In which Lily takes over the nation of Albania with what she considers to be far too little effort, several parties offer Lily guidance, and Lily realizes that in spite of everything that has happened nothing has really changed.

There was a single tower comprised of small blocks and though it stood still it was only for a moment as each block removed at its base caused it to wobble just a little bit more freely; always teetering on the edge of destruction…

"Lily, as much as I enjoy watching you and Death the Destroyer of Worlds play Jenga we have much better uses of our time." And at the sound of Wizard Lenin's voice the tower collapsed on Lily's turn and all that remained was the rubble.

She and Death looked at one another for a moment and then they both turned to face Wizard Lenin who was sitting at a nearby table with Rabbit, dutifully ignoring his comrade and instead glaring while calmly drinking tea.

Rabbit, for his own part, simply stared blankly into space as he perfected the art of thumb twiddling, a trait he had only recently picked up.

"It's my birthday, Lenin, not yours." Lily pointed out although she didn't really know when Wizard Lenin's birthday was; or if horcruxes celebrated birthdays at all. It was on the list of the many things she never intended to ask him but that she probably should; if only to clarify exactly what horcrux meant at the end of things.

But it was her birthday, and as far as she knew it wasn't his, and one's twelfth birthday only happened once. And already it was proving to be very different from any other birthday she'd had.

For one she was many miles away from the Dursleys.

It was weird, when she really stopped to consider it, but it had been a very long time since she'd seen any of them; almost a year. And other than Dumbledore's last chat with her she had no idea how or what they were doing; like they didn't exist at all when she didn't look at them.

As it was she thought more often about Dumbledore's words, his insistence that they loved her, more than she did about them. Maybe, that's why he had said it, to remind her that they existed or else to insist upon their existence.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Wizard Lenin.

"Of course, how could I forget?" He asked, but in a way that implied that he hadn't forgotten merely that he didn't care.

He still looked tired, his clothing and expression worn at the edges, as if his thoughts and circumstances had laid him bare. It wasn't as extreme as that night with Quirrell but it was still there, in the shadow of his eyes, and everything in between.

But he did have a point.

"What would you rather be doing?" She asked.

After leaving Hogwarts she had gone directly to Riddle Inc. and said she was changing her mind. That they were ramping up the A.L.F. movement right then and there and were headed off to Albania to get started. There must have been something in her eyes because no one argued not even when they had yet to find a figurehead or else make use of propaganda.

She'd almost expected someone to show up then, just before she left, for Neville, Hermione, or perhaps even Dumbledore to show up out of nowhere and say, "No, stop, you can't simply leave…"

But no one prevented her from grabbing that portkey, no one shouted her name, and so she left and she'd been in Albania ever since.

Wizard Lenin gave her a look, as if what he wanted should be obvious to one and to all.

And she supposed it was, obvious enough.

It had been a long time since that confrontation with stone and he still had no body to show for it, but then, it all boiled down to the stone.

But it was her birthday, and there was no place for that, or for the memories of Quirrell that came with it.

She turned from him, back to Death, and began once again to set up the tower. Death watched, unspoken feelings flickering in his eyes, steadily gaining solidity as the silent minutes ticked past.

"Lily…" Death started quietly only to be interrupted by Wizard Lenin.

"And how long do you intend to run from reality?"

Her hand hovered over the tower, a block between her fingertips, and once again she turned back to Wizard Lenin. She met his eyes with a steady expression; she was not running.

Drifting, yes, but not running.

"There was no reason to stay." She said, placing the block on the stack.

He knew that, he had made no argument against her leaving Hogwarts, the country even.

And perhaps that wasn't quite what he meant, because there was no easy way back. She had left the dead and bleeding carcass of Quirinus Quirrell in his office and she had allowed Hermione Granger to keep her memories of a night best left not remembered. Not to mention the fact that Dumbledore seemed to be unnaturally focused on her relationship with the Dursleys, which couldn't mean anything good, and that she hadn't even liked Hogwarts that much to begin with.

Quirrell wasn't wrong when he had said that there was no reason for her to attend Hogwarts.

There was a scraping of metal against the pavement as Wizard Lenin stood and made his way over to her. He placed a hand on her shoulder, she didn't flinch, merely continued to place blocks on the tower.

"That doesn't mean you leave, either." His hand tightened slightly as he searched for the words, words that usually weren't his to give, Wizard Lenin was never the provider of direction or else guidance and he seemed to be struggling a bit in finding the right words to say, "Why are we here in Albania, Lily?"

She finished the tower and began to straighten it so that it was a single, deceptively sturdy, structure, "To provide assistance and guidance to A.L.F."

"And why do you feel that it's necessary to do this?" He followed up, in that same light questioning tone, as if this question was not leading her down some narrow path.

"To combat the oppression of the Albanian vampires."

"And yet," Wizard Lenin said with a sigh, taking up the third chair at her and Death's table, watching as Lily pushed out the first block, "I can't help but notice that not only are you not a vampire you are also not Albanian; your interest in this matter is completely superficial at best."

"So?" Lily asked before nodding to Death, "Your turn, Uncle Death."

"So, you have even less reason to destroy the wizarding Albanian political system than you have to attend Hogwarts." Wizard Lenin concluded with a thin smile and a rather pointed look.

She just looked at him for a moment and then said, "That's probably true."

And then proceeded to take her turn in Jenga.

Without a word he stood from the table, the chair scraping again, and it was to the sound of his angered footsteps that Death delicately removed his own block from the tower. And then it was only her, Death, and Rabbit sitting outside the café by the train.

"Lily…" Death started but she cut him off before he could finish.

"I don't want to talk about it."

He smiled at her, his eyes softening around the edges, "Do you know why I like Jenga better than chess?"

She didn't, she'd never thought on it too carefully, she'd only remembered his mentioning of the game after leaving England. Before that she'd never thought to ask him to play.

She shook her head.

"Chess is a game of strategy, of warfare, of two people placed together attempting to outwit one another until there is a clear victor. It's a metaphor that speaks to wizards and non-wizards alike, one that pervades through time, until it is used even when chess itself no longer exists. But life is not like chess."

There was something lurking in that last statement, something old and ancient, something cold. And even though he was smiling at her, that smile only Death seemed to know how to wear, his eyes held too many years inside them for comfort. She wondered then if her own eyes ever looked like that, they were the same color, and yet she could not picture his eyes in place of her own.

"Life is not so easy as winning or losing; as being the black or the white. We lose too many pieces along the way, or we lose them only partially, because they are still visible but they are out of reach. Chess does not account for the things we almost have or the things we have almost lost."

He moved his own piece, carefully, as the now unstable tower wobbled on its inadequate base.

"Jenga has no end. There is only the tower, and the attempt to build it out of the pieces you already possess. You try to take the safer route but then sometimes you are forced to remove the pieces you do not wish to touch. And sometimes it falls, as you fear it must, but sometimes it doesn't."

"I'm not going back." Lily said, beating Death to his own conclusion.

"Perhaps not," Death said musingly before adding, "But then, you have left so very many things undone."

Hermione Granger, Dumbledore's weird manipulations of her life and his interest in the Dursleys, Quirrell's corpse, Neville, even her feud with Snape. She had only taken the clothes on her back and the assorted magical items in her pocket, that's all she assumed she needed.

She liked to think these things didn't belong to her though, she was not tied to them, perhaps as Eleanor Potter but if she chose not to be Eleanor Potter then it was all moot point.

"Have, I ever told you that I had a wife?" Death asked seemingly out of the blue.

She blinked, looking at him, she supposed it was possible but she just couldn't picture it. Aunt Death, Mrs. Death, what exactly did that look like?

"Yes," He said laughing slightly at her expression, "It was a very long time ago and I was very young. It was when I thought I was human, or rather, when I was beginning to doubt I was human."

"Was she…" Lily trailed off trying to think of an adjective.

"She was pretty, kind, and she had a phenomenal temper… She deserved better than what she had with me and she realized that soon enough into our marriage, but that's not the point." He said waving his hand as if to shake off lingering memories.

"It's not?"

"I have been down this path you're on Lily, I have run from myself, from my past, and from every doubt I had until I couldn't run any further. And when I finally stopped, when I forced myself to stop and turn and look at where I'd been, I realized that I hadn't gone anywhere at all. We are tied to ourselves, Lily, and we cannot run from that."

The Jenga tower fell once again, pieces clattering to the floor beneath the table, and Lily could only stare at them wondering if she should bother placing it together again.

"I'm not running." Lily stated in words so plain that they couldn't be argued against.

"Perhaps not." He said again, his eyes twinkling, as if the words were some sort of joke, "But I'm sure the Albanians would appreciate it if you gave them a little time to think over the consequences of your conquest."

Well, they might. They should, Lily's revolution had been a little too short and lackluster to be considered glorious. It had turned out, despite Lily's complete disbelief that it was even possible, that the Albanian Ministry was even more incompetent and terrible than the British.

Part of it had to do with Grindlewald's invasion in the 40's, Grindlewald had never made it inside Britain but he had in Albania, he hadn't spent too much time there more focused on defeating the French wizards but he'd left a nice little dent. After that the Soviets had taken over the muggle half of the population and the ministry had spent most of its time doing damage control for the muggle born student population.

Not to mention that Albania was refuge to many dark creatures including various tribes of vampires who had been chased out of almost all of the Eastern Bloc until there was nowhere left to run.

They'd practically been waiting for Lily Riddle to show up and start funding a revolution.

"Yeah, you know, I think they'll be just fine. It's the first magical vampire run government, you know."

"Considering magical states in themselves are few and far between I can imagine." Death said with raised eyebrows.

Death wasn't really sure how to take the whole Albanian revolution, on the one hand he seemed to disapprove of war on the whole, but on the other hand he wasn't there and he did say that most wizarding governments were doomed to failure anyway. He'd seemed to decide, after the first few months, that he was just going to let it go and wait and see what happened from Lily's descriptions.

As far as A.L.F. was concerned it was out of his jurisdiction.

"And what exactly is your role, in this government you've set up?" Death asked.

"Supreme Advisor." She wasn't exactly sure what a Supreme Advisor did, only that she was still permitted to fund the fledgling government, give advice, and just hang around the government building.

"Ah, I see." Death said, but managing to say it in a way that implied that he really didn't see anything at all.

"Right, Well then, I'd probably best be heading back… I'll drop by again later, soon, and…" Lily trailed off searching for the words but finding nothing, it didn't seem to matter though, because Death's expression didn't change.

"Well, bye, Uncle Death."

And only a little while later, after rounding up both Rabbit and Wizard Lenin, she was back in the office she had just left overlooking the square in the heart of Tirana's, the capital's, magical district. It was a little less glamourous than Britain's ministry, certainly after the revolution to get inside, but none the less it was the government building.

Her desk was free of paperwork, she'd loaded all of that onto Frank, and she as was left staring the empty space where the door was just waiting for someone to come through and make her day a little more interesting.

It turned out revolutions were only distracting while they were still revolutions.

Hogwarts loomed like a great shadow in her mind then, something she couldn't help but think on, simply because there was nothing bright enough to distract her from it.

She wasn't running, she was drifting, as she'd always drifted.

"…Reality, is that which, when you stop believing in it doesn't go away." She almost jolted at the observation, a very uncharacteristic thing for Wizard Lenin to say, and she tried not to think on the fact that he had taken those words from her.

She needed something new to happen, something exciting, or else there would be more truth to what Wizard Lenin and Death had said than she was willing to admit.

She could always work on the stone, she had done that, and to her great relief it'd seemed only to be weird with Quirrell. On normal dying humans it worked just fine, restored physical symptoms it didn't make them… Well, it didn't make them Quirrell.

It still wasn't enough though, they still weren't anywhere close, and each time they tried to think of it she couldn't help but think of that last night she'd fought for it. It was something neither of them wanted to linger on for various reasons; and so progress was slow; too slow to be distracting.

They'd figure it out, eventually, there was no rush. But Lily was beginning to realize, now that the ministry belonged to A.L.F. that she had needed there to be a rush. She needed there to be something.

"Right…" Lily said to herself, and to Rabbit, "Well, maybe something interesting will be happening somewhere else…"

She stood out of her chair dramatically ready to face the world and all it had to offer, "Come on Rabbit, let's go tour the building."

"Yes."

And she continued to stand there her head slowly but surely turning to Rabbit, who had stopped twiddling his thumbs, and was now staring straight back at her with more awareness in his eyes than she would have liked.

Even Wizard Lenin, who hadn't been thinking of Rabbit at all, stilled in that moment and turned his attention to the white haired youth.

"What?" She asked.

"Yes."

Rabbit's voice was very human, considering that he was… not human, it was perhaps a little more clear than the average twelve or eleven year old boy's, a little more ethereal, but it wasn't a voice whose humanity one could doubt.

"Oh dear God, it learned to talk." Was Wizard Lenin's emotionless and stunned response.

Rabbit had been picking things up, since coming to Albania and even before that when Hermione had insisted Lily teach him English. He'd had that nod then and things had happened in between but she'd sort of put it aside. Between Hogwarts, Quirrell, and leaving Hogwarts she hadn't had time to focus on Rabbit or Rabbit related issues. She'd noticed things, but they'd just been small thoughts in her head, she hadn't realized that they were building on one another.

He learned how to fidget, so that he wasn't just sitting still and staring at nothing for hours on end, he'd learned how to twiddle his thumbs, shift slightly, blink, cock his head, all sorts of human mannerisms people took for granted. He'd learned how to eat food, when to stand, when to sit, when to shake hands, when to smile, when to frown. He'd even learned how to nod and shake his head when necessary.

And now, apparently, he'd learned how to actually talk.

"This is so alarming." Lily commented and wordlessly Wizard Lenin agreed.

(But she couldn't help but notice that when she asked for a distraction, a rather large distraction, it had come. She supposed that some part of her should be grateful; the part that was thinking beyond the fact that Rabbit had just found words.)

"So… Rabbit… You talk."

"Yes." He responded again, in the same tone as before, his eyes never drifting from her face.

"Is this a new thing? Or did you always secretly talk and just chose not to?" Lily asked slowly sitting back in her desk, feeling that she wasn't actually going to leave the room anytime soon with this latest development.

"Yes."

Lily thought about that for a moment and realized she needed clarification on his answer, "To which?"

Rabbit appeared to think about this for a moment, his body going still for a moment and his expression relaxing, before responding, "Yes."

He looked so pleased with his response, well Rabbit pleased, which equated to a slight flash of a smile that was there one moment and gone the next.

"Yes, is the only word you can actually say, isn't it?" She finally asked when it seemed there was nothing else to say.

Here the smile grew and stayed, a charming smile that had nothing true in it, that was only its superficiality and he said, "No."

Apparently Rabbit only spoke Binary English, a language comprised completely of yes, no, true, false answers. That or Rabbit had developed a sense of humor somewhere along the way and was enjoying watching her fidget, which was an even more alarming thought than him learning to speak fragmented English.

"Does anyone else know you speak English now?" Lily asked after a moment of thought.

"Yes."

They were probably a little less alarmed by it, she'd tried explaining the whole Rabbit thing to other people, but even the vampires weren't entirely on board. They knew Rabbit was odd, but they'd just assumed he was the rumored male veela and all weirdness was due to that. None of them, not even Frank, was quite ready to believe that Rabbit was an abyss monster.

"Who?"

Again, Rabbit appeared to think about this for a moment, and then responded, "Yes."

Lily really felt she should have seen that coming, "Right, only two words…"

Still, it was a matter worth investigating, more than that a matter requiring serious contemplation. More importantly, it required action, action that had nothing to do with Hogwarts or the fact that she had no intentions of ever attending it or even thinking about it ever again.

Lily stood for a second time, more dramatically than even the first, "Right, let's go find Frank and find out who has been encouraging your progressing sentience."

"Yes."

"And please stop responding to everything I say." Lily replied almost instinctually with a small shudder.

With that she pulled Rabbit out into the far too decorative hallway and went in search of her loyal secretary. The hallway, while it'd been stripped of most of its portraits when she'd invaded, still had that gaudy ministry look to it. She'd talked to the Albanian vampires about the place, the wizards, and they hadn't been surprised by that.

Albania wished to believe that it was on par with magical Germany, which was really the most magically powerful state in Eastern Europe, and desperately made a show to pretend that it was. Their wizards were proud but in a desperate way, constantly on the defensive with foreigners, and designing tourist attractions and buildings that would prove just how good things were. They tried to ignore the deep forests where the things that went bump in the night lay in wait, and whenever one dared to approach the city, all hell broke loose.

So even when her new vampire companions had burned the portraits and stripped the gold off of the walls somehow the place never lost that initial tone; of something desperately trying to be grand.

It was through several of these hallways that Lily and Rabbit had to travel until they found Frank's door marked by a passive aggressive sign, "Drowning in Paper Work". She knocked.

"Frank!"

There was a sound of rustling inside, some muttering, and then the door opened to reveal a somewhat worn for wear Frank. It was always difficult to tell when vampires were fatigued as they always were on the pale side with dark shadows beneath their eyes but Frank somehow managed to radiate and aura of exhaustion nonetheless.

"Give me a few days, boss, and I assure you the stores in Britain will be taken care of along with our foreign affairs here." Frank said with a sigh, rubbing a hand through dark hair, before adding a desperate, "Please."

She peered behind him to see that his sign hadn't been as passive aggressive as she'd thought but rather more literal.

"Oh, no, this isn't about that." Lily said.

"Thank God." He said before moving away from the door and ushering her and Rabbit into the room, moving papers from the couch so that they could sit down, before collapsing into a chair.

"I can't remember the last time I was asleep before noon." She heard him mutter, but it seemed to be more to himself than anything else.

It seemed that Frank was officially out of energy, probably used it all up in the beginning, it turned out Frank was fairly gungho about the whole revolution business and had really buried himself in it during the initial phases. She hadn't even wanted to take him, had wanted to leave him behind, but he'd insisted and she'd been in no mood to sit around and argue about it.

He looked like he was about ready go back to London as much as Wizard Lenin was.

But she wasn't done yet, she couldn't be done yet, there had to be something else for her that would keep her from Hogwarts.

"So why are you here then?" Frank asked when a few silent moments had passed.

Lily motioned to Rabbit, "Have you been teaching him how to talk?"

Frank looked perplexed at the silent and blank faced Rabbit before looking back at Lily, "He talks?"

"Apparently," Lily said turning to Rabbit and commanding, "Say something."

Rabbit only blinked back at her, as if he couldn't understand a word of it. The thing was, and she didn't know how she knew it given he looked just as dazed as always, that she knew that he knew what she was saying. Rabbit was just choosing not to respond, he was choosing to make her uncomfortable, and the fact that he was choosing to do anything was making her more uncomfortable than anything else.

"I swear he talks now, he says yes and no." Lily assured Frank.

And they all just waited for Rabbit to say something, but he said nothing, merely twiddled his thumbs.

"I was wrong about Jenga, this is a much better use of our time." Wizard Lenin snidely commented.

"Well, I haven't been teaching him anything. I thought he was mute." Frank said with a shrug, "Maybe from Aleksander or Fatmir…" Frank said listing off some of the Albanian vampires they had recruited along the way.

"Maybe." Lily said shortly, although she'd wondered why he'd picked up English then instead of the Albanian po and jo.

"Well, was there anything else you wanted to discuss?" Frank asked.

No, Lily thought almost sadly, that was the end of it. Her grand distraction and it had ended there, with a silent Rabbit, and there seemed nothing else to say.

Wizard Lenin and Death were right, she was done here.

"Aleksander says he's going to take over the government then?" Lily asked and Frank nodded.

"Yes, they're setting up the new constitution now and preparing for the rebellions. We've negotiated funding and arms trades but it seems that our work here is done. It's up to them now to contact vampires abroad, to see if any other dark creatures might be negotiated with. I expect we can head back to London soon."

Yes, she expected that as well, strange how everyone seemed to bringing it up today, as if they all somehow knew it was her birthday and thus a time for coming to terms with the state of the world. She gave Frank a weak smile, "Well, then, that's all good isn't it?"

"We could stay, if you wanted, station someone here permanently." Frank said with a shrug but Lily shook her head.

She was not running, she wasn't that desperate, and she knew when she had gone too fast and too far. The summer was almost over and with the fall she would have to turn back towards Britain if only to see what would become of the saga of Eleanor Potter.

She sometimes thought back to that moment in her own head, the play, she hadn't realized she'd thought of it that way. She'd never been taken to a play before, sometimes they aired on the television, but she'd never been in an audience. She would have expected a movie, a t.v. show, but she hadn't thought it would be a play.

But it was true, they were in intermission, and the plot would only wait so long for the second act to begin.

"No," Lily said with a voice that felt too empty, "No, we need to go back. If they need my help they can always send a letter."

Frank was looking at her more intently than he had before, the tiredness shaken from his expression, and after a moment's thought he asked, "Are you going back to Hogwarts again, as Eleanor Potter?"

She could just go back to London, go back to being Lily Riddle full time, it wasn't that large of a hassle. And it'd been enough before Hogwarts, or if not enough, it had been distracting. All the same though, she wasn't running.

"Probably, people would get upset if Eleanor Potter just disappeared for too long." Lily said to which Frank offered her a somewhat bitter smile; he always liked those sorts of comments.

Frank, she felt, had a little bit of Wizard Lenin in him after all; kept under the surface, beneath the accountant's sensibility, and the pragmatic man's lack of insistence. The fires of determination, distaste, and revolution burned in him on slow heat; never managing to extinguish themselves with time or else despair.

Perhaps, if he hadn't started working for Lily Riddle, he would have started his own vampire rebellion years ago. But then, there was no real use wondering on what ifs of some other time; they were here now, and soon enough they'd be headed back.

"Fair enough," He said and then his smile dimmed slightly, "Although, to be perfectly fair, I never saw why you felt the need to go in the first place."

She opened her mouth to answer then stopped, not quite sure how to explain it, that it hadn't been Death's suggestions or Wizard Lenin's persistence that had driven her to it. Sure those things had played a part, but they hadn't been the final push. No, it had been something far simpler and at the same time nothing anyone ever seemed to understand, that it was something that she was just supposed to do.

Eleanor Potter was supposed to go to Hogwarts.

And then she realized, even before she could answer, that it was as true now as it was then. It had been true on her eleventh birthday and it was still true on her twelfth. It would remain true for at least seven years.

Eleanor Potter was supposed to go to Hogwarts.

She was supposed to go regardless of corpses, of traumatized friends, of Dumbledores, of Snapes, of Quirrells, of whatever the school felt the need to throw at her.

Eleanor Potter had been offered a script, the role of heroine, and told that she must go to Hogwarts.

Nothing had changed, not beneath the surface, the stage was still the same regardless of the plot and changing characters. It was still the same play.

"Because Eleanor Potter is supposed to go to Hogwarts." Lily said, standing slowly, placing her hands in her pockets and feeling a grin work on her face in spite of everything.

Inexplicably, suddenly, she had the feeling that without solving anything everything had just solved itself. It was all about perspective, "Let's wrap up things here, Frank, I'll need to be getting my books."

Author's Note: Probably one or two more chapters sans Hogwarts but regardless here we are. I really debated having more Albania but at best it would have been slightly entertaining filler, so perhaps in a side fic. Speaking of side fics, if you're quota of Lily toppling governments is low for the day check out the side fic "Luck be a Lady" but I'll offer the warning that if you're sensitive to bashing you might want to avoid it. It's not really bashing, at least I wasn't aiming for that when I wrote it, but I've been told it edges it more than many readers like.

Also, on another note. Oedipussy is creating an audio recording for "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" but needs a male voice actor for Wizard Lenin, Death, and other male characters. So if you have a man voice, can sound British, and want to say some of Wizard Lenin's one-liners PM Oedipussy.

Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated as always.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.