Chapter 1: The Boy Who Lives
If there was one thing Harry Potter had learned in the 16 miserable years of his life, it was how to take care of himself.
Wandering the empty streets of Hogsmeade, he reminded himself that he had faced far more difficult challenges battling basilisks and murderers, and that he had to do what he had always done- put aside his fear and hurt and act on instinct.
His stomach growled. He sighed wearily, looking over the signs of the shops. The Three Broomsticks stood out, memories of laughter and the sweet taste of butterbeer overwhelming him. Perhaps...
"No." He muttered firmly. There was nothing for him in there.
Most of the food in the pub would have gone bad by now. He could smell the rot from outside. The Hogs' Head was out of the question as well-hardly anything there was edible to begin with. Besides, it was dark inside. Too dark.
Still, he had come too far to return empty handed. And while it wasn't safe to go in, trying to find something was better than starving to death.
He gripped his wand tightly, reassuring himself. It had been weeks since it had been out of his hands, even when he ate and slept. It was the only thing he had to protect himself, and to avoid danger.
He wouldn't go into the pub, but Harry could still get what he needed.
"Accio cans!" he cried, stepping to the side as two dozen pieces of metal flew out the window, smashing the glass into shattered fragments. The fresh snow cushioned the cans' impact and they remained intact. Harry examined them, finding beans, meat, potatoes and vegetables. All sealed and in perfect condition. He had hoped there'd be more.
Seeing the sun dip in the sky he hurried along and summoned whatever he thought would still be edible. Flour, sugar, salt, even pots and pans for cooking. He shoved it all in to the bulky burlap sack he had attempted to cast an extension charm on. The charm seemed to work for the most part, but by the time he was done the handle of a pot was digging into his back. And the featherweight charm barely worked at all. The weight of the supplies strained every muscle in his body. Harry wished he had paid more attention in charm's class.
'The liquor will have kept.' He thought wryly, attempting the featherweight charm once again before summoning bottles of butterbeer and firewhiskey into the bag. There was too much to do for Harry to fall into alcoholism at his tender age, but he needed a way to keep warm. The days were getting colder.
'Shorter too.' he noted. They hadn't passed the solstice yet, now matter how deep of a winter this was. Today was... early December. It had been at the Halloween Feast that things had started to go to hell, and it couldn't have been much more than a month since then. He had to move quickly.
He repaired the window, not wanting to leave a trace of his presence, and then hurried down the street to Honeydukes. He needed to stock up, and the sweets were likely in better shape then the healthier parts of his diet.
"Lumos." He whispered, as he came to the store window. The store was a mess- there had been a scuffle there. Bertie Bott's every flavoured beans were scattered across the floor, mixed with shards of glass; display counters had been smashed into pieces. But there were none of them.
Harry began greedily summoning everything that was intact, not willing to wait until they came back. If they figured out he was here they would starve him out, destroy everything he needed to survive. They would corner him. He couldn't have that.
As the sun began to set he considered that Hogsmeade may not be deserted- not for much longer anyway.
He hurried down the path to the Shrieking Shack, erasing his footsteps as he went. He had been safe there because it was abandoned- they knew nothing was there for them. The tunnel from Hogwarts to the shack was guarded by the Womping Willow, and only a handful of people knew about it - he was the last of them alive. Still, if the anyone else who knew the secret had come back... well, he had taken steps. He had booby trapped the tunnel with every muggle and magical trick he knew: pits, greek fire, stinging jinxes, stakes, tripwires and detection spells every other meter. And the entrance had been warded as heavily as the rest of the shack. He had become obsessed with wards.
He was safe for now, so long as he kept his head down, but if Harry was survive he'd have to start thinking long term. There might still be scraps of food in the houses of the village, stones left unturned, but they would run out as well. If he lasted until spring he could start a garden- but even with concealment charms that might make his presence too visible.
Harry couldn't raid the castle kitchen either. There were too many dark places. Too many dead ends. Far too many of them.
'No.' he thought wistfully, he would never go back to Hogwarts. Happy memories didn't need any more tainting.
He would have to make his way to one of the nearby Muggle settlements. There would be more preserved food, but even more alluring than supplies was the chance of finding another person. Somewhere on an island of 60 million people there had to be someone else who was still making a go of it. Maybe they hadn't found everyone yet. Maybe there was still someone he could save. Maybe... maybe... maybe...
Harry clenched his fists until his knuckles were white. There was no use in getting his hopes up. Either he was the only one left, or the others were hidden too well to be found by anyone.
'The only Boy-Who-Lived.' he thought darkly. 'Some savior I turned out to be.'
He knew he was in Scotland, and he vaguely knew that half of Great Britain was within a day's reach of his broom. Floo was a death trap- no use teleporting into the belly of the beast. And, just his luck, the world had come to an end right before he learned to apparate. But Dobby had brought him his trunk- his map, his cloak, and his Firebolt. Distance was not the issue.
What was the issue was that if he went away from his sanctuary and was caught out at night-
Harry tensed, conscious of the last of the sun's rays vanishing. He was 100 meters away from the edge of his wards. He was weak from hunger, slower than normal. The heavy bag of food had slowed him even more. He quickened his pace, but he could feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck. One of them had been hiding here, waiting for night fall. And it had found him.
The hurried, clumsy footsteps were the only giveaway, the only way he could track its presence. There was no heartbeat, no breath, only the sound of movement.
Harry whipped around, free arm raised and guided by well honed instinct as he loosed his spell right as the revenant burst from the tree line.
"Sectumsempra!" he cried. Harry hit his mark, and was rewarded with the sound of flesh being rent from bone.
The creature's momentum was broken and it collapsed to the ground as Harry continued to move towards the shack. Harry cursed under his breath. He had missed the heart. He listened, he looked, he felt, and shook his head. Only one of them for now.
He always got one eye on the creature, black blood pooling in the snow as it lay, motionless. That was not the horrifying part. The part that always made Harry's heart stop was the moment when they got back up.
"Hiya Harry!" Colin Creevey called out, all of the old, senseless cheer still in his voice as he looked over Harry with a new kind of hunger. His robes were torn and his face had a haggard, ghoulish look to it. " I should have known you were still alive."
" I'm surprised, Colin." Harry said, delaying the inevitable. " I didn't think you'd have come back."
"I couldn't have done it without you." He said brightly, ignoring the wet sound of his left arm flopping in the wind, held to his body by only a few sinews. " Without your lessons and the DA, I wouldn't have been able to fight the others off long enough to turn. I would have been torn to pieces." Colin's ghoulish grin, his intense, sunken eyes, and the eager shivering of his body reminded Harry of a snake that had caught the scent of a rat. " But Harry, I'm going to need your help again."
" For the last time, Colin. I'm not giving you my autograph." Harry said, buying time as he edged closer and closer to the line that meant safety. He'd have to kill this creature, this shade that remained of Colin, and he'd have to dispose of the body so that no one else found it, and followed its trail.
"I know." Colin said good-naturedly. " But perhaps you can give me some food?" He pulled the robes over his stomach off to reveal jagged scars, the shape of human teeth, all across his torso. " You see, I'm still not strong enough to heal myself, and I haven't had anything to eat since Dennis." he grinned toothily. " A little flesh and blood ought to sort me out, though."
"Where is he? There wasn't enough of Dennis left to come back, was there?" Harry asked.
"No." Colin said guiltlessly. " Stripped to the bone after everyone got a bite of him."
Harry bit his lip until it bled. The coppery scent excited the beast, who took a step towards his prey. " I'm glad." Harry forced out. " He's at rest, now. And I'll put you to rest with him."
"Why don't you join him in my stomach instead!" Colin cried, lunging at his former hero.
"Bombarda Maxima!" Harry shouted, letting the explosive force of the spell push him and his cargo right over the line. The blast slammed into Colin and created a crater of smoke. Harry hoped that none of the others had been nearby. They would be drawn in like moths to a flame otherwise.
Colin's smoking corpse lunged forwards, innards hanging out, the wounds of his infection reopening from the force of the impact. His left arm was completely gone now, nothing but a stump, but he kept coming forward, growling.
But Harry had crossed his ward's barrier. He stared listlessly as the revenant charged. Just as Collin crossed the line he was pushed back smell of burnt meat filled Harry's lungs as blue fire enveloped Colin's good arm.
Colin recoiled, shrieking in pain and fear as he rolled about in the snow.
Fire, Harry had discovered, was one of the few ways of dealing with someone who had been infected. They hated light and caught fire easily- it was the only thing they feared. Short of destroying the heart or the head, flames were the best way of taking them down for good.
They weren't foolproof, though. Colin had stopped, dropped and rolled, and a puddle had formed, mixed with the ashes of his scorched skin. The shade looked at Harry, hatred in his eyes.
"You think you've won?!" Colin shouted. " I know where you are now! Once I tell the others, we'll find a way around anything to get at you. Every defense has a weakness. We'll torment you every night. You will never rest! You will never be safe! We'll feast!"
Harry sighed, and raised his wand, The Half Blood Prince's spell on his lips. He never got a chance to utter it.
An arm suddenly slammed through Colin's chest, piercing it like knife cutting through butter- right through his heart.
"We won't be doing anything." A voice said calmly. The timbre was dark and feminine.
Colin convulsed before collapsing, body falling unto the line surrounding the Shrieking Shack and igniting. The newcomer stepped back from the flames, feral eyes glowing in the darkness, observing him.
Harry shuddered at the familiar, knowing smirk that adorned its features. Standing before him was the remnant of Hermione Granger.