Sphinx

Title: Sphinx – Love
Author name: Kenji
Category: Angst
Sub-Category: Drama
Summary: Draco Malfoy hates Harry Potter. But why? What drives him to seek vengeance around every corner for the boy who lived? When the Dark Lord gives him an assignment he has a chance to find his reasons for hate and perhaps even to reconcile himself.
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author notes: This is a sequel to my other work, Opiate of the Tortured. You can access it by click on that link or by going to my profile. It will also be on my brand new yahoo group called, Title Pending. I invite you to join the group and check a look at all my other works.

This story, by the way, will be dark and includes voyeurism, masturbation and sex along with some very dark themes of murder, deceit and spite…but then again, if it didn’t, would I really have written it? Who knows. Now, to the story.

Sphinx – Love

I grip my sex at the base and gently, steadily move my hand up. My jaw locks and my teeth come together and I can’t help but hiss in pleasure. There is an underlying pressure in my body that needs to be released. It takes refuge in my solar plexus, pounding and scratching at its surroundings waiting to be released. I feel a sharp jab of pleasure as my fingers descend slowly down my sex. My mind reels with brusque convulsions of solitary pleasure seeping its way through my veins and arteries. I can sense the superfluous amount of energy seeping from my pores and I bring my hand up quicker on my sex.

I am a tight bundle of nerves that will cataract only once I have reached my peak. My legs feel taught, high strung and I desperately move them across the green cotton sheets of my bed in attempts to dissipate their zeal. My left hand stubbornly grips the sheets and holds them in place. I begin to form a pace that is neither steady nor quick. It is exactly the way I have practiced and I feel quite sure that it is my ideal pace. Its movements induce the utmost pleasure and prolong it. It’s as if by going at this tempo the pleasure dissipating orbs in my brain stagnate creating increasing and building bliss.

My eyes have been closed but I quickly open them and begin to retake my senses one by one. I see green hangings attached themselves to the four posts of my bed. I see wispy blue light coming in from the window to my left, accentuating the mystique and allure of my position. My skin is pale white snow against the bed’s rich, forest green. I unclench my left hand from its fanatic position against my sheets and hold it up against the cleft of light seeping through my hangings. I fan out my fingers and marvel at their nimbleness. My right hand hitches against my sex and I groan loudly knowing nobody is in the room.

My sense of hearing returns to me having emitted the groan; I hear the slippery sounds of my hand moving across my flesh. I hear the mellow grinding sounds of the cotton fibers woven into my sheets as they smoother my skin and tantalize my nerves. I hear the sounds of fire, roaring just past the hearth. It is not so much roaring as it is growling, warning my last unfelt senses into life.

My sense of smell and taste return simultaneously. I smell the lifeless air and let it waft into my nostrils. I smell the acridness of my sex as I stroke it continuously, my arm certainly not tired but at the same time nowhere near inactively energized. I taste the warm blood that has seeped from my lip. I have not noticed the pain as it has been masked by my pleasure. It comes to me sharp as I lick my tongue over the cut and draw out the last vestiges of blood with a supple lapping. The combustion of pain and pleasure brings me closer to my peak.

My sense of touch has been relentless but somewhat nullified. My touch has been drawn down into my center, concentrating euphorically in my sex. My sense of pain was delayed and as I begin to think, straining a bit, I notice the warm soothing feeling of the sheets beneath me. I feel the soft crowning of my pillow splayed below my thrashing head. My hand has conjured itself most of my touch but the rest of my body is now coming alive with pleasure. I grunt savagely as I spill my seed onto my stomach stroking the last vestiges out and prolonging the ecstasy.

My body slumps into the sheets and my head lolls comfortably into my pillow. My eyes struggle to keep open and finally I relent. My hand uncomfortably keeps its grip sheathing my sex in a stringent mixture of heat and wetness. I reach my left hand and prance my thin fingers on top of the nightstand for my wand. I grip it tightly as soon as the tips of my fingers find it. I point to my mess and clean it away with simple whispered words. All at once, the shame envelopes me and I release my hold on my withering sex. I had planned to bring upon sleep but I had instead borne familiar feelings of self-hatred and loathing. There is a weakness in me that draws me to this resounding sensation and it has consumed me and continues to consume me every time. It is the feelings of pleasure and completion that attach me to the suppleness of nightly acts. It is the feeling of predictability and stability that allure me to do something that causes me such downtrodden awareness of myself.

I reach for my watch and smile as its hands briskly work themselves about the face. I put the watch down and bring my hands to my face, hot and tempered. I feel the skin of my face and welcome myself to my humble age of seventeen. I decidedly take my next step as a seventeen year old, I close my eyes and brush aside my feelings of remorse and layer myself with a thick sheet of indifference and numb euphoria.

***

The bench below me is stained rich and smooth. It is however short and my knees extend close to the table. In my sleep-induced drag from bed to hall I have mistakenly seated myself at the first year section of the Slytherin table. I glance around me and notice no specific stares, no giggling tantrums. Briskly, I stand up, dust off my robes and robustly tread nearly the full length of the table to the sixth year’s section. It is the way the Slytherin hierarchy works. First years to their own section near the teachers and so on it progresses each year farther from the front table.

The sixth year section is empty and quiet. The plate before me is steaming and ready to be eaten. I lift a fork in my hand but do not scoop the food before me. Instead I examine the fork: its four tines shimmering in the early morning sky provided by the Great Hall ceiling. It is surely silver, I can tell by the way it catches the subtle hints of blue and white that accumulate in the sky. No other metal could produce such glory. I marvel at the exquisite perfect-ness of the fork; the way the tines are perfectly aligned and evenly spaced; the way there are no scratches or need be buffs; the way it is ornately carved and wielded. There is not enough feeling in my fingers to feel the exact contours but I run them up the fork nonetheless delicately searching the most obvious figurations.

A movement in the corner of my right eye catches my attention. Potter is bent over his plate two tables away from me. His position is perfectly parallel to me. He sits at the table in the exact same place that I would sit should the hierarchy exist in Gryffindor and if I were in it as well. Potter concentrates well on his plate. His eyes do not look up or away to the side or down off of his plate or down onto his fork. I stop my fingers from fidgeting on the four tines as I watch Potter calmly eat. His jaw slowly ruminates the food and I see his Adam’s apple move up and down with the force of his swallow.

Granger sits next to him her eyes caught by the attention of a book. She does not pay attention to her food. Rather, she gently twirls her perfectly shaped, four tined fork into her eggs, puréeing them into yellow mush. Her nose is scrunched up and she looks delicious enough to eat. I think of how wonderful it would be to grab her by the hair, take her to some corner and drive into her savagely. I stare at her and I feel anger. I stare at him and I feel hate.

An owl flies through one of the open windows of the great hall. I do not instantly recognize it as my own but as it draws nearer and stays its course, I realize it with certainty. In its talons locked sharply like a prisoner is a letter of aged, rolled and beautiful parchment. It is stationary made only for the Malfoy family. The owl does not stop or slow down. It does not flare its wings to land on the table. Instead it releases its hostage and the parchment glides smoothly down into my lap. The owl does not miss a beat of wings as it glides back through another window from the great hall. Roughly, I strip the wax from the letter with my pallid, long thin fingers. Fingers of kings. Hands of gods.

Child,

Your mother has been worried at your lack of correspondence. She insists that you remember your duties and not derelict her presence by neglecting her.

It has been exactly sixth months since the plan has gone into effect. I trust that you know what to do. Three days from now you will do as you have been told to do. When the Dark Lord asked me for a willing and able follower I did not digress in committing to you quickly.

I do not pretend to be oblivious to the importance of this plan. I do know what it is like to perform the ultimate duty for my Lord, and in that I stress that you fondly remember the absolute hate you harbor for the boy. You must dwell on this hatred it is essential. The curse cannot be performed without absolute hatred, remember that.

Do your duty for your Lord, my son, and perform it well. It is your destiny.

Lucius Malfoy

The letter burns up in my hand. The fine cream-colored parchment turns black with disdain and I crumple the ashes into my palm festering on the heat that burns my nerves. I feel hatred in my heart but I know it is not directed at whom it should be directed to.

Deceit filled, I stand from my perch at the Slytherin table and walk out traveling straight through the dungeons and quickly into my room. While I say quickly, I don’t actually mean it, as the trip from great hall to dungeon is quite the gruesome trail. It takes quite long to travel down into the deep rank crevices below the castle, but the down trip is nothing compared to the trip back up to the great hall.

I collapse into my bed with its green sheets and green hangings and green pillows outlined in silver. I feel at home with the colors unlike anything else. Green and silver empower me. They feed me strength even though they be only colors. I feel the green represent my strength; green like the strength of forests and fields. Green like the green eye of jealousy and finally with jealousy I begin to wonder what exactly has brought me to even minutely hate Potter.

He declined my offer at friendship. A travesty instilled for all Malfoys. Nobody declines a Malfoy; it is like playing with fire and water and expecting the water to put the fire out. A Malfoy is a never-ending fire: water resistant and hotter than any other fire, we cannot be hastily put out nor can our power ever be subsided or made to look a fool.

“Potter,” I roll the sound off my tongue and assuage my lips with its willowy necessity. I grumble the word over and over again and feel as it reverberates in my empty, hollow chest.

I hate him. But I do not know why. Surely, I am not so shallow and vain as to hate a person for not accepting me. I am a Malfoy but I am a great Malfoy. I am forgiving like no other Malfoy. I am evil, but by necessity. I can chose to be gracious and giving other Malfoys cannot. I do not follow, I am my own person and yet…I am not. I am very much a product and follower of my father and in essence, a follower of the great Dark Lord.

And yet I still cannot fathom what draws me to hate him so. He hates me that I am sure of. He suspects me to have killed his friend that I am sure of. But for all of his reasons, what draws me to hate upon him? What liberates my insecurities and makes my blood boil at his very name?

I bring up my hand and stare at the black ashes that stain its beauty. I am instantly rewarded with my answer. I hate Potter because of him. I hate Potter because of my father. My father hates Potter because of his Dark Lord. I am no better than my father. I wish to be free of his prison. I wish to travel down light plagued paths and not fear the wrath of my Lord, my father.

***

I have fallen sometime in my blessed ponderings into a preposterous and troubled sleep. My dreams flash memories of my childhood and the abomination and mindlessness of it all. I watch as I fall victim to beatings and torture. I watch as I succumb (an endowed child) to my mother’s pleadings and my father’s orders. And through all my dreams I am present. I am omnipotent to all except the travesties of my suffering and the brutal hinders of my father. I can change the location, the people, the time, the words and thoughts of everything and everyone except for my father who holds supreme power. And soon, I begin to realize that this exactly is my world at its presence. I am not dreaming so much as projecting my reality into my subconscious.

With all my power I search my childhood for something or someone that has established some sense of good regard into me: someone that has given me individuality and the blessedness of being able to decide for myself. My brain squanders through the sands of my memory each time grasping the grains and feeling them fall between my fingers delicate as they are. I am aptly rewarded for my heroism with a single jarring memory. It is in the face of one single person: honey colored and beautiful the face placates a wealth of memories (emotions mostly) into my mind.

I fall back into consciousness with a single word spilt onto my lips, “Apala.”

***

I fall from my bed onto the hard granite floor of the castle. In the dungeons the floors are always cold, much more so than any towers or ground floors. The dungeons attract no light or warmth. Hurriedly I whisk back onto my soft covers and shiver. The dreams still leave a lingering feeling of dread and horror. One thing stands prominent in my brief memory of my subconscious wonderings.

“Apala.”

I begin to think but I cannot remember anything beyond a honey colored face and beauty. It is as if a child lazily stared at their bountiful project and decided to ruin it leaving only the most beautiful part as a reminder.

The question rings in my mind quickly. Who is Apala?

The answer rings in my mind just as quickly. The pensieve!

I clamber off of my bed onto the cold floor again not bothering for slippers. The air of discovery has masked the feeling of cold on the bottoms of my feet. I reach my hand and open the left drawer at the bottom in my bureau. I sift past the papers quickly and then reach the false bottom and pull it up. Inside is my pensieve murky gray and magnificent. I circumnavigate my wand just above the gray matter and allow the air to swirl it, and siphon through my thoughts. I think as hard as I can in my head, “Apala. Apala. Apala.”

Her face appears honey colored and beautiful again reaching her hands out for me and I dip my wand into the pensieve feeling as it draws me into its clouds and into its reality.

***

Draco Malfoy is four, vindictive, spiteful, eerie and cold. He is as curious as a cat and has the sharp wit of a snake. He is consolidated by his father and his father alone. His mother fails to maintain grasp for her own child. He is emaciated and dehydrated with several lashing across his back and several cuts to his heart. Draco Malfoy is four.

He sits quietly on the floor in his room allowing himself the quiet and peace of no yelling, no beating and no animosity to his being. He plays with a few toys: stuffed dragons that really move and shot out smoke; mini-models of quidditch players riding broomsticks only inches from the rugged stone floor underneath him; quills of many different shapes and sizes he uses them to dip into imaginary ink and write calligraphy on perfectly cut and made sections of creamy parchment paper. His calligraphy is in fault. The symbols although beautiful are not of any worldly language.

Draco Malfoy’s peace is shattered roughly by the door opening to his room with contempt.

“Child, stand. Your new tutor is here and I want you to treat her with respect,” Lucius Malfoy tells his son. Draco hurriedly stands at attention with his feet together and his hands behind his back. The way his father taught him.

Draco’s vision is clouded by beauty. The woman that walks into his room reeks of beauty. Her hair is a cacophony if differently colored strands. One might imagine diving into her hair and discovering every pigment of hair humanly possible. Her eyes are deep, dark rich and brown. The pupils dilate comfortably in the low light that Draco inhabits. Her skin is wonderfully colored honey and perfectly sweet to the sight. Her body is long and auspicious, regally so even. Her lips are thin and veiled but to a four-year-old child, this does not entirely matter. Her nose is perfectly on center and tiny, fitting her face like a carefully placed flower in a bride’s hair creating the illusion of completeness. Her ears are set back and hidden by her hair. Draco Malfoy can think of no greater thing but beauty even at his four years of age.

“Hello little Draco,” the woman bends down to say. “I am Apala, your new tutor. I see you have been practicing your calligraphy. May I have a look?” The woman, Apala, has a slight accent carefully masked by years of living in the language’s mother country.

Draco hurriedly moves to his piece of parchment and prostrates the beautifully drawn non-words to his new tutor. He keeps his head bent waiting for the lashing of hand or the thrusting of foot. When it does not come he looks up into the warm eyes of his tutor. She is smiling a smile for the gods.

“This is absolutely wonderful, you did this all by yourself?” Apala says.

Draco cautiously takes a glance to look for his father but does not see him in the room any longer. He then looks back into Apala’s eyes and nods emphatically reveling in the smile that she extends.

“Good, then I suppose we don’t need to go much into your neatness. Can you draw a square for me?” She asks, the smile still on her face and her knees firmly planted on the floor. Her face looks inviting, not for a kiss but for success. Draco realizes that he wants to succeed for Apala like he has never wanted to succeed for his father. Now, of course, that has to be incorrect at a minute level. Draco does want to succeed for his father, but not for the man’s happiness, rather, for his own happiness. Draco’s happiness.

Draco draws the square precisely. Its sides are perfectly straight and even with each other. The right angles are exactly right. Apala claps lightly for her student.

“Ah, you are ready for this aren’t you? I can see we’re not going to have any trouble at all. Do you know what a circle looks like?” He draws it for her, again, perfectly. “Well, what don’t you know?” she speaks in astonishment.

He sits on the floor quietly. She waits for another minute before asking, “Are you not going to tell me?”

He sits quietly again neither nodding nor shaking his head. She presses on, “Do you not know what you do not know?”

Draco speaks not a single word. Apala’s smile dissolves and she digresses, “Do you understand me?”

Draco makes an action. He nods. Apala beams then falters. “If you understand me why do you not answer me?”

Draco does nothing. The silence clicks into Apala’s mind with a blur of realization. “Can you talk? Can you speak?”

Draco makes another action he shakes his head. Apala grasps his hands firmly. “Well, we’re going to fix this ok? You’re going to learn to speak before you even know it. I promise you!” she says excitedly.

***

Draco Malfoy sits on the concrete lip of the fountain in the garden behind his home. He is seven, well fed and adherently discovering new things. His eyes are never glazed over or distracted. They always long to find something interesting, exotic or alluring. They have minds of their owns yet they are controlled even by the slightest by Draco’s ever developing mind. He struggles to keep his command over his own body but with growing intelligence he begins to win.

The water from the fountain jettisons out from its hole. It shoots straight up and then falls back onto itself creating a wonderful umbrella of cascading water. The cement of the fountain is moldy and ancient giving it a pristinely used look exhibiting upon the family with prestige at having been such a great family as to have a molding fountain. The grass gardens that surround Draco are lush and green, unspoiled by the weather and well kept by the servants.

“Well Draco, have you come up with your answer?” Apala says somewhere near his ear. She is invisible so that he might enjoy the vastness of the world around him.

“It’s difficult.”

“Difficult to get the right answer, yes but not your own answer. That is simple.”

“Because it is perfect,” Draco relents.

“Perfect you say? How so? Why do you believe in its perfection?”

Draco falters, deciding before saying what he thinks. “Mother nature made it. She crafted it with all her love and adoration.”

Apala reappears before him; she is kneeling at his feet so that she may look straight into his eyes. “Love you say? What do you know about love?”

Draco ponders. His hands reach up to rub the hair behind his ear absentmindedly. His eyes are set on the grasses and the trees and the flowers. He notices the four petals vibrantly colored on the flowers; the four thick branches on the tree holding up leaves and families of birds; the four lawns of grass perfectly situated to accent the fountain at its epicenter. “Love is perfection. Mother nature has love that perfects the way everything looks,” Draco answers, decidedly.

“So love is perfection and perfection is love you say? My darling sweet little Draco, you know nothing of love,” Apala says sadly. Draco’s eyes shoot up from the stalks of grass waving in the wind to his tutor’s eyes, brown and tear filled.

‘Tell me!” he pleads. “Teach me!”

Apala stands up meagerly. Her hand is outstretched and forgiving. “Come Draco. I will show you what Love is and what it is not.”

They walk back through the gardens and into the manor. Draco interrogates everything as they walk. The rose buds. The ladybugs. The daffodils. The thorny bushes. The cracked cement. The aged wooden door. The bronze door knocker. The stone worked floor. The hand stitched rug. The fire succumbed log. The aged metal lattice covering. The maple wood table. The stuffed filled sofas. The porcelain china plates. The shinny silver forks. The shinny silver spoons. The glowing sharp knives. The cabinets of food. The very cold icebox. The straight tile floor. The oak wooden stairs. The strange creaking sound of a footstep. The ground cinnamon smell of Apala’s hair. The great large dark hallway. The wood of his bedroom door. The sheets of his bed. The toys on his floor.

They are all quiet and unyielding.

Apala walks to his bed and waits for him to approach. He does so, cautiously and wearisome. He takes one last glance behind him that the door is closed before he stumbles into Apala’s arms. She embraces him sorely. Her hug is genius, steady and warm. It hits his core and circles throughout his body. He begins to feel heat enter the chambers of his fingers and toes and relinquish the steady hold of the cold.

“Draco, darling, Love isn’t perfect. It is anything but perfect. It exists in all forms. Treacheries, debauchery, spite, rue, romanticism, beauty, hate, hurt, reconcile, and many other forms. There are an infinite number of ways that love can and will exist. No one person can pinpoint it do you understand? For that reason it isn’t perfect, plumb, level or square. The love that your father gives you is different from the love that your mother gives you and that is different from the love that I may give you. Do not look surprised it is true. They love you and so do I. They express it differently, but they love you.”

Apala cries tears of pain and anguish for the child who cannot cry. Draco stands steady in her embrace the warmth still radiating. His head begins to shake from side to side.

“No, he can’t love me. It is a lie.”

Apala wretches out a sob. “Oh, but he does love you! He wants you to be safe. He wants you to be ready for your life. He wants you to hate so that you may live.”

“No,” he wrenches from her hold. “He does not love me. It is not love he has for me. It is hate. He hates me.”

“Yes. He hates you Draco. But he loves you. It is difficult my darling. You may never understand it but love is not to understand. Love is to relinquish your insecurities and never try to grasp them back in hand. Trust your father in everything that he does for he does them for you.”

***

Draco Malfoy is nine years old, confused: evil and cherubic. He exists as an amalgam confusing both to his inner soul and the people around him. His father draws him to the dark side of hate and loathing. His mother does nothing but watch and weep. Apala stands fast and teaches him of love and beauty.

Draco changes personalities to suit each person equally. For his father he is cold and conniving. He is a ewe following its master to the ends of a very high cliff and jumping as its master commands. For his mother he is subservient and cognizant of his own self. He stays perfectly neutral for her wavering neither to the dark side of his father’s nor the light side of his tutor’s. For Apala he is a child of Vishnu, Buddha, Mohammed, or God, whichever pleases Apala most. She teaches him every religion in hopes of broadening his realities of love and compassion. She subjugates him to teachings of holy men and prophets and gods and deities. And he takes pride in his quest for knowledge. He knows of love and all its infinite forms. He knows of hate and all of its infinite forms.

He knows. He knows.