A/N: For the Houses Competition. Set during sixth year when Draco is agonising over his task to kill Dumbledore.
House: Ravenclaw
Category: Short
Prompt: Grey eyes
Word count: 522
Grey is such a dull colour, Draco thinks absently, as he stares blankly into the mirror. It is the colour of cloudy skies on an overcast day, when the weather is neither here nor there; the colour of the cracked and broken flagstones of the Hogwarts grounds. Nobody notices grey.
He doesn't really recognise this imposter staring back at him. He blinks at the same time that Draco does, and has all the same features (he thinks; he's not sure how long it's been since he last looked in a mirror) but there's something about him that doesn't seem quite right. But then, nothing feels right anymore.
His hair is greasy and hangs in limp, dead strands around his face. He tries to brush it back into place, but it refuses to stay so he just lets it be. It's the same silvery-blond it has always been, now seeming to blend into the rest of him with how pale he has become. He glances down at his hands, paper thin, with spidery veins stretching out like cobwebs across his skin.
He is thin all over now, he supposes. His shirt hangs loosely off him - grey, like his eyes, like everything else - and his ribs have begun to show. When he looks back at his face, it appears gaunt, with sharp bones sticking out prominently from hollow cheeks. He's always been slim - angular, some said - but he has long since moved past that. He's only mildly surprised to find that he doesn't particularly care.
He remembers an old saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul. He's never believed in superstitions or folktales such as those; his father always told him that they were for Muggles, and that Muggles were beneath wizards in every way. As a child, Draco had believed his father without question. But he cannot blame his ignorance on his youth, because that belief delivered him to the Dark Lord and the new mark on his arm. He supposes it is pointless to say he regrets it all now.
But if the eyes are the windows to the soul, then his soul must be very bleak indeed. Grey and dull and blank and faded; this is what his eyes are, so this is what his soul must be. It doesn't take much for him to believe it. He feels hollow and empty inside, like he can't feel anything at all. He glances back down at his thin frame. Come to think of it, he can't remember the last time he ate, although he's not sure whether or not he's actually hungry. Everything feels the same these days.
He is surprised when he looks back up to find his eyes filling with tears. He doesn't feel any different from the crushing emptiness of five minutes, an hour, three days before, but perhaps he should have known that there would be a tear in his protective shell. Where others' eyes might be said to sparkle with tears, his own mist over, becomes duller, more obscured.
For the first time in what might be years, Draco closes his eyes, and weeps.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Please leave a review if you have a moment. Bye!