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.”

Barbara said that she didn’t have a very good imagination and Freddie wondered how he should respond to that. Maybe he would be better off if his imagination wasn’t quite so vivid. He liked to think about what he’d do if he had money, if he had all the chances in the world. These dreams sometimes led to him lying to his schoolmates because the things he imagined seemed so much better than reality that he’d rather share those instead of being honest. However, sometimes, quite rarely, the boy found himself wondering if he wasn’t making the best of what he had.

Hogsmeade was a much easier topic to talk about and Freddie felt that he could be at least half honest there. “No,” he said, shrugging, “I’ve never been to Hogsmeade before starting at school. When my parents went shopping with me we usually went to London.” They had rarely been to London and there hadn’t been a lot of ‘shopping’ then, but at least he had seen Diagon Alley years before he had got his first school supplies from there.

If Barbara had picked up on him blushing then she was decent enough not to rub it in and Freddie was grateful for that. He glanced at her, offering a slight smile.

“You live over the funeral home?” Freddie had known that Barbara lived in Hogsmeade and, now that he thought about it, he could have put two and two together. He really needed to listen more carefully to the things he heard and make the necessary connections. “I wasn’t aware,” he said, making an apologetic face.

“How is that for you? I mean, I guess you got used to it but…” his voice trailed off as he tried to imagine how that had to be. Thinking of the ghosts at Hogwarts, the boy wondered if there were ghosts at a funeral home but didn’t dare to ask because he felt that he might seem stupid for doing so.

“Oh,” said Barbara pensively. “I have been to London.” Not often -- even once her sister had moved out, she’d stayed in Hogsmeade. A part of Barbara couldn’t imagine herself ever leaving -- even at Hogwarts she’d been comforted, her first year, by being able to see the smoke rising from the chimneys over the Forest. It made her sort of sad to imagine herself living like her sister had -- all her life in Hogsmeade -- or, worse, like her father had -- all his life in the same house.

After all, she was in her fifth year now, and she had to start thinking about that. Which was intimidating. She pressed her lips together and stood on her tiptoes again as the line moved closer to the carriages, most of which were already on their way down to the train.

He grimaced at the mention of the funeral home, and Barbara shrugged and glanced off to the side, again sure he didn’t want to discuss it -- couldn’t the thestrals move any faster? (She was sure she didn’t know -- she couldn’t see them herself.)

But Freddie did want to discuss it. She shrugged, feeling rather put on the spot, and said, “Aye, it’s alright. It’s a nice house. We do get a lot of visitors.” Now Barbara really wanted to change the topic somehow, but from what she remembered of the last time they’d spoken, his family was a sort of touchy subject. She pointed feebly at the line ahead of them -- “We’re getting close,” she said, and laughed uncomfortably. “Are you looking forward to it?”

He nodded as Barbara said that she had been to London. He wanted to say more, respond with something fun or witty or at least remotely interesting. However, there was nothing coming to Freddie’s mind now. He offered a sheepish smile and felt like a fool. It wasn’t really a difficult topic of conversation and yet he absolutely blanked.

Noticing how Barbara stood on her tiptoes to peek over the heads of the students lined up in front of him made him feel even more awkward. Was she hoping that the line would move faster so their conversation would come to an end? Funnily, although Freddie felt rather uncomfortable right now, he wasn’t eager to part ways with Barbara. He actually liked the Ravenclaw. While he was not sure if he’d go as far as to call her a friend, she was one of the very few people he felt he could be more or less himself with and that was nice. They had talked about serious things quite openly and while it made him feel vulnerable it was also nice not to keep up a facade all the time.

“Hmm,” Freddie said when she responded to his question about how it was to live over a funeral home. He wasn’t convinced. The visitors that came to the house because of the funeral home were hardly the kind of company he’d want to have - he imagined grieving families, everybody puffy eyed and clad in black robes…

Before he could say more, Barbara pointed out that they were getting close and he looked at the line in front of them to which she had pointed. Was he looking forward to it? It wasn’t a yes or no question to him. There were things he was looking forward to and there were things he was dreading. However, he was not going to be this honest with her. “Mostly?” he, therefore, said evasively. “Well, you know how it is…” She indeed knew more than most other students about his situation at home and he thought that she’d understand even without too many words. “Are you?”

They lulled into kind of a quiet, and Barbara snuck another look at the line; though she wasn’t uncomfortable with Freddie’s company, she felt odd about it – odd, perhaps, that they were speaking again, or that this boy (boy!) knew things about her that she’d barely told her best friend, which – she told herself firmly – had been mostly an accident in the first place.

And she knew things about him, too, Barbara reminded herself, that he didn’t seem to talk much about to any of their other friends. She didn’t know if she liked having that kind of friendship – it wasn’t one she’d had often before, where her confidence was reciprocated. It felt more dangerous somehow.

She wasn’t an animal, though – she still had to be nice to him – he was, after all, she admonished herself, a very decent boy when she thought about it, for a Gryffindor at least. She didn’t really know how it was – he’d been very tight-lipped about it the first time they’d discussed his family, which she had rather admired, when contrasted with her own effusiveness (Merlin and Morgana, that was humiliating in retrospect. She hoped he didn’t remember it well.)

She said, “Oh,” rather than let that mess out – that was far more self-obsessed and apathetic than she wanted Freddie to think she was – and was wholly unsurprised that he turned the question back on her rather than go on. What an odd little puzzle Freddie Snyder was. Barbara was used to being the least talkative in a group, usually, with Gryffindors. (Or second least – Billie.) She said, in kind, “Well, you know. It’s nice to have a break.” Surely he could agree with that – she was not enjoying their O.W.L.s workload one bit.

“Yes, a break is good,” Freddie agreed. “I hope it’ll be a pleasant one for both of us.” He really meant it and offered a genuine smile. He hoped that Barbara would be able to enjoy Christmas although her family didn’t really celebrate a traditional Christmas.

His family didn’t really either. It was different, though. They kind of pretended to be celebrating Christmas but the atmosphere was hardly pleasant and festive. Freddie always put in an effort to decorate and make everything look like he thought it was supposed to look. The real Christmas feeling, however, hadn’t been there in years. He sometimes wondered if that was maybe the case in most families. Maybe the whole idea of celebrating Christmas was more for little kids.

“I’m a bit… scared,” Freddie admitted quietly so that no one but Barbara could hear him. “I don’t know how things are at home these days. I’m always worried when I go home that…” he shrugged and shook his head. “Never mind. It’ll be alright.” He grinned but this time it was not anything like the genuine smile he had offered earlier. Barbara knew more about him than most and likely could imagine what he had been about to say. He thought that the girl likely understood his fears more than anybody else he knew.

“I'm looking forward to seeing my mother anyway,” he said as they walked a little closer to the carriages, feeling like he was repeating himself. It was just what he told himself all the time anyway - that the positive thing about going home was to see his mother, nothing else.

“Yes,” said Barbara drearily, “so do I.” Freddie smiled at her; she tried to muster one in return, and felt like her lips had stretched so far to the sides of her face that she looked frightening. She shut her mouth and looked away again.

He said, quietly, that he was scared; Barbara felt a spike of concern, and looked back up at him, her eyebrows pinching together over her nose. “What do you mean?” she said, but he didn’t seem like he wanted to go on. And Barbara didn’t want to pry, except that she did, not even so much out of curiosity as much as concern. What was going on in the Snyders’ home, that had Freddie looking so anxious?

(What did it matter, if she couldn’t do anything about it? came a more pointed thought; she buried it quickly.) It wasn’t her place, maybe, to interfere with a family matter like that, but there was no reason she couldn’t offer Freddie her friendship still. He seemed like he needed it. “If it isn’t alright,” she said, “You could owl me. Anything that goes to Gibson & Sons gets to our house.” That still seemed paltry comfort – she added, “I wish there were something I could do.”

They kept moving toward the carriages.

“That will be nice,” said Barbara, who had nothing else to say about his mother, as she’d never met the woman, and all she’d discerned thus far was that his mother wasn’t what he was concerned about going home. “I’m sure she’s looking forward to seeing you too.”

His smile faded and Freddie nodded. They were both hoping for a nice break from school but it seemed like the best thing about the holidays was that there was no school rather than anything else. Well, for Freddie it was at least something. Not having to do any homework for a few days sounded quite promising anyway.

He shouldn’t have said it. He knew it as soon as the words were spoken aloud. Barbara looked at him now, a concerned look on her face, and she enquired what he meant. Freddie shrugged nervously. “Umm… nothing,” he said quickly. “It’s just…” he shrugged again. “I wonder how things are at home now. They had been pretty bad last summer and my mother didn’t tell me a lot lately. Her letters were short.” He shook his head and looked at some spot in the far distance. He couldn’t really spell it all out.

Barbara’s offer came as a surprise. He liked her, vaguely considered her a friend, but he hadn’t expected her to be willing to exchange letters. “Thank you,” he said, sounding as surprised as he felt.

“I might actually take you up on the offer,” he smiled gratefully. It was odd; Freddie Snyder usually tried to be more of a stereotypical Gryffindor, hoping that people liked him then, but now he felt shy, anxious, weak and Barbara was aware of it and still wanted to be his friend.

They took another few steps towards the carriages. Soon they’d reach them and soon after that their ways would part for the holidays.

“Yes,” Freddie said thoughtfully. He only went home because he knew it mattered to his mother and because he wanted to check on her, wanted to make sure she was alright. “That’s how it should be, right? Our families should want to have us home for the holidays.” His father likely didn’t care. However, he was certain that it meant the world to his mother and as long as she needed him there, he’d always come home even if it was a struggle for him.

He was still being vague; Barbara was torn between the knowledge that this was properly none of her business and her far more pressing nosiness. There was nothing for it, though – this was all Freddie seemed capable of vocalising. She said, “Oh,” and let the topic drop.

Perhaps Freddie meant to write her; just as likely, Freddie was just being nice. Still, Barbara let herself wonder for a moment what his letters would be like – far apart from whatever was going on with his family, she thought it likely he write letters in the rambling, disorganised way that so many other boys and Gryffindors did; he had that sort of personality. The thought made her smile; she had always thought that was sweet, in an indecorous way she would never have wanted to emulate.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” she said.

Freddie sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he was wanted back at home; a part of Barbara’s mind registered again that she ought to be highly concerned about that before she turned her thoughts toward her own family.

Of course they wanted her home; of course she knew that. Her mother would brush her hair before The Nutcracker; her grandfather would put Patches the cat in her lap when she was curled up reading; her father would come through the kitchen as she and her mother worked on Christmas dinner, just to smile at her in her ruffled apron. They would be happy to see her, even if they weren’t happy overall. She was very fortunate.

“I suppose so,” she said, to Freddie, unsure whether she was more eager to go home or not, after thinking it to death. She wondered if he’d done the same, and only confused his feelings even further. The last carriage rolled up to a stop in front of the last small cluster of students; she looked over (up) at Freddie.