raise your arms [freddie]

and someone's always there
DECEMBER 2003

Barbara had forgotten her cloak on her bed and gone back for it; the first carriages were already heading up to the castle when she peeked out the window in her dorm room, so she pulled it on as she was hurrying back down the stairs to the entrance hall, taking them two at a time. She caught up to the end of the line, a little out of breath, and stood up on her toes to find somebody she knew -- the first carriages were still approaching the lines of students, so she blew her breath out with relief, smoothing her robes over her front.

Freddie was standing not too far away -- she sidled through a group of noisy seventh years to stand near him, though as soon as she did she realised that this might have been a bad idea. She didn’t know Freddie well at all -- for a moment she craned her neck for her roommates or one of the other girls in her year, but they had crowded further up the line, so she cleared her throat awkwardly.

“Hullo, Freddie,” she said -- she felt a little weird speaking to him on such familiar terms and not his , when they’d only really had one conversation in their lives, but it was what everybody else called him -- “Are you headed back to -- where are you from again?”

@Freddie Snyder

Going home always made Freddie feel as though he had eaten something that his stomach didn’t agree with. He swallowed hard. This was ridiculous. He was happy to see his mother at least. In fact, he was very much looking forward to seeing her. He tried to focus on her, pictured her smiling face in front of his inner eye and tried to stay calm.

He didn’t have much luggage for this winter break. Admittedly he never had much because he didn’t possess that many things. However, winter break didn’t last long and what did he need to see his parents, really?

He had asked one of his housemates to give his hair a bit of a trim yesterday and was still regretting it. The boy felt that his slightly too long hair had looked still far better than what had come out of this trim. Well, if nobody on the train was able to help, he could be sure his mother would be able to fix it. However, he had intended to look presentable for her. He wanted to make her proud, after all.

Standing in line for the carriages now, Freddie took a few deep breaths and looked towards the forbidden forest, thinking that he had heard a scream or something from there. It was probably just his imagination, though. Maybe he should have chosen to stay at Hogwarts this Christmas. However, none of his friends were staying as far as he knew and that would be a very lonely Christmas, after all. He’d be able to think of a good story to explain it but no, he wanted to see his mother.

Then his train of thought was interrupted by someone calling his name. “Hey,” he said, grinning somewhat nervously. “Yeah,” he said, running his hand through his hair, making it thus look even worse. “To Manchester,” he added, realising that she had asked a question. “You’re going home too? Not far for you, is it?” He was pretty certain she lived in Hogsmeade but wasn’t entirely sure and thus didn’t want to mention it in case he was wrong. Keeping it vague seemed a far better idea.

Freddie glanced at her and promptly rubbed his hair into a bedhead with one hand; Barbara pressed her lips together to keep from smiling at him.

Barbara had never been to Manchester, or indeed really anywhere -- she’d been to London with her sister or her mother before, and she’d been to Derbyshire a few times to see her friends, but so much of her life she’d spent in Hogsmeade. Freddie seemed to know that already -- she nodded vigorously, enjoying the way she knew her hair flounced with the movement, and said, “Yes -- do you know I’ve never ridden up on the train?”

Usually that was where she left that tidbit, but -- she remembered with a slight drop in her stomach -- Freddie could be told that, “My sister wanted to ride up, her first year, but by the time I was around, you know, it wasn’t really worth the trip.” Neither of her parents had the time to take her all the way to London for no reason; she’d just waited for the train to arrive at the Hogsmeade station.

She stood on her tiptoes but couldn’t see Hogsmeade past the treetops in the Forest; there wasn’t much she could say about it, though. Freddie, she knew, had been there before. “Are you doing anything fun for your holidays?” she said. “We usually just spend our Christmases at home.”

“Wow, yeah,” Freddie said in response to Barbara’s question that she had never ridden on the train. “I hadn’t thought about that!” The boy said nodding thoughtfully. It had to be strange to be singled out like that due to her place of living. He wondered how it must have been for her in her first year. He had got to know some of his yearmates already on the train.

“Yeah, I understand,” Freddie muttered, offering a slight smile which he hoped looked comforting. “That must feel strange for you,” he said a moment later, “do you sometimes wish you could take the train with your friends?” he hoped Barbara didn’t mind his question. They had, after all, talked about some really private stuff before. This seemed like nothing special now although it, too, was rather personal.

“I quite enjoy the train ride,” Freddie offered, “gives me time to mentally prepare for home but I guess I could as well do without it. I guess it loses its appeal a bit over the years anyway.” He wasn’t sure why he was saying this. He liked the train ride. He enjoyed looking out of the window, seeing the landscape change as they got out of the Scottish highlands and further down to the South. Besides, he felt that he’d feel sentimental once he’d take his very last train ride home when he’d have completed his seventh year of magical education.

Freddie shook his head in response to Barbara’s question, wondering what he could tell her about what he was expecting from his winter holidays. “No, nothing particularly fun,” he offered after a moment of hesitation. “We also just spend Christmas at home. I wonder…” his voice trailed off and he turned his head down to look at his feet. “I wonder if we’ll even decorate the flat. I guess when I arrive there’s nothing looking like Christmas yet. I might try and… make it pretty for my mother.” He grinned sheepishly as he felt how he blushed. His family couldn’t afford any great presents to put under a Christmas tree, but he could try and make their home look festive, help his mother prepare meals and just hope that his father would not ruin their time together.

Freddie wondered at whether she wished she could take the train with her friends -- “I guess so,” said Barbara doubtfully. “I don’t know what I’m missing, I guess. I think that’s meant to make it easier.” Not that it did -- she missed the relationship she and her sister could have had, much more than she missed the one they had; she missed it more when she talked to her sister’s friends, when she saw anybody else her age with their siblings. She had been so small and shallow when Florence had been alive.

She pushed that out of her mind -- Freddie was trying, sort of, to say what the ride home was like for him. He had been vague the last time they’d spoken about their families (the first time they’d spoken about their families) but his words now made her more vaguely concerned than she had been even the last time. “I suppose it would,” she said, “Like Hogsmeade does.” Hogsmeade had lost its appeal even faster for her, but even some of her yearmates -- even the muggleborns -- seemed less enamoured with it than they’d been as third years.

“Oh,” said Barbara, “We don’t usually decorate either -- but then we have flowers out almost all year round.” It was sweet -- really sweet, in fact -- that he wanted to decorate it for his mother; she let a ghost of a smile wisp onto her face. “That’s very thoughtful,” she said, “I’m sure she’ll love it.” Barbara would never have thought to decorate their home just to make her mother smile; she didn’t think she would even now that the thought had been put into her head. She gave a little shrug. “I don’t know what we’d do -- we’ll have flowers around already, I reckon, but… it’s been a while since Christmas felt like Christmas.”

Not for lack of trying -- at least on some fronts -- but Barbara herself was less and less interested in making the effort, as she grew older.

“Yeah,” Freddie nodded thoughtfully. “I guess, but I don’t think that makes it easier, really.” He shrugged. “I think when you do not know how something is you imagine it one way or another.” He wasn’t quite sure how to phrase his thoughts now. He felt that, sometimes, he painted things in brighter colours in his imagination. Like he thought that his life would be a whole lot easier if his family had more money. However, he had also heard people say that money isn't everything and that it didn’t make people happy. He assumed that only rich people would ever say such a thing, though.

“I agree,” Freddie said. “Hogsmeade was so interesting to me in my third year. I know I wanted to go there for every Hogsmeade weekend.” He smiled sadly to himself when he remembered how excited he had been to get to visit all the interesting shops and how he had clenched his fist tightly around the few sickles and knuts he had, trying to figure out what to spend them on. Now he did not take every opportunity to go there anymore. He knew he could not afford all the cool stuff so why should he bother to take a look?

He felt how his cheeks reddened slightly and he turned his gaze down. “Well, yeah,” he muttered, “I hope so at least.” He shrugged. His mother meant the world to him and Freddie would do anything for her. He’d make a complete fool of himself if that would lure a smile onto her face.

“Flowers are nice, too,” Freddie reassured Barbara. “Might be nice to put up a Christmas tree, though. I mean, I always feel that it creates a special atmosphere.” His voice trailed off as he thought about how it had to be for Barbara’s family that probably felt reminded of the past and got sentimental if they tried to decorate festively. “Actually,” he added, feeling a little guilty for his previous statement, “forget that I said that. I guess you don’t need festive decorations for Christmas.”

Barbara shrugged. “I don’t think I have very good of an imagination,” she confided; it had always been rather a sore point that she didn’t think of herself as a particularly creative person. It wasn’t for lack of trying -- rather the opposite, in fact -- but more for lack of talent. She pressed her lips together thinly and added, “I shouldn’t complain.”

“Had you never been to Hogsmeade before?” she said -- she knew it wasn’t uncommon for some wizarding families to visit. It was one of precious few all-magical settlements left in Europe, after all -- her parents liked to talk about the wizarding world as though it were shrinking, even though Barbara -- having seen the way that her muggleborn or halfblood friends took to it -- thought it could only be expanding, in recent years. She glanced back at the ominous woods, trying to picture the village through the trees, with its snow-capped roofs.

Freddie turned a faint pink at her praise -- Barbara coughed delicately and glanced slightly away, uncomfortable with his suddenly sheepish look. Freddie must have been a lot fonder of his mother than Barbara was of hers -- she was a little jealous of that, and abruptly she wanted to say something that would tip him off to that, but she bit back that petty impulse and moved on.

He must have said something that he was embarrassed of saying, but Barbara didn’t realise what it’d been at first. “I think it makes people rather melancholy to attend funerals around Christmas,” she tried to explain, “So we don’t decorate much. I don’t know if it helps or not, though.” Belatedly she thought to add, “I live over the funeral home on High Street -- I don’t know if you knew that -- that’s why, it’s not anything to do with… anything else.”