Dust
By GeeksGeeks
A/N. Everything Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling and Warner Brothers Studios. Just throwing sand in the playpen.
As a heads up, this will be very AU; members, events, and some themes will be from canon, but their interaction and growth will leave that route very quickly. More than likely there will be some Fanon tropes you'll find in the story, as it seems at this point most angles have been addressed, so if anything is glaring, let me know and I'll see if I can come up with a new twist. This chapter's VERY short; I pretty much just wanted to get the idea down and flesh out the premise; I try to make my chapters substantial, so there'll be plenty of meat on the bones as we move along, usually around the 6-7,000 word mark.
One last note; this is my first fic, as "A Roaring Wind" was pretty much abandoned, so genuinely let me know what you think. However, flames will be ignored, because obviously.
I'm also doing this without a beta, so if the flow feels odd, let me know. REVIEWS ARE GOLD!
Chapel One
Dust
In the desecrated husk of a building, a man in tattered clothes and a blood-stained pant leg stumbled through the blown-out door.
Holding tight to the splintered frame for support, with a lurch he forced himself down the foyer, palming the wall to steady himself as he moved; his hand leaving swiped prints in the accumulated grime as he shuffled towards the end of the hall, saying as if drunk. This particular building was like all others around it in the area, if not the country- beaten down, weathered, rotting, and lifeless- no one had lived within its walls for decades, and the war had taken its toll on the decrepit structure long before the elements eroded the walls.
Coming to the main landing he took as brief of a hazy glance around as he dared, noting the stairs leading off to the left; despite his weakness, it wouldn't do to grab any rest on the lower level as the gruesome creatures that roamed the nighttime hours would locate a straggler quite easily once evening landed, as the door to the building itself had been non-existent. He screwed up what remained of his strength, and with a mighty push from the wall staggered his way the last few feet towards the stairs.
With a Herculean effort, he raised his foot and placed it gingerly on the stair- what remained of his luck would immediately disappear if he treaded carelessly and had a stair drop out, snapping a leg in the process. That would, of course, be par for the course he thought, chuckling mirthlessly; his "luck," as he called it seemed a very peculiar mistress. On the one hand, the war that had ravaged the globe for the past 20-ish years, the bioweapons that the Muggles created to combat the 'wizard threat,' and the vicious monsters that grew from that tragedy had killed everyone. Everyone. He wasn't sure as to the exact number of people still living, but there were no longer the odd pockets of survivors to be found in his travels, which had covered the globe extensively. The first handful of years after the war had unofficially ended, as there were too few people to fight it regardless of side, groups of people struggling for necessities could still be contacted and bartered with; however, the last six years, almost the 20th anniversary of the first shots fired, not even the roving bandits that seemed cockroachesque in their will to live could be found. Whether that was due to the lack of resources, or the deformed monstrosities that roamed the barren landscape, he did not know. However, much as his hated moniker had been in his youth, he alone seemed to keep surviving through sheer stubbornness.
Now, twenty plus years after the first shots were fired, the governments of the world were gone, magical and muggle alike. The majority, if not totality, of people were gone. There was just one man, shaking with the strain of climbing the stairs. One leaden step after another, until he stepped a little more heavily in his fatigue than he meant to, putting too much pressure on the old wound on his leg eliciting a white-hot jolt of pain. Giving out an instinctual yelp in response, he yanked his leg up to reduce the pressure on the wound, losing his balance and tipping backwards down the stairs.
Landing heavily on his left arm after the six-stair fall, he let out a weary groan of pain. Dust, a veritable screen of dirt, debris, and viscera floated around him like a cloud. With a grunt he moved to pull his arm out from under him; the lightning fast stab of pain that he knew well told him that it was broken beyond simple repair and resetting. Rolling himself onto his back, he chocked back a sob as he shoved himself upright gasping and heaving for air as he did so, scooting backwards until he hit a wall and blessedly rested there for a moment. His heart beat sluggishly from the sepsis his untreated leg wound had induced, the fever he had pushed through for the past couple of weeks burned through him, and his arm ached as if he was being electrocuted. None of this mattered to him, however, as much as the thundering growl he heard circling the house. Much to low for a human voice.
He scooted further down the wall, trying to leave as little of a dust trail as possible. Spying a small closet underneath the stair set that he had just fallen down, and subsequently garnered the attention of the horror prowling towards the door in doing so, he ambled as quickly and quietly as his broken body would allow him to until he reached the threshold of the closet. With a whimper, he reached out and tugged himself inside, almost crying with relief that the closet had a bolt and latch that still seemed functional.
Shutting the door and gathering himself in the corner, he reached to the holster at the small of his back and removed his pistol, the only thing he had left to remind him of the magic he missed immeasurably, as he had done away with his useless wand years ago- the runes carved into the metal for the magazine to never run out, to never need cleaning, and for the somewhat demure pistol to do much the same damage as a typical shotgun barely gleamed in the light. He knew what this meant, as the runes and pistol's enchantments were charmed to be permanent- Magic itself was dying, if not truly dead. He chuckled dryly again as he readied it for use, either to do some damage to the prowling creature or to not give it the satisfaction of it ending him, noting his eyes getting moist at the thought.
His smile danced on his lips at the brief memories of a happier time that flitted through his fevered head, even as his eyes drooped and his breathing became shallow. He took a last rattling breath as the foul bestial groan moved closer, but in the end it mattered none: Harry Potter, The Boy-Who-Lived, The Man-Who-Conquered, died not from a Dark Lord's spell or of old age in his bed but from a simple cut on his leg, in a cupboard under the stairs.