Desmond's eyebrows raised quietly as the djinn mentioned that the curse of wishes was based solely on the mindset of the djinn involved with it. It brought about a somewhat terrifying possibility. As powerful as Desmond himself was, he was not powerful enough that he could simply destroy an entire species if he wished to. A djinn, on the other hand, might. The fact that their wishes backfired instilled something of a balance. You couldn't wish to destroy all the vampires in the world, because while you might get it, something equally as bad might happen as well. "That is... a rather interesting revelation. And a terrible burden, I would imagine. For it is often somewhat hard enough to be mindful of the consequences of ones actions when it involves just yourself, and not the power to reshape the universe."
Desmond might have been more worried about it if he thought that he had some way of controlling it. Even if he was worried about Tobias' power, he knew there were several other evil djinn out there, who he could serve to balance out. And, potentially, might serve to balance him out, if he tried to give a human exactly what it was that they wanted. Though he kept that thought to himself. Usually, thinking of oneself as a force of balance usually was depressing unless one happened to be a monk, or incredibly at peace with the nature of the world as a whole.
"I have the benefit of watching others deal with their parents. Not of having parents myself." he said simply. That, combined with what else he'd said about Dhampirs would make logical sense, but if Tobias couldn't take the hint on that front he was likely to get to know more about Desmond's past than he ever wanted to. Still, assuming that he took a hint, Desmond was willing to leave it at that. He had no particular desire to dump on a stranger the fact that he was more like a lab rat than he was a real person. That regardless of whatever strife or disagreements that Tobias may or may not have had with his parents, at least he HAD parents, he knew what it was like to know where he came from, to have that mean... something.
"It is my first year here as well." He said, not really betraying that once he had attended Oxford. But that was a far different time and place than the one that he currently lived in. While philosophy, he reasoned, was likely the same, all of the sciences had appeared to have changed over the years, and there were some classes that were offered here that were not offered anywhere else. "I think I have a class on royalty, one on how magic and technologies work together, a potions class, a diversity class... and a class on Dracula... as well as a fencing class." he said, smiling a little broader at those. For one, he knew Dracula... but he did not know Vlad the impaler. And he had to admit that he was increasingly curious about whether or not the two were related. As for fencing, well, everyone needed a course they could breeze through in their sleep.