Dated to 12/12, the wee hours of the morning

[noonelaughed]

By the time the party started dying down, and people had either decided they were going to stay where they were and sleep on Chris's floor or stumble back to their own home or to someone else's, Chris was fucking well off. He wasn't sure just how much he'd had to drink, and he'd definitely had at least two of those brilliant brownies that Effy'd

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[honestlyrubbish]

If there was anything Hermione could have picked from all of her experiences at Hogwarts as symbolic of all that the place meant to her, trains wouldn't have been it. That evening, though, she found herself sitting on the very last car of the small train which traveled and wove through the island, looking backwards, her hair carried off by the wind and looking more like the tangle she was once known for in Hogwarts, before she'd started to care about appearances, considering it a part of her identity that was important too, if not quite as much as the time she liked to pour into her texts and studies. Drawn first to the train as more of a lark than anything else, as soon as she'd sat down on it, she'd thought about the last time she rode a train over half a year ago, the fact that it had been so clear in her mind that it could be the last time she ever traveled on that path to and from Hogwarts. The place where everything had changed, really.

Maybe it was more important to her than she'd originally thought.

After the effects of the first brownie had subsided, Hermione had adamantly refused to take another, something about the swell of happiness only leaving her stomach feeling significantly lower than it had been before. By the time she sat on that train, all that remained was the slight buzz of alcohol, a concession Hermione had allowed herself mostly to be social. She sat down on the caboose, watching Harry walk on over to another girl standing far ahead, and smiling a bit for it, before turning to watch the retreating tracks.

Some time later, she laid down on the train, wincing at the slight discomfort of it, before staring up in wonder at the sky above, at the numerous stars that shone so clearly, marred only by the occasional ring of steam emitted by the train. One hand reaching up to feel the crisp winter air blow past, she sung to herself, under her breath.

"Weasley can save anything, he never leaves a single ring. That's why Gryffindors all sing: Weasley is our King."

[of_badfaith]

"No, no... Those aren't the words," he murmured, wedging himself into whatever space in the tiny train care not already occupied by one curly-haired Gryffindor. Luna was... somewhere nearby, which made him inexplicably happy. Right then, he wanted to keep her close to him forever and ever.

He wanted a lot of things just then, including butterbeer and pumpkin pasties, but none of those explained his need to climb in next to this girl, whom he remembered had once been his sworn enemy.

"I wrote them. I would know."

[honestlyrubbish]

In spite of the soft, steady thud against Hermione's temples, the beer that still had her feeling warm and blanketed in spite of being only a shadow of what butterbeer had once been capable of, she turned to the side to look at Draco with an almost alarming amount of clarity. Perhaps she'd had enough time to acclimate herself to his presence, between the fact that he'd been one to find her on the beach and the various times she'd bumped into him at the party, one too small and confined to miss anyone familiar for the duration. As pathetic as it possibly made Draco out to be, even Hermione noted that she could recall very few times, if any, when the young man had been honestly happy. Not vindicated, not malicious, but content with the way things were, and that fact had her sighing as her temple dropped into her palm, eyes fixed on the blond and lips only pressing lightly with disapproval.

"You wrote the words, but you got them all wrong," Hermione replied slowly, with an exhale sharp enough as to almost be derisive. "So we rewrote it. You'd do well to learn the new lyrics, unless you'd prefer to continue spouting lies."

[of_badfaith]

"They weren't lies until he somehow managed to pull a modicum of skill out of his arse at the last minute. How, I suppose we'll never know," he said, without the sting of his usual vitriol.

He was quiet for a moment, his hair whipping loose about his flushed face and stringy from sweat, then finally, he said, "It's strange, having the two of you here. 's like... one life bleeding into another."

Unfortunately for him, he'd had more than one brownie.

[honestlyrubbish]

"He's always had the skill, he just needed to practice," Hermione insisted, voice growing slightly short with impatience, although why she couldn't be sure. Certainly, she hadn't been one of the people who expected Ron to amount to so much on the Quidditch pitch, even if she'd ended up being surely one of his greatest followers, just as she had been Harry's. There was simply something about Malfoy saying something to that effect, when he had the help of his father, of a far superior broom, that rankled her nerves as much as Draco ever did. "He worked... hard to make his way onto that team, and deserved it. Anyone can see that."

But she too fell silent along with Draco, calming down with the silence which stretched between the two of them, nose only wrinkling slightly when his hair whipped in her direction, a few flecks of perspiration touching her cheek, which she rubbed away with the back of her hand. (Or maybe it was just her imagination. It was still strange being in such close proximity to him at all.)

"It's all one life, you know," she told him quietly after she considered his words. "You can try and run or hide from your past, but your life is one continuous stretch. It won't be strange to have us around for long."