A/N: This fic is experimental in nature, as it was inspired by the musical play by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan: Alice. The lyrics to the songs in this musical are often a parallel between inevitable darkness and playful beauty, something I hope to capture in this story.

Alice

It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice. . .

-Tom Waits- Alice(Brennan/Waits © 1992)

"Come on, Longbottom," Geoff Diggory leaned halfway into the dormitory room from the busy hallway. "All the ice'll melt before you finish that bloody essay for McGonagall. How many inches of parchment was it? Forty-two?"

"Twenty-four. I'll be there in a bit," Frank replied, barely lifting his head from the book he was bent over. His hand started to glide across the parchment again, the steady lines and curves of his penmanship forming words and symbols as the feather of his quill trembled with each gentle stroke. "Go on without me. I'll catch up."

"That's what you said yesterday," Geoff sighed.

"And the day before that," Thedrick Cowell popped up behind Geoff. "You can't stay in here all day mate. It's almost the holidays. Get out, come skating with us."

"You only live once," Thedrick's twin, Merrick piped in. "Transfiguration will always be there, Longbottom."

"But Alice won't." Thedrick added.

Frank's hand paused in mid-letter, the feather steadying just before a sigh of breath escaped him, ruffling the plume. "I'll be there in a bit," he repeated, a little more thoughtfully, for now his mind was on Alice Delaney. Alice, whose hair was the shade of meadow grass in summer, whose eyes were like two ripe blueberries. Alice. . . who didn't even know he existed.

"She's not going to notice you if you're never around, Longbottom." Geoff reminded him.

"I'll only write to the end of the parchment, and then I'll be there, I swear." None of them believed him, but stood blinking insolently in his wake. Frank gave a chuckle, the corners of his green eyes gathering cheerfully as his face lit up. "Go on then you lot, off with you! I won't get any work done with you standing about looking clever."

"All work and no play," Thedrick's shoulders slumped as he backed out of the doorway.

Merrick picked up where his brother had left off, "Makes Frank a dull boy."

"Indeed," Geoff agreed. "That it does," and that was the last Frank heard from his roommates before they closed the door behind them, merging with the cheerful commotion that had gripped Gryffindor tower.

He was still chuckling to himself as he read aloud from the last words he'd written, "The properties of a full grown alynxissus hydrobotamus make transfiguration impossible because of excess amounts of. . ." he tapped the point of his quill against the inkwell. "Excess amounts of. . . damn!" He flipped back over his notes, turned the pages backward in his book and skimmed it all again, but couldn't retrace the origin of his thought.

Frank closed the books on his desk with a sigh. Now that his mind had turned to Alice there would be no turning back, but he couldn't go down to the lake and he knew it. Professor Flitwick had charmed the surface with a healthy layer of ice, and Professor Dumbledore had handed out skates Friday evening at dinner. Frank hadn't been down to the Lake all weekend. He'd found some excuse or another to get out of going, always promising to show up later because he knew Alice would be there, and he couldn't skate. He'd look the fool standing on the sidelines watching as the giggling girls whooshed and whirled by in flashes of bright color as their hair and scarves caught in the currents of wind.

His friends would try to humiliate him, and Alice would think he was stupid. . .

He got up and walked to the window. The Fifth floor overlooked the school grounds, and out over the snow spattered grass Frank watched specks of blue and bronze, red and gold, green and silver, black and yellow, as they huddled close and made way toward the lake. Puffs of breath hung over their heads like little clouds, while his careful green eyes scanned over the crowd in search of her. It was a perfect day. He wished that he'd gone out with the rest of them now that he was alone there in the tower.

There were already students out on the lake, spiraling in graceful pirouettes, the colors on their scarves melting together in blurs of brilliance. He saw Lily Evans first; the rich auburn flow of her hair giving her away. Even from that distance, he could clearly see her face and she was laughing while her friend waved frantic arms to try and maintain balance. It was Alice, he noticed, skidding toward Lily, her head back as coils of laughter shook her shoulders. Lily reached out and braced the other girl's hands first and then her arms, but the movement had already been decided, the struggle already anticipated, and wildly laughing, the two girls fell bottoms first onto the ice.

"Some Gryffindor you are, Longbottom," he muttered. "How you ever managed to make Head Boy I'll never know." He would have given anything for the courage to put on his hat and scarf to head out there to talk to her, to hear Alice say more than just hello to him. He watched as she and Lily helped each other to stand again. James Potter came whizzing through between them, vying for Lily's attention. Alice laughed again, but Lily was obviously not amused.

He felt like such an idiot, standing in the windows watching the world go on outside. If only he could convince himself that talking to her was not the end of the world. The worst she could say was bugger off, Frank, but it was the idea of her actually saying it made his throat ache somewhere near the back. Bugger off, Frank was a chance he just wasn't willing to take. So he watched her from a distance, admiring her laughter from the confinement of Gryffindor Tower, where with his arms crossed and mind made up, Frank Longbottom watched the girl of his dreams skate gracefully over the frozen lake.

The smooth, white-blue surface had become a series of white scars and slashes, swirling figure eights and looping letters. He couldn't be sure, but he swore that underneath it all, the lines and swirls grouped together to spell out her name. Yes, indeed it had. Emblazoned there across the lake was the word Alice. He hadn't even realized it, but he'd been watching her trace it there, over and over with her skates. Lily had done the same, but hers wasn't near as obvious to him.