Tom was five the first time he'd seen it. The orphanage had taken the children on a rare outing, leading them down Charing Cross Road as though they were little ducklings, and there it had been—a worn wooden sign hanging from creaking hinges outside a shabby little building. It was nestled between a bookstore and a record shop and the sign read The Leaky Cauldron in looped script and the paint, while chipped and faded, seemed to glow an ethereal emerald.
That was the first time.
It was years before he was able to return and enter the run down building, now an eleven year old who had just learned the existence of magic. An eleven year old with bright, greedy eyes and white knuckles that clutched a heavy envelope addressed in almost luminous green ink. He drank in the sight of openly used magic and cloaks, drawn to emerald robes and green flames that erupted for people to step out of. Then he'd been sorted into Slytherin, the house of snakes and silver and green.
Every year he received a letter written in the same viridian ink. Every year he returned to that world of emerald flames and ties. Every year he was watched by a man who headed up the house of red and gold.
When Tom was fourteen he discovered an otherworldly, deep green spell that gave him power over life and death. When he was sixteen he'd used it to rid himself of the filth that tied him to the Muggle world.
He used that spell a lot, favoured it as he rose in power and influence. He used it when he struck down a man with messy hair and hazel eyes who didn't have his wand. It was on his lips as a woman, whose eyes were the same magical green, begged for her son's life. She, too, fell to his curse. The child looked on him with the same eyes as he spoke the words he had so many times, and that was the colour he saw when his spell rebounded on him.
Green eyes.
Green eyes.
Green eyes glaring in defiance, refusing to hand over his chance at rebirth. The vague imprint of those eyes, somewhere deep in his subconscious, stabbing him in the soul. Green eyes hidden behind screwed up eyelids while the boy screamed in pain, tied to a gravestone. Green eyes hardened with bravery as he stood to face his demise. The green of the Dark Lord's curse as it sped at the speed of death, and the red charm that shot forward to defend those blasted green eyes.
Green eyes burning with grief in the Ministry, and the memory in Snape's mind of those green eyes wide with shock on the Astronomy Tower. Green eyes, filled with a cold acceptance as his green curse shot toward them again, this time unblocked.
Green eyes, an echo of the woman he'd killed, offering redemption. Green eyes revealing Snape's true allegiance. Green eyes once again staring down his green curse.
An explosion of red and blessed green.