Jump on the Wind's Back

[Freya Song]

The library was a convenient place for Freya to hole up when she wanted some quiet. It was close enough to her common room that it didn't feel like effort to throw herself down the hall and into a comfortable corner, and it had the added benefit of being the last place anyone would think to look for her. She wasn't intentionally hiding, but someone might spot her and think she was studying and it could ruin her carefully cultivated image of not caring about her studies. The library was quiet this early in the morning, and Freya assumed everybody else was still at breakfast. Freya still had a long time until she was expected to be anywhere, and had decided to spend the time alternating between building herself a small barricade out of books and flipping through an ancient copy of Peter Pan. The book belonged to her brother, and Freya had swiped it during one of the few days she actually saw him over the holidays. She had only taken it because she wanted to see if he'd notice and get mad about it, or at least that's what she told herself. Taking Soren's books in an attempt to get to know him better without having an actual conversation was certainly not something Freya would ever do. She smoothed over a wrinkled page of the book and whispered along with the words of the story she now almost knew by heart.

 

[Mary Lou Layton]

The library had always been comfortable for Mary Lou - she’d made a number of friends in this library and since first year she’d always come here to read over her notes and try to understand what fresh craziness the magical world had thrust upon her this week.​

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She wasn’t always successful at understanding it, but she liked to try.​

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Today was no exception as she walked in, mostly as a way of avoiding the common room. Ever since Cindy had been sorted with her, she’d found it increasingly more difficult to avoid her. She didn’t want to seem callous, but what was she supposed to do? How did she talk to her sister without sounding like all she was doing was making more excuses…​

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… because that was exactly what she was doing. She hadn’t meant for it to go that way of course, she’d never intentionally hurt Cindy - she didn’t have a malicious bone in her body - but circumstances being what they were, she felt she didn’t have a choice. She didn’t want to avoid Cindy, but she’d been doing that for the last four years - sort of - and now she just didn’t feel like she had any right to try and explain.​

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How did you even start to explain something like this, honestly?​

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As she’d headed deeper into the library with her textbooks with her, lugging them along behind her because she still felt weird about using magic for mundane tasks like that - she frowned slightly when she clocked someone she thought she knew. Was that Freya? She hadn’t seen her friend in some time - she assumed they’d both been busy - so she was glad to see her now, even if she probably should be focusing on actually doing work. She wouldn’t mind having a chat, if Freya didn’t mind of course. Though, she looked like she was busy, perhaps Mary Lou shouldn’t disturb her then?​

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“Freya?” She asked quietly as she moved a little closer, hoping she didn’t pull her out of whatever story she was immersed in. Mary Lou couldn’t see the cover from this angle. “Am I interrupting you? Should I leave you alone?” She wouldn’t mind the company, but she didn’t want to cause issues either.​

 

[Freya Song]

Freya looked up in irritation, but her expression softened when she saw who had interrupted her. "Hi, Miss Apple Pie," she grinned. Mary Lou was very sweet, but being around her did make Freya a little nervous. She had a real concern she might accidentally hurt Mary Lou's Hufflepuff-ly feelings by saying something insensitive. The younger girl had been in Freya's thoughts recently, as she'd discovered that she felt a sense of responsibility to look out for the younger students in her house. She was rather annoyed about it. "You can stay, but you've got to pay the construction tax," Freya said, gesturing to her wall of books and then to a bookshelf. She was happy to have Mary Lou around, but getting other people completely arbitrary tasks was always amusing to her. "I'm just hanging out with my boy, Peter," Freya held up the book so Mary Lou could see. "So, how've you been?" she chirped. If her estimation of the girl was correct, she'd probably been busy doing something disgustingly wholesome like baking cookies for the first years. Freya bet that Mary Lou even had her own special secret recipe and everything.

 

[Mary Lou Layton]

Mary Lou wasn’t entirely sure what to think of her new nickname - apt as it was - but given that it was Freya who’d given it to her, she was more inclined to accept it happily than be worried that it was a thinly veiled insult into her hobbies. Since things with Luxen had come to a head, she’d been seeing nastiness wherever she looked and that was hard to deal with for her. Mostly she didn’t have to worry because she had one of her friends around, but on the rare occasion she didn’t, she was spending time with someone she wasn’t as familiar with, she worried that she was too dumb to realise when she was being insulted.​

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Okay, so maybe not dumb, but definitely naive.​

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It was strange to think that only a year ago she was much more trusting. But an entire year of looking around corners and worrying that Luxen was going to put Alihotsy leaves in her tea was terrifying. He’d legitimately threatened her and she’d still told no-one about it. What would she have even said. He was a well liked student from what she’d gathered, so it was hard to see that he wasn’t the type of person she thought everyone was. Knowing she was in school with someone like him… it made her wonder how many other people she was going to school with that wanted to hurt her.​

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“Oh,” Mary Lou gasped slightly looking at the wall of books. Slowly she made her way over to them so she could pack some of them away. “How many for the tax?” She asked, looking over her shoulder at Freya. She was taller now then when she’d first met Freya, though not by much. So she was able to reach the bookshelves a lot easier than she had in first year. “I like Peter Pan - but I think it’s sad that all those boys are lost away from their families,” it had always been one of her favourites. When she was little and she’d started to be able to do things, her mother had called her demon-spawn and talked about getting a priest in. Then when she’d exploded the kettle her mama had sent her away. She was feeling more and more like a lost boy these days.​

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She was a lost girl.​

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She’d had a dream once about Peter Pan coming and taking her away - she sometimes still had it. “I’ve been okay,” she lied, moving to another stack of books and pulling them over to the empty shelves. She hoped she didn’t have to do too many of these, though she was kind of enjoying the catharsis of it if she was totally honest.​

 

[Freya Song]

"As many as your little heart feels is right," Freya shrugged. She didn't really care what happened with the wall of books, not when she was busy building a metaphorical one to wrap around her emotions. She was reaching her limit of people she cared about. Three felt like the right number of human beings for Freya to feel anything other than disinterest toward, and Mary Lou was severely pushing that number. Merlin forbid that she started catching feelings and making friends with people. Freya hummed thoughtfully. She'd often wondered why none of the lost boys had parents, but it mirrored her own parentless existence so much that she only wished she could find others who were lost like her. "Maybe that's why they all found each other and made their own family." she said.

Her immediate thought about Mary Lou's response was that the younger girl was lying. Nobody was ever actually just okay. Anybody who said they were was either being polite or lying. While Freya generally approved of scripted niceties that gave her an easy way to duck out of conversations, she had invited this one in and intended to let it stay for a while. "People who are okay generally don't hide up in the library during breakfast," Freya observed casually. She shuffled discreetly to one side to make more room in case Mary Lou wanted to sit. Not that Freya cared if she did or not, but the option was there.