Opposite sides of the playground

A/N- hello! so just in case you didn't read the main characters bit, this is Snape thinking.

We sat on opposite sides of the playground. She was with her sister on the seesaw, living in the land of the muggles. I sat amongst the sand, shaping it with my hands and strengthening the small granules with my magic. The swing set lay between us, a barrier, just like the one between our worlds.

She ran towards me. Quickly jumping off the seesaw and skipping over, she left her sister to bump heavily into the ground. She came to the border line, not all the way across. With one hand resting lightly on the frame of the swing set she called out to me. `I`m Lily, come and play with us`. Her red curls bobbed slightly and she beamed at me, showing a toothy smile with a gap in the front. I smiled back and walked over to her. There was, of course, no room for me in the muggle world. With the two sisters playing, there was no room for me on the seesaw. But I sat on the boundary and swung lightly. I watched her as she fearlessly bobbed up and down. She pushed off hard from the ground and came off the seat at the top. Her green eyes gleamed from the fun of it. She was so different from her sister. I don't know how I knew, but somehow I realized that she didn't belong on the seesaw, she belonged in my world, with me.

Days and weeks went past. Lily drifted closer to and me and the wizarding world. We would swing on the boundary, with both of us on the edge of our known territories. Petunia could see that I was pulling her closer to me. She tried to convince Lily to come back to the seesaw, to leave the `weird boy with the poor family` alone. But more and more often Petunia was left at the bottom of the seesaw while the two of us swung high into the sky. Eventually Petunia gave up. She stopped coming and Lily made the trip to the park on her own. We never played on the seesaw, always the swings and occasionally the sandpit. Either way, we were always together, there was nothing to separate us.

When we reached school, a different wall sprang up between us. She was once more on the seesaw and I was stuck in the dirt. As Gryffindors and Slytherins, the boundary was a little more solid. But we still met up, just like at the playground. We would meet in the middle. Always sitting together in classes and swapping between tables at mealtimes. We found neutral spaces in the library and school grounds and the barrier once again disappeared. We were back on the swing set once again.

We were as close as two so very different people could be, until the day when she retreated back to the seesaw. She ran back to the safety of the accepted and known when I verbally slapped her in the face while we sat together on our invisible swing set. She limped away, wounded on the inside by a word that had slipped out in a rage of teenage hormones. I couldn't have insulted her more had a wanted to. She went back to her side of the playground and I sat glumly on mine. We never met in the middle again. She had a new playmate, James Potter.

Years went by and my mistakes kept making the wall between us more and more solid. It was built up brick by brick, with each of my mistakes another layer. Some bricks for the company I kept and mortar for my attitude. I knowingly cast a shield charm on it when my forearm became tattooed. And when I sealed her fate through a prophecy, I made that wall impenetrable. The wall was miles long, metres thick and yet made of glass. Through it I could see her, but all my waiting, shouting and pleading could not change a thing. Like a two way mirror, I watched her through frosted glass and she never noticed a thing.

On the night of the 31st of October 1981, the wall became as solid as it ever would. There was a wall no wizard could ever break down. She was dead and I wasn't.

Years later, her boy came to Hogwarts. The wall that had existed between his mother and I caused me to build one between the two of us. This wall held no purpose other than to hold back memories and to help me avoid contact with him. And now that he has seen my memories I hope he knows about this wall and the reason I built it, for all that reason is not an excuse. I hope he can forgive me for never looking at him properly now that he knows that when I did look, all I saw were the eyes of my heart`s desire.

A/N- please please please review. Its the only way i improve. Thankyou third sissys for checking it and second sissy, i said i would finish it for you.