All Right, Evans?

Chapter 11: Evans This, Potter That

Tuesday, 1:20 P.M.

"Alice, I never got a chance to ask you how your date went on Saturday."

"Oh, right. Well, that's all right, Lily, I know – OUCH!"

"Are you okay?" Lily asked, looking up from the teacup she was supposed to be Charming.

Alice was shaking her hand, trying to dislodge her own teacup, which had clamped its jaw around her finger. "Damn cup," she snarled, finally succeeding in shaking it off. "I gave it teeth instead of legs."

Marlene, who was sitting on the other side of Alice, laughed heartily at her friend's mistake.

"It's not funny, Mar," Alice snapped. She waved her wand and shot her flesh-hungry teacup at Marlene, who said "Reducto!" and succeeded in blasting the offending cup into little flower-patterned pieces.

Alice sighed but didn't bother arguing since the spell was such a pain, anyway, and Charms was too much of an excitable class for Flitwick to notice that she'd called it quits.

"So," Lily said pointedly before Alice and Marlene could have a go at each other, "how was it?"

"It went well," Alice told her, a bubble of happiness surfacing in her chest, successfully dissolving her annoyance. "He's sweet. He tried taking me to Madam Puddifoot's and I started laughing because, well, you know, it's Puddifoot's..."

"Ah, well, Longbottom's nothing if not eager to please," Marlene chimed in.

Lily laughed. "I expect he was just trying to do what he thought you wanted, Alice," she said, poking her legless teacup with her wand to no avail. She was distracted and didn't much care about bestowing mobility upon a teacup. "Granted, he was off the mark, but how could he have known?"

"That's what I thought, too," Alice agreed. "Anyway, he started laughing too. We talked about how mad everyone is, wanting to get together in a small space to snog each other –"

"Disgusting," Marlene supplied, pulling a face.

Alice nodded. "Precisely."

"Really," Lily said, "who wants to go for a snog someplace where you can hear a bunch of other people sucking face two feet away? Anyway, Alice, go on. Did he kiss you?"

"Somewhere private?" Marlene added, her mind still on the madness of Madam Puddifoot's.

Alice blushed furiously at the question, and she became suddenly very interested in her fingernails. "Well, um, yes, as a matter of fact," she mumbled, embarrassed. "We were walking back and we were shooting off those Filibuster firecrackers, just talking, and then he sort of caught me mid-sentence."

"Did he use tongue?"

"Marlene!" Lily laughed again.

"What?" Marlene said innocently. "I've been tongued loads of times –"

"Oh, don't say it like that," Lily pleaded, still chuckling. "It doesn't sound like you're talking about kissing at all."

"Maybe I'm not," Marlene said haughtily, causing Alice to gasp and Lily's jaw to drop. She couldn't keep a straight face after that. "All right, I was," she admitted. "But come on, Prewett, don't hold out on me; did he do it or not?"

"Um... a bit."

"Ha!" Marlene jabbed her teacup rather forcefully in her exuberance. "I'm telling your brothers."

Alice shoved her. "Shut up."

Marlene grinned and looked over at Lily. "What about you, then?"

Lily stared resolutely at her motionless cup. She recognized that tone, and she didn't care for it one bit. "What about me?"