Tom's heart stopped, as her words sunk in. The first years, Myrtle, Cassandra, the townspeople of Smethwick. All of those people would have suffered a far worse fate if Lilith hadn't intervened. She saved them all, many of them being nothing more than strangers to her, with Lilith seeking no recognition or reward for her actions. She genuinely cared about others and would do whatever it took to spare the innocent from further harm. Even him. She, who had yet to make a deal with Tom, recognized a threat to his life and future, recognized it as dangerous enough that it had to be removed forcefully and did it all on her own, at clearly some personal cost. Even as her rationale filled his mind and did its best to calm him, his cautious mind couldn't let go of the fear that now began to dominate his thoughts. She had killed Morfin and introduced him to Thomas, favoring one side of his blood relations over the other. How else had she manipulated him over the last year, without him even knowing? Feeling his emotions running out of control, Tom voiced a concern that he had forgotten in the heat of the moment, only now realizing it as he applied the time frames to what he knew. "My uncle was the first person you ever killed, wasn't he?" Lilith's eyes dimmed as the memory resurfaced. She wrapped her arms around her body. "Yes." Tom closed his eyes. The first person she had ever killed and it wasn't for herself. It had been for him, to keep him safe. And yet that person had been the only living tie he had to his mother's family. For all accounts Morfin Gaunt was a monster, deserving of death several times over. And yet, a part of Tom refused to let him go. It refused to forgive Lilith for killing Morfin, for taking something away from him that was his right by birth.
Releasing a deep breath, a cloud of air visible in the cold night, Tom walked a bit closer to Lilith. He wanted to touch her, to hold her in his arms, just as much as he wanted to push her away. He did neither. "I… I need time, Lilith. Time to make peace with what you did. I know that you feel you were justified in what you did, and yet a part of me can't forgive you for this. For the time being, let's head back to Hogwarts and just… let me be. I will let you know… when we can start working together again." Lilith, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground, murmured just loud enough for him to hear. "You meant to say if…, didn't you?" Tom clamped his jaw shut, realising that Lilith saw through his attempt to reassure her, despite his own misgivings. Not wishing to be caught in another lie, Tom apparated away, landing just outside the village of Hogsmeade, before making his way up the path to the Castle. Lilith, for her part, remained at Little Hangleton for a few minutes longer, wondering if this would be the last time she would be here as a welcomed guest. The town's people would surely welcome her, as they always did. But if Tom couldn't forgive her for killing Morfin, then she didn't deserve to be here. This place could be his home, even if he didn't want it to be right now. She wouldn't sour his feelings about it anymore than she already did. Taking out a Portkey, she wished the town a whispered goodbye, just in case she would never see it again, before vanishing on the spot, the indentations on the ground being all that was left of either of them in the snow.
-✦-
Alexander frowned as he entered through the front door of Peverell Manor. Sensing the presence in the wards, he sighed, stripping off his boots, scarf and jacket, before walking up the stairs. Opening the door to her bedroom and living quarters, Alexander breathed out a sigh of relief. "Oh good, for a second I thought I would need to pull you out of the bathroom again. What are you doing here? Your letter made it clear that you would be spending the Yuletide at Hogwarts." Getting no response from the teen, he approached the bed where she was lying down, finding her vest and gloves thrown about at the foot of the bed. He sat down next to her, getting a feel of her magics, finding both unstable. It was never a good sign. "What happened?" Lilith, who had been lying down on her stomach, turned her face to face him slightly. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. "I took him out to the Riddle Manor, to meet his grandfather." Alexander blinked at her. "That bad?" Lilith shook her head lightly. "It went well enough, except that he is too observant. When Thomas brought up Morfin's death, he caught my reactions. I tried so hard to bury them but he was able to notice. He deduced correctly that the person I killed last winter was his uncle." Alexander sighed as he patted her back gently. "It's not your fault. The boy's upbringing forced him to rely heavily on his ability to read people. Even gifted Occlumens can only control their physical reactions so far."
Lilith turned her face into the bed, her voice growing muffled. "It was so much easier being Lillian. I didn't need to save anyone, I didn't need to worry about anything. I was just this awkward girl who never stood out, a ghost in and out of the classroom. Only the Slytherins knew that I was different. After I nearly killed Malfoy in my fourth year, they all just left me alone. But not here. Here I have to feel responsible, I have to help people, no matter what. Tell me, Alexander. Did I… am I losing myself? Am I losing who Lillian was and becoming someone else?" Alexander rested his hand on Lilith's back, running it back and forward as comforting as he could be. "I can't say for sure, as all my knowledge of Lillian is what I saw through her eyes, but maybe this is who you were always supposed to be. From what you showed me of your memories, you were forced to live everyday for yourself, never thinking about anyone else. In the Orphanage and at Hogwarts, you always needed to look after yourself, as every single place held threats and dangers to your life and future. Because you never had anyone there to take the burden away from you, to let your life blossom. You never felt like your life meant something more than just a struggle. Here, that is not the case. You have agency over life, a goal beyond just surviving. It's letting out a side of you that could never be out before." Lilith remained silent, as Alexander removed his hand from her back.
"I sent a letter to Henry Potter. It contained documents about the old Alliance. If he uses it correctly, we might get to see the Wizengamot move as one to confront Grindelwald." Lilith turned her head to Alexander, who felt a bit proud of himself at getting her attention away from the recent debacle. "Are you sure he will be able to do it correctly? Getting the Light to follow him won't be as easy as it once was, not with Dumbledore's mouth pieces trying their best to undercut the faction's cohesion." Alexander nodded. "True. So far, the Anti-Dark Arts movement's members haven't opposed Speaker Potter openly, but their influence is starting to be felt in the wider community. But I believe Henry will be able bring them all back in line as the needs of the war force thrm to revaluate their beliefs. If everything goes as planned with the Alliance call… maybe you could even meet him in person." Lilith pressed her head against the bed. "I would rather not." Alexander frowned. "He was your great grandfather. There should be nothing wrong, getting to know him and all." After a few beats of silence, Lilith spoke up. "It hurts more, knowing them. As Lillian in the Orphanage, I didn't need my parents names or life stories. I could make up my own. I could believe that I was loved, that I was taken from them against my will. I could believe that my life had meaning to it, that it was simply stolen from me. When I arrived at Hogwarts, learned about my parents dying in the war, I could no longer maintain those dreams. There was no hiding the fact that my life was meaningless. That I was just an unfortunate soul that survived."
Alexander raised his voice slightly. "Lilith." The redhead, however, continued talking. "I could also see the flip side, you know? Neville Longbottom. The Boy Who Lived. His life had meaning. He was the Chosen One after all, Champion of the Light, the Great Albus Dumbledore's chosen successor and the bane of He Who Must Not be Named and his loyal Death Eaters. His life had meaning alright, but it wasn't one that he got to pick for himself. He got told what was right and what was wrong, never questioning the motives or the history behind those labels, never thinking for himself, never getting to pick who his friends and confidants would be. His parents were an inspiration to him, the people said, having defied the Dark Lord several times before their death at his hands. A bloody curse is what their memory was and he couldn't even see it. Everywhere he went, he was celebrated, treasured, loved for just surviving death. His youth, stolen from him as he was trained by his parents' best friends to be the force for change they wanted him to be, never thinking that the boy might want or need a life beyond the name he was given. That's the line we all walk, isn't it? To be weighed down by meaning and pressure not your own, or to find the world so utterly devoid of meaning, that you ask yourself how long you can go on pretending that there is any meaning at all in your being alive." Alexander sighed. "Is that what you have been doing these past two years, seeing if there was any meaning to coming back here?"
Lilith shook her head. "Seeing? No. Making it. Fifty years into the past, during a time when Death practically walked the Earth, claiming lives by the thousands every day. And here I am, one soul possessing the body of a victim of this war, wearing their skin, using their name… I needed to make sure, Alexander. There needs to be a point in my coming back here. Otherwise… why did I even bother in the first place?" Patting Lilith's back softly, Alexander spoke up. "There has been meaning, Lilith. Big and small changes abound. You will see. In time, you will find out just how important your presence here will have been in the lives of countless people." Lilith lifted herself up, turning to look at Alexander right in the eyes, hers filled with unshed tears. "And if I only care about one person's opinion?" Alexander smiled at her softly. "Believe me, he will understand." Lilith shook her head. "He asked me to stay away from him, Alexander. I… might have lost his trust. Even if I didn't, I doubt he could ever offer it to me truly ever again. I don't think he is able to give it out so easily and I may have ruined my only chance to save him from himself and all the monsters in the world." Sighing to himself, Alexander raised his hand and rubbed her hair, getting a scowl. "Give him time to think over what your actions have meant for him and to realize that his life is the better for it. In the meantime, will you be staying here?"
Pushing his hand away from her head as she sat up, Lilith pulled her legs under herself. "Yeah. I still need time to refine the construct's behaviour. I couldn't do it at the Castle outside of tye Room of Requirement, but here I can test it out fully, with your permission, of course." Alexander chuckled to himself. "You are more than welcome to stay until classes start again, giving him the time he needs to figure out where you two go from here. I will send a letter to Dippet. He will grant the request more easily coming from me. In the meantime, Happy Christmas Lilith." The redhead frowned at him. "You don't celebrate Christmas." Alexander, now at the foot of her bed, leaned down, picking up her discarded clothes. "No, but celebrating Yule while you are lying in bed, screaming your head off in pain isn't grounds for celebrating much. Now either go to sleep or join me in my study so I can tell you the plans for the upcoming Wizengamot Sessions. I will have some hot chocolate ready. After that, we can just sit back and watch the snow falling outside until you fall asleep." Lilith, catching her clothes after Alexander threw them at her, followed his movement with her eyes, before she turned to look at the large but unwrapped present box that contained her gift for Tom. She sighed to herself, praying to whatever gods were willing to listen that he still regarded her as a trusted friend. She was willing to settle for that right now. The alternative only seemed to make her eyes water and her heart ache.
-✦-
Tom eyed his collection of books within his mental landscape, debating which texts he should read for the millionth time. The reason as to why he was unsure which books were worth his time now was due to a snap decision he had made the night prior. Being trapped within the confines of his Hogwarts Diary hadn't been the most pleasant of experiences, so he was understandably surprised when a few months ago he found himself connected to a redheaded girl by the name of Ginerva Weasley. The girl's obsession with the Boy Who Lived did serve him well as a way to understand what had occurred to the world at large since the day he had been trapped here. His corporeal self had taken the aggressive and perhaps foolish action of waging war against the British Ministry of Magic, not to mention the vigilante group known as the Order of the Phoenix. He had apparently come quite close at achieving victory, until one night, after slaughtering four members of the Order within their hideout, he himself had been repulsed in some way by the Boy Who Lived, a mere infant barely a year old. It was a ridiculous story, but the girl and the wider world seemed to take it as gospel, so there had to be some grains of truth to it concerning the events that had happened that night. Seeing as his otherself was either gone or incapacitated, Tom had decided that it might just be time to leave the Diary for good.
Ginerva proved quite an easy mind to control, allowing him to re-enter his Ancestor's Chamber and awaken the Guardian. Debating the best approach to achieving his goals, he determined that perhaps some degree of theatricality was in order. The last time the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, several Muggleborns and Halfbloods had been petrified, a scare tactic designed to get the unworthy out of Hogwarts. Unfortunately, that plan hadn't worked as intended, with Ministry and Hogwarts staff doing nothing to advertise the severity of the attacks. It wasn't until Moaning Myrtle died that the staff took the attacks seriously. Too seriously. They had gone straight with the option of closing the school, rather than acquiescing to the demands written on the walls with the blood of the children. Tom had to resolve the matter in a way that kept the school open, while also diverting attention away from himself. It worked too. So as Tom debated the best possible means of acquiring a physical form, repeating the incident once more seemed a viable option, especially as his goal now was to actually get the school closed. With a malleable victim under his thrall, all he needed was to drain her of her life force and magic within the Chamber, hidden from everyone's eyes, and that would be the end of his imprisonment. It was a perfectly sound strategy, except that he didn't account for one thing to happen.
The young Weasley girl had managed to gain some understanding as to what he had been doing to her mind and had tossed the Diary away. Then, another person found it, and Tom found that he could no longer follow his original plan, at least not with his new acquaintance. He had never encountered someone like Lillian Potter. The raven haired little girl with the most striking green eyes wasn't like Ginny Weasley. Unlike the Boy Who Lived, the girl who had been orphaned that same night at his side wasn't given the same idolatrous treatment. Instead, she had been abandoned by the Order, left at an Orphanage at some point in her early life. There she too learned, as he had done, that there was no kindness in the world without an angle. Like him, her bouts of accidental magic had left her being ostracized and shunned. Until she did what he couldn't do. She buried her magic away. Hiding in plain sight, never standing out, the girl just went one day at a time, working her way in the kitchens of her Orphanage with the other girls, before she received her own letter from Hogwarts. When she first appeared within his mindscape, he thought that he would need to work a bit harder to bend her to his will. Instead he found that he didn't have to. She was utterly indifferent to the fact that muggleborns were being targeted. Her only complaint had been that she was a known Parselmouth in Slytherin and that the students of her House suspected her of the crimes. That reveal had certainly made him hesitate.