Nothi nothing is left
On the clock above the mantel piece the time runs out. It’s an old heirloom, ancient like the marble walls of silenced sound. So much gets lost between its walls - so many childhood memories, so many moments spent with his sister in the darkest hours of the night - reading beneath candle light and soft blankets around them. It ticks by unstoppable in its tracks. Minutes, hours - six. the total of hours spent inside the stuffy room without air circulation - standing straight backed even after his father left for the port key in the morning. Or was it midday? maybe not six hours - maybe ten. Evan can’t bring himself to care.
Hallway sounds - Soft thumps in the room a few doors down the hall - Pandora in full exercise of creativity. Hollow steps in the room next to the study. They are all muffled - only the opening door unfadingly amplified by the lack of furniture inside the townhouse’s entrance hall, makes the first clearly perceptible sound. Voices carry - hit Evan with a new wave of anxiety.
Black curls and emotionless eyes are the first to greet him, when the heavy wooden door opens largely, offering a grand view on the five newcomers. Regulus - constructed of only elegance and poise is the one that comes to a halt right next to him, offering a curt nod while the adults are captured in their own conversation. Wilkes is the last to join their lined up formation - backs turned to the ceiling high bookcase at the furthest wall of the room, awaiting their fathers’ acknowledgment with straight spines and neutral expressions.
When Pierre was still alive and the one participating in their father’s meetings instead of Evan, the Blacks had visited their house in a set of three. Orion, Regulus, Sirius - black hair, pale skin, impeccably clothed, wearing grim expressions. Sirius stuck out though - the few times that Evan had seen him accompanied by his father and younger brother, striding through Rosier-house as if they owned it. His tie was always just the tiniest bit too loose, his hair too long, his posture too relaxed - as if he didn't care to be there at all. Effortlessly beautiful, but entirely out of place.
Today the older boy is nowhere to be found and Evan doesn't know if he should feel glad about it. He fights the urge to scrunch up his brows and question his composed friend flanking him. Out of the corner of his eye, Evan can make out Regulus’ usual straight posture, the cold hollowness of his grey eyes and stoic air that came as an addition to his demeanour at the beginning of term. In retrospect, it should have caught Evan’s attention way sooner - the shorter boy’s already too familiar silence, the cold curve at the corner of his mouth, the hard expression etched into the variety of angles on the other boy’s face. He looked older when the term started - hollowed out somehow, thinner, more angular than usual. He had kept his grades up over the progression of the school year, excelled at quidditch, stopped participating in house gossip and kept to himself - up to a point that Evan would consider self-isolation now that he thinks of it.
And now the older Black is entirely absent from their gathering. Something dark and twisted dawns on Evan then. A meeting - held only by the leading heads of influential pure blood families - discussing the topics of heirship, political influence and - oh.
Oh. Oh no.
Evan’s brother died. Wilkes’ is the only child his mother had given birth to before her death. Regulus - Regulus is the second son of the house of Black - the spare, the sickly child, the weaker one of the two brothers. He has no reason to be here - not unless -
“Sit, boys. We have a lot to discuss. Several changes happened in these past days that you should be made aware of.” Orion Black’s voice sounds, cold and informative - leaving no room for objection.
All three of them move in unison, Wilkes and Regulus more or less elegantly in their rush, while Evan’s legs threaten to give out under him.
The meeting passes by in extensive length. The topics circulate, intertwine, overwhelmingly detailed in plans of their execution. Evan is incapable of keeping up with its contents. There is a roaring noise in his head, tuning out the hierarchical conversation and monologue of Regulus’ father and the few scattered nods of the younger participants. All he can think about is the unpredictable speed, of which the composition that is his life, is going downhill with every additional information shared.
Sirius Black disowned - kicked out of the Blacks’ household and burned off their family tapestry. In his place, Regulus sits now - similar to Evan, named first son of their family legacy - carrying the burden on his too young shoulders, that were never meant to hold them.
And then there is the matter of a so-called Dark Lord that Evan has heard his father talk about at the last meetings they held in this very study. A Dark Lord who is on an uprise - raising supporters everywhere he goes - spreading word of the revolution he plans to establish of the new world, how he calls it - How Evan’s father calls it also. A new world without muggles in places of power - a world where the entirety of the wizarding community works together to wipe the earth of their existence. A world that only allows purebloods in its centre as the superior ruling race.
His friends seem unfazed over the adults’ talk - but so does Evan. A mask of neutrality, carefully constructed over the span of their childhood, inevitably perfected down in the Slytherin dungeons between the serpents and snakes never missing an opportunity to bury their fangs deep into laid bare naivety.
He doesn't see them leave, doesn't mentally process them clearing out the study - and eventually the empty halls of Rosier-house pulsate with radio silence again. Physically he is there, shaking hands, bowing, muttering words of obedient support, mirroring his father. Mentally he faces a tinted glass wall, separating cognition from his physical actions - castrating his force of will, locking it into a cage of blurred vision.
Rosier Sr. Dismisses him with a distracted nod, buried deep into the papers on his desk, skimming and sorting, as Evan’s footsteps fade down the hallway.
Inside his new room the lights are off - candles burned down hours ago without the option of lighting new ones because he had used the spares back in the early morning hours to ground himself inside his notebook. The pages stare back mockingly in the dark, obscured with the hue of cold hollowness echoing off the walls inside the too large room. Evan sits down at his desk anyway - too much acid cursing through his bloodstream to provide him with a restful night of sleep. He buries his hands in his sweat clam hair, rests his forehead against the cold wooden surface of the empty work desk and allows himself a moment of silent shattering.
Agony drips from the tip of his spare muggle pen when he scribbles blindly over an assumed empty page inside his notebook. His fingertips are the only lighthouses, the only sufficiently informed leaders of his sensation, as he grabs the small book with shaking hands and pours every last shred of himself into the pages in hopes to prevent the unstoppable progression of his own identities’ obliviation.
He fills too many pages, rips the pen over the soft paper with too much force as the tearing sound reaches his ears from too far away. The collapse follows shortly after - abrupt and merciful, as Evan slips into unconsciousness with his head resting heavily on the opened notebook covered in angry lines and desperate attempts of coherent speech that lead to nothing but overwhelmingly obvious distortion.
Am I am I am I - No you took that, didnt you? It’s not a question anymore - you own me. You own my achievements -
few in numbers -
my life’s work before i got the chance to write it down.
Hungry and greedy and brutal - tearing down the walls of my assumed safe house - you stole the light. I borrowed it years ago - now I protect it on another island - the silent one I watch from afar.
How long until you blind me - I cant see anymore but I still remember - remember the vision so clearly - the pictures and moments and memories - how long until you take them ?
Take them.
Will you? You will.
Of course. It’s inevitable.
The chance so close - the future a step away - did you take me without my notice? Have I been taken already - I dont feel home. I dont feel safe - will I ever again. No. It’s to a question - So many of them buried deep under.
You stole - stealing is all you do. Was I ever not a puppet on your strings? How would anyone know but you?
mAke Me rEmembEr. DOn’t lEt me forGET. SEE me - bEfore he tAkes eVerything of mE until Nothi nothinG is left - WHere arE yoU? HaVe yOu seen thE evidenCe? collected enOugH of me? ALL wiLl DisapPear. YOure noT fast enougH- how loNg unTiL therE is
NoThiNg of iMportaNce anYmoRe. TaKe a PiCturE I’ll fADE. I FaDE. WhERe is MY minD- WHEre aRE YoU?
I CAn’t breaTHE. Thee LiGHt is goNE.
# 6 ? E.r