Lusting the Loathed

Lusting the Loathed

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Chapter one

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Sirius Black, I despise you. I loathe you with all the good sense that can be found deep inside of me. Just thinking of your name makes me shudder, sends shivers down my spine, and the thought of your face leaves my face blushed and my hands shaking. Every time I pass you in the hallway, receiving those dirty looks that make my heart want to explode, I want to take out my wand and duel you in the middle of the corridor, right under the eyes of the teachers, for I don’t care about getting expelled in those moments. If it weren’t for my father I’d do it, everyday, I’d beat you up twice for every single dirty look you ever gave me.
 
My mother would have understood. She wouldn’t have blamed me for getting into a fight that was about honour and pride since she always wanted me to stand up for my rights and wishes. She was never like my father, calling me into his office to lecture me about the responsibilities I inherited along with my family name. I am keeping her name now, because everybody shall remember whose family I belong to, and whose name I reject to wear.
 
Back to the subject of Sirius Black: called after a constellation; isn’t that romantic? The girls seem to think so at least, for they always gather around him, giggling and trying to get his attention, subconsciously drawn to him like moths to a flame. He must have had nearly a thousand girlfriends during the last three years, and he seems to change them with his shirts. Strangely, though he never seemed to care about any of them. I always thought that something was going on between him and his ‘best friend’ James Potter, whom I hate even more, though in a totally different way. They never showed up separately, always had their heads together, talking about those little secrets they shared. I’ve never had anybody to share my secrets with, but if I did, that person would have a lot to hear. My secrets are unheard and untold. Somehow I believe that it’s better that way. Some things should never be told, should never be brought into the light because the sun cannot be prepared to face them. And neither can a friend, for that matter.
 
I’ve changed my mind about the Sirius-James subject, though. Nothing like that is going on... or, at least I don’t *think* they still have something like that going on. Lately, James has been showing interest in a pretty, redheaded Gryffindor, a Mudblood. And Sirius' role as the most important part of James' life has come to an end.

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I feel terribly lonely. Throughout the last several years, I can’t say that I haven’t received any attention from he opposite sex, but I’ve never met a girl that totally satisfied me. Somehow every single one of them has been a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong; I liked them, I really did! Only I always missed something. Something I longed for, that I needed, something they could have never given to me. Nevertheless, I’ve always somehow been content, because although the girls never managed to make me happy, James always did. He’s been the best friend I’ve ever had and probably the best friend I’ll ever have. The secrets we share I would never trust anybody else with. He is the first person that accepts me the way I am, and that is one of those things that can make a friendship last forever. But James turned his attention from me to someone else. Not that I blame him, he loves her, but he's never around the way he used to be, never there to talk with anymore. I feel like I've lost a part of myself. But he doesn't even know about the secret that could really divide us: the only secret I ever kept from him and will never reveal…

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He is sitting with his three musketeers again. I hate Breakfast…and lunch…and dinner, since the Gryffindor table is far too close to the Slytherin table. Sirius and his friends always choose their seats so that they have a good view on me. Their laughter thunders horribly in my ears, shattering every single positive thought I come up with in order to face their vicious, immature cruelness. Kids can be so sadistic, gaining their pleasure from the pain they cause the weak. But I've mastered my sneer so that it matches their laughter. I will never again give them the chance to benefit from my tears, like the first times they managed to make me cry. The marauders. The oh-so-funny marauders. Everybody loves and envies them; everybody wants to know them and to be just like them. To know them. I think I know them a little too well, having been the victim of their ‘pranks’ -as they call them- many, uncountable times. It hurts, being laughed at without having anybody to turn to. It hurts getting beaten up, having nobody who stops his laughter while standing in the circle that surrounds you when you fall to the ground, broken nosed. Being alone hurts and seeing them together turns that injury bleeding in my heart to ice, changing the nature of the original desperate feeling into pure rage.
 
He is smiling again, and for the first time today turning to look at me. His smile doesn't fade away like it usually does, though, it stays, seemingly being burned into his features. His eyes lack the coolness I despise so much and I cannot help but smile back. It is strange how such a single movement can confuse me this badly. I pull my eyes away, feeling my blood rushing into my face and hearing my own heartbeat, echoing in my ears. It is the same feeling I always have looking at him and yet it is different. It’s dominating my rationalism, forcing my rage to calm down and turn back into its original self.
 

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Time passes slowly these days. James is always around Lily, trying to impress her by showing off and laughing about her jokes even though they’re not funny. She is not fun to be with. And I am not saying that because of pure jealousy. Well, maybe I in fact am a little jealous, but I think that is just my right, considering the fact that James and I have been like brothers for years now, never apart, never letting anybody and anything come between us until now. It feels like being incomplete without him. Naked, maybe, and insecure. I could turn to Remus, but that would make him think I just wanted to be with him because James turned his back towards me. I like Remus, but he could never replace James. Actually, Remus has never wanted to be too close to anyone for obvious reasons, and I’ve always accepted that, taking him the way he is.
 
There is always mealtime though. Around mealtime everything seems to be the way it’s always been. Well, at least it looks that way. We still sit together, laughing about the same things, talking about the same problems, but definitely not thinking about the same things anymore. Things are different now, and I would even go as far as to say that we are different. Our little talks are not as open as they used to be, now that Lily sits with us. Now James has secrets he keeps from me. Not because he wants to hurt me, not because he wants to be away from me, but because he wants to stay close to Lily. I can say that I hate Lily. Even though it is for such a simple reason as jealousy, I still do hate her. She shows me how different I am from James. He can be content with his girlfriend, he can love her back the way she loves him, he can look forward to a future together with a woman, probably a lot of babies and a house with a white fencing. He can look forward to leading a normal, accepted life. And that is where James and I differ. I’ve never been normal.
 
My father used to abuse my mother and me when I was very young until one night: she hurriedly packed my things and fled with me. She was a wonderful mother to me and my childhood had just begun when we finally moved into my aunt’s house, far away from my father and his whips. That particular night, though, I had been too young to understand that she risked her life, taking my father’s so called crown-son away from him. Later, I was too young to understand why she sometimes started crying when she received owls in the morning, owls that I knew were father’s. I always believed that she just missed him very much. Then I remember her picking me up at the Kindergarten one day, tears glistering in her eyes. She took me home and told me to be nice and careful and then she hugged me and kissed me one last time at the door and she left the house, not looking back. My aunt took me into her arms, sobbing and wetting my shirt with her tears, and I still did not really understand what was going on.
 
Two days later we received an official owl, telling us that my mother had lost the official duel she had accepted from my father. I hoped that my tears would never fade away, forcing me to look at the world that, without my mother, would never again spin the way it had once upon a time.
 
The worst thing to come hadn’t yet happened, though. The following day, there were visitors disturbing our sorrow. I didn’t get to meet them, since my aunt let them into the kitchen to avoid having me see them. Lying on the carpet in my mother’s room, I heard my aunt screaming at them, and I heard them yelling back. Then, suddenly, the yelling stopped and it was terribly quiet in the house until I heard the kitchen door fly open and footsteps in the hall. The front door was opened and the footsteps left the house. No noise was audible after that as I noticed in astonishment. I got up, picking up my favourite teddy bear and made my way down to the front door to ask my aunt who those visitors might have been, and why she had been so angry with them since I had learned that screaming at guests was bad behaviour. I called her but received no answer. After I had looked into the kitchen, the living room and the basement, panic started to overwhelm my senses. The front door was still open but I heard no one talk outside the house, I heard nothing except my own breathing that had become sobbing as I slowly started walking toward the door. The loss of my mother, the new house and now being alone was too hard for me to take. When I reached the door, the sun shone directly into my eyes, keeping me from seeing anything except the green and red grass in front of me. It took me some moments to figure out what disturbed me. In the kindergarten I had been told that grass was supposed to be green and not red. I held my breath and followed the red trace that led me out of the garden and that seemed to have been laid for me. I had always liked those seek games, adventurous and seemingly dangerous. I reached the forest that laid close to the house and that I wasn’t allowed to enter. I hesitated, but my curiosity has always been stronger than my sense. After I had passed the first trees and bushes that hid a clearing, I knew I had made the wrong decision. Standing in the middle of that clearing, surrounded by a couple of black hooded men stood my father. I took a step back and fell over something I must not have had seen on my way into the clearing. Looking down at the thing it had fallen over I felt my stomach turn over before I dropped my teddy bear and lost my consciousness.
 
There’s not much to say about the time that followed. Living with my father again was hell, but I survived it, getting stronger and stronger everyday, gaining strength from the hatred that filled my heart. I wanted to grow up to be strong, strong enough to take revenge on my father for taking my mother and her sister from me as well as for stealing my just-regained childhood. I learned to smile even when things weren’t going right, I learned to smile even while my father hit me, because he wanted me to, and I learned to smile despite of the pain that still ripped open my chest when I thought about my mother. I grew up despising authority, despising anyone who wanted to rule me. But most of all, despising my father, whom I had to obey.
 
When I finally received that letter from Hogwarts, I knew that things were about to change. I was happy to be away from my father, happy to start a life of my own. But as soon as I arrived there, I found out that the world I had expected one of freedom, dreams and free time, was again filled with rules. That moment, I swore to myself that during my stay at that school I was to break as many rules as possible. I broke my first rule on the Hogwarts Express, starting a fight with a boy whose hair had been a horrible mess. We got into a wonderful fight, one of those fights that don’t hurt either of the fighters but look as though both were going to get killed. The only problem was that I got furious in the end because he had me pinned to the ground, sitting over me, and that way, showing power over me. I punched him hard on the nose, sending his glasses flying through the air and spilling his blood that now started streaming down his face onto my robes. I heard fast footsteps running down the corridor and saw a face appearing over my head, looking down on me. The face announced to me that detention would have to be served at Hogwarts.
 
That had not been the last fight James and I got into. During the next school year professor Dumbledore’s office grew so familiar to us that being called there didn’t make us nervous anymore. I especially spent a whole lot of my time there, since my pranks and the little anti-authority paroles I used to announce during my classes caused some ado about the “little nothings”, as I sometimes called those happenings. So, when I was again called to the office one morning, I walked there light-headed, expecting nothing but a detention for turning professor McGonagall’s wand into an earthworm (which, of course, hadn’t been my fault). Professor Dumbledore did not say a word about that particular event, though. He instead talked about my father and his behaviour towards me. Then he told me he was sorry and that something had happened to my father. I just asked whether he had died, smiling again, as I had learned it. The old headmaster looked at me for a short moment, seemingly trying to read my thoughts and then gave me a positive answer. I can’t say that the smile that stayed on my face had been real, since although he had successfully done everything to make me hate him, he had still been my father. That night, James and I really talked for the first time. We talked about this and that and finally about my past. James didn’t seem shocked, and if he was, he hid it perfectly. His questions were asked so that I got to talk the weight from my shoulders, afterwards feeling light as a feather, and endlessly grateful to James for listening to me like that. After that the pranks I pulled I pulled with him, and our ways – until now – became inseparably connected.
 
James… thinking about him, the one who has always been like a brother to me, hurts, and every time I do talk to him, my heart turns over, showing its sensitive part, making me more vulnerable than I’ve ever been. It’s breakfast time, time to see James and the others. I almost fear not being able to talk to them anymore, having thought about them so much as of late. Also, the secret I haven’t told anybody now lies on my chest, its heavy weight forcing my heart to sink lower into my stomach than ever before. And breakfast is so close now, seeing the three persons I miss so much, and the one that I feel so insecure about. The one who is the subject of my secret and my darkest desires. James always loathed him, and that way, he involuntarily forced me to hate him as well. My mind tells me to keep up that barrier I have built to make the world believe I am someone that I am not. It tells me to keep looking at him with hatred instead of the feelings I, in fact have, for him. For *him*. Had my father ever known about this, about me not being *normal* in that particular aspect of life, he would have given me the longest beating-up session of my whole life, and let me assure you, it would have been a very long session indeed.. No, showing my real feelings is not an option I can even consider taking. But James is not with me anymore, not making me want to compete with his normal behaviour anymore, and I am not so sure I still can behave the way I used to.
 

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I have never in my life felt this way. I feel my lips curl into a smile thinking about him. Still I am blushing, still my heart beats faster, everything is still the same – only, I do not want to punch but to kiss the smile out of his face. I stop my pace, realizing what I have just thought. The colour fades out of my face as I notice that, really, my feelings are not at all new, that I have been ignoring that tickle deep inside of my stomach for a long time, that the rage I used to feel towards him might not have been what I had thought it to be. Sometimes, knowing the truth about something can be a lot worse than living with a lie, as I realize now. I have feelings for a male, feelings that I can’t ever show, never tell or receive a response to. I close my eyes, thinking about the reaction he would show if I were to tell him about my thoughts. Impossible.
 

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I can’t believe it. I just smiled at him! I hope he didn’t see me blushing. I turn to see whether James noticed it, but his eyes are again turned towards Lily. I feel a wave of jealousy dwelling up in my body. I’m tired of fighting it back and just glare at the pretty redhead, not caring about her feelings anymore. She doesn’t see me though, only paying attention to my best friend. Remus and Peter keep talking about something, but I can’t concentrate on anything but him anymore. He has smiled back at me. Right into my face, and although I know that his smile naturally does not mean what mine does, my heart still wants to explode in my chest. Oh geez, I cannot stand this anymore! He is looking at me again, still smiling. I mumble an excuse toward my friends and hurriedly leave the hall, escaping from my own thoughts that seem to hammer his face into my mind, his smile that for the first time had been freed of the typical Snape-like sneer.
 
I leave the castle and step onto the green and still wet grass of the school grounds. Again, I am thinking of him. My thoughts turn back to his raven black hair and his defiantly white skin that makes him look so fragile and so dangerous at the same time. I don’t want to accept thinking about being close to him and in attempt to make my mind turn to something else, something that has to do with the opposite sex maybe, I start running over the grounds, passing Hagrid’s hut, and taking the way that leads down by the edge of the forbidden forest. I hope that by totally exhausting my body, my stirring thoughts will finally rest. I try in vain though, and when I finally turn to make my way back to Hogwarts, I feel sweat soaking my shirt. It doesn’t have the effect I intended. Vainly I try to suppress an image that tries to steal itself into my mind, the image of him, sweat covering his body, as it is pressed up against mine in a moment of total desire and lust. I shake my head, not being able to shake away my feelings, but only evoking a monstrous headache. As I make my way back to the building, I try not to think of him while the wet grass soaks the bottom of my pants and I taste salty sweat, licking my own lips instead of his.
 
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