And Lily is back. We get to see how things are going for her.

She also receives a crucial information.

LILY XXIX

She walked along the winding streets packed with tourists. No one noticed her. Here, no need for any charm or spell to dissimulate or disguise herself. She only had to wear Muggle clothes and to dye her hair in blond so people wouldn't recognize her easily, if anyone happened to be looking for her. In other circumstances, Lily would have enjoyed walking in those pedestrian streets sometimes made of gravel, other times of cement, with stairs and flagstones, among the picturesque houses. Some had the demi-sphere roofs for which the island was well known. Here, even in February, the weather was very good. Lily felt as if she was in early autumn, not in the dead of winter. Indeed, Santorini was an island she would have loved to visit. However, the reasons that brought her here had nothing to do with tourism.

Lily was following a track leading to the heart of the island, making her way through residents and tourists alike. Over the past three months, she travelled through the Balkans, searching for Bartemius Crouch Junior. But the young man seemed to be evading her at every turn. Wherever she went, it seemed like he had been gone for weeks, if not months. Lily searched for so long that she ended up in a section of an Albanian forest where all life seemed to have vanished.

Lily knew there was the possibility that she could find him on her path. Crouch Junior had not come to this region for nothing. He knew that Voldemort was rumoured to be there. And the signs of his presence had been obvious. There were no animals in the region of this forest that Lily visited. No bird could be heard singing, no mammals moved between the trees. Even the insects seemed to be gone. As for the vegetation, half of it looked dead. Many trees had no leaves left, and the bushes were reduced to piles of black branches.

But she didn't find Voldemort. Just like for Crouch Junior when he committed a murder, he left a body behind him, the body being the forest. But he was no longer there. Lily feared the worst. If Voldemort was no longer in that forest of Albany, he could be anywhere. She sent a message to Dumbledore and the Ministry to inform them, using informal methods of communication, but it would take some time for them to receive the message.

In this dead forest, Lily had found a strange glowing artifact, which led her on this Greek island. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was her best chance to find Crouch Junior. Though at the same time, she couldn't help but feel this was a trap. So, as she walked through the streets of Santorini, she kept her wand drawn out under her clothes, ignoring partially the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy and the Muggles wandering all around her.

If Lily feared that something might happen, she was wrong in the end. The streets emptied as she reached the less populated areas of the island, with fewer or no tourists at all, and as roads changed to be totally made of gravel or earth. She descended into a valley, the white houses and blue roofs of the island slowly receding for a rocky scenery. In her pocket, the artifact was vibrating. She was close to her destination.

And then she was getting farther from it. The artifact's vibrations were reduced. Lily went back on her steps, and the artifact started vibrating more strongly. Before its vibrations lowered once again. Back and forth, she finally stopped at the very place where the vibrations were the strongest. It was next to a huge cliff. But she felt that something was wrong. Slowly, she extended her hand until her palm came into contact with the stone. Only, it never made contact. The palm went through the stone. It looked like something similar to the barrier of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Lily walked through it. The artifact vibrated wildly.

Lily stood in front of a gigantic door of triangular shape. It was so large and high that it dwarfed the heavy doors that gave on the Great Hall in Hogwarts. There were some markings on the door, but their shapes were so crude and irregular that she wouldn't be surprised if they were only cracks and holes. However, one of these holes attracted her attention. It was in diamond shape. She took the artifact from her pocket. It was glowing now. The shape was roughly the same as the hole. She approached the artifact from it, and the door opened, leaving an opening large enough for three people to walk side by side. Lily drew out her wand.

"Lumos!"

The light illuminated the inside, but it was too deep to see the end of it. All she could see was a corridor made of rocks and stone. Slowly, Lily walked through the passage. She put back the artifact in her pocket. She kept advancing, the walls, floor and ceiling remaining pitch black.

A loud noise was heard behind her. The door by which she entered just closed.

"Damn it! Alohomora!"

The door did not move. Lily cursed against herself. She took the artifact. It had stopped both glowing and vibrating. For a few minutes, she kept trying to unlock the door with all the manners she knew. She even tried to Apparate, without success. It soon became evident that it wouldn't move. Her only way out was probably to follow the tunnel and see what there was at the end of it. Resigned, Lily turned to head into the darkness. She soon realized though that something had changed. The tunnel was no longer plunged into darkness.

There were now two pillars that she didn't see before from which thin blue lines protruded. These lines produced a light that was enough to illuminate the entire room. For yes, it was a room in which Lily was. A room with a huge hole in the center of the ground.

This brought her three years ago, when she travelled into the dungeons of Hogwarts, back when her son and his friends had been stupid enough to descent there on their own. She had used a Levitation Charm back then to dampen her fall and avoid the Devil's Snare. Thinking of Harry made her feel alone and sad, like every time the thought of him crossed her mind since she left England, but she forced herself to focus on the problem at hand.

There was no other issue in the room. Lily conjured a lighting stick and dropped it in the hole. She watched it fall as it illuminated the walls, until it fell into a pool of water. So, it seemed there wasn't a hard ground at the end of it. Still, Lily wasn't going to just jump in it. The fall was long, and she wasn't some kind of superhero who could somehow fall into the void and always land into a pile of hay without a scratch. But anyway, this seemed to be the only way to go somewhere.

So she waved her wand, and began to levitate. Then she slowly lowered her altitude, carefully going down into the hole. The descent seemed to last forever. She was feeling that she going very deep into the earth. Then finally she approached the water and saw an opening on the side wall, where she brought herself. Just as she landed on the ground, a group of bats flew straight at her. Lily covered herself the time that the bats flew past her, then walked forward.

The next room had columns, but they seemed to have been made by nature rather than by men. As she walked, her feet slightly sank into some mud. Ahead of her, up near the ceiling, at the top of a steep slope, an orange light could be seen. Lily saw no issue to the place, so she decided to go and see what it was.

"Carpe Retractum!"

She attached herself to a stalactite and brought herself up to a stony platform where the light was stronger. The temperature got higher as well in this place. She noticed that the source of light came from a small opening in the rock at the bottom of the platform. A gas was coming out of it. Could it be…?

"Of course. How stupid I am! The island is a volcano!"

This was probably sulfur that emanated from this opening in the rock. The smell was not very pleasant. However, this was again the only issue. Sighing, Lily threw several spells to help her lungs filter the emanations and to cool down her body temperature. Then she crouched to get through the opening. She could have blasted her way through the rock, but she had no idea about the solidity of this cave. She could provoke a landslide if she wasn't careful.

On the other side, Lily could stand on another platform of stone, but below this platform, rivers of lava were running. She could distinguish an opening on the other side of this room, on another rocky platform. She used the Carpe Retractum once again, but was surprised when she came just short of landing on the other platform, and used levitation to bring her back on it before her feet would brush the lava.

"I better be careful," she said to herself.

Lily walked away from the room of lava and fell upon a downward slope. She followed it, using levitation again to not slide. She noticed the same lighting blue lines as in the entrance in the slope. She came to its end only to meet a crack in the stone that gave on another place filled with lava. She had to use the seize and pull Charm along with levitation several times to reach a place that allowed her to exit this place. She then followed a narrow passage in the rock that turned in one direction then another all the time. At the end of it, she arrived in a very large open space that projected the same fluorescent blue light that she saw before. It seemed to be coming from a huge diamond opening far away, and there were structures in the open area, these ones definitely made by men and not by nature, given their straight angles.

All of these things were far below Lily's feet. She was standing on a platform dominating this place that looked like a temple of some sort. Lily feared that she was too far above to try to levitate to the ground this time. However, it seemed like going down was the only option again. So Lily began to levitate herself down, accelerating more and more as she kept going down. She was afraid that she might hit the ground at too much a high speed. So instead she decided to land in the water next to the floor of the temple. All that it cost her was to get wet.

Once she climbed out of the water onto the stone floor, she dried herself and began to advance towards the gigantic diamond source of light. The walk seemed to take an eternity. This place was made by men for sure. The stones were too finely arranged. Whoever were the people who built this, they were master engineers and architects. She walked between two large statues displaying creatures with large fangs and a snake's head, but the body of a bear. The blue light grew more intense.

She arrived on some sort of platform connecting four paths coming from different directions. From one of those directions, another diamond opening projected the same light. Only, through this one, you could see what looked like an ancient city submerged by the sea, fishes and marine life swimming around mighty towers and what looked like an ancient coliseum. And at the bottom of this opening, a lone figure was standing, back turned on her, holding some kind of staff into his hand.

Lily froze. Who was this? Who could be there, in this abandoned place? From afar, she couldn't see who it was. The person was wearing a cape. Could it be Voldemort? No, he could only occupy someone else's body. But it could still be him, in the body of Crouch Junior. The cloak could be hiding his face on the back of Crouch's head.

Quickly, Lily threw without uttering a word a series of spells to dissimulate herself, eliminate the noise she made, and proceeded to walk carefully towards the lone figure, descending stairs without a noise, her wand pointed on her target. Last time, she barely made it alive. She wouldn't make the same mistakes again and would attack them from behind this time.

"Put away your wand, Lily Evans Potter."

The words came out of the lone figure the moment she set foot on the stone floor where the figure was standing, a few meters away from Lily. Lily frowned. This couldn't be Bartemius Crouch Junior. This person, whoever she was, had the voice of a woman. A voice that was familiar to Lily. She didn't lower her wand though and kept it pointed on the person. The person finally turned to face Lily and removed the cloak from her face.

Yes, she knew this person.

"You are Kassandra, aren't you?" she asked.

The woman smiled. "So, someone gave you my name?" she said in her thick Greek accent. "Was it Albus Dumbledore or Amelia Bones?"

"It doesn't matter. What are you doing here?"

"I'm guarding the gates."

As if it emphasized this role, she hit the stone floor with her staff. It looked like a spear, but it also had wings at its pointy extremity, and two snakes that were wrapped around each other and the stick. The symbols on this staff were not to inspire trust from Lily towards this woman.

"What gates?" Lily asked, still suspicious.

"You wouldn't believe me. But like you said before, it doesn't matter. What matters if that you found the artifact I left for you in Albania."

Lily's grip on her wand tightened. "It was you who. You brought me here."

"I did."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to speak with you. I have important information and there are some things you need to understand about the man you call Voldemort."

"Why didn't you tell me those things back at the Ministry of Magic?"

"Because it wasn't time yet. And some pieces of the puzzle were still missing. There are still some missing, but maybe this isn't my place to find them and someone else must."

"Why go to all this trouble? Why place something to lead me here? You could have met me in Albania instead of having me follow you here."

"There are things that you don't understand, and it is not in the interest of neither of us that you know them. Furthermore, I must keep a constant watch over this place."

Lily looked around. This temple didn't inspire her any trust, no more than the woman in front of her. "How do I know that I can trust you?"

"Albus Dumbledore and Amelia Bones do. Isn't that enough for you?"

Dumbledore also trusted Snape. So no, it wasn't entirely enough for Lily. For all the trust she had in Dumbledore, she didn't think he was above mistakes or wrongdoing.

"You are suspicious. I get it," the Greek woman said. "And you should be. But whatever your impressions are about me, this doesn't make the information I want to give you less valuable. And you won't have a way out until you hear me."

That was it. She didn't trust that woman at all. However, if she had information… Lily decided that it could be worth listening to her. After all, she did provide them with accurate information on Crouch Junior's whereabouts, although it had been a long time since he came to Greece when she told them.

"I'm listening," she said.

"Good," the Greek woman said. "Now, first, you must understand a few things. I know this man. Voldemort. Although his real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Lily frowned. "When you say that you know him…"

"I mean that I know him very well. A long time ago, he came here. We met. It was before he was known under the name of Voldemort by most people, although he already used this nickname for himself and his friends. People who consider themselves important and superior often take aliases. It helps them to view themselves as special. And Tom Riddle knew that he was special. And he was right, in some sense."

"You seem to almost admire him," Lily said accusingly.

"In a certain way. He is a very powerful man. Although I do not agree with what he does with those powers, and how he uses them to his own advantage. His craving for knowledge is also dangerous, both for him and for everyone. But we cannot deny what he accomplished. Denying it would only stop us from understanding the threat he represents, even now as he's supposed to be dead."

"On that, we agree. He is a threat. So where is he now? You left this artifact in Albania. That means you knew he was there."

"I knew. Of course. And I met him there, a few times."

Anger rose in Lily. "You met him? And you did nothing to stop him?"

"Because there was nothing I could do. He was without a body, even weaker than a spirit. He was just too weak for me to do anything to him. I couldn't kill him. But through the interactions we had over the last ten years or so, I've come to discover a few things about him. In the first place, and that is an evidence, he wants another body. One that will be stronger than the one had had before, the one that was destroyed by your son in 1981. A body that your son cannot destroy. Everything he does is to serve that goal."

"Yes, I know. He wants to return. I stopped him a few years ago."

"You only delayed the inevitable. He will come back, sooner or later. Believe my personal experience. When people are as power hungry and determined to not die as this man is, they always return. And I'm afraid I somehow gave him the idea about how to return."

"What do you mean?"

"Like I told you, the first time I met Tom Riddle was very a long time ago, before he was known as Lord Voldemort. He came here, and that's how we met," the woman said while pacing and gesturing to show the temple around. "I was impressed by him, really. Few people can find this place on their own. And we had one particular common point, which made him very interested in myself. We both come from a very ancient bloodline. And Tom believed just like mine, his gave him great powers, and certain rights too. That is where we diverged."

"What do you mean?"

Lily was getting more confused by the second.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle is the last surviving descendant of a great wizard by the name of Salazar Slytherin."

"I know. He is his heir."

"Yes, he does consider to be so. When he approached me, I could see how interested he was in this place and in myself, particularly. He had many questions. But I had far more for him. He tried to not give away much, but his behavior revealed a lot, whether he liked it or not. What interested him the most was my blood."

"Your blood?"

"Yes. Some of my ancestors were… particular. Let's just say that my blood gives me some power that many humans don't have. It doesn't make me unique though. Wizards and witches, including you, have powers, but they are not unique. There are hundreds of thousand across the world. When Tom came here, he clearly believed that he was apart from everyone else. I could see how disappointed he was when I tried to explain to him that it didn't set us apart. His disappointment and disagreement were even clearer when I told him that the powers we got from our blood were by no means rights, but rather responsibilities, and that we had to use them wisely for the common good."

Lily could see how Voldemort would disapprove of such a language. Though the common good was also used by Grindelwald to justify his many crimes, so she remained suspicious of this woman.

"Despite this, Tom spent some time here, trying to understand me and the secrets of this temple. I didn't try to stop him because I myself wanted to learn more about him. I suspected that he could achieve great things, good or bad. In both cases, it was better to have a good idea of what kind of man he was. But I also didn't stop him because it became evident after a short time that he would never pierce the secrets of this temple. He didn't understand this place. And whatever he doesn't understand, he doesn't care. He ignores it. One thing remained certain during this time though, Tom Marvolo Riddle was obsessed with the idea of bloodline, and the power that could be contained within this liquid. And from what I could gather when I searched on him in Albania, he is still obsessed with it today, especially when judging the events of last spring."

Lily frowned. So this woman knew.

"Yes, I know. We still don't know the use he intended to make of my son's blood," Lily said.

"I think I have a pretty good idea about what he intends to do."

This caught Lily's attention. "You do?"

"Yes. Because, you see, over the years, I found out an interesting way that Tom was considering to get another body. To constitute a body, we need bones, human tissue… and blood." Lily blinked at this. "And like I told you, Tom Marvolo Riddle is obsessed with bloodlines and their power."

A sudden idea came to Lily's mind. A terrifying idea. "He wants to use Harry's blood to revive himself. That's what Wormtail was trying to do last year. He wanted Harry's blood to revive his master?"

"Indeed. And more importantly, this blood would represent a boon for him. He cannot attack or touch your son since you and your husband were ready to sacrifice yourselves for him. But do you really think that your protection will work when someone of his own blood tries to attack your son? After it was his own blood who saved him?"

No. That couldn't be.

"Now, I hope you understand why I wanted to see you," Kassandra finished.

Lily couldn't believe it. Voldemort was trying to resuscitate himself using Harry's blood, so he could hurt Harry this way. No, she couldn't let that happen. She could have had reasons to doubt Kassandra's word, but the explanation was simply too good and filled all the gaps.

"I've got to go. I've got to…"

"You can't," the Greek woman said. "You still have Crouch Junior to catch. He's still in the wind, and I believe that Riddle is with him now. According to the latest information I got, he was heading towards Russia, more precisely Saint Petersburg. This is where you should go."

"Someone should warn my son! And warn Dumbledore too, so he can protect him."

"Send him a message. But letting Bartemius Crouch Junior run wild will place your son in danger as well, so I suggest you keep chasing him." She planted her staff into the stone floor. Lily heard a loud noise coming from behind, from one of the diamond shaped entries she saw when she arrived in the temple, and she turned her head to look at it. "Our time has come to an end. This is the exit. Stop Tom before it is too late."

When Lily turned to look back at the woman, she had disappeared. She looked all around but couldn't find her. Did she Apparate? Lily didn't see how she could. Lily herself tried to Apparate without success in this place. She tried again for good measure, and she failed once more. She remembered Amelia Bones' words, that she wouldn't find this woman.

Lily felt that she had nothing left to do here. Furthermore, with what she learned, she had to warn Dumbledore and Madam Bones, and also to find Barty Crouch Junior before he could harm her son or anyone else. This woman was right. He was currently the greatest threat to Harry. The dragon that he faced and that she read about in the newspapers looked like nothing when compared to the danger Voldemort posed. Suddenly, the Triwizard Tournament didn't seem to be that big of a problem. Lily couldn't see how the second and third tasks could be more dangerous for Harry than the man who killed his father.

Lily rushed to the exit to leave this cave.

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Next chapter: Susan