Atlas was a Greek Titan, and brother of Prometheus. After taking part in the war against the Olympians, Zeus condemned him to hold the heavens or sky for eternity. In art, he's often depicted carrying a celestial globe.
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d r a c o
I lay on our balcony beneath the night sky. A few streets away, muggles drove in their cars, engines chugging faintly. Somewhere, a dog barked. After two years here, I never quite got used to the sounds.
The stars were all out, baring their light proudly. On nights like this, Angel and I might have sat in this very spot and peer through the telescope. She would tell me about a new nebula I had never seen before, and I would listen.
Angel. It had been a week since she had left, and her sudden absence left a gaping hole in me. Loneliness was not an unfamiliar feeling, but to have felt warmth, true warmth, only for it to choose to leave you - that was pain immeasurable.
Tell me, stars. You have been around for thousands of years. Tell me, how did we come to this?
It was ironic that the only happy memories I had with Angel was when we had still been in school. All those years ago, in the Astronomy Tower, in the midst of the greatest Wizarding War.
I know, it was all I ever talked about - everyone told me so. But the truth was, it was the only time I had ever been happy.
I spoke to the stars, throwing my thoughts and memories at them like a catapult. I told them about the time I had first gotten to know her name. She had been crying in the Room of Requirement.
Then, the days we met in the Tower under the cover of darkness, her incessant chatter that drove me nearly mad. I hated, yet never desired someone more. The way she had looked at my Dark Mark when I first pulled back my sleeves - fear, disgust, disbelief, disappointment.
And then I also remembered other things. The way her eyes sparkled when she told me her stories, the night she told me about Ophiuchus. I thought of her face, her voice, her eyes. She had known that very night who I was, and who I wasn't.
When she had stolen fruit and Firewhiskey because I hadn't been eating. The sound of her crying my name in that godforsaken bathroom as my blood seeped into the water, her ice cold hands taking mine. I shivered at the ghost of the sensation.
I thought of our first kiss, just round the corner from the Hufflepuff common room. The feel of the concrete against the back of my hands as I cushioned her head. She tasted like apples in spring, the amber warmth of her sweet florals floating lightly between us.
The very first time she told me she loved me. The words slipped off her tongue, easy as melted butter and thick as fresh honey. I remember how she whispered to me about the smell of the stars - sharp, silvery, prickling my nose.
That special night when I had stolen food from dinner and put them on a small table in the Astronomy Tower. She looked beautiful in her silver-white Yule Ball dress, the light of the moon weaved into its very threads. But it was the way she had looked at me as she sipped her elf wine, the dazzle in her eyes when I made the constellations come to life for her. She was incandescent, my Angel.
She had held me while we danced, head on my chest as if it had never known another place to rest. They're so wrong about you, she had said.
In the battle of Hogwarts, when I had Potter right where I needed him to be in the Room of Requirement. I was ready to duel him to the death, if only to save my family from Voldemort's wrath.
But I had thought of Angel then, how she told me that there was goodness in me, and that I needed to hold on to it no matter what. I let Harry go, not because she had been right about me, but rather, I had wanted to be right, for her. I never told her that, and yet, she believed in me anyway.
In the courtyard, when I had cast the great bloodhound Patronus - her Patronus. It was a piece of her soul that I carried with me. The same bloodhound led me to the Tower after her death, where my mind had re-conjured her in all her gentle resplendent beauty.
I might have been Draco Malfoy, Slytherin bully and traitor, and eventually, Death Eater. But it did not matter to her one bit, never had and never will. Her deep umber eyes did not see me in one particular way or another, as how the rest of the world might have.
Suddenly, it was like everything made sense. My love for Angel Dawson will never know any boundaries, it would be something I would never be able to comprehend. But what I had not realised is that she felt entirely the same about me.
I was only ever just... me, in my truest, purest form. I was good, and that was all I had to be for her to love me. I still am good. Underneath my misshapen layers and poisoned soul, I am still the same Draco who would carry the galaxies on my back if it would make her smile.
She knew that. She had never not known. It was only I, who had forgotten. I had lost myself, while she had only grown more sure of me.
Perhaps it was pompous to think so, but I realised with a start that Angel would not leave me like this. If being a Death Eater was not enough to make her turn her back on me, she would not do so now over a stupid fight about nothing.
If she had, she would have said goodbye at least, in some form or another. She was sentimental; her love was deep and overflowing. It was an ocean that washed over everything and everyone - it did not care.
She would have taken her things - her telescope, or the silver figurines. She would not leave her parents house alone, on her own accord. It meant too much to her.
Something had happened. Terrible or not, I did not know yet, but I will find out. I had to find Angel.
I sent letters to her friends. I wrote to Hannah, Susan, Hermoine, and even Lorcan. I told them she was missing - for I was sure she was - and that I needed help.
And then I waited.