Disclaimer: Still Applies

Chapter 4

She was so nervous that she felt like she had a stone in her stomach and it would weigh down the boat to the lakebed. Luna pictured it with child-like clarity in her mind's eye. Like a snap-shot.

Instantly, the boat tipped like a wonky scale and Luna was in the water. Riddle was on the other side of the boat, hanging in midair and yelling at her.

Why was she heavier than him? Was it a good sign or a bad sign/

Was the crocodile going to eat her heart now?

The crocodile Time. She distinctly heard a ticking noise all of the…in the Nile. Tom Riddle looked like…something more than ghastly through the bluish-black water. Some sort of god long lost. He judged.

But the crocodile eats the hearts around here. Tick, tick, and there was a shadow to her left, blossoming in ever-present angles, ripe in formation, while her hair floated around her like reeds and her eyes grew grey.

Her side of the boat bobbed up like an apple. She sputtered and wheezed.

Tom Riddle looked astounded. It was the first look ever in his history of looks. Just…baffled. Then he returned to normal and leaned forward, his jaw set and his eyes blazing in deep anger.

With him, anger came not from the mind, not from the heart (or lack wherever of), but from the soul.

"You want to get us both killed, don't you? He can't see your overweight lump and so you have to give him a visual aid. Blood in the water or not, it won't be mine."

'I…I couldn't help it. You have a way with words. The image just popped into my head."

He gripped the wand in his hand tightly, and he considered her, weighing the options.

"Will I have to fix it so nothing ever occurs to you again?"

She was very still and very cold. He was the crocodile, she thought.

"I can control it. I promise," Luna said, rubbing her arms.

"Do," he said and she gave a start when the boat began to glide forward. Luna would have been happy to be invisible and she tried to stay quiet. Only after several moments, he seemed to realize she was still alive. That bothered him, it seemed.

"So…someone has you for a mother?" Tom asked. "Tragic, the way life works for some poor souls."

"I know. I feel like I'm being eaten from the inside out. And there is swelling. I've heard of the rampant implantation scheme from the Ministry. Implant a spy, through the cauliflower growth, into the stomach to listen in. I had no idea how deep it went."

Riddle seemed defiant for some reason. He straightened up and stared at her, taking his time studying her since he had the opportunity.

"You do know that happens, don't you?"

"I was told but I didn't expect to be an ompa-lumpa. I acquire mass with bread crumbs. I think there is multiplication going on, I-."

"Not that. The way that sometimes…well."

Luna stared. "Well what?"

"Some vampires…you know how cuckoo birds raise their young? Replace one child with another? That's very prominent with young women, with…swelling or whatnot. The infant grows teeth and decides it wants to be born. Takes it upon itself to make an exit and have a little snack on the way. A cake metaphor comes to mind.

All those sweet, expectant, little girls: walking rotisseries"

"…I have never heard of that," she whispered, all eyes.

"It's true. A very bloody epidemic, last I read."

She began to shiver. He would have kept his ghastly grin if she hadn't started to scream. It was a bad moment, there, and for once, he actually had to be soothing.

"I...uh, I was just joking!" Tom called out nervously over her screams. "It was just a bit of conversation! Get your wits about you!"

Responding to the word wits, Luna calmed herself, realizing he had been being rude.

"Thank you for not ruining my robes. They are new," he said, and if to underline the point, he gathered the end of his robes to the far end of the boat. "Impressionable thing, aren't you? Scared of what's inside of you?"

"I'm more worried about the outside at the moment," she retorted, feeling pained from the earlier…horrible moment. "That was extremely rude."

"I'm sorry you believe everything you hear."

"That's not an apology," Luna muttered, holding her stomach.

"I'm sorry you misunderstand things on purpose so you don't have to face anything outside of your own control. You deflect things constantly, ignoring the normal, boring things like talking. Your only defense for an unreasonable world that misunderstands you. You like it, even though the result is that it makes you seem nearly mad. You build yourself in the contrary of what is the main flow of…well, everything, ironically, drowning yourself more in the flow," He spoke as if he knew her. His eye skipped the as if entirely, and he stared at her with a discerning familiarity. "But you're not mad at all. Your responses always relate, always connecting some way. Thus, you're extraordinarily normal."

At her look, he sighed. "You're not mad, you loony. I can tell." This was stated with the air of a small awkward greediness, and his eyes flickered away from hers.

"I wouldn't know," she said primly. He made a motion with his rather admittedly beautiful hands that she assumed meant 'There you have it'.

Luna was inexplicably more afraid of him now than ever.

"Only that time, that little internalization of your discomfort almost got you killed." He smiled to himself. "Internally…oh, that's poetic. And I don't believe I would try that again, if I were you. Your coping mechanism won't work here."

"I don't think you know the first thing about me because you wouldn't care to. That's the key part, you don't really care. You can't know people without caring. You're flying blind with me, Tom."

"I don't see the problem with that if there's only one direction to go in," he said, and she felt a thrill of horror. "That much you also have in common with others. You think you're special. But don't take my opinion so personally. I don't think you lack…energy. It must be tiring, to keep up that particular defense all the time. I admire that. I'll give you one thing: you, like others, count in numbers. Only you go against the odds rather with them. At least you have made your choice. Everyone wants to be special but few want to pay the price."

He was brilliant, an artist with words. He linked them together in such a way that the link would feel far greater on her side than on his. Luna knew this. She also knew that he was really flying blind: he was an Outsider on the subject of being like people, of fitting in with anyone. Sometimes those outside the box know the workings of the inside better, or at least, present themselves that way. He had missed…quite a few things in his description. But she had felt nothing for years but anger and loneliness and a longing, a gift of his older self, and had basis of comparison.

She felt deeply for him. And an outsider would know she did this without any ill intent or conscious thought. She on the other hand had little awareness of this.

"You do know that when you wake it, it won't be over. If you have the child, it especially won't. I'm under the impression that it requires some interaction."

Life was/is/will be funny. Now that she could feel, there was another issue, another problem with the prospect of becoming…no, not becoming, being a mother.

"I don't want to do to…my child what my mother did to me." She was speaking more to herself than him but he perked up.

Tom Riddle belonged on a Muggle yacht. He would disagree, most fervently, but he belonged on a yellow yacht in the Caribbean drinking Gillywater or something of the like (something red, that kind of like). Because his posture just screamed elitist ponce. He was being condescending when he raised an inky black eyebrow and she knew it. She just thought it appealing.

Dreams. Weirder things have happened.

"And what, exactly, did your mother do to you, Luna? Leave stray bottles of potions about? Not childproof her wand? Leave you out in the sun too long one day?"

"She died on me. Actually."

His eyes searched hers and you know, she thought he was trying to spy a lie. He seemed more interested now.

"Pity she couldn't find a convenient day to die," he answered. Yet he was still listening.

"It's not just that, either. Um, it's different when you have someone counting on you for feeding, of course, I'm not discounting that." Riddle made a face at her. Luna ignored him. "It's that I look at myself through my mother's eyes. My mother was brilliant. She researched the forbidden arts without funding and still managed to find the most astounding things. She was amazing.

And there's me. I went to Hogwarts, hoping…that I would be as liked as she had been, grow up to be as pretty as she had been. I'd never say to anyone outside of this place, outside of my dreams, but I'd have liked to have been acknowledged. In some way. In a class or as a good friend or…some little way.

I didn't mind sitting outside alone for my own self. I rather liked it. I could concentrate and see the beautiful clouds and maybe because I was looking at life in little pieces rather than the big, two dimensional, boring picture, that I was special in some way. That I was at peace with what I could do, and what I could do was dream.

But through my mother's eyes, all I could see was disappointment. I kept saying to myself once I am out of school, I will travel the world and do great things and discover. Change the way people think about things, for good, and perhaps find the beauty I was good at seeing in clouds.

I wanted to find meaning. In myself, mostly, but in the world. I missed the awe I felt from the beginning, before Hogwarts. I struggled very hard to keep it.

For many reasons—a specific one, but for many, I can't fool myself now—I found out that school wasn't the reason for my failure. I was the reason. I used to be content looking forward to the next day. Never in the one I was in. I was dreaming of the next day or the little things. And one day, I woke up pregnant and my time was up.

And do you know, my mother…I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry that she had me instead of the charming, talented girl that she deserved.

I feel sorry for mothers in general. I don't know if she would have loved me. I feel wicked for saying it, I do, but perhaps we were both lucky that she died. I do not know."

Riddle was silent for a moment, looking at his hands. Luna didn't know where all that had come from. She hadn't gone through her days—even up to before the incident with Voldemort—actively thinking such things. It must have been the lack of feeling for all those years.

And of course, she confided to the worst of confidants.

Life will always be funny, complex in its simplicity. She was just rather tired of being out of the joke.

"I, too, believe that love is not always…well, I believe it's not there at all. But in your example, yes, that affection due to blood and pain is not guaranteed."

Luna paused. "Really? Or are you just being…"

He looked up, with a darkened gaze.

"Really." Luna finished, the adjective she was looking for not being of use.