Your Eyes (from the musical RENT)

Your Eyes, as we said our goodbyes

Can't get them out of my mind

And I find I can't hide

From your eyes

The ones that took me by surprise

The night you came into my life

Where there's moonlight, I see your eyes

How'd I let you slip away when I'm longing so,

To hold you?

Now I'd die for one more day

'Cause there's something I should've told you

Yes there's something I should've told you

When I looked into your eyes

Why does distance make us wise?

You were the song all along

And before the song dies

I should tell you, I should tell you

I have always loved you

You can see it in my eyes

The Potions Master sat at his desk, examining the samples his 6th years had submitted for that day's lesson. The colors varied from sickly yellow to the correctly-brewed clear turquoise. He quickly separated the "Dreadfuls" and was left with a handful of Blissful Dream Potion samples in various shades of blue-green. Severus Snape's long fingers worked quickly through the samples, suddenly stopping at one bottle.

It held the exact same color of her eyes.

Lily's eyes.

The sparkling green caught the torchlight as Severus held up the vial. How long had it been since that green had brightened at seeing him? Lily Evans - no, he told himself, Lily Potter - had been dead for two years now, and it had been even longer since she had ever been genuinely happy to see him, her eyes sparkling in the exact same shade of green he held in his hand. Severus let out a deep sigh, looked at the vial, and marked Sapphire Lazarus as "Exceeds Expectations"

Sapphire Lazarus… That would be the one in Hufflepuff then, with all those sisters and cousins in Gryffindor.

He finished grading all the amples, and retired to his chambers. He lay on his bed and thought of Lily Potter, like he did every night before he went to sleep. Her dead, blank eyes staring unblinkingly at him, the night he had followed Lord Voldemort, without him knowing, to Godric's Hollow.

Her son would be four now.

Would his eyes be like hers, as Dumbledore had said?

Severus himself had had no eyes for the child that tragic night; it was all he could do to hold himself together. It was as if nothing was holding him to the earth, as if every particle of his body was struggling to break free from each other.

It still hurt every time he thought of her.

Dumbledore had said he would get better, that time heals all wounds.

He had been wrong.

Severus knew that he would love no other as he had loved Lily Potter. His heart was not capable of loving like that anymore. He was, however, able to function socially now. His first year teaching at Hogwarts, right after Lily had died, he refused to speak to anyone other than in his lessons and his occasional meetings with Dumbledore. The students feared him, and even the teachers thought he was strange. Now at least he was able to carry on a short conversation with a human being, and Dumbledore, though he never told Severus, saw this as progress.

Severus reached for his nightly dose of sleeping potion, took a sip, and dropped into a dreamless sleep.