Lusting the Loathed

-Chapter 01-

Breaking Through

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 would do it, everyday, I would beat you up twice for every single dirty look you ever gave me.

My mother would have understood. She would not 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 charming? 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 over a hundred girlfriends during the last three years, and he seems to change them with his shirts. Strangely however, he never seemed to care about any of them. I used to have doubts concerning the platonic nature of his relationship to 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. Not that I am jealous or something, but I've never had anybody to share my secrets with. If I did however, that person would have a lot to hear. My secrets are unheard and untold, and I believe that it is better that way. Some things should never be told, should never be brought into the light because the world is not ready to face them. And neither is a friend, for that matter. Does that sound arrogant to you? Well, then so be it. If my arrogance is what keeps people from asking, then arrogance is what I shall keep putting on display. Being alone is easy if you have never had company.

Time has changed my mind about the Sirius-James subject, I think. 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 unfortunately come to an end.

***

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. Please, 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 never have given to me. And yet I've always somehow been content, because although the girls never managed to make me happy, James always did. He has been the best friend I've ever had and probably the best friend I will 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. And I always loved him, no matter what he did, or what he said. 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 to anymore.  I feel like I've lost a part of myself.  And he doesn't even know about the secret that could really divide us: the only secret I ever kept from him and will never tell…

***

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. Children can be so sadistic, gaining their pleasure from the pain they cause the weak. But I have 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. Everyone 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 anyone to turn to. It hurts getting beaten up, having nobody who stops to laugh 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 burned into his features. He was born smiling, I bet. One more cheery, chipper, charming baby with deep blue eyes and a fetching smile. Utterly nauseating, I think. Surprisingly, his eyes lack the coldness I despise so much and despite of that nauseating feeling in the pit of my stomach, I cannot help but smile back. It is strange to see such a tiny gesture confusing me this badly. And as I pull my eyes away, feeling my blood rushing into my face and hearing my own heartbeat, echoing in my ears, I know it is too late. This sensation that is running through my body, thumping in my veins and rushing in and out of my lungs, is the same feeling that I always have, looking at him, and yet it is different. It seems to be dominating my rationalism, forcing my rage to calm down and crumple and then grow to turn back into its original self.

***

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 something as trivial as mere jealousy. All right, so maybe I am a little jealous, but I think such a reaction is indeed justified, 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 I am incomplete without him. Naked, maybe, and insecure. Of course I could turn to Remus. But other than Peter, Remus has a very sharp mind, and he would instantly know that I'd only want him to be a substitute for James. I like Remus, but he could never replace James. As a matter of fact, Remus never wanted to be too close to anyone of us, for obvious reasons. And ever since he told me that story about teeth and claws and bloodshed, I accepted it as a border that I am not to cross, taking him the way he is.

There is always mealtime though. Around mealtime everything seems to be the way it has always been to a certain extend. We still sit together, laugh about the same things, talk about the same problems, but we definitely do not think about the same things anymore. Things are different now, and I would even go as far as to say that we are different. Our conversations are not as open as they used to be, now that Lily sits with us. Now James has secrets he keeps from me. Naturally, he does not do that because he wants to hurt me, not because he wants to be away from me, but because he wants to stay close to Lily. With all honesty, I can say that I hate her. 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 conservative future, a wife, probably a lot of babies and a house with a white fencing. He can look forward to leading a normal, accepted life. And this is where James and I differ: I've never been normal.

When I was five, my mother died by my father's hand. Up to that point, I had loved her, but when she died, leaving me along with him, I learned to despise her more than I despised him, because she had not had the strength and courage to run away with me while she still could. I once heard someone say that dead people turn into saints. If you only think about them often enough. He also said that with time, everything that you hate about them vanishes, leaving nothing but that certainty that had they only survived, the world would be a better place now. But my mother is still my mother, there is nothing holy about her. Because my world would be as it is, even if he had not put his hands around her throat and strangled her until her silky skin had the colour of venom and her crystal eyes were foreign and frozen. She must have been a very strong woman to have loved me enough to have stayed with my father to the very end in order to protect me, but in my eyes, she was nothing but weak. Because I am a child, and it is my right to find myself a person to project my disappointment and my fears on. Just like her. Just like my father. Just like Severus.

There's not much to say about the time that followed my mother's death. Living with my father was hell, but I survived it, getting stronger and stronger everyday, gaining strength from the hatred that filled me entirely. I wanted to grow up to be strong, stronger than my mother had been. 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 foot steps 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.

***

I have never in my life felt this way. I feel my lips curl into a smile thinking about him. Still I blush when he is around, still my heart beats faster than usual, 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.

***

I just smiled at him. I hope he didn't see me blushing. I turn to see if James noticed it, but his eyes are turned towards Lily again. I feel how jealousy comes storming back in and as I'm tired of fighting it back, I just glare at the girl with the outrageously inflammable-looking hair, seething almost noisily. Maybe, if I hate her enough, she'll be a nice girl and drop dead. Yes, maybe that would make things all right again. So it would be a very Gryffindor thing to do. But she doesn't see me, as she is 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. 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, and his smile that for the very first time had been free 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 do not 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.