A/N: I had fun writing this one. Warning for profanity.

Interlude 2: Eliza Fenton

"Eliza."

She whirled around, fear jolting her heart. Who was -

Oh. It was her stupid grandfather.

He wore a meek, sad expression on his face, hovering a foot in the air, some papers collected in his hands. He held them out in front of him, almost as if to ward her off. "I brought you, your present," he said, hesitantly, looking at her hopefully.

She stared at him.

"And you couldn't knock?" she asked incredulously. She pursed her lips, then took a calming breath. Peace, Eliza, she told herself. "What are you doing here?" she asked, almost congenially.

Her grandfather looked away. "I, uh…" He gulped, and almost looked close to tears.

"Why don't you sit down," Eliza said, standing up to pull over a chair from her desk.

They were in her bedroom, which made her nerves frayed and predisposed her to a Pissed Off mood. Unfortunately, her mother had cultivated good manners in her, and so she couldn't exactly let it show when her grandfather was looking so weepy.

He gratefully accepted the chair, settling into it and gravity immediately, and subconsciously collected his papers into his lap. Eliza propped herself on the edge of her bed, the ball of her foot set on one knee, her arms crossed.

She waited.

"Well?" she demanded.

Mother hadn't been so successful in teaching Eliza patience.

Grandfather grimaced. "I, uh, I came to give your present a couple of days early, and…"

A brief flash of pain, old aching familiar pain, before Eliza stomped it down and replaced it with cold, righteous anger. "Because you can't be there for the actual day?" she snapped.

He was staring at her in concern. Obviously, she had made her feelings too clear.

"Eliza? Are you alright?"

She seethed at the question. Was she alright? What kind of question was that?

No, she was not alright. She was not alright when he had left them when she was five. She was not alright when she had learned how Father had died. She was not alright when Grandmother freaking died a year ago and this lout didn't even stay after the funeral to tell them he cared.

But she kept it all bottled in.

"I'm fine, Grandfather," she smiled. "I understand that you have plans, being busy and all. That you can never spare any time for your family. That you have oh so many responsibilities and duties and it just keeps you away from us. It's perfectly fine."

She gave her words a moment's thought, and realized that maybe she hadn't been entirely circumspect with her anger. To cover it, she made her smile grow brighter, more deadly. "So what are you doing here?" she asked him, very politely. "If you can't make it to my actual birthday."

Grandfather's face had turned pale as she spoke, like a ghost. Ha. He was always pale like that, come to think of it. Maybe it had something to do with his ice powers. Or maybe it had something to do with why her skin always sunburned when she was outside for ten minutes. Damn genetics.

She hated genetics.

"U-um, Eliza - I really, really wanted to come to your birthday, but something really bad came up. I have to -" He paused, looking at her suspiciously for a moment, but she made no comment, even though her vocal cords burned to. "I have to, help some people. And… and the timeline got pretty tight. So, I," there was actually a lump in his throat, "I'm going to have to die tomorrow, Eliza. For real. I mean, maybe not for real - I'll still exist - but then I'll be a full ghost, and then I really will be gone."

Suddenly her grandfather was speaking, and speaking, and it just wouldn't stop.

"I wanted to come, because, it was our last chance, you know, while I'm still human. I mean, of course, I'll still visit when I'm a ghost, but it'll be different, and I don't know how you'll react. Clockwork said… I mean, nevermind. I'm really bad at this. I..." He kept rambling on, and on, about how things in the Ghost Zone had gotten really bad and that he really had no choice anymore, and he kept apologizing and apologizing and apologizing. It all became a murky haze, until she heard, "Eliza - are you - are you okay?"

"You're going to die," she breathed, unable to comprehend, "tomorrow."

Her stomach dropped.

"Tomorrow," she repeated.

What the hell?

How does this even happen?

I'm just sitting on my bed, taking life like normal, drawing some random stuff, then my grandfather pops in, and yeah, tells me he's going to die -

- and god I've only ever hated him for my entire life.

"You bloody twat," she said incredulously to herself. "Bastard. Shithead. Fucker."

There were a couple of more creative curses she could say, but she politely restrained herself.

Grandfather shifted very uncomfortably, then his face collapsed into self-recrimination. "I know. I'm terrible. I shouldn't have let this happen."

"You can't help dying, bloody… bloody git. What the hell led up to this anyway? Some ghost you pissed off is coming after you and forced you into some grand Duel to the Death shite set up?"

Then Grandfather spewed out the most unbelievable shit-ass story she had ever heard. Apparently, he was the Ghost King all along, since before she was born. Apparently, some crazy ghost named Bellatrix Lestrange had been terrorizing the Zone. Apparently, he needed to nobly sacrifice himself so that he could rally the support of the Ghost Zone and gain enough power to fight Lestrange.

"So you're deliberately dying, you crazy fuck?"

She shook her head in disbelief.

"No. You finally tell me something, and then it turns out you're going to deliberately kill yourself the next day. That's not happening."

Grandfather gave her a wry, humorless smile.

"If it helps, I'm not fully dying. I'm… I'm only becoming a ghost. Fully."

She shook her head again.

"Nuh-uh. Not happening."

If she hadn't already crossed her arms, she would cross them again.

"Eliza…" Grandfather began tentatively reaching an arm out, before he seemed to remember the papers on his lap. "Well, I, brought you a present, if it might help. I'll still… be… existing, but I thought you might want to hear a little about my past. When I first went to Hogwarts."

"I don't want your stupid present," she muttered, distressed. "Grandfather, you can't tell me you're going to just… accept this." She looked up at him, eyes pleading. "There has to be another way. You're the… the Ghost King, for Merlin's sake. Can't you just, I dunno, send some other people after her?"

Grandfather grimaced. "I already have been, Eliza. I have to act. I've been complacent for too long already."

"But -"

"It's me being the Ghost King that makes me have to do this," he interrupted, raising a hand to calm her. "I have to do it."

"Then abdicate," she shot back.

Again, a grimace.

"I'd like to," he said. "Really, I would. But…"

"But what?" she asked, feeling snarky. "Another secret? It can't be worth your life."

"It would be worth my life," Grandfather said softly, suddenly meeting her eyes. "And I'm not sure it'd only be my human one."

She stared at him in shock.

"What?"

He looked away.

"Goddamn it, stop avoiding the question. What do you mean? Abdicating would cost you your life?"

"It's not only that," Grandfather said, still not looking at her. "It's the people that I'm protecting. Especially now. With Lestrange out there…"

"Forget that. Why would abdicating cost your life? Did you swear, what, an Unbreakable Vow or something?"

There was a spark of… something in his eyes.

"Merlin's bloody bollocks. You actually swore an Unbreakable Vow to be King of the Ghost Zone." A thought occurred to her. "To whom?"

He only shook his head. "Someone long gone."

"So they're dead," she said, her gears spinning, feeling a seed of hope bloom in her chest. "So what if the Vow's not valid anymore?"

"It doesn't work that way, granddaughter," he said, softly.

"Well…" She pursed her lips, eyebrows drawing together. "Well if you're going to die tomorrow anyway, why not try it out then? Say 'I abdicate.' If you're human, there's a chance, right?" A horrible image popped into her head. "I mean, the alternative is being the Ghost King for an eternity, right? That… That doesn't sound..."

She stared at him, her grandfather who could scarcely look her in the eyes half the time, imagining him on a throne, ordering other people around, taking on the weight of the world. Of managing politics, of managing people, of managing ghosts, forever cursed to manage.

Merlin's bloody bollocks, it sounded awful.

She then thought about her own words. She had been so against him accepting death, ending his humanity, and now she was proposing for him to risk losing it all? Just so that he could come and actually live with them again? Wasn't that awful, too?

"It's too risky," Grandfather said, as if in response to her thoughts. Then he continued, "If I were to do that… If Lestrange is out there and I did die, permanently, then who would stop her? Not only the Ghost Zone would be in chaos, but the human zone too. She would wreck havoc." He grimaced thinking of it.

She stared at him, flabbergasted. Again.

"I wish you cared less about other people," she said, barely hearing herself speak.

His eyes widened, and he suddenly leapt across the room, papers scattering, and clamped a hand over her mouth. Loudly, he yelled, "She didn't mean it!"

There was a long silence where she stared up at him, very close, utterly bewildered.

Eventually, he sheepishly retracted his hand and began gathering his papers from the floor.

"What…"

"There's a ghost," he explained, as he grabbed another sheet, flipped it over as if to inspect it for something, then added it to the rapidly growing pile in his hands. "She grants wishes. That… would have been a bad one. We're lucky she wasn't around."

"... Right. I'll… stop myself from wishing, I guess."

Grandfather frowned. "Only aloud," he said firmly. "And only if you say the words 'I wish'. Otherwise, wishing is a perfectly good thing to do." He smiled, suddenly looking cheery as he grabbed the last sheet of paper.

"... Right."

He was going to die tomorrow, and he was acting like this?

He finished straightening his pile of paper, then promptly deposited it on her lap. "This is my present," he said, finally meeting her eyes. "This is what I wanted to bring you. It's my story. Of my first year at Hogwarts."

She actually gaped at him, then looked back at the pile, and nodded. "Okay."

A present.

At a time like this.

She got that it was her birthday in two days, but what the heck. She only vaguely remembered him mentioning it when he came in. It was a far-off dream. Before she knew he was going to die.

"I want you to read it." He looked embarrassed. "So that you know more about me. It's a little… long, I guess, but hopefully you'll find something of value in it."

"... Alright."

There was seriously too much mood whiplash going on here.

"And I'll write more," he said, a look of determination entering his face. "Even after I'm a ghost."

"I… look forward to it?"

She did, seriously, but this was… This was weird. She still couldn't correlate my grandfather is going to die to he is the King of the Ghost Zone to he's kind of acting weirdly cheery now to god, I've hated him all my life to yeah, cause he basically abandoned our family to well, he's going to die so I can't hate him to...

"But for now," Grandfather said, interrupting her thoughts, the corners of his eyes creasing. "I have the entire day free, just to spend time with you. Time to live it up a little. What do you want to do?"

She stared at him blankly for a long time.

"I guess, uh," she said, trying to rouse some sense of normalcy back to her beating heart, failing, and generally feeling lost in more ways than she could count on one hand, "we could go to the mall?"