"One more," Luna said immediately after the door was shut. "While we have the time. Let's see him again, at least once."
"Did he hurt you?" the Doctor asked.
"The desk did, a bit," Luna replied. "Just here..." She pointed to her hip.
"One more Riddle visit," the Doctor sighed, simply frolicking with nervous energy. "For today. And I'm simply stunned that you weren't made a Gryffindor."
"I'm not brave," Luna said. "Not really. Although I suppose what I'm doing wouldn't be counted terribly clever..."
"Clever. Perhaps not. But you chose the peaceful way. Instead of killing him while he's powerless, you want to reform him."
"Killing him while he's powerless seems a Slytherin's path, doesn't it?"
"You'd be surprised. Slytherins and Gryffindors aren't so different, when all's said and done." The Doctor looked sad and wistful and farther away than normal. "Bravery can make one ambitious, and ambition can make one brave."
Luna tilted her head. "But cleverness can do the same."
The Doctor grinned. "I like you." He sprinted to the TARDIS console.
While he worked, Luna wandered down the TARDIS hallway until she found herself in front of a familiar door. She opened it to find the TARDIS's labyrinthine library. Led by what she could only assume was the TARDIS's willpower, Luna followed an intangible path and found herself in front of a shelf housing many brightly-colored books.
One specific book cover caught her eye, and though she couldn't quite make out the title, she reached for the book.
A hand yanked her round, and she was face-to-rabbity-face with the Doctor, who looked alarmed. "Lovegood! What are you doing here? What have I told you about wandering off?"
"Have you told me something about wandering off?" Luna asked interestedly. "I don't remember that."
"Hasn't anybody ever told you not to read books from a time traveller's library?" the Doctor looked exasperated.
For once, a look of penitence fell across Luna's features. "Yes. I'm sorry."
The Doctor was a bit startled by this turn of events, but he plowed on, "Right. Well, see that it doesn't happen again." As he steered her out of the library, he let out an imperceptible sigh of relief that he had stopped her before she managed to grab hold of the fifth Harry Potter book. He couldn't imagine why she would be led to that specific shelf.
They arrived at the TARDIS's exit, and he turned to give Luna her usual briefing. "Alright. We're farther along in Tom's timeline, now, but it is possible that we've crisscrossed ourselves and he's seen us more than we've seen him. Try not to volunteer new information until you've gaged how much he knows."
Luna nodded. "Alright."
The Doctor threw the door open with a flourish and sauntered out into the same bedroom to see a lean young man sitting atop his desk, facing them. The Doctor staggered back, but Luna continued, awestruck, to enter the room. Tom was older by many years, now, and very, very handsome. There was a charming upturn to his lips but the same intensity in his eyes, just better-masked. He looked amused when he saw Luna and dropped down to the floor.
"Lovegood!" he acknowledged, clearly pleased. "You're here. And you're so young. When's the last time you saw me?"
Luna passed the Doctor, who still stood tense and unmoving. "We just came from your childhood," she said cautiously. "Before Hogwarts. How old are you now?"
"Sixteen," Tom said lazily. "And I've seen you loads more times, now. Your aim could improve, Doctor." His dark eyes landed on the Doctor, then, with condescension but no noticeable hatred. Like a cat pinning down a small animal or insect. The corner of his mouth rose a bit. "You drive like a madman."
The Doctor finally stirred, raising his chin to better look down at Tom in wariness. "I am a madman. Did you say you're sixteen?"
Tom nodded, gazing at the Doctor as though trying to unweave the riddles that composed him. "And you always seem to know so much." With that cryptic remark, he waved a dismissive hand. "I presume you know the drill, now, Doctor. You can go."
The Doctor looked much more reluctant this go. "Think I'll stay, if that's alright."
"What? You think I'll hex her? You don't know me yet, the way I know you, but you ought to know that I won't do that."
"Leave me your wand, then," the Doctor said without missing a beat.
Tom's eyes narrowed, but he pulled his wand out with a hand of slender fingers and set it on the floor for the Doctor to pick up. The Doctor took it and disappeared into the TARDIS. And this time, the TARDIS did leave.
"Sit," said Tom, gesturing at the bed and beginning to pace the room.
"Is it...after your sixth year, or before?" Luna asked, seating herself where he had indicated.
"After," Tom said absentmindedly. He seemed to be deciding something. "What's that first thing you said that I have?" he asked, a bit of amusement touching his voice again. "The first of your strange creatures that I ever heard of?"
"A soulwig," Luna said. "You didn't like it very much."
"A soulwig," Tom repeated. "And that's supposed to...prevent me from confiding in people?"
"Yes," Luna confirmed, frowning a bit and wondering if he was about to make fun of her.
"I'm about to confide in you." Tom pulled his desk chair so that he was able to sit across from her. His eyes were so intense, simply daring her to judge him.
"Alright," Luna said, unfazed. Quite the contrary: she met his gaze with intrigue.
"I killed someone this year," he said. "A Mudblood. Are you upset with me?"
Every word in that sentence slammed into Luna's mind with nothing to soften the blows. So I fail, then, she thought. I'm going to see Tom Riddle throughout his life, and I'm going to try to make him better, and I'm going to fail. Her eyes started to burn, and she looked past Tom, at his desk, and she wondered where the pretty rock had gone.
"Why did you kill the person?" the Ravenclaw in her asked.
"I opened the Chamber of Secrets," Tom said slowly. "I set a Basilisk on her."
"I didn't ask 'how'," Luna pointed out thinly. "I asked 'why'." A tear spilled over, and Tom caught it with a finger.
"Have I disappointed you, Lovegood?" he asked.
Luna shook her head. "You've grown to be yourself," Luna said. "It's me I'm disappointed in."
"Because you went back in time to fix me," he said, with just a trace of venom in his assessment, as he caught another tear.
So he would find out. Maybe that was why it wouldn't work.
Luna looked at his blurry form. "I'm not a mechanic," she said, still sounding so clear even though she was crying. "Or a doctor."
Tom laughed a bit. "If it's any compensation," he said, "you have changed something: you've made it so I'm not alone."
I'm about to confide in you. That was what he had said. If she couldn't fix Voldemort, there were things that she could do. She could try to decrease the damage. "You can confide in me," she said aloud.
Tom's response was cut short by the TARDIS reappearing.
"I forgot how short our meetings were back then," he said with a wry smile.
"I'll see you," Luna said.
"I know," Tom replied almost cockily.
Luna rose to leave, but Tom caught hold of her wrist before she was within reach of the TARDIS. "Take this," he said, handing her a bundle of paper. "Write in it if you ever need me."
Need you? Luna thought, having honestly not considered that their relationship might go two ways. "Thanks, Tom," she said uncertainly.
Tom nodded. "If you have it, I should be able to protect you. Keep it with you."
Luna nodded.
"And send the Doctor out with my wand," Tom added, sounding more irritated.
...
"He said that?" the Doctor said, stunned.
"Yes," Luna replied calmly.
"Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, the bloke who sees interpersonal connections as a weakness, that bloke, said 'you made it so I'm not alone'?"
"Yes," Luna said again.
The Doctor rubbed the palm of his right hand against his forehead. "Either he's tricking you, which I wouldn't doubt for a second- sorry, Lovegood -or you've managed to change something in him."
"That was the hope, wasn't it?" Luna had the package that Tom had given her sitting on her lap, and she was surprised that the Doctor didn't seem to notice it.
The Doctor sighed. "I tried some tinkering with Voldemort's wand...even brought in Olivander. Not sure if it did anything, though. I wanted to make it so it didn't hurt people, but apparently it 'doesn't work that way'."
Serious though the topic was, Luna couldn't help but find the Doctor's juvenile mimic of the old, renowned wand-maker rather funny.
"We're here, by the way," the Doctor said glumly. "See you again next weekend."
Luna waved as she exited the TARDIS with her package.
Her walk to the Ravenclaw common room was fairly serene, and the riddle she was asked in order to get in wasn't terribly hard ("What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in a thousand years?" "The letter M"). She passed a clump of boys studying and two girls playing chess and curtsied to the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, just to be polite, before at last she reached the girls' dormitory.
Sitting in her bed and drawing the curtains, she unwrapped the package that Tom had given her.
As predicted, it was a book. A little black diary.