Yours is the emptiest of all

Oh how he hates those eyes.

There's too much noise as the clack clack sputter of the potions bubble around him – there's not enough silence. She used to love silence, the beauty in the nothingness and smile delightedly as she laid in the sunlight, dappling through the trees. She used to giggle, elated, when he smiled because it was so rare (unless he was with her, with the only person who mattered). She used to be a stark beauty, with her long hair and beautiful eyes, standing, lonesome, against the pale bland canvas that were her friends. She used to look at him like maybe he could be the one she shared her life with. She used to be a lot of things.

Now she is only one thing.

Now she is only (deadandgoneburiedunderrubble) a memory.

A memory of fire and apples and the things that tingle in the back of his throat when he thinks too long and too hard about her; he thinks sometimes she might look down on him and say I know that man, I am proud of him but he knows she won't and the knowledge hurts (he stops dreaming that day). All she knew of him before she left him was that he was a prat, and that Potter (hiss and curl your lip Severus, it will make it all better) was amazingwonderful and things that he wasn't before. So he boils his potions and inhales the scent of eternal sleep and desire.

The things that remind him of her.

But the memories only sustain him for so long, until he starts seeing her in his students. In that Annie's long red hair against the sunlight (just a shade too light and an inch too short) or Sandy's big blue eyes that look a bottle green in the light of his classroom (he dims the lights till they're just the right shade) or little Luna's thin, tapered hands moving slowly over the pot (only to add the wrong ingredients and she never did that so it's easy to give the girl a 'T' especially when the Weasel-bee is behind her, mooning like Potter) or the way Susan's pale face glows when she does well (he tries to ignore the brown eyes and brown hair) or the way Hermione Granger's mouth curves at just that right angle to match the disapproving look she used to send Potter's way.

Hermione Granger reminds him most.

So he hates. He hates with a burning rage and fire and wants to wring her little neck until she cries out in a voice an octave too low to be that airy voice he loves so much. But when he moves to stalk over her and move his hands it's that Potter boy that shifts just so closer to Granger and shifts his eyes to warn his Professor that Granger is his and Professor better stay away.

It's always those Potters. But this one is worse. This one has James's hair and face and grin and glasses but he has her eyes, her bright green eyes and they're just the right shade in any light. Harry is the monster in sheep's clothing.

So he stands back and watches this Potter woo the Granger and thinks of (lilyandjamesnotlilyandseverus) new ways to fail the boy. To hate him. To generate that ill desire to (killhim) save him. Because those eyes have to live on through the Granger girl and the Potter boy.

And he tries to hate, tries to save, tries to decimate, but all he can find to do is want. Want those eyes, want red hair, want thin tapered fingers, want oval faces with freckles, he wants Lily Evans back.

But he doesn't get her. He gets this little spit-mongrel.

(ohhowhehatesthoseeyes.)

Severus Snape finds he hates silence nowadays.