Hey you guyyys… I've been away for a little while. Betcha never even noticed! So, Smile has been revamped… yay? I'm really sorry it had to go but I didn't like it. This is the same story, just a little different.

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Tommy Hessen was eight years old. His birthday was just yesterday and he had gotten several gifts, one of which was an awesome bucket and shovel. He and his friends and several kids he didn't know were having a contest to see which group could build the biggest castle. He and his group were totally going to win because of his awesome new bucket and shovel. In mid-laughter as another tower fell from the opposing team's castle, Tommy turned his head and spotted him.

It was that boy, the freaky one that stroke fear in every kid's heart as he walked slowly into the playground and sat upon a swing.

He stared solemnly ahead, eyes blacker than night but far from blank. In fact, his eyes glittered with intelligence and a sort of calculation that was unnatural in anyone under thirty. They took in everything around him from behind a curtain of greasy black locks that tangled in some places, curled slightly in others or hung lank. He was absolutely filthy looking although he did not smell as he looked with his ill-fitting clothing and dirty hair. Instead he smelled, as most would put it, like fire. Tommy understood it to be true even though it made no sense. The black haired boy smelled as though he were standing in the middle of a great, roaring fire and it absorbed into his skin, sunk into his soul.

If that wasn't disturbing enough, the boy never said anything. He would come to the playground every day, at the same time and position his skinny body on a swing and simply sit there. He wouldn't speak to anyone, he wouldn't look longingly for a friend and he wouldn't actually swing on the swing. At first they attempted to speak with him, they really did. However the boy would meet them with his calculating onyx eyes and stare. He would stare hard into their eyes, never blinking and never speaking. He wouldn't allow them to look away as his entire body stilled and he looked into their very soul and if they ever got away, they would cry like he had actually struck them and some even peed themselves.

Tommy had gone up to him twice, had braved the boy twice and never let his friends live it down when they complained about imagined monsters because no matter what anyone said, monsters were real but they weren't under beds or in closets. They didn't hide in the dark. They came to the playground to sit on the swing. They looked just like the rest of them but smelled like an undying fire.

Tommy remembered looking into those eyes, staring into them, unable to look away but unwilling to continue their contest. It was only the second time that he tried to communicate that Tommy realized that what had been building up in his chest, the fear and the panic hadn't really been tears, it had been… well, he couldn't describe it. It was like laughter, like he wanted to scream with laughter until he was crying but it would still be laughter because something was funny and horrifying and funny. But Tommy couldn't and didn't do that because they would call him loony. So he smiled at the boy and continued to play with his friends until it was naptime. Then he buried his face into his pillow and laughed his crazy laughter until he fell asleep, still laughing.

Tommy Hessen did not remember the one time someone tried to bully the boy because he wasn't there—had the chickenpox he did—but his best friend, Billy had been there. The squirrelly boy told him how the bully had come storming into the playground, chest puffed and obviously a new kid. It didn't take a genius to guess that whatever had happened had ended in absolute disaster. His first target had been the little boy on the swing, probably because he was alone.

Billy didn't go into too much detail, his short attention span never allowed it but from what Tommy heard, the boy had made eye contact with the bully when he attempted to grip the boy up by his shirt. He made eye contact and froze like a statue then the bully dropped the boy and ran. He ran and he wasn't screaming. He was laughing so loud and hard that it sounded like shrill shrieks of agony.

Normally Tommy would have called Billy a liar (despite his own reaction to the boy), he was quite known for that but then Billy would look at him with serious green eyes, no longer twitchy and smiling and Tommy knew that he wasn't lying. Whatever the little boy had done to that bully had been a harsher version of what he had done to Tommy and it scared Tommy sometimes when he really thought about it.

Before the brown haired boy could pull his thoughts away from the strange solemn boy across the playground gazing about with his glittering eyes, he saw something he hadn't seen in quite some time (since he was six). There was someone approaching the boy. And not just anyone but a girl. She had bright, fiery red hair tied up in pretty green ribbons that matched her pretty green dress. She flounced up to the boy with a sparkling smile on his face, stopping right in front of him like a ball of sunshine trying to brighten up a hall of darkness.

"Oh my—somebody should get her out of there! He's gonna eat her," Glenn Tilly whispered which brought the scene to everyone else's attention.

"She must be new," Glenda noted, her eyes gleaming delightfully as though what her brother said meant absolutely nothing. She too had flounced up to the black haired boy and actually spoke to him, managed to introduce herself before something overtook her and she ran without speaking to her friends. Since that day, she hardly stopped smiling.

"Yeah, she's Lily Evans, her family just moved in last week—my mum works with her da and her mum works with my older sister," Terra Rocky piped up, working some grains between her fingers as she watched the scene from behind her golden hair. She hadn't gone up to the boy because she fancied herself something of a genius. Or, if not a genius then at least someone with a good sense of self-preservation.

"Sssh, I'm trying to watch!" Tommy hissed, waving off the chattering children. He wanted to see what kind of reaction this girl would have to the monster that smelled of fire and looked like a normal little boy.

"Hi, my name's Lily! I just moved here from London, I did. My mum got a new, better job down here so we all had to move. I was gonna play in the sandbox but then I saw you were here all alone and I didn't want ya to be all alone so now I'm here and… and…" her words stuttered off slightly and she took a small step back as the glittering, calculating eyes finally turned towards her and connected with her sparkling greens. Tommy couldn't see her expression from this angle but he could only assume that it was frozen as she became a statue for whatever amount of time the monster forced her—

"And my sister…" Or until she broke the spell herself. More than just Tommy's mouth fell open as the girl continued to chatter as though nothing had happened or would happen. From their distance, they could see that the boy seemed slightly confused as well, a slight furrow in his brow as the girl sat down next to him, talking a mile a minute all the while looking him in the face.

"… older than me. She's already ten, she is! Ohhhhh, there she is, coming right there. HEY TUNIE!" Lily waved, kicking herself on the swing so that she could go higher.

"Lily, I told you not to run off now c'mon before da goes loony!" another girl they had never seen came striding into the playground. Compared to her sister, this girl was completely plain and downright boring with her brown hair, brown eyes and dark blue dress. Her hair held no ribbons and she did not sparkle but she stalked right up to where her sister swung, barely casting a glance at the little boy sitting there, feeling no need to stare into his calculating eyes and test her luck. She did not fear him or, if she did, she ignored it in favor of her sister.

"Awww Tunie, we're right by a playground!" Lily whined, still kicking herself higher and higher. The older girl pursed her lips and placed her hands onto her hips as mothers want to do.

"Lily Rosaline Evans, you get off that swing right now or I'm gonna tell Aunt Helen!" the brunette threatened. Lily gasped and immediately released her grip on the metal chains. As she twirled elegantly through the air some would say that she actually flew, that she had gone much higher than any of them ever had. She landed with hardly a thump or a hair out of place. Her older sister immediately gripped her by the hand and practically dragged her away, the redhead turning around to wave to the black haired boy.

Tommy turned his head back to said boy and saw that the confused look on his face had smoothed out and now he looked as though he understood everything and he waved back.

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Two Weeks Later

"You still haven't told me your name and we've been friends for ages now," Lily said as she bit thoughtfully into her apple. Across from her, the boy was doing the same thing although he was taking much smaller bites and wasn't really looking at her. Instead he took in everything around them, cataloguing it and moving onto something different. He did it quickly over and over again before staring at her really hard, looking into her eyes then gazing over her face then her body before going back to their surroundings.

He was an odd sort of fellow, he truly was but something about him drew her in almost like when the voices in her blood told her she could and should do something like jump really high or bring a flower back to life or fix a kitty's paw. She liked and trusted that voice and so she always listened to it even when it told her that the group of kids wouldn't be as better as this single boy with the ill-fitting clothes and dirty hair.

"Actually, you've haven't said anything to me. I don't know what your voice sounds like, I don't," Lily continued. "Can you talk?"

The boy finished looking around and slowly looked at her from behind the curtain of hair, glittering eyes staring at her. There was something about his stare, something that twisted something inside her, something that the voice in her blood enjoyed quite much. It told her that if it hadn't been there, then she'd be giggling instead of it and the way that it said this, Lily figured that she didn't want to giggle because of his gaze.

"Yes," he suddenly said, breaking the redhead's train of thought. Lily blinked in confusion then smiled as she remembered her earlier question. His voice was nice if she had to comment, small and kinda rough as though he didn't talk much but it was nice.

"Good on you, I thought we were going to play charades if you couldn't talk," Lily smiled, "So what's your name?"

"Severus Snape," he answered easily.

"I never heard of a name like that, I haven't but I like it. How old are you?"

"Two weeks from eight."

"Oh, I'm nine so that means I'm older than you. Haha!" Lily playfully stuck out her tongue. Severus raised a bemused eyebrow and watched as the girl bounced giddily and clapped her hands together, probably excited how much she was learning about him.

"You're a witch," Severus suddenly stated something that had been on his mind since he allowed this redhead to come into his domain. He truly did like her, she had enough energy and enough words for the both of them and she had magic just like him. Yes, she was older but that mattered very little because his birthday fell right into Hogwarts' birth date limit.

"Hm, are you being mean Sev?" Severus frowned deeply at the butchering of his name but bit his tongue from saying anything. While the redheaded twins had some magic, they didn't have nearly as much as this girl and couldn't handle when he used his own brand of magic so if Lily wanted to give him a… nickname… then he supposed it wouldn't be so bad.

"No, you are a witch. You do magic like when you jumped off the swing and flew. I do magic too but I'm a wizard," he explained in more words than he ever used. Ever. He held up his apple in one hand and slowly extended his magic as his mother had taught him, forcing it into the apple and causing it to melt red and white down his hand only to land on the ground to sprout a rather crude flower.

"Magic," Lily whispered in awe. She had done magic, she knew that it was magic but to see someone else do it, to know that she wasn't alone… Lily smiled brightly and tackled Severus to the grass, rolling playfully, her laughter bouncing off the trees.

(**)

To Be Continued

Did it get worse or better? I'm hoping better…