Author: Magdalith
Translation: Serathe
Betareader: Rachel
Mio
"Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."
Vladimir Nabokov "Lolita"
Hermione. Her. Mio. Ne.
At the beginning: hard, German "her", strong and resolute, like herself, when she is getting her own way. She always does. When she puts her hand up in class and I'm not letting her answer for the pure satisfaction of seeing lightning in those nut-brown eyes of hers. When she is grounding those two, who are always accompanying her, the gumpkin and the over-excitable one, both not being patched on her. Like a strong stroke of her nails on my skin.
At the end: short "ne". Like a flap, a snort over a task too simple. Like a shrug of thin arms. Fast pivoter and turning her back on me, when she has enough of my sight. Like an amusing slap in my face, which she is giving me. Sometimes soft like a smack of cat's paw with hidden claws, but sometimes almost stinging. Wonderfully stinging.
And in the middle: "mio". Soft like her lips on mine, sweet like a taste of her tongue, gentle like her peachy skin and melodious like her semiconscious whispers. Like sunny, Italian "mio". Mio like "mine". My treasure. My Mio.
---
If the last half hour of life would be given to me so I could choose the way I wanted to spend it, I would lie all that time with my head on her stomach.
If Heaven was a place, where we are endlessly doing what is the most pleasant to us, I would taste her interior eternally.
If I could take with me one image to the next world, one memory, it would be her, when she is standing with a window in the background, at six o'clock in the morning, dressed only in the beams of rising sun.
---
She wasn't always like that. I did it. It's my fault and I will burn in the fires of Hell. I hope, that at the same time she will walk on the heavenly rose petals. Because it's only my fault. And I will never redempt it. Even the Dark Mark can be removed. Probably. But not a stolen innocence. Merlin forgive me.
---
When it started, she was fourteen and all she knew about sex was an observation. She knew that when she sat with the book on the armchair, if the position is right, it can make a pleasure. I know she wasn't afraid of it. She accepted that like something natural, maybe even funny. Later she hadn't paid attention to that. Books were more exciting. When she allowed me to take a book from her hands, close it and put it aside, I knew, she was already mine.
---
I was like a mice trap. Mouse, rather, lets call it by its name. And the trap doesn't run around behind her victim. It's tempting with cheese and waiting. Long glances over the plate at supper, over the cauldron in class. Supposedly accidental plaiting a hand in her long curls, lying on the parchment, when I was checking her homework. One - or two warm breaths on her neck. Admonishment and ironical comments during the lesson, and then giving her the highest grade, to see her surprise and disbelief. Watching her when she waded in the lake with a raised skirt, among the squeals and idiotic smiles of girls in her age, who lacked her aura and her feline grace. After doing it for so long, until her smile would blanch, eyes shaded by a curtain of eyelashes, she returns to the shore, contracts her legs and hides them under the skirt.
And then you know that she knows. And you don't have to brew any deceitful potions. And there works Magic, the greatest of all. And you are waiting until she will approach herself after the lesson, stand next to your desk and shove a finger along your hand. With fear and excitement simultaneously.
There is nothing more cruel or perfidious than a mouse trap.
---
I'm a teacher. That's how it came. Arduous business, but I can live with it. But at nights I'm a teacher in vocation. Private lessons. Endlessly repeating the same instructions. And an observation: the student is overtaking and outgrowing the master.
---
It's not a disease. Not that disease. I'm not interested in girls of her age. My knees aren't growing milder on the sight of legs in white socks, protruding from under the tartan skirt. Thoughts about blooming buds of breasts, impossible to hide under the thin blouses: they are not exciting to me. I don't give a damn. I even don't like children. After all, they are all children, kids.
I only care about her knee-socks, her contused knee, her full-blown breasts, her neck, the sweetest neck in the world, unseen by others, inaccessible for the eyes of all the trembling third years, vulgar forth years, unappeased fifth years. Only I can kiss it, after I push away that crazy, smelling of wind and sun hair. And then hear, how she is breathing hardly into the pillow.
I care only about that. I'm not sick. I'm just bad. Bad to the marrow.
---
Sometimes I get lost in myself. I lost the way I wanted to go long time ago. I realize this only for a while, because the pleasure can drown out everything.
But there are more and more of those moments. I knew that I was wandering from the beginning. But now I entangled not only my ways, but hers too. And I'm seeing more and more clearly, that there is no escape from this labyrinth. In addition, someone locked a monster in it. Or many monsters, and I'm one of them.
That short while, when my consciousness is back. When she sits on me, in the way that a fifteen year old girl shouldn't do. When she is grasping me strongly by the hair. When she is saying words that even me, the old Death Eater, would not say in moments like that. Finally, when she is completely taking control, tempting me and then refusing to give me herself and watching with satisfaction the tears of powerlessness, which are almost appearing in my eyes.
In those moments I'm scared. For me and for her.
We went too far.
---
There are two of us.
One is standing by the cauldron and hurriedly, without thinking writing down the worst grades to all Gryffindors (no, not all; only for those, who deserved that, meaning all except her), watching the clock and non-verbally forcing the hands to move faster. He is counting hours, minutes and seconds, which are separating him from that magical, sweet-and-dark time.
He is watching the tiny fingers of her, armed with small, but devilishly and sharp nails, playing with a quill, and he is thinking about what else that fingers can do. He is catching her significant, lazy glance.
The other one is seeking for Mio. That Mio, who enchanted me, for who I lost my mind. Who was unknowingly scratching her calf with a tip of her quill, moistening her finger to turn the pages of book, bitting her lip in anger and, unaware of her charm – still unaware! - shaking her head and making those glittering, unbelievably soft curls move.
Where is she? Where is my Mio?
That real Mio is already gone. She died with a quiet cry, full of begging and fast breathing that first night.
I don't have anything to look for.
I will never find her.
THE END