The International Wizarding World Competition
Story: A Dark Bought Peace
School: Durmstrang
Theme: Write about a character's collection.
Mandatory Prompt: (character/restriction) male characters only
Additional Prompt: (genre) Thriller
Year: 2
Word Count: 1752
Additional Information: Serial Killer/Assylum!AU. Warning for mentions of character death, canon-compliant child abuse, and canon-compliant torture.
I would like to take the time out thank everyone who beta read this story for me. It truly means a lot that you would take the time out to help me like this. So, thank you all very much. I hope you enjoy A Dark Bought Peace.
If there is one thing that I've learned in this life it's this: the world is an ugly place mostly full of horrible people. People who are willing to hurt you and don't care when they do. I had learned this lesson from a young age when I was dropped off on the doorstep of Number 4 Privet Drive.
My only living relatives didn't care about me, and they weren't the only ones. Dumbledore. He knew exactly what they were like, and yet he still left me with them. Surely, someone else could have taken me in. Anything would have been preferable to living under the stairs for ten years, with the spiders, like a rat.
"What are you thinking about now, Mr. Potter?" asked a voice beyond where my eyes were staring. "Are you thinking about how you ended up here?"
"I'm thinking about nothing," I said, keeping my voice blank. Keeping my voice devoid of life usually makes the voice go away. It gives me time to think about how my revenge was right. Why they deserved what they got. Each and every one of them.
"Mr. Potter, I am only here to help," the voice returned, sounding closer to me than it had before. "If you don't tell us your thoughts and feelings, then we can't help you, now can we?"
"Help me? You want to help me?"
"Yes, Mr. Potter. We do want to help you."
"Where were you when the Dursleys had me living in a cupboard under the stairs?" I didn't give the voice a chance to answer. "Where were you when time after time I was attacked by the Dark Lord? Where were you when the world turned its back on the Boy Who Lived?"
I heard the scrape of a chair being pulled out from the desk across from my bed. Someone lowered themselves into it, the owner of the voice, no doubt.
Nastily persistent this one is, I thought bitterly as I folded my arms over my chest and refused to speak any further.
"You might not want to speak to me, Mr. Potter," he said, sounding sadder than I ever heard this particular voice sound in our recent visits. "But that doesn't mean that I won't be speaking to you."
I heard leather sliding against leather, and I couldn't help but flinch a bit. The memory of the leather of a belt stinging my back from many punishments my Uncle Vernon had given me ran through my mind.
The thud of a book being placed upon the table brought me back to myself. I hardened my expression once more and turned my back on my visitor. I know what you're thinking. Stupid idea, Harry. This person could be a serial killer. But I knew better than that. We could smell our own kind, after all. And this man certainly wasn't one of them.
"Mr. Potter, can I show you something?" I hear him ask, the sound of pages turning clear and present in the room.
It wasn't the photo album that I had thought he was going to show me. Not the one with pictures of a happy-go-lucky Harry spending time with his friends. Not the one with pictures of Harry and his husband Draco on their wedding day. Not the one of Harry during his graduation from the academy. No, those were for a different me. Those were a different Harry altogether. Those were of a Harry who still believed that justice came to those who waited for it. Justice came to those who were on the side of good.
That was all a crock of shit. Justice came to those who had the balls to reach out and take it for themselves. A thing I had quickly convinced Draco of when he found out about my proclivities a few months after our marriage.
"Mr. Potter, could you please look at me?" the voice returned more persistent. "You aren't going to be able to see what I show you if you aren't looking at me, right?"
"Right," I mumbled, turning my attention not to my visitor but to the black leather-bound book that I knew all too well. It was the book where I kept my collection. Those weren't for this man's eyes. They were for mine and Draco's only. "Where did you get that?"
"Should it matter?" he asked, standing and walking over to my bed with the book. He laughed a bit when I flinched away from him. "I'm not going to hurt you, Mr. Potter. I just want to know what you were thinking while these men spent their last minutes alive with you."
I shook my head as I took the book from him, cradling it as though it was one of the children that Draco and I had adopted. It had been months since the last time I had seen the bound-leather perfection of this cover. The glinting gold lettering in the center of its spelling out My Collection. I had charmed the ink to flow personally to make the book seem more ethereal.
"Why did you do it?" the voice asked, followed by dipping of the end of my bed due to the owner of the voice sitting down. "Why did they have to die, Harry? Why did we have to die?"
I looked up from the page that contained my favorite kill. Piers Polkiss. To find Piers sitting there looking at me the way that I had left him for the police to find.
"You're dead," I cried out, trying to back away from the young man that I had cut down in his prime. "You can't be here. You're dead!"
"But I can be here, Harry," Piers said, looking at me malevolently and nodding around the room. "We can all be here, and you know exactly why that is?" His eyes traveled to the book in my arms.
The book I was cradling like it was my own flesh and blood. The book that had all the misdeeds I had ever done since I left Hogwarts. I looked away from the book and wished that I hadn't.
There, next to Piers, was the rest of his and Dudley's little gang. I hadn't gone after Dudley. I had to make it look like all was forgiven, and it practically was. All I had to do was get rid of his horrible friends from high school.
"Were you really sorry for our loss, Harry?" one of the boys asked, causing me to look down at the crime scene picture that I had stolen for my collection. "Or did you just kill us so that you could be friends with your cousin?"
"I don't have to answer you," I screamed, trying to cover my ears with one hand, clutching my mementos with the other.
"Did any of us deserve to die, Potter?" Rodolphus Lestrange asked, lurking in the back corner of the room.
I glared at him over the shoulders of my ex-high school bullies. He had a lot of nerve asking if he deserved to die. He had killed more people than I had in my entire career as a Death Eater. Not to mention tortured Neville's parents into insanity.
"You have a lot of nerve to speak," I said, glare pressing into him like the knife that I had used. "Did any of your victims deserve what they got? Did any of them deserve to die or be tortured into insanity?"
Rodolphus snorted. "You don't have to answer us; we don't have to answer you."
The pictured book seemed to take on a life of its own. Pages upon pages upon pages of victims flashed before my eyes. Each time the page was flipped to a picture that looked up at me asking me why the person pictured had to die. I clasped my head in my hands as the voices started to mix together in a raucous din.
"Mr. Potter!" the night nurse said, shaking me awake. "Mr. Potter, wake up!"
I opened my eyes to find a handsome young man kneeling by my bedside. His grey eyes were much like his father's.
"Scorpius?" I asked, reading his name tag. "You wouldn't happen to be related to Draco Malfoy, would you?"
"He's my father," the boy said, confirming my suspicions about his parentage.
I had heard that Draco had gotten remarried after our divorce was finalized. Not just remarried. No. Remarried to a young woman of high society. Astoria Greengrass.
I caught him looking at my collection. The black-bound book seemed to be calling to him the same way it had called to me. I smirked. Perhaps I had found a worthy successor to my crime spree.
"What's in the book?" Socripus asked, cocking his head to study the carefully glinting words My Collection. "What kind of collection do you have, Mr. Potter?"
"One that your father would be quite embarrassed to know is still alive and thriving," I said, patting the side of my bed. "Do you want to see?"
Scorpius nodded and moved towards the spot that I had patted.
I raised my hand to stop him. "Once you've seen this though it becomes your collection too," I told him. "Are you ready for that responsibility?"
Socripus nodded, a hunger in his eyes much like the one that had been sparked in Draco when I'd first shown him the book. He dropped in a crouching stance next to the bed as I opened the book to the first page.
The world is an ugly place filled with somewhat ugly people. But I knew that I could find peace now that I had found a successor to make them pay for their hubris. Now it was my turn to sit back and watch the world burn.
I hope you all enjoyed A Dark Bought Peace as much as I enjoyed writing it.