Unassuming, the ochre arc stood, branded with the platform numbers from which the wizard would have to slink between. ‘Slink’, because never in a million years would Mrs Murray allow Keiran to run in public. Which, frankly, he wouldn’t argue with- he didn’t run to begin with, let alone run into walls. An expectant nod from his grandmother substantiated the boy’s goodbye as he dragged himself through the oh-so-ethereal gate, stifling the shivers that ran through him when he reemerged before the sight of the Hogwarts Express.

It stank. Unfiltered smoke wafted through the air, settling in the open mouths of first-years who’d just begun their Journey at the private school. Desperate to escape the steamy, oily aroma before it stuck to his skin, Keiran’s knobbly hands moved to readjust his scarf over his nose as he jerkily heaved his baggage over the gap between the train and the platform.

Even though the Murray's were anything but not punctual, the train was already crawling with students, the sound of them bustling to their carriages greeting the wary wizard on his staggered way in. Cradled between his fingers and crinkling as they curled around the handle of his suitcase, Keiran’s train ticket was crumpled into the pocket of his oversized robe once he arrived at his window seat.

'Back to school.'

The notion ruminated, bouncing between Keiran’s thoughts as he slumped weightlessly against the leather, his shoulders dropping for the first time since he’d last been on that train. A sigh rattled out of his chest, clearing out his throat, before he let his eyes flutter shut.

Finally.

@Draven Mirador

The last couple students elbowed and shoved their way onto the train; 'Merlin's and a couple unmentionable words flew all around platform 9.3⁄4. Stressed out parents looked on as kids piled themselves high in the vehicle with the tenacity of clowns squeezing into a very tiny car, trunks, cats, toads, owls and rats making a great deal of (rather unnecessary) noise. And Draven?

Well, Draven Mirador was, by all accounts and definitions of the word, late. A patchy enchanted satchel was thrown across his chest, the old leather belt digging into his skin and leaving red marks on the boy's neck as he traversed the precarious halls of the Hogwarts Express. Being fashionably late, as he would later call it, did inspire a certain style, a je ne sais quoi, an air of mystery. His torn sneakers, the (rather unfortunately) puke green scarf wrapped around his face, and the very displeased spider chewing on his hair did the exact opposite, however.

He supposed they canceled each other out.

"Bloody hell," he coughed, his fingers finally hooking underneath a door handle and pushing it open. It was towards the back of the train, near the bathrooms. Naturally, the cabin was mostly empty. Nobody wanted last pick from the snack cart, nor were they particularly fond of the way the engine roared beneath their feet. Idly, Draven wondered how much wizards spent on coal yearly.

His bag was set down atop one of the chairs with a rather pronounced thud. A louder thud followed, as its owner practically collapsed on the bench.

Sequential sounds of someone else staggering into the cabin clattered across the space one after another in a brief but wince-worthy antiphony. Keiran’s nose scrunching valiantly fought his urge to peer at the newcomer, his jaw clenching as he swallowed his curiosity and attempted to compose himself as though he’d never noticed their arrival to begin with. Thankfully, whether his foolhardy facade was enough to remain invisible or his company paid no mind to it, the silence he accommodated was allowed to fill in the blanks that social obligations of eye contact or starting a conversation would have otherwise left uncomfortably open.

They were accompanied by the fumbling of mumbling voices that resonated from the other cabins drowned in the tear of the train’s horn, assimilating into the click-clack of the wheels on the rails once it’d finished its melodramatic screech to a start. Palms pressed down to fold over his ears, Keiran wished he, too, had been lulled by the residual drone of the rapturous *CHOooO* before he’d been graced with the sound of its rival.

The relief that washed over him when he'd first boarded had seemingly evaporated, and now, for the life of him, Keiran could not sit still.

Such a compulsion was not unfamiliar; however, in the absence of his matron of a grandmother, there was a vacancy where his usual inhibitions resided. The void grew the further the train strayed from the station, from Ellidh, reigning in the itch at Keiran’s fingers and spinning it straight into his chest. What had him clutching it so as it tightened was a question:..fear?

Or excitement?

Regardless, it propelled his head forward, wires routing in his brain in such a way that cut through the usual fog as his eyes peeled open straight into the chasm that was the rucksack that he left lopped over his lap. Looking for something to do with his hands, Keiran reached in for the familiar fuzzy texture of grated leather, producing the notebook from the bottom where it’d been confusingly pressed against the back of the exterior pocket. There was something so satisfying about the weight of it between his hands, the swing of the loosely latched pendulum at the front that tangled between his fingers, unfolding the cover with the welcoming dusty scent of old paper.

It was a relief that he'd found a pencil ready to be plucked out of the binding; All he needed now was something to draw. Settling on not staring out the window in search of something stationary after trying for a good, nauseating five minutes of sketching, Keiran dared to look the way of his company, or rather, at the wall behind them before properly registering how- he’d craftily curled up between the two empty seats. It was - another boy. Taller than himself. Tired, clearly - from the rush, sure, but something about how he'd sunk into his bones the second he clamoured in spoke to fatigue that festered deeper.

Keiran wasn’t certain when he copied the other boy's position precisely, but when he did, he found himself slightly turned, leaning against his knees as he traced the swooping lines of the stranger’s leg swung over the other, his heel pushing the brunt of its weight against the armrest. It’d been a while since the young wizard had been close enough to a person to draw them, to detail the crook of their nose or hatch the way their hair fell in tufts across their forehead, as opposed to hasty renditions of how their hair sprouted out from thin to thick from a point on the back of their head.

Time towed along, and the graphite sanded down to the wooden mouth of Keiran’s pencil. Still, he etched on, tilting it, twisting his wrist as he flicked before the paper itself relented, the sudden friction against the grain catching him off guard, causing the instrument to fling out his fingers rather cartoonishly. “Shiteshhhiteshite-“

It may have even been funny had it not rolled along the ground and nestled by the wall beneath the seat of his muse.

“Ffffeck.”

@ Draven Mirador

Two hours had gone by without a creek or sigh from his companion. Not a hello, not a 'fuck you', no nothing. Draven had been watching him wearily from underneath heavy-lidded eyes. Steady breathing, his body loose and carelessly draped on the train seat, it wasn't long before an uneasy, restless sort of sleep took hold of the Mirador heir. Shivers, ticks, flinches rocked his limbs as he lay. His elbows and knees had been pulled in, stripped of the nonchalant elegance he'd been trying to display (although how elegant could somebody be laid atop a train seat?).

Mirador didn't look peaceful in his sleep, nor particularly young. His cheeks were sunken, shadows dancing underneath his eyes, his chin jagged and prominent. Tiny whiskers had begun blossoming atop his upper lip. He'd shaved that morning, as evidenced by the nicks across his jaw, but the darn hair grew faster than he could keep up with it.

The land between wakefulness and dreams was a strange one. His thoughts were nonsense, merging into one and splitting into ten. They bounded and looped, broke and dispersed before his half-closed eyes.

Interrupted only by-

Pushing himself up to a sitting position, Mirador blinked blearily at his companion. The boy had frozen like a deer before headlights, his whole body tensing up underneath Draven's sleepy gaze. He'd stopped in an awkward position, hand outstretched, eyes pinned to the ground as if reaching for something.

Draven raised an eyebrow, peering at the floor. Nothing.

He dropped to his knees, scuffed jeans folding atop the dusty ground as he stretched underneath the seat. Seconds later, his hand closed around the pen-? Pencil. Around the pencil.

It was a decent one too, nicely balanced. He wasn't a fan of pencils; the dollarstore ones he had the tendency to buy only took one drop for the led inside to shatter. "Here," he said. His voice cracked.

Grimacing, Draven extended the pencil in the kid's direction. "Drawing?"

Describing the onset surge of electricity that ran through the Wixen as horror wouldn’t do it justice as he watched the boy stir, then rise; Keiran’s stomach sunk along with him as the taller boy, too, dropped to the ground, finding evidence of his two-hour endeavour. There was something about the perfectly candid way the stranger proceeded to inspect it, interrogate it with half-lidded eyes - turn to him with it in tow - and hand it back to him that made Keiran wonder if it was deliberate.

What was he doing? Mocking him?

Both of Keiran’s hands clamped around his sketchbook at once.

“Nae.” Thin and brittle, Keiran’s voice was barely audible through the layers of tartan wrapped across his hunched shoulders, eyes unblinking in a blank stare that fixated on the pencil between the lad’s fingers. It was a useless lie when Keiran’s own coated in graphite betrayed him in the form of black smudges on the side of his nose, accompanying the myriad of marks that already stood out against his unfortunate complexion. ‘Awfy peelie-wally’ - as Ms Murray would describe it.

'Stupid questions get stupid answers.'

An uncomfortable few seconds go by, the pencil still inches away from his face, before Keiran fully realises that this was, in fact, a social interaction and that the normal thing to do would be to take it back. Say thank you. So he does, the words forming uncomfortably in his mouth, caught slightly between the callous combination that was his Scottish-Bristollian accent and the itchy scarf that hadn’t been moved since he effectively dropped onto his train seat.

“Thank- ye.” Close enough. As if to compensate for the hand that reached to retrieve his clumsy mistake, the other tightened as he withdrew the instrument from the edge of its ferrule, crumpling the edge of the drawing that decidedly did not exist. “You dinnae have to bother.”

Still, Keiran looked down at the non-existent drawing. Then, finally, he blinked when he didn't find any significant non-existent damage.

Reducio

Alas, the boy was still there before him when he opened his eyes. The line Keiran worked so hard not to cross had been trodded and pissed on. Great.

Might as well change the subject.

“There’s a spider in yer hair,” Keiran mused bluntly, as matter-of-factly as he could as if the other boy wasn't aware of the presence of his own familiar, before adding, “Eatin’."

@ Draven Mirador

"Look at this one," he said, flipping to a page that had a web spanning a whole wall. "This one took him the entire summer." The web was gorgeous- sporting an intricatly made Hogwarts, three meters long and seven meters wide, black webbing was a contrast against a white cloth Draven had put up in his tent.

"When we get to Hogwarts, I'm going to give him a new design and see what he comes up with. He's got until summer to work on it, so I think it's gonna be really good."

Deimos gave a spidery grin, blinking up at Kei. Now that Mirador was talking to the boy, the spider's suspicions had begun to melt away. With a delicate, elegant patter, he jumped off of Draven. Across the train floor he went, eventually climbing up the younger boy's leg, tiny feet hooking into Kei's pants. Before long, Deimos was resting atop his sketchbook, admiring the boy's work.

He gave a nod of approval, which was really a bob of approval since he had no neck.

"Oh he likes you," Draven said, his voice holding a note of surprise. "That's odd. He doesn't usually warm up to strangers that fast."

Blinking, Draven set his book down, extending his hand towards the other boy. "I'm Mirador. Draven Mirador. Nice to meet you man."

"Bored spider." Keiran echoed, quirking a brow; his slight amusement could be seen in his eyes squinting at the other boy's familiar, considering it closely. "Never heard of it."

Cocking his head to the side, the Wixen blinked back at the arachnid. Living in a forest meant the occasional giant house spider would wriggle inside to mate come autumn, looking for warmth. They were so big, yet dainty- almost human, animated; lurking so long in the shadows meant they were unused to being perceived, and it was funny when they skittered away or dropped by his shoulder upon Keiran's inspection. Company that didn't shout, judge, or comment - just 'hanging' out in its own woven corner - it made sense really, to travel with a spider. Although this one, in particular, did seem to have a particular predilection for pouncing about, opinions protruding from its ebony shell in the form of long, larcenous legs twitching territorially -

Scuffling fabric against paper caught Keiran's attention, eyes darting away from the critter and onto the notebook that had seemingly manifested itself from thin air. The silver shine of graphite beckoned him closer, his widening gaze taking in the sight of- Polaroids? Peculiar muggle technology.

"Oh,-" An opportunity to roll his shoulders back arose when Keiran leaned forward to look at the pictures, following the languid slopes that'd curve down into sharp junctions that wove in and out of the tangled tapestry, sheer strands of black silk sprawling across the white background like veins that shone through pale, thin skin."- - Is maith sin."

Enchanted, Keiran's hands around his work went slack, looking between his acquaintance's drawings and the spider's, too engrossed in reading the loops and twirls of cursive and picturing how he'd mimic the weight of the Wizard's linework had he done it himself to notice anything else. Some strange sense of awe and envy had wound itself into its own web of sorts, a sticky yearning that strained across his mediastinum to bridge the chasm between his lungs and his heart, cinching the centre of his chest uncomfortably.

'What would it be like to have that-?' One nasty, unwanted question had gotten trapped between the strands, a petulant pest that buzzed as it relented against its solitude, and as though the rest couldn't take it as a warning, more swarmed in to seal what little room Keiran had left to breathe. 'How would it feel to hold memories like that between your hands and speak about them as though they paved the way for the future?'

Then came the spider. What Keiran's brain had decided was the cabin cold prickling against his skin had made its way onto his lap, looking at home against the charcoal-charred pages. Keiran watched it jerk in its spot, blinking away the blurriness in his vision. "-hmh-" It looked pleased, somehow. "Aye."

'...Draven Mirador....nice....man...'

An outstretched hand marked an exchange of names. "Keiran." It dawned on him, perhaps, that it was also an exchange of items. "Kith." He stared blankly at Mirador's open palm.

He supposed it was only fair.

"I lied." The boy's - Draven's - companion returned to him atop the open pages of Keiran's sketchbook, gently passed over. "Here."

@Draven Mirador | GAELIC | ACTION: Is sitting and staring at Deimos, then his work, then Deimos again, then at Draven's hand, confused, handing him his sketchbook.

The other boy's voice was throwing Draven a curveball. It was a Spanish accent he was used to, the words rolling thickly out the mouths of his mother's buddies. Not the beautifully melded together words dropping from his companion's lips.

Draven frowned, taking Deimos and the book attached to him over on his side of the train. "Thank you good sir," he said, eyes flickering down towards the sketch. His jaw dropped a little.

"You're so skilled." Holding up the sketchbook to what little light managed to sneak between the thick black clouds gathering over the train, Draven's brows knitted together. The drawing could rival anything in his mothers old art studio. She was more partial to color and paint, but the graphite sketches lying around her old desk still would have had a place on a nobleman's wall. And Kith's piece too, if one were to disregard the subject.

"I'm-..." The boy looked like Draven, and it was with a jolt that our hero realized that. It had been a while since Draven had looked in a mirror. Merlin. Was he really that small? More bones than person? Was his scarf really that nice.

Slender fingers wrapped in the fabric as he returned the book. And just in time, for the door to their compartment was pulled open.

"Snacks," the lady said. "Oh my sweet Jesus. You both need them. So tiny. Aren't they feeding you lot?"