AN: Stoop faming, okay! BTW you suck! From now on evry tim someone flams me I'm going to slit ma wrists. Fangs to Raven for h'lepping and to The Carnivorous Muffin for stilin.

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In which Draco Malfoy sings multiple times to get what he wants, with surprising success, some girl named Willow dies in a horrific manner offscreen much to the complete indifference of everyone around her, and Lily confronts her greatest fear in all the world.

"We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw." Lily recited, kneeling before a row of simple white crosses, in the relentless sleet that had been plaguing Hogwarts for weeks on end with no sign that it would ever truly stop, not until the world itself finally ground itself to a halt, "Alas! Our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar."

None were marked by names, there had been no need, no reason to, after all, no one aside from herself would think to come here, would recognize what had been lost.

"Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion…" She swallowed, closing her eyes and trying to hold back the terrible vision that screamed inside of her, "Those who have crossed with direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom, remember us –if at all –not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men…"

She could continue, T.S. Elliot's words scraping out of her soul, but there was no sound from her now, only the rain pounding, pounding, pounding down upon her… For the wake of Hogwarts, there could only ever be the sound of silence.

The day after their confrontation with Hindenburg, the transformed and corrupted Hindenburg, was in many ways anticlimactic and the most climactic moment thus far. As always, it had in some mysterious way revolved around Ebony Way.

Once, Lily had assumed the world had revolved around her, or rather, that it had revolved around Eleanor Lily Potter. And it had, Lily didn't think she had been mistaken in this, but times had changed and this was no longer the case. Ellie Potter was now one of the inconsequential masses, no more important than Pansy Parkinson, in a way she was perhaps more superfluous than that as Ebony had so thoroughly stolen her own role.

Transfiguration, a class she could have sworn they'd just had the day before, featured all of them attempting the bizarre transformation of pentagrams into electric guitars. Something which baffled and frustrated Wizard Lenin to no end, if only because he was failing miserably, and Ebony Way was clearly going to get an O for Outstanding.

"Why the hell do I even bother coming to class anymore?" Wizard Lenin asked, crumpling the drawing of his blood red pentagram and throwing it onto the floor, "This is clearly a waste of everyone's time."

"Because we have nothing better to do, and you wanted to stalk Ebony," Lily summarized to which she earned a withering glare from Wizard Lenin.

"Is it unwarranted?" He asked, before sighing shaking his head, and leaning back in his seat, "Well, all the same, I doubt McGonagall's in any condition to grade us, she's been infected."

Lily glanced at McGonagall, who indeed shared that same flat, cardboard, expression of distaste which lingered on Dumbledore and even Snape's features, and quietly, she agreed, "And another one bites the dust."

Yet another silent death to linger inside of this place.

As if to emphasize this point Draco Malfoy appeared out of nothingness, or rather, out of Ebony's black guitar, and, kneeling on her desk as she blinked up at him with stunned awe and heartfelt tenderness, he pleaded in a truly sorrowful tone, "Enoby, I love you! I dee not care what those fucker preps and posers think, you're the most beautiful girl in the world!"

Wizard Lenin placed a hand over his eyes, gritted his teeth, and looked about two seconds away from whacking his head against the table. Lily, for her own part, was at least grateful that Draco had decided to wear pants this time.

Draco's crimson eyes bored into Ebony's, beginning to fill with tears as he grasped at her hands and said, "Before I met you, I used to want to commit suicide all the time. Now, I just want to fucking be with you! I fucking love you!"

Then, he took a large breath, a familiar sort of breath, the breath that Lily had seen for days now, one that signaled that Draco Malfoy, the Satanist romantic, was about to burst forth into song.

"Oh lord no," Wizard Lenin said, "Can I not go a day without singing?"

But no, apparently they could not, because the song was already bursting forth from Draco Malfoy's lipstick stained lips, "You come in cold, you're covered in blood…"

And of course, it was one that wasn't in the least bit romantic, yet seemed to truly charm Ebony Way, her blue eyes practically filled with stars as she looked up at him.

"They're all so happy you've arrived. The doctor cuts your cord, hands you to your mom, she sets you free into this life…"

The song continued, the entire class seeming to clap along, until finally the song came to a dramatic finish and Ebony stood, joyful black tears gathering at the edge of her eyes, and cried out, "OMFG!"

Then, before either Lily or Wizard Lenin could say anything, she flipped them the bird with her hands still entwined with Draco's, however her eyes were still on Draco as she exclaimed, "I love you!"

Then, she moved in to kiss him passionately for a moment, then, tugging on his hands, pulled him out of the classroom with a smile and into the hallway, leaving the rest of the class to give them a standing ovation, only Lily and Wizard Lenin remaining in their seats.

The last sane men to inhabit Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

There was a great sigh as Wizard Lenin stood, began to pack his things, while Lily only raised her eyebrows at him increadulously, "Lenin, you can't be serious."

"Oh, you'll find I'm quite serious, Lily," Wizard Lenin said, "I am keeping an eye on that girl even if it means I must listen to Draco Malfoy sing ten thousand times."

"And what if she has nothing to do with it?" Lily asked, "What if the universe is simply… ending?"

"I would rather assume Enoby the antichrist is responsible than simply choose to become a nihilist," Wizard Lenin spat, before regarding her and asking, "Or would you rather stay here, Lily, among all our new gothic friends?"

So Lily and Wizard Lenin left the classroom, and, it didn't take them long to find the black and red oversized poster announcing yet another concert in Hogsmede, this time for the entirely different abbreviation of some group called MCR.

"MCR… I wonder if they're any better than GC," Lily commented as she tore the poster from the wall, "Funny we didn't hear about this, given that they cancelled classes for the last one… And that this is happening right now."

"Good, that means we know exactly where those two will be," Wizard Lenin stated, before pulling her along, "Come on, we'd better get to Hogsmede."

"Oh," Lily stated suddenly realizing that he really was serious about this, "I am not looking forward to this, do you remember the last time?"

"Sacrifices are necessary in war, Lily," Wizard Lenin stated, which perhaps was fair, but Lily preferred when those necessary sacrifices didn't involve her ear drums or seeing Draco Malfoy stick his tongue down Ebony's throat.

The walk out of Hogwarts was filled with tense silence, Wizard Lenin thinking his own thoughts while Lily… Her thoughts were plagued with unfilled graves, with a plague that was unseen and unnoticed, stealing through the halls at night and claiming nothing less than the very souls of its victims.

When she teleported them to the stage in Hogsmede, the same that had been used in the last concert, she found herself wondering if any of this was real anymore, or if everyone besides her, Wizard Lenin, Luna, and Rabbit even remained.

A band played there, dressed in ridiculous dark robes and pale masks, honestly looking a bit like Wizard Lenin's old cult more than anything else.

There towards the front of the mob surrounding the stage was Ebony Way dressed in her usual combination of black leather ridiculously small dress that would have had more decency as a shirt, black leather platinum boots, and blood red fishnets and Draco Malfoy in his baggy shirt and dark baggy pants, both of them twitching back and forth as if on the verge of suffering an epileptic fit, only interrupted by Draco doing his best to choke Ebony with his tongue inside her mouth.

And Lily could only wonder if they had any idea how lifeless they looked, "And here, here is the great plummet of mankind, this is where we end."

Wizard Lenin glanced at her before offering a wry smile, "Well, I had never truly thought the human race capable of much, although I hadn't predicted this. I'd always thought that we would destroy each other through war, Satanism is something of a surprise to me."

Before Lily could comment back there was movement on the stage, there, the band members pulled off the mask adorning their faces, and Lily couldn't help but turn to look at Wizard Lenin in horror, searching his face to see that he was still there, still standing next to her, still in this world and not his doppelganger on the stage.

But Wizard Lenin wasn't looking at her, he was stepping forward, searching each and every face on the stage, then searching his doppelganger's, hair still dark, eyes a strange and burning crimson, a leering smile stretched across his lips.

"Oh," Wizard Lenin breathed out, pale eyes widening, "Fuck."

Lily blinked.

"WTF Draco, I'm not going to a concert with you!"

Lily blinked again, and there she was, standing alone in a Hogwarts hallway, right outside the Transfiguration classroom, or rather, standing next to Ebony Way and Draco Malfoy, Wizard Lenin inexplicably gone. Ebony glared balefully at Draco even as she shouted, shoving him backwards with a pale hand.

"Not after what happened to me last time!" Ebony continued, scoffing at Draco's truly wounded expression, "Even if it's MCR, and you know how much I lick them."

Lily turned her head, looking down one end of the hallway and back, searching for something, anything, to anchor her. Or rather, searching for Wizard Lenin, that haunting vision of Wizard Lenin's face, his other's face, still digging its claws inside of her head.

And his eyes, so wide and so blue, as he looked across at his mirror image.

Draco floundered and flushed almost as crimson as his eyes, "What, because we… you know…"

"Yeah," Ebony finished, also flushing to an absurd degree, "Because we… you know…"

"We won't do that again!" Draco promised, "This time, we're going with an escort."

Now, Lily blinked, because she was trying to correlate escort with what Draco was saying and wondering if he was meaning it in the way she suddenly thought he was meaning it, as a male prostitute, or rather as the old idea of having a chaperone to prevent general naughtiness.

Either way, Ebony seemed unduly offended, "OMFG WTF, are you giving into the main stream?!"

Ebony's eyes narrowed as she surveyed him, pushing him again, "So, I guess you're a prep, or a Christina now, or what?!"

"No!" Draco cried out in terror but Ebony did not falter.

"Are you becoming a prep or what?!"

"Enoby," Draco pleaded, falling down to his knees now, "I'm not, pls come with me!"

But, when she remained unmoved, as if he were the wind howling to the mountains, he once more burst into song, a tactic that had always seemed to work for him in the past, "Turn on channel seven at a quarter to eight, you see the damn thing it's just a different day. And no one really knows why this is happening, but it's happening, and everywhere you go it's just a different place…"

Strange, how apt Draco's words sometimes were, always appropriate to the setting even when he himself never seemed to realize it. Something was happening, no one cared, and no one knew why.

And, as with every time before, Ebony softened and said, "OK, I guess I will have to."

She then kissed Draco passionately against the lips, and began to walk away, leaving a dazed Draco and Lily behind her. Lily spared a glance for Draco, lifeless, soulless, Draco Malfoy, and without a word turned to keep pace with Ebony, who made her way up the staircases to the seventh floor and into the dormitory where Hermione Queen of Goths waited for them.

"Hajimemashita, girl," Hermione the Bloody said as Ebony opened the door, "BTW, Willow, that fucking girl, that fucking poser, got expulled. She failed all her classes and she skipped math."

Lily blinked, watching the pair of them, and desperately trying to remember if she knew any Willows, or rather, if she knew anyone who had the misfortune of becoming a Willow over the course of the past few weeks.

Ebony let out a harsh laugh, cruel merriment dancing in her eyes, "It serves that fucking bitch right!"

The pair then looked to Lily, perhaps for confirmation, so Lily hastily nodded and said, "Yes, I hated that stupid… slut."

The pair seemed appeased and began to lounge in the room, eventually putting in what they called a depressing film, something called "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (a movie which, Lily actually found she liked, and wondered if that was a good or horrifying thing, and perhaps the first sign of goffickness taking root inside of her own soul).

Wizard Lenin remained absent.

Of course, so did Luna, and Rabbit, Blaise and Daphne, Death and Draco…

And there was Skeleton Jack upon the screen, his world so filled with possibility and wonder for the first time in decades, and in him she saw what she would have dreamed her life to be instead of a world that was so rapidly draining itself of color.

"Maybe Willow will die too," Ebony mentioned somewhere towards the end of the film, Skeleton Jack staring at the results of his scheming and meddling, his downed ship in a cemetery.

"Kawaii," B'loody Mary responded, as if this was an acceptable response to anything.

"It's kawaii, you fucking bitch!" Ebony corrected, seemingly out of instinct, only for Hermione to shake her head in a way that was at once both strangely energetic while also being lethargic. Like a windup toy that now could only jerk here and there, in its last throes of life, before its gears became too stiff and rusted to permit movement.

"Oh yeah," B'loody Mary added, as if she wasn't simply casually adding this in conversation, "Oh have a confession, after she got expulled I murder her and Loopin did it with her cause he's a neckphilac."

Lily felt as if a bomb had exploded, yet somehow no one had noticed, as Hermione Granger cheerfully confessed to murder and rape… Well, the defilement of some girl's corpse via that homeless man who liked hanging around the castle videotaping naked girls.

"Kawaii," Ebony said with a cheerful smile, turning her attention back to the film, leaving only Lily to stare at them and wonder if the world was so far gone that murder didn't even count anymore…

Well, Ebony had a death count of three already, what with Snape, Lupin, and Pettigrew, and no one seemed to mind. Plus, two of them had come back from the dead without a scratch on them. Clearly, death meant nothing anymore.

Which, since Death had died, in the only way left to him, was perhaps to be expected from all of this.

"Oh, hey, BTW," Ebony suddenly exclaimed, "I'm going to a concert with Draco tonight in Hogsmede with MCR. I need to wear, like, the hotset outfit evar."

This was enough for Hermione as she, in a very un-Hermione like manner, sprung to her feet and exclaimed, "OMFG, let's go shopping!"

"In Hot Topic, right?" Ebony asked, as if this was a forgone conclusion, as if there were no other store in the world to be considered but Hot Topic.

"No!"

Ebony gasped, turned, a look of utter disbelief on her features, "B'loody Mary! Are you a prep?!"

"Nooooo! Noooo!" Hermione corrected with a desperation that could only come from one just accused of being a prep, "I found some cool goffick stores near Hogwarts, that's all!"

"Oh, well then," Lily said, not entirely sure how she felt about the idea of goffism spreading itself into Hogsmede and the outside world. However Lily, as during the whole time, was cheerfully ignored by the pair.

"Who told you about them?" Ebony asked even as a much calmer look appeared on her face at the confirmation that B'loody Mary was not one of the b'loody preps.

"Dumblydore," Hermione explained, as if it was perfectly reasonable that Dumbledore had suggested a goffick clothing chain to her, "Let me just call our broms."

"OMFFG, Dumblydore?!" Ebony asked in a strangled whisper, one that Lily would join in with if she had the energy.

"Ja, I saw the map for Hogsmede on his desk."

"Right," Lily said quietly, "Of course you did, why wouldn't you have?"

But again, neither seemed concerned by this and instead they both left, Lily trudging along almost unwillingly, wondering what the hell she was even doing with the pair or where for that matter Wizard Lenin had wound up.

There was…

There was a terrible fear, a deep dark fear, that she had seen the last of him at the concert, the concert that now appeared to have never happened, or had yet to happen, as time once again tripped over itself.

That despite the need and urgency to keep him close she had somehow lost sight of him and… And now Lily was one person closer to being perfectly alone in the universe.

They entered some overdecorated black store, one filled with ribbons, crucifixes hung upside down, pentagrams, the anarchist's a, and what looked like a wide variety of voodoo dolls. Also present were many different almost Victorian styled corsets, many articles of leather, and the strange black baggy pants with chains that Draco seemed so fond of these days.

And there, standing at the counter, was the person she had most wanted to see and least wanted to see.

Younger, he looked younger, or rather, he looked like he should have at seventeen or sixteen, if he wasn't in the guise of Lenin Rabbitson. Dark hair that curled about his face, a thin lanky figure stretching out beneath a black turtleneck and black tight pants, a face far too pale beneath thick white makeup, dark stained lips, his eyes ringed in kohl and making all the bluer for it, and not a hint of recognition in his face as he stared across at them, at her.

Oh, oh no, it was too soon, it was…

Lily leaned over, pressing a hand to her mouth, feeling the urge to vomit and trying to force it in, to force the world to be steady, to force it back into some state where this wasn't happening, where this couldn't happen because they'd had no time, and there were supposed to be signs and then he'd return to her head at the very least and…

He handed Ebony a pair of dresses, with pale hands sporting black painted fingernails, smiling charmingly at her as he ushered her into a changing room, "We only have these for the real goths."

"The real goths?" Hermione asked, her face flushing as he looked at her, his expression at once so reminiscent of Wizard Lenin putting on the charm that…

"Ja," he said, the smile growing that much wider, "You wouldn't believe how many posers there are in this town, man. Yesterday, Loopin and Snap tried to buy a goffick camera pouch."

He shook his head, almost as if in pity of those poor wayward souls of Loopin and Snap, "I didn't even know they had a camera."

Ebony burst out of the changing room, somehow already dressed in one of the black intricate dresses that he had thrust into her arms, red ribbons come out of it, low cut to accentuate her no longer prepubescent breasts, and a huge slit up the side of it that revealed more of her thighs than was decent for any human being, "OMFG no! They're going to spy on me again!"

"Oh, my Satan!" Lenin, this dark, gothic, washed out, diluted version of Lenin exclaimed as he put a hand against his cheek, "You have to buy that outfit!"

"Yeah, it looks totally hot!" Hermione said in agreement.

The pale remnants of Wizard Lenin shook this thought away and said, "You know what, I'm going to have to give it to you for free, cause you look really hoot in that ootfit."

Before Ebony could say anything or anyone else for that matter, he asked, in a way that was so casual yet at once not, "Hey, are you going to be at the concert tonight?"

"Yeah, I am actually," Ebony stated, "BTW, my name's Eb'ony Darkness Dimentia Tara Way. What's yours?"

A devilish smile, one so similar to the one he always used to wear, that shark like predatory grin as he ran a hand through black, too black, hair, "Tom Rid, maybe I'll see you there tonight."

"Yeah, I don't think so, cause I'm going there with my BF Draaco, you sick perv," Ebony shouted back, but before Lenin, this horrifying Lenin doppelganger, could beg her to go with him, Hagrid flew in on his broom (as he always seemed to show up at the strangest times).

"OMFG, Ebony!" Hagrid cried, "You need to get ot back to the castle into it, now!

There was dithering here and there, Ebony taking the dresses and B'loody Mary running away with her, following Hagrid as he issued some dire warning about something that no longer concerned Lily.

For nothing concerned Lily anymore.

Instead, she stared across at him, at Lenin trapped in Tom Rid's body, and thought of Death in the rain with blood and tears running down his cheeks. Outside the rain still pounded, relentless as always, and inside her heart beat with a tempo to match it.

"And you? You don't look like much of a goff," Tom Rid sneered at her, taking in her vibrantly red hair, her bright green eyes, and her pale defined features, "I don't service preps, you know."

Slowly, out of nothingness, a gun materialized in her hand, she pointed it at his head. She licked her lips, closed her eyes for a moment, and pictured instead the great fields of America, two men on the run, one a fool with his hat removed unable to see the gun pointed at his temple by the only man who had ever been his friend.

And in the distance, the mob after his head, shouted.

"Look acrost the river, Lennie an' I'll tell you so you can almost see it," Lily started, her eyes still closed, yet her hand unshaking, "We gonna get a little place… We'll have a cow, an' we'll have maybe a pig an' chikcens… an' down the flat we'll have a …little piece alfalfa for the rabbits… And you get to tend the rabbits… You… and me. Ever'body gonna be nice to you. Ain't gonna be no more trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from 'em…"

She opened her eyes, desperately ignoring the tears coursing down her cheeks, or the look of stupid confusion and derision on his face, and with a great cry she pulled the trigger.

END OF CHAPTER

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AN: Draco's voice is so amazing, and goffick, and sexy, like a cross between Gerard, Joel, Chester, Pierre, and Marilyn Manson. Don't you think those guuys are so hawt?

Author's Note: What can I say? I could not resist the call of Steinbeck here. At any rate, more still to come, as always, you know you love this story. At any rate, there's now a side story for it, "In the Garden of Eden" where we see Riddle Inc.'s take on all of this madness.

Thank you for reading and reviewing and do know that reviews are always greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I still don't own things.