Chapter Sixteen: The Bird of Paradise
You put on quite a show
All these highs and lows
And you're never really sure what you do it for
Do you even want to know?
– "Smoke and Mirrors," Gotye
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After her second meeting with Malfoy, Luna returned to her daily routine as usual, spending free periods with her Gryffindor friends or Perpetua and making occasional passing efforts to focus on her schoolwork. When she reached the tail end of the week, she began to notice a conspicuous absence of any kind of suspect activity among her fellow Slytherins — rather like, she suspected, Riddle's lack of aura. Clearly there was something going on, but they were for some reason suddenly making an effort to carry out their business quietly, at least when in her company. Every Slytherin eye she looked into was studiously blank, every aura smooth and so nearly static that it must have required a frightening degree of self-control. Riddle might not have realised the nature of her particular talent, but he certainly understood that she could tell when people were hiding something; he must have drilled into his followers that they were not to reveal anything to her. Luna was unused to being handled by other people in this kind of bland, profoundly Slytherin way, and it made her deeply uncomfortable. Was it a sincere effort to keep her in the dark, or was it one of his oblique taunts? Did he reallythink he could just lay low for a while, and she'd forget all about him?
She eventually came to understand, to her chagrin, that this was exactly what she'd been doing. In her disdain toward her callous and self-centred housemates, she'd practically abandoned her promise to Yancy to keep an eye on them in favour of distancing herself from them as much as she possibly could. And while Riddle had threatened her, even frightened her, his lack of direct action had led her into a kind of complacency; she'd once again lapsed into thinking of him as an annoying teenager who liked to antagonise her rather than a future Dark Lord who wanted to kill or subjugate everyone she loved.
It hit her suddenly, on Friday afternoon after Arithmancy, that she still did not know what it was Riddle was doing. The Slytherin girls had effectively locked her out of the loop once Cecily had identified her as a threat, and she knew better than to try to get anything useful out of any of the others. Yancy was her only ally, and even he probably had no concept of the magnitude of Riddle's powers or the extent of his ambition.
When Saturday at last came round, Luna was hesitant about meeting with Abraxas Malfoy for a third time but resolved to go anyway. Malfoy hadn't done anything to suggest an ulterior motive as of yet, and despite being an open follower of Riddle, noticeably wasn't quite as fanatical in his devotion as some of his fellow Slytherins were.
As she made her way to the classroom where they had conducted their last two sessions of the study, she briefly entertained the idea of trying to turn him against Riddle. While it didn't seem likely, the thought of having an insider ear was appealing. Given Malfoy's naturally discreet and understated bearing, something told her he would make an excellent and subtle liar – a skill which, despite her ethical misgivings, she had come to see as valuable over the past weeks. Perhaps she should try to scope him out and see if he seemed willing to switch sides.
When she reached the classroom, Luna was surprised to find that Malfoy was not there waiting for her as he had been the past two times. The room seemed much shabbier and darker without his deliberately over-polished presence filling it, and Luna conjured an elegant little sculpture in the centre of the room to make herself feel better. A hare, well matched to the colour and texture of the walls and floor, but a bit less austere in sensibility. A tad obvious, maybe, but Luna enjoyed predictability from time to time; after all, one couldn't be truly unpredictable without it.
Just moments after she'd placed her finishing touches on the hare – brightening its innocent eyes, adding a little fluffiness to the stone tail so that it looked softer — Malfoy entered.
Really, he didn't so much enter as burst in, although he immediately composed himself upon noticing her presence in the room, looking surprised and a little disconcerted.
"Lovegood," he managed, graciously enough. Almost instantaneously, she could see that something was wrong, although she didn't want to jump to conclusions about what. His eyes were red-rimmed and had large, dark bags under them, as if he'd had more than one sleepless night, and his normally languid aura was pulsing rapidly in a way that looked unhealthy. Luna frowned at him.
She knew he likely wouldn't tell her what the problem was, but she had to ask anyway. "Are you all right?"
"Of course." His reply was smooth and decisive, well delivered, if far too hasty to be convincing. By the half-formed grimace that briefly flickered over his face, he could see that she didn't believe him, but he conjured two chairs anyway and went on as if she hadn't said anything.
"So. Today I thought we'd move a little more into the practical side of your abilities. We know that you can resist the Imperius, simple compulsion. Auerbach suggested we look into other kinds, so I spoke to Professor Merrythought and she authorised me to try you on Veritaserum, which is a form of directed-complex compulsion." The words were falling out of his mouth in a rush, and he had pulled a little vial out of his robes and started waving it at her before he was even finished speaking. "As long as I only ask questions that are on a pre-approved list, she told me it's acceptable, so we'll be sticking to basics as much as possible and just testing your resistance to the potion. I'll ask you questions, and you try to lie."
For a moment, Luna didn't answer him, set on edge as she was by his obvious tension. She hadn't spoken to Merrythought personally since class on Thursday. The professor hadn't mentioned anything to her about the study, but she supposed it was possible Malfoy had simply waited until the last possible minute to ask her about it. Although it rationally seemed more likely that Malfoy was up to something, imaginings of Malfoy as her new double agent were still floating around Luna's head. If she was being honest with herself, too, she'd actually come to appreciate his company in spite of herself, and she didn't want to jump to the conclusion that he'd betrayed her.
And anyway, she rationalised, there was only so much damage a Veritaserum interrogation could realistically do to her circumstances. If he asked her a suspicious question and she was forced to answer, she could simply leave the room straightaway and seek assistance from a professor. It was immensely unlikely that he would hit on something useful to him on that first and only try he would get at questioning her. No one in 1943 knew of her identity as a time-traveller, the lion's share of her knowledge about the future would be entirely irrelevant to anyone in this time, and her awareness of the threat Riddle presented was already obvious. She had no idea what other secrets he might try to pry out of her, but she doubted they would be dangerous; Luna knew plenty of things, but they usually weren't things other people saw as important, at least not until much later. It was funny how that worked.
"Lovegood," Malfoy repeated, pushing the vial at her again. "All right?"
She reached out slowly and took it from him. With a nod, more of resolve for herself than assent for him, she drank it. When it hit her tongue, she couldn't suppress an involuntary shudder. Veritaserum had no taste, but there was a certain… something about it that made her skin crawl, in much the same way the Imperius had. The potion was cold, almost thinner than water, and it parched her throat and nearly made her wheeze.
Unlike the Imperius, though, she had difficulty detecting its effects until Malfoy asked her his first question.
"Is your name Luna Lovegood?"
The spell of the potion locked around her tongue, forcing the answer out before she could stop it. "Yes."
Malfoy's brows snapped together, but there was a bizarre shade of relief in his eyes. "Come on, Lovegood. You can do it." He waited a moment, allowing her to compose herself, until she nodded again. "Are you in Slytherin house?"
This one gave her a bit more leeway, although he had no way of knowing that. This time she was able to sense it as the potion rifled subtly through her mind, looking for the truest possible answer she could give. Luna took a shot at pre-empting it.
"Yeeehh," she began steadily enough, but her lips betrayed her and tripped into a half-hearted "Maybe."
Malfoy looked pleasantly surprised at this. "Clever. Not technically untrue, but not the truest statement you could make. And it seemed like you even overcame the potion trying to make you say 'yes,' which was very well done, Lovegood."
She didn't open her mouth, but waited for him to ask another question, knowing the potion would force her to try to correct him if she drew breath to reply. As long as he abandoned this line of thought and asked her something else, she could get away with a lie by omission.
"Are you friends with Cecily Harlowe?" he inquired, doggedly intent gaze meeting hers over steepled fingers.
Luna's jaw dropped slightly, and her mouth began to move again before she could stop it. She hadn't been expecting that one, and she wasn't sure what the potion would try to make her say.
"Cecily… is not a friend," was what came out. What she'd intended to say, perhaps a little acerbically, was Cecily is not well-suited to making friends. Her point had almost come across, and she had been able to toe the line of the truth magic such that she didn't have to specify that Cecily wasn't her friend.
Malfoy's lips quirked at this, and she reflected that he must have been expecting a more straightforward response in the negative. It wasn't much of a logical leap to assume that Malfoy knew about Cecily's various betrayals of Luna, entrenched within Riddle's inner circle as he was. But as it was, he had no way of commenting on the ambiguous veracity of her response without admitting that he was involved in those betrayals, however indirectly.
"All right," he said neutrally. "Tell me about your friends."
As this was not a yes-or-no question, the Veritaserum didn't immediately come up with an answer for her to say.
"I am friends with Euphemia Crinsey-Abbott, Everett Weasley, and Fleamont Potter." The spell didn't seem to count those who didn't technically exist at her particular temporal location, like Ron. She managed to resist mentioning Perpetua, and thanked her lucky stars that she hadn't had enough of a chance to befriend Yancy to feel any compulsion to add him in.
Malfoy squinted at her. "What about that little Ravenclaw girl? Fancourt?"
Luna wasn't sure why she felt so uncomfortable with him asking about Perpetua, but she acted on instinct and tried her best to conceal what she could.
"I see her around a lot," Luna answered easily, which was true enough. "She's very nice. I don't know that 'friend' is the first word I'd choose to describe her." She wouldn't be able to evade a direct query, but perhaps she could redirect his attention. "I spend more time with the Gryffindors."
"Do you care about her?" her inquisitor pressed, leaning forward.
Luna's mind went blank. How was she supposed to –
"I care about everybody."
He pursed his lips at her. "That wasn't really an answer."
"Actually, it was," Luna shot back, trying to keep the triumphant smile from creeping onto her face. "Premise A, Perpetua is a person. Premise B, I care about all people. The conclusion is implied."
It was a simple categorical schema, based on the same basic constructs of logic that were drilled into all the first-year Ravenclaws on their first night in the common room. Luna had had some difficulty with them at first, not wanting to accept that if a, Professor Dumbledore was a wizard, and b, all wizards were lizards, that c, Professor Dumbledore was a lizard. A pretty third-year girl with dark hair had needed to explain to her the distinction between validity and soundness of an argument before Luna was able to grasp how the set of premises made sense. It was a slippery solution to her problem, one she hadn't been sure would work, but apparently the spell was willing to give her some ground on indirect answers so long as they were sufficiently logically obvious. And given how rubbish most witches and wizards were at logic – well.
Malfoy had gone curiously silent and wasn't meeting her eyes. "I think that's enough for today," he said finally. "You've come up with some clever solutions for avoiding direct answers, but it's not evident to me as of yet that this capacity is related to your resistance to simple compulsion."
Luna drew back a little, discomfited. That he would choose to call off the questioning so abruptly, at that particular point, made her uneasy, but she saw no benefit to remarking on it. "What do you think our next step is, then?"
He finally met her gaze, his expression perfectly easy. "Well, the obvious choice would be undirected-complex compulsion." At her questioning look, he added matter-of-factly, "Amortentia."
Luna blanched. "No."
"Miss Lovegood, it's the clear – "
She scrambled out of the chair and away from him, holding her hands away from her face as if she was trying to deflect an offensive spell. "No," came out as a choked whisper. "No. Absolutely not. No, we're done." Half-unthinking, she Vanished the sculpture that she'd conjured earlier and put her wand behind her ear with trembling fingers.
Malfoy stood, looking upset. "Lovegood, we'll be doing it under – "
"I said no!"
"It's not nearly as – "
She whirled out of the classroom and slammed the door behind her with a wordless magical impulse, cutting him off mid-sentence.
Yancy. She had to talk to Yancy, let him know what was going on. Malfoy really had been up to something with the study, damn it. Maybe it wouldn't cause her any problems, but it had been stupid of her to take the risk anyway. She could always have just waited until after her task was completed and she wasn't going toe-to-toe with a megalomaniacal teenager to fritter around learning about her mysterious powers.
Her feet carried her to the library, where – thank all the stars – Yancy was standing by one of the tables with a little Gryffindor girl, explaining how to use the reference numbers. Luna strode up and grabbed his arm, ignoring his half-formed apologies to the girl as she dragged him into a secluded spot. The look of agitation on his face faded into one of concern once he noticed her own disturbed expression.
"What's wrong?" he murmured, glancing briefly back at the abandoned first-year before meeting her eyes.
"The study's over," she whispered back in a rush. "I had to end it. Malfoy wanted to try Amortentia." Yancy's eyes went wide as saucers.
"What?"
"I know. There's no way he can really have gotten approval from Merrythought for that, which means this whole thing was probably just a way of keeping an eye on me." She leaned against the bookshelf behind her, suddenly bone-weary. "I just thought you ought to know."
"R-right," he stammered, "of course." After a moment he said, "What sort of questions did Malfoy ask you? In the Veritaserum test."
Luna shook her head helplessly. "Nothing important, I didn't think. Mostly basic personal questions. It didn't last for very long."
Yancy blew out his breath. "Well… that's… that might be something. I don't know what yet."
"We'll find out, I suppose," Luna ventured, reaching for her hair and twining her fingers in it absently. Yancy nodded.
"Oh – before I forget," he piped up suddenly, "I've been looking into a few things. Selwyn's research, first. I don't know very much about it, but I can tell you it's starting to dip into dark stuff, illegal stuff. Some of the books I've seen him with in here are banned." A bright little smile formed slowly on his face. "Pretty stupid of him, actually. I thought about reporting him to Dippet, but I thought it might be a good idea to let him carry on for a bit, since we don't have any other way of figuring out what Riddle's really doing.
"And one more thing. You know that the faculty and staff tend to be a bit more free with their words in front of prefects than regular students, right?" At Luna's nod, he went on. "Well, I overheard some things. Professor Bornwise and Professor van der Mond were talking, and Professor Bornwise mentioned something about Professor Dippet having to deal with – listen to this – centaurs."
Luna's pale eyebrows rose. "You mean the centaurs that live in the Forest?"
"Yes. Apparently they've been pretty riled up lately, and they seem to be putting a lot of pressure on Dippet for something, although I don't think most of the professors know what or why. I'm not sure if it's important to us or not, but I figured it couldn't hurt to tell you."
She bit her lip and nodded, remembering her encounter with Solarn on the day of the Sorting Feast. "It… might be important. I'll keep an ear out around the Slytherins and let you know what I hear."
"All right." Yancy looked over at the table where the first-year Gryffindor student was still sitting, kicking her feet and looking as though she was about to keel over from boredom. "I'd best get back over there and finish helping Laetitia with her research. Let me know if anything else comes up." With a quick, satisfied nod, he left her in the corner and returned to the table.
Luna stood there by herself for a few minutes, thinking. All she could really remember was that Solarn had recognised her as a time-traveller, and that he had been strangely upset at her mention of Firenze. He hadn't seemed very concerned with her being 'out of time,' as he put it, beyond a simple curiosity as to her motives, so it didn't come off as likely that the centaurs would be harassing Dippet about that. There were a number of variables in play here, most of which Luna didn't know anything about, and her lack of information made it difficult to draw any conclusions about what was going on or how Riddle was involved, if at all. Slytherin was almost certainly going to continue in its pattern of dead silence, so there was little chance of her getting any information from within her own house. If she was going to learn anything, she needed to go back to the forest and talk to the centaurs.
Later, was her only exhausted reaction to this thought. She was worn out with intrigue and mystery; she needed a rest. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was a time-travelling campaign against the machinations of the most powerful Dark Lord of the age.
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The following afternoon found Luna doing homework with Euphemia, Everett, and Fleamont in an empty classroom not far from the Gryffindor common room. As usual, the four of them were having difficulty being productive, but Luna was finding it impossible to care.
"I just don't understand why there have to be so many rules," Fleamont was saying. "I mean, theoretically speaking, there's no reason at all why we can't conjure entirely new forms of life. It's just a different kind of spellcrafting. A new frontier!" Euphemia giggled as he lurched up from his desk and struck a dramatic pose.
"It isn't, though," Everett argued, fidgeting with his quill. "True animation is still fringe magic at this point. And even if it wasn't, the ethics of creating sentient life for the sake of mere curiosity are always going to be questionable."
"He's right," Euphemia put in, still smiling. Fleamont made a face.
"Ethics. That's such a boring way of talking about things. Ethics are for Ravenclaws."
"Actually, most Ravenclaws would disagree," Luna said mildly. "A lot of them are more concerned with discovery for discovery's sake, just like Slytherins care more about what works. Figuring out where the line is, what's right and wrong, is supposed to be where the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs step in."
"There you go again with your mysterious and inexplicable knowledge of Ravenclaw, Lovegood," Fleamont drawled, pointing at her. "One of these days you're going to have to admit that you were Rowena in a past life, and the Grey Lady is going to fall at your feet and worship you."
Unable to resist smiling back at him, Luna nevertheless had to gently correct him on one point. "She doesn't like to be called that. Her name's Helena."
"You're strengthening his case, Luna," Everett pointed out with a grin.
"She's nice!" Luna protested. "I can't help it if the rest of you don't want to bother getting to know the castle ghosts. Or the other houses."
"Actually, there's a thought," Euphemia said suddenly. "Ghosts aren't created with magic, but their existence apart from corporeal bodies imply some sort of ontology of soul that would influence creation of sentient life, right? Maybe if we studied ghosts we'd get a better idea of how to craft a true animation spell."
Everett made an interested noise. "That's… rather clever, Euphemia. I'm impressed." Euphemia beamed at him.
"Yes, well, even if the ethics are questionable I still think it's an interesting idea. I mean, all we have right now are transfigured or conjured animals, and then whatever a Patronus is."
"How are Patronuses different?" Fleamont wanted to know, his eyes sharpening with genuine interest.
Euphemia's face went faintly pink at the increase in his attention, and she went on eagerly. "Well, from what we know about Patronuses, we're not actually conjuring the Patronus in the sense of generating it from magical energy. More like… summoning it. Its sentience isn't easy to study because Patronus magic tends to be unpredictable, not to mention how difficult the spell is to actually perform. But it comes from somewhere, in a way that, for instance, conjured birds don't – watch. Avis."
With an elegant flick of her wand, Euphemia conjured three little red birds which hopped onto her desk, peeping, and then pointed at them. "Did you see how they sprouted out of my wand like that? And they're not real birds – there isn't any bird alive that looks like a common sparrow but has the plumage of a summer tanager. These aren't suited for any type of survival; they're created and sustained by magic, and thus aren't bound by natural rules." With another wave of her wand, she Vanished the birds. "Now, I didn't just kill those birds, because they were never alive. They imitate life, but they don't reproduce it."
"Still not seeing how a Patronus is different," Fleamont reiterated, shaking his head.
Euphemia sighed, gesturing expressively with her hands in her frustration. "Well – if I could conjure one for you, I could show you what I mean. A Patronus acts with a will in ways that a conjured creature can't, and it's sort of — drawn out by magic, but not really created by it…"
"You can do a Patronus, Euphemia," Luna said suddenly. Euphemia dropped her hands and stared.
"No, I can't."
"Yes, you can," Luna repeated. "It's really not as difficult as you might think. A friend of mine taught me how. You can do it, I promise."
Euphemia's eyebrows shot up. "You can perform a Patronus?" Luna nodded, privately amused by the flabbergasted look on her friend's face.
"I can show you how, if you'd like."
"Oh, please!" Euphemia responded instantly, her pale brown eyes shining.
"Why didn't you tell us this before, Luna?" Everett inquired, frowning quizzically. Luna just shrugged.
"Mysterious knowledge!" Fleamont shouted at the ceiling, throwing up his hands. "The girl's an enigma! You expect her to just reveal the secrets of the universe to us peons, Weasley?"
Everett flapped a hand at him. "Quiet down, Fleamont. I want to see how a Patronus is performed."
Luna suddenly felt nervous. She was sure that Euphemia had the capacity to perform a Patronus successfully; that much was beyond doubt, given Euphemia's bright disposition, dazzling magical competence, and strength of will. However, her own ability to teach magic had never been put to the test, and she found herself wondering if she would be able to explain how to do it in a way that made any sort of sense. Her eyes watered briefly, and she suddenly missed Harry desperately. It became obvious to her, in a flash of irony, that she was trying to pass on his knowledge to his own grandparents.
"All right," Luna said after a moment. "Well – you know the incantation, I suppose."
Euphemia nodded. "Expecto Patronum," she pronounced clearly.
"Right. Well – all you need to do is perform this motion," she demonstrated the proper wand movement for Euphemia and then repeated it for good measure, "concentrate your whole self on the happiest memory you can recall, and say the incantation. Quite straightforward, really." She desperately hoped that this would turn out to be true.
Her friend blinked. "Is that all? But it's famously difficult. It must be more complicated than that."
"Well, let's give it a try," Fleamont suggested, pushing off from his desk and pulling out his wand. He performed the wand motions with his usual energetic hyper-intensity, constantly on the verge of appearing ridiculous in his vigorous overcommitment to any spell he bothered to cast. "Expecto Patronum!"
Luna held her breath, half-expecting some brilliant shape to come bursting forth from his wand out of the sheer force of his will, but no such apparition manifested itself.
"Couldn't do it," Fleamont said, appearing entirely unbothered by his abject failure. "Must be pretty difficult after all."
Luna sighed, wondering how to explain. "It can't just be a happy memory. I'm not even sure everybody has one that works for the spell. It has to be… a soul-singing moment. The kind of memory that – you would be happy having only that memory, even if all the rest of them were erased. Pure, bright. A sublime memory." She shook her head. "I don't know if that makes any sense."
Euphemia had been listening quietly, her eyes unfocused on Luna but deeply intent. She raised her wand, performed the motion, and said in her cool alto, "Expecto Patronum."
The silvery shape from her wand appeared more slowly than Luna was used to, almost as if it were unfolding out of the wood rather than leaping like Luna's hare or Hermione's otter. Its form was indistinguishable at first, but after a moment a pair of blinding wings spread forth, accompanied by an elegantly curved head and a large plume of gossamer tail feathers. The creature hopped onto the floor and cocked its head, regarding them. Euphemia looked to be almost in tears.
"What is it?" Everett asked in a hushed voice.
"It's a bird, Everett," Fleamont noted blandly. Everett glared at him.
"It's a Raggiana bird-of-paradise," Euphemia said quietly, staring at the small silver bird in wonder. "I saw one once, when I was on holiday with my cousins in New Guinea. The natives call it a kumul."
"Well, now I've really been shown up," Fleamont commented without bitterness. "How shall I ever recover?"
Euphemia turned around to look at him, and though the movement was casual, her expression was one of such tenderness that Luna felt almost like an intruder.
"With an ego like yours, I think you'll be all right," she teased gently. Fleamont grinned back at her, eyes suddenly blazing.
Everett coughed discreetly. "I want to try, too," he put in, looking a little forlorn.
Euphemia turned back around, smiling encouragingly at him. "Well, go on then, Weasley."
"Expecto Patronum!" intoned Everett, to no results. Luna shook her head ruefully.
"It might take a bit more practice, but I'm sure you'll get it," she consoled him. "You're a very talented wizard. Both of you are," she added, with a glance at Fleamont. Both of them looked pleased.
"Not as talented as you, Luna," Fleamont denied, cheesy grin still firmly in place. But the look in his eyes was one of genuine admiration, and Luna glowed.
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She returned to the Slytherin common room that evening in a delightfully buoyant mood, the likes of which she hadn't felt since before the war. She was going to find out what she needed to know about Riddle; she had a direction, she had help, and she had friends. Everything was falling into place. Before she knew it, she'd be back in her own time, and Harry would be there.
"Evening, Lovegood." A familiar voice cut into her dreamy haze like a deluge of cold water. "You're looking rather more bright-eyed than usual this evening."
Luna stopped dead in the middle of the common room. How had she not noticed that he was here? But there he was, lounging on one of the sofas in the corner, surrounded by a ring of followers.
"What do you want?" she said, entirely sobered now. If he was going to interrupt her good mood, she wasn't going to bother with pleasantries.
"Come over here and speak to me a moment, won't you?" Luna tensed. He had phrased it as a request, but the thin veneer of grace and cordiality that he had always maintained when speaking to her up till now was abruptly gone; there was an iron quality to his tone that made it clear he was commanding her, not asking.
Luna gritted her teeth and walked over, crossing her arms. She took a deep breath to calm herself, then said, "Yes?"
He wasn't looking at her. "I hear you've been teaching some of your little Gryffindor friends how to perform a Patronus."
"What if I have?" she responded warily, steadfastly resisting the urge to reach for her hair.
An awful, predatory little smile was playing about the corners of Riddle's mouth, and he finally met her eyes. "I wanted to ask if you'd be willing to teach me. Assuming you really can perform one yourself, of course."
"I would never." The rejection sprang from her mouth without thought, flat and bitter.
He laughed, and the sound was somehow both more beautiful and more horrible than it had seemed before; Luna didn't know whether she wanted to cover her ears and scream or make him do it again, and he knew it, and she hated him all the more for her sudden absence of clarity.
"Just as well, I suppose. It's next to useless anyway, at least for those who don't intend to end up in Azkaban." He fiddled with the ring on his finger, pretending disinterest.
"How did you know about that?" she demanded, sounding more forceful than she felt.
The long-lashed green eyes narrowed in amusement. "I heard your voices from the hallway," was his response, delivered in a sickeningly blithe tone.
It was a patently obvious lie, and they both knew it. They had been near the Gryffindor common room, where Riddle didn't have any classes, nor any reason at all to be.
"I thought it unfortunate that you made the decision to call off your independent study with Abraxas," he went on, apropos of nothing. Luna felt a chill down her spine as she realised that he was now trying to make it as obvious as possible that he had been spying on her. Not every Slytherin in the room was one of his followers, and yet he felt at ease enough in his own power to casually admit to having her watched.
It was time to abandon the façade. She wasn't going to play games with him anymore, not if he was getting this bold.
"I'm not afraid of you," she informed him simply. There was no animosity in her voice, only a statement of fact. It was something he ought to be told more often.
Into his eyes came the expected flash of anger, followed by… amusement.
"Dear, precious girl," he crooned, "of course you are. Just not in the way you thought you would be – am I right?" His grin broadened. "Did you think I hadn't noticed?"
Luna stilled. Of course he would do this, she thought furiously. It was a low trick, mocking her in front of a room full of people for something she had no control over. Worse, everyone would believe it was true, despite any protestations she might make to the contrary; he had made denial impossible, even though every bone in her body screamed against the implication, just as it had when Cecily had asked her about it that night on the dormitory floor.
That he expected her to be humiliated, to be angry, was obvious. Well, she was. But he didn't have to see that.
"I'm not afraid of that," Luna said dispassionately. "I simply choose to disregard it. Although I suppose it would be typical of a teenage boy to assume that others, like him, are unable to draw their attention away from…"
That did anger him, and he sat up, the smile gone, face flushed. His eyes were burning. "Have a care how you speak to me," he spat, "dear Luna."
Her first name; he'd known that would get to her. The sound of his voice forming the word was unbearable. She turned her face away to hide her flinch, and fled.
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A/N: Hey guys, finally an update! This chapter is a bit longer, to thank you all for your patience – it's been a really turbulent couple of months and a lot has been going on, so I appreciate you bearing with me.
You may have also noticed the presence of a recommended soundtrack at the beginning of the chapter. I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while, so I've actually taken the opportunity of this new update to go back and retroactively add recommended listening to all previous chapters (I've also deleted a couple of redundant authors' notes). Please feel free to check them out if you're feeling up to a re-read – I've chosen them all with care and I think they really add to the vibe of the story.
On that note, I thought I might mention again that I have two 8tracks mixes up as official soundtracks for the fic as well (my username is spookyshai, so you can find them on my profile). They were created before I started doing the per-chapter soundtrack system, so there is a bit of overlap in terms of the songs I chose, but there are also songs on the 8tracks that won't appear as recommended soundtracks on any individual chapter. I've also got a side blog on Tumblr that's solely dedicated to Tom and Luna (url: tunavibes) and a few fanvids up on YouTube if you want to check them out (the username is spookyshai, again).
Thank you all so much for your continued readership and support. I started this for myself, but I keep doing it for you. If you have any thoughts on the story so far or just want to say hi, please feel free to leave a review – I read them all and I love to hear from you guys. Best wishes! xo shai