Chapter 1
Chapter 1
I pull another small first aid kit from under the drivers seat of a silver four door car. Its one of the big commercial kits. The kind that has bandages, gause, antibiotic ointment, burn cream, aspirin, and little rolls of tape. This one still has the plastic wrap holding it snuggly shut.
Its an odd thing to be pleased about although I suppose I have always been odd. When you're hungry, when you're desperate, you find yourself more accepting of things that would make most people hesitate. The world has ended, in a manner, and beggars cant be choosers. Survival is whats important, after all, not some antiquated notion of propriety.
I suppose I should've expected that the world would actually end. Somehow, and I dont know which deity I angered but I wish they would relent, I always end up here. I'm not being egotistical when I say that this is Potter luck at its finest. I end up in a deadly, really horrible, situation only to survive by the skin of my teeth.
In my defense, its all Voldemorte's fault; or perhaps its Dumbledore's or even Pettigrew's. The point is, this is NOT my fault!
You see, Voldemorte just refused to stay dead. That wouldnt be a bad thing except he insists on dragging me into his ridiculous games with Dumbledore and the headmaster is more than happy to throw me in just to see what happens. I'm not so dumb that I dont realize that I'm being used. To the Dursleys, I'm a freak. To the Weasleys, I'm a gold mine. To Dumbledore, I'm a weapon, a puppet, and a shiny pawn. I know this. I have known it for a while now. I just couldnt do anything about it.
So what happened is this:
* Voldemorte found a ritual to be brought back to life as he was before he died. While He could've performed this ritual at any time, he chose to be a drama queen and make a grand production out of the whole thing.
* Dumbledore decided to sit back and watch, hoarding knowledge like a goblin hoards treasure. He could've easily stopped the whole tournament mess but he wanted to see what would happen and just like in my first year, he sat back to watch and play like the omnipotent Merlin that he is Not!
* Pettigrew, the rat traitor, decided that helping Voldemorte be reborn was safer than say, running to another country to dissappear or something. And by Merlin, the rat is even worse at potions than poor Neville.
Voldemorte was in some sort of mutant baby form and only had Pettigrew and one other Death Eater to help him. His 'most faithful' was at Hogwarts and lets be honest, with the track record it was obvious. I mean, how could Dumbledore not notice his 'close friend' was an imposter?
Anyways, so because the only one able to brew was Pettigrew, he was the one to fill the ginormous cauldron with whatever murky green potion was bubbling away in there. I dont know what it was supposed to be, mostly because Snape is the worst teacher ever!, but wormtail clearly got it wrong. Or maybe it was correctly brewed and its what happened after that caused all... this.
You see, I was stupid. Injured and tired, I guess I just wasnt thinking. Because I offered to share the win with Cedric, as if it was all really a school event. Its like, for a moment, I forgot that someone was trying to kill me. So Cedric and I take the the cup together and get whisked away... to a graveyard. Not just any graveyard but the one from my dreams.
Poor Cedric, he never stood a chance. He was dead before we could raise our wands. Unfortunately, he was near the cauldron pearing over the edge and fell right into it.
Spells were flying as I tried to get away and Pettigrew tried to catch me. Next thing I know, Cedric's body had crawled out of the cauldron and proceeded to eat Voldemorte's mutant baby form. Pettigrew threw about a dozen killing curses at Cedric but they did nothing even as Cedric's teeth tore into his arm, then his throat. I hid, watching as Petegrew died, choking on his own blood.
Three men, who must've been drawn by the screams, came running forward to help. I shouted for them to get back but... Cedric attacked them too. One stumbled back only to have the mutated form of Voldemorte bite his leg.
I tried to help, honest I did, but none of the spells seemed to work. Stunners just rolled right off of them and none of the men had weapons beyond a few flashlights. The men were dead and Cedric turned on me, milky eyes dead and blood filled mouth snapping at me. I didnt know what else to do! I had to get away!
I managed to grab the cup and get whisked back to the school, barely catching a glimpse of Wormtail's body starting to rise before the vortex took it all away. Only there were already voices shouting, people drawn by the screams, no doubt seeing the blood on my robes. I tried to tell the others. I screamed it! But no one would listen. They all looked at me like I was mad, as if what Skeeter wrote was the truth. No one believed what happened because when the Aurors got there, there were no bodies. I tried to explain how Wormtail's body got up, that the men's bodies probably did the same. No one believed me, not even Ron or Hermione. It was second year all over again.
From there it spread like fiendfyre.
In a moment of brilliance, I summoned Dobby. Or rather, Dobby came by to check on me and I begged him for a favor. You see, I don't trust this. I don't want to be blamed when they finally do find the bodies eating other people. I want to leave, find somewhere safe to hide away until this is all over. I'm TIRED of being blamed for something I didn't do. Dobby was willing to help me. He took me to Gringotts and covered for me at Hogwarts, swearing on his magic to protect my secret.
I bought out all of the bottomless handbags and shrinkable trunks. I had tried to warn others but they shrugged me off as if I was crazy. Snape whispering in the ministers ear about how I'm nothing more than an attention seeking liar didnt help. Even Dumbledore said I must just be confused because bodies dont just animate by themselves and they certainly dont EAT people. Well then, fine, if no one wants to believe me then I cant make them. Instead, I loaded up on supplies while repeating my warnings in the hopes that it may save at least one of them.
The trunks are all shrunken as charms on three necklaceses that stay under my shirt for safe keeping. Most hold food, whether chilled or not. Some hold seeds and plant cuttings, all held frozen under preservation charms. That way I can setup something like a farm for myself, wherever I can find a place to stay. The only thing I couldnt do was keep live animals. Something about changing their size caused complex forms to fail.
The bags are all fairly small, stuffed in the bottom of a black messenger bag, and filled with everything from books to potions to dishes, blankets, and everything else one could possibly need to survive. Dobby helped tremendously, filling several of the bottomless bags although I probably should've checked to see what he packed. Whatever it is, I'm sure it can be used for something at some point. I even got a shrunken cube tent that when unshrunken is the size of a small cabin.
Unfortunately, you cant mix bottomless charms with shrinking spells. It has something to do with needing a specific defined space or something, I honestly wasn't listening as closely as I should have, but I do clearly remember the shop owner warning me repeatedly not to mix the two or there would be explosions as the two tried to cancel each other out. Its similar to how something can only be shrunken or enlarged so much before the very matter of the object is too dense/thin to maintain itself.
I kept the items hidden in the messenger bag that doesnt have anything more than normal anti-theft charms. I even shrunk my normal trunk and hid it inside so the Dursleys couldnt take it away. They've taken a dont ask, dont tell approach with me this summer. Especially since I, along with all the other students, was sent home a month early. It doesnt bother me the way it did when I was younger. I used to want their attention. I used to think that if I was good enough, obedient enough, that they would love me. It was foolish in the way kids are and I've long since given up on that.
Their indifference, especially when they've dragged me halfway across the world to somewhere in America, has allowed me to continue gathering supplies. I've been watching the news, there are more and more strange happenings. I need to find somewhere safe to go until this all blows over!
I nearly bought out a sporting good store and every day, as the news got stranger and more attacks and disappearances occured, I would buy more and more supplies. I bought food, so much food!, to fill up the rest of my shrinkable trunks. I was really able to stock up although there were many times I got odd looks from the store employees.
One thing I didnt expect, even though I should've, was the Dursleys leaving me behind. On day four of Vernon's week long conference, when the news reports were talking about hospitals overfilling and the military moving through to help aid the sick, he came back to the hotel with a bandage on his arm and a temper about some drunk attacking him. The fever hit, I left to stock up on medicine at the nearby pharmacy that was crowded by fearful and frazzled shoppers. I had to get away before he decided it was my fault, and while I was out, they decided to switch their tickets for an earlier flight.
I only know because Petunia wrote the ticket information on the pad by the phone and the impression stayed on the pages below the one she took. I didnt really have a reason to chase after them so I didnt. I sat in the hotel room and watched the news reports. The woman said that all flights are grounded and I expected the Dursleys to return. They didn't. I dont know if they're alive or dead and I dont know if I care.
Honestly, its a relief to know that civilization has ended. The world sucked, it really did! Now things are simpler. I'm safer and better fed now than I was before the world ended, how sad is that?
I do miss Sirius and Remus, even if they're still practically strangers. I dont miss Ron and Hermione as much as I probably should. I do miss Hedgwig but she's safer with Sirius.
The reason this got so bad probably had more to do with how the Wizarding World tried so hard to hide it. There wasnt a whisper for the first month except for first a few families then an entire villiage abandoned. A plane crashed, a subway and a train had damage that no one remembered witnessing. This curse/virus/thing spread so fast because those exposed didnt remember being exposed. Its horrible, the world ending because the wizarding world wanted to bury their heads in the sand.
I close the car door and move on to the pickup truck. There's nothing to do but keep moving, keep surviving. Its the only thing I know to do.