Author's Note: This is a side fic to the extremely AU Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus and features a few of the OCs mentioned within that fic. If you read this without reading that first it won't be completely nonsensical but you will not understand all the references, settings, or what is going on in general. It is highly recommended you read at least part of that fic first before reading this.

If Riddle Incorporated could be described as a ship rather than a gang or even a business then all employees would agree that when Lily Riddle herself, the captain, went on vacation or was otherwise detained it was Frank, the first mate, who took the wheel. Frank, after decades of working for her, wasn't quite sure how he felt about that.

He was not, for one thing, Lily Riddle. He considered himself fairly smart, certainly smart enough to stay alive, keep his head down, and eventually make his way to London but he was by no means Lily Riddle. It was hard to see unless you met her in person but everything she did or said had a sort of vibrancy; a brilliance that could not be achieved in just anything. She stepped so far over their heads that they had to crane their necks to even get a glimpse of those strange green eyes.

Their truly profitable ideas, the ones that had gained them real power, had been those at Lily's behest. It was acknowledged by Frank, Lily, and all those who worked for her that there was no substitution for her, only periods where the status quo could be retained in her absence.

And for the most part he did just that, researching, keeping the accounts afloat, collecting payment when payment was due, all the ordinary aspects of business. He jumped on opportunities when he saw fit but he never truly stepped outside of the box, not without her guidance first.

In the recent decade, Lily still wandering off somewhere in the ether without any contact information or sign of when she might return, they had funded an aspiring English dark lord. There had been something about him, even when they first met, that had reminded him of her. The coldness, that stillness that showed both confidence and determination, he had stood like Lily on the edge of a kill. It was the note from Lily, left decades before, that had given him the confidence to sign over the funds to the pale thin young man.

"Do see that you pay it back."

And then the man had been gone, Tom Riddle, he'd said his name was and Frank couldn't help but wonder if that really was his name. They both had dark hair, after all.

As Lily had predicted they did turn quite a profit out of the whole affair, with the rise of the Dark Lord Voldemort heir of Slytherin the influx of wizards demanding the darkest potions they had available increased and eventually even jittery lighter wizards made their way to the office and asked for protection and sometimes even hits on specific wizards they believed might have been targeting them. The sales only seemed to be rising and with the desperation of the government it wouldn't be too long until the ministry turned to Riddle Incorporated for a favor rather than admit defeat to the terrorist Voldemort.

However one thing Lily Riddle had not predicted or left instructions for was one Bellatrix Black, or Lestrange rather, who had become in a few short years one of their top clients.

It was 1977 and Voldemort's war of terror against the muggle born wizards and those who sided with them was in full force. Dangerous youth walked the street with the mania of idealism in their eyes, their left arms covered, and their faces transfixed into disdainful sneers; buildings that had stood for generations found themselves burnt to the ground in mere moments; and the ground seemed almost littered with unfortunate muggles who the dark lord thought might serve as a demonstration.

These were times of anarchy and war and it always surprised him how unprepared these wizards were for it. As if they hadn't been in a similar position only thirty years prior with the wizard Grindlewald knocking on their gates.

The dark lord, having stepped out of his guise as Tom Riddle, had not made a habit of visiting the office but he did stop by once after his appearance to place in an order for various concentration, strength, and divination potions that could not be found at another vendor. Frank had sold him Ritalin, PCP, LSD, and the standard cocaine and heroin.

He had a feeling though even as he filled out the order that Tom Riddle was exactly aware of what was in each and every one of them and where they had really originated from. When they had first met Tom Riddle had not walked into the office in the standard wizard's robes but rather in a dark and slim muggle suit with piercing blue eyes that had all but dared Frank to question his choice in clothing. Tom Riddle should have known though that Lily Riddle was the first to make dressing like a muggle a habit and that even as a dark lord she was far more dangerous.

The dark lord had abandoned the muggle clothes and was now the proper wizard, still in black though, but he had managed to retain and perhaps refine that menacing charisma and there had been no thought of small talk as Frank had filled in the order.

The man never came in person again, always mailing in the orders or otherwise sending some nameless underling to do it. Eventually though some of the dark lords more memorable underlings came to them.

Bellatrix Black joined the cause very young, before she was out of school even, and as a young girl the handsome and charismatic dark lord had caught her eyes like a blazing sun until there was nothing left to see. She fell and she fell hard without ever once looking back so that she was soon on their doorstep demanding more, more of the fix, more of the cure, to make her stronger faster better so that she might serve him.

Narcotics were an interesting business, they never seemed to realize what it did to them, and they'd look across at him with a dazed expression that was almost frantic. I need more, I can't function without more, I must have more.

He had seen vampires with that expression in their eyes, splattered in blood sitting in a room full of corpses, those dazed eyes and them muttering over and over, "I must have more, it's not enough, I must have more."

Heroin was a human's virgin blood; the wizards simply hadn't figured it out yet.

So there she'd been, an eighteen year old girl, and now here she was a married woman and dedicated cultist and terrorist all rolled into one without the self-awareness to refer to herself as either. Then again, had he not known Lily Riddle he hardly would have known the words for these things either.

And here he was wondering if he should offer a warning, a little knowledge of things to come, if he shouldn't let Bellatrix Lestrange know that you could only burn so fast for so long because all things had their price in the end. Overdose was terribly easy, when you thought about it, and Bellatrix had been burning so terribly brightly.

It was in her eyes, that dazed expression in a room full of pure corpses, "It's not enough, not nearly enough, I need…"

Frank had tasted necessity before and it was such a dangerous thing to take inside you.

He wasn't sure what it was about this client that led him to consider diminishing her sales, he didn't like her. She was as rude, arrogant, and unoriginal as every wizard who had passed before her. She stared at him as if she towered above him, was unreachable to the likes of him, of all creatures like him who had once lurked in the alleyways like vermin. Perhaps it was her hair, that dark curling hair, which reminded him only slightly of the girl who had yet to return from vacation.

It was a small resemblance at best. Still, the sentiment remained, "Mrs. Lestrange, how good it is to see you on this fine Tuesday afternoon. How may we at Riddle Incorporated help you today?"

She sneered over at him, perhaps at her title of Mrs. Lestrange, a thing she had not quite worn in yet. Arranged wizarding marriages were like that sometimes, these far off things that suddenly descended and there you were with a new name and lineage, no longer a Black but a Lestrange as if that was a better deal.

"As if I would deign to speak to an underling like you," She failed to mention that she herself was only an underling of her own master, "I've come to see your master."

This would mark the definitive end of his pity for Bellatrix Lestrange, with those words she dug her own grave as far as he was concerned.

"I see," He said simply while in his mind's eye he did see her, the way she had looked the last time he had laid eyes on her decades ago, that thin girl in a frayed bright yellow sweater with eyes as green as death, "Unfortunately, she is not available at the present moment."

She had played it well, coming in the back door rather than the front, and setting up an appointment with him first as if this was simply a customer relations problem with shipments rather than something worth seeing Lily Riddle face to face over. Had she walked through the front door she would have been greeted by the Wonderful Wizard of Oz rather than anything thinking being and that usually did the trick in deterring them.

"For the Dark Lord she had best make herself available, petty potions makers should remember their place."

He folded his hands together and really looked at her then, how long had it been since her graduation, only a few years really. She was still in her early twenties, nothing more than a child, and he wondered if Tom Riddle wasn't using that to his advantage to get that glimpse of Lily Riddle that he had never quite managed.

"We are hardly a business of brewers and potions masters, Mrs. Lestrange, I work for a lord as well and it would be good of you to remember that narcotics can be just as if not more lethal than any dark arts."

She stared across at him in contempt and he wondered if this was the moment he had always suspected was coming. The day the Dark Lord truly tried to take wizarding Britain, where he recognized that the ministry was hardly the country and that to really and truly own the soil he'd have to rip it out from underneath Lily Riddle's feet.

Lily often quoted the Lord of the Rings and one of the things she would say often in regards to situations like these was, "There is only one Lord of the Ring, only one who can bend it to his will. And he does not share power." Or in simpler words that she might say, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us."

"I would be happy to refill any of your orders or to show you our new products but if you are here to threaten or to stick your head where it does not belong then I will be forced to remove you from the premises." He said his eyes never wavering from hers listening for the sound of that rising wand that he had become so familiar with over the past thirty years. When one worked for Lily Riddle they quickly learned how to anticipate violence.

In their previous encounters where Bellatrix would show herself in person demanding better quality or their latest products he'd noticed her easily triggered temper so it wasn't exactly a surprise when his cool suggestion lit the short fuse.

"How dare you speak to me like that?! As if the little bitch you work for could ever hope to match him! You know rumor is she's nothing but a little mudblood who thinks she can play with the big boys, like she thinks she can keep up, ickle Lily Riddle!" She gave him a grin, the wild crazed grin that all the addicts ended up wearing by the end of the day, "She would be licking his boots right now if she had any brains at all."

He stared across at her giving her a considering glance, the frantic eyes, that distant hazy expression, and yet there all the same as if she was proud to be doing her master's bidding no matter how menial the task. Grindlewald had never sent a minion their way, not even when he had invaded England. Then again Grindlewald had been more removed from magical Britain than Tom Riddle was, he had also severely underestimated the threat Lily Riddle could pose should she get political, from the German Friedrich who had joined after the war he had learned that Grindlewald had laughed when he heard of her offer to the ministry to kill him for ten percent of the GDP. He should have felt relieved that Albus Dumbledore had done it instead.

Tom Riddle appeared to be very aware of his tenuous situation, he had originally come to them for money after all, but he had the misfortunate idea that he was somehow saving face by sending his minion Bellatrix in his place. Perhaps it was simply that he wanted to draw Lily Riddle out, sending Bellatrix in as obnoxious bait and seeing what the drug lord might make of her.

He had a better grasp of Lily's nature than Grindlewald had, but not by much.

"It would do you well to remember, Mrs. Lestrange, that Lily Riddle was playing this game before you were born. My associates will now see you out as you appear to have no true business with us today." With those words Stefan and Friedrich, who to her would only appear as pale thin men in dark suits and crimson in their eyes, stepped into the office and grabbed Bellatrix by the arms and kindly but firmly lead her back out into the street.

He had no doubt that one day Bellatrix Lestrange would find herself in the addict's trap but he found that it was no longer his concern, when she came with her master's bidding she had stepped over the line of pleasantries like warnings and advice, and now as she had put it she was playing with the big boys.

Outside he could hear the sounds of her frustrated screeching as she attempted to breach the well tested wards and set the building on fire. He wondered if she realized that she was far from the first to try that particular technique, Lily had done the wards herself before her original arrest, saying that you never knew what shenanigans people might get up to if they thought they had the chance of getting away with it.

"That is one crazy bitch." Stefan stepped in shaking his hands as if to shake out the scratch marks that could now be found there, next to him a slightly worn looking Friedrich nodded.

"I can't imagine her on PCP, it has to be dangerous, selling her that kind of stuff." Friedrich was a relatively new addition to Riddle Incorporated but even so he had managed to keep a strange naiveté that Frank would have suspected to be snuffed out by Grindlewald or else by the darker aspects of working for Lily Riddle. He also had never met Lily in person, having been hired after the war when she had already left, and had only the various anecdotes that made their way around the office to go on. In the end it was clear that he wasn't quite sure what to make of it and it was evident in his eyes every once in a while.

"More so to them than to us, it's their war after all." Frank mused from behind the desk, Lily had been to saying in 1945 with the invasion of Grindlewald that Riddle Inc. like the Gringotts was more like the Swiss Banking System than a part of Britain. Neutrality was important in times of conflict and what had Britain ever done for them that they hadn't already done for themselves?

"She didn't seem to think so." Stefan noted sticking his hands into the suit's pockets and looking more like a mobster than he had probably intended, "Goes to show they've never met Riddle though, if she thinks that she can take her."

"Well, she isn't exactly in her right mind I suspect, she does after all take more than the recommended dosage of our wares." Frank said with a sigh, "I doubt her opinions match her masters, if he truly intended a hostile takeover he would have had to come in person and I'm sure he realizes this. Perhaps he means to deal with us the way he dealt with Greyback."

"Buy us off? With what money, the way I remember it he borrowed from us." Stefan snorted and shook his head. Having been one of the original employees of Lily Riddle he shared the almost ridiculous amount of faith they each had in her, as if she truly was some god of calamity instead of a rather intelligent… whatever she was (the question of Lily Riddle's species human or other was often debated but never resolved). It was never the older ones that questioned her decisions or her judgment even when she was not there to explain it. There was no question of Lily Riddle being bought out or defeated for any of them it was simply inconceivable.

"Perhaps he means to get us, and not Lily Riddle herself, by promising us a revolution along with the werewolves and the giants." Frank mused, that was how he had gotten Greyback after all. Greyback had no use for materialism he did have use for a future of his people and the way he saw it this new dark lord was his best chance. The werewolves had taken one last desperate gamble and it would remain to be seen if it would work out for them, Frank doubted it, when you played with that kind of desperation it was because you knew you had already lost.

"We've been playing this game longer than him though, and we cast our chips a while back, I'm sure he'll realize this soon enough." Frank said with a sigh, they'd outlasted all the petty turf wars so far, from the few impoverished wizards who looked at Lily Riddle's empire and thought they could do better than a little girl, but even he had to admit that Tom Riddle was hardly one of these. The other Riddle went about it differently than Lily had but he had a system none the less and even Frank who had been there before he had started couldn't help but be impressed by the speed and ease he went about it.

The truth of the matter was that Frank wasn't Lily Riddle, he didn't know if it was best to wait out the storm, to strike before the man became Britain itself, or to bargain while they still had control over the gutter. He only knew that she had left one other reference to Tom Riddle other than the note telling Frank to go ahead and give him the loan, it had been a small thing as if written down last minute as a reassurance. "By 1981," it had said, "there will be enough of a reprieve that no action on our part will be necessary. All you have to do is wait him out."

1977 in only four years it would be 1981, in 1981 something was going to happen to Tom Riddle that he had not predicted but that Lily Riddle had, in the note on his loan she had stated that he would lose pathetically. When you had worked for Lily Riddle, seen her in person, you knew that she tended to have good instincts for this sort of thing.

So in the mean time they watched over the Bellatrix Blacks turned Lestrange who wandered in with dazed eyes and sneered and spat even while they demanded more as well as the Fenrir Greybacks who gambled with more than they could afford to lose.

I want more, I need more, I must have more; the addict's mantra was quickly becoming the national anthem these days.

Perhaps he wasn't a true replacement of Lily Riddle and could never hope to be one but he could see the patterns well enough; enough to know that it was time to focus on shipments, payments, accounts, sellers, and all the smaller things that had nothing to do with politics. Tom Riddle would keep, until 1981 he would keep, and they could and would rely on that even if all the others in the country did not.

Author's Note: Because it makes so much sense that Bellatrix was drugged out of her mind, but actually. Anyway this was actually a review fic for the 200th review of October by tenchifew whose prompt was something from Frank's perspective in Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus. I'd already just done a glimpse of the origin story so I thought in the midst of Voldemort's terrorism/urban guerilla warfare would be interesting to portray. So, I guess Lily wins the popularity contest? But anyway, thanks to readers and reviewers you guys are great.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter