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Pat re on. c om(slash)belleveela(delete spaces)

Harry Potter was strangely suited for the end of the world. Or, one could say, he was strangely adapted to this particular end of the world. The one where everything was covered in ice and snow that fell mercilessly from the sky all year round.

Before that happened, before the snow started to fall and the ice began to creep over everything in an unrelenting wave, he couldn't remember feeling particularly special. If anything, he had a distinct impression of being painfully average.

After the war, the problems with Gringotts were resolved by seizing his funds and declaring Harry persona non grata in the magical currency system. He ended up in the muggle world, where he had to make do without an education. He was constantly hounded by reporters, writers, and ministry representatives who sometimes demanded impossible things from him, like paying taxes for three seats in the Wizengamot. Of course, they didn't understand that he had no right to deal with goblin money. His only option was to escape. One day, he took everything valuable and the last of his savings given to him by Dudley and boarded a plane. He landed in the USA, where he found a job at a grocery store and worked his way up to become a shift manager.

Harry spent most nights playing video games with his non-magical friends, but on some weekends, he went camping and hunting. It was something he could use magic for, and he found that he was quite decent at it even without magic. The new law prohibited the use of magic by anyone in the presence of muggles, and monitoring extended to every wand on the European continent. Only ministry officials had certain rights, but everything was done to minimize detection with the still-developing muggle technology.

Sometimes he went camping alone, but more often than not, he went with his friends and the girls they managed to convince to join them for a few days to feel like tough guys and escape the city.

"Okay, yeah, and to get laid. I won't lie to myself," Harry thought. But when the snow started to fall, and the weather started to get stranger and stranger, and the shit started to hit the fan on a global scale, he began to learn that he did indeed have something a little more special about him.

He didn't panic.

He'd like to think it's because he's a born tough guy and excels under pressure, but that would be a lie. Or at least a bending of the truth. He means that he was damn scared, really.

But he thinks that as he watched the layers of civilization begin to peel away, as it became increasingly clear that the world was getting colder and wasn't going to stop anytime soon, he knew that if the worst came to pass, he could survive. He meant, as long as it didn't get to a new average of minus one hundred.

"Then we'd all be screwed," Harry thought.

But that didn't happen.

The new norm seemed, essentially, damn cold. Below zero. Definitely dangerous, but not if you knew what you were doing. And you were careful to stay away from hostile people or wild animals, and not get caught in a whiteout. And you didn't get too sick. Or run out of food. Or have a serious health condition. Magic didn't help, ever since the cold started appearing, it had been failing. Sometime in the days when he still kept tabs on the magical world, articles from the Daily Prophet reached him, frantically pointing out the decrease in magic strength all over the world. Now, his almost dead wand was barely able to summon a few sparks to light dry wood.

"Okay, so yeah, it was a bit tough to stay alive," Harry thought. "I guess this is what I'm strangely adapted to, this icy apocalypse." The Dursleys, Hogwarts, the war, life hadn't been kind to him, or rather, it stretched his endurance. He knew that if someone looked at his adventures from the outside, they would conclude that he couldn't be killed, but Harry just dismissed those thoughts with a soft smile, sometimes whispering "luck."

He still didn't know whether to feel good or bad about it. Harry had been forging his way down the same path for almost six days when he finally saw a building in front of him.

He felt like an omen for Harry Potter, a good one. Although he didn't believe in anything superstitious beyond chance and luck, he had to admit that this shitty new world was kind of leading him there. It had been a really crappy week. He had been kicked out of a small village built around a truck stop and a few barns around it. He liked it there, but some jerk had been nagging him since he arrived and he had had enough.

When that guy approached him to badmouth him while he was trying to have a damn drink after a long day of hunting and chopping wood, Harry warned him. Frankly. But he just took it as an invitation to finally jump him. Harry didn't know what the fuck got into him, but he was probably drunk. They tangled, then the guy's buddies stepped in, and after Harry knocked two of them out cold, it became clear they were thirsty for blood.

One of them nearly bashed Harry's head in. It was pure luck that he was too exhausted to toss his backpack into the room he rented. He grabbed it and reserved it when it became clear that the people watching him weren't going to get involved and help him, and he had already been beaten up. So with a black eye, a split lip, and more bruises than he cared to admit, Harry ran into the woods and didn't stop until he found a place to crash for the night. It was some old ruin with at least a bed and a really simple wood-burning stove, and a storm was coming.

He hoped the storm would cover his backside and keep them from coming after him, but starting any fires was dangerous as the smoke could be seen from many kilometers away. Without a fire, he would perish, so there was no question of competition. But they never showed up. He got up from his sleep and walked until he found this stupid road that apparently led to nowhere.

He was pretty sure he was somewhere in the Midwest, but had no idea where. It could be Missouri, but he might have wandered all the way to Kansas. That certainly explained the complete lack of anything.

Besides the occasional abandoned vehicle or empty shed over the last six days, there was almost no wildlife and very few fruits and vegetables growing everywhere that they began to scatter everywhere when it became clear that the snow would stay.

Harry was really missing his supplies.

Of course, Harry Potter can still screw up. The building could be completely empty. If it was... he wasn't sure what to do. Keep walking, he guessed.

He listened to the sound that had become almost meditative over the last year or so since he finally said "screw it" to what was now comically called "city life": his boots crunching in the snow.

The cold air burned his lungs, as always, and his heavy black boots crunched in the freshly fallen snow as he walked down the road whose name he did not know, between vast fields of ice and snow.

He was glad to see trees in the distance. Forests, as skeletal and bare as they were now, still portended wild game. Rabbits and wolves, deer and other things still congregated there.

The rough facsimile of natural order still played out with a kind of manic desperation among the frigid wastelands of the Earth. And he was there to take his place in it, armed with a shotgun, pistol, and sometimes a bow and arrows.

At this point, he was quite proficient in all three.

He had maybe one day's worth of food left in his backpack. Just a little bit of rabbit meat in a plastic container and an old candy bar. At least water wasn't a problem. There was always more damn snow to melt, provided he had the right gear, and he did.

He had to admit he was still pissed about the things he left in his room. His rifle was in there, so it was gone. And the ammunition. A few books. A lot of clothes. A bit of food. That's why he carried as much as he could, you never knew when you'd just have to get up and go.

As he walked down the road, being cautious about everything, he tried to get a sense of what he was looking at. But when he finally got close enough to get a decent look, he could tell from the things sticking out of the ground in the middle of the parking lot that he was looking at a small, middle-of-nowhere gas station.

It was good. Apart from the fact that this place seemed relatively unpopulated, even now, gas stations tended to have a lot of junk. Of course, that didn't have to mean anything. He always played the odds. And contrary to what some might believe, you're not entitled to a bit of luck, even if you've been getting your ass kicked for weeks. Nowhere was it written that you couldn't get your ass kicked for another few weeks.

Anything could be there. Bare shelves and empty cabinets, a cannibal camp looking for fresh human meat, damn, even a fucking bear could have made that place its home. The only way to find out was to go in and see what was what.

When Harry planned to do it, he was hit by the severity of the situation, as it sometimes happens. At this stage of the apocalypse, it happened less frequently, but it could still creep up on him.

He thought about how when he was younger, he would look at every building in his town. Houses, stores, restaurants, apartment complexes, warehouses, everything. He would look at every building and want to go inside and look around. He wasn't interested in breaking in, stealing, or even people's secrets. No, he just wanted to explore.

In exploration he was... not quite the thrill-seeker, maybe closer to satisfaction, or even simple gratification or joy. Now, with some exceptions, of course, if he saw a place, he could usually just walk in and poke around.

At this point, it was practically mandatory for his survival to take the time to thoroughly investigate every structure he encountered. After nearly six days of nearly nothing, he had exploratory blue balls.

He also had real blue balls, because he hadn't had any luck in this town, even though one of the women working in the bar was giving him the eye, he didn't have a chance to make a move. That night, he actually intended to hit her up and invite her over. And for the two weeks before that, he hadn't been with any woman.

Damn, when was the last time he got laid? Over three weeks ago. Yes, it was with a woman who was part of a small caravan he stumbled upon. They set up camp in some big house out in the boonies, and the only serious hunter among them apparently froze to death a week ago. So he traded his wares: he hunted and killed a deer and two rabbits, and even skinned them and prepared them for the group.

All they had to do was give him an honest share of the meat, and to sweeten the deal, one of them offered to fuck him. She was a hot blonde with a slim body, and he couldn't refuse.

It was sweet, but quick. He wanted more and was even willing to work for it, but apparently she didn't mind doing it as a quick, one-time thing, because her husband was waiting for her at the place they were heading to. So...yeah.

Potter still felt uneasy about the one thing. He didn't believe in karma bullshit, but... maybe he would earn something from what happened in this city. He certainly wouldn't want it to happen to his wife. Not that he ever had anything that could be called a serious life partner.

The gas station was close now, and as he approached, he saw two cars in the parking lot. One of them was an old green car with broken windows and no wheels. The other looked like a solidly built jeep of some kind. Damn, if he found a fucking car, a real one... It would invite new challenges in his life, but it would eliminate certain others.

He stood in front of the gas station, his hand resting on the pistol at his hip. He also felt the wand in its holster, in case he needed to surprise someone with it. Anything could be in there. He looked through the glass windows, one of which was boarded up halfway, and didn't see much in terms of life.

But that didn't mean much. People were good at hiding. Untouched windows always surprised him. It seemed that people derived so much satisfaction from breaking glass. He didn't know why, but he knew it was true. At first, he did it quite often, picking up a brick or something solid and just, fuck it, throwing it through a window.

The sound of it shattering was strangely satisfying.

He stopped after he realized, really realized, that he could be killing people, or at least making their lives more difficult. What if someone stumbled upon a building where he had broken windows during a blizzard in the middle of the night, looking for shelter, and froze to death because all the windows were broken?

He didn't know, but at some point, he stopped being destructive. He thought it might lead him down a path of worse, more violent tendencies. So far, it seemed like it hadn't.

Not that he couldn't be brutal if necessary.

He walked slowly towards the gas station. It was bright outside, the sun not too bright, so he could see through the windows. Watching for any movement, he checked the cars first. The smashed-up green one was clear, no one was shaking inside, tucked away in the back. The jeep was surprisingly in good shape.

Of course, it was heavily weathered, but the damage he saw seemed fairly superficial. He wondered what was really wrong with it. Although it was possible that the untouched jeep had been abandoned here for a year or more, it didn't seem likely. If it worked, or was easy to fix, it would be somewhere else by now.

Now, though, it was obvious that the jeep was leaning to one side, and Harry Potter noticed that the left front tire was slashed. It wouldn't be too difficult to fix, provided he found the right equipment. He looked inside through the windows, but they were too frosted over, so he tried the handles. The back doors on the driver's side were a bit sticky, but not locked.

He opened the car doors and looked into the middle seat. Some clothes were thrown on the back, but nothing else. He quickly glanced at the back, at the trunk space which was easily accessible from the middle seat, and saw a few suitcases.

The front seat was empty. He would have to look for the keys later and pray for luck. Time to check the gas station.

He pulled out his gun as he approached the door. Carefully, he pushed it, opening it. He expected that annoying ding! that all gas stations seemed to have, but there was nothing. Just the distant crackling of ice and occasional whisper of wind. The store was dead silent. He stood in the doorway, waiting, with the gun in his hand.

It was like entering a tomb, but without the damn anti-robbery shields, but with a fucking high chance of zombies. Half of the building was in his view. A long, two-sided shelf divided the main area from left to right, and was apparently cleaned. More shelves to the right, and a few coolers to the left. Also nicely cleaned. He could conduct a more thorough investigation later. For now, he just wanted to know if he was alone.

He took a step inside, closing the door for most of the way. The place was decently warm, at least because the sun had warmed it up above zero today. He carefully slid along the big shelf and was pleased to see that not only was no one hiding behind him, but a few grocery items were gathering dust.

He moved back towards the counter and slipped behind it. There was enough light under the counter to see what was under it, thanks to a pair of small fireflies in the ceiling. There was no one there either. He began to head towards the opposite end of the counter, towards the door that would let him into the cooler, but as he did, he checked a small corridor he found that led to the second half of the building, undoubtedly where the office or bathroom was.

He froze. There were boot prints leading from the back door, bringing in snow. They went down the corridor a bit and entered through the next door on the left. They were closed. He stood there, considering it. Okay, so he wasn't alone. Those were recent prints. Someone was almost certainly still here. What to do...

Harry Potter slowly walked down the corridor to the door, not standing in front of it, and tried the knob. It wasn't locked, so he turned it and pushed, opening it. It swung open slowly, began to retreat, and then stopped. Nothing happened.

He decided to try a reasonable approach. "I know someone's there," he said, maintaining a neutral voice. "I'd prefer not to have a fight right now, so I think you should come out to talk to me."

He waited. Nothing, although he could certainly hear someone's breathing now.

He sighed, increasingly frustrated. He had a lot of patience, but this was a tough week.

"Listen, can you just come out here? I don't want to hurt you. If I have to go in there to try and find you, and you come out at the wrong time or surprise me in some other way, you're liable to get shot, because I have a gun. We've all seen that movie. So...can we just talk? I'm not looking for trouble."

He waited and just when he had decided that he would enter anyway, because he couldn't just leave the situation alone, he heard a timid "Okay". It was a woman. She sounded scared and cold. He didn't blame her. Everyone was at this moment. She cleared her throat. "I'm coming out."

"Okay," he said, stepping back a few steps to give her some space. He heard hesitant, slow steps and held his pistol outside, but aimed at the floor. He waited. Eventually her shadow fell on the floor and she pulled the door behind her, stepping out into the corridor. She looked... lost.

She also looked very attractive. She was of medium height and weight, her skin was pale, and her blonde hair reached her shoulders. She looked at him with uneasy, blue eyes. She was wearing a heavy, brown coat, jeans, and boots. He didn't see any backpack straps on her, which was rare. Practically everyone had a backpack now. She reminded him of someone, but he abandoned the thought. Since the apocalypse, he preferred not to think about the past, it had saved him several times.

Her eyes dipped to his weapon and she tensed. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Daphne," she answered, her voice tense. "Daphne Greengrass...what are you going to do to me?"

"Nothing," he said, slowly lowering his gun. Movies are hit-or-miss about a lot of things, but they were right about how dangerous the post-apocalyptic environment could be to your sibling. He didn't think everyone, or even most people, were monsters.

This wasn't reality. No, the reality was that it was shockingly easy to become a monster in the right circumstances. He even remembered seeing some new school of thought before all this, that anger was a form of momentary madness. You know, if that was true, it would explain a lot. Harry Potter knew that Daphne had an extra layer of fear about running into someone like him out here in the middle of nowhere. He was of course bigger and stronger than her, and probably looked intimidating. Many people had told him so. As Harry said, he strangely fit into this new world. Unless Daphne had a knife or weapon on her, there was probably not much she could do if Harry were to attack her and try to force her to do things she didn't want to do.

Of course, Harry had no intention of doing that, but too many guys would, if they knew or even thought they could get away with it. He continued his attempt at a rational approach.

"My name is Harry Potter. I'm alone. Are you alone?" Harry asked.

Daphne hesitated, then sighed softly, her breath puffing out air. "Yes. I'm completely alone."

Harry considered it. She could be lying. This could be a trap. Some pretty brunette, scared and completely alone, pretending to be terrified and defenseless while her boyfriend or someone else snuck up behind him to smash his skull or put a bullet in his brain and steal his things. But Harry was good at sniffing out these situations, and this one had all the hallmarks of being genuine.

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked.

"I got lost," she muttered after a while.

Harry waited. She sighed again and looked down. He couldn't quite tell if she was embarrassed or ashamed. "I was with a group. We were traveling. I thought I saw something in the woods we were passing through, and stupidly went off on my own. I thought it was a rifle propped against a tree, which," she said, looking back at him almost defiantly, "would have been an amazing find."

She looked down again and huddled, rubbing her arms. "Wolves appeared. I panicked and ran. The group leader came back for me. The wolves got him instead of me. They killed him. The others drove off the wolves, but they were really pissed. And they didn't like me much to begin with. They told me to leave or they'd kill me. So I left. That was two days ago. I wandered until I got here. When I saw you walking up the road from behind, I panicked. I ran in here and hid. Then you came in," she muttered.

Harry thought about it. How did he miss her? She should have been pretty obvious... then again, he had the feeling the terrain behind the gas station sloped, so that might have done it. He still studied her.

Harry approached Daphne and asked, "So where does that leave us?" Daphne sighed and said, "I suppose you wouldn't be willing to help me?" "That depends on what you mean by 'help', I suppose. It's a pretty general word," replied Harry. Daphne studied him, and there was a change in her expression as she looked into his eyes. She seemed a little shrewd and calculating, but at the same time shy.

"Maybe we could make a deal," suggested Daphne. "What kind of deal?" asked Harry. Daphne leaned in and said, "You take care of me, provide me with food, keep me warm and safe, and ultimately bring me to civilization. In return, as long as we travel together, I'll be your... lover."

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Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are already on Pa tr eon
Pat re on. c om(slash)belleveela(delete spaces)