IN NOX, SUM VERITAS━━DRACO MALFOY

twenty one. màgoa

(n.) a heartbreaking feeling that leaves
long-lasting traces, visible in gestures
and facial expressions

LOUIS WAS JUST ABOUT READY TO COLLAPSE INTO HIMSELF BEFORE HE HEARD A VOICE OF A MUSICAL QUALITY.     No, scratch that. He heard two voices. One belonged to his mother, that recognizable music box softness that could lull just about anyone to sleep. The other one was new to him; it complemented his mother's, a somewhat low timbre that sometimes varied in pitch whenever they spoke.

     It had been a month and Louis could still feel himself begin to sway on the stairs, all those sleepless nights from before continuing to settle in his already weary bones. He had felt the world cave that night. Everything was coming down and crushing him all at once, making it hard for him to breathe, his lungs incapable of taking in any breath. Sleep had been lost on him, five months of a routine embedded into his arms and his heart and his nose, not entirely sure what to do with either now that the object of his affection for those five months was gone. The sophisticated odor that clung to his clothes from when he would nuzzle his nose into the back of Draco's neck as they napped on the couch in the library still lingered around his nostrils, a phantom of a scent still haunting him as he woke and slept.

    The first handful of nights were absolutely terrible. Louis had lain awake at night, his arm stretched out and thumbing the space beside him where Draco would be if he were there. He said he'd stop the third night, but here he had been, a week in and still thumbing at the damn cotton material whenever he found himself between his sheets. He thought about going back to bed to regain the hours the sandman had skimped out on, but his mother must've caught hold of him because the conversation that had been going on in the kitchen quietened and then there was a question. "Louis, sweetheart? Are you there?"

    His grip on the stairway railing tightened as he began to feel himself sway once more, closing his eyes as he felt tears welling. He sank to the step he was standing on and caved in on himself, wrapping his arms around his shins and pulling them up before finally beginning to cry, surprised that he had any tears left considering that he had spent them all on the night before. He wanted to stop himself from doing so, but with the way his chest was constricting, choking him, he couldn't.

     "Louis," his mother called for him again, "darling, are you there?"

    Louis couldn't answer—he refused to. Several words were stuck to his throat, unable to create themselves and form a dialect that could reach his mother's ears. So he wept silently, a star caving in on itself and imploding. It hurt him, it hurt all over. Memories flashed before his very eyes every time he closed them, glimpses of the sweetest moments that slowly dissipated, slipping between his fingers as the days went on. It was as though he had gotten stuck to the stairs, unable to move. Louis's mother ceased her calling, not in defeat but in realization that he didn't want to be bothered. She had seen how he looked that night—under eyes sunken in, the whites of his eyes bloodshot, and seeing a visible weight bear down on his shoulders as he stumbled through the door after leaving school.