Written for TV show episode monthly competition - (There's No Place Like Home: Write about someone coming home)
-oOo-
They had kept him in a holding cell for two weeks before his trial. He had almost banged on the door demanding they just send in the dementor he knew they would is to do him in so he could stop with this agonizing waiting. Gods, waiting for judgement and his condemning had been worst than the trial he had faced. Alone, in a small cell with only a bed and a loo to relieve himself, he figured he would have gone mad before they did him in.
But he didn't. Go mad that is. And they didn't condemn him; at least not in the way he had feared. His name had been smeared, strangers had sneered at him like he were mud on their shoes and he had been pressed into answering so many questions that he forgot what he told them before the words even passed from his lips.
It was over now. It was all over. They had pardoned him of his sins. They had let him go without further consequence. He should have felt relieved. He just felt hallow.
His hand on the cold iron fence, Draco stared at the place he had once been so happy to return to. It loomed high into the sky and as a kid he used to say it was his castle. It looked like a nightmare now. The towering black bricked building looked over a forest of dead shrubs and weeds. His mother's carefully crafted garden lay in forgotten waste. He pushed the gate forward, grimacing slightly at the hesitation it gave before it opened with a squeal. The wards let him pass, recognizing him as the head of the family. He chuckled mercilessly at the title. What family? His father sat in prison for the remainder of his days. His mother had needed to be moved to a ward in St. Mungo's, the toll of the war and her time in holding having done a number to her already wavering health.
A bird chirped somewhere in the distance. It was far too happy a sound for these hallowed grounds. Draco pushed his hair from off his face in search of the creature among the tree tops. A body of blue sat among the half filled trees. It had been so long since he'd seen a blue jay. His gaze caught the woods framing behind the house. He wondered if his mother's prized peacocks were roaming back there still – those that hadn't been slaughtered for the pleasure of the Death Eaters that is. He had always hated those birds, but nothing deserved to die in the hands of those twisted monsters.
Shoving his hands into his pocket, he stopped walking. He was halfway up the path now, the porch only a hundred yards away. He glanced to his left, noting the tree he used to climb with Blaise when they had been kids. It too had fallen victim to whatever sickness overtook the property. Despite it being early summer, none of the trees seemed to have regained all their foliage. It was almost fitting that whatever darkness the Dark Lord had invoked had spread over the place like a cancer.
Having seen enough of the dull green lawn, Draco closed the last hundred yards or so before reaching the front porch. His mother used to sit out here, sipping tea in the light of early morning. She had always said that best way to start the day was with a quiet moment under the rising sun. He hadn't paid her words any mind as a kid. As an adult, he really wished he had listened more.
The stair gave off a soft creak under his weight. The sound danced through the air before fading off. He took the next stair, and the one after that but couldn't bring himself to step onto the porch. Knees shacking under him, Draco turned and sat on the stairs. His back to the home, he looked over the large yard. The blue jay kept singing its song somewhere among the sad trees.
He couldn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to enter into the home. To face down the forgotten screams which awaited him. He was a coward. He knew that. A coward who couldn't even face the darkened halls of his home.
But the truth was, he didn't want to be here. He didn't want to go inside walls that he knew would only scream at him. He had thought coming home would have given him a sense of normality… a sense of purpose… a reminder of self… He didn't really know what he expected. But whatever it was, he wasn't feeling it. The home he had once loved was only a reminder of how easily darkness had crept through him.
This wasn't home. Not anymore. Staring out over the dull yawn, and feeling the dark home looming over him, Draco let out a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his hair.
But where was home now?