It was the end of the day. The end of class, the end of study break, but just not quite the end of the week. There was still one more day to go. But for now, Bridget was done. Or she wanted to be done. Instead she was caught up in that crowded herd known as the dinner rush. And she was going the opposite direction. Fan-freaking-tastic.

The fifth year braced herself, squared out her shoulder and stood to the full extent of her height (which got a few extra inches thanks to her pulled up dreads). Oh how she hated this time of day. She just wanted to get back to her common room, change out of her uniform and have an hour of quiet to herself away from all her obnoxious classmates.

Bridget struck out in the crowd, trying to weave her way through. A nice, kind, considerate girl would have daintily sidestepped and said her proper 'excuse me's' and 'thank you's'.  Bridget was not a nice, kind, considerate girl. She hardly cared if people that didn't get out of her way got bowled over. She was getting to the common room and everyone else could (literally) shove off.

"Out. Of. The. Way," Bridget finally snapped, ramming her shoulder into some dumbass student directly in her path.

See, his is why she hated people and lived in the woods. She didn't have to deal with this shit.

That dumbass student was one Erin Harper, renowned for his distinct lack of patience and a temper so hot and quick to flare it was comparable to a book of matches ... a gasoline-soaked book of matches about to be thrown into the fireplace. He had been taking it easy lately, drawing in instead of lashing out with unhappiness, stress, social allergies, or whatever it was that drove him. He'd been quieter in classes, near invisible in the halls, hadn't crossed the library threshold in weeks or so much as slammed another student against the wall, no matter how annoying he might find the mass of them (locking Sellaphix into the girl's bathroom didn't count. The twat deserved it several times over). He'd been polite to his professors, tolerable to his housemates, and only a minor nuisance to the rest of the school. Even the fact that he was apparently catnip to the type of people who valued looks over his horribly sulky attitude, even the fact that some of those people were boys, hadn't riled him up too much. He'd simply laid low, and taken to skulking around dark corners of the castle on his own, on the lookout for androgynous Asian males or Razzy, who was almost as bad.

But maybe it was just that no one had provoked him lately, because when Bridget slammed her shoulder into his he recovered quickly enough, snapping back around to snarl, "Watch it, Hufflepuff."

uniform

Bridget's lip curled when the dumbass snapped back. She recognized him-vaguely. He was another fifth year, but she didn't go out of her way to get to know her dormmates, much less someone in another house. Harper or something was he? Not like it mattered. He was in her way and raised his voice at her. That was all she needed to know.

"You freaking watch it," Bridget snapped back. "Or do you enjoy just standing around like a useless lump? Get out of my way so we can all go on with our lives, got it?"

Five years, five minutes. It really didn't matter how long Bridget had known of someone's existence. Chances were they'd get treated just the same. With typical disdain and scorn. They could be the loveliest people in the world wanting nothing but friends, hugs and love. She'd give them the same treatment as the class bully (a role she herself had been known to fill sometimes). No, it didn't matter on age, race, gender, looks or attitude. Bridget Nilson would have the same first impression and the same initial treatment: she didn't like them and she'd let them know on no uncertain terms.

"It's called common sense," he hurled back. "If everyone in the hallway is going one way, you don't push your way through like an stupid git and expect them all to move." A sneer. "But I guess you don't have any."

Feisty thing, wasn't she? Now that he'd had more than a split second to look at her, Erin recognized those dreads. Nilson was supposedly as much of an antisocial terror as he and, thinking back, he had vague memories of her skulking in the back of the room each class. Not that he who or what she was, beyond the fact that she might be good for a little bit of sport.  Erin had plenty of knowledge of how to play an arse - he didn't even have to try - and she was already riled up. More fun than dinner, anyways.

"Better watch your words, Nilson. No one'll want you with a snappy mouth like that." He grinned at her. It was not a nice expression.

Common sense? Was this git seriously lecturing her about common sense? Most of the student body didn't have a lick of common sense. Most wizards, didn't either. Period. Oh yes, I'll pluck a few scales from a dragon, see what happens when I arbitrarily throw things in a cauldron and what does this do when I poke it with my wand? This was the mentality she expected from most of the wizarding world.

But at the moment she was less concered with the wizarding world than she was about a blonde Slytherin prat that called her a stupid git.

"You can't understand what happens when the word 'it' is preceded by 'move' and you tell me I'm stupid?" Bridget shot back. All the Slytherin boy had to do was glare appropriately and move on with his little life, but nooo, he had to be one of the ones that shoved back. It made him only stupid, instead of stupid and pathetic, but she was wishing she had gotten one of the pathetic ones that ran of with a good glare. Like that one first year that seemed convinced she was a sea monster or something.

Bridget couldn't really glare anymore than she already was, so she just held that expression when the twat continued.

"Do I really look like I give a damn if someone 'wants' me?" Bridget asked. "Or is your own personal life so pathetic you start moaning about your own dateless existence weeks before Valentine's day?"

Dammit, she was not in the mood for this (even more so than usual). If the bloke kept this up she was going to punch him in the nose and call it a day. Amazing how a bonk to the nose could effect what came out of the mouth.

"Oh, I understood," Erin said lowly, still smiling a little - but it was an interesting expression, more quietly intent that anything else. "I understood fine the first time. But I wasn't terribly inclined to take anything seriously a hag-haired Hufflepuff was telling me, now was I? Still not, come to think of it."

Yes... what a mouth. It would've been more annoying had Erin been half as irritated as Bridget was; instead he threw back his head and laughed, quick and snappy, so that his eyes weren't off her long. "You're pureblood, aren't you? Your parents aren't going to sell you off?" (Erin was not generally a pureblood prick, only when he thought it could help; and, well, he certainly had a good example to play off, didn't he? All he had to do was draw from his very own arsehole of a brother.)  "Lucky girl, nevermind, you can be as nasty as you want then. At long as you're not impeding my dinner."

He paused then, cocking his head to the side as if in sudden thought. "Oh - wait - you weren't lying to me, were you? 'Cos, well, I can't think of many girls who wouldn't care. Although - " He cast a long look at her hair, the deliberate disdain in his voice tainted by quiet delight. "Maybe you really don't."

Bridget's kholed-over eyes narrowed into slits at the hag-hair comment. It didn't matter if it was true. She disliked being associated with her guardian, even unintentionally with a hair insult. She liked her dreads, dammit. She didn't want to want to change them because they gave her some sort of weird connection with Auntie Calli.

"Keep talking, Harper. You're just making me want to shut you up via broken jaw all the more."

Sell her off? That would require money, power and respect that her darling daddy and see-you-later-maybe mother just didn't have. Sometimes it made her want to run off with a mudblood. Not for real, just enough of a show to get her properly disowned and legally unaffiliated. 

She was sick of this little shit, who seemed like he was just going to stick around and hurl insults her way. That's it. When words didn't work, time to get physical.

"Don't care enough that I am completely fine hurting my standing by roughing up another pureblood," Bridget said with a grimace of a smile.

She moved toward Erin with the intent of grabbing him by the shirt color, shoving and holding him (none to gently) against that nice convenient stone wall. Most purebloods (not all, but a lot) were all bark and no bite. If Erin was one of them, not only would her shove be successful, but this day might not turn out so bad after all.

"Keep talking, Harper. You're just making me want to shut you up via broken jaw all the more."

She earned herself a sneer at that. Yes, she looked plenty bad, but Erin doubted she had the nerve to live up to her words. After all, tough or no, she was a girl - and girls were generally small than him and less prone to violence. "Try it," he suggested, without the slightest doubt that she wouldn't.
 
In his mind, she was the one who wouldn't shut up and move on. Sure, he was having fun yanking her around - but she was still standing there, wasn't she? If she was tired of his mouth, then she could leave instead of just sitting pretty hurling insults and snarls back at him. It was so rudimentary even Erin could grasp it. Nelson was more stubborn than expected.
 
Erin started to scoff at the idea of a "pureblood standing," remembered he was playing pureblood prat, and kept smirking instead. Until she made for him, however, at which point he forced himself to stay in place (with some effort, because there are certain instincts that have to be overruled when it comes to willingly letting someone grab you). He wanted to see where she'd go with this, even as she pushed him into the wall - oh, he gave a token effort to resist, pressing his feet against the ground and all that, but it was more to test her strength than anything else. She had him by the shirt collar, thoguh Erin didn't care at all for the fate of the flimsy fabric; he just let himself be pushed up against the wall and grinned a toothy grin at her angry face.
 
"Now that you've got me, what're you gonna do?" he wanted to know, managing to sound both extremely unimpressed by her show of strength and also rather suggestive. It was a gift. A natural one.
 

Seriously, Bridget thought that there must be some sort of rich pureblood etiquette school where small children learned how to scoff and sneer.  She had yet to meet someone with as much money as wizard blood that didn't seem to have that particular skill down to a "T." God, it was frigging obnoxious.

At least, that hoity-toity attitude could rarely hold up against actual physical persuasiveness. Harper didn't put up much of fight. Either he thought his sneers could save him, or he just really was that pathetic. Amazing how much of a inborn shield the wealthy purebloods thought they had.

Oooh, and now he was challenging her? What exactly was she going to do? Oh wrong move, Harper. Well, it wasn't like he could say she didn't warn him. She'd given him plenty of opportunities to move on with his life.  He hadn't taken it.

Bridget tilted her head and smirked up at Harper. Then her arm moved to punch him in the stomach.

"That's a warning," she hissed. "Wanna see what I do when I'm really pissed off?"

Erin was calm, curious, completely unfazed - certainly she had him by the collar and against the wall, but the stomach shot was not one he was actually expecting her to take.

The breath whumped out of him, and he doubled automatically, one arm clutched tight against his stomach. The pain wasn't much, for Erin was used to being hit and to hitting, but it was so surprising. That more than anything tore the grunt from him and rounded his eyes.

He straightened faster than anyone could have expected, looking happier than anyone who'd just been punched in the stomach had the right to look. After all, now Bridget had started it. He disregarded her comment about her blow being just a warning. No one in their right mind would expect Erin Harper to stop for a warning.

He didn't even speak - no more taunts - just surged through the scant inches into Bridget's personal space with a mighty shove to throw her off balance and then followed it immediately with a right hook to the jaw. The bound in his step as he pursued her was was positively cheerful.