A/N: This story didn't get the stuff out of me that I wanted it to get out of me. So I'm sorry if it has no real body - it sort of just happened. Take it as it is, and don't think about it too much.
Disclaimer: Not mine!
False Loneliness
by padfoot
...
Lily has never seen a movie about someone who feels alone that ends with the person being alone. And she's never heard of a story where the handsome prince doesn't get the princess. Not a good story, anyway.
She's never thought of herself as the type of person who wallows in loneliness. She's always had so much in her life – so many friends and family, who she could not ignore, even if she tried. So much love that it smothers her sometimes, overwhelms her. So much love that sometimes she's not sure that her frail little body can take it. That her frail little mind can take it.
Because why her?
Why love the quiet girl, who only speaks up to call out an answer in class? Why love the girl who glares back, who labels herself a feminist, who never puts up with anyone else's crap? Why love the girl who feels as small and invisible as a breath of air, yet resides in a body with thundering thighs and tummy that juts out when she's eaten too much and arms that wobble and feet that hair sometimes grows on, okay!? she doesn't know why?
But she's never been the type to wallow in loneliness. She has love in her life and is grateful a million times over for every little bit of it, not matter how undeserving she thinks she is.
No one lives their life completely alone.
That affirmation had gotten a short, bossy Lily through every day of school in the Muggle world. It had replayed like a broken record in her mind through every humiliating second of mockery at Hogwarts. It had soothed her to sleep on hot summer nights as her parents and her sister fought downstairs and Severus hid himself away and she had felt more isolated from love than ever before or ever since.
Lily knows that, in reality, she has never spent a single moment entirely alone. Even now Harry – her son, her perfect, perfect baby boy – is clutched in her arms. He's so silent, so tiny.
Is he breathing? Is he real?
She asks the same question to herself every day.
How did she get this perfect little creature? And is there any way to tell that short, bossy little girl how much more wonderful her life would soon get? Is there any way to tell that tragic, slain woman how much false loneliness her perfect boy would suffer?
No one lives their life completely alone. That's why there aren't any movies, or any good books about it. People don't exist in isolation. They exist among others. Always among others. Touched by them and touching them, endlessly, infinitely.
Even once they aren't really alive to touch them at all.