In which England discovers America and Russia's cold war love child, Eleanor Lily Potter finds out she was actually a country the whole time, and nobody respects Sealand.

It's October, 31, 1981, and ask anyone at the time and the world is going on more or less the way it has been for the past few decades.

Russia is desperately poor but faking it until he makes it, intimidating everyone around him in the most terrifying manner possible into staying in his house, and spreading communism around the world like giving free candy to desperately impoverished and underdeveloped countries. He also has to stand in lines to buy left pairs of shoes but if anyone tells America they disappear into a dark room and are never seen from again.

America is a bit more cynical and bizarre than he usually is, having failed to convince Vietnam how kickass capitalism is and crawling out of Asia only a few years earlier, and still suffering from the nagging demands of several bitchy Middle Eastern countries and Venezuela (who have come up with a team name OPEC which he'd normally find pretty cool if only he was in it) as well as through the roof inflation. He's still loud, proud, and stuffing hamburgers in his face like diabetes is a myth but maybe a little more into that whole counter culture thing than he was in the 40's.

China, for his own part, is waking up from a nasty hangover from his temporary insanity known as the Cultural Revolution and trying to get his general shit together, which is really just a continuation from the last time he tried to get his shit together after the mass starvation of his peasant population.

England's a little less temperamental, for once, than these other barrels of fun but he is in the middle of a whole new economic outlook via Margret Thatcher as well as a magical wizarding civil war. However, he doesn't really tell anyone about that, because the last time he tried people wouldn't stop giving him shit over the leprechauns, the unicorns, and the fairies.

So England just doesn't go there, even though Romania, Russia, Japan, Finland, and even bloody America with that alien roommate, all have thriving magical communities. England just won't go there.

Which is why he doesn't tell anyone about when it came to a shuddering and rather anticlimactic halt on Halloween night and how little Eleanor Lily Potter became England's magical quarter's own Joan of Arc.

It also didn't help that he was too busy at the time continuing the yearly tradition of scaring the living hell out of America, carving turnips, and being an all-around magical nerd to really pay attention.

What's important about this particular Halloween isn't all of that though, it's the fact that it's the first time that someone really should have noticed Oceania but didn't because they were all too busy being self-absorbed assholes.

"Oceania?"

A little red headed country poked her head around the corner, face covered in soot, curly hair only barely restrained by a braid, clothing more or less unrecognizable underneath the grease. That, in itself, wasn't an unusual sight.

Or, at least it was one England had gotten used to recently.

"Why is there a black hole inside of my living room?"

The girl blinked, turned her head towards the wall and the gaping black hole inside of it, one that didn't appear to have any gravitational pull but which ate anything thrown into it giving absolutely nothing back.

"That's a very good question." The smaller country responded, perfectly blasé about all of it, somehow combining Russia's terrifyingly good natured poker face with America's terrifyingly ridiculous and bad ideas.

"A good question?!" England just repeated and the girl nodded.

"You see, the way I see it, the splintering of reality has finally started to become visible to other people. Which should be mildly disturbing but so far has only resulted in small tears in the reality of your wall."

"That is not a bloody small tear in my wall!"

"Comparatively speaking… It could have been bigger." The girl responded with a grin as if this was the most reassuring thing he'd ever heard since Sweden had taken up carpentry rather than pillaging and raiding Europe.

"It could have been bigger? How big did you expect it to be?!"

She paused, considered this for a moment, rocked back on her heels (so casual just like America), "Well, Uncle America's alien friend Tony didn't really say, just that crossing dimensions and visiting Traflamador takes a lot of power and that sometimes this can…"

She prattled on, but at the name America and alien England just stopped listening, instead he started sulking wondering what he'd done to deserve this and how this had even happened to begin with.

"It was already falling apart anyways, you know, so it's not like I accidentally maybe made it even worse than it already was. I actually consider this a marked improvement now everyone will have to know that I was right! Because I was, right, this entire time."

England actually had a fair bit of experience running across foreign countries (and then consequently colonizing them for himself). Some were much older than he was, like China, and took much persuading in the form of being drugged out of their minds with opium to let him take advantage of their ports. However, some were much younger and completely unknown at the time, like little America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Hell, there was even that little limey brat Sealand to think about, who despite all odds had managed to survive as a completely useless scrap of metal in the middle of the sea.

The fact was that it was very easy to recognize when someone was a country versus being an ordinary human. Countries had a sort of depth to them that humans didn't, in their shadows and flesh was the soul of a nation and years upon years of cumulated history. When you looked at them you could see flashes of it in their eyes, their hands, the not quite hidden scars of battle. Humans noticed this, and some were smart enough to put two and two together, but for the most part they were just seen as charismatic (if a bit eccentric and stereotypical) relatively ordinary people.

Only those truly patriotic or tied to the helm of the country could get a real grasp on the personification of the nation and even then… Even then, countries were never all that close with their countrymen.

There was also the fact that countries knew they were countries, rather than people, without exception. Even the most insane and fragmented of nations knew that they were in fact a nation.

England himself had just woken up one day, sometime after Rome had invaded and colonized but before the Nordic bastards had become a true menace (although how they went from pillaging Vikings to assemblers of cheap furniture he would never understand). He could feel the woods, the rain, the stirrings of Christianity, the old deep magic, and just knew that he was England, Britain, and he was the land, the people, and the memory.

And that the frog faced bastard across the channel was France and that England would dearly love to smash his face in and cut off his ridiculously luscious hair.

This wasn't stuff he thought about on a daily basis. He normally wouldn't even bother thinking about it at all, except that, in 1985 in his own bloody country he found little Oceania running around unattended with no idea what the bloody hell she even was.

It was one of those days where England was shoving his superiority down America's ungrateful throat. This time, they were comparing zoos and the adorableness of the cute baby animals they'd collected from all over the world. (Similar to the time England had shown America all of the cool things he'd borrowed from other countries and put into his museum.)

Did England still find it a little sad about how America had befriended the whales when he'd first met Japan? Yes. Was he still going to shove in all the cool animals he had into America's face? Yes.

"Dude, Britain, I want to go see the penguins! Penguins are the coolest! At my place we get them to tap dance and it's so freaking awesome! They have canes, music, Dick Van Dyke, and it's the coolest freaking thing you've ever seen in your life! Way better than China's baby pandas!" America was spending the day jabbering away, laughing loudly to himself, and looking like a complete ass like usual.

He'd been such a sweet little boy, once, England could see him now running up to greet him with that bright grin…

"Ah, dude, Britain, where are the whales? You gotta have whales, they're like the coolest ever!"

"America, this is not a bloody aquarium!"

And before America could jabber on about penguins, whales, sea lions, and all of the creatures that weren't in England's zoo a flash of red caught his eye.

And there she was, hands in pockets, face an interesting shade of complete apathy and unamused, following behind a rather overweight family.

You could tell a lot about a country by the way they looked.

She was young, very small, the size of a nation who had only just realized its existence, whose people had only just looked at each other and declared that they were a unit separate somehow from all the world.

She was poor, ill dressed, wearing a bright colored sweater, white sneakers, and jean shorts that looked as if it had been found on sale in a thrift store. She looked like he had, like most of them in Europe had, when they'd first started scrabbling for survival against each other and the Viking states.

There was an otherworldliness to her though, a lack of land, time, space, and memory. There was a gaping hole inside of her where her people, her history, everything about her should have been clearly visible and instead there was only that feeling of desperate emptiness and bright distant fires burning in the sky. Her red hair, like poppies, her elfin pale skin, and her green eyes only seemed to draw more focus to this… surreal presence she had.

For a moment, their eyes met, she slowed and then finally stopped, her head cocking to the side and her eyebrows raising. And for a moment England was not in his own country but in the New World staring into the grass and seeing guileless blue eyes staring back at him in wonder.

And then of course, America had to go and ruin the moment, "Dude, Britain, it's a tiny little country!"

America slapped the girl on the back, then proceeded to ruffle her hair and squish her into the ground (although she was holding up surprisingly well against America's strength), "Ah ha ha ha, look at her, she's so adorable and strangely terrifying! I should teach her all about how awesome democracy, capitalism, and kicking ass are!"

America, England had noticed, was still in the midst of his competition with Russia over the future of various impoverished countries. Not that England wasn't involved, he was no fan of Russia either but America had taken it to a whole different level. America never went halfway on anything, it was always all or nothing, and the cold war was no different.

And just like that England was still thrown back into the New World, except this time it was a memory of him and France, squaring off once again and trying to tempt little America to one side or the other while Finland looked on with a somewhat concerned expression.

Only this time, it wasn't salivating, perverted, France focusing on his newest French territory but instead overzealous and overbearing America who had somehow forgotten over the past two centuries how to take no for an answer.

"America, you ass, what the hell do you think you're doing?!" That wasn't really what England wanted to ask, he really wanted to ask why America felt it necessary to do this in the middle of England's country inside of a zoo where everyone and their brother could listen in.

"Hey man, you've kind of done the whole colony thing already, and if I'm remembering right it didn't go that well for you." America pointed out, not snidely because America was never really snide, but all the same in a patronizing tone that England did not appreciate.

The little country's eyebrows raised further and her companions stalled ahead of her, turned back, the fat man's face growing quite purple as the scene progressed although whether out of rage or heart failure was uncertain.

He actually started shouting something at them at this point, and at the girl, but England was too busy getting back at America to really notice.

"It went great for me I'll have you know! Canada, Australia, and New Zealand quite happy to be in the common wealth, unlike some!" England said before adding, "Besides, you can barely take care of yourself! What makes you think that you could look after another country? You'll die of type two diabetes before she even…"

As he was saying this the girl turned to the man and said something in return something which caused him to become an even more alarming shade of purple, but again, before England could really bother himself to listen or figure out who the man was (because he felt British but he was acting like he was the girl's boss) America was already interrupting.

"Because I'm America and I'm freaking awesome, dude!" And then the laughter, so much laughter, making everyone look at them like there was a neon sign on the bloke's head saying, 'look at me I'm stupid America saying stupid things very loudly'.

England didn't really like to tell the rest of that story, so he usually didn't, it did after all involve a fist fight reminiscent of his rivalry with France (except worse because unlike fancy pants France America actually could box), panicked dashing off with the little country in the panic, and having his face plastered all of the local paper as a kidnapper.

But that wasn't important… Or, at least, it wasn't anything anyone needed to know about.

Some important information about the adorably insistent and terrifying Oceania.

Officially discovered in July 1980, Oceania isn't a country in the traditional sense, being that she has no citizens, no history, and seems to have made up her culture by watching America's infamous action movies and reading a lot of books.

Oceania, in fact, isn't even really her name.

Oceania used to refer to Australia, New Zealand, and other nearby smaller countries in the area as a general sort of regional term. However, in her case, England bestowed it on her as a reference to one of his own classic examples of literature.

Namely, a reference to Oceania, in George Orwell's 1984, a totalitarian state that comes into existence after an implied nuclear third world war. Or, as England saw it at the time, the product of an unholy union between America and Russia.

However, who her people are and how she came into existence without land or citizens, remains one of the greatest country conspiracy theories to date. Perhaps she's the lost Atlantis, still trapped beneath the waves, brought back to life by literature and sub-par Disney films.

Perhaps she is Antarctica, supported by a population of penguins and frozen researchers.

Perhaps she is the final frontier, space, the forbidding limitless expanse of the universe that is only just beginning to be explored.

Or, perhaps, she is the country of the dead, that place where all men are equalized and travel without form, without history, and without future.

This air of mystique, combined with her reality warping powers that seem to have surpassed even Russia's, along with her brash almost America-like personality, pretty much scare the shit out of everyone.

Oceania, whose human pseudonym remained Eleanor Lily Potter, felt she'd gotten the hang of being a country fairly quickly. She'd always known something was off, that there was some veil over reality that separated her from the herd, she just hadn't realized it was because she was the anthropomorphic representation of a nation state.

Really, it explained quite a bit. Well, perhaps it didn't explain the universe collapsing in on itself, or why she lived in a cupboard as the Dursley's indentured servant until she'd been colonized by England (unless that had been the Dursley's sad and pathetic attempt at colonization), but she felt like it explained something.

She just couldn't really put her finger on what that something was.

Regardless, life in England's house was a thousand times better than life at the Dursleys', no matter how much Northern Ireland and Scotland bitched about it. She had pointed out to them that her previous bosses, the Dursleys, had made her live in a cupboard and had routinely threatened to turn her into Oliver Twist, but according to Scotland and Northern Ireland that still sounded a lot like England.

And it was true that England was trying to break what he deemed her American habits, like watching American television, eating fries by the handfuls, and stating her very correct opinions and not waiting for someone to contradict her with something stupid. He hadn't been too insistent though, at least not Dursley insistent, and so it was still miles better than living in a cupboard.

The only problem was that as a tiny, newborn, citizenless country who had been promptly colonized by England (who claimed it wasn't really colonization because countries didn't do that to each other anymore but instead to think of it as a supportive and healthy partnership which England controlled), she held about as much political weight as Sealand.

Oceania was on par with Sealand.

Being on par with Sealand meant that no one would even look at her, she didn't get invited to any of the fancy country meetings, and she got ridiculous spam from Sealand and reluctant pals to hang out as micro countries together.

She'd have to watch glumly as the G8, including Northern Italy who no one respected and only Germany seemed to tolerate, all went into their meeting room slamming the door shut and leaving Oceania and everyone else to stare after them. Or worse, the times when they'd have the UN meetings, and Oceania would have to glare at the door along with the serene Tibet and… Sealand.

So, fairly on in her colony career, stuck at the kiddie table with Sealand and what she was pretty sure was the remains of Jones Town, Oceania came to a decision, "This is not acceptable."

"That's the spirit, Oceania, if we band together they have to respect us!" Sealand said with a cheer, pumping his fist into the air, with all the hardwork and enthusiasm that kept his metal homeland from breaking apart and falling back into the sea.

"No, if we have citizens, if we have wealth, then they will respect us." That's what really separated someone like Oceania from someone like America or even Canada.

And Oceania found she had a great desire for respect, she'd never really had it with the Dursleys, and she had more now with England than she'd ever had in her life but she'd caught a glimpse of it and she wanted more. She wanted recognition, to be able to hold her own and have people look at her and see something worthy of attention.

She wanted… She wanted an existence beyond that which Eleanor Lily Potter could offer.

She slammed her hand on the table, cracks surfacing through the wood, and stared forward with burning determination and righteousness as well as a trickster's grin that promised nothing good for its target.

"Um, Oceania, what are you doing?" Sealand asked, a little less enthusiastic and a little more terrified than before.

Oceania turned her head towards him, the shadows seemed to stretch, and the room grew cold, "Why, Sealand, we're going fishing."

Needless to say Sealand didn't disagree or offer any word of protest when she dragged him out of the meeting (which they hadn't even been invited to anyway), or when they began distributing propaganda in the streets of New York, or when Oceania began to preach to the masses on a soap box she'd created from thin air (because apparently countries could do shit like that and it was amazing).

She also noted, that if she made American dollars out of thin air, threw them in the air dramatically that people tended to mob around her and at least catch some of what she was saying, "Are you tired of working? Are you tired of being poor? Being unattractive? Dying? Not having enough channels on the television? Come to Oceania and we can take care of those problems and more!"

With a wave of her hands sparkles appeared in the air, behind her a brightly colored tourist poster of the tropics unfurled, and the people who were busy grabbing twenties out of the gutter were covered in bright strips of confetti.

Oceania continued, motioning to the poster behind her, "Oceania provides a sunny, rich, and creative environment where you can follow your passions and dreams no matter where they might take you."

"Um, Oceania, I don't think this is legal…" Sealand tried to say above the money grabbing horde, being pushed and shoved this way and that, as he hadn't managed to create his own soapbox.

"Shut up and make it rain, Sealand." Was her only response, as, really Sealand just didn't seem to understand that the most powerful of countries were the ones that were pushy bastards. America, Russia, even England, they were all secretly or not so secretly giant assholes who bullied others into getting what they wanted.

The only one who didn't fit this norm was Canada, who had somehow become fairly powerful, and yet was still charmingly polite about all of it.

Of course, nobody paid any attention to Canada, or even noticed his existence.

"Come to Oceania, we give you free money and beaches!" People seemed to like beaches, at least Aunt Petunia had, she'd always wanted to go on vacation to the beach. Oceania, personally, felt that space travel would be much more exciting but the common man was less interested in walking on the moon than having a nice tan.

By the end of the UN meeting she'd managed to poach a dozen drunk vagrants, which was almost equal to Sealand's population, and probably would have managed to get a few more if England hadn't been leaving the meeting right at that moment.

Catching England's green eyes she waved, showing him her new citizens with a wild and delighted grin, "Oh, hey, England, look at this! I have people now!"

"Dude, Iggy, isn't that the country you stole from the zoo? And did she just poach my citizens?" America asked but all she could see what England's look of growing horror and embarrassment.

"Turns out people will do almost anything for money."

Of course, she didn't realize it at the time, but this incident would start her formal education as an official colony of Great Britain and all in all wasn't worth the hassle.

Especially since she still didn't get a seat in the United Nations.

Despite her lofty ambitions from 1985 through 1991, Oceania would remain a relatively powerless and unacknowledged English colony more or less on par with those like Sealand or on a good day the beaten down Lithuania.

Instead, during this time, she would remain in England's house and be educated on the decorum for a proper country would be interrupted by her periodic rebellions and attempts at revolution, often patterned after the rebellion in the Star Wars film franchise.

However, in spite of England's almost desperate attempts to bring his newest colony to heel, Oceania managed to strike up and gain a rather dubious friendship with both America and Russia.

England blames both of them for the results.

"Oh, gaining friends is simple process, I have had no trouble convincing my sisters and my Baltic friends to live in my house." Russia said with his usual polite smile and thick accent, appearing entirely ignorant to the terrorized forms of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia all peering in from the hallway just waiting for him to snap.

No one mentioned how his house had started to fall into disrepair, how the furniture had aged and was no longer as fine and grand as it once was, and how the smell of failed industry and winter pervaded the air.

(This is the scent of an era coming to a close.)

"Well, Uncle Russia, I'm not quite so sure I want friends, I just need citizens." Oceania set down her tea as she explained, her eyes large a doe like as she continued to think, "Besides, every time I do the friend making thing people just lump me with Sealand. Do you know what it's like to be lumped with Sealand?"

"I would not know."

"It's humiliating!" Oceania responded, throwing her hands wildly into the air, "And I'm kind of getting tired of it. And to get out of that hole I need to not be a micro country anymore meaning I need people."

"But comrade, remember that friends have citizens, and if you make friends you will find people." Russia's charming smile became a charming grin, one that caused the room to grow dark and the furniture to rattle, "I make great point to have many friends."

Oceania considered this, turning her head to stare at the quivering Baltic states, watching as Lithuania shook his head in a pitying manner as if watching her destroy herself by willingly stepping foot into Russia's home, "Well, that's all well and good, but I think I'd need a house before I can kidnap friends and store them in my basement."

"True." Russia conceded, "Basements are very useful for friendships. When my friends say things that are displeasing they often take long vacations to very dark depths of basements called gulags. This is why I have such nice friends."

Oceania blinked at him, "Uncle Russia, you would tell me if I was going to disappear into a gulag after one of these visits? Right?"

"Nope!" His smile seemed to cause sparkles to appear out of thin air and illuminate his face, "That is what makes it fun, da?"

"…You know, I think I understand why England says your terrifying."

"The important thing to remember is that you always have to be the hero!" This was said in between cheeseburgers, walking down the streets of New York, and almost getting hit by cab drivers everywhere.

Oceania walked dutifully beside him, taking avid notes, and looking up at him in wonder. Either oblivious or indifferent to the amount of food he was inhaling while he talked, "The hero is the most awesome and essential part of everything, dude!"

"I see, I see," Oceania said, marking down words like Rambo, Clint Eastwood, "Yes, extremely important."

"You got it, dude!" America laughed heartily, which was rather impressive considering he was eating a burger at the same time.

"Out of curiosity though is this a new thing for you?" Oceania asked.

"Huh, what are you talking about? I've always been awesome!"

"Well, just, England has a very different opinion about all of that in the world wars…"

Despite his strong words at the time America was actually something of a latecomer to both world wars and had little interest in worldwide affairs at the time. It wasn't until after 1945 that America would gain interest in becoming the world's number one capitalist cheerleader to battle Russia in space with robots.

After his messy and surprisingly successful revolution against England, America had decided that he had no need to get involved in Europe's messy affairs, and given France's break down during numerous revolutions and failed governments, England's colonial conquest, and all the other nonsense they got up to over there it isn't very hard to understand why.

This later expanded to a policy of 'you stay out of my hemisphere and I stay out of yours' which allowed America to become involved with Latin American countries but still more or less avoid Europe.

So when World War I started up America didn't actually want to go, instead he spent the majority of the war supplying arms to Britain, but not actually getting involved himself.

It wasn't until 1917 and one of his boats sank that America would join the allied powers, four years after the war had already started, and one before it would eventually end.

America's entrance in World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was fairly similar.

1941

"America's here to save the day!"

A battered England, covered in soot and scrapes, leftover wounds from the Blitz looked at the patriotic and grinning America with raised eyebrows and incredulity. Noticeably missing was France, who had long since been occupied by Germany, as well as China who was occupied by Japan.

"Where the bloody hell have you been this whole time?!"

America blinked, took in England's disheveled appearance, and said, "Look, dude, I thought it was a Europe thing."

"A Europe thing, Germany's gone completely insane!" England said, motioning around them, "He wants to be bloody Rome!"

"Yeah, I kind of figured that one out with the declaration of war and Japan bombing Hawaii. Still, hey, it's all good because I'm here now and with my help there's no way we'll lose to those German bastards!"

England simply stared at him for a moment, incredulous, and then said, "There are times when I hate you so very much."

"What? No, that's not how that happened at all." America stated with authority, "Iggy's totally pulling your leg. He always does that, thinks because he raised me, and because he used to be an empire he can act all superior to everybody. It's a real personality flaw of his."

"So what did happen then?"

"Me and General Patton kicked Nazi ass!" The thumbs up and grin he gave to seemed only to add more authority to this statement.

"I see, I see…" Oceania said, nodding her head in agreement, and then moved onto her next subject, "But I was thinking of being more of a Clint Eastwood, dangerous, terrifying, and silent sort of hero who kicks everyone's collective ass."

Oceania is born into a world of rapid transition, one where countries are constantly changing shape and moving in and out of various houses, where Russia's power is waning as the cold war comes to a close that no one knows how to recognize, and the world must readjust for this.

America celebrates, ignoring his own debts piled on to economically devastate his rival, Russia drinks, Oceania abides.

The world turns.

1991

The Berlin Wall falls.

The cold war ends, communism fails, and Oceania receives her Hogwarts admissions letter.

Author's Note: Because a reader suggested that a crossover between "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and "Hetalia" would be a great idea and I went and watched Hetalia, and here we are. To be honest, I don't know if I'll continue this, if I do just expect more of this same style of very short scenes interspersed with Hetalia-esq explanations of history. If there's a lot of interest, maybe, but otherwise I'm satisfied with this chapter.

Thanks to readers, reviews are greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Hetalia.