apotheosis | • a r i

Freya was completely and utterly lost.

Oops.

After using a portkey to get to Paris (right under the Eiffel tower, no less!) the blonde had decided to try walking to the café Ari had suggested they meet outside of. Freya had a map with her; it shouldn’t be too hard, right? Wrong. After a few bad turns, Freya had found herself in some scary drug dealy alleyway. Was that a brothel she could see at the end of the street? Staring furiously at her map, as if that would help her find herself, the witch wondered if she should maybe just apparate back to the Eiffel tower and work her way from there? It was the only place in Paris where she had a point of reference.

Freya stuffed her map back in her backpack and started walking in a random direction, grumbling to herself as she trotted along. Would she even be able to apparate back to the tower? Freya had only recently received her apparation license and she’d only apparated a few times around the house. Always short distances, always somewhere she knew well. The blonde was a little worried that she’d splinch herself in the middle of Paris. How embarrassing! – Not to mention terrifying.

She stopped to ask for help once or twice, but being able to ask where the toilet was, or for a mug of butterbeer in French did not equate to any sort of conversational fluency; she learned this very quickly. Freya had previously thought heaps of French people spoke English?? Maybe they were just having her on. Maybe she was just really, really unlucky. Maybe both? She stomped around the windy alleyways of Paris for almost forty minutes before she finally saw it; Café le monde. Her eyes grew round and glittery; she almost cried. This felt like the best moment of her life.

And of course, there was Ari out the front, patiently waiting for her still. Freya threw herself at the other girl in a very dramatic hug. A sob escaped her. “I got so lost and a creepy guy followed me and I had my wand out but I was pretty sure he was a muggle and a big dog barked at me and I nearly hexed its legs off!” The words tumbled out of her mouth relentlessly. This rant continued for a bit. And a bit more. “…And then she yelled at me, but how was I supposed to know that area of the street was closed off? Who gets married in a dingy old alleyway, anyway?!” Pulling herself back, Freya wiped a tear out from under her eye with one finger before not-so-subtly stashing her wand back inside her clothes.

In a moment, she was over her emotional outburst. “So what’s the plan for today?” she asked, the excitement she’d felt earlier today picking up again.

A cup of coffee--having decidedly set herself against smoking, Ari was trying (with difficulty) to acclimate herself to this part of Parisian life--and a croissant sat in front of the British girl on her tiny table for two at the café she'd chosen for the week. It was her new thing, to pick a different place every week and become a regular, more or less, to see how it changed over the week instead of catching only glimpses of each place at a specific time. Freya should be there soon, and Ari was terribly excited to see the other girl. So many people she'd known had gone to ISS, but Freya was staying back, which meant she could visit her for a few days here in the city. And while Ari enjoyed speaking French, it would be nice to hear proper English for a little. 

Soon...appeared to be a very, very, relative word. Ari kept frowning at her watch with its little brown leather strap, wondering if she'd gone crazy. Maybe it had been a little confusing? France and Britain were one hour off from one another, for whatever absurd reason. Maybe Freya had thought she meant London time, not Paris time, and was coming an hour later. Or maybe there had been an error in enchanting the Portkey? Ari pulled out the Prophet from her bag--she was getting it delivered at a high international cost every morning--and settled in to read about the latest Quidditch news. As time dragged on, though, she put the paper down more often, scanning up and down the street for long golden hair and getting more and more anxious when she didn't see any--or at least, not any that belonged to her friend. Surely wizards were going to invent better instant communication sooner or later?

Four croissants consumed in increasing agitation and three cups of coffee later--maybe she was developing a taste for it--Freya finally appeared and threw her arms around her. Ari breathed a sigh of relief. "It's okay, you made it," she attempted to get in between the outburst of nervous words coming out of her friend. "Don't worry, you won't get in trouble even if he was a Muggle. It's Paris, we're under the French Ministry and they're much lazier about bureaucracy than we are in Britain," she attempted to joke to lighten the mood, although privately she sometimes did wonder exactly what kind of "work" they thought they were doing there. Ari couldn't continue responding to everything, though, as there was just so much. "There was probably an old church by the alleyway?" she finally offered weakly as the fountain dried up. 

"Well, I stress-ate a lot more than I was planning, so just let me settle the bill first," she said laughingly, handling the change with exactness. "And I guess that depends on what you want to do! We have tons of time, and there'll be no more getting lost," she laughed. "Why don't we go see Notre-Dame and the Seine first? I know you came in under the tower and after that that's about the most iconic Paris view. Oh, and the bouquinistes are there, and they sell all kinds of old books, paintings, and postcards. We can wander around and get a cone from Berthillon, maybe? I've decided that ice cream is probably better for stress than coffee is." Standing up and bouncing a little down to the street, she started to walk a little. "So how's your summer been?" Freya had broken up with Kerr but it had come at the very end of the semester and they hadn't really had a good talk about that, nor did she know how she'd been since. "Sick of your cousins yet?" she quipped.

It didn’t take very long for Freya’s hysteria to subside, making way for her usual bubbly excitement. She was fickle like that. The blonde fixed her hair using her reflection in the shop window as a guide before spinning around to look at her environment again, as if she suddenly had fresh eyes. Her excitement was back within moments. She was in Paris. “Notre-Dame…” Freya repeated dreamily. There might as well have been star-shaped glitter in her eyes. Paris was so romantic and beautiful and the blonde wish she spoke French so that she could experience it more freely.

“Mum made me promise to buy her some spoons. You know how she collects spoons? I think she has four from France already, but she said this one would be special because it’s practically my first overseas trip as an adult, even though Paris is relatively easy to get to…” Freya went off on a tangent about the logistics of spoon collection for a while, happily chattering away without needing much validation or input from Ari. She was particularly distracted and airy today. When the brunette asked about her summer, Freya frowned. She missed Finn. And Kerr. Mostly Kerr, though missing Kerr made her miss Finn even more.

“It’s okay? I’m kind of bored a lot. Everyone went to summer camp, you know. I’d rather be in Greece than at home, to be honest.” Het brunette friend summed up her feelings pretty well with her next question. “Oh, yeah, I’m used to having no privacy by now.” Freya waved her hand flippantly with a light laugh. The older she got, the more appealing the idea of moving out was. A part of her couldn’t wait to get out of home and call her own shots, though having such a gigantic family to fall back on did have its merits. She never felt lonely in the Trickett household, that was for sure.

Freya followed her friend, falling into matching strides with ease. The blonde reached up to play with a long strand of hair as she continued. “Kerr and I broke up just before the holidays.” Freya was sure that Ari knew this by now, but the two hadn’t spoken about it. She offered a shrug and a small smile. She bumped her friend gently with her shoulder as they walked. “Please tell me your love life is more exciting than mine at the moment. Tell me about all the cute Parisian boys you've met.”

If there was such a thing as rolling one's eyes in affectionate amusement, that was the sentiment at the forefront of Ari's mind, watching Freya quickly got over her agitation. "Yes, we are in Paris, and there are famous cathedrals," she grinned. "I don't know if I've seen spoons anywhere, but they can't be that difficult to find. I guess it's important that it's unique, though, so our best bet is to look for something old. You wouldn't believe how old some of the postcards I've seen are, they're from the turn of the last century and they're all written in such nice script." Ari liked her handwriting, but it wasn't really the same, even though she had a nice cursive hand when she put her mind to it. 

"I kind of wish I'd gone," Ari said slowly, thinking about how many people were there. It wasn't everyone, but it was enough that even though she was absolutely sure that this was the right decision, she was thinking about how she could have been hanging out with people and making memories before their seventh year. She should probably owl Jeremy, she seemed to remember promising to do that. "I mean, not really. This is definitely what I wanted to be doing with my life right now, but everyone is so very far away. I forget, what kept you?" Ari was ashamed she hadn't kept track of all this information better, but it seemed the older they got the more...dispersed people were, somewhat physically but mostly emotionally. "And your family is a little too much," she declared. The Lauriers were connected to a good number of second cousins, but they weren't cohesive in the same way. She followed with an impish grin. "Luckily, you're with me this week. Please breathe a sigh of relief so I can feel good about myself," she laughed. It was nice to unwind with someone so close and familiar. She didn't have to be reserved.

Freya brought up Kerr without being prompted, which was lucky, because Ariana hadn't wanted to figure out how to broach it otherwise. "Mmm," she said, expression turning sympathetic. "I heard. Want to talk about it? Was it really mutual?" The idea of her having a better love life made Ari laugh. "Me next to you? You're the golden girl, everyone wants to be with you, to the point where I feel like fending off the unsavory ones," she punched Freya lightly in the shoulder. "I'm the one who's prematurely doomed herself to a life of soldiering, as if we hadn't had enough of that already. Who wants to date a girl who might lose an eye four years from now? Think I could pull off a Mad-Eye?" She twisted up her face, imagining a fake eye whizzing around in her right socket. "Actually, I'm mostly meeting people at work, and they're all at least 30," she said seriously, shrugging. "I think I'm too shy to properly move to a new city on my own." 

They turned around a few corners and arrived at the Pont St. Michel to the Île de la Cité. "There she is," Ari gestured at the face of the building, having chosen the slightly further bridge for greater effect and buildup as they walked toward the imposing facade. "What do you think? We'll have to go queue up behind all the Muggles."

Freya wasn’t all that excited about postcards, but she nodded enthusiastically as her brunette friend told her about fancy script. Ari had always had a deeper appreciation for things like history than Freya did. The Gryffindor loved the romance of it all, and she liked learning about some historical things, but Ariana was the true appreciator out of the two friends.

“We couldn’t really afford it,” Freya said with a slight shrug. Finn had been at Summer camp, and she would have loved to have spent their last summer together before he left for the big, bad world. “I would have liked to have gone.” The girl glanced down at the ground as they walked. What sort of fun things were they getting up to in that camp? “But I’m glad I’m here,” she added, “Truly. I mean… Paris!” The blonde shot a sunny smile at her friend, whatever glum feelings she’d had about missing out on the camp banished.

The blonde started looking around as they walked, her honey-brown eyes taking in as much of their environment as they could. She was so jealous that Ari could speak French. She longed to have an open door like that, with an exciting new place on the other side of it all. “It was mutual,” she affirmed, though she didn’t know what more to say. “It just sort of…” The girl waved her hands in front of her, “…fizzled. Though I kind of miss it,” she added. Freya missed being in a relationship, and the easiness of being able to fill up her social needs bar when she had a boyfriend. Friends were wonderful, but most of the time her friendships didn’t involve very much kissing or cuddling, and Freya had always been a physical girl.

“Thirty?” she repeated, a teasing edge in her tone, “That’s impressive.” Freya laughed. Okay, so cuddling was nice, but this was pretty good too. She’d missed her friend.

The blonde squinted at the building Ari had pointed out. “Damn muggles, getting in the way of my cultural experiences,” she muttered jokingly. “Sure, lets go!”

Ari nodded. It made sense. They could have probably sent Kate if she had wanted to go, but her Gryffindor sister had somewhat bizarrely said she preferred staying at home, even if Ari wasn't there. Kate had explained to her later that it was because of Mum, that she wanted to spend as much time with her as she could, after that horrible year, even though it had been a while since. Ari understood the impulse. Now that this was their last summer, she would never really live at home again. "Hey, do you ever think about how this is our last time really living at home?" she asked suddenly. "Like how much do you think about graduating?"

Looking around at the old city around her, Ari smiled. "It's such a beautiful city," she admitted. "It's not as...romantic as I thought it would be living every day though. It is, there's a sort of magic about it, but it also isn't because it's normal. Maybe it's better to live somewhere less exciting and just come to places like this once in a while?" She shrugged. 

Ari couldn't imagine dating someone like Kerr, but maybe that was because she couldn't imagine really dating anyone, not just because he was he was so different from her. "What was it like?" she asked, a little hesitantly. Ari wondered why she didn't have these conversations more often with people. It wasn't as if her friends hadn't been in relationships, more like...when they did, she didn't know how to engage with it. "I mean, you know I've never been with anyone or anything." There were just awkward maybe-starts. "I feel like I wouldn't know what to expect. Or what I want. And I never actually manage to talk about it with anyone, it's just something that floats along outside my orbit." She felt slightly helpless about it for a second. It wasn't that she didn't want it, in the abstract, it was just...complicated.

"Not meeting in that way!" Ari said indignantly, a tiny hint of red in her cheeks. "They've all got compagnons. Or are women. Or they're the one dude in the office who's fifty-five and makes "joking" comments about every twenty-year-old woman he sees, except you start to get the feeling he isn't joking." She made a face.

The line wasn't overly long today, but it was still significant. "We have to go around the back later, too," she suggested. "It was one of the first cathedrals to use flying buttresses, and even if that's not that interesting they're still pretty cool to look at. In the meantime, look at those creepy devil things on the portal..." Knowing how many grotesque beasts actually existed, though, made it seem both more and less serious. She envied Muggles their ignorance of the existence of all their mythical creatures. She lowered her voice. "I don't think they'd like looking at those people climbing out of their coffins on the bottom if they knew about Inferi..."

“Graduating is something I try not to thing about,” Freya said, shooting Ari a dark look. Unlike her friend, Freya hadn’t always known what she was going to do after school. Even now, she really had no idea. The blonde had taken all the hard subjects – potions, transfiguration, charms – just because she thought it would give her more options if she ever did figure it out. With any luck, someone from a quidditch team would scout her out and she’d have an easy ticket to life direction, like Finn. Freya entertained this fantasy while Ari spoke. In her head, she was an incredible quidditch player! In reality, she definitely wasn’t as good as Finn had been.

“The dating?” Freya asked, adding a little skip in her step. “Well… It was great.” Freya shrugged, smiling. A light blush appeared on her cheeks. “He always knew what kind of sweets I liked and he gave me massages and we made out a lot.” Freya shrugged again, a little flustered. “What do you want to know? I was kind of nervous at the start because…” Freya gave her friend a meaningful look, “… I mean, you know. He’d had lots of girlfriends and stuff.” She waved a hand as she spoke. “But really it was sweet and nice and not pressurey. I guess we just got busy at the end and didn’t see each other as much and… I don’t know. Got bored?”

It had seemed like a good idea to break up before the holidays considering that they probably wouldn’t be seeing much of each other, though Freya still harboured a little worry that he’d been bored of her for way longer, or had thought she wasn’t very cool or something. The blonde had always wanted to please. Freya echoed the expression Ari made when she was talking about the fifty-five year old. There were too many men like that, Freya thought.

“Oh they’re coming out of coffins?” Freya asked, squinting up at the… ‘Portal’, Ari had called it. Right. Like that made any sort of sense. Muggles would never cease to amaze her. The blonde fell into matching her friend’s steps, bumping into someone accidentally as she stared up at the architecture. After a moment, the blonde gave her friend a meaningful sidelong glance. “You know, Kerr and I never…” She blushed a little, but didn’t finish her sentence. It was busy enough around them that Freya didn’t need to speak quietly not to be heard, but she dropped her volume anyway. “I mean, we did some stuff, but not like, the main thing…”

"But being an adult being hard and strange aside," she persisted, "it's...I don't know. What do you want to get done while we're still all here?" Here being Hogwarts, not that they were actually there at the moment. Ari didn't really know how dispersed her classmates would become. It wasn't as if the Wizarding population was huge, so chances were they'd all still be around. But she wouldn't bet on it. What was on her bucket list, and what was going to happen to all of her friends? Were they going to keep in touch they way they thought they were?

"Yeah, that." Freya's reaction was cute, for lack of a better word, and Ari wondered again just what it would be like to have the kind of relationship that provoked that kind of emotion. "I guess just that. Day-to-day stuff." Her tone was maybe a little wistful. Catching Freya's glance, though, it was Ari's turn to feel a little heat. She hadn't thought about that, either. Did people really... "It seems nice having someone in your corner all the time," she mused. "Not that friends aren't like that, but you know, it's kind of different. Especially when people pair off. You still seem pretty positive about it for having gotten bored, though," she offered.

Ari nodded, staring at the devils' faces again. "Last Judgment and resurrection and all," she shrugged. She knew religious people, but she'd always found it hard to be anything more than culturally religious when thinking about magic. It always made it seem like all the miraculous things could have just been very powerful magic done by brilliant wizards. Freya distracted her by coming back to that subject again though, and Ari was a little surprised. Gratified, too, that they were having a conversation about it, however roundabout, and however inexperienced she was. She dropped her voice to match hers. "Did you...want to, or...?"

ooc: allllllll dialogue lol

“I don’t know, be friends?” Freya gave her brunette friend a quizzical look, not really understanding the question. “Sneak out for a campfire party or something? Is that the sort of thing you mean?”

Day to day stuff. Yes. She understood exactly what her friend was saying. “It’s like they’re socially obliged to look after you and listen to you,” Freya joked, laughing a light, melodic laugh at her wording. “I do miss that. It has been a pretty glum summer, I have to say.” Glum was a good word to describe it. She hadn’t been devastated or anything, just sort of bummed. She shrugged, adding; “I’m always positive.” It was true. Freya had the slightly annoying tendency of always focusing on the bright side of things. Her downs were quickly forgotten, even the ones that made her cry.

Freya didn’t know what Ari was talking about. Last judgment of what? By who? But her friend was speaking in a conspiratorial tone and Freya instinctively moved a little closer.

“I…” Freya grinned, touching her cheeks with both hands. Yep. They were warm all right. She shook her head at herself, letting her hands drop to her sides. “I guess? I mean, a part of me just wants to do it. I wanna know, you know? We did other stuff, but it always seemed like a level up.” She’d been with Kerr for almost seven months. Freya was sure there were people in their year who would tease her for not having sex after dating someone for seven months. Ari didn’t make her feel uncomfortable and inadequate though.

"Kind of?" Ari pondered the question, wondering if it was possible to specify. "That kind of thing I guess, but...I don't know," she said, spreading her hands. "I've been wondering where everyone is going to go, and what everyone is going to do. And what our relationships are going to look like in a few years." Things had been so complicated between them around fifth year or so. They had cleared up more recently, but she thought it was by separating out and growing a little apart. "And what it's going to be like not living at home anymore." She couldn't specify because she didn't really know what she meant. Maybe it was too big to encompass in a few words.

Ari laughed. "Do you ever wonder if they're just doing it because they have to?" she teased back. Maybe that was what people meant when they talked about being insecure in their relationships. Maybe it was a lot of pressure, having to act a certain way to someone all the time. She smiled at her friend, though. Freya was always bright. That was why people liked being around her so much. "Would you try it again if you had more time and were less busy and he wanted to, then?" she asked curiously. "Or was there something you didn't like about it?"

She couldn't suppress a grin at Freya's feeling of her cheeks. It gave her a weird kind of thrill even though they had waded into territory that Ari was completely lost in. Freya knew it, too, which was probably why she was being so relaxed about talking about it with her. "I always grew up thinking it was such a big deal," she said, nodding. "But it's hard not to wonder what it's like, when you hear people whispering about it. I've always been kind of...scared about it, though," she admitted, laughing at her own insecurities. "It seems...vulnerable. And strange. You know what I mean?" Ari knew what it entailed in a sort of textbook kind of way, plus the added knowledge that people liked doing it. A lot. "Then again I watch people snogging when they think no one is watching and have trouble imagining doing that. Kissing doesn't make much objective sense." She lifted her hands up and tapped her closed fingertips together in awkward imitation of the motion with a laugh. "Maybe even less sense than...you know."

Would she try again? Definitely. “Probably,” she replied airily, inspecting her fingernails. Freya always wanted to be liked. She had always been a pushover. Not that someone asking her out was pushing, but the idea that someone liked her like that was always appealing. There really weren’t a lot of people she’d say no to, if they asked her out genuinely. More than one of her infatuations had been born from learning that someone else had a crush on her first. “If he wanted to.”

Freya moved a little closer, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper and dropping her hands to her sides. “It seems like a big deal, but I think it’ll just be a dud, to be honest. I mean, the other stuff was fun? Some of it was really fun. But – ” she paused to let Ari finish her thought. “ – Exactly! It’s weird. I wanna do it just to know.” Freya laughed at herself, accidentally slipping out of her secret-whispering-mode into emphatic-gossip-mode. She waved a hand to emphasise her points. “A part of me is like; ‘do it this year! Don’t graduate not having done it’. Because what if I move into the adult world not having any idea what I’m doing, and then I wanna do it with some guy, but he just expects me to know…?” She looked at her friend again, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “You know?”

Freya had talked about this sort of stuff with Tess, but Tess seemed so much more sure of herself and her sexuality than Freya was, so the blonde was always hesitant about expressing her insecurities, naïve questions and thoughts on the matter. Speaking about it with Ari was sort of thrilling. Even though she had more experience on the topic, Freya still felt like she didn’t know what she was doing, and Ari was on that page with her. She felt close. “So maybe that’s something on my bucket list,” she added, snapping her fingers and flashing a wide grin. She was kidding. Mostly. 

Ari frowned, considering. "I don't know, Frey," she said skeptically. "People wouldn't talk about it so much if it wasn't that great, would they?" Of course, not everything that people talked about was really that great, but usually consensus was a pretty good indicator. Her eyes widened at Freya's proclamation and she couldn't help breaking into a grin at her friend's whole manner of presenting it. Maybe she was serious, maybe she wasn't, but it was impossible not to grin at the spark she displayed.

"Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't want that. Though, I mean, it isn't as if we're going to be meeting a ton of people we haven't already heard of. There just aren't that many wizards, and most of them were in school with us at one point or another." Ari laughed, but she wasn't really sure if she liked the thought. It sort of made her feel that if nothing had happened so far that she'd never manage to meet someone she really clicked with. "At least you've done other things, though," she said, the slightest hint of wistfulness breaking into her voice. "They can't fault you too much for not knowing the last thing if they really like you, I think. They'd have to start from the beginning with me though. But I think you should go for it if you want--if there's the right guy in the right situation, anyway. Maybe something like where you already were with Kerr. Don't wanna get hurt, you know?"

Shuffling a few feet forward in line, she glanced at all the people in the square around them. There were a lot of couples, and they looked happy. "Freya, why do you think it is that I haven't ever gotten anywhere with a guy?" she asked her friend, kicking at pebbles in the grooves of the bricks on the plaza. "Am I just not open-minded enough?" All her interactions with boys seemed to fall into the same categories. Either they were just friends, or even if she thought they were cute it was easier to go on being friends like they'd been since they were kids, or if they showed some kind of interest she acted like a deer in the headlights because she didn't know them very well and she wasn't in her comfort zone. And it was hard to worry about herself when there always seemed like so many other things and people to worry about. It seemed almost selfish to spend time or energy on this kind of thing when it wasn't as if she wasn't happy doing the things she did. It seemed weird already to be asking this to Freya and focusing on herself. It was always Ari happily on the advice-giving side with her friends.

“No, no; I mean, the lead up stuff – the making out, taking off clothes – that was always fun, but the other stuff… like it took a bit of time to sort of learn… and it was fun, but it wasn’t like the most amazing thing until like some practice...” Freya trailed off, a slight frown marking her pretty face. “I’m having trouble talking about this without being, you know, super explicit.” Freya cast a glance around them, wondering if they’d drawn any attention so far. The blonde knew that she wouldn’t be able to help herself if she overheard a conversation like this. She’d be eavesdropping immediately. It was easy to forget that just because English wasn’t the main language spoken here, it didn’t mean that she could say whatever she wanted like they were speaking in code.

The conversation had gotten really quite personal very quickly, but being so open felt really good. Freya had missed connecting with Ari, even if connecting like this was quite a new thing for the girls. She didn’t talk about this stuff with many people, especially in such a candid way. It felt special. The girl waved a finger, shaking her head. “What I’m saying is, I don’t think it’ll be a bug deal the first time… And yeah. Maybe I’ll just go throw myself at Danny or Jeremy.” Freya laughed, but the idea of doing it for the first time with a friend was sort of appealing. She loved being in love, but relationships weren’t safe like friendships were. A moment later, she pictured Danny in that context and snorted at the image.

Freya knew what Ari was feeling. She’d felt it all of last year too, until she’d started dating Kerr. So many people their age had so much more experience than they did, and there was some pressure – internal and social – to hurry up and have that particular experience as quickly as possible. Kerr had been sweet, and taken things as slow as she wanted, but that didn’t stop Freya putting pressure on herself to do and/or like one thing or another. “I think you’re plenty open minded,” Freya said reasurringly, readjusting her backpack. After a moment, the blonde moved closer and wrapped her arm around Ari’s waist, giving her friend a quick squeeze.

“I only did the getting-somewhere-with-a-guy thing this year. Well… at the end of last year, I guess. But point is, I’d only ever kissed one boy before Kerr and Seth doesn’t count because he was just trying to get in my pants.” It hadn’t been obvious at the time, because Freya had been a little younger and just as romance-struck. She’d been seriously in-crush with Seth. Actually, she still had his jumper stuffed in a drawer somewhere at home. “I’m sure if that’s what you were looking for, you’d be able to find it. Seriously. But the other stuff is always harder – and it’s not like you’ve been looking, right? Maybe you give off friendy-vibes to boys who wanna date you.” Freya nodded. It was the truth.

Ari nodded, catching the drift even though her own lack of experience cast a fog over the subject, through which it peeked academically and illicitly. Glancing around in a mirror of her friend's image, she shrugged her shoulders and pointed out, "I mean, you'll never see any of these people again?" She laughed, her mind lingering on the taking-off-clothes bit. Weighing her options, the Hufflepuff got a wicked grin on her face. Her wand was in her bag, but that just provided perfect cover. Grasping it, she raised it up a tiny bit and whispered "Muffliato!" before stowing her rowan wand again, glancing back up at Freya. "We are over age," she explained cheerfully, feeling a little triumphant. Ari didn't rely on magic the way some purebloods did, but it was sort of their birthright. "And now everyone will just think they have tinnitus, in case you wanted to say anything else."

"I didn't realize it was that hard to get right," she mused. "Makes me even more nervous. But in that case, I think you'd want to do it more than once to avoid the whole guy-expects-you-to-know thing. You don't think it'd make things weird with them?" The mention of their year's notorious pranksters made her flash back to... "Hey, did I ever tell you about that time Jeremy walked in on me in the prefect's bathroom?" Freya had been with Kerr and they hadn't been talking as much at the time, so she wasn't sure she'd ever gotten around to it. He'd been so nice and chill about it despite her mortification. She wrinkled her nose in response to Freya's snort. "Tell me if it happens, but don't tell me too many details. I don't think I want to do too much imagining there..." She flashed her friend a grin, although she thought it would be more weird to see Freya out and about with one of their mutual friends than some other boy she didn't know very well.

Ari tilted her head to lean it briefly on Freya's shoulder. The Gryffindor was just a tad taller than her, so it worked all right. "Thanks," she said ruefully. "You're right, I haven't been. That's the thing," she said emphatically, straightening up and putting her thumbs in her pockets. "You know I have plenty of guy friends. And talking like this makes me feel like I want to know what it's like, being...more than friends with someone, I guess? But," she squinted in the direction of the sun, "when we're at school I always feel like there's so much else to worry about, and now we're leaving in a year, and Auror training will happen, so it's easy to tell myself it's futile...you know, I've always had a terrible time focusing on myself. I'm not the main character of this story," she laughed. Fiction metaphors came easy, working at a publishing house.

Freya huffed a big sigh. “I always forget,” she told her friend. “I mean, at home there’s so much going on that the odd spell here or there is really no problem; I’ve been doing little bits of magic since I was twelve. But when I’m out, I always forget.” Freya had only recently acquired her apparation license, and she’d only apparated very short distances so far. The blonde reached up and touched her cheeks again. She was still blushing a little, but by now it was more of a general flush rather than a right-red reaction. Her cheeks were a little sore from smiling so much. Freya shifted her backpack a little.

“Maybe we should just hire someone to teach us. What’s the word? Gigolos?” Freya snorted at her own joke; their conversation was full of jokes and giggles at this point, but it definitely allowed for the more serious things and insecurities to be brought up without judgment. Freya’s eyes widened a little and she smacked her friend on the arm lightly. “No you didn’t!” she reprimanded, “What happened? Did he see you naked? I’m shocked that I haven’t heard about this.” From Ari or Jeremy. “Oh, the scandal of it!” Freya shook her head dramatically, but she couldn’t play grumpy for long. Soon enough she was smiling again.

Freya gave Ari a sidelong glance. “Who’s the main character, then?” she asked curiously. Falling into fictional tropes to contextualise real life was easy for Freya. “Who cares if it’s futile? Everything’s futile.” The blonde gave a sunny smile, juxtaposing her expression with her words. “Point is, if you want a boyfriend, you should put that on your bucket list. Maybe you can date Jeremy and I’ll date Danny…” The girl trailed off, trying to imagine Danny in a ‘boyfriend’ role. “Or maybe you can have Danny. I don’t know.” The girl looked at her friend, “Which one do you prefer?” she asked in a businessy voice.