Our story begins at the local public, suburban high school: Central Dauphin. As in a classic boy-meets-girl story, the two first consciously crossed paths during a spontaneous mutual friends/group summer hangout at Saint Thomas Roasters (Ben will tell you that he first saw Lydia during math help when he was attempting not to fail calculus and she was messing around with her friend and the teacher, effectively prohibiting Ben from getting help). The story goes that Ben asked a mutual friend for Lydia‘s number after the meetup and said friend famously "forgot" to share it. Fortunately for Ben fall was a short time away and the lunch table Gods just happen to bless him as Ben and Lydia would go on to have lunch tables right next to each other. As the two began to get to know each other, Lydia rejected Ben’s advances on more than one occasion. However, in a rare turn of events where both parties happen to be attending the Friday night football game under the lights (which was extremely uncommon for both of them), the two ended up talking for hours. Now after the game, Ben being the kind gentleman he is, Ben offered to drive Lydia home and she famously rejected him. In her 15-year-old sophomore mind she thought that allowing an 18-year-old senior to drive her home would surely leave her kidnapped. The two remained friends and after a divine intervention, multiple conversations with friends, and admittedly some curiosity Lydia ended up giving Ben a chance. They went nowhere other than Saint Thomas Roasters for their first date and the rest is a long seven-year history. Let this story serve as a reminder of two things: 1. Ron Weasley is not the only man to ever make it out of the friend zone. 2. Sometimes your friends know you better than you think you know yourself.