Author's Note: Coming up with an original angle for a fic is difficult, so when I was re-reading Beedle the Bard one day and realized that there weren't a lot of fics dealing with the wizard fairy tales, I thought I'd give it a shot. From that inspiration (or "plot bunny") things have really taken off in a twisty, dark direction. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. – Angry Slytherin

HARRY POTTER AND THE TALES OF THE BARD

Prologue

Do you believe in fairy tales?

I do, of course, but that is no surprise to those who know me. Do you know me? Perhaps you suspect. It is possible to find out even now who I am, if the temptation strikes you. All you need do is scroll forward in time and see. Are you tempted? I would not blame you.

I'll wait.

-But a warning first.

Time is not something to be manipulated without consequence. I believe this now, as I believe in the fairy tales. And both things are to be believed for the same reason: their power lies not in what awaits at the end, but the path taken to get there.

But where was I? Oh yes…

I believe in fairy tales, but I would not say that I love fairy tales. Having been the subject of one myself, I can attest that they are often ugly, terrifying things. At least if they are being done correctly.

Certainly, there are also lovely tales, filled with gleaming forests and trilling songbirds that guide wayward princesses of flaxen beauty. But these stories are, by and large, drooling, feeble-minded things; anesthetized and lobotomized before being pre-macerated for ease of consumption.

They are worse than insipid, because they would have us forget a very important fact:

There is truth in fairy tales.

Take them lightly at your own peril, for they do not spring forth from nothing. They do not exist without purpose.

I do not urge you to become a scholar of fairy tales, to open them up as a coroner opens bodies. Even if this was not a path to madness (something I also now believe) you will be stymied by the simple volume of tales at your disposal. You cannot dissect them all.

If you are here, and reading this, then you already know this fact. I am not conceited. I know that this story is one of thousands, stumbled upon in the hopes of finding enjoyment. Or seeking truth. And even though I play a role in this tale I still would not bother with the telling were it not for that latter point.

But I believe in the truth of fairy tales, and so I cast this one out like a bottle into a sea of bottles. You open it, and you read. And it begins as any self-respecting fairy tale should.

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a man who had no name. He had no name because there were none to call to him. He was alone, though he did not believe himself lonely.

Had there been others to speak his name, he would have been called the Time Keeper. It was he who tended to The Great Clock, the one which did not tell time, but told the time. Its hands dictated the seconds and minutes, hours and days, centuries and eons.

In the timeless place where time sprang forth, the Time Keeper made sure that The Great Clock's mechanisms were well-oiled, and that it told the time true, for a great many things counted on its accuracy. He loved The Great Clock dearly, and he knew that his was the most important job in history. After all, without The Great Clock there would be no history.

Still, the Time Keeper knew there would come a day when The Great Clock would toll a final time, as every clock must, and that would be the end of things. This made the Time Keeper sad to think about, so he cherished his most important work for as long as time would allow, and he was content.

And he was alone.

One day, the Time Keeper looked down from his tinkering to see an amazing sight, something he'd long-thought impossible:

Another clock had appeared!

This clock was tiny, but to the Time Keeper all clocks were precious things, and so he went to investigate.

He built for himself a Clockwork Door that would take him down to the place where the tiny clock lived. And when he stepped through, he was astonished at what he found.

There was not one tiny clock, but a great multitude, and they were like nothing he'd ever seen before! Yes, they had hands and faces, but they also had arms and legs, eyes and ears, hearts and minds. They ticked away their hours purposefully, thinking and loving, and making tiny watches to call their own, watches that grew into great tiny clocks themselves.

And though these clocks were quite tiny, all clocks were precious to the Time Keeper, and so he loved them all the same.

But the Time Keeper was also sad. You see, while The Great Clock had hands to count the eons innumerable, the tiny clocks only had hands for years, at most a century. And when their time was up, the tiny clocks were silent, and ticked no more. This was true for all clocks, but for the tiny clocks time seemed so fleeting that the Time Keeper could not help but be stirred to action.

And so he visited the little clocks often through his Clockwork Door, to watch over them and guide them in any way he could. The Time Keeper led the tiny clocks, to ensured that theirs was always the best path, and that their choices were always the correct choices. He tended to them, and was proud of his most important work.

Some of the clocks, he found, chimed more melodiously than others. Such was their beauty that, when they chimed, other tiny clocks would join them in glorious harmony. The Time Keeper felt that these tiny clocks were deserving, and so he rewound their springs and allowed them to tick a bit longer than they otherwise would, to the benefit of all.

Other tiny clocks, he saw with great sorrow, ground and whined with rusted gears. So terrible was that cacophony that it would cause other tiny clocks to tick-tock out of synch, or even stop entirely! Though he was sad to do so, the Time Keeper gently wound these grinding clocks forward, hastening their end to spare the others. This, he felt, was also for the greater good.

And yet there was one task the Time Keeper prized more than any other. Whenever a tiny clock ceased ticking, the Time Keeper would stand at attention by its side. He would gather up the sounds of those final clicks and whirrs and hold them close. He'd tell the clock that, although it was tiny, its ticking had been mighty and beautiful, and it was precious. He'd carry those final sounds back through his door, to meet with The Great Clock itself, to a place where they could tick peacefully forever.

For, although all clocks must stop, the ticking echoes on.

For this, and for the love that he showed them, the Time Keeper very much hoped that the tiny clocks would love him in return.

But this was not to be.

The tiny clocks had eyes, which could see the inexorable movement of their hands, spinning around and around, knowing with terrible certainty that one day they would spin no more. And the tiny clocks were afraid.

The tiny clocks had ears, which could hear the plaintive ticking around them, and this reminded them that, one day, they would tick no more. And they became more afraid.

The tiny clocks had minds, which could reason. And they reasoned that there had to be a cause for the end of their ticking, that there was someone to blame.

And, because they were just tiny clocks who knew no better, they blamed the Time Keeper. They berated him for not rewinding some clocks who had stilled far too soon, or for not winding forward others who ground. Those who could see the Time Keeper, even when he thought himself hidden, saw him standing at the side of the stilled clocks, and blamed him for their end, not realizing that he stood by out of respect and love.

The Time Keeper tried to make them understand: he could not alter the ticking of The Great Clock to grant more time, nor could he make their own tiny hands spin forever, for all clocks must someday stop, even Great ones.

But the tiny clocks did not listen, they did not understand, and the more the Time Keeper tried to help, the more they grew to despise him.

They gave him terrible names and he became a symbol of all that was terminal. Fear and anger at the Time Keeper grew, and none dared speak to him, or thank him for the valuable work he did, tending to The Great Clock if nothing else.

There were other tiny clocks that were crueler still. These clocks had a special hand that told not of the years or centuries, but of magic. They created foul mockeries of the Time Keeper: magical monster of fear and cold, shrouded in black, and able to kill with a single breath. To the Time Keeper, this was the cruelest thing of all, and so he wept.

In time, the Time Keeper's tears rusted his own gears, and he began to grind bitterly.

"Who are they to judge me?" He demanded. "After all, I tend to The Great Clock, and in comparison they are tiny, pitiful things."

And his bitterness turned to rage.

He no longer sought out the deserving tiny clocks, to wind their gears back for them.

As for those bad clocks, the ones that ground, the Time Keeper was no longer content to wind them forward gently. They deserved to be punished. He did not see that, for many of them, their grinding was also caused by the rust of tears.

So he came to these grinding clocks and forced upon them his gifts, miraculous trinkets of his own clever making. The tiny grinding clocks cheered and celebrated, not knowing that, within these devices, their doom was sealed.

The first such gift was an eye, granted to one who was especially suspicious and cruel. This eye could reveal all perils, and the suspicious clock was overjoyed, but he could not see that the eye was a trap. With every true peril he saw (and now he saw them all) ten more sprang forth from his imagination unbidden. He was driven mad with paranoia, and eventually he ceased his own ticking in his quest to find peace.

In this, the Time Keeper was pleased.

The second gift was an amulet of glowing emerald, gifted to a clock of cruel arrogance who demanded everyone's respect. The amulet cast an aura of terror upon her many enemies, but fear alone does not inspire respect, as the Time Keeper knew. The fear and cruelty drove the other clocks away, and soon the cruel one was alone. She had been her own worst enemy all along, and so the amulet struck at her hardest of all. Her nights were filled with such restless terror that soon she too ended herself to escape the nightmares.

Once more, the Time Keeper was pleased.

So he continued on in this way for a long time, showering cursed gifts down upon the 'evil' clocks, reveling in the fearsome tales told of him. If, as sometimes happened, his gifts reappeared later to curse the hands of others, the Time Keeper did not think this wrong. For those who sought the power of the Time Keeper's baubles, was their fate no less deserved?

One day, the Time Keeper watched in eager fascination as three tiny clocks approached a raging river, and grew even more fascinated at the fact that they seemed determined to cross, even though it would certainly mean their destruction.

But, to the Time Keeper's chagrin, all three of these tiny clocks had the hand that told magic, and so they crossed the river unmolested.

The Time Keeper raged at this, and remembered clearly those with the magic hands that had created those cruel, demented mockeries of himself. He vowed that these three clocks should be punished above all others. Their gifts would be the cruelest, and most subtle of all his works.

To his credit, he hesitated at the thought. The Time Keeper wondered if such an act was deserved. But, to be sure, he heard a loud grinding noise coming from the direction of the magic clocks, and so he knew them to be evil at heart.

He did not realize, so deaf was he from the grinding inside himself, that only two of the three clocks grated.

So the Time Keeper approached the three tiny clocks, three brothers as it turned out, and lauded them for their cleverness.

And he offered, to each of the three, a boon of their choosing…

Perhaps you already know the ending to this tale. Perhaps you merely suspect. It really all depends on one question:

Do you believe in fairy tales?

If not, then take this fable for what it is and go in peace. Your time is a precious thing as there is, in each of us, a hand that goes around but once.

But perhaps you see more than the mere tale. Perhaps you see the truth in these words. (Or, if you are a particularly clever Ravenclaw, you know that this is just the Prologue.) In either case, you are certain:

This is merely the beginning.

Are you ready for the rest?

Not so fast! Heed this second warning; I promise it's my last:

Going forward, the only 'gleaming' you will see in these forests will be of hungry eyes. The trilling you hear belongs to the crows. The heroes have hair of midnight and umber, and the villain is not a feeble-minded thing.

Oh, but I wish he had been.

You know who I speak of.

Not all of us shall make it to the 'Happily Ever After,' perhaps not even myself. Will you?

I hope so. And if you do, I hope you find something in this fairy tale worth believing.

The "Plot Bunny,"

Babbitty