Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters and locations are not my creations. I make no money from this. And if you paid for this then you were robbed. Also by a stupid con-person, because why would this disclaimer be left in it?
Warnings: This is not horror, because I don't do horror well. It get's on my nerves and I don't see the point. So if you were looking for gory descriptions of people getting ripped up by zombies and zombies being head'sploded then you have the wrong fic. Also: Character death.
Harry Potter and the missing Veil
When he was eleven, Harry Potter discovered that he was a wizard and would learn magic at the most renowned school for wizardry and witchcraft that existed in Europe and possibly the whole world. By the end of the school year he learned that the madman who wanted him dead was still alive and out to kill him. After he turned seventeen he defeated said madman and married the love of his live, who helped him cope with the aftermath of the war, including the death of his godfather that he had directly caused.
When he was twenty-five some left over followers of the madman killed his wife by throwing her through the same veil that had claimed his godfather. In front of his eyes. Seven months later Harry Potter, savior of the Wizarding World (or so they claim) destroyed the veil. A few minutes later the first zombies popped up. Call them what you want. They are dead. They are moving. They are contagious. They are zombies.
Actually, cut that bit about being contagious. That's strictly speaking not true. They are deadly. Venomous. The Unspeakables say they carry Death within them. A single bite will kill you within three days, depending on how resistant you are. Wizards and witches, being more resistant to such things, have up to five days. And then you are dead. And then you don't stay dead. Simple as that, really.
So, in destroying the veil one Harry Potter caused the death of a few billion people and doomed the meager rest. That knowledge has to suck. I guess that's why he keeps signing up for front-line duty, even if mages are discouraged to do so. You have to envy the Headless Nicks for having actual wizards with them. I hope the Death Eaters responsible for the guy snapping are out there, shambling about, trapped in their rotting carcasses and resurrecting every time someone blows their head off. Yes, I'm a bit vindictive when it comes to that.
Well, I should probably introduce myself. I was Marcus Dahlec (don't go there, I've heard them all), age seventeen, aspiring carpenter apprentice, son of a mechanic and a doctor. Also I'm very good with remembering things which means I was a very handy guy to have around even back then and unfortunately that has made me something of a public commodity for woman with no partner and a child wish in the here and now. I'll probably rant about that later, but for now let's finish the introduction. That seventeen year old carpenter apprentice has become Marcus Dahlec, twenty-six, leader of the Bloody Baron squadron, member of the People's Army and currently in a bit of a situation.
We are sitting on a roof and keeping our heads down. The radio has fizzled out, which means there's a sparkler down there somewhere close by. Some call them mummies, some demons, there's no consistent name to go with them. We of the Bloody Barons call them sparklers because when they are around every last bit of technology fails horribly. That was one of the reasons the epidemic was so extremely devastating. A single zombie or even a score of them is no real threat, if you look at it calmly. Once you know what to do with them they can be put out of commission easy enough. Immobilize it and burn whats left to be sure. Taking the head off helps, but it might still bite someone who assumes it's dead. We use ammo that blows the head clean off and to pieces nowadays because when there's a million more you don't want to stop and start a bonfire unless you're a wizard.
After you figured out how it's done you phone all your friends and spread the word. Only, zombies are beings of magic and they tend to fry whatever means of communication you have. We have runes on our tech nowadays to prevent exactly that. Took the Unspeakables three months of hard work, but everybody agreed that if we were to contribute at all we needed our technology working all the time and not just when the coast was clear.
That works on normal zombies like a charm (it isn't, wizards are a very uptight bunch when it comes to spell classification), but when a sparkler comes along nothing anybody ever came up with holds. Luckily there are not a lot of them. They are what happens when a wizard or witch dies. It doesn't matter if they were bitten, died of old age or killed by any other means. They always come back as the worst nightmare a normal like me could have. Don't even try to take one on without a strike-team of well-trained magic users. Unfortunately I had to discover that there are not a lot of able fighters among the magicals. It's the same way that not everyone is a born soldier. Sure, you can whip them into shape, but only a few will ever be warriors and not just conscripts. And the base pool is a lot smaller among wizards. Having just fought a war among themselves didn't help in the way of having numbers, even if it did make sure the few we have are skilled.
I glance over the edge of the roof and make out rotting robes and a gray beard. That's the sparkler, looking as wizardly as I've ever seen one. I take a good look at the sparkler and crawl back and out of sight.
"Jones, send an owl and request immediate evac."
Jones nods. She is my science and communications officer and nothing on this world could convince her to use the word zombie. She always says CAD. Continuously Animated Corpse. Other than that she is a good comrade and hasn't threatened to slip me a love potion, which makes her one of the few woman I actually trust.
The Bloody Baron chooses that moment to return from recon.
"You may want to add the name of the undead wizard in question," he says, his voice even more grave than usual. Working with this guy took some getting used to, but once you know him he isn't that bad. A bit morbid, but I guess several centuries of being dead will do that to most people. And if he starts to get on your nerves with his mightier-than-thou attitude you can always put the necklace off that allows you to communicate with him.
I take a deep breath when I hear the name. It's the one. The anomaly. Nobody but him came back if they died before Potter could vandalize the veil. And from what I hear this guy being a sparkler is a whole new tier of bad. He wiped out Hogwarts and Hogsmead. When you hear the wizards and witches whispering about him you can feel the fear. They don't even use his name if at all possible.
The owl takes off and I motion my squad to take up defensive positions. If we are discovered the sparkler will make short work of us, but there's no need to become sloppy because we might die. Most of us have long range rifles. They can double as sniper-rifles or repetition rifles. We don't manufacture full automatics anymore. Precision is far more needed than the ability to spew a few hundred bullets in a minute, because if you don't destroy the head all your brilliant shooting will accomplish squat. So why tempt your soldiers? Also, if one of your folks decides to lose it they can't lay down suppression fire on your squad. Having one unaimed bullet per second is preferable to, say, thirty.
The good thing is that our weapons are pure mechanic and chemistry, nothing electric for the magic to fry. Most of them have a few enchantments. Mike and I are the last line, wielding shotguns. Mike is also our demolitions expert. He has three belts of WWW-articles with him. The whole squad has an ongoing bet when he will accidentally blow himself up. My bet is he will do it consciously one day, and not by accident. He's just that kind of guy. Weasley's Wizard Weapons are useful, I'll give them that, but Weasley (the former owner of the shop aka the Trickster, if you are confused) has the annoying tendency to come up with those genius pranks of his to raise the morale, and since I was a victim of one of his "fun" articles for over a month I don't like them very much.
Luckily for my eight-soldier-team nothing happens until the Portring pops up. The Soaring Saint brings it personally. Fawkes. The Phoenix, not one of the numerous babies named after him. It's a shame so few are able to be transported by him and live to tell the tale. It's Fawkes that our hopes rest upon, because to restore the veil we either need to undo what wizards did a few millennia ago or build another veil. Rebuilding, difficult as it is, is infinitely easier than discovering how the ancestors hooked the veil into the dying process and repair that. We normal people who are suffering the effects would at least like to know why they did it, but so far the Unspeakables are not one step closer than they were a hundred years ago. And if they were they wouldn't tell anyone, I reckon. They are a very private bunch.
"Everyone, fall back to the center," I subvocalize before I remember that the mic is fried as well, thanks to the sparkler. I give the signs to assemble my team and they come and grab the Portring. It's basically a Portkey, only the format is standardized and the troops call them how they see them. We grab the Portring, wait for another twenty seconds and I can feel the disgusting feeling of being sucked through reality. This is the reason why magical travel methods will not be popular once all this is over. Maybe having magic shields you from it, but being a being without magic I don't have that luxury. The wizards and witches I spoke to commented on the unique feeling of being transported via Portkey, but I had always the feeling they were trying to minimize jealousy.
When my sight finally clears I look upon General Shacklebolt and gulp involuntarily. It's not everyday the supreme commander of the strike-teams visits us lowly soldiers.
"Are you sure?" Nothing specific, just that. I guess he hopes to keep the scuttlebutt in check. Good luck with that.
"Yes, sir. The Bloody Baron identified him personally."
"Well, I'll be damned. Good work, soldier. And good work bringing everybody home in one piece." The man doesn't look very grateful, but that's no surprise, really.
"Thank you, sir."
"Dismissed."
He nods, turns on the spot and is gone with a crack. God, how I wish I could do just that. I don't need anything else, but apparating... I would sell my soul for it.
I debrief my soldiers and send everyone off duty. They vanish in the direction of the barracks, I myself go looking for Big D. He has the rank of Major and is with logistics, but to me he will always be the guy who saved my life. Dudley Dursley and the Wizarding World don't see eye to eye. It has something to do with the past he and his cousin, Potter, share. Apparently Big D had some personality issues while growing up. I wouldn't know.
I found him while I was scavenging through the suburbs of London, when he held back a horde of six zombies to allow the rest of his group to escape. He explained to me that it was only logical. That he was the strongest and the slowest and that he wouldn't have made it either way. Maybe all of that is right. Today he sits comfortably with logistics and makes sure we don't run out of ammo and the loot we bring back is distributed evenly. But don't make the mistake of taking Big D for a wuss. He can and will bring a zombie down with no problem whatsoever. He told me that his strength comes from boxing before all hell broke loose, and then he always had to destroy the undead or he would have been a goner. Not one for speed, he isn't. Even with our limited rations he managed to stay quite imposing. In another time he would have become fat, with our problems he became massive. A solid rock. He collected the few survivors he could find in the suburbs and then led them to Devon, where he said might be a safe place. If they could find it.
How he managed to be honest and still make it seem like we couldn't possibly fail I'll never know. We made our trail through the countryside and every kilometer or so Big D would send us away and scream: "My name is Dudley Dursley! I am the cousin of Harry Potter! We need help!"
Nobody among the twenty-something survivors knew what we were even looking for. Not even Big D himself. All he knew was that there was the home of a wizard somewhere and that was it. It was a gamble, and luckily for us it paid off.
The Weasleys (the grandparents, if you're wondering) came out of their wards and brought us in. They told us to stay on the premises at all cost because we wouldn't be able to find our way back. Most of us were absolutely baffled. Not Big D. He was just... incredibly relieved. I found out later that he feared the Weasleys would ignore us even if they heard his plea.
Potter was not around and no one knew where to find him – not that surprising now that we know he was the one responsible for the apocalypse. Since Big D was the only one who knew even remotely about the wizards we all looked to him to be our spokesperson. He did a well enough job. At least we didn't die of hunger. But that was also when we realized our problems had only just begun: The Weasleys were a big family but they were in no way able to feed thirty people.
Dudley asked if maybe we could relocate to Hogwarts or something, because he'd heard that was a castle, so it had to be big enough to give us shelter, but the school was already rubble by that point. The teachers had tried to repel the attack, only to find themselves sorely outclassed and unprepared. The best of them made it out alive. McGonagall, Flitwick, Hagrid. The rest – dead. Killed by the same creature that could have ripped my squad to shreds today.
A few days after arriving at the Burrow we made another unnerving discovery: The zombies weren't stopped by the Muggle-repelling wards. I guess them being dead made them too stupid to be fooled. They were a horde of forty, coming from the nearby village. Because of the wizards we made it through without any loss, but it made clear that we wouldn't be safe here. Weasley (the Curse-Breaker of course) developed a hasty ward against the undead things. He told everybody who was willing to listen that he couldn't understand how a ward could stop inferi but not walking corpses. I heard this particular rant three times while he drew diagrams and was generally wizardly. Someone had to keep him company. I think he was shell shocked that the wards hadn't held, even if the threat was new.
After that was out of the way we began to develop strategies. We had to keep salvaging food and other goods from the overrun places, and to do that we needed weapons. Real weapons. The only one who could use a baseball bat with consistent deadly force was Big D, and he was not meant for raids.
The wizards offered to take care of us, but most among our survivors wouldn't hear any of that. It takes a certain kind of person to get your act together and survive a sudden zombie outbreak. Since the start of the apocalypse the government on both sides had begun to fall apart. The Weasleys (the grandfather and the Bureaucrat) were part of the ministry and they said several families had gone missing, their homes devastated. Some of them were key members of the ministry. With our own encounter we could safely assume that the zombies had broken into what the owners thought were perfect defenses. The other wizards didn't have a bunch of homeless Muggles to help them distract the zombies long enough to figure out how to destroy them all. A fun fact about zombies: They distort whatever wizards do to apparate. It can be worked around, but if you meet them for the first time you are in deep trouble. I would still sell my soul to be able to do it, though.
Diagon Alley, a magical shopping district that I would give my left pinky for to see in all it's former glory, was overrun shortly after our arrival at the Burrow. With London beginning to fall apart around it and the wizards noticing only slowly that something was wrong, they were careless and the sounds from the Leaky Cauldron finally attracted enough zombies that the wizards were simply overwhelmed. Someone in a panic opened the passage to Diagon Alley and that was it. I hear there was a whole population of goblins living under London. No one knows what became of them.
At last the magical portion of Britain realized that not only was Hogwarts in ruins but that there was a real and widespread problem at hand. Until then they had tried to gather the forces necessary to deal with the worst sparkler you will ever find. Now they suddenly had to work together with Muggles.
We were already in contact with the Weasleys, and that made us something of ambassadors, at least until better suited individuals took over, if you're wondering why I know so much about it when all I do is command a little squat of looters.
You have to hand it to the magicals: They saved more of us than could have saved themselves. On the other hand they needed us. There's maybe fifty thousand of us normals left in all of Great Britain. The wizards were counting something in the thousands when all the problems began.
To the impartial mind it might seem as if the zombie epidemic should have ended the day the wizards turned to it. It didn't. They tried, of course. Had a real blast in London and destroyed a few thousand zombies. Until the first sparkler turned up, and then a few of it's friends. Because that day we found out that sparklers are drawn to magic like moths to the light.
Sparklers are, as far as we can tell, as dead and dumb as the next zombie. The problem is they create chaotic magical effects around them once they have noticed something that registers as a target in whatever guides their actions. From what I've learned the power levels of wizards and witches vary, sometimes quite drastic, for no known reason. It's why there was a war with I-don't-know-who-but-no-one-want's-to-tell. Yeah, some wizards are total bastards about their glowing hands.
Some even hated the thought of cooperating with us so much they chose to simply let us die and survive by themselves. From what I hear that didn't turn out so well for most of them. An ancestral family home is like a beacon for the sparklers. And I wouldn't recommend camping out in a magically enhanced tent either (I've got to get one of those once all this is over).
By now it's all a bit better, since we have killed most of the sparklers from the Diagon Alley incident and then some, but in the beginning? Wizards were running left and right from their homes. Oh how I wish that Malfoy noble-wannabe had been among those who not only voiced their opinions but actually lived them like his parents did.
I got sidetracked. Wizards, sparklers and powerlevels. Let's say you have your average run off the mill Draco (Total coincidence that the soldiers use that name to describe a hypothetical wizard, I assure you; Malfoy is, unfortunately, actually quite skilled) with five O.W.L.s. That's like the most basic school degree anyone can have and still be called a wizard or witch. They won't be very powerful and if it weren't for our notorious susceptibility to magic even us normals could take one in a fair fight with a bit of training. Now add a measure of death to the formula and the same average Draco becomes about as powerful and dangerous as a trained Auror, which is something between a policeman and a soldier.
To deal with those you don't only need competent and powerful wizards, but you need competent and powerful wizards who are creative and quick. Or you need Hagrid. He will probably not be part of the effort to hunt this particular sparkler, but for most of them his magic resistance is enough to allow him to get close enough to squash them. While wearing plate armor. Enchanted to be lighter and move easier, but still. He seems to prefer this to using his wand.
I arrive at Big D's office and knock before opening the door. Big D is having a conversation with Bones. I still think of her as the Harpy, even if she isn't a part of the strike-teams anymore. She was one hell of a fighter before she lost about half of her body. Normally you'd think she would retire, but no, she signed up for resource allocation and now spends her days apparating across the country so that our soldiers don't run out of supplies. I know I wouldn't have her strength were our places switched.
"...and maybe down in Bristol, we haven't raided there and as far as we know there aren't any survivors."
"I'll see to it tomorrow. Dursley." She nods and gets up to leave. You'd think them being mages they would have found a way to make something better than peg legs and hooks, but apparently few wizards are actually crippled, because most of the time they throw spells (Or curses or jinxes or whatever. Sue me.) around that will leave the victim dead. If not they can regrow most of the damage inflicted. Cases of that not working can be counted on one hand for the last century, but what that sparkler did to her was beyond even magical healing.
In concert with salvaged Muggle prothetics they were able to replace Bones' legs, and her arm. The rest of her missing internal organs they had regrown before. Magic and a bit of Muggle ingenuity and she can at least work again, if not fight. I quickly smash a familiar bout of envy, but I can't stop it: No normal could have survived those wounds long enough for help to arrive.
"Bones." She acknowledges me and shuts the door.
"So, you done here? Want to go get a drink?" I look at Big D and notice how tired he looks. Half of the books in his office are inventories of large warehouses all over Britain. He doesn't sleep enough and it starts to show.
Polkiss once told me he couldn't believe how much of a workaholic his childhood friend had become. The fact that Big D and Polkiss were friends lends a bit of credit to all those stories about Big D being a jerk and a bully. Polkiss was not good company. Before or after his death. He was also the one who wouldn't let the joke "let's see how long we can keep Dahlec a woman with Impersonator Baubles" go. I spent over a month as a woman. Most of the time. Weasleys Impersonator Baubles last for six hours and are notoriously hard to notice when put in your food. Maybe I should have raised hell and be done with it, but I'm safe enough in my masculinity to survive a few hours without my dick. Pride, probably the cause of my downfall one day. Annoyingly enough woman tend to believe I should understand them better because I spent a considerable amount of time as one.
Big D opens his mouth as if to protest but I don't even let him speak the first word. I grab him at the arm and start pulling.
"Great. Come on, there's a bar we need to visit." All of us need a rest sometime. My soldiers, me and even Big D. If he falls apart so may our supply lines and that would not be good.
"They found the guy," I tell him while we are on the street and no one is around. Shacklebolt won't thank me for spreading this around in a bar.
"The one the Phoenix wants destroyed?"
"The very same."
"So, we may win?" Big D sounds like a man who wants to hope but is afraid to.
"If the wizards do their job," I allow. There's not much us normal people can do except provide a distraction.
We are all assembled at the crack of dawn the next day. Shacklebolt is standing in front of all of us, scouts, scavengers and strike-teams alike, and taking a deep breath.
"As some of you know and a few more might have heard we have found the one thing Fawkes wants dealt with before he helps us restore the veil. We all know what that means. We'll have to attack him." He doesn't say not all of us will survive this, but it goes with the territory.
"Since this is a high-risk mission your participation is purely voluntary. We have eyes on the target, so take your time to think about it. You have until 1300." He conjures a box for us to drop our name in. The General dismisses us and I see the Saints going to the box before we can even begin to disperse. There's no hesitation at all. The wizards call them the Golden Trio, but among the soldiers they are called the Saints because everyone who has seen them fight together has said "Holy shit!" at least once. I go up and drop my name, too. The decision for that was made a long time ago when the zombies killed my family and wiped out London. If my being there raises our chances to end this even a little then that's what I will do.
By the time of 1300 we have about twenty wizards and fifty soldiers. We are mostly to keep the normal zombies out of the way and strike if a chance should ever prevent itself. It has happened before, after all. Once.
Longbottom is among the volunteers and I frown. I'd like to leave him out of this entirely, but I don't have the rank to say so. Not because he is inept, but because he is far too valuable to risk him in a gamble like this. He is the one who keeps us from starving to death. Without his plants there's no way we could maintain a population of about fifty thousand on the ruins of our society. Not for almost a decade.
This really is a last-ditch effort. If we lose this battle the war is over and ancient, long dead wizards and one depressed savior will have caused the extinction of humanity, magical or not. Because if we lose this one we will likely lose most of our offensive power: Potter (The Ace, you have to see him fly that broom of his to believe it), Weasley (The Dominatrix, but don't call her that to her face), Weasley (The Rock, he's the one responsible for defense so his wife and Potter can wipe the floor with the sparklers; there are some interesting rumors as to why he is so good at that), Weasley (The Goddess, I hate fighting when she's on the field because you run the risk of standing around gaping like an idiot – and that's for the resistant ones), Weasley (The Trickster, I hear he had a twin brother once and has become a bit vindictive since his death), Weasley (The Matron, don't let her nickname fool you – she didn't take the death of her husband well), Weasley (The Bureaucrat, the most stuck up guy you will find this side of a computer), McGonagall (The McGonagall, no one is crazy enough to call her anything else), Flitwick (The Sage), Longbottom (Nobody bothered to give him a call sign because he is just Longbottom and nothing else could do that justice), Malfoy (The Snob, this was a hard earned one, I assure you), Lupin (The Wolf, somehow he is a bit touchy about that), Greengrass (The Diva, but she's handy in a fight), Hagrid (The Hulk, but Hagrid works just as well, I hear he got his wand three years after the apocalypse started but you wouldn't know), Shacklebolt (The General, because he is), to name just the most important members.
Most of them are Weasleys, whether through birth or marriage. A military family if I've ever seen one, pretending to be normal and upstanding citizens. Well, as normal and upstanding as a wizard family ever gets. Whenever there's a problem in the wizarding world they are standing at the front-lines. They bled during the First Wizarding War, during the Second Wizarding War and throughout this whole nasty zombie business. They lost the Dragon-Handler early on, because for all their destructive power a dragon attracts sparklers even better than an ancestral home. And they lost the Curse-Breaker before they finally had the size of the wards down to something that could actually provide safety and not present you on a silver platter.
I assemble my team, every one of them having volunteered, and give them the pep-talk of the year.
"Alright, this is it! We have finally found the old bastard! I know the wizards are a bit shaky about facing him, but to us he is just another sparkler! With his destruction the Soaring Saint will finally allow the wizards to fix this godawful mess and our children, relatives and friends will be safe." I make no mentions of surviving this. No need to insult them with lies. I raise my gun into the air for a bit of added drama.
"We fight for the Living!"
They follow my lead and scream "For the Living!" at the top of their lungs. A few soldiers outside our squad pick it up and soon the sounds of a few hundred soldiers bidding the volunteers goodby crash around me. I hope none of the people that remember ever tell I stole that from a video game. Let the historians figure that out by themselves.
The teams take their Portrings and we are off to fight for the fate of the world. We are in London. Even now, nine years after this started, London is still the source of many a resource. Clothing, food, tech. It's also one of the most dangerous places in Britain, because quite a lot of the zombies from London stayed in London. And the sparkler we're hunting is here as well. The wizards were debating if they should set up some wards in London to attract him, but they opted against it for the obvious reason that it would also attract the others and were one sparkler is a problem three of them are a catastrophe.
We arrive on a flat rooftop like the one we evacuated from a day ago. The Bloody Baron is waiting for us.
"He is down there, about one and a half furlong," he greets us and points north-east. I swear, one of these days someone's gotta teach him the metric system. But it won't be me, no sir.
I look in the direction he's pointing. About three hundred meters, give or take. I see the strike-teams going in position closer to him, brooms in their hands, while the supports hunker down and prepare for the inevitable. Explosive ammo, loud and attention grabbing, we will try to divert the horde as best we can.
The General gives the signal and the strike-teams take off. Our target, already on high alert because of the Portrings, notices them immediately and the dance begins. Three hundred meters are not enough to feel safe when a building suddenly explodes into magma. I squint my eyes. That's no magma.
"Fiendfyre incoming," I scream. That has to be the fastest we had to switch positions. We didn't even have time to fire a single shot. My squad scrambles for cover. The raging fire breaks off into four parts and forms into a distinguished shape. A giant snake is coming for us, while a lion is ready to burn a path east. There's also a bird and some overgrown bear-like thing, but I have too much to think about to classify the animals. Jones is directly behind me as we jump down the stairs and shoot a few zombies that were in the building. No time for a clean sweep, the fire will be here any moment now and we need to be out on the streets by then. My soldiers get separated from Jones and me, but that's okay. They know what to expect and what's expected. Blasting my way through another three shamblers I finally make it to the door. I hear another shot behind me and the sound of Jones reloading.
"No CADs in sight, Dahlec," she reports in her cool battlefield monotone. It's the reason she's my communications officer. The more frightened she becomes the more emotionless she appears. I reload as well and we brace ourselves for the open streets. A crashing sound above us signals the arrival of the fiendfyre snake.
I crash through the door and shoot a lonely shambler to the right while Jones secures the left side. The sound of a body hitting the ground makes me spin around. It's not the zombie I expected and not the soldier I feared. It's the Rock and the Dominatrix, however they ended up here. He is unconscious or dead, having shielded her from the impact, while she is getting up, unsteady and bleeding from a head wound. The fiendfyre snake burns through the wall and spreads chunks of molten rocks around. It's coming right for the Dominatrix, who is a bit preoccupied trying to dispel her right arm that's split into five tentacles attempting to asphyxiate her. I lunge at her while Jones is trying to attract the snake's attention to no avail. A sad fact: We are more disposable than even the most unskilled wizard could ever be. Our whole tactics are based around that: The wizards stay safe while we loot, scavenge and scout. They only make a move when the target is clear. Except for the Saints, due to Potter's guilt.
I crash into a disoriented Weasley and get us to safety by a hairs breadth. My left arm melts away as the goddamn snake burns it's way through it. I look at the stump with horror. It's still burning, as fiendfyre usually does. A sharp pain shoots through my overloaded nervous system when the Dominatrix uses her signature spell, the fire whip, to burn the sad rest of my arm clean off. Battle medication: The wound is cauterized and the remaining fiendfyre can't spread to my vitals. Usually Weasley takes off the heads of zombies with that whip while simultaneously burning them.
I look around frantically.
"Where is it?"
"It's gone," she says while checking up on the Rock. He moans and moves. Jones wasn't as lucky. The fiendfyre didn't get her, but somehow she got turned to stone. Mike and the rest of my squad come around the corner, running while shooting backwards.
"There you are! Let's move, we have successfully lured the horde in this quadrant."
I take the lead and we leave Jones. The Rock is with us while the Dominatrix takes to the air again. We leave the horde shambling after a Weasley-Cracker, a useful device that will make noise and move in a direction, while we disappear into the next building that didn't have the bad luck of being in a fiendfyres way.
Up top I take a roll call. Jones is dead, Loring and Cassidy are missing and most likely lost as well. I have three soldiers less but potentially saved two wizards. Not the worst day. I don't think about the fact that those three soldiers were my friends and comrades, because if I do I won't be able to keep on fighting.
The battle with the sparkler seems to have moved a little further west. I can't see anything, but the lights and sounds indicate it has gotten worse.
"Try to lure them east," I command to my squad. We fire at a bunch of zombies coming in from the offices over there and the explosive shells make for a nice firework. The zombies we just managed to shake come back, as I see while glancing over the edge of the roof.
"Watch out!" The Rock is hurling spells at a chimney that came to life. It looks like a really ugly golem and attacks my squad with a vengeance. It's good the Rock is here for the moment, because without him this could have become ugly.
"You okay now, Weasley?" He looks at me with grim determination. His wife is out there and she isn't exactly gifted when it comes to flying.
"Yeah, 'm good enough. Take care." He rockets into the fray again with a spare broom. From the way the spellfire is shaking the city the battle with the sparkler is still going on and drawing in masses of zombies. Speaking of which...
"Mike, Sweden, escape." They don't need any more instructions. The horde has found us and staying here on the rooftop would be a death sentence. They use our grapple hooks to connect our roof with a neighboring building and we are all on our way. No one wastes any bullets on the zombies pouring onto the roof, because they are for the most part out of the picture.
A giant burning bird crashes into the roof and vaporizes our pursuers. The good thing is: The fiendfyre bird is gone after that. The bad thing: It shook the foundations of our second base and the ropes are coming loose. We crash into the side of the office building we were trying to get into. Swanson looses his grip and plummets down into the teeming masses of undead citizens. Mike sends a fyreblaster after him. It's predecessors were fireworks developed by the Weasley Twins. The Trickster has since improved the design and made it usable for our struggle. Two dozen zombies go up in flames and Swanson dies almost instantly.
"Go go go!" It's times like these that I hate the fact I am the one who has to keep it together. The rest moves. We are at half strength and there's no sign of the battle ending anytime soon.
At least for a while nothing goes off script. We manage to draw a sizable amount of shamblers away from the fireworks the wizards are making. Then I feel it: The ground is slowly leaning to the left side, and the whole world moves around us. It's too late to switch locations and all I can do is shout for my remaining squad to hang on. Not that they needed that advice but I feel better doing the only thing about this situation that I can.
Miraculously we don't die. The lower half of the building has turned into a substance akin to pudding, and the effect creeps upwards, trapping us all in a precarious situation while saving our lives at the same time. I see a lone shambler in a skirt coming at us and take a shot at it automatically. The bullet is transfigured (just try to get a report with the words "got turned into" past McGonagall) into a bird with poisonous claws that throws itself onto a zombie head that's sticking out of the hardening office-mud. Not a skirt. A robe. Mike suddenly roars besides me and sprints towards the sparkler. Our demolitions expert almost manages to reach it when suddenly his legs lock and he falls to the ground. Our suppression fire is doing nothing to distract the sparkler. It reaches Mike who doesn't even try to crawl away using his still functional arms. Playing dead doesn't distract the sparkler either.
Mike looks at me, looks me straight into my eyes – and winks. I'm shocked for a second and then every single remaining device on Mike's belt goes off simultaneously. Mike is gone, but so is the sparkler.
"We need to go, Dahlec," Salet says, her voice rough and shaky. I'm still in a stupor, but we begin to move again. My last two members behind me we round the next corner to shake our undead pursuers, only to run into a bearded and robed figure. This is clearly not our day.
"RUN!" My scream wakes Salet and Sweden and they turn around and try their luck with the several hundred shamblers behind us. I have no such luck, because my feet are stuck in the sidewalk and the sparkler has all his attention on me. My shooting at him is about as effective as throwing stones at a battleship. Then my trusty weapon suddenly comes to life and tries to bite my hand off. I throw it away with a scream. It hisses and runs of into an alley.
The sparkler is mere meters away from me now and the five to seven wizards I can see are very preoccupied with a small army of transfigured monstrosities. Some of them were my former bullets, most of them began their existence as harmless banks, trashbins or flowerpots. The dried out hands of the sparkler grab me and in a last-ditch effort I try to destroy it's brain with my army knife. The blade melts as soon as it hits the skull and the burning sensation of being bitten flows through my body. The sparkler takes a chunk of my right arm and seals my fate. Suddenly a long silver blade sticks through the skull of my killer. Too late for me, but not too late for the world. Longbottom decapitates the sparkler, just to be sure, and set's the remains on fire with a flick of his wand. The Ace lands besides us and frees me with a muttered incantation.
"Let's go. You alright Neville?"
Longbottom nods with shaking hands and doesn't protest when Potter gently takes the blade from him. They are kind enough to take me with them to a roof that is our designated evacuation point. Sweden waits for me there, as does Cassidy much to my surprise and relief. We take our Portrings back home and stumble into the prepared medical center.
"Dahlec, bitten," I introduce myself to the healthcare unit. They look at me with pity, but also hope. None of them shies away from me, because I haven't even developed the symptoms yet. For now it's only the pain that burns through my body.
We paid a terrible price for this. The General is dead. The Dominatrix is dying, bitten by a shambler during the fight. The Matron is dead and there's not even enough remains for a burial. Flitwick and McGonagall: Gone. Hagrid got close enough to strike at the sparkler but apparently couldn't do it. Maybe because he was overwhelmed by chaotic magic, but maybe... I had a feeling he should have sat this one out. He had too much admiration for the man that sparkler once was. Hagrid was always too soft for his own good, even during the apocalypse.
The Unspeakables are finishing the new veil. The thing has been ready for ages, but it needed one last thing. The Death of an immortal being. Fawkes will sacrifice his everlasting existence so that we may go on living. But he wanted to be sure that the desecrated remains of his former friend were dealt with. It was the deal and hell if I know how he even negotiated that. The Unspeakables don't talk about that.
The veil is functional eight hours after the battle of London. Nervous glances are shared between us normal folks and magicals alike. Did it work? Big D doesn't care. He visits me and complains that his looting units are on strike due to severe partying. Forced everyday banter. He knows I don't want to be pitied.
Weasley and I will be the primary test cases. Everyone else who made it back is more or less unscathed, only we had the bad fortune of being bitten. A bunch of soldiers are surrounding us, in case we don't stay dead and everything was for naught. Most of them are friends and family, except Gregory, who is my designated executioner. I didn't want to burden anyone with that duty, not even Big D. I think he understands.
The Rock on the other hand wouldn't let anyone else take care of his wife. His eyes are hard and his face is closed off as can be for a living man.
The burning has gotten worse. Whatever that zombie poison is, it wasn't rendered harmless by the creation of the veil as I was secretly hoping. I've developed a fever and it's hard to control my remaining limbs. Sometimes I'm sure I'm delusional, because I swear my family is besides my bed occasionally. Other times it's Dumbledore, as my head imagines him alive. Old, yet vital and wise. Nothing like the monster that took my live.
Then it all ends. My body is shaking and I have trouble breathing. The time has come to say farewell to this mortal coil and start the next great adventure. The Weasleys and Potter have talked enough about that for the last thirty-something hours that it has burned itself into my hallucinating brain. With a shudder I breath my last and pray to everything that might control our crazy lives that this is the end.
Far away from the troubles of the human world, in the bubbling depths of a volcano, a very ugly creature crawled out of the magma. It coughed molten rock and stumbled around on weak feet for a few minutes. An unassuming observer might have thought it was a burnt piece of dead chicken, if not for the obvious movement. Suddenly the ugly creature stopped moving, cocked it's head, and burst into flame. Spreading it's tiny wings it took to the air and left for the world.
And that's the end of the zombie apocalypse. I wrote this mainly because I was looking for Harry Potter and zombies the other day and noticed that there seem to be no fanfics out there that do this in a way I like and are longer than two or three chapters (aka: completed). Seriously, zombies pop up, magic proves to be ineffective and suddenly everyone throws away their wands? Why? I mean: Why doom the Harry Potter universe if you aren't going to include magic?
Since I know myself I made this about the end of the apocalypse, or else I would have lost interest before the survivors even reached the Burrow. I hope you enjoyed this and maybe I will write a few chapters about things that happened before this, but no promises. I have Attention Deficit Creator Disorder.