In which Lily becomes older than Death, does a spot of time travel, and comes to terms with what she must.
And then, just like that, Lily was in a train station.
There had been no pain, it was too quick for that, too well-aimed. Although his hands had been shaking, they had not missed, and she imagined he'd either torn her head from her neck or split her torso in half.
It didn't matter now.
Slowly, her feet carried her over to the nearest stone bench facing the train, and she sat down.
She stared at it and—it was the same as ever.
The same as it had been when she was only five years old, and this world was so very new to her.
It had never changed, even the way the light glinted off it had never changed, and it was still waiting for a passenger.
"Lily," the words were distant, she could barely hear them even though they sounded as if they didn't come from too far away. A second or two later, and there was the sound of someone sitting next to her, "Lily, what happened?"
"Nothing," Lily said quietly.
"Nothing?" he asked, "It doesn't look like—"
"Nothing," Lily repeated, "I just—realized a few things about myself and the world."
He put a hand on her shoulder, clearly meaning for it to be comforting, but in this moment, Lily felt—as if she were having an out of body experience.
And why shouldn't she?
Wasn't she having one?
Her body, the body she had—stolen, borrowed, butchered—was lying somewhere else. It had been ripped in half thanks to her own carelessness, her arrogance and hubris, her unwavering faith that she deserved to be somebody.
Before he could ask anything more, still staring sightlessly ahead at the Hogwarts Express, she asked, "Why did you take the train?"
His hand tightened involuntarily on her shoulder, and took him quite a while to ask, "Why would you ask me that?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she thought of a cave, and of Neville Longbottom.
Why he'd done what he did—she didn't know. She supposed she couldn't know, couldn't fathom it, because the Neville she'd once known would never have done that. But—he'd changed when she wasn't looking, perhaps changed because she wasn't looking, as all things seemed to be unwittingly directed by her whims.
Maybe he'd realized she'd once been on Voldemort's side, that she'd aided in his resurrection, that she'd had something very important to do with Tom Riddle's past. Maybe he still thought she opened the Chamber of Secrets.
Maybe—he knew she'd once been a horcrux, or maybe he guessed at it.
Or maybe he'd just decided to kill her for next to no reason at all.
For whatever reason, he'd decided the world was a better place without her in it, and he had been right.
Maybe that was all that mattered.
"Lily," Death forcibly turned her towards him, "Look at me, Lily, whatever happened—this isn't the end. This can't be the end. Whatever happened, it's alright, it will get better—I promise!"
She gave him a tired smile, "I know."
"It'll get better for me, I know," she repeated, placing her hands on top of his, "But this isn't about me, it's about everyone else."
"What are you talking about?"
"I am the Death of this universe, you once said," Lily said, "I am destruction incarnate, the end of all things. I am the unraveling of the world and everything good inside it. And any attempt to be anything else—where does it get us?"
If she went back, she'd be standing inside that cave, staring across at Neville, and he'd look back at her in horror. Perhaps he'd try again, or perhaps in despair, he'd lose hope and destroy himself.
She could obliviate him, unmake him, and turn him into something she found more palatable but then he was only what she wanted him to be.
And if she killed him in turn then he'd only be dead. Like so many others who had made the mistake of crossing her path.
And if she didn't go back—
Then Wizard Lenin had his world and his revolution, Neville had his quest to hunt down horcruxes that didn't exist, Dumbledore died knowing he had left things to his successors, Hindenburg had Sirius Black's legacy and wealth, everyone had everything they ever wanted.
They could make a mess of it but at least it was their mess to make.
At least they moved only by their own gravity.
And all she had to do was disappear.
"Maybe, the reason I had such a hard time picturing what I was going to do next, what I was supposed to be when I grew up was because—I wasn't supposed to grow up," Lily said, a small smile on her lips as the pieces came together.
"Maybe I've just been fooling myself this whole time," Lily concluded, "And maybe the world is a better place without me in it. Maybe the dead are supposed to stay dead."
"Lily—" he started again, but she stood and without waiting for him started to walk.
He tugged her back before she could make it to the step, "What are you doing?!"
"I'm taking the train," she said, "It's high time I did."
"No, Lily, if you take the train—you don't come back!" he said, motioning towards it, "I have never, Lily, never gone back after I took it!"
"Good," she said simply, "Then I can't change my mind."
Then there'd be no moment of weakness, no moment where she asked herself if maybe she was wrong, maybe she could live unobtrusively and be as human as the rest of them. Maybe, if she just made herself small enough, there wouldn't be any butterfly effects.
And then she would never see Lenin again, never any Tom Riddle she had ever known, and the world would be a better place for it.
If she took it, she could never look back, and that was a good thing.
But Death didn't seem to realize that, "Lily! I—don't give up, please, I'm begging you."
"It's not giving up," she said, "It's—"
She paused, tried to think of the phrase, but nothing was coming to her.
Only that it felt like, for perhaps the first time in her life, she was clear sighted and doing the right thing. She felt as if she could see into the future, could see all the destruction, chaos, and calamity that would follow her were she to stay where she was.
As if she were a black hole where everyone around her was inevitably pulled towards her event horizon.
"Stop and think about what you're doing," Death said, "Lily you're—you're so young. You won't graduate Hogwarts for years. Whatever Tom Riddle is doing doesn't matter, he's temporary, they're all temporary. You'll get past this and—if there's anyone the world's better off without then it's him."
He—looked so human.
He sometimes did, he sometimes wanted to, but she didn't think she'd ever seen him look so desperately human. And all at once she wondered if he wasn't—somehow living vicariously through her. Oh, not in a bad way, not in a harmful way, but if Lily could make it out there in her borrowed world, then maybe he could have as well.
If she could play at being human, then maybe there was a way he could have too.
Maybe he didn't have to have taken the train.
And for all he'd been the one to tell her she wasn't human, for all that he'd told her that he had realized he wasn't human, that he'd never been human—
Some part of him must still not know, or still not want to know, and it had put its faith in her.
"Please," he said, "Stay. Leave England if you have to, leave the United Kingdom, but don't give up on the world."
"Give up on it?" Lily asked, "Death, I'm saving it. For the first time in my existence I'm—they don't need me."
Not only did they not want her, not need her, but her very presence was a detriment to them.
"I have to go," she concluded, she pulled herself out of his grasp gently, held his hands in hers and said, "You can come with me, if you like."
He blinked at her, stunned, "What?"
"I—I am leaving, with or without your approval, but—you could come with me. You could take the train too," Lily said, staring him in the eye, not daring to look away.
For a moment he just looked stunned, as if he didn't quite understand her, then he looked—it was as if he couldn't decide whether to be pitying or else terrified.
"Of course, you don't have to," Lily said, "I would understand."
"No," he quickly said, "No, Lily, if you're going—I'll come, of course I'll come, don't ever doubt it. I will—always be there for you, no matter what happens."
"I just think you don't have to go," he finished quietly, hands tightening around hers.
She said nothing for a moment, just stood there with his hands in hers, and let herself believe for a moment that that might be true. That she and Tom Riddle could coexist in the same universe and—hadn't that been in the prophecy?
That neither could live while the other survived?
She hadn't understood that line, how it could apply to her, Neville, or Tom Riddle. After all, they were all living, weren't they?
Funny, now it started to make sense.
None of them could truly live in a world Lily inhabited, not as they were meant to, with their free will uninhibited and their destinies their own.
Yes, that must have been what it meant.
She then realized— "Wait."
"Wait?" Death looked hopeful, a bright spark in his eyes, a smile on his lips.
"I can't leave yet," Lily said, quickly explaining, "I—Lily Riddle was seen in 1945."
Not only that but—but there'd been something in the Gaunt house for Dumbledore to find, something that had blown off his hand. Tom Riddle, once, had learned how to create a time machine, one far more powerful than anything the ministry could make. Someone had set up that pedestal on the lake with a potion that defied Lily's very will inside of it.
"I'll have to make a detour," Lily said with a sigh, her eyes closed.
Death jumped on it, "A—no, stay in 1945, no one will even notice. Then there's no Voldemort, you can let Tom Riddle live however he likes, and you don't have to—"
Lily just gave him a look and the words died on his lips. He looked so sad, so terribly sad, and so understanding. Because once, in some other world, he had also decided to take the train.
So, that's what this was.
"I'll be back as soon as I can," Lily said, standing on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. It was surprisingly warm, his skin, despite how pale it looked.
And then she was standing in the cave.
But it wasn't quite the cave she had just been in. Neville was gone, as was Rabbit, and the pedestal in the center of the island. Instead, the cave was exactly the same as it had looked in the summer of 1937, before Tom had gone to Hogwarts, and back when Lily had thought her duty was to return to the future.
Maybe she should have left then, let Tom board the train and then board the other train herself, but—
She supposed then she wouldn't have come to 1945, and then there'd be a paradox. So, maybe it was better that she'd given it a try for a few months.
She walked towards the center of the island and couldn't help but smile down at where the pedestal would be.
It hadn't been Wizard Lenin's style, Tom Riddle's, at all, had it?
It'd been so plain, the whole cave had been plain, and the silver cup—he would have carved snakes down the side, she was sure. The whole place would have been crawling with snakes or zombies or something.
It would have been terrible.
She laughed, of course it had been her, she should have known.
And Neville—hadn't even been able to tell the difference.
For all that he'd claimed to know Tom Riddle so well.
"He wouldn't make a horcrux out of an armchair," Lily said mockingly to herself, repeating Neville's words spoken with such authority.
Right.
With a wave of her hand the pedestal came into being, marble white, with a concave bowl at the top.
It looked so innocuous, didn't it? Nothing that would give her so much trouble. But—then she supposed troublesome things in her life tended to look innocuous. It was why she kept running into them.
There'd been something inside it, something Neville had found. It'd been silver and glinting, maybe jewelry of some kind, and—she supposed it didn't matter what it was at the end of the day.
Whether Neville had decided it was a horcrux or not—it didn't matter, she would never see his reaction. Which meant that it could go either way.
Out of thin air she created a glinting, silver, necklace. Nothing too expensive or grand looking, little more than a silver chain with a pendant on the end. Frowning down at it, she transformed the pedant into a small, curled snake.
There, that looked like something Tom Riddle might buy a sweetheart.
"Of course, I suppose he never gave anything to me," she mused to herself with a fond smile, even Trotsky—just a pile of false memories, a trip to a brothel, and then a subpar date.
What a Casanova that Tom Riddle was.
And then, the liquid.
She looked down at it with a frown. It'd been so dark that—she hadn't seen what color it was. And the taste—metallic and salty.
"Oh," Lily said dully as she realized what would do the trick, what, of course, would know to defy her to the very end.
"Oh, I am so stupid," she said to herself, how—how had she not recognized it.
Lily placed her pale arm over the bowl and cut it. She watched as the blood poured inside, covering the necklace completely, and felt—the cheap semblance of humanity pouring out of her with it. That blood, it was all for show, wasn't it? She didn't need it, whatever she was had existed long before flesh and blood and—
And all those times she'd gone back and forth between life and death, had that only been to reassure herself that she was a living breathing thing at all? Nothing more than a cheap trick she'd played on herself, to convince herself she could do mortal things like live or die? Then she could say to herself, "Ah, see, but I'm mostly human! I just have a few extra god-like abilities up my sleeve here."
When the bowl was full, she stepped back. She willed the bleeding to stop, and just looked at it.
Exactly as she'd left it.
And it'd remain that way until December 1993.
The only thing that would change, in fifty years, was that there was soon going to be a corpse beneath it, perhaps buried in the water.
There was nothing more for her to do here.
She teleported to the Little Hangleton, right outside Riddle manor. It was no longer dilapidated, or rather, it wasn't dilapidated yet. It would be, soon, inside there was no hint of life. Tom Riddle had already come and gone and with him the murder of his entire family.
And up on the hill, the Gaunt shack would be empty, as Morfin was arrested for a crime he hadn't committed.
She walked up the hill and into the shack. The snakes were no longer there, without a parselmouth to draw them in they'd long since left the place. But then, it wasn't a building fit for anyone to live in.
Stepping inside, it—matched her memories.
So far as she knew, Tom Riddle had only ever been inside once, and yet Trotsky had etched every detail perfectly into Morgan Gaunt's memories. Everything was exactly where he'd left it, every corner and every dust mote. Everything that was wrong—had come from her own memories, as the Dursleys and Morfin had bled together.
A horcrux for Albus Dumbledore to find—
Nothing came to mind. Nothing that any Tom Riddle would store in this place, certainly.
She wandered into what remained of the kitchen. There was a table, a few chairs, but they were in poor repair and rotted through. If she sat in them, she was sure they'd break under her.
"Maybe the time machine first," she said to herself. She reached into the ether and pulled out her notes, the notes of how to build a time machine that Wizard Lenin had once relayed to her. There were all the diagrams, all the painstaking ways in which to put it together—
She wondered if the young Tom Riddle would use it. He hadn't made it sound like he did, he'd sounded terrified of it—maybe he'd tried once, and it'd been an utter disaster.
She supposed it didn't matter now, whatever had happened—that was the trouble with time travel, it'd already happened.
Blowing on it, she caused the paper to disappear. Tom Riddle would find it in between his books at school, unnoticed and innocuous, a mysterious out of place note that shouldn't be there. He'd ignore it for a while and then would become curious, by the time he reached Lily—he'd take it seriously.
Which left only a horcrux and—
And Frank.
"Oh, oh Jesus Christ," Lily said with a sudden laugh, "I never come back!"
This vacation in 1945, this decades long vacation from which a younger Lily had unwittingly returned—she never came back from it at all. Frank didn't know it, the young Lily didn't even know it, but this was it.
This was—when Ellie Potter died in the future, that would be it, the end, and there would be no more Lily Riddle.
And Frank had absolutely no idea.
"Well," Lily said to herself, "Well, that's—just perfect, actually, it's just perfect."
Why go out with a bang or with a whimper when you could exit without anyone realizing at all?
It was the polite thing to do.
"Alright, come on Lily, horcrux. Evil evil horcrux that gives Dumbledore hand cancer," she said to herself.
Where to put it?
"Oh, what does it even matter?" Lily asked herself, "He'll definitely find it."
Albus Dumbledore came here and he found something, so, with that logic, he definitely found whatever it was. So, it didn't matter what it was or where she put it or anything like that because it was already over and done with.
She lifted one of the floorboards and paused.
There'd been a ring on his finger, a silver ring she hadn't seen there before.
"Well, I guess that decides it," Lily said to herself, and replicated the ring she'd only ever seen at a distance.
She dropped it beneath the floorboards where, some fifty years later, Dumbledore would be sure to find it and blow his bloody hand off.
Great day to be Dumbledore, she was sure.
Well, that about covered it, didn't it?
She'd go see Frank, go make some ruckus about the GDP and Grindelwald, and then—
Then that was it.
It was over.
Just like that.
For a moment, standing there, she asked herself if there was anything else she wanted to do. If there was any last thing she had to do before she left. But—
If she went to see Tom Riddle, even from a distance, then he might catch sight of her. And to her knowledge—she didn't believe he'd ever seen her in 1945. And—and in the future, she had promised that he wouldn't see her again, and she had meant it.
How callous would it be if she went behind his back with a Tom Riddle who couldn't possibly know any better.
No, she didn't need to see him.
She trusted that he'd go on, that he'd do everything it was he wanted to do. Yes, she'd trust him to do that much, and certainly to do it without her watching.
"Then that's the end," she said to herself, "I guess that's it."
And some weeks later, after closing up shop, a girl who had once been Ellie Potter left the world entirely, and in a place between life and death, she boarded a train.
Author's Note: Thanks to Vinelle for betaing the chapter. Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter