Written for alohamora080's True Colours challenge.
Yellowing Skin
Filius Flitwick never understood the problem with yellowing skin. It may just have been the goblin part of him, but he associated it with age, and with age comes knowledge. And wisdom. It was when he came to look back over the years he'd lived, the lives he'd taught, that he finally understood what it meant to humans to have yellowing skin. It was a sign of age, so old that you hang limply from your soul, so inactive in what you do.
He had been starting to feel heavy when he saw grandchildren of people he'd taught coming in through Hogwarts' doors to begin their own education. Looking down at them, he saw so few similarities between them and their grandfathers and grandmothers, that it became clear to him what it meant to be old. It was watching others live their lives in happiness, watching them as they bound about in glee and laughing at the inane problems that befuddle a teenager; schoolwork, Quidditch and who snogged who.
He paid close attention to them to hold on to who he himself had once been when a child. It had been different for him; being a quarter goblin he had been ridiculed by many, and was ecstatic to be allowed to attend Hogwarts. The excitement had quickly washed away his sadness of being excluded. And ever since then he's never lost that drive, that pure joy at being a wizard, and the pass it on to others, some like him… Well, it made him feel like a child inside again.
Sorry, what's the problem with yellowing skin again?