Author's Note: To those of you about to read this I offer the usual pair of warnings I give for these things. One, this is a side fic to "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" if you haven't read that then I guess you can just assume it's a time travelling fem!Harry but that sort of defeats the point. The other warning is that this is NOT CANON, for more or less obvious reasons.

Godric had been told, a very long time ago when his father was still alive, that the fair folk had gone back into their kingdoms underground centuries ago. In the old days, the very old days, before the Romans had invaded and Christendom had been brought to England they had walked aboveground more freely. That was back when they were druids rather than witches and wizards, back when magic had been believed in and the church had been far from them.

His father would tell old tales a lot, about the time before the Romans had come, and then about Merlin and how he had been advisor to a king. It wasn't that there were less of them now, or less magic even, it just seemed further away than it used to be. Now they burned witches, not true witches like his mothers, mostly elderly neighbors that looked at someone funny too often, but the sentiment was there.

They would burn you, if they found you. If you were lucky you were taught by your father or even your mother, you found yourself a wandmaker and you paid him in gold, and if you were clever you went from there offering miracles for a fee and associating only with those families whose names you knew, whose names had changed time and time again but had always remembered the old ways.

Godric was clever, he was very gifted, and his father had given him praise for that. "You'll be a fine wizard, some day, lad."

His father was a runemaker, and Godric had been learning the trade for as long as he could remember. His mother had died in childbirth, magic not being enough to save her, and so for as long as he could remember it was only Godric and his father. And for a while, it had seemed as if nothing could change that.

Until his father died and Godric had been left to wander England and Scotland on his own.

The world was beautiful but it was also dark and grim. The world had no pity for orphans with a name they didn't recognize and they had fear and hatred for that which the local priest told them to fear and hate. People used to buy small miracles, a handful of magic beans, a cure for their child, a charm to keep out the brownies, but these days such miracles could get you killed.

Godric was clever, but he was also young, and he liked being alive more than he liked selling magic for gold. So he kept his talents to himself and he wandered and he would find himself thinking of the old ways and the way magic used to be.

Otherwise he thought of finding a master somewhere to take him on as his apprentice, another runemaker like his father, or a wand maker perhaps.

But he had been told the fair folk had left for the underground, that only if you were unlucky did you step into their circles and find yourself spirited away for years and years. And he had believed that, until he saw one for himself.

He had been walking in the deep forests, the kind that people tended to avoid because of the beasts that lurked within, the forests still had old and powerful magic in them and because of that this was where he would find supplies he needed.

And then, for whatever reason perhaps hearing her footstep, he'd turned and caught sight of her. She looked, distantly, like him. Her hair was red, brighter somehow than his, although they both had that same red gold shade that you saw in the early stages of a sunset. She was so pale though, and so thin, but not starved looking, no she looked lean somehow. There was an elfin cast to her features, to her paleness, her large too green eyes that looked more like spell light than eyes and she was wearing such a strange and brightly colored tunic.

And when she talked, it was in a dialect he could only barely string together and with a grin that reminded him too much of a fox, "Oh, yay, people."

Her name was Lily, she said, but she didn't give a surname with it. Perhaps the Sidhe didn't have surnames like that, and names were supposedly dangerous things with them, true names had power. Though she claimed she wasn't one of the fair folk.

"No, I'm just a time traveler." She'd said with a shrug, as if this was any more outlandish.

She claimed to come centuries from the future, from a world where people had entirely forgotten the existence of magic, where people like him had scripted runes and created spells to hide from these people and had separated completely.

So that the blacksmith, the brewer, the priest, the baker, the butcher, were all tasks performed by those with the gift. An idea he found frankly bizarre, because if you had magic, then why on earth would you become a butcher?

"Don't look at me, I have no idea why people do anything!" She'd exclaimed when he'd asked, her pale hands darting through gestures like erratic confused birds, "I've never understood people and let me tell you pseudo glitch manipulators are even more confusing than the regular kind of person. Too much bureaucracy, I should think, it isn't good for anyone."

Needless to say, the eleven year old Godric had no idea what this meant.

In the end he'd asked her to accompany him on his journey to find a master. He didn't know whether she was insane, whether she was from underground, or whether she really had been telling the truth but he found he didn't particularly care.

Some part of him, the small part of him that had burned when his father died, wanted this. Wanted this girl who had appeared out of nowhere in her bright tunic, her strange pathetically short trousers, and her red hair that was so similar to his own to come with him wherever he went.

She said yes.

He didn't realize that in some other time, in some other world, he should never have asked at all and that because he had things would never be as they were.

He quickly realized that Lily had certain moods she cycled through.

There was the boundless cheerful optimism and determination, where reality bent to her whim and everything was charted out before her. In these moments she would dash ahead, dancing on the water and the wind, her smile that blinding smile that had first greeted him.

There was the casual impatience, which mostly reared its head at villagers on the path, when they didn't understand some concept or couldn't decide to stay or leave. Sometimes he received the brunt of this, when he asked something she considered not worth answering, or else felt that no one understood the way the world truly worked.

There was the stark, predatory, seriousness that would overtake her. He'd only see this occasionally, it would be a flash, like lightning through her green eyes and at once she would seem ancient and terrible and then it would be gone as if it had never existed in the first place.

Then there was the quiet drifting, a deep emptiness that spoke of forgotten things that could never return, like a deep well where one could not see the bottom but could only drop stones and listen desperately for an echo that never came. It was the type of feeling he'd had when his father died, only more, and because of that this lingering quietness always terrified him.

And in explanation, when he asked why she would have this feeling, she only once responded, "Time travel, it's always too complicated."

The first time he realized the extent of her power, and how much more powerful she was than him, they'd still been fairly young.

Of course, there'd always been small things. She could apparate, float things wandlessly, walk on water and wind, conjure, transfigure, anything and everything without the wand that was so precious and necessary to him.

But for whatever reason it hadn't cemented in, he hadn't realized that they were so different, that while he was clever and she was fey she was more powerful than anything he could ever have imagined.

"So, this setting people on fire in the town square thing…" Lily trailed off, her eyebrows raising at the sight of the latest witch trial, Godric merely kept his eyes lowered and his head away from the sight.

She wasn't a witch, they rarely were, the old families never kept to villages long enough to be accused. People accused the neighbors, the ones who had been around, the ones that no one liked and then they in turn accused people they knew. The woman up there was like many others he'd seen, not a spark of magic inside of her.

At this point he and Lily had been travelling together for some time, making their way south again towards Scotland, searching out the latest rumors Godric had heard of a runemaker. He peddled herbal medicines and simple potions and in rare cases the more magical kind for a higher price.

This time they had finally come to a village holding a witch trial, he'd always tried to avoid these scenes, it was his first time seeing one with her.

"It isn't new." He finally said, answering her implied question, his voice hoarse suddenly as he still looked away. "It's been going on for years now."

They were sitting on the roof of a nearby shop, away from the mob, with wards for secrecy and misdirection cast about them. It was safer that way, and easier, it meant that he didn't have to stand inside the mob gagging on the smell of sweat, blood, and urine as they shouted to burn the witch and see if she'd live.

"Oh, right, well it's just a bit alarming, isn't it? What with all the flames and the screaming and the death in public squares." She frowned considering this slowly, watching as they built up the kindling and accused the woman of her crimes against the village.

"Yes." Was all he could say, because it was terrible and barbaric and it hadn't been this way when his father was a child, his father had said that much.

They stood in silence, listening to the jeering of those below them, Lily watching their faces and the scene while Godric turned and looked at how blue the sky was that morning. He did that sometimes, and wondered how they could live in a world that was at once so beautiful and so cruel.

"I find this uncomfortable." Lily finally said.

"What?" He asked, turning to look at her.

"Well, I mean, it's just really inefficient… and also painful. And I'm still not quite getting the why of this… Is it a virgin sacrifice? Local cannibalistic barbeque? Setting people on fire and testing how good of kindling they make? I mean, not that any of those make any sense either, but they make kind of more sense than… You know, I thought lighting people on fire was one of those things that fell under the category of bad." She grimaced, her hands twisting the fabric of her blue tunic, and finally she sighed and had the resigned look as if she'd just come to some decision, "Well I guess there's no helping it."

And then she proceeded to do something that he had never seen his father do, something he'd never dreamed her capable of. With a casual flick of her fingers the woman was untied from the pillar in the square and thrown off into the far distance at an uncanny speed, in the meantime the kindling and pillar itself exploded into brightly colored strips of paper with loud popping noises.

He sat there, mouth open, waiting for words to come out but finding none.

"Come on, freckles, let's go visit the next Renaissance fair village." Lily pulled him up, grabbed him, and together they floated down into the square leaving the scene of chaos and witchcraft behind them.

At first it was a hobby, something to pass the time if they happened to be in the area, it wasn't something they sought out. Then it became something to look forward to, a stopping point on the road to find whatever rumored master was next on his list. But as he grew older and the rumors of masters became less and less it became something far more.

From the age of twelve until he was fifteen, he and Lily disrupted any and every witch trial they heard about in the most creative, obnoxious, and ludicrous manner they could possibly devise all while transporting the witch out of the village and giving her a chance to run for the hills.

It became something of a game. They'd try to outwit each other, take turns and make the disruption more ridiculous than the last. Lily would bring in her otherworldly references in with things like disco music and he would bring in his own experiences with things like giant transfigured chickens that would run amuck through the streets.

England, it was said, was experiencing witchcraft of a kind that the world had never seen and surely none other than the devil himself was behind it.

"I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds, not Satan Prince of Darkness." Lily had commented derisively when she'd heard the news of their supposed identity, "Besides, I don't have the time or patience for coming up with ways to torture humanity forever. That sounds like the worst job, no, wait, I think that was Snape's job… I would hate Snape's job."

They went on adventures whenever it pleased them and in time he studied, created spells, perfected his craft without that master he'd been so desperate to find. And as the years passed Lily seemed to settle into herself, to let her past and other world go, and as she did so details of her own world would slip out.

"I don't really have a reason to go back, you know." She admitted one night as they stared up into the stars, her eyes calm and steady and her face so terribly blank, "I had this friend named Lenin, have… It's still have. At any rate, if he'd been here, I think he would have wanted to go back. But he's not here, and now I'm not there, he might actually appreciate that. It makes things less complicated. And Death exists outside of time anyways… So I don't really have a reason to go back." She'd frowned, looking pained by this, as if she had wanted to find a reason to return to wherever she had come from.

(And this had terrified him beyond measure, she said he was brave, that he was courageous, but he felt nauseous at the idea that she could leave him alone again.)

But then she grinned, "Besides, now I don't have to go to Hogwarts! I don't have to go to Potions! I don't have to murder Quirrell! I don't have to do anything I don't want to do! It's a free world, Godric, isn't that great?"

And she didn't leave, which was more than he could wish for.

It didn't matter that she wanted to start magical wars with France (it didn't matter that they did start several magical feuds with France, an army of enlarged transfigured chickens as their only defense), it didn't matter that they went on quests to the top of mountains in order to destroy golden jewelry, it didn't matter that she had started an underground movement to overrun and corrupt the church, it didn't matter when she wanted to build strange otherworldly devices only for them to spiral out of control and have to be destroyed.

None of this mattered, solely because she'd chosen to stay, and for that he would turn the world upside down with her.

They ran across Salazar when they were sixteen.

By that point the Gryffindor twins had garnered something of a reputation among those who had deep magic in their blood. Those without magic, the muggles as Lily swore other people called them, still hadn't caught on saying that it was the Devil's work and the end of the world but others remembered.

Dangerous idiots, reckless fools, arrogant brats, and saviors perhaps more talented than Merlin himself. Because they were the first, the only, to confront the church since the witch trials had started to spread like a disease through the island.

Some had met with them already, some had tried to kill them for what they were doing and continuing to do, but Salazar had been one of those odd ones they'd just sort of stumbled across.

They'd been in a pub, one where witches and wizards tended to gather, the kind that sold fire whisky if you had the money for it and enough of an eye to get past the wards around the place. Sitting by themselves in a corner they'd taken up Lily's hobby of people watching.

The idea was to pick a person in the room, only look at them, and by their dress and manner detail their life out in the most outlandish manner possible. It was horrifically insulting, Lily had no shame and Godric had learned to quickly set up silencing spells for whenever she did it, but it was also strangely entertaining.

Really, that could be said about any of Lily's past times though.

"Alright, alright, me first." Lily leaned forward, her hands clasped under her chin and her eyes like daggers as she combed through the room searching for that poor bastard whose life she was about to dictate. Lily was very serious about her hobbies, "Middle aged guy, on the stool, the one with the beer belly and the bald spot."

Godric searched for him, found him in rumpled robes leaning against the counter with a morose drunken expression on his face.

If Godric had been playing that turn, had picked him, he would have said that his wife had run off with his squib neighbor who had seduced her while wearing women's robes.

"He's just realized the lack of utter meaning in the universe, that there is no point to any of his actions, that ultimately he is mortal, fat, and balding. He's hoping that he can find meaning in the bottom of his glass, but so far it isn't working, he's been trying really hard though. He has yet to realize though that you can't find meaning in the bottom of beer glasses, only alcohol." Lily said shaking her head in pity before distantly adding, "Although he will find more fat for his beer belly."

Godric continued considering him, "His wife didn't run off with the squib in the dress?"

"Oh, well, that happened too I suppose." Lily said and then added, "And his first born son was stolen by a leprechaun."

"No, did he steal its gold?" Godric asked.

"He forgot to pay his taxes, he's Irish you see, and over there they have a leprechaun tax for every time you see a rainbow."

"Oh, I see, thank Merlin we lived in a civilized land like England. The leprechauns here are much less demanding, unfortunately we have goblins instead." If there weren't laws against it, and if the wizards wouldn't go to war for it, he was certain that the goblins might try to take children from those who hadn't paid their dues.

"Leprechauns are like Shakespeare, they like the whole pound of flesh thing for debtors, which by the way does actually work. Seriously, if you ever need to convince someone to pay their debts just tell them that if they don't get your money you're going to start with the hands."

Godric had never needed money that badly, "Really?"

"Seriously, it will save you so much time, believe it." Lily paused, taking a swig from her own glass, "Your turn."

With a smile he turned to the room once again, picking through each and disregarding them in turn, then he saw him. He was a thin boy, around Godric and Lily's age, his face pale and his cheeks sallow, his eyes obscured by dark and mangy hair. His long, thin, fingers tapped impatiently at the table and his glass was almost empty. He didn't seem lost though, he looked instead as if he was on the verge of bursting into flames, as if everyone was in danger just from being near him. Yet he was so small, so hidden in the shadows with his dark robes and hair, that he was looked over by each of them in turn.

"That lad, the one in the back corner, with the dark hair and funeral outfit." But as he said it the smile dripped from his face and he became momentarily somber. Something about him demanded Godric take notice, take him seriously, and this was not a game for taking things seriously.

Lily eyed the corner, finding him, and her eyebrows raised, "Jesus Christ, Snape junior?"

He said nothing though, just leaned forward, still watching, waiting for something to happen.

Lily meanwhile filled in for him when the silence went on too long, "Let me guess, his mum was a witch but his dad was a magicless wife beater and he grew up in the poor side of town. Meanwhile he falls in love with my bourgeoisie muggleborn mother and they eventually go to magical school together. Unfortunately he says some racist things and joins a cult, my mother is dreadfully disappointed by this and dumps his ass, he then proceeds to do a lot of murdering and intimidating and eventually becomes inadvertently responsible for the death of my mother. He then feels really bad about it and agrees to teach small children Potions to make up for it, but he sucks at teaching and instead uses his profession to make as many children cry as possible. Their pain is an essential ingredient in his secret evil potions."

Lily paused, waiting for him to say something in turn to her, but he didn't he just kept staring, "Really, Snape is that boring to you?"

Without thinking about it, without really knowing why, Godric stood with his drink and slowly walked over to that table in the shadows where the boy sat. Lily followed, taking her own drink with her and looking somewhat alarmed at him, but he offered no explanation.

When they sat down at the table the boy looked up.

Godric would have thought his eyes would be black, or else a dark gray, but instead they were a pale blue like the color of thick ice on a lake in winter. Somehow though they were just as piercing and smoldering as they would have been had they been the color of smoke.

Lily of course ruined this impression by speaking, "Whoa, you look like homeless Lenin."

"What?" The boy asked, his voice higher than Godric's, not necessarily unbroken but a high tenor like a minstrel's.

"If Lenin got addicted to cocaine, lived in a cardboard box for two months, and grew out his hair, I swear he'd look exactly like you." Lily said, not realizing that the boy had meant this rhetorically, and not realizing that neither of them had any idea what half the words she had just spouted meant.

The boy blinked painfully at her, as if processing her words was equivalent to throwing sharp objects at his head.

"Ah, right, I'm Godric Gryffindor and this is my sister Lily." Godric said, somewhat sheepishly, and at that something in the boy's expression sharpened.

"I've heard of you." He said, rather bluntly, he was like Lily in that respect. While Lily tended to go on tangents she also tended to say exactly what she meant and got to the point very quickly when she felt there was a point to be had. That thought caused something of a smile to come to his lips.

"Have you?" Godric asked.

"You've destroyed at least a dozen towns with oversized poultry."

"To be fair they were burning people alive in the town square." Lily pointed out as if the moral hazard was the issue the boy had with them.

"Well, clearly you've heard about us, what about you?" Godric asked before they got too off track.

"I hardly see how that's your business."

"I think we should just call him Crack Lenin." Lily said, tilting her chair back and placing her hands behind her head, looking at the boy she'd just dubbed Crack Lenin with speculation, "Or perhaps Heroin Lenin."

Apparently he didn't like the idea of Crack Lenin as a name, "My name is Salazar Slytherin, from the Slytherin family."

Godric didn't recognize that name, but then he'd never used names to recognize practitioners of the craft, if they weren't in a warded bar he'd still know that this boy had magic. It was in his aura, the way the shadows surrounded him, and the way his eyes cut through to your very soul.

But the way he said it, so proud, so insistent, Godric had never introduced himself as being from the Gryffindor line.

Lily seemed to recognize it though if her grim expression was anything to go by. For a moment she just stared at the boy, her face paling and her eyes growing still and ancient, and for a moment Godric thought she might do something quite drastic. But then, insistently, in a tone that was the same as the boy had used towards them she said, "Godric, you've got to build a magic school."

"I have to build a what?" He asked.

"You, Salazar Slytherin, Helga Hufflepuf, and Rowena Ravenclaw all get together and build a magic school in Scotland called Hogwarts and teach people… magic stuff."

"I do what?" He asked, because this didn't seem like a serious thing except she looked perfectly serious, Lily only looked that serious when she meant what she said.

"We've spent too much time destroying villages with chickens! I'm from the future, remember? I went to your magic school, Hogwarts, and for me to go there it has to exist which means you guys all have to get together and build the thing."

"Lily, I don't even know who those people are." Not that an argument like that had ever stopped her before.

"If you don't build this school it will destroy the universe! Probably, I mean it's kind of falling apart already. But this could be the reason it started falling apart in the first place!" Lily at this point had dramatically stood up on the table, and pointed towards the ceiling, as if it was the universe teetering dangerously over their heads.

Godric looked over at the boy who seemed somewhat stunned. He wasn't running though and as Lily continued to stand there looking strangely terrifying, and the patrons of the bar all turned to look at them, he saw a spark of interest kindling in the boy's eye.

"So, Salazar Slytherin of the Slytherin family, how would you like to build a magic school in Scotland?"

The next few years became a quest to find either Rowena Ravenclaw or Helga Hufflepuff.

Godric would never truly understand why Salazar had agreed to come. Fondness grew with the years, so that later Godric would think that Salazar considered him a true friend, but it didn't start that way. In the beginning they had been nothing but strangers with a half mad goal of building a magic school.

"I believe in it." He'd said once, "This school your sister wishes to build."

They'd been sitting around the campfire, in the middle of the night, both having abandoned their task of charting out the constellations as they looked out into the night.

"Believe in it?" Godric asked.

"It is too hard, too dangerous, to find a master and become an apprentice these days. We're spread thin, disconnected. You know this." Salazar said, the light of the fire reflecting in his eyes, as if it was the fire of his own soul.

Yes, Godric's father had died before he had taught him all of his craft, by chance Godric was clever and powerful enough to continue on his own. By luck or fate he had found Lily in the woods that day, but there were many who were not lucky and were not as clever and powerful as he had been.

"A school would solve this, would allow a general education, so that you could choose what you would wish to master. It would center us, make us a community to stand against the muggles instead of remnants of a dying past. Great Britain needs this school, Godric." Here he offered Godric a wry smile, "Your sister may be eccentric, but she's really quite brilliant, isn't she?"

"She wants to name it Hogwarts."

And the smile became a crooked grin, "Even so."

But she was brilliant, in her own bizarre way Lily was a genius, certainly when it came to power alone she was unmatched. She did not need them to build her school, in the bat of an eye she could erect the mightiest castle the world had ever seen, but she had insisted that the school belonged to them.

Still, it would have helped if she didn't spend the next few years scheming as they hunted down their future co-founders as she called it.

"Godric, you get to be the brave and reckless one who charges into battle and probably gets himself killed off first. Salazar, you get to be the manipulative and cunning bastard who stabs people in the back to get what he wants while also being very racist about it. Rowena gets to be the smart one who reads too many books. And Helga gets to the hard working person who never really does well in school but sticks by her friends and doesn't give up, Charlie Brown in other words." She said as they climbed through the highlands, somehow unhindered by the supplies she carried and always light on her feet.

"Those are all terrible!" Godric cried in despair knowing that it was already too late because it was always too late with Lily, "Why am I the meat shield? Can't I be the one who reads books?"

"I would also like to be the one who reads books rather than the one who stabs people in the back." Salazar said, far more dully than Godric. It was in his humor, to say things bluntly and in a condescending tone, and it always managed to wear on Godric's nerves.

"Hey, I didn't come up with the stereotypes, don't go shooting the messenger." Lily said holding up her hands as if this was hardly her fault.

"And what are you supposed to be? The insane one who releases oversized chickens and has a penchant for tilting at windmills?" Salazar asked, to which she blinked, as if she'd never truly considered her own reputation before.

"Please, no, if that had been an option I would have taken it. Really, Slytherin sucked."

"I did what?" Salazar asked his magic suddenly sparking to life and the dry grass near them lighting itself on fire. With a swish of his wand Godric put it out before it could spread into something more dangerous.

"Slytherin the house, there's this whole sorting thing. They put a singing magical hat on your head that gives you a personality quiz, depending which founder you're most like they put you in that house. Well, most of the time, last time I sort of broke it but that's beside the point."

"Wait, a singing magical hat told you that you and I are similar?"

She nodded as if this was extremely evident, "I'm very manipulative."

"How in the name of all that is ancient and untouched, are you manipulative?"

Funny, Godric was thinking the exact same thing, but Lily just gave them a dull and somewhat unimpressed look.

"I said manipulative, not subtle or ambitious, there's a bit of a difference."

"Such as?"

"I decided we should build a magic school so that the universe doesn't implode and we're currently in the process of building a magic school so the universe doesn't implode." She let those words sink in for a few moments, the true weight of them digging into their souls, as they realized that yes they were doing exactly what Lily wanted and she'd made no pretense of hiding it.

"Just because I didn't bother to be subtle doesn't mean I didn't get you to do it; I'm just more efficient that way." She grinned before skipping on ahead with another hair brained scheme no doubt in her head.

"The truly terrible thing is," Godric said with a sly glance over towards the stunned Salazar, "She has a point."

Helga was not what he would have expected.

He and Salazar, despite having different personalities and outlooks on life, were somewhat similar. Both were orphans, both were very powerful, both had spent their lives searching for greater secrets to magic and were well on their way to becoming masters. They were like two sides of a coin, the sun and the moon, and thus in their opposition they were the same.

Helga was a simple Potions' apprentice.

She was a plain girl, hair the color of straw, hazel eyes, freckles dotting her skin where the sun had touched it, working as an apprentice in a Potions shop on the edge of the magical district in London.

She was neither talented nor brilliant, still in the process of learning, and far from being the Potions master's greatest apprentice. But she appeared to work hard, and she also appeared to be loyal, which was unfortunate for the future of Lily's Hogwarts.

"No, I won't go."

Lily, when they'd finally found the girl, had apparated them into the nearest pub and immediately laid out the job offer and given the girl a pint of butter beer. Helga had the city's accent, a working class accent that reflected how close she was to the muggles, but she didn't even appear to notice it. She was so different from them already; Godric had forgotten how different even wizards and witches could be from one another.

"I've heard a lot about you, the Gryffindors anyway, and I have a lot of respect for what you did… A school sounds like a great idea, I wish I could have gone when I first started learning, but I can't start it with you. I've got to finish my apprenticeship first and become a Potions' mistress, I promised my da and I can't quit now."

"Did you miss the part about the universe exploding if you don't build found the place?" Lily asked, sounding almost desperate.

But Helga shook her head, "Sorry, I just can't, maybe when I finish I can come with you. But I'd have to mind the shop a few years first, not to mention take my own apprentices…"

"And that's more important than the stability of the universe?"

Salazar sighed at this point, clearly ill at ease with the city's hustle and bustle and the nearness of the muggles, "Clearly she's not interested, Lily. You're wasting your time."

"You're wasting your time, Crack Lenin!" Lily retorted almost without thought as she did to anything Salazar said that she didn't agree with. To Godric's amusement and sometimes frustration Salazar and Lily had made an art form out of pointless bickering and childish insults.

"Do not refer to me as Crack Lenin. It is either Salazar, Slytherin, or Salazar Slytherin." The shadows in the room began to stretch and Salazar's blue eyes sharpened, Lily returned his gaze, that fox like grin working its way over her lips and a storm seemed to brew so that everyone's hair stood on end.

"What you talking about, Willis?" Lily leaned in close and the candle light began to flicker ominously, a foul wind working its way through the rafters, "You should be honored to be called any kind of Lenin. Not everyone can be a communist revolutionary, even if you do look like a crack head."

Godric just put his head in his hands, because they had both evidently completely forgotten about Helga Hufflepuff. Salazar Slytherin and Lily, despite having largely different personalities, shared unbelievably large egos as well as raw magical power. This meant that whenever their petty bickering went too far they tended to engage in extravagant dueling that left craters all throughout Great Britain.

"Helga Hufflepuff, if you two would remember yourselves we're having lunch with Helga Hufflepuff." And they were failing to convince her to build a magical school with them and there was no question as to why that was.

Salazar at least had the decency to look somewhat chagrined as he remembered himself and focused his attention back to Helga. Lily, as usual, didn't bother to look embarrassed or regretful at all.

"I am so terribly sorry about them." Godric said, "I try to ignore them and hope they will transform into civilized beings when my back is turned. Unfortunately, they never do."

Salazar and Lily both retorted to this in the same brusque and frankly insulted tone.

"Screw you, asshole."

"That's rather rich coming from you, Gryffindor."

Helga looked more than a little stunned and perhaps a little wary, "Oh, well, that's quite alright. Thank you for offering, and for the meal… I suppose I'd better be going then."

And just like that, with a small bow towards them, she was gone and walking briskly back to her shop as if they'd never met her in the first place.

For the next three days they watched her, watched as she worked hard, tirelessly almost, for little reward. Her master had other apprentices, younger ones, who appeared to grasp the materials better than she did and left Helga to the mundane tasks that one performed only in the beginning of a master apprentice relationship. Still, such a different life she had, one that was so very stable.

"We don't need her." Salazar concluded, his eyes sharp, "She has nothing to bring to the school."

And it was true, because she was still only an apprentice. Salazar and Godric knew enough of the basics of Potions to be at Helga's level of expertise and Lily was capable of even more than them, they would need a Potions master and taking Helga Hufflepuff on seemed rather pointless.

"You hear that, Crack Lenin?" Lily asked with lowered eyebrows and a sober expression, "That's the sound of the universe imploding. We need Helga Hufflepuff."

"Well, then I suggest you start distorting her memories or else setting fire to her shop because no argument will convince her simply to leave." Salazar practically spat out, refusing to comment on the title she bestowed upon him.

Lily looked as if she was about to respond but then she got that pensive expression on her face that usually indicated she was about to resort to drastic measures. Measures that Godric would very much like to avoid.

"Wait, you said we need Helga Hufflepuff." Godric said slowly an idea forming in his head slowly but surely.

"Yeah, and Rowena Ravenclaw."

"But do we need that Helga Hufflepuff?" He asked motioning to the girl and then proceeded to explain, "How would they know the difference between a Helga Hufflepuff we create and the true one that works in this shop. We know that she is hardworking, that she's loyal, that she values friendship and honesty, but do we absolutely know that it's her? If we can't convince her, why not make our own?"

"Uh, I reject that idea, making people equals bad. That turned into Rabbit, which is probably why I'm here in the first place, and he's probably eaten some really important things about now and we're all in big trouble because of it." Lily said, clearly taking his words far too literally, as she tended to do on occasion.

But Salazar's eyes lit up in comprehension and he turned to look at Lily as if there was a spotlight surrounding her, "We already have a woman, why not simply turn her into Helga Hufflepuff?"

Godric and Salazar both stared at her, waiting for her to grasp their meaning, and slowly but surely she did, "Wait, you guys want me to pretend to be Helga Hufflepuff?"

"Why not? Why does it have to be her instead?" Godric asked, grinning as he realized that they had finally done it, in a long roundabout way they had finally found their founders.

"Because I don't even really understand what loyalty even means." She said, her hands waving about wildly.

"More, why can't you also be our Rowena Ravenclaw? Why search for these women when you are already here?"

"Wait, so now I'm pretending to be two people? How can you pretend to be two people, they'll notice when there's only one of me around at any given time! Are you even listening to yourselves right now?" Lily asked, looking more alarmed than before.

Godric reached out to her and hugged her tight, not letting her protest, because the school was real now. They could build this thing that Lily had dreamed and that Godric and Salazar had reached out for. They could build a better world for their children.

They found there spot of land in Scotland, on the edge of an old and magical forest, as well as a great lake. From there, through their sweat and blood, they erected the stone and the wards that would become the castle itself.

Godric focused on the wards, on anti-apparation, on defense against muggle tactics as well as intense magical ones, on deflection for the wandering muggle's attention, and wrote them deep into the stone work so that it seemed that a part of his own soul had bled into the castle.

Salazar crafted the architecture, designed the classrooms, transfigured what was necessary for each subject and always looked forward to what needed to be done.

And Lily played that which bound them together, as she always did, running here and there and fetching what was needed as well as supplying the raw power that built a castle out of dirt, grass, and air.

And then it was finished, their castle, their magnum opus, and they were still so terribly young.

It was Salazar who convinced the old families to send their sons and daughters to the school. He traveled the country as well as even Ireland, and charmed everyone he met into believing in his dream, their dream.

He cut his hair, washed his face, and became the son of the noble lord he had always claimed to be and even looking at him Godric could see the force that Hogwarts would become. And at the sight of him even Lily had been struck into silence.

Within a year they had students, within a year they divided the basic subjects between them according to their skills. Herbology, Arithmancy, Runes for Godric. Charms, Transfiguration, and Alchemy for Lily. Ancient Magic, Potions, and History for Salazar. Within a year Hogwarts more than a castle made of wishes but a place with people inside and a reputation to uphold it.

And the students learned, progressing quickly through the basics, as if they were in an apprenticeship to three masters rather than one who specialized in only one field. And when they returned home every summer for the harvest their siblings and cousins came back with them, each also eager to learn from the Gryffindors and Slytherin. Older traveling wizards came, asking to teach what they knew to the next generation, and it was a new world.

They grew older, perhaps more dignified, their names were recognized for more than radical wandering and village destruction at the very least. Soon the three of them were the founders of Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin, Godric Gryffindor, and Lily Gryffindor.

("Four, Godric, there were supposed to be four." Lily would say, her expression dark and story and perhaps afraid, because they had never found their Helga and Rowena.

"Then you shall have to be Rowena and Helga enough for all of us.")

In spite of the nearly continuous muggle wars, the threat of French wizards across the channel, Godric felt as if the world was so very bright because now there was no reason for a child to be like him. To be lost and alone in the wilderness without a light to guide him.

They all believed in Hogwarts and that was why it burned as brightly as it did.

But things can only burn so bright for so long.

She stayed for the first few years, to see their first few students graduate, but it was clear even then that she had grown restless. They had grown older but somehow, in spite of being taller, she looked the same as she had all those years ago.

Still elfin, still pale, still strangely androgynous in spite of her clearly feminine features, she had remained as she always was while he and Salazar had grown into men.

And she would stare out the window, at the night stars when she thought he and Salazar weren't looking, and there would be a dull flatness to her eyes as she stared at the stars.

She had said they each had their reputations.

Helga the loyal, Rowena the wise, Salazar the betrayer, and Godric the fool.

Perhaps he was the fool, because he had forgotten that though she had stayed years and years she had never promised him eternity. But if he was the fool then Salazar was as well, because he knew the man had never suspected for a moment.

Salazar would walk with her down the hallway, bickering as they always did, missing the way she would stare out past the grounds to the furthest edge of the lake and the forest. He would be a fool to think he could hold her forever, because how can you trap sunlight?

The end came one summer's night in his chambers, he walked in to find her sitting cross legged on his bed, staring into the fire. She was wearing clothing reminiscent to the strange tunic that she had worn when she had first appeared. And at the sight of her Godric said nothing, merely felt his pounding heart in his chest, and knew that somehow this was the end.

"One of us had to leave, you know." She said, eyes flicking over to him, "It was supposed to be Crack Lenin. He was supposed to throw a giant hissy fit over accepting muggleborn students. But it doesn't look like he's going anywhere anytime soon and I'm… I've stayed too long already."

"You don't have to leave."

She just smiled at him, took his hands in hers, "You're a good friend, probably the best I've ever had, Godric. But I can't stay, you shouldn't want me to."

"Why not?"

She held up a finger, "One, I'm a shitty professor who can't teach anyone anything. Don't tell me otherwise, I'm pretty much the least qualified person for my job since I don't even use a wand to begin with."

He couldn't help but grin back at her because she was right, she was terrible at her job, Salazar and he had been contemplating replacing her for years and leaving with her some inconsequential subject that no one would be required to learn.

She held up a second finger, "Two, I am a thing of destruction."

She fell silent, the fire crackling in the background, and sitting in his bedroom with the light dancing on her face he knew that she was truly dangerous.

"I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. You don't let something like that into your house and invite it to stay forever."

"And if I don't care?" He asked, because he almost didn't, but she just smiled at him.

"Then you really are the king of reckless idiots."

She hopped off the bed and gracefully landed on her feet, reverting back to her usual casual tone of conversation as she did so, "As it is I've sort of destroyed Hogwarts already, pretty sure Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw were supposed to be a big deal. So by them not being here I've sort of erased their houses from existence, meaning everyone has to choose between Gryffindor and Slytheirn which… Ugh, hard choices."

"You forgot about yourself," Godric pointed out, although he and Salazar had both agreed to never implement a sorting system based off of a talking hat, "There would be a Lily house as well."

"A Lily house?"

"For those who aren't quite fools but are not quite ambitious either." He said and then pulled her into a hug, she stiffened awkwardly within it, never certain how to respond to physical affection, "But that doesn't mean you have to leave."

"No, it's… It's time. Even if my future doesn't exist anymore, even if I really am stuck here, I have to at least try. It's, it's my latest quest."

He did not say that if she failed she could always return, that they could create whatever future she wanted right there in the castle, he did not say it but he thought it and he knew that she thought it as well.

All the same, he had never known Lily to fail and he doubted she would then.

She offered him one last smile, one final salute, and then she was gone. Tearing through his wards as if they were paper and apparated out of the castle like she never existed in the first place.

Leaving him and a bewildered Salazar Slytherin behind.

Years later, Salazar would leave Hogwarts but not for the reasons Lily had listed. Instead of betraying them, of falling into dispute with Godric, he would leave to search for the woman with red hair and no wand.

As far as Godric knew he would never find her.

Godric himself stayed for a long time, perhaps too long of a time, but his last act was to create that wretched singing hat she had described but only to create three houses.

Gryffindor for the courageous fools, Slytherin for the ambitious and cunning, and Lily for those that belonged to nowhere and nothing.

And, before handing it off to the next headmaster to do with it what he wished, he placed it on his own head and waited for the verdict.

("Lily.")

Author's Note: Or the Default house that never was, or that one time Lily met half of the Founders and wrote Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw out of existence. Written for the 2700th review of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" by Cynical0range who asked for a fic where Lily meets the founders.

Thanks for reading, reviews are always appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.