Author's Note: For those about to read this I offer two warnings. One, this is a side fic to the fic "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and without reading that you'll be a little confused. The second is that this is NOT CANON to the main fic.

"Well, you're certainly different from the other Harry Potters I've met." The young man said, pale fingers moving through her red hair, finally concluding with a smile that was far too charming, "I think I like it."

They were sitting inside the dilapidated remains of Wizard Lenin's father's house, the mansion left in ruins since the day Wizard Lenin had killed his father almost fifty years ago, drinking tea that had kindly been provided to her by the young man across from her who was, in his own way, Wizard Lenin himself.

(In the background a piece of classical music played over and over again, on repeat forever, the notes on the piano sounding like rain tapping against the glass, Trois Gyymnopédies, Wizard Lenin had called it when the song first began playing in the living room.

She kept waiting for it to stop, but it hadn't yet, it kept playing and playing…)

The alternate version of the horcrux she had yet to meet, who called himself Tom Riddle, belonging to a world that could have been her own but wasn't. Where Harry instead of Ellie had been born and later chose to abandon everything he ever knew… It was beginning to be a little difficult to keep track of everything.

She didn't respond, instead stared into the fire, seeing Hogwarts' image superimposed upon it. She also didn't drink the tea, although it smelled like Jasmine, because she had the feeling that she shouldn't trust Tom Riddle any more than she trusted anyone else in this dimension.

"Not every Harry Potter comes to see me, you know." Tom Riddle confessed. He moved away from her, after he had been standing far too close, and sat down across from her. He was almost as tall as Wizard Lenin, he still had a bit more to grow, and his face wasn't quite as chiseled but he had Wizard Lenin's eyes. He had those pale eyes that reflected all light and burned.

She looked at him reluctantly, at the way he held his tea delicately, his eyes glancing down at the leaves at the bottom as if they might tell his fate and then back over to hers, "I always find it a little insulting. They each go out of their way to see him, but few come to visit me, and when they do… Well, too much bad blood never does sit well with a Harry Potter. You're the first who hasn't tried to kill me."

"Really?" She asked, not meaning it, or even caring about his answer her eyes still drifting towards that unattended fire place fueled by magic and will alone. She wasn't sure which of them was stoking the fire, whether it was him or her, either way the flames climbed the smoke almost dulling the smell of mold on the half-forgotten wall-paper.

"Truly." He responded, smiling, Tom Riddle loved to smile a sweet charming smile that Wizard Lenin didn't give. She wasn't sure how she felt seeing that type of smile on that face.

"So, Harry, what brings you to my humble manor?" He asked when the silence had continued for too long.

For a moment she didn't respond, trying to get her thoughts in order, feeling bound to silence as Wizard Lenin was, not knowing if there was anything at all worth saying. She wondered why she had come, Wizard Lenin had suggested it, but they had expected it to be empty. When they saw the wards they could have left but they pressed onwards and found Tom Riddle instead; and now she was here in this living room staring into the fire and wondering where they would go next.

"I have a few questions." She finally said.

"Oh?" He asked, "Well then, what are they?"

"A question." She revised, realizing there was only one question at the end of things, this seemed to intrigue him further his eyebrows raised and his posture became more causal. He set down his tea and leaned forward.

"Well then, what is it?" He repeated, looking pleased with himself for this witty comment.

"Tell me a story, the story, tell me about all this from your point of view." She said, though in the end this wasn't a question.

"You know what happened." He said, his smile getting a cruel edge to it, like a blade and she could see Wizard Lenin beneath that smile. Old, dangerous, and so very lethal; she wasn't sure if she found it comforting to see such a familiar expression on that face.

"I know my story, I know the pieces I've glimpsed, and maybe I know the end… That doesn't mean I know the story." She said before adding, "Humor me, since I came all this way and didn't try to kill you."

He laughed out loud at that as if she'd managed to surprise him, truly entertain him, she'd since concluded that this other version of the horcrux she'd never met was a bit of an eccentric and perhaps had a little too much time on his hands.

"Well then, where to start; where to start…" He said his finger circling the rim of his tea cup, slowly, carefully, not once pausing in its orbit. She couldn't stop looking at his hands.

"I met Harry Potter, the first Harry Potter, in 1992 as you must have been told." He started looking thoughtful; perhaps even a touch nostalgic, "I was a different person then, misguided, under a few very wrong impressions. You see, I assumed I was Voldemort which is well… just not true."

A crooked, self-deriding smile appeared on his face then, and he added darkly, "I was so pitifully naïve."

His finger stopped circling the tea abruptly, and for a moment his expression darkened, but the moment passed and he began talking again, "Regardless, at the time I was possessing Ginny Weasley and draining her life force in order to gain my own body…"

(In the back of her head, where she wasn't consumed by her own story, she made a mental note to Wizard Lenin to look more into this vein of thought. But neither she nor Wizard Lenin were interested in pursuing such practical thoughts for the moment, not for a while at least.)

"I learned about Harry Potter and his role in my main soul's demise. Needless to say I was a little put out by this information and decided, while I was causing all hell to break loose, I might as well kill little Harry Potter while I was at it. He was very young, twelve, and he looked so fragile. He wore glasses, round atrocious things that looked like the bottom of coke bottles… I ran into him a few times that year but it wasn't until the end that I confronted him directly. I killed him in May of that year with a basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets; and as far as I assumed at the time that was the end of Harry James Potter."

It wasn't the end of him though, perhaps this Tom Riddle would never realize it but she had met that Harry Potter again. He had looked like he'd described, close to her age, around her height maybe a little taller with those thick glasses that hid his green eyes. He'd smiled at her, in the world beyond worlds, and had kindly told her that he would not be returning.

"I understand." He'd said, "I finally understand; I shouldn't have been there in the first place."

But he was in a place where these people could not reach him so Lily would not inform Tom Riddle of his mistake.

(Death has gone away, she thought to herself, he's abandoned his old childhood home and nobody even thought to notice.)

"The next few years had no sign of the boy who lived in them. For a while I tried to get my bearings, then take over the group of remaining Death Eaters, but soon enough my original soul reappeared to claim his position. There was a bit of messy infighting, the other prophesized boy Neville Longbottom was killed and used to restore Voldemort's body, and it seemed as if Britain was doomed to the rule of an immortal dark lord." Tom Riddle said all this nonchalantly, as if it was ultimately unimportant, and she wondered if that infighting was what had condemned him to this rotting house on a hill. She didn't know, couldn't guess by looking at him, only knew that he was about as fond of his original as Wizard Lenin was of Quirrell.

From what she knew of this Voldemort, from what she'd heard of him, he probably hadn't been too accommodating of his horcrux.

"The rumor is that Dumbledore designed a system of runes that summons 'Harry Potters' into this universe. Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't, either way soon after he died the Harry Potters started showing up. The first was older, perhaps eighteen or so, and had already defeated his own Voldemort…" He trailed off, remembering him, "I didn't meet this one, he was killed quickly, I think he was tired of wars and winning them; his own war had drained him already."

He stalled for a moment, flicking through the memory of thousands of now dead Harry Potters, who had fought, run, rebelled and the died in this world after being pulled from their own. She sometimes wondered where all of his bodies were buried, and which building stood on the bones of prophesized heroes.

"They're all more or less Harry Potter, the son of Lily and James Potter, born at the end of July, and prophesized to destroy a dark lord. Beyond that they have their differences; some aren't near-sighted, like you and some hate quidditch... You're the first Harriet, female Harry, as far as I'm aware…"

Lily interrupted then this wasn't really why she had asked, she had guessed this much for herself when she'd been inside Hogwarts, she wanted to hear about other things, "When did the Order of the Phoenix go insane?"

His eyebrows raised at her words and he gave her a sharper pointed look, "Ah, yes, them. Well, that took a good number of years and a good number of deaths. You see, they've had so many Harry Potters in their midst that at this point he's like a weapon you can order from the factory. There's a process they've devised to deal with him, how to work him, where to point him, what to do when he's a Gryffindor, a Slytherin, and everything in between. When he's too young, when he's too old, when he sees them for what they are… All manners of contingency plans for them. They became too experienced at dealing with Harry Potters and they forgot that summoning is a truly dangerous thing to do."

Here he smiled at her, as if sharing a joke, "It's why you were able to kill them."

She said nothing in response.

"As I've said I haven't had much interaction with the Harrys; they're only interested in getting home or else killing the main soul. The ones that remember me usually do so because they know about horcruxes or else they loved Ginny Weasley a little too much. As for him, my main soul, well, at first he was a little concerned but I think he's even finding dull at this point. It's just the monthly chore at this point, deal with the latest Harry Potter if he's a little too competent. The truth is that they lost long ago and no army of prophesized heroes will make a difference to us."

He leaned back then in his chair, less intent than before and looking almost bored, "I'm afraid that's all there is to the story. There's little worth commenting about in the middle and as such the only importance is in the end; in you, Harry. But that's a story you can tell me, just what did they do that made you burn them alive?"

That was none of his business, she almost told him that, but he seemed to expect that from her as if that was a very Harry like response to have.

And at this point she wanted to be anything but a Harry Potter.

"I didn't burn them alive, I burned down the castle, most of them died before it burned down." She clarified, and this was true, she hadn't burned them alive although she hadn't really been thinking about it then. She wondered if he knew what they really had descended to or if he just wanted her to say it.

At first it had seemed like a guerilla compound, like they truly wished for her to destroy Hindenburg and save the country, but later…

The short and crude way to say it was that they all went crazy, killed the ones who hadn't gone crazy, and had started bartering over her organs and blood as if it was the latest magical fix they needed to finally defeat the Death Eaters.

There was nothing like cannibalism to win wars.

She didn't like putting it like that though, not only because it skipped over the finer details, but because putting it that simply seemed…

She couldn't put it into words, not then and not now, she could only set the place on fire and then start walking.

She hadn't recognized them, neither had Wizard Lenin, none of the original Order members appeared to have survived the war. She didn't know what year it was in this world, but it seemed as if it had been a very long time since Harry Potter had died and every Harry Potter since.

"Is it true they keep the original Harry in a glass coffin in front of the ministry?" She asked, instead of answering further, but Tom Riddle didn't answer her question just poured himself some more tea and drank slowly from it.

If so then one day he could return to it, if he so chose, the once and future king.

But she had a feeling that the boy she had met beyond death would politely decline, as he had done when she first met him, and would simply wait for eternity as the world he'd left burned.

There were many Harry Potters, she realized, but in the end there was only one Death; the Death she had met so many years ago in a train station and no other Harry Potter would ever replace him.

He was the last great Harry Potter.

She would tell him that, when she found him again.

So she turned to stare into the fire, seeing nothing but Hogwarts inside and Wizard Lenin's words, as they'd watched Hogwarts burning rang in her head, "I suppose it deserved to be set on fire."

Author's Note: Well, so that happened, I originally tried writing the longer in detail version of this but in the end it wanted to be short. Based on the prompt from the 2200th reviewer of Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus by Rosie Cheeks and Sneaky Peaks who asked for a fic where Lily is summoned to another dimension to defeat Voldemort. Since I already did the lulz version of this, where Lily's summoned by Voldemort to canon land, I decided I'd get a little more serious this time.

Thanks for reading, reviews would be great.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter