Chapter 10

Rubble laden streets lined the landscape as far as Harry's eyes could see. Ruins of a once bustling city sat empty and barren. Litter was strewn everywhere, and possibly worst of all, so were corpses. Bones more accurately, as the meat had long ago rotted away or been eaten by local wildlife.

The only sounds Harry could hear were that of animals. Birds sang happily as though everything were quite dandy, and for them maybe it was. Off in the distance a line of skyscrapers lay one leaned up against the other, as though they'd fallen like dominoes. Strange teardrop shaped vehicles Harry quickly figured were cars sat idled in the middle of the road. Some still had full skeletons in them.

As he made his way through the devastation his chest grew tighter. It became more apparent that whoever had done this had slaughtered without mercy. Scattered among the decay were smaller skeletons, children most likely.

The buildings were almost completely decimated. Furniture, computers, large screens- everything seemed broken. No sign of human life could be seen. And the plants! They were everywhere. Splotchy patches of grass grew over the streets and sidewalks, trees and flowers grew up through building frames, and vines and ivy sprawled over every surface available.

"HELLO?" Harry yelled out into the street. The birds stopped chirping for a moment but quickly resumed when the silence returned. A couple of small animals skittered away into the bushes as the young man walked by. "This can't be happening." Harry whispered to himself as he ran his shaking hands through his hair.

An idea struck. The young man quickly tried to recall the apparation coordinates for the Weasley's vacation spot in Egypt when they went back upon Ron and Harry's year-late graduation from Hogwarts. "One seventeen... no, one seventy? Ah!" As the numbers rushed back to him, he apparated away as fast as he could.

His mixup between Bill and Fluer's home and the Egyptian vacation spot became apparent when he apparated and saw the remains of the town. The place had been completely leveled and covered in rubble, much like London had. The only ruins were that of the half-standing Eiffel Tower far in the distance. Everything else, the buildings, the skyscrapers, everything had been destroyed, incinerated by the looks of it, long ago. He shivered as he recalled seeing pictures of nuclear aftermath years ago in primary school and made the connection on how similar it was. "No, no... Shit..." He muttered as he worked to recall the proper coordinates.

Wizarding Cairo was just as desolate and abandoned as Paris and London. At least here Harry found some still standing buildings and someone else. He approached a young girl and tried to speak with her, but aside from the language barrier she seemed more afraid of him than anything. As they ran off, Harry looked around for anything that might help.

He needed a fast way of travel to survey the landscape, and he needed it fast. Luckily for him, among the ruins there happened to be a broom shop- the symbol on the door was most definitely a broom. Unluckily for him, when he went inside to check he found the place to be empty without a single broom in sight. "Books." He whispered. Snape had been mentioning books a bit lately, maybe he could find a book on proper broom making.

The young man scoured the building, checked behind the smashed counters, and sifted through the rubble. He came to a locked door in the back, but it looked so rickety it may as well have been wide open. He kicked a hole through the rotted wood and pulled back the planks that made up the door. With a lumos from the tip of his wand to guide his sight, Harry looked around the dark room. Finally a break! He found a small stack of five books all with that same broom symbol on them, though none of them appeared to be in English. He took them anyway and tucked them under his arm before he went back out to the street.

There he was met with four people, one of them the girl he'd scared earlier, and the other three all holding knives pointed at the boy. They shouted something at him but Harry didn't understand what they were saying and he backed into a wall. "S-Sorry I speak English." He tried.

One of the knife wielding people cocked their head to the side and narrowed their eyes at the young man. "What do you want from us?" He demanded in a gravely thick voice as he shoved the knife forward a few inches to illustrate that he meant business.

Harry swallowed thickly and gripped tight to his wand behind his back. "Information." Harry said as he stood up a bit straighter. When it became apparent that the man was waiting on him to elaborate, he cleared his throat. "I want to know what happened to- well to everything. Everything's in shambles, it's all destroyed. I want to know why."

A sneer formed on the man's lips and he came close to Harry and pointed the knife at his throat. "Don't play games. You are not fooling anyone- we know you came for our food. Tell your clan the next time they send someone, that person dies." He stabbed the knife into the wooden door frame behind Harry. "Now LEAVE, unless you want to die too."

The girl let out a sneeze and a nearby patch of grass caught fire. One of the other men quickly went to put it out while the others watched Harry closely. The young man nodded and apologized then quickly apparated back to Hogwarts.

When he came back to the Great Hall, the spells flying from the makeshift wands stopped, and Harry dropped the books and fell to his knees. "It's all gone..." He said as he clutched his stomach and felt himself lurch. "Everything- London, Paris, Cairo, wizarding and muggle... it's all gone." His pleading eyes looked up to Snape as his stomach rumbled loudly. "You were right Snape, this isn't horror... it's post-apocalyptic." The young man retched and vomited on the floor, much to the disgust of most of the people there.