Note: I do not lay claim to any of J.K. Rowlings characters in Harry Potter.

The Painter

Chapter One:

"Herminone?" a small and distant voice beckoned.

"Uh, hello?" she said trying to follow the voice.

"Hermione!!!" It had been Ginny who popped her head slightly through the door as if she had been seeking her friend.

Ginny had been trying to get Hermione out this summer. Hermione Granger, at eighteen years old, often acted a lot older than her mere adolescence. She rarely went out, she found more comfort in sitting and reading Muggle books such as Ginsberg and Tolstoy, then going out on the town with her friends.

"Hermione, you are too young to be sitting around like a drab librarian, who's greatest source of entertainment is a dead author, a cup of coffee, and her cat." Ginny said in a very concerned voice, while placing her hand gently on Hermione's shoulder.

Hermione looked at her with her caramel eyes. She would often be amazed at how persistent her feisty red head friend had become. Ginny would have rather ran outside in the fresh air of the Burrows and sank her feet into the nearby ponds, then sit inside the attic with a book. She smiled acknowledging a distant memory of the last summer that they had walked through the grounds of Hogwarts in the rain with their barefeet, and how Ginny never complained once. It was like she was meant to be outside in nature.

"I guess we could go outside, I mean, I still can read Anna Karnina, can't I? she said with a very convincing, hopeful grin.

"Alright, on one condition…" Ginny proposed, "you have to go with me and spend time with…"

"Oh, Merlin… are you saying I have to be around…"

As if Ginny could read her mind, her eyes told her, Ronald Weasley.

--

Hermione had been avoiding Ron since the end of Sixth Year, because Ron had been quite, different around her. It was ever since Hermione had taken him to the National Gallery in Muggle London. It wasn't so much that Ron didn't like art, but he didn't see the need for it, since he couldn't name any wizards or witches to even think of paintings and drawings as a valid subject. Hermione knew deep down this had deeply offended her, to the point that she could not speak to Ron all those months. It seemed friviolous to have an argument about the validity of art, but she knew that she loved painting and drawing up there with all of the studies she had excelled at. Art was her form of therapy, her way of in a very muggle way, getting away from the world. It wasn't magic, but it was magical.

Surely Harry would understand that it meant a lot to her.

Ginny and Hermione had apparated into Three Broomsticks that day and sat anticipating their good friends to come through the door at that moment. Ginny annoyingly tapped her small fingers over and over again on the table. Irritated, Hermione just ignored it and stared out the window.

"Mione!!!" A familiar voice shouted, was this the Boy-Who-Lived who's voice rang out in her ears?

"Ohhh, Harry!!" she yelped as she ran up to him and embraced him making up for all the hugs they had missed during their long absence.

"What about me?" Ginny smirked as she too got up and embraced their raven haired friend.

A while later while Harry was going off on how he had spent the summer with Sirius Black, his godfather, and how they had wandered the forests and found out more information leading to finding more Death Eater lairs, Hermione sat in her own little world.

My, Harry has grown she thought. He was no longer the slim and smaller framed boy anymore. This summer obviously changed him quite a bit. He looked a bit older, not just because he was seventeen now, but because he seemed to have matured. His raven hair fell in front of his face and peeking between those unkempt locks contained his illuminous green eyes that seemed to hide so many painful secrets. Hermione couldn't help but unconsciously grab a charcoal pencil and sketch on her drawing pad, his face.

As Hermione sat quietly observing and sketching Harry, Ginny got up and embraced a taller, stronger redhead. It had been Ron.

"So… Mi, I see you are still as artistic as ever." A soft, yet deep voice whispered in her ear.

"And Ronald, it seems you are as imposing as ever." She stared back at him.

"Hermione, ok… I'm sorry, I have been owling you all summer, and yet it seems that you hold this grudge on me. I am very sorry about what I said in London, can we just move on?" Ron said almost pleading for her to forgive, because in Ron's eyes, he didn't feel he had said something too out of line.

"Alright, take a chair." She eyed him.

As the four friends sat down, the awkward silences and glances turned to laughter and talk of what the new year at Hogwarts was to bring.

&&

Back at the Weasley's, Hermione paged through the books that her mother had given to her. Most of the books had been on the Renaissance or on the 20th Century. Her mother had realized how much she had enjoyed her trips to Heyward in the summer, so she decided that she would buy her gifts that combined her love of literature and her love of art.

Running her fingers through her long dark golden hair, she spotted a painting that made her quite, intrigued to say the least. It had been Manet. "Afternoon in the Park." She kept gazing at the nude woman who was in plain view sitting in front of two fully clothed men. She longed in some way to be as provocative and confident as the woman who proudly gazed back at her, unashamed of her nakedness. With the thought in her head, she gradually rose from the armchair and looked into the full length mirror in the corner of the cozy room.

The light of the fireplace had left the room with a goldenrod colour that flickered into her eyes as she gazed into her own reflection. Hermione without breaking the gaze, slowly, but unconsciously unbuttoned her shirt each button slowly unclasping. The shirt fell to the floor. Soon her skirt unzipped on the side and that too fell.

She gazed at her undergarments and slowly bit her lower lip. She moved her hands towards her back and unhooked her bra and slid off her underware. She finally broke her own gaze as she overlooked her body. Sure, Hermione had known what she had looked like without clothes on, but she had never really observed her body. She had never really noticed how much she had changed, especially in the last year. Hermione Granger was no longer the slim, waify, bushyhaired girl that everyone had thought she was. She had now almost been replaced by woman.

Hermione's hands slowly trailed up her thighs, the voluptuous legs and hips that had replaced her thin skinny ones. When she had no stomach she all of a sudden ran her palms along her soft womanly belly and up to her ample breasts, trailing a finger on outlining the large curve of each. She wasn't so different from the woman who had been in the paintings that she had secretly envied.

She smiled warmly as she thoroughly enjoyed what she had seen. And it seemed that the silent figure watching did as well.