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 brought along with her.

What Chris really needed, he'd decided, was some proper food. Like, food you could only get up at the compound. So, a group of them had decided to take the small train-- the one that had showed up with the snow had-- up to the compound kitchen. Only, that had been ages ago now and Chris wasn't entirely sure that they hadn't passed the compound already.

Fuck it. None of it really mattered, anyway. The night was still young.

Comments

[cleverness]

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.livejournal.com]

"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.

[cleverness]

"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."