27. The Memory of Martyrs
Like a scavenger, the Prophet pounced on the Potter murder the moment the Aurors went public with it. It was potent material - Harry Potter kidnapped and murdered by his old school adversary, the son of the infamous Lucius Malfoy, who then commits suicide by dementing himself. Even his death was a violation - of the Dementor, that poor misunderstood creature. Or, if you were less politically correct, Draco Malfoy did something admirable, at last, in both dying for his sins and taking a bloody Dementor with him into the Underworld.
The People were in mourning. Their boy hero had been slain by a dark, dragon prince (a favourite description in less reputable publications), a perverted madman who had killed when he couldn't convert - to the Dark side of magic, of sexuality. Pictures of Draco's withered form was reproduced ad nauseam. But Potter was still the dashing young Quidditch player, smiling shyly at the camera, a charmed-up reminder of the beauty that had been lost to depraved ugliness. No one cared to remember that young Mr Malfoy had once been voted one of the most beautiful wizards alive. Because he wasn't anymore. He was dead, and good riddance.
Only the Quibbler published old photos of Draco and new ones of Potter. Few people cared. The readership was cultish to begin with, outsiders in a crowded little world. Only the Quibbler dared publish the idea that something had burst out of the Dementor, that it hadn't died of starvation or sickness. Only the Quibbler noted that the corpse of Malfoy had been moved by someone. Only the Quibbler had me, and only I sought to redeem Draco Malfoy. Only I wrote stories about a tragic love affair. Only I had the diaries. And only the Quibbler would give me the benefit of the doubt. Only Luna believed me.
I was accused of having written the diaries myself, of having fabricated the story. I was unstable to begin with and the gruesome sights that had greeted me at Hogwarts had completely unhinged me. I was a tragic woman damaged by cheap romance novels, unable to come to terms with a reality of true darkness and hate. And furthermore, I was a twisted pervert trying to defile the memory of the Boy Who Lived.
Where I saw a young man half mad with grief trying to finish his boyfriend's assignments by overdosing on Polyjuice, the mainstream media - and the vast majority of witches and wizards - saw a mad murderer trying to cover up his crime until he could escape, or finish whatever dastardly experiments he had been conducting.
The general public wanted to make a martyr of their dead hero. They wanted the Boy Who Was Murdered, not the young man who might have cheated on his male companion and then suffered an accident during a domestic squabble. It wasn't romantic enough, not traditional enough, not a worthy ending to the fairytale.
The press had been turned inside out. The Prophet published fairytales, the Quibbler the truth. And only the latter dared speculate about the sudden deaths, the unexplained murders, the burnt-out Prophet offices. They were accidents, the deeds of deranged madmen and arsonists. That was what people wanted to believe. It was quite enough that He Who Must Not Be Named, whose mutilated remains had been found by a Muggle farmer, had been replaced by The Strange, the Wizarding World's very own bogey-woman. No one dared speculate that the Prince of Darkness was still at large, taking revenge on those who had published the truth about his crimes.
Or, as only I and the Quibbler would have it, the ludicrous lies.
The Quibbler suffered no accidents except a sudden drop in subscribers. Even our loonies wanted a simple world, and a dead saint to protect them.