Prologue: Home Sweet Home

 

Prologue: Home Sweet Home

            I don’t need your praise. I need you to return me to my home.

            I’ll do so, as promised, dearie. But, firstly, we have an important stop to make…and I’m gonna need your special little wand to get us there.

            Missy kept her word. Draco casted a spell to her vortex manipulator device, sending himself and Missy across all space and time to the Time Lord planet of Gallifrey. They brought along their “prize” – the unconscious body of Zoe Curtsinger, a girl about Draco’s age who was the teenaged counterpart of Neas, the Gladiator of Gallifrey.

            It was all a bizarre circumstance to Draco, which was saying a lot from the life that he left behind the day Hogwarts fell to that “Dalek,” as Maureen called it. Of course, it was her fault that it happened. She lied about who she was – and who she was turned out to be Neas herself.

            There was only one home left for Draco now: Malfoy Manor.

            He was certain his mother and father caught word about Hogwarts’ destruction and presumed he perished in the incident. How thankful they’ll be to discover that wasn’t the case!

            They materialized on the property, following their drop-off in Gallifrey. Draco would never forget the chills he got around Rassilon, the founder of the Time Lord civilization on Gallifrey. Missy was just as uneasy around him, perhaps for personal reasons or another. They only had to give him Zoe and the Regen-8 formula Missy perfected, and they were on their way.

            Although the Malfoy Manor property looked as it always did, something about the atmosphere felt off to Draco. “It’s humid,” he noticed, tugging at his shirt collar. “It’s never felt humid ‘round here.”

            “Do you wanna keep complainin’ or do you wanna ring the doorbell?”

            Draco didn’t appreciate her pushy tone, yet he did actually want to ring the door.

            The first face that he saw as it opened was that of his mother, Narcissa. Frozen in a state of shock that she fought herself out of, she embraced her son in overwhelming relief. “My boy,” she whispered. “You’re alive!”

            There was one thing on Draco’s mind as he was smothered in his mother’s embrace. “How long has it been?”

            “Two years,” Narcissa answered. “Two years since we heard.”

            It was a lot for Draco to process. Two years he had been pronounced dead, along with whomever else that suffered in the Hogwarts attack. All those students and teachers. He often wondered if Severus Snape survived. With all the experience he had in magic and potions, it’d seem impossible for him to die in such an uncouth way.

            “Draco?” His father, Lucius, emerged behind his mother. He well enough hid his relief in seeing his son alive, expressing more of a sense of pride. “I knew you’d survived all along. You are a Malfoy after all. I had to be brave for your mother.”

            Draco glanced back to Narcissa; it was evident in the hint of frustration in her demeanor that Lucius was lying. Nonetheless, he was grateful to be back home with the only family that he had. Missy departed undetected during the reunion, without as much as saying goodbye (not that Draco cared).

            He was brought inside, given a nice hot bath, a fresh change of clothes (he had been stuck with his ragged school uniform for God knew how long), and his favorite meal prepared for him by new servants he hadn’t seen around the manor before – a group of dark-skinned people. Lucius and Narcissa sat with him as he ate, bringing him up to speed on what had transpired since the attack on Hogwarts.

            “The entire school burned to the ground,” Narcissa said.

            “Good riddance,” Lucius maliciously muttered. “That school was beneath you.”

            Draco didn’t want to talk about Hogwarts anymore. Instead, he concerned himself with a more unsettling issue: “Why does it feel so different around here?”

            “What do you mean, Draco?” Narcissa asked.

            “What I mean is that it’s humid. Not only that, but who are these people that’ve been serving me? They aren’t the usual servants we have. What is going on? What is it that neither of you are telling me?”

            Lucius and Narcissa gave each other conflicting glances, engaged in a silent debate that Narcissa seemed to have won. She turned back to Draco and said, “Things are much different after what happened to the school. We had to make some deals…deals that led to severe changes.”

            Draco needed more clarification on this. “What kind of changes?”

            Suddenly, the dining room doors busted open, startling Draco and interrupting the family conversation. A rugged man in overalls wearing a bowler hat and carrying a loaded shotgun barged in unannounced. “Mister Malfoy! One of ‘em’s flown the coop!”

            “What did I say about coming into my home without invitation?!” Lucius stormed, slamming his fist down on the table with such force that it rattled Draco’s dinner plate at the adjacent end of the lengthy antique.

            “Beg your pardon, Mister Malfoy, sir,” the man spoke with a thick southern American accent that Draco couldn’t help but notice. “You told me and the boys to let you know when one of the sacrifices escaped. Well, sir, one of them done did just now! You want I should round up the posse?”

            “Yes,” Lucius authorized. “I shall join you shortly.”

            The man rushed out thereafter, leaving the Malfoys to themselves.

            “That man,” Draco said. “He’s American…and yet he’s on our property here in Wiltshire.” He then began to put the pieces of this mystery together, formulating a disturbing conclusion: “We’re no longer in England, are we?”

            “We’re no longer in our own dimension, Draco,” Narcissa elaborated.

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            Henry felt like a runaway slave, running as fast as his feet could carry him through the woods. Sweat beaded down his face and back – more from fear than the humidity. He could hear Bubba Joe’s bloodhounds barking in the distance, coming up on his scent. He might as well have been a runaway slave in this situation.

            It was 1929 for heaven’s sake! Slavery was abolished in America 64 years ago!

            But that all changed once Lucius Malfoy and his estate showed up out of nowhere in southern Louisiana. Colored men all over town were enlisted in some sort of work he promised for the families suffering from the Depression. The only catch was that they would have to leave their families for an unsurmountable period of time, but it’d be worth the fortune they would earn for them.

            Henry found out the truth that night.

            Malfoy was using the men as bait for an ungodly creature he had within the bowels of his manor. Henry heard it earlier that evening, just as he and the men were sleeping. His curiosity brought him back to the tunnels they dug beyond the cellar as part of Malfoy’s “expansion” project.

            Those huge inhuman eyes. That putrid smell. And those massive tendrils.

            Henry had to get away from whatever it was. He didn’t get far.

            A paralyzing sensation suddenly shot over his body. He stood where he was, unable to move an inch of himself. Lucius Malfoy stepped into view, holding a stick towards Henry. Its tip glowed, illuminating that area of the woods more than the full moon had.

            “Henry Dobbins,” Malfoy sneered. “Where were you off to, this dead of night?”

            “You got somethin’ down there…somethin’ that was born outta Hell itself!”

            “I know. And you thought you could escape from your only purpose in life?”

            “It ain’t no purpose o’ mine to be eaten by that abomination ya’ll got down there!”

            “That’s where you’re wrong, Henry. I’ve observed the muggles in this world, in this time…how the ones that look like me treat the ones that look like you. They see you beneath them. Rather poetic, I suppose. That is why you and your kind are meant to be gifted to the Cthulhu.”

            Bubba Joe, his posse, and their bloodhounds reached their location. Shortly before their arrival, Lucius removed whatever spell it was that he paralyzed Henry with, letting him drop to his knees. He then concealed the glowing stick in his snake-headed cane that Henry had always seen him with.

            “We got you, boy,” Bubba Joe kicked Henry in the back, slamming his face into the dirt.

            “Return him to the cellar with the rest of the filth,” Lucius ordered.

            His men joyously obeyed, dragging the screaming Henry back to the manor.