Losing Game/// James Potter

Chapter 16

"Hurts doesn't it?" The boy started, eyes locked on the same scene Elsie was looking at, "...Watching the person you love, love someone else."

Elsie's head turned when hearing the boy's words, becoming shocked at who was sitting next to her.

Her eyebrows furrowed, not in anger but rather in confusion. "What are you doing here, Snape?"

The boy next to her scoffed while replying, "I could ask you the same thing."

Severus Snape always had a rivalry with James and the rest of the Marauders, however, Elsie never found it in her to make fun of him. The boy with messy black hair and a hooked nose was never the sweetest person, but Elsie thought he was just misunderstood. After all, Lily had to have been friends with him for a reason. Elsie hadn't seen much of the boy after he had called Lily a mudblood and they stopped being friends. But from the looks of it, he wasn't doing well. It seemed that Lily was the only true person he had in his corner, and after she left him last year for what he called her his appearance took a turn for the worst. His eyes have been sunken in with dark circles underneath and his hair is slightly greasy every time Elsie spots him in school.

Her train of thought was broken when his deep voice sounded again, "You know, you're the most tolerable out of your group of pathetic friends."

Elsie's hands slightly turned into fist at his snarky comment as she snapped back at him, "Does that include Lily?"

His eyes flashed with pain, a look Elsie was all too familiar with, as he replied in a low voice, "No, not including Lily."

Elsie continued looking at the boy next to her. Although she had noticed his worsening appearance after losing Lily, she never stopped to think about why it had worsened. Not until right now when she saw that look in his eyes. It was filled with hurt and pain and regret and a hint of something that she couldn't quite figure out. Elsie knew this look. It was the way that James looked at Lily whenever she rejected him, and the way she looked at James whenever he talked about Lily. And as she saw Snape's eyes focus on the redhead laying down in James' arms, she finally figured out what she couldn't see before.

Her face softened and her fists uncurled as she slowly looked at the boy next to her. "Watching the person you love, love someone else," she whispered under her breath in realization. She let out a small gasp.

"Y-you're in love with Lily?" She asked him with wide eyes. Her question was met with his silence as his hands tightly gripped the bench underneath him, giving her the answer without him having to speak.

"Snape, you love her...I-I can see how you look at her," she started speaking, sadly smiling at him, "After all this time of her not talking to you, you still love her?"

"Always," he responded in a cracking voice, "I will always love Lily. I will always regret what I did to her, but I will always love her."

Suddenly, Elsie began to understand the boy next to her. Severus Snape's heart belonged to Lily, but hers would never belong to him. And now, he couldn't even have her in his life as a friend. He pushed away everything and everyone that loved him. That's why he looked disheveled and disheartened... Lily took his heart with her when she left him. He was now empty. Elsie looked at him and saw a little bit of herself in the boy. He was just a boy in love with someone that would never love him back, and she was just a girl in love with someone that would never love her back.

"And, you... you're in love with that Potter boy," he gritted his teeth when saying James' name, "I can tell because you look at him like...l-like I look at Lily." She sadly met his eyes and nodded. There's no point in lying to someone who knows exactly how it feels.