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Chapter 2 – Smiles (as noticed by Harry Potter)

THAT AFTERNOON AT LUNCH I sat across from Hermione Granger. I don't always get to eat with her, because sometimes I'm too busy for lunch, but she always sits at the same table, so when I can sit with her, I do. Everyday she brings a brown paper bag with the same things inside: an apple, a cheese sandwich, and a bottle of juice. She usually reads during lunch. Once in a while she'll talk to me. This afternoon she smiled at me.

"What's that smile about, Hermione?" I asked.

Then, while still smiling, she reached over and brushed her hand across my bangs and said, "I just think you're so wonderful, Harry."

I only wish she meant it. I mean, I know she meant it. She loved me, as a friend. She adored me, as a friend. She thought, in her words, that I was wonderful, as a friend. Yet, when she smiled at me, my heart melted. Would a friend's heart melt when another friend smiled at him? I don't think so.

After the smile, the touch of the hand to my hair, and the declaration of how wonderful I was, she started telling me how Draco Malfoy took her glasses yesterday and he hadn't given them back yet. I wasn't sure why that was such a catastrophe. She didn't really need them to see. She bought them at a Muggle chemist shop. I'm thankful that I no longer needed to wear glasses, and here she wanted to get fake glasses back from the stupid wanker, Draco Malfoy.

I nodded my head with her in agreement; yes, Draco Malfoy was the world's biggest git. Yes, Draco Malfoy was strange. Yes, Draco Malfoy was reprehensible and an idiot.

Because he was all those things, a wanker, a git, a stupid fool. Why we had to ruin a perfectly good lunch hour talking about something we both already knew was beyond me. I almost told her that I thought she was protesting a bit too much.

She didn't like him or something, did she? The thought of that made my stomach lurch forward and then fall down into my feet. I reached over for her hand, to keep it still, and said, "Hermione, can we stop talking about Draco Malfoy?"

"But he still has my glasses!" she said. "He took them right off the table in front of me and put them in his pocket for no good reason! He stole them right under my nose, and because we were in the middle of the staff meeting, and I didn't want our boss to notice, I didn't say anything."

"I hate that you work with that prat," I said with a frown. "I'll get your glasses back for you."

"Oh, Harry, that's nice of you, but I wasn't complaining to you because I expected you to get them back for me. I can get them." Then she smiled at me again. A smile that started at her mouth but soon lit up her whole face.

Silent film star, Charlie Chaplin, wrote a song about smiles. I remembered only a small part of it, bits and pieces really, but it played around my brain at that moment because her smile made me think of it. It said something about, "smile, though your heart is aching, smile, even though its breaking, when there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by, if you smile, through your tears and sorrow, smile, and maybe tomorrow, you'll see the sun shining through - for you, if you smile."

Hermione's smile had the power to make my heart ache and break. It had the capacity to light up a dark sky. It had soothed many of my tears and sorrows away. I often knew that everything would be better in my dark, lonely life, just because she smiled at me.

She was my best friend in the world. Ron was my best mate. There's a difference. I loved them both, but differently. There were different times in my life when I thought I was IN LOVE with Hermione Granger, my best friend. I've actually been in love with Ginny Weasley since I was a boy, but even that's a different kind of love.

What I feel for Hermione is deeper. It's a soul searing love. It's a 'give up all that I own and it still wouldn't be enough' love.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to kiss her. We are always very affection with each other, and we've even kissed on the lips, but not passionately. I'm not dating Ginny right now, and Hermione is no longer dating Ron, so the thoughts of kissing her have been getting stronger lately. Her lips are so full and soft. Her body is curvy and giving and warm. She would feel right in my arms. I want to feel that. I want to savor her lips, taste them, and have them next to mine. I want her to smile at me, for the rest of our lives, and at no one else.

I looked back up at her and her smile melted away. She looked over my shoulder. She looked as if she was concentrating on something or someone. There was something so different and compelling and singular about this woman and her smile and her every expression. I knew them better than I knew my own. This expression was one of concern.

I looked over my shoulder to see what she saw. Draco Malfoy entered the room, and had stopped to talk to someone. He had Hermione Granger's glasses in his hand, and while he was talking to the bloke, he was waving the glasses around, vicariously, almost as if he wanted Hermione to see them. It was as if he was offering up a challenge.

I heard the chair legs of her chair scoot back across the floor. This was her battle. I would fight it for her if she'd let me. I'd fight them all for her if she'd let me, just as she would fight all of mine. We usually accomplished more fighting together. I stood up as well, just so he would see that I was there.

"Malfoy?" Hermione poked Draco's arm - the arm that owned the hand that held her glasses, at least for the time being.

He told the man to whom he was speaking goodbye, turned to Hermione and didn't even have the manners to answer her. He merely stared back at her.

She said, "I'd like my glasses back, please." She held out her hand. I was shocked she said please. Her demeanor didn't denote 'please'. Her demeanor denoted, 'give me my glasses or suffer the consequences'.

"Oh, really?" the git said, waving the glasses in front of her face. "Do you mean these glasses? The ones you admitted that you don't even need? The ones you wear to make yourself appear smarter? The ones that you annoy me with by playing with them, or twirling them? These glasses?"

She still held out her hand. I sat against the table and folded my arms in front of me and cleared my throat so he would know I was there, since he hadn't yet notice me. Not that she needed me as a back up, and not that Malfoy was particularly scared of me. More because I knew my presence would annoy him. I lived to annoy Malfoy, just as he lived to annoy me. It was what we were to each other: the ultimate annoyance.

He rolled his eyes and said, "I see you have Potter back there. Does the boy who lived need to fight your battles for you now, Granger?"

"Do you mean to battle me over MY glasses, Malfoy?" she asked back.

He moved her glasses from one hand to the next, and then actually rolled them around the fingers of one hand in a generally good show of dexterity. He looked her straight in the eyes and said, "I want to throw these in the rubbish bin, Granger. You don't need them. They don't improve your looks. You're already the smartest damn person I know, so believe me, they can't possibly make you look smarter. It annoys me how you put them on top of your head, or twirl them on the desk, or suck on the ear piece. I can't concentrate at work when you wear these. Please, let's get rid of the blasted things."

I stood upright, away from the table, a bit shocked. Was Draco Malfoy being contrite? What the hell?

It seemed to confuse Hermione, too. She had a frown on her face, but then, I became aware that her frown turned into another smile. She smiled at the ruddy bastard. It started out as a small, tentative smile, but grew to a large smile that encompassed her whole face. Her eyes were bright and her face flushed.

I hated that she would waste a smile like that on a man like him. It seemed to mystify him as well, because the look on his face was priceless. It was a cross between confused and amazed.

"Go on and throw them in the rubbish bin," she said. She pointed to one in the corned of the room.

The smarmy bastard did something next that almost made me pull out my wand to hex him. He smiled back at her.

He walked to the corner of the room, tossed her glasses on top of the heap of trash, and said, "Good show, Granger."

She walked back over to our table, SMILED, at me, picked up her things, and then when she walked back to Malfoy she said, "Yes, I have another pair at home just like them."

Malfoy's smile turned into another frown.

And heaven help me…I smiled again. I loved that woman so much.