WARNING: It's Complicated
Chapter One: What I Do with My Vacation Time is My Business
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Author's Note: Hey guys, me again! Yes, I am starting another project. No, why would I be studying for exams? This piece is my sumbmission for the "It's Complicated" - OT3 Competition on HPFC. It's Due on Feb. 13th so anyone who wants to help me keep up with the updating by sending me encouraging reviews or PMs or suggesting plot points. Go right ahead. I'll love you forever!
TIME JUMP: The Year is 2004 (cause I wanna include modern tech and fashion).
WARNINGS: If you look at the rating you'll see this fic is rated M. Some content may not be suitable for younger viewers. This story will definitely contain Slash (M/M/M), don't like don't read, and violence. And it will also contain mentions of under-aged smoking, drinking, and sex. You have been warned.
Most people would probably be terrified in this kind of situation, Harry thought to himself as he sprinted away from a small moaning pack of zombies he'd inadvertently attracted. In fact he probably should be terrified, but this was becoming an alarmingly commonplace circumstance ever since he'd come to the Black Forest.
He was alive and a zombie's meal of choice was living flesh. There were zombies living, or rather being dead and walking around anyway, in the Black Forest. Harry was living in the black forest. It was a basic two and two equals four thing.
He'd cut his hand on a rock earlier. He'd been taking down his tent when one of the trees had moved a fraction of an inch. He'd tripped over the root, thrown his hand out and BAM! A bloody slash three inches long. It took all of fifteen minutes for every zombie within a quarter mile to be drawn to the fresh blood-scent.
They weren't too fast, the zombies, none of them were newly made and most of their muscles had already been consumed by the virus that kept their corpse upright but zombies had incredible stamina, seeing as how not getting enough air, cramping muscles and other physical limits didn't bother them. There was also the issue of the moaning. The moaning would attract even more zombies and if enough zombies were drawn here a mob would form and wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake.
The thing about zombies was the more of them there were, the more difficult it became to escape, they developed a kind of gang intelligence and suddenly became capable of setting up traps and ambushes, and the more useless it became to try and kill them. Harry had gotten to be a pretty good shot with the crossbow bouncing against his hip and beheading was easy with an enchanted sword, and he had one of those in his satchel, but he wasn't under any illusions that he was skilled enough to take on a pack of—he risked a quick glance over his shoulder—nine zombies, and those were just the ones he could see chasing after him through the shadows and thick trees.
Luckily he wouldn't have to, provided, of course, he didn't screw up or die or do both at once in the next three minutes.
Drawing in a deep breath and picking his target Harry put on more speed, slowly increasing the distance between himself and the pack, until he reached the tree. For one heart stopping, lung freezing, gut clenching minute he thought he'd misjudged the height of the branch and that it was beyond his reach but adrenaline gave him strength. He jumped and curled his good hand around rough bark, using his momentum to run up the trunk of the tree and, with a grunt, managed to swing a leg over the low lying branch and haul himself up.
The fragile limb swayed and dipped alarmingly with his weight and Harry was quick to press his back against the trunk while the zombies, most of them much taller than Harry, gathered around clawed ineffectually at the dragon hide of his boots. He thanked his lucky stars that his last lover had insisted on showering him with expensive gifts. Dmitri might have been a couple of cards short of a deck but the half-vampire was pretty and he had good taste in footwear.
A zombie got a good grip on his ankle and Harry, ignoring the sudden drop of a tightly wound ball of barbed wire and icy fear into his gut, kicked it in the head, stunning it long enough to free his ankle. Harry then reached for his crossbow and, balancing carefully, shot it between the eyes. It fell, still dead but no longer moving and one of the more skeletal members of the pack bent down and started feeding on what was left of his rotting flesh. Harry shuddered at the scene and turned away making a reach for the branch above him. It was a stretch but with a little hop he was dangling from a sturdier branch another five feet above the zombies.
With a careful bit of schoolyard gymnastics Harry was soon settled on the branch well above the zombies in a pretty good position to take them out with the crossbow at his leisure as they clawed ineffectually at the trunk of the tree, well past the dexterity, coordination and intelligence necessary for climbing after him or avoiding his quarrels.
Harry paused for a moment to catch his breath and check his weapon. He glanced down at his watch. He still had about twelve minutes.
The crossbow and bolts had not been a gift from Dmitri but from his mother. Lady Sonja felt that it was prudent for anyone who frequented the Black Forest to have a weapon on hand. Given how often he'd been in need of her gift over the past month Harry was inclined to agree. Harry ran a hand over the machinery of the crossbow, making sure that nothing was damaged, and checked the tautness of the string. He re-loaded the weapon with a quarrel from the quiver at his hip.
The spelled-bolts were silver tipped and would serve him well against vampires and werewolves as well as doing the more mundane job of punching holes in the brains of zombies, revenants, ghouls and whatever else the forest decided to throw at him.
Harry could hear the low moaning carried on the wind as more zombies approached from deeper in the forest but he still wasn't really worried. He would be out of here before the mob formed he was sure. He checked his watch. Seven minutes.
He raised his crossbow at a female near the fringes of the pack, her teeth were blackened and it looked like half her face had been eaten, and took careful aim. She went down as the metal quarrel flew into her open mouth and severed her spinal column. He reloaded with another quarrel from the small quiver attached to his belt and searched out another target. Then another. He took the time to line up his shots properly and only had to take a second shot once. He had just managed to make a tricky shot and take out the last zombie in the pack, the male who was losing his nails clawing off the bark of the tree, when the portkey around his neck activated.
There was the sudden disconcerting sensation of a hook behind his navel jerking him out of his tree and into the whirling vortex that was characteristic of portkey travel and Harry found himself whisked away.
When he landed at the London Office of the Department of International Magical Travel he was unceremoniously forced through a blood test, and summarily stripped, relieved of his weapons, tent and satchel and put through decontamination, all without a word being spoken to him.
Harry wasn't offended. Anyone coming from a hot zone like the Black Forest was subject to decontamination, as well as registration if they tested positive for lycanthropy or vampirism and immediate destruction if they tested positive for the strain of virus that made zombies. Western Europe had been completely zombie free for two hundred years now and Harry could understand the precaution. He wouldn't want to be caught running from a mob of fresh made zombies in London, and the thrice-damned things would definitely spook the muggles. It made magical customs look more like a border patrol than, say, a muggle airport, but according to the pamphlets Harry had read while he was waiting to get out to Albania earlier that summer the Department hadn't had a single incidence of work related infection in the past 175 years.
His belongings and clothes were spell sanitized and then returned to him where he was waiting, naked and freezing, in a post-decontamination holding pen. He dressed quickly in a clean set of clothes, spell-sanitization always made his clothes feel stiff and uncomfortable, and put his long hair back up.
"Terribly sorry about that, Mr. Evans, standard procedure you know," said one of the wizards who'd been doing the wand work, and older man with a fluffy cap of white hair and an equally fluffy white beard.
"No problem," said Harry with an easy grin.
It was a grin that would make anyone with half a brain cell and who was using it aware that they were being tricked in one way or another, but either the fluffy-haired guy wasn't as intelligent as his very professorial brown tweed robes portrayed him to be or he wasn't paying attention. Either way Harry won.
For all their careful monitoring the great thing about the Department of International Magical Travel was that they didn't check that you were who you said you were. Harry could have said his name was Alemi Tarabotti and he doubted anyone would have batted an eyelash.
The fluffy-haired wizard went through the standard round of questions and then handed Harry off to the healer-trainee on site who waved her diagnostic wand over him lazily while he stood with his arms out at the sides. She did heal the jagged cut on his hand though, which was something. Then he was required to acknowledge any animal, vegetable or sentience he had on his person or in his luggage and was subjected to hearing about the long list of items that that the Ministry had officially banned and that he could be fined upwards of 100 galleons for owning.
After all that ridiculousness he was finally brought to another, more conventional, waiting room where he had to go through another round of entirely pointless questioning conducted by an exhausted looking wizard before he could sign his fake name on the arrivals list and leave the building without being stunned by the guards on duty.
Finally out in the relatively fresh air of the busy London street outside the Ministry building, Harry breathed deep and stretched. He dug around in his satchel until he found his phone and a pack of cigarettes and dialled the Burrow, holding the cell phone between his shoulder and his chin while he dug with his free hand for his lighter.
"Hello Harry dear," answered Mrs. Weasley after the third ring.
After a summer of calling Ron at least once a day, most of the Weasleys were old hands at using the telephone.
"Hey Mrs. Weasley," Harry answered, grinning to himself as his fingers closed around the cheap red plastic of his lighter.
"Did your portkey get in on time? I know that the department is a madhouse with all the wizards arriving for the World Cup, Charlie was waiting in the building for hours to sign out and Bill was held up by customs, something about a piece of the treasure he was bringing into Gringotts."
"It wasn't too bad actually, looks like their devoting a lot of resources keeping a lid on whatever happens to be coming out of the east so they rushed me through."
"But they didn't give you any trouble?"
"Nah, it was pretty standard."
"That's wonderful dear, so we'll see you tonight for dinner?"
"I wouldn't miss it," said Harry with a wider grin, "I'll be there in about an hour."
"We'll see you then, Harry dear, travel safely."
"Of course Mrs. Weasley, see you in a bit."
Harry hung up the phone with a click and tossed it back into his satchel, lighting his cigarette and taking a drag. He sighed in contentment as the familiar acrid taste of hot smoke filled his mouth and hit the back of his throat, feeling the stress of the past two hours just melt away. He took a walk around the block to fully appreciate what was probably going to be his last cigarette for a little while and then hailed the Knight Bus.
The double decker wizarding bus was just as loud and purple as it had been at the beginning of summer and Harry mounted the steps digging a few sickles out of his satchel and handing the conductor, a young witch Harry didn't recognize sporting a bored expression and a bright red gem in her nose ring, the appropriate fare. The bus sped off with a sharp crack as Harry staggered unsteadily into a seat at one of the tables. Wizards, he reflected, had done some brilliant things with magic but transportation was not their strong point. Harry couldn't wait until he knew how to either apparate or drive.
The bus dropped him off just outside the village of Ottery St. Catchpole in front of the lane leading up to the Burrow itself. Harry hefted his satchel higher onto his shoulder and set off at a brisk clip eager to get up to the house but not quite desperate enough to actually embarrass himself running up the lane.
The familiar sight of the lopsided patchwork house at the end of the long winding drive brought a smile to Harry's face. The Weasleys were Harry's all-time favourite family and the sight of the overgrown yard and the multi-coloured wellington boots were a welcome sight after spending months living in a tent. That wasn't to say he hadn't come to think of his tent as his home away from Hogwarts but no one he truly cared for was waiting for him inside.
AN: Hey guys, thanks for reading! Before you ask I'm not going to tell you what the pairing is. It'll be pretty obvious within the first four chapters or so and if you're that desperate to know you can always creep the "It's Complicated" thread on HPFC.
Before you go I'd love a review! So type something into the little box at the bottom of the screen and hit submit! I live to hear from you guys, the good, the bad, and the helpful so it'll really make my day!