Chapter 2

I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters except for the non-canon ones. Everything else belongs to J.K Rowling. Enjoy!

When Alice arrived home that night, she ran straight upstairs to her room and slammed the door. Perhaps she was being a tad bit melodramatic but today Alice couldn't be bothered with any of it. Frank Longbottom had asked her out and that deserved some type of freak out, didn't it? For the past several weeks Alice had an inkling that her slightly stalkerish neighbor might have feelings for her but she'd never considered the possibility of the bashful Gryffindor gaining the courage to ask her out on a date, like a real date? With a 5th year boy? It's was all so weird and bizarre to even consider.

Alice collapses on her bright green bed and stares up at the ceiling hopelessly. A budding look of horror begins to expand across her face as she remembers everything that came after Longbottom asking her out. Alice recalls with great detail the way his face crumpled up in disappointment when she hesitated and then flushed with embarrassment as she laughed. She had seen with her own two eyes the moment he decided to flee the scene and booked it.

He didn't even pay for their ice-cream.

Merlin, what kind of person is she? Apparently she's one of those weird 6th year girls who laugh at nice, bland and innocent guys like Frank who ask girls like Alice out, who are clearly out of his league. Even though Alice knows that she's too cool for Frank, she still feels guilty for how she behaved. Mainly she just wishes that she wouldn't have lost it in front of a guy like Frank. She should've responded back to him in a calm, mature and collected way, sort of like Val did with Lovegood, Diggory, Stump and Truman. Val always had some ready-made response that made her seem much older, mature and elegant. Obviously, Alice should've started practicing how to accept and reject guys as soon as she turned 14, now because of her laziness or thoughtless she would be lucky to see Frank at all this summer.

Her father calls her down for diner but Alice ignores him. She doesn't deserve dinner nor does she deserve to be around decent people. The kind who know how to give normal and polite responses after being asked out, sans laughing.

Right about now, what Alice really wants is to firecall her friends. It would be a bit difficult to call them since the only fireplace in the house that's connected to the floo line is in the living room which is directly across from the dining room. The last thing she needs in her life is for her parents to find out about this situation. So instead she reaches over to her night stand and turns her small lavender colored magical radio on as laud as it can go and tries to drowns out her parent's voices and the thoughts in her head.

She falls asleep a little while later to Frank's mortified face. Merlin, she's horrible.

******************************************************************************"I still can't believe he asked you out!" This was the third time the raven haired witch had said this in the past 20 minutes and each time Alice became more and more offended. She was regretting telling either of her friends about her evening with Frank. Both of them were proving to be useless.

"I mean, really?" Lori continued in that annoyingly high pitched nasally voice that made Alice want to throw her cat on her, "out of all the girls in his class, no! Out of all the girls in the school he picks you. He likes you!"

That Saturday night, Lori, Alice and Gwen found themselves hanging out in Ruckus, a muggle diner located several kilometers from the Alley. Alice's audience of two, if you didn't count the old lady eavesdropping from the bar seats, were drinking milkshakes and had just finished listening to her recount her dreadful evening with Frank. They'd tried to have this talk earlier this morning but nothing had gone as planned. Lori and Gwen came to the parlor under the guise of helping Alice and her father set up. Normally the flimsy lie would have worked on her father who was completely gullible but her mother had been there, seen through them all and knew that working was the last thing on either of their minds.

Perhaps the lie could have worked if the witches had been dressed to actually do work. Gwen wore pretty orange and white summer robes that came to her knees with creamy ankle socks and funky colored oxford pumps. The whole outfit screamed expensive and not appropriate to work around food in. Lori was wearing a long sleeved pink dress with white cuff links, knitted knee high socks with black Mary Jane's. They were at the very least dressed to go shopping. So instead her mother had supervised them for an hour before her friends grew tired then bored and then just left.

Now at Ruckus things weren't going much better. Alice expected some form of sympathy from her friends and perhaps a little light joking on Frank's expense. She hadn't expected Lori, normally kind and compassionate, to spend the night insulting her or her best friend to pay more attention to the lousy letter she was writing rather than Alice and her feelings. Couldn't she finish that at home? Who can be bothered with writing a letter when you friend is literally pouring her heart and soul out? She wanted comfort and she wasn't getting it. If she had known that this was how her Saturday evening would turn out for her, she would have taken her time getting to the diner. She would have went home and changed out of the dingy dress that her mother had made for her 11th birthday, which at the age of 14 was dull and noticeably shorter. Too short. She would have worn the new forest green dress with the million pockets on it that she had made with her mother a couple weeks ago with her shiny yellow slip on's. She would've been the pretty one today and not the ugly duckling amongst her friends.

"Why do you even care?" Alice asked defensively, "you don't even like him."

Lori rolled her pretty blue eyes in exasperation and tapped her fingers against the gray table erratically, "I like Frank! Who doesn't like Frank? You'd have to be blind and an idiot not to." The raven haired witch said in a tone that tried to make Alice feel small and stupid and partly succeeded. It was the same tone that Val liked to use on them when they were being exceptionally thick or so she thought. It grated on every one of Alice's nerves to hear it now. She even saw her absentee friend stop writing to look up at Lori with a raised eyebrow.

Lori flushed under Gwen's glaze and said in a greatly exaggerated tone, as if being pleasant to Alice was a hardship, "He's really nice, you know, he once tutored me in Herbology and Potions for three hours for our finals last term. He even helped me with some of my summer work. Yeah, he's not the most hip guy out there but he's not immature like some of the other ones at school. I can't believe you don't want to date him."

Alice shrugged apprehensively, perhaps she had been a little too hasty in rejecting Frank's advances, but it wasn't like he gave her time to consider or the option to think things over. No, he just asked her straight out and expected a 'yes'. Alice hadn't said yes or no. She wasn't even able to give him a proper response before he fled the scene. Now her stalker was constantly on her mind. She worried mostly that Frank wouldn't come back to the ice-cream shop. Did this mean she liked him?

No, she was positive that she didn't have feelings for him like that. It didn't quite fit but there was something. It was just that, even though it had only been a few days since that night, she could already feel his absence. Frank was always so willing to help her around the shop, carrying large boxes to the storage room to cleaning up ice-cream stained tables. If he came before or during lunch, he always brought food from Bertie's, an expensive sandwich shop in the Alley that Alice loved.

Lori was right. Frank wasn't like the other boys in the school. He was kind, helpful and considerate. He was ridiculously nice and she had been so rude to him. He did so much for her at the shop and he didn't even work there. She desperately hoped he would forget all about Wednesday night and her despicable behavior.

"You think I should've said yes?" Alice asked in a small voice.

Lori made a face and then said, "Maybe." Lori gave a disdainful look at her grungy ice cream stained dress and sweaty hair. Alice self-consciously ran a hand through her hair and wondered if she should've asked her mother do a quick cleaning spell in her hair before she left. Did it really look that bad? "I don't know. I just never would have thought that you would be his type."

"What? And you think you are?" She replied back in a mocking tone before her brain could catch up with her mouth. Lori looked across the table in surprise. Alice is shocked too. She hadn't meant for it come out that way. She hadn't meant to say it all. She wants to tell her that but Lori answers before she can even get a syllable out.

"Yeah, I do actually. I think I'm a lot more suited for Frank than you are. I may not be pure blooded like you are, and therefore his social equal," she said rolling her eyes and running a pale hand shakily through her raven colored hair, "but at least I don't go around looking like Oliver Twist."

For a moment Alice is completely dumbfounded by Lori's comment. She doesn't know who Oliver Twist is but judging from the nasty smile dancing on Lori's lips and the disgusted look the witch gave her hair and dress earlier, it's not difficult for Alice to connect the dots.

She thinks she can play off her humiliation if she avoids looking at her Lori's chubby self-satisfied face and if she can keep the burning of her cheeks under control, then she can live through this.

But then she hears a strangled laugh escape from Gwen and her head involuntarily snaps over to the brown haired witch. Her hand is covering her mouth as if the laugh slipped out, like it was an accident, but Alice can see the mirth lurking behind her best friend's eyes and she loses that last strand of control.

There isn't a single part of her face that isn't burning now. She looks down at her lap so that her friends won't see her face as she struggles not to cry.

"Crap! Allie, I'm sorry," Gwen tells her and tries to rub her arm consolingly but Alice moves away from the hand and snatches up her purse and digs through it for some of her muggle money. "Come on Lori, say sorry!" She hears Gwen orders, but Lori remains quiet, and Alice doesn't dare to look at the witch.

She's too busy searching in her bag for muggle money that she knows she doesn't have. She forgot to exchange some of her wizarding money to muggle after she left the shop. After a few seconds of watching her, Gwen seems to catch on to Alice's dilemma.

"Allie, I'll pay for your milkshake. No worries." But Alice will be damned if she looks like the poor friend as well as the wretched hag. So she throws a galleon down on to the table which she knows is way too much but she doesn't care right now. The only thing she's interested in doing is leaving. She spins around and leaves before she can be humiliated anymore.

Author's note: I'm extremely sorry that this update took so long! Bare in mind that I'm a procrastinator and if I don't have a deadline or people breathing down my neck then things tend to get down- well - whenever feel like it. Yesterday I was in the mood to write this story and then tada! A new chapter was created! :D I hope you guys stick around for the next chapter...but full disclosure- I'm not a reliable fanfiction author :/