The sun slowly continued its arc across the sky as it shed its light upon the destruction that was plaguing the land of England, smoke billowing up into the sky as metal machines started rising up out of the Earth. Wherever the machines rose, people died and buildings were destroyed in moments. This assault was leaving massive swaths of once populated lands desolate, as tripods continued their assault. But in the silent little town of Little Whinging, a lone wizard stumbled into the now silent town. All around him was the ruins of the once lively town that had been his home until he had found out that he had magic. Now, it was nothing more than a black spot on the map, as he shuffled his way deeper. Harry Potter looked around as he tried to comprehend what has happened in such a short time, feeling so alone in this desolate town.
As he wondered, he could only see the images of his cousin turning to dust and other people being disintegrated around him. His Aunt and Uncle were dead as well now, he was truly alone. He came to a stop before a crosswalk, looking up to see the local supermarket was still standing. Running towards the building, he saw that it had been attacked on the outside as clothing was all over the parking lot. He tried not to think of who those clothes had belonged to as he reached the entrance, to find the doors refusing to budge as he came up to them. He ran up to the second pair of doors and found one that had been shattered, allowing him entry. Harry looked around the market, looking for anything that would be of use to him before setting off in the direction of where the backpacks would be.
Aisle after aisle, Harry rushed through as he tried to find the backpacks. He came upon the "outdoor" section of the market, only to find it having been almost cleared out. Several of the on display tents were ruined, as many of the needed accommodations for camping were gone. Try as he might, he couldn't find anything that could help him. Instead he decided to actually try and find some food, hoping to actually fill his stomach. As soon as he got to the food aisle he felt something or, he heard something, coming into the store. looking around he tried to make himself as small as possible by crouching near the ground, hoping that he wouldn't be found by a whoever or whatever had just entered the store.
"Got to find food, got to find food," a male voice said, even though Harry was pretty sure that this person was probably very dangerous, "if I find food, I can survive."
Harry tried to tiptoe his way past the food section, however he was spotted by a man that was wearing a rather dirty jacket. In his hand was a gun, which he pointed at Harry even though his hand was shaking slightly. The Man's eyes were kind of wild, filled with some animalistic rage over craziness that Harry couldn't identify. All Harry knew was that he was in trouble, the trouble that could get him killed.
Harry bolted it for the end of the aisle, several bullets whizzing past his head and shoulders as the man took potshots at him. When he had just reached the edge of the food aisle he turned right and headed towards a different aisle. his feet were pounding his legs aching as he ran as fast as he could towards safety. However, as soon as he turned the corner into the women's product aisle, a bullet hit him in the thigh. Harry cried out an alarm and in pain as the bullet hit him sending him sprawling onto the ground. In his mind, you know that he had to get up and run, but he couldn't because it was so painful to move his leg.
"Got you now you little grub," the man said with a sneer, pointing his pistol at Harry as he's tried to drag himself across the floor, "as long as you don't get in my way, I'll be free of this madness that's filled this continent or country or whatever. Time for you to die boy."
The man was about to actually pull the trigger when Harry, by some miraculous miracle, flung some of the women's products off the aisle shelving and into the man's face. The man lifted his arm to protect his face as Harry got up and hobbled towards the end of the aisle, blood running down his wounded thigh and leaving a trail of red. Harry grabbed the edge of the aisle, not able to actually take another step as you looked at the man as he started moving towards them taking his leisurely time doing so. In a desperate act of horror and in loss of blood, Harry grabbed the edge of the aisle and started pulling with all of his might.
The man started laughing at him, pretty much telling him that nothing would happen and he would die here. However, Harry found something else had happened instead, as the aisle shelving itself was made of metal and connected together down these long rows. the isles themselves started shaking as though something was longer than Harry was actually trying to pull them out of the ground, and it was working. The bolts that held these metal isles down were suddenly coming loose, a few of them flying right out of the ground and hitting the man that held Harry near gunpoint, making him cry out as the metal bolts slammed into him enough to actually cause him to stumble a bit. As Harry cried out as he strained his body to actually pull the aisle off the ground, the aisle itself lifted floating in the air as though it was held by strings. Then Harry slammed the aisle into the next one, crushing the man between the two, in one fell swoop.
The man was crushed between them, killed instantly by the force exerted by the two heavily covered aisles slamming together. Harry collapsed onto his knees, feeling like he had just run a thousand miles without any water. Gasping, panting, Harry looked at the mess he had wrought. He dropped to his hands, feeling his heart nearly tearing apart his rib cage as the adrenaline ran through his veins and arteries. As he was trying to get his mind sorted, something pulled them out of his body in a way that didn't feel normal. you saw himself flying out of the store past all concrete wood and all sorts of other structures as he flew into the atmosphere. As you went past clouds and blue skies into outer space to see the Blue planet which he lived upon with so many other people, before his vision was turned away from the Blue planet. around him it looked like a kaleidoscope of colors was rushing past him, shooting him towards the planet that was as close to Earth that it could be called a sister planet.
40 million miles of void separated these two planets, however upon the red planet of Mars, Harry saw something that he wished he could forget. Going through Mars's dying atmosphere, Harry saw a City built underground made up of rounded shapes of all sorts of green and white hues. Meandering or working around the entire city were tripods, of various shapes and sizes that didn't look like the ones that were on Earth. He saw different machines with varying numbers of legs upon them, as he was pulled into one of the largest buildings in the city. Upon entering this city building, Harry found himself watching extraterrestrial life that looked like it belonged in the oceans of Earth waving their tentacles at one another. That was until he started hearing their voices inside of his head, voices that told him of something much older than Earth or Humanity in general.
"The war plan is going exactly as it has been predicted," one of the technical octopi said, even though his lipless mouth didn't even move at all, "The first cylinder should be arriving within the first rays of the sunrise on the next cycle of this planet. Within it lies the first generation of Fighting machines that are designed like the war machines of old. These war machines are 50 ft smaller than the original design calls for, however, these machines are built as a support to the main War machine as we discussed earlier. All troops must be ready to mobilize to take out the rest of this country that the humans call England within the next week, if this is not done within the time frame we will have lost the element of surprise amongst the humans."
"The Martian forces are ready to be deployed at a moment's notice upon the opening of the cylinder," another one of the aliens said pointing at an image that just appeared in the center of the room of the cylinder that was now finally closing in on Earth, within it lies the first three of these new support tripods, ready to be used with the first awakened War machine. Their goal is to secure a vast area for the main base of operations on Earth, and then deal with the human city known as London. Once that is complete the occupation of the rest of this continent will proceed."
"Our forces are surrounding other vast cities that the humans have built, they will be taken care of within the next few days if not the following week."
"With this strategy already in play, we will have taken over a vast amount of area before the humans could retaliate." One of the older looking aliens said before he stopped and looked in Harry's direction, his large glowing eyes staring at him with vast intelligence that lied its vast nature, "it seems that one of the humans has been watching us."
These aliens all turn their glowing eyes onto Harry, making him feel utterly uncomfortable about being looked at by intelligences that clearly knew what they were doing and didn't really care for Humanity as a whole. Something tried to dig into his mind but he was doing his best to push it out, making the one who was digging into his head laugh in a deep chortle that didn't belong to something that was as large as a bear.
"This one has spirit, which is quite exhilarating as a human hasn't had the mental capacity to actually hear us before," This one sounded female, and yet Harry felt himself shutter in utter disgust upon thinking that, "however, this isn't the only human that could listen upon our plans if they didn't have the mental capacity to actually hear us properly. I have felt this mind before, looking upon the xenopaths that were sent us reports of humans that have powers that allow them to modify reality as they see it. The xenopath pilots were the first to report this as they found it difficult to deal with the humans that had these abilities, as they could defend their minds from such intrusions that the other humans could not. Because of this, the humans have a great advantage over us because they could listen in to our telepathic nature, however I do not see this as a possibility as most would rather close their minds off to us due to the painful and near death nature it would cause their own minds as it is killing this boy."
Harry felt his heart stop upon hearing that, was he truly dying from actually hearing these aliens talk? He didn't know what to believe anymore, as in school they have been taught that there was no intelligences in the vastness of space that could compare to humanity, the story known as War of the Worlds by HG Wells was nothing more than a story as there could have been nothing on the planet of Mars. And yet here they were right before him, looking upon him and telling him that he was dying by just listening and seeing them. With an intense amount of focus, partly due to his panic and another part due to himself not wanting to die, Harry pulled himself out of whatever this vision was. He saw himself flying away from the planet of Mars, stars streaked past as he returned to his own body, slamming him down into reality faster than a bludger could hit him.
What happened next was the most painful part of his entire life so far, Harry gagged and wretched as blood came out of his mouth and onto the floor. Pools of blood form under his body as he continued to wretch and gag, ears slowly leaking blood as his nose dripped the red substance. It felt like his mind was turned to mush as he tried to keep himself from dying on the spot to do what unknown power could have caused him such pain and agony. The next three hours were just him retching and trying his best to not die from blood loss, shivering as the night slowly, ever so slowly, creeped in.
By the time Harry woke up, he saw that the sun was setting. Slowly getting himself off the ground, Harry decided to get as much stuff as he could in the building that was once a store and then leave as fast as possible. He went for where he could find the backpacks, finding them in an aisle not far from the women's products, and before he grabbed three of them and headed back to the aisles that he would need. Unknowingly, or through some other miraculous means that he didn't realize at the time due to only running off of adrenaline and low amount of blood due to wretching a lot of it onto the floor, Harry didn't realize what had happened to the bags. It wouldn't be until later date that Harry realized that his own magic had done this without any need for his wand.
What had happened to the backpacks was that they had an expansion charm put inside of them so they would be infinite on the inside, all one of them had a stasis charm that won any food product went past the opening they would immediately be put into stasis so Harry wouldn't have to worry about refrigerating or anything. But because his mind was focused on actually grabbing what he needed, he didn't realize this. So he went about stuffing food into one backpack, clothing into another and all others assorted items into the final bag. As he went about doing this he didn't realize that the backpacks also had a featherweight charm put on them so they would never feel like he was carrying that much stuff on his body. By the end of it, he realized he couldn't carry all three bags at once so he grabbed the final bag that looked like it had once been a sports carry bag.
He put all three of these bags inside of it, his magic acting out again, causing the inside of this sports bag to have enough room to carry all three. Harry then went around and got himself some new clothing to get himself into, as his clothing right now was covered in his own blood in the dust particles of all those who had died from that martian weapon of choice. Pulling on a jacket, Harry slowly made his way to where the medical supplies were. Harry then spent the next hour digging that bullet out of his thigh with a pair of tweezers, before wrapping it up and a bunch of cloth that was covered in gauze and other medical supplies that could help heal this bullet wound. He then found a walking stick or cane or whatever which he could use to actually get around without having to put too much pressure on his leg. As he slowly made his way out of the store, Harry realized that he may be the only man in little whinging that was alive. The clouds up ahead were darkening as the Sun finally set behind the mountains, as thunder, real thunder boomed in the distance.
Rain started the fall not long afterwards, as Harry moved as quickly down the road that would lead him to London. As he continued to trudge through the ever growing rainstorm, he tried his best to actually not remember his cousin's dying face as thunder continued to boom and crash around him as the rain only got heavier and hit harder than ever. It wasn't until he had tripped and fell into a ditch on the side of the road that he realized that the thunder didn't sound correct, it sounded something like a machine. Harry did his best to try and act as though he was dead in the ditch, hoping beyond hope that whatever these Martians were doing that they wouldn't see him due to the rain that was pelting down. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw the main machine that had actually destroyed Little Whinging as it moved up the road the grace like that of a cat. As he watched, two other machines came.
These machines were about 50 ft smaller than the main machine, looking around as they were busy moving through the trees carefully. Suddenly one of them crouched down, it's legs bending as multiple tendrils with blue light tips at the end of them reached down into the bushes and picked up a man, He was screaming and rising in the tentacle that held him, as the machine looked upon the man as though one would study a candy of sorts. That was before it moved its tentacle like it was going to toss something and brought the tentacle around, bashing the man's head into that of a thick trunk of a tree. The man went still, no sound could be heard coming from him as he was held in the tentacle, his body all limp. Harry fell himself ready to regurgitate his empty stomach, but he was unable to as the second machine seemed to have spotted him with his spotlights.
It bent over to study him more, Harry doing his best not to breathe and actually keep his body as limp as possible, hoping beyond hope that he could trick the Martian inside of this machine that he was in fact dead. However the Martian inside of this machine didn't seem to buy it for a second, reaching out with multiple tentacles for him. Harry knew that his days were now coming to an end as the tentacles reached for him, but before any one of them could touch him, the main machine that destroyed his home town gave out a massive blaring call. The two machines that had been with it stood immediately back up, looking upon the main machine before they too looked up into the sky. In the sky Harry could see a green light shoot across the sky, even though he hadn't seen the first Martian cylinder crash landed to Earth, he could only assume that this was the second one.
The main machine gave out a lower, deeper call and started to move as fast as it could towards the green light would have landed. It's support moved as quickly as they could through the trees to secure the second landing zone, leaving Harry behind and dumbfounded wonder at what had just happened. Be it by the impatience of the Martian inside the main war machine or that the hand of God had saved him from being killed like the man that had died earlier by Martian whims, he didn't know. But now he knew one thing, his path to London was free of any Martian threat for the moment.