Were they friends? Arabella considered that question for a moment, finally settling on that it would be wrong to name them friends when she did not know the answer instantly. He could make his own decisions about them, because Aberforth was a good man who deserved all the friendship that he could gain. But he was also an adult, capable of making those choices.
“You were… extremely kind to me and my situation,” Arabella said. She still danced around the word squib with all the finesse of a drugged cat batting at a bit of light on the wall. There was a kinship in having been in the Order; for Arabella it had been the first time she’d really been accepted or wanted. And Aberforth had been apart of that for her. Perhaps that was something she needed to start accepting, that she had made friends, that she was not merely the squib who had taken up other’s time in her need for protection.
“Yes. We were friends. You were my friend,” she finally said, making that decision for herself. Maybe she wasn’t his friend, maybe she’d just been a nice girl who read a lot and gave information. Maybe, to him, that had just been that. But she was ready to say he was hers. And that was more than she’d been able to say or claim or own since she was a small child.