Title: Not a Real Escape
Summary: Lily manages to escape with her family from Voldemort on that fateful night, but there was a completely new threat waiting for her.
Pairing/Characters:
James/Lily, baby Harry, OC
Rating:
T
Warnings: Mention of gore, main character death.
Notes:
Zombie apocalypse!AU


The first time she saw the creatures, they were ripping apart her husband. With her fifteen-month-old child clutched to her chest, Lily could only stare at the sight in abject horror. She never thought it would end like this. They were in a war; if James was going to die, he was going to die fighting Death Eaters. Not this. Nothing like this.

When they were done with James (and her mind still flinched away from the resulting gore) their eyes turned to her.

Lily ran.

There was no other option really. With Harry crying in her arms due to all the jostling, Lily ran as fast and as hard as she could. She ran away from the muggle alleyway they'd been ambushed in (right after escaping from another very real threat in their safe house). She ran away from the blood behind her but most of all she ran from the creatures.

"In here!"

Lily turned her head and came face to face with a scruffy old man holding what looked like a muggle shot gun in one hand, the other holding a back door open for her. Lily only hesitated for a moment before dashing through the open doorway, hearing the door lock behind her. She collapsed to the ground as soon as she was as far away from the door as possible.

"Are you stupid?" the man said after he'd ensured the door was locked tight.

Lily didn't answer. She couldn't make her voice work or her arms or legs. She felt frozen, and despite the strange man she was locked in with or her squirming, crying child, she couldn't break through the shock that had settled over her mind.

"Hey!" the man snapped.

Lily managed to lift her eyes up to lock onto the man's, but she couldn't move anymore. "My husband—" She didn't finish her sentence, knowing without a doubt that James was gone, but still unable to fully accept that fact.

"I'm sorry," the man said, and he truly did sound sorry. In fact, he sounded almost devastated. "I wish I could have helped more than I did.

Lily wanted to reassure him. She wanted to remind him that he'd saved not only her life but the life of her child as well. She wanted to tell him that there was nothing he would have been able to do, but no words of reassurance spilt from her lips.

"What are they?" she said in a horrified whisper.

"Zombies," he said with a bitterness that suggested a long and hate-filled relationship between the man and creatures. "Stories say they just eat your brains, but they don't. They eat anything they can get at, leaving barely anything but blood and bones behind."

Lily sucked in a deep breath, squeezing Harry even closer to her chest. "I've never—"

"Where the hell have you been, then?" the man snapped, stalking up to her frozen body and hauling her to her feet, though still being careful of Harry in her arms. "These creatures have been around for almost four months now. Everyone knows to stay indoors as much as possible."

Lily was about to snap at the man, but his words stopped her cold. "Four months?" James and Lily had been isolated even in the Wizarding World. It was no surprise that they knew nothing of the disasters in the Muggle world.

"Yeah, and they're all around the world so you can't tell me you've been away. There is no away."

She couldn't tell him she'd been inside either a magical castle or a magical house ever since her fourth month of pregnancy, but he was becoming suspicious of her. Harry let out an ear-piercing whine, and the man glared at him.

"Shut your child up! If they hear us, we're all dead."

Lily breathed a sigh of relief even as she bounced Harry to try and calm him down. He slowly did, his large emerald green eyes (her eyes) staring at her with his chubby checks stained with tears.

"Mama," he said in his soft, squeaky voice. "Dada?"

Lily started to cry, though silently so as not to piss off the man anymore. James was gone. Her husband was dead and gone, torn apart. She still couldn't get the horror out of her mind.

The man sighed. "Look, do you have anywhere you can go?"

Lily shook her head. She couldn't go back to Godric's Hollow (it was probably gone anyway) and she couldn't get to Hogwarts very easily. She'd lost her wand at some point and James was back there. She had nowhere to go and no one knew she was even still alive.

"Come on, then. You can join us, but you'll have to help out. You have to earn your keep." The man looked down at the child in her arms and smiled softly. "Although I think we can make an exception for the kid."

Lily forced her lips to twitch up in a smile as thanks. "Lily," she said, "and this is Harry."

"Mark. Come on, it's through here."

Lily sighed and followed the man through the small doorway she hadn't even noticed before. It was all like some cosmic joke. How did she escape one war only to join another?


(w.c 883)

WolfWinks –xx-