“Be Careful Who You Sit Next To” - 1^st September 2023 - 11 AM - Interacting with @Rory Hara - Outfit: school robes

And so, another member of the Hills family was about to leave London to start his journey to Hogwarts. Contrary to other kids who were thrilled and enthusiastic to go, Damian was rather bored and already tired: his family had been preparing him for Hogwarts since he started reading, and that train represented nothing more than his duty. He already knew everything he had to know in terms of study, habits and daily life at the prestigious school; the only thing he still didn’t know was in which house he would have fitted the best.

That morning was very confusing for Damian’s standards: not only his parents but also many other relatives were on their way for the Platform 9 3/4, some of them were bringing their younger kids to show them the Platform and say goodbye to all the family members that were leaving, some others had older kids who had to start their new school year; whatever the reason, almost everyone was going there. “The perks of being a pure-blood family” Damian thought sarcastically. He knew he had a target on his head this year and all the older relatives were looking at him, and obviously he had to keep the honour of the family high by getting straight O’s and overall achieving a perfect year.

All these thoughts only put more pressure on him, pressure that he had to keep hidden in order to maintain that perfect facade that the family wanted to show to everyone. It was heavy for a kid, but he didn’t really question it that much.

Many of his family’s friends were already there, and while the adults chatted among them Damian limited his interactions to some simple greetings to their kids: he hated small talk, and wasn’t definitely in the mood to discuss some more serious topics. He just wanted to go on the train and finally feel some sort of freedom for once.

After a while, all the Hills that had to go to Hogwarts were ready to enter the train. He was determined to sit as far as he could from all his cousins: not that he hated them or something, he simply wanted to enjoy a family-free ride and have some peace. He waved his parents goodbye after promising to write them letters every week and stepped on the train. He quickly went through the compartments distancing himself exactly as planned, and entered a random one thinking it was empty. “Pff... Some peace, at last.” he commented loudly.

He turned to take a seat, and noticed another boy around his age already sitting. Damn, many goodbyes to the peaceful ride he wanted. He usually liked the company of other people, but that day the pressure of his family and the chaos of the morning really rubbed him the wrong way, and put him in a quite grumpy mood. He sighed, and took the seat opposite to the other boy. “I thought it was empty.” he briefly said, and took from his leather bag some papers containing some few preparatory notes for his first classes, despite all he really couldn’t take a single break from studying. He intended to spend the time exactly like that: reading in peace and occasionally having some chat if he really had to.

“Be Careful Who You Sit Next To” - 1^st September 2023 - 11 AM - Interacting with @Rory Hara - Outfit: school robes

Damian wasn’t particularly in the mood for talking when he entered the compartment: he just wanted to have a nice and quiet trip in which he could have revised something or maybe even sleep a little bit. He barely looked at the boy after the first interaction, he only gave small glances here and there in between the paragraphs of his notes. Damian felt almost sorry for him, in other times they might have been friends, but that day he was getting the unfortunate experience of Damian’s bad mood.

He couldn’t help but to notice the incredible difference in both the looks and the behaviours of the two: like almost all students, the boy looked extremely intrigued to start his journey to Hogwarts, and even if Damian was happy to leave and experience a whole year on his own, the pressure of having to be at the top from day one was massive, way too massive to think about something else. Besides, with all the tales from his parents, his elder relatives and all his cousins that were already studying there he felt like he already knew what to expect.

In some sense, he almost envied him. It must have been good to experience Hogwarts with the eyes of amazement, without pressures and with the sole purpose of learning and meeting new friends. Damian was so far from that life, he couldn’t imagine himself like that, without the need of outstand everyone.

His train of thoughts was interrupted quite violently by the voice and the face of the boy that swiftly leaned closer to him and made him move the notes away on the seat. And what a good thought it was to move away the notes, since the cup of tea that the boy - Rory, apparently - had in his hands obeyed the laws of physics and the liquid splashed all over his clothes.

Damian’s jaw opened without any sound for a good handful of seconds. He was still processing what had happened, unable to talk at first. “What is your problem?!” he shouted over Rory’s attempt to apologise. Damian didn’t even hear what he was saying, the bomb had just exploded; his bad mood, the pressure and the stress he was experiencing just needed a spark to detonate, and that tea splashed was exactly the spark they needed.

“How can you think drinking a damn cup of tea on a moving train is a good idea?!” he continued raising his volume of voice at each word. He also stood up and moved his papers as far as possible. “And don’t you know what happens when you tilt a cup?” he was ragious at that point, and each action of Rory was only contributing to his flaming emotions. It wasn’t entirely Rory’s fault, but surely Damian was way too angry to understand that, it was almost like he was held captive by his burning rage.

“Stop- just stop!” he said and grabbed Rory’s hand to distance it from his wet robes. The trip had just started so he had plenty of time to change himself, but the boy was only spreading the tea instead of wiping it off; Damian had to stop him immediately. “I don’t need money, I can buy ten of these.” His tone was sharp and dry, and even if his intention wasn’t to brag about his wealth since he never cared about it, his words could easily be mistaken for that.

Moreover, his hair was starting to change colour due to the intense rage he was feeling: from his usual dark brown it was becoming pitch black on the roots and slightly ginger on the tips. Damian of course didn’t notice, both because he didn’t have a mirror and he had other thoughts in mind, but probably from the outside the change was clearly visible.

“Be Careful Who You Sit Next To” - 1^st September 2023 - 11 AM - Interacting with @Rory Hara - Outfit: school robes

At that point Damian was definitely discharging his stress over Rory: the argument could have easily died there, with an apology and a quick change of clothes, and also a small laugh perhaps. But sadly once in full rage it was very difficult, if not impossible, to stop him in a nice way. His prideful personality wasn’t helping either since even if he realised he was definitely overreacting and projecting his own problems on poor Rory he wouldn’t have apologised.

Damian didn’t stop for a second to think how the other kid could be possibly feeling at his awful demonstration of burning rage, he wasn’t even thinking much to be honest. All that was coming out of his mouth wasn’t meticulously calculated like his usual, there were no filters whatsoever and he would have probably forgotten most of the things he was saying in a few hours. It wasn’t cool at all, he knew how unpleasant he could become when really angry, but there was no way to control himself once the rage was above a certain level.

“Yeah, I noticed you weren’t thinking.” he replied almost immediately after Rory’s attempt at explaining what had happened in his point of view, and after grabbing the hand and pulling away he started trying to clean himself. He rapidly went in the leather bag and looked for a napkin or something similar; his movements were sharp and concise, and somehow managed to find a napkin without touching anything else, especially his notes that were still lying on the seat.

He tried his best to dry and clean his robes but it was clear he would have needed a change anyways; and even if it wasn’t noticeable, he wouldn’t cross Hogwarts with a tea stain on his new robes in a million years. Luckily for him, all his spare clothes were easily reachable without having to spread open all his luggage, so it was something he could have done in a secondary moment.

After all that rage and the poison he had spit, he was finally about to calm a little bit; not much, but just that tiny bit that would have prevented his mouth from going uncensored like before. He had found a moment to take a breath and maybe gain back some consciousness when he noticed Rory’s eyes glued to something up his face... his hair, perhaps? He had his thoughts confirmed when the boy talked again.

“Huh? What’s with my hair now?” he asked and turned to the train window to catch a glimpse of his reflection, and finally noticed the colour of the hair. “This too now?!” he shouted again and grabbed the tips of his hair to better look at the colour. Normally, he liked his random morphings, as they were cool and unexpected, but that time was really bad timing to morph. He couldn’t control himself and his magic well when in intense emotional states like that one, so it was pretty common for him to have different hair or eye colours when particularly angry.

He had to return to his natural colour as soon as possible, he didn’t want to be seen by all Hogwarts at the Sorting Ceremony with his hair half black and half ginger. The problem was that he wasn’t skilled enough to do it without calming down first; and right now he was getting even more upset than before. “God, why me? Ugh.” he commented and started circling around to try dispersing the stress he was experiencing. “This is all your fault!” he even said at some point, obviously to Rory. He didn’t really want to start arguing again, but once again his mouth was quicker than his filter.

“Be Careful Who You Sit Next To” - 1^st September 2023 - 11 AM - Interacting with @Rory Hara - Outfit: school robes

No matter how hard he tried and concentrated, he couldn’t turn his hair back: it was true that he still had much training to do, but outbursts of rage like that one were pretty common in Damian’s life, usually lasted for short periods of time and went away together with his bizarre morphings. That time, though, the more he tried to calm down and make his hair brown again, the more he seemed to be upset.

Something about that whole conversation was just wrong, from the beginning to that very exact moment: almost like Rory was doing every single thing that Damian hated most. He started thinking he was doing everything on purpose and only played the part of the poor guy who couldn’t believe what was happening. Almost plausible, but to his knowledge nobody hated him that much to put up such a play.

Damian kept looking at the image on the window of himself, continuously checking if the colour of the hair was at least changing one bit, but still no luck: he was still half black and half ginger. He really didn’t want to be seen by all Hogwarts like that, he couldn’t let his image be damaged by a ridiculous hair colour, and of course he didn’t want his cousins and his friends to see him so that they could report it to the family.

Of course, the more he worried about it, the worse his mood was getting. He had isolated himself from the compartment, ignoring for the moment Rory who was probably much more confused now that he wasn’t shouting anymore. If there was a moment of silence, someone could almost have heard Damian’s voice mumbling to himself something.

He heard his name called, Rory’s voice had successfully pulled him out of that spiral of thoughts that wasn’t going in a healthy direction; Damian’s head turned to his direction and he stopped his motion before touching him. “What now?” he replied with a harsh tone, ignoring for the moment the question of how he could know his name, simply because he didn’t care much. “I need to fix that immediately! Can’t you see how horrendous my hair looks?” he asked and raised his voice again, this time without even realising. He also bowed slightly in order to give Rory a better look of his head and pointed at the hair, more specifically at the ginger tips.

Maybe he could have tricked someone with the black, but those ginger tips were difficult to hide: he didn’t have time to lose, and almost considered the option of taking all his stuff and going to another compartment, careless if someone could have seen him in the moving.

For once, he actually listened to what Rory was saying to him, and even if he was ready to clap back his tone was ready to come out a bit dampened, a good sign that he was trying really hard to control himself in order to regain his composure. And then, it happened a second time.

The touch of Rory’s hand made him sharply step back, and luckily for him Damian had reached the bottom of his bad mood. “What are you doing? Don’t touch me!” he roared and pushed away the hand. The words Rory had said were right, and he knew that, the only problem was that Damian couldn’t drop the aggressive attitude for some reason. And that was also the main cause of his ginger hair that shined on top of his head, without fully calming down and understanding how badly he was behaving there was no way to get back his brown.

“Be Careful Who You Sit Next To” - 1^st September 2023 - 11 AM - Interacting with @Rory Hara - Outfit: school robes

Maybe the solution was really to just make Damian shut up or send him somewhere else, because he had reached a point where literally anything would have upset him as a way to discharge all his negative feelings that he had bottled up for too long. Poor Rory just had the unfortunate opportunity to witness those flaming emotions all together in a way that probably no one else had seen them before.

His outrages usually lasted much less time, but maybe another reason why this time it was different was also the closed space that prevented fresh air from entering the small room, as the window was still closed.

One solution could have been to just make Damian go in the corridor and have a little walk, maybe go to the bathroom and stay silent for some minutes, but those were all options that could have been done by a third person, and there were no other people besides him and Rory.

The argument raging on wasn’t going to die easily, especially after Damian had once again rudely rejected the boy’s attempt to help him. At that point he was very clear in the message he was sending to Rory: he wanted nothing to do with him. Nothing personal, really, he just was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and unfortunately Damian was too prideful to admit that.

He was still looking at his hair mumbling something when Rory’s voice changed drastically: it seemed like he was finally done with Damian being a complete jerk. “Finally.” he thought “At least he is dropping the ‘nice guy’ facade”. Again, it wasn’t probably a rational thought, since he didn’t even know Rory and he was really doing his best to show his worst.

“Is that so? Am I that awful? Or maybe it’s you that can’t get a simple message like ‘mind your own business’?” he replied sharply and with a renewed venomous tone. “You kept worsening the situation over and over! And thank the odds you didn’t ruin my paper.” he continued, pointing this time to his leather bag and the sheets of paper still left there.

A small laugh exited his mouth when Rory stated the last phrase. “Ha! Pity? They must only thank the Sorting Hat that put me in their house, since I’ll bring it to the top." The prideful tone was rapidly shifting in pure arrogance, something Damian wasn’t really that much, but it could totally look like a trait he had in his personality when he was losing touch with reality.

“What about you, huh? I bet your house will be happy to have a clumsy crybaby like you.” his tone was clearly very sarcastic, a tone specifically targeted to Rory in order to mock him for whatever reason. He had never been the type of person to bully others, he was simply trying to empty his mind and push all the negativity he had inside on his words. The only hope was to wait until he got tired of it and stopped, or the train to arrive.