Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Chapter 57

Tom's hand on her waist was a brand for all that his touch was perfectly light. Gentlemanly, even. And Lucy knew, if she thought too much about it, that it was the perfect picture. He, a gentleman, his touch never too rough and never in the wrong places, and she, the blushing girl whose cheeks reddened at even that perfectly proper contact.

It didn't matter to anyone looking that her cheeks could be red from the heat of the room or the flush of one too many flutes of champagne. It didn't matter that Tom's eyes, when viewed from this close, were clouded just enough for Lucy to believe he wasn't thinking entirely as hard about the image of this as he might have. And it didn't matter that when Lucy laughed and spun, drunk on pretending to be someone she wasn't, someone happier than she thought she might ever be, Tom caught her back with hands that pressed just enough for her to think they wanted to do more than rest politely at her back.

The thought was headier than the drinks, a fizz in her stomach and on her tongue. It was an impossible thought. One the girl she was under this pretty dress and behind these champagne smiles, would have dismissed in a heartbeat. Because he was Tom Riddle. A plotter and a schemer and a boy who aimed for extraordinary. And she was Lucy Steele. She was practical. She was no one. She was extra ordinary. She rejected greatness like it was a curse. Because she rather thought it was.

But somehow, as the night wore on and the music got slow and the candles burned to a soft haze in a room that had forgotten all the politics of the night's beginnings, as the space between them became a smaller thing than it should have been, the thought stopped feeling quite so impossible. And it felt instead like a reckless dream she wasn't sure she wanted to wake from.

Because he had said no. Merlin no. He didn't want to be a politician. And Lucy couldn't quite articulate why that had mattered so much. Why that had lifted some shadow, some weight keeping the bubbles down. But it had. And for the first time, something bigger had seemed possible. Had seemed... allowable. Had seemed like it might just last.

Because he wanted more than that. Wanted change. Wanted impact. Not just acclaim. Because... because Slughorn had said your Lucy and something in her core had fallen to pieces and it had taken everything she had not to show it.

And she knew she should have been offended.

Your Lucy.

Like she belonged to him.

And she didn't. Wouldn't. But Lucy had spent long enough not belonging anywhere that to him and with him had felt close enough to the same to rattle something loose and make her remember what it had felt like to rest her head against his chest and hope it healed something in both of them. What it had felt like to have arms around her she believed could keep her safe. Keep her whole.

It had been years since she'd felt that. Years that had felt like lifetimes. And she had realized, standing there, continuing the conversation while only half paying attention to it, that she missed the feeling. That she was tired. That she wanted little more than to collapse into someone's arms and trust they would catch her. Trust it would be okay.

It was a dangerous thought. One that left an ache along her limbs and in her chest and made her wish, for the first time tonight, that she wasn't here.

Because with that dangerous thought, the effervescence of the night evaporated slightly. With that dangerous thought, the pretending that had been easy twisted and warped into the kind that was hard. And Lucy was as tired as she had been yesterday. And the day before. And the day before.

She was wearing thin and she knew it. Every day it was a little harder to hold on to those pretty, necessary self-deceptions. Every day they took a little more out of her. And she was beginning to wonder, as she never had before, just how much there was left of her to take.