Chapter Text
“You can’t put a tracker on your husband, Harry. It’s unethical, Harry. Unethical, is it Hermione?” Harry asked one of his best friends with a glare as they waded back through the swamp that his home had been built in.
“Oh, grow up, Harry. It wasn’t like I knew the world was going to end and your hill billy husband would be gone when we got here, is it?” Hermione snapped back as she cast another repellent charm on her legs as shewaded through the swamp water, terrified of anything clinging to her. “I know you said you lived in the arse end of nowhere, but really Harry?” she continued with a raised eyebrow.
“What? Daryl hates people, apart from me, of course,” Harry answered her.
“Subtle, mate,” Ron said, rolling his eyes as he ignored Harry and Hermione’s sniping and Accio’d the map from Harry’s pocket to look at.
“Where are we heading now, considering he isn’t at your place?” Ron asked, not wanting to be stuck in a swamp for who knew how long. How Harry could have gone from London to this was beyond him, but Harry had been happier these last three years, living in America with his hillbilly husband, than Ron had ever seen him, so he had been happy enough for his best mate, even if he missed him. Of course, then the world had to end when Harry was visiting and sorting out custody of Teddy, and he was trapped in England, unable to do anything as the world around them burned.
Harry and his friends were extremely lucky that they had been through a war and knew how to make tough decisions. They knew how to ration, how to fight and how to make some of the strongest wards and protections known to magical kind. Having places like Grimmauld Place and Hogwarts, which were steeped in magical protection, helped too.
Hermione sighed as she looked at Harry and the droop in his shoulders as he surveyed the place he had called home. She was aware that to Harry, places weren’t home, but people were, and his home was now with Daryl; only Daryl was nowhere to be found, and Harry was forcing them to hoof it on foot to try and find the man.
Hermione had never even met Daryl. All she had known was that Harry had come back to England one summer with a wedding ring on his finger.
It wasn’t even legal to get married in England yet, and according to Harry, it wasn’t in most states either. They had gone to a place called Vermont to get married. None of them had even realised that Harry was seeing anyone, let alone anyone serious enough to marry, and a man none of them had ever met. One who according to Harry “hated everyone and would not travel, especially by magic,” to come and meet Harry’s friends and family. The only one he seemed interested in meeting was Teddy, and that was only because Harry loved the boy so much.
Harry had tried to stay in England after the Battle of Hogwarts, and the war was over, he had tried to live his life and help raise Teddy. Still, when he had quit the Aurors, not wanting to be the next Head Auror as was expected of him and once again facing the fickle British public as they turned against him, he had learnt that he now had the agency to say screw it to it all. He had been a grown man at 26, not the frightened teenager who thought he had to do what was expected of him to be loved. Harry had learnt and grown and decided he wasn’t pandering to people who had never cared about him anymore. People who allowed him to fight in a war as a child so they didn’t have to.
Harry had been careful to return for every holiday for both Teddy and his niece and nephew, who were Hermione and Ron’s children, and then, when he had seen the kids back off to Hogwarts, he too would whisk himself back away to America, back to his husband.
The most time Harry had spent back in England was the six weeks of the summer holidays, which had been the longest until the dead started walking. They had all had their hands full helping to fortify Hogwarts and as many magical manors as possible, places that now housed both witches and wizards and muggles alike, as well as enough animals to make sure they didn’t go extinct too.
Harry had always been adamant, though, that he was returning to America and that he was taking Teddy back with him. Harry had already been taking the boy back with him before the outbreak and with Andromeda having been bitten in the escape from the crowd they had been in, Harry had been positive he wasn’t staying in England when he had a husband and a “dickhead of a brother-in-law” waiting for him back in America. Harry had wanted to go home, but he just hadn’t been sure how to get there.
It had taken them a few months to ward off what they could and save those they were able to save. In the end, Hermione, Ron, and what was left of the Weasleys had decided to travel back to America with him.
Ron had asked Hermione if she wanted to stay in England because he wanted to go wherever Harry was going. Ron had explained that he had hated the last three years, that he hated being an ocean apart from the man he considered his youngest brother and best friend, and it didn’t seem right for Harry (or themselves) to be in danger and not be by one another’s side.
Although she wasn’t 16 anymore and was a powerful witch in her own right, Hermione had to agree with Ron. She, too, didn’t feel right letting her first friend dart across the ocean, especially knowing it was likely they would never see him again once he finally left.
So, the couple had told Harry that when he went back to America, they would be going with him, and when they agreed, almost all of the remaining Weasleys did too.
Bill, Fluer and their three children had agreed to travel to America, hoping it would be better than England, but were not very hopeful that it would be.
There had been no word from Charlie since before the start of the outbreak, and no one held any hopes that he was still alive.
Percy had refused to go with them, taking his family to Hogwarts, where Harry had given him a spelled diary in the hopes that they would be able to communicate long-distance with it so that the Weasleys wouldn’t lose touch with one another completely.
George and his two children (Angelia having been bitten when she fought to get the children into The Burrow) had agreed to come in a heartbeat, not wanting to stay in the country that had stolen his twin and his wife, any longer.
Ginny, who had no children but was everyone’s favourite aunt, had agreed immediately, positive that she would not be left behind, unable to protect most of those she loved.
Arthur had never made it back from the Ministry when things had gotten bad. Molly had used her dying breath to cast a blood magic charm on the house so that only those with Weasley blood running through their veins could make it through her wards to keep those things away from her precious grandchildren, who had been sleeping over at the Burrow.
Harry had been the first to see her, and he had put the zombie version of the closest thing to a mother he could remember down so that none of the Weasleys had to.
After that, Harry had taken Hermione to Grimmauld Place with him to scour the Black Library. They had learnt that with enough magic, they could create an “illegal” portkey that would send them far enough to travel to America. So, Harry had packed up everything in his home, and the others did the same before they went out scavenging. Collecting enough food and other necessities in featherlight and bottomless bags to tide them over until they could figure out what they were going to do in America and where they were going to go.
It had taken them almost seven months to be able to leave England, and Harry was ready to leave the accursed isle far behind and go home, to take Teddy home with him to face whatever this new world had in store for him and to find his husband.
And that led them here, wading through the swamp, where it turned out Harry and Daryl lived. The swamp where his husband was nowhere to be found, and his home had been abandoned for months, it seemed.
Hermione had been irritated that there were no pictures of Harry and Daryl anywhere, including no wedding pictures, Harry claiming that Daryl was camera-shy. Instead of lingering, Harry had packed up his sparse home, including grabbing the crossbow that had apparently been a wedding present from Daryl. Now they were heading out of the swamp to see if they could find any trace of Daryl, having to wade through it because Harry refused to use the weird swamp boat “(it’s called an Airboat Hermione, I thought you knew everything?”) because it was loud. The fact that he could put a silencing spell on it didn’t seem to have occurred to him, and Ron had told her to just drop it. Harry was worried, and a little bit of walking wouldn’t hurt her. She was sure it wouldn’t, but if she found one leech on her, she was going to hurt Harry.
Harry, for his part, was thinking desperately about where Daryl could be. If he wasn’t at their home, the only other place he would have headed towards would be Merle’s home to find his brother. “We have to head to the town,” Harry said into the silence surrounding the trio.
“There’s a town around here?” Hermione asked in surprise.
“No, Hermione, of course there isn’t a town I intend to head towards,” Harry said as he rolled his own eyes, ignoring her. He loved Hermione with everything in him, but she was so middle-class it was ridiculous.
Admittedly, he was technically also middle-class (at least when living with the Dursleys), or, well, a Lord with his now-useless family fortune. Still, unlike Hermione, Harry had never had enough until he was 20 years old and had been earning his own wage, not wanting to use his father’s fortune that he had never thought he deserved. She was also snotty, and well, it was clear what she thought of his husband. Harry sent Ron a look, and Ron nodded back, a silent promise to talk to his wife and get her to rein in her biases. The last thing he wanted was for Harry to feel like he had to pick between them and Daryl, and for the first time since they were 11, Ron knew Harry wouldn’t pick them. If that was a choice he had to make, then they would lose him. Something Ron refused to allow to happen.
“Why a town? Probably not the best idea,” Ron said to break up the awkward tension around them.
“Because that’s where Merle lives in a caravan,” Harry said as he led the way to the edge of the swamp onto the closest road.
“A caravan?” Hermione asked, surprised.
“Don’t, Mione. And yes, Merle lives in a caravan. Or rather, a trailer, as they call them here, on the edge of town. Daryl left the cabin in a rush, and we saw the dead zombies. It means he rushed off to find Merle before he got himself in trouble like a bloody idiot.”
“And why would he get himself into trouble?”
“Because he’s just like that. He doesn’t hurt anyone but himself unless they hurt kids or threaten Daryl, but he’s always spoiling for a fight, and I imagine he found a lot of them if he didn’t get himself bit first,” Harry admitted with a shrug.
“Harry …”
“I said DON’T! I know they wouldn’t be the family you wanted me to marry into. I get it, why do you think I didn’t tell any of you about him? I know you won’t mean to, but you’re already judging the man I love, the man who loves me, without even meeting him because he is different to us, from me. I love him, Mione, and he loves me, and he wants to help me care for Teddy, well, he did when I last spoke to him, and now I need to find him. Teddy and the kids are safe in the Compound with the other adults, and you can go back if you want. “Ron and I will find him,” Harry snapped at her, his tone brooking no arguments when it came to his husband.
Hermione blinked at Harry. It had been a long time since they hadn’t seen things eye to eye. Their last argument about him had been about Harry up and moving away, far away, from them all. “I just … I worry about you and want the best for you,” she said quietly.
Harry turned and smiled softly at Hermione before pulling her into his arms and hugging her tightly. “I know you do. But I’m almost 30 years old, Hermione. I know what’s best for me. And Daryl is best for me, or at least finding him will be. If only someone hadn’t talked me out of putting a tracker on his stubborn hide in their last letter,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
“I already said I was sorry,” she grumped out as she ignored the blush rising on her face, she had been appalled at the thought when Harry had asked her to help find him a spell that would latch on to a muggle and so she had refused, and like an idiot she had convinced Harry to ignore his gut feeling about something happening. Something he couldn’t explain but felt was going to change everything. She should have known better.
She knew that Harry didn’t say things unless they were true, and he had an uncanny ability to feel when something was going to go down. An attribute they had discovered was a trait in the Potter line, where they had a long line of premonitions and seers in their family. She should have listened to Harry and helped him, but she hadn’t. Now they had to try and find Harry’s husband the old-fashioned way in a world overrun by the dead and with people who were happy to hurt others, now that it had been almost a year since the world had changed into a horror movie right before their eyes.
“Your probably right that it is unethical, but well, if he stayed put where he was supposed to be I wouldn’t have wanted to put a tracker on him,” Harry said with a soft laugh as they trudged through the last bit of the swamp onto the dirt road that led to the nearest town.
“We should probably keep it down from here,” Ron muttered as soon as they made it onto firm ground.
Harry nodded as Hermione pulled out her wand, casting silencing spells on their feet so their footsteps couldn’t be heard before casting a modified Disillusionment Charm on the three of them, meaning they could see one another. However, they were still hidden from all other prying eyes. She then cast the scent-blocking spell they had created after realising the dead hunted more with their noses and ears than their milky white eyes.
“Ready?” she whispered as she motioned for Harry to lead them forward.
“Ok, let’s do this. Towns about a 15-minute walk,” he said as he set off, guiding the others to where he hoped both Daryl and Merle were holed up and relatively safe together.
Harry felt his heart all but stop when he saw the state of the town. His heart broke as he took deep breaths not to scream out his frustration.
There was no way Daryl was here with zombies roaming the streets close to their destination. He would never have allowed a threat to stay that close to him, which meant that he was long gone.
Harry supposed he understood why, after all, Harry hadn’t been here to ward their home, to protect the only man he had ever loved, and yet he couldn’t help but be annoyed that he hadn’t left him a note or something.
It was then that Harry stopped in the middle of the street, a soft “oh ...” leaving his lips.
“What?” Ron hissed at Harry, looking around for any immediate threat, even as he pulled out his wand to destroy the zombies before them.
There was no point leaving them to wander and possibly infect others when, between the three of them and their magic, they could kill off entire herds (and they had).
“He thinks I’m dead …” Harry trailed off, hanging his head at the pain Daryl must have felt when he thought Harry wasn’t coming back.
“How do you know that?” Hermione asked him softly as she placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently in comfort.
“Because he didn’t leave a note. I bet there isn’t one at Merle’s either,” Harry admitted, biting his lip and trying to blink the tears back from his eyes.
That in itself alarmed Hermione. Harry never cried. The last time he had truly cried that she knew of was when he had been 15 and Sirius had been lost before his very eyes, and it was that act alone that caused her to tell herself to knock off her attitude. If Harry was about to cry over Daryl thinking he was dead, well, she guessed he really was as important to Harry as he said and not just some form of teenage rebellion spilling through now that Harry had the chance and safety for it, as Hermione had assumed.
“If he is not here, we will find him, Harry,” Hermione said gently before stepping back and sending a bombarda through the head of the first zombie heading towards them.
“How? I don’t ... If he isn’t at Merle’s, if he hasn’t left a sign, I don’t know where to start,” Harry admitted before he too started blasting the zombies as they headed towards them.
As soon as they got close enough, Ron set up a quarantine ward that only allowed the healthy through, as the zombies were, well, dead; they were unable to breach it. So, the three magic wielders killed every zombie that headed towards them, and the noise they made as they stood in the centre of the town’s only main street.
“How big is this place?” Ron asked as he blasted the last zombie.
“About 4 thousand people. I mean, we just killed a fair chunk of them,” Harry admitted as he recognised a few of the now zombified people from his few trips in town with Daryl. People that Daryl and Merle had known their entire lives.
“Not too many then. We clearing it or …?” Ron left the question hanging, unsure what Harry wanted to do.
“Can we just go check out Merle’s place first and go from there?” he asked, with no optimism in his voice. The only good thing so far was that neither Merle nor Daryl had been in the herd, but that meant little when Daryl could have gone anywhere in almost a year.
The walk to the edge of town was easy with only a few zombies that they took out from a distance. Harry wasn’t surprised. Whilst Merle hadn’t lived in the middle of nowhere like he and Daryl, he also hadn’t been much of a people person either, and it had been better for everyone if he hadn’t lived in the centre of town.
They got to where his caravan was, and Harry groaned aloud when he saw the door wide open. “Definitely not here then,” he muttered to himself.
“You already suspected that thought, right, mate?” Ron asked as he gave Harry a consolatory pat on the back, feeling sorry for his best friend.
Ron was well aware that the only reason he, Hermione and the kids were alive was because of Harry rushing to them so quickly. As soon as he had gotten Teddy and Andromeda away from where they had been shopping in Diagon Alley, he had apparated them to Ron and Hermione’s and put the strongest wards Ron had ever felt on their flat, and Ron had been there when the Hogwart’s War Wards had been activated.
Harry had then rushed around to The Burrow, where Rose and Hugo had been having a sleepover with little Molly and Louis. It was then he had found Ron’s mum as she turned, having made sure the children were safe.
Harry had killed the zombies that had taken the Weasley matriarch from them, learning that they were Muggle zombies and not Inferi as he did so before rushing back to grab Ron, Hermione, Teddy and Andromeda before whisking them back to The Burrow. He and Ron had then sent out Patroni to everyone they knew, everyone they could think of who would need the information Harry knew, especially since Ron and the others who were brought up in the Wizarding world would have no clue how to deal with Muggle zombies. Harry had warned them to lock their homes down. To put a quarantine ward up, and that a bite would turn them into one of those things. To not take any chances and that they should let anyone in as long as they weren’t aresholes over magic, as these zombies would kill everyone in their path, creating more of the undead monsters to try and eat the living. It was then that the other Weasleys had trickled in, learning that The Burrow was now safe, even though their parents were gone, and it was then that Ron had decided that no matter what, he was going to America with Harry. He didn’t trust Harry to survive, especially with Teddy in tow.
“Yeah, I knew, but still …”
“We learnt the hard way that hope is hard to kill,” Hermione said softly as she came to stand beside Harry and place her arm around his waist. Harry had spent a long time hoping and searching for a way to bring Sirius back through the veil before admitting that the only man he could remember ever loving as a parent was gone for good. It had been a huge blow for Harry and had left him fighting his depression even harder than usual. Hermione was determined that they would find Harry’s Daryl before it was too late and before Harry’s heart was broken all over again in a different way.
“Let me send a message to Bill telling him we won’t be back tonight. We used too much magic fighting that herd.” Hermione said as she pulled her wand out.
“We staying here?” Ron asked, looking around the caravan with a look he tried to disguise.
Harry just rolled his eyes and cast a banishing charm, getting rid of the beer cans on the floor of the caravan and cleaning up whatever other mess Merle had left behind when he, too, had left, probably with Daryl, hopefully.
He then went around looking, casting the wards to make them all but invisible to both zombies and other living people alike. Harry was all for helping people, but they had met too many cruel people who made the Death Eaters look tame in the last year, and he was determined that he and his would not be casualties of more cruelty. He ground his teeth thinking of Daryl and Merle out there, who knew where, without any magic to protect themselves. Of course, they were both strong, capable men, but magic would have protected them far better than anything else in this world, and Harry couldn’t help the fear that ripped through him at the thought of his husband being one of those things.
Hermione came back in and looked around at the caravan Harry’s brother-in-law had lived in. It was as sparse as Harry’s cabin had been. Barely anything in it, and nothing personal. That was until she knocked some pieces of paper over and stood there gawking at what had been uncovered.
“What are you looking at, love? Ron asked her as he came to stand beside her and slide an arm around her waist before looking at what she was staring at. “Oh, I get it now,” Ron said with a soft laugh before calling Harry over when he was finished with the wards.
“Yeah?” Harry asked before stopping and staring at the picture before him. Harry hadn’t even realised that there was a wedding picture for him and Daryl at all, let alone one that Merle had kept.
They hadn’t dressed up, not really. Daryl had ditched his leather vest for a soft green jumper Harry had brought him, his hair up in a small ponytail, and that had been the extent of his “cleaning up”.
Harry, in contrast, had been wearing a smart polo shirt, the same blue as Daryl’s eyes, and his smart black trousers, a huge contrast to Daryl’s jeans.
Not that Harry had cared. All he had cared about was being Daryl’s husband, and he was more than aware that there would have been no way in hell he could have gotten Daryl into a suit or anything more restrictive. The fact that he had willingly put on a jumper was enough for Harry.
And there they were in the picture. Unaware that Merle was even taking it, as they gazed at one another.
“Ohh, if he looks at you like that, he must love you,” Hermione said softly as she leant into Ron’s embrace.
“Told you,” was all Harry said as he picked up the picture and cast some preservation charms on it. After all, it was the only picture they unknowingly had and possibly would be the only way for him to see Daryl’s face again when he was alive.
Harry didn’t look up as Ron pulled him close with his other arm; he just allowed the closest thing he had ever had to a brother to offer him the support and comfort he so desperately needed, whilst his mind conjured up images of Daryl shambling around out there as a zombie.
The three decided to sleep in the living area of the caravan as they often did when they were outside of the very secure Compound, as they called it, taking watch shifts. Harry was on first watch as Hermione and Ron curled up together. All of this wandering around with the possibility of getting killed reminded them all of the camping trip from hell they had endured towards the end of the war. Harry looked over at a now sleeping Hermione and Ron, and was grateful they were willing to follow and help him once more. There was no one else he would trust to have his back and it was sort of nice to be out with his best friends alone for the first time in much too long, even if the world had gone to shit around them.