Chapter 7: Othello
Week 39
I didn't have any time to do detective work over the next couple of weeks. NEWT work was intensifying horribly and I was in danger of being flattened by a gargantuan snowball of incomplete homework. Getting it done was a greater trial than ever; when Ron was off with Draco, which, obviously, was most of the time, I didn't even have someone equally clueless there to sympathise with my ignorance. Hermione, needless to say, was having kittens over my failure to take the exams seriously.
That wasn't all I had to contend with, either. Off the back of my completely undeserved reputation as a left-wing firebrand, I was once again followed around by an aimless, gaping crowd of zombies, sorry, students, who stood and watched me and waited for me to do something interesting. They were sadly disappointed. More interestingly, not that that's saying much, I was sent a steady trickle of petitions begging freedom for house-elves, legal reform, democracy, and wand rights for vampires. The goblins also sent me a letter that didn't beg for anything but informed me that I should support their bid for equal rights or they'd chop off my nose. The legal stuff was a bit difficult to understand so I had it vetted by Hermione, confident that she would make a left-wing-firebrand-appropriate decision. She seemed pretty chuffed with this job. She was especially pleased with the house-elves one.
"You don't mind doing this, do you?" I asked in the library while trying to ignore giggling tots.
"Of course not," she said, crossing the Ts on her letter particularly decisively. "I've always wanted to achieve something useful. I don't see why you should have all the fun."
"Fun?" Ron didn't say, since he was off snogging Draco.
Even if she and Ron never spoke to each other again, though, her relationship with me seemed to have healed overnight. Evidently, the lure of sedition was so great as to overcome the minor problems of gay sex and Weasleys; I was suddenly her best friend again, even if she did periodically lecture me about how I shouldn't have cheated on Ginny, and did I know that Dean was trying to get back with her and it was a terrible pity because she'd always liked me best? This sort of thing was not very easy to deal with, since I still felt guilty about Ginny and hardly wanted to open up to her about how I was shagging Voldemort, but I bore with it.
To be honest, I have very fond memories of the January/February period; it was when I first became Me. I took the first step when I was eleven and entered the Witzyworld, but my current incarnation didn't really cohere until I Got Politics; even if it was really the politics that got me.
Week 40Just when I couldn't have been any more distracted, along came Valentine's Day. This did not augur well. For a start, the traditional Hogsmeade Valentine's visit was actually on Valentine's Day, which hadn't happened since 1987; this meant an extra-spangly celebration, which I suspected would give even more scope than usual for disaster. Second, Hermione was out to impress or annoy Ron, and had snagged a stud from the Ravenclaw Quidditch team to show off at Hogsmeade; I doubted she would succeed in starting a fight with the ginger one, but there'd be tears before bedtime either way. Third, Ginny might find a new partner, the thought of which made my heart plummet; fourth, Draco and Ron were certain to have either a gruesomely sentimental love scene or a dust-up; and finally, they might start asking me who my boyfriend was and why I didn't invite him to Hogsmeade. Mmm. I threw myself into my Herbology essays, a backlog of which had been slowly accumulating since, well, ever.
I spent the Hogsmeade visit hiding in the Hog's Head, which, I reasoned, was the last place any courting couple would ever come, unless of course Aberforth had invited his goat. It also got me away from the gawping students; unfortunately, I'd forgotten about gawping adults. The whole bar sat and stared at me in silence. I sat down very firmly with my back to them.
Presently a sharp finger poked me in the shoulder and I twisted round to see two goblins, one of whom said without preamble, "Make sure you support the Criminal Justice Thing, kid, or we'll chop your – "
" – nose off, I know," I finished. "I have. I wrote a letter to the Ministry." I felt intensely pleased to have got everything so well organised. Good old Hermione.
"Don't know if that's enough," the other one said suspiciously. "They've promised us stuff like that before."
"Yeah. Why don't you talk to the Minister yourself?" the first one demanded.
I blinked. "I'm not allowed, am I? I have to stay at school."
"Oh," said the second one. "You still at school?" And without any further questions they trundled out, looking gratified and saying things like "Writing to the Ministry" and "Still at school". Barking.
With the goblins gone, I settled down at my table and ignored the massed weirdos. I had planned to spend my time reading I Will Not Serve, but it was a slim volume and I finished it remarkably quickly; so in fact I sat there for a long time thinking about its hidden meanings while distractedly drinking Butterbeer.
OK, so there was some gay love in it, albeit unconsummated... actually, if you looked at it another way, the gay love could have saved the girl from going bonkers, so perhaps he meant that I was keeping him sane? That was nice. There was also some helpful advice about not failing your exams on purpose, which I didn't really need at the moment.
The point was, though, that this was the second book Voldie had assigned to me in a fortnight that dealt with dodgy teachers; the third in three months, if you counted Villette. Two common themes were emerging: officious or malicious superiors trying to break up your relationship, and teachers who wanted you to conform and do as you were told instead of displaying any original thought. I wasn't sure how to react to that.
In the end it was getting a bit late, so I drank up my last Butterbeer and was just standing up when Luna Lovegood wandered into the pub. I should have guessed; if there as anyone else in Hogwarts barmy enough to go to the Hog's Head on Valentine's Day, it'd be her. She looked pleased to see me; she traipsed tranquilly over and cooed, "Hello, Harry. The Togan Hickagathnia told me you'd be in here."
"It was right," I agreed. (He? She? It? Oh, sod it.) "Have you had a good time?"
"Oh, yes," she said happily. "I went to the Three Broomsticks with Ginny and she bought me a Butterbeer." This made me blink. Were they just friends, or was this an actual date? Before I'd had time to get over the shock, she continued, "But then she had to put Ron in some water and carry him back to the castle, and I needed to go to Dervish and Banges, so then I came here."
"Why did she have to put Ron in water?" I asked with a feeling of impending doom.
"Because Hermione turned him into a squid," she said serenely. "After he made the chandelier fall down on her head."
"Er – why didn't Draco put him in water?"
"Because he was hitting someone from the Ravenclaw Quidditch team over the head with a chair," she asseverated.
"Thanks, Luna," I said resignedly, and chalked up a fairly huge point on the Valentine's day minus side. I think I'll skip the aftermath.
At least, I consoled myself, Voldemort would be immune to Valentine's Day madness; sadly, I was counting without the First Jealousy. On Sunday I conjured strawberries for him and administered sex, and gave him the happy news that the goblins were going to amputate my nose, so I would look like him soon; and all was going well until I gave him his stack of books, one of which unfortunately turned out to be an unspeakably lurid pulp paperback entitled Secret Lusts of Grindelwald. He stared at it for a moment in uncomplicated, open-mouthed puzzlement until I took it back and said "Sorry, you've got one of Pettigrew's."
His eyes narrowed. "Pettigrew's?"
"Yes. Wormtail's. He reads really shit books."
"Wormtail?"
"He was friends with my dad and my godfather! People deserve to be, erm..." I thought about it, and gave up. "Well, they deserve to have books to read, anyway."
He bared the ex-teeth. "Are you doing hahours for eheryone in 'his prison, Potter?"
He refused to speak to me for at least ten minutes, which is a long time when you only see someone for an hour once a fortnight, and when I left he asked for Fanny Hill. I got him Othello instead and hoped he wouldn't strangle me next fortnight.
Really, it was true what I'd decided when I was with Ginny; all this sex business was way more trouble than it was worth.
Week 42Towards the end of February, I began to feel run down. The weather was a constant barrage of sleet and hail and gale-force winds, the whole of seventh year was revising for tortuous mock exams, and I contracted several bad colds and kept having to go to Madam Pomfrey for Pepper-Up Potion. None of my friends were talking to each other; Hermione was mounting an epic assault on the bookshelves, and Ron still occasionally sprouted tentacles out of his head.
The only positive thing was that I hadn't shared Voldemort's feelings for a good six weeks; no falling down the stairs or writhing under dark figures. On the downside, my libido seemed to have all but gone; probably I was working too hard.
The thought of visiting him in prison became depressing. The sour sweat of his mattress had pervaded my skin; I reeked of torture and mumbled loathing and crazy-eyed despair. I missed a visit.
"Aren't you going to Azkaban?" Hermione said in surprise when I joined her in the library.
"Not this time," I said off-handedly, skilfully avoiding the voice of my conscience.
That night, I had one of the dreams. It built up slowly. At first I heard an eager clamour at the back of my mind, like the chugging of a train; Harry's coming, Harry's coming, Harry's coming. I felt the anticipation building and building as I checked the clock, the internal clock that all wizards have; it gets its data, I think, from the earth's magnetic field (Hermione's explanation went a bit over my head). He would be here soon; he would be here. Three minutes to twelve. One minute past twelve. He would be here.
Five minutes past twelve. He was late! I began to feel impatient, then indignant, then worried. Unfamiliar doubts whined at me like dogs. Perhaps he didn't want to come. Had I said something, had I done something to put him off? But he would be here soon, I consoled myself, and felt that reassurance warm and cosy in my belly. Harry would be here soon, and the concrete would grow flowers.
Twenty past twelve. I changed my tune. The inconsiderate little bastard, how dare he be so late? Did he not realise that a whole third of our time was gone? I would kill him when he arrived. I ranted and raved and fumed and then became afraid. Perhaps I'd better not kill him when he arrived. Perhaps he was getting bored of me, or disgusted. I'd better be especially nice to him, funny or interesting or obedient, or he wouldn't come back. Part of my soul gave a howl of anguish, cried, You surely don't have to jump through those hoops for Harry as well, but I refused to listen because I was too worried.
Quarter to one. He's not coming. Merlin, he's not coming! Leaping, biting panic. He must be hurt, or ill, or detained somewhere. Perhaps he got injured playing Quidditch, or bitten by a Hippogriff, or Merlin, perhaps the Ministry sabotaged him! What could have stopped him coming, where could he be? Maybe he was dead!
One o' clock. Dull acceptance: he hadn't come. I didn't deserve to be visited. Next time I would have to try to be what he wanted, to put right whatever had gone wrong this time; problem was, I couldn't think what I'd done recently that was any different from things I'd done before. Didn't matter. I'd have to make sure I licked his feet.
The quiet little chant started in my head again, only this time the refrain was Harry didn't come, Harry didn't come, Harry didn't come. There was a sense of absolute, terrible desolation. I woke up screaming yet again, and Ron and Seamus had to chase me around the dormitory and extricate me from my blankets.
Then the visit the next fortnight, and he was so pathetically eager, so desperate to please; willing to do anything to keep me coming back and not leave him there, alone but for unspecified maniacs:
I never missed another visit.
Week 44Such big eyes. I'd never noticed before; but when I peered through the flames, there they were, peeping out from behind the quivering blanket as if they belonged to a mouse, not a snake.
"Harry!" said the owner with a trembling attempt at enthusiasm. "I misssed you – "
"Don't, don't do it," I begged. "Just don't," and he stopped, frightened.
"I dreamed about it," I began. "I shared all your thoughts, when you were thinking to yourself afterwards, I must be polite to him next fortnight. I felt all your feelings..."
"Ha," he said, and stared intensely at the foot of the bed for a moment, the stumps of his fingers bunching the blanket into peaks. Then he shook his head and said "Well, it's true, isn't it? People do hahe to be pleasant company, or why would you want to visit 'hem?"
"No, you don't – "
"Let's see 'he books," he said in an extremely passable imitation of brisk authority; except that his hands were still trembling and, when I climbed into bed beside him, he flinched away as though I were electric.
Othello. I blushed. "Ignore that. It was when you were being jealous. I got you Jane Eyre to go with Villette – " He made a small noise of pleasure, and I felt intensely, unreasonably delighted. "And I asked the bookshop for some, like, brainy-type people and they gave me Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt and Yukio Mishima."
This lightened the mood a lot better than I'd expected. He gave one of the great howls of laughter that I am such a genius at inadvertently eliciting, then coughed feebly for a long time while I patted his back. "Brainy-type people," he said. "Yesss. Which bookshop?"
"Er, Flourish and Blotts."
"Mmm. Anyway, 'hese are non-hichion."
"Aw!..."
"Don't mind, don't mind. I like non-hichion," he assured me meekly.
"Yeah, well, sorry. I spent all my time sort of learning how to kill you, so I'm pretty dodgy at literature."
"All my time trying to kill you too," he mumbled.
"And I couldn't think what to give you to cheer you up and stuff, so I got you Jane Eyre because I knew it was a love story."
"It was hery nice oh you," he said sturdily, although his voice was shaking.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "I do love you... I don't know what's come over me the last month. I just felt as if I'd be sick if I came here again; oh, and I've got a pain up my nose. I knew it was bad to leave you here on your own... um... I think I've gone temporarily insane."
"Kidneys?" he said.
"So I'm really sorry. What?"
"Pain in kidneys?"
"Yes. What? How did? – "
He started sniffing me all over. "Peas," he announced.
"I smell of peas?" I said, certain that he was off his rocker. How precisely had we got from love stories to kidneys and peas?
"Yep. Pohion of Disahectahion."
"You – what? SOMEONE'S GIVEN ME A POTION THAT STOPS ME FUCKING LIKING YOU?"
"Well," he temporised, shrinking away from me, "you'h taken 'he pohion."
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY PLAYING AT? I DON'T EVEN LIKE YOU ANYWAY!"
"Sexual desire," he said before the guard arrived and asked whether everything was all right, and I assured her that it was. We listened in silence as she trundled away, then I resumed, "You must be joking. It probably doesn't even exist."
"Take holly."
"What?"
"Take inhusion oh holly. Ih you hahe taken the pohion, hat'll cure it. Ih you hahen't, won't do anyhing."
"You're off your nut. What book d'you want?"
"Anyhing's hine," he insisted uncomfortably, still shrinking away from me, and I became embarrassed and cooed over him and told him I would be disappointed if he didn't pick a book. Then I apologised for saying that I didn't like him and explained that I'd only meant he was a mass murderer who'd killed my parents. He played along, gave feeble and gratified smiles that wrenched my heart, and, for reasons that quite escaped me over the next two weeks, chose Jean Genet.
Week 45Holly. I looked it up in my Potions textbook, where I found, to my surprise, that it was a well-known antidote for hatred and jealousy spells. To double-check, I searched for 'Potion of Disaffection', which wasn't there. I finally found it under 'Hate Potion'. Perhaps Voldie didn't believe in hate.
I already know there was some holly in the Forbidden Forest, but the berries weren't in season and you surely weren't meant to just eat them raw. Slughorn's stock cupboard it was, then. After all, I'd raided it so many times when it belonged to Snape that I could do it in my sleep.
Holly. Small, pale green pills. I checked the dosage, took two. They tasted of peas.
That night I awoke in shock from more epic dreams, and not nightmares, either. I was in such ecstasy that it was a long while before I could even be bothered to acknowledge that my feelings for Voldie had been abruptly reversed when I took holly; ergo, I genuinely had been poisoned. Someone was sneakily feeding me hate potions.
Could just be Draco, of course. Dab hand at Potions and used to think I was shagging Ron.
Very bloody likely.
Week 46Jean Genet's book arrived and gave me nightmares. Why on earth had Voldemort requested the bloody thing? Why did the woman insist on writing about perverted gay men all the time, for that matter? If anyone found it I would be expelled from Hogwarts. I hid it at the bottom of my trunk and hoped Voldemort didn't think of it as light reading.
Anyway, I had no time for porn; I had a plan: or, rather, I had a purpose. I had to see beneath that mask; that damned strip of textile that was keeping me from everything I needed to know. I had a suspicion, and if it was right, rescuing Voldemort ought to be as easy as a visit to Dumbledore.
If he believed me, of course. Best not to think about that.
And the situation might never arise; not unless I could figure out a way to see Mr Murky without his mask. And how, I wondered, was I to achieve that? Hide in Azkaban with my Invisibility Cloak? Not a great idea, Harry; people really might notice you hadn't returned to Hogwarts. Polyjuice someone and ask them to pretend to be me while I lurked in Azkaban? Possible, if horrifically difficult. Wait until the middle of the night, then Floo off to Azkaban using one of the school fireplaces? Yeah, a perfect way to get instantly expelled from Hogwarts.
I decided all of that was unnecessary anyway. There was a much quicker, risk-free way; or, at any rate, all it risked was my sanity.
That night I cleared my mind. I lay in bed thinking, I must see behind the torturer's mask. I must see behind the torturer's mask. I must find my way into Voldemort's mind. I need to see behind the mask.
The first two nights: nothing. I wondered what I was doing wrong, and finally remembered the clearing your mind made it more difficult to penetrate (oh, god, don't mention penetration again... Especially since it gives me flashbacks about Jean Genet). Presumably I had to do the opposite of clearing my mind; but what was that, anyway? Think hard about things? Feel a lot of emotion?
Well, that second one wasn't difficult; not now I was in love with Voldie again. I wanked happily for about three hours before I finally got to sleep. Thank god for silencing spells.
But I still didn't get into his mind, and I woke up feeling dirty; and paranoid, now, because it seemed wrong that I could find a maniac physically attractive, that a mass murderer should have individuality and intelligence and whatever it was about his body that drove me crazy; or, at any rate, that my body responded. I was clearly a sicko like that Genet woman.
I dug out the book and actually bothered to read the notes. Jean Genet was a man. Oh. That actually made it worse, not better.
Well, anyway, I didn't understand why I was obsessed with Voldemort... oh, all right, obsession made sense, but why had it changed? I was in love with him, made excuses for him. Why?
Now that we'd got over the hate potion thing, I was starting to think "love potion".
While I was washing and dressing it became clear that in some sense, my experiment had worked. My head throbbed; I heard sounds, saw flashes of light, that shouldn't have been in my mind. I was pretty sure they were Voldie's sensations. Typical; I got these half-visions now, when I didn't want them. I didn't want to faint down the stairs again, so Ron half-carried me off to the hospital wing, where Madam Pomfrey assured me I'd done the right thing and told me to rest.
Rest! Ha! I didn't even make it to the bed.
There were nasty, turbulent nightmares. I writhed and choked. I was given a ladle and told to pour out an exact amount of water or else the intended recipient, which I think was Stan Shunpike, would go thirsty. It didn't look difficult, but somehow, when I tried, the water went all over the floor; and I tried again, and again, and again.
"You're doing this on purpose."
"I'm not." Gasping. "I can't help it."
I was Voldemort; I was in his body. I was sure of it. There was so little light, though, that it was almost impossible to tell what was happening; was that the torturer in front of me? Was that dark blob the shape of his hood? I wasn't sure.
"That's what you said last time, Tom," his voice came from just in front of me. "And the time before that."
Howls of anguish. My skull was sundered. My brain collapsed.
"You will stop doing this," the voice said. "You will stop doing this to Harry."
I am Harry, I thought. I was Harry, and I was Voldemort. My heart was racing in terror and also in anticipation; I could see the shape of his head now. My head was held back by the chain, but if he would only come a bit closer, I could grab that mask.
I found the pain tolerable; nasty, but nothing I couldn't stand. Voldemort did not. "I can't stop it!" I screamed. "I – CAN'T!"
There was a terrible lump throttling my throat. Was I crying? No, it was someone's thumbs. "Take control of your mind. Raise your shields. I know you can do it. You will do it now."
"I CAN'T! I CAN'T!" I squealed, wetting myself in an explosion of terror, but my hands were moving. I reached up, and my stubby fingers were pale against his mask; I hooked them into its soft corners, and snatched it away –
Then grim dreams, dreams about so many things. I was brooding before I even woke up; reflecting on how I had failed, had failed to see the face beneath the mask and didn't even know what had happened. Had the torturer become aware of my presence; had he thrown me out of Voldie's mind? Or had Voldie done it himself? Maybe the mask itself was made of some strange boy-awakening material.
When I did establish that I was in the hospital wing, my only thought was how to keep the ghastliness from the innocents in Hogwarts. They didn't understand this kind of thing.
I was quite surprised when Madam Pomfrey told me she'd mended three broken ribs. I hadn't felt a thing. She complained that my bones must be made of glass; she wittered on about how I should now be regarded as functionally epileptic and shouldn't use the Prefects' Bathroom and should pad the furniture in my dormitory if there were any sharp edges, and all the time I was thinking, That's not it. I want preventive, not curative medicine. I want them to stop torturing him.
"Madam P," I said wearily during a gap in the lecture, "don't you agree, what we should be doing is, is get them to stop torturing him? We know perfectly well I can't block this out properly or stop it happening – "
"I know you can't, it's not your fault! That's what I said when you kept shouting, and I knew you couldn't hear a word, it was just too upsetting to hear you scream like that. 'I can't help it, I can't help it'. I know you can't."
"But they can. The authorities can, and I keep telling Dumbledore and he keeps fobbing me off – "
"Dumbledore, blasted man, he's always away when the trouble starts. I sent that miserable Malfoy boy and, oh dear, when he said Dumbledore wasn't there I actually thought he was lying. I thought he was just being lazy. Poor boy finally changes his ways and nobody believes him."
"Typical, really," I agreed. "Ron knows, then? Is he allowed in yet?"
"Hmm."
"Please..."
"Well, seeing as it's you," she grumbled, and a pack of cronies was permitted to enter, including Draco, who squinted at me and said sullenly, "Sorry I didn't get hold of Dumbledore."
"That's all right," I said. "He wasn't there."
"Pity you didn't fall on Snape this time," Ron commiserated, putting a bottle of Butterbeer on the bedside table.
Draco bristled and said "I'm sure it's better for Harry if he doesn't bang his skull against Professor Snape, who is very hard-headed."
"Ron, he's not here for you to use as a missile," said Ginny.
"No, but like you said, you might as well twat Snape if you can get away with it..."
"Rooon!" whined Draco.
"Sorry, babes," Ron said, smooching him.
"Oh, please," said Ginny. "Not in front of Madam Pomfrey."
"Says you, who was all over the place with Dean Thomas!"
Hermione noticed that the thought of Ginny/Dean was making me pull my grapefruit-eating face, and suddenly interjected, "Did you see anything awful?"
"Er," I said, not sure whether this was a much better topic. "Same as usual, I suppose."
They all looked sombre at this, apart from Draco, who was staring at me with ghastly fascination.
"Is the Dark Lord really being tortured?" he said.
I wasn't sure what to say to that. "Yes."
His whole face glowed. "Good," he said with terrible viciousness.
The conversation went a bit sparse after that. Ginny and Ron squabbled a bit more and then cheerfully excused themselves and argued back off to Gryffindor Tower with Draco in tow. Hermione remained sitting silently by my bedside.
"I quite like it when you wake up in the hospital wing," she said in the brittle voice she uses in extreme stress. "It's the only time we're all together."
"Oh, Hermione," I said, hugging her awkwardly with the arm that was nearest to her. "I'm really sorry about, y'know, all these things going wrong..."
After a pause she said "It was awful to see you. You were thrashing about and shouting, and then you went 'I can't, I can't, I can't'. The gawpers were terrified. I think they believe you're the second coming of Voldemort."
"What would they have to be terrified about?" I said bitterly.
There was a silence while she sat and thought dark Hermione-thoughts, and I contemplated Voldie. Of course, from bitter reflections on torture I soon progressed to idle thoughts on his jawline, and his shadowed eyesockets, and his frosty pallor, and his hemipenis... I stared at Hermione's hair in extreme embarrassment, wondering how we were still here after six years, and we were the same people in the same school with the same bushy hair and everything, yet I was fantasising about Voldemort.
"Hermione," I said, "is there a general antidote to love potions?"
She blinked, then crinkled her nose up in perplexity. "Hate potions, I suppose. Why?"
That didn't seem right. "But then," I argued, "it'd just be love and hate mixed up together. You'd fancy them, and you'd also hate their guts."
"True," she said reflectively. "That can't be right. No, you'd need an antidote."
"A bezoar," I said glumly. Far too expensive to waste on that sort of thing.
"Or a specifically blended potion to deal with that particular, you know, person and love potion."
Well, that wouldn't do, then. I didn't even know if anyone had slipped me a potion. In desperation I said, "OK, how d'you know whether you're being affected by a love potion or if, you know, you really do fancy that person?"
Hermione's reaction was most unexpected. She stared at me with a pitying expression, then burst into scornful laughter.
"Oh, Harry," she scoffed. "You can't really be thinking anything so stupid. You fancy men, therefore you must have been given a love potion?! Wizards stopped using that line in about 1690."
"Er..."
"It's just homophobia and self-hatred that your Muggle relatives have drummed into you," she continued, and she lectured me for the next ten minutes on how, yes, sexuality could be a confusing thing, but I really had to be responsible for my feelings and not try to blame them on potions, because really, homophobia had no place in witzy society and it didn't have much of a place in Muggle society either, and I could just ask Stephen Twigg or Ben Bradshaw. I rather doubted they would give me any time out of their schedules, actually, but at any rate, I was greatly comforted by Hermione's attitude. It was nice to have confirmation that she was mad at me and Ron because we'd dumped her and Ginny, rather than just because we were sausage-jockeys.
So, I thought after I'd waved goodbye to her and settled down to rest; why was I mad about Voldemort, if not because of a love potion? Why did I find his jokes funny and his body delicious and his intellect humbling, when he was a crazed, unrepentant murderer?
Theory A: I am totally insane. Probably true.
Theory B: I am totally confused. Definitely true.
Theory C: My loveless childhood and violent adolescence have left me a sadomasochistic weirdo like Jean Genet. No. NO. Really, NO NO NO.
Theory D: It's something to do with sharing his mind. What?! I mean, just... what?? Eh?! Why would I fancy him because of sharing his mind, unless he's so egotistical he fancies himself? And he doesn't, he fancies me; he called me "beautiful boy" (snort), so I ought to fancy myself... Gah!
Thinking about it just dug me deeper and deeper into a quaking bog of confusion. I didn't have any answers, and most of my mind wanted to avoid tackling the subject at all, which made the rest of me unhappy. It was odd, because whenever I thought about the Transfiguration-homework episode, back when I'd kissed him and tasted him for the first time, it seemed absolutely plain that I'd been doing the right thing.
Possibly that combination of agony, pity and disgust inspired by his torture had sublimated into tenderness.
I didn't know. I had no idea what to do now that I loved him again.
