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04

"So tell me again how exactly you got the chocolate into the strawberries?"

Harry swallowed the one he had just bitten into and smiled at me. "You cut the top off and scoop out a little hole, then you put chocolate in it, put the top back on, and put them in the refrigerator. Voila."

"Very fancy."

"Indeed."

Harry decided that he wanted to go on a picnic, but it's too cold for that in January, so we are sitting on his bed with a picnic basket and eating strawberries that he magically got chocolate into.

"I can't believe you have art in your room too. It's everywhere." I gaze at his walls and examine each of the paintings.

"There's not that many. These are all mine in here. Nobody usually sees them which is how I like it." He says.

"Why don't you want people to see your paintings? They're beautiful." I ask, confused.

"I don't know. I just don't like to show them off that much." There was a long pause as he bit into another piece of fruit before he said, "tell me about your favorite paintings."

"That's like asking a mother to choose her favorite child. I can't." I say. It was true. There were too many beautiful pieces of art in the world for me to choose just one to have as my favorite.

"Hmm," Harry hummed, "then how about I show you paintings that I like and you tell me what you think about them."

I smiled at him and nodded. I had always felt like I had a better understanding of art than other people did. It took a lot of hard work to interpret the meanings of paintings that appear to have none, but I had become quite good at it.

Harry picked up his phone off the bedside table and opened up an app. I'm assuming looking up paintings for me to talk about.

"This one." Harry turned his phone to face me and showed me The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.

"Well, I feel like he's basically saying that time doesn't last forever and it eventually melts away and you run out of it. You feel that it doesn't matter but then once you see that it's gone it's too late, so you should do something with it now while you still have it, but the title doesn't really match that. So when I hear the title and see the clocks I think of how people remember the best things that happen to them, but the time is all a mush in their mind even though the memories are still there and persistent."

Harry smiled at me, his dimples sinking deep into his cheeks. He nods and turns his phone back towards him, swiping to something else.

"Here, do this one." I recognized the painting automatically. It was the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

"Personally, I think this painting is really overrated like people hear "name a famous painting" and the Mona Lisa is always the first one that comes to everyone's mind. I don't know why because there are paintings that are way better than this, but the thing that amazes me is that it took da Vinci five years to paint her lips. Just the lips took him five years that's honestly so much time to spend on one piece. He was so dedicated."

I looked back up at Harry to see him still smiling at me.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I ask, avoiding his gaze.

"You're just so passionate about art and I can see it in your eyes and your face and it's absolutely beautiful."

I blush slightly and say, "show me another one," before he says anything else.

He swipes at his screen a few more times before turning it back around. The picture accidentally changes to a photo of him making a goofy face and I smile.

"This is my favorite piece of all time. It took around 10 months to complete and this piece is about 22 years old. I feel that it portrays emotions better than any other art piece there is; I've never seen anything as happy at this one. It's insanely tall and was chiseled by the hands of God. It holds the biggest heart in the world on the inside, and has the more beauty than anything else. But the thing that makes it amazing is that it doesn't know how much beauty this piece truly holds."

Harry's confused look made me laugh a little. I knew he didn't intend to show me a picture of himself, but oh well.

"What painting did I show you?" He says, still confused as he turns his phone back towards him.

"No painting, just you."