Deus Ex Machina

WARNING: This chapter isn’t all sunshine and rainbows – it’s NASTY, it’s DARK and there’s SUICIDE at the end. For those who do not wish to read such content, there is a summary at the bottom beneath several rows of ***** so that you’re not lost with the plot.



PROLOGUE: The end of the world.



Emperor Voldemort sat high on his throne of obsidian marble shot with blood red veins among the white patches, it was encrusted with twinkling black diamonds that shimmered in the dim light of the poisoned sky. He peered down at the line of emaciated, bruised, bleeding, deformed, sick, whimpering muggles that were being led to the steps leading to his feet. The terrified vermin were shoved up the sharp steps, many cutting the feet on the razor-like edges as they stumbled in exhaustion.



One by one he casually flicked his wrist, aiming the killing curse, blasting their broken beings sideways over the side of the steps with the force of hatred behind the green blasts. The bones of various members of the Oder of the Phoenix were embedded into the stars, little brass plaques saying what the bone was and whom it had once belonged to.



The preserved remains of Harry James Potter were encased in a beautifully constructed glass cabinet, and were used as a foot rest by The Emperor. Harry’s corpse was twisted in agony and had been frozen until rigor mortis had set in and then preserved perfectly. His eyeless face was a constant image of excruciating pain; his tongueless mouth in a permanent scream. Hands with dislocated fingers and no nails desperately reached out to anyone for help. Wounds still gaped, wet with non-colagulated blood: angry holes of flesh that had trickled his life blood away at the end.



Fawkes had been killed, plucked, roasted and eaten by the Emperor in a banquet of celebration after the Order fell. The beautiful golden feathers that had symbolised renewal, rebirth and new life had been used to fill the cushions that padded the black throne he sat upon.



If the Emperor was feeling particularly creative, some muggles would feel the torture of various other curses before the anguish and mercy of their deaths.



To the side of the Emperor, there was a cheer as Death Eaters collected their winnings and handed over their losses of bets. The games were popular, they were the Death Eater equivalent of dog fighting or cock fighting. Muggle children were bred and trained to kill.



The muggle infants that weren’t murdered were taught to fight, their teeth and fingernails sharpened to deadly points. They did not speak, nobody had ever taught them; they did not play – not knowing what fun was… they were fed if they won, and only if they won; The children associated a win with food – and thus they fought for their supper. Though, exactly what they were fed on was a mystery.



A floating platform hovered next to the throne, and the youngsters battled as their Death Eater owners placed bets. Often the Emperor would become bored with frequent winners, and aim the acid green glow of death at them to remove them from existence; fresh fighters would be paraded out before the adults lined up for execution.



The Death Eaters cheered with each victim, and casually evenesco’d their corpses away from the throne.



The Emperor Voldemort quite happily ruled the world, having first caused one of the British muggle nuclear power stations to go into meltdown, with an added spell so that only the radiation targeted non-magical people. The radioactive clouds had spread nicely into Europe and beyond, killing muggles slowly and painfully – leaving magical people healthy and as obvious as beacons in the blackest night.



The army of Death Eaters and their Emperor had induced the destruction of man in other countries by starting a nuclear war that was no longer cold. The Death Eaters played battleships with real boats as they fired missiles at random and at will. Green mushroom clouds had sprung up on all continents as the Death Eaters had killed those they thought not worthy of life.



Emperor Voldemort had been proud of his ability to turn the mushroom clouds green and for them to take the shape of the Dark Mark. The Symbol of the skull and snake were ominous with death, destruction and malevolence.



The Death Eaters kept finding small pockets of half-bloods, mud-bloods and squibs; these were tortured slowly, until there wasn’t even the smallest hope left in their hearts; then they were stripped of any rags they might be wearing and locked in outdoor cages behind the Emperor’s throne, and left to face the elements. The occasional survivor was retrieved and fed to Nagini.







In a little cave on the Yorkshire Moors, one of the few remaining Muggleborns, Hermione Jane Granger, lay sobbing as she blinked in the darkness. He-who’s-very-name-inspired-fear had wiped out a large chunk of the muggle world, had annihilated the squibs, had brutally slit the throats of house elves and had left the muggleborns and half-bloods to die of hypothermia and starvation.



She was one of the lucky ones to have survived the searches and to have not been caught; but without food, clean water or hope, she was slowly dying.



He-who-everyone-feared had not taken into account the fact that the magical population was small; he’d decimated the gene pool and left only the purebloods alive. Children born to the purebloods were few and far between, and many did not survive longer than one year; those who did survive were often deformed, and those who made it to adulthood had frequently proved infertile…



…Emperor Voldemort had doomed the human race into extinction.



Hermione wept for the loss of the planet, for the loss of the people, and for her own guilt and inability at not being able to do anything about it. She quietened as she heard voices approach her cave.



“The spell says there is a magical being in here!” one voice said.



“Oooh, another one! Our Emperor will be pleased!” laughed the other.



There was nowhere to run; her hiding place was no longer concealing her. She would not be able to fight the Death Eaters at the cave’s mouth. She knew she would be tortured and left to die – her torture worse than any other, as she was the last member of the Order of the Phoenix to have not been accounted for.



A hooded and cloaked, thin person appeared next to her; he took down his hood and proved to be an incredibly pale man with long white hair and shining grey eyes, he looked rather handsome to be honest – high cheekbones and a strong jaw, but ever so slightly skeletal. The stranger sat down next to her, smiling gently as he held her hand, he lay a sharp scythe on the ground at his side as bony fingers massaged her wrist’s pulse gently, calming her and giving her courage.



Hermione, using her last scrap of Gryffindor bravery and her last miniscule amount of magic cast the killing curse, her wand trained upon herself. She breathed her last as the Death Eaters laid eyes on her ruined body. The stranger vanished in a breath of mist as the Death Eaters hacked at her dead body with knives and aimed hexes at her lifeless form.



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Summary:

Voldemort won, and has slowly annihilated the human population through the killing of non-pureblood magic folk (resulting in inbreeding and a gene pool so small that nothing can be done to save the human race).



He induced a nuclear war to poison every muggle, the crops and the water - but magical people remain immune to the radiation and stick out like sore thumbs - and are tortured and killed.



Hermione kills herself upon being found in hiding, as she has no chance of winning in a fight.