so much for our little talks

Everything was just... Damien mentally sighed, finding no word that could accurately fit the description he was looking for. The letter in his pocket was folded up neatly, but despite the fact that it should weigh close to nothing, it felt like it was weighing him down. He felt as though his feet were dragging. His face was hard as stone as he paced the length of the boys dorm that the seventh year Slytherins called home. He took very little of his scenery in. None of it mattered. He was sure that most people (anyone who valued their health at least) would just leave him alone. Obviously he was dealing with something. And the one person who might not leave him alone was the one person Damien would just love to be interrupted by. Thaddeus Lestrange would have it coming. Not because he had done anything particularly nasty lately, to Damien's knowledge, but because he was the source of most of Damien's problems. Aside from the contents of the letter he had received from his father, Damien blamed Thaddeus for almost everything. And while Damien was normally very cool and collected, he wasn't afraid to get into a match with the Lestrange boy. He knew they would be pretty evenly matched. Thaddeus would have his crazy, but Damien would be able to think everything through. Thaddeus was powerful physically, but Damien was certain that he was much smarter than Lestrange.

But the other Slytherin student did not walk in, so Damien was left alone with his thoughts. Before the letter had arrived, his largest concern was that Laurel had talked to Thaddeus but had decided not to break up with him after all. Part of him wouldn't have blamed her. Though he didn't know what the other Slytherin had that Damien did not have, he knew Laurel was pretty careful about her reputation. While dating Damien would probably be approved by a majority of the Death Eaters that they were supposed to join after graduating, around school Damien skirted a fine line between tough guy and actual student. He got good grades despite the fact that school wasn't particularly entertaining to most of the students his age. But he also held a certain do-not-touch status because of his father. And though he tended to shrug off small things, he had a temper that could flare up if he was pushed the wrong way. To most people he was just the boy who studied and thought he was better than a large portion of the people at the school. And in his mind he was. So he could see why Laurel might not really want to be with him. But would she want to be with Lestrange? Really?

Then he had been kicking himself, metaphorically of course, in the ass for not insisting that he go talk to Thaddeus with her. Ultimately, he understood that it would be better if she could get through this by herself, and he wasn't entirely pessimistic about the situation. But he knew how Thaddeus could be and was worried that she would get into some trouble. On the other hand, he wasn't going to be the person that made decisions for her. The real problem was that he hadn't had a chance to talk to her, or even really see her, since the night they talked in the Astronomy Tower. The not-knowing was killing him.

Or at least it had been until the owl came. He pulled the note out of his pocket again, though by now he didn't need to look at the words. He had the few words completely memorized. How could he not? The letter wasn't even a letter, it was just a note. About the length of something students passed to each other in class. But these words were not from a student, they were from his father. They came through in his mind in his father's voice, uncaring, smooth, and with the confidence that power brings to a person.

“Mr. Flint has been found guilty and sent to Azkaban. I trust you understand what this means.”

And that was it. Of course Damien understood what it meant. It meant that his father expected him to jump right into getting himself initiated with the Death Eaters. His time as just a student was running out. Soon his father would expect Damien to make some sort of commitment to the cause. But this wasn't what troubled him the most. His father could care less, apparently, who had been charged. Getting sent to prison was just a risk they all took. Damien, though, had all but forgotten his issues with the Laurel and Thaddeus relationship. All that mattered was whether Laur was alright.

Of course she isn't alright. Damien thought as he walked out of the dorm, out of the common room, and headed down the halls, unable to stay in the castle any longer. He wasn't planning on running into her. For all he knew she was avoiding him because of whatever happened between her and Thad. He hoped that she wouldn't avoid him because of her father's current situation. If Damien knew his father at all, Theodore Nott was probably already planning some way to get whatever Death Eaters they could out of the wizarding prison. It was only a matter of time. But that might not be common knowledge to everyone in their circle. As he thought, Damien walked without any real direction. He didn't know where his feet were taking him and he was completely fine with that for the moment. He just needed out. So he was a little surprised when he saw the girl he'd been thinking of sitting near the lake, throwing stones. Without another thought he ran over and grabbed one of the rocks from her hand. “Hey, hey, hey. What did the rocks do to deserve spending their pitiful existence deep in the Black Lake with the merpeople?” He tried to make his voice joking, but the note that he had folded up again and put back in his pocket made his heart feel as though he were sinking with the rocks she had thrown.

It appeared as though things were working out for neither of them. Of course Damien's problems took the back seat in his mind just now. He didn't care if his deadline was coming to an end or if Laurel had decided that she didn't want to be with him after all. He would deal with all of that later. In the back of his mind he knew that was bad for him; he knew that the fact that he was putting everything aside because he cared more about how she was feeling was something he would have never done for anyone, Dahlia the only exception, before now. And he knew that despite the fact that he had told himself that he would understand if Laurel had decided to stay with Thaddeus, Damien had still hoped more than he should that it wouldn't be the case. It felt like as soon as he had admitted the fact that he was feeling something for Laurel it was hard to go back to how he had been before. At the same time he wasn't exactly a new person either. He found that showing any sort of emotion toward her was awkward for him. It wasn't something that he was used to doing. Not just around Laurel but to any woman. The closest he'd come was to Jasmyn, and even that was more friendship than anything else.

Damien wasn't sure when the conversation moved from actually talking about rocks to a metaphor, or if she had been talking about people instead of rocks from the start, but he couldn't exactly blame her for the outburst. It was pretty traditional in their social circle for the wife in a relationship to be almost entirely (if not completely) dependent on the male. It wasn't something Damien particularly agreed with. When he thought about the short period of time that his father had left and he had to become the man of the house, Damien got angry at his father all over again. But he hadn't gone to Azkaban. Or at least, Damien assumed he hadn't been there because there were no reports on it. And he definitely did not want that kind of relationship for his sister. But to make sure that didn't happen he would have to stick around and join his father. It was probably going to happen anyway, maybe he should just give in.

The Slytherin boy stood at what he thought was a safe distance. It was close but he was careful not to touch her in any way, partially because he wanted to avoid any rocks that became air-born but also because he just wasn't sure how he was supposed to act around her now. He thought at the very least they were still friends. He could be friends with her if she no longer wanted to be with him... right? They had been friends before. He waited until she was done talking about how no one did anything, unsure of what to say. Did she mean him as well? Or just people in general? He supposed she should include him in that statement. So far Damien had done absolutely nothing, except make her life a bit more complicated.

Since they hadn't talked since their night at the Astronomy Tower, and because Damien was still expecting rocks to fly in his direction at any moment just from Laurel's anger, he was surprised when she closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him. Her appearance hadn't escaped his notice, but he wasn't exactly sure how she got the bruises. It could have been from anything really. Maybe her father had gotten angry with her, or Thad could have given them to her. Or for all he knew she had tried a new spell and it hadn't worked out, though he found that option less likely at the moment. He wrapped his arms around her as gently as possible, not wanting to hurt her.

“Laur, you aren't your mother.” He spoke softly. He knew of her mother, not necessarily everything about the woman, but he knew she was really dependent on Laurel's father. “You're much stronger than that. You actually try.” He pressed his cheek to the top of her hair, unable to help himself. If all she wanted was to be friends, Damien was going to have a bit of a problem. He took a deep breath. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” Hopefully she wouldn't have a new outburst about the fact that he already knew. Of course he knew. His father wanted him to be part of the Death Eaters. And Damien was quickly learning that it might be the only possibility for him. “We don't have to, but if you think it will help...”

Yes, Damien was definitely in trouble. He didn't know how he was supposed to react in this sort of situation. The only people he had ever had to comfort before were his sister, mother, and on the rare occasion Jasmyn. And he was sure that Jasmyn probably needed more comforting than Damien had ever known about, so she had probably gotten it from somewhere else. But this was different. He could be protective over his sister or mother because they were family. They belonged to him in a very real sense. Not in the way that he thought he should have to control them. Just in the way that he had some sort of claim, or reason, to want to be protective over them. Jas was one of his best friends, so he assumed the same rule as family mostly applied to her as well. If he really wanted to stretch, he supposed that as Dahlia's friend, Laurel was one of the people he could have a reason to feel protective over, but that wasn't why he felt like comforting her at all. The reason he wanted to be close to Laurel was a very different reason than the need to be close to a mourning relative. He shouldn't feel the need to be protective over someone else's girlfriend. That wasn't how this was supposed to work.

At the moment he didn't care how things were supposed to work. He just stood there with his arms around her, wondering how a moment so full of grief and anger could actually feel right. It was all only because he was with Laurel, of course. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that. Their lives were more difficult than any seventh year's had any right to be. But that was just how it was for Slytherins, he guessed. Some of them were like Lestrange and welcomed what was expected of them. Others wanted to just wanted out. All Damien wanted was a way to be with his family while not losing who he was at the same time. He didn't think he'd ever find a way to do that, but it was what he wanted. He also wanted to be with Laurel, but even though it felt like they were close right now, he wasn't sure how they could get over this Thaddeus business. He hated that Laurel thought she was already her mother. He moved a hand to her hair and gently ran his fingers through it. “We'll figure something out about your mother. Maybe mine can go and visit her more often. She isn't exactly an independent person, but it would be better than nothing.” He didn't know how to make any of this right. Maybe if he accepted his father's offer to join the Death Eaters without anymore delay he could just put Thaddeus in his place and protect Laurel and her mother at the same time. It was tempting. He didn't think he would be willing to do everything that the Death Eaters expected of him, but at least he could keep everyone together. Then again, he didn't want to be making the decisions for Laurel. She got enough of that from other people.

His arms wrapped around her a little tighter as she mentioned Lestrange. He didn't know that he could agree that Thaddeus was a younger version of Laurel's father. In Damien's mind, Thaddeus Lestrange was a lot worse. Her statements made him think she was confirming that Thaddeus was the one who had beaten her up. He could tell she was hurting on more than just her face. She winced when she stretched and she just looked fragile. But either because he really did just like to torture himself or because he wanted her to say it outright so he'd have another reason to hate the Slytherin he shared a dorm with, he had to ask anyway. “Lestrange did this to you, didn't he?” It wasn't a question, though it was phrased like one. It was more like a statement. “I should have come with you...” Not to make the decision for her, because he would never have done that, even if she was exactly what Damien wanted. But he could have stopped it from getting that violent. At least where Laurel was concerned. Thaddeus would have turned on Damien, but that was something he could live with. He could still go make that situation right. He wouldn't have to tell Lestrange anything. He didn't have to make any of Laur's decisions. He could just show Thaddeus Lestrange how it felt to get hurt. That was something Damien knew how to do. Sure, he might end up getting hurt in the process, but who cared?

“Jas doesn't hate you.” Damien stopped and corrected himself. “Well, she doesn't want to hate you. She just needs a reason to not hate Lestrange as much and you probably seemed like the best option at the time.” He knew that wasn't exactly comforting, but he couldn't really do anything about that. He couldn't change Jasmyn's mind. He knew, since he had tried. “You aren't as broken as you think you are and you're not near as broken as some people get.” He sighed. “And even if you were, so what? So you fell. We just pick you back up again.” He tried to smile a little, though he knew she wouldn't see it since her head was resting against him. A real smile touched his face when she said she wanted to just stay there. He wasn't one to just hide from things, but he had to admit that right now it sounded like a nice idea. If they could just pretend that nothing else existed then it would be perfectly fine for them to be standing there, holding each other like they were. “Sounds good to me.” He kissed the top of her head, knowing that he really shouldn't. As much as he wanted to pretend that she wasn't seeing Lestrange, the fact was that he didn't know for sure and he had his suspicions that Thaddeus had beat her into staying with him.

As much as he hated to ruin the moment, he couldn't stand there not knowing if he was just mentally beating himself up. “Laur, I really need to know what's going on... with us.” It was all weird. Traditionally, shouldn't she be the one saying these things? He didn't want to sneak around. He didn't care if they didn't label what they had as a relationship, but he didn't want to share her, and he wasn't the type to hide who he was and what he was doing. “Maybe it would just be better, if you want me I mean instead of Thaddeus, if we just pretend that everything went fine with your talk. And if he gets upset then at least it's at both of us and not just you...” He didn't know if he was saying anything right, but he didn't want to sit there and do nothing while she got the life beaten out of her.

Everything was only getting more complicated. He had always been pretty anxious to get out of school. Or at least he had been when he believed that out of school meant freedom. Now Hogwarts felt like a safe haven. It was a place where he could be himself and he tried hard enough he could forget that after he left he would quite possibly be heading down the wrong path. It wasn't as though he had a choice in the matter, though. Damien was seeing that clearer and clearer every day. In order to protect everyone he would have to join the Death Eaters. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. He didn't really think muggle-borns needed to die, but he definitely knew that he was better than any of them. If he joined the Death Eaters he would get ranked high pretty quickly because of Theodore being his father. It might be enough to get Thaddeus off of his back. It might make Thaddeus think twice before he hurt Laurel again. And he could get someone to make sure Laurel's mother was taken care of. It would look like an act to protect their higher status. Laurel's mother was pureblood. That meant she was still one of them. But until then he could at least get his mother to check in on Laurel's. “It will give her something to do. She needs to stay occupied. I think it will help.” He tried to be reassuring.

Though her concern for him was touching, Damien wasn't concerned about facing Thaddeus at all. Maybe it was because the two were always at each others throats anyway. They got on each others nerves in the worst way. Damien was almost positive that he and Thaddeus were the two people who hated each other most in the entire school. And neither was really afraid of the other. Damien was a little more realistic about the situation, probably. He knew he wouldn't come out of a fight unharmed. But he also knew that he was evenly matched with the Lestrange boy and he knew he wouldn't get killed. If he was killed, Thaddeus would lose every chance of becoming a Death Eater and on top of that, he wouldn't have Damien to get angry at and blame things on anymore. “I don't know if I should be flattered that you worry about me or insulted that you think I can't take care of myself around him.” His words weren't harsh or even accusing. He was just making a statement, thinking out loud.

“Don't talk like that.” How could she think she was worth so little? “You've been taught that you don't matter much by horrible people. And it's just not true.” He snorted a little at her next comment. She thought that she didn't deserve him. He didn't know how to tell her that it was the other way around. “Right. As if you're not in this much pain because of me. Let's face it, Laur. If I hadn't told you how I felt about you Thaddeus wouldn't know either. He might have just let the relationship died down. If I had just waited...” But he couldn't. He was impatient with this and didn't want to share Laur with anyone, especially Thaddeus Lestrange.

Damien sighed. If this was about his safety, well then Laurel had another shock coming to her. “If you're waiting for me to be safe then you'll be waiting for quite some time. We'll never get to be together if that's what's keeping you.” He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. If he got worked up he might have an anxiety attack and his potion was up in his dorm instead of on him. He hadn't thought to bring it with him, though the letter from his father was just the sort of thing to set an attack off. He moved his hands gently to her arms and pushed her away just a little so he could see her face and she wouldn't be able to hide behind her hair or cover her face with his shirt. He started calm and slowly, pronouncing each word carefully as if that might make them sink in. “I. Am. Never. Going. To be. Safe.” He paused for a second. “Thaddeus has enough reasons to get into a fight with me. Thaddeus doesn't even need reasons if he doesn't want them. But more than that, after we get out of school one of two things will happen. Either I'll join my father and risk going to Azkaban like the rest of them, or I'll have to run and leave my family behind, in which case my father will likely try to kill me himself. There's no safe for me. Only relatively safe. Thaddeus is the least of my concerns. He's already hurting Jasmyn and he won't hurt Dahlia because he likes using her to get under my skin too much.” He pulled her back to him and wrapped his arms around her again. “So stop worrying about what he might do to me, please.”

Flattered? Well, that solved that, he supposed. He laughed a little, glad that he could drag a smile out of her, whether it was completely genuine or not. He didn't even try to trick himself into thinking the tension was gone, but at least they were smiling... sort of. “Then I'm very flattered, but still think you're too worried about the wrong things.” By the wrong things he meant him getting hurt by Thaddeus, and he was pretty sure that would come across. He wasn't afraid of Thaddeus Lestrange. Or at least he wasn't afraid of him in the way that some people, Thaddeus included, thought Damien should be. But Damien knew that they were pretty evenly matched. They both had their strengths and weaknesses and they would use them against each other. They would just continue the way they had for the last several years. It was just part of who they were now. And while he knew that Laurel had probably actually meant it as flattery as she said, Damien couldn't help but wonder what it was about him that made her think he couldn't hold his own in a fight with the Lestrange boy. He would have thought that she would have accepted by now that his study habits would have given him something to work with.

His hands found her hair again as she mentioned it and ran his fingers through it. He waited for her to finish talking before he said anything, though. And at that point he didn't know what he should say. What was the right thing to say when someone told him that they admired him? Especially when it was the girl he was interested in? His body seemed to act without him telling it to. He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers for just a short moment. Damien knew he shouldn't do it; she was still Thaddeus's girlfriend. And the way she talked he wasn't sure if she had any desire to break that off anymore. Could he really blame her for that? If Thaddeus was beating her, he couldn't very well expect her to stand up against him for very long. At the same time he didn't plan on sneaking around with her. And she didn't seem to want him to stand up to Lestrange. It was all very confusing. When he pulled away he shook his head slightly. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat.

Damien wasn't sure what Laurel meant by her comment. When she said fine was she being sarcastic or was she actually going along with this idea? Did it mean that she was just going to let Thaddeus be angry about the situation or was she just saying it to get Damien to drop the subject? Or was she just acknowledging the fact that Damien was sort of in a situation that likely had danger written on it either way? “I'm not sure what you're saying 'fine' to.” He laughed a little. The second part was clear enough. She didn't want him to get hurt because of her, but he wondered how she could see it as her fault when he was the one making her life this complicated.

The topic change wasn't exactly a welcome one. Damien wanted to focus more on getting Laurel back to whatever she could call at least fairly normal. He wanted to make sure that he could help with whatever it was he was able to help with. He didn't want to pay attention to his problems. She didn't need to worry about his problems on top of her own. Besides that, he was afraid that thinking too much about the letter in his pocket would open up an opportunity for an anxiety attack to perk up. He wasn't sure Laurel knew about his anxiety attacks – he usually kept them well controlled with the potions he got from the Hospital Wing, and when he was at home St. Mungo's – so almost no one knew about it. But he supposed she could have found out from Dahlia. He should probably just tell her about them, but he wondered if that would make her think he was weak. He didn't want her to use it as an excuse as to why he shouldn't help with the Thaddeus situation. But he didn't want to lie to her about them, and he didn't want her to think he was hiding anything from her when she asked about whether or not he was worried.

He released her and slowly sat down on the ground. “I try not to think about it enough to make me worried.” He forced a sort of half smile on his face. “I guess that sounds kind of hypocritical.” Damien sighed, not exactly sure how to explain things. “I don't really have that many secrets, but making the anxiety attacks one of them is pretty necessary.” He pulled some grass out of the ground. “I take potions for them, but thinking about what might happen after Hogwarts always makes me tense. And I just don't want to set one of them off... But, yeah, I'm worried. When I do have to think about it. When Theodore sends owls reminding me.” He let out a little laugh remembering the Astronomy Tower. “Then again, it's not just thinking about the future that sets them off. It's just nerves in general I guess.” He looked moved his eyes from the ground to Laur's face. “So what do you think now that I'm not so... completely together?” He wondered if she'd run away. Part of him thought that it might be in her best interest, but he didn't want to lose her, if he had her anyway.

If Damien had said that he hadn't thought about kissing Laurel since their night in the Astronomy Tower, he would have been lying. As it was, there were very few people, or at least as far as Damien knew, that knew that they even had feelings for each other. He supposed that the rumor would circulate anyway with Thaddeus in the know now. His just-let-the-pieces-fall-where-they-may plan was looking better all the time. There was no way that Lestrange was going to let this topic go. It would mean completely staying away from Laurel now and he didn't think that he could do that. Especially when her lips were back on his. His arms wrapped back around her without him even thinking about it. Everything with Laurel just felt so natural. He felt like he didn't have to care so much about anything else as long as she was there. Of course that was an illusion. There was so much to worry about. But at least with Laurel he could forget for just a little while. He was happier when she was around. His smiles came easier. It was a weight off of his shoulders. But he had been sorry. Maybe not sorry for the closeness they were having, but he didn't want to push her to anything, even if it was just kissing, since he wasn't sure what was going on in her head. It looked as though his worrying about that was unneeded, though, since she kissed him back. He chuckled a little as they pulled away. “I think you were right. I wasn't that sorry.” He smirked a little.

Damien smiled a little and pressed a kiss to Laurel's forehead. He knew it wasn't going to be easy for her. She had spent so long trying to be one person in public and then recently spent a lot of time trying to be someone completely different so she could do something with her life other than be the wife that she was expected to be. But he couldn't help but be just a little happier at her words. “Well, you can worry a little.” He made his tone joking, but really it would be nice to be able to share some of his concerns once in a while. He felt like he kept everything to himself. He was sure Dahlia would be more than willing to listen, but he didn't think they were in the same place lately. She was more carefree, sure, but he was pretty sure that she was way more into the Dark Arts than he was. He didn't want to put Dahlia in this sort of position. He didn't particularly want to put Laurel in it either, but at least she could sort of understand him. Now that the smile was there, he didn't know how to remove it. “I know it isn't going to be perfect and simple, but I can't think of any other way to go about this. He's always going to say you can't leave and just assume that he's right.” Damien didn't know if he was making any sense.

He probably could have continued standing, but now that they were talking about something he wasn't entirely comfortable with, he just wanted to not have the temptation to walk away. Sitting down would help that. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that Laurel wouldn't care about his anxiety disorder. That didn't change the fact that just not knowing exactly how she would respond made him... well, anxious. Maybe that was because he was already a little anxious from the letter that he had gotten from his father. And the topic of Thaddeus had been a little tense. So it was another relief that she didn't think he was completely insane. He knew that having an anxiety disorder wasn't really desirable. He had been worried that she would think he was incapable of protecting her from Lestrange. He didn't know how to explain that Lestrange never got to him like that. He wrapped his arm around her as she leaned her head on his shoulder, again thinking that it was the most natural feeling he could think of. It was very comforting to have her there. "So you don't have second thoughts about being with me?" He smiled a little, making sure.

The thought of Laurel facing Thaddeus and her father made him a little worried. Especially since the events happened so close together. But he didn't want her to think that he thought that she couldn't take care of herself. He knew she could if she put her mind to it. It was all a matter of being who she was instead of who she was supposed to be. “I still wish I would have gone with you. I mean, to speak with Lestrange at least. I didn't know you had gone home until I got Theodore's owl. And even then I only assumed.” He kissed the top of her head again and tightened his arm around her just a little. “I would have offered to go with you to your house too if I'd known what you were dealing with. That might not have been entirely appropriate though.” He added the last part almost as an after thought. He was still, mostly, a gentleman.

He watched her throw another rock into the lake, noticing that it wasn't nearly as anger filled as before. That made him glad. It seemed like they comforted each other. He could feel his anxiety slowly leaving him already, which was good since his potion was up in the boys dorm. “Are you worried about the future? I mean, aside from the issues with your mother and with Lestrange...” He didn't particularly want to bring the subject back up again, but he wanted to know that she could be happy with him. His free hand ran through a few strands of grass at his side.