01 Prologue—Winning Isn't Everything…It's The Only Thing
Disclaimer: OK, you know, this is really getting old. I mean, for the love of God, you guys are all able to read, right? Therefore, you saw the name on the book, right? Was it Silver Misery? Or Vixen? Um, what was that? Yeah, that's it, um, no, it was not. Therefore, I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: As the more literate of you should be able to tell from the opening sentence, this fic is loosely based on Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, my favorite classic besides Pride and Prejudice. But it's not strictly adhering, so don't flame me if I don't fit your criterion of a parody—it's not one.
It was the happiest of times, it was the saddest of times; it was the age of healing, it was the age of destruction; it was the season of the Light, it was the season of the Dark; it was the spring of a new hope, it was the winter of the old hate, we had peace before us, we had war before us; we were all going directly to our wildest dreams, we were all going the other way—straight into Azkaban.
During those first delirious moments when Harry Potter stood over the fallen body of the Dark Lord, having found all the Horcruxes, having willed them out of existence by dint of his tremendous innate wandless magic, and then come after their maker himself, everybody had gone crazy with joy. It was the End of the War, it was the Beginning of a New Time, they were free at last, free from the haunted eyes and the strained faces and the grim, fey smiles.
The minute the last part of Tom Riddle ceased to exist, Patronuses flew from every wandtip at the battle—You-Know-Who was dead, the War was over! In a million different houses all over England, Scotland, and Ireland, parents sobbed with relief and raised thankful eyes to heaven, children stopped being adults and became children again, pulling up the blinds, laughing with the sunshine streaming on their faces, and even babies gurgled with delight and banged on the table with messy spoons. Parties were thrown, nobody was alone, even the old crotchety lady with a million cats at the end of the street was invited over for a drink and a hurrah, bars were suddenly thrown open, restaurants and coffee shops were filled to flowing with customers.
The world was suddenly alright again, as it had not been for so long.
And meanwhile, the boy who had caused it all stood swaying over the corpse of his enemy, blood pouring in rivulets down his face, streaking his glasses from the scar that, even as the onlookers watched, sizzled and crackled and slowly turned in on itself, erasing and clearing it, until at last no more was left than a faint white outline of a scar, just a normal scar, that had been caused and healed many years ago.
Then he collapsed.
The watchers murmured, but none dared to go and check to see if he was dead; the pulse of his wandless magic still throbbed around them even as the fear of his power throbbed in their hearts. In the end, it was a middle-aged man with shoulder-length black hair, a hooked nose, and flat obsidian eyes who went forward and gently lifted the prone form of their hero, carrying him off the field and out of sight.
Nobody stopped him, and for three years, Harry Potter was lost to the wizarding world.