This
is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn
from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be
loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell
we'd be held.
Held, Natalie Grant
Home
Dried blood over the walls, tables, chairs, over the windows and frames. It is everywhere. I spun this way and that, looking for a clean surface. There was none in sight. Everything had been destroyed. Every step that I took furthering myself into the space, the entire structure moaned, as if the weight of my body were causing it immense pain. I took two tentative steps and stopped.
On the floor in front of me, I stared at a picture frame.
My roommate smiled up at me, as if nothing had happened. At the time of the picture, nothing had happened. It was before the start of the War, before she had been killed so brutally.
Our home had been ransacked, torn apart.
I fell to my knees, my eyes filling with tears, the face of my best friend staring up at me. She had been my cousin, my confidant. The hand of my fiancé came to rest on my shoulder as I cried, burying my face in my hands. I cried not only for the loss of a dear friend but also because of the house.
That old house in Old Arley held so many memories. We had moved in two weeks after our graduation from Hogwarts, nearly fifteen years prior. The walls held so many memories, times long past. I slowly stood, determined to assess the damage done by the Death Eaters. Kale held to my hand, resolute in his support.
"Where to first?" He murmured, helping me into the den. "Upstairs?"
"Not yet." I answered, stepping over my overturned desk. My papers were strewn across the room. "They broke everything, didn't they?" Gently, I picked up my journal. Dusting off the top, I regretted the fact that I had not returned to the house since she had been kidnapped, for fear of my own life. I had taken up residence with my Pureblood boyfriend and learned of my roommate's demise weeks after her kidnapping. Over the past year and a half, I had come to accept my sadness. I had experienced the death of a loved one before, with the death of my sister in the First War. I knew the course that the emotional healing would take.
Even for that, I had never had my home completely shattered before. A new experience, indeed.
"They broke the vase." Nicholas murmured, shaking his head in the corner of the room.
I glanced around. "I don't think there is anything they didn't break." I meant that in more ways than one. For a moment, I stood still, simply taking it all in. I could remember many a happy night within the walls around me. Birthday parties, late nights, chocolate frogs, and pumpkin juice, all ran through my memories. "Can you get together anything salvageable? I have something to take care of upstairs." He nodded, waving his hand over his shoulder.
Climbing the stairs, I could feel the air becoming more and more heavy, a weight against my chest. I wanted to turn around, to not acknowledge the hurt that lay beyond the doors. It was the purest need to know and find closure that made me place my hand on the rustic knob, pushing the door to Charity's room ajar.
Inside there were obvious signs of a struggle, anyone could tell by the blood and overturned items. Yet, her room was not as damaged as the rest of the house. For that I could be thankful. I moved further into the room. In the corner lay an empty owl cage. Jefferson, Charity's barn owl, had resided there. I wondered if perhaps he had been away when she was taken. I would never know.
The posters and pictures on her light yellow walls were gone, ripped and strewn across the hardwoods. Her once beautiful oak bed was now in shambles resembling jumbled matches.
It was all lost.
Shaking my head, I turned and walked briskly out the door and down the hall.
My room.
I nodded resolutely before pushing the already partly open door inward. What I saw shocked me.
Nothing was out of place. Not one item had been moved. I stepped inside, shaking my head in wonder. My bedding was pristine, the walls white. I would have been surprised if there had been a speck of dust. Walking over to my bedside table, I took a picture in my hands and sat on the edge of my bed: Nick, Charity, and myself smiling and waving when Charity had received her appointment at Hogwarts not seven years ago.
I glanced up from my photograph and found my room to be in just as much disarray as the rest of the house. Everything was pristine and yet, broken. The clock on my dressing table had stopped working, stuck with the large hand on the six and the small on the nine. Nine-thirty—the time when Charity had been taken. I chanced a look into the mirror and froze.
'Blood-traitor' was written on the polished glass in hurried script. There was nothing more. Perhaps nothing else was needed.
Taking the picture with me, I exited the bedroom without a second glance. I closed that chapter of my life as I stepped out the door, pulling it shut behind me. There was no use in trying to live in a house where I would feel nothing but pain. What good would that do me? My memories. My love for that home live on inside my heart. I may have only been placing my feelings of regret, fear and loathing…of pain, into a preverbal box.
That didn't matter though, did it?
The house in Old Arley still stands to this day. No one lives there. No one can forget the monstrosities that occurred within the walls. Several people lost things in the war. I know that. Everyone does. I lost Charity, my best friend, but I also lost something else.
I lost my Home.
I wanted to show differing kinds of loss. I wonder how I did with showing this woman's loss. She lost her best friend, but she is already dealing with that. She returns to her home for the first time and realizes that she has lost a lot more than she could have imagined. This character is very strong.
