James' Face and Lily's Eyes
By Misha

Disclaimer- Everything belongs to J.K. Rowling and is not mine, however much I might wish differently. However, I am not making any money off of this, so please do not sue me!

Author's Notes- This is yet another bitter Severus piece. It's why he's so mean to Harry. It's what I think goes through his mind whenever he looks at Harry. There's definitely some angsty Snape/Lily shipperness in here (as usual) and a tiny bit of James/Lily. This is bitter and disturbing, but then so are a lot of my stories. Well, that's all for now, enjoy!

Pairing- Snape/Lily, minor James/Lily.

Summery- He would never be able to see the boy as anything other than a living reminder of what was gone.

Rating- PG.

Spoilers- All four books, I guess.

Severus sometimes wondered if this was his punishment for the crimes he had committed.

To have that boy in his class. To have to see him and all that he represented. To have to protect him.

Every time he looked at Harry Potter he saw the face of the man he had despised, but the eyes of the woman he would always love.

Many thought that he protected the boy because of the debt he once owed James. That wasn't true.

He protected him because she had given her life to save him.

The boy would always be a living reminder of James, but there was a piece of him that was uniquely Lily. And because of that, Severus couldn't bring himself to truly hate him.

He didn't like him, there was too much old bitterness for that, but at the same time he couldn't hate him.

Severus looked at the boy and was lost in the memories. He saw the boy's face and remember a nearly identical face of another boy, one who had been considered golden by most who knew him, who Severus had envied almost as much as he despised him.

Then, when the bitterness of those memories was overwhelming Severus, the light would catch the boy's bright green eyes and he would be lost in an even more powerful memory.

He would remember an identical set of green eyes and the way they had once shone with love for him. Green eyes that Severus had been able to lose himself in.

The boy he had hated and the girl he had loved intertwined forever in the face of one boy.

Sometimes he wondered if he hadn't given them both more power after death. If he had taken timeworn memories and blown them up in his mind.

Maybe it had been the times. The world had been dark, every moment was one of doubt and fear, and the petty dramas seemed to have a life of their own.

But more than that, it was what James and Lily represented that got to him.

James was all he had never been. Lily was all he had ever wanted. Their son was all that he had never had.

He wondered sometimes in the dark of night if he didn't love Lily more now that she was gone. Now that she was forever lost to him.

Not that he hadn't loved her when she was alive. But had it been this powerful and all-consuming?

He could no longer remember. It just seemed as if there ahd never been a day in where his every thought didn't revolve around her, where his soul didn't long for her.

He did know that he made her more perfect in death than she had been in life. He had long forgotten the faults that she, like everyone, possessed and put her on a pedestal in his mind.

And because she was dead, she would never be able to fall off of it. She was forever immortalized in his mind as the beautiful, perfect lost love.

His opinion of James stayed the same. His hatred had not increased, but time had not mellowed it either.

James Potter was still the person who had been the Golden Boy of their years at Hogwarts. Who had been worshipped by all. But more that, he would forever be the man who had married Lily and who had fathered her son.

Sometimes, he dreamed that the Potter boy was his not James. But then he woke up and remembered the truth.

That Harry Potter was James' son and always would be. That if Severus had done things differently, he could have been his.

After all, he had lost Lily through his own actions. For a moment in time she had loved him as he had loved her.

Deep down, he knew that she never stopped loving him. That a piece of her always belonged to him.

But it was cold comfort when he lay awake and prepared for another day without her. Another day where he would have to see her son and those damned green eyes that still affected him as much as they did as that day in September of 1970 when he saw them for the first time.

He was no longer an eleven year-old boy becoming fascinated by a lively redhead, but... Sometimes, for a moment the spell of those dancing green eyes still got to him.

But the son's eyes were only echoes of the mother's.

The boy's eyes were full of a secret sorrow that Lily's eyes never contained. She had been much more innocent than her son.

Sometimes, when his bitterness wasn't overwhelming him, Severus looked at the boy and felt a little bit of sympathy.

On those rare occasions, he saw the differences between parents and child.

Yes, the boy had James' face, but the carefree grin was gone and there was maturity beyond his years that James had never possessed. Just like the eyes carried sadness and self-awareness that Lily's had not.

James and Lily had been able to enjoy their youth, while their son had been forced to grow up much too soon.

However, usually, Severus did not notice those things because he was too caught up in the memories.

He looked at the boy and rarely saw him for himself. All Severus ever saw were James' face and Lily's eyes.

And every time he did, he felt the same bitterness and loss all over again.

So, he reacted by being nasty and dreadful to the boy. It was the only way he could deal with his emotions.

With the ever-constant Hell of having to look at Potter and see the face of a man he hated and the women he loved and having to remember all that had gone before.

Severus tried to fight the memories, but he couldn't. Just like he couldn't see Potter for himself, a unique individual.

No, to Severus, all the boy would ever be was James' face and Lily's eyes come back to life to haunt him.

The End