A/N: Just a small Drabble, based on the song 'The Show Must Go On' by Queen. Made for: The Queen Song Competition.
Summary: Draco Malfoy's last glance at his old home. First person. Draco centric. By DW.
It all felt empty. Everything. The rooms, the people, even the whole Manor. Myself, even. Literally and figuratively speaking. The room I once called my bedroom seemed bare and lifeless; dull. It was all cleaned out. The building that was once my home felt like a travesty of what it had once been. It had been used and thrown away. After one last look behind me, I left the one building that once contained my memories, my fond dwellings and childhood crimes, innocent as they once had been. Inside my heart was breaking, splintering in a million little pieces, which pierced nearby organs. I felt like my mask, which has been plastered on for many years, was finally cracking, and I honestly didn't know how I felt about that.
Mum moved to France, where the only thing was left of our family's holiday homes. The only thing we didn't sell or was taken from us. I couldn't go with her, but neither could I stay. But I had to see the Manor one last time, to properly say goodbye to everything I once held dear, but was now tainted by wrong decisions and bad choices. In a way I added to it, too. Maybe not that much, but even small things add up. I walked through the gate, which opened to let me through, but closed right after I stepped out of the way. And that was the last sight which greeted me. The gates, cold— made from wrought iron— and menacing, with in the distance the Manor, empty and lifeless, its lustre long since gone. I Apparated away with that picture in my mind, burned on my retinas. And my heart was broken that little bit more. I stood in front of my Unplottable cottage, something I bought. It wasn't much, but at least I got to keep one house-elf. And that gesture, that one little sign made me feel like the smallest person on the planet. Because if I didn't have a house-elf, how on Earth would I manage? It made me feel needy and dependant.
It was ironic that the one thing I didn't want to be came back to haunt me. I wanted my independence, to show that I wasn't the little boy anymore. But now it seems that that's all I seemed to be. All but mentally. And I realised, then, that my innocence would forever be lost, and that I would forever wear a mask, no matter the cracks.