She

'...The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come...'

-Christopher Marlowe 1564-93

I don't know what year it is now, or what month or what day and frankly I couldn't even care if I tried. I know the seasons though. I can count the seasons from inside here. From inside my metaphorical white room with its padded walls and my straight jacket, I can look outside my window. When it rains I know winter has come, when the leaves fall it's autumn, when the trees flower it's spring and when the sun makes my little white room too hot I know it's summer.

Right now, as I write these very words, it's winter. It's storming and this gives me inspiration to write. What to write? What else is there to write? I feel I must explain my being here. To explain what created my 'metaphorical white room with its padded walls and my straight jacket'.

You must excuse my writing style while you're reading this (if you've even reached this far and haven't run to your hearth to burn the utter shit that is my writing). By the end you'll understand why I pay attention to all the little annoying details, like dresses and wall patterns. Why it's melodramatic in bits and totally bare in others. All those little details are essential to the story - and that's why I'm recalling them (not much of a pain) -if you are able understand exactly why things turned out they way they did.

I know that my writing is lacking and I probably won't elaborate where I must and elaborate too much where I shouldn't but please bare with me. This is how I saw things.

It's important to me to write this because if I'm going to live a second more, a minute more, or from now till 'the end' this will help me keep my sanity. To keep me sane I must have you read this and understand why I'm like this now. Because when you do, I'll know I haven't been forgotten. My existence is still recognised.

Even now, my vision is still clouded by love. Love is what keeps me in a 'metaphorical white room'. The door is locked, by the way, so if you were wondering why I hadn't just walked out of here and screwed my love in her tight little rounded buttocks, now you have your answer. You see, love is very talented. While keeping me here, it also has the power to form locks and coils around me so if I ever, on a silly whim, decided to do what I previously mentioned I cannot do, it will make sure I don't do what I previously mentioned.

Love is a bitch. She is. Don't say she isn't. I have met her and you haven't.

She

Part one:

The first time I saw her, I was but fourteen. I was with my father, my mother not too far away. She seemed too tall and too beautiful, too pale, too bright, too freckly. She wore a most unusual outfit, a purple dress that showed off her pale shoulders and arms. The bodice was tight but then the dress flared out and hovered around her. She wore purple boots. Her hair was tied up high and I remember thinking that I wanted to untie it so it could reach her hips - where I imagined it would reach.

At the age of fourteen, I was short for my age, I was pale and blond. My eyes were grey and I was another Lucius in the making. My mother would fuss over me, brush my hair, take me to the tailors, buy me expensive trinkets and shoes from Italy. She'd Take me to lunch in France. She'd oh ah and aw at me. Her friends would call me a 'darling,' a 'sweetheart'; they'd say that I'll soon be catching women like bees to flowers. They'd get their children to play with me, to see me, to sit with me, to talk with me. To be like me.

She came to us at the Quidditch World Cup. We were up in the box and she'd come when the game was over. In her purple dress and purple shoes. Her hair was alight and her eyes were deeply stagnant then. She came into the box and curtsied to my mother and father.

This had intrigued me, for no one ever curtsied in those days. Men kissed a woman's hand, bowed, but women didn't curtsy back. This made me turn away from the vast population in the stadium and have a better look at what I'd seen out of the corner of my eye.

I shouldn't have, is what I later decided, I should not have turned and looked at her. It was wrong of me because she was so totally enthralling in her purple dress and boots, her elegance and her beauty, her grace and tact. Her web too. When I turned around, I the fly got caught in the web of her, the spider.

I did it innocently.

From the way my father's eyes skimmed over her, I knew he was considering her for his bed even as my mother stood beside him. From the way that my mother nodded towards her with a small smile, the way that Narcissa commented on the woman's unusual dress, I knew that my mother instantly despised the girl that baffled her. To my mother's comments, the woman only smiled and inclined her head. Eyes stagnant still, and cold. But she was beautiful and even at my age I knew that men wanted her for their bed and women wanted her dead.

She'd stood before me and took my hand with two of her fingers.

'Malfoy,' she stated, 'what Malfoy?'

'Draco,' I said. I felt it important to make her remember that, I felt it important that she remember me. I don't know what compelled me to have such an emotion, such an odd desire. It was that woman, it must have been. There was something about her and I was able to tell even in the still uninformed stage that I was in at the age of fourteen. It was something more than her appearance or her dress, it was something inside. A mystery, if you'd like, to use a term that would appeal to a modern reader.

She smiled in that mysterious, electrifying way of hers. It wasn't a smile, nothing happy like the girls at school; it wasn't a smirk like the one my father had indirectly taught me. It was a considering. No consideration of feelings but that of persons. She considered me then, now I know, considered what I could mean to her, what I could do for her, how she could use me.

She touched my hair and looked up at my father.

'A china doll, just like a china doll,' she said to my mother, who nodded.

She looked back down at me and this time her smile was fire in me. It was amused and wicked; her eyes were no longer dead swamps of green moss but flickering emeralds. The change was unnerving, and part of me felt like snatching my hand and backing away; the other part wanted to go with her where she would take me. And the latter, I did.

She asked my father if he'd let her introduce me to her friends and he nodded. I was sure then that Lucius wished her for his bed, for the way he skimmed the bare skin of her shoulders, that pretty, stiff neck and the top of those freckled breasts made me want her too.

I was but fourteen, and for the first time, I discovered this new feeling. This new part of me that wanted. Not just to touch and skim but to have. I wanted to own her.

She took my hand like an older sister and walked out of the top box. She walked down the stairs and across the now empty Quidditch field, then she stopped. She turned to me and kneeled down. I was now looking down at her, down her dress, getting a better look at her shoulders. Those shoulders that I found I so wanted to get a hold of.

'Draco, that's it,' she said, and I'd thought she was about to scold me, but I couldn't think of what I'd done wrong. 'We're friends now.'

Friends? We'd only just met and she was kneeling down in front of me and confirming our friendship? It was odd to me even while I was being taken over by the miasma of her, that spell that she so easily weaved. It wasn't like me to give myself over so easily, to agree, not to question, I'm Draco Malfoy! It is my birth right to question. But I didn't, it didn't occur to me to do so. I was totally devoid of thought and I was being driven by this new found feeling in me. The wanting that she had etched into my system.

She got up and quickly walked away with me. I was running as she pulled me by the hand. When we reached the other side of the stadium, her friends were there. They were in a small room, one reserved for water boys and extra chairs. They were sitting, as if they were waiting. They were talking and laughing, but I felt their waiting. I did not know what they waited for and till this day I am not sure, but for that second I felt like they waited for us.

When she came in, they greeted her like old friends. The women kissed her cheeks and the men attempted to fondle her but she pushed them away with flirtatious hands and a winking eye. All her friends were dressed like her, the women in puffy revealing dresses, fancy hair, dusty make up and glittering precious stones. The men wore expensive suits, shiny shoes, thick capes and their hair long and shiny.

When the room had calmed down, she stood behind me and they all watched us. She dropped to her knees next to me and ran her hands on my arms, my shoulders and my chest then finally cupped my chin. She came close enough to kiss my cheek and she ran her lips over the invisible barrier around me that seemed to be keeping her away. The people in the room - her friends - watched with amused and wicked eyes - just like hers. The women licked their lips and undressed me with their eager eyes, the men smirked and leaned forward.

'This is Draco Malfoy. My new china doll,' she whispered to me. Not to the room, to me. I wanted her to whisper to me, I felt lucky to hear her whispers. I knew nothing of this woman, not her name, not even her age, all I knew was the way she touched me. The firm and pleasing way her hands ran up my arms and her breath lingered on my skin. The way her pouted lips nearly blessed me.

Why was I so eager? It was her that made me like this, clouded my judgment. I didn't complain and I didn't want to and I wouldn't have complained even if I was in my right mind. For I believe now that I wasn't.

I'd never been touched by a woman. I had by my mother and her friends but never like this. I felt like a sacrifice and she a god. Except for my few skirmishes and tumbles with a few girls in my year, no woman had ever meant anything to me. Of course, to someone reading this, it would sound like I'm easily pleased. The fact is, I'm not; I used to never be pleased with anything - nothing ever reaching my standards. But she appealed.

They applauded her and she chuckled. It wasn't a happy one, but a triumphant one. The women came and knelt by me, touched my face, oohed and ahed, touched my hair and gasped. They felt my clothes, my chest through them and told her what a prize I will be for her. She smiled that cold smile of hers.

She got up and took my hand. We walked back across the field to the box where we stopped outside. She leaned down again and placed her hands on my shoulders. For the first time I noticed them, they where very pale, just like the rest of her. They were elegant and delicate. Her hands were tiny and slight but strong. Like pianist's hands, like one who drew with paint on canvases, or like one who fenced and killed ruthlessly. She rubbed my shoulders and it soothed me. I wanted her to touch me. I did not know that my feelings for this older woman were wrong. Nor did I know that it was a start of an obsession.

'Draco, I'm your friend,' she said this very slowly as if I was five, and it infuriated me, but that was only what I thought. I thought I was angry but I wasn't, I was too caught up in her face to be anything.

I was caught up in her flawless skin, the way it was pale but promised soft caresses, the way it was tight and spoke of expensive beauty. Her eyes were green and they reminded me of grass when it rained and the droplets hung on to every strand until the wind blew and the droplets splattered. Her eyes were trusting, I don't know how at the age of fourteen I found trust in them, but I did. Her lips were pouted and shiny with the pale creamish lipstick that she wore. She looked like a virgin all together. Untouched.

I thought of her as being ceramic... no, porcelain. Yes, porcelain. She was porcelain and I was china. We were together and we were fragile.

'I'll come for you at Hogwarts. I'll come at night - so I am not seen - and spend time with you. I'll be your friend. Don't tell anyone of my coming or I won't come. Do you understand me, petal?'

I nodded and she gave me another of her smiles. The ones that spoke of tales of glorious battles. The ones that were triumphant. She gave it to me. Gave me it. She gave me her smile and I wanted it to be mine alone. I didn't want anybody to see it but me, I didn't want her to give it to anybody else. At fourteen, I did not know that I was pining for her, for her skin against mine, for the soft moistness of the place where I wished to slide. She held my shoulders firmly and brought my body to hers, kissed my cheeks with a soft brush for her lips and then released me.

You must understand, I was knowledgeable in many areas but not that of women. I had never been given attention like this; I had been touched and gasped over but not like this. I don't know how her treatment of me differed from other women, but it was different and I was too... I didn't feel home, you could say, to be in control and demand to know what she was about. Her sureness of herself made me unsure and threw me into a stupor.

At my age I had been introduced to the gentler sex. No, I was no virgin. I knew how to 'screw' 'fuck' 'score' or whatever you want to call it but at that tender age I hadn't been introduced to the spiritual side of it. For there is a spiritual side to it, one must agree. I just knew that sex was this mechanical thing that brought me pleasure and women were merely instruments better than my hands.

But her being next to me, her doing things the way that she did spurred my curiosity and offered me something I hadn't yet known. Something of a mystery. She was a mystery and I wanted to discover. With all her clothes on and her treating me like a child, even with this, she sparked my curiosity and it started occurring to me that maybe there was more to erotic pleasure than previously thought.

She got up and, taking my hand like a child, she walked with me back into the box where Lucius waited for us. He rose when he saw us and a smug smirk spread over his face.

'They loved him,' she said and let go of my hand as I took my place next to him.

'Will we be seeing you again?'

'Perhaps.'

He took her hand, and kissed it. His eyes spoke volumes that I did not hear at fourteen, but she, at twenty-two, smirked. 'Perhaps,' she said again and I knew my father would bed her when he got the chance. I didn't want him to; I wanted her to remain untouched. At the age of fourteen I couldn't explain it, but I knew that I wanted her to remain untouched for me.

She walked away.

My father hurried me along and I hated him for thinking of her that way. For thinking of her in any way.

*

At night, in my bed, I dream of her. She comes to me like she promised. I see her not only in my dreams but also at night, by the lake.

She sits with me and asks me questions. She listens to me as I answer about school, my friends, the things I like and dislike, my hobbies, my childhood and if I liked any girls. When I told her how I hated Harry Potter, she told me to be patient. When I told her how his friends annoyed me and I wanted to murder them, she told me to think rationally. She let me ask her questions too.

She said she was twenty-two. She was very rich. Her family was originally from Ireland. She'd moved out of home when she was seventeen. Her name was Annabel.

My Annabel. What a beautiful name.

It never occurred to me to ask her what she wanted. Why she came to me, why she told me we were friends, what that meant. I was only mesmerized by her beauty, by her bloodied hair, by her soft pale skin, by her sharp collarbones, her pointy nose like a pixie's, her emerald eyes and that aura of delicacy and fragility that she carried.

I felt like she was my secret. Mine. I wasn't to let anybody near her. She was mine alone and often in class or in the Great Hall, a smile would curve my lips. She was mine and nobody else knew about her but me. I was above everybody else because I had something they didn't, couldn't have, weren't even able to dream up in the wildest of their dreams.

I felt smug.

At the end of my fifth year, after the Department of Mysteries incident, she came to me. I was angry, I loved my father, I respected him, I looked up to him and I wanted to be like him. It killed me to know that a mere fifteen year-old-boy and an old wizard could put away my father. I loved him and I wanted vengeance.

Much, much later, many years later, when I sit down to write this, I think over it. Think over this moment and I realise that I hadn't been angry because my father had been sent to prison but because I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be like a man who was fool enough to be caught and sent to prison.

When she came to me, she was dressed in peach. It suited her skin, her porcelain skin, enhanced by the light shade of the material. This dress was like the purple one in its style. Her feet were clad in ballerina shoes. Her hair was tied up high and I wanted to wrap my hands around her thin neck. I wanted to be that ruby necklace that hugged her throat and rested in the cleft of her breast.

She led me to the Quidditch field, holding my hand like she always did. When we reached the middle of it, she stopped and looked down at me. Her smile was talking to me. I told you so, I knew this would happen. I'm always right.

For the first time, she angered me. I pushed her away when she tried to lay a hand on my cheek. She wasn't hurt by it; she only smiled like one would at a small feline doing a trick it hadn't done before. I stopped and breathed deeply, looking up at the dark sky that was adorned with glowing diamonds.

'You won't find your answers there. Mortals always look up at the sky and beg for answers but they never find them. You think your God will answer your pleas but he won't. The sky won't give you vengeance. Those stars are just there, they have no abilities, and they can't help you..'

'Space... the solar system... the universe with its stars and plants, it isn't bigger than ourselves. In mass they are but not anything else. They will not grant a human life or chances. They don't even know humans exist. We mean nothing to them. Each human must go seeking from another or if they have truly mustered themselves, they must seek from there.'

'Petal, only you could give you vengeance. And I... I could give you vengeance,' she spoke from behind me; her breath was on my neck like always.

One thing I must note is the peculiar way that she formed her sentence, the way she spoke. She did it as if she was plucking her words out of the air, as if everything was an after thought. Like what she said to me was an already stated fact and she was simply repeating it for the sake of doing so. She had such an off handed manner to her speech but the way she moved, picked up and replaced things and even the way she blinked had an utter importance about it, that I constantly found myself leaning in to see her better. I saw her quite fine from where I stood but I always stood just a little closer or scooted that much further.

I turned to her then, and she put both of her hands on my shoulders.

'You've grown,' she said. 'You're almost as tall as me now.' And I was, I reached her shoulders. Her smooth shoulders.

It frustrated me how she spoke to me like I was just a child. Just a little boy who didn't understand. The way she made her sentences simple and leaned in to me in her playful way and softened her voice. Her intention wasn't that of seduction or temptation - if it was then that was entirely on my behalf - but she spoke like a kindergarten teacher would to her charges. She saw the irritation in my eyes and took a step closer. 'You'll be a man tomorrow; you'll be all grown up.'

'Will you still come to me?' I felt it important to know.

I don't know why at that moment in time I felt like she might not come. She'd worked at making me trust her so well that not once had that thought occurred to me. That there was such a possibility as Annabel leaving - this silliness, it didn't exist in my world. Wasn't something for me to worry about or ponder upon. You must understand, I was a slave and she my goddess, I worshiped her. Secretly I had made her a goddess for me to worship and find solace in

Maybe I was worried because she never told me anything about growing up and she was my guardian, I had to have her approval on everything. If she would leave me because I had become a man then I won't become one. I'll stay a child forever.

Perhaps it was also because I believed that growing older was a journey of gradual change and she was making it different. Or maybe because I already thought that I had grown up. It was because this was my understanding, this way and she was making it that whole other way. I was panicking without realising because I wasn't doing the right thing for her.

'You'll always be my china doll.' She touched my hair briefly and then turned and walked away and sat down on the grass. I walked to her and she took me in her lap like an older sister or an aunt. She let me rest my head on her bosom, I sat in the V of her legs and she played with my hair. She smelled of honeysuckle. I still remember now.

We sat like this for a long time; I imagined we looked like lovers. She glowed in her peach coloured dress and porcelain skin. Her hair was an amazing contrast, the colour of blood.

As I thought of her, I found my hand on her knee as I pushed up her dress. I sat up a little, my arm supporting me on her side. She said nothing, she was staring at the sky as if she now searched for answers. I brought my lips to her knee and kissed it there. Her skin was just like I'd imagined, soft and scented. I kissed a little higher and than higher than that. I rubbed her thigh with my hand and I felt a tremor go through me. She was what I'd been waiting for. Beauty, grace...infidelity.

I was fifteen but I felt like I knew what to do. What to do to contact my spiritual side of this. I nipped and sucked on her skin, I kissed and caressed it with my hands. Her thigh fascinated me; pale, soft, round and developed.

She wasn't like the girls in my year, she was more, more woman. And a whole lot of woman she was. I remember thinking, if I'm this excited with her thigh, imagine what I could do with the rest of her. Something plunged through me and my loins tightened. I knew then that it wasn't just lust, I wasn't just wanting to touch her because she was older than me or more beautiful then any other woman. I didn't just want to undress her because I was now fifteen and had an ever growing need to explore the gentler sex.

I found that I'd slowly fallen in love with her.

I loved her like I still do today.

I pushed her dress further until her thigh started to widen to meet her hips under her skirts. I couldn't see anymore, but I could imagine it and this sent a further haste to my hands.

She felt it; she felt my need as I caressed her thigh and tasted her skin. She looked at me and smiled, just another of her cold smiles. Just another of her cold smiles for Draco who felt anything but cold at that moment. She put a hand at the nape of my neck and with her fingers played with the ends of my hair. She brought her head forward and I thought she was going to kiss my lips but she didn't. She placed a soft kiss on my nose and smiled.

'The sun is rising, I must go. Do not do anything that you'll regret, there will come a time when I will allow you your vengeance. Be safe.' With this, she got up and walked away. I watched her until she was but a speck in the distance.