Thanks for the awesome reviews again, mywildcharmsforyou and Jjidizzle122! Apologies for the cliffhanger, haha, but it's to set up a chapter where Lily bites off a bit more than she can chew with a certain character whose motivations won't be clear for several books. So, let's dive into the void and see another side of Hogwarts…

The unnatural wind blew Lily's hair across her face. It carried both the chill of a winter frost and the damp heat of a summer afternoon, and Lily was caught between clutching her arms to keep warm and stripping her shirt off to avoid soaking it with sweat. Her heart thumped so heavily she feared it would rip right out of her chest, and her throat clenched in fear, her breaths ragged and strained. She swallowed hard as the shades of people wandered around her, through her, down the corridor both ways, passing in and out of each other, chatting, idling, two even dueling with wands outstretched down the corridor, ghostly fighters who were anything but ghosts.

God. What is this place?

Forcing one foot in front of the other, Lily inched down the corridor, her wand in hand. Not a single one of the shades reacted to her presence. Some looked as if they could have sprung into Lily's Hogwarts and fit in, yet like in her dreams, others wore outrageous outfits and old, pointed hats, and when she drew close to them, she heard what sounded like an ancient English dialect, some language abandoned for hundreds of years. All about her Hogwarts swirled, the corridors rumbling and quivering, the ceiling opening up as the sky boiled, the clouds swirling together so violently that for a moment Lily could have sworn she'd seen them come together in the shape of a skull, something like a snake uncoiling from the mouth.

She picked up her pace as she headed down the hallway she both knew so well and didn't know at all. There has to be a way out of here. Out of this. Somewhere. She'd just wanted to find out what the shadow was up to, what it was, even, not get sucked into this.

Feeling nauseous from the world writhing around her, Lily trotted down the hall all the way to where she knew the Grand Staircase to be. It wasn't how she knew it, however: Where usually the stairs moved slowly and pondered between landings, every staircase whipped around in all directions at once all around her, connected from one floor to the next, in flight, splitting free to move, linking every landing everywhere in the chaotic kaleidoscope all around her. It was as if the entire Grand Staircase was in a superposition, all the stairs everywhere the possibly could be at any given time all at once. Ghostly people carried on up and down them as if nothing insane at all were occurring, each and every one of them – thousands, tens of thousands, more – all carrying about their business and oblivious.

Lily's brain threatened to overheat.

She grabbed her head with both hands, whimpering in confusion at the overwhelming nature of it all. Then – up there! On a landing several floors above her, something pale and sickly stuck its head out. She recognized it at once: It was the thing from all those nightmares and bad dreams, that gray-white, scaly, human-yet-not demon that had watched her like a silent sentinel as she slept. It floated just off the ground high above her, its four arms just as grotesque as she remembered them, its yellow, beady eyes arranged in the same circle around its head. Through all the shades and ghosts she could see it, the only other thing she was sure was solid and physically here – wherever "here" was.

Just as quickly as it peeked out it dashed away behind cover. Lily yearned to go after it, but as she dashed up to the stairs, she felt a sickening feeling in her stomach. The stairs were in front of her – but everywhere else as well, both solid ground and empty space phasing in and out where she planned to ascend. She drew back, afraid to go forward – and she was a long way up from the ground floor. There was no surviving that fall if the stairs wouldn't hold her.

"Don't mind the height, Ms. Potter. The stairs are nothing to fear."

She whirled around. A wizened old wizard stood straight and tall behind her, dressed in a long blue robe dotted with stars that fell to the floor. He was thin yet tall, with silver hair and a long beard that fell far past his chest. His nose was off-center just enough to be noticeable, and Lily recognized his bright blue eyes, not because she'd ever met the man, but because she'd seen him countless times in other ways – on the pages of books, in photographs in her home, even in her mind as her dad described Albus Dumbledore in his stories.

Lily took a step back, dumbfounded, her head pounding, her confusion deepening. "You – you can see me? Standing here?"

"Of course I can see you, Lily. I may have grown old, but I have yet to go blind."

"But," she stammered, words jumbled in a heap on her tongue, "you're dead. Your tomb's out there on the shores of the lake! You're in history books, and – and you can't come back from that to be here!"

Dumbledore mused, "Quite right. There's no spell that can bring the dead back to the world of the living. If I were speaking to me, then, I would have to assume I was something else."

"A ghost?"

"No, not a ghost. That's an existence very few choose to live after death, and one I could never opt for. So if I'm not alive, and I'm not dead, I must be something else. Perhaps an echo, or someone's memory of me. If you're not too overwhelmed by this place, I would suggest we go for a walk and try to figure it out ourselves."

Lily wanted to shake her head, curl up into a ball, close her eyes, and wake up back in the Hogwarts she knew. Something about Dumbledore – or whatever form of Dumbledore this was – settled her nerves. His even, gentle voice instilled just enough assuredness that she nodded, pressing her lips together and glancing up towards the landing again. The creature, demon, wraith, whatever it was, had gone.

Dumbledore followed her gaze. "I wouldn't worry so much about him. Something tells me he's just as afraid of you as you are of him. For now, at least. So while we have the time to ourselves and the company of all the busy tenants around us, let us take a walk down to the second floor."

"What is that thing?" asked Lily as she followed Dumbledore down the stairs, ghostly people all around them. Men and women in paintings hurried in and out of their picture frames, then back in before leaving once more. "And what is this place? Is this Hogwarts?"

"I was going to ask you that," Dumbledore said as he led her down to the second floor landing. Peeves flew overhead, pelting shades with water balloons, the droplets passing right through Lily. Peeves also flew up the Grand Staircase, holding his gut with laughter, while also flying down to the second floor landing, careening across the ground floor, and heading in a thousand different directions everywhere. "I can name the creature you saw. It is a phantasm, a dark creature that preys upon thoughts. They're loosely related to Dementors, foul creatures in their own right, and leave behind not sadness and despair but fear and self-doubt. Unlike Dementors, they can be….perhaps tamed is the right word?"

Lily felt a surge of dread. "Tamed? So someone's using that thing to…to run around Hogwarts making people afraid?"

"Maybe. A wizard willing to go to the trouble of planting that in Hogwarts might have other uses in mind, however," Dumbledore said as they walked down a corridor on the third floor. "There is a lot to see here, of course."

Gears turned in Lily's head. "Is it a watcher, then? Is it looking for something?"

"A hard to tell matter, but I wouldn't rule out that possibility."

Dumbledore led her down a dark hallway, this one throbbing much more than the one she'd first stepped into, the roof gaping open and revealing the hellish sky before slamming shut and warping together. Figures continued to fly by, all the way to and through a large gargoyle at the end of the corridor that jumped in and out of its stance.

"So what is this?" Lily said, her voice still shaky. "Is this some sort of dream Hogwarts? One where that creature – phantasm – isn't a shadow any longer?"

"What would your eyes tell you?" Dumbledore asked her.

She shook her head, trying to clear it, only for the jumbled chaos around her to fill it up in a blink of an eye again. "It's like everything that's ever happened in Hogwarts is happening all at once, and…and over and over again. It's like a library with the entire catalog on one page."

Dumbledore smiled. "A good observation. I myself might even categorize it as…jumping into the mind of the castle itself, seeing its memories all unfold around us. If we could use Legilimancy on stone and wood, I wonder if we might not see something like this. An unfolding of what Hogwarts can remember, from its construction all the way up to a single point of time – when you stepped in here. As a matter of fact, that's why I brought you here to my office."

"Your office?"

The gargoyle leapt aside as they reached the end of the corridor, jumping back into place through Lily and making her squirm out of discomfort. She didn't feel a thing, but the notion of having a stone gargoyle phasing right through her very real body was all wrong.

"It was my office, at least," said Dumbledore, leading her up stone steps to a grand, circular room. "I suppose it still is my office if we're viewing Hogwarts like this. It just so happens to be every Headmaster's office, then."

Pictures jumped onto the walls and fell off again only to return, pictures of old wizards and witches, one of them Dumbledore himself, although his picture only stayed up for a fraction of a second before leaving for a full minute. Everything seemed to fill the room: Shiny metal magical gadgets Lily couldn't place, a Pensieve, something she recognized from her reading, photographs, trinkets, mementos, even a phoenix growing and dying and rebirthing in flame in a matter of seconds.

A shade of Headmaster Maribor pounded on the table in front of Lily, shades of Dumbledore and a dozen other wizards and witches passing right on through him.

Dumbledore squinted at the people. "IF you're right about this being a giant library, Lily, then perhaps…we can check out a single book?"

He clapped his hands, and suddenly everything in the room stopped moving – all but for two shades in particular. Before Lily could ask him how he'd done that, she stared at the two and gasped. One was Dumbledore, identical to the man – echo, memory – next to her, except for his ghostly nature. The other was a teenage boy with messy brown hair, glasses, and green eyes that were only too familiar. Harry Potter, student.

Dumbledore snapped his fingers, and the ghostly Dumbledore shifted. "Magic," he said to the ghostly Harry, "especially dark magic…" Harry reached out and touched a ring on the desk, recoiling as he did so. "…leaves traces."

"I was referring to instruments of Voldemort when I spoke to your father then," Lily's Dumbledore said, "but traces aren't limited to dark magic. At a place like Hogwarts, someone looking could find some very rich traces, indeed."

Lily said nothing. She barely heard him: Instead she watched Harry, Harry the boy, not a full-grown Auror and father but nothing more than a student like her. All of this felt unnatural, but she wanted to stay, wanted to hear him say something, as if he was with her here in this strange, bizarre Hogwarts she'd entered.

Dumbledore clapped his hands, and chaos resumed. "I can see this is making you uncomfortable, Lily."

"Not the only thing," she said, staring at the space crowded full of shades now. "I don't get it, though. Is that phantasm looking for traces of magic in Hogwarts? The entire thing is magic. It would have to comb through more than a thousand years."

"Fortunate that it seems to have all the time in the world at its fingertips," Dumbledore said, looking around wistfully. "Perhaps you'd be more comfortable with someone familiar instead of me, Lily?"

She glanced at him, confused again. "Sir?"

"I believe Albus Dumbledore would have been fine with 'professor.' At any rate, maybe thinking this over with someone you call a friend would be better?"

Lily stepped back, feeling for her wand again. That crypticism didn't sound like something the Albus Dumbledore she'd read and heard about would say. He clapped his hands once over his head and disappeared in a burst of smoke and white light. Lily caught her breath, looking around for where he'd went, when someone scooted out from under the Headmaster's desk. It wasn't the Headmaster, though – it was Natalie.

"This better?" Natalie chirped, her arms akimbo and her lips turned up in a bright smile. Her scarring was gone, her skin smooth and natural again like it had been during her first two months at Hogwarts. "I think Dumbledore was a little more fun from that wise, kind old man angle, but this can be fun, too. Playing the whole free spirit angle."

Lily whipped out her wand and aimed it at her 'friend.' "You're not Natalie."

"Well obviously, I wasn't Albus Dumbledore, either."

"Who are you?"

Natalie sighed and rolled her eyes. "Gosh, Lily. You have to be so serious all the time. Fine, fine. We've entered the no fun zone. Gimme a sec."

Like Dumbledore had done, Natalie clapped her hands and disappeared in a whoosh of light. Lily kept her wand raised, expecting someone dangerous to come charging at her. She missed on the charging part, but she had no doubt the man who replaced Natalie was dangerous in some fashion.

The no-name man from the train appeared in a flash of white smoke and reclined in the Headmaster's chair, his feet up on the desk. Clad in the same scarlet jerkin from the first mysterious time Lily had seen him, he tossed a whole carrot up and down in one hand, his bored gray eyes watching it tumble end-over-end through the air.

"Don't like the theater, Lily?" he asked, catching the carrot and biting off the very tip of it. "You read all those books for fun, I'd have thought you'd appreciate a little drama."

Lily didn't lower her wand. "You! Why did you bring me here? What do you want?"

"You mad, girl?" the man said. "I didn't bring you anywhere. If I've got it right, you brought yourself here. As for what I want – I'm not a fan of traditional snacks like sweets or crackers. More partial to vegetables and healthy fare. Or wine, I'm a huge fan of wine. I've had a taste for Argentine reds as of late. Anyway, I'd like to eat this."

"Then tell me what this place is. A straight answer."

He shook his head and clicked his tongue. "I'm not a fan of demands. Besides, do you really think your wand's going to do anything to me? Summoning a train car out of nowhere on the Hogwarts Express is perfectly normal in your book, but this is a step too far?"

He held up the carrot length-wise. "You ever see a timeline? Well, duh, of course you have. Importantly, it's a line. That's how we perceive time. A beginning and an end, the beginning a long, long time ago, the end being the exact present. What if we just turned the line?" He rotated the carrot until it lined up straight away from Lily, looking like a great orange circle now. "Well, look at it that way, and it doesn't look anything like a line at all. Fact, it looks like all the time is in one dot. Wonder what would happen if you did that to a certain period of time, or a certain place. Like, oh just for fun, let's say…Hogwarts School between its inception and the present?"

"So what do you really want? Why make this?"

"Me? I didn't make this. I'm a traveler, a tourist. I just popped in here. Like you. That's not my phantasm up in the upper corridors, thinking over how best to either kill your or punt you from here as it scrambles to cover up its mistake of letting you in in the first place. I just showed up for fun."

Lily didn't ask how he had gotten in here. She didn't even want to know. The less time she spent with this creepy man, the better – but unfortunately, he was the only other one in here who even realized she was there, not to mention having a lot more knowledge about this place than she had.

Crunch. "You even listening at the part with your dad and Dumbly?" he asked. "The whole magic leaves traces part? Well, if someone, I don't know, was interested in acquiring knowledge and knowing more magic than anyone else on the face of this planet, Hogwarts might not be a bad place to look. Whatever kind of man would that be? Surely you've never had a run-in with a man who had an object that could manipulate time, have you? Hm."

A jet of dread washed through Lily's veins. "You're saying Sion – or his mentor character, Genseric – did this? They're searching for something, or trying to learn something at Hogwarts?"

"There, she's got a brain after all, folks!" the man threw up his hands and looked around at his ghostly audience. "No applause. They must not like your performance."

"So we're…we're pulled out of time, then? Or in some version of Hogwarts that's like that, one where we can see everything but can't do anything?" Lily summarized, still trying to wrap her head around it all. "And…and Sion and Genseric are…are spying? Or searching? For a trace of magic that…that…wait, go back. They're spying or searching history or memories in Hogwarts in here with that phantasm as the actual spy, but how can they even do this in the first place? Hogwarts has all sorts of magical defenses."

The man looked amused. "Now she's getting to the good stuff. Why don't you tell me how the phantasm got in? A shadowy but real beast that's more like sand and shadow than creature out in the normal world, hm."

"Well, if it can come in through here – "

"Please, girl. This isn't an alternate universe. That thing's a real creature, not a dream. It exists in the real world. We're still in the space of Hogwarts, even if we're not in the time of Hogwarts. Better yet, tell me what's going to happen with the phantasm after its masters find what they're looking for."

"I don't know! What are they looking for?"

"Well, I thought she had a brain, folks. Disappearances around Durmstrang, an attack near Godric's Hollow – where your grandparents are buried, and a town that's probably got its fair share of powerful traces of magic after Voldemort came through - and you can't come up with a measly guess? Don't be boring, Lily."

She harrumphed. If this man knew anything, and she expected he did, he certainly wasn't giving it up. "I don't know! I'm not going to find out sitting in here with no place to start! Why can't you help me?"

The man lowered his face and stopped eating. "You want me to help you? Really?"

Lily froze. Something about that seemed far too sinister for her liking.

"Come up with a decent name to call me yet?" the man said, watching as ghostly Dumbledore paced around the desk. "I've got one if you're being boring today. How about Bacchus? Roman god of wine and festivals and fertility and revelry. Seems like my kind of fellow. Call me that. Oh, and you might want to figure out a way out of here. Playing Dumbledore, I told you the phantasm was afraid of you for the time. Seems like it's changed its tune. It's heading down the corridor this way."

"What?" Lily gasped. She spun around, seeing nothing but the back wall of the office. How does he know these things? "How do you know? Whoever you really are?"

He bit off another bite of carrot and rolled his eyes. "Honestly, that's your question? And I'm just a man who happens to know some magic. What, you think I'm some sort of higher being? This isn't a fantasy book."

"How do I fight that thing?"

"I don't know, how?"

"Fine! How do I get out of here?"

"And go where?" the man – Bacchus – said. "Are you asking for my help?"

"Back to Hogwarts! My Hogwarts! The one I know!"

"The one you know? That could be a lot of places. You officially asking me to help you out of this, or not? I didn't get you into this, and I don't do many favors, Lily. I consider myself a trader as well as a traveler. When I give a service, someone gives one back to me. I told you on the train I like fair business."

She didn't have time to think on what that meant. The phantasm burst into the office, even ghastlier up close. Its ring of eyes bore into Lily's, and it snarled with a dry, raspy growl, its four arms outstretched wide as if to engulf her.

"Flipendo!" Lily cried, swiping her wand at the creature. Her spell hit it in the head, knocking it back into the quivering wall, but only making it angrier. "Incendio! Yes, help me, dammit!"

Bacchus snapped his fingers. The phantasm lunged at Lily but stopped, smashing into an invisible wall, snarling and shoving against it as it tried in vain to attack her. Lily stepped away as far as she could, hugging the office's rear wall as it bounced and writhed behind her.

"Send me back to Hogwarts, please," Lily panted, terrified of the beast just a few feet away that thrashed in its attempts to come after here. "Get me out of this place."

Bacchus held up a hand, then balled it into a fist and raised his index finger. "We're dealing now, Ms. Potter. You agreed, and that's one." He lifted a second finger and upon raising a third, added, "When it gets to three, and it will, then we'll meet somewhere picturesque, and you'll agree to three of my favors. Fair is fair."

"I won't ask you for anything else," Lily hissed at him. "I just want to get out of here."

"Of course you won't. You're thirteen, you know everything. I should be asking you for help."

The man pulled open a drawer in the Headmaster's desk and pulled out a wand. He aimed at nowhere in particular and swung it in a wide arc, shooting green fire out of the tip until he completed a ring. It flashed once, bright, its center filling with a grayish void as strands of magical energy coursed out from the center towards the ring's edges. Behind the invisible wall, the phantasm shrieked and slammed its arms against solid air, struggling to get at Lily.

Bacchus beckoned her in. "The Hogwarts you know, correct?"

Lily scowled at him. "Yes."

"In you go then. Oh, and as a freebie, if you decide to come back in here again, just kill that damn phantasm and set its remains on fire and you'll have an easy way back. That thing's supporting this whole screwed-up nether world. Knowing you, you're going to come back. Until next time."

Feeling uneasy about the way the man smiled at her, Lily shot one last look at the screaming phantasm and stepped into the portal.

Whoosh!

She fell on hard, wet cobblestone. It was dark, nearly pitch black except for the glow of a dim white light far behind her down a narrow, tall, stone-walled passage. She thought she heard whistling, but she knew she heard something else – a dull, low, groaning noise, much closer and nearby. Something slithered down the passage in front of her, and when Lily lit her wand, she spotted a black tentacle sliding past an intersection.

Her head started to hurt. I suppose I do know this part of Hogwarts. He didn't lie.

"Shite," Lily swore, pulling her wand.