"What if the zombies attack Hedwig?" Harry asked.
Snape threw a disgusted look at Harry over his shoulder. "Do not be so dense. She can fly out of their reach."
Harry made a face at him as soon as he turned around.
They had found a small stream and were now following it rather than the country lane, as the bed and breakfast owner had told them it led to a nearby village. Snape seemed to be attempting to keep away from any populated areas. Now imagining the zombie trap that a place like London must be after Snape's tirade yesterday, he understood why. He was tempted to ask him what the plan was, but the fierce scowl on his professor's face was enough to keep him quiet for now.
They had a few brief skirmishes, but the area was relatively devoid of zombies. (Harry didn't care what Snape said, they were zombies.) His feet were killing him, but he knew better than to give Snape the satisfaction of hearing him complain.
"If someone with magic gets infected, can the zombie do magic?" Harry asked.
Snape sighed. "I do not know anything about these creatures."
"They're not intelligent though, right?" A sudden doubt plagued him. "Or curable, or anything like that? 'Cause if they are, we just murdered a bunch of people."
To his credit, the man didn't even hesitate. "No."
"But you just said you don't know anything about them," Harry argued.
Snape stopped and looked at him. "Having watched them trip over rocks and bash their own heads in, I'm not worried about sentience." He tilted his head slightly, capturing Harry with an intense look. "We cannot afford to get caught up about if we can cure them or not. Hesitate in battle, and you will die."
A chill passed over Harry.
They stopped half an hour later in the shelter of a copse of scraggly trees. Snape had taken two water bottles from the man for their use, and handed one to Harry now.
"What happens when we run out of water?"
"We use a charm and spell some more."
"I thought that Gamps Law thing said you can't make food out of nothing."
"Food, Potter. Water is an inorganic molecule, and thus does not apply." He sneered, as if Harry should have somehow known about the chemistry of water. "Did you not learn Aguamenti in your first year? Even you should remember learning such a basic life skill."
"Well, I didn't know if it was drinkable or whatever," Harry said defensively.
"Water is water! Regardless, did you honestly think eleven year olds are capable of conjuration from thin air? That spell merely changes the state of matter of the evaporated molecules already in the atmosphere back to a liquid form. Do you have to practice at being this dense, or is it just your natural state?"
Harry sniffed and drank in contemptuous silence.
Snape repeated the duplication process on their food, and they ate quickly. After finishing his scone, Harry stood.
"Where are you going?"
"I have to use the loo."
Snape waved him off. Harry resisted a sarcastic bow and wandered further into the trees.
He had just finished his business when the sound of heavy footfalls in the brush made him whirl around. He gave a shout of surprise, falling backwards as he scrambled for his wand, but it was too late. The zombie was too close, and he didn't have enough time to get a spell between them before–
The zombie gave a horrible, gurgling cry and toppled forward, nearly landing on top of him. Harry looked up to see Snape standing there, wand in hand.
"Can't you survive five minutes alone?" He asked irritably, kicking the zombie's limp foot.
Harry was too busy trying to calm his racing heart to respond at first. He scrambled to his feet, away from the dead zombie. "I– that– it just–"
"We need to get moving." Snape pointed up at a hole in the canopy above them, showing dark clouds rolling in. Harry, casting one last look at the corpse on the ground over his shoulder, followed him out of the trees.
The rain began shortly thereafter. Harry and Snape charmed the rain off, but the ground still became muddy and hard to walk through. Stalking along beside him, sludge tangling up his robes, Snape's irritable mood rapidly descended into a towering temper. Harry walked out of arm's reach just in case.
Vague, shadowy figures could be seen moving in the darkness. Both wizards kept a constant hold of their wands, on high alert for any sign of immediate danger.
Another two hours of walking brought them past a moderately sized hamlet. Without any sort of communication, both drew to a halt on a short hill several hundred metres back and stared at it through the downpour.
Many of the buildings showed lit windows, but to Harry's dismay, one after the other began winking out. A window here, a porch light there, tiny patches of light in the gloom abruptly extinguished.
He glanced at Snape to see his reaction to this. The man's face looked grimmer than he had ever seen it. Harry turned back to the dying town.
"They don't stand a chance, do they?" Harry asked seriously.
The response was so quiet, and the storm so loud, that at first he wasn't sure he'd heard it right. "Few do."
Unexpected grief choked the back of his throat as a whole building went dark at once.
"We have to do something!"
"And what do you suggest we do?" Snape caught Harry's gaze, eyes flinty and intense. "Because the only real options are to walk away, or die."
"That's shit." Harry's eyes searched for any signs of life fighting back in the hamlet, any lights turning on instead of off. He couldn't find any. "That's a shit choice."
"Welcome to the real world, Potter."
Watching people die was proving an effective check to his temper. He thought of the prophecy, and how it was kill-or-be-killed. This wasn't the first time he'd been faced with an impossible decision. "I'm not sure it's my first time through."
Snape contemplated him. "No," he finally mused, as if to himself. "Perhaps not."
They stood there, watching, last sentinels and witnesses to the hamlet's fall. It was growing late, and they set up camp on the hill as the rain began to peter out. Snape muttered spell after spell, protective wards and alarm spells and dozens of other things Harry had never even heard of. Feeling somewhat useless, Harry kept his eyes trained on the single remaining light in the hamlet.
It was on someone's roof. He didn't know if the building had a generator, if the occupants had taken refuge up there in hopes that the zombies wouldn't be able to reach them. Maybe it was too late, and they already had. Maybe it was a distraction, something shiny to draw the crawlers' attention away while they snuck out a back entrance.
Maybe they were still alive.
Maybe they weren't.
He shivered and wrapped his invisibility cloak around his shoulders. It was the only thing he had that could keep him warm. The meagre possessions he'd thought to bring had been wrapped inside of it, hanging off of his Firebolt (he didn't care what Snape thought of him bringing his broom, there was no way he was leaving it with the Dursleys).
A toothbrush and toothpaste, shoved in a little makeup baggie he'd nicked from his aunt. His money pouch, filled with a handful of galleons and some spare sickles and knuts. His DA coin, which he now shoved in his pocket. A ratty jacket of Dudley's, as well as a couple other sets of clothes. He figured now that as long as he could use magic, freshening charms would be good enough, and had ceased to worry about that. It was only Snape he saw every day anyway, and Harry felt completely justified in not caring about what that greasy head thought about his hygiene. There was a comb as well, although he wondered now that he had bothered at all. Some owl treats for Hedwig. Luckily, she would be able to hunt for herself, especially while they were walking through the countryside like this.
There were more things he wished he'd brought, or had room to do so. He had wanted, ever so desperately, to bring the photo album with his parents' pictures. There had been some of Sirius in there, too…
"It has gone," Snape said.
Harry looked up from his inventory, eyes automatically searching for that one lit rooftop.
It had gone dark.
Suddenly, Harry wanted to do nothing more than curl up in his cloak and fall into a few hours of oblivion. Instead, he forced himself to choke down some of the food Snape handed him. It tasted like preservation charms and ash in his mouth.
They didn't talk much that evening. Not that they would have, otherwise; Snape was a taciturn man at the best of times, and these were certainly far from that.
Harry got to sleep first. Despite the cold, soggy ground, he quickly drifted off.
His dreams were disjointed and troubling. It seemed to him that his friends were calling his name, but he couldn't see them through the mist. He searched and searched, but when he saw a pair of silhouettes and ran to them, they were zombies.
He was just starting to slip into a deeper part of his sleep cycle, away from the odd dreams, when Snape shook him awake. He opened his eyes blearily and rolled over.
"Wassit?" he mumbled.
"Your watch. Get up."
Harry sat up with a groan, then almost leapt out of his skin when he saw a zombie standing a mere few feet away. He raised his wand, but Snape shoved his arm back down.
"It can not see us," he hissed. "The wards include a strong notice-me-not charm."
"But didn't you say that they can destroy wards?" Harry asked dubiously, adrenaline still coursing through his system.
"Wards, if they try to break through them. Not charms."
"Then why bother with the wards?"
"Why do you ask so many damn questions?" Snape snapped, rolling up in his robe and laying down facing away from Harry. "There are more enemies than these ritual creatures, Potter."
"Zombies," he corrected, feeling petulant. Snape pretended to be asleep so he didn't have to respond. Harry knew better.
If he had been worried about staying awake the whole time, he wasn't now. Having a bloodthirsty creature wandering so close made him jumpy. He sat cross-legged, wand resting in his hand on his right knee.
He watched as the zombie seemed to fall asleep standing up. It swayed there for about fifteen minutes before, without any obvious reason, staggering away again. By the time the morning sun had risen high enough to start burning away the mist, Snape was stirring.
They dismantled the camp and continued on their journey. They didn't eat right away, waiting until they had passed the hamlet. Snape told him, "Hungry keeps you alert. Hungry keeps you alive."
Harry wasn't to find out that morning whether or not hungry keeps you alive. He didn't have much of an appetite after the events of the night before. He could still see, in his mind's eye, the lights slowly turning off one by one in the small town. He wondered if there were any survivors cowering in corners, if they would be able to get out of the area before they were turned.
Day three wasn't proving any better than one or two. Harry trudged silent along besides Snape.
Casual conversation would not be welcome, and he didn't really desire it anyways. He couldn't bring himself to regret being found by his surly potions professor, however. He knew that with him, Harry would have a greater chance of survival than with someone like Professor Sprout. Snape was a fighter. He'd known that, at least subconsciously, since his very first class first year with the man. Snape was always putting up a fight, whether it was a verbal one against the son of his most hated school rival or a battle of wits against Voldemort himself as he fought to retain his position as Dumbledore's spy. The man was a quick draw and had excellent reflexes. Harry would eat the sorting hat before believing that Snape wouldn't be a nasty opponent to face in a duel.
At the same time, this didn't mean Harry liked him. And Snape, he suspected, didn't want to be liked.
They took more rests that day than they had before. Harry caught Snape sniffling into his sleeve once or twice and eyed him suspiciously. If Snape got sick, Harry had absolutely no idea what he'd do. There was no hospital wing out here. There weren't even muggle doctor offices. They couldn't tell which buildings were inhabited by zombies and which housed frightened, barricaded humans. He guessed the only reason they had risked the bed and breakfast was because Snape had needed to recover from magical exhaustion and didn't trust Harry to keep them alive on his own.
He kept score in his head of all the zombies he killed. Snape advised him during one of his rare moments of speech during the day to use only simple spells. "Do not waste magical power with flashy hexes and exhausting incantations. Why bother with a bombarda against a single zombie that could just as easily be taken out with a simple cutting curse to the neck?"
This was, Harry had to admit, good advice, especially considering the fact that they battled zombies on and off throughout the day. Four hours of sleep hardly felt sufficient to re-energize either of them after a long day of walking and defending themselves. He wondered why Snape felt the need to set such a strenuous pace. Surely it would be wiser to take more rest so they wouldn't exhaust themselves?
He found that a surprisingly large part of the day was enclosed in monotony. For every zombie they killed, there was half an hour of uninspired landscape to walk through. He didn't know if this was because most people were still safe, or because the area they were passing through was just less densely populated. Either way, the boredom started to get to him.
Their pace continued to slow as both began to flag, Harry weakened after a few weeks at the Dursleys' careless hands and Snape… well, truthfully, Harry didn't know what was wrong with Snape. It was hard to tell that the man was tired; his posture remained tall, his face focused, his determination unwavering. But as the day went on, Harry started to notice that his movements were somewhat stiff and forced.
"Are you okay?" he tentatively asked as they settled in for the night, actually beginning to worry that his professor was getting sick.
"Of course I am alright, you incompetent little cretin," came the expected scathing reply. "And do not bother asking after my welfare as if it matters to you."
Since Snape was the only way Harry could see himself getting to Hogwarts alive, he privately thought that Snape's welfare mattered quite a bit to him. Annoyed at the spiteful response, he ignored the voice of reason in his head (it sounded like Hermione) and said, "My bad, sir. I just wanted to know if you had an excuse to be so irritable, or if it was just your normal charming personality."
Snape whipped around and grabbed Harry's collar so fast the boy wondered that his clothes hadn't caught on fire from the speed of it. He dragged Harry's face so close to his own that he could count every scraggly tooth in his professor's scowling mouth. The first thing his shocked brain could notice was how extremely pale he looked.
"Do not presume," Snape hissed, "to take such liberties with me. Let me be very clear: there is nothing I would love better than to part ways with your regrettable company. Due to circumstances beyond my control and certainly yours, I must abandon any hope of researching a way to end this disaster and instead babysit a surly teenage hero."
"Research a way– why aren't we doing that first? That sounds important!"
"Because I do not want to endure the headache I would get from being yelled at for allowing our boy savior to turn into a mindless zombie. I will drop you off at school to cause trouble there, then turn around for a no doubt fruitless effort afterwards. I do not trust your abilities to keep either yourself or me safe."
Harry stared at him, wide eyed, for a long beat of silence. Then–
"So you admit they're zombies?"
Snape gave a wordless snarl of rage and shoved Harry away, finally releasing his collar.
The rest of the evening was spent in silence.
Snape gestured for Harry to sleep, obviously intending to take the first watch. Harry didn't argue, exhausted enough that he fell into a heavy sleep immediately.
He woke the next morning with a lazy stretch, wincing when a crick in his neck twinged. He rubbed it and blearily opened his eyes.
Harry snapped up to a seated position, this time ignoring the pain in his back (courtesy of his night on the ground) as he looked around. It was mid or late morning, and Snape had never woken him for his watch. He must have slept a good ten hours at least. At least there were no zombies wandering around nearby or anything.
He turned around to look at Snape, seeing his form lying on its side in the grass several feet away. Smirking as he realised his professor must have drifted off during his watch, Harry crawled over and nudged him in the ribs.
"Professor?" he called softly. There was no response.
Frowning now, Harry risked Snape's wrath and tugged him onto his back so he could look at the man's face. It was pale and soaked with sweat. He still didn't wake up.
"Fuck," Harry whispered.