Mr. the Doctor did not return until after Halloween.

He landed on the Hogwarts grounds, in the area that Luna tended to occupy, one early morning and spilled out onto the grass, along with some smoke. "Sorry!" he coughed. "Bit of an error with the console. I just came back from an adventure with a giant capybara...Anyway, happy Saturday, Lovegood!"

"It's Friday," Luna answered serenely, putting aside some weeds that she had been braiding together.

"Right, so I'm a bit early..."

"It's after Halloween, but it's no trouble." Luna stood. "It's still my first year."

"After Halloween...So, anything strange happen to Filch's cat?"

"Not that I know of. And I do like to make it my business to know about the castle's animal guardian population, so I'd say Mrs. Norris has been rather ordinary. Ronald Weasley's rat is very strange, though. I don't think he's really a rat at all."

The Doctor reeled from this information. "Mrs. Norris is fine?"

"She hasn't been limping, and she still likes being scratched behind the neck. I don't think anybody's kicked her or anything. Why do you ask?"

The Doctor blinked. "Have you met Ginny Weasley?"

"Of course. She's very nice, but she is very shy, too. She's why I know who Ronald Weasley is. And the rat."

"Enough on the rat," the Doctor said a bit firmly. "Has Ginny seemed...strange, recently?"

"No," Luna said, frowning a bit. "We live near each other, and I don't think she acts much differently than she normally does. She does get easily embarrassed around Harry Potter, though."

"Nothing else?" the Doctor insisted.

Luna shook her head.

"Something's changed, then," the Doctor said, pacing.

"Positively?" Luna asked.

"It seems so, but I'm not sure yet." The Doctor turned and wordlessly entered the TARDIS, leaving the door open for Luna to follow him.

"Are we going to see Tom?" Luna asked him, touching her pocket, where the diary still sat. She hadn't written in it, hadn't done anything but flipped through the blank pages and occasionally touched the place where it sat, as she was doing now. It felt curiously like it might burn her if she held it for too long.

"Yes. I think so." Something in the Doctor's tone made Luna feel like she was on the outside of some great secret. The feeling wasn't unpleasant, though. The Doctor always seemed to know things that she didn't. He was like Dumbledore, only older and with even more power.

Luna sat down, cross-legged, as she had in the past, and waited.

The TARDIS's almost-soothing jerky movements stilled, and the Doctor crouched in front of Luna. "There was a deleted timeline," he said at last, "where the Chamber of Secrets was opened on the Halloween that just passed. Something's changed in your timeline, and I think that it has to do with your meetings with Tom Riddle."

Luna felt herself hoping and wondered if it would be smart to put a stop to it, but she decided that it was better to feel violently than to prevent herself from feeling at all. So she hoped.

"I don't know how," the Doctor said gravely, "but this timeline has been altered so that he opens the Chamber once and either doesn't open it again or waits much longer." His gaze shifted. "Still barefoot, Lovegood?"

"I suspect nargles," Luna said without conviction. Nargles were most active in the springtime, and anyway, Hogwarts should be warded against such creatures. But there was still a chance that it was them stealing her shoes.

"Let's see Tom," the Doctor said with a strange gentleness.

They stepped out of the TARDIS.

Tom, young and glaring, stood waiting for them at the door. "Why didn't you tell me there was a wizard school?" he demanded.

"How long has it been?" Luna asked.

"Lovegood, stand back," the Doctor ordered almost at the same time. He had taken a defensive stance in front of her, nearly bumping her back into the TARDIS. He held his sonic screwdriver like a wizard might hold a wand, which was curious.

"It's been a month since you said you'd be back," Tom said accusingly. "In that time, a man called Dumbledore came to tell me I'm a wizard. And he set my wardrobe on fire." He glared from the Doctor to Luna, and somehow he managed to make each glare different. His glare for the Doctor was one of distrust, whereas his glare for Luna looked more like a parent who was disappointed in his child. "So. Are you wizards, as well? Why did you see me early?"

At the same time, Luna and the Doctor came to the decision to never tell Tom Riddle that they had met him by accident.

"Lovegood's a witch," the Doctor said. "I'm a time traveller. She couldn't come to see you without my help. This box is my time machine. And we came to see you because the future required us to. There's a timeline in which good and evil come into conflict, and good wins, but the cost is many lives. Lives that we'd like to save. Including yours."

"I die, in the future?"

"Everyone dies eventually, Tom."

Tom scowled.

"It's like sleep, after a long day," the Doctor continued.

"And you'd know?" Tom challenged.

"Oh, sure. I've died loads of times," the Doctor said with his usual playful grin. "Anyway, we've already changed that timeline a bit, but the goal is to change it completely."

Tom turned his head slightly. "And that box of yours. It's bigger on the inside. That's magic as well?"

"More like a pocket universe, but sure, if it helps."

"You can go, now," Tom said stiffly. "I want to speak to Luna."

The Doctor's smile fell. "Sure. I'll be here, then, Lovegood." As he had before, he slipped into the TARDIS but kept it parked.

"Let me see your wand," Tom ordered.

"You'll get your own before school," Luna said.

"I want to see yours."

Cautiously, Luna took out her wand. The familiar greedy look entered Tom's eyes, and she put the wand back hastily. "It has unicorn hair. I was pleased."

"And you're from my future. That means, really, I'm older."

Luna nodded.

"How do I die?"

"I can't tell you that," Luna replied. "Spoilers. It's against the rules."

"Why not?"

"The Doctor says that if I tell you, it becomes fixed and we won't be able to change it."

"But he already fixed it so I die?"

"Everybody dies. You'd have eventually died anyway."

"Not with magic. I'm going to get a lot of magic, and I'm not going to die." For the first time, something in Tom's eyes legitimately scared her. It wasn't a self-preservation fear, though.

"Living forever would get awfully boring," Luna pointed out pensively. Her hands instinctively found the pretty rock on his desk.

"I'd keep you alive, as well," Tom said dismissively.

Luna frowned, finding this comment, and the of course I would tone of his voice oddly thoughtful, in its way. And perhaps a bit comforting, again, in its way. "Are you sad here?" she asked him, rather off-topic. "You seem so unhappy."

When Tom simply stared at her and didn't answer, Luna took the tiara of weeds that she had been weaving and placed it on his head.

"There," she said, satisfied. "It'll keep the bad thoughts away."

"Is there a spell on it?" Tom asked, standing still, as if he thought bees might attack him if he moved.

"No," Luna answered simply.

"They'll think I'm mad if I turn up at dinner wearing this." Still, he didn't take it off.

Suddenly, the TARDIS began to vanish.

"I wonder where he's going," Luna said. "Maybe he forgot we were here..."

Tom, to say the least, did not look sorry about this turn of events. "Want to go somewhere?" he asked eagerly.

"Are you allowed?" Luna asked.

"Sure." It was an obvious lie, but Luna decided she didn't mind.

With the slightest movement of her hand to confirm that her wand was still in place, Luna nodded. "Sure."

...

Tom seemed surprised that Luna, smaller though she was, was able to keep pace with his sprinting. They had exited his room through the window, and now they dashed over hills and across roads, up to a strange, dark cave.

It looks like a place where people are murdered, Luna thought curiously. It even smells a bit like dead things.

But Tom led Luna to a grassy area not far from the cave. With a firm grip on her hand, which felt increasingly like a leash, Tom dragged her into the deepest grass and then sat down, pulling her down as well. The grass was over their heads.

Tom released her hand, then, and closed his eyes, looking rather peaceful, for practically the first time. His lips still moved, however, framing nonsensical words and little hissing sounds. Then he quieted.

"It's nice here," Luna observed, looking up at the stars. Tom had mentioned dinner earlier...he was probably missing it now...and he hadn't removed his weed tiara.

Luna felt a tickle along her spine. Then again, at her wrist. She looked down and saw that a large snake was curling itself around her arm. And another worked its way over her shoulder. And another slid up her ankle and spiraled around her calf. Luna went still, her eyes even wider than they normally were, and she looked at Tom, who was positively blanketed in snakes and seemed pleased about it.

"I can speak to snakes," he boasted. "Snakes love me. Can you do that?"

Luna shook her head. "I wish I could," she managed. "I'm sure snakes would have interesting things to say."

"They're more interested in me than I am in them," Tom replied. "Like servants."

"I would make friends with snakes, if I could speak to them," Luna said, not judgementally.

"You haven't spoken to them," Tom said simply. "They get boring. But so do people."

A snake curled all the way around Luna's neck. She wasn't sure if Tom had told it to do so. Either way, she leaned back, giving the snakes full rein over her. They looped around her midriff, her legs, her head, but the one around her neck didn't tighten or constrict her. They like me, Luna thought, almost laughing because every movement tickled.

When the snakes stilled, she sat up to face Tom, who had her wand pointed at her. There was even a bit of light at the end of it.

"Are you afraid?" Tom asked her, keeping the wand aimed directly at her heart.

Luna thought it over. "No," she answered.

Tom edged the wand closer, holding it under her chin. "Why not?" he asked calmly.

"Because the worst thing you can do to me is kill me," she answered simply. "And, now that I think about it, I don't expect you to do that." She thought again. "I suppose you could take my memory, but there's no benefit to you there. And you could have the snakes hurt or kill me, if you want me hurt or killed. Really, I'm at your mercy from every angle. And I don't mind that."

Tom smiled. "You don't seem to think that I'm a good person now. You want me to believe that I'm a good person in the future?"

"I don't think there are good people or evil people," Luna answered.

"There is no good and evil," Tom said. "They're made up. There's only who can do what to whom."

"That was very good grammar," Luna said with a slight smile. "I don't agree, though."

"With what?"

"Some things can be called evil. People can't, but actions can."

"And what actions do I commit in the future?"

"I can't tell you that."

Every snake that had wound itself around her hissed simultaneously, in an unmistakably threatening way.

"The worst you can do, I don't fear," Luna reminded Tom. "Anyway, you don't want someone to talk to? In your timeline, I don't exist yet. I haven't been born. My parents aren't old enough for Hogwarts yet. I'm like an imaginary friend."

"Only you don't show up whenever I want," Tom mused. "...I could keep you here."

The snakes around Luna's wrists and ankles tightened their loops.

"Then you'd have to explain why someone who doesn't exist is coming with you to Hogwarts," Luna mused along with him. "But I suppose it's your choice. It's not as though I can make you decide one way or the other."

Tom moved closer to her, so that they were hip to hip, but facing opposite directions. He smelled like soap, and she like grass and wet flowers, and both were covered in snakes. He ran a hand through her long hair, and she couldn't see his facial expression because he sat in the shadows. He could see her face rather well.

All of a sudden, he withdrew his hand and set her wand on her lap. "Let's go back," he said.

...

They were soaking wet from rain and lake water when they returned to Tom's bedroom, and the TARDIS still hadn't reappeared.

Luna was exhausted, and Tom directed her to his bed, not allowing room for protest, while he sat in his desk chair. "How old are you, Luna Lovegood?" he asked.

"Eleven," Luna answered, rather impressed that, after not having spoken it for so long, Tom still remembered her full name.

"So am I," he said. "So, you're in your first year of Hogwarts?"

"Yes."

"What's it like?"

"Spoilers," she whispered, burrowing deeper into his pillow and closing her eyes.

"Is it big?" Tom persisted. "Are there loads of people?"

"Mmm..." Luna hummed noncommittally, already drifting off.

Tom sighed, and that was the last thing she heard.

...

And then the high whine of Mr. the Doctor was waking her up.

"Oy! Couldn't wait a few hours?" He shook the mattress, jostling both Luna and Tom, who had, at some point, donned pajamas and occupied the other end of the bed.

"Where did you go?" Luna asked dazedly.

"Had a certain...thing...to correct, just thought of it, but anyway, I'm back now. It's still today, isn't it?"

"It's tonight, now," Luna answered.

"Ah well...Few hours. Anyway, we're off."

Luna climbed out of bed to follow the Doctor into the TARDIS. "I'll see you, Tom."

"I'm going to King's Cross today," he told her urgently. "Will you come to see me while I'm at Hogwarts?"

"I'll try," she said sincerely. "Of course I'll try."

Then she disappeared again, only hesitating to make sure that she still had her wand and the little black book.

Tom was still wearing the tiara of weeds.