So I think I should do drabbles more often, because they're really fun to write. This is a longer one (693 words), but hey, does anyone really care?
This idea came out of nowhere, pretty much. No prompts involved. Present tense isn't something I normally do, but it was a good change, I think. I really, really hope there weren't any tense-slips, hah. I don't have a beta right now. That said, this isn't really very different from the rough draft. Basically I just changed up the wording in some spots, and even then it was minor stuff. I don't want to keep finding things to nitpick because I'll end up even less satisfied than I was before the nitpicking, and I don't want that. x)
Nothing in the world of Harry Potter belongs to me, as much as I can pretend it does to make myself feel better. Only this writing is mine. Woe.
The title was taken from Mumford & Sons' song Sigh No More, though. I have no clue of its relevance to the story but I was nearly tearing my hair out trying to think of a title that wasn't dead obvious and that was just what I had on repeat while I was writing this.
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Lily Potter is thinking.
Lately, she has been doing this a lot more than she would care to. It is too overwhelming, too painful to think in times like these, you see. You start off thinking innocently, and then somehow something reminds you of someone and you reminisce, you mourn – you can't help it, you'll say a million times feeling sorry for yourself and the rest of this godforsaken world won't do anything, you know it and you'll wish you can follow your own advice but you can't – and then you have to decide whether to feel resentful or doubtful or scared, or maybe you'd decide to feel all those things and, she muses, quite possibly end up exploding from it all.
Everything is a choice, she realizes. Everyone has a choice. Lily will have none of that predetermined fate nonsense. Alastor and that eccentric Elphias Doge liked to talk about it whenever something horrid happened (that was quite a lot), as if it were supposed to be some sort of twisted comfort. "Well, we're sorry your son died, but destiny said it was his time to go." She thinks it's ridiculous. James does too.
James, James, James. She wonders if she could force herself to stop thinking about everything else by just repeating his name over and over again in her head. She almost tries, but she stops herself because she knows she shouldn't. She shouldn't hide behind him, because everyone needs to stand up and face the music – or do they? No, that's a choice as well, she decides with finality.
Back to choices we go, she thinks. Choices are wonderful, and if Lily Potter is going to be thinking, she wants to think about something that is wonderful and not Benjy Fenwick found in pieces or the Boneses murdered in their beds. That was reality, and she had enough reality to last her a good few lifetimes. Thinking was most certainly not reality, and it shouldn't have to be. Another choice! Lily smiles to herself and briefly entertains the thought of becoming choice-obsessed; she hopes she won't, because she knows the boys would never let her hear the end of it.
Lily ponders the consequences of making the wrong choice, and then asks herself if there are any wrong choices at all. Perhaps, she contemplates, perhaps there are only different choices, and then what you make of the result is but another choice. That sounded about right.
Life is nothing but a cycle of choices. Choice after choice after choice after choice.
She shifts in bed, pulls the duvet up to her chin; rolls over onto her side to look at her husband. James Potter is snoring (which she finds endearingly revolting), but by the way his eyelids are fluttering like that Lily knows he is sleeping lightly, if it can be called such. They could choose to rest comfortably, but they do not; no one did anymore, and this was a decision they made without even considering it. Some things, she thinks, do not have to be considered. Some choices are just automatic – instinctive. His dark hair is temporarily flattened against the pillow, but she knows it will be a nightmare when he wakes up.
She tries not to giggle at the thought. He could choose to do something about it, of course. Cut it all off, maybe. But he doesn't, and she's glad. She chose awhile ago that she liked his untamable hair indeed.
She wants to keep watching James, just watching – it's peaceful, he's peaceful, and it is so much easier to keep thinking from becoming reality when all she's thinking about is peaceful, sleeping James whom she loves so much (so much, sometimes, she feels her poor heart could burst from holding in all that love). She wants to, but her jaw is growing slack, and her eyelids are feeling so familiarly heavy, burdened by a now ever-present exhaustion.
So Lily Potter chooses to stop fretting about choices and just make them. She laces her fingers with James's and she sleeps. Her sleep is not restful, but it is a choice.
She chooses not to regret.