Time Away From Home Solo Finished

Flash had been mailed his train tickets and itinerary for getting back home by Marius. Once he got off at King’s Cross, he would just stick around to get on a LNER train to Durham. It would be around a three hour train ride, but since he was in first class, it was more like a moving lounge where they served drinks and dinner. As far as he could tell no other Hogwarts students were jumping on the same train-- let alone the section he was riding in. It almost felt like a physical line being drawn. Back to it.

At least with the time alone, he could start to collect his thoughts. There were plenty of emotions involved in saying good-bye to the people he had grown to love over the school year. Hugs, tears, promises, more hugs. Even though it had been tumultuous, the parting from it made him realize how much he would miss it. Well, everything but his dorm room. He was glad to be away from that.

He took some time to look over the last letter Marius had sent-- it certainly read like a business transaction, all the details clearly written out like meeting notes. It was fine like that, at least there was no room for confusion. Even though he would miss his friends, and there were things he was dreading, he also missed his home. The fear of doing right by his family had made him afraid to return over winter break, but being away for so long made him nostalgic for everything that he was used to. At Hogwarts, it was one new thing after another. No time to get comfortable.

Willow had reminded him of it on the night when they were enjoying a late night fireside picnic together. The things about his home that he loved, like the seemingly endless swath of land that he was free to roam. The peaceful solitude when no one in the house was talking, just the sounds of nature from an open window while you read. The internet. He thought idly about how he should have had his smartphone ready for the train ride, he could have used the wi-fi to see what had been going on while he was away. Check a few news sites, some of his bookmarked discussion threads.

He missed his family too, of course. Marius mentioned Darius was going to pick him up at the station. The Holmwood family was generally a tight knit group, not one to send a driver to pick one up unless they were honestly unable to themselves. Even though Darius was probably the sibling Flash got along with the least, not including the negligible Fabius who was barely a conscious human at that point.

That didn’t mean they didn’t get along at all. Darius was the second child, so he and Valerius had always had a bit of competition going on between them since they were young. Not that it was much of a competition, Valerius was an immaculate, calm breeze and Darius was a cocky, stubborn whirlwind. He was worse around other people. At least with the family he seemed to mostly follow the rules and behave.

Marius had that effect on people. Even though their parents and grandparents were still alive, she was the one often deferred to for decisions, and the one who would dole out judgement if things got out of hand. The fact that she could handle all the Holmwood brothers just by the crack of a horsewhip wouldn’t have surprised anyone that knew her. At the age of 23, she was already in line to become the majority stockholder in Holmwood & Carson Bloodstock Ltd. that their father founded. Not that it was a business likely to be showcased in a fortune magazine, it did have roots in the pockets of disgustingly wealthy patrons.

Flash had sometimes listened in to alleviate his boredom at the balls they would hold. Just listen to the kinds of things those people said to each other. Sometimes it was fascinating, sometimes it was droll. Sometimes, awkward, or... disturbing. When he was little, he would get caught listening in and locked in his room for the infraction. It was Valerius who opened his door back up, and taught him how to eavesdrop properly. How to figure out where the interesting information was.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have time to practice. Their mother seemed to throw balls as a means of entertainment for herself. She loved being a part of high society, picking out beautiful clothing, decorating her beautiful mansion, etcetera. Flash wasn’t himself immune to the charm of living a life of decadence. It was because they were so taken care of that they could focus on higher learning and appreciating art and beauty. Marius called it enlightenment, something they would be fools not to strive for, given their circumstances.

Marius was always fair-minded. Everyone in the family was. Disagreements were a discussion. Quiet, giving evidence, talking clearly, making concessions. It felt a bit off to Flash while he sat at a window seat, staring off into the rolling mountains inching by in the distance. It was something he hadn’t really wanted to think about, but was needing to confront as he expected to talk to his family again after no contact at all for nearly a year.

It was just that… when he went to Hogwarts, he thought he understood his role in the world. The way he was told to see it, how it was explained to him, it had always made perfect sense. Somehow, it wasn’t working for him. Whether it was his fault for being a failure of a human being, or whatever else, he clearly couldn’t approach his school career the way he had been trying to. He realized much of what he had learned in the ballroom was only useful when talking to adults and rich people. That the world at large was not as ruthless as he was led to expect. That he didn’t have the power to keep all of his emotions bottled up inside like Val and Mari.

That only brought his mind back to Darius. Darius was always saying Val and Mari were too strict, that they never let loose anymore. One would think the impressionable young Demetrius would have gladly joined his brother in rebellion, and perhaps he might have if said brother wasn’t such a pain. Always flicking his nose or mooring his shirt to snag on something. He thought making people uncomfortable was funny. Also, if he didn’t get his way, or didn’t like something, he would just do it anyway. A terrible sort of older brother to have, especially when the two were alone.

As a growing child, he didn’t know what was acceptable teasing and what was unwarranted harassment. He still didn’t. Darius had been going to Hogwarts while Flash was growing up, so he only ever saw him during summer and winter. Sometimes he dreaded it, knowing inevitably he would wrestled to the ground for something, in a choke hold, barely able to breathe.

Why is he picking me up? Why not Mother or Mari? In the past, Mari had been so excited about being able to drive herself around. Perhaps now she was just too busy, and Darius was the lowest on the totem pole. Flash wondered if it was even worth getting a driver’s license. It wasn’t like they had anywhere else to go. And anyways, Darius was growing older. If Flash was lucky, he would start maturing.

Now, he wondered if there wasn’t some truth to what Darius had said. That Marius was being too strict. If Darius had been as kind and accepting as Val was in Flash’s youth, perhaps he would have seen the world his way instead. A child’s mind was so easy to mold after all. He could tell when he was in Hogwarts that his isolation had made him… different. He spoke too politely, his vocabulary was too verbose. It threw people off, made them feel uncomfortable.

At home, he rarely spoke. Mostly reciting poetry and passages from books for his private lessons with Mari, to practice diction, tone, and pronunciation. At the dinner table, or any other gathering, he was mostly mute. He wasn’t able to contribute much to the lofty discussions they had. They talked about economics, global news, finances, and philosophical and moral dilemmas. At best, Flash could just listen and absorb what he could. Watch from his theatre seat as an attentive audience.

He was going to be in the car with Darius for at least an hour, though. One-on-one, his dynamic with the family was a very different story. He would be expected to talk around Darius, because he tended to be quite nosey. There wasn’t a Holmwood alive that didn’t love to be as informed as possible. That meant Darius would get first dibs on getting any dirt he could out of Flash about his school year.

And there was so much dirt… how was he supposed to evade the endless teasing? Even Val and Mari liked to tease, and Flash as well, if he was being honest with himself. It was a delightful sense of superiority parading as a sense of humor, a way to get back at all the teasing one endured while they were growing up. Flash was now on the chopping block, and as tirelessly as he had tried to control his school experience, it had burst like an over-enthusiastically filled water balloon, right in his face.

The sound of the travel attendant over the intercom heralded their arrival at Durham, though the vista was easy to recognize without being told. It was a land of steep hills and old stone buildings, castles dotting the horizon of the bustling city. Mari hadn’t scheduled him any time to spend in the city itself, so he didn’t bother even giving it a second thought. Darius’ ugly mug was going to be somewhere in the train station, so that would be his only target.

He saw him right away, he was well over average height, dressed in his immaculate designer clothes. The colors were subdued-- browns, tans, and only subtle hints of deep reds-- but anyone who looked at him for more than a moment would be able to tell that he was fabulously rich. Unlike Flash himself, Darius enjoyed giving off the impression. He didn’t want to be treated like ‘anyone else’. It was a matter of pride, of demanding respect. Pride in being a Holmwood, which, arguably, was something worth being proud of.

Not long after heading in his towering brother’s direction did he also recognize his kin. An unashamedly broad smile stretched across Darius’ face, and he closed the gap between the two to scoop Flash up into a hug. Flash wasn’t completely unprepared, seeing the telltale signs of hug-lift in Darius’ excited grin, so he at least was able to drop his luggage before lift-off. He grabbed onto Darius’ shoulders for support, getting wrenched left and right like a little kid might squeeze a beloved teddy bear.


”Deme! By God, look at you!” Darius’ voice chimed with earnest delight, Flash’s nervousness began to subside with the sound.

Still, it felt strange… to hear the name. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know, he had given up on trying to convince them. It had taken enough effort to get them to let him go by it in his own circles. The strangeness only came from his newfound familiarity with his preferred name, and more generally, having been completely and utterly detached from the family for so long. Even though they had been far away, living their own lives, Flash had felt their eyes upon him in every action he took. Now that he was in his brother’s arms, he wondered if he would have been hugging him so fondly if he had seen.

He wasn’t used to having something about himself not be known by his family. It was a bit frightening, it almost felt like dishonesty somehow.

After he had squeezed Flash to his satisfaction, Darius deigned to place him back on solid ground. Flash might have felt embarrassed if he thought anyone there would recognize him, but at that point they were far away from anyone whose opinion he cared about. Besides Darius, of course, who clearly still saw Flash as his little baby brother.

”Yes, it’s me.” Flash sighed.

After having been sitting so long, being tossed around was a bit disorienting. The two of them threw a few harmless sardonic barbs at each other before Flash got impatient and insisted they make their way to the car. Darius saw teasing as a sign of endearment, no doubt one of the reasons women never stayed with him for very long. He definitely didn’t know when to stop.

Flash kept to short, uninformative answers when asked about school. It was hardly a tense game of chess, since Darius seemed in a gracious enough mood to not needle him to answer in any more detail. Perhaps he had assumed Flash’s first year would be boring and uneventful. He might have been pushing harder if he had even a fraction of an idea how ‘exciting’ it had been. Given Flash’s answers about his grades and extracurricular, he probably assumed it was a boring year of study and networking. In fact, the year he was imagining was probably so far off the truth as to be hilarious.

Flash didn’t recognize the car, it was a new one since he had last seen his brother. It was almost jarring to see all the high tech equipment inside, having not seen electronics in so long. Darius rarely seemed to even fiddle with any of the settings, Flash wondered if it was even worth the asking price if he didn’t even care about all the tacky add-ons.

It was out on the open road, with nothing but distant hillsides and massive national parks as far as the eye could see, when Darius’ line of questioning became more personal. The sun was starting to set at that point, and a pinkish glow in the distance that lit up the broad open sky. Flash had taken a position he usually took in car rides, the window down and his head leaning against the door. After all that he had grown at school, it was even easier than before. The quick warm summer flew through his hair like the gentle caress of a doting mother’s hand.

”So, anything else? You know? Girls?” Darius looked over, though Flash didn’t catch his expression. Probably the face of a cat who was watching a mouse scurry its way further into a corner.

”Girls… not like you’re thinking. I’m not interested in that kind of thing.” Unlike at school, Flash’s words were unsure and somewhat quiet. With the wind, he wondered if Darius could hear him at all.

”That kind of thing? Pahaha, like you get a choice whether you’re interested or not!” Darius started to laugh uproariously. Apparently something Flash said was funny.

The line of reasoning was somewhat ominous. Was Darius implying that feelings like love had more control over people than they had of it? Wasn’t that eerily similar to the way Burnett talked about it? Didn’t it reflect Flash’s inability to stop himself from being so needlessly sentimental all the time? Flash almost wished he could believe it, and just submit to whatever his heart desired, but he knew not everyone was like Darius. Surely it was only because he wanted an excuse for being a serial paramour. That it was something completely out of his control. Perhaps he even believed it.

”Well I don’t want to be. It seems like a great mess.” Flash’s words were defeated, not even trying to match his brother’s enthusiasm.

”A mess! Sounds like you’ve got everything figured out, Deme!” Darius snorted, not seeming to take anything Flash said seriously. How could he, Flash was still just a baby to him. ”If you’re saying that then it must have already happened. Had a big crush and got disappointed?”

Flash couldn’t help but squirm a bit in his seat. Darius wasn't any less keen than the other Holmwoods, who all learned plenty without having to be told. Flash should have shut up and stopped talking, it was so obvious when he looked back at his words. He couldn’t possibly feel that strongly about it if he hadn’t had a taste of… how did it go… ‘Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!’

There was no hiding from it then. They had plenty of road in front of them, and there was no way Darius was going to release him from the trap without having earned something. He didn’t want to think of what measures he would go to in such close quarters, Flash really had no power at all in such a situation.

”Yes. It was foolish.” Flash’s face was getting warmer, noteworthy by the wind’s ability to cool him down. ”I don’t even know why…”

The more Flash detracted from himself by asking broader discussion topics, the more likely Darius would ramble on about his own opinions rather than continue to drill Flash for details to taunt him about. There were a lot of things he didn’t want to say about it. Darius nodded along, mostly keeping his eyes on the road, driving ‘rightly’, as it were. He would hardly want the shame of being stopped by a police officer. Where they were by then, he had a good chance of recognizing them, he always hung out in cop bars. It was his crowd, both in the wizard world and the muggle world.

”Well, here’s some free advice: just pick a girl and date her. Date lots of girls, instead of obsessing about one or two.” Darius looked forward, face smiling like he was recounting a good memory, and voice bold as if he were giving a motivational speech in front of a crowd of thousands. ”Like anything, dating takes practice. Play the field a bit and learn to not take it so seriously. Heh… when I was your age…”

Darius’ speech changed, morphing back into his weird older brother. Flash most certainly did not want his advice about love. If he understood it so well, why were his girlfriends always so… well, Flash didn’t like to judge people he didn’t actually know, but they never left a good impression.

”Please don’t tell me anything gross.” Flash stopped Darius before he could continue, his annoyed monotone returning.

Darius laughed, slapping the side of his shiny new car out of the open window. From then on, the conversation remained mostly neutral. A few jokes, teasing. At one point Darius pushed Flash’s face into the door until he would tell him about Professor Jensen and how ‘cute’ she was. Revolting. Still, through the course of the conversation Darius had eventually imparted two important pieces of information he had been given the duty to share. His father wouldn’t be around the mansion for the entire summer, and Valerius wouldn’t be arriving until late August, almost the very end. Flash tried not to show it, but he was a bit crushed.

It wasn’t as if he expected them to be around, they were both always busy. At least the house would be less noisy… well, not really. Even when he was in the house, his father rarely spoke. It was just how his father was, and any child who tried to get more out of him would just get a lecture about ‘only saying what needs to be said’. Still, for that, his words did tend to have a large effect when he did speak them. Not only in the home, but with the business partners he was ‘trapped’ with in Japan. Darius said something nonsensical about some ‘JRA awards’ that Flash started to tune out.

Horse stuff. That was for them to know, Flash didn’t care about Japanese horses. He barely cared about his own horse. He was told how amazing it was to get a colt sired by whatever Arabian horse had sired him, but he had no clue why the effort had even been taken. Some paperwork by the Arabian Horse Association was something he was told to take good care of, but he had stuffed it into the pages of one of his books to keep it flat. Actually, he had been learning how to take care of the growing colt from six months old to when he left for Hogwarts, a bit after he had turned one year old. Flash was told he wouldn’t be fully grown until four or five, so it was the ‘right time’ for Flash and the baby horse to bond.

Well, it was nothing like what happened with his siblings. They all loved their horses, Darius most of all. It seemed like his world revolved around Asha. Flash made sure to never bring up Asha or any other horses around Darius, or it would be horse talk for hours. The same when for Mari. That was another reason why it was so much better to have Val around, he never droned on about the boring beasts. So much for that this summer. None of Darius’ playful jabs did anything to lighten his mood once he had learned as much, but it was hardly news to the big Gryffindor alumnus, he had clearly saved that bit of information for later in the ride. At least Darius knew him well enough to spare him a long, awkward car ride.


The sun was quite low once they arrived on the estate, enough that Flash wondered if it wouldn’t be complete darkness by the time they arrived at the mansion. Not so. In the twilight the exorbitantly large villa-like structure looked the same as when he left it. The memory of every corner of it was already creased into his mind. Home.

Darius was thoughtful enough to drop Flash off before driving himself down to the barn to check on Asha. God forbid the pampered war horse had a second to himself. Flash almost felt the urge to see how much his colt had grown, but he had been travelling almost all day, and didn’t want to get roped into all the maintenance Darius was likely to start doing himself, unprompted.

With his two large trunks in either hand, Flash took a deep breath before rolling them to the front door and pressing the button for the intercom. Back to technology. It was a simple page to the security officer, who was expecting him, so unlocked the door remotely. Over the intercom by the door, the officer Mr. Schick could be heard giving a short, “Welcome home, Demetrius.”

That was all. Flash opened the door and walked in. The foyer was a bit grand, it was connected to the ballroom, so it was obnoxiously massive, a place for people to gather or wait. Now, it was empty, quiet enough that Flash could hear the distant sound of his sister’s ringtone as Mr. Schick called her to inform her of his arrival.

He had never come home from Hogwarts before, he wasn’t sure what the procedure was. Perhaps he should have asked Darius before he went quiet. Was he supposed to wait for Marius to come greet him? Well, probably. Marius was the one in charge when father was away, everyone knew that. In charge… so he would just wait for her to tell him what to do. It probably wouldn’t be long.

Flash had set his luggage down in the middle of the cavernous dome, the way to his room still a bit of a walk from there. It was all exactly the same. It usually was, the Holmwoods weren’t generally fond of gaudy shows of exorbitant wealth. Though the mansion was large, it was hardly gouache. It was a renovated space, so the bones of the mansion made it look almost like a castle fort, but inside it was modern and minimalist. Simple accents with bold color, something that impresses but appears humble.

Not too long after he had started to dully look around with tired eyes, distant footsteps on the stone floor could be heard drawing closer. Looking up to the distant balcony above him, he watched Mari’s head pop over the side, as if checking to make sure it was really him. Her hair was down, but she was still in her day clothes. Had she waited for him, or was she just still working this late at night?

Tapping down the stairs quickly, she closed the gap between them. Once close, she leaned down for a hug, still a head taller than Flash, even though he had grown over seven centimetres since she last saw him. That was Darius’ estimation, at least, and he was notoriously good at that kind of estimation.


”Demetrius. Welcome home, sweetheart.” Mari squeezed tighter, her arms around his head while she lay her own on top of it. ”You must be tired.”

Mari stood up from the hug, her elegant, personalized fragrance left behind in her wake. If a swift motion that could hardly be tracked, a phone appeared in her hand and she began to type something diligently with one strict, pointed finger. Just as quickly, it slipped back into one of her deep pockets. She always dressed for function, she looked much the same way the house did. It made sense, since she and the Holmwood name may as well have been one and the same. Everything they had rode on her shoulders, but her face never broke.

”I just asked Luis to help you with your luggage. We’ll have breakfast served at 7am exactly, so get it while it’s hot, alright?” Mari spoke as she thoughtlessly fixed any stray hairs on Flash’s face, speaking in a soft, doting voice.

”Luis…? But I can carry it myself…” Flash felt nervous for some reason. Perhaps he was worried that Mari might have thought he was weak.

Mari stopped her fixing and gave him an inquisitive quirk of her mouth.

”Is there some reason you don’t want to see him?” She asked Flash directly, something that could be expected of any conversation with her. ”Do you need to be left alone?”

”No, no reason. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Flash felt bashful, he had let himself grow too… relaxed. He had to remember the things Mari had spent so much time and effort teaching him. Things like how one shouldn’t say things out loud unless they are willing to defend it.

”Okay. I’ll let Luis take care of you then. I hope to hear all about your school year tomorrow. I can say for certain that Mother has a lot to say, as you can imagine.” Mari flashed one last sweet smile, pausing for a moment to look at him again before retreating back up the stairs.

Well, there it was. Wait for his retainer to come and help him to his room. It wasn’t really objectionable, Luis was good company. He heard her footsteps grow further away, replaced by the distant buzzing cacophony of nighttime insects. No one else for miles and miles. He stared straight ahead, a bit lost in thought.