Author's Note: A note that this is a side fic of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and if you haven't read that you'll be dreadfully confused.
As with Halloween, or Ellie Potter Day among the English, the yuletide season was a rather over the top and ostentatious month-long celebration for the British wizards. They kept the form and customs of their pagan ancestors but had gleefully adopted the commercialism of the muggle world and the streets were filled with food, sparkling lights, people, and so very many consumer goods.
However, unlike Halloween, it was a date that Frank could afford to be seen out and about without the wizards and witches reaching for their pitchforks and torches. Still, he tended to find it cold, dark, and a little irritating to have to push himself through the crowds flooding into even the unseemly sections of magical London like Knockturn Alley.
Not quite all the way to Riddle Inc's doorstep, of course, but still obnoxiously close to the office all the same.
"Why do I even bother leaving?" Frank cursed to himself, his usual vampiric aura doing nothing to part the crowds like it would at any other time of the year save maybe for the rush of last-minute Hogwarts shopping in the summer.
Honestly, he might as well just stay in the office, he had done it often enough. The only downside was that it got a little depressing staying there too often into the middle of the day, made Frank feel like all he really did was work just like everyone said. And true, he was something of a workaholic with no personal life, he'd acknowledge it but that didn't mean he wanted to live that the office either.
He sighed as he finally turned the corner onto the familiar street, blessedly free of anything but the usual hag or prostitute. From there it was just a short walk to the front door, just in time for sun to fully set on the horizon, and opening only to stop dead in his tracks.
There was a little girl inside, not, mind you, the little girl he was usually used to seeing in this place, Lily Riddle, but a very different one. She was a blonde, tiny thing, not too much older or younger than Lily Riddle's current appearance and was wearing…
Frank wasn't even sure what she was wearing.
There were radishes dangling from her ears, a collection of bottlecaps strung together around her neck in a necklace, a large hat with ostentatious elk antlers springing out of the top decorated with tiny fairy lights, and a truly eye wateringly bright blue and yellow sweater that was so large and thick it also seemed to be functioning as a dress.
Even for an English witch, he thought, this little girl was the most fashion confused person he'd ever seen in his life.
She was also, he thought in some alarm, interviewing Oz the Great and Powerful.
"You little girl," the voice bellowed, as always quaking the very walls of the waiting room, "Have the audacity, the affrontery, to ask questions of the great and powerful Oz?!"
"Mr. Oz," the girl said rather obliviously, blinking large dazed blue eyes up at the green and intimidating features of the giant head in front of her while she recorded his answers in a thick notebook, "I'm sorry if I'm being affrontacious, and I realize that it must get very tiring to try and dismiss all those who would speak to Lily Riddle (and I am making a note to daddy to write an article on just that), but the thing is that I really do need to talk to someone who has opposable thumbs. I've asked you my questions several times and—"
"Leave, fool!" the voice commanded but the girl only shook her head.
"I would, but you haven't answered any of my questions," the girl stated, "For example, how long have you been employed by Lily Riddle and just where did she find you? Daddy has a theory it was in muggle America, where the dread Lily Riddle seems to have spent a lot of her time in the land called Oz in Kansas but—"
"Your desires are inconsequential, your questions are inconsequential, you, girl, are inconsequential!"
"Oh, sir, they are always consequential!" the girl responded, oddly passionate as she stepped forward towards the giant talking head, "The curiosity of a living, thinking, being is always of consequence even when you don't like or understand the answers or the questions. In fact, I'm not sure there's anything in the world more consequential than that."
Now, Frank had seen a number of different interactions between clients and the talking head.
Tom Riddle, the dark lord Voldemort as he would later become, had taken great pride in ignoring its existence until a living thinking being had spoken with him. That, and, Frank suspected he was one of the few if not the only to recognize a relic of "The Wizard of Oz", he had seemed too annoyed versus baffled as he had continued to sit in its presence all those years ago.
Then there had been those who had attempted to ignore it but then eventually descended into screaming matches with the thing as they demanded to be let through to the back office and didn't the damned head know who they were?!
And then there were the collection of people who truly were terrified of the things and would either leave early or quake in terror at the sight of it and the sound of its voice.
He had never, to this very day, seen someone genuinely attempt to hold a conversation with it. Of course, he had never to this day seen anyone this young other than Lily Riddle herself wander in here. There'd been a few teenagers on a dare, giggling Gryffindor schoolboys who then ran out in terror, but never a little girl this young.
Frank, politely, coughed and watched as the little girl turned towards him.
"Can I help you?" he asked, feeling oddly like how he did when he first saw Lily Riddle in Diagon Alley all those years ago.
"Oh," the girl said, twirling over towards him (and there really was not another word for it), "You must be Mr. Frank."
"Mr. Frank?" Frank asked, wondering just how in the hell she knew his name (or well the one bestowed upon him), and how she could say it with such a bright smile on her face.
The girl nodded, still smiling, "Daddy's written about you in the paper, and everyone knows that Frank is Lily Riddle's number one minion and accountant."
That was… sadly true, he thought to himself. Although he hadn't thought most wizards cared enough to catch or even ask for his name. And her father? He'd spoken to many wizards here and there, but as far as he knew none of Lucius Malfoy's Prophet employees had ever written about him or Riddle Inc. Not, at least, in any sort of flattering sense that would mention him as anything other than Lily Riddle's vampire.
Unless…
"You're Lovegood's daughter," he said almost in awe, and now that he thought about it he could see the family resemblance, certainly he could see the inherited eccentricity.
Wizarding Britain, despite their widely held beliefs, did not in fact have a free press. They had the ministry and Malfoy controlled Daily Prophet which was consumed and read by all. Its only competitors were the gossip rag Witch Weekly, a few rather dry economic papers controlled by the wizarding aristocracy, and of course The Quibbler. Now, The Quibbler separated itself from the masses not only by being a truly bizarre magazine devoted to conspiracy theories and the habits of mythical creatures, but also staunchly being against the views of Malfoy in the way that no other paper had dared to be before it.
The only reason it hadn't been shut down, as many competing papers had been before it, was the fact that no one in the entire country took the damned thing seriously even if they were willing to subscribe to it.
Frank, himself, was actually a happy subscriber and had taken great joy on reading the many bizarre theories the man had on the mating rituals of your average vampire.
He had forgotten Lovegood had a Hogwarts' aged daughter.
"Luna Lovegood," she said holding out her hand to shake his, "Default private, first year Hogwarts student, and budding cryptozooligist!"
He took it awkwardly, her palm so much warmer than his, and shook it, "Pleasure to meet you."
And it oddly enough was, the girl was… It was refreshing, to meet someone like this, and oddly reminiscent of Lily Riddle in her lighter and more whimsical moods. Lily Riddle, after all, had also not had a hint of fear in her eyes when confronting a vampire.
"Is there a reason you're here, Miss Lovegood?" he asked, she blinked, looked a little dazed, and then nodded vigorously.
Looking around, noting the time and the fact that others would be arriving momentarily, he waved her through the room and into his office, "We'd best get into my office then."
"I'm looking for Ellie Potter," she said as she sat down in the seat in front of his desk, pale legs dangling over the edge and not quite long enough to touch the floor.
"Ellie Potter?" he asked, but she just nodded again, like of course Riddle Incorporated was the first place one should look for Ellie Potter.
"I have a theory that Ellie Potter is secretly Lily Riddle," Luna said, and Frank nearly had a heart attack, had to clutch at his chest as the girl nonchalantly rattled on what no wizard would have dared to believe let alone conceive, "Daddy says if you look at old photographs, especially if you look at Ellie Potter now, then they look nearly identical except for the hair. That and the goblins seem to think they're the same person or at least are very suspicious whenever I ask. And I think Ellie Potter went back in time, became Lily Riddle then, and has secretly been Lily Riddle the whole time and that's why she went to Albania."
How… How the bloody hell had she managed to figure that out?! Frank didn't know about all of that time traveling but the truth was that Lily Riddle was Eleanor Lily Potter. More, that as the girl said Ellie Potter hadn't spent the summer being kidnapped but instead unleashing her wrath upon the Albanian wizard population. How had an eleven-year-old girl, he thought, ever put that together?
"I understand if you have to keep it a secret," the girl now said, as Frank continued to choke on air, thinking it before he could even begin to think about backtracking and covering up his reaction, "I don't think the ministry would like the idea of Ellie Potter time traveling or become head of a vampire gang."
No, he thought, no they would not.
"Well…" Frank said finally, gathering himself, "Even if all of that was true, how would I know—"
She cut him off, "Well, I was just hoping that since Ellie Potter disappeared from Hogwarts that she'd be here, or that you'd know if she was in Albania again."
He slowly shook his head before catching himself, "No, I… I can't say I've ever met Ellie Potter, but even Lily Riddle I haven't seen since the summer. Not that this is unusual."
Although, he supposed it was unusual that she hadn't come during the Hogwarts holiday break, but then again Lily Riddle had disappeared for decades at a time. Until Luna Lovegood came and asked him he honestly hadn't given her current absence all that much mind.
"So then, the heir did snatch her," Luna said, more to herself than to him, "Or perhaps she defeated him after all and merely wandered off into the sunset as a proud, triumphant, yet oh so weary warrior."
"Perhaps," Frank said.
The office became quiet, both Luna and himself consumed by their own thoughts centering on the same ineffable figure. The mysterious Lily Riddle, Eleanor Lily Potter, who even half a century later Frank could not say he understood at all.
However, that weary warrior, it reminded him so much of that day in 1945, when she had looked older and more worn than she ever had before. She'd looked at him, and spoken of a vacation that would last her almost fifty years…
"Still," Frank said quietly, to Luna Lovegood, as well as to himself, "I choose to believe she will return."
Luna Lovegood smiled at him, a knowing yet compassionate thing, "So do I, Mr. Frank."
Author's Note: Written for the 4300th review of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" where TwilinOfTheWillows asked for a fic where Luna meets Frank. Because we can never, ever, have enough Frank.
Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter