if tmi ever gets adapted in a visual media again, there's need to be shot of Magnus alone in his apartment after the part in city of bones imo. like it represents him sooo well at this point of the story in such a gutting way.
just. that moment after the party ends. there's no more music and the lights come on and the magic of it all dies. you look around at wreckage around you and then you leave with your friends and take all the fun and laughter with you to go home because the moment is over and life continues on.
except for Magnus, because this is his life. that silent hollow room is all he has.
so much of Magnus is frivolous and fun; he throws parties and goes on adventures and he's over the top in all the best ways. and it's all a bit of a front for the fact there's nothing meaningful behind it. that he's throwing parties for his cat because there's no one else to throw them for. that all his friends are immortal, and flicker in and out of his life between all the other things they have going on that give their lives meaning his doesn't have.
Magnus, for all the 400 years he's lived, doesn't really have anyone even to mourn. there were people very important to him, absolutely, but they came with a catch. Etta is one of the exes he looks back upon the most fondly, and she left him because she wanted a family, something meaningful that was incompatible with him. Most warlocks only live because someone loved them enough to protect them from the world, but Magnus lived because he saved himself. there's never been anyone else but him from the very beginning.
except for now theres these random teens who barrel into his life and refuse to leave. and he makes flippant comments and puts up his walls because he knows in the end it'll just be him alone in aftermath, because that's how it always ends. except. when he calls Asmodeus in Edom, when he know theres no way to save himself and when he comes to terms with that... they stand between them. they save his life. Simon makes a massive sacrifice for him, and no one has ever really done that before.
just. that moment after that first party. Magnus standing in the carved down emptiness left behind. and that's the beginning, because they stick around this time. they're annoying and reckless and a little doomed by the universe and this time they're his.