Outfit & car.

"Will that be all for you, ma'am?"

"Um. Could I get thirteen pounds on station three, please?"

The petrol station was empty except for Murphy and the cashier. When she had arrived, there had been a few others, but they left after paying for gas. Murphy had taken her time to pick out a bag of kettle chips and a cool, artificially flavored, strawberry soda. She was surprised her crappy car had made it so far before screaming at her to get gas. Luckily, she had plenty of money stashed around her room to last her about a week in London. That was all she really needed. Murphy would be sleeping in her car, she had decided, so her money would be spent on food. She had only brought two other sets of clothes. She planned on wearing them sparingly, as she couldn't really imagine a scenario where she'd need another set of clothes. Murphy had decided to not think of anyone else besides herself, though she did plan on giving her father a ring at some point. She imagined he'd only answer to ask her where the car went.

She thanked the cashier after paying and trotted out to her car to fill her tank. The thing was old, but held enough gas to get her by. London was only a six hour drive, so she wasn't all too worried about gas. She'd be walking, mostly, though she had been taking a more long, scenic route than the usual quick and easy one. Murphy liked her old car, despite the fact that he father didn't exactly approve of her driving it. Only because she was young, she supposed. Murphy wondered what would happen if a policeman questioned her, sleeping in her car in an empty lot. She was only sixteen. She wondered if she could stay with a friend, for the time being. She remembered Aiden lived in London. She knew he out of all people would let her stay. That is, if it were up to him. There was no saying what his parents would think of her coming in, raggedy and unappealing and a mudblood. Was Aiden a pureblood? That was something they had never gotten into.

And if he couldn't let her stay, she knew a few people around town that she wasn't close with, but was chummy with. She couldn't think of them at the time, but she was sure to run into them at some point. Columbine from Puddifoot's lived in London, though Murphy was reluctant to ask to stay with her. They talked a lot whenever Murphy visited to drink tea, mostly on the slow days, but she knew Cole was more off than Murphy would ever be.

Murphy had woken up in the middle of the night, strangling herself with her comforter. She had a disgusting feeling in her stomach. She had a dream where she had died and after death she had to start her life over again, starting in her third year of muggle school. Her mother was alive. And her mother had that hateful look on her face. And she wasn't magic. She had to go to muggle school. And she was stuck in Glasgow. She couldn't leave. It was horrifying. Murphy had the urge to leave when she woke up. Just for a little while. She didn't want to be stuck in Glasgow. She was a typical teenager in the sense that she wanted to leave as she got older. The dream only made her feel stronger about it. She wasn't afraid of being stuck, per se. She was never really afraid of anything. Though the dream had rattled her up quite a lot, she just had the epiphany of leaving.

And so she had gotten a few things together and left, in the dead of night. No note, no second thoughts, no goodbyes. She would ring her father up eventually, but she doubted he really cared. He could walk to work, he didn't need his car. He only drove because he was afraid his back would hurt too much. It never did. But Murphy understood his worries. But, she wasn't concerned about them as much as she should have been. She had only gotten to Durham county before she made a gas stop.

She sipped her soda and placed the petrol nozzle into position. She loved the smell of gasoline, though she would never admit that to anyone. She breathed slowly and placed her can on top of the flat roof. Murphy was enjoying her lonesome adventure. It was getting closer to noon, but still early. She would have been closer to London if it weren't for her occasional stops to take pictures or if she didn't take the longer route. After filling up her tank, she set the nozzle back in place and circled her car to get in. She turned her car on, watching the little hand creep up the gauge, closer to 'F' but not quite enough gas to be touching it. She enjoyed cars, though she hardly knew anything about them. She decided to read up on them a bit before school started again. She lurched forward, ready to continue her drive, when she heard something thunk against her back window. She glanced in her rear view mirror, seeing her whole back window covered in red liquid.

Her soda.

Murphy screeched with anger and backed up, back into station number three. She kicked her door open and stomped back around to where she had been standing before. "Bloody fuck," she said, a bit too loudly and a bit too nonchalantly. She took out a window whipper from the side of the pumps and began to clean up the mess she accidentally made. She was more upset about losing her drink than she was with the mess. But Murphy's frustration died down quickly. It always did.

Huck shoved his way through the little door of the petrol station, shouting a goodbye to the cashier who he knew very well. He had gotten himself a banana- he had no prejudice against buying fruit from a dirty little petrol station- and taken a very gratifying bite of it. The past few days had been a joyous (and at times, yes, harrowing) blur, and returning to his nice little house with his nice little family sounded pretty damn good right about then.

He was dressed very casually and was making no attempt to cover up the fact that he was very hot and uncomfortable- he had chosen that day, which was particularly blistering hot, to wear a white wifebeater, a pair of cargo shorts, and a pair of flip-flops. His hair was a tousled mess atop his head and he had an even layer of blonde stubble sprayed across his jaw. The summer thus far had been good to the boy, giving him a bronze glow that made him look like a lifeguard (or so he told himself every morning in the mirror.)

The more pressing matter than the banana was the fact that the drive down to see Gracie had taken his tank down past the E line, making him feel as though he had coasted into the station on fumes. It only took him about ten pounds to fill the tank, but as it was such a small tank it didn't take long before it'd be right back down to empty.

He was leaning against his car eating his delicious banana when he heard a young woman cussing nearby. Nearly deep-throating the banana in his surprise, he peeked over his car to the next pump over, where a young lady was furiously cleaning her car of what he assumed was either blood or a cool beverage.

Seeing a wide-open opportunity to play the handsome white knight, Huck strode casually over to her, still clutching his half-a-banana, and leaned on her car. "That's no way to give the car a paint job- miss- OH MY GOD," he sputtered, launching himself back until he hit the pump with a 'clank' noise. "Urquhart?!

The wiper grazed across and the red liquid began to melt away. Mostly, people would had left it at that and went on with their lives. The crap was off their window, they didn't have to think about it. If it weren't for the sticky residue the drink left on Murphy's car, she would had been done within seconds. She sighed, flicking off a slimy layer and running a finger over the glass. She didn't want crap sticking to her car and getting caught in a strawberry web of stickiness. She could almost imagine peeling off a leaf or something of the sort and smelling the artificial flavoring and seeing the red goo still smudged across her window. Only Murphy would really think of this, really. Maybe a finicky mother, too. But Murphy never really met another person her own age who was concerned about sticky residues on cars. Actually... Well... She took that back... The same thing went with gum, however. If a glob of gum stuck and dried onto her shoe, she would smell it later when peeling it, and the crap that stuck to it, off. Disgusting.

And then a male voice announced its presence and began to say some rather dumb shit. Murphy wasn't really paying attention to him, merely leaning further into her car than before, until...

"Urquhart?!"

She frowned, slightly, and turned to see who had approached her. Huxley Ward wasn't a bad guy. They were friendly to say the least, and as Murphy recalled, he wasn't a bad artist, either. She gave me a casual nod and a faint, toothless smile. "Hey, Ward," she told him. She wasn't surprised he found her. It was a small world, after all. Or so she heard. She had forgotten he had lived in that area, but she wouldn't be surprised to see him either way. Obviously, he was, as he fell into the petrol pumps. She set her wiper down and gave him a rather concerned look.

"You didn't hurt the pump, did ya'? That'd be a bloody mess," she smirked again and fixed her rolled up sleeves. The joke being that she was more concerned about the pumps than the boy in front of her. Of course, Murphy had a rather strange, dark sense of humor, so this was a bit funny to her. But she placed the wiper away and ran another finger across her windshield, completely unfazed by seeing him. "Nice weather over here," she told him, carelessly, pleased with the lack of stickiness on her car. She turned to him again, faint smile still pressing against her lips. "Of course, I'm white as can be, so I can't fully enjoy the sun. But you know... Small talk,"

She paused and looked down at the banana he held in his hand, "Gross..." back to his face, "You alright? Seriously, though. Nice to see you, I suppose. Not sure, by that reaction, if you're happy to see me, but all well."

Murphy wasn't exactly known to be the most popular girl, though. Surely if she were someone else, he would have continued his charming facade. But Murphy and Hux were bros. Not girl and guy friends or girl and guy friendly acquaintances. Bros. In Murph's mind, at least. Meaning, she and Hux talked about a lot of stuff disregarding their gender, and Murphy was most likely deemed undatable by Hux and therefore treated more like another guy than anything. Hux was a bit too slow for Murphy's type, and as she never went for looks, that really mattered to her.

"Why're you looking at me like that?" she asked, tilting her head. She slid her hands down her torso and looked down, making sure her shirt was buttoned, or if it lost a button, or if she was even wearing a shirt, or if she suddenly sprouted something interesting on her person that would make him be so surprised to see her. She had decided, after a small investigation, that he was, indeed, just slow. Or perhaps it was custom for other people to be surprised to see fellow students outside of Hogwarts. She supposed that was different for her, too, but it wasn't like they were walking down her street in Glasgow or anything. She supposed she was walking on his territory then. She considered vandalizing it.

Huck hadn't realized that he had been staring at Murphy as though she were a giant spider or... Professor Storm... so he slackened his gaze a bit. "No! No. Sorry. It's not like I'm not happy to see you, like. It's just... uh..." he made vague hand motions, trying to stir his thoughts into a more recognizable soup. "What... what?"

It wasn't as though he hadn't seen friends over the summer so far- sure, he had- but it was the first time in his Hogwarts career that he'd run into a school friend in such a muggle area. His hometown, no less. The nonsensical part of him was petrified that their being seen together would somehow let the cat out of the bag about who they really were. Looking back and forth across the lot, he found it pleasantly deserted apart from the two of them. That was a relief, at least. "Well... shit, Murph, yareet?"

"The fuck ye doin' up... er... down my way?"

It was a fair enough question, seeing as she didn't even spend summers in the same country as him. ...Technically.

Huck liked Murphy well enough. Unlike most of the weirdos he couldn't be bothered to spend time with, she was cool. The social outcasts of Hogwarts tended to be whiny and dorky, a combination that wore on Huxley like an emery board. Murphy, on the other hand, was very sure of herself and didn't need to prove it to anybody. She was only weird by default. That, and she tended to share his sense of humor, even if she didn't put it on display all the time.