Chapter Text
Harry Potter only knew violence growing up.
The young boy hidden away in the cupboard under the stairs would sit in fear and anticipation as heavy footsteps pounded above and rattled the dust onto his tiny bed. He had a single mirror in his cupboard that Aunt Petunia had given him as a Christmas present after his uncle had slammed his head into it hard enough to cause cracks to run through it like an overzealous spiderweb.
No matter how many times he tried to avoid it, Harry always ended up watching himself in the dingy glass. In anything remotely reflective, really.
Everywhere Harry went, people commented on his eyes. On how pretty they were, how they made him look respectable, how much they stood out against the darkness of his skin and the heavy bangs that resembled a rat's nest at the best of times.
It had jump started Harry's obsession.
Everywhere he went, Harry would stare at eyes. Brown ones, blue ones, grey ones, green ones, and every mix you could think of. He liked the emotions that ran through them, how they told stories that faces and bodies would never reveal.
He could see the happiness when a couple held hands.
He could see the fear when a man gripped his girlfriend's arm a little too tight.
He could see the joy in a father's eyes when his baby snuggled further into his neck.
The fear was nice sometimes. When it was someone who deserved it. Like when Dudley's friend Henry punched Harry hard enough to take out his baby tooth and split his lip. Harry had launched forward and kept hitting and hitting and hitting until Henry was crying too hard to make noise and he was covered in reds and blues that never blossomed on Harry's deep skin.
(Henry's eyes were grey. They were scared. It was nice.)
(Henry's parents also moved their whole family far away from the neighborhood the very next week. Harry chalked it up to coincidence.)
Harry liked the happiness a lot more than the sad or scared ones. He liked sitting in the little park far from the Dursleys' and letting the long cuffs of his torn hand-me-downs scrape below the swing, watching the happy families laugh and jump and run around with one another without caring about anything else.
For as long as Harry could remember, he had wanted that. He longed for it. He would sit in his tiny cupboard on the last night of July and beg and plead whoever was up there for someone to find him. At first, Harry wished for someone to take him away. Now, Harry would be content with someone approaching him to just talk. It was a far-fetched dream, something he only dared to dream of in the quiet darkness when he pretended that his parents weren't worthless drunks who cared for the bottle more than their son. That he had a mother that took the time to tame his bird's nest of a head and read to him at night, that he had a father who taught him how to play chess and cook breakfast for his mum in bed, and maybe even an uncle that bought him secret ice creams that ruined his dinner and taught him how to talk to pretty girls at school and maybe even a sister who laughed too loud and grinned too wide and let him wrap her up in soft blankets when she was too cold to ask for it.
But for now, Harry would settle for their eyes.