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Goodbye, Miss Granger - Part 1
Date: 12/28/2015, Categories: Love Stories, Author: blin18
... friend to Harry and Ron. And then we loved her. To have someone with my name – okay, maybe just my surname – and my exact age in what was becoming a famous kids’ story book; it was special. It was like having my own secret identity; a fantasy world that I could step into whenever I liked. And I enjoyed a small notoriety at school, too. Not as much as a kid called Potter might have enjoyed; but kids mentioned it; in a nice way. I had already read the paperback twice, but Dad ordered me a First Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and gave it to me for Christmas. I treasured it. J.K. Rowling was like my personal fantasy writer; giving Hermione, and by extension me, new adventures for the next three years as I went through puberty. She was even beginning to hint at a love interest with either Harry or Ron, which was deliciously appealing because I was getting interested in boys too. And then they made the movie. Actually, it wasn’t too bad at first. I was fourteen when Philosopher’s Stone was released as a movie and Emma Watson, the actress playing Hermione – was only eleven, so nobody saw the resemblance. When Chamber of Secrets came out the following year, a couple of people, adults mostly, made the connection; I had a few people say “You know, you Granger girls DO look a little bit alike.” But a year later when Emma Watson was thirteen – goodness knows what it was like for her going through puberty on a movie screen – and with her face and body changing shape, ...
... it became clear that we were more than just a little bit alike; we could have been sisters. The sort of sisters who looked like twins. Added to the coincidence of our shared age and surname, looking like the “real” Hermione should have made the fantasy even more special; and for a while it did. Until the trouble. ~~~ I turned sixteen in the year Chamber of Secrets was released at the movies. I didn’t have a boyfriend – I never had had one – but things seemed to be changing on that front. Without really understanding what was happening, I found myself arriving early for each class at school so that I could stand outside and wait for the teacher to come; and there was a boy doing the same thing. His name was Rick. Goodness knows how shy kids ever hook up, because Rick and I spent five minutes alone together, three times per day. In complete silence! I looked at my shoes. Rick looked at the ceiling, or at his watch, or anywhere but me. For pity’s sake, why didn’t one of us have a wing-man, or wing-woman, whatever! This must have gone on for weeks, and it probably would have kept going on if one day I didn’t look at my watch, lose my grip on my books and then spill them with a shriek all over the floor in front of Rick. It’s possible that I orchestrated it; I don’t remember. Okay, I DO remember, but I’m not telling. Anyway, I mouthed some suitable sixteen-year-old curse like ‘bugger’ and went to ground to start picking everything up; as did Rick, according to plan, if there had ...