A/N: Thank you so much to Kore-of-Myth, lyin', lilyre, mustardgirl1128 and Dangling.Radishes for their feedback on the last chapter!

Her Eyes: Spring

It was an occupational hazard of being a seventeen-year-old girl who lived in jeans and could shout louder than the entire sixth-year boys' dorm put together that you weren't knocked back lightly, given that you'd spent most of your life knocking other people for their conservative lifestyles. This would all have been quite all right, until Matthew McKinnon came along, and my priorities in life had changed overnight.

Well, perhaps I was exaggerating, since he'd always been there in the Gryffindor common room. But there had been this one day when he'd been up in arms about a lost essay, and I'd been the one who'd found it in the wastepaper basket.

"Thank you. Thank you. I could kiss you."

And from that moment, I'd started wondering what would have happened if he had kissed me, and whether there was now any chance of it happening in the future. Now, with two months between us and our exams, I was convinced that flapping about, rustling loudly through piles of parchment and throwing books was the best way to get seventh-year Matthew's attention.

"You're only in sixth-year!" shouted the boy. "What have you got to worry about?"

Plan B was to ask my good friend James for "approval".

"What do you think of Matthew?" I asked, expecting that he would do for me as I had done for him.

"He's…weird," James said. Lowering his voice, he then asked, "Why, are you and him an item?"

"…no, not exactly…"

James' face lit up with glee – I unfortunately had overestimated his maturity, as he galloped over to his mate, Sirius, and whispered in his ear. This was the start of a grotesque Gryffindor grapevine that grew from Sirius Black to Beryl Hughes, to Stacey Streatfield, to Dervla O'Sullivan, to Benjy Fenwick and then to Matthew himself. The result was that Matthew told Benjy, who told Dervla, who told Stacey, who told Beryl, who told Sirius, who told James to tell me that he wasn't the least bit interested.

And so it came about that I was fuming in the common-room very late one night on the verge of tears, and scribbling in my diary with so much force that I kept punching holes in the paper. At the sound of footsteps on the stone stairs, I slammed the precious book shut.

"You're up late."

I lifted my head and glared straight into the green eyes of Lily Evans, who sat down next to me. "It's not about exams, is it? I heard," she said gently. "You should've spoken to Remus instead – he doesn't gossip."

I sprang out of my seat, thinking of James, and how he would feel if she and Remus were an item. "Don't tell me…you…two…"

She chuckled quietly. "Why does everyone think that? I can't understand it – just because we're both quiet intellectuals – if anything I thought you two would be more suited to each other. You both admire the ability to use metaphor to speak evasively."

I began thinking of how "bad boy" James had fallen for "good girl" Lily, and how my situation was the exact opposite. Then, because tears always show up uninvited, I felt my eyes mist up and my nose start to run. Seizing my stationery, I turned my back and was about to head for the dorms when I heard her voice.

"My mother always tells me – never let a boy make you cry."

"I am not crying!" I exploded.

Now she said nothing.

Instead, she came over and rubbed my back.

"It's easy for you to say," I blubbered through saline, snot and saliva. "You've always had plenty of not-so-secret admirers."

"Stalkers, more like," she muttered. By this stage, the whole school knew about James. "Wouldn't wish one of those upon anyone."

"But you're smart, and funny, and – and – you have perfect skin…" Unlike clumsy, plain, pimply Marlene.

"My skin?" her tone changed completely. "You think my skin is perfect? With my five million freckles?"

I was fleetingly reminded of the light spatter of freckles across Matthew's nose.

"You know what they say – a face without freckles is a sky without stars."

She looked stunned for a moment, then remembered who she was speaking to. "You want me to speak in your language?" she said, a smile returning to her face. "Well then, see those flowers in the vase on the mantelpiece?"

I shuffled closer to the bouquet that one of the fifth-years had conjured up as exam practice.

"Look – one's still a bud! But I think," she said, pulling it out of the vase and handing it to me, "That when it blooms, it will be the loveliest of them all." For a moment, our hands connected, and I started to wonder if all the random acts of kindness in the world were part of something greater, some kind of ancient magic. Or maybe it was just friendship.

I was the one who broke the spell, and the silence. "I'm so over boys, aren't you? Let's be feminists together…"