The blinding light of a thousand suns was the last thing that burned itself into the iris of Harry Potter on the last day of earth.

It had been a normal day at the job for him. Nothing that would have heralded the catastrophe that would follow. Some Slytherin seventh year had stolen valuable items from a Ravenclaw. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement had sent two recently finished trainees to investigate the minor incident. Harry Potter and Daphne Greengrass, Auror Initiates and the ones that lost the daily competition of coming as late as possible. The early ones always got the boring cases.

It had been simple enough. Harry threw his name around like a club spiked with nails and soon enough the Slytherin who's parents had connections to Neo-Death Eaters sung like a nightingale. Nobody soldiered on under the glare of the man who had killed the Dark Lord with an Expelliarmus. Turned out that the boy had used house-elves to do his dirty work for him by quick talk and smart wording. One of the elves had died while punishing itself. The conflicting nature of the Slytherins words and the ongoing orders the little critters had from Hogwart's headmistress had been too much for the elf.

Enter stage, Hermione Granger, chief commissioner of the newly founded subgroup for house-elve rights in the Department for Magical Creatures. If something could freeze the depths of hell, it was the glare that Hermione shot the young Slytherin. Harry thought that he had done quite a harsh investigation, but Hermiones furious temper smashed the Slytherins ego against the wall, trampled on it, chewed it through and then spit it into a bucket. It really was a shame that she wasn't an Auror. Harry thought she would clean out Knockturn by simply glaring at it long enough.

It made the job for Harry and Daphne all the more easier, at first sight. Up until the point when the seventh year spilled the beans on the students organization that called itself the "Emerald Hydra". An organization that actively recruited purebloods for camps in eastern Europe where they would be trained in Dark Arts and general terrorism tactics.

He had really looked forward to the Leaky Cauldron's special this afternoon. Eating Tom's Shepard's pie, flirting a bit with Daphne and then writing a report that nobody would ever read sounded like a good way to spend the day. Interviewing every pureblood in the school had made a bit of a dent in that plan. It cost him the better part of the afternoon to get the students to talk, but in the end, they all sung. They always did, he had thought in triumph.

Then, after dinner, meeting in the Room of Requirement with the entirety of the Hogwarts staff. Leading the team of educators was, of course, headmistress McGonagall with a mood as sour as a lemon. Following her were the teachers. Filius Flitwick, Charms, quirky and fun normally, but all the more pissed off about the situation. Horace Slughorn, no longer Head of Slytherin, but still going strong with Potions looked a lot like he rather the floor swallowed him whole. Twenty of his students were found to be Hydra Heads, as they called themselves. Then came Head of House Gryffindor, Neville Longbottom, proud as on the day he realized he had killed the last Horcrux. No Gryffindor was among the suspects. Close after him came Luna Lovegood who helped out this year for Magical Creatures, with George Weasley, Defense against the Dark Arts, close after her. The only one who had been fatalistic enough to take his chances with the position this year. The next group of three were Susan Bones, Ancient Runes, Septima Vector, new Head of House Slytherin and Aritmancy Professor, Aurora Sinistra, Astronomy. Binns didn't show, of course, but all the more surprising was that Lilith Moon came from her divination classroom at the top of the tower and sat down in a corner of the Room of Requirement, mumbling about Ragnaroek and the final judgment. Harry snickered and wondered how the confirmed Oracle managed to sound even crazier than Trelawney had. Harry was rather relieved that the latest amazing idea of the Board of Governors hadn't shown for the meeting. Professor Pansy Parkinson, educating her students to the best of her knowledge in the ways of the muggles refrained from mingling too much with blood traitors.

The discussion that followed was the stuff of legends, if legends were made of empty platitudes and mindless accusations. Susan Bones just straight up refused that one of her Puffs could be a Hydra. Septima Vector didn't tire of repeating over and over again how disappointed she was and how far she distanced herself from such beliefs. Flitwick was outraged and his Goblin half came through so that he growled more than he spoke. In one word, it was a freakin' madhouse and Harry had to take control. Daphne had been asleep already on a couch and the clock in the Room of Requirement told everybody interested that it was already way too late to get eight hours of healthy sleep if one had to wake up at six o'clock the next morning.

The moment he wanted to shout over them all to silence them, that job was taken over by the shaking form of Lilith Moon in the corner. She screamed like a banshee and clawed at her head until blood streamed down her face. In between her screams, manic laughter came from her and she shouted, over and over again. "DEATH IN FLAMES! THE WORLD TO ASHES!"

He had been annoyed out of his mind at this point. He took her by the shoulders and shook her out of it. It took a heavy backhand to the face for her to wake up from he trance. Milky, blue eyes looked at him as she spoke in a whimpering whisper. "The world dies, Harry. They kill her and us with her. Right now, they kill us all. Its coming." Then she convulsed and fell over, unconscious.

Why the Room then showed them all the outside, nobody knew, but then again, nobody really knew how the Room worked. Maybe it had been Lilith that wished for the Room to form some sort of display, maybe it was the Room itself that knew that something significant was happening. In any case, what they saw froze them in place.

Clouds formed like mushrooms could be seen all over the horizon. Bright flashing lights that reflected in the clouds came from the south and closed in to Scotland. The dull sound, like growling demons, howled through the room.

Harry stepped up to the display, not believing what he saw, not wanting to believe it. The form, the sheer mass of the clouds, he couldn't even think it until Hermione whispered from behind him.

"Atomic bombs,"

"Mrs. Granger, you know whats happening?" McGonagall asked silently, her eyes never leaving the spectacle.

"Yes, Professor. These are mushroom clouds, a phenomenon occurring when atomic bombs detonate." She began to cry in silence. Tears rushing down her face while she kept explaining. "Atomic bombs use the force that is harvested from the splitting of an atom to produce unimaginable destruction. In the history of humanity only two cities were ever destroyed by them, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recently they have been employed again, in smaller versions, in the war of the USA and its allies against China and their allies." A heart wrenching sob escaped her and she fell to the floor, crying her eyes out.

"What, I… Mrs. Granger, what does that mean?" the headmistress pressed on.

"It means, Professor." Harry spoke up. His voice calm, collected - resignated. "It means that this is the end. The muggles have decided to end it. Its the Apocalypse."

And with those words a bright flash swept the Room in white. It burned in his iris, but he refused to close them. Somewhere a few miles from them a bomb hit a target, devouring it like a sudden flash of fiendfyre. Harry thought that it was beautiful in a horrible, terrifying way as the shock wave hit Hogwarts. They heard screams from the corridors, but nobody moved. Then another bright flash, a roar from the deepest pits of hell, holy fire smiting the earth and all that was built on her.

Then silence, for there was nothing that could still make noise.

OOO

Silence was all that reigned in Harry for a long time. Silence of sound was just the very beginning. His sense were silent, his emotions were silent. He drifted in a sea of nothingness and all he knew was the bright light that had burnt itself in his mind. The light and the sobs of Hermione as she realized that they would all die, together with the entire world.

Yes, there it was, that thought he hunted for. The world was dead. He had witnessed the insanity of man unfold as their tools of the apocalypse rained down upon themselves. They were all devoured by the hellfire they had designed themselves. Artificial fiendfyre, a thousand times hotter than any living flame, a million times more cruel, for it had no preferences, no hunger to still and no counterspells to fear. The atomic fire just burned without priority, everything at once to leave nothing behind.

This time, he thought, it felt different. Maybe that would have awaited him beyond the veil? Some nothingness that merely in the most poetic senses could be called the everything. Where mind and emotions were at peace and just the last thoughts of your life hunted you.

The mushroom clouds, the bright flash of light.

A sobbing Hermione.

Lilith Moon as she came mumbling into the classroom.

It would be cruel to live eternity this way, he thought. All those memories were not happy ones. Thinking about them forever would be painful and even though his emotions seemed on standby, eventually it would be torture.

It was this thought that would end his wait. Sometime he would feel his hands twitch and he could feel his heart beat against his chest as if he had a weight on his body. Then he felt a foot, then his lungs as he began to inhale and exhale. His sense came back slowly. At first his nose began to smell again. His heart skipped a beat in shock as the sweetly stench in the air registered in his brain. It was the smell of corpses who found death just recently. Then his ears came back. Harry tried, but failed to cry for help as he heard someone whimper. With a flash, the rest of his body came back and with it came pain.

His cry echoed through the room as his nerves sent nothing but pain through his body. It was like a Cruciatus curse, so brutal. To his luck, it ended as fast as it started and left him behind, sore and stunned.

"Harry!"

He knew that voice, he thought, but it couldn't be. Weren't they all dead? "Daphne?"

"Its me, Harry. Can you open your eyes, can you stand up?"

"I think so," he mumbled and opened his eyes a slid. Fortunately it was rather dark in the room. He opened his eyes fully and looked into the tear-smeared face of Daphne Greengrass right above him. With sheer force of will he made every single one of his spines lift him up. Every single one of them protested by making him feel as if he had just come back from a ten-thousand mile run, at least. Every fiber of every muscle was sore and tense, but he kept on until he sat next to his blond colleague.

"Are we dead?" he asked.

"Wha… " she stopped and looked around the room, seemingly searching for something and then her voice became decidedly panicked. "Harry what happened? Some people here are dead. The others are unconscious just like you were."

"Oh, right…" he mumbled ", you were asleep, weren't you?"

Even through her panic she had the decency to blush at that. "Don't tell the Director…"

"There's no more Director, Daphne."

"You're making no sense, Harry."

"It was the Apocalypse. Atomic bombs… if that means anything to you."

"Like those things those people used to blow up cars?" The confusion was evident on her face as she tried to get an image in her head of what she was dealing with.

"Same principle, a lot more punch to it." Harry answered. "Enough of them to kill every living thing on the planet. Therefore I repeat: Are we dead?"

"As far as I can tell, we are alive. Can't say that about the Professors, though."

Harry did a quick scan of the room. He immediately saw the unconscious form of Hermione lying next to him and soon after her a skeleton with a witches hat and dark-green robes, Professor McGonagall. Next to her the small body of Flitwick was rotting away, just like the bodies of Vector, Slughorn and Sinistra. The others were also lying on the ground, or like Lilith, leaned in a corner. He couldn't tell if they were dead or alive. Not without checking their vital signs.

He grabbed the wrist of Hermione, ignoring his muscles disobedience and felt her pulse. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the feeling on his fingertips as they pressed onto the veins. Harry wasn't sure for several heart wrenching seconds until he felt the faint beating of her heart. She was alive.

"Daphne, can you check on the others? I don't think I can stand."

"Sure can, Harry." She said with a nod and began to feel the pulse of Neville. "He's alive," she said with some honest to Merlin relief. The next one were George Weasley and Luna Lovegood and both checked out as faint, but alive. So did the rest of the younger Professors.

"So it merely got the older semesters?" she asked, more to herself than Harry. "That's…odd,"

"Maybe it was their bodies giving up. To be honest, I feel like I could end up unconscious any second. Something has exhausted us and maybe it was too much for the older ones?"

"Your guess is as good as mine but that sounds at least like it could be the truth." She came back to Harry and sat in front of him, eyes locked with each other. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"Check out Hogwarts, see if its still standing, then…"

"Wait,… what do you mean "still standing"?"

"I told you that they dropped atomic bombs on us."

"Yea, but… I mean, this is Hogwarts! How could some muggle weapons destroy the oldest school of magic?"

"Same way they probably pulverized London and every major city around to little shreds. I can't explain, but trust me when I repeat myself. Those bombs pack a punch. They're basically wide-area fiendfyre and the shock wave is just as good as an area of effect Killing Curse."

"I have trouble believing that."

"I'm sure you'll soon enough see for yourself. Given that you're right an we truly are alive. Still not sure about that."

"Anyway, what do we do?"

Harry looked a bit around. If he was honest with himself, checking out Hogwarts sounded like a lot of walking and he was not ready for that at all. "Lets wait for the others to wake up. Say, an hour or so. Then we see from there. Alright?"

"As good a plan as any." Daphne scowled, sat back on the couch and closed her eyes.

OOO

It took the better part of three hours for everyone to wake up. Harry repeated the story several times for the magical raised and confirmed with the muggleborns and half-bloods. Hermione had sobbed horribly when she had realized that her parents, whom she had just recently found in Australia again, where probably atomized dust at this point. It was just the same as everybody felt. All of them had lost loved ones and even the purebloods slowly realized the sheer brutality of this. They had witnessed the apocalypse, and for all they knew, they had survived it - somehow.

Then, Harry took a sharp breath and hurled himself into a standing position. His knees were like jelly and his bones cracked and felt like rusty metal joints while moving. It took quite the effort, but finally he reached the door to the seventh floor corridor. He then took the knob, twisted it, opened the door and looked out. He felt the expectant eyes on his back as he closed the door again, dumbstruck by what he had seen.

"So, how is Hogwarts doing?" Neville asked.

"There is no more Hogwarts."

Nobody knew what to say until Neville blurted out "What?" and wobbled to the door with his own, paining bones.

He opened, looked out and closed again. As he turned his face had gone from pale to arctic snow white. "There is… no… no more Hogwarts." He whispered and let himself fall to the floor.

That prompted the rest of them to do the same and take a look for themselves. All of them came back a few shades paler and with just as many ideas as to how to proceed as before. Hogwarts didn't lay in ruin. Hogwarts wasn't a skeletal pile of rubble. Hogwarts was simply… gone.

"What did those muggles do!?" Daphne shouted through the room, holding her head and taking shallow, frantic breaths. Susan quickly began to rub her back and told her to breathe slower and deeper, preventing the blonde to go into hyperventilation. When she calmed down, she looked up and saw the clueless faces surrounding her. Only one of those faces wasn't stunned in place. Harry's quickly moved from despair, to realization, to sadness and finally, to determination.

"Doesn't matter what they did. More important is to see if anybody else survived this. If we got a lease on life, maybe someone else did too." With a few quick steps he was through the room and stood in front of the brooms pile. "Everybody grab one. We might have to search places we haven't visited yet. Floo network is most likely not an option so we'll have to fly. First destination will be Diagon Alley. Second will be the Ministry. Maybe Gringotts had some luck in surviving this. I'd also reckon that the deeper Departments of the Ministry would make a fine fallout bunker. Now, get moving."

It was something like the single stone that got the avalanche running. All it took for them to get up, dust off and move on was direction and purpose. Harry knew that there were better leaders, tacticians and especially strategists out there than him, but he came to acknowledge over the years that he wasn't half bad at it. They needed something to do that got them away from the darker corners of their mind where their pulverized relatives, friends, fiances and lovers awaited them. He knew how much of a sinkhole despair could be and what a lifeline tasks and purpose could represent.

So they grabbed a broom each and went out of the door. Harry was the last one, since he had to do something he didn't want the others to see. With a flick of his wand he cast several Accios and the wands of the Professors lying dead on the floor came to him. Some spares wouldn't go amiss, he figured. He also got some more brooms, some cloaks and wizards hats that he shrunk to fit in his Auror robes. Who knew what awaited them out there?

Suddenly a shriek made him sprint outside. He knew it as Hermiones high pitched screech when she saw something that scared her to no end.

The group stood on the outside in the middle of rubble and grass, staring at something Harry couldn't make out in the glistering sunlight. He moved a bit closer and realized that it was a ghost. More importantly, one he didn't recognize as a Hogwarts ghost. Daphne talked to it and seemed close to tears, again.

"…so long, I don't even know the years." He heard the ghost speak.

"Make an estimate, please. This is important." Daphne urged the ghost. But the spirit gazed off to the horizon, Its ethereal hair floating around her face as she began to weep. Daphne tried to gain the ghosts attention again, but to no avail. She floated away, weeping her eternal sorrow. Harry was about to announce that they should haste and apparate to Diagon. Whatever the ghost had on information, it would be just as good to get it in London - or whatever was left of it.

But he was stopped in his track by the soft voice of a ghost he knew.

"Harry Potter," the Grey Lady, Helena Ravenclaw whispered. "It has been a long time."

He whirled around to look the ghost in the eyes. She was as beautiful, in her ghostly and sad way, as ever. "What happened?"

"The fires of hell consumed Hogwarts. Something collided with the wards, exploded and reduced the castle to dust."

"An atomic bomb, Helena" he whispered.

"I have heard of some of the new ghosts what those weapons were. Maybe Uncle Salazar was right all along?"

"I have problems arguing against that right now." He admitted."You have said a long time ago. We just woke up. It feels like the bomb dropped a few hours before."

"The Friar had made it a point to count the full moons. The last time I asked he was at a bit over two-thousand four-hundred."

"That's…" Hermione blurted out and then quickly divided the full-moons. She mouthed some numbers, then her eyes grew wide in shock. "TWO HUNDRED YEARS?!" she shouted over the soft hills of what was once Hogwarts.

"As I said, a long time." The Grey Lady nodded. "The first fifty years, silence reigned. The next fifty, scavengers came and would try to take the Hogwarts menhir. The following hundred years was another period of silence. Occasionally there would be Goblin hordes coming through, or herds of whatever the centaurs had become. They never said much when asked."

Hermione stepped next to Harry, her fingers almost twitching because they hadn't got a quill and parchment in them to take notes. "Wait a second. The Hogwarts menhir? Hogwarts has a menhir?"

"Yes, Mrs. Granger. It has powered this school since the day my mother and her friends had built it. But lately, it became weak. Weak enough to be just another block of stone with runes engraved in it."

"And what about those Goblin hordes? And the centaurs? Merlin… what…?"

Helena closed her eyes to think, before she began to whisper her answer. "The goblins seemed to have taken over Britain. I do not know much, but what they tell us gives reason to believe that there are no more humans on the isles. The centaurs…" she sighed loudly, as if bemoaning a great tragedy. "They have changed. Their lower bodies are like Sleipnir, with eight legs, their bodies are twisted things with three or more arms. They are hideous, vicious and nothing more than animals."

"Mutation…" Hermione whispered.

Harry stepped in again. He was sure when they were safe somewhere he would be glad to analyze everything with Hermione and the others, but time was of the essence. "Helena, what do you know about London? What about Diagon Alley and the Ministry. Hell, what about Beauxbatons, Durmstrang and the rest of Europe?"

The Grey Lady just shook her head. "There is nothing left, Harry. The last wizards I have seen came through here to cross the ocean to the new world. They were Germans, I think. They have told me that Durmstrang, Beauxbatons and every major wizarding community is gone. They were on their way to… oh, yes… this might interest you." She suddenly whirled around and flew through the floor. Not knowing what to do, Harry decided to stay for a bit.

"Harry?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

The brunette looked warily around her, waving her wand and mumbling a few spells Harry didn't know. "I don't get anything, but its a good bet that this area is irradiated. That could kill us, eventually. We should go."

"Wait a few more minutes. Helena sounded like she had something important for us."

"Alright… but we should haste. I don't know much about radiation other than 'Avoid it at all cost'."

"Promise. Once Helena is back we apparate somewhere else."

Hermione seemed like she just swallowed something profoundly disgusting as she spoke again, this time hushed. "Harry… I don't think we should apparate. The places we want to visit…. They don't exist anymore. Even without the bombs, it has been…" she took a deep, calming breath. "It has been 200 years. Who knows what has changed?"

With a hateful glance at the, now literally ancient Cleansweep Swifty in his hands he resigned. Just like most of the time, Hermione was right. He didn't survive the Apocalypse just to get impaled by apparating into something that wasn't there 200 years ago. "Good thinking, Hermione. Could you tell the others while I wait for Helena?"

"Alright, Harry." She said and turned around. She stopped and her head turned to look Harry in the eyes with her special 'I'm being dead serious' look. "We should move fast. Wrap this up quickly and then lets go."

"You got it."

Some minutes went by in which Harry heard the little group of survivors talk through their predicament. Sometimes, sobs could be heard, sometimes angry shouts. He already dreaded the first night that was about to come. When one tried to fall asleep, the horrors of the day came back and haunted you. He would make sure to lend a shoulder to cry on for anyone asking. It might even help him with his own buried grief.

Helena came out of a small hole in the ground where some stones that looked like they could have been stairs at one point reached down into the earth. It was a small hole, maybe big enough for a dog to crawl into. It was, however, also big enough to allow Helena to bring an envelope outside.

"A letter?" Harry asked in confusion.

"Indeed. I have opened the first one to arrive and then the next dozen. All stated the same. This is the most recent. It is two years old."

Harry grabbed the offered letter and looked it over. It was standard issue parchment, with black ink on it. The sigil was unbroken with no identification on it. On the front it stated that it was sent by a group calling themselves the "Salem Settlers".

"From the States," he mumbled while he ripped open the envelope. He took out the letter and looked it over once again before reading.

To whomever reads this.

Greetings survivors of Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, Alexandria Libraries, the Ziggurat and other addresses we have sent these letters to.

If you read this, you have survived the madness of the muggles by some means and are magical of nature and blood. We are the Salem Settlers. We are a large group of wizards and witches from the east coast of the United States. We have rebuilt and fortified Salem in the Commonwealth (of Massachusetts). This is a call for all magicals of the world. We provide food, water, shelter as well as a large depot of wands and books in exchange for your help to rebuild magical society.

If you already have built a settlement, send word to us so that we may install trading routes and transportation to further the goals of both of our settlements.

If you are alone or in a group searching for help, make sure to take every bit of magical knowledge with you. Much will be forgotten after the fire brought upon us by the muggles, but we can start anew!

Along with this letter we send you maps to guide you. The global map shows the quickest route from your current position to us. The map of the East Coast marks territories you ought to avoid. The local map of the Commonwealth shows you our exact location.

We send you our hopes and prayers so that you may find us in these dark times ahead.

Victor magisis, brothers and sisters.

Harry thanked Helena for the letter and made his way to the group, the Grey Lady right behind him. "I got some news, people. Listen up!"

He immediately got the attention of all of them and they were eager to hear what their de facto leader had to say.

"This is a letter from wizards and witches who have survived this. They have rebuilt the city of Salem and seemed to have managed to organize a new magical society."

"What about London, Diagon Alley, the Ministry?" Susan asked.

"Helena here reports that she has gathered information pointing towards the fact that there are no more humans in Britain."

"The bombs did the most damage, the rest was killed by the Goblins" the Grey Lady added.

"Right, so my view on the problem is as follows." He sighed deeply, hoping he could convey his message. "We have no way of knowing whats out there. Helena has told me that the last wizards she had seen had told her that wizarding Europe is just… gone. However, we have this letter stating that there are people in the States who rebuild. I suggest we follow the only lead we have."

"How?!" Daphne shouted. Her hair was a mess and the makeup she wore had run down her cheeks. "How do we get to the United States. Its not like the ICW…" but she didn't finish. She just dropped to her knees and wept.

Harry decided to let her be, for the moment. Hermione had been right. Technically they stood in the middle of an atomic detonation crater, even though the bomb detonated at the wards, a few hundred meter above them. So as cruel as it was, he ignored Daphne's emotions for the time being and focused on getting them moving.

"There is a map included in the letter. The wizards of Salem suggest a route over the north. First we fly to the Faeroe Isles, then Iceland, Greenland, Canada and finally, the States. We have brooms so it shouldn't be a problem with enough warming charms."

"How and what are we gonna eat? Where are we gonna sleep? Harry, this seems awfully rushed." Hermione stepped in.

"We can hunt. There is still wildlife out there. We sleep where we land, with people on the lookout at all times. And yes, I know this is rushed but what else are we gonna do?"

"I…" Hermione sighed. She threw her arms in the air, surrendering to his plan. "But I'm telling you this is going to be rough."

He couldn't quite hold back the chuckle at that. "Have you looked around you, Hermione?" with a wide gesture he pointed at the distinct absence of a castle. "Of course it will be rough. Its going to be rough for every single day from now on. Our Horcrux hunt is going to look like a family vacation compared to whats coming." He then sighed again, took a knee and gestured the others to follow suit. He wanted them close for what he had to say next.

"Listen, we are the only people each of us still has. We are all there is left for each end every one of us. If you tell me you have a better idea, spill it. I'm just going with the flow here, taking things as they come and right now, this plan seems like the only thing we can do, other than simply surviving. But I need you for this because to survive, each of us needs everybody else. So, tell me, are you with me?"

Nobody spoke, and most of them, kneeling in a circle, tried to process what he had just said. It took nearly a minute of silence before Lilith spoke up.

"I'm with you, Harry. I have learned to trust my guts. I'm an oracle and my guts provide some insight, if I say so myself. In both cases I see hardship, but only with your plan I see light at the end. I believe we must go to Salem."

"If Lilith says we should go, I trust her." Susan said quickly. "Not that I don't trust you, harry. Its just…"

"I get it…" Harry interrupted before she could go on. He let his eyes glance over the rest of them. Daphne met his eyes and his heart broke at the sight. She was a strong woman, a fierce fighter and a great duelist. Having her sit before him, utterly defeated and crying, was nothing short of crushing.

"I'm w- with you…" Daphne choked out with a heavy sob following.

"Me too." Neville had found his voice again. "If the Grey Lady is right, this sounds like a good enough option, all things considered. However, we should still look for loot in the Ministry. You may be able to fly on this thing to the States, but I and some of the others aren't as good as you on a broom."

"Got it, Neville." Harry nodded. "We'll look for useful stuff before we go. At least we should try and salvage what we can from the libraries in the Department of Mysteries."

"We also wanna take a look at where my joke shop was." George Weasley chipped in. "I had a hidden basement. My workshop was there. Maybe some of that stuff is still useful for our journey?"

"Good idea." Harry said and then eyed up the last two people who still had to agree. His best friend didn't take long, as expected.

"You know I would never let you out of my sight on something like this. Honestly!" Hermione tried to be serious, but the small smile on her face negated that effect quite well.

"I've never been to the United States. Maybe they got some interesting animals?" Luna breathed. With determination she gave a single nod and her hand became a fist. "Yes. A vacation to the States would be delightful."

"Its not exactly going to be a vacation." Neville said and gently padded the blondes back.

"Not with that attitude, it won't." she gave back.

Harry could have kissed the quirky blonde at this point. She had made them all laugh, effectively banishing the sour mood away. It had cleansed the way for what they had to do.

"Helena," Harry said to the Grey Lady. "We'll come back one last time before we are off. To say goodbye."

"That would be most polite, Harry." She whispered in her trademark way and then grew more transparent as she flew off.

"Alright then. Lets go, mount your brooms and go through your disillusionment charms on the way. We're gonna do this quick and clean. Ready?"

"Ready!" came the chorus of his seven comrades as they jumped off the floor and flew south towards London.

OOO

Three Days later

It was defeating to see what had happened to Britain. They were sitting in a cave, north to the ruins of Hogwarts and prepared for the flight to the Faeroe Isles. Harry had been able to hunt some deer and Luna had found some wild vegetables they could put under stasis charms and eat once they reached the small archipelago.

Harry chopped up the two headed deer as if in trance. His hands moved without his guidance, cutting tendrils and muscles. It was quiet in the cave, everybody did something to prepare them for their journey, and everybody thought about what they had seen.

London was nothing more than a pile of rubble. They had seen two craters and soon after forgot all about looking into the Ministry. The bomb had pulverized White Chapel and with it, the Ministry. Their next stop hadn't been better, but for entirely different reasons. Diagon Alley had been overrun by Goblins and their pet-trolls. It was the core of their city and the middle of a wide field of shacks, caves and huts. The moment the little bastards had seen them, they had opened fire with everything they had. The Alley was now a construct of ruins and caves from where Goblins streamed like ants. However, a lot of the shops had been intact as far as their structures went.

In the darkest of nights, Harry and George had disillusioned themselves and sneaked through the Alley where huge trolls patrolled and the lesser Goblins slept on the streets. Every step they took they had made sure to sidestep the bones and trash that was everywhere. They had maneuvered through a labyrinth of grim, gore and brutality. It had reminded Harry about the things he had heard about the Goblin Rebellions. What was written on parchment couldn't even begin to describe the savagery of Goblins once released from the shackles of Gringotts. They had witnessed cold-blooded murder, cannibalism and rape just by walking from where the Leaky Cauldron once was to the ruins of Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes.

Once inside George did a quick check-up on his stash. He tossed aside what was useless, even though Harry suspected that he sneaked some pranking articles into his pockets. Harry just hoped it wasn't some potion. No matter how well brewed, potions just didn't hold two-hundred years. In the end they left with some books on Arithmancy, Charms and Runes, some more clothes and a bunch of newer, if still rather slow, brooms.

Once they had met up again with their group at the top of the Big Ben ruins, they had made their silent way home. Seeing London and the entire United Kingdom in such a state did a number on his group and Harry just hoped, no, prayed that he could lead them to a better future.

In any case, a better future was not what went through his groups heads. Daphne hadn't stopped crying, she just stopped producing tears after a while. Harry grew more worried with every minute that went by without her sobbing and whimpering. He sliced through a strong muscle and finally got the rear separated from the rest of the deer. A flick of his wand and the juicy, if slightly irradiated meat was in a preservation charm. They were normally used to secure evidence, but Harry figured that a charm that prevented a corpse from rotting would do just fine to get the meat over the next week.

Behind him Neville was rummaging through the pile of clothes they had found in Georges stash. They were mostly made of fine material, in flashy colors and fine linings. They were robes and cloaks used for presentation and balls, not exactly the best to ward off icy cold weather. However, enough layer of them and liberal use of warming charms would do the trick. He hoped, at least.

Just next to him Hermione was trying to figure out some way to make their old brooms fly by themselves while serving as rune cluster-points for a forcefield that should ward them against snowstorms and other weather. Harry didn't have enough understanding of the subject, but he was relatively sure that Hermione just did anything to not think about their situation too much. When he thought about it, she didn't talk about anything else the last three days other than how they would be able to cross the Atlantic. Years of friendship had taught him that this wasn't good. It was on the same level of horrible as a Daphne that didn't make a sound.

However, Hermione was at least not as annoying as Susan who seemed to try to survive on positive vibes. 'But at least we didn't…' was her favorite way to start a sentence, it seemed. Usually something forcefully positive followed. It had taken her until London, when she saw the new Goblin city, that her denial was broken and she couldn't find any good in what she saw before her. The following three hours she had cried her eyes out.

The only two who appeared to have reached some sort of acceptance for the situation were Luna and Lilith, closely followed by George who lost himself in tasks like producing a magical compass or helping out with the warming charms. The quirky Professor for Care of Magical Creatures and the Divination Professor were talking about the many interesting creatures that lived in Greenland while they held vigil over the meat that was cooking over the fire. Harry hoped their carefree nature would rub off to the rest of the group. He knew Luna well enough to know that she was in pain, but he also knew that in many ways she was stronger than all of them. She had kept her sanity in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor. She had endured year after year of vicious bullying. She had seen friends die in battle and had killed during the same. Yet, her nature prevented her from giving up. She looked forward and beyond. Harry felt that this was her most admirable trait.

Meals came as mostly unwelcome distractions for the group. It took Harry near violent force to get Daphne to eat. She was drawing into herself and hadn't looked anyone in the eyes for the last day. She was weak and pale, her eyes were red from the crying and her voice, if she spoke at all, raspy and without any sort of emotion.

Given the last days Harry hadn't much hope for this dinner of deer meat and water. It was the last before they would begin their journey to the United States and the tension in the air was feasible. Nobody looked up from the meager meal and even Harry didn't speak for the longest time. But he had to make a point to them. It was his lot in life to be the spear, the leader of any group he was part of. He had accepted that during the Battle of Hogwarts and embedded it in his mind and heart during Auror training. He was Harry Potter and he had to lead those people to better lives. The last piece of meat proved hard to chew as he thought about words. They needed to be on point. With a last, painful swallow he forced the meat into his stomach. Then he whipped his mouth with his shirt and looked up to the group. They all had rings under their eyes. They all looked tired, not exhausted but tired of the situation and their lot in life.

Just five days ago, for them, Hermione had told him about Ron proposing to her. No more Ron and no more dreams of silent nights with red-haired children running around in their flat. No more fighting for the rights of elves and no more ambitions to become the first female, muggleborn Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.

Just five days ago, Daphne had been the life of the DMLE, was near a promotion for her exceptional work and on the best way to break free of the pureblood shackles her parents had lain onto her. She had gushed about her flat in Aberdeen and the first movie she had seen in a cinema that was now buried somewhere beneath thick layers of dust.

Just five days ago, Susan had been the Head of House Hufflepuff and the pride of the British Runes society. She had an essay published and was about to write a book on modern Futhark. All that was for nothing, dust in the radiation storms that howled down in the South.

Just a few weeks ago, Neville had been at Grimmauld Place searching for help, answers and firewhiskey. Hannah had been expecting. He had been about to become a father. He had a family - wife and child - burned away in atomic fire.

Just a month ago, George had finally begun to produce new products. He had married Alicia, joked around, pranked all his guests with canary wedding cake and it had seemed like he had, after all these years of pain, found equilibrium and peace. Now he once again grieved for his family, old and new. For his friends and partners. For the child he would never have with Alicia. For Arthur and Molly and Billy and Fleur and Percy and Ron and Ginny.

Oh Ginny Harry felt the blunt force of his sorrow hit him at the memory. They had broken up, just a pause really, to get their affairs and minds in order. They had wanted to think what each of them wanted from life. Harry wanted to see the world a bit. Ginny wanted a family. She had wanted some small Harrys and Ginnys running around Potter Manor and she wanted Harry out of Grimmauld Place to reside in the ancestral home of his fathers family. He hadn't been sure back then what he wanted from life. He had flirted a bit with Daphne, but never planned on getting serious with the beautiful Auror. He had wanted family, just not yet.

They all had lost so much and were loosing as they ate and more and more memories surfaced. When they came back, they had buried the Professors whom by then lay out in the open. The Room of Requirements had collapsed. Seeing the small hills where their older comrades lay in peace brought home the dire message. They were alone. They only had each other. Harry had felt it and was sure the others had too. What he had to make sure of was that they knew that survival was the only option. Giving up, admitting defeat in the face of overwhelming odds would simply not do. They were all in their early twenties and there was just too much life left for them to life to give up now.

"Everybody," he said and had to cough. He hadn't used his voice all that much this day. "Everybody, listen, please."

Harry waited for them to look up from their meals and wouldn't back down before all gave him their attention. The first were Luna and Lilith, both of them actually smiling in that sad, but all the more brave way. The last was what was left of Daphne. The spirit she had once in her eyes was gone. They were dull, milky and red and looked through him to somewhere only she could see. The bit of meat in her hands had been left untouched.

"Listen… we all lost so much, I… I just wanted to say, that I'm proud of you. The last three days were… hard and… exhausting and… and they broke our heart and spirits… and hope. All we have is a foolish plan to ride old brooms to the new world, some clothes and our wands and… and each other." Harry decided to stand up. On one side it would get pressure of his chest and stomach, on the other hand, he wanted to stand proud. He wanted them to see that they could trust him, rely on him and lean on him. He would be the boulder on which they could rebuild themselves.

"We must not despair! You hear me?" he said louder than he intended. "We must not let this tragedy rob us of our life. I am… confident that we can get through this. But I need each and every one of you to be strong for each other. I need you to remember that we are given this chance and those we have lost would want us to try and make it through so that we can live on. Live on for them and for us. Our lives have been one of hardship, but remember all the good times that came after these days of challenge. They can come again. If we work hard enough, if we refuse to give up, we can see the light at the horizon, I'm sure of it!"

He then gestured at all of them, a wide wave of his arms that ended with an inviting, open pose. "You are the last I have in this world. I promise you here and now that I will defend and protect you with all I have. I promise you that my decisions and actions are and will always be for the best of this group."

Harry sighed and relished the smiles he had produced on Luna and Lilith, on Hermione and even on George, Susan and Neville. But most of all, he cheered inside when he saw Daphne nibbling on her meat, eating with small bites. It was a start, a good one at that. "We need our strength tomorrow. I say we go to bed early. I'll…"

"Harry, look." Luna interrupted and pointed behind him. When he turned his head he saw the Grey Lady hovering at the entrance, Nearly Headless Nick right behind her.

"Helena, Sir Nicholas. Have you come to say goodbye?"

The Grey Lady shook her head and gifted him one of her rare smiles. "Quite the contrary, Harry. We have come to ask a favor."

"How may we help you?"

"We have heard your speech, it was… a bit much… but inspiring nonetheless." Sir Nicholas said with his head held high.

"Thank you," Harry said and beckoned them in to join their group. "Join us and tell us about this favor you ask."

"It is maybe a bit imposing of us." Helena whispered.

"Don't you think that we are past that point, Helena?"

She shrugged and gave that shy smile Harry knew the heir to Ravenclaw for. "It is a big favor to ask."

"I am, we all are still indebted to you for showing me where the diadem was. And anyway, worst case is that we say no."

"Indeed, Mr. Potter. Helena, please go ahead. You are better with these things, milady." Sir Nicholas said.

The Grey Lady took a deep breath, despite her lack of lungs and rubbed her hands together while she formed her words. She then looked at the group of living in the cave, sitting around the fire, and exhaled loudly before she spoke. "We ask to leave, Harry."

"Leave? As in, leave Hogwarts?"

"What Hogwarts? There is nothing left!" Helena blurted out. Her voice was suddenly loud and a hysteric undertone could be heard. "We have nothing to do, nothing to see and I catch myself staring at one point for weeks before I snap out of it. I am… we are going insane here, Harry. Two-HUNDRED years of nothing to do, nothing to see, nobody to talk to. No questioning Raveclaws, no foolish Gryffindors, no scheming Slytherins and no Hufflepuffs to have fun with. The other ghosts may be happy with just basking in their sorrow, but not us!"

"Calm yourself, Helena. What is it we can do?"

"We would need to relocate, Mr. Potter" Sir Nicholas chipped in. "And for that to work we would need our anchors, the part of out soul that clings to a place, to be taken away from here."

"There are only two ways to do it and one is impossible while the other won't be to your liking, Harry." Helena whined, her eyes downcast and face twisted in sadness.

"Let me be the judge of that. How would we go about that?" Harry asked before Helena could pull away again.

"Possession," Hermione whispered. "You want to take a ride in one or two of our bodies?"

Helena nodded and Sir Nicholas followed her in looking down to the ground. "I am ashamed to say that we had hoped that at least one of you would allow this to happen."

"Its dangerous," Hermione gave back, with more heat than necessary, Harry thought. "We could loose ourselves in this! Our personality could wither away!"

"We are well aware of the dangers Mrs. Granger. Its not just your personality that could be jeopardized. However, we are talking about weeks, maybe one or two months of travel. One would need at least a year to loose himself in a possession. Even a cretin like Quirrel withstood longer. We promise, we will hold ourselves in the background of your thoughts during the journey."

Helena flew forward. Her hands were clenched together, begging them to hear her out. "Please! I cannot spend eternity here. If you cannot help us, I don't know what else to do! We're going insane. Please!"

"I'll do it!" Harry decided.

"What?! Harry!"

"Its the right thing to do, Hermione." He cut her off before her rant could even start.

"Fine, but then I'll take Helena with me. If you do it, I'll do it!" And with a huff she sat down and the Granger Council, its single member, had decided.

"So… how exactly does one get possessed?" he asked the two ghosts. Helena looked gobsmacked at them and Sir Nicholas had a face-splitting grin on his face.

"Oh, its easy, Mr. Potter. Just… stand still." He said and suddenly, the ghost began to dissolve before him.

Harry felt the restless soul come into his body and it reminded him of a certain soul-splinter in his head. It was the same feeling he had remembered the day it had left his head. Back then it had been like a weight he had carried his entire life lifted itself and now, that weight was back.

Can you hear me, Mr. Potter? The voice of Nick echoed in his thoughts.

"Oh, wow." Yes, Nick… I can hear you.

Very good. Please inform me immediately of any changes in your normal behavior. It would simply not do to have a Sir Nicholas Potter roaming around the States.

Agreed.

"This feels… odd." Hermione said as Helena dissolved into her. "Is it supposed to feel odd? Oh, hi, Helena…"

Harry then turned around to the group who looked at the two friends as if they'd just ran around starkers while singing the Hogwarts anthem. Harry grinned at them and slowly, while shaking their heads and mumbling about what an reckless idiot he was, they began to smile as well.

"What? I said this group is all I have. And if two souls decide to join, I won't say no."

OOO

Flying over open water was the single most exciting and terrifying thing Harry had ever done on a broom. The dementors had nothing on the awesome threat of the deep blue ocean underneath them. He had taken a last glimpse of the shore of Scotland and hour before looking North to where a small archipelago came into view. At their height, Hermione had suspected, they would be able to see from shore to shore. She had also deduced that from the shore of Scotland to the first isle of the Faeroe, they would have to fly at least seven hours to reach them. She had also pointed out that this wasn't even their longest flight over open water. Their flight over the Labrador Sea would take a full day, seventeen hours, of flight. The prospect was scary for him to imagine. He didn't really want to think about how Neville or Daphne would do on a flight like that.

If we'd just had some Firebolts, or at least a Nimbus. Hell, I'd give anything for a flying carpet right about now. Harry thought. The slow brooms they sat on, more designed for relaxed and leisure flying, capped out where a Firebolt just began and forced them to endure long times on cushioning charms.

They also didn't have as strong windshield charms as a Firebolt, he cursed in his mind while tightening the scarf made of a cloak around his face. Warming Charms were one thing, but the wind clashing against him was just all the more annoying for it.

Eleven days was the estimate for their journey. Two-hundred and four hours of wind and weather against them, blue ocean beneath them and merely the faint hope that there was something waiting keeping their eyes on the goal.

Three and a half hours later, they landed near an intact house on the first island with even the most meager of civilizations ghosts upon it. Around him the others sat down, completely exhausted and glad to have earth back under their feet.

This was the shortest of the flights to come. Came the traitorous thought of doubt in his head. The flight tomorrow would have them sit on the brooms for over four hours. Days of challenge, indeed.

He had the least problem with the flight. After all, he has had Quidditch games that took longer and were far more exhausting than a fly over the North Sea. So while his group stretched and moaned, he opened the lock on the door of the house and stepped into the small shack. It was simple in its decorations and furniture, but the chairs were cozy and the pillows on it looked like they would make for a great place to sleep once dried off. In the corner stood a terminal. One of those fancy new inventions he had seen the last time he was at the Dursley's. Dudley had gotten one to his birthday and managed to break the thing in a weeks time. He had failed to understand the simple way of making it do what he wanted and broke the screen in the process. Harry himself had never bothered with them. He was a wizard and enjoyed his life away from muggle society.

The interesting thing about them was that the products of one special company, one located in the United States, was immune to magic. That had been one time where the Statute of Secrecy almost broke. Some of his colleagues didn't bother checking on the terminals and left the footage of the video feed on them intact, figuring that their magic had brunt through the circuit boards anyway. The terminal that stood now before Harry was from the same company. RobCo , if he remembered correctly.

Harry went on to look at the next room. The door stood slightly open. He moved through the doorframe and freezed when he saw what was inside. On a single, two-person bed lay two skeletons, hugging each other. They were covered in rags and damp blankets were around their hips. In the hand of the bigger skeleton that held the smaller one close to his ribcage, Harry found a small, tin box. On its etiquette he read 'Abraxo Rat Poison'. With a heavy sigh, Harry started to levitate them outside of the house when he saw a cassette on the table next to a dresser. It was one of those holotapes the muggles used to store information. He picked it up on his way out. There was a backdoor from the kitchen to a broken down hut that could have been a stable once. There he placed the skeletons onto the soil. A quick wave of his wand and a slightly overpowered Vanishing Charm produced two holes. Harry hesitated, waved his wand again and the wall between the holes was gone. He lowered the skeletons in them, summoned the earth back over them and then left the nameless grave.

Great tragedy reflects in the smallest of merciless fates, Godric once said. Nowadays I come to understand what he meant. Sir Nicholas whispered in Harry's mind. Harry could just nod.

The holotape was still in his hands when he came back into the house. His group had already gathered there and prepared themselves for the night. If they'd huddle together, five could find a place on the bed while the other three, probably the men, would find rest on the armchairs. He placed the tape next to the terminal and already wanted to busy himself with making dinner when Hermione grabbed the holotape and begun to fuss over the terminal.

"Hermione, its been two hundred years, I don't thi…"

He was rather rudely cut off by the victorious smirk of Hermione when the terminal surged back into life. She inserted the holotape. It clicked, rumbled a bit and then the room was filled with the recorded voices of a woman. Her voice was frail, despairing and merely a whisper. "This is Fera Bjergsson to whomever this reaches. We from the village Sumba on the southern isle of the Faeroe need help. Our supplies run low and we have lost contact with everyone. Please we…" she cut off with a heavy sob. "We… We are dying. Our food runs low and we have butchered the last of our livestock. We have sent men with our fisher boats but they never came back. The fuel's gone and… I… please, somebody help. Anybody… please."

The recording stopped with a click and the following silence was like torture. It was so easy to forget in their own endeavors of survival that others had already failed at that task. Their failure was not for a lack of trying, but merely because they were confronted with overwhelming odds.

"Now that was… depressing." George said. He was the first to move and grab a pan, some of the food he had been carrying and began to summon stones and wood from the broken down stable to build a fireplace.

Harry grabbed the holotape the moment Hermione pulled it out of the machine and made his way to the nameless grave. The grabbed a plank and his wand. In the damp wood, grinded by centuries of rain, salt and snow, he etched the name of whom he suspected to lay there.

Mr. And Mrs. Bjergsson. May they rest in peace.

He could feel Sir Nichola's approval in his head. Satisfied with his work he rammed the plank into the earth. He stood there, contemplating and imagining the last days of these peoples lives for he knew not how long. He smelled meat cooking when he decided to come back into the house. Hermione was sitting at the terminal, rummaging through text after text with Luna and Lilith behind her. Susan was preparing some snacks for the flight tomorrow while George and Neville busied themselves with the meat. Only Daphne sat in the armchair, doing nothing but staring at the wall. Harry decided then and there that she needed to snap out of this. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but at the very least when they reached Cape Farvel at the south of Greenland. One couldn't fly seventeen hours without purpose in front of oneself.

"Daphne;" he whispered to get her attention. When she didn't seem to recognize that somebody had so much as spoken to her, he grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look at him. They were as milky as yesterday, but even more devoid of emotion. Simple balls of white and blue with a black dot in the middle were her eyes. There was nothing left what would prompt one to call them the gate to the soul.

"Daphne," he sighed, "lets talk. Alright?" Not even waiting for an answer he pulled her up, linked her arm in his and took her for a walk around the house. The scenery was beautiful. Harry could see why people chose to live here in the middle of the North Sea. The isles had something mystical about them as they lay there in the middle of the blue of the sea, with faint fog caressing the green fields.

"Why?" Daphne breathed, so silent that he barely understood her.

"Why what?"

"Why are we clinging to a life like this?" she asked, and her eyes locked onto something in the far distance. "I have seen the poison. I know those muggles took fate into their own hands."

"They accelerated their fate, if anything, Daphne. You heard the recording." He forced back at her. "We, however, have a chance of more."

"More of what, Harry? More scavenging? More killing poisoned deer for food? More crawling in the dirt like animals!? More of housing in shacks and caves like trolls with clothes that stink that it rivals their stench?!" her voice grew loud and with every bit of volume, hysterics came with it.

"More of us!" he shouted back.

Daphne took a step back, her mouth hanging open a little. "What do you mean?" she whispered.

Harry sighed. "What I mean is that I refuse to end it like this." He laughed a humorless laugh, and forced the tears in his eyes back that threatened to fall. "My entire life… all twenty years of it, I have fought. When I was little, I fought to stay sane while my relatives abused me. I fought in Hogwarts through all that shit Voldemort threw at me. Through all the slander and rumors, the unwanted fame and the pain of many a good man falling because of me. Then I come out victorious and all I get is a lousy golden medal and more problems than before to boot."

Harry then sagged, tension leaving his body as he gathered the words to continue. "I just refuse to let this be it. I refused when I was hit with the Killing Curse in the Forbidden Forest and I refuse now. I want more out of this life than hardship. I want… just… more… you know?"

Daphne shook her head and in her eyes the first tears for days welled up. "I don't see it, Harry."

"Then let me show you." He gave back and opened his arms. She didn't wait long and fell into the hug, sobbing any crying onto him. Her fingers clawed into his back, but he didn't mind. It was a good first step to get Daphne back, even though he was sure that she would never return to her old, cheerful days. He had seen those eyes before. Sirius had them after his escape from Azkaban. Andromeda and many others had them after the war. They spoke of defeat and pain that no human should ever have to suffer. Most of all, Harry knew that these eyes needed something to look upon and those people's hands needed a lifeline to grab onto. Sirius had his vengeance and his godson, Andromeda had Teddy and Daphne would get Harry.

This night Daphne didn't let go of him. Not during the meal where she sat next to him and not during the night where she held guard with him and nestled herself next to him onto an armchair. Harry didn't mind being her pillow and faithful shoulder to cry on. He lost enough tears in her hair and shoulders himself.

OOO

The next days were an exercise in patience on more levels than Harry cared to count. Rain, wind and snow allied together to make their trip as miserable as possible. Even through their shielding, their clothes became damp and the hours in the air stretched and stretched.

Iceland was just another graveyard. However, a graveyard with some supplies left laying around and something that Hermione called "Rad-Away". It was a brownish goo, packed in drips and according to Hermione was used to wash radiation out of a bodies system for good. To emphasize this she was the first to undergo the procedure. The following hours in the bathroom for everyone was just an indicator for how much radiation had been in their cells, once again, according to Hermione.

They had found a half-ruined hotel and for the first time in some days, everybody had their own beds. Daphne still insisted on sleeping at Harry's side and to his surprise and pleasure, Hermione chose to join them. Harry had no objections. Warming Charms were fine and all, but nothing beat the warmth of a body and the comfort of equally beaten souls to hold onto.

The trip from Iceland to the coast of Greenland was filled with the same horrible weather and a tension in the group that Harry blamed the nearing big obstacle for. The Labrador Sea was the only thing anybody talked about since Hermione had announced during their scavenge of Reykjavik that the flight would probably be the hardest. Harry had some strict words for her after that. It wasn't the most motivating thing for someone troubled with flying for 5 hours, to hear that this wasn't even close to the worst to come.

During their flight along the coast of Greenland, further south, they also spotted wildlife nobody knew anything about. Enormous colonies of huge crab-like beings could be seen walking up and down the coast. Hagrid would have loved the flesh-eating, murderous killercrabs, Harry mused while he heard Hermione mumbling about developing a special spell just for the extermination of those animals.

Two days went by before they finally reached Cape Farvel. From there, the global map drawn by the Americans pointed them south-west, over the sea. This was it, the Labrador sea and the seventeen hours of exhausting flight.

They had used their fear and doubt to design plans for the following day. They bound their brooms together and themselves to them. If one would collapse, the others could carry them the remaining way. But they needed to get as far as possible without anyone fainting. In order to do so, they flew around the fjords and peaks until they spotted a village. There they rested for five days, stocked up on their supply of meat and reapplied their warming charms. Harry ordered them to gather energies, eat much and rest most of the day. It was all he could do and yet, he felt no more easy than two weeks earlier when they had first discussed this problem.

The day started out with thick clouds over them, but no rain or overly brutal wind. Nobody said much while they bound themselves to each other with rope and magic. At this point they had done it so often, they knew which end went where and their safety measures looked as good as they got when they lifted into the air. Daphne and Lilith were beside Harry. They were arguably the weakest. Daphne because she was privy to give up, given her mental state. Lilith because she was petite, thin and had close to no endurance. The seven hour flights they had mastered while traveling the coast had made her fall asleep at the spot they landed. Harry didn't think she would be able to go on for very much longer, even if she was well rested now.

They flew for two hours before the landmass of Greenland was hidden behind the horizon. It had begin to softly rain, but the wind blew at their backs and gave them a bit more speed and much less to fight against.

Five hours later they reached their record for the longest flight in one go. Lilith appeared to be half gone at this point. She barely kept her eyes open and often just dozed off and let Harry and Hermione handle her broom. The others were just slightly better off. Neville groaned and moaned, George became awfully silent and Susan slapped herself from time to time to stay awake and on target. Daphne held Harry's gaze with stoic calm.

She expects you all to die, Mr. Potter Nick echoed in him.

We won't, was the single most important and strongest thought in him. I refuse! They couldn't turn back at this point. The only way was forward and there he would move them all by himself if he had to.

At the ten hour mark, Lilith slumped onto her broom and was out cold.

At twelve hours, Daphne fainted onto her broom, only the ropes holding her in the air. The rest of them had started to hit each other with spells to keep them awake.

Fourteen hours went by and the only thing keeping them up was Hermione's stubbornness, Harry's iron will and Neville's tenacity. They had gone to actually vicious, pain inducing spells. Anything to get them to not fall asleep. Hermione recited arithmantic formulas to herself, runic alphabets and their meanings, wand movements and the Prime Ministers of Britain in chronological order. Harry repeated the names of his group. Hermione, Daphne, Neville, George, Luna, Lilith, Susan, Helena, Nick, Hermione, Daphne,…

They would not die, not on his watch. And they were so close! After another hour, Harry laughed when he saw the coast on the horizon. It was a manic laughter, speaking of his exhaustion, but he couldn't hold it back. Hermione joined in after she saw the first signs of land and so did Neville after he made out the forests. Just another two hours, just a bit more.

The last two hours were a blur to him. The rain became stronger and the wind blew from the side as they came near the coast. He heard Hermione cry and Neville curse. He felt himself grow weaker by the minute.

He barely registered when they crashed onto the sandbank. The moment his head hit the sand, he fainted.

OOO

"WE MADE IT!"

Harry started up from where he laid and nearly choked himself with rope. "What? Wha…" he stammered but he didn't get much further before body after body slammed into him, hugging him and ruffling his hair.

"HOLY MERLIN AND HIS UNDIES! WE MADE IT!" Harry now recognized the voice as George's.

"We did it, Harry." Daphne whispered in his right ear and then hugged him again as if he would vanish the next moment. "We really did it."

It took them a good hour before everybody had enough of hugging and shouting their relief to the world. Their stomachs were empty and all of them were sore, beaten and the last three of them who had carried the rest over the last miles had also residual magic beating them down. Some of those spells they had used were known for leaving marks and Harry spent hours mending his scars and wounds from nasty curses. But it was worth it.

After some days of regeneration, they continued their journey. However, this time, with no amount of stress. They took their time and traveled in four hour trips per day south along the coast. Harry got the east-coast map out and followed the advice on it by the dot. They steered clear of any signs of civilization in Nova Scotia or the Bay of Fundy. The map warned them about "bandits and other dangers" in Maine and New Hampshire.

After another five days of flying, they finally could go to the last of their maps. The map of Massachusetts showed them the quickest route to the Salem settlement. The mood in the group was never higher since their awakening in the Room of Requirement. They flew along the last hundreds of meter of the sandy coast, enjoying the sun and celebrating their final destination.

Then they landed on the spot the map indicated. It was a destroyed city like all the others before them. They hopped off their brooms and looked around, but saw nothing but rubble, destroyed walls and collapsed roofs. Hermione also found some representatives of her newfound most hated animal in the world.

"Ye better get runnin' or them Mirelurks gon'…" came from somewhere around them but the voice was quickly silenced by the vicious salve of reducto curses against the crabs. They splattered into a hundred pieces each as the yellow curses hit them.

"I!" Hermione shouted and fired another reducto at a particularly huge crab.

"BLOODY!" another reducto in a group of the beasts.

"HATE CRABS!" With a final, echoing explosion a last group of crabs decorated the walls of the nearby buildings with their innards.

"Know what, lady? Nevermind." The voice laughed.

Harry whirled around like the others to look for the man with the heavy American accent. They found him in a house that was surrounded by a fence as he descended the stairs. A few second later he stepped out of the fence-gate and waved at them with a big smile on his face. He took the outstretched hand of Harry and shook it hard and welcoming. He did the same with the others, however he refrained from trying to rip their hands out when he shook the hands of the women.

"Names Barney Rook, and here with me is my girl, Reba. We're the Salem Militia, only members." He said, still smiling like the cat that got the canary. "Did a number on those mirelurks, lady. Can respect that."

"Its nice to meet you Mr. Rook…" Harry started, unsure how to ask him about the Settlers.

"Ah, none of that Mr. I'm Barney, boy."

"I'm Harry, once again, nice to meet you." He looked around and wanted to start asking when Daphne took the words from his mouth.

"Where is everybody?" she demanded.

Barney took to looking up and down them, one by one and especially at their wands and brooms in their hands. One could see the wheels grinding in his head before he seemed to have come to an conclusion. "Ah, you people be some o' those… well, you're outta luck. Big chunk o' them be gone now for a good half year. Last guy they left never made it out of that Raider whorehouse, 'm afraid."

"What do you mean, gone? Where to?" Daphne pressed on.

"Nah, no where. They shot each other with those sticks of yours. Nasty business I tell ya. Some funny speaking guys… burmans, or someat got here on the same flyin' things. Got in a bit of a fight about some books they brought. Didn' understand most o' it. End of story is that they blasted each other with green light to the last man standin'."

Daphne went to her knees, hugged herself close and just seemed to shut off. Neville and George sat down on a bench nearby and closed their eyes while Susan already wanted to start a sentence with 'At least…' before Hermione glared her down. Luna and Lilith seemed to just stop feeling anything and looked at Barney with expressionless eyes.

"Did they…" Harry began, furiously pressing down despair and disappointment. "Did they… leave something? Anything?"

Barneys eyes wandered up as he thought a bit. "Well, if you're lookin for some beds or sumthin', then no. But they got sum room under the church that I never could enter. Also brought the Raiders and the Children in a bit of a tizzy that one. Can't open it, can't break the lock, can't dig into it. Some nut tried ta blow a hole in it. Blasted his guts from here to Diamond city in the process."

"Can you show us?"

"'Course I can. Follow me."

The room proved to be locked with magic, as Harry had suspected. With a simple Alohomora, the lock broke and stairs into the crypta of the church opened up underneath the trapdoor. They had left their group behind and just Harry and Hermione made their way into the room. It was hard, on Harry and he suspected on Hermione just as much. They soldiered on through simple force of will.

Their spirits should soon be lifted as Barney showed them around a corner of the crypta into the part that seemed to served as a warehouse, library and potions workshop all in one. The shelves were full of ingredients and finished potions. They had wood for a base of transfiguration, rolls after rolls of parchments and crates full off raw material used for all kinds of rituals, transmutations and crafting. The potions workshop was equipped with the right tools and a small set of different cauldrons. But the biggest surprise was the massive shelves and big piles of books that were everywhere. Most of them were around a desk with a terminal of all things on it and piles of notes littered around. Harry could barely hold Hermione from jumping head first into the books. Her eyes shone with the prospect of searching through this library, all disappointment forgotten.

Harry let out a sigh of relief. What would he had done if the whole of the settlement was gone? What would have happened if all were for naught? He couldn't imagine Daphne surviving if they'd have find out that there was nothing, let alone finding it in her to build something from it. It would have broken all their spirits and in the end, their will to survive. But this in front of him gave him hope. The crypta was a start, a way to make it work. He felt horrible for thinking it, but in the end they didn't need anyone else than themselves.

He was ripped from his musing when he heard screams from outside following gunshots. They shared a quick look and then dashed for the upper level of the church. Barney unlocked his rifle and Harry drew his wand, ready to defend his people against anything.

They stormed out of the church and were greeted with the sight of two men in suits flying through the air. A sickening crunch was heard when their heads collided with concrete walls. In the middle of the field was the whirling form of Daphne. Her face was twisted in rage and anguish and she didn't bother with Stunners. The men in suits exploded with reductos, were cut open with Sectumsempra and one man was being clawed to pieces by a transfigured lion.

Harry jumped into the fray and quickly dispatched of two men in suits with quick piercing hexes. The small stream of light punctured their bodies just like bullets would and made them sink to the ground.

It was over as fast as it begun. Harry counted a dozen men lying on the floor with various degrees of blood streaming from their bodies. Only one was still alive and he cowered in front of Daphne who had rage burning in her eyes.

"Who are you?" she growled out.

"Please… I'm just some small guy."

"Crucio!" Daphne didn't even recognize the gasps of the people around here. She released the torture curse soon after and growled again. "Who. Are. You?"

"We're the Triggermen from Cambridge. We… geez, fuck… we just wanted to collect some caps. Some trader said Rook was alone and horded some caps. Please… whatever you wish, just no more. PLEASE!"

"Leave here. Don't come back." Harry said to the man and watched him run as if Death itself was behind him. He then turned to the still stunned group behind him and Daphne who's entire body shook.

"What happened?"

"Those guys came up to us and just opened fire." Neville explained. "We were bloody lucky that Daphne was quick about drawing her wand."

"Who are those Triggermen?" Harry asked Barney.

"Ah, jus' some lousy gangsters. Worst gang in the Commonwealth if ya ask me, but got sum serious backing. Rumor's around that they get their caps and chems from the green jewel."

"The green jewel?"

"Aye, Diamond City. Biggest settlement around. Say… now that ya know of the basement, whatca gonna do? Can't say that I'd mind some company. And you bunch certainly pack a punch."

"I… haven't thought about it. We came because the ones before us sent letters telling us that our culture is rebuilt here. Now we're just us again. Well… us and you."

"And Reba," Barney padded his rifles like a loved child.

"And Reba, " Harry chuckled.

"Alright then, tell ya what. I got sum mirelurk stew cookin' and ya're all invited for a bite. Come along. I bet I can find sum old sleeping bags and such for ya to get through the first nights." Barney cheered and waved them with him to the house with the fence around it.

Harry was about to leave with the group when he saw Daphne still staring at the spot where she had used the Unforgivable on the man. "I understand, you know."

"How could you?" she whispered. "You're the bloody Boy-Who-Lived, how could you understand?"

"Boy-Who-Lived or not, I still used two of them. And honestly, I reckon we'll use a lot more of them in the future. We're not even here for half a day and we already got into the first fight. To cite Susan. At least… they were humans."

"So, we're staying? Has our leader decided then?"

"Don't give me that, Daphne. Where else would we go? Want to go back? To the Goblins? Back over the Labrador Sea?"

Daphne didn't answer and just looked at the spot of her first use of the Cruciatus. Her body still shook with the adrenaline and shock of the spell and probably, the rage and hate in herself. Harry softly touched her arm and she started like he had shot her a stinging hex. But Harry wouldn't be refused and he hugged her, first against her will and then just to hold her up. She sank against him, too tired to cry.

"My first time…" Harry whispered in her ear. "Was when Bellatrix Lestrange killed my godfather, Sirius Black. He had been all I had and she took it from me. I used the Cruciatus, but I couldn't get it right. She had mocked me about not having enough hate in me, but now I know that it was simply my young age that prevented me from torturing her into insanity. When I broke into Gringotts, I used the Imperius on a Goblin. And in hindsight, I regret not using the Killing curse in the Battle. Many lives of more deserving people would have been save that day if I had just disposed of the Death Eaters for good."

Daphne nodded and then whispered back. "The last weeks I had only one goal. I wanted to see some sort of civilization again. I wanted to go to a cafe, get something fancy to drink and read a good book in the sun. I had… accepted… that my family was gone. All I had was the promise of that letter. Then we get here and I see that it was all for naught. We're still among ruins and decay. When they attacked, I…" she chocked on the words, but Harry understood well enough.

"Let me show you something. Come on." Harry led her into the church, opened the door again and led her down into the crypta.

"Oh my," was all Daphne could get out before her face lit up in a smile similar to Hermiones. "This is… we can… YES! YES! Oh, bloody hell yes!

"Its not much, but I think we can start with this, can't we? We also got Barney to get us acquainted with this area. In the end, we…" he got interrupted by a cannonball of blonde smashing into him. Her arms hugged him so tight, he had trouble breathing and her beautiful laugh echoed through the crypta.

"Yes, we can start with this. I already glimpsed some Household and Crafting spellbooks. We can start with the houses, and then get on with cleaning up the shore form these crabs. Then we should establish some defenses, don't you think? Maybe some intent wards and some more hand-on traps. Ooooh," she gushed. "This is… this is…yes!"

"Yeah, "he smiled "sounds like a plan."

OOO

She was going to murder Arcturo when she came back to Diamond City. What a unbelievable idiot that wannabe ladysman with his fakeish south-american accent and his stupid 10 Millimeter pistols that did nothing - nothing against Super Mutants. The only thing she got for firing at that single, green brute was that he roared at her and called his brothers.

She was dodging a missile that blew her reporters cap off her head. She barely avoided falling as she grabbed her hat, jumped through a broken down bus and at the same time tried to not loose her useless pistol.

"Come back, hooman!"

Even in this situation she couldn't avoid to roll her eyes at the Mutants. She swore, an average of ten points more IQ and those giants would easily take over the entirety of the continent. But as it was, they already failed at figuring out the problem of fitting through a bus-door all at the same time. The laugh she wanted to let go got stuck in her throat when she turned the next corner.

"Oh damn…" she cursed as a band of Raiders looked up from their meager meal of molerat and hubflower soup, grabbed their rifles and immediately begun firing at her.

She fired three quick bullets at them and then ran in the opposite direction. At this point, her guess was as good as anyones as to where exactly she was in Boston. She had jumped through houses, crossed streets, dashed through broken stores and nothing shook those bastards off her. The Super Mutants had her chased from Trinity Tower to the Combat Zone, through Boston Commons up until she had slipped them at the bus.

She was running somewhere north she realized as from time to time one could see the river through the debris of the city. The rattling fire of the Pipe Rifles behind her drew even more Raiders in. She just hoped beyond hope that these were rival gangs and she could slip them in the following fight.

A bullet nearly took off her nose, so close was it at her head. She fell to her knees and so avoided a salve from more than one rifle. The wall next to her burst up into small pieces of concrete and bricks as the shots collided with the walls. She gave some quick shots back, one, two, three, and heard some of the raiders scream as her desperate spray hit a mark.

She jumped up and fell back into the full sprint. Another block and she saw the river. She sighed and in the back of her mind she already went through everything she could sell to get an anti-rads treatment afterwards. But the constant sound of muzzle fire, bullets whistling through the air and strays colliding with metal made the decision an easy one.

With a wide leap she jumped onto the balustrade and with another she flew into the murky water separating the main city and Cambridge. Bullets shot after her and she could hear them penetrating the water, but she knew, this was it. Once again, she had survived when others would have been killed.

She held her breath as long as she could and followed the stream down the river. It was almost a minute when she had to resurface. She did so with the utmost caution, sticking first her eyes, then the rest of her head out of the water. She could almost feel the radiation doing its work while swimming through the dirty water. To her luck, the stream carried her to the edge of the river where she could easily climb up the walls. She took a look around and realized that she was close to Monsignor Plaza. Another look around to check if any Raiders, Mirelurks or other critters were around and then she let herself drop to the floor. She leaned against the wall to the river and took a deep, cleansing breath.

"That story wasn't worth it…" she breathed, half pissed off and half just happy to be alive.

But wasn't that one of her defining traits? Snooping around places she wasn't supposed to be in and getting out with her live and, most often, pride intact was just classic Piper. The sole journalist of the Commonwealth was infamous for her ability to slip through the big players grasp time and time again. Just last week she had investigated the dirty water supplies which ended with her close to execution through the hands of the Children of Atom. Piper faked a vision and was now an Acolyte of Atom. It had been one of those cases were her pride was left behind in favor of her life.

This time she had been given an anonymous tip that Hancock, the mayor of Goodneighbour, was allowing children to buy chems in his city. However, she never reached the settlement. That Super Mutant nest just next to Goodneighbour had spit out one of their brood right in front of her face. At least double her size, with muscles like a Yao Guai and a spiked board, or better small tree in its hands, the first thing that had come to her mind was to raise her gun and shoot it in the face. The scream of 'Aaargh, silly hooman wanna fight?!' had been the start of a marathon she had been sure she wouldn't survive.

When she found it in her to walk again, she stood up and made her way back to Diamond City where she would have to tell Nat that the boring story about the spoiled beer in the Dugout Inn would be printed. Talk about a walk of shame, she thought. But fate takes, fate gives and she didn't encounter anyone trying to kill her while she made her way back.

The guards around the gate were more tense than normal, but she had heard gunshots coming from the city and had seen a missile flying over Boston from somewhere around the main entrance. She probably wasn't the only one who has had problems with Super Mutants today. She saw some of the guards carry away three of their own and wondered who McDonough would hire next for the outside guard duties. For all she knew, and she knew a lot, the guys were outcasts from raider gangs, farmers who had their fields burnt down or just scavengers looking for a solid income. In any case, they weren't Diamond city residents anymore, even if they got the promise that after a few years of service, they would get a house. It had yet to happen that one of the guys survived this long.

When she reached the speaker she was already pissed off to no end for the day. She was sure that she had severe radiation poisoning and really looked forward to have that Rad-Away flowing through her veins. Her bullets were wet and useless, she was damp all over and the sun was already at the horizon. She could really do without a nighttime adventure today.

She pressed the button on the intercom and waited for the receiver to answer. The crackling told her that someone had activated the speaker.

"Hey, this is Piper. Open the door… please."

"Hey Ms. Piper," the voice of Danny, the newer guy in the Guard answered. "Look, I'm sorry, but I can't let you in."

"What do you mean you can't let me in?" she had to really pull on the last bit of her nerves to not explode on the guy. A calming breath later she spoke, her teeth clenched. "Stop playing around, Danny! I'm standing out in the open, for crying out loud!"

"I got orders not to let you in, Ms. Piper. I'm sorry I'm just doing my job."

At this point she already drew the name of Danny on her shitlist. She was so sick of all those brown-nosing, ass-licking, imbecilic, ghoulbrains that had a range of thought from their current to their next moonshine. "Oooh, 'just doing your job'. Protecting Diamond City means keeping me out, is that it?" She shook herself in exasperation. "Oh, look its the scary reporter." She mocked and sent a 'Boo!' with it.

"I'm sorry, but Mayor McDonough…" Oh, now we're getting to the root of the problem she thought and cold rage bubbled up in her stomach. "…is really steamed, Piper. Sayin that article you wrote was all lies." Yes, of course he would say that you idiot! "The whole city's in a tizzy." Good!

She snarled and viciously suppressed the urge to go back to the Super Mutants and show them the way over the roof she had found the last month. "You open that gate right now, Danny Sullivan! I live here. You can't just lock me out!" she threatened, but knew just the same that yes, he could lock her out. He could lock her out and then the problem number one of the Mayor would be no more the next day. As she sighed she saw a lady in blue next to her, but didn't give her much attention. "I can wait here all day, Danny! Open up!" she tried a last time, but really didn't think it would do anything.

She turned around and saw the lady raising a single, elegant eyebrow at her. Pipers eyes grew wide as she recognized the blue of the Vault Suit, mixed with some typical raider armor over it. The black haired lady with the unhealthy skin color and slightly milky, green eyes held a rather impressive looking laser rifle at her side. Two options then, Piper thought. Either the woman was a exiled Vault Dweller or a pretty lucky Scavenger. Then she saw the big load of guns and leather pieces on the womans back and had an idea. Piper beckoned her closer with a wave.

"You. You want into Diamon City, right?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"Wh- What? Who are you?" the lady stuttered. Oh, great. Another muscle for brains wastelander.

She hushed her. "Play along." She whispered and then, in a louder voice, she spoke sideways to the speaker. "Wh-What was that? You said you're a trader up from Quincy? You have enough supplies to keep the general store stocked for a whole month? Huh?"

With a gesture of her hand she told the Vault-Dweller to stay silent. "You hear that, Danny? You're gonna open the gate and let us in or are you gonna be the one talking to crazy Mirna about loosing out on all this supply?"

The speaker cracked and Danny was once again on the other side. "Geez, alright. No need to make it personal, Piper. Give me a minute." YES!

Piper whirled around to the lady. "Better head inside quickly before Danny catches on to the bluff." She couldn't quite hold back the sigh of relief.

"This place. Diamond City. What is it?" the vault-dweller, Piper was sure now, asked.

"Oh, the green jewel? Shes a sight." Piper gushed. "Everyone whos anyone in the Commonwealth is from here, settled here or…" she pointed at herself, "got kicked out of here. A big wall, some power, working plumbing, schools and some security goons are what make Diamond City the big monster it is." Another sigh, she really couldn't hold back her relief. "Love it or hate it. You'll see for yourself, soon enough." She nodded to the dweller. "Lets go,"

She turned around, her steps a bit quicker in case Danny had second thoughts - not likely since a first thought would be required for the second to occur. She stepped on the broken floor of the Entrance Hall where two centuries ago, people bought tickets to watch baseball. Right in the middle of the hall stood Numero Uno of her shitlist, the Mayor himself.

"Piper! Who let you back inside? I told Sullivan to keep that gate shut!"

Now if that wasn't telling her that she ought to roll over and die, than Piper didn't know what was. But she had long ago stopped to think that the Mayor or those grabbing his caps each month had any sort of decency left in their system. In the case of the Mayor, he probably didn't have it in his programming. If Piper could just prove…

"You devious, rabble-rousing slander!" Rabble-rousing was a new one. "The level of dishonesty in that paper of yours! I'll have that printer scrapped for parts." He threatened and made a show of it for his guards. Idle talk, she knew, but it hit where it hurt, especially after a day like this.

"Oooh, is that a statement, Mr. McDonough?" she hissed out with enough venom to make Radscorpions jealous. "'Tyrant mayor shuts down the press?" she announced to a invisible crowd and drew the headline in the air. She was on a roll and the lady in her vaultsuit would have to take it. "Why don't we ask the newcomer? Do you support the news? Cause the mayor's threatening to throw free speech in the dumpster." She said with a voice that dared the lady to disagree.

"What newspaper are you talking about." The woman asked with the dullest voice Piper had ever heard. Couldn't that woman see the 'Press' sign on her cap or - heres a brave new thought - read some freakin' context?

"Mine!" Piper gave back. "Publick Occurences, and we're the hard look at the truth." Most of the time she added in her head. "So are you with us or not?"

"Always believed in freedom of the press,"

Before Piper blurt out an overly inpolite 'Good!' the Mayor opened his arms wide again and did his usual routine whenever someone in the discussion isn't on his side. "Oh, I didn't mean to bring you into this argument, good lady." Of course not, now that she told you whats what! "No no no, you look like Diamond City material." Pff… meaning she looks like she got some caps to spend for your coffers, more like it. "Welcome to the great green jewel of the Commonwealth. Safe. Happy. A fine place to come, spend your money, settle down. Don't let this muckracker here tell you otherwise, allright?"

Muckracker, her ass. She wouldn't have told the dweller any of that. The only thing she would have told her was that the place was just safe in comparison with the rest of the Commonwealth, the happy part was reserved for the people in the upper stands and settling down was only an option if you got sacks full of caps or little enough dignity to earn the same amount in the Mayors bed. Well, when she thought about it, maybe he wasn't so far off with her telling otherwise.

"I'm sure your city is a great place." Came the diplomatic answer from the dweller.

"Yeah. Greatest House of cards in the Commonwealth… until the wind blows." She zinged at McDonough.

Cutting her off, the Mayor cleared his throat in his trademark, awkward way and tried to push Piper out of the conversation entirely. "Now, was there anything particular you came to our city for?"

"I'm trying to find someone." The woman said, suddenly loosing all of her cool, neutral demeanor. She looked positively broken as she spoke. Her eyes were downcast, but quickly came back to the conversation. However, her shoulders sagged and so did her entire body. It was defeat, Piper couldn't describe it any other way and felt the guilt already rising.

"Trying to find someone? Who?" the Mayor asked, faking concern like he always did.

"My son, Shaun. He's less than a year old." Now the woman was close to tears. It was heart wrenching the way the woman held the rifle in her hands like a lifeline, her knuckles white from the pressure with which she held on. She blinked the water in her eyes away and, unknown to the dweller, made Piper decide to help her.

"Wait, your son's missing?" she asked "Oh, you hear that McDonough? Whats Diamond City Security doing to help this woman, huh? This isn't the first missing person's report to come through here, and now we've got an infant who's been taken!"

"Don't listen to her!" McDonough tried to soothe the dweller. Piper could see the rising dislike in her eyes. "While I am afraid that our security team can't follow every case that comes through, I'm confident you can find help here."

Damn right she'll find help Piper thought while already compiling a list of potential allies in her head. There was Nick, of course. The only private detective and only accepted synth in the Commonwealth had a heart, or better, processor of gold and would jump at the chance to help the lady in blue. Arcturo and Mirna could maybe be convinced to give her a bonus and the barkeeps in the Dugout Inn always knew some rumors from the sewers. She pulled herself back from her thoughts, realizing that the Mayors idle talk had become a blur.

"…one of our great citizens can surely find the time to help you."

"Well, a mayor of a great city must know everyone. Who can help me?" Oh, smooth, Bluesuit.

"Well, uhm…" McDonough stuttered. "There is one private citizen. Nick Valentine, a detective of sorts who specializes in tracking people down, usually for debts or whatnot." The Mayor became increasingly nervous, Piper noted and rescued himself by basically telling the dweller that she would be welcome as long as she wouldn't get on the nerves of the guards with stuff McDonough didn't want to admit were true.

But Piper wouldn't be so easily denied another juicy lead. "This is ridiculous! Diamond City security can't spare one officer to help? I want the I truth, McDonough! Whats the real reason security never investigates any missing…"

"I've had enough of this, Piper!" the mayor shouted over her. "From now on, consider you and that little sister of yours on notice."

"Yea, keep talking McDonough, that's all you're good for!"

The Mayor harrumphed some unintelligible words and went off to his office above the stands, the big ivory tower over the field. She took a deep breath before she looked back at the vault-dweller next to her. The woman was back at her neutral expression, now easily recognizable as a mask of will to power through the pain she obviously felt.

"I'm impressed, not everyone can claw information out of McDonoughs tight-fisted hands." Piper said to her. She made a bit of a show of sizing the dweller up, before she offered her help. "Why don't you come to my office after you see Valentine? I think I just found my next story."

Granted, Piper thought, that wasn't the most direct approach to offering help, but it wasn't any less true. The Vault-dweller that was looking for her son was way more interesting than Vadim's lackluster views on refrigeration.

After leaving the dweller that she had decided now to just call 'Blue', since she had forgot to ask her name, behind her she started to her own house, closest to the entrance. The little shack her father had built with their mother all those years ago. Just like most of the time, Nat, her little sister was shouting the latest headlines to get people to read their latest news.

Nat was a smart girl, and so she knew exactly whats what when Piper sat down next to the printing press, looking defeated.

"So, how was Goodneighbour?" she asked, the smirk on her face making quite clear what she expected to hear.

"Didn't even make it there. I was so close, but then ol' Green and his friends started chasing me through the ruins."

That erased the smirk, alright. Her little sister looked shocked out of her wits. "You met Super Mutants?"

"And Raiders - a lot of those - and some ghouls, in the mix for good measure, I think, and I took a swim in the river."

"The riv… Piper!"

"Listen, Nat. I didn't have a choice. It was either rads or raiders and I chose the less lethal option."

"You gotta go see Doc Sun!" Nat ordered, forgetting all about her sales position on the box. She sat next to Piper and suddenly was all little girl worried for her big sister again. Piper patted her head and pulled her into a tight hug. "And with what caps? Anti-Rads costs forty, at least."

Nat didn't even answer and just rummaged around her pockets, pulling caps from everywhere. In the end some sixteen caps lay before her. She looked absolutely devastated. Piper patted her again on the head and tried to smile, even though her muscles didn't really want to at the moment. She felt sick, horrible really and she knew that feeling well enough to make her own diagnosis. That was severe radiation poisoning she got there. Well, it was a shit enough day, why not loose her pride at the very end?

So she grabbed the sixteen caps from the floor and, with a last smile at Nat, made her way to Doc Sun who stood, broody as ever, in front of his clinic. It was just across the street, but oh boy did standing up feel weird. It took the doctor just one quick look to see what was wrong with her.

"You have severe radiation poisoning. Shall we clean you up, Piper?"

"Yes, well… thing is…" she hemmed and hawwed.

"Its 35 caps, for you."

"Can we make that…say… sixteen caps for me?" She asked with the most adorable puppy eyes she could muster.

The doctor touched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes and sighed as if she had just insulted him on the deepest levels of his heart. "What do you have to spare, that I could use?"

"Uhm… well, heres a... A pen…useful!" she stuttered. "And heres… oh, paper!"

"I write it on your tab?" he said through his teeth. "Again!"

"Yes, tab… please." She quickly said and made her way past him to sit at the chair of his clinic.

She hated to get radiation washed out of her system. Whatever was in Rad-Away and the special stuff the doctors used, it was highly unpleasant and exhausted her to no end. It also made her need to visit the toilet as if she'd just drunk three gallons of Nuka Cola. After she had taken care of that and thanked the doctor for his time and his patience with her ever increasing tab, she made her way back across the streets. It was already night, and when she entered the shack, she saw Nat preparing herself for bed.

"Sun let me put it on the tab. I drop the caps in the drawer, alright?"

"Right," Nat mumbled. "How large 's that tab now?"

Piper couldn't quite meet the eyes of her sister at that. "Lets just say I'd do good to find some Fusion Cores or Fat Mans on my next investigation to trade with Arcturo." Then she grinned as a thought hit her, "Or that vault-dweller lady I just met outside really drops by and gives us a juicy story."

"A vault-dweller? With blue jumpsuit and all?" Piper grinned at her sister as she said that, gushing like she was talking about Grognak or the Silver Shroud. Her sister had to grow so fast and it was good to see her being a child once in a while.

"Blue suit, perfect - if somewhat pale - skin and as much knowledge about the Commonwealth as a newborn."

"Sweet! And shes coming to give us an interview?"

"I hope so… otherwise we'll have to print that beer story."

"Gah… that one's awful."

"Thanks," Piper said, her voice dropping with sarcasm. "Always good to hear you have such confidence in my writing."

"Hey, no one can make Brahmin dung into caps." Nat teased back. "But that reminds me. Some harassed looking guy came to town today. Said he was coming from up north. Babbled something about wizards and magic before Security kicked him out. Sounds like the Institute!"

Piper wasn't so sure about that since the Institute seemed to avoid making a show, or leaving survivors for that matter. Whenever Synths attacked settlements or some technological factories, they were fast, clean and thorough. There were never survivors, just onlookers that saw it from some observation posts and there certainly never was any mention of magic.

"Did you get where exactly?"

"Salem,"