A/N: This story was written for the International Wizarding Schools Championship's World Wizarding News.
Section: Grammar School, Issue 10
Technique: Introducing a story
Techniques used: All (I think? lol elements are there), but mainly 'Start your story with a question' and 'revisit the beginning once you reach the end.')
School: Mahoutokoro
Year: Part-time
Word count: 986 words (+10% max leeway)
Additional notes to read after the story if you wish: I didn't intend to write this, but the idea just wouldn't leave me alone and I wanted to tie up a few loose plots floating around. I took a little liberty with canon (given that Crabbe was burned and therefore his remains were unlikely—not impossible... I have a headcanon that he survived somehow—to have been recovered). He was in a Muggle plot because I don't think he'd have been accepted into any of the public wizarding sites after the war; I also think not every anti-Voldemort witch and wizard had hearts of gold and could likely have vandalised.
I hope you enjoy reading it, anyway, and that it makes readers think about how we treat each other. Xx
That Kind of Human
What kind of human being could do such a thing?
John stared after the youth running away, watching as he meandered through the headstones, carrying a stick in his pudgy hand. For a young man with such a large build, the brunet could certainly move fast.
"Off with ya! Next time I'll call the police, I will!"
He turned back to the cracked headstone in front of him, his blue eyes growing watery. The stone was a fairly new addition to the graveyard—no more than a year old—and yet it had already been the victim of vandalisation. Almost once a week, John would amble into the graveyard, ready to ensure the grounds were clean and kept, only to discover damage to the plot. Rude phrases would cover the rock, claiming that the boy lying within the grave deserved worse than what he'd gotten. In the first few months, a woman—presumably the boy's mother—would often leave a bouquet of flowers on the grave. Unfortunately, they'd always end up being ripped to shreds, and she stopped visiting.
Bending down, John pulled out an old rag and tried to buff out some of the ink markings across the name: Vincent Crabbe. He didn't know Vincent's story; perhaps he'd been caught up with drugs, wandered around with the wrong crowd. According to the gravestone, he'd been only eighteen when he'd died; he couldn't imagine someone so young being capable of doing something that would justify such vitriol.
No matter how much he tried, though, the graffiti wouldn't budge. Sighing, he stood up. He'd have to clean it later; visitors would be wandering in soon, and they'd be more likely to notice stray weeds along the footpath than a lone teen's destroyed grave.
"Damn, rotten, good-for-nothing thugs," John muttered as he shuffled down the footpath.
The early morning chill made him want nothing more than to grab a cup of coffee before he began work. Unfortunately, some hooligan had picked the front gate's lock again, and he was sure he'd have to clean up whatever damage they'd left.
Sure enough, as he headed to the southern plots, he caught sight of a familiar bulky figure hunched over a grave. The teenager scooped up a bunch of soft-pink roses from it before walking over to the next grave and swiping some lilacs.
"Oi! You there, stop! Those don't belong to you, matey!" he shouted, walking as quickly as his legs would allow him.
The teenager turned and glared at him. He dropped the flowers, scattering petals everywhere, and took off.
Wheezing, John hurried over to the graves, walking a little way down the row.
As he'd suspected, the grave belonging to Vincent Crabbe had been defaced yet again. This time, someone had used thick, black ink to write: 'You're with the Muggles now. Bet you love that, scum!'
He didn't know what 'Muggles' were, but given the nature of teenagers these days, he assumed it was probably some new insult.
He reached out and gently tried wiping the ink off Vincent's name. Some of it had seeped deep into the stone, making it almost impossible to remove.
"There now, young man, I'm going to put a stop to this once and for all."
"No good, useless fiends…"
The more time John spent with living people, the more he grew to dislike them. He'd expected at least a little help from the local police, perhaps to take some fingerprints or offer extra security to fix the problem, but they'd been utterly useless. They'd just laughed him off, though, telling him it was "too early in the morning" to bother with such an insignificant issue.
As he headed through the graveyard gates—noticing again that the lock had been left hanging from the gate—he knew that he'd have to take matters into his own hands. Armed with a cup of coffee and his sharpest rake, he shuffled down the footpath.
This time, he wasn't surprised to see the burly brunet bent over the Crabbe boy's grave. A stick was in his hand, and he seemed to be muttering to himself as he slashed it across the headstone.
"Caught ya! Don't you even think about runnin' off now, you hear me? It's off to the police with ya!"
The teenager spun around. Brandishing the rake, John tried to block him from running past.
He needn't have bothered, however, for the brunet held up his hands. "Don't."
John let the rake fall by his side. He hadn't expected the teenager to be crying. Over fifty years of seeing all sorts of mourners meant he knew the difference between genuine tears and fake crying. He could see the pain within the brunet's eyes that made his heart squeeze slightly.
"Now, now, no need to cry, laddy. We needn't call the police if you cooperate, alright?"
The teenager sniffled, wiping his sleeve across his nose. He was wearing quite funny clothes, and John wondered if perhaps he wasn't all there in the mind. His slow speech seemed to point to as much.
"P-police?"
"What you've done here, sonny, is vandalism. It's illegal."
The brunet stared at the gravestone. 'Muggle-hating scum' had been scratched across it.
He shook his head. "Not me. Trying to remove it," he grunted, bending down. Before John could stop him, he started scratching over the writing, attempting to cross it out. "But I don't know how to."
John's blue eyes trailed over it, noticing that flowers had been propped up against the stone. Understanding dawned on him, and he turned back to the boy.
"Was he your brother?"
"Almost," the teenager said. "He wasn't bad."
Guilt washed over him as the sound of more scratching filled the air. He clapped a hand on the brunet's shoulder and offered him the coffee. "Here, let me help you."
He still didn't know what kind of human being would vandalise a grave, but he knew now who wouldn't.