Title: Self Inspection
Pairing: Lily/James
POV: 3rd Person
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 527
A/n: This is actually two pieces lumped together. I don't have a time frame for the first one, but the second is set in 6th year.
Dedicated to cupid-painted-blind who doesn't know this but reading her stuff on UR (Andromeda311 over there) provided the incentive for me to actually sit down and type this.
Lily had always been fascinated by 'Alice in Wonderland': the old wood cut drawings, the sheer nonsense of it all, the way Alice scolded herself even as she was falling down the rabbit hole. From the first time she read it, aged 7, she had tried it on herself.
"Stop crying this instant young lady!" the first time a teacher really shouted at her when she was nine… "Stop being such a wimp, do you want to end up all alone in a new place?" when the time came to run though the solid wall in King's Cross station … and, though she pretended she's never thought it- "You aren't good enough to be here. It's far safer at home." the first time she set eyes on James Potter.
She cried a lot that year.
She didn't know why.
School was fine, everyone at home was better than ever- Petty even had a boyfriend, no major exams were looming and she knew she had happy friends that loved her.
She told herself it was hormones.
She carried tissues, not that she needed them once she learnt how to dry tears, but because she found tearing them to pieces under the desk helped.
When she woke early, in the dark, private hours between 3am and 6 she thought.She analysed herself.
She tried to be objective: was she ignoring the fact that the Marauders had been quiet because it really wasn't important or because she didn't want it to be?
She imagined she was searching deep inside her soul, or, failing that, the part of her brain that made her feel like this, tired and inexplicably sad.
She wrote lists: things she knew about herself, things she suspected but could never quite prove, things she wanted to be.
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3. I'm paranoid. I imagine coach drivers who search school childrens' lunchboxes when they drop them off for school trips, or that the taxi drivers at Kings Cross have a camera so they can be far away as soon as an owl cage comes in sight.
4. I rather enjoy it.
5. I have fantasies about a boy I know, in reality, I would never, ever, date.
6. I scared to examine how I know that.
7. This list could, quite possibly, be evidence that I am slowly driving myself clinically insane.
8. I suspect I've achieved that already.
9. I know the above statement is false, but imagine I'd be a lot more interesting if it were true.
10. The only outcome I achieve from all this is that I sometimes believe: "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." is an excellent description of myself.
11. I can't really bring myself to care.
12. Saying more will not help me. Stopping will not either.
---
She tried keeping the lists in a small box under her bed, along with old letters and newspaper cuttings.
On the last day of 6th year she burnt the box's contents. Seventh year would be a completely new start.
That's what she told herself, and there was nothing wrong with pretty lies.
A/n: quote from Oscar Wilde. Please review, any comments welcome.