Concrete Angels
A Harry Potter Fanfiction
By: Mother Rose
Harry James Potter walked through the small, isolated cemetery taking odd note of the number of small angels adorning different graves. There was a lot of them in this cemetery. Different sizes and patterns and made from different materials but all of them angels. He came here every time his Aunt ran him off for any length of time so she could hold one of her garden parties or afternoon teas with the ladies. Those ladies didn't like him. They didn't trust him and refused to come to the house if he was to be there. So she always ran him off when it was her turn to host the social event.
He didn't really mind. Or at least he didn't once he had found this place to get away from Dudley for the afternoon. He had found this small under-tended yard shortly after he'd turned five when his cousin had been chasing him trying to catch him and beat him up to relieve his boredom. When he had discovered his cousin and the other neighborhood bullies wouldn't follow him here it became one of his favorite places to go. He didn't really understand what their problem with it was but he also didn't really care.
It was morbid to spend your free time, what little you had of it, in a graveyard but he was safe here. Safer here then he was anywhere else he knew of. The dead would not lay in wait for him hoping for a chance to beat the crap out of him and make him bleed. And while they really didn't care about anything mortal any more he would spend his afternoon tending the graves no one ever seemed to visit or care about anymore. He'd read the names as he pulled away weeds and straightened vases and other ornaments left behind by forgotten visitors. It was the only way he could think of to thank these forgotten people for the sanctuary they gave him in a world where such sanctuary was hard to come by and therefore very precious to him.
He had been fascinated with all the things people put on the headstones to denote who exactly was buried beneath the surface but it had taken him several trips to the library to find out what they all meant. Mainly because he wasn't really all that welcome in the library any more than he was anywhere else. His family had done their job too well of convincing everyone he was the devil incarnate and anywhere he went or spent time was going to suffer some sort of major calamity. Why no one ever noticed he wasn't the one tearing things up, he didn't know but he had long ago given up on the people around here.
These days he simply did his best to ignore the people and just get through each day as it came hoping he would still be alive when the sun went down. And hoping as he lay on his bedding in the small dark closet, he would spend an undisturbed night and wake up safe and sound when the sun rose in the morning. Because for a boy like him, there really wasn't anything better to hope for. He knew he would never leave this place alive just as he knew he would never have anything to make his life worthwhile.
As he walked among the headstones he wondered about the people laying beneath the ground. What kind of people had they been? Had they been happy? Prosperous? Kind and gentle? Or mean and selfish? Would they have treated him like his relatives did? Like his teachers did? Did they have children of their own? Were their children laying here also? Dead and forgotten in a plot of ground over grown with weeds. He didn't know but he always wondered.
He wasn't sure why exactly but every time he came here, the angel statues always caught his eye. Whenever he saw one, he would walk over to the grave and read the name of the resident of that grave. He didn't need to do the math to know the occupant of the grave was only a child. The county had specific ways in which they would mark graves to let visitors know what type of person was buried there. Criminals were marked with the scales of justice somewhere on their headstone. War veterans were marked with the emblem of the flag. And children with angels.
He always visited the children and he always wondered what had been the cause of their demise. In his ears ghostly laughter would haunt his mind as he paid silent tribute to the children. That laughter let him know even if they had suffered the most horrible of lives, they were happy now. He hoped they had died of disease because then at least there was a possibility they had been wanted. Loved. Cared for by the people they had lived with. He didn't want to believe all these graves with angels resting over them were unloved children who had known only pain and suffering. He didn't want to think they were children like him. Children who knew so much pain they couldn't even cry any more. Because if they started they might never stop.
No, he wanted to believe it had been a disease that had brought them low. Because by believing that, he could believe there was still hope for him. Hope that he would survive. Hope that one day he would escape the endless round of blame and pain. Bruises and cuts he didn't deserve. Burns and broken bones he was forced to hide. And tears he couldn't shed. That one day he would escape this place and have a real life. One worth living. Like Dudley did.
But every time he left the cemetery, he would wonder if the day would come when he was laying in the cold ground with a concrete angel to mark his passing. He couldn't help it because he knew; couldn't help but know. Not all those children had died from an illness or disease. Some of them had been murdered. As he was being murdered. And sometimes he found he really wished it would just end for him too. Because it was so tiring always being on your guard. Always waiting for the blow that landed just a little bit wrong. Or too hard. Or in the wrong place. At least it was over for them. The children resting under the concrete angels.