It was the end of the year, they were all on their way home, and Erin was wandering the halls of the train in an effort to both entertain himself and to prolong the inevitable home-bound sulk. He didn't have anyone to sit with and he was too restless to stay still at any rate, so he was popping his scruffy head into various compartments and immediately adopting a look of distant preoccupation if there wasn't anyone he wanted to talk to in that car. If anyone asked - or objected to his abrupt interruption with an annoyed "Harper!", as was more often the case -  he told them he was looking for his boyfriend. That shut them up.

It was kind of weird, wandering by the compartments and seeing all the kids who wouldn't be here next year. Most of them he only knew by face, and even then usually only if they were in his house - Erin's social circle was not terribly large. Still, it was bizarre, almost as bizarre as the fact the he was now technically a sixth year. Erin did not feel properly prepared for being an upperclassman. He was certain that responsibility and maturity and being a good role model was involved, and he was terrible at all of those things.

He ducked into another car and found the Fayette twins amongst a bunch of other 7th years he didn't care much about. Well, all right, they counted as an interesting find. A three-second stare was enough to confirm which was which. He nodded respectfully to Dion, then:

"Oi, Fayette," Erin said, brightening. "I've been looking for you." Then he lunged forward and clipped Dax neatly on the jaw, scampering back out of the compartment before the other boy had time to react and grab him. He trailed laughter behind him along with a gleeful, "Happy graduation!"

So much for melancholy!

In reality - even as he rose from his seat, holding his jaw - Dax was grateful on some level for Erin's sudden appearance and invitation to rumble. The ride had already grown depressing; watching Hogwarts recede into the distance and finally vanish and the gnawing uncertainty of the future had reduced their compartment to an uncomfortable silence only occasionally broken by quiet comments from either side.

He heard Dion say something, but he wasn't paying attention. He slammed the door shut behind him, ignoring the fact whatever Dion was saying didn't sound nice, and took off after the smaller boy.

"Come back here, you little twat!" He snapped, as if this would make Erin slow down. There was a Hufflepuff up ahead, dodging out of Erin's way; Dax gave him a "Hey, Henry!" as he shoved the smaller boy aside, tossing him through an open compartment door. The squeals of the girls inside confirmed that something had broken his fall, at least.

In the split second between ducking out of the compartment and tearing down the hallway, Erin had a choice. This choice was simple - right or left. Right, towards the front of the train, and he'd eventually run into the prefects' car, maybe even a professor or two. Left was towards the back, a longer journey without the end result of crashing into a car full of people academically obligated to stop the two of them from attempting to beat each other into the threadbare red carpet.

Obviously, Erin chose left. From the crashing behind him, the sweet sound of the dimmer Fayette twin yelling insults, Dax appreciated Erin's touching farewell gesture and was coming to offer an adieu of his own. Erin half-hoped the people in the last train compartment wouldn't mind too terribly when Dax finally caught up with him, but to be honest he didn't really care.

"Not a chance, Fayette!" he called back behind him, cackling madly as he leapt over someone's leather schooltrunk. "I'm shite at goodbyes!"

The corridors were getting more crowded and the doors of compartments were slamming as people opened them to see what the heck was going on. Erin was better able to get through the crowd than Dax was; Dax settled for running over people or tossing them into the opened compartments as he passed, in an effort to keep them from slowing him down.

"You're shite at -" Dax's voice was cut off for a moment as he ran into another student, and he brushed the smaller boy off. "You're shite at everything, Harper!" It wasn't exactly a good insult, but Dax rarely cared.

He barreled after the other boy, stopped only when someone closed the door between train cars suddenly - and Dax, carried by his momentum, was unable to stop in time.

He crashed into the door, and it opened under the force, spilling him onto the floor. He lay for a few moments, stunned by the blow, before he shook his head and got to his feet. The sound of Erin's passage was fading, and he hurried to catch up; when he spotted Erin ahead of him, he did the only thing he could think of - grabbed something and threw it. That something turned out ot be a first year, who shrieked as he went airborne.

Dax was breathing like a bull and he moved like one too, so Erin was sure to impede his way with the suitcases he kicked to the floor and students he threw back into Dax's path. Everyone was yelling condemnation or shouting encouragement, so the Doppler effect of a rapidly approaching shriek didn't really register as anything unusual. Next thing Erin knew something solid and too squishy to be a school trunk clipped him in the back. A small trainer, with a foot inside, bounced off his shoulder. A flailing hand fixed on his ankle. Erin pitched forward and tried to twist around at the same time, catching a glimpse of a red face and a gaping, wailing mouth. Dax had thrown a kid at him.

"Bloody hell," he breathed and went down in a tangle of limbs, not all of which belonged to him. It was while he was in this unfortunate tangle that he had time to wonder, as he sometimes did long after he'd already stirred up the hornet's nest, whether pissing off the kind of bloke who was roughly twice his size and who could throw small children around was really a good idea. Too late now. The tingle of fear was quickly drowned out by a hot ready rush of adrenaline, although his thrashing to get out from under the younger student and to his feet did have a bit of desperation to it. If Dax caught him on the ground, he was dead.

Poor first year. He'd have almost as many bruises as the two fighters after Erin kicked him off.

Erin went down and Dax lunged forward, shoving his way through the small crowd, most of which was flowing with him now as the students ran to help the two on the floor. Flinging the first year, who now lay in the tangle of limbs with Harper,  had been a mistake - but Dax hadn't really been thinking. The realization of that gave him pause, and he couldn't stop himself from stopping with the crowd to find out if the kid was okay.

Of course, that just gave Harper's escape effort valuable time. The smaller boy had managed to untangle himself as the crowd closed in and had taken off for what was undoubtedly the final traincar.

Dax glanced at the first year - he'd live - and elbowed his way through the crowd. Unfortunately they'd now identified him as the tosser in question, and weren't exactly about to let him through.

He wordlessly shoved them into each other. At another point, he'd have been amused at the domino effect as the shove knocked over several up them - butfor now, he took off again, all but kicking down the door to the last car....