Disclaimer: Wands are wooden and Voldy can rot, I'm sitting here crying 'cause I just own the plot.

Summary: His eyes were so intense that she had to look away. She has the most beautiful eyes, it's unbelievable. Sometimes all it takes is snow. Harry/Hermione

Your Eyes
By BlueSuedeSandals

I should tell you
I should tell you
I have always loved you
You can see it in my eyes —Roger, "Your Eyes" from RENT

She has the most beautiful eyes, it's unbelievable. They're this chocolate color with golden flecks, and they sort of spiral inwards until you're caught looking there. It's so…so…gorgeous. I've always thought she was beautiful, but I never realized it till now, I guess.

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His eyes were so intense that she had to look away. They commanded her attention from two yards away, and her heart gave a somersault. Viktor's eyes were like his, but they never gave her that sort of feeling. She was drawn to intensity, and always had been.

That precious moment of diverted attention cost her a soft thwump! near her ear, accompanied by a stinging sense of coldness. She felt it slide down the right side of her head, and heard Harry's laughter ringing through the icy December air. Her heart skipped a beat again.

Snowflakes kissed her eyelashes gently, like a mother at bedtime.

Hermione ducked, snow was in her face, another snowball was whizzing past her bushy brown hair—

Her mittens were wet but still warm. She felt a globe of snow taking shape in her hands. She inched on her stomach to her left, wriggling out from behind a tree. She lifted her head a fraction, enough to see that Harry was doubled over, adding to the stock of snowballs that he'd formed. They were clumsy, hasty things, and very likely to disintegrate on the way to the target. But she wouldn't take that chance.

A deadly white missile landed with an explosion of snow on the growing pile Harry had been fortifying. She gave him ten seconds to locate her, before she hurled the second at him. It zipped through the air in a perfect arch and straight home.

He recovered more rapidly than she would have expected. Or perhaps he caught her off guard while she was giggling and feeling lightheaded among the overwhelming scent of pine needles. A moment before he was wiping the wetness from his glasses, and suddenly she was the one gasping snow up her nose in her surprise.

A surge of something warm flipflopped near her heart.

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When we first met on the Hogwarts Express I saw a bushy-haired know-it-all. I was so caught up in being annoyed at her for interrupting my conversation with Ron, I didn't realize that her first act of being a witch was to try to assist an almost-Squib in finding his toad. Trevor is the ugliest, wartiest toad I've ever laid eyes on, and Neville is a klutz, but she was helping them out. She's still a know-it-all, but she's blossomed from bushy-haired to beautiful. I can't believe I haven't seen this before…

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Laughing, she patted another snowball into form and flung it at him. He ducked. It flattened into nothing against a tree that hadn't the sense nor animation to brush it off.

Quidditch reflexes, she thought to herself admiringly.

She threw another snowball, and he dove onto his stomach to avoid it. A split second later, he was on his feet again and retaliating. She was still laughing as the cold impact forced her backwards a few inches before, teetering, she lost her balance to a snowdrift.

The laughter never seemed to leave her, not ever with him around, and she was blinking snow from her eyelashes when he was suddenly next to her.

"Are you okay?" he said, with genuine concern. Her heart fluttered. His eyes were so deep. She attempted to look at the situation from the eyes of a spectator, if only to stop herself from drowning in the greenness, and saw his eyes mirroring anxiety and hers laughing. It was ridiculously funny, and she rolled over on her side, laughing.

"Yes," she choked out, heaving with laughter for no reason at all. I'm such an idiot, she told herself, rejoicing nonetheless. "Yes, I'm fine," she amended, when she was able to calm down and accept his hand as he helped her rise.

But he didn't see that the snowball he had dropped as he ran over to her, and tripped. He went flying backwards, into another snowdrift he had used as a temporary shelter from annihilation, and she went with him. The snow that had seemed toughly packed as ammo was surprisingly soft, and it cushioned the rough landing.

"It stopped snowing," Harry said.

Hermione started laughing again. He laughed with her, into her flyaway hair. They didn't move, for a few moments, until she shifted slightly. She felt herself falling into his eyes, his mother's eyes—

Her eyes were closing—

Was he getting closer, or was she really, truly drowning—

She could feel his breath on her cheeks. It was warm, and she realized her face was cold. She never felt completely cold around him—

Then she felt his lips on hers. Chapped, but warm. She sighed inwardly, and her heart danced. She threw her arms around him and waited for her heart to relax, while she basked in the moment.

"It's snowing again," she said some time later.

It didn't stop, and neither did her heart.

.FIN.