The Truth Behind the Veil ✔️

Every Word

"Yeah, go get your man!"

She laughed brushing a wispy hair out of her face. "Okay okay! I might ask him out sometime..."

*****

James Potter stood in a corridor during Prefect rounds. Lily had left to use the loo leaving the boy to monitor on his own. He twiddled his thumbs in boredom while he patrolled the corridors, a whistled tune leaving his lips.

A shadow moved around the corner alerting unwanted attention. Out of the darkness a student emerged, still clothed in the required school robes despite it being well into the night on a Friday.

"Snape?" asked James, recognizing the specific walking pattern.

  "Potter," he spat back.

"It's a little late for a stroll don't you think?"

  "That's none of your business."

   "It is though," James countered. "You see Snape, I am Head Boy so therefore it is very much my business why you're out of your dorm after hours."

Snape snarled. "You think you're so great don't you Potter? You think now that Lily has given you a morsel of attention that you've won her." James didn't respond, waiting for the Slytherin to continue as it was sure he would. "News flash Potter, you haven't. Lily is only tolerating you due to your new position. I can assure you she still hates you as much as ever. You will never win her."

James scoffed lightly. "Maybe so," he said, "but where you are wrong is assuming that she is something to be won. Lily Evans is not an object Severus, and even if she were, it is and it never was a competition."

"She'll never want you."

  "Okay," James shrugged.

   "Did you hear me? She will never give you a second thought."

  "I heard you."

Severus went to speak again but was cut off.

"I don't need her to feel the same way about me as I do for her. All I need is for her to be happy, in whatever way that is. I'd rather her marry someone else and be the happiest person alive than be with me if she doesn't want to."

James surveyed the boy, realizing Severus was expecting him to continue. "I love her but you already knew that." Severus nodded resentfully. "But love is wanting the best for the person. She owes me nothing. As long as I can keep her in my life in one way or another I'll be satisfied.

"And I'm sorry," he said, "For my past actions. I bullied you, I won't deny it. That was wrong of me, but I can't change the past, only the future.

"I have matured, and have decided to leave you alone for the rest of our schooling and beyond that, but you haven't. You still try to get under my skin, still think Lily owes you something and for what? You know damn well what you've done to her and yet as far as I am aware, have made no real effort to change. You do not have anything over me Severus, not anymore. Say all you want about how much she hates me, how she'll never see me in the way I see her, but it no longer angers me, it only shows your own insecurity.

"Now I suggest you get back to the dungeons before I am forced to take points off, Mr. Snape."

Snape's face was now a ghastly shade of red, that did his complexion terribly. He said nothing more, deciding to glide away with his head held high as though the Gryffindor of whom he despised had no effect on him.

James sighed, leaning his body against the stone walls. He could say that Snape's words didn't affect him as much as he wanted but that didn't make it true. Yes, he cared for Lily to be happy, but it was something else to realize that Snape's words of her never returning his affections were probably true.