please don't go away | • a r i

Freya knocked on the door very lightly but when there was no response a flare of impatience made her knock very hard.

Of all seven years spent at Hogwarts, Freya wouldn’t rank her seventh year as the worst one. She hadn’t been forced to attempt torture on underclassmen, or threatened with lashings and various other unthinkable punishments for speaking her mind. She hadn’t been able to contact her family outside of Hogwarts in her seventh year, but at least she knew that they were probably all safe, which was more than she could have said in her fourth year. Still, seventh year ranked pretty highly among her Hogwarts years as being one of the worst. Many people had been hurt - they’d all been to too many funerals for people so young - and there had been a stretch of seemingly endless time in the castle last year where Freya hadn’t been entirely sure how long she or anyone else could keep going for.

So seventh year had sort of been a bust. Understatement of the century? Perhaps. Part of the fallout of all of that chaos for Freya, though, one of the more stressful and concerning parts - and this was saying a lot about their friendship, considering - was that she and Ari weren’t talking. They hadn’t talked in months - maybe a sentence or two was exchanged at graduation at most.

They’d both been under immense pressure, but it had manifested in very different ways. Freya had been depressed at first, but once things had started getting dangerous she’d really stepped up. She’d taken it upon herself to keep everyone else’s spirits up and to keep everything together. She’d stopped wearing her quidditch captain badge but she’d gone on raiding parties and fought monsters and looked after her friends instead. Ari, on the other hand, had turned into some kind of soldier machine, Freya thought. Efficient, quiet and if she were honest, kind of nihilistic. That was the vibe Freya had gotten anyway, and maybe one of the many factors that had gone into the way she’d approached things with Ari.

They’d fought about a lot of things; small things that had morphed into big things as well as big things that were already big. You know what’s as important as keeping them alive? Keeping them wanting to be alive, she remembered saying, her words filled with the kind of passion that made her heart beat fast in her chest and gave her tone uncharacteristic weight. Ari had been such a good prefect and Freya knew that people had been looking to her for leadership and support and as far as Freya had seen there had just been… nothing. So they’d fought about it. They’d spent long months fighting and then they’d spent the rest not talking, so Freya was here now. She wasn’t good at grudges, or waiting, or feeling bad. She wasn’t good at staying away from her friends or being petty. A part of her was still angry about all of the things they’d talked about, but she’d rather Ari be the friend she was angry with rather than the stranger she was angry with.

The blonde pushed her glasses up her nose - she’d only recently discovered she needed them and definitely wasn’t used to wearing them yet. She shifted her weight uneasily from one foot to another and fidgeted with her hair, tucking stray curls into her messy bun. When the door finally opened she was practically tapping her foot impatiently, arms folded defensively across her chest. “You didn’t write me back!” She exclaimed, her words immediately proceeded by a shocked expression contorting her features as she realised the person who’d opened the door was a few years to young to be the friend she was looking for.

“Oh! Hi, Kate!” She said, the sounds slipping out along with an embarrassed laugh, “you’re not Ari”. Obviously. Freya played with her hair self-consciously, trying to pat it down. “Is she home?” She asked innocently, peering into the hall, very aware of the red in her cheeks.

Ariana Laurier was feeling properly guilty.

Well, she had to qualify that statement. With regards to the actual substance of the fights she'd had with Freya, she wasn't entirely convinced that she could have done more than she did. Day after day of going into the Gauntlet and fighting hordes of Dark creatures and remembering the last time she had fought in the very same castle and watched people die and indirectly killed people had taken a serious toll on the seventh year. Freya wasn't wrong that she might have had other responsibilities--after the war she'd grown to fit the role of prefect and of leader--but. They had been in a castle half-filled with underclassmen thoroughly incapable of conjuring any kind of Patronus to throw off a Lethifold, underclassmen who didn't need to be confronted with an Inferi and all the terrible understanding that this was the body of someone who had been real and alive and maybe in these halls a hundred years earlier. Well, Ari was as good as they came, among those still students, when it came to Defense. She'd been able to cast a corporeal Patronus for three years, although she admitted that it had gotten rather difficult towards the end of it all. It made sense for her to specialize in fighting and for those who were maybe less skilled or less psychologically ready to do so to specialize in the less combative tasks. She conveniently ignored most of the fact that Freya had managed to turn up a perfectly good balance between them. Maybe the Gryffindor girl was just better at this than she was. No shame in admitting that, was there? She'd tried for a bit, and it had failed, and she'd specialized.

But she was guilty about the fighting. And about the not-talking. And about the not-trying-very-hard-to-fix-it-ing. Now that some time had passed since graduation, and all the most hectic things to get through to be cleared for Auror training were out of the way, she had had more time to think about it, and it was clear that she hadn't done her part when it came to their friendship. Especially since she was in the wrong. Stubborn Ari had spent some time trying to decide to owl her friend, and then trying to figure out what to say, and when Freya's brief letter had arrived, it had been confusing enough that she'd spent three hours trying to decide how exactly to respond that she'd eventually just fallen asleep instead. And now, flicking her wand to open her door a little from her desk, she heard a very indignant Freya voice coming up from the door that Kate had so blithely opened. Oops.

"I'm coming!" she yelled down, skidding down the stairs herself a moment later and relieving her little sister of the obligation. She blinked at the sight. "Oh. Glasses? That's new." She stood there awkwardly for a moment before recovering herself from how the surprise had thrown off however she had imagined this conversation to go. "Sorry, I have like a half-written sheet upstairs?" she offered weakly. "...Do you wanna come in? Dad made cookies yesterday."

“Excited for school?” She asked with a sunny smile. It was so very hard to stay angry with little Kate there in front of her, looking all cute and young and stuff. Freya remembered being that age and she had a bizarre little moment where she re-remembered the fact that she was now a proper adult with a proper job (sort of) and bills and rent. Not that Freya took care of any of those things, of course; she still relied on her parents to organise her budget and she’d only gotten the internship because of Erika. Freya had failed Ancient Runes, for Merlin’s sake, it wasn’t like she was about to get a job as a curse breaker or translator or something.

The blonde snapped out of it as she heard her friend’s voice from somewhere in the house. Ari appeared and Freya felt a lick of anger and sadness and nervousness all at once. Ari spoke first. Glasses? Freya adjusted them self-consciously again. “I - they look stupid don’t they?” She asked unhappily before quickly shaking her head and mentally moving back to the frustration at hand. She was so easily distracted, it made it hard to stay angry. Freya let herself in a moment before Ari asked. She pushed past Kate with an apologetic smile, making sure to arrange her features back to indignant for her old year mate as she followed her. “Cookies?” She asked, her frustration evident, then after a moment; “Yes please.” Obviously.

Damn Ari and her persuasive ways. Everyone knew Freya had major sweet tooth and in this situation, accepting the cookies made her feel like she had to let some of her feelings go. But she wasn’t going to say no to cookies. So some of the feelings went. “Soooo I haven’t heard from you for a while,” she said pointedly, not sure how to bring up anything that she’d previously had so easily sorted in her head. Freya took one of the cookies and started eating it grumpily. “Missed you at the grad party,” she added through a mouthful. Freya knew why Ari hadn’t come to that party, but she couldn’t help a little accusation seeping into her voice anyway. Freya was extremely sentimental; she framed all of those moments in memory-glass to look back on in the future. A year ago she couldn't have imagined feeling like this standing in Ari's house.

"No, they're cute!" Ari said in her best reassuring voice. She didn't know what it was about her Gryffindor friend, but there was something ineffable about her that Ari could never imagine possessing. Perhaps it was just that whatever Freya did, she did it so naturally. She didn't have a deceitful bone in her body. Unfortunately, that also meant that, while Ari was quite sure that her newly re-indignant face had taken a bit of effort, she was still rather mad about their fights. Even cookies weren't going to break her. Although they might help.

Ari grabbed the platter from the counter and slid it right in front of Freya. For good measure, she stood up to retrieve two glasses of milk as well, partly for something to do with herself instead of sitting there awkwardly, and partly to continue buttering her up. Or, as she liked to think of it, demonstrating her good will. Freya could probably tell from a mile away how guilty she was feeling, behaving like this. "About that..." she said weakly. "I just didn't think I'd, you know...contribute very well. To the partying." Graduation had been a rather tepid affair for her. Before seventh year had started Ari couldn't imagine having been so eager to leave Hogwarts. She had been so concerned last year about what was going to happen, and so determined to savor every last moment. And then the dome had happened, and that had all gone to waste.

"I kind of, you know, needed some time to recover from everything..." Ari sighed. "But I'm sorry I haven't been in touch. And I'm sorry about all the fighting. And I'm...sorry I wasn't much of a leader last year." That last one was hard and she still didn't really think she could have done better but she was sorry she couldn't. She waited a moment, then peered up at her friend expectantly. For someone who held her morals in such important regard, she really wasn't the greatest at apologizing.

Freya took another cookie, dunking it in her milk unceremoniously before stuffing it in her mouth too, before the previous one was even finished. She was grumping about as hard as Freya Trickett ever really grumped. No contact for months. No response to her letter. They’d been friends for almost all of their time at Hogwarts, and their relationship had devolved into this? It was enough to make Freya reach for another cookie. Ari started talking aboutt graduation and her noticeable absence from the following party. Yeah, yeah. She knew. Freya knew why Ari hadn’t been to graduation, but it still felt like something she’d needed to bring up. “We took lots of polaroids,” she said in a clipped voice, not entirely sure whether she was trying to make Ari feel more like she missed out or trying to say that she was willing to share what she could.

Okay, so watching Ari feel guilty was supposed to be vindicating and satisfying but instead it just felt bad. Freya had never been good at holding grudges and she didn’t really want her friend to feel bad about anything. Freya wasn’t really entirely sure what it was that she wanted. Freya took her glasses off and polished them with the hem of her shirt. The wizard that had prescribed them had told her not to do that - something about scratching lenses or something? - but the new addition to her face was clunky and she wasn’t used to it, so at the moment she was playing with them a lot. Freya felt her feelings rising slowly as her friend spoke but she held all of her thoughts in until Ari was finished. “And my birthday,” she blurted, “you forgot.” Freya wasn’t sure if she’d forgotten, but they’d had a particularly big fight a few weeks before and then Freya hadn’t heard anything from her Hufflepuff friend.

“It’s not even a big deal though,” she said suddenly, waving her hand airily. “I mean, birthdays, who cares?” Freya stopped leaning on the counter and got to her feet. “And the fighting,” she said, holding half a cookie to one side as she spoke. Freya was picking up pace. “I mean, it was bound to happen right? All of that time trapped in there together, everyone was going a little crazy, right?” Freya didn’t give Ari enough time to interject; her rhetorical questions were almost overlapping as she paced the small space. “And you know, graduation. I mean. Whatever. But you didn’t write me.” Freya’s voice broke on her second last word and her eyes filled with shiny tears. She stopped pacing. “You just stopped showing up. What’s even happened in the past few months? What are you even doing?” Okay, so some of it was Freya’s fault too. Obviously. But the sad feelings were all there, building their way up inside her and Freya wasn't one to keep those things inside. “So many things have happened already,” she gushed, “and I can’t share them with you. Do you even want to know? I found an apartment with Finn. I’m working at Gringotts." The girl took an unhappy bite of her cookie. "I failed runes.”

Ari grimaced. Freya was probably going to look at those in ten years and wave them and her conspicuous absence in her face. Hopefully they were still talking in ten years. Merlin, she'd really messed this one up. "I'll send you some wizard photos later so you can see photo-me apologize to you a lot," she said, half-joking, half-completely serious. Wizard photographs were more interesting than the blurry ones her grandparents had.

She blinked. Freya's birthday was in February. It had been half a year. "I still have your present upstairs, actually." She'd looked at it while she was packing, but she hadn't been in the mood to do anything but come home at the time. And she'd looked at it again while she was slowly unpacking everything from her trunk, but she hadn't been ready then, either. She'd actually looked at it a third time when Freya's letter came, but Freya herself was here now and it seemed irrelevant.

Freya didn't seem particularly interested in that specifically right now, anyway, and she looked at her Gryffindor friend with a hint of alarm as words kept pouring out of her. She moved to the edge of the stool she was perched on, and suddenly Freya was crying, and Ari's heart gave a sort of squeeze. "I..." She felt tears welling up in her eyes, too, but she kept them in. "I'm sorry, Frey, I messed up. I really...I never..." she took a hard breath. "I guess I didn't realize how much I'd hurt you by being so selfish. Maybe I wasn't sure you needed me. But yes, I want to know. Of course I..." Ari took a deep breath. "Tell me about it. Where is it? What's it like? What are you doing? You..." Failed runes. Ari had gotten an E in Runes. "I should have studied with you," she said in a small voice.

A tear got the best of her. Ari stood up and wordlessly crossed over to her friend and gave her a hug, arms going around her shoulders, avoiding the cookie. She hoped she wouldn't push her off.

Ari still had her present? Still? Had? Present? Freya’s mind boggled at this for some reason, totally confused by the idea that Ari had actually remembered her birthday and gotten her something but not given it to her or wished her a happy birthday. For some reason this didn’t make any sort of sense, but her mind skipped over it quickly as Ari gushed an apology. The tears in Freya’s eyes were building up beyond her control and it was incredibly frustrating. Their sentences overlapped.

“Well yeah, obviously, then maybe I wouldn’t have failed it,” Freya joked, the humour strange and out of place with the rest of the vibe of their conversation. It came out weird too because of the tears. She was about to bring up the funny fact that Erika had managed to get her an internship at Gringotts despite her crummy grades and make some joke about nepotism and how great it was, but Ari was on the move. She was smaller than Freya; shorter by a couple of inches, but she still went over instead of under for their hug. Freya found herself suddenly crying into Ari’s hair, probably getting tears and snot all over her, but she couldn’t stop. It was like everything had swelled up under her and taken her by surprise.

“I’m sorry,” she said immediately, apologising for being so rude and apologising for not getting in contact earlier and whatever else there was to apologise for. “I didn’t mean…” she sniffed, squeezing Ari a little tighter around the waist, “I mean, I did but - that’s not the point - I just…” the words were coming out, but they weren’t coming our very cohesively. Okay, take two. “I mean, I don’t want you to feel bad. I'm sorry.” That was true. Whatever else was happening, that part was true. She missed Ari. She was mad at her for not being there, not for anything else.

“Last year was so messed up,” she said, finally pulling back enough to look Ari in the eye but not letting her all the way go. “But we’re out now. And I miss you.”

Ari laughed, although it was rather less hearty than it usually was. She couldn't help it, though. Freya's tone of obviousness forced a tiny tear out of her eye and she quickly wiped it out. Realizing that Freya was sobbing into her hair, she tried to pat the blonde's hair comfortingly, although as she was shorter than her friend she wasn't exactly sure if that was working.

"Don't be sorry," she whispered with another weird little laugh. "I'm the one who gets to be sorry," she proceeded to joke lightly. "I wouldn't be much of a friend if I didn't feel bad, would I? And you're one of my best friends, Freya. I don't know what got into me this year." Well, she kind of did, but she still meant what she said. She sniffed a bit and looked at Freya. They really were very different to look at, Freya's golden curvy blonde figure and Ari's straight dark one. "But you're right. We are. And we're here now, so I guess we can start trying to not-miss each other," she said, her laugh gaining a little bit of length and earnestness.

Taking a deep breath, she shook her head and let out another little laugh. "...d'you want your present? I paid a second year Ravenclaw who's really great at knitting to whip up some winter stuff you can't get at Quality Quidditch Supplies with the Magpies' logo on them." There were some fingerless gloves and boot cuffs and a mugwarmer and such. Finn was Ari's friend too, but she hadn't switched teams when the older Gryffindor had made the team. Ari still adhered to her dad's team, Puddlemere United. But then, she wasn't Finn's best friend.

“No,” Freya protested through little sobs and sniffles. She didn’t want Ari to feel bad. That had never been her intention. Still, somehow it had happened and now they were here. It was better than they were a week ago, Freya thought distantly. Ari was speaking again and the blonde tried to pay attention. Her hufflepuff friend was right, as per usual. “I know - can we please not… not be friends… ever again?” Wow, words were hard sometimes.

“I’d really like to,” Freya said in response to the talk of presents. She’d always loved birthday parties and she’d always loved both giving and receiving presents. The girl’s enthusiasm around the topic was indomitable, so a little bit of it flared up right now, though a part of her was sure that she would have agreed to anything. Freya busily wiped at her face with her clothes, trying to forget about the crying part of the day as quickly as possible.

She was just a tiny, tiny bit disappointed that Ari told her about her present before giving them to her but she gave a sunny smile. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Can we go look?” Freya followed her friend up to her room. “I kind of miss Puddlemere colours sometimes,” Freya admitted, playing with her hair absentmindedly. “But, you know. I get free tickets to games now. You should come with me sometime!” Freya paused for a moment, “Actually you should come to lots of things. You’ve missed so many parties…” This time Freya’s voice lamented the fact with an edge of determination. It was still summer, wasn’t it? She was going to get Ari to a party if it killed them both.

"Promise," Ari said, and wiped away another stray tear. Merlin, she really hadn't been thinking. How could she have decided that this was an okay situation? Maybe her psychological markers were wonkier than she'd thought.

She led her friend up the stairs to her bedroom and dug around in a pile of extra stuff she'd brought home from Hogwarts, trying to find where the tote she'd stashed them in had gone. "Sorry, I didn't really unpack that well," she laughed a little. "I wasn't sure whether I'd be moving or not. I'm still not entirely sure. What kind of a place did you and @Finn Mckenzie get?" Ari didn't know who she'd live with if she moved. Maybe @Camm Erskine or someone like that. She didn't really have that kind of easy companionable relationship with many other people in their year.

"Oh, what am I doing. Accio Freya's presents! she said, flicking her wand, always at hand, easily. "So much for being a witch, huh?" she said, as the bag zoomed to her outstretched hand. It was kind of cute too, with some illustrated hills and a sun. "I didn't wrap it but keep the bag," she said, conjuring a purple ribbon tied in a bow around it for good measure before handing it over.

"Blue and gold is better than black and white, you know," she said, teasing as her friend opened the package. "But I'd love to come if you've got one to spare." The mention of parties made Ari pause a little bit. She'd always been way worse at parties than Freya or @Tess Gorman. "Oh I'm so bad at parties anyway Freya..." she said semi-reluctantly. "But if you want me to come," she said, getting up the nerve, "I can try to come to the next one." Ariana would probably say yes to annything Freya wanted her to do at this moment.

Freya bounced up the stairs impatiently behind her friend, taking them two at a time. “It’s massive,” Freya said, “and I have an ensuite and everything. It’s actually so amazing.” Freya paused for a moment, wondering if she should launch into a long gushing session about her apartment. “Finn and I argued over the bigger room, you know, but it wasn’t much of an argument. I think he has trouble saying no to me,” the girl laughed, “but you should check out my bath, it’s so cool. So weird going from a full dorm at Hogwarts to such a small household.” Freya watched her friend accio her presents out and she bounced a little in excitement.

“So true,” she agreed about the colours. There wasn’t really an argument there - black and white were boring colours to dress up in. Still, she was a loyal friend and all that. Go Magpies! Freya laughed when Ari conjured the ribbon, all sad thoughts and tears gone. “Thank you so much,” she said, leaning in to give her shorter friend a big hug. “I love you, you know.” Perhaps there was a little extra weight to those words. A little more seriousness than there needed to be, but Freya moved on quickly. “Finn’s so much better now, it’s amazing. I don’t think I really appreciated the difference between high school quidditch and real, competitive quidditch until now,” she admitted.

Ari moved on to the topic of parties and Freya bounced onto her bed. “You have to,” she said, “it’s our last summer together, you have to at least come to one party! I’ll find out what’s happening and drag you there. You can get ready at my new house,” she added for good measure.

"And what kind of rent are you paying?" Ari asked, slightly suspiciously before laughing. "Bet Gringotts pays better than the Ministry, anyhow. It must be nice not having competition for any facilities. No prefects bathroom schedule," she laughed. "It's okay, Finn can go to Ray and Sarah's when he needs a change of scenery, right?"

"I love you too," she said, hugging her back tightly. "Oh yeah? I'll have to come see a game. I mean, they all have faster brooms, for one thing," she laughed. "My Cleansweep wouldn't cut it in that kind of league, but I think I did all right in school. 'Course, you've got a Firebolt, so maybe I'm talking to the wrong person." Obviously, there were skill level differences. Ari was pretty good for Hufflepuff, but although she had friends--like Finn--who were major-league quality, most of them weren't. "Hey, do you remember that time we did that summer pickup game? And the time we had the bet?" Quidditch had made up a good deal of good memories for the students after all.

"What do you mean it's our last summer together?" Ari said, vaguely sharply at the idea. "We're going to have more summers, we're just going to be doing more work during them is all, right?" Summer would always come around, and hopefully they would all see each other. "But all right. As long as you don't make me wear weird makeup. I want to see your new place, anyway," she said, punching her lightly in the shoulder.

"Too much," Freya said, wrinkling her nose. Honestly? Her parents still basically organised her money. Freya didn't have any experience budgeting, so her mum helped her do it. Plus, Finn was making plenty of cash as a pro sportsman, so it wasn't like she had to pay a whole bunch herself. She wasn't about to admit any of this, though. Freya was on a big independence kick at the moment; everything was about finding herself and being an autonomous adult... no one needed to know that she needed a little help from time to time from Mum and Dad.

"We won that year, right?" Freya asked, curiously. Gryffindor had won in her fifth and sixth year, but not her seventh. No one had won that year, much to her dismay. So much for potentially getting scouted by some big league quidditch scout and having her future handed to her on a silver platter. Freya had fantasised about getting onto the same team as Finn, but it didn't look like that was happening any time soon or probably ever at all.

"No, you're right," she agreed with a firm nod, "there will be more summers. But it's our last one as... I don't know, kids? I know we're not little anymore, but there's like this difference between school and adulthood. And everyone's going to go off and do their thing and stuff." she trailed off. Freya had always been scared that graduation would mean losing friendships. For her and Ari, it felt like it almost had. But Freya didn't want to think about it. She tended to get over things very quickly and this was no exception.

"Weird makeup!" Freya scoffed, indignant. Her discontent was quickly forgotten, however, as the blonde bounced to the next topic. "Come stay this weekend! I'm sure something will be happening. Things have basically been happening every weekend since school finished. Jeremy will be there~" Freya paused, then added, "Other things have happened too. With me. Things like... boy things?" Freya gave her friend a meaningful look.

"I think so," she said, with a huge sigh. Hufflepuff always had big dreams with Quidditch, but they never actually came through, despite the years where she felt they clearly had the most experienced team. Obviously, it was all in the past now, but Ari's pride still smarted residually.

"I dunno about you, but I've been of age for two years now," she joked, poking fun at the fact that Freya was about half a year younger than she was. Ariana was turning 19 in a month. At 19, Edmund had been taking care of Kate when Mum had been on the run and working. Ari's training was serious business, but at the same itme it sort of felt like it prolonged her adolescence. The same adolescence that had been cut, broken, and scarred by everything that had happened, and which she always thought she might make up but never quite seemed to.

"Most makeup is weird," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Eyeliner and mascara are okay I guess. I'm just too lazy most days." Freya didn't wear it that much either, but she thought she did when they went out. "Do you two have space for me to crash? And of course he will, when have Jeremy and Danny ever missed a party?" she laughed. Not that she had been to that many, but... "Remember that time you and...Danny, was it? threw the P party? Was that you two?"

Sitting back on her bed, she narrowed her eyes slightly, undecided on whether she should be excited or not by this. "Boy things with who?" 

It was all in the past, but Freya was still sort of proud that Gryffindor had won that year. They would have won in her seventh year too if they'd actually played proper games. The Gryffindor team was just too good, she thought proudly. "Yeah but you know what I mean," she said simply, in response to Ari's comment about age and all. Freya was scared all of her friends would grow up and leave and do their own things and she'd never see them anymore. Tess, for example, was looking at moving to New York! In America! Freya shook her head. "Me too," Freya said, playing with her hair absentmindedly, "And of course you can some stay at mine. There's plenty of space." Freya smiled and nodded when Ari mentioned the P party. She and Danny had been a little mad back then, hadn't they? What was that, fifth year? Freya copied Ari's narrowed-eyes expression when her friend asked who she'd done "boy things" with.

"Does it matter?" Freya asked innocently, suddenly realising that she probably should have predicted this and wondering if she could get away without mentioning his name. Under Ari's skeptical gaze, however, Freya cracked. "Fine," she said, falling back into Ari's bed as she predicted her friend's reaction. "Seth Stanton. We met in a bar and I asked him back to my place." Freya made sure to word her sentence like Seth hadn't been planning to take her home from the moment he set eyes on her in the club that night. She made sure to emphasise her autonomy and the fact that she'd wanted to do it. "And it was really good. Fun. And I feel like I know what to expect now, you know, like if I meet someone I really like..." Freya trailed off, the rest of the sentence just implied in her wording.