Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Wicked ❯ Wicked ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Wicked and I am not making any profit from this story. Harry Potter belongs to J K Rowling, Scholastic Books and Warner Bros. Wicked belongs to Gregory Maguire. I'm just borrowing the characters from one, and a song from the other to create something for my own amusement as well as that of others.

 

Wicked

By Evandar

 

 

No one mourns the wicked,

No one cries they won't return,

No one lays a lily on their grave.

 

The grave stone was simple: a neat rectangular slab with only a name carved into its face. It would have been improper to have anything else. It stood in a cemetery at the bottom of a hill in a small Northumbrian village.

 

It would have shocked the Wizarding world to know that the grave was tended to and cared for, considering all the evils that the man who lay in it had done. It would have shocked them more to see the person who was doing it.

 

He was a small man: years of neglect in his early childhood had robbed him of the height he might have one day reached. He wore his long, untidy black hair tied back in a tail at the base of his neck and hid his brilliant green eyes behind a neat pair of glasses. He was handsome, in a desolate sort of way.

 

The good man scorns the wicked,

Through their lives our children learn;

What we miss when we misbehave.

 

It was odd to think, Harry had decided, that a man as powerful and charismatic as Lord Voldemort should be consigned to history as yet another maniac. It was stranger still that people were determined to forget him now that he was gone from the world. One day, he knew, students at Hogwarts would read of the great battle between the Dark Lord and himself and that had eventually consumed both of their lives. They would be wide-eyed with wonder at the thought of anyone surviving the Killing Curse, or someone only just turned seventeen preparing to save the world at the cost of his own life.

 

Harry wondered what they would think if they heard of this: a man so consumed by his nemesis that in the end he was the only one who really cared that the other was dead.

 

Everything had changed so much since Voldemort's fall that the Wizarding world was barely recognisable as the place that Harry had fallen in love with seven years ago. He didn't know what to think about it anymore. Werewolves and vampires were being persecuted more now, just because they were `Dark' creatures, and some of their kind had sided with Voldemort during the war. It was sickening.

 

And goodness knows, the wicked's lives are lonely,

Goodness knows the wicked die alone.

It just shows; when you're wicked you're left only on your own.

 

Harry let his fingers trail over the headstone. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would have been like if he had died instead of Voldemort. Would Voldemort have forked out so that Harry could have a proper burial as he had done? Would Voldemort have caused as much pain and grief as Scrimgeor and his government were doing? Harry knew that Voldemort had been brutal, violent and psychotic. He knew that, and yet, he still couldn't help but wonder about what might have been.

 

Are they born as wicked?

Or does it grow as time wears on?

 

Dumbledore had once told Harry that it was choices that made a person who they were. What Dumbledore had forgotten to mention was that Harry's choices would also shape the world around him.

 

Harry could still remember the night before the final battle when a soft, hissing voice had entered his dreams and awoken him. He had met the Dark Lord on the battlefield that night, not as his opponent but as a…Harry still had no idea what that was. They had talked. Voldemort had given him the chance to join him, but Harry had refused. Voldemort had nodded just once and let his long cold fingers trail over Harry's cheek, leaving a strange tingling sensation in their wake, before melting into the darkness. The very next day, Voldemort had hesitated, and Harry had taken his life.

 

Now he was alone and his responsibility towards Wizardkind completed, Harry had a lot of time to contemplate his actions and Voldemort's, and those split-second choices that had forged the Wizarding world anew on that blood-soaked morning. Why had Voldemort hesitated? Why had he stopped at the final moment? What had that gentle, lingering caress that still haunted Harry's dreams meant?

 

Had the Light really won the war?

 

Who can say? But this we understand:

No one mourns the wicked,

When at last they're dead and gone,

Then at last there's joy throughout the land.

 

Harry knew that he hadn't won. Even from beyond the grave, Voldemort seemed determined to drive him insane. That was why he had bought the Riddle House and dragged it back to its former glory. That was why he came down to this one piece of ground as if staring at - and, heaven forbid, talking to - the Dark Lord's headstone could answer all his questions.

 

He calmly replaced the solitary lily he had placed on the grave the previous week with a fresh one before raising his hand again to trace the name engraved on the black marble marker.

 

Tom Marvolo Riddle

 

He could still remember the wash of fear that had filled him when it had been explained to him that the name was an anagram for `I am Lord Voldemort'. He had been young then, and he had feared the owner of that name more than anyone else. Now Harry feared himself and the consequences of his actions.

 

The world was tearing itself apart all around him, and he couldn't see a way to stop it. The people who had once relied on him had moved on into this new world, and Harry had swiftly realised that it was not a place where he would be welcome. Not that he had been welcome in the Wizarding world anyway; all they had wanted was his power and his misguided sense of justice.

 

And goodness knows we know what goodness is,

Goodness knows the wicked die alone,

Woe to those who spurn what goodnesses they are shown.

 

He had abandoned them in return just a few months after his `victory'. He lived as a Muggle recluse now, far away from anywhere they would look. He didn't even care if they did search for him.

 

Harry knelt by the headstone for a long time before standing slowly. He brushed down his black slacks more out of habit than actual care for the worn material.

 

No one mourns the wicked.

 

After a slight pause, Harry leaned down again to brush his lips against the cold stone in a kiss he knew that the Dark Lord would never know.

 

No one mourns the wicked.

 

A single tear slipped down Harry's cheek as he pulled away. There was a harsh sense of finality about the gesture even though it happened every week.

 

“I miss you, Tom,” he whispered to the still air before turning away to walk back to Voldemort's ancestral manor in which he had made his home.

 

No one mourns the wicked.