From the Novel (more recent)

Many of the windows at the unfortunately-named Caulfield High were large, with ledges coming up from the floor that were wide enough to serve as excellent benches, on which students could be seen at lunch and break hours doing homework, chatting up, making out, and other teenagerly things.

Eva and Alex were sitting on one of these benches during the morning break. Alex was leaning into the wall that came out at a right angle from the window itself, hugging his knees, his knit rainbow beanie pulled low over his forehead and his white Converses barely showing through the long (though not so baggy) legs of his jeans, looking down towards his toes. Eva was seated a bit more becomingly, with her legs crossed, looking straight at Alex. Her naturally strawberry-blonde hair was choppy and slightly messy-looking, her jagged bangs going this way and that across her forehead, but it somehow all looked much more dignified and elegant that Alex's jet-black, perfectly-straight hair, which was long enough even to show quite a bit beneath his low cap.

“So I was thinking this morning,” Alex began, still staring down the points of his sneakers; “if you could choose a single character out of Harry Potter to be pals with—whom would you choose?”

Eva burst into ringing laughter, then smirked at him. “Alex, honey, were you like, fucking high this morning again, or something?”

“No!” he said quickly. “Well, I mean, yes,” he went on, “but that's not my fucking point. I think it's an interesting question.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

“Yes, I do. So, whom would you pick?”

Eva continued to chuckle to herself. “Well, I dunno; I guess maybe Hermione? Nah, too annoying.” She put her index and middle fingers to her chin, and looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then said, “Maybe Ginny. She'd be a laugh, and she'd be great to have on my side if I ran into enemies, I guess...”

Alex did not move his head, but glanced upward with his eyes at Eva. Eva loved it when he did that—those puppy-dog eyes. She mastered the impulse to take off his hat and ruffle his hair.

“Ginny, huh?” Alex looked down again, and seemed to lose himself in deep thought.

After about fifteen seconds of silence, Eva said, “So whom would you pick?”

Again, Alex looked up at her, this time not taking his eyes off of her. She could tell he was not stoned now: his eyes were definitely focusing on her quite well, and there was no sign of bloodshot.

“I guess...” He finally moved his head, turning it to gaze out of the window. “I think I'd have to go with Luna.”

“Huh. I guess you would pick her, wouldn't you, Alex?” Eva reached forward and poked his forehead playfully. “Dreamy, in her own world, all that jazz?”

“Well.” Alex looked down at his shoes yet again. “There's that, I suppose. But you know, I was thinking about it, and she's really the best friend you could possibly have. She's fiercely loyal. She's much more tough-skinned than she looks—stubborn, even, you could almost say. And she has this kind of inextinguishable optimism, you know? Like, remember in the last book, when they're all trapped in the Malfoys' basement, she's just like, Oh, you know, this is normal and all, I can take this, and she helps her fellow prisoners get through it too. So I think,” he began staring at his fingernails, “if I were in that kind of jam, I'd want someone like her close by.”

“Wow.” Eva, who had herself turned her head to gaze out of the window now, and who was watching a boy and a girl walk hand-in-hand across the sidewalk towards the entrance that was some ways down the length of the hall, turned back to look at Alex. “Anyone tell you you maybe put a little too much thought into Harry Potter?”

Alex finally cracked a small smile. “No, you're the first. Then again, it's not like I talk a lot about it; I just think, you know?”

Eva laughed again. Alex really loved that laugh. It reminded him of an English nightingale, or a delicate turn of phrase in one of Mozart's late chamber works, or the sound the rain made in the leaves of the trees in the college quad. He chuckled to himself as he listened to it, and relished it for all the four seconds that it lasted.

Alex and Eva had known each other since they were ninth graders together in the same third-period introductory Spanish class. Alex never did quite figure out what it was that caused Eva, a bubbly, social, highly-extroverted butterfly, to gravitate towards his seat one chilly November day, as he sat in his usual corner with his hat pulled low (even then, he had already been wearing that knit rainbow beanie, which, incidentally, had been a gift from Sophie). Eva, and of course almost everybody who knew her, would have told him immediately if he ever asked that it was just because he “looked a little lonely,” and Eva was never one for passing up a chance to help someone break open their cocoon, if even just a tiny bit, for just a little while. And, for some reason that neither of them could probably fully explain, they became fast friends afterwards.

Alex was, in most outward respects, almost the precise opposite of Eva. He was one of those people who hung his head down as he walked down the halls, avoided eye contact, had few friends. Not that he was lonely—those few who were friends with him (or at least had gotten to know him to some degree) could see that he wasn't, and he most certainly would probably have been the last to say he was. In fact, despite his gloomy-looking demeanor, in conversation he came across as, if not cheery, at least a relatively happy young man with a healthy sense of self-worth.

The reality of it was that he often appeared so aloof because—well, he had a slight drug problem. It was nothing hard—he had never tried cocaine, crack, or heroin, and had sworn after dropping acid once that he would never let a psychedelic get within ten yards of him ever again. No...He just liked smoking grass. A lot. He once confessed to Sophie that he was averaging about an eighth four nights a week; and when Sophie took his arm and told him he would be stupid, toothless and impotent within two years at that rate, he merely shrugged and said, “Hmm” (after which Sophie let go of his arm, rolled her eyes, and let out a frustrated sigh, and never mentioned it again).

But, to his credit, he was not an alcoholic—more than could probably be said of Eva. Alex had seen her slip generous amounts of vodka into her breakfast orange juice from a flask that he eventually learned she carried everywhere. Indeed, when he and Eva would sometimes spend afternoons after school in a clearing in the woods that they considered something of their own secret discovery (they had never seen anyone else there, in any case), he would take hits from his pipe, while she took long draughts from her flask that would have made Hemingway proud (and perhaps a physicist confounded as to how such a tiny-looking container could hold so much liquid).

The bell rang, and ruckus ensued as students began getting up from the various hallway benches and exiting the library and various classrooms where study hall sessions took place, and began making their way to their third-period classes. Alex and Eva both said “See ya” and walked off in opposite directions towards their next classes.