"In some ways, Lily, it was easier when he was gone," Death said, "People assumed I was a shaman, well later, at the time they always figured it was just the next step in the legend of the boy who lived or a consequence of… Well, it's hardly important now. What I think of most now, when I think of it at all, is that Hermione, Ron, and eve Ginny seemed almost… relieved, when he disappeared. And for a while, for a very long time, I was relieved too."

It ended up being a few minutes shy of seven days, and only then, she suspected, because he had set himself that limit. If he had given himself two weeks, a month, or even all the school year she would have been waiting until that last moment for him to appear.

As it was, his post card from London arrived halfway through the week, a picture of a double decker bus printed on the front and elegant writing, far more elegant than Dudley's or even Lily's for that matter, on the back in looping paragraphs.

And he seemed…

Happy.

Sitting in the cupboard, the fake daemon placed onto her mattress snuffling as it stared at her with those wide unblinking dark eyes, she read through again and again but that sense didn't change. He seemed happy, somewhere in that black ink, in the descriptions of the people and the museums and the sheer history of the great city of London, was joy.

She tried to remember if he had ever once seemed happy before.

Lily, among the pair of them, had always been the one more prone to optimism, a little bit more untethered off the ground, while he himself had been firmly grounded and firmly cynical even from the start. He'd come into the world hating all of it, or at least, for as long as Lily could remember.

Until that first post card.

Lily, sitting there with the fake daemon, which she'd taken to referring as Rabbit, the soulless abomination and mockery of a human soul, sat and wondered if she had ever been truly as happy as he seemed to be.

Still, on the seventh day, waiting in the playground there was a somehow familiar eagle in the sky and then, a grinning, laughing, boy as he landed and grabbed her into his arms, twirling her about even as Lily sent out her will to deflect everyone's eyes elsewhere.

Because sometimes, it seemed, that Lenin forgot that going without pants on a jungle cat was all well and good but quite a different story for a little boy.

"Oh, Lily, I wish you could have been there with me," Lenin declared later, after school had ended and they were back in the cupboard again, and for the first time Lily could possibly recall, Lenin didn't seem to mind the cramped quarters. Instead, in the form of the pale dark-haired boy again (and was it strange that he kept gravitating to that now, as if acclimatizing himself to the taboo of it, testing the waters one foot at a time and going deeper and deeper), Lily's male alter-ego as it were, Lenin's jade eyes sparked and his hands gestured about like overexcited doves, "The sheer history, Lily, in London, in The British Museum for that matter. It just shows… Well how large the world is, how much larger it is than Little Whinging, and filled with wonders we never considered."

Well, to be fair, Lily did read, and she watched documentaries and movies whenever she got the chance. So it wasn't like she and Lenin had been wholly ignorant of the outside world, of the fact that the world was not comprised of the suburbs of London, but still, she doubted Lenin wanted to be reminded of that.

"And the land itself, the rolling hills of the countryside and the forests that remain…" he shook his head, and how odd that still was, that he could and would take this alien human form with such ease, almost appearing in a daze, "I… I never realized how beautiful the world was."

"Well, I'm glad you had fun," Lily said, clapping her hands together, "And glad you're back, the fake daemon, well… People are starting to ask if you've settled unseasonably early… And if I'm mentally handicapped."

Rabbit… Well, there were dull daemons, and then there was Rabbit. For something Lily had summoned or pulled or did whatever with out of thin air it really was quite miraculous. However, it never seemed to… do anything. It just kind of sat there, twitching, occasionally blinking. Even Buddy, at least, would move and talk and showed some (small, infinitesimally small) signs of intelligence.

Generally, when you saw a daemon acting like Rabbit, it meant that the human they belonged to usually was in some kind of a coma.

Lenin spared a pair of raised eyebrows towards the Rabbit then back to Lily, then back to Rabbit, "The fact that people can mistake that thing, for me… No, I've stopped wondering at the height of human stupidity."

He still looked insulted, which was probably fair, since Lily had started to earn some very concerned looks from her teacher as the week progressed and Rabbit… rabbited. He didn't even change forms once, not one time, just…

All the same, there was something about Rabbit that just… unnerved her.

"Either way, I won't be here long, a week is really too short even for an island as small as this one, I didn't even get to the cliffs of Dover…"

"Oh, right, of course, I'll… stay here, then," Lily interjected, trying to understand why she felt… He was her, in every sense of the term, and his seeing the world was her seeing the world, so really it was to the benefit of the combined being they called Eleanor Lily Potter.

All the same…

Still, wordlessly, as he looked at her, it was more than clear that he understood what she couldn't even bring herself to say.

"Lily I… I can't stay here," Lenin paused, and it was horrifying, how his human face made his emotions that much clearer, her emotions in a roundabout sense, as they had always seemed at least partially hidden when he wore a long-coiled body of a serpent or the eyes of an irritable black cat, "This place will destroy us, Lily, inch by inch… Thirteen years is too long, far too long."

He meant it, she could see it, and he was right, thirteen years was almost three times longer than they had been alive. All the same, all the same, the words slipped out of her mouth, "Half here, Lenin, is still here."

You could have heard a pin dropping.

Slowly, the form of the boy unwound, a serpent took its place, winding up her neck, and then, hissing in her ear, "Then we'll both go, this time, I promise, Lily, we'll both go."

For a little while, before they planned and researched and even thought about leaving, they dreamed out the future. How first, first they would go to London as Lenin had done, and he'd show her everything he'd seen for himself. Then, they'd travel the whole island then over to Ireland, and then to the continent…

And, he in the form of a fierce lion, in his yellow eyes she'd seen some bright inner fire, the fire of her own soul, burning…

The next time he left it wasn't nearly so far and wasn't quite so exciting. Instead of playing tourist he went about Surrey then London during the day, returning home every night, inspecting foster homes and orphanages. She imagined he took the forms of spiders, flies, and moths as he read of papers and made his way through nooks and crannies and peered with too many eyes into the faces of children.

"Children," he said after the first time, expanding into the form of a ragged coyote whose yellow eyes practically burned with irritation, "Are disgusting."

"The ones at school aren't…"

"Oh, but we don't live with the ones at school," Lenin cut her off as he shook himself, "And even then, even in the classroom you catch them eating paste out of the containers. Oh but, like Dudley, behind closed doors they reveal themselves for what they truly are."

Then nodding his head towards Rabbit, he said, "Let me put it like this, your cheap imitation of me over there, if he was only slightly less catatonic, and was covered in snot and drool, would have fit right in."

Still, he kept going, and by about the third time he acknowledged a pattern, a strange elusive truth that neither of them had guessed for years.

"We're being abused," he said it so calmly, and yet with an undertone of solidified belief, as if only now had this earth-shattering realization come together.

They were sitting outside, on the roof, Lenin returning and insisting (in a tone not to be reckoned with) they not spend another moment in the cupboard, and with the sound of his roaring voice in the form of a tiger Lily hadn't thought to argue, so flying on Lenin's back as he took the form of some strange, majestic, and frankly oversized bird, they'd sat up there and stared at the overcast night sky, towards the lights of London.

"What?" Lily asked, eyebrows raised, and then scoffed, "Come off it…"

"Lily, they put us in a cupboard, and they barely feed us," he said, and there was a dangerous undertone to that quiet voice, even as he shifted into his human form, his face so perfectly still and pale as his eyes seemed to burn, and even without any clothes the fire of his anger seemed to keep him from shivering, "At every home I've been to, they are treated better than we are, it's crowded, true, and filled with emotionally unstable brats of all ages, but they're fed, they sleep in a room with a bed and a window, and they aren't put to work in a garden and their mothers aren't called whores and their fathers aren't called drunkards."

"But they don't… They don't hit us…"

"Oh, but Uncle Vernon's belted us more than once," Lenin's voice grew louder, he still wasn't looking at her, instead staring with rage out towards London, "And let's not forget Dudley, he certainly makes sure we remember our place."

Then, interlacing his fingers together and leaning forward on top of them, he said, "I want them to go to jail, Lily. I want to see that fat bastard of an uncle go to prison and get shanked. I want to see our rake thin aunt penniless and forced into wandering the streets. I want Dudders sent off to a foster home to get the shit beat out of him by juvies twice his age and size. I want to see them lose everything and for everyone in Privet Drive to know it."

He turned to look at her then, and how did he look her age yet so much older in the same moment, how did he burn with such anger, "I want to destroy them."

"But if we don't live with the Dursleys then…"

"I don't care if we're shoved into a foster home with twelve other children," Lenin said, shaking his head, "I don't care if we end up on the streets, we'll survive, I know it. Lily, we can't let this slide, we've let it go for long enough."

"…If," Lily started, holding up a hand before Lenin could interrupt, "If we are being abused by the Dursleys, then… Why hasn't anyone done anything about it?"

From what Lily generally understood, there were laws against things like that, granted she didn't really know the details but the idea was that if you were unfit for having children they were taken away from you. Granted, Lily wasn't necessarily sold on this abuse thing, it wasn't anything she or Lenin hadn't been able to handle for years, but by the look he was giving her he was anything but impressed.

"Because humans are corrupt, worthless, piles of garbage who will do nothing to help even an abused little girl if the evidence isn't undeniable even to a dullard!" Lenin shouted then threw his hands into the air giving a great bark of rage and despair, "Everyone worth meeting Lily, is already dead, or never existed in the first place…"

He sighed, wrapping his arms around his torso, goosebumps finally appearing on his pale skin as he huddled in on himself, "We'll just have to make it that obvious."

"Well," Lily said blandly as she stared out to the horizon, "That's not ominous, or anything…"

That, at least, managed to get a laugh or two out of him.

Of the two of them, if anyone considered Lily and Lenin as a pair at all, if they dared to consider them, as Lenin might say, one might conclude that Lenin was the rational realist.

And this was true, to a point, certainly Lenin believed it and told her it often enough, but sometimes, sometimes Lily didn't wonder if it wasn't her trying to keep her passionate, fiery, overzealous, and sometimes terrifying soul firmly grounded in the reality they lived in.

Because Lenin seemed to forget every now and then.

"Alright, it says here… Lily, would you stop watching that goddamn rabbit and pay attention already!"

Lily jerked her head towards him, keeping Rabbit in her periphery as they sat in the school library, Lenin in human form to more easily flip through pages, dressed in her own clothing, with a borrowed psychology text book from the much larger public library, although how he'd managed to con the system into granting him a library account without a parent or a daemon to accompany him was nothing short of miraculous.

"I think… I think I may have made a mistake with the rabbit," Lily whispered over to him, "It… I think it eats things."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Lenin whispered in frustration back, "And why do I care?"

"Well, that's the thing, things keep… disappearing. Or not always things, like do you remember how Aunt Petunia used to go to bridge all the time, then just… stopped going and acts like there never was a bridge club in the first place? Or, Dudley, he had that one toy that looked like some sort of army man, and he took it everywhere, only now it's not there anymore and Dudders isn't accusing me of having stolen it or…"

"That is the least important thing you could possibly be focusing on right now," Lenin stated, "Listen to this, it says here that the daemon of children in abusive households generally take…"

"No, I think it's very important," Lily interjected, "I think… I think it might be eating things out of reality. I mean, I don't really know where it comes from, I just sort of pulled it out of the ether. I mean for all I know it could be some sort of reality devouring abomination intent on eating Scotland… I think I've made a huge mistake."

"Wonderful," Lenin stated, "At any rate, it says that the daemons of abused children generally shift between forms of predatory mammals, this is theorized to express their unease and growing paranoia and distrust of authority figures…"

Lenin then turned the book to show the glossy photograph of a sullen looking boy and a great feral wolf behind him with yellowed fangs and wild bloodshot eyes.

"You take the form of a wolf all the time," Lily pointed out but he was shaking his head.

"No, no, this goes on to describe the almost feral behavior, a constant snapping at all hands, scouting of rooms, and in general a marked silence… I've never exhibited any of these symptoms," Lenin said, breathing out and looking quite dazed, before finally admitting, "I'm not sure I have it in me to snarl like a rabid dog."

Well, Lenin didn't necessarily attack like that but he did… provoke. However, hearing that kind of a thing seemed beneath him so Lily didn't point it out.

"Well, I guess that's out," Lily responded but Lenin didn't even look up, just kept flipping pages until his eyes landed on something but then, then his face paled.

"Oh, oh no," he looked up at her then back down at the page, "This isn't going to work at all."

"What won't?"

"Lily you can't… Act," Lenin finally finished lamely, wincing, and holding up his hands almost in apology, "And this is, this would be subtle stuff… You know what, here's what we're going to do, we're going to provoke Dudley, and let him catch up to us, beat the living hell out of us. Then… Then I'll… I'll give you a black eye, and we go to school and we tell them we tripped down the stairs."

Lily stared, stared some more, cast her eyes about the library as if to check that yes, the old librarian with a tabby daemon was still there, then back to Lenin, repeating dully, "We tripped down the… What good will that do?!"

"Because then, then we do the same thing again, except this time we get some nice, visible, bruising up the arms, oh maybe around the neck, and again, we say that we tripped down the stairs."

Lily just stared at him, dumbfounded, and repeated, "Lenin, that is the lamest explanation that…"

"Of course, it is, that's why we're saying it! They will assume that someone told us to keep our mouths shut, because we love our abusive child beating jackass of an uncle, and we would rather tell this obviously, patently false, lie rather than confess the truth."

Lily blinked at him once, twice, then confessed, "That's a terrible plan."

Lenin, as always whenever anyone questioned Lily's judgement or Lily questioned his, looked grievously offended, Lily felt like he was compensating for her own strange lack of ego by taking it all for himself, "How is it a terrible plan?"

"It involves me getting beat up, by Dudley, for weeks, and you strangling me or hitting me with frying pans, just so that I can tell my teacher, multiple times, that I fell down the stairs," Lily paused, considered Lenin's master plan again, and said, "I don't like the plan."

"Well, if you don't like the plan, let's hear yours?"

Lily didn't necessarily have a plan but, "Why don't we just tell them?"

"Tell them?"

"Tell them that they lock me in a cupboard and don't give me nearly as much food as Dudders," Lily explained, "That seems a lot less painful."

"They will never believe us," Lenin said, and then, softly, perhaps too softly, "Lily, if they were going to notice, wouldn't they have done it already?"

In the end, for better or worse, they ended up going with Lenin's plan. And, like Lily had predicted, it hurt, a lot.

But the trick was not minding that it hurt.

The ending was… It was what it was, that's what Lily decided later, and although Lenin would always remain bitter about it, the memory still embroiled within his very being and never really coming to terms with it, he too, more or less, let it go.

There was really no point thinking about it.

It took about two months, but eventually the bruises starting racking up and after a few really bad self-inflicted injuries where Lenin had misjudged, the government was more than willing to intervene. Aiding this along was the fact that Aunt Petunia had started catching on about two weeks in, and, talking to Uncle Vernon he was convinced more starvation and more belt was the answer.

Lenin, naturally, was delighted by this turn of events.

He still had Uncle Vernon on some sort of internal death list, but all the same, every day he praised that man's stupidity and impulsiveness.

The day of the social service visit, there was a flurry about the house, the door to the cupboard beneath the stairs locked, Lily placed in a yellow sundress newly bought and a small cardigan to cover her bruised arms.

Dudley's toy room was cleaned rapidly, Dudley screaming and Buddy keening as Aunt Petunia hurriedly shoved newly bought dresses over his old video games and action figures, Sheila braying in dismay, telling him, "Shush, Diddykins, mummy is busy."

Lenin meanwhile, paced anxiously in the form of a jaguar, back and forth, back and forth, eyes on the door and then alerting to attention when the social worker came in. She came, she critically eyed Lily's sweater, she looked around, and then just like that, she was gone…

And Lily and Lenin just stood there, waiting, waiting for something to have happened.

Night came, them in the cupboard again, silently sulking together.

"We can fall down the stairs a few more times," Lily said, Lenin saying nothing, spotted tail just swishing back and forth, his back turned towards her and his ears flat as he curled in on himself.

"I don't mind, I'm almost used to it," Lily said and then, softly, "We can also… We can also just leave, you know."

Still nothing…

"Paperwork takes time, they may have to do a few more visits."

Finally, finally, Lenin responded quietly, "If they don't want us, why do they only threaten the orphanage, why not just send us to one already?"

"Have they ever made any sense, Lenin?" Lily asked, then placing a hand in his fur, she sighed and said, "You know what they are, Lenin, as well as I do. They're… automatons, cheap replications of humanity, close but never quite there, never truly… sentient. If they have any semblance of thought at all, well…"

"And if I don't subscribe to your theory?" Lenin scoffed.

"Then why are we in this cupboard, Lenin?" Lily asked, and it said too much, far too much, that he had no legitimate answer to that.

Now, if the universe was a rational place, even filled with magic and bears and northern lights as it was, the story would have ended right there. However, the world was an experiment in the absurd and falling to pieces, so of course, at that moment, the door to the cupboard slowly unlocked and Lily found herself staring at a pair of unfamiliar, thin, legs, and a pair of men's, scuffed, second-hand oxfords.

Against her will Lily was summoned out of the cupboard, pulled by the air itself, Lenin roaring and clawing at the man's legs but rebuffed by some invisible shield, she was lifted out and found herself silently staring into the pale, pinched face, of a man around her aunt and uncle's age, who looked down with dark eyes and an indiscernible expression.

Oh, his shoulder, there was a dark eyed, brooding, raven, and it said, as Lenin began to circle them, nails cutting into the wood of the floor, swiping desperately and Lily stood there in horror, "Severus."

The man placed a stick against her temple, Lily jerked backwards, kicking him in the shin, shattering his shield and allowing Lenin to bound in only for his eyes to be attacked by the bird. The man muttered something vaguely Latin and ridiculous sounding and both Lenin, and Lily, were frozen still.

The man placed a wooden stick, a wand, against her temple.

"Obliviate."

And then just like that, the world seemed to turn backwards, Lily woke back up inside of her cupboard with the pounding headache that she imagined would accompany a hangover, the bruises all having strangely disappeared, and only Lily and Lenin seeming to remember that strange dark, tall, greasy man and his raven daemon had been inside the house at all.

And more, none of them seemed to remember the past few months at all.

It seemed clear enough that the man had been aiming for Lily to forget too, for her memories to be subjugated to oblivion, but for whatever reason, whether because she herself was a witch or something else entirely, it didn't seem to stick.

So the world moved backward but Lily remained exactly where she'd been before, and they were stuck, at someone else's whim, inside of Number 4 Privet Drive.

Of course, it was because of that, more than anything else, that Lenin started giving zero shits at all...

Which probably was an outcome that the strange man in black hadn't been banking on.

Author's Note: Ah, the pre-Hogwarts days of bickering, terrible plans, and more bickering. Although, in the strange universe where Lenin is not as worldly or old as he is in the canon verse, Lily plays the role of the straight man. What an eerie thought.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or His Dark Materials