Flecks of Gold
by Joshua McCusker

A/N: This was inspired... and I hope it works.

I'm watching him again. I know I shouldn't, but I do it anyway. He's talking with Granger and Weasley, as usual. I've watched him come down, so far, to this point. He doesn't really smile anymore. It looks like something broke inside, and no one has been able to fix it. Oh he pretends; smiling when required, laughing just enough to appear like he means it, but I see it. I've watched him ever since I realized that my fascination was more than just that, it was lust. It took me a long time to know that I loved him, but now I know that I do.

I empathize with Ginny. We used to talk about it, once I was ready to tell her. She was so open with her feelings, but I couldn't do that. I felt weird, hid behind my camera, pretending I was just excited by him being who he was; that scar, those glasses, that hair. She actually noticed it first.

"He's so cute, isn't it?" I just smiled and tried to change the subject. "Really Colin, he's adorable. That smile makes me want to melt, you know?"

She pressured me for ages, until one day I cracked and said 'yes'. She smiled and hugged me, and said, "Welcome to the club." I'd thought she meant the 'Harry Potter Fan Club', but she shook her head. "No, I call it the 'Flecks of Gold' club."

I knew what she was talking about. I'd seen it too. That first day, the first time I took a picture, I saw them. Those beautiful little flecks of gold in his otherwise perfectly green eyes. They were so subtle you wouldn't even see them unless you were right up close, but my pictures of him let me get closer to him than I could have myself.

Ginny's moved on, or at least she's trying, but we're still in the club together. She once said she'd considered herself his number one fan, but now she realizes that F.O.G. members aren't just fans, we're much more. We know things about him that silly little girls in Hufflepuff couldn't know. We know that he cries at night, remembering Sirius Black. We know that he loves to eat the crusts first on his sandwiches just because it makes it last longer. We know he likes to pull off his glasses and clean them whenever he's nervous or when he meets someone for the first time and doesn't know what to do with his hands. We know that he has another mark, just above his collar on his neck; it's usually hidden behind the over-grown fringe of his hair, but when he reaches up to run his hand from his neck to the top of his skull while he's fidgeting, you can see it there: a tiny little sun spot that looks like it shouldn't be there, just the size of a dot and almost perfectly round.

So I watch him again, across the table, and I see that he's smiling again. Weasley's just told a joke, something funny to raise Harry's spirits, but it's not really working. Harry's laughing but his eyes are still crying. He's still just a boy even though he's almost seventeen now, almost a man. He wants to pretend that he's tough, that he can take this, beat this, but he's just Harry. He's just the guy that likes to make people happy, wants to feel that happiness too. He's just the guy who can't feel comfortable around romance because he doesn't even know what it's like to feel someone touch you out of love and kindness. He's just Harry, who will hold my heart forever even though he barely realizes I'm here.

He's just the boy with eyes as green as grass in a summer's meadow, with little flecks of gold like dandelions.