
She searched his face. He met her eye contact full on, refusing to look away, causing both of them to take a half a second too long before inhaling again. "I've always known," she said. "Our loved ones are always there, just out of reach."
"That's ridiculous. And I haven't got any loved ones, anyhow," Tom said, then gritted his teeth as though he hadn't meant to say it.
"What about your mum?"
"I never knew her. She died just after childbirth. They told me the story at the orphanage, many times. Made sure I knew it by heart." He was breathing somewhat heavier than before.
Luna didn't speak, face placid, eyes on his, wanting to allow him the space to continue if he chose to.
"She was a witch," he said. "A witch of noble blood, and she allowed herself to die just after having me. She could have saved herself, if she had...wanted to." His voice was like knives, the words sharp and short. "No, I don't love my mother, and not only because I did not know her."
"Why didn't she save herself?" Luna asked.
"Heartbreak," he replied, spitting the word out like poison. "Fear. Cowardice. Weakness. She had to have known the sort of place she was leaving me, she had to have known they would never understand me. She left me at that filthy Muggle orphanage to rot."
Luna's heart felt like a deadweight in her chest with thoughts of a scared young witch, so broken she couldn't get up, not even for her son. A baby without his mother, a child destined to be feared. "Tom," she said.
"Ah, yes, and her final gift to me. My father's name." He looked away from her, finally breaking their eye contact.
Inhaling sharply, feeling as though she had come out of hypnosis, Luna placed her hand on the tabletop to steady herself. She had never felt that way when speaking to someone before, so consumed. Evidently, neither had he, judging by the way he was now looking anywhere but her face.
Luna reached out with a steady hand and pulled one of his books across the table towards her, a volume on medicinal herbs and poison antidotes. She opened the book and began to read. She felt his eyes on her, but she did not look up. After several moments, the scratching of his quill resumed, and they sat in silence together.
•
On Christmas Eve, with snowflakes falling gently outside onto the blanket of snow already on the ground, Luna once again ran into Tom. Indeed, she ran headlong into him on the landing where the stairs up from the dungeon and the stairs down from Ravenclaw tower met, as she hummed to herself and tried to step on every other stone in the floor.
"Oh, I'm sorry, wasn't paying attention," she said.
"A habit of yours, obviously," he said with a frown. "Are you going to dinner?"
"Of course I am, I never miss dinner. You, on the other hand, are very mysteriously absent from meals these days."
"Well, I'm going now; don't make me regret it," he snapped. "And I've been getting food from the kitchens to eat in my common room. I'm nearly the only Slytherin here. It's quiet."
They started towards the Great Hall together. The four house tables had vanished and had been replaced by a single table, since there were so few students left behind. Headmaster Dippet sat at the head of the table with Professor Dumbledore just to his right. As Tom and Luna entered the Great Hall, Headmaster Dippet called, "Ah, there you are, Tom! Come sit by me, my boy." He gestured to the empty seat to his left.
Tom obligingly sat next to his Headmaster, and with a casual wave of his hand, the vacant chair next to his pulled out. Already in conversation with Headmaster Dippet, it had appeared to be an unconscious action. When Luna did not immediately sit down in the chair, however, he paused in speaking to Dippet to glance up at her with his eyebrows slightly raised. "Are you going to eat standing up?"
She sat down beside him, and when Dumbledore winked at her from across the table, she fought off a smile.
The meal was much more modest than it would be the next day, but delicious as always. As they finished their meal, Luna turned to Tom and asked, "I'm not particularly tired, and I'm not fancying the idea of going back to my common room just yet. Would you like to go for a walk?"
"Outside?"
"Sure. I like the snow."
For a moment, she thought he would refuse. Then he said, "I suppose I have nothing better to do."
They had gotten to the landing where they had collided before dinner and were about to separate to grab their cloaks when Peeves swooped down upon them. "Perfect Prefect and Loony Lovegood have to kiss! Mistletoe!" he screeched, dangling a bit of mistletoe in front of their noses.
Luna quickly took a step back, muttering, "Nargles."
Tom shot a half-quizzical, half-exasperated look at her before turning back to Peeves. "Get lost, Peeves," he growled. "We're not going to kiss."
"Oh, yes you are!" the poltergeist cried with glee.
"I wonder where the Bloody Baron is," Tom mused in mock nonchalance. "I was just on my way to the dungeons, I'm sure I'll find him. . . ."
Peeves' impish grin immediately dropped from his face. "Fine, bratty brat. If you're going to be that way, you'll make sure Peevesey has no fun at all." He blew a raspberry and threw the mistletoe at Tom's head, where it landed in his hair, before rocketing away through the corridors, banging suits of armor as he went.
Tom was watching Peeves go, looking pleased with himself, when Luna rushed over and swept the mistletoe off his head. "Ooh, you're going to have Nargles in your hair, Tom!"
"What are Nargles? Or what do you think they are, I should say. Actually, never mind. I suspect I don't actually want to know."
Luna opened her mouth to tell him just what a Nargle was exactly, but then changed her mind at his tone of voice. Suddenly a feeling of displeasure began puddling in her belly, indignation at her Nargles being mocked by this boy, this boy so full of darkness even at sixteen, when she had to spend Christmas away from her father, when she might never see her family or friends again, when she was just trying to help him. How dare he? She snapped her mouth shut, then muttered, "No, you don't want to know."
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Stop that."
"Stop what?" she asked.
"What you're doing, Lovegood," he said, gesturing vaguely at her entire person.
"Stop calling me Lovegood," she retorted. "I have a first name, you know."
"What's gotten into you?" he asked with a mixture of incredulity and acerbity. "I know you're sensitive when your stupid creatures are insulted, but honestly - "
"What's gotten into me?" she repeated, her anger flaring in time with his. "You!" She prodded the center of his chest with her finger. "You've gotten into me! I try to be your friend and be nice, and you...make fun of me, what I think. You're horrible to my friends, my real friends, you're - "
He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her back against the wall. "You are being very foolish," he whispered. "If you have even the foggiest idea of what's good for you, you'll stop this right now."
"What? I thought you liked it when people were honest with you?" she said bluntly, without sarcasm. Already her anger was ebbing away, a flash in a hot pan, never lasting long. She knew she was not angry, but sad and homesick, and although a great many things were the responsibility of Tom Riddle, this was not.
Breath hot on her face, he kept her pinned against the wall, his own anger nowhere near dying down. The fingers of his wand hand twitched where they sat on her shoulder.
"I'm not afraid of you," she said, catching the movement.
"Foolish," he repeated in a hiss.
Luna could see the pulse in his neck thudding, wondered if he was coherent enough to feel her own under his hands or if he was too enraged. She counted to seven heartbeats, then said, "Sorry for the outburst, Tom, I've had a bit on my mind the last few days. You really are going to have Nargles in your hair." She reached up and ran her fingers through his black hair.
The rage in his eyes was replaced with surprise. For the briefest moment, she swore the pulse in his neck thudded even faster. He took a step backward, swatting her hand away. "What are you doing?"
"Nargles," she repeated, feeling as though this should be obvious, and a bit worried for his sanity.
"Unbelievable," he snapped, before turning on his heel and storming off, their planned walk in the snow long forgotten.