Lover of the Light

From a Different Angle

Lover of the Light

Chapter Nineteen: From a Different Angle

Everything he's ever loved has always been wrong in the eyes of his father.

When he was five, he loved a boy named Lorenzo. He stumbled upon him a fateful day when it rained and he snuck out of the illustrious mansion to roam the gardens while twelve year-old Stefano took business lessons from the Zabini patriarch. Mister Zabini had insisted that he joined the teachings of the day, but Mrs. Zabini had managed to have her youngest child set free for the first time in his lifetime. Finally getting to be a kid, he explored the gardens, seeing it with new eyes, and loved the liberty in the air to run wild, laugh, and imagine. Deon created a wonderland, a child's kingdom, and he wanted to share it. That was enough for him to set off to the cages where the guard dogs were kept.

Lorenzo was, at the time, an eight year-old boy; tall, lanky, and with hair the color and texture of a haystack. He'd been serving the dogs water and food when Deon stumbled upon him. Being five, Deon's curious mind had been frazzled to find an unknown boy in his property and handling the aggressive dogs with such care and respect that they returned to him. After loads of rambled questions, Deon learned that Lorenzo was the cook's son and he worked for the Zabinis while he was not at school. Happy to know that Stefano and him weren't the only children in the massive home, Deon clung on to Lorenzo and befriended him.

For almost two years Deon took his etiquette lessons, endured tutoring sessions and his father's speeches of superiority and family values, and then he hurried off to the gardens to play with Lorenzo. He'd been so captivated by the older boy: Lorenzo knew how to tame the dogs, how to build things, how to play Quidditch, where the sweets were hidden in the kitchen, how to climb the towers of the mansion to overlook the river, and how deep into the surrounding forest they could find centaurs. Lorenzo wasn't just his best friend and his role model, he was his brother, too.

For almost two years, Lorenzo was the only true friend Deon had—until Stefano found out. Deon was meant to be in his room, reading a massive history textbook for that week's lesson, and when Stefano was ordered to fetch his brother for dinner, he found the room empty. Stefano, being the oldest, felt like he was meant to always achieve his tasks perfectly and keep order. After his discovery, he marched right back to his father and informed him of Deon's secret friendship.

Deon assumed that the beating he received that night was for not studying. Of course, he'd been corrected the following day when he found that the cook, la signora Sofia, had been sacked along with her son Lorenzo from the Zabini mansion before the sun came out that morning. When he demanded for an answer, tears in his eyes, Mister Zabini simply declared that a boy with Deon's stature did not befriend the help. He had the family's honor to withhold and it was time for Deon to make it proud.

The summer he turned thirteen, Deon was allowed to accompany Stefano to Rome for a day of leisure and freedom. Stefano had wandered into a pub that belonged to the university that he attended; giving his younger brother a handful of money and telling him to piss off and not return for three hours. Glad to be free of his twenty year-old brother and his lack of personality, Deon took to explore Roma and see a beauty to Italy that he'd never been allowed to see from inside the walls of his boarding school, his room, or his father's company. It was the first time he ever really heard music. He was fascinated by the intense rhythm the group created, filling his eardrums and making him feel liberated. After that, he scouted the grand city for a music shop and bought himself a guitar with Stefano's money.

By the time he was fourteen, he was arrogant enough to think himself an excellent guitar player. In boarding school he was hardly seen without the instrument; always playing away in his dormitory, out in the field, in the library with a surrounding Silencing Charm, before class, and the days he set out to woo girls. One of his many admirers was the school's music teacher. One day, without Deon's consent, she owled the Zabini patriarch to suggest that Deon was better off in a proper music school where he could expand his talents. La professoressa Marano never received a reply. That year's Christmas holiday, however, Deon knew exactly what his father thought about his talent when he watched him use his prized guitar as a log in the fireplace of his office. Music was never the same after that.