Stolen Smiles

Every Thursday. Mid-morning. Fourth floor. After Charms, before Transfiguration. It was like this, week after week. Ginny didn't even realize she had been keeping track. But it was there. He was there. They passed in the hallway. That was it. She'd spent most of the year not even recognizing that her brain was accounting each time, carefully shuffling it into the back of her mind. Every time, she would glance up, not spending more than a second of her day thinking about him. Until the day she made a mistake. She actually looked at him, registering his vacant eyes, his disinterest in his supposed friends' conversation, the way his back curved with his hands shoved into his pockets, as if he were trying to hide himself. It was a defensive position that she hadn't seen on Draco Malfoy. And once she thought about it, he never made snide comments, or sneered at her. He just walked, staring straight ahead.

It came to a point where Ginny enjoyed those chance encounters, wanting to memorize his face when he wasn't on his guard. It was delicate, fine almost innocent, until you reached those steel-gray eyes full of...something. Not anger, not hate...definitely not love...almost indifference, but at the same time desperation.

Everything was fine and lovely until he had to go and look at her. And not just glance, like she had done. He looked up and their eyes met. If this had happened when she was younger, Ginny would have gone pink, looked away, and hurried down the corridor, but not now. She was 16 and could take on anything. A 17-year-old boy was nothing. She had gone out with plenty of them, let alone made eye contact with one. But the second gray met hazel, something happened in Ginny that made her want the floor to open up and swallow her whole. It wasn't that it embarrassed her to look at him; it was the way he looked back, like he knew everything about her. And it scared her, more than anything. So, when she could bear it no more, she looked away and was ashamed of herself for it.

And it continued. Every Thursday, mid-morning, fourth floor, and so on. Nothing ever changed about it. They would look at each other and one of them would inevitably look away. Except when they didn't. Then she was sick, out for a whole week. And her first Thursday back, he did something that shocked her. He smiled. Not a sneer, not a scornful grin, just a smile. For the first time in her life, Ginny felt the urge to hug him. It was a weird feeling. She smiled back and walked away, hurriedly. And she kept that smile, filed away in the back of her mind, just like those stolen glances. Except this time, she brought the smile out, every once in a while, and when she did, her heart sang. And every smile, she added to her collection, every one different. It was never more than a smile, but sometimes just a smile to one person can change another's life.

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Every Thursday. Mid-morning. Fourth floor. After Transfiguration, before Charms. It was like this, week after week. Draco would walk to class, trailed by his fellow Slytherins, not really paying attention to anything, just trying to forget the world. And then he would feel it, just as they walked past the empty History of Magic classroom, eyes burning holes into him. He never looked up, he didn't really care. But he memorized the feeling of being watched.

Eventually his curiosity got the better of him. As soon as he heard the click-clack her black pumps made on the marble floor, he looked up , He had expected some fan girl from Ravenclaw, but he was wrong. He felt a jolt through his body as grey met hazel. The Weaselette? Why is she watching me? She held his stare and he looked right back, searching her eyes for a reason. She looks at me and sees something she wants to fix. Like every other girl. But she didn't, and eventually he came to know that. She saw something else, something she recognized, and he saw it in her.

And it continued, every week. Thursday became his favorite day. It wasn't that he thought about it all day. In fact, the only time he ever thought about it was when it happened. Until one Thursday, he didn't hear her heels and didn't see her hazel eyes. That was the worst Thursday of the whole year. And the next time Thursday rolled around, he looked up, uncharacteristically shy, and did something that he wasn't planning on doing. He smiled. A true genuine smile. It felt foreign on his face, but he held it and was rewarded when she smiled back. Her smile was timid, tentative, and also uncharacteristic. It made him want to smile forever. Strange. But he broke his gaze and hurried away. And he memorized that smile on her face, saving the memory for a particularly difficult day. He collected the memories of each smile. They were all different and each meant something different to him. He would never be able to express just how much, but when he faced his father when summer holidays came, he thought of the first smile and braved the hailstorm.