First Date

November
First Hogsmeade Weekend
6th year
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This was their first date out. He met her outside The Three Broomsticks.

"Hi," she said. She was nervous.

"Hi," he replied.

Her first date ever and with this utter hunk, she sent silent entreaties to every God she could think of that tonight go well. This was impressive for her since she was largely a non-believer. Like many others, however, she could believe when she wanted something and tonight she definitely wanted something.

They took a booth inside and Leili pulled an Exploding Snap deck out of her clutch, "Wanna play?"

"Ah think ah'd like to keep my eyebrows this time," he laughed. Last time he'd lost the game and had half his eyebrows singed off.

"They grew back!" Leili pointed out, dropping the cards back in her purse. "Besides, if you wanted to keep your eyebrows, then maybe you shouldn't have taught me to play," she teased.

A waitress came by with a quill and pad floating beside her, "What'll you have?"

"Two butterbeers and the shepherd's pie," Oliver provided.

"Actually, make that one Butterbeer and a Gilly Water and could I get the chicken fingers, please?"

The quill scritched and scratched and the waitress nodded, moving on to her other tables.

"Do ye no' wan' a Butterbeer? They're famous here."

"Believe it or not, they're too sweet for me. I can't drink more than a few sips of the stuff."

"Och, Aye, right!" he was sure she was kidding.

She shrugged, perfectly serious.

His eyes widened in disbelief, "Tha's practic'ly sacrilegious, Leilani."

She shrugged again, smiling gratefully at the waiter who dropped off the drinks.

She struggled with the cap on her gilly water for a few minutes before holding it out to Oliver, "Can you open this for me please? I swear they put the caps on these things with a wrench…"

"Are ye goin' ta take Apparating Lessons this year?" Oliver asked as he twisted the cap off and handed the bottle back.

"I can't, lessons are in January; I won't be 17 till April. I'll take them with Jo next year. I'm looking forward to it. Is it hard?"

"So long as ye keep your concentration and don't splinch yourself, it's pretty easy. How are your classes? You're taking Alchemy this year right?"

"Classes are hard. Alchemy is really hard; I have an essay due next week and it's giving me fits, I've got a group meeting in the library tonight to work on it. Magical Theory is interesting, though, trying to figure out how spells work in order to create new spells. Mostly it's a lot of Latin. One of the boys in the class was trying to take apart a camouflage spell, and accidentally turned his hair blue."

"Blue?" Oliver asked with a grin.

"It was one of the more successful classes we've had, actually. How's Quidditch?"

"Fred and George don' take it seriously, Harry is ne'er available for practice because of the Toornament, and the other players are too focused on exams, they're neglecting their skills."

"Well, the exams are important, you know that. I mean you're going to have to take them too at the end of the year, unless you want to be stuck here forever. And Harry has a right to be nervous, I mean who knows what he's going to have to deal with in the tournament and he's going to have OWLs next year. As for the twins, I don't know them very well, but not taking things seriously seems to be a main aspect of their personalities."

"Are ye saying that I take it too seriously?" he frowned, feeling offended.

"No!" she said hurriedly, "I'm saying, you love Quidditch, it's your end all be all, you just have to remember that it's not that way for everyone else. At least…at least there's no Cup this year, you don't have a game riding on everyone when they're distracted."

When their dinner was delivered she breathed a sigh of relief that that hadn't gone off and become an argument.

She hated fighting. She hated being angry; it made her stomach cramp up. She'd rather walk away angry than stay and fight with someone. It gave her a chance to calm down.

Between mouthfuls he asked, "Where are ye froom?"

She responded with a knee-jerk, "Brighton, England."

"Your name doesna sound English."

"Oh, you mean where's my family from. No, sorry. I'm half-'n'-half," she slipped into a hard to maintain Irish accent she'd stolen from Seamus Finnigan. "Me mum's English, Da's American."

"American—really? Your name doesna sound American, either."

The accent wobbled before falling away entirely, returning to her original lilt. "Caveat on that, Dad's American, yes, but more accurately, he's Hawaiian—which is why you can't place my name, because it's Hawaiian, not English."

"You don' look Hawaiian either. Yer too pale."

"I never said we were native Hawaiian; my great-great grandparents moved from Oklahoma after spending their Honeymoon on Maui."

"What brough' yer dad here?"

"Mum. He moved here to be with her."

"Fer a minute there ye sounded—"

"Irish? Yeah, that happens sometimes. I pick up accents when I hear them often enough and they slip out when I'm not careful. I hear Seamus' at dinner, he's such a loud talker, I can hear him from halfway across the room."

When their dinners were finished, she knocked on the table, saying, "C'mon, play a round of Snap with me. If you think you're going to lose, just lean away from the cards. At least I'm not suggesting gobstones, where one of us goes away covered in ick!"

He had to admit that was true.

She pulled out the deck and he shuffled, because if she did it, the cards went all over the floor. They played a round and he won! Emboldened by his success, they went again, and this time, he lost.

He got up to get another Butterbeer.

She glanced at her watch after he came back. She had to do a double-take when she saw the time, she was late! "Crud! I gotta run. I've got a study session in the Library to get to, I'll see you later, ok?"

He caught her hand as she stood up. "Hey…Stay," he said.

This was the Oliver she'd decided to go out with. The one who'd had the house elves bring her flowers the day she'd agreed to go out with him. The one who'd taught her how to play Exploding Snap when he'd seen her playing Solitaire. It was odd, but she felt like this was the first time she'd seen him all night.

He gave her hips a tug so she was sitting abruptly on his lap. Linking his fingers over her hip, he pressed his lips to her bare shoulder; it sent shivers up her neck and down her other arm.

She rested an elbow on his shoulder and propped her head on her fist. "I really do need to go, Oliver..."

He frowned, "Did I do something wrong?"

"No!" she burst out, shocked that he would even think such a thing. "I told you, I have a cram session in the library. It was a last minute thing. Nothing to do with you, I promise."

"Will ye go oout with me again?"

"Sure."

He did something awfully forward then: he kissed her.

Her face burned with the heat of a blush but something cold twisted in her belly. It happened so fast she didn't really have time to think about it.

"Ye taste like chicken," he said.

She snorted, "I gotta go."

She stood up to go but he caught her hand again. He paid for dinner and then walked her back up to the castle, always keeping her steps aligned with his. She pulled his hand down from its position: grazing the underwire in her bra. She placed it firmly on her hip. She'd let him get away with the kiss, but almost fondling? That was too forward.