Hello! Apologies for the extremely late reply. I left the fanfic world for a few years (but I'm back now). Hopefully you are still on the site and will see this. You took so much time to comment that I couldn't leave this comment unanswered!

Yes, I was struck by the idea that if Harry and Snape could just see that's it's possible for them to be a family, they might come to accept how much they could help each other. Plus I love Harry and Snape interacting, and wanted as much of that as I could write. :)

What I was thinking with the "never felt real" line was that Harry never knew his mother before - he knew about being an orphan, of course, and the practical realities of not having parents, but he never knew his parents beyond photographs and stories he was told. He didn't have a relationship with Lily. I think loss feels different when Harry has known the person, known her smile and her personality and all the things she could have been if her life hadn't been cut short. The loss is less of an abstract concept - it feels more real. 

But overall, you got what I was going for there - that Harry (and in some ways our!Severus) had to let go of the fantasy of Lily they had in their heads, so they could accept what will never be and open their hearts to each other, to what could be.

No need to apologize for a long comment - long comments are a delight! :) It's wonderful to hear thoughtful reactions to the story. This story grabbed me by the ears and insisted I write it - it was the first longfic I ever wrote, which I was not planning on doing at all - and it's good to hear that it affected you reading it the way it affected me writing it. Thank you for your thoughts!