The Riddle's Sphinx

"Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver
in some stagnant lake,
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances
to fantastic tunes," (Oscar Wilde, 'A Sphinx')

"Through a thousand voices

Spoke the universal dame

"Who telleth one of my meanings

Is master of all I am." (R. W. Emerson, 'The Sphinx')

"I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my

questions: I know the answers you hold." (Carl Sandburg, 'A Sphinx')

[A] Sphinx [is] in Greek mythology, a winged creature with a lion's body and a woman's head. It strangled all who could not answer its riddle, but killed itself when Oedipus answered correctly; [also,] a mysterious or inscrutable person. (MSN Encarta Dictionary)

He sees her first among the captives.

Luna Lovegood is brought into the room, along with a gaggle of prisoners by Bellatrix Black. Voldemort descends upon the group and divides the prisoners among the cellblocks.

He recognizes her from previous battles. She is a friend of Potter.

Luna does not flinch when he stares at her, or when he begins to claw through her mind.

Her mind is deceptively simple, layers upon layers and odd ties between memories. He watches a memory of her kissing a Thestral's nose, and wonders how she could possibly show so much affection towards a creature of death.

A Gryffindor girl might have launched herself at him, a Hufflepuff might have cried like one of her companions currently was doing, and a Slytherin might have tried to swear allegiance. She, however, is none of these things and so when Lord Voldemort peruses her mind, she merely smiles and waits for him to finish.

He pulls away and quietly tells Bellatrix to place the girl - Luna, he recalls her name from her mind - in to his most secure prison block. Voldemort remembers Luna's unflinching gaze and amused smile for hours to come.

----

Inside the prison, the war is over and the Dark Lord has won. Luna accepts this without too many tears. She has learned to accept impossible and improbable circumstances easily. Before her capture, she had fought as bravely as a Gryffindor, but now she was just a Ravenclaw once again. To be more specific, she was a Ravenclaw who knew very little of her surroundings or of her captor. Not knowing all that she could know about her current predicament was sure to drive the Ravenclaw mad. Luna begins to study her guards, memorizing both their schedule and manner. The guards refuse to look into her all-seeing eyes.

----

He stands outside her cell and stares at her. She looks up, unperturbed. "Come in," she greets him from behind the bars. Her courtesy is unexpected and he shivers beneath her luminous scrutiny.

Her moon-orb eyes blink slowly. "What do you want from me?" she asks.

"Everything."

Luna stands and brushes the dust from her robes. "Very well then," she replies.

He orders the guard to open her cell. She watches him and waits.

----

Luna is used to her treasures being stolen, broken, never returned... and so when Voldemort breaks through her and into her, she gasps, but does not cry over the loss. What's been done is done. He forces his lips upon hers; she shuts her eyes with revulsion. Next time, she keeps them open and she watches him force his body upon hers. The next time, she kisses back. She remembers a verse of poetry as she slips her thin arms around his narrow body and smiles, the beginning of a plan developing within her mind.

You kissed his mouth with mouth of flames: you made the horned god your own.

While he sleeps, his eyes closed at last, she brushes her pale fingers across his scalp and murmurs in his ear, "I am the Goddess of Law, telling you what you will know."

You stood behind him on his throne: you called him by his secret name.

She pulls the dark green cover over her naked shoulder, and molds her body against his. His skin feels cold and prickled against her own. She breathes her warm breath upon his face and whispers his name softly with each exhalation. "Tom. Tom... Tom." He shifts beside her. She falls slowly to sleep.

----

She perches in his lap like a marionette, and tugs his followers to her. Bellatrix glares and trembles beneath Luna's cold gaze and Voldemort's searing one. Severus merely closes his eyes. The rest cringe, but they must all comply. Voldemort laughs and kisses her pale, pink mouth.

----

Luna no longer dreams of nargles and heliopaths. She owns the rarest sort of creature instead: a genuine Dark Lord. He occupies all her thoughts, and she studies him without pretense. He allows her to do this, because he knows what she is. He penetrates her mind roughly, staring into her eyes intensely as he thrusts into her body. He makes her relive all her strongest memories - hatred, passion, disgust, pleasure - until the combined physical and mental assault coaxes an unbridled scream from her throat. When he asks her why the old fool had never taught her to protect her thoughts, she laughs. Her dirty blonde fringe is plastered to her sweaty skin, and her eyes appear even larger after her climax.

"You don't need to be an Occlumens," she says, "if you have nothing to hide."

He kisses her and is glad that she is his.

----

Voldemort brings her a thestral, and he watches as she slips her hands over the beast. He is entranced by her entrancement, and he knows that he should destroy her before she destroys him, but he can't.

She looks up at him unblinkingly, her pale fingers brushing over the ugly monster's scalp and neck. She is a Sphinx, he decides. Voldemort tilts her mouth up to meet his.

----

When Lucius brings in a new group of captives, Ginny Weasley stares at Luna, held tight in Voldemort's embrace, with an expression seething of unmasked betrayal. For a moment, Luna remembers that the war taking place in the outside world has not ended yet, and her dream world in which Voldemort is just her specimen for study, cracks like an apparition. Luna stiffens with disgust at the bone-white arms that grasp her tightly, and at the snake-like face that kisses her shoulder gently. Then she closes her eyes and forces herself to relax.

"Place her in my old cell, please," she murmurs to her lover, and he does so.

----

After Ginny yells and rants and screams, she begs Luna to tell her why. "Do you love him?" she asks.

Luna shakes her head. "Love is a lie, Gin... you know that. He calls me his Sphinx."

Ginny snorts derisively at this. "And I suppose he is your Riddle. What is the answer, then?"

Luna smiles at her in her strange way, and asks, "Would you like to guess?"

"If I get it wrong, will you kill me?" Ginny asks, only half-joking.

Luna pauses. "No," she says, finally, "But I may let you pass if you answer correctly."

Ginny stares up at the gray ceiling and shakes her head.

Luna leaves the cell.

----

One night, when Voldemort is feeling particularly tired, he rolls over and brushes his parchment-like finger over Luna's eyelashes. "How do you know you are alive?" he asks her.

Luna shrugs. "You die."

----

Voldemort calls Severus Snape before him, and gives him a gift for his good service.

"Do with her what you will," he orders, as his guards toss Ginny Weasley down in front of Snape. Luna smiles and nuzzles her head beneath Voldemort's jaw.

Shocked, Snape accepts his gift and takes Ginny home to the Order.

----

An empire is crumbling while Luna makes love to the latest Ozymandias. He does not see his destruction, though. He sees only her... his Sphinx. His unnatural crimson eyes glare at her, but she does not feel their burn against her skin. "Love is a human lie," she quotes, even though she knows the words are untrue. "For need, for lust." She leans her head against his chest and watches as he holds court. "You need me," she whispers so softly that he does not hear, and she closes her eyes.

Bright, green light fills the room and a man collapses, dead. Voldemort glances around the room. "Does anyone else have questions?" he asks. No one moves.

----

At night, Voldemort listens to Luna's heartbeat and deep, even breathing. He feels her pulse and makes her cry, so he can taste her tears. Luna brushes her small hands over his dry skin and coaxes a reaction from him. "If you can do this," she says, "how can you be dead?" The answer is not enough, though, and so after he falls asleep, she silently leaves the bed.

Luna calls Snape and meets with him in private. "How soon can the Order be ready?" she asks. Snape evades answering.

She hands him a packet of parchment. "My notes," she explains, "They should help you to act quickly." Luna then returns to her bed, and to Voldemort's arms. As she climbs beneath the dark and heavy sheet, she notices how bony her lover is. He looks like a corpse in the darkness, and Luna is reminded of the thestral he brought to her once. Neither dead nor alive, she thinks, and with only one way to prove he's a man.

Snape returns to the Order, feeling shocked, once again. Among Luna's notes are maps, timetables, and lists of the guards and their placements in the stronghold. She has delivered the entire fort into the Order's hands.

----

In the end, Voldemort was not killed by hatred or revenge, but rather by an act of love. Luna kisses him before the 'saviors' descend upon their sanctuary, and before Harry finally fulfills his prophecy, she brushes her fingers over his skin. She traces a rune for protection onto his throat and another for mystery. The Sphinx destroyed herself when her riddle was solved, and Luna knows that the solution to her Riddle would destroy her, as well. She kisses his slitted nose, sharp throat, and bony chest. "I am the Goddess of Law," she whispers, and tears cloud her eyes, "Telling you what you will know."

"Wake up, Tom," she urges him, and presses a wand into his hand. "Oedipus is at the gates," she whispers swiftly. "He is the answer to our Riddle. Meet him, and be solved." Her words make little sense to him, but he understands what must be done. Luna lies back in their bed after he leaves to destroy or be destroyed. She closes her eyes.

Out of a sleeping a waking

Out of a waking a sleep;

Life death overtaking

Deep underneath deep.

"I regret nothing," she whispers and falls to sleep. She dreams of nargles and heliopaths.