walk into any room just like you own the place [freya]

It had been sad, leaving Hogwarts for the summer holidays and knowing she wouldn't be back for months. Eleven years she had existed without Hogwarts and now it was like there had never been anything else. Just a castle and flying and Tomie and Benny and Griffin (and JR, too) and so much to learn around every turn.

Still, there were upsides to being home. Her mum's cooking, for one - she had gone all out on a Korean spread so big that Shelby nearly cried when she realized she couldn't eat it all. Dad had promised to let her Floo unsupervised so she could visit Islington and some other places. She had a whole new divination text at home to pour over that she didn't have to return to the library. And she had her cousins back.

Sure, she had Aase and Jari at school, but they were older and had their own friends, which was fine since she had her own now, too! But without other people around, it was nice to be one of the baby cousins. She liked the attention.

Today, she was waiting on cousin Freya to take her to Diagon Alley - the older girl had promised to help her pick out some summer outfits, since she had suddenly outgrown everything she had. Shelby sat on the front steps of their house in Lizard, her little purse heavy on her lap with Galleons and Sickles and a copy of her horoscope for the week. Freya hadn't Apparated in yet, So Shelby was frantically scribbling notes from the book onto another scrap of parchment. There: Freya's horoscope for the day, too - just in case.

@Freya Trickett

Freya appeared with the distinct pop! of apparation, honey-coloured eyes finding her young cousin right away. She’d been on track to arrive early, but had characteristically ended up being a few minutes late. Despite the fact that distance didn’t really matter so much when one had access to immediate travel, Freya would have felt bad if she’d gone anywhere west of London and not visited her parents. Lizard wasn’t very far away from Tinworth anyway. So she’d dropped in to say hi and was (predictably) roped into a tea-and-nibblies session with her mum. She was here now, though.

“Shelby!!” she called, a bright smile lighting up her expression as she closed the distance between her and the porch stairs, arms open for a big hug. “Oh Merlin,” Freya said dramatically, pulling back from the hug and immediately straightening up and comparing their heights. She held Shelby’s hands in hers as she stepped back and looked her baby cousin up and down. “How old did you turn two months ago again??” Freya asked, sounding indignant but undermining it with a big, sunny smile. “Twenty-seven?” Shelby was… almost as tall as her. Freya let go of Shelby’s hands and made a show of adjusting her glasses to make sure she was seeing what she was seeing.

She shook her head. “One sec,” she said, and skipped up the couple of porch stairs to poke her head inside. “Hey Uncle Amund, Aunty So-youn!” After the quick greeting, Freya trotted back down to Shelby, drawing her wand and holding her elbow out for her young cousin to hold. “Milady,” she said with a smile.

There was a POP! and suddenly Freya was there, standing in front of her, just after the hour. People had been Apparating in and out of her house for as long as Shelby could remember, but the sound still startled her sometimes. She couldn't wait to learn how to do it herself, Apparation. She had gone by Side-Along so many times that she figured it would be easy enough.

She stuffed the parchment into her purse and stood up just in time to meet Freya's embrace. Her head was nearly level with Freya's now, when back at Easter she had still been nearly a head shorter. As Freya stepped back to give her the once over, Shelby just smiled, her cheeks reddening a bit. "Freyaaaaa," she mock-whined, "I'm just twelve!" Freya was easier to read than strangers- Shelby knew she was being teased. "Mum says I'm just starting to grow, I might be taller than you soon!" The thought amused her - it didn't seem possible to outgrow her older relatives, and yet here she was.

As Freya darted in to say hi to her folks, Shelby brushed herself down. Her pants only hit her midthigh, and she was wearing one of Ingvar's tee-shirts. All of hers were too small, too tight around her chest now. Plus her chest was ... changing, and it freaked her out to see it happen. Of course, she had read about puberty already, but reading did not prepare her for the aches and pains of it happening in real-time.

Freya trotted back down the steps and held her arm out to her. Shelby giggled at the fake noble gesture, grinning widely as she grabbed onto the outstretched arm. "Ready when you are!" Shelby clutched her purse a little closer to her, waiting for the familiar pull of Apparation taking her off to somewhere else.

Just twelve! Freya scoffed in response to that.

The blonde held her wand in her left hand and made sure Shelby was securely attached on her right. “Deep breath,” she said lightly, before lifting her foot to take a step, feeling herself fold inside out a few times, and then landing in diagon alley. By now, Freya was mostly unphased by apparating, as long as she was the one doing it. Side-long apparating was still a bit jarring, and when she'd been twelve, she'd hated it. So she made sure to glance at Shelby to make sure her baby cousin was okay.

Fixing her hair, then tucking her wand away, the blonde started walking. They’d appeared in a cool and shady side alley, and were now heading out into the main stretch of shops, where it was a little sunnier and more busy. “So,” she started, smiling excitedly at her companion. “Tell me about your year! I need to know everything. Favourite classes? Friends? Lovers?” She wiggled her eyebrows at the last one, then laughed, bumping her cousin lightly with her shoulder as they walked.

The first time Shelby was Side-Alonged, she was eight and Mum was taking her to the Asian supermarket in New Malden, and she had thrown up on the street when they got there. Now, the twisty, stretchy feeling was just a little uncomfortable. She took a deep breath anyway right before Freya whisked them away - it had been a little while since she travelled by anything other than broom or train.

Another loud crack and then they were in the shade of a building, the familiar sounds of Diagon Alley just a few yards away from them. Eagerly, Shelby walked alongside Freya. The summer air carried all sorts of smells - food, fragrance, fun.

Lovers?! Shelby hadn't even had a crush yet, at least she thought she hadn't. She looked over and Freya was making a face and nudging her - a joke. She grinned. "No lovers. Lots of friends, though!" She had mentioned to Freya in August or so how nervous she was about making friends at school, so she was proud to be able to name so many. "Tomie, Benny, JR - his family owns the Gravesend Quidditch team - Simon, Archie," she paused, considering for a moment just how many boys she counted among her close friends and if that meant anything. "There's this one girl that, she's not like, my rival or anything, but she really doesn't like one of my other friends but she talks to me sometimes?" She frowned. "It's confusing."

They passed the owlery, and Shelby snuck a quick glance at the owls perched outside under an umbrella. Cute. "I really like Astronomy, and Charms has been pretty good! Nothing's really that hard yet, except maybe Transfiguration." She frowned. "I get the spells eventually but it takes me a lot longer than Hazel does - that's the girl who's like, my frenemy?" Shelby really didn't know how to describe her relationship with Hazel So. "Oh! There was something wrong with the ghosts and the school is getting deep cleaned for defensive magic this summer. Wasn't that scary though."

Friends are better anyway,” Freya said like she was agreeing, waving a hand. She didn’t elaborate, deciding that her recently-not-quite-non-existent love life wouldn’t make great conversation in this context. How weird was it, to feel so grown up and together when she was with a much younger cousin, but to feel so inexperienced and unsure of herself in most other areas of her life. Wasn’t she just a kid still?

The blonde tried to memorise the names of Shelby’s friends, but most of them went in one ear and out the other. JR was the only one with a memorable little tidbit, so his initials stuck. “Ooh,” Freya said appropriately, her thoughts going back to her own school experience, and how intricate and important all of the friendship webs had been. “Are they mostly from your house, or other houses?” She asked. Most of Freya’s best friends had been in her house - Finn, Jeremy, Tess, Danny... But she’d had friends from other houses too. Ari. Camm. Nicole. Stewart…

“Frenemy,” Freya repeated with a knowing nod. She raised her eyebrows at the mention of ghosts; there was always something going on at Hogwarts. At least Shelby's first year sounded relatively normal, not like Freya's last year. Or her fourth. Or her second. Or her first. Well, she thought, Hogwarts was a weird place. "Deep cleaned for defensive magic?" she repeated. She'd ask Ari about that later, her auror-in-training friend was sure to know something about it.

The blonde caught her reflection in a shop window and she fixed her hair absentmindedly as they walked. "Sounds pretty cool, then," she said, shooting her cousin another sunny smile. "Are you happy to be home, or missing your friends? Or both?"

Freya seemed so cool at that moment, waving a hand like she was shooing Shelby's worries about future boys out of the way. Shelby idolized Freya juuuuuust a little bit. She had been at school when all the cool stuff happened - the end of the Second Wizarding War, the Triwizard Tournament, all the stuff that was being added to new editions of Hogwarts, a History. Shelby didn't really talk about those things with her cousins or parents - it was universally acknowledged that she was Too Young - but she still wondered about them. Maybe when she was older.

Freya seemed excited by JR's connection. Everyone was excited by JR's connection. Shelby rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "Um, well, there is Wendy, she's in Ravenclaw too, but we all hang out with the same group unless it's after eight o'clock. There are people from every house in our group though!" She was pretty proud of having a couple of Slytherin friends - she had heard some scary stuff from Ingvar about the older Slytherins, but JR was not scary at all.

"Not Hazel, though, she's pretty scary," Shelby said, continuing the thought she hadn't said out loud. "She's kind of mean, but kind of cool? I don't really miss her but," she shrugged, unsure how to finish describing Hazel So. "I wish she was nicer. She's the only other Korean girl in our year."

She wasn't quite sure how to explain the ghost situation. "There was like.... leftover magic? From the Dome? and it made all the ghosts disappear. So they have to deconstruct the wards, or something." It had been warm, at the feast, and there was more exciting things to be listening to than McGonagall.

"I miss them, but I think I'm going to get to visit a lot of them this summer - Dad said so - so I'm not too worried," she finished, skipping a few steps ahead. In the window of this store was a cute dress that looked so light and soft. "Can we go in here?"

“Wendy,” Freya said with a nod, she’d always loved that name. Then, “Not Wendy Wilbond?” she asked, glancing at Shelby. She was pretty sure Danny had mentioned his baby sister getting sorted into Ravenclaw, and she was pretty sure her name was Wendy. “I know her big brother.” Like Freya, Danny had a lot of siblings - six, was it? Or seven? Freya had known Danny forever, but she didn’t think she could name all of them. Especially not the ones who weren’t close in age to them.

Thinking about Danny’s sister made Freya think about Danny and she felt the emotional equivalent of question marks bubble up a little in her chest. Squashing them down, Freya tuned back into the conversation. “Oh there’s another Korean girl in your year?” she asked, happy with the idea, even if Shelby had described Hazel as “scary” and “mean”. Freya didn’t think there had been any Koreans in her year at school at all.

The dome, huh? Freya nodded; it was very on-brand for Hogwarts to still be messing up after all of that. She was glad that missing ghosts was the worst of it for Shelby. “Nick’s okay, isn’t he?” she asked. Not that she liked to think about any of it, but when she did she remembered very vividly the night of the battle of Hogwarts, and how her house ghost had found her crying in a corridor, and led her to safety.

The blonde glanced up at the shop Shelby had stopped at, grateful for the distraction. “Of course!” she said enthusiastically. “C’mon, you have to try that on.”

Shelby's mouth opened into an "o" of surprise. "Yeah, Wendy Wilbond!" Wendy had mentioned a few siblings, but not specific years or ages. "That's really cool! Are you and her brother friends?" Know could mean anything from vaguely knowing of each other to being enemies, but Shelby thought it would be cool if she and Freya had friends from the same family. They could all hang out together in the summer, maybe, if Freya and Big Wilbond got on.

Freya sounded surprised, but that made sense - Ingvar was one of the very few Asian kids in his year, after all, and in some of the upper year classes Shelby didn't see anyone who looked like her. Shelby nodded. "Well, she's full Korean, so it's a little different, but it's still nice to have someone besides Ingvar to talk to in Korean." Going from a fully bilingual home to a nearly monolingual school had done a number on her vocabulary. Too bad her conversations with Hazel were short and mostly about homework.

"Nearly Headless Nick, you mean?" Shelby furrowed her brows, trying to remember - the Grey Lady's disappearance had been more pressing. "He disappeared pretty early on, but he's all back now."

Grinning, Shelby grabbed Freya's hand and barrelled into the shop. Inside, the walls were a cute pastel pink. The dress in the window, a floral print affair, was one of many in a collection on display throughout the store. A shop attendant approached Shelby - suddenly feeling way out of her depth, she drew back, trying to hide a little behind Freya.

“Yeah, friends,” Freya replied airily, as if she hadn’t seen him every friday for the past two years. Friends who sometimes made out, she thought. But like, not in a cool casual we’re-friends-who-sometimes-make-out kind of way. More like the oh-shit-did-that-really-happen-better-not-talk-about-it way. Sure. Those kind of friends. Right. Yep.

“I’m glad about that,” Freya said, stepping into the store. She had a quick glance around. This was definitely not the kind of place she’d have been into when she was twelve. As a young teen, Freya had been sort of tomboyish. She hadn’t really started wearing dresses until she was fourteen or fifteen.

“Oh, Hi,” Freya said brightly, giving Shelby’s hand an affectionate squeeze as they were approaced. “Sorry, I’m just wondering if we can maybe try on one of those - ” she pointed over her shoulder at the pretty floral dress in the window. “In uh… Do you know what size you are in womens’?” She asked Shelby. Sensing some uncertainty, Freya waved a hand dismissively. “If we could get a couple of different…? Yeah, thanks,” she said appreciatively. The attendant set off to collect what Freya had asked for.

“Over here,” she said pointing at the wooden changing cubicles at the back of the store, and steering her cousin there gently with the hand at her back. “And one of these…” Freya plucked a cute skirt in a similar style to the dress Shelby had liked, and then a top to try it on with. “And this… Do you have favourite colours to wear?” She asked, making sure to pay attention to the answer. When they got to the change room, Freya dumped a small pile of things in Shelby’s arms. “I want to see everything,” she added, as her cousin disappeared behind a thick curtain.

"That's so cool!" Shelby exclaimed, letting herself imagine the possibilities. "Maybe we could, like, all go to the beach together or something?" Shelby scrunched up her nose, trying to remember the phrase on the tip of her tongue. "Like a friend double date!" It sounded fun to her.

The shop smelt vaguely of vanilla. It was a little small, but it felt cozy, not cramped. Freya asked her what her size was - Shelby shook her head. By now she might be in actual woman's sizes - in August she had still been wearing children's sizes. The attendant gave Shelby a once over like she was measuring her with her eyes before going to collect dresses.

She let Freya take the lead, looking at all the outfits with wide-eyes wonder. "Oh, I love that," she gasped, running her hand over the lilac floral skirt that Freya had spotted. "Um, I really like, um, cool pastels? Like, baby blue and purples like this. And flowers. And stars!" She added the last bit with a burst of energy, pointing at a star-studded top. "I really like those."

Her arms filled with linen, Shelby shot her cousin a grin before darting into the change stall. First up, the smallest size of the dress in the window - it flared nice, but she couldn't really move her arms, and her chest felt tight. Still, dutifully she emerged to twirl for Freya. "Too small, right?" She felt a little exposed - her legs were bare and the skirt on this small one was shorter than she realized.

Shelby’s reactions were so enthused that Freya felt herself vibing off of the younger witch, getting more and more excited over each piece of clothing even though the things in here weren’t really her style. “Very Ravenclaw of you,” Freya said, grabbing the star-studded top with a light laugh. When she’d pivoted to girlier clothes in her fifth year, Freya might have come into a shop like this. Maybe one of her older cousins or sisters would have brought her in.

“Yeah, maybe,” Freya answered vaguely to the Danny thing, trying to think of anything more awkward than showing up for a “friend double date” with Danny and his little sister. At the beach. She snorted, shaking her head and grabbing a summery hat and putting it on as they made their way to the changerooms.

She waited outside dutifully, sitting on an embroidered little pouf. She crossed her ankles out in front of her. When Shelby came out, she raised her eyebrows. “Colour’s gorgeous,” she said with a nod. Then Freya held a hand up to her mouth, like she was about to tell a secret. “Can almost see your knickers though,” she stage-whispered, then grinned to make sure Shelby knew it was a joke. “Try the bigger one,” she suggested eagerly. Freya swayed a little, bobbing her head to the music playing quietly in the background.

Freya and Shelby didn't have exactly the same taste, but with each successive selection, Shelby became more and more certain that Freya was the perfect shopping partner. Everything she picked was something that she loved the design of - flowy skirts, patterned tops, dresses that looked more like a watercolour of a garden than an outfit for a twelve-year-old. Picking through them in the fitting room, Shelby moved a couple to the No pile automatically - the fabric made a weird noise when she brushed it, setting her teeth on edge. Oh well, they couldn't all be winners.

Shelby blushed, but only a little, as Freya confirmed what she knew about the dress already, both good and bad. "Got it," she managed, throwing in a weak thumbs up. She brushed the skirt down and backed up into the changing stall, closing the curtain in front of her.

"Wait, you haven't told me anything about your life yet!" Shelby called, shimmying out of the dress and into the larger version. Much better fit. "What are you doing? How's Gringott's?" Shelby stuck her head around the curtain as she pulled up the side zippers. "Do they have a new dragon there yet? Have you seen a dragon?" She flung the curtain open, expecting compliments on the dress and answers on the dragons. 

“Oooh,” Freya said, wondering what parts of her life her baby cousin wanted to know about. “I’m just working, hanging out with friends…” That was the answer she gave her parents, surely she could think up something more exciting to tell Shelby. “Last week I - Oh yeah, I’ve seen dragons,” she said, smiling brightly. “Plural,” she clarified unnecessarily.

Okay sure, she’d only seen two baby dragons and only when she’d been out with Erika, not when she’d been doing her usual boring data entry thing in the back offices, but whatever. It wasn’t a lie!

“Ooooooooh, Merlin,” Freya said, getting to her feet as her baby cousin came out. Freya took the hat she’d picked up earlier off her head and put it on the edge of a nearby clothing rack. “Shelby Trickett,” she said emphatically. The blonde gave her little cousin a once-over, then turned her around so they could both look at Shelby in the mirror. “Amazing,” she said. “We have to get it.”

One perk about working at the bank, and living with Finn, was that she had some decent cash coming in at the moment. Of course, she should probably save it, but for now most of it was spent on drinks with the boys and spoiling her cousins. Freya returned to her seat, letting Shelby get into the next thing. “Don’t look at the price,” she added.

After a moment of playing absentmindedly with her hair Freya called out to her cousin. “Hey Shelbs, no pressure or anything if you don’t know it off the top of your head, but I have a couple of star-related questions…”

Dragons, plural! Shelby could hardly imagine it. "How big were they? Do you know what species?" She had so many questions forming, most of them about how cute are dragons, anyway? Shelby was entertaining thoughts of going into dragonology, sometime in the distant future.

Shelby grinned, letting her cousin spin her by the shoulders. They made a pretty picture - Freya's hair catching the warm light, almost glowing as they both looked the mirror image up and down. She felt grown in this dress. Not grown-up, not all the way, but definitely closer to the person she was supposed to be. She whipped around when Freya mentioned the price. "Hey!" Her mum would kill her if she let Freya pay for everything. "I have -" she scrunched up her face, trying to remember what was in her little purse, "at least 6 Galleons? and a couple of Knuts?" She wondered if that would be enough to cover it. At least she could buy Freya a snack later.

Next up, the skirt Freya picked out for her and the studded top. As Shelby shimmied into the new outfit, she heard her cousin call out a question made for her. "Go for it!" she yelled back, doing up the skirt before stepping back out. Maybe she shouldn't say that she did Freya's chart earlier. Just to seem cooler.