Author's Note: To those who are about to read I offer the technicality that this is a spin off/side fic to the very AU "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" that being said this takes place in an entirely AU universe to that one so you don't have to read the original fic at all to understand it.

Another note is that because of that this is NOT CANON to the main fic, at all, but then that's almost self-evident.

The clatter of a basilisk's fang falling to the floor.

The sharp, rasping sound, of breath in the dark and a heartbeat like a drum out of rhythm.

These things are closer to her, to her head, than her thoughts, her feelings, and even the sight of the pale young man smiling across at her.

"I must say I am impressed, it is no easy task to slay a basilisk. Still, there's no cure for that poison, I'm afraid this is the end, Eleanor Potter."

The sound of her breathing, the sound of her heartbeat, the clang as a sword dropped to the stone floor of the chamber of secrets. In the background a great leviathan laid dead and she stumbled forward towards the man.

"It's just too bad you weren't your brother."

And Harry Potter was nowhere in sight.

Ellie Potter had known for a very long time that she had come out wrong.

It wasn't a well-known fact, or one even discussed extensively as far as she could tell, but sometimes people were born just a little off. Her parents said it about the dark lord, people didn't become monsters like that, you had to be born broken to do what he did. She was sure they said it about others too, no one she knew personally, but then she didn't know too many people personally.

She was more than certain people said it about her; they just tried not to say it to her face.

Interestingly enough people did say it about Harry, which, when it came to Harry it just wasn't true at all.

(A well-established but necessary fact: Eleanor Potter was not the girl who lived, she had just been there at the time, it was her twin brother who'd been shot in the head but managed to get out unscathed.)

Harry, as far as she could tell, was pretty well ordinary aside from the whole blowing up the dark lord and not dying thing. Well, he was magically talented, according to their parents and everyone else they met but nothing really out of the ordinary. Besides people expected Harry to be gifted, no they wanted him to be gifted, people were alarmed by a boy who lived who just acted like a boy.

They never acted like it, uncle Sirius and Remus always tried to treat Harry like 'a real boy', whatever that meant. They'd have him play quidditch with them for hours or do other normal boy activities, but all the same they'd always get a little distressed when Harry took to these normal activities a little too well. It was like they all wanted to say, "Try to put a little effort into it, Harry, you're acting like you're not a prophesized warrior."

People were weird about Harry in general; they always had been.

But this wasn't about Harry, this was about her, and that made all the difference really.

The first time she remembered really thinking that something was wrong, that maybe something really was off about her, that she should have been more like Harry and less like Ellie, was when she was very young.

She'd started talking a lot sooner than Harry did, reading too, and even accidental magic. At first her parents had been proud but then, well they'd never stopped saying that they were proud, but their eyes had dimmed slightly with each new parlor trick she'd devised.

One day, when they'd told her to go play with Harry in a room for a little bit while they did grown up things, she'd tapped the floo and decided to listen in on whatever it was they didn't want her hearing.

It turned out they'd called over Albus Dumbledore into the living room.

"Thanks for coming, Albus." Her mother said accompanied by the light clink of a tea tray.

(In the room she was in she watched with distant eyes as Harry toddled and played with various floating toys, reaching out for the colorful bubbles and laughing with delight as they danced away from him.)

"Thank you for having me, Lily, James, you would not believe how little time I have to drink tea with old friends." There was a smile in the man's voice, a grandfatherly type voice, and then rustling as all parties settled themselves into chairs.

Too long of a silence and then a sigh from the old man, "I see that this is not purely a social call, then."

"You said to talk to you if there was every anything…"

"Is it Harry?" The man interrupted before her father could finish all signs of geniality gone and replaced by something that was almost alarm.

"No, no, it's not Harry. Harry's fine, it's… Well, it's Ellie."

("Ellie?" She looked to over to see Harry who was looking at her with a concerned expression, he said it at the same time as the old man, before she could respond though her father was answering.)

"Yeah, she's… Well, I mean it's good that she's doing magic this early, and talking, and writing… Isn't it? I mean, you said to tell you if anything…"

"No, no, you were good to tell me, James, Lily." Albus Dumbledore quickly reassured them.

("Ellie?" Harry prompted again.

"Quiet, Harry, I'll play in a minute.")

"Tell me, it's been a while since I've seen little Eleanor, what is she like?"

"Like?" Her mother asked, questioning, "Well, she's… She's a very smart girl…"

"Like her mother!"

"Stop it, James. No, she's smarter than I was, you too James. She's also, well, a little different. Of course there's nothing wrong with being a little different, and she's very sweet, she's always looking after Harry…"

"But you did call me here." The man pointed out.

"Yes… Yes we did, it's just… Well, see what you think."

("Ellie? You okay?"

"Yeah, sorry, just listening to some things I probably shouldn't be.")

It wasn't that her father, her mother, uncle Sirius, uncle Remus, or anyone else didn't love her. That was an important thing to note, something she told herself often. She wasn't entirely sure what love was, really, but they knew better than her and they meant it when they said they loved her. They believed that they loved her. And love was pretty important, Dumbledore said it was love that had let Harry live with a wand pointed to his head, so it was a good thing to have.

So it wasn't that they didn't love her.

Even when Dumbledore started showing up more and more often, asking her what she could do with magic and what she couldn't, it wasn't like any affection had dimmed in their eyes. It was just, well… They always had an easier time looking at Harry.

"I wish I was good at magic like you are, Ellie."

This was a few years before they had gone to Hogwarts and by now it was almost taken for granted that she was very good at using wandless magic. At first they had tried to convince her not to use it, saying that was the whole point of having the wand, so that you only did real magic when you were ready. But that never really made sense to her, you didn't need a wand after all, she certainly didn't and as far as she could tell she could do pretty much everything her parents could and maybe more.

(Not that they knew that, they'd been alarmed by floating objects and balls of fire, she didn't know what they'd do if they'd see wandless transfiguration or ward manipulation.)

When that hadn't worked they'd sort of given up stating that they'd be coming down hard when she got her wand and the laws came into effect. So by the time they were eight it was pretty commonplace to see Ellie's supposedly accidental magic in effect.

She and Harry were outside in the yard, her reading a book, and Harry chasing a snitch on the latest broom he had just gotten for their birthday. He'd gotten down to talk to her though, sat right next to her on the grass.

"I'm too good at magic." She qualified, which was true enough, her parents had said as much to Dumbledore and certainly the old man seemed to think so as well.

"No, you're… I'm the boy who lived right?" He asked, but it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else, "So I should be good at magic."

It was then, staring at her twin brother, that the idea first popped into her head. In person Harry was fairly unassuming, he shared her green eyes, the color of the killing curse as they were told, but he was small and he wore glasses. He looked, for all intents and purposes, just like any other boy.

She looked fairly normal herself, at a distance, but even she had the small lightning bolt on her forehead from the ricocheting killing curse that had hit Harry.

She'd wondered why it took her so long to think it, maybe because everyone took it so seriously, as if there was no possible room to question it.

Harry was the boy who lived, it was that simple, but then, who had been there at the time?

"Harry, what if you're not… What if you're not the boy who lived?" She asked hesitantly, he didn't say anything but she pressed forward regardless, "What if that's not really what happened that night? I mean, we don't really know, we just know that the house was blown up and we were somehow both alive and the dark lord dead. I mean, what if it just seems true because everyone says it all the time?"

"What do you mean? I'm the boy who lived, Ellie." Harry said blinking his eyes growing wide and something like fear entering his expression.

"Oh sure, everyone says that, but that doesn't mean anything. I think they just want you to be the boy who lived, the good explanation for that night, better to have a boy savior than to just have dark lords exploding for no good reason."

"But…" Harry started again looking stricken and she continued for him.

"But what if you're not? For all we know I could be the boy who lived…"

He cut her off, "I am the boy who lived, Ellie!"

He grabbed his broom and stalked away leaving her blinking and staring at his retreating figure and she had no idea what she'd said.

Even later, years later, she still couldn't quite figure it out.

Harry hated being the boy who lived, he hated the pressure, from their parents and everyone else, the need to live up to their expectations. Harry was always saying to her and later to his friends how he just wanted to be Harry Potter; someone normal. But when she had even suggested for a moment that maybe he really wasn't, that maybe there had never been a boy who lived, he hadn't talked to her afterwards for days.

She was always doing things like that. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. It was like she was living in some fading illusion, where reality and the spell were warped together so that parts bled in and out, and the rules for each different reality were… well, contradictory.

You were supposed to be good at magic, but not too good, people never survived the killing curse, until they did, and the war was over, except when it wasn't.

She never seemed to be able to get it straight, or when she did, it turned out that it was the wrong thing after all.

Like telling Harry that maybe he really wasn't the boy who lived.

"I really don't get it after all." She'd said with a sigh but as was typical of moments where you were alone in the backyard, no one answered back.

So it wasn't like she didn't know that Eleanor Potter was just a little bit too weird and too magical and too other things to boot; she knew, she just couldn't fix it.

She and Harry grew apart later.

In retrospect it was kind of inevitable, or rather, she had seen it coming long before they even got to Hogwarts.

She and Harry had been pretty sheltered growing up thanks to Harry's ridiculous celebrity status and whatever it was Dumbledore wanted with their family. Harry was important, not only because he made dark lords flammable, but also for some other unknown secret reason. Harry hadn't caught on yet but Dumbledore visited them a little too often for friendly chats and was always a little too interested in Harry's, and then her own, magical development.

So for a while, before Hogwarts, Harry didn't really have too many options for friends. There was her, the Weasleys, and that was about it.

When the hat placed her in Slytherin and Harry in Gryffindor that was really the death knell for them.

Harry didn't really mean it, she thought, even as he played quidditch and made Gryffindor friends and tried to fish out Snape's secrets. He didn't mean it in the way that her parents didn't mean to only kind of love her; he didn't mean it, but what did people's intentions ever get them?

The muggles said that the road to fiery torture pit was paved with good intentions.

So Harry made friends and Ellie didn't and when you're all alone in a castle the monsters come out to play.

Despite being the boy who lived, the unquestionable protagonist of the story, Harry never faced his demons.

Ellie did instead.

Ellie was not the main character in the play, she was a side character, a quirky thing who sometimes spouted interesting philosophy or else had an eloquent monologue. Important enough, in her relation to the protagonist Harry Potter, but on her own she could not carry the weight of the story.

She lacked destiny, prophecy, and the humanizing need to live up to the expectations of the audience.

And yet, it seemed that the play had other ideas, and drove itself in its own intended directions which were much further than the ones she would guess.

She had no intention of getting involved in the mysterious mystery that took place in their first year. Dumbledore announced a treasure guarded by demons in the basement but she had no interest in such materialistic things as that.

(The true irony was that Harry did have an interest in this, his role as the boy who lived almost begged him to take interest, not to steal the treasure but to protect it from scoundrels and fiends. He just looked in all the wrong directions.)

After realizing that she wasn't going to make any friends, that Harry had essentially abandoned her for Ron Weasley and then later Hermione Granger, she'd just decided that it would be best to float her way through Hogwarts and wait til it was over.

She turned in her assignments, did her problems, and on the whole was the top student in their class (which apparently drove Hermione Granger up the wall but that was another fact for another day) but beyond that she didn't interact much with the school.

She had no intentions of finding out Snape's secrets, playing quidditch, and protecting the third floor corridor like Harry did.

Intentions were tricky things though; they usually didn't get you what you wanted.

It was Quirrell who ended up taking an interest in her.

He gave her migraines, that was a thing to note, unbelievable and spontaneous headaches from his stutters and sheer incompetence. He was possibly worse than Binns, who was dead, and that said a lot about everything.

The moment he'd first had her in class though, when their eyes had met, it seemed as if something had passed through them and he seemed fake. Like he was wearing Quirrell as an enchanted cloak and that something else lay beneath it.

He asked her to have tea with him in his office regularly; for seemingly no reason and she went because she saw no reason to say no.

Sometimes he didn't stutter and when he didn't stutter he always had something interesting to say.

"You're very different from your brother, Miss Potter." He noted one day and she made some noise of agreement because it was true enough.

Harry was always weird about their shared classes, seeing her on the Slytherin side of the room with the likes of Draco Malfoy. He'd freeze up a little and turn his head as if to ignore the fact that she was even in the same room, like if he didn't look at her then she wasn't really in Slytherin.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're more talented than he is?"

No one had said it in as many words, it was a bit taboo to claim she was more powerful than her savior brother, because of the two of them Harry really should have been the more powerful given everything. You just didn't say things like that or even believe it, her parents were always encouraging Harry to show his true potential, saying that if Ellie could do it easily then he could too. It never seemed to cross their minds that maybe Ellie was just better than he was.

"No, that's not really something you just say, professor." She said before taking a sip of her tea wondering just what point Quirrell was getting at with all this.

"True enough, but nonetheless it is an uncomfortable truth we must contend with. The boy who lived is not as powerful as his twin sister."

"Is there a point to all this?" She interrupted with narrowed eyes, there always was a point with the non-stuttering Quirrell, and usually he got to it quickly enough as he didn't have the stamina to talk normally for a long time but she was getting a little impatient with the personal observations.

"Patience, Miss Potter, I'm getting there. The reason this truth is uncomfortable is because it leads to seemingly conflicting facts, the young Harry Potter who is predicted to grow up to be one of the greatest wizards of his generation is less powerful than his sister, Harry Potter is the destroyer of the dark lord and his sister is not, and yet… It is this and yet that makes things interesting. Tell me, Miss Potter, what do you think these people make of you?" Ah, here was his point, his eyes glowed like dying coals and a satisfied smile was stretching itself across his face. The rest of the conversation was written for him, he just wanted to hear her say it.

"People don't know what to make of me."

"Wrong." He said the word slowly so that it sounded out like the single peal of a bell in the office, "They avoid you, not because they don't understand you, but because they are afraid of you. You don't fit into their idea of how the world works and so they fear what you represent; the fact that they have no idea how the dark lord died."

"And you're not afraid of that?" She asked peering over at him and his smile faded at the question sobriety working itself back into his features.

"Well, not quite in the same manner."

Quirrell was very ill, possibly dying, and as the year progressed she watched his transformation into something else first hand and no one seemed to notice. It was as if they were all blind or else completely indifferent, Quirrell was less than a side character to them, he was an extra.

Harry, when she did run into him in the hallways or on the weekend, constantly went on about Snape and how their father had said Snape was a Death Eater, that he was an evil man who had done only one good thing in his life but could falter again.

Harry should have been chasing Quirrell, but he didn't, and so Ellie was left to him instead.

And things spiraled out of control soon after that.

May of 1991.

A few essential facts before the scene commenced.

Eleanor Potter was in a different play than her brother and his companions and in a different genre as well. Harry Potter played the knight, Eleanor Potter's role was not so easily defined.

Quirrell, a man whose papier-mâché face seemed to have everyone fooled, was dying of some terminal disease and was most likely after Dumbledore's secret treasure.

Quirrell took unnecessary and unwarranted interest not in the boy who lived, whom he encountered a few times but left no lasting impression, but rather in his twin epithet-less sister.

Wizards did believe in demons, in horrors that could not be explained, they were the darkest of arts. Eleanor Potter had been raised with these images in her head and she couldn't help but think that she did not understand Quirrell in the slightest.

Dumbledore was summoned to the ministry one day leaving the third floor corridor supposedly unguarded.

Harry would make it almost all of the way through the obstacles with his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Ron won the chess game but at the cost of his own piece, the blow had not been a kind one, and so Harry and Hermione Granger had stayed behind to drag him back to the entrance and then to the hospital wing.

So she and Harry didn't cross paths that night because by that time she'd already been in the final chamber and Quirrell had been there too.

He turned from the mirror that cold smile decorating his face as he caught sight of her, "Ah, I wondered if you might show your face, Eleanor Potter."

They made no move towards each other, she stood on the stair case covered in dirt and grime from the obstacles to get there, and him before the ornate and ominous looking mirror.

Without prompting from her he continued, "Forgive me, but I'm afraid this is one of the few times that I actually hoped to see your brother in your stead."

"I guess you'll have to settle." She replied coolly and took a step at a time.

She was afraid but everything seemed tilted more than afraid she felt cold, like there was some cold engine where her heart should have been, pushing her onward and making everything seem distant and yet sharp in the same instant.

He laughed at that, "Yes, I suppose I will. I've always liked you better than your brother though, so it all works out."

She stopped once she was on the floor with him, the fires raging behind her, and again their eyes met and his seemed to dance in the reflected light.

"Who are you, really?" She asked.

"Oh I am disappointed, I thought it would be obvious." He paused considering her momentarily and she supposed it was obvious, obvious enough that he didn't need to come out and say it, after all perhaps even he feared to say his own name.

Somehow it didn't matter that he had been blown up to bits the last time anyone had seen him, she just knew that it was him.

Lord Voldemort.

"The real question is, Eleanor Potter, who are you?"

She paused at that the coldness breaking momentarily, "Who am I?"

"Yes, you see, I was there that night and I can safely tell you what you've already guessed. There is no boy who lived. When I made to slaughter you and your brother, having gotten your parents out of the way by that point, I aimed first not at the boy but at you."

Something in her shattered in that moment, the dream or hope for normalcy, to fake it til she made it. It was one thing to think such things, to even acknowledge them and present them to Harry, it was another to know that they were real.

She was startled by his hand on her shoulder, somehow burning through the cloth, and he looked down at her, "And now, girl who lived, I'm afraid you must do something for me."

He steered her unwilling legs towards the mirror, unconcerned by the wand in her shaking arms, or her weak protests.

"Look inside, little girl, and find me my philosopher's stone."

And then she looked.

And then she failed.

Harry would ask her what happened later, as would Dumbledore, and her parents but her brief acquaintanceship with the dark lord in the guise of Quirrell had taught her a few things.

Don't bother telling things to people who aren't going to listen.

Something told her that her failure to retrieve the stone from the mirror, and then her almost instinctual grabbing of the back of Quirrell's head, digging her fingers into the misshapen facial features she found there, and burning them was something presumed to be in Harry's realm of expertise rather than her own.

Indeed, Dumbledore had been surprised that it was her that had made it all the way to the end, and not her brother Harry. He spoke to her briefly, his mind wandering elsewhere, and had merely listened as she'd told him that Voldemort was almost back but not quite.

She didn't bother telling him what he had told her, that Dumbledore had the wrong boy who lived and that everyone had been betting on the wrong quidditch team.

It consumed her over the summer, the thought of how much sense it really made, because when you thought about it she was more of a boy who lived than Harry. She was the one with the unbelievable amount of magic, the best in their class, who made everything seem so simple and easy and yet failed in the simplest of tasks like making friends or even understanding people.

She lacked certain aspects of humanity; that was necessary in things like boys who lived.

Voldemort's humor was catching, because she thought that statement was absurdly funny.

"Ellie?"

It was almost the end of summer, their birthday had already passed, Harry had received a new broom model and she a stack of books. It was August and in the heavy heat the idea of Hogwarts loomed ever closer.

She was outside sitting beneath a tree and staring out into the red washed sky, waiting for the sun to set, and wondering how a sunset could look so different on any given day.

She looked over to see a concerned Harry staring down at her, fidgeting slightly, seeming uncomfortable. Probably guilty over not talking to her much during the school year, or something, one could never tell with Harry.

"Yes?" She asked when he didn't say anything else and he almost flinched at the sound of her voice.

"Are you, are you alright, Ellie?" He asked then determination firing into his eyes, "I know we didn't talk much last year and that I wasn't there with you when I should have been but… You don't seem alright."

She considered his words, they were fair enough, and true enough as well. He was the one who was supposed to be in Dumbledore's final room; but then maybe he wasn't. He was the boy who lived but only to the general audience, maybe that room really had been meant for the boy who lived, the real boy who lived, or the next best thing which was her.

Voldemort hadn't exactly been surprised to see her.

"I grabbed the back of a man's head and lit him on fire." Ellie summarized with a dull expression and she watched as Harry paled at the details, she hadn't told the details before, "And it was mostly unnecessary, I think he would have let me walk away."

Harry was silent at that for a few moments, blinking rapidly as he took in the details, even taking half a step back from her. He licked his dry lips before asking, "But… But he was the dark lord…"

"He thought I was interesting."

And he had, he really had, and that moment when she'd turned to him failing to get the stone she'd really thought that maybe he'd let her go. But it had been instinctual and they'd both had their roles to play.

"Ellie… Ellie, he was not going to let you live. You had to do it, I know that, don't ever think that you did something you weren't forced to." Harry said as if this justification excused all her actions against the man.

When it came to Voldemort you could do pretty much anything to him and get away with it even lighting him on fire with your bare hands.

"If you say so."

He sat down next to her then and took her into his arms, and they sat there together staring out at the sunset, with so many empty words resting between them. She hoped it made him feel better about the whole thing.

The next year started a little differently in a few ways. One was that Harry was almost needlessly around. Where he had been entirely absent before he now took to hanging around too much or more frequently asking for her to hang around him and the gang.

It was alright, for the first week, but both Weasley and Granger tolerated her at best.

Hermione Granger was still a little upset that she was ranked second in their year to Ellie and something about how Ellie ignored Harry too much and didn't respect his feelings, whatever that meant. She plastered on a polite expression though and tried to include Ellie in whatever it was they did on any given day, which was usually Hermione lecturing on the benefits of studying Potions. It was clear though that their forced friendship was failing fast and that unlike Harry with the near troll death experience she and Hermione didn't have much to fall back on with common interests and experiences.

It was even worse with Ron Weasley. Ron had this weird obsession with her brother, sort of like he was a collector's item, and that somehow by being Harry's friend he was superior to his brothers and everyone else. Ron barely stood Hermione but had seemed to decided that Harry and Hermione were a package deal, he wasn't about to stand Harry's younger twin sister.

He was a little more vocal about his discontentment than Hermione.

"Harry, why did you have to invite your creepy sister along?" Ron would groan as they prepared to visit Hagrid.

"My sister isn't creepy, you take that back!" Harry said before looking over at her apologetically.

"Oh it's alright, most people do tend to think I'm creepy, I think it goes with the reputation of lighting people on fire." Ellie said to which Ron didn't give her a grateful look but did give her an odd one as if she wasn't the one he wanted to jump to his defense.

"See what I mean, mate?" Ron whispered into Harry's ear, still loud enough that she could hear it perfectly well.

She felt like she was in a little play made by Harry to reassure not only their parents, who had become increasingly worried about her wellbeing over the summer, but himself as well. It wasn't so much for her own joy and happiness as it was for him to feel that he had done his duty as a brother, that he hadn't abandoned her to his own enemies.

Which he had, sort of, depending on your point of view.

Ellie meanwhile felt as if she was being swallowed into a bottomless hole where everyone wanted you to grin all the time and pretend that things hadn't gotten out of hand. Where you had to listen to the ramblings of Gilderoy Lockhart, have tea parties with your twin brothers and his side kicks, and pretend like you really went to a school instead of a façade for the things that lurked in the basement.

Like Quirrells.

So in a way it was almost a relief when the basement came to her, when it wrote on the walls in rooster's blood.

But of course, in many ways it wasn't.

Ellie had met Ginny Weasley, all of the Weasleys really, long before they had come to Hogwarts. Being another family in the Order of the Phoenix they were one of the few children that their parents trusted to be around Harry and Ellie without trying to manipulate them for power.

This turned out to be wrong, not so much for the older children, but definitely Ginny and Ron got weird about Harry.

Harry probably never realized the extent of the weirdness in either of them, they'd learned to hide it pretty quick, that and Harry was extraordinarily thick when it came to how others perceived him. Even he had admitted that the six year old Ginny Weasley's extravagant marriage proposal had been a bit odd.

So Ellie hadn't exactly been thrilled to meet Ginny in the dark hallway, in the middle of the night, when the walls were whispering for her to kill mudbloods.

"Oh, Ginny, hello…" Ellie started noting that Ginny looked a bit creepier than usual.

Ron said that Ellie was creepy but really his little sister had him beat, at least that night, the way her eyes seemed dull and dazed as if her body was just a puppet and the way the shadows danced on her face.

"If it isn't, Ellie Potter, the sister of the boy who lived." Ginny started sounding a bit more sophisticated than Ginny usually managed.

"Mmm, yep, that's me, the sister, of that guy. It's super fun, can we not bring that up?" Ellie asked and Ginny's mouth twisted into something that would look like a grin if it wasn't so jagged.

"Are you bitter?" Ginny asked stepping closer.

"Well, not about that, it's a long story. Way too long for the middle of the night with the purist Slytherin monster roaming the halls." Ellie pointed out which caused the red-headed little girl to pause and consider that statement. Her brow furrowed for a moment, perhaps caught on the fact that Slytherin's monster had some pretty strong opinions for a monster, but she shook it off.

"True enough, I suppose, these are dangerous times." Ginny said, "Of course, Harry Potter will save us all I'm sure."

"Harry?" Ellie asked.

She supposed it was a reasonable enough belief, especially for Ginny, and Harry was trying. He and the gang were investigating again researching Slytherin's monster in the library and things that could cause petrification. So far Harry had pinned the suspects down to Malfoy and Snape, both of which were terrible choices for various reasons, but Harry hadn't listened to her when she'd tried to tell him. It kept him busy and out of trouble, at any rate, at least it kept him out of the important trouble.

Like the thing that whispered in the pipes.

Ellie, for her own part, had decided that this year would be different and she really wouldn't get involved in any of it at all. She'd gone out of her way to avoid Gilderoy Lockhart as much as possible, he looked well and good but Quirrell had told her that there was a curse on the Defense position and as crazy as Quirrell ended up being he usually wasn't wrong. She'd been a model student really, well except for the sneaking around the castle at night, but that was an entirely different story.

"Do you think he can't do it?" Ginny's voice cut into her thoughts the girl's eyes narrowed.

"No, I mean, he is the boy who lived…" Sort of, kind of, except when he wasn't, "Listen, Ginny, all this catching up is great but I'm leaving now. Bye."

And with that she hightailed it out of there to the Slytherin common room leaving Ginny standing there with that terrifying smile in the hallway.

Since that day Ginny had decided that she was Ellie's best friend ever.

She was everywhere, standing outside Ellie's classes, following her into the library, one time Ellie had even found her in the dungeon bathrooms, and the more Ginny talked the weirder it all got.

It was like Ginny wasn't even Ginny, there was no more talking about seducing Harry, about marrying him when they were old enough. Ginny barely talked about Harry, instead she philosophized about magic, the boy who lived, and Ellie's own role in the universe.

"I'm glad you're making friends." Harry had said with a genuine smile one day, Ellie had joined up on some of his hang outs with his friends if only to stave off Ginny (if Ginny looked for Ellie she avoided Harry like the plague).

"Um, I don't think Ginny's a friend, she's more like a terrifying stalker." Ellie commented but Harry's smile didn't dim.

"No, really, I was worried about you last year, and even this year too. You don't like Hermione and Ron much, do you?"

"That's irrelevant." Ellie said, because really, it had nothing to do with Ginny's stalking.

"Still, I'm glad, Ellie." He said patting her on the shoulder briefly, that warm smile on his face, before turning his attention to Ron and Hermione who were bickering at a nearby table about something pointless.

It was her one reassurance, that Ginny's constant presence made Harry happy, the one benefit of the situation. Because otherwise it was starting to remind her a little too much of Quirrell and the year before for comfort.

She and Quirrell had gotten on very well, after all.

"Doesn't it bother you that none of them even glance in your direction?"

She and Ginny were outside, wandering by the lake, Ellie watching her reflection as it danced in the dark water.

"Not really."

Ginny was looking at her curiously as if she truly wanted to hear the answer. Ginny had softened a little bit as the months had worn on. She'd also gotten paler and sickly and sometimes more scattered, but towards Ellie she had gotten softer, as if they really were friends instead of… whatever…

"It would bother me." Ginny commented with a musing expression, "I wouldn't be able to stand it at all."

"Oh it's not so bad, you get used to it." Ellie said with a shrug.

"You're infinitely more powerful and intelligent than your brother and if he had been anyone else, if you had been anyone else, they would be praising you as the next Merlin. To be looked over simply because of your blood, because of who they think you are, how could you possibly tolerate something like that?"

Ellie stopped, no one had ever put it so bluntly before, and she supposed there was some truth to that. She didn't not feel about it, there was anger and disappointment that brewed deep within her sometimes, but it wasn't overwhelming. It was never rage.

"They don't matter; they're not real." Ellie said with a small sad smile, not entirely sure what she meant but meaning it all the same. People who worshipped Harry, who dismissed her, these people had nothing in them, they were only the reflection of mankind.

Ginny stared at her for a few moments as if to see if she was actually serious, if she could be satisfied by that response, and with a small snort she shook her head, "You and I are very different people, Eleanor Potter. You see, to me it doesn't matter that they don't exist, as you put it so eloquently. They will remember my name regardless."

Hermione was petrified late in the spring and it hit Harry and Ron hard.

"We should have watched her more closely." Harry said dully looking at her frozen and stiff body. "I should have been there."

"She's not dead." Ellie offered but it was the wrong thing to say, Harry turned his head to look at her in disbelief, and he opened his mouth to say something…

He closed it and shook his head turning his face from her and back to Hermione.

Later he'd probably say to Ron that they'd get the bastard that did this to her, they'd make him pay for everyone, but he didn't say this to Ellie.

He wordlessly told her to get out.

And so she did, she got out and she stood in the hallway, alone thinking how nothing had changed from the year before. It was still a play, still this great machine called tragedy, and they were still trapped in their roles that weren't the ones they were supposed to be given.

Harry would have been a great hero.

As she walked through the hallway, ignoring the wall's whispers to kill, she wiped away the trail of tears that silently trickled down her cheeks. She had promised herself she wouldn't descend into the third floor corridor again; she'd made a promise that she would light no more men on fire.

It seemed the play might have other things in mind.

In the end it was as easy as following the trail of chaos and destruction, through the bathroom and down into the Chamber of Secrets, where Ginny had disappeared. Once again Harry was looking for her but once again he would fail to reach the finish line; as he always did.

So it was Eleanor Potter alone who made her way into the great chamber, staring into the stone face of Salazar Slytherin, and the translucent young man who smiled over the body of a dying Ginny Weasley.

"Ah, if it isn't my young friend Eleanor Potter." The young man proclaimed at her entrance practically beaming at her. "Forgive me but I was expecting…"

"My brother?" Ellie cut him off.

"Well, yes, frankly no need to be so rude about it." The man said cocking his head as he observed her, "Don't worry, I'm just as, no I'm happier to see you than him."

Ellie walked forward slowly, feeling something inside her burning, all the emotions burning away until there was only rage as she read the same script she had read a year before.

"Don't be so angry, little bird." He said moving from Ginny over to her, his smile softening in a superficial manner, "It's hardly your fault."

"You're killing her." Ellie said motioning to Ginny and he nodded.

"I'm afraid it's a necessity, in order that I might live she must die. It's nothing personal, she just happened to be around at the time." He looked over at her, a passing glance towards Ginevera Weasley, and then turned back to Ellie.

"You know I can't let you do that." Ellie said.

"Oh, why not? You don't particularly like her, I remember our first meeting, you already had a bad impression. And she doesn't particularly like you either, sees you as a… rival I suppose for your brother's affections." He grinned at her as if this was a particularly witty joke.

"It's the role I've been assigned to play and I must play it." She said taking a shuddering breath.

"No, that's your dear brother, who isn't even here." The young man corrected her, "Besides, I don't even think you really believe in heroism."

Maybe not but she believed in the play.

She made a move towards Ginny, but he cut her off, standing transparent in her path still smiling.

"You're already too late, she's lost far too much to keep on going now. Why not simply let her fade?"

She made to dart around him in the other direction but again he moved, blocking her path.

"Is it your father, your mother, perhaps even your dear brother? I notice Gryffindor runs deep in the family, they must have been so disappointed in you."

Again she moved, again he blocked.

"Why all this fuss over such a little thing, let it go Eleanor."

She met his eyes, a sharp pale blue, trembling under their intensity. With a dash she ran straight through him, shuddering as something deep and integral in him resonated deep with her, like a chord had been struck.

She made it over to Ginny and began searching for something, something that tied her to the young man, but whatever it was wasn't immediately evident and the young man was quickly solidifying.

"Well, so that's how you wish to play." The man said softly in a tone that was almost disappointed, "Very well, I suppose I'll introduce myself first. My name is Tom Riddle and I am, was, and will ever be Lord Voldemort; the man your little brother destroyed eleven years ago."

She turned slowly to look at him, almost unwillingly, and inside her there were no thoughts.

"After this is over I will seek out your brother and kill him, humiliate him, see to it that no one doubts my prowess ever again. And then, and then even I'm not sure, but I'm sure it will be a lot of fun."

He grinned and reached out to touch her, a pale glowing hand resting on her chin and moving it up to look him in the eye. "And you, little bird, will die here tonight in a valiant way that is befitting of the path you have chosen to take. It has been interesting, knowing you, but not integral."

And with that he stood dramatically and called out in a voice of whispers and hisses and in the dark something rumbled and the beast came out of the shadows.

He combed his fingers through her hair, almost solid, lighter than a normal hand but warm and real. She unconsciously leaned into it, listening as her blood dripped to the floor, her fingers twitched.

He had pulled her into his lap when she had fallen, rested her head against his chest, and she could hear the faint echoes of a heartbeat.

"Shhh, it's alright, you did very well."

She heard something's choked sobs, barely a human noise, and her throat ached with the effort of making the sound.

He made that shushing noise again, his arms tightening around her, and began to rock her slightly.

The chamber was spinning and the lights were all going out.

"It will be soon now."

She closed her eyes, taking a few last breaths, and leaned back against him waiting for all of it to fall away as if it had never been there in the first place.

Somewhere along the way the breathing stopped.

When she opened her eyes again she was in King's Cross, sitting on a bench, staring forward and looking at the Hogwarts Express with dull eyes.

Next to her there was a man, a man with hair like feathers and eyes like hers, a pale thin man who seemed terribly old and terribly sad. Somehow, she thought even as she looked at him, he reminded her of Harry.

"I've nothing to say." She commented to the man.

"Then there's nothing you need to say." He responded a slow smile spreading across his face, a kind smile, the kind her father had tried to give her but never really dared.

"I should have something to say; I've failed."

He shook his head as if to deny this and reached out hesitantly with one of his own pale hands, a scarred thing that said "I must not tell lies" and took hers. "No one has ever truly failed; not even in the darkest of times, because life and light always go on."

"Life and light…" She said looking to the air, the bright atmosphere of the station, to the way the train glittered in the presumed sunlight.

"You are very young to be here." He said softly still holding her hand.

"I was poisoned by a basilisk." She commented dully though the poison no longer clouded her thoughts or made everything shake and fade in the same instant.

"Ah, the Chamber of Secrets…" He brushed away her hair to reveal the lightning bolt scar frowning slightly at it but then deciding ultimately that it didn't matter, "That's a very difficult thing to do, you know, killing a basilisk and staying alive afterwards."

She shrugged not sure how to put it, that she hadn't been left the option of failure, that she had no choice but to succeed and yet she had still died and everything had spun out of control as it always did.

"My brother should have been there… I should have been my brother, we should have been switched. I was… I was never right, never good enough, never what anyone wanted!" She brought her feet up onto the bench curling into herself and feeling the tears once again coursing down her cheeks.

"I was never meant to be the boy who lived!"

The words echoed, too loud, much too loud.

"I am so sorry." The man said, and he pulled her into the dark robes he wore even as she sobbed, "We do not choose what we are though, believe me I tried as well. We take what we are and we follow the winding path dictated to us; knowing that things never truly end."

More hesitantly he said, "You can return, if you so choose, you can go back to face the basilisks and the demons and many more besides. You do not have to take the train; there is your choice."

"I…" She pulled away so that she could look him in the eye and for the first time she felt that someone understood.

"There will always be a train to somewhere."

When she returned the young Tom Riddle had become solid, was staring at her in disbelief, and when they looked across at each other there were so many things they couldn't bring themselves to say.

Author's Note: Otherwise known as "The Wrong Boy Who Lived" Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus Style. Anyways this was for the 1500th review by Rasdra who asked for a fic where Lily connects on a human level to some character (any character) and finds something in humanity that she envies. I'll admit, this is a little bit of cheating on my end, but the character development required (in the bounds of a one shot no less) for this to have occurred is monumental. Lily can connect with characters but she wouldn't go so far as to envy humanity, and so we have the slightly humanized version of Lily instead who does envy.

Thanks to readers, reviews are always appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.