It was a Saturday, in April (or was it May?), and they were sat, as they had done so many times before, in a booth with cushioned seats, in The Three Broomsticks. They drank their butterbeers in silence, as best friends tend to do, and Frank took the opportunity to watch the way Alice's round eyes sparkled in the dim lights of the pub, and Alice thought about the way he cradled his mug in his hands, like it was something precious.
The intensity of her feelings for Frank had never surprised her. It had sort of crept up on her, like on a hot day when night falls so slowly you don't notice until you can see the stars. It had felt like waking up, but on one of those mornings where you realise you don't have to physically get up for another three hours, and the sunlight casts rainbows on the wall. Emmeline had once described falling in love as like drowning, but, Alice thought, that Saturday in April (or was it May?), for her it felt more like floating.
"Al," Frank said suddenly (and it occured to her that he had been staring into her eyes for the past half an hour) "we're mates, right?"
She couldn't help but laugh. Mates didn't even begin to cover it.
Frank was her best friend in the whole wide world, and sometimes she thought that she was dust, and he was the only thing holding her up. The first time she'd ever gotten drunk (damn Gideon and his home brewed Firewhiskey), Frank had held her hair back whilst she was sick in a bin. When Narcissa Black had told her she'd never become an Auror because she was too fat, Frank had charmed all the knights in the castle to blow raspberries as the Slytherin walked past. When Frank was ill, Alice made notes for him in every lesson, and when George Avery punched him in the face, Alice cleaned him up, and hexed Avery so thoroughly that he was in the hospital wing for a week. They were the centre of each other's universes.
"And mates tell each other stuff, right?" Frank said. Alice nodded.
"Thing is, Al, right, is that there's this girl, and I um….well, I really, really, um, well, I like her." he finished by messily gulping down the dregs of his butterbeer. The froth spilt down his front.
For Frank, he had never not known that he loved her. It had always been there, an ever present glow in the middle of his chest. Alice beamed at him.
"You like someone?"
"Yeah." Did she know? She must know. She knew everything about him.
"Well," she was still smiling, "I fancy someone too."
"You do?"
She giggled and sipped her butterbeer. "Yeah."
"Right. Okay. Cool."
They fell into silence again, as best friends often do, and Frank knew from the way her smile reached her eyes that she knew. She'd always known.
Later, as they wandered down the High Street, munching on bags of Peppermint Imps (Frank) and Droobles Bubblegum (Alice), the sun came out from behind a cloud and bathed everything in a warm, golden glow.
"Pretty, isn't it?" Alice said, gesturing to the High Street.
"Hmmm."
And she reached out, and took his hand.