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.

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[backward.livejournal.com]

Standing up on a moving train might not seem like the best of ideas, small though said train may be, but Effy thinks it might just be the best one she's had all night. Granted, there are only so many ways one's legs can bend, and there comes a point when sitting in such a tiny cart just becomes impractical, but she's a small enough girl that standing isn't necessary. She does it because she can, however, arms extended out on either side and her head tilted back as the cold wind blows against her ears and through her air.

It is, she decides, the most fucking fantastic Effy has felt in a long, long while.

Whether her eyes are tearing up from the wind or the sheer beauty of it all, she can't quite say, but she finds herself transfixed by the night's sky above, remiss that she hasn't ever stopped to appreciate it. It's simply gorgeous.

[cleverness]

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."