where do lonely hearts go?, tag; marissa/alice

After saying his goodbyes at breakfast, which was mostly just mumbled ‘see you later’s at his dormmates and a wave at Marly who he would undoubtedly see more than once during their time away from school, Frank straightened his prefects badge and herded the first years to the carriages to take them to the train station. Of course the firsties hadn’t seen the carriages before as they’d come up to the castle by boat last time and they didn’t have permission to go to Hogsmeade yet so he spent most of the trip fielding questions from kids. How did the carriages work? Why weren’t they going back in the boats? What time did the train leave? Had he seen an orange cat? Why were there no horses drawing the carriages? And Frank used his most patient school teacher voice to answer every question, trying to remind himself that they were still new to the whole thing.He’d considered going up to the prefect’s carriage upon boarding but there wasn’t any sort of mandatory meeting so he’d opted to steer clear of it and head towards the very back of the train. It wasn’t that Frank didn’t like his fellow prefects or the Head Boy and Girl but some of them were too nice. Like Lily or Remus; both of them were perfectly pleasant and most of the time he enjoyed casually chatting with them in the lulls before and after prefect meetings or if they happened to be on rounds. But when stuck in a larger group of people like that, all of them talking at the same time, he tended to sort of shrink back instead of trying to stick his nose into all of the conversations. And if Lily or Remus noticed that then he knew them well enough, especially Lily, would try to work harder to include him in the discussion and he just didn’t feel like trying to keep up with awkward conversation all the way back to London. Better to just avoid the whole thing.So he’d chosen one of the last compartments on the last car and slouched in his seat so he could prop his long legs up on the bench across from him to discourage anyone else from coming in uninvited. He pulled a slightly worn copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles out of his bag and opened up to his dog eared page to settle into the world of Sherlock Holmes once again. He’d read the book a dozen times already but seeing as how he’d already completed as much of the holiday work as he could without trying to write an essay with an open bottle of ink on a moving train he was left with a little bit of free time for pleasure reading. The compartment door opened and Frank didn’t lift his eyes from the page. “What?”

There were several reasons that Alice Parker was not fond of Severus Snape. First of all was that he was better at Potions than her - that bothered her the most. She had been the top of the class until Slughorn had the audacity to mention Snape's prowess. Second of all, and only slightly less important, was that he was the sole reason that she found herself stomping out of her usual compartment with Lily and Marlene on the way home for the holidays. She and Lily were always butting heads, there was never any doubt about that: Alice loved the girl to death, she really did, but when she started getting on her high horse about Severus being such a great person underneath his obscenely large nose and his greasy hair, she could only say so much without Alice wanting to speak up - well, actually, she never really got to say much because Alice usually conjured up a few strongly worded sentences about how she felt about the oil slick. Honestly, though, Alice had been there when Severus had called one of her best friends a Mudblood, and she appreciated the girl for being the one to see the good in people because Alice sure as hell didn't, but for Merlin's sake, she just didn't like him.

It never really bothered her when things like this happened. She knew Lily would come around eventually. Lily was always the one that did, as Alice had never experienced the slightest propensity to apologize to anyone, even when she knew she was wrong. She had always been too headstrong for that, and she knew Lily recognized it as that much, but still. She was the one that had left the compartment anyway, both to avoid from putting Marly in the middle (as was often the case) and was dragging her bag along behind her, trying to find an open compartment. She was somewhat optimistic in thinking that she might be the one to turn around and apologize to Lily about it, but when it came to Severus Snape, Alice would never apologize.

Upon peering into a few compartments, she pulled the door of one open, only to find that it was not completely empty and that a Frank Longbottom was lounged across one of the seats, nose in a book. Stepping a little closer she realized that it wasn't a schoolbook but an actual book (not that there was much discernment on her part) and her eyebrows raised at his curt interjection. "Mind if I sit in here? Lily's gone all crazy about Severus. You'd think she actually liked him as much as James." she didn't bother to wait for his answer and just took a seat, resting her bag against the seat. "I won't bother you."

The last person he expected to head respond to his greeting, clipped as it was, was Alice Parker in all of her crushable glory. His eyes widened and Frank immediately dropped his feet to make room for her to pass in front of him to the other side of the compartment while he worked on trying to un-swallow his tongue. Luckily she didn’t seem to require an answer from him before sitting down because he doubted he could have spoken right then even with a sizeable stutter. He felt his cheeks burn in shame and embarrassment at having been so rude to her; it wasn’t often that he got the opportunity to talk to Alice and even half of the time when he had the opportunity he considered himself without anything to say so he just didn’t. And while he had come to the very back of the train, in one of the last compartments, to find some peace and quiet to read his favorite book for the hundredth time and generally avoid the rest of the human race, Frank could not exactly say he was upset at finding himself decidedly not alone. “You’re n-not b-b-bothering me,” he finally managed, wincing at the unavoidable stutter.With Alice sitting and seemingly comfortable Frank went ahead and propped his feet back up on the bench, making sure to point his shoes away from her just in case. Not that she seemed like the type to be overly concerned with a little bit of dirt but he would rather not go about being the one to test that theory. He furrowed his brow and considered her reasoning for leaving the compartment, likely on an entirely different part of the train than where they currently sat, she’d been sitting in with her friends. “Why is she g-going on ab-bout him? D-Didn’t Severus s-say something t-terrible to her l-last year?” Now Frank was not usually one to indulge in the Hogwarts Rumor Mill and that was saying something because he was often privy to some interesting dirt. The benefit to being practically invisible was that people didn’t think twice before just talking openly right in front of him. More than once he’d heard people say things that he knew there was no way they’d known he was sitting there, it just wasn’t something people said in front of strangers. So he had definitely heard about the Marauder’s prank and Snape being hoisted up in the air and the filthy word he’d called Lily Evans shortly thereafter; it had been impossible not to hear about that, the whole school had been buzzing about it. He usually tried his best not to judge people but it’d been hard not to judge Snape harshly after hearing about that.

Alice quite liked Hufflepuffs for several reasons. The first was that they had their common room down by the kitchen, and while that had led to some unfortunate teasing of their generously fed population, she was mostly jealous of them for it. However, food aside, she had never thought of Frank as a very bookish type, though she had to admit she had not paid him all that much mind except occasionally catching him looking at her in class through the gleam of the crystal ball and saying a friendly hello to him when he was talking to Marlene and she needed to talk to Marlene. At the very least, he wasn't grating like the self-professed Marauders happened to be.Where the other boys got their fuel on grating at her nerves, it didn't seem like he was going to do the same.

Regardless, she raised her eyebrows at his stutter, her trunk making an unfortunate thud on the empty side of the bench, mostly as a precaution to keep others from sitting with her. It came rather naturally for her to be alone. "It's nice to think someone thinks so," she told him with a disconnected nod. Mostly she believed that Lily and Marlene didn't keep her around for much except to laugh at her sometimes ridiculous banters about things like chivalry and the fact that after six years of Transfiguration, she still couldn't turn her rat into a proper cup.

Anyway, her flaws aside (not that she believed she had any), she glanced up from rummaging in her bag and furrowed her brow at his interest. Albeit it was taking him a moment or so longer for him to express his interest, one that took her a second to sit back and wait patiently for him to stop stammering. Had she been in a sentimental mood (which she never was), she might have found it endearing. Right now, she was waiting for him to just spit it out. She came close to expressing her impatience when he finished and she settled back into the seat, less tense."Of course he did, and if I had the choice I would have throttled him right then and there, but," she stopped to rummage in her bag and withdraw her Transfiguration book, "I was unfortunately trying to sort out why my wand simply refuses to do Transfiguration. I could have transfigured the guy into a tadpole if I knew how to do it correctly," she said, albeit a little too fiercely. She rested her wand and her book very neatly next to her and closed her bag. "If you asked me she should be done with him, but the whole him being her first magical friend or whatever. Apparently that's a sentimental connection."

Done talking about Lily and the very subdued companionship she upheld with the grease bucket, she nodded towards Frank's book. "I didn't know you liked to read. What've you got there?" she asked, trying to both distract herself and express an interest in her companion. If they were going to ride the train together, she wasn't going to do it in silence.

Frank ducked his head a moment to hide the grin that refused to stay fully hidden and hoped she wouldn’t see the grin and just assume it was another symptom of his being shy. Over the last six and a half years he was often within earshot of one of Alice’s rants and he’d always found it amusing how riled up she could get over pretty much anything. He didn’t understand the connection about a first magical friend either but then again he wasn’t a muggleborn and his first magical friend was still his friend and certainly hadn’t called him by a derogatory term in front of a portion of the student population. And knowing what he did about Alice’s family tree he imagined her view on the matter was similarly colored. However he wisely kept his mouth shut about the situation as the tone of her voice indicated she was done talking about it.Knowing how their previous non-discussions had gone, usually when their mutual point of contact had been Marlene, Frank had prepared to be ignored in favor of something else and opened his book back up. Hearing her ask him about the book though surprised him. Usually once she finished with the polite greetings they were done talking since he wasn’t exactly the type of guy to force himself onto a conversation that wasn’t really involving him. “Oh, erm…” He dog eared his page and held the book up for her see. “It’s a m-muggle novel. It’s about a d-detective named Sherlock Holmes and his p-partner Dr Watson and they solve a m-mystery.” He had all the original Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes novels either on his bookshelf at home or tucked away in his trunk to go back and forth with him, among other fiction books. They weren’t especially helpful at school so he tried to focus on his textbooks but he liked the stories and the escape it provided from his dull reality. “It’s my favorite from the series,” he murmured.It sort of made his stomach tie up into knots but now that Alice had initiated some sort of conversation he felt obligated to do the same. Obligated felt like the wrong word since he did like her and wanted to talk to her but words still didn’t come naturally to him and his first instinct was to bury his nose back in his book and sit quietly and be as unobtrusive as possible. But she’d made the effort to be interested in him and his stuff so he was going to do the same, even if the anxiety over the whole thing threatened to kill him. “G-getting a jump start on the homework McG-Gonagall assigned?”

She couldn't quite figure out if Frank wanted to hear her misdirected ramble or if he was more interested in his book, but in the very small glance she cast over to him, she thought she saw the very edges of a smile in the way his eyes crinkled at the edges. After seven years, there were very few people that ever joyed in her rants anymore. There were, of course, the handfuls of naive girls who Sirius Black or James Potter had tried to hit on that she had saved from a greater doom. More than a few minutes with any of the self-dubbed Marauders was hell enough on her - she had yet to figure out how Marlene or Lily or even Dorcas could stand it. Well, Dorcas had it the easiest as Remus was the one she could tolerate the most out of the four - apart from Peter, who usually sprang aside whenever he saw Alice coming down the corridor (and rightfully so, as she was becoming prone to trying to give him inspirational speeches about not being a pushover).

But! Contrary to popular belief, and being executed by this particular conversation, Alice wasn't a complete bulldozer all the time. Rather, she had good intentions sitting with Frank (although that was a quick decision that she hadn't really thought about - oh well, it wasn't bad at all) and since she had yet to take the liberty of scaring him away getting to know him, she was making what she thought to be a good effort to get to know him. The interest in his book was not falsely founded, since she rarely met anyone who enjoyed literature books - or books, for that matter - except for a few Ravenclaws. She, for one, found the words always dancing across the page when she tried to read for pleasure and thus the book was never finished.

She tilted her head to get a better look at the cover, and she made a short, interested humming sound. "That's interesting. And I mean, really. Some people don't mean interesting as interesting but that is... interesting. That you like books, I mean. Usually that's a Ravenclaw thing. I just can't get into them unless they really grab my attention, you know?"she looked back at him a little warmer than when she'd first entered the compartment. Part of what she had said was a lie, of course: she had a whole stack of campy romance novels under her bunk back home and under a Disillusionment charm under the bunk in her dormitory, but she was very picky about what they were.

At his question, she glanced over at her own books with a frown. "I'm still trying to master the rat into a cup thing. Mine is only slightly less furry than when I started school at Hogwarts," she commented dryly. It was a mild exaggeration, as the only thing she had to figure out was how to get the tail off of the bloody goblet, but Alice was renowned for exaggerating plights - both her own and others.

He supposed that reading was more of a Ravenclaw thing than a Hufflepuff thing but he was pretty sure they read for different reasons; he wasn’t usually interesting in learning something new or finding a better way to understand something. He studied because if he didn’t he would fail and he derived absolutely no pleasure from that sort of reading and everything else he read was to distract him from being lonely. “I d-don’t have a lot of friends so I mostly read or st-tudy in my spare t-time,” he said by way of explanation though in the end he wasn’t exactly sure what he said offered anything in his argument versus hers. He wasn’t exactly the sort of guy who had a way with words so that he wasn’t great at getting his point across verbally was really no surprise at all. “But uh, these are p-pretty interesting. I still find s-something new every time I read it, something I d-didn’t notice last t-time.” And now he sounded like a huge dork. He cracked the book back open out of habit, giving his hands something to do, though he stopped himself short of actually burying his nose in it.Frank nodded with understanding. He’d heard her frustrated Transfiguration rants before in the Great Hall, the hallways, and sometimes the library before she got shushed and since he sat behind her in class he’d seen her visible agitation at being unable to master the skills easily. The subject was so-so for him; he tended to have the basic understanding by the time class let out but he would have to put in quite a bit of work to get himself anywhere near refined and he was never able to come even remotely close to McGonagall’s finesse for the subject, or even James Potter’s for that matter. There just wasn’t enough time in the day for him to study it enough which he found to be slightly unfair because he was pretty sure that Potter didn’t bother cracking his Transfiguration book at all, ever. Or any other school book for that matter. And yet his classmate was practically a genius when it came to that class.But the goblet thing he had. “It’s y-your wrist. You hold it t-too stiff.” As soon as the words were out of Frank’s mouth he felt his cheeks, neck, and ears go hot. He’d essentially just announced to the girl he fancied that he more or less stalked her and watched her in class often enough to know what she was doing wrong without her having to demonstrate again. Not exactly a winning trait. And on top of that he just gave out unsolicited advice to someone who hadn’t asked for it which was never a way to get on someone’s good side. But in for a penny, in for a pound. “Your m-movements are right but if you loosen y-your wrist your g-goblet will get much better. At the v-very least tail-less.” He cleared his throat and actually buried his nose in his book this time, rather embarrassed at having just said all that to Alice.

She tried to reach back into her memory and remember if she could prove Frank wrong that he had no friends, and, unfortunately, she realized that he had hardly made a blip on her radar. Granted, hardly anyone made a blip on her radar that she didn't already feel comfortable around. "You can always come hang out with us. Me and Lily and Marlene," she told him - as hard as she worked, she hated to think about someone studying because they didn't have anything better to do. Well, she didn't have much better to do either, aside from bossing around her Quidditch team (yes, she identified them as hers) and trying to prevent her best friend from stripping in front of Sirius Black and his mates - again.

She'd never understood Transfiguration except for its necessity. She couldn't remember when she hadn't wanted to be an Auror - well, until she had stepped foot into McGonagall's class. She was fairly sure that the woman was starting to let her scrape by so she could captain the Quidditch team. She wasn't doing poorly enough to completely fail out it, thankfully, but it was nowhere near easy for her. The spare time that didn't go to Quidditch or her friends or studying other subjects went to Transfiguration.

She looked down at her wand in her hand. She refused to believe it, but tenseness had always been a problem for her, no matter how hard she tried to let loose, and that extended to more than just flicking her wand. Lily and Marlene were always getting on her for it, but she had more to worry about than just how she was going to get her firewhiskey that weekend. Not that she frowned on them for doing that, but she could get anxious about almost anything. "You think so?" she asked, slightly wary that he had noticed, but if it was true, then she owed him something. She looked down at her wrist and shifted the wand in her palm, trying to find a point where all the stress wasn't all balled up in one place, but the more her hand moved, the more stiff her wrist felt. She made a frustrated sound, sending sparks out of the end of her wand, only making her grip it tighter. She glanced up to find that he had stuffed his face back into his book. With an uneasy laugh - not to tease, but to loosen the air she'd created - she reached over and nudged the book slightly. "Oh no you don't," she said teasingly. "Show me where it's tense or where it's going wrong." She held out her wand hand for him to demonstrate with.

Frank smiled and nodded politely at the invitation but he knew they both knew he would never take her up on that. He’d been friends with Marlene since they were practically in diapers still and he still managed to avoid her crowd of Gryffindor friends, preferring to be alone over trying to overcome swallowing his tongue at every turn and feeling lonely in a crowd of people. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hang out with her, either one of them, but trying to be social usually ended up being more effort than it was really worth most of the time and people usually ended up looking at him like he was a freak anyway. Even when they’d been much younger, despite their status as friends, he’d rarely tagged along after Marlene and her group of friends despite many people’s efforts to get him to be more social by doing exactly that. He’d much rather people speculate about him being weird than open his mouth and confirm what they were already thinking.The tap to his book forced Frank to look up from the pages he wasn’t actually reading anyway, too embarrassed and nervous to do more than go over the same three words in the middle of the page over and over again, to stare at the hand she’d extended out to him to try to show her what he meant. He swallowed thickly and eyed her warily for a moment before he dog eared his page again, set the book aside on the bench next to him, and slid forward in his seat a little. Gingerly, Frank reached out and put his fingers onto her wrist, closing her fingers tightly around the wand and making her grasp it like she usually did during classes. He poked his fingers into the rigid muscles around her wrist to show her what he was talking about. “The tension here might be good for catching or throwing or staying on your broom but you’re stunting the magic.” Gently he rotated her wrist in circles, trying to ease a little of the stiffness out and loosen the joint to make the rotations and movements more fluid. “You have to relax a little. Don’t drop your wand or anything, but give it a little wiggle room.” With a nervous throat clearing Frank sat back in his seat to allow Alice the room to practice her movements. He picked his book back up but somehow he doubted she was going to let him retreat back into the world of Sherlock Holmes at the moment so he mostly just fiddled with the pages and tried to maintain some composure. It wasn’t every day that he managed to have a halfway decent conversation with the girl or actually touched her.

Alice was not the kind of person that included everyone - whether intentionally or unintentionally. After all, what got her in as Quidditch captain was not her mark in Transfiguration (obviously), but her natural ability to pick weak from strong. That only worked on the Quidditch pitch, though - in the real world, she wasn't much better, but the thinly veiled disbelief on Frank's face made her feet bad. Maybe she could convince Potter to befriend him or she'd kick him off the Quidditch team, but she doubted he wanted friends out of bribery. That, and from what she knew of him from Marlene, Frank was too nice for her to let someone like James or, Merlin forbid, Sirius to take their liberties in corrupting him. "Well, if the need ever arises, I've been told I'm a pretty good shin kicker," she amended.

Her outstretched arm had relaxed so much that his fingers on her wrist jolted her slightly, and maybe it was the chill of the compartment that made her give an involuntary shiver at his warm skin. The knot he found was unexpectedly rigid, and her fingers closed around her wand as he spoke. Even more so, the little circles he was making seemed to loosen it, enough that she didn't feel like she had that good of a grip on her wand, but it wasn't enough for it to fall out, either. "Hmm," she mused, rolling her wrist experimentally, her eyebrows jolting upwards in surprise at how much better it felt. "Makes me wish someone had told me that . . . oh, I don't know, six years ago?" she chuckled, sitting back when he let go.

She would be lying if she said that she wasn't a little disappointed that he was getting back into his book - he'd read them before, right? Oh, right, he found something new every time. Not to mention, she didn't fancy that she was all that wonderful of company. Yet, rather than sulk off back to Lily and Marlene and avoid the words "I'm sorry," she stayed in the compartment with Frank, pulling her legs up onto the seat and practicing her Transfiguration on various things in her bag.

[ooc: andddd end scene?]