Closed Grow in Hollow Spaces

[Freya Song]

Freya was experiencing emotions of the negative sort, and was at a loss for how to deal with them. It had only been a couple of days since the beginning on the school year, and Freya was already becoming overwhelmed by the school. She loved Hogwarts - as much as she allowed herself to care about anything - but the walls felt like they were closing in on her. The holidays had been especially difficult and she'd hoped everything would get better when she got on the train to return to her magical life, but that wasn't how things worked. She still had a brother she kept in the dark about magic, and nowhere to go except muggle foster care when Hogwarts kicked her out over the holidays, so Freya wasn't feeling extremely optimistic. She didn't even fully believe she belonged at Hogwarts, like maybe the last few years had been a fluke or a dream she was going to wake up from.

She was good at keeping a distance from people, even her friends. The word crashed around in her head even as she thought it. It still felt too heavy to think of another people as being her friend. Classmates and casual acquaintances she could handle, but friendship was a bridge Freya had never learned how to cross. It was far easier to fool herself into believing she could avoid growing roots and walk away from all the people who knew her name. Some days she just wanted to disappear, to turn into a ghost, and float away to never be seen again.

Freya had considered finding someone to talk about it. She knew there were at least a couple of muggleborns in her year who might understand her issues, but that would have involved opening up to people and there was always the risk that her frustration would be seen as irrational and stupid. So, she did what she did best and ran away from her problems. Hiding out in a bathroom wasn't her favourite idea of places to be, but she didn't think anyone would find her there at least. Freya scowled at her reflection as she approached the mirror above a sink. She wondered what it would be like to look in a mirror and see somebody else. Freya didn't even realise that she'd pulled out a pair of craft scissors from her bag until she was holding them up to her shoulders. "Rest in pieces," she muttered as she held on to one of her braids and began cutting. Wisps of pale hair fell to the ground in messy clumps, and Freya laughed out loud as she saw the damage she'd caused. A hairdresser, she certainly was not.

 

[Kasim Safir]

Freya had been hard to track down so far this year and in the interests of being a good friend and also because Kas wanted to complain about how annoying their professors were already somehow, he was indulging in a little friendly stalking. Someone had mentioned they'd seen her along the 5th floor and the old bathroom up there was the just the right sort of weird and grimy that Freya might decide to take up lurking there for awhile.

"Bathroom's really are ideal for using the word lurk-" He commented as he pushed his way in, spotting Freya at one of the sinks and pausing. "Everything... good?" Kas asked stiltedly, looking at the pile of hair around Freya and the scissors still in her hand. "You know I don't like using the word honey, but honey," He said forlorn, stepping closer to Freya half in the interests of comforting her from whatever weird breakdown she was having and half to liberate her of the scissors she was clearly not qualified to be using.

 

[Freya Song]

Freya had forgotten how impossible it was to disappear in a boarding school full of people. She jumped when she heard a voice, momentarily forgetting what she was holding and nearly poking her eye out when she swung around. She wasn't surprised to find that Kas had been stalking her, but he hadn't even shown up with coffee or any sort of bribe. The audacity of it all was just too much. "Oh, yeah, 'm good." Freya said, trying her best to appear unaffected. Her voice came out scratchy and even her best acting skills couldn't hide that she was on the verge of tears. The world was a stage, but Freya had forgotten all her lines and was pretty sure she'd missed her cue. Still, she refused to acknowledge that she could start crying at any moment and barrelled on. "Do you even read Witch Weekly?" she asked, dully. "It's experimental. Avant-garde, and all that."

As a rule, Freya avoided advertising her feelings in front of people. She actually cared what Kas thought of her, much to her irritation, and half-suspected he'd run for the hills if she started bawling like a baby. She gave a weak little laugh and lowered her head so she could stare firmly at the ground, before inching forward and gently headbutting Kas's chest. It wasn't quite a hug, but the contact made Freya feel a little more solid in the midst of her tiny existential crisis. She held up the scissors towards Kas in a silent request for him to help before she made it worse. Her hair was barely above her shoulders, in all its raggedy glory, but she'd probably end up bald if given free rein to continue her massacre.

 

[Kasim Safir]

Kas almost winced at Freya's response, but he and her had an unspoken rule when it came to things like this. They didn't ask questions about stuff like this. If Freya wanted to pretend everything was fine, then Kas would nod along like nothing was happening. It was the rules. He nodded mutely when she insisted she was fine, giving her a weak smile when she made a wan joke about her hair. "It's certainly different, I'll give you that," He said speculatively, stilling when Freya pitched forward, her forehead leaning against his chest. "You know... I reckon you could pull it off," He said slowly, running his fingers through her hacked hair gently. They weren't quite hugging, but it was close enough that Kas hoped it helped. It was a delicate dance they were doing here, dangerously close to being open with each other.

Kas was grateful when Freya offered up the scissors, taking them and stepping back so he could get a good look at Freya. "We could probably get a hair growing potion if you wanted it back," He said, taking Freya's chin to tilt her head this way and that, though something about this told Kas that growing the hair back would rather ruin the point of... Whatever this was. Where they still even talking about hair anymore? "I make no claims to know what I'm doing," He added, giving the scissors an experimental snip in the air as a last warning to Freya that she could still back out and salvage this.

 

[Freya Song]

There was nobody else in the world that Freya would rather trust to cut her hair than Kas. Some of the tension left her body at his silent agreement to play along with her game. She wouldn't have even known where to begin with open communication and actually talking about her feelings. That just wasn't how their relationship worked, and Freya was happy with that. She loved her housemates and being without them seemed like the whole world had gone and shifted a few inches to the left when she wasn't looking, but being back and trying to relearn how to act around them seemed like another level of wrongness.

"Muggles don't even have potions for that," Freya said, fluffing up her hair so she could feel the extent of the damage. She'd never had hair this short before and the change hadn't yet sunk in. "They have to wait months for their hair to grow." She shrugged as an invitation for Kas to do whatever he wanted with her hair. Freya didn't really care what happened now that the dramatic action heroine part was over, but letting Kas fix it would distract her from the real reasons she was hanging out in a bathroom. "Do you think I'd look good with an undercut?" she asked, quietly.

She was vulnerable, and seen, and it made her feel vicious. She wished that Kas would say something to justify her anger, allow her to lash out instead of keeping it hidden inside her chest. She wanted to hit something harder than her thoughts were hitting her. Her gut told her that she needed to make Kas go away so he wouldn't witness her being a mess. He was being too kind, and Freya knew she didn't deserve it.

 

[Kasim Safir]

Kas was still unnerved by Freya's behavior, the thin veneer of casualty between them threatening to crack at a moment's notice. But Freya was soldiering on, so he would as well. Besides, Freya's mess of hair was in serious need of saving, so it wasn't like he could do much more damage. "Sounds dreadful," Kas said dryly when Freya mentioned muggles didn't have the luxury of magic to fix things like this. He'd been using some form of magic or potion to mess with his hair for years, still did even though he'd stopped trying to straighten it last year. "Absolutely not, I'd sooner give you a fringe than an undercut," He said seriously at the mention of an undercut, placing a warning hand on Freya's shoulder. He may have not been around to avert this disaster, but he could stop that one at least.

Tentatively, Kas maneuvered Freya in front of one of the bathroom's grubby mirrors, deciding trying to scourgify it clean was probably a lost cause at this right, and angled her so she was facing forward. "Well, here goes nothing," He told her softly, finding the spot her hair was at its shortest and doing his best to carefully even up the rest of it. Even without saying anything, it felt oddly intimate, the snip of the scissors loud in the quiet bathroom as Kas watched more short strands of blonde hair fall to the floor.

 

[Freya Song]

Freya tried her best to stand still while Kas worked on her hair. It was difficult for her, when all her instincts told her that she needed to leave, right now, immediately, as she forced herself to be a statue. Freya was, unfortunately, not made of marble and therefore had to control her own movements. Leaving before her hair was fixed would probably annoy Kas, too, and that didn't sit well with Freya.

"I look like my brother," Freya pouted. She wasn't sold on her new look yet, but at least she was being spared from her post-breakdown aesthetic choices and was grateful Kas had come along when he did. She unfocused her eyes until her reflection was only a person shaped blur in the mirror. "Your stylist skills have uncovered the family resemblance, you irredeemable monster." Freya barked a laugh. She cut it off before it started sounding broken around the edges. It was one of her many, many internal rules not to think about her parents. Doing so only lead to spiralling into self pity and why-don't-they-want-me whining, and Freya liked to think herself tougher than that. She had long since decided that they were garbage people who didn't deserve to have her delightful self around. Their loss, really.

 

[Kasim Safir]

Kas tried to keep his focus on cutting Freya's hair as neatly as he could and not on the awkward stillness he could see in Freya's shoulders. Objectively, he figured they both knew there were better, easily solutions to this problem than what they were doing, but again, Kas felt like stepping outside of this room for an answer would somehow shatter whatever weird truce they'd reached. That whatever had caused Freya to lop all her hair off was only being held at bay by the gross bathroom tile and if he left to go find another solution it'd come rush right back. But maybe he was just being dramatic. Besides, it wasn't every day he got to cut his friend's hair, so Kas tried to at least pretend to enjoy it.

The scissors stilled when Freya mentioned her brother, as Kas tried to remember if she'd ever mentioned even having one before. She didn't seem to talk about her family much as a rule, which Kas was fine with, determined only to bring up his own family if it was in the vein of complaining about them. "You want me to cut his hair too? I could give you both matching bowl cuts," He said lightly, snipping the scissors a few times in a mock threat. "Besides, my styling skills are one of a kind, don't lie. Not just anyone can pull this look off," He said, fluffing some of Freya's hair up and ignoring the annoying little, itchy hairs that stuck to his hands.

 

[Freya Song]

It was with a dawning horror that Freya realised that a haircut didn't actually turn her into a different person like she'd quietly hoped it would. Even worse, she was beginning to weigh up the possibility of saying more things about herself where Kas could hear her. It was antithetical to the whole keeping people at arm's length gig she preferred, but performing for an audience of one was incredibly tiring. Her snuggly blanket of denial could only hold out for so long.

"I'm adopting you as his replacement," Freya said, aiming for light-hearted even as metaphorical lead crushed her windpipe. Once she started babbling, she couldn't seem to keep the words from flowing. Future Freya was going to throw a fit about her current self's increased verbosity, but current-Freya's sense of self preservation was flying off the rails. "You can be, like, the prettier, cooler, and more magical version," she grinned. If Freya kept smiling and steadily ignored the tear rolling down her cheek, surely Kas wouldn't notice that she'd started crying. Huffing a sigh, Freya shook her head so her newly-short hair covered most of her face, and moved to tuck herself under Kas's arm. "Tell me something awful about your family," she requested. It wasn't quite an eye for an eye, but even talking a circle around her real issues made Freya desperate for some kind of balance. If she wanted to remain the hide and seek champion of her own problems, she needed to shut her mouth immediately.

 

[Kasim Safir]

Kas nodded vaguely while he finished trimming up the last bits of uneven hair, smiling quietly to himself as Freya talked about adopting him. "All my best qualities, for sure," He said mildly, glad that Freya couldn't really see his face while he was ducked behind her head, eying up how neat the ends of her hair were. He didn't think he could remember any time they'd talked about Freya's family in real detail, but in the past few minutes Kas had at least gleaned that Freya both had a brother and also preferred Kas to said brother. It was weird to discover, but his ego was pleased at the very least.

Content that Freya's hair looked about as good as they could get it, Kas just moved his arm in acquiescence when Freya tucked herself under it, letting his gaze wander idly around the lavatory so she had some privacy for the rest of whatever this breakdown she'd been having was. He faltered some when she asked about his family, making a half-shrug as his brain spun its wheels. "I mean, where to start," He asked, joking tone feeling more strained than he would have liked. Did Freya wanna be real here? Or should he make a joke about his dad can't cook to save his life? "I'm pretty sure my parents love their pet snakes more than they love me. Or each other," He eventually said. Easy enough to play off as a joke, but real enough if Freya know how to parse that out.

 

[Freya Song]

Freya felt itchy in her brain as they inched into the forbidden territory that was talking about their families. She'd been the one to ask the question and drag him into her game of competitive misery, but now she wasn't sure how she was supposed to react to Kas's answer. Half of her wanted to deflect and make a joke about how all parents sucked, but the other half was a little too invested in reading between the lines.

"That's not ideal," Freya said, a low undercurrent of anger running through her words. She thought she was probably a hypocrite, because if she had a pet snake, she'd definitely love it more than her absent parents. But this was Kas - one of the very few people that even Freya could almost admit that she loved - and no matter how cool snakes were, Freya immediately hated his parents with a ferocity she hadn't known she possessed. "I'm convinced that the set I had this year only kept me around to be a free stable hand," Freya said quickly, and grimaced at the realisation of what she'd just revealed.

Freya liked to tell herself that it didn't matter that she was shuffled around to any foster family that had a place for the holidays because she could just forget about them when she went back to Hogwarts and never see them again. She was fine if she didn't think about the empty feeling climbing up her bones and threatening to reveal everything she was intent on burying. "I live with muggles." Freya bit down on her lip hard as soon as the words rushed out. She froze, immediately wishing she could take it back. If she kept throwing puzzle pieces at Kas, he'd eventually build a whole picture of her and Freya wasn't sure she could handle his reaction. She'd already said too much. If Kas was going to decide to hate her, she wanted to at least be in control of the information before he figured out out on his own. "My brother's one too, and he doesn't, uh," Freya took a shuddering breath and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Knowaboutmagic?"

 

[Kasim Safir]

Kas gave another shrug at Freya's comment about his parents, trying to come off as non-plussed. He knew things could be a lot worse, really, and he'd rather accepted how conditional his family situation was a long time ago. "They're very big on appearances, and I, as you may have noticed, am not exactly ideal for that," He said, giving Freya a gentle poke in the side with the hand that was around her.

Kas had to pause at Freya's use of wording when it was apparently her turn to share, stuck on the words "set" and "this year". Was that a thread Freya really wanted him to pull at right now? He glanced down, the top of her head not really being that useful for figuring as much out. "Ah, I knew you had to be muggleborn, your takes on wizard fashion were all wrong," He said magnanimously, the joke more an olive branch than any sincere attempt at humour. He didn't really care if Freya was muggleborn or half-goblin or secretly a ghost. She was Freya all the same, really. It would drive his own parents up the wall to know his closest female friend was a muggleborn though, which he found appropriately hilarious. "Does he need to know?" Kas wasn't going to judge Freya for keeping secrets, it was her life, she could tell people whatever she wanted. But something about all this was bothering her enough to hack all her hair off, so maybe it was worth talking about it, as much as it clearly pained the both of them to try and be sincere.

 

[Freya Song]

Freya couldn't exactly say that she knew how Kas didn't match up to his parents ideals. Having parents with expectations was unfamiliar territory for her, and she couldn't think of a single reason why Kas could be anything other than perfect. He'd probably have to be committing a lot more arson for Freya to even consider it. "Ah, I think I understand your parents now. They're just jealous they can't keep up with your impeccable fashion tastes." Freya said drily. It didn't quite melt her fear away, but now she only had to worry about Kas hating her in secret and that was really too much effort to commit to.

Freya blinked, and pulled away from Kas so she could properly stare at him in bafflement. The guilt from not telling her brother had been a weight on her since she first received her Hogwarts letter, and not once had she considered that maybe her being a witch wasn't as big of a secret as it felt. "I mean," she said, considering. "He thinks I trained an owl to send packages to juvie, and that is infinitely better than anything I could come up with." Freya shrugged. Soren did have his own life that Freya was barely a part of anyway, so it was only fair she got to keep her own secrets. She did, however, like the idea of the long con, and keeping magic to herself until she was of age opened up infinite possibilities of how to stage a dramatic reveal.