A/N: Those green eyes will haunt him for the rest of his life. I do not own Harry Potter.
Submission for:
Hogwarts Fair 2014 Challenge/Competition: Minerva's Magical Merry-go-round - Write a cyclical story that starts and ends with the same line or word.
The Sorting Hat's Challenge: What are you most vain about? - Eyes
The Pokemon Journey Challenge
Green eyes.
They were everywhere. He saw them every time he went to sleep and every morning when he woke up. They haunted his thoughts and caught him unawares at the oddest moments.
He would be working in his lab and they would flash in his mind, accompanied by a laugh he had not heard in years but could recognize clearly. He would be sitting by the fire with a book in hand when they would flash again, a swish of red tickling his nose in their wake. He would be eating dinner among his colleagues and there were eyes before the smell of vanilla that always floated around them.
It had been years since he had last saw them for himself. The eyes continued to follow him, close at his heels, ready to trap him in memories, but he couldn't say he was trying hard to run from them. They were a part of her that he would never let go. Her hair, her freckles and her smile were also there, but those eyes looked straight into him.
Of all the things he remembered about her, they were the most vivid. They were once filled with such love and compassion, a special look devoted just to him. Only those eyes could see the real him. They saw the little boy within him, the one that was scared of the world and hid behind a cold outer shell.
But the thing is, the eyes in his mind were just flashes, just memories of a time long gone. Each one excited him and made his heart race, but also weighed heavily on his chest as he remembered where she was. Those eyes had been laid to rest with the woman herself, never to gaze lovingly upon anything again. She was ripped from this earth before her time and it was all his fault. He had dimmed the light in those eyes. He would live with that sin for the rest of his life, and that's why he felt it was just for the eyes to haunt him.
It is the Welcoming Feast tonight. He sits at the teachers' table staring out at all the chattering students in every house. His eyes drift to the jittery first years lined up to the side. He has heard that the famed Boy Who Lived, her and Potter's son, is starting this year.
The green eyes flash again and he leans back in shock. His eyes run through the small faces before stopping on one boy. The eyes are not a flash. These are real. The boy looks around just as the other young boys and girls do, but his gaze is different. His gaze is wide, soaking up everything around him just like hers always did, just like the day he had first met her.
Green eyes.