- Spoiler:
Damien was obviously not properly prepared for the promise of changes during the peculiar phase of puberty. Sure, he had been through the period of confusion, then embarrassment, of supposed physical alteration to his body, as seemingly explained by his mother. She had, he remembered, been rather excited about what he has come to resent. Puberty did not treat him well. Damien looked at himself in the mirror, trying to pick out the signs to an invitation to manhood. There was hardly any. His face, or head, seemed to retain the shape of his boyish days. He was still a boy, but a teenage one at that; and he thought that it would signify the sort of change that he had seen in the other boys at school of his age. Damien's searching look turned into a deeply-set scowl, proof of the over-used expression on his tender face. Then, he turned away from the mirror violently, and launched himself back into bed.
As if his tiny frame was not sufficiently depressing, the physical changes occurring to his life during this age of puberty was the punch-line to this one sick joke. As he lay in bed with a hand beneath the back of his head, Damien sighed. He did miss his mother. Even so, he could not allow her to see him anymore. She had betrayed, not only him, but the expectations of her Pureblood family. How could he ever forgive her when, even when he had been so patient with the years, she refused to see the mistake she had made in marrying that Muggle-born? The boy was tired of waiting. Then, too, he got tired of waiting to be useful. He was supposed to learn to be great, somehow. Damien had thought that his father would have done it for him, many years ago, when he returned to the d'Eaths at the age of eleven. Pity that Lorcan was too busy skirt-chasing and money-making.
Not that the boy could complain about the latter. In fact, it seems, something odd was happening. The power that was typically invested in the other more Ancient families of Pureblood seems to have given the nouveau d'Eaths an entree to the slice of Elitism. Of course, the d'Eaths can never be like them. They had hundreds of years of history and establishment. The d'Eaths can only take joy in the present situation. A slight smile tugged at the sides of Damien's lips. This he could content with. Years of struggling to establish himself as someone to be reckon with might just pay off, what with the new family situation that the other Slytherin students must learn about, sooner or later.
At that, Damien sat up in his bed, moved to the edge, slid off it, and out of his room. It was fantastic here, at Alistair's. He could have his own space, away from the siblings he could not stand to be in the house with all the time. He could read uninterrupted here, eat when he desired, choose to do anything he wanted at any part of the house bar his brother's room ... Best of all was really to be living with Alistair, the man he had moved on to after Athena's disappearance, looking to him for the sort of guidance he had earlier sought from Athena, and at the earliest, had thought his father could provide. There was a type of contentment that the boy found here. He was not happy, no. Merlin forbid he ever felt happy. He thought he could not; it would be very unbecoming of him. Of course, he would not have admitted it all to be teenage angst. No. It always had to be more than that.
Damien was contented. Toast and juice in each hand, he strolled past the front door and stepped out into the garden. In the open! Damien was in the light of day! True, there was barely a sun in the ever so grey skies of Britannia. It was a feat, however, that the boy was not to be found in a dark corner, brooding as if his life depended on it. No, he was out now, lounging in the garden, with birds singing in the late morning, and the fresh slight breeze of air making its presence known to his pale skin. It was not a week until the start of the new school term. The boy had arrived a week ago at the invitation of his brother. He liked the fact that he did would not have to get cosy with a crowded Hogwarts Express just to get to the Castle. No, he would arrive at Hogwarts with dignity, and with clothes still crisp from fresh ironing, unmarred by the crease it would likely suffer from the pushing and squeezing with the rest of the student population.