Disclaimer: Neither of the characters is mine, not that I mention them by name anyway. They belong to the oh so great J.K Rowling.
He visits his child, his soft grey child who looked upon him with his trusting, innocent, unknowing eyes and outstretches his fragile arms to the one he counts on to protect him, the one he loves unconditionally and he exclaims in delight with his cherubic voice the joy of having his father visit him, the joy of seeing him as he comes to his child, the joy of having someone who he can rely on to visit him, who he can rely on to love him. The one who basks in the love that is enveloped in him without realising that it was so much more than he could ever conceive, than he could ever return or understand. But still he reaches out for the man and demands to he held, to be hugged and held close until they could have been one person, not knowing what he was doing, not knowing what it meant.
He visits his child in the night time, when the soft blond woman who he married is lying asleep in their room, mostly unknowing that he is not there and trusting him with whatever he desired. Sometimes waking up in the night and finding that he was not there with her, that he had gone and she did not know why. But she never said anything, never opened her mouth and simply shut her eyes once again and forced herself to class it as a dream. When all the servants were tucked away, not seeing and not knowing how the door to the child's room always ends up open but never saying a word. When nobody quite knows that he does visit his child, or really knows why he visits his child, but a faint knowledge is hidden within them all, but it will never be voiced, never inquired about and never even proved. Out of fear or out of a blind trust nothing is said, nothing is acknowledged, nothing happens as long as they wish it so.
He visits his child while the young boy sleeps on unaware, watching the steady breathing and the faint moving as he dreamed of other things, of places where there were no memories banished or hidden, in a place with no secrets and no darkness. He memorises everything about him, about how he moves, the oh so breakable fingers softly curving in his palm, the arm draped in the purest cotton gently curling around his small body, about how he sounds the quiet whimpers that remind the man so much of past moment, exhalations of breath as the child relaxed into such a deep state that death could have come upon him and no one would know the difference. About how the muted grey blends with the white and black around him, until he is almost not there at all, until he has to squint to see his son. But squinting has now become natural to him and he barely notices himself doing it as the muted tones are banished away to bring a clear picture of his son, prone and vulnerable as he lay sleeping unaware.
He visits his child when the boy is too young to realise why he is visited when the house is empty and alone, too young to realise why he is shushed from making too much sound, and too young to know why his father is always as silent as a ghost, as if he were never really there. Why his light touches and caresses where designed to make no mark, no indication that his hands had been there at all, as though they had slipped right through him, affecting nothing and the boy is too young to realise that when his fathers hands slip through him they may not mark his pure skin, but bruises the insides, where nobody can see them but where they will never leave him. Where they will accumulate until all the skin hides is a boy of bruises, created by them and destroyed because of them.
He visits his child when he knows that he will not understand what he is doing to him, when he will not think anything wrong or out of place, when nobody will interrupt and no one will see. When silence has been cast round the room, but spells are never trusted and so he keeps his ecstasy in, where nobody will hear it, where nobody will see it and stop its flow. Where nobody can separate him from his child and nobody knows of the true relationship they share. Where he doesn't have to hide and where he can be with his child in the way that he wishes without others citing it as wrong, when his son cannot cite it as wrong and he can convince himself that they are all wrong, that this was right, this was true and this was pure, that this was love.
He visits his child for pleasure, for truth, for love and for want. He visits his child to teach him, to show him the way of the world as he sees it and to make sure that he knew everything that he needed to know, he teaches him all that he knows, all that he wants to know and everything that he believed as truth. He teaches him how to act and how to think, how to trust and how to believe everything that he is told by his father. Once he has learnt, the man gives into his want, gives into what he needs to keep the world spinning, and having taught his son that it was right, he takes it from him. he steals his pleasure from his son in the only way he knew how, the only way that didn't have a name to his son, the way that the child only knew from his father and only knew that his father had told him that it was right, it was love. The child didn't see it as wrong, but still the man always taught him one more thing before he left, one more thing that was truly eternal. Withdrawing his wand, the man teaches his child how to forget.
R&R please!