The Fool, the Emperor, and the Hanged Man

Title: The Fool, the Emperor, and the Hanged Man
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: MA/NC-17
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Suspense, romance, angst
Warnings: Character Death, graphic violence, madness, non-consensual sexual acts, abuse, oral, M/F, and overall darkness. Dark!Harry included.
Summary: DH-EWE: Ten years after the fall of the Dark Lord, Hermione Granger leads of life of self-imposed obscurity, that is, until the day Headmistress Minerva McGonagall is murdered and a certain 'hero' is responsible.
Author's Notes: This fic is in 1st person POV, so take heed. It will eventually be a DM/HG, but there is a squicky scene that might make you think otherwise. There is some non-con in this fic, so if it squicks you, don't read it for Merlin's sake! Comments and ConCrit is welcomed!




The Fool, the Emperor, and the Hanged Man

Part 24




I could not feel Severus’ presence in my mind, and I was frightened. It seemed that the magical shockwave that had come from Harry’s body wiped out all traces of the embedded spell.

I had no idea why Harry’s body had released such magic upon his death, but then again, I had read that when a great wizard died, sometimes, just sometimes, his magic dies with him, and when it does, there is a wave or an explosion of power like a final death throe. When Albus died, phoenix song had filled the air…

I wondered if Harry had lived on, not mad or obsessed with the past, would his death also have been so—so fitting?

I had killed Harry Potter. Not Voldemort. And now they were both dead, like so many others.

And Draco, was he dead? I had not had the chance to know. But still my heart ached.

The last conscious thought I had had was of me flying through the air and the Time-Turner forcing me through time. But had I been going forward or backward? Technically, knowing how Time-Turners worked, I assumed I had been going forward in time since the device had been used by Harry to go back. The pegs that held the hourglass were pinned with springs, but I did not think I had gone forward twelve point nine zero eight years…or turns…

It was then I opened my eyes.

I had been aware of my body for quite some time, and the pains and aches in my face and limbs. I was also aware that a Time-Turner was on my chest, no longer spinning, but the hourglass caught between the frame the dragon hide of my shirt. Gently, I lifted my hands to hold the hourglass to keep it from moving, but I did not move otherwise.

I was lying on the ground, and above me were stars, so bright and so beautiful, I wondered how I could see them so clearly. I could even see the ribbon of the Milky Way as if I did not have the earth’s atmosphere to distort it, no other lights, no pollution. But it was not only starlight that lit my hands and body for my eyes to see.

I turned my head to my right, and high in the sky was something that I could not immediately identify.

Red, glittering rock seemed to float in the sky before the stars, like red ice balls, broken and streaked across the dome of the stars. I knew the largest piece by its features and let out a moan.

It was the moon, but it was not. The moon had been fractured and broken, pieces scattered across the sky like a shattered glass bead.

I lurched to sit up, clutching the Time-Turner in my right hand.

“Gods…” I whispered as I looked all around me.

I was not sitting in the cemetery at Little Hangleton, I was not sitting in grass.

Sounds, gentle and haunting, came to my ears, and I realized that my boots were in water while the rest of me sat up in pure white sand. I was on the shore of a great black and calm sea. The red moon reflected off the surface of the water, bathing everything in orange light.

Behind me, the white sand shore seemed to stretch on forever, and the horizon behind was barren. The black sea before me was the same with no hint of a sunrise or sunset. There was a breeze, balmy against my skin, but there was no scent of sea upon the wind.

The featureless landscape frightened me so profoundly that I felt tears streaming down my face, the salt stinging the cut on my face. My mouth was open, my lips trembling, but I could not cry.

Where was I?

When was I?

I blinked away my tears as I turned my head about in every direction, seeing nothing.

I climbed to my feet, and sighed. Glancing down at the Time-Turners knobs I frowned. Every numerical place read ‘9.’ If Draco had been with me, I knew exactly what he would say.

‘We’re fucked, my dear.’

Yes, we were.

I chose to walk in one direction along the shore, and walk I did. I walked and walked, finding that my boot prints were quickly washed away by the small tide of black sea water. I stopped for a moment and tasted the water. It was fresh, not true seawater at all.

I continued walking, comforted that if I would need water I had a whole ocean of drinkable water. But the fact that I did not have a wand, or my cloak was disconcerting. I had no food and no means of protection if I needed it.

It was then I began calling out.

“HELLO! IS THERE ANYONE HERE?”

My voice was lost on the breeze.

I called again and again until my throat ached and I had to stop walking to let my left hand dip into the water to drink. It seemed hours passed, and again, I sat down, still clutching the Time-Turner. I searched the pockets of my pants and found a spare hair tie, which I used to secure the Time-Turner so I could have both hands free. Satisfied the hourglass would not move and send me somewhere else in time, I walked on.

Time seemed illogical in this place, for I walked and walked and had not yet seen the sun. The stars did not change either as they would if the earth were rotating on its axis. I tried to identify constellations and stars, but found none that were in the least bit familiar. The only star I could identify was Betelgeuse, but I could not see Rigel, Bellatrix, or the three stars Alnitak, Alnilam, or Mintaka that formed Orion’s belt.

Had I travelled so far into the future than even the stars had shifted so much? If so, why was the earth still in existence? Surely, the Sun would have gone nova and our solar system would be finished?

I wished Severus would answer me.

I carried my boots after I grew tired of dumping sand out of them, and walked on…and on…and on.

I was weary, I was heartsick, I was frightened. The shore was featureless, never changing, and the tide’s monotonous sounds began to hurt my ears. Nothing changed; even the breezes off the water came in thirty-second gusts with two-minute pauses in between. Everything was artificial, and I dared not attempt to go ‘inland’ into the white desert.

My pace slowed, my bare feet slipping in the sand. My shoulders fell, my face ached, and I wanted to sleep.

I wanted Draco. I wanted to go home. I wanted my cat. I wanted coffee.

Then I stumbled, dropping my boots in the sand, the Time-Turner swinging about my neck. My hair fell into my face as I knelt in the sand, resting my palms in the sand. My head hurt with unshed tears and fear. So, I cried. I cried my sorrow by screaming it. I screamed as loudly as I could, knowing that no one would hear me—there was no one at all.

I pulled at my hair as I cried and threw my fists into the sand.

I was being punished for killing Harry, surely.

“Why? WHY?”

A splash in the water started me and I fell to my side in the sand—a glitter caught my eye and I gasped.

A dolphin. A dolphin leapt from the water, twisting in the air to fall into the water again.

I snorted a sob; it did not make sense that a dolphin could live in fresh water. Then again, very little made much sense in this place. The dolphin jumped again, and I was on my feet.

With a happy cackle, the dolphin called to me, and I found myself walking into the water, forgetting my boots.

Life, there was life where there should be none. And joy coursed through me, and I laughed on my tears. The warm water passed over my ankles, but as I continued walking into the water, I found that it was no deeper the further I walked.

I stopped as in the distance the dolphin jumped again. I frowned. Logic? There was no logic to this world. The lack of logic was part of the reason dread had settled into my belly. Was the dolphin in the distance even real?

Merlin, I wished Severus would speak.

I continued to walk, however, the shoreline disappearing behind me. I ignored a mental warning that I might fall into the water and drown being so far from the shore. The dolphin arched into the air, and sometimes swimming so that all I could see was its dorsal fin. Other times it would turn to cackle at me, making me smile. But never once did it get too close or did the splashes it created pelt against me.

The resistance of the water around my ankles made my pace slower, but the dolphin did not seem to be any hurry, then again, I was not sure why I was following either, or if somehow the creature had wanted me to follow at all, but follow I did.

It was strange that I would be following a dolphin since I had the image of dolphins emblazoned in my skin, and that I remembered seeing mosaics and frescoes of dolphins on the walls of my dream palace. I twisted my lips into a sardonic smirk. There was no such thing as a coincidence to me at that point.

Hours passed, or so I thought, until, finally, the dark horizon changed. There was red light reflected in the waters, like the sun beginning to set or rise over the sea. My spirits lifted, simply because I was seeing something different. The light was not bright or blinding, but it was enough to light the water under my feet, and I could see deep into the sea.

Schools of silver and blue fish swam behind me, and despite myself, I giggled.

How odd.

I kept walking, a bit slower, wiping sweat from my brow. I wanted to stop, to sit down, but I was afraid that I might sink into the water. Illogical, I knew, but then again, logic…

The dolphin leapt again, and as my eyes traced its slick form as it dove back into the water, something changed.

In the distance, I saw the shape of something—something I could not make out until I began to run the best I could through the water. Ahead was what seemed to be platform in the water, and figures atop what appeared to be marble.

Three figures, sitting on a stone bench, reminding me of the ancient Greek sculpture of goddesses, their stone heads missing, the drapery wet and thin, sculpted out of marble. However, the three figures did have their heads, and were made of flesh, but were wrapped in thin white gauzy fabric. But it was not just three figures, it was three figures and a spinning wheel.

When I set my barefoot on the platform, I stopped, sitting down on the edge, curling my legs under me. I was extremely tired, and my mind was overloaded by what I was seeing only six or so feet across from me.

Three women: the first, at the spinning wheel was young, possibly no older than fifteen, Clotho. The youngest sat to my left. Next was a woman closer to my age, her belly rounded slightly, but not pregnant, with a rod she measured the red thread being spun, Lachesis. And on the far right was an old woman, her face wrinkled, and in her withered hands she held a pair of golden sheared, carelessly cutting the thread as it was passed in her direction so that red thread fell to the white stones below her bare feet, Atropos.

“We have been waiting, Hermione Jane Granger,” the youngest woman, the maiden, said, looking away from her spinning wheel to me, her voice melodic and sweet.

Clotho had my face, my face when I was a girl.

“Right on time,” the mother said, her voice imbued with love.

Lachesis was me…

“Just as we foresaw,” the crone wheezed, her voice as ancient as her face.

Atropos was me as well, only older.

I was the Moirae, and I wanted to claw my eyes out. However, all I could do was stare at them, gaping. Then I asked the only question that had been on my mind.

“Am I dead?”

All three began laughing, but never once stopped what they were doing—apportioning lives and time.

“No, Hermione, you most certainly are not!” Atropos said with a cackle in her old voice, her shears snapping. “You have simply come to the time when man no longer lives on this world.”

I blinked. “What?”

“It is quite simple, really,” the girl, Clotho said with a giggle.

“You have travelled past the point of travelling. The world is still here, but your race is not, and has not been for millions of years,” Lachesis continued in my voice.

“Of course, you already knew that,” the crone said with sigh, pulling the red thread from Lachesis’ fingers to cut again.

I frowned. “Then what are you three doing? If there is no one else…”

“Oh, we do this for every living thing. Of course, we are only apportioning time for the fish and creatures of the sea, but it is still a job,” Lachesis grumbled.

The Fates where nearly unemployed—how lovely.

“But you are not really the Fates, are you? This just some manifestation…”

Clotho giggled. “Perhaps.”

“We take many forms, Hermione, this is just the one most fitting for you,” Lachesis whispered.

I licked my lips and sighed. “God?”

“God? Are you trying to make a joke?” Atropos snapped in time with her shears.

I shook my head dumbly.

“We are time, the universe, we are as much a ‘god’ as you are, Hermione.”

“Then, there is no God?”

All three laughed again, their faces glowing with mirth.

“We cannot answer that—you wouldn’t understand.”

I cocked my head. “Try me?”

“No, sorry, we cannot do that,” Clotho responded glibly.

I nodded, confused.

“You are overlooking the most important question, Hermione,” Lachesis said, again smiling at me.

“Which is?”

“How do you get back to where you need to be, because honestly, luv, you cannot be here,” Atropos wheezed.

“It was an accident,” I supplied.

“We know,” they said in unison.

I shifted to sit against my right hip, rubbing my wet feet together.

“So this…” I said moving my arm to gesture at the sky and sea, “…is what the earth will become?”

“Yes, in a few billion years. And in about an hour it will all disappear.”

I blinked again.

“The end,” Atropos cackled.

“And we move on to another place,” Clotho beamed, apparently ready to leave Earth.

“So you need to go very soon. It will not do to leave you here when this world explodes, nasty business…very painful,” Atropos added.

I did not know whether to laugh or scream. Why did the Fates have a sense of humour? I sighed, it made their jobs easier, I assumed, granted their humour was far too dark and ridiculous for my taste.

“You need to go back to that boy you love. We’ve already seen your life, Hermione…”

I opened my mouth.

“…but we cannot tell you about it,” Lachesis sighed.

“That device about your neck, take it to Atropos,” Clotho suggested.

I hesitated, my hand moving to the Time-Turner resting upon my chest. Slowly, I rose and padded across the platform to sit next to the crone.

“Ah, I don’t have to cut anything for a while, not until the grand finale,” the crone wheezed, setting her shears upon her lap.

I stiffened as the older version of myself turned to me, her fingers moving to take the Time-Turner in her spotted hands.

I studied her face, her lank grey hair.

“You won’t look so bad, my dove. If you had to cut thread for millennia do you think you would have time to be pretty?” she cackled.

I shrugged, thinking of no other way to respond.

Atropos fingers, despite being old and swollen with what I supposed was rheumatism, worked nimbly, adjusting the dials on the side of the Time-Turner.

“We really respect you, Hermione, we thought we should tell you. For a mortal, you have caught the eye of the universe. Just remember that everything that has happened and will happen is for a reason,” Lachesis said softly.

“But don’t worry. You’re almost done with all this time business, you’ll have other business to attend to soon,” Clotho added.

I was not impressed by the words of two women who bore my face and told me Earth was going to explode in an hour.

“Harry…all of this…why?” I asked.

“This is just one course of history among many,” Clotho said softly.

“But why did he kill to get the Hallows when he could have spared those lives?” I cried, I still could not understand Harry’s motives in killing to get to Hogwarts, killing the centaurs…

“He intended to set himself up to play our role, inadvertently,” Lachesis answered, her measure rod upon her lap.

“In his desire to change the course of history, he wished to bring the dead back as those who would work his will—loyal agents—to have the power over life and death is not a power meant for man,” Clotho answered.

“You were meant to stop Harry Potter, that was what you were born and groomed to do.”

I sniffed. “Free will? I have no free will after all?”

Atropos cackled. “At any point, you could have stopped, Hermione. You could have chosen to die during your War, or after Potter attacked you. You could have run away, but you did not. Your will changed the course of history, to its preferred course or future.”

I blinked. “Preferred future?”

“Yes, a future that will ultimately lead to a desired end, the place in which you now exist, resting with us at the end of the world,” Clotho chimed brightly.

“You must go back and finish what has begun. Though we knew you would come here, there is much more to do. You mustn’t question the sequence events to come, but trust that now Harry Potter is now dead in your experience, everything will work out to a preferred end,” Lachesis said with a reassuring smile.

“Time travel is dangerous, far too dangerous for humanity. It was not meant for humans to meddle with our work, but that is a flaw that cannot be remedied now, but can be prevented from affecting the future,” Atropos grumbled, fiddling with the Time-Turner.

“Can you tell me when this is?” I asked finally.

Clotho giggled. “Approximately nine billion years from your time.”

I took a breath and sighed. “Some cosmic catastrophe?”

“Something like that. Of course, you’d probably laugh if we told you the exact reason,” Lachesis said softly, her eyes glancing her measuring rod.

“Not for some interstellar bypass?” I asked, a smirk on my lips.

All three laughed…and continued laughing.

“You’re joking!” I cried, eyes widening.

“No, luv, it isn’t that,” Atropos wheezed fixing the last dial.

“But it is something just as silly. You needn’t worry, Hermione. By now, humans are gone…”

“Extinct?”

Atropos coughed a laugh. “Evolved and gone from this place. That’s enough questions, luv.”

“Yes, it is getting late,” Lachesis agreed.

“That will do it!” Atropos pronounced, grasping my hands to hold the Time-Turner, the safety catch still broken. “You’ll just have to let it go and you’re off.”

I glanced down at the Time-Turner and then back up to the Fates.

“It will stop when the dial runs down?”

The three nodded.

“We would refrain from using that one again, however. It cannot be fixed for the time being and travelling forward would lead you somewhere you do not want to be,” Lachesis whispered, her voice laced with warning.

I stood from the bench and moved to stand before the three.

“Just release it whenever you’re ready. You will appear before the chapel in the cemetery at Little Hangleton. Of course, where you are actually standing would be the North Sea in your time…but we’ll help you get to where you need to go,” Lachesis explained.

I sighed, shifting on my bare feet.

“You’ll be fine, luv. Trust in yourself. This has happened before…” Atropos said smiling, and I realized that she was missing most of her teeth…Merlin, I hoped I would have my teeth, all my teeth until the day I died.

“…and it will all happen again. And remember, as a time traveler, you must be aware of paradox, and every possibility!” Clotho declared.

I nodded. “Thank you,” I said with an air of confusion.

The Fates were smiling at me.

I stared at them for a moment and then shifted on my feet again.

“What are you waiting for? Waiting for us to impart some great cosmic truth? Go, girl, go, your life is no going to wait forever!” the crone admonished, grasping her shears and brandishing them menacingly.

I snorted a laugh before smiling, tears streaming down my cheeks. I did not know why I was crying exactly, but it did not matter. I was going back, back to Draco.

“Goodbye,” I whispered.

The Fates smiled and nodded.

I held the Time-Turner before me and let my finger slip, and the hourglass whirled, propelling backwards through time, and with the help of the Fates, through space.





I vomited when time stopped moving. I was on my hands and knees, expelling everything I had eaten and a great deal of black bile onto the grass.

Through blurry eyes, I found that, as the Fates had said, I was in the cemetery, just before the chapel. Fighting down more dry heaving, I fell back to my haunches. I glanced down to the Time-Turner, and sighed as I noticed that the hourglass was cracked. I could not use it again, not safely. I touched the chain to remove it, but thought better of it, and let it drop against my chest.

Before me, just as I had left him, was Harry.

With a groan I stood, skirting around my pool of sick and moved to look at Harry. He was dead, and had been dead for approximately two hours for the blood on his face had dried. His open emerald eyes had begun to form cataracts and his mouth was open, his tongue already stiffened against the roof of his mouth.

I did not study him long, and instead whirled around, running down the embankment to where Draco had fallen.

Except he was not where I had last saw him.

Ire clouded my vision, and I screamed, “DRACO!”

I began searching the ground. There was a small puddle of blood where he had lain, and in the grass, blood was smeared to where my cloak lay in a bundle. I began running about the stones, searching, calling his name.

“What are you looking for?”

I stumbled as I turned toward the source of the voice, and fell between the stones. Scrambling, I rose again, cursing myself for not locating my wands before searching for Draco.

The voice was distorted and otherworldly, and it came from the phantom that had struck me who stood just beside Harry’s hanging body. From where I stood, Harry’s body—the position struck me.

The Hanged Man.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to reconstruct my angry resolve to locate the man I loved, living or dead.

“Where is Draco?” I asked softly, not moving from my place among the stones.

I was defenseless. If I had to fight the phantom Harry called Erebus, all I had were my fists, and I was not so great with fist fighting. Punching, a jab was the only thing I was good at.

“He’s gone.”

I frowned. “Gone? Gone where?”

“From this place.”

I gritted my teeth, ignoring the pain in my loose molar, but could taste blood in my mouth again. I clenched my fists to compensate for the pain and strode toward the phantom, letting my eyes scan the ground for my wands I had dropped. When I came to the bottom of the sloping embankment, I still had not located my wands.

“Are you looking for these?” the phantom asked, producing both of my wands out the liquid darkness of his cloak.

“They do belong to me, yes,” I growled.

The phantom then did something unexpected. He tossed the wands at my feet.

I did not hesitate, and took my wands up, and aimed them at the phantom.

“Give me a straight answer. Where is Draco?” I shouted.

The phantom did not answer, but floated toward me, forcing me to back step into the clearing among the stones, where the Death Eaters had assembled.

“He has travelled to another time.”

My breath stopped and my eyes widened.

“What?” I whispered.

The phantom floated before me, right into the tip of the Elder Wand. I began to hyperventilate—the phantom was corporeal for my wand poked into unyielding flesh of what would have been its chest if it were not shrouded in darkness.

Erebus, the son of Chaos, the personification of darkness and shadow, otherwise known as Hades—death.

“Travelled to another time?” I asked incredulously.

I grimaced, sticking my walnut wand into what I believed to be the chest of the phantom.

“Explain…NOW!” I screamed.

The phantom’s black form seemed shift before me and slowly it floated back slightly.

“When Potter’s magic left his body, you were thrown back, and then you disappeared. Draco Malfoy was clinging to life, suffocating slowly, blinded after striking his head on the stones.

He crawled to the cloak ripped from you, and found a Time-Turner in its pockets. He released the safety, and he also disappeared.”

I blinked rapidly.

Draco was alive, or he had been when the Time-Turner I had been wearing propelled me into the far, desolate future. He could have travelled anywhere in time. Into the past…into the future.

Then I remembered.

With a cry I ran to my cloak, ignoring the phantom, tucking my wands into my holster, I began to furiously dig into the bottomless pocket. My fingers brushed against metal and I pulled.

The disc pendant fell into the palm of my hand, and quickly lighting a wand, I searched the face of the disc.

There was nothing.

Both Time-Turners had been used. The one I had pulled from Harry was used first, the disc would have burned the times and the number of turns. Then I frowned at the disc in my hand with the Grecian border and the tiny dolphins. The Time-Turner had travelled as far forward as it could go—nine billion years.

Nine billion years, I shook my head. Nothing, not this world, would have existed that long. The sun would have begun to die; at five to six billion years it would have turned into a red giant, swallowing the earth as it expanded. Then again, our current science was theory, at best.

Damn. Draco could not have followed.

I rose, turning to the phantom that had silently moved to place itself just behind me. I stumbled away, taking my wands again.

“You would not be able to follow even if you knew where he had gone,” the phantom’s voice seemed to echo across the space between us. “Your device is broken.”

I began to hyperventilate again.

I had lost Draco, not to death, but to time. He would not come back, and I could not follow. He had the only functional Time-Turner, and I was stuck in 1995 with Harry Potter’s dead body, and a phantom Harry had brought with him.

I scowled at the shadowy head.

“You were with Harry, yet you did not help him, you passively watched me and Draco travel away, and yet you stayed here, why?” I ground out.

The phantom’s form seemed to flicker in the darkness and I considered relighting my wand.

“I was waiting for you to return.”

My brows furrowed, and I took a step back my back falling against one of the above ground stone sarcophagi.

“Who are you?”

The phantom floated downward and I saw booted feet meet the ground.

“I thought you’d never ask, Hermione.”

I shivered at the sound of the distorted voice, and began to hear distinct masculine strains.

“I am Aidoneus, also called Erebus.”

Epithets of the Greek god of the Underworld, Hades. I wanted to vomit again.

“But that will be addressed later.

To answer your previous question, Draco Malfoy travelled to the future. Two hundred and twenty years into the future.”

“How do you know?”

The phantom’s hands came out the darkness that composed its main body. The gloved hands folded together before what I assumed was its belly.

“I know.

After living there, he came to learn many things. So much new technology…such a different world than he could have ever dreamed. But no matter how dazzled he was, he could not forget the one he had left behind—his Hermione.

Two hundred and twenty years… Hermione was long dead, and Draco Malfoy could not bear his life without her. And so he travelled again, having finally learned the basic mechanics of the Time-Turner, a device he learned was called Prometheus. Hermione, he learned, had taken Epimetheus, the brother. However, when he tried to learn what had happened to the woman he loved, he found no information about her after the day of the tenth anniversary of the defeat of Voldemort. Draco even searched for information about himself. He, too, had disappeared from the annals of history.

It was then he decided to go back.

But he miscalculated, the Fates being fickle, and did not arrive in this cemetery in 1995, but after many trials, he arrived in the year 2008, in January before Harry Potter escaped from St. Mungo’s and W.A.T.C.H. members attacked the Malfoy Manor. It was then he had to make a decision. He could not reveal himself to anyone and cause a paradox, so he decided to plant himself to be close to Potter, disguised as an eccentric wizard, a wizard who called himself Aidoneus, the ‘Unseen One,’ or more fittingly, Erebus, the god of darkness and shadow.”

My knees gave out at the words, which slowly changed in pitch and tone. And as my eyes rolled back into my head, and I began to fall, arms caught me before I hit the ground.

Erebus was my Draco…