Harry was almost disappointed that Snape didn't wake up and criticise him for swearing. Just in case it could still work, Harry repeated the exercise. Multiple times.

It might have made him feel very slightly better, but obviously hadn't done anything to fix the situation. He jumped to his feet and began pacing, looking around fruitlessly as if Dumbledore would step through the field behind them with a kind smile and a perfect solution to Harry's problem.

Which one? Harry asked himself as he sat back down at Snape's side, staring down in consternation at his professor. So much was wrong now.

A glint in the grass caught his eye. An empty glass bottle lay there, not far from Snape's hand. Harry picked it up and sniffed it. Pepper-Up. Obviously it didn't work. So Snape didn't have a cold, then. The flu? Were there other magical diseases he didn't know about?

He side-eyed his professor. There was one magical disease he knew about. He'd been fighting off its victims for three days now.

Surely not. It was probably just a fever or something. The man had been… wherever he was before finding Harry, he hadn't said; fought so much he had drained his magical core; and then walked and slept in the rain for hours without fully letting himself recover from magical exhaustion. After all of that, it was no surprise that he fell ill.

Snape had said something about not wanting to be yelled at for letting Harry die. No one would blame Harry if his professor died; they wouldn't have expected him to be able to save an older, more experienced wizard. If he ever made it to Hogwarts and told them what had happened, they would all make sympathetic noises about what he'd endured. No, no one else would blame him if Snape didn't make it. Harry would blame himself.

"Why'd you have to go and be human now?" Harry hissed at the unconscious man, setting the empty bottle back down. He tried once more to wake Snape up, and when it didn't work, suppressed a scream of frustration.

What am I gonna do? He was fairly certain they were supposed to turn north at some point, once they'd gotten around London. If only Snape had actually given Harry's intelligence enough credit to bother explaining his plan. Not that we could move anyway. He can't walk like this.

Wait a minute. What was he doing? Harry was more than used to figuring things out on his own. Was he actually standing around wishing Snape could give him orders? Man up, Potter! All he had to do was make a plan.

If only Hedwig were here. He liked to use her as a sounding board sometimes, talking aloud while he thought. She would always watch him and occasionally hoot as if she were actually listening.

Hedwig! They'd sent her off a couple of days ago with a letter to Dumbledore. She should be back any day now, with at least a letter of instructions or maybe even more. Perhaps the headmaster himself would come for them!

All he had to do was keep himself and his sick (not turning, Snape was alright, he had to be) professor alive until Hedwig got back with Dumbledore's response to Snape's missive.

Reluctantly, he searched Snape's robes for the pouch with their food in it. He found it and quickly retreated, settling cross-legged in the grass a few feet away. Opening the bag, he peeked inside and saw a couple of croissants and their waterskins. He duplicated the croissants and drank some water, wondering how or if he should try to get Snape to eat breakfast. Can't eat anything until he wakes up. I'll leave him alone for now.

Leaving the bag on the ground next to Snape, Harry scouted out the area around them. He was careful not to stray out of sight from where their camp was, telling himself he was making sure there was no danger lurking nearby. Really, he was just bored.

When he finally returned to where Snape lay prone on the grass, he saw that the professor was now shifting slightly and muttering, brow deeply furrowed as if in discomfort or distress. Was there something he could do to make it better?

He searched Snape's robes again, this time fruitlessly seeking some more potions. Maybe a fever reducer, or dreamless sleep. Didn't the potions master have more on him than a simple Pepper-Up?

He only found one other bottle, a tiny vial full of a deep red liquid. Blood, 'cause he's a vampire? Harry wondered with a smirk before turning it and seeing the words "Anti-Cruciatus" on a label. The amusement quickly fell from his face.

He returned the vial to its place in a padded pocket along Snape's ribcage. As he had looked through his robes, Harry had realised that while they were still black, these were not the clothes he usually saw his professor in. It was hard to place them without the skull mask, but…

"I hope Hedwig gets back soon," Harry whispered, moving to sit with his back to a tree and his arms wrapped around his knees. He tried not to care about what Snape was wearing, tried to look anywhere else.

When the sun had risen to high noon, Harry took his lunch. Once he'd finished eating, he stretched out on the grass and stared up at the sky.

How long could he expect it to take to get a reply? This was day four. They'd sent her off on day two. When he wrote to Ron about something urgent during the summer, she was usually back in less than a day. Hogwarts was much further away from here than Ottery St. Catchpole was from Surrey. Maybe a day to get there, a day to get back? She might have needed some time to rest. Give her an extra day for that… she should be here by tomorrow.

He had no right to be this bored during the zombie apocalypse. His very life was constantly at stake (nothing new there, though, he supposed), and here he was wishing something interesting would happen.

Just to pass the time, he sang quietly to himself. "Underneath these stairs I hear the sneers and feel the glares of my cousin, my–"

"Cease that infernal racket," came a groggy, weak voice.

"Professor?" Harry scrambled to his feet, hovering over the now-awake but extremely pale man.

"What time is it?"

"Early afternoon, I think."

Snape gave him a weak glare. Harry got the hint and cast a Tempus. "Half one," he said, even though he knew Snape could see the spell for himself.

"Why didn't you wake me? We need to move," he groused, trying to sit up.

Harry watched him struggle upward doubtfully. "I did. You weren't reacting." The man had just slept for fourteen hours, did he really think he was just going to get up and walk to Scotland? Harry would be surprised if he made it to his feet.

Sure enough, Snape only made it to a roughly kneeling position before his face drained of what little blood it had remaining and he collapsed back.

"Perhaps– a day of rest," he gasped, struggling to catch a full breath. Harry took a step forward instinctively, wanting to help but not sure how. Snape gave him a dark glare through the strands of lanky hair that had fallen in front of his face as he panted.

Harry backed up a couple paces, hands in the air to show he had no secretive plots of actually helping the stubborn fool. Not that I would have acted any differently, if I were him, he mused as Snape settled his back against a tree with great dignity (and great difficulty). Both of them had a lot of pride, and very little willingness to look weak in front of the other.

Snape managed to eat something small and keep it down despite the nauseous look that it gave him afterwards. Still, Harry was heartened by this. Wanting to distract them both, he started rambling aloud.

"Nothing happened while you were… out, by the way. No zombies or anything. Pretty quiet. Pretty boring, actually. I–"

"Aw, was poor Prince Potter not stimulated enough in his little enclosure? However did you survive the monotony?"

Harry scowled and decided he didn't have enough goodwill left in him to try to distract Snape amidst a barrage of insults. Let the man wallow in his discomfort alone. Without a word, he shoved his wand in his back pocket and started walking away.

"Where are you going?" Snape yelled hoarsely after him.

"To prowl my enclosure," Harry called back through gritted teeth.

He wandered in the same way he had before, not straying too far but walking in a vague circle around their camp. He went a little farther out this time, since Snape was awake and the last thing he wanted to do was keep him in sight. Harry remained within earshot and killed the time by practicing how quietly he could move through the undergrowth.

Some time had passed since he left, and he was surprised that Snape had never yelled for him to come back. His attention was on his feet, trying to carefully avoid stepping on any dry twigs or leaves, when his straining ears (listening for Snape's call) caught the sound of something else. Head snapping up, he saw a zombie approaching mere feet away.

For the first time, he wondered just how far the wards and notice-me-not charms reached. Frantically, he tried to attune to his surroundings and feel for it. His relief was almost overwhelming when he sensed the edge of Snape's web of spellwork inches in front of him, magically suspended between him and the zombie.

It stumbled to a halt almost at the edge of the notice-me-not charm. If it moved any closer, it would feel the spell's effect and be deterred away. For now, though, it seemed to stare right at him, although Harry doubted if it could really see anything at all in the way it once had.

He could have reached out and touched it. Instead, he simply stared at its face. Obvious signs, like the negligent body posture and oozing wounds, marked it as a zombie. Other traits were less obvious but somehow more telling. It was hard to define, really. Maybe it was in the vacant expression, the lifeless eyes, or the impossible pallor of its face, that a lack of real humanity was evident.

"Who were you?" Harry whispered.

Its head cocked to the side, attention snapping undeniably to him.

He stepped back quickly, wand raised and levelled at the zombie in the next moment. How could it see him? It shouldn't be able to notice him past the charm.

It never finished its first lurching step towards him; Harry sent a blasting curse its way so fast that he barely managed to get the word out of his mouth. At such point-blank range, the zombie was practically decimated. He stepped hastily back again, this time raising his arms in an automatic shield against the spraying biomass. Ignoring the warning he'd been told that it was considered too harsh for frequent use on skin, Harry cast several scourgifys on himself. Raw skin was better than the risk of infection. Heart racing, he checked himself over once.

That should have been impossible. It should never have been able to sense him there. Harry reached out again for the notice-me-not charm and wards, only to realise that they were no longer there.

Snape!

"Can't you survive five minutes alone?" he muttered to himself as he ran back to their camp.

Snape had fallen back to unconsciousness, tossing and turning on the grass. A sheen of sweat shone on his face. Harry had heard that, when a wizard died, any active spells they had cast would dissolve. Hermione had explained it like this: "if someone was placed under a petrificus totalus in a battle, and then the caster was killed by someone else, the body-bind would be released and the first person free to move again." He didn't think that was what had happened this time, and yet… Harry double-checked just to make sure he wasn't crazy, but Snape was definitely still alive.

Maybe his condition had deteriorated enough that his magical core let go of the wards so it could focus on trying to make him better. Harry had spent enough time in the hospital wing over the years to pick up on the sorts of things Madame Pomfrey would say to explain wizards' often strange medical phenomena.

"Professor?" he asked urgently, shaking Snape's shoulder, not expecting any sort of reaction.

Sure enough, Snape only continued his restless muttering. Maybe it was more than restless: there was a sense of delirium about him that unsettled Harry.

He stood, wand still in hand, and turned to scan their surroundings. There weren't any other zombies too obviously nearby, but that could change at any minute. He didn't know how to cast any of the wards or protective spells that Snape had besides a muggle repelling charm that was next to useless in this scenario. The D.A. had focused mostly on offensive spells and some basic shielding charms that could be useful in battle. Obviously Umbridge had made D.A.D.A. worse than useless.

He wished Hermione was here. She would know all of those charms. Honestly, Harry, if you bothered to read and study more often, you would know them too. She would say something like that if she was here.

But Hermione wasn't here, and neither was Ron. It was just Harry and a sick, definitely (hopefully) not dying Snape.

He had a flash of inspiration then, thinking about Hermione and the D.A. in the middle of a lonely little corner of a dying world. Harry pulled out his D.A. coin from the pocket where he always kept it and turned it over in his hands.

The message there still remained as the summons they had made to rescue Sirius from the Ministry. He ignored the pang of grief that thought gave him and pressed the tip of his wand to the coin, casting the spell that would change it.

There was limited space on the fake galleon's rim. He simply wrote out the only thing that really mattered:

ALIVE

He gave it a minute, and sure enough–

WHO? HRMNIE

Grinning in relief, although not a bit surprised, he responded.

HARRY

Not thirty seconds later came an ecstatic GOOD. Hermione let the message sit for a minute, then changed it again. ALL GOOD?

There wasn't an immediate response, and his heart began to sink, only to be lifted up again with relief when the coin next burned.

WEASLEYS GOOD

Harry let out a shout of joy before clamping a hand over his mouth, glancing around furtively and hoping it hadn't attracted any unwanted attention.

NEVILLE GOOD

ERNIE GOOD

DEAN GOOD

PATILS GOOD

TERRY GOOD

KATIE GOOD

And then… it stopped.

That was more than he'd dared to hope, sure, but he couldn't help mentally listing all of the names that hadn't appeared. Lee Jordan, Lavender Brown, Michael Corner, Cho Chang, the Creevy brothers… little Luna, who had followed him to the Ministry and survived Death Eaters (she had to have survived the zombies) (she couldn't be dead) (none of them could be).

And if they are? What happens then?

He couldn't give up hope. Anything could have happened. He knew many of the members simply stopped checking or keeping their D.A. coins on them after the club was disbanded by Umbridge. Maybe they had been forced to flee, just like Harry had (and he was still alive, wasn't he?) and had only taken the bare essentials. They could be sleeping, or busy doing something else, or maybe even fighting for their lives at that very moment. No response didn't mean no life.

Eventually, when it was clear that no more confirmations would come, the coin changed one final time.

BE SAFE

He didn't know who sent that one. Maybe it was one of the Weasleys. It didn't really matter, did it?

Smiling, but unable to ignore the vacuum that so many people's silence had left in his chest, Harry settled against a tree trunk and turned the coin over in his hands a few times before tucking it back into his pocket. Safe. Be safe.

The sounds of Snape's muttering grated on his ears. When he couldn't stand it any longer, he soaked one of his spare shirts with a charm and started mopping his sick professor's forehead. His nose wrinkled at the proximity, but since it seemed to ease the man's suffering, he didn't stop.

If Ron could see me now. He shook his head.

The first zombie didn't come for them until the daylight was half faded from the sky. Harry rose to his feet with determination, stepping in front of the senseless Snape and into a wide dueller's stance.

He waited until it was close enough that his simple cutting spell to the neck didn't require too much power to work. It toppled sideways into the undergrowth, and he gave a sweeping look to the rest of the area.

Two more, further off. They were coming closer.

He wondered if the zombies were able to communicate somehow, to send signals to each other in their dying thralls. It wouldn't surprise him, the way one's death seemed to summon more.

It was a long night.

At some point, the sick man behind him roused enough to speak slightly louder than a mutter and slightly more intelligibly than in delirious ramblings.

"Potter!" It was a horrified, raspy sound.

"Professor?" Harry chirped cheerfully, blasting back two zombies at once.

"You…" the black eyes that he glanced briefly at over his shoulder were shiny with fever and staring at him with a kind of shock mixed with… grief. Then they hardened to accusation. "Of course."

"'Of course' what?" Harry asked, ducking a swipe from a zombie's clawed hand and pushing the creature out of range with a Flipendo.

But whatever epiphany Snape had come to, he wasn't in any condition to share it with Harry. He raised a wand shaking so violently with the tremors in his arm it was impossible to aim, clearing intending to give what assistance he could.

Harry sent out a wise-spread Depulso that gave him just enough time to reach out and lower Snape's wand.

"It's okay," he said, a hint of that sincere sort of kindness which his friends who knew him best loved him for now showing through. "Rest."

He turned his back on the thunderous but slightly confused Snape gave at this and was just in time to throw up a protego for the latest attacking zombie to bounce harmlessly off of. He probably thinks I'm being condescending or patronizing or something. Harry was too used to being misunderstood by Snape to be bothered by that thought now.

A couple of zombies lumbered up from the side. He turned to them as if they were practice dummies in the Room of Requirement and tried out a spell he'd never used before but had heard Snape employ many times over the past few days.

"Sectumsempra!"

They fell.

Snape made a strangled sort of noise behind him, but Harry could feel the feral grin on his face and turned to the next zombie with a raised wand and a heart throbbing with life.