Author's Note: A note, this is a side fic to "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and if you haven't read the first chunk of that story you'll be very very confused about what's going on.

"A human from Gringotts," a tall, thin, dark haired vampire in a dark muggle suit opened the door to Riddle Incorporated with a somewhat amused expression, crimson eyes crinkling at the corners as he narrowed them against the afternoon sunlight, "Well, I'll be damned."

Bill smiled sheepishly, feeling so very out of place in this street in his work uniform, his hand poised above the door and he along with the vampire no doubt wondered how it had come to this.

Well, that was something of a long story.

After the Is-Lily-Riddle-Really-Ellie-Potter debacle of the summer things had gone on much as they normally would have, well, except for the philosopher's stone incident which had taken place only a few days later. For Bill, it could be said, things had gone on as expected. He was sent out to Egypt, to a particularly nasty set of tombs that would have him working probably through Christmas (the upside of this being that it made for a nice vacation for his parents and baby sister) but then he'd stopped back in the London office and all the sudden they seemed to be whispering about money again.

Not to the humans, of course not, but his fellow curse breaking humans did catch whispers now and then that there was some serious funding moving out of the country. Or, more importantly, those stationed in Eastern Europe working on old cursed crypts and castles, had noted that Albania had suddenly gotten very dangerous very quickly. And rumor had it that the wands, the old dark artifacts, the fresh blood, all of it was funded from England.

And from there it was only a short apparition away to land square on Riddle Inc. being responsible.

Now, was it really Gringotts' business if Riddle Incorporated chose to fund some sort of vampire revolution in Albania? No, they left that gruesome business to the ministry (who seemed inclined to do nothing at all). However, after weeks of dithering, the managers seemed to have decided it was better to know something than not know anything. And, while the goblins did do business with Riddle's vampires, they tended to prefer not to meet face to face.

Or perhaps they felt, vampires once being humans themselves, would react better to or else underestimate a human face.

Now, if Bill was as sane a man as he pretended to be, he would have said he drew the short straw. However, in truth, when it'd been announced Bill had volunteered. It wasn't so much that he wanted to be eaten alive by vampires just that…

Well, it really was a once in a lifetime opportunity, wasn't it? To see the other side as it were.

"I suppose you had best come in," the vampire opened the door further allowing a grateful Bill inside… Inside what looked like his dad's fantasy gone and come to life. Strange muggle knickknacks and still photographed posters everywhere, everything bright and red and blinding, and not one bit of it familiar as if Bill had just stepped inside some alien world.

And there, at the front, Bill stepped back as he almost crashed into a giant green head of a man.

"Watch out for Oz the Great and Powerful," the vampire noted drily, not even looking back at Bill who was dusting himself and eyeing the head, Oz apparently, extremely dubiously as he continued to follow the man into a back office.

A room which was far less flamboyant and more familiar, still with a strange muggle charm to it, but composed of wooden furniture, books lining walls, a window with the blinds pulled down, a desk, and two chairs.

"I suppose your masters will be wanting to hear about Albania," the vampire said, not even looking at Bill as he took out some paper and a strange muggle quill and began signing one sheet while doing what looked like accounts on another.

"Um, well, yes, but we were hoping to speak to…"

"One does not simply speak to Lily Riddle," the vampire interjected, looking up briefly from his papers to give Bill a rather flat look, "Especially without appointment."

It was almost hard to remember the man was a vampire, it wasn't that he didn't leak that vampiric aura and sense of danger, just that it was so overwhelmed by… By what looked like some sort of secretary or accountant or glorified lawyer employed by Lily Riddle's drug firm.

Maybe that was why Bill had found the courage or stupidity to say, "I wasn't made aware appointments were necessary."

That at least got the man's attention, he set his pen down and looked up from the paperwork, staring Bill in eyes. And the vampire's eyes were so red and so bright, almost glowing, and certainly barely human at all as he said, "You have some nerve, schoolboy."

Bill swallowed, his voice shaking ever so slightly as he said, "I graduated from Hogwarts a few years ago, sir."

"And yet you're still a schoolboy," the man said, looking back down at his papers and inspecting the figures, "You English are perpetually schoolboys, you're proud of it, that you never outgrow those glory days of Hogwarts. Gryffindor?"

"Um, yes, how did you…"

"The red," he said, motioning to Bill's tie beneath his robes without even looking, as if it said everything for him, "You're so damned proud of your houses that years afterwards you can't stand to wear any other color. It's a pity for the Hufflepuffs, so few people look good in yellow."

"And the brazenness," the man added before Bill could even open his mouth to refute that, "You all love to stereotype yourselves, fit yourselves into those four little boxes and call yourself content with being caricatures, I find it astounding. Years afterwards you'll find that those sporting yellows are cheerful, pleasant, and helpful as can be, those wearing green are filthy rich and filled with hubris, arrogance, and what they like to call ambition, the purple always shave their nose stuck in some book or another and consider themselves far more intelligent than the rest, and the red, you can always count on them to proudly speak before they think."

"That's not true," Bill chided, "What would you know about Hogwarts?"

"And you're doing it again," the man pointed out, Bill blanching as he realized that he had, that the words really had just slipped out, "It's like you can't help yourself."

"I…"

"But you were here to talk about Albania," the man interjected before Bill could even finish that sentence.

"I'm here to talk to your employer," Bill responded.

"Yes, well, wouldn't we all," the man said with a somewhat irritated sigh, his eyes rolling towards the ceiling, "Regardless, I am afraid she's quite busy…"

"Busy doing what?" Bill asked.

"If you must know she's busy doing what you, the bloody English wizards, expect of her," he held up a hand to stave off Bill's confused protests, "God only knows why, she gets the strangest ideas in her head sometimes, but they usually work out for the best."

And Bill snapped, leaning forward and pressing his hands onto the table, "How does supplying Albanian anarchist vampires with arms and funding constitute what's best for anyone?!"

"Oh, you are a bold one. The whole family's red and gold, isn't it?" the vampire asked with a smile, a rather Slytherin smirk if Bill had anything to say about it, and then he casually switched topics once again, "First, they are not anarchists, they're guerilla revolutionaries. Second, it might not be bloody good for you, Englishman, but I say it's a bit of a nice change."

"Are you serious?" Bill asked but the man only smiled, looking the picture of any accountant or bureaucrat in the ministry.

The man regarded Bill, almost fondly, as if he really was looking across at a cute schoolboy, "You forget I am not human, I have not been human in many years. And I see so much in this country that you can't possibly wrap your head around."

"The wizarding world tolerates you and…"

"Tolerates us," the man interjected, that smile growing sharper and less fond by the minute, something of the vampire inside of it, "There, I think, is that key word. Your people tolerate us, they throw us into the gutter and give us blood pops like stray dogs and try to forget what we really are, and they tell themselves that they are generous. Meanwhile, we all know, in our heart of hearts, that the minute things change, turn ever so slightly south, we will be the ones to go first."

Bill wanted to refute that and say it wasn't true, and it was true that he himself didn't believe it, for all that was wrong with their government they wouldn't descend to that. After all, it was that kind of thinking, this vampire's bitterness, that had given Voldemort so many dark creature supporters.

Except he couldn't help but blurt out, red faced and beyond reason, "If that's what you think why didn't the vampires join up with the dark lord in the war?!"

The vampire stared at him, seemed to stare through Bill almost as if the man was a legillimens, then with irrefutable authority he said, "Because he lost."

In the background, in the deafening silence that followed, the ticking of the clock was almost like the firing of muggle canons.

"Now, Mr…"

"Weasley," Bill said bitterly and proudly as if his name alone could make this man take back everything he'd said and thought, "Bill Weasley."

"Mr. Weasley," the vampire said succinctly, "I have little to say to your employers as I frankly think it's none of their business. You may simply tell them that we have decided that it is long past time we went international and leave it at that. How that effects them and theirs, well, that's for them to decide. However, I trust they shall stay as reasonable and ruthless as always and we shall endeavor to do the same."

They had probably expected as much, Bill thought to himself bitterly, when they sent him over here.

"And you think the ministry will stand aside?" Bill asked quietly.

"Do they do anything else?" the vampire asked, but almost as if it was a joke, like the ministry really hadn't done anything else and never would.

He should stand, he thought, stand and leave as it was clear he was now dismissed, yet he kept sitting. Watching as this man's eyes returned to his paperwork, looking the figures over and over again…

"Why are you still here, Mr. Weasley?"

"Your boss, Lily Riddle, this is really what she wants?"

The man looked Bill in the eye one final time, a curious look on his face, as if he were somewhere else entirely as he said, "Now, Mr. Weasley, even I have never been entirely sure what Lily Riddle truly wants. She is, after all, that power which all of us know not."

And if, walking out the door, Bill passed by a smaller dark-haired or even red-haired figure shouting at the top of her lungs, "Frank!", then he was too distracted, too dazed, to truly notice.

Author's Note: Written for the 200th review of "Eru Lee and the Sundance Kid" by AmaiKotori who asked for a sequel to "A Weasley Family Dinner", you know the one where Bill wants to go and meet Lily Riddle and fills the rest of the family in on the scandal. Well, he gets a sneak peak of Lily at the end there but by this point is too dazed by meeting sassy Frank, vampire secretary, to even notice. I say this is not cheating.

And wow, what a blast to the past this was.

Thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.