A/N: Some of you may briefly remember this story idea from a note during "Know the Perils." Well, I've decided to go through with it. Story-compliant with one minor detail changed, involves politics, spell science, and some romance.

Anything you recognize (characters, setting, plot, etc.) belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Thank you for reading, and please review with your initial thoughts.


CHAPTER ONE—ZOMBIE

The world was on fire.

Smoke slithered into Jenny's lungs and made her cough. Screams filled the air. She thought that one of the shrill voices might be her own.

The men who'd broken into their home were holding up sticks, and somehow, somehow, they were making her fly. She didn't want to be so high up in the air, but no matter how hard she fought or tried to float down nothing happened. It was like magic.

The men wore dark robes that looked like Halloween costumes and scary masks that made Jonathan cry. Her brother had tears and snot all over his face. Jenny was scared too, but she wasn't going to cry. She was a big girl now. Mummy had fainted and Daddy was yelling at the men to stop it.

They didn't stop it.

Jenny watched as they walked through the campgrounds. She could see more people in costumes with sticks running around. Instead of running to help them though, they were running toward the forest. The men were crumpling tents and setting things on fire just by pointing their sticks at them. She screamed again as a giant flame came close to scorching her bunny slippers. The men just laughed.

Her mummy woke up and gave out a shrill shriek that hurt Jenny's ears. The men smiled and pointed their sticks at her. She flipped upside down and her nightdress fell. Everyone laughed at her knickers, but Jenny didn't think it was funny. Her mummy looked really scared. The men made Jonathan rocket up into the night sky and start flipping over like a monkey. Her stomach dropped as they shot him toward the ground, only to pick him back up again.

Her daddy was shouting again, but one man pointed his stick and his voice was gone. His mouth opened and shut, but no words came out. His face did turn a bright purple though. It would have been a little funny if she weren't so scared. One of the men pointed a stick at her and she could feel something shooting out of her head, immense pain beyond what she'd ever felt before, and she reached up her hand to feel a pair of perfectly-formed antlers.

"Now she really looks like a doe!" the man said. They laughed.

Now she did cry, because if the men could make antlers burst out of her head and make her daddy's voice go away then they could do much worse. There had never been a time in her life before when she thought she was going to die, but it seemed an absolute certainty now.

There were other men with sticks approaching and trying to fight the ones holding her family up in the air, but the crowd of frightened people running away was too large. The smoke was making her eyes water and that made her cry harder. It looked like her mummy had fainted again, and Jonathan too. Daddy had stopped yelling without his voice, but he was fighting against the invisible force holding them.

Then there was a bright flash of light from the forest. It blinded them all for a few seconds, but then she saw a giant green skull in the sky with a snake coming from its mouth. The men below her shouted and started disappearing with loud pops. Her body jerked as the forces holding her started vanishing. Her brother plummeted to the ground, but another man caught him before he could crack his skull on a large boulder. The men in masks all went away as the screaming got louder.

Jenny guessed that the glowing skull was scarier than the mean men.

A man floated her down from the air and helped her stand. They picked up her mummy and brother and started carrying them back to the house. A woman with a stick was holding her hand and following. A big man was talking to her father. She listened as her rescuers talked at rapid speed.

"The Dark Mark!"

"Do you think it's You-Know-Who?"

"It can't be—did you see the way the Death Eaters ran?"

"Merlin's beard, what are we going to do about this?"

"Memory Charms all around."

"The father is going to be a problem. We've been dosing him at least twice every day since set-up."

"It's protocol. And we have bigger things to worry about now."

"You're right."

The front door had been blasted in, but the lady fixed it back in place with a wave of her stick. Her mother and brother were on the couch, staring blankly as a man talked to them. There was a cup of tea in her mother's shaking hands. Jenny was placed by her brother.

"Now it's nothing to worry about," the man was saying.

"Those men…our campground…"

"It'll all seem like a bad dream in the morning."

"What are you going to do to us?" Jenny said.

The man swiveled his attention to her. She felt awfully small under his gaze. "We're just going to help you forget. Everything is going to be okay."

Jenny watched as he and two others lifted up their sticks and pointed them at her family. She didn't know what they were doing, and there was another horrible moment of certainty that something was wrong. That nothing was going to be okay. She didn't have time to say anything before they spoke.

"Obliviate."