Author's Note: The usual warnings before you proceed. One, this is a side fic to "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and if you aren't familiar with that universe you'll be somewhat confused by mentions of Wizard Lenins, Rabbits, and cynical Hermiones. Two, this is NOT CANON, because time travel you know.

The important part, Lily felt, wasn't how she got into the situation that she was fairly certain she did not understand, but what the situation in itself was. Thrown onto the stone floor of a great cavernous room, brushing the dirt off of her clothing and staring into the bearded rather intimidating face of what she assumed was the lord of the castle. Lily had enough issues just trying to wrap her head around what was happening let alone how she'd even gotten into this mess.

"Wait, so, let me get this straight," she started, then paused, trying to arrange the thoughts in her head. This proved somewhat difficult as there were many and they were raging against one another; each one emphasizing that she really did have no idea what the bloody hell was going on.

Well, she thought she had some idea, for a while. She'd thought she'd gotten the hang of everything for the most part at least until she'd been arrested and or summoned to court (it had never really been explained) and now she was clueless once again.

The point was that she could really use Wizard Lenin at the moment.

He would know what was going on or at least he would pretend to which was more than she could manage at the moment.

But they were still all staring at her, these bearded wary eyed men and their stone eyed lord, just waiting for the command to unleash medieval hell.

Not that Lily couldn't handle medieval hell, she could, but there were certain ramifications for the handling of said hell that she wasn't so sure she wanted to handle. Her inner Wizard Lenin was screaming at her that now was the time for prudent caution and not igniting a massacre and declaring herself lord of Wessex or Umbria or wherever the hell she was at the moment.

That would be bad or, rather, it would have consequences. Because she was pretty sure, despite History of Magic not even being a class, that she would have heard about a twelve-year-old girl single handedly wiping out a fortress and thus accidentally becoming nobility.

Probably, best not to tempt paradox, and that meant keeping a more or less low profile. Although, in retrospect, her complete and utter failure to keep a low profile was probably what had brought her to this place in the first place.

And that just reminded her that she was still very unclear on what was happening and that before anything else happened she should probably make sure she understood exactly what was going on.

She blinked, pretended she was simply back at Hogwarts where she could process this situation easier and ask that single desperate question she needed to ask, "You hauled my ass across the country so that you could screw your feudal rival lord's unusually attractive wife?"

This, according to the guards' reactions, was not the right question to ask. Although, what the right question truly was would remain forever a mystery, as no one provided anything close to an answer.

The story of how Lily ended up before the lord Uther Pendragon and was told that, as a peasant dwelling in his lands, it was technically her sacred duty to help him fulfil his ambition of uniting the kingdom and sleeping with Gorlois' extremely beautiful wife, was a relatively simple one.

It started, as with most events in her life, on a seemingly perfectly ordinary day in Hogwarts, in mid-October, 1992.

She had been in the library, taking a well needed break from staking out bathrooms or else napping in Wizard Lenin's over decorated basement dwelling while he pretended that he was a productive non-crippled member of society, and had been sitting across from Hermione Granger.

She probably should have been practicing quidditch, but, well, that ship seemed to have both sailed and sunk dramatically into the depths of the sea never to be resurrected.

Lily, according to both Blaise Zabini and Ron Weasley, didn't understand either quidditch or fair play. This was apparently a rather large flaw in her character. Although, how exactly this was her failing grace was never truly explained to her and instead remained one of those incomprehensible mysteries produced by the continuous failing of the universe's internal gears.

When she'd told that to Wizard Lenin he'd thrown one of Lockhart's textbooks at her head.

These thoughts, along with others, were interrupted in that moment by her newly chronically irritated comrade, Hermione.

"You know, someday you may actually find this relevant."

Lily looked over with raised eyebrows to find Hermione waving some thick absolutely boring looking book in her face.

Hermione Granger, in spite of her newfound complete lack of respect for anyone in any position of authority, still retained some of her old very un-Lenin like habits.

Some, like her obsessive need to have perfect grades, didn't really bother Lily personally as Lily more or less had nothing to do with this. She just had to stay out of Hermione's way whenever she was writing a paper or else face the muggleborn's wrath for daring to distract from her precious study time.

Others, like her insistence that Lily learn things and appreciate the education she was being given, were much less appreciated.

"I will never find…" Lily trailed off, held up the book to her face and inspecting its title dubiously, "Merlin's Britain and the Era of Pagan Enlightenment remotely relevant."

She found her copy of Lovecraft far more relevant given that there was a large possibility that Lovecraft had been able to see the terrifying future and that the future was actually Rabbit. Or, at least, Lily felt by acquainting herself with the Dream Cycle she might be more or less prepared when Rabbit inevitably devoured humanity and reality fell back into disorder.

"We're taking History of Magic for a reason, Ellie." Hermione said, "And besides, you don't even seem to know who Merlin is beyond his use as an expletive."

"Sure, I know who he is…" Lily trailed off because usually this was where Wizard Lenin would give some cynical ramble out of irritation that would tell her more or less who Merlin was. As it was, Lily's knowledge was somewhat limited, "He's English wizard Jesus…"

Hermione was just as unimpressed by this answer as Wizard Lenin would have been, "He's the founder of the modern British wizarding tradition!"

Seeing Lily's complete lack of recognition and utter apathy Hermione continued, "The last magical advisor to an English King? Served under Arthur Pendragon? Arguably the most powerful wizard to ever live in the British Isles?!"

"Right, yes, that is important." Lily said as she returned her attention to Azathoth who she was fairly certain was Rabbit in ineffable blob disguise, "Although, it doesn't really make History of Magic worthy of a class."

"That's because you either skip History of Magic, use it to pick fights, or else spread your ridiculous made up stories!" This, apparently, was akin to blasphemy.

"Is there something else I was supposed to be doing there?" Lily asked and Lily felt that Hermione's glare and lack of audible answer said more than enough. If they actually wanted people to go they would have had a professor there.

"Given that you're apparently…" Here Hermione paused, lowered her voice, and bit out, "A god, I think I should be concerned that you have no respect for your own culture."

Lily felt that gave her every reason not to have to respect British wizarding culture, certainly Wizard Lenin had never really bothered to respect it, otherwise he never would have come up with that crazy glorious revolution idea in the first place.

But that probably wasn't what Hermione wanted to hear.

"Technically, we've never really clarified if I am a literal god." Lily said instead, but this apparently was also the wrong thing to say and resulted in Hermione collecting her books and marching out of the library muttering things under her breath about the state of the world and how she shouldn't even be surprised that Lily was a god because it explained why terrible things happened.

(Which, that was patently unfair, Lily had never been behind the inherently flawed structure of reality.)

Only, in her hurry, she left the Merlin book behind, leaving it for Lily to flip through.

"Let's see what the fuss is about." Lily said, pausing on various pages and declaring her thoughts as she went along, "Swords, beards, Christianity, more swords, more beards, weird pregnant lady, more swords, weird old beard guy… Boring."

She slammed the book shut having felt she'd seen more than enough. If it was really relevant, after all, Wizard Lenin would have ranted about it already and she wouldn't even be having this thought.

Ordinarily, at this point, things would have proceeded as per usual. As it was, Lily wasn't entirely certain what went wrong, just that something, somewhere, tilted and it felt like she was standing perfectly upright but that the world itself was slipping away beneath her.

It also felt a bit like drowning in a washing machine set to high.

Regardless, Lily didn't stay in the library or even in Hogwarts for that matter, without warning or explanation she opened her eyes and found herself in a deep and ancient forest without any sign of human life around her.

Only the books she'd had with her, The Dream Cycle and the history book on Merlin. With caution, she picked them both up, and looking around came to the only sensible conclusion she could think of, "Goddammit, Rabbit, when I find you I will skin you alive and make you wish you had stayed a gelatinous blob of evil beyond the outer reaches of existence!"

Of course, finding Rabbit and making him vomit Hogwarts, Hermione, Lenin, and everything else she'd ever known back into existence wasn't that simple. Because, no matter where she seemed to look she couldn't find him, or anything familiar really, instead everything had been replaced by a giant renaissance fair complete with peasants, disease, chickens, and lords on proud horses.

They also didn't really speak English. It sounded vaguely like English, similar, but was mostly incomprehensible and took a lot of glitch manipulating for Lily to get the hang of listening to. It was England, she was pretty sure anyways, there was rain and a Stonehenge and a pitifully medieval version of London but it certainly wasn't her England.

Not England in any modern sense of the word.

After too many stops in too many villages she'd finally sat down and thought about her options.

"Alright, Lily, there are two probable things that could have happened." She announced to an empty field of wheat, the amber grains nodding their heads in agreement, "One, Rabbit ate the modern era and we're now all trapped in England before the Norman invasion. Two, you were somehow, without warning, thrown back over a thousand years in time and are now more or less trapped in the past."

She paused, gathering her thoughts, "Now, if it's the first, we're all probably doomed anyways. The future, after all, would have been devoured from existence, it may no longer be even possible for things like television, Die Hard, or Hindenburgism to come into existence."

This was alarming for a number of reasons and she'd really prefer if this wasn't the case. If it was, well, then she'd have to continue forth with the Rabbit Heimlich plan that she'd been going with so far.

"If it's the second, well, if you keep your head down and don't change anything then maybe you can time travel yourself to the future." She stopped, that didn't sound too bad, she could probably manage that without breaking reality. Of course, she'd have to figure out how to build a Delorean or Tardis but she could probably do that. It was certainly more feasible than somehow recreating everything and pulling it out of Rabbit's stomach.

And that had gone well, for a while, but healing lepers for a few gold coins garnered attention from people in very high places, as did walking on water, banishing fae, and anything else she did while traveling around the country looking for mystical time travelling objects.

And that was the short version of how Lily found herself before Uther Pendragon.

Author's Note: So, after looking up the usual Merlin lore I found that it's long enough to warrant a bunch of smaller chapters rather than one huge long chapter. So that's how it's going to be folks. Also, know that this is based off of what I vaguely remember from NBC's miniseries Merlin and Wikipedia articles, so expect its accuracy to be somewhat iffy and convenient to me.

Written for the 3200th review (wow we're getting high in those numbers) of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" by Wrabbit75 who asked for a fic where Lily time travels and is mistaken for Merlin or else becomes Merlin.

Thanks for reading, reviews are greatly appreciated (if I don't respond for a while it's because 's reviewing mechanism is still broken), and expect more soon.