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 27





I ended up sitting on the bench looking out the front windows of the groom’s quarters, facing east, the warm setting sunlight staining the outlying fields a fantastic gold colour. I spotted Lucius’ white Arabian atop the nearest hill, rolling in the grass happily while a line of sheep moved past, surely moving to the small brook to drink.

I twirled my walnut wand between my fingers, leaning back into the wall as Draco moved about in the kitchen, making coffee. I had slipped out of my boots at the door and sat with my bare feet propped upon the padded bench, my right elbow resting on the windowsill.

Placing a steaming mug next to my elbow, Draco sat down across from me, his strange eyes also moving to the fields.

I took my mug and drank; the semi-bitter brew was so familiar that I did not realize until that moment that I had missed Draco’s coffee.

“Gumboil offered me a job.”

I had to break the silence. I also had to be honest about my unease.

Just sitting close to Draco Malfoy unsettled me. I studied him, knowing that he knew I was studying him. He did not seem to mind that my eyes lingered on the faded scar on his face, or his long silvery blond hair pulled back into a ribbon. I stared at the strange eye, almost excepting it to swivel to look at me as Mad-Eye Moody’s had. But the eye was real, I could see the tiny capillaries, red and healthy, and moisture on the surface as he blinked slowly.

He seemed younger than the night he dispelled his shadow cloak, the lines not as pronounced under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. Draco was now older than I was, but it did not take anything away from the handsome face I remembered. He wore clothes I was accustomed to seeing him in, grey slacks and a white dress shirt. In the Ministry, he had worn a green silk tie and grey jacket, but immediate doffed the clothing when we came to the groom’s quarters having used to bothy’s Floo. It seemed Narcissa and Lucius were no longer primarily using the older residence, the furniture in crates, and small sundries in boxes.

However familiar the surroundings, the clothes, the taste of the coffee, I still could not feel as if everything was just as it had been.

“I know. Gumboil has been asking me how easily you could be trained as an Auror.”

Draco’s voice was rougher than I remembered, but not as restrained as it had been the night in the graveyard.

“What did you tell him?” he asked, turning his face from the window slowly to meet my eye.

I shuddered, but tamped down my discomfort, clearing my throat. I caught my wand in my hand, slipping it into its holster again.

“I would think about it.”

“You would honestly want to work in the MLE?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. All this…” I gestured between the two of us. “Travelling through time… I don’t think I want to have anymore to do with it.”

It was true. When I thought about the Time Room, and even my beloved ‘samsara’ jar, I knot of dread would form just between my heart and throat. I did not want to have to relegate time any longer. It repulsed me. However, I was not sure if I wanted to track down terrorists, place myself in danger, or do the paperwork on an arrest either. I honestly was not sure what I wanted to do, but I knew what I wanted…

“You realize how tedious the job can be, not to mention, on the reverse, how dangerous.”

I nodded. “I am only considering, Malfoy.”

Draco blinked, and if possible, his face paled.

I had called him ‘Malfoy’ after lovingly calling him by his first name. I almost wanted to slap myself.

Draco took a drink from his mug, slowly, and just as slowly, he placed it on the wide sill.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly, and then sighed, my fingers playing along the rim of my own mug. “Something has changed…and not just the fact you now have a right eye again, or the clothes you were wearing that night…something has changed you, nine years spent lost in time…and I…I don’t know what to do, or say to you. I’m just as lost…”

It had come out stilted, uncertain, but it had come out honestly. I, however, could not look at his face, and stared at the padded bench top.

I closed my eyes as Draco stood, expecting him to walk away, however, when I opened my eyes again to that interesting spot on the bench, I found I was staring at Draco’s belt buckle. He had moved across the bench to sit before me, my bare toes neatly tucked under his left leg.

Lifting my chin with his cool fingers, I averted my eyes to stare at the windowsill.

“Many things have changed, Hermione, but not my feelings for you. If my feelings had not been so strong, we would not be sitting here now, drinking coffee,” he whispered and my eyes moved automatically to his face.

“I told you, what seems like decades ago, that we would sit down someday, drink coffee, and laugh about how exciting our lives had been. I also said that if we kept saving each other, we might live to see old age—well, we’ve done it. We’ll keep doing it, we will live far beyond our expectations.

I want to keep saving your life, and I want you to keep saving mine. Because, Hermione, I have loved you longer than the few weeks we have spent in this house.”

My jaw trembled, even as he held my chin.

“I travelled through time, just to be here, with you, once again, and you say and act as if you do not know me…”

His whisper was thick with emotion, and in his mismatched eyes I could see him, the man who had toasted me as his ‘lady,’ the man who saved me time and time again, not because I was his ward, but because he wanted to keep me alive. And as I looked at him, his lips curled into that smile that I so loved, scoundrel-like, and irresistible.

It felt as if more shadows that had been hiding his true self were being dispelled, and slowly I began to see my Draco Malfoy, my Draco.

“I know you…” I whispered, my right hand moving to grasp his shirt. “I want to know…” I leaned forward, my left hand grasping his shoulder. “I want you…”

I kissed him. His lips were soft and warm, and I could taste coffee. My hands moved over his shoulders and chest, while his arms warped around me, and suddenly, I was in his lap unable to kiss him enough, deep enough, hard enough. Those lips felt as I remembered them to feel, those arms, the warmth of his chest, it was all there, all the same.

I hummed into his mouth, my fingers finding his long tresses, pulling them free of the ribbon. His hair was like wet platinum, smooth, straight, divine between my fingers. I clung to him, reacquainting myself with the cavern of his mouth, the sharpness of his teeth, the curve of his lip, the point of his nose and chin, the texture of his eyebrows, the ragged line of his scar, the line if his jaw, the tender fleshiness of his earlobes, the contour of the shell of his ear, and the taste of his skin at his pulse point. Time had changed little about the man I had grown to care for, and the true differences, I knew, would take time to get used to, especially the icy blue quality of his new right eye.

Finally, when we pulled apart just enough to gaze deep into each other’s eyes, I smiled faintly—even with his kisses, I was not undeterred. I wanted to know, and I wanted details.

“Tell me,” I whispered, my arms about his neck, sitting in his lap like some child, “Tell me what happened that night…”

He smirked, but looked away. “Only if you tell me where you went.”

“Fair enough.”

Gently taking my waist, he removed me from his lap back to the bench where I sat close to him, burying my toes under his fabric-clad left thigh. He drank his coffee again before speaking, and I watched him as many emotions played over his face. His hair was down about his shoulders, and even though he was Lucius Malfoy’s son, Draco was not so similar to his father. In the fading light outside, he reminded me of Narcissa, or Sirius Black.

The lamps and candles lit automatically as I waited, and the new light sources made Draco appear too pale, like a handsome ghost or fey elfish prince.

“I was dying,” he began, but paused to seek out my face. Our eyes met, and he continued. “The curse Potter cast had not been aimed at me, originally. He was aiming it at you, and being the intelligent witch you are, you dodged, but for some reason, that I cannot explain, I could not dodge as quickly as you.

I fell, hit my head, and I could not breathe. I could not dispel the Curse, and every spell I tried failed… And then, you killed Potter. I had stopped struggling, finding that if I laid very still, I could manage to breathe short, tiny breaths.

I saw the light, and saw you flying through the air. Even as you flew, your figure flickered into nothing, and I was left staring at the point you had been. The Time-Turner was spinning as you flew, and I, in my irrationality, began to crawl. My vision tunneled, but I found your cloak, and the other Time-Turner.

My memory gets hazy at this point, and I knew that I was not thinking clearly. I released the latch on the Time-Turner, somehow looping the chain about my neck, and the I remembered nothing.”

I stared at Draco, as he stared back at me. His face was grave, his voice dulled by trying to restrain an emotion, but what emotion, I could not tell.

“When I woke up, it was day. I could breathe a bit better, but I still was not able to use my lungs properly. I managed to roll onto my back; I was still holding the Time-Turner. With the last of my energy, I propped myself up on a grave marker, and I saw that the chapel was in ruins, the yew tree three times the size I remembered, and in the middle of the clearing, where Voldemort had been reborn, a strange marker. It was a prismatic crystal…

I stared at the prisms radiating off the marker for a long while, until someone clasped my shoulder, and I nearly fainted. I could hear a man’s voice, but the light reflecting rainbows off the marker dazzled my eyes. I suppose I was in shock, because the next thing I remembered was being dragged along a path from the graveyard to a large house in the distance, and being put in a bed. A man, whom I later learned was a wizard by the name of Ptolemy Nix, tended to me—tried to take the Time-Turner from my hands to heal me, but could not manage to pry it from my fingers.

Days passed, maybe weeks, before I was able to move to secure the Time-Turner. I hid it in my cloak.

Lem, as I was instructed to call him, lived in the old Riddle House, and had lived there for thirty years. To make a long story short, I learned where I was, when I was, and it took me another week or two to let the shock sink in.

I could not speak, due to the aftereffects of the Curse, and I communicated by writing. I did not tell him my name, but did tell him my predicament. Lem had seen the Time-Turner and deduced much. He turned out to be a ‘scientist,’ of the Wizarding sort. He informed me that the graveyard was a type of tourist spot in the twenty-third century, mostly for morbid types who had an interest in our time—their history. The marker was a commemoration of the life of Cedric Diggory, who becomes quite a celebrity of sorts in the future.”

Draco paused, smirking. I returned his smirk as together we drank our nearly cold coffee. He rose, plucking my cup from my hands and went into the kitchen. He continued even as he poured the dark potable into our mugs.

“Lem informed me, slowly, that the future was very different. The concept of Magical and Muggle is far different. This is due in part to a world war sometime in the early twenty-second century. The world population is only a fourth of what it is now, and there is no longer any segregation between Magic and Muggle. I deduced that most of the people who died were Muggle, and due to the wars, the magical communities revealed themselves, no longer afraid of persecution. Muggle science and Magic innovation combined…”

Draco returned with our drinks and passed my mug to me before sitting close to me again.

“Lem was what he called a ‘synthetic outfitter.’ He made synthetic organs, or at least, designed them. That was how I regained the use of my right eye.”

I drank deeply from my mug, peeking up to stare at Draco’s eye.

“Lem was aware of temporal paradoxes, and all the dangers of my travel to his time. However, Lem was a gracious host, and after a year, I was able to talk, literally talk to him. I told him that I could not reveal the how or why I had travelled, or even my name. Lem understood. I told him that I needed to ascertain that ‘our’ timeline had been saved, and so Lem let me access a computer database, far faster and superior to anything Muggles have now.

I had only ever touched a computer once, while working in America, and nearly blew the damn thing up—too much innate magical energy…” he muttered.

I smirked. I was happy that Draco even knew what a computer was, it was pleasing to find that my own prejudices about Pureblooded Wizards were being disproved.

“Our timeline was safe. However, after my parents died, there was no heir, and these lands went to the nearest living relative, which happened to be Teddy Lupin.”

I frowned. “How?”

“It has nothing to do with my mother’s side. It seems that the Lupins and the Malfoys are related, distantly. A great great aunt Malfoy married a Lupin… At any rate, by the time I learned that little Teddy inherited, the Malfoy lands were property of the Ministry, no Malfoys.

I knew that, I, in having come to the future, had taken myself out of my normal timeline. And then, I began researching you.”

I sighed. Draco clenched his jaw before speaking again.

“I had no idea where you had gone, or when, but when I was researching, there was no record of you, not after a record of employees at the Department of Mysteries from 2007. Up until Potter’s attack on you, the records were detailed, afterward, there were only mentions of you possibly being a victim of Potter’s whose body was never found.”

I bit my lower lip, my hands tight about my mug.

“The only person, it seems, to have made it through was Ron Weasley. He married, but I could not discern whom, had a litter of more Weasleys, and died a rich and very old man.

As for Potter, his body was never found, not in 1995 or 2008. That told me that somehow, someone had disposed of his body. And then, I remembered the black figure who had arrived, unknown to us, with Potter. Erebus, Potter called him, but I knew who he was—the missing W.A.T.C.H. member, Aidoneus. E. Aidoneus was his name, and no one knew what he looked like, where he came from, just that he was near Potter.

The day I remembered the name of Erebus Aidoneus, Lem then showed me a project he had just completed, the ‘Shadow Cloak,’ or as Lem called it ‘umbra clocca.’ It was to be used by Aurors of that time, but the current Ministry did not like the price they would have to pay to acquire one.

I then learned the exchange rate of the future.

I traded him my Firebolt for a Shadow Cloak.

It seems that brooms in the twenty-third century is a novelty, and Quidditch is confined to national teams only. Brooms are only used, specifically, for Quidditch since the manufacturers number only one, there is no market, and a third generation Firebolt, is, of course, an antique, worth two dozen Shadow Cloaks…

I knew, as soon as I saw Lem’s Shadow Cloak, that Erebus Aidoneus wore one, and the only way someone in our time to have one was to know Ptolemy Nix.

I had two new purposes: get back to you, somehow, and to pose, without the knowledge of anyone, as E. Aidoneus. I laughed for over an hour at the name I apparently would take.”

I chuckled softly. Draco had enough foresight to see what he would have to do, and the role he would have to play.

“A piece of a puzzle locked into place for me, and all the while I was studying the Time-Turner to travel back, I began remembering things—how Potter had known to show up at the Ministry that day, how he was able to get through the wards at the Manor, how he was able to use the Time-Turner at all. It was because I must have told him. If I did not tell him, I would not be able to get him to the graveyard that night. I had seen him die; I had watched you bury the blade into his heart. If I did not help him, the nightmare might never end.”

I touched his hand as he said this, and his fingers curled about mine, warm and alive.

“I set the dials, said my goodbyes to Lem, expressing my eternal thanks, and off I went.”

Draco closed his mismatched eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

“Only I ended up in the fifteenth century, standing in the middle of tiny graveyard, the chapel new, the yew tree not even planted yet. I cast the Charm to check the time, and I nearly threw the Time-Turner to the ground.

It was early morning, and the first thing I did was Apparate, certain I had not been seen. I was angry, and was not thinking clearly, and I ended up neck deep in the Black Lake. I had wanted to go to the gates. I knew, even in the fifteenth century, that Hogwarts was open…

I Apparated again, this time to the cottage, only the cottage was not there…” he trailed.

He squeezed my hand and turned his gaze out into the dark beyond the open window.

“I’ll spare you the details, mundane as they are, but I built that cottage with my wands and two bare hands. None of the creatures of the Forest interfered, though I could feel them watching.

The inscription in the flue…”

I nodded.

“…I added that as an afterthought, remembering we had found it in 1995. I had to keep the timeline intact, and I had to keep the interior of the cottage fitting with the time I was in—no fancy water fixtures or toilet, just a plain water closet. I laid the basic wards and household Charms, and for a long while, I lived there. I was hesitant to try the Time-Turner yet…

I told you other details, and I told you about my foray into the eighteenth century. Most of that time I spent in the cottage, resetting wards, finding that only one individual had found it, using it as a hunting lodge, it seems, and let no real traces other than heavy boot prints in the dusty floor and ashes in the fireplace.

I began computing the time, the dial settings, occasionally stealing into Hogwarts to nick a book or two. I began planning my defense to the Ministry after I returned, I began planning what I would say to you when I saw you in the graveyard, if I saw you in the graveyard.”

He paused again, his right hand rising to caress my cheek, his thumb moving to brush my lower lip.

“I waited nine years. I watched myself near you, how my hands itched to push you out of the way to kill Potter myself, it was agony. Watching you kill him, watching you disappear, it killed me. I watched my younger self also disappear, knowing that I was gone again for another nine years…

I extracted Potter’s memories, and watched his eyes deaden. I walked the perimeter of the graveyard five times. I stared at your cloak for an hour, and then, you appeared again, just below the chapel, spewing your guts out into the grass.”

I breathed a laugh. “I’m surprised my head didn’t explode after traveling billions of years…”

Draco’s brow quirked, “Billions?”

I nodded.

“Except for what I learned about Potter in the months I was his so-called ‘right hand man,’ I’m done with my tale, it is your turn, my dear.”

There was no mirth in his voice, and I gazed into his eyes again.

“The Time-Turner broke,” was all I said at first, Draco taking my other hand in his. I bowed my head as I stared at the way his fingers tangled with mine. Draco pressed his mouth against my forehead, not to kiss but to feel my warmth. Lifting my face slightly, we sat leaning toward each other, foreheads pressed together. It was a strange pose, but comforting that he, after assuming such a ‘shadowy’ role, was still human.

“I woke up in a strange place. And there was nothing but stars, a broken moon, white sand behind me and a black sea before me.”

“Where were you?”

“Home…just before the end of the world.”

Draco breathed in deeply, startling a few stray hairs about my face and neck.

“I cannot really explain it, but I met the Fates. Even now, it all is like a dream, indistinct in my head.”

“How long were you there?” he asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know.

They fixed the Time-Turner, setting it to go back to 1995. They said that everything would work itself out, in the end.”

Draco huffed a laugh, sardonic, but did not move his forehead from mine. “Sounds like something my Mother would say.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

We sat silently for a long while, I shutting my eyes as leaned into each other. I listened to his deep breathing and shivered at the way the side of his thumb brushed against the mound of Venus. I was beginning to reconcile the man who had made love to me on Beltane with the man who was arousing my by just a simple caress on my palm. I certainly was not the same woman he knew; I was a murderer, among other things.

However, killing Harry, in some way, was what I was supposed to do. The Fates had said I was born to stop him—did that literally mean killing him? I felt particularly numb about Harry, and knew that perhaps in weeks, months, or years, all of my emotions would come gushing out of me in a terrible torrent of bile and self-loathing.

For the moment, I could only feel glad that Harry would no longer be able to hurt anyone else I knew and loved. And that feeling would have to do.

“It is hard to explain everything that has happened to me, everything that I have felt, and I understand why, why you did not come to me, or stay with me just when we returned,” he whispered. “For nine years, you were a dream to me. A goal to be attained, a place to return to, and then to see you again in the graveyard, it took everything I had to keep from going to you. I knew that everything had to happen just as it always has and always will happen. I had no idea whether or not you would return, and for two long hours, I swallowed my fear…”

“But I did return, and we made it home, the timeline is safe, the future you saw, it may not be our future now,” I whispered.

Draco hummed, lifting his head to kiss my forehead. He released my hands and cradled my face in his palms, forcing me to meet his strange eyes. I tried to smile, but my lips trembled too much.

“What have you to cry about, Granger?” he teased in a near whisper.

Tears streamed down my face into his palms.

“I remembered, when I was in that other place, how I was so alone.”

That dread had not left me.

“I have spent so many years alone, never wanting to be connected to anyone, how foolish I have been, Draco…”

He sighed, wiping my tears. “You have said that once before, and then, I did not really think you believed how wrong you had been.”

“Now I know. Walking on a beach at the end of the world will put a great deal of things into perspective.”

He chuckled. “I almost wish I could have seen it myself.”

I frowned, shaking my head slightly in his hands. “It was beautiful, illogical, and barren. I prefer the ‘now.’”

Draco brushed the last my tears away, his hands moving to mine again.

“Speaking of the ‘now,’ what are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“The job? Are you going to remain secluded in our little cottage in the woods?”

I honestly was not sure anymore. As appealing a change of title would seem, I loved working the Department of Mysteries, but I no longer had a stomach for anything related to time. I knew Alex Roux would not mind letting me work in other sections, but the thought of the Time Room knotted my stomach.

As for the cottage, leaving it would mean trying to find a flat in London that was close to the Ministry, or a house secluded enough that I could outfit it magically. All of that took money, more money than I currently had in my vault at Gringotts. I would have to stay in the cottage until I had saved enough, or worked out a proper budget for renting a flat.

It all seemed so overwhelming.

“I need time to think about the job. After school, Harry and Ron practically begged me to go through Auror training with them, and I nearly conceded. I had the marks at Hogwarts to pass the entrance levels into the training programme, but I was never confident with the physical components, flying, etc…”

“You’re a fair flyer now, my dear.”

I sighed. “That was Severus’ doing…”

Draco said nothing for a moment, staring deeply into my eyes. “But you can fly now.”

I nodded. I could fly now. I had also proven myself nimble enough to avoid unfriendly spells, with training I knew I could improve. I also knew how to duel; another skill set Severus had given me. On top of all of that, I knew every spell from ‘The Hanged Man,’ which could be modified into offensive or defensive spells easily.

I exhaled loudly. If I wanted to be an Auror, I could be an Auror. But the question was: did I want to be an Auror? I was more cerebral, not physical.

“And the cottage?” Draco asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

“I don’t know. It is not as if I really ‘own’ the place. I could not sell it. And I really cannot afford…”

“Stay with me…”

I blinked at Draco, rapidly.

“What?” I asked with a little more force than I had intended.

Draco set his jaw and pursed his lips. “Stay with me, here.”

My brow furrowed. I understood what he was saying, and part of the reason as to why he was saying it, but deep down, something did not settle well in my gut. As much as I wanted to stay near Draco, as easily as we had lived together only weeks previous, my hesitation was forming my lips to say—no.

Instead, I twisted my tongue and asked: “Why?”

It was an inane question.

Draco straightened his back and pulled away from me slightly. He still held my hands, but I could sense his irritation. The fact that I could still irritate him was comforting on my part.

“I would like for you to stay. I am sure Mother would also enjoy having you near.

I’ll even let that silly cat of yours stay as well, if that makes you happy.”

I cocked my head and stared at him. I answered him just the same as I answered Gumboil.

“I will have to think about it.”






I did think about it, and concluded that I simply was not ready to settle into a comfortable little life with Draco Malfoy.

I loved the man, as infuriatingly handsome, charmingly acerbic, stunningly sarcastic as he was… All the more tender attributes Draco had were hidden deep under a tough skin of scathing words and derisive glares, and I wondered if anyone knew who he really was besides his parents and myself.

Draco Malfoy made me feel alive, priceless, beautiful, free.

However, I still left without a proper goodbye. I escaped to the States, and with help from most unlikely places, I set to prove myself to myself. I needed a path to seek my justice and truth. I needed to feel worthy of his love; I needed to miss him as much as he missed me.

And miss him, I did, desperately.






The owl came in mid October while I was sitting on a park bench in Central Park, New York. After watching pigeons, the sight of an eagle owl startled me. With a screech, the owl dropped a letter in my lap and took off again before I could thank it.

The leaves were beginning to change in Central Park, just in patches of soft wood trees as I sat near the backside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I glanced about, wondering if any of the joggers, or birdwatchers had noticed the eagle owl.

With a sigh, I took the letter into my hands, and turning it over to the front, saw my name in ornate, flowing script. The back was sealed with green wax, and a crest that I figured was a family crest though I had never seen it before.

Malfoy.

I opened the envelope, which, to my surprise contained another envelope, this time a glossy embossed black envelope. Pulling it out, I realized it was an invitation. Impressed by the ornate design of the invitation, I opened it by pulling a velvet ribbon, and written inside, in the same script as my name, was Narcissa Malfoy’s insistent invitation to Samhain celebrations at the newly rebuilt and remodeled Malfoy Manor. Festivities were to begin at ten o’clock, and no costume was necessary, it would be provided.

At the bottom, under Narcissa’s signature and Malfoy family seal, with the motto of: ‘tempus edax rerum.’ I blinked at the motto, and felt my face crack with a smile. The Fates really did have a sense of humour.

In a rushed hand, Narcissa scribbled: “If I must resort to threats, Miss Granger, I will. Be at Samhain!”

I folded the invitation and slipped it back into the envelope, in turn, slipping it into my bottomless pocket of my Transfigured dark blue pea coat. My fingers brushed the Invisibility Cloak and the chain that bound the ring with the Resurrection Stone. The Elder wand was in its arm holster, along with its dark sister.

I stared out across the Great Lawn to the East Side, and let my smile fade.

I was the master of the Hallows, and only on occasion did I realize it. I only ever used the Elder Wand, the Cloak and the Stone had remained in my pocket ever since that night in 1995.

Draco still had the remaining Time-Turner, but I had given up stewardship of the devices, leaving the broken piece in its goblin-warded box, still hidden in the now empty cottage.

All the while I had been in New York City, I wondered why Draco had never found me. I had left the groom’s quarters as if possessed that night. My feelings for the man had been strong, but still I submitted my resignation, and packed the cottage, leaving Britain two days later. I had not written to him, or his family, I had not contacted anyone besides Ron, and that had not been correspondence of a personal nature.

Perhaps it was because they believed I needed the time away, Ron had mentioned that I should leave Britain for a while, and I did. However, Draco never sought after me, and I felt a little, no, very stupid. I felt stupid for two reasons, one being that I was totally besotted with the creepy ferret, and the other being that he did not find me, when deep down, in my secret heart I wanted him to show up in New York, stopping me on the street, in Times Square, in Battery Park, in Brooklyn, and kiss me senseless. I only allowed myself one minute of self-denigration before I set my face to occupy myself with my work and training.

Training was part of the reason I was in New York.

I stood up from the park bench and stretched. Adjusting my coat over my jeans, I started along the path that led along the perimeter of the Great Lawn, jogging in my military issue boots toward the East Side.

My hair was fixed just the way it had been at Beltane, and it moved over my shoulders heavily as I jogged past people walking their dogs, or older couples enjoying the cool October day. In New York, no one knew me, and that fact was almost as good as the solitude I had in the Forbidden Forest. I had been told that in New York, everyone is alone.

I jogged into the streets from the park, and along the sidewalks. No one paid any mind that I was not outfitted like a jogger, no one looked at me at all. I grinned as I ran across a street and into an alley, all the while letting my wand slip into my hand. Jogging in place before bare stretch of wall, I tapped the brick four times, and a heavy metal door melted into existence before me, and through it I went, up a set of stairs that did not taper until I reach the top of the building, six stories up, and into a studio flat. Through another door I stopped jogging, sweat beading my brow. I magicked the door shut, locked, and warded it before doffing my coat to through it over a ragged armchair down into the studio’s main floor.

Angled roof windows gave me an unobstructed view of the Park, and I flopped down into the armchair, my back pressing painfully into one of the Transfigured buttons on my coat. I did not mind it, as I stared out across the Park, and the spots of yellow and orange among the dark green trees. However, I turned my eyes to the walls, and the canvases stacked against them…

“I did not hear you come in,” a voice sounded behind me, coming from the kitchen area, which had more jars of paint and dirty brushes than it did cookware. “How was training?”

I did not turn to the voice.

“Hard. I’m afraid to take off my boots for the blisters.”

There was a clattering of pots in a cabinet and then the hiss of gas before a ‘whoosh’ of fire igniting a stove burner.

“Ron told you it was going to be rough. When do you finish?”

“This weekend. Then I’m in.”

Melodic laughter filled the kitchen even as I heard more clattering of dishes.

“You may have been the brightest witch in school, but I am having doubts about your sanity, Granger.”

I smirked as I watched the lamps in the Park begin to light as the sun set.

“Guess what?” I called as I heard water being filled into what I suspected to be the only clean pot in the flat.

“What?” the voice called back.

“I got an invite to the Samhain celebration at Malfoy Manor.”

More laughing.

I sighed and shifted in the armchair, my eyes moving to the far side of the studio and the large canvas set upon an easel. It was the scene, just as I had described it: broken moon, bright stars, the black rippling waves of an ocean and the red giant sun beginning to rise or set behind a pedestal, where three faceless women sat apportioning fate and time.

I jumped, startled due to my fatigue, as a figure strode past me, and fell into the couch adjacent me, and I studied the figure that lounged back, a head wrapped in threadbare towel.

Pansy Parkinson was wearing only a pair of pink underwear and a damp dark green tank top. I wondered why she had a towel about her head when her inky black hair was as short as a boy’s. Pansy stared back at me, a smile on her small mouth.

“I got one too.”

I cocked my head. “Are you going?”

“Hell, no. Ron did not get an invitation, so why should I go?”

I blinked at Pansy.

I had been staying with her for months. To be truthful, I was still in shock that we had managed to stay in the same room for more than a few minutes before the insults began to fly. When Ron had suggested I stay with Pansy, I stared at his letter for a long time, thinking that he meant someone else. Pansy Parkinson lived in New York City? Why? She was apparently a painter. How did Ron know her so well?

It seemed while I sequestered myself away for eight years, much of what I knew about Pansy Parkinson had changed. After Hogwarts, and her parents’ shame of being on the wrong side of the Last Battle, Pansy had decided to strike out on her own. She knew people, and she was Slytherin. Pansy moved to New York, disinherited, but far from destitute. She procured her studio flat from a wizard she knew through her mother. And from there, she started painting—magic paintings that sold for a high price. Pansy was famous in the States.

How Ron came to be reacquainted with her was merely by coincidence. He had been in New York for work, which I learned much later on was not just on British Ministry affairs, but American, Canadian, Mexican, French, Spanish, and a list of other countries. Ron was an Auror associated with the international Dragonriders, but worked on a less ‘covert’ level than his brother Charlie. I had known Ron was working with an international Auror group, which, again, I learned much later on was a group called F.O.I.L. or Federation of International Law. Magical law, of course, well versed in the varying law systems of all nations with magical peoples.

The acronyms had begun to make my headache.

Simply put, F.O.I.L. was the larger organization that encompassed the Dragonriders. Charlie’s branch dealt with international terrorism, Ron was more or less an Auror with a worldwide jurisdiction. Pansy called Ron: “The C.I.A. to Charlie’s F.B.I.” I was amazed she knew what those organizations were.

Pansy met Ron a Wizarding club in Soho seven years before, and, had been lovers ever since.

“I’m making spaghetti, hungry?”

I shook my head. I was too tired to be hungry; I had purposely spent the last of my energy jogging back to her flat.

Pansy shrugged and jumped from the couch to stride gracefully on the balls of her feet into the kitchen.

It was hard to believe that she was the same girl who had mercilessly tormented me in school or that she was the girl who stupidly screamed the night of the Last Battle that the Slytherins should grab Harry and toss him out to Voldemort.

She was not nearly a pug-faced, but she still like a stick with clothes placed upon it. Pansy was not pretty, for that matter, neither was I. When Pansy opened her door to me months before, I expected some scathing remark, but instead found myself being embraced as if I were some dear, old friend. It puzzled me.

Ron had told Pansy part of my ordeal with Harry—and Draco. Pansy never brought up the subject unless I mentioned something first, and then she would silently listen as I poured myself out to her. I was still wondering if I should have trusted her after she began the painting on the easel, the black waves lapping at the base of the pedestal, the spinning wheel turning slowly. The painting unsettled me, and Pansy usually kept it covered when she was not working on finishing it.

“Where did they take you this time?” Pansy called from the kitchen. I could hear her adding spaghetti to the pot, throwing in a bit of salt.

I finally decided to peel off my boots, wincing as I did so.

“Washington State, just below Mount Rainier, near a military base.”

“And?”

I sighed as I let the last boot drop to the floor.

“I fell off my broom once, trekked ten miles through rough terrain, and nearly hexed the instructor’s head off when he ambushed me from the high ground…”

Pansy laughed again. I made it to my socked feet and hobbled into the kitchen, leaning against the bar counter, watching Pansy push all the raw spaghetti down into the pot. I looked about, paint splatters on the last of the clean mugs, dishes rotting in the sink, and many other nasty things I did not like to see in a kitchen where food was being prepared. I had never pictured Pansy being a slob.

Drawing the walnut wand, I cast a series of spells until the kitchen was sanitary for food preparation.

Pansy smiled back at me as I frowned.

“And you finish by the weekend?”

I nodded.

“I bet that will be a record,” Pansy uttered sarcastically. I knew she did not mean her words to seem unkind; it was a manner I was slowly getting used to with Pansy.

Stepping away from the boiling pot, Pansy moved to the bathroom door, which led into the kitchen, and pulling the towel from her head, threw it in the general vicinity of her laundry hamper. Again, I frowned.

“Ron will be pleased though. He was worried that the American instructors might put you off.”

“They are alright—a lot of talk. The range of spells they use is impressive, but it is obvious that have not studied magical theory, that there can be degrees to a spell’s intensity.”

Pansy hummed as she began to prepare to heat a canned sauce. It was not a gourmet meal, but at least it was not take-out. Pansy acquainted me early with the joys of New York Chinese take-out.

“Better than London’s,” she had said.

I tried of watching Pansy stir the boiling pot, and moved into the bathroom, and took a quick shower. I felt as if I had brought back half of Washington’s dirt with me. I had only just Apparated back to New York, in the trees of Central Park to sit down when the eagle owl came.

I Summoned clean clothes from the bedroom open to the loft while I toweled off. I heard Pansy squeak when a pair of underwear and a long sleep shirt came sailing past her. I stifled a giggle. By the time I had fixed my hair into a ponytail, the braids dried, and left the bathroom dressed, Pansy was filling two plates of spaghetti and sauce. Together we moved into the common area before the windows, sitting down to eat and stare out into the dark Park below.

“Are you going back to Britain after you finish?”

I paused mid-bite. I had not thought that far ahead.

“I suppose it depends if they will allow me to take the position Gumboil offered me back in May.”

Pansy shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, I’m just a simple painter,” she guffawed.

“I wish I could paint, or write, or do anything creative, Pans.”

She had insisted I call her ‘Pans’ since Ron did. I did not ask why Pansy had been so friendly and kind, but I had a feeling it was partly because of Ron, and Harry’s cruel insanity.

“Ah, but I wish I could be a F.O.I.L. operative. You have a steady salary. You acquiesce to no one…”

“Except a superior.”

“Who cares? You have jurisdiction to do what you want. And no one at the Ministry in London can top that. You realize that you and Ron are people to be feared, don’t you?”

I began eating again. It was true what Pansy had said. But I was not seeking that kind of power. I just wanted to do something where I could truly make a difference. Relegating time was tedious, and a waste of talents I had even before Severus’ spell was enacted.

I had written to Alexander Roux just before I began training with the American branch of F.O.I.L., I did not want to lose his confidences. Alex wrote back immediately, conveying his understanding as to why I had chosen to leave the Department of Mysteries. I was much relieved. I wrote back to tell him that I would see him soon, if he would not mind having his old subordinate back in the darkness of the tenth level. Alex looked forward to my return.

“I did not decide to put myself through the five month-long fast-track hell of training just so I could ‘lord’ over someone,” I answered after eating a few more bites.

Pansy smirked, and began to say something, but stopped. I knew what she was going to say.

I had endured the most difficult Auror training known to wizard kind, subjected myself to one month stranded in the Amazon, three weeks in the Siberian steppes, and many more weeks on last minute training exercises to various, dangerous locations in the world, because I wanted to prove to Draco Malfoy that I could protect myself from here on out. I was not weak; I was not defeated because of everything we had done to stop Harry Potter.

At least, that was Pansy said quite often. Strangely, she was absolutely correct.

“You have become a warrior, in the truest sense. You were probably always that person, and it took Potter and Draco to show you the truth,” Pansy said to me when my fatigue made me wish I had not committed myself to my new path in life.

However, as we sat, eating overcooked spaghetti, scantily clad, I felt like Hermione Granger, the real Hermione Granger, the woman I should have been eight years earlier. I felt alive, and I liked it.