Frigid Flames ch.8

Harry Potter was not the type to declare himself a staunch libertarian. He insisted that everything he owned belonged to him and no one else, and he cursed anyone who dared to tell him what to do. Although he preferred working for himself, he had no problem taking orders when necessary.

He simply didn't care about his current job. He tried to care, but most of the time, he felt like it was a waste of time. Not that he considered his time to be particularly valuable or anything, but he just had this nagging feeling that he should be doing something else.

Descending the slope and stepping onto a large field behind him, Harry tried to push thoughts of his past life out of his mind. But who was he kidding? What else could he think about in this frozen wasteland?

His mind wandered to Daphne, the girl he had recently met. It still seemed like he had seen her somewhere before, but analyzing his entire memory, he couldn't recall where. She was quite nice, and he could say that he liked her a lot. But he already felt guilty about it. He knew she wanted something serious, and he wasn't sure if he was ready for that.

Sure, Daphne was attractive in many ways, and Harry liked that he could take care of her. He was the type of guy who enjoyed being in control, but that didn't mean he was overly arrogant or offensive. He also liked assertive women and thought that he and Daphne could work well together.

However, Harry knew he had a wanderlust bug, and he couldn't ignore it forever. He had been through this before. They would find a settlement, settle in for a while, and then he would become restless and leave. It was a pattern he couldn't break, and it probably started back in his Hogwarts days.

He just hoped that Daphne would understand. He didn't want to hurt her, but he couldn't help what he felt. He sighed and shook his head, cursing the freezing hell of the post-apocalyptic nightmare he found himself in. It was a tough life, but he was suited for it. It just really sucked.

Harry Potter shut off his brain as best he could, marching through the field, listening to the wind and the crunch of snow under his boots. At least today the sun was out, so it was halfway decent in terms of warmth.

He couldn't see anything lurking nearby. No wolves, no bears. He was almost certain it was bear country... or wait, was it a country? It didn't help that not only did he not know much about the United States, but he wasn't even sure which damn state he was in. He still felt like it was Kansas, damn boring, but it could be Missouri or Nebraska. Hell, it could be Colorado, although he seriously doubted it. He hadn't looked at a map for too long.

Finally, he reached the shack. It was in a terrible state, full of holes, and the solitary window it had was shattered, but at least it was still standing. He checked what was happening outside, then pushed the door open while holding a gun in his hand.

Someone could be inside. However, when he peered in, he saw no one. It was dimly lit, so he pulled out a flashlight, tucked it under his arm, and took out his wand, casting a simple Lumos spell. He felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him, but he maintained the spell, using the flashlight as a cover, and entered, nudging things aside.

On the right side, there were some boxes, and on the left, a dried-up, rusty frame of an old bicycle with no tires. Against the back wall, there stood a workbench. Above it, there was a plank that apparently used to hold tools, but they had long been removed.

Feeling the same thrill he had even now, over a year since he started searching for places, he got to work, dismantling the shed piece by piece. There was nothing hidden around or beneath the bicycle. The drawers of the workbench turned out to be just as depressingly empty and cleaned out as the plank that once held tools, and the crates weren't much better.

The top one was empty. He flattened it and set it aside. Good material for burning. The next one held a few glass jars that would have been useful if they hadn't been shattered. With a sigh, he discarded the glass onto the workbench and flattened the second box.

The third and fourth boxes contained a bunch of random junk. A few remote controls without batteries, some miscellaneous scraps, a handful of paperbacks so rotten and weathered they were good for nothing but fuel, and a few children's toys that he eventually hung up. He could see someone trading for these. Or damn it, he would just give them away honestly. Being a kid these days? It must be really fucking scary. Then again, maybe not. Kids were truly adaptable and resilient, or so he had heard.

He packed whatever was useful into the remaining box and peered out the window again. Everything was still fine out there.

Now was the perfect moment for Harry to indulge in one of the things that kept him sane. He sat on the floor with his back against one of the walls and pulled out his journal from an inner pocket of his coat. No one knew about it. No one.

If you were to ask him directly why he never let anyone know that he kept a journal, he would have to answer honestly: he didn't know. He only knew that he simply felt good not letting anyone know that he wrote in a journal. He wasn't embarrassed by it, exactly. It was more about the fact that it was his. And he wanted it to remain his in every possible way. His best theory was that he didn't become too attached to anything he owned out of necessity. It could break, be stolen, needed to be traded, or lost. That was how it was with everything. Nothing he had with him now was with him when he set off on his new life a year ago. Except for the journal. That stayed with him. If he were to lose it... he wasn't sure how he would react. He imagined it would be devastating.

But he had been writing in that journal for fifteen months now. Sometimes weeks went by without updates, and it wasn't even that he had a lot to say. It helped him keep track of the date... to some extent. He had to admit that the whole "waiting weeks for an update" thing had probably messed up his chronology, but he still felt pretty confident that at least the month was correct. There were still places claiming to keep accurate time. Right now, he was almost certain it was August 2014. That was another reason why he caught those feathers.

He sat in that shack for a good twenty minutes. He wrote another entry, dating it as best as he could. It had been about a week since the last update. If you were to ask him why he wrote in the journal, he wouldn't be able to answer that either. Someone suggested it to him nine months after the apocalypse, and one day he just... tried it. And it felt good. So he kept doing it. And now he did it fairly regularly. He wrote about assholes chasing him out of town, shitty six days he had afterward, meeting Daphne, and the fantastic sex they had. When he finished writing, he tucked it away securely, and then he sat there, just... cooling off for a few more minutes. It was nice to sit and relax, even if it was on the cold, concrete floor.

Finally, he stood up again and started making his way back.

Harry Potter and Daphne returned to the room, and he placed the suitcases on the bed. "What happened to your things?" he asked.

Daphne sighed. "They took them. Basically robbed me when they kicked me out."

"That's messed up," Harry replied.

"Yeah, although I kind of feel like I deserved it. Their leader died because of me, and he was a pretty popular guy. Also, a useful guy."

Harry wasn't sure how to respond to that. "Well... sort through it and put anything you don't want in a pile on the table, so I can take a look," he said.

"What are you going to do?" Daphne asked.

"I'm going to boil some more water. I want to wash my clothes. Yours too, if you want."

"Yeah, that would be nice... thanks."

"Yep," said Harry, positioning himself to boil some water.

As Harry gathered snow to melt just behind the building, he could see that a storm was definitely approaching. But unless it worsened, he didn't think it would be one of those miserable bastards that lingered for days.

Harry fell into his routine, packing the snow, going back inside, starting a fire, and setting it up for cooking. From there, he stripped naked and put on the second set of clothes. He now only had two sets, completely identical: black boxers, black socks, a pair of heavy jeans, and a pair of work-style pants with sturdy pockets (he definitely preferred those), two sets of thermal underwear as a base layer, two thin long-sleeve shirts, two heavy shirts (a gray hoodie for one and a dark gray sweater for the other), and then the larger coat that went over it all. Next was his hat, one of those simple woolen caps, and a pair of woolen gloves.

While Harry dressed, Daphne sorted through the clothes. Half of them seemed to be meant for children, and although they would be useful, they were of no use to them. After she finished grabbing some clothes that seemed to fit and then stripped naked to try them on, it was hard for Harry to focus. She had a nice body.

But Harry dealt with the task at hand. He didn't find anything that fit him, so he packed everything back into one of the suitcases and placed them both in a corner. Clothes were great trade material.

After that, Harry tracked down another bucket from the manager's office and set the melted and boiled snow to cool down a bit.

"Hey, Daphne," he said as he waited.

"Yeah?" she replied, folding the new clothes up, now only wearing a pair of panties. She glanced at him.

"What's something that took you a while to get used to?" he asked. "Like, something that's not super obvious, like the weather or the lack of government. Something you used to do all the time in everyday life but don't have to anymore."

"Oh...okay, yeah," Daphne paused, thinking. "Maybe it sounds silly, but putting on makeup and taking care of my hair."

Harry understood. He knew what a time investment it could be for some women and how irritating it could be if they didn't enjoy it but felt like they had to do it.

Daphne sighed. "I started doing it in school when I actually started worrying that I was ugly. That's what some girls told me. I was ugly."

She furrowed her brows and stared at Harry for a second. "I'm not saying guys had it easier necessarily, but... there were days when I would've taken a punch straight to the face over the mental torture some girls could dish out."

"The way they picked at you, piece by piece, like acid eating away at your self-esteem, and their friends joining in, insulting you until they found that one thing that cut you deep, and then they focused on it. For example, if you secretly thought you had crooked teeth, oddly shaped breasts, or a forehead that was too big, if they discovered that it bothered you, really bothered you, they honed in on it. God, it was fucking torture."

"I think you're right," Harry said.

"About what?" Daphne asked.

"I'd rather take a punch to the face than endure that shit."

She laughed. "So yeah, that's one thing I don't miss. Besides, you can hardly find any makeup anymore, and nobody really expects it from us. No one expects us to look all dolled up." She grimaced. "You know what I fucking hated? Those guys who were like, 'I don't mind if girls don't wear makeup!' or 'I just like the completely natural look!' No, those fucking assholes actually just like it when you wear so much makeup that it looks like you're not wearing any at all. If you actually don't have any makeup on, they ask if you're sick or didn't get enough sleep or something. It was annoying."

"Yeah, it definitely was," Harry agreed.