Running.
Ron was running.
Running through the woods wand in hand. Passing tree trunk after tree trunk. Pulling branches aside.
Running.
Ron Weasley was trying to put as much distance between himself and The Burrow as possible. He couldn't go back now. Not now that the infected had descended upon it. He tried Apperating over and over again, but with no avail he began to run.
A herd of them had mauled the house. He didn't know where they had come from or what had happened to them. All he could come up with was they were infected or dead or something unnatural. He didn't want to believe they were zombies, but after what he witnessed how could he not. Out of all the magical creatures in the wizarding world, he had never seen anything like them.
They were rotting. Definitely rotting. And they were covered in dried earth. And that smell! The smell they put off was horrible. As if they had been dead for weeks- years even!
In a hoard they were able to breakdown the house. Not that the structure was the most sound to begin with. But the group made it through their wards and straight for the musty, wooden door.
The first to go was him mum.
He choked at the thought. No. He couldn't think about that now. He had to run. Run for his life.
He couldn't stop to think how they had busted down the door looking for the first piece of meat in sight. He couldn't think about how he'd ran down the stairs only to see one of them bite into his mother's arm as she brandished her wand at them.
She went down hard. And before his eyes began to change. Her eyes went cold and dead. Before Ron even had a second to see if she was alright the mob pushed forward. More of them flooding in and filling the small kitchen. They began breaking down the walls. Searching. Hungry.
So he ran.
Ron ran back upstairs with all the speed of a former athlete, but he could hear them reaching the stairs gaining on him.
"GET OUT! EVERYONE GET OUT!" Ron yelled at the top of his lungs. He wasn't even sure who was home. He had just arrived the night before while everyone was sleeping.
There was no time to check each bedroom. There were too many of them. He could feel the stairs start to quake and hear the snapping of wood as the stampede of angry dead grew.
Percy came lumbering out the door not even carrying his wand.
"Come on!" Ron screamed at him running past. Ron grabbed Percy's shoulder and pulled him along the staircase attempting to pull him to safety.
"Ron, what is going on?" Percy asked, still disoriented. He was following in Ron's footsteps when he paused to turn around. In that second of hesitation, in the need of seeing what was going on, one of the dead grabbed Percy by the ankle and pulled him down. He didn't simply get set off balanced, but instead was pulled into the pile of rotting flesh.
Ron swore he heard a bone crunch, but couldn't stop to see the fate of his brother.
So he ran.
He ran up the staircase, threw open his bedroom door, and headed straight for the window. There was no time for thought. There was no time for another escape. Instead, he shoved the window open and without a second thought, jumped.
Although he could not fly, he was a wizard after all. So he transfigured the garden below into the softest down pillow he could think of and he landed with a soft plop. But somehow he knew that escaping the house was not going to be the end of his problems.
He could still hear the groans and smell the rotting flesh that had envoloped his home. So he rolled out of the down and ran for the woods. Barely sneaking a glance over his shoulder, he saw the house he grew up in start to fall.
***
I'm not sure where I'm headed with this story, but I'm hoping for a wizarding world meets The Walking Dean fic. I promise, it is not a crossover. There will definitely be some ships, but as for the story.. who knows.
