Author's Note: A note, this is a side fic to "The Wasteland" which in turn is a crossover of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and "The Lord of the Rings", so if you haven't read the original "The Wasteland" you might be slightly confused.

"He's worse than you are," this was Wizard Lenin's rather unforgiving assessment of their only friend, companion, and guide, the one true ring (whatever that meant), in this strange midlevel country that looked like every Dungeon and Dragons enthusiast's wet dream (complete with dwarves, mages, elves, rogues, and strange useless things called hobbits that apparently had the sole redeeming quality of having absolutely no ambition.)

Unfortunately, Lily was discovering that she wasn't much for Dungeons and Dragons.

Well, it was beautiful country, Hogwarts was one thing, and Albania was another, but here, unless you were standing right next to a village or a worn road leading from one place to another, it was perfect untouched wilderness as far as the eye could see. Bright blue skies, golden fields, jagged towering mountains…

But Lily missed showers, or she missed not having to walk everywhere dumping rocks out of her shoes, and she missed English. By George, Lily missed English.

Still, walking towards the back of the fellowship, shoulder to shoulder with Boromir the Overcompensating, Lily turned her attention away from her aching feet and the endless path ahead of them and instead to Frodo Baggins and the horcrux he carried around his neck.

"What do you mean he's worse than I am?" Lily balked, not entirely sure if she should be insulted that she was compared to a piece of jewelry or that a piece of jewelry was honestly being compared to her.

Not that he wasn't nice, for a ring, although he was rather pushy and frankly a bit alarming with his opinions. Wizard Lenin never, under any circumstances, would express any sort of overwhelming desire to return back to his main soul. In fact, if Wizard Lenin wasn't so bent on taking over England, he'd probably be just fine staying in another dimension, since it meant he and Lily would never have to have the inevitable confrontation with his other half. That the ring would so gladly sacrifice his own life, which he didn't even seem to view as an actual state of existence, for his other half's gain was…

Lily wasn't sure if alarming was the right word for it but she was leaning towards alarming.

"That, Lily, is what I mean," Wizard Lenin said, "He has absolutely no self-awareness."

Lily again felt herself grimace, lightening her pack with a glitch and shifting forward, "Hey, I am perfectly self-aware, it's just the rest of you that I'm not so sure about."

"And yet, strangely enough, doubting your own existence seems to have similar effects to doubting the existence of everyone around you."

Lily sighed and caught the stray thought that, despite subtle differences, Lily and My Precious were equally as socially incompetent. Well, no, the ring was more socially competent, but only when it suited his purposes and otherwise seemed a bit daft. Lily, to Wizard Lenin, had been hopeless from the start, having no idea how to understand something as simple as Mrs. Figg and her many cats, "Well, now I have no idea what you're talking about."

"True, he's much more socially competent than you are, and he's been stuck in a ring for thousands of years. And yet, for all his ability to twist the thoughts of those around him, he's utterly hopeless." Wizard Lenin said with contempt, "Honestly, I almost hope they do succeed in whatever the hell it is we're doing, just so I can watch the surprise on his face when they melt him alive."

"Lenin, he's a ring, I don't think he has a face," Lily said, "And give him some credit where credit is due… Boromir's been looking like a crack head for days now."

She glanced across at the man, who was looking slightly better today, but still had a rather feverish glow about him, a sense of malevolence and greed hanging about him like a cloak, and his eyes always wandering back to Frodo Baggins and the ring he kept with him.

The ring that apparently wanted Boromir of Gondor to murmur sweet nothings in his non-existent ear.

Now, if Lily was the ring, she'd try to do a little better than Boromir. It wasn't that he was bad he was just… If Ron was a good fifteen years older, less ginger, and had a giant sword, then he and Boromir were for all intents and purposes the same person. Just replace the word "snake" with "ring" and it was the same thing.

If Lily was a sentient piece of jewelry, for whatever reason wanted to attract men by the bucket load, she'd set her sights on Robin Hood the elf or else on Aragorn (who, according to the ring and what Lily could vaguely make out of the common tongue, was a prince king guy who was supposed to be ruling Boromir's kingdom or something.)

Of course, the ring also wanted to be called My Precious, which was about the worst stripper name Lily had ever heard, so clearly, she and the ring weren't on the same wavelength.

"Boromir is their weakest link," Wizard Lenin commented, in that reluctantly impressed tone that he hated so very much, "And that's why he's chosen him. He'll chip away at his defenses, slowly but surely, until there's nothing left to the man but greed and paranoia, and then he will singlehandedly eliminate every threat existing to the ring. It'd be masterful, if it weren't for such a pathetic cause."

Accompanying this was the graphic, if not unexpected, image of Boromir standing over a campsite of mutilated bodies and hacked off limbs, holding the blood-stained ring aloft with a great cry of triumph and despair.

Lily considered this hypothetical scenario for a moment, then commented, "Monochromatic Dumbledore would kick his ass."

And instantly whatever good mood Wizard Lenin had been in disappeared at even being remotely reminded of Dumbledore. That said, the man wasn't really all that like Dumbledore, he kept his cards close to his chest, and tended to play the fool… But he wasn't as manipulative as Dumbledore was and he didn't seem inclined to play the role of the chess master.

Still, there were enough similarities there that Wizard Lenin was willing to loathe him without even having spoken to him face to face. Something about old and morally superior wizards looking down their nose at him (or in this case Lily) just got to him like nothing else did.

"Just for that I hope the old man is the first to die," Wizard Lenin said.

"He may be the one who gets us home though," Lily said, "What if we're stuck here because Boromir offs him?"

"…Then I suppose we step in before the worst happens." Wizard Lenin said but Lily's eyes turned towards Boromir again, and she tried to picture the worst happening.

Perhaps it was her own lack of interest at fault, but she just couldn't picture Boromir doing anything remotely that important, he just seemed… there, that guy, that other sword guy besides Aragorn.

By his very nature he was superfluous.

"That was perhaps the most insulting thing you've ever said about anyone."

Lily blinked, taken aback, "What? No, what about…"

"Yes, Lily, you just shortly accused him of having absolutely no point to his existence. Squirrel, at least, existed to annoy you."

Lily considered this, grimacing, and finally just coming out and asking, "Well, am I wrong?"

And she could almost taste Wizard Lenin's blood thirsty grin as he took in the man's profile, "For now, like Peter Pettigrew before him, until he commits the ultimate act of betrayal, he will never escape his own… superfluousness."

(Next to her Boromir looked down at her with an irritated expression, asking something rather shortly in Westron.

"He wants to know what you're staring at," the ring commented from a distance.

Lily just smiled awkwardly, straightened and walked a little further ahead so that she was next a pair of the hobbits, and said, "Oh, you know, you just have one of those faces.")

Author's Note: Did I post this over a year after receiving the 100th review, yes, yes I did. Do I feel bad about this... yes. Oh well, better late than never. For the 100th review of "The Wasteland" by proenza who asked for a fic depicting Lily's thoughts on the other characters in the fic thus far, which I chose to interpret as the first chapter as that's when we really see the most of the fellowship. As you can guess this means I'm working on "The Wasteland" next to update so... sit tight for that I suppose.

Thanks for reading, reviews would be lovely.

Disclaimer: I own neither Lord of the Rings nor Harry Potter