AUTHOR'S NOTE

-I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter & co.

-This is not happy reading. I mean, this is apocalyptic shit. Death and dying and decaying corpses will happen.

-This is 'plotting as I go' so I haven't decided what is going to happen yet.

-Anyone might die or already be dead or - y'know - survive, mutate, and become a rampaging monster.

-Relationships may not stick to canon. In fact they probably won't.

-If you don't like characters to be queer, feel free to read something else.

-Tristifical Tris

On Wizards, Muggles, and Magic

Despite all pretenses there was no 'Wizarding world' and 'Muggle world'. Wizards were born to Muggles and Muggles were born to wizards. Although they refused to call their children without power Muggles, it was denial of a truth. There was no difference except that these Muggles were family, or more importantly, a denial of a greater truth: There are no Wizards, there are no Muggles, there are only humans with varying levels of magical potential and access to magical education.

There was no difference between Muggles and Wizards except the ability to use magic. Or perhaps to be more precise, enough of the ability to matter. There were still 'Muggles' with trace amounts that were passed over, not enough to cause a stir among non-magic folk, too difficult for Wizards to trace. Not enough to make the effort of finding, training, and schooling them. Without a wand they would likely never find out about magic or their power.

Children born to wizards with equal amounts of power to these 'Muggle' children were not quite Squibs, but near enough. Barely enough magic to equal a first or second year student despite any amount of training. Yet - they often still got the opportunity these days, unlike their counterparts born to Muggles. To live in the secret world of magic. And of course there were the Squibs, the Muggles that lived among Witches and Wizards.

These were things Not To Be Discussed.

Just because you ignore something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Imagine if they learned of their power, weak as it might be, and applied it - too weak to be traced, weaker than the youngest Wizarding child. Without knowing what they were truly doing, just that things sometimes happened when they really really wanted it to, and knowledge of precisely what they wanted. Imagine that they learned about Witches and Wizards and that they'd been passed over, ignored, forgotten. Slighted.

And what they really, really wanted, was to make an incredibly virulent bio-weapon.

Among the Dead

The night was darker than she remembered it being. There was always some light in the distance, caught in the atmosphere, reflected. Light pollution they called it. You had to get very far away to find a truly dark night, and even then a plane might come through the night sky. There would be no planes now, and there were no lights in the distance. A quiet had descended on the world and a return true darkness to the night broken only by the moon and the stars.

And a softly spoken 'Lumos.'

Hermione Granger looked ragged and worn at the edges. The young witch had aged dramatically in the past several months. There were lines that didn't belong on such a youthful face, from grief deeper than any she'd faced during the war. She'd thought life would be easier. Safer. It had been, for a time.

They had moved on, and rebuilt their lives, only for... what?

Leaves crunched beneath her feet, too loudly for her liking, but anyone who might hear her was long dead. Before they'd realized how badly contagious it was, before they'd discovered the cause or a cure, wizards had rushed to St Mungos. None of them, none of Healers had lived, and none of their patients. After that, the panic had only gotten worse...

It was all over now, though. It was quiet, and dark, and nothing stirred at her arrival.

Hermione looked at the abandoned building with lingering apprehension. No one had remained to clear it of corpses of course. It was something she had gotten somewhat used to, but this place would have been full to bursting. The conditions would have been horrible by the end, patients and Healers dying together with no one left to tend them. The dying trapped with the dead, with no where to go, nothing to ease their suffering.

It had been just as bad for Muggles, in their hospitals, the last she'd heard from her parents. They'd hoped to the last - she couldn't go on thinking they'd lived after communications cut out - that magic could save them. That she'd find a way to save them. She was supposed to be so bloody smart. Maybe she would have eventually found something. In time. Time that she hadn't had... no. They hadn't had the time for her to save them. She had all the time in the world now there was no one to save.

The grief she held was thick with guilt, and the uncertainty. Not knowing who lived or who died, whether it was safe to seek out other survivors yet. She'd suspected early on that the owls carried and spread the sickness, so any that came near her felt to the ground with a stunner with no care whether the fall might be too great. It hurt each time, but if she'd survived by chance of not being exposed to the pathogen and not being immune she couldn't risk exposure.

She'd never seen them carrying a letter. They were just former companions of witches and wizards, desperately alone as she was. Even if they were carrying a message for her she couldn't risk approaching the fallen birds to find out.

Yet here she was, walking into a contaminated site, and hoping that her precautions would be enough. As if other people wouldn't have thought of using a bubble head charm to protect themselves from infection. Perhaps they didn't, perhaps they did. Perhaps she had already been contaminated and it was only a matter of time until she, too, died. Perhaps she wanted to, rather than live alone and in fear.

She had been right about one thing. St Mungo's was full of the dead. Corpses were crammed in together so thickly she had a difficult time making her way inside. She wouldn't have been able to breathe the air if she hadn't anticipated this and practiced that charm. As it was she stepped on several bodies as she progressed, and they made rather unpleasant noises as her boots sunk through the rotting flesh. She wondered if scourgify would be enough to decontaminate what she wore into this place. She wouldn't take the chance. She never wanted to wear them again after this.

It was a good thing that she had a stronger stomach than the little girl who had climbed aboard the Hogwarts Express such a long time ago. Even the young woman she'd grown into, shaped by conflict, would have lost her stomach at the journey through the halls of St Mungo's. Now she merely grimaced within the confines of the bubble of fresh air that floated about her face. She couldn't smell the rotten stench that must have sunken into the stones of the building, but she could imagine it quite well. It wasn't a scent easily forgotten.

She traveled through the building with a sense of horror outmatched only by her growing determination as she searched. She tried not to look at the faces of the fallen as that would distract her from her task. If they had learned anything here, she would discover it. Any progress they had made on their research would be saved from this place. She would gather whatever medical supplies she could find. And then this place would be destroyed.

This was not the first place she had visited for such reasons. Gathering supplies, destroying contaminated sites, and moving on.

If she was the only survivor she would be well supplied. If she was not, she had stockpiled enough for a small settlement to get started. They didn't have to be magic either. She just wanted to see other people, hear them talk...

She paused sorting through papers, mid thought. She'd heard something. An animal loose, it had to be, scavenging. No one would come in here. No one except her. The thought made her grimace. There could easily be other survivors with the same ideas as she.

"Is someone there?" she called out.

Ringing silence.

The silence before had been different. There had been little noises she hadn't really noticed but now- nothing.

She shifted from foot to foot uneasily. She wanted to finish her task and get out quickly, and instead of sorting through everything she just shoved everything into her charmed bag without really looking. It was time to go. A noise in the hallway made her reach for her wand. She fought the urge to call out again. Whatever it was it she might not want it to find her.

A limping figure came into the light.

She dropped the bag, aimed her wand, and opened her mouth to cast-

"Hermione Granger?"

Her mouth remained open, her wand still pointed at the figure.

Living.

Human.

For a moment she didn't recognize him. Grimy, too thin, hair a total mess. Her first impression had been something from the scary movies she'd watched as a child. Her mouth shut with a click of her teeth. Teeth this young man had once caused to grow to enormous size. He had been detested, hated, and even pitied. Now...

"Draco Malfoy," she replied as evenly as she could manage. She tried to stifle the first thought- if it could have been anyone, why did it have to be him? Anyone else, anyone... and then she felt guilt. Even he hadn't deserved that. He might be unpleasant and bigoted but he didn't deserve to die like that. She smiled, and it wasn't even all that forced. "You have no idea how glad I am to see you alive."

Even you.

The blond wizard was still staring at her from the doorway of the room. Shock, probably. She hadn't seen anyone else, no reason to think he had either. And he was in far worse shape than she. Too used to being taken care of, she guessed. She picked up her bag and returned to her work, ignoring the wide eyed stare.

Eventually some sense must have returned to him, because he demanded, "What are you doing?"

His voice was sharp, hoarse with disuse, but there was some remnant of his old arrogant self she remembered from her childhood.

"Searching for supplies. Its no use to anyone here, and this place is a breeding ground for pestilence," she began to tell him, and then lost her train of thought entirely as she noticed something. Something important. He wasn't visibly charmed against contamination. He hadn't protected himself. "Why- why aren't you- you-" she spluttered, unable to finish the thought. Even Malfoy - no, especially Malfoy would have thought of protecting himself from sickness.

"What are you trying to say?" Malfoy asked almost primly. It seemed her own lack of composure had helped him regain his own somehow. "Have you lost your ability to speak coherently since civilization has fallen to this sickness? It has been months, Granger, not years..."

"Why are you not protecting yourself?!" Hermione finally screamed. There was more than a hint of despair in her voice that surprised both of them, as well as some anger. Finally she'd found someone and he was going to die and she still hadn't found out a cure. He was going to die like everyone else. That it was Malfoy didn't even factor into it.

"Perhaps you haven't considered I do not need to," Malfoy said softly, looking at her with unreadable eyes. His sharp, pointed face was inscrutable. Whatever had happened to him in the past months had changed him as much as it had changed her. "I won't be dying of this, at least."

"You won't... how do you know?" The witch, who had been holding it together for so long, was nearly weeping. Over this boy she'd never liked, and likely never would even if he did live. There had just been too much death.

"I already sickened of it. I recovered quickly. I understand that was not the case for many," he said smoothly. His voice didn't match his appearance. "Now, I asked what you are doing. I understand you are distressed, but answer my question."

She stared at him for several moments before she began to answer. She warily did not tell him just how much she'd had stockpiled, implying that this was the first excursion she'd taken to gather supplies. Even if he was the only other survivor, that didn't mean she trusted him. He was a Malfoy after all. They looked out for themselves first and foremost and to him she was just a Mudblood. She wasn't going to forget that. She went on until she was nearly out of breath.

"Places like this - where there's too many dead to clear - need to be destroyed. We can't risk this place becoming a breeding ground for sickness and death," she finished. He had returned to staring at her. Maybe she'd said too much.

"I hadn't thought... I survived that sickness, but there are so many dead bodies..." Malfoy looked paler than ever beneath the grime. He looked like he was going to be sick. Hopefully it was just queasiness and not that he had actually fallen ill. Hermione hesitated, about to reach out to him. Malfoy grimaced. "Well. Too late to worry about that I suppose. Have you gathered everything you needed here?"

"I... yes," Hermione decided. She'd gone through most of the building. And getting him out as quickly as possible was the most important thing now. She grabbed her bag, and went to him. "I don't care to walk through that..." she gestured toward the doorway. "Again. I don't plan on walking back either, and you don't know the place, so I'm going to have to Apparate the both of us."

Malfoy held out his arm for her to take. If he did not entirely trust her, he was at least confident in her skills as a witch. There were not many she would trust to Side-Along Apparate her without splinching. Maybe he just wanted to get out of this place as badly as she did.