babylon, the one I'm wasted on

There were times when muggles had some use, he could admit. Damien settled himself down as he hummed to himself. Despite his consistent rejection of muggles, he had to admit that they wrote good songs. Art -- perhaps that was their function. Did that mean that he was not to be seen with his sketchbook? Surely there was art exclusively from and for wizards only. Damien, however, could not think of any. Perhaps he just needed a shift of exposure. Wizards could do a lot of things, surely art was something one of them. The greater art, of course, had to be magic. Perhaps, then, he was partaking in a lesser art. Damien wondered, in confusion, about those thoughts.

It was the second night of the new school year. After the feast from the first day, a majority of students staying up late especially in their dormitories, and a whole day of lessons that threw them all back into academic motion, the castle scarcely had anyone roaming about. Almost everyone had decided to catch up on some beauty sleep, or laze in the common room. The events of the two days drained quite a bit of energy, especially when all had to adjust themselves back to the onslaught of classes. Thankful for the lack of people around the castle at this time, Damien had sneaked out of the Slytherin Dungeons, and made his way up to the Astronomy Tower. Just a year ago, he would have met Alexis here. With his sister having graduated and left Hogwarts, Damien was feeling a little lonely now, staring solemnly at the view of Hogwarts that his position offered.

Damien continued to hum the song to himself. It was a good one, Jar of Hearts. He had heard it on the radio. It was not an activity he proclaimed about, listening to muggle radio. He hated when they had to talk on and on, blabbering about insignificant muggle nonsense. The songs, though, the sad ones, he appreciated. The moon was extremely faint, and Damien settled his eyes on it as he hummed. There was an eerie look to the Castle now, but he liked the look of it. People have been whispering about changes in the school, especially with the change in the Minister. So far, they all looked good to Damien, who had believed that this change was going to be for the better. To begin with, there had been conversations along the corridor to classes about people losing muggle artefacts. Oh joyous day, he had thought. It was certainly hypocritical, seeing that he owned a small muggle radio, but which he had left at his mother's, refusing to be found with it at school.

School had began well enough for Damien. He would remain contented as long as things went his way; which so far, they did. Still humming, the boy flipped the pages of the sketchbook that had rested on his lap. It was very personal, his sketchbook. It was also probably the only thing that he owned, that was an avenue for the ultimate freedom of his expressions. He drew anything and everything that came to his mind. Naturally, that were a lot of drawings of mother. There was one of father, and one of the D'Eath Residence. There was one of his twin elder sisters, and none of the other siblings who he disdained. Pricilla Cuffe, for her slight impact on his adolescent life, also made it to the pages. Mira Anderson took another bulk of them, while there was one of him and Georgia Wheelbarrow. Damien continued to flip the pages, a habit he often exercised - to look back at his memories in this way. And then a page was revealed, which made him glare hard at.

There she was -- Roxanne Weasley. He had drawn her on one of the nights that he had lost sleep over the fact that he was frustrated while trying to get his mind off her. The original sketch of the girl was her in the way she looked. And then moments of frustrations had him add nasty things to her face. He wanted to blot the memory of her out as badly as he did to her face in his sketch. Unfortunately, he still had it. After the meeting at the circus, Damien had led Roxi to dinner, where he had tried the usual taunting, only to find himself relishing her presence, and returning home feeling more conflicted than usual. That was the night that he had coloured all of her teeth black in his sketch of her. Looking at what had become of his original sketch of the girl now, Damien felt a strange dissatisfaction. His eyes fell to the next empty page, while his left hand still held out the ruined sketch of her face. Was he really thinking of re-drawing her on the new page?

Roxi hummed as she walked away from the prying eyes of Stanley and his gang. Stanley Crosswell was a cool guy, his circle crossed paths with Roxi' circle, that how that worked. He was a handsome fellow, a bit of a partier, and he loved hook ups. A lot of people called him a male Roxi, she was a female Stanley, so on so forth. They flirted, occassionally hooked up, etcetera.

For a strange reason, Roxi had actually been insulted when he had found time to corner her the first night of school and suggested they talk sometime- seeing as they had similar needs. Basically, Stanley had not gotten any- or enough- over the summer and he wanted to make up for it and celebrate the start of another year. Usually she would have giggled and given a suggestive reply. However, she had shrugged and said they could see what happened, even though she knew she would eventually break.

She walked through their group, mamanging to smile and work her hips a bit as she was expected, but had she removed the glasses they would have seen a tired and apprehensive girl looking back at them. To escape their looks, she had been forced up to the Astronomy tower where she figured she could start working on her first piece of homework.

When she entered though, she was distracted immediately by the stars. She pushed her glasses onto her head as she strode over to the balcony, unaware of the other presence there. She stared out at the stars, twirling the ring on her finger. It read 'Nobody can hurt me without my permission. -Gandhi." She knew the problem though. She let people use her. She rolled her lips, chewing on her cheek, much heavier thoughts than the airhead was acredited to have rolling through her mind.

outfit

The impulse to slap himself had to be held back. For a moment, Damien thought he saw a life-sized, real-life, conceptualisation of Roxanne Weasley. Despite a couple of blinks to ensure he was not merely going mad from thinking about her, she was still there, near him. A few moments passed before the boy realised that it was really Roxi herself, and not his imagination gone wild. Quickly, he shut his sketchbook. The contents of it, if found out, would be an embarrassment to him. Cautiously, Damien placed the sketchbook on his left, where his body would temporarily obstruct a view of it from the girl's perspective if she were to direct her gaze at him.

Damien allowed himself to stare at Roxi undauntedly now, waiting to see if she returned the stare. Never in his life had a coincidence been so awkward before. He had come here for some private time, which also meant that he was feeling vulnerable in his private space. Yet, now, he felt like he needed to construct himself up again, in front of another, no less a Gryffindor. Strange that he had to remind himself about why Roxi was not meant for anything besides animosity.

Clearing his throat, Damien eyed the colours that Roxi had allowed on her clothes. It made it difficult for him to take her seriously. But if that thought was true, then why did he hold her in such a serious regard? Unlike the times that he was accustomed to seeing Roxi, something was different about her for the night. Damien tried to label what it was exactly. And then he realised, there was no glint of mischief in her eyes, the one he was used to, and the one that had taunted him in his dreams. For the first time, she looked serious.

"Weasley," he began, not knowing what to say. Still, he was not going to just avoid the circumstances and walk away. He began, then, in the only way he knew - to attempt to shed intimacy with her with an impersonal address.

Roxi was watching those stars... thinking. People wondered why they were so far. Or how they were so bright. Or if there was someone out there near one of those stars looking back. Wondering why they were so beautiful, so captivating. Roxi found herself wondering why they were there. Did they serve some sort of purpose, or were they there just to captivate fools, just to fill them with hope or melancoly, just to be a set piece in every person's life.

She was lost in thought- something atypical of the girl- when someone spoke behind her, causing her to gasp ever so slightly and turn around, her hand flying to her mouth. "Oh," she said, on seeing it was Damien. She breathed out a sigh, dropping her hand to her chest, pressing it against her heart to slow it's frantic, frightened beatings. "You caught me by surprise."

She tried, she really did, to put on that mischevious, devilish smile she associated with Damien, but she was having trouble feeling like herself, and her mannerisms did not seem so at hand. With almost a pained smile, she crossed her arms and stepped a little closer, looking down at her feet. "So what are you doing up here all alone?"

The smirk returned to his face. Damien watched as Roxi responded in a slightly dramatic surprise. It was, at least to him, seeing that he was always one for little expressions. At least he was having some sort of effect, no matter what the response was. That was all he wanted, some sort of power or control to effect something. And then the girl stepped closer, of which prompted Damien to stand up. He would rather talk to her at the same level than feel her looking down at him. As it is, he was already shorter than he would like to be.

As soon as he stood up, Damien tuck both hands into his pants pockets. His eyes, however, did not leave the girl. It wanted to learn about this new face of hers, a face that it did not know about before. He watched Roxi force a smile, and he frowned. Still, the customary dig at the Gryffindor was called for. He could not pass it up.

"I was hoping for some amusement in the form of a gullible First Year. I see I'm going to be better rewarded tonight then." His mind was not so sure though. Already, Damien could envision himself being the gullible one instead. It was horrid, real horrid, to be gullible against Roxi. Damien found his eyes memorising the face of the girl, purporting to fill his empty page with it. And then the memory of the current sketch of her face entered his mind, in which he duly smirked at it.

Roxi blinked at his words, first thinking something along the lines of When you really think about it, Damien is kind of a prat. Is he suggesting I'm stupider than a first year? Where does he get off making an assumption like that? We slept together, we didn't have an intellectual debate. Then Roxi remembered that this was not how she thought, not how she worked. She did noth think about how people were jerks. She blindly ignored their flaws.

She flickered a small smile and offered a belated chuckle. "Ha ha," she said distractedly. He had stood up and she nervously worked one of her hands into her hair, distractedly letting her eyes sweep over the inside of the tower. She suddenly remembered with a jolt that Damien was there and she brought her gaze back to him, grinning bashfully. "Sorry, I'm just a little distracted."

She opened her mouth to say something useless when she spotted something on the ground. She tilted her head and pointed at the journal. "What's that?"

Damien scowled. There was no reaction to his implication. That was not a good sign. Was he losing it? In an effort to recover, the boy reminded himself to lose the paranoia. It was not a good idea to be like this when he wanted so much to learn Occlumency and Legilimency. Surely Athena would not approve. He needed to maintain himself. As soon as the scowl left his face, Damien found himself trying to analyse the thoughts in the girl's head. The look on her face gave just one fact away - that she was troubled, or at least had something big enough to keep her mind to, so much so that she actually did not look as keen as she usually does in an encounter with him.

Surely, that did not please Damien. He took pleasure in his attempts to refuse Roxi's advances, even if they never succeed. Now, though, it felt as if the roles were switched. Was he pursuing it now? The silence between them was unbearable to him. Even his mind went blank from ideas on how to taunt the girl, not that he had been doing a lot of that, not at all. His intentions were always disappointed by his inability. And then Roxi pointed, noticed, his sketchbook.

Shooting a worried look at it, Damien quickly threw his stare back at the girl. "Nothing," he answered quickly. He realised how suspicious that would have looked, and decided to tone down the jitters in his voice. "Just drawings, no big deal."

Damien seemed upset that Roxi was not reacting, or that was something Roxi thought she picked up on, which she would have usually relished in, but her pity party was still going strong and she could not bring herself to care for how Damien felt at this moment. It would have mattered to her another time... for whatever, unexplainable reason.

She continued to chew on her lip, but she felt a little reinspired, a little flicker of life when she seemed to get a strange reaction from him over the little book. It made her curious, what was so important or strange about that little book of his, for him to keep it as a secret, to be so defensive and ashamed of it. Now, Roxi really had to know.

But he told her- drawings? "Drawings?" she repeated. She never would have pegged Damien for the type to sit about, sketching things. "Really?" she asked, as though she was not sure that he was telling her the truth. Maybe he was trying to mess with her, trying to get her to react in some way. She looked between him and the book, before reaching over and reaching for it. "Let me see."

It was out of the question. Why did he not lie about the book in his hand? If he had said that it was full of Potions concoctions, perhaps Roxi would not have become curious about it. Damien really needed to reconsider how he calculated his words. No one had been allowed to see the contents of his sketches. Sure, that had been accidental peeping, followed by almost instantaneous shutting of the book upon quick realisation. Anything more than a couple of seconds was prohibited. No one was extended the right to do so; not Georgia, not Alexis, not even Mother.

Who did this Gryffindor girl think she was then? The audacity in her action was almost impossible, or so Damien thought. He was an artist for himself after all. He did not draw to impress, to display, or to get what he wanted. He drew, simply for himself. Mostly, though, he drew in privacy. After all, it was a lesser art. It would do better for him to be seen reading up on Potions rather than scratching against material that had once been part of a tree, part of the earth.

Damien had, once again, wasted work in his mind, trying to come up with new ways of interaction against the Gryffindor tonight, now that she was available for some amusement. Pity. He was far from being amused. He had yet to really remember how it was useless trying to get around to anticipate the moves of Roxi, since she was usually one to act on impulses, with no plan to really allow him to guess at. True enough, Damien had allowed the book to slip out of his hands, when he least expected it to. Instinctively, he reached for his wand. How else could he defend his dignity if the girl sees the contents of his book?

He really did nothing to stop her, so she had no reason to abandon her plan on retrieving this book of drawings. The intrigue that surrounded the little book was too much for Roxi to be able to ignore. Slytherins were fun but she had never though they could be.. well.. deep. Or artistic. They were always so wrapped up in their own little worlds they never opened their eyes to the beauty in the one around them.

She picked up the book and straightened up, opening it and the page fell onto a drawing of an older woman. Her mouth opened slightly- wow. It was... well, beautiful. "Wow," she articulated. "This is really good." She flipped forward to see a picture of the same woman. "Is this your mum? She looks like you." She continued to thumb through.