Warning: this is not happy. An apocalypse is not really a happy thing with much scope for happy endings (to me at least)… (Though I suppose I could have gone a comedy style route or something but this it what came to mind.) So sorry. Please feel free to send a different ask requesting something nicer or better and I can try again?
They fought of course, like a well-oiled machine, expertly dispatching the invading zombies. Spells carefully chosen for maximum effectiveness, both of them perfectly capable of casting sectumsempra to sever the spinal cord just as they were able to ignite them as if they were the inferi they were more accustomed to. Maybe had that been all it was, a sudden and inexplicable swarm of zombies, they would have been fine, but it wasn’t just an influx of the undead. It was an apocalypse.
Severus would have claimed that the only person he cared about was Harry, but Harry knew that as they lost contact with the rest of the world, as all his friends succumbed and ceased to respond to his franticly futile attempts to regain communication that Severus too felt a hideous grief. A grief that was different from the one Harry felt, as he lost the friends that had formed the family he had never had, as well as his sudden demotion from saviour of the wizarding world to just another man helpless in the face of the zombies that lurked behind the feeble barricade that would not last. Severus too suffered and grieved, for people who he had often never shown any love towards, but he too had devoted his life towards the protection of others, even if he had done so cloaked in barbed wire that had never been revoked, with only Harry having ever managed to make the dangerous trek across that No Mans Land to find the terrified and shellshocked soldier, signed up far too young to see battle and unable to ever truly recover from that, still trapped in a war that had ended.
They sat side by side, exhausted as much from the emotional drain of fear and loss as they were from the physical and magical exertion of fighting. Harry knew that they were both more drained by their emotions, suffocating and drowning them in the despair of loss after having survived so much already, than by the act of fighting. He knew that should there be more battle it would invigorate them, inspire them to once more shut down on all their thoughts and focus on the simplicity of survival rather than the dreadful truths that they were forced to confront in those moments of peaceful silence that were neither peaceful nor silent.
They could both hear the groaning from beyond the barricade, just as they could feel it shifting against them, knowing that it could never last. Severus touched his fingers to Harry’s, both stained with blood that went deeper than the present moment and present battle. Harry rested his head against Severus’s shoulder, his eyes not focusing on the tiny basement, not interested in the cold concrete that was all that kept them safe, lit by a single flickering flame on a solitary candle, lit to avoid wasting energy on lumos but draining their oxygen supply. The only way to ensure their safety was to seal themselves in so the zombies stood no chance of breaching their defences, a tactic that would lead to them suffocating in the darkness to the sounds of rotting fingers scraping against the door, fingernails and flesh falling off the fingers that clawed so desperately for them. Somehow even that was more appealing than being torn apart, eaten alive as they were ripped to shreds, an alternative that was itself almost better than becoming zombies themselves.
Harry shuddered. Severus shifted, wrapping an arm around him in a gesture that could give no comfort as there was nothing left. They both knew it, that all that remained was to choose. The barricade shuddered, as if it too was nearing the end of its life, close to the final death throes that would signal the end of it all, a final moment of desperation before the collapse into nothingness.
Severus drew the small phial out from his pocket, “It’s close to painless,” he said, his voice a strangled mess of emotions, “And fairly fast.”
“Is there enough for both of us?” Harry asked hoarsely, the most important question of his life, desperate for Severus to have prepared as well as he knew he would have. The answer was a nod that Harry didn’t see but felt, stabbing blades of relief piercing his heart, twisting to destruction, leaving nothing but a gaping wound in a heart already destroyed by grief and love.
“A mouthful should be enough,” Severus said, his voice hoarse from lack of water, another option that awaited them“But if we drink half each it should be…”
“Yes,” Harry said, not needing to know what it should be, not knowing if there really was anything waiting at the end of the sentence, just like he didn’t know what was waiting beyond the mortal coil, only that it wouldn’t be zombies but rather an adventure as he had been promised long ago, an adventure with Severus by his side.
Severus uncorked the phial gingerly, as if it was the most precious item in the world, and for that moment in their world it was. He offered it to Harry first, as he always did, his priorities never having shifted, his eyes still full of love even thought the shadows hid them. Harry still knew, just as he would have know had all his senses been magicked away rather than it being the mundanely awful circumstances that hid his eyes from easy view.
“A mouthful,” Harry said, repeated, his own voice cracking from dehydration and emotion.
“Half,” Severus repeated, though Harry knew that a mouthful would be almost half anyway, “At least half,”
“Half,” Harry agreed, the words hurting his dry throat, swallowing the clear liquid that wouldn’t quench his thirst. It burnt an icy trail down his throat, bitter and pungent, a hint of decay though that could be the decay that seemed to have filled the world as it accompanied the zombies, spreading as they decayed. He checked the phial, peering at it in the dim light before taking another sip, to bring it to half full. He handed it back to Severus calmly, who downed it in one. Harry didn’t know if it was his imagination or the poison, but the sounds from beyond the tiny basement seemed to fade away, either through his senses slowly being suppressed as his life ended or through the solution having allowed his brain to finally dismiss them as ultimately irrelevant.
Severus smiled thinly, strained and yet relaxing, either because there was now no longer anything left to worry about or because his nerves were being dulled as his body started to shut down. He ran his dirty fingers through Harry’s dirty hair, resting his palm on the back of Harry’s head. Beneath his hand was skin and bone, covering a brain that would slowly drift away into unconsciousness and then fall even deeper away from the world of the living, though the world they would leave behind had long since ceased to being to the living but rather the dead who refused to remain truly dead. Harry leaned forward, his motions lubricated, concepts such as pain or fear starting to fade just like the corners of his vision. They kissed, the acrid taste and scent lingering on both of them, their breath toxic as it slowed.
