"Never Was, Never Will Be"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

I try not to dwell on things like this, what I always wanted and couldn't have. It's simply not logical. It's also easier to ignore the things I might have wished for, because it hurt so much not to have them...

It wasn't much, really, just a simple thing that almost everyone has, something most people never give a second thought to, because, for them, it's always been there. I wanted a family, and not, kind as they've been to me over the years, the kin of friends who've taken me in. I wanted my own family, my mother and my father, my aunts and uncles and cousins. I wanted them to look at me the way they looked at each other- I wanted them to hold me as if I belonged.

I would have given almost anything in those days if they would only have loved me. Only that. It doesn't seem much to ask, does it, for parents to love their daughter?

Somehow, it was.

It all could have been so different, if they had only done that. If even once there had been someone to meet the train when I came home from school over summer holidays, if they had run to meet me, hugged me and kissed me, asked how I'd been, asked me to tell them all about school... If they had exclaimed over the good marks, consoled me over the bad ones. If they had been proud of me for how well I'd done, if they had bragged to their friends the year I made Prefect.

Even Percy's parents did that, and Percy's family hasn't really ever appreciated him much, either.

If they'd worried over me when they heard about what happened in my fifth year, when the Chamber of Secrets was opened, if they'd even noticed that I didn't write even once, or send my usual Christmas note to Da...

Everything could have been different, if they had only given a damn.

I can picture it in my mind, a world so different from mine that it would have been someone else's life. If I hadn't been the child they were ashamed of, but the daughter they were proud of, if they had accepted that the magic was a part of me, that it wasn't evil but beautiful and wonderful...

I imagine taking home the Ministry of Magic brochures on Auror training, going over them with Mum and Da. I imagine explaining to them how difficult the training was, how strict were the entrance requirements. I imagine their smiles and nods, their pleasure at the idea that their daughter would choose to do something so difficult and prestigious. I imagine the stories they would tell their friends, for they couldn't tell the truth- the tales of their daughter going off to university, studying linguistics and literature and a dozen other things. The subtle whispers to the neighbors, just a hint, that Penelope had gone to work for Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (the SIS), but they must keep it quiet, it's top secret, eh?

I can see it so clearly... Except that it never happened that way. Except that it never was this way, and it never will be.