Author's Note: A fair warning to those of you who are about to read that this is a spin off/side fic to the very AU "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" starring several OCs from that story. You will recognize the setting if you read this but you most likely will not recognize any of the characters mentioned here unless you have read at least part of the original story. If you wish to read this fic, I highly recommend you read that first.
His name was more Frank than it was Constantine, and it always surprised him how easily he came to accept that fact. Then again, he had found many things easier to accept after 1937.
Vampires had a reputation of being old-fashioned and desperately out of the game. They lacked the werewolves' mindless insanity or the giant's reclusive nature. By the twentieth century, they no longer fought for themselves but simply... faded.
They were the urban shadows, having sat in their castles and their manors only to find the humans swarming beneath their windows and themselves pushed out like refugees, into the arms of the wizards who were only too quick to cast them to the gutter. It was not uncommon to find an uncommonly pale man leaning against the walls of the slums, staring into the street with crimson eyes that seemed already dead.
They had lost before they had even begun to fight, that was the pathetic truth of it.
Constantine had been one of those who should have seen these trends coming, who did, but who had been surprised to find himself in London in cheap inns living off blood pops nonetheless. There had been some who hadn't kept their heads down. In the end though, he had to give the aurors credit, they knew how to make vampires burn when they stepped out of line and went for the real deal rather than the pig's blood or the blood pops.
The modern world had transformed them into cheap things of urban myth and pulp fiction.
He was not ancient by any means, he had not been a Roman, or a druid, or anything spanning back thousands of years. At that time, in the 1930's in London, he was still as old a wizard might be, having been born the century before.
He'd immigrated from Hungary, slowly but surely making his way west through Europe until he found himself on that dark island in the ghetto of wizards.
He'd perfected the art of keeping his head down and out of sight, living a shadow of any real existence, and wondering what eternity was to a peasant in the skin of an immortal being. Having seen the price of failed rebellion elsewhere, he had little wish to bring it on himself.
Looking back, he wondered, had he continued in that manner, if he wouldn't have hammered a stake into his own heart just to end the wretchedness and monotony that was his existence. It was easy to look back and see that back then, before 1937, there had been no point to his existence.
His turning point was not gradual or by any means subtle and it had the graciousness to let him know straight to his face that it was an offer he couldn't refuse.
The depression had hit Wizarding Britain as well as the muggle world. Although the wizards never seemed to admit it, most of their economy, as well as their security, stemmed from the muggles.
The wizarding countries were all like that, believing they had been forever, when really, they were little more than city states still desperately clinging to their muggle counterparts. They forgot how young their nations really were, their ministries of magic. It had only been a few centuries and already they were under the impression that it had been eternity. Never discuss eternity with a vampire, chances are they have a better idea of what it is than you ever will. That was another story though.
He'd found himself lurking on the edge of a Diagon Alley that was less crowded than it had been in years past, less colorful and bright, going so far as to even allow a pale dark haired man with eyes that glowed lean on the edge of it.
He remembered the taste of the blood pop in his mouth, that artificial twang that came with mass produced flavor, a sickening metallic sweetness that always stayed in his mouth long after the thing had disappeared.
This is not iron, he would think to himself, this is rust.
He almost didn't notice her, which was somewhat surprising in hindsight, because Lily Riddle was hardly a person to be missed.
"Yo, tall, dark and shady."
He looked down to find a small girl, probably Hogwarts age, in worn (yet somehow brightly colored) muggle clothing with hair a shade of black he'd never seen before but seemed somehow false. She, for her own part, was staring up at him with alarmingly green eyes and an expression he couldn't quite name, looking at him as if he was some missing piece of an equation that she was attempting to solve.
He looked to see if there was some other tall, dark, and shady man nearby, but there was only him against the alley way and she appeared to be looking nowhere else. "Yes, are you lost?"
At the question, she looked almost disappointed in him, if not a little frustrated.
"No- well, I mean in the fourth dimension, yeah, but the third is a cake walk. Please, I am perfectly capable of handling Diagon Alley. The question is, sir, are you perfectly capable of handling Diagon Alley?"
At the last dramatic bit, she pointed a pale finger in his face with a determined grin, looking for a rather bizarre moment, like a propaganda poster that had been pasted onto the walls of muggle cities.
"…Yes, I believe I am."
She apparently didn't believe his answer, because the floodgate of words flew out then.
It was odd, he thought to himself as he listened to her talk, how she sounded both childish and very adult in the same moment. Not like an adult trying to be a child or a child attempting to sound like an adult but neither and both at the same instant as if she truly was this mix of attributes.
"I notice, Mr. Vampire, that you appear to be without a castle and have substituted it with a rather dingy-looking alleyway on the side of the wizards' most famous and useless shopping district in London. I also notice that you're living on the vampire equivalent diet of instant ramen. Now, I'm no one to judge anyone's life choices, but I can tell by that really glum look in your eyes that you aren't pleased with the present situation. Unless, you are pleased?"
He said nothing, merely back blinking at her dumbfounded. She paused only for a second, before taking his silence for consent and returning with enthusiasm back to what sounded like a recruitment speech.
"Excellent. Now, you could continue in your homeless lurking state that you've seem to have gotten yourself stuck into or you could do something completely awesome instead. You see, I just recently… moved here, I guess, and I realize that I have absolutely no money whatsoever and having become accustomed to being richer than God, this is not a state of affairs I would like to continue. The way I see it, there's a huge gap in the market here that's just begging to be taken care of. Now, normally I'd do this all by myself, but the trouble is that I expect to take ridiculously long vacations every once in a while for no apparent reason. Also, secretarial work is for the weak. So with that in mind, I'm going to need some hired help; you look appropriately shady, not busy, and totally bored enough to help me help you help… people."
She paused there and appeared to think for a little bit, then pulled out a notebook from a pouch that had been hidden under her shirt and began rapidly drawing what appeared to be a flyer, complete with a mailing address, promotional picture of herself giving him a thumbs-up, and the list of benefits, should he accept her offer.
"But wait, there's more. I offer complete health benefits, munchies that aren't manufactured in a candy shop, excitement, dividends, and lots of terrified peasants. So tell me, what do you say?"
She tore out the page from the notebook and placed in his hands, grinning the whole time.
What did one say when your destiny approached you in the street and offered you a flyer, complete with a picture of herself looking encouraging?
"I'll have to think about it."
"Goddammit!" she said, the smile instantly gone. She shuffled away from him placing her hands in her pockets and muttering, "If I didn't have to be richer than Malfoy, then I swear I wouldn't even bother…"
He watched her wander off, her kicking various buildings and looking rather dejected the whole way. Even so, she didn't look defeated. Watching her leave, it was as if he could tell that she would never truly look defeated; that in life, there were only minor setbacks, if even those, and that was all.
Later that night, listening to the sounds of love-making in the room next door and sitting on his bed, he surveyed the flyer again and found himself thinking the strangest of things.
"Why not?"
And so it was that he found himself sitting at his desk and writing the fated name Lily Riddle on an envelope.
In the end, although she would not say these words until a much later date, she made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Lily Riddle was both the leaf on the wind, going where the wind took her with little care for what she left behind, and the hurricane itself, tearing up everything around her. A child who wore the wit and ruthlessness of an adult with an innocent grin, a little girl who discussed things like political theories, philosophy, and science as if they were the foundations of life itself, and a being whose species he could not even hope to name except to note that he doubted she was the human girl she appeared to be.
When he first worked for her, appearing at the doorstep of a rundown abandoned building in the back of Knockturn Alley, where even the ghetto dwellers feared to tread, she had smiled at him and pointed to the newly painted sign: "Riddle Inc: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here Or Just Leave it At the Door For Later."
"Pretty cool, huh? The lair, I mean. Well, it will be. Right now it's just the sign and stuff inside. Now, I have enough counterfeit money to get us the basics, but we need to get down to business fast if the goblins are gonna buy this." she said and ushered him inside into what looked like... he didn't know, he had never seen anything like it. It was a mess of muggle knick-knacks, posters, and other things whose origin he had no clue as to. She pushed him into a back room that was almost suspiciously clean when compared to the first complete with an impressive looking wooden desk.
"You stole from the goblins?!" he asked looking at her bewildered and wondering if it wasn't already too late to turn back. No one stole from the goblins, even the wizards in all their arrogance had realized this error after the goblin wars had finally burned out. Only the greatest of fools attempted it and the tales of their demise gave even the wizard prison Azkaban a good name.
Setting herself up at the desk, she glanced up at him with raised eyebrows. "Hell no, I'm not stupid. No, I didn't steal from the goblins, I gave stolen (well, fake) money to them."
He blinked at her. "I don't understand."
"Well, Frank, can I call you Frank? I'm going to call you Frank." she said, shifting through the desk for some unknown object. "The goblins keep a very close eye on how much gold is travelling through the market, faking gold (which isn't easy even on a good day) would not be an option. They'd know that the money didn't come from anywhere. However there is one currency they keep almost no track of - Muggle money. With the influx of muggleborns, they've had no choice but to accept it and set up a currency exchange, but they don't know how to check for counterfeit muggle money. It's only paper after all, not gold, no magical traces, just pieces of paper with a number on it. Who can tell one piece of paper from another, I ask you? So let's say a very wealthy looking young girl walks into a bank with a butler of some type and a briefcase filled with muggle cash and says "I would like to open an account for my tenure in Hogwarts and I would like this money to be converted into whatever the peons require." It's not so hard to transfigure an outfit or to find a bum on the street who will walk into a bank with you for a sickle. Really, it's almost too easy." She gave him a conspiratorial grin as she found whatever it was she was looking for, which turned out to be another piece of paper, this one looking rather professional. "Still, we can't sit on this for too long, that sort of thing will only work once, you know."
And so it was that Constantine, now Frank, was first introduced to the schemes of Lily Riddle, which had a tendency to be both outlandish and brilliant in the same moment. He found he wasn't sure what to think of her; there was a mix of exasperation, fondness, gratitude, frustration, and fear.
Oh yes, there was fear. Only a fool would choose not to be afraid of Lily Riddle. But strange as it seemed, the world had no shortage of fools.
That side of her wasn't really a side of her personality, it was always present, that ruthless pragmatism that cut everything into pieces. Hidden inside her eccentricity and her youth, there would only be flashes of it here and there. It was there in that first offer on the street, there in her explanation of the business model of drug lording in the wizarding world, and everything in between. There were times though when it seemed as if there was nothing else.
The first time he truly saw it, saw the hurricane at full force, was when the aurors first came to arrest her.
She'd been expecting it for quite some time. She hadn't exactly started out subtle, what with hiring vampiric help in the street whenever she felt some muscle as well as secretarial skills were needed. By 1938, there were five of them on her payroll, a range of backgrounds and countries between them, and yet all of them having found themselves in the English slums. In spite of their bewilderment, each of them had that spark of life forced back into their eyes as if to say 'this is what I was meant for.'
She'd also taken to advertising her wares all over both the black market in Knockturn Alley and on the walls of Diagon Alley. The only difference in the posters being the use of certain terms like light and dark as well as the color schemes of the advertisements.
He remembered pasting the posters on the walls at her insistence, looking at each as if he had no idea what to make of them, because he truly did not.
"Crack: The Inexpensive Energizing Alternative for that fatigued Witch or Wizard."
"Cocaine: The Luxurious Wake-Me-Up for the Most Interesting Wizard in the World."
(What was truly strange was that half of the wares she advertised on the walls he hadn't heard of in either the muggle or the wizarding world and those he had heard of were primarily muggle inventions rather than any wizarding ones.)
It didn't take a genius to connect the dots back to Riddle Incorperated, and in spite of Riddle's hired vampire goons (or so the story went among the Auror Corps), things had to come to a head sooner or later.
It was almost as if she was waiting for it.
The five of them had been loitering in one of the side rooms, playing a game Lily called poker and comparing back stories and recruitment pitches they had been thrown. Frank had been insulted to find that as of yet he was the only one whose name had been changed in the process, and worse, it seemed to have stuck; no one called him Constantine. At that point, he had even caught himself referring to himself as Frank.
"Face it, Franky-boy, you're the most whipped of us all. She got you good and early. You notice you're the only one who does that secretary shit for her?" Stefan, the other Eastern European immigrant, said between bites of a blood pop. Strangely enough, he seemed to like the candy that Frank had always found so awful tasting; it was hard to find him without it. The others in the group nodded in agreement.
"I do not do all of her secretary…" he started before being cut off by Lily's most recent hire, the youthful French vampire Claude who had only been turned a decade before in the glittering twenties.
"Well, you never see her doing it and when she recruited me, it wasn't in the job description."
It was true though, he knew it as well even at the time. For whatever reason, perhaps because he was the first she had found, he had been the one she relied on for keeping the accounts and the budgets balanced, on doing the invoices and all the aspects that he had never known were necessary for a business to run, especially one as shady as narcotics.
At that point, he was still trying to hold onto the shreds of his dignity. It would pass over the years.
At the sound of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz starting up, the five of them had looked at each other and then rushed to the front room, but somehow the girl had already beaten them to it. The projected head, Lily's unofficial doorman, was off before he could even get started the young girl stepping out from behind a green curtain hiding controls, switches, levers, and gauges.
"Please ignore the man behind the curtain." she said staring down at the aurors without even sparing a glance for her own taller and paler men scrambling in from the back room.
In her there was, in that moment, a quiet intensity about her a cool collected confidence that demanded attention. He remembered thinking that he had never seen her so perfectly still and poised, normally her hands flailed in conversation and her legs carried her across the room and out the door, but here there was not even a twitch.
"How may I help you fine gentlemen of law enforcement today?" she asked, a slight curve of a smile making its way onto her face.
They each stared at her and then each other in bewilderment. Perhaps expecting an older, more seductive woman with a glint of danger in her eyes rather than this small and thin black-haired girl who looked poorer and more muggle than anything they'd ever seen. Finally, the one who appeared to be the captain spoke up.
"Lily Riddle, you're under arrest for the use of the Dark Arts and for distribution of dangerous materials to the general public."
The man and his group moved forward, pointing their wands at the girl who still seemed unconcerned by the situation, even holding up a hand to stop Frank and the others from rushing in.
"You mean the sale of narcotics." Lily interrupted staring flatly at the man. "Not the dark arts, narcotics, sir. Please, they are two very different things. If I'm going to be hauled off to Azkaban to get my soul sucked out by the nazgûl, I would at least like to be accurate about my charges."
She sighed then and then lifted her hand and in that moment everything seemed to stop. He had seen wizards fight before, and he had heard descriptions of very powerful and terrible wizards, but whatever she did was not the act of a wizard.
She simply lifted a pale hand in front of her as if it was a wand and her fingers seemed to twitch slightly and then there was a clatter of wands on the floor and the muffled screams of men as they each clutched and their wand hand's broken fingers. They reached for the wands, but by then they were rolling away to Lily's feet, where she collected them in a pile.
"I wonder what the resale price is for wands." she said to herself, looking over the pile. "Yo, Frank, look into the used wand business and see what Ollivander's usually go for."
With that, she turned back to the aurors who were now staring at her in shock and, in some cases, horror.
"Now, gentleman, I am unfortunately rather tired today. It's been a long week of marketing, dealing with the goblins, and just all sorts of shenanigans I don't usually deal with. In all this excitement, I find myself as, well, almost as exhausted as you. So I'm not going to blast off a bunch of killing curses and send you off to kingdom come, instead I'm going to let the boys have a go at you. You know how hard it is for a vampire to get fresh juice these days and I'm sure they'll jump at the opportunity."
She pointed back at the vampires without looking at them but they were all looking at her, their eyes glued on her, and Frank had no doubt that each and every one of them was thinking back to their journeys across Europe and the self-declared vampire lords they had seen them. In that moment, they were less than nothing in the shadow of Lily Riddle.
"They're a bit out of practice though, so maybe if you act quick enough you'll have a good chance. But that's not really the point, because maybe they're not that out of practice. You don't really know. So the question is not do I feel quick, do I think she's bluffing, or anything like that. The questions is, do I feel lucky. So do you feel lucky? Well, do you punk?"
With that, she turned on her heel and made her way towards the doorway where her employees were still standing staring at her. She gave them one look, this time one of exasperation and sighed before saying, "Don't make them feel that lucky."
She pushed past them and into the other room, leaving the vampires she had only recently hired with crippled wandless aurors on the floor.
The results of that day had become somewhat infamous and was a common anecdote that was told on the streets whenever any punk felt he had the nerve to try his luck when it came to Lily Riddle. It was also the start of her true reputation, where her name would hold more weight than the German dark lord Grindlewald when he began burning Europe, where the very mention of her could stall a conversation before it started, where working for Lily Riddle truly began to mean something, and the aurors thought twice about sending anyone in to confront her.
To them, to her clients and to those sent in to stop her, she was only the terror and the death.
She had always been so much more than that, she was the leaf in the wind as well as the hurricane, and it was important to remember that. They forgot that it was her who had the stars in her eyes, who brought in the props and stage gimmicks into the office, who brought in the ideas and the five vampires on the street who had nothing worth living for.
Strange as it seemed, they each owed her something, especially those original five she had approached on her own two feet with a spark of an idea in her eye.
Enough so that the five who had originally worked there in that first year of 1937 into 1938 stayed even after she one day shook all of their hands with grim determination in her eyes. She didn't come in every day, or even for very long on the days she did arrive, but it was the first time that they each had the definitive thought that she was going elsewhere, if only for a little while.
"I can't say how long I'll be gone or where you can reach me, but I will be back, some day. So until then, keep things running, mark the heroin up, and always remember that the ministry is full of bureaucracy and someone can be paid off to make things easier." she'd finished. Then, before walking back out the door, she turned and said, "Oh, and always remember, have fun."
A small wave later and a closing door, they would not see her again until almost ten years later, in 1945.
So that was the story of how Frank began, or at least a portion of it. A small glimpse into beginnings of that eccentric world that the underground had become. Those who knew, who were close to her, they all knew that the back of Knockturn Alley did not belong to itself but rather, it was a dark and imperfect reflection of Lily Riddle. It was only those who lingered at the edge or in Diagon Alley itself, who saw the death and the grime and the disease. The vampires no longer lingered on street corners in half-light with a dead look in their eyes and a blood pop in their mouths. Posters of narcotics advertised as the darkest and most seductive of arts had taken their place, and for his people, it no longer seemed as if they had somehow lost the war that had never started.
They had lost the battle, this was more than evident, but they had not lost the war. One day, the ministry would reconcile themselves with that fact. When they no longer had their dark lords to search for, or their mudbloods to put down, they would look back into the shadows and remember that it was Lily Riddle who ruled the city.
The question then wasn't about luck, or strength, or even magic but rather... who was it that worked for Lily Riddle?
Beta'd by Kurama's Foxy Rose
Author's Note: At this point, I honestly can't tell if this would spoil anything or not. I believe that those of you who have figured out what is going on have figured out what's going on, and those of you who have not can be surprised. But anyway this is for the 300th review of Lily and the Art of Sisyphus by ptl4ever419 who's prompt was A fic on how Lily Riddle got her underground empire started. This is more a snapshot of that but then Lily's underground empire will also be covered in the main fic, so this isn't the end.
Thanks to readers and reviewers and Kurama's Foxy Rose for the beta job.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter