Author's note: Hey, gang! Some further elaboration before you read…So Sirius is my favorite Harry Potter character and Daryl is my favorite Walking Dead (show) character. Since I believe they have a lot in common, I thought it'd be cool to put them in a story together. This story will alternate POVs with Sirius, Harry, Daryl, and Carl, focusing on friendships between Sirius/Daryl and Harry/Carl, while also exploring surrogate father/son type dynamics between Sirius/Harry and Daryl/Carl. The story will take place in the world of The Walking Dead for a great duration and will eventually change back to the Wizarding World. The Walking Dead plot/setting aspects will start between seasons 3 and 4 and probably end around season 6. Enjoy!


Harry Potter blinked in the sunlight, trying to ascertain where he was and what was happening. He was on his back and surrounded by trees, and the only sound was what minimal rustling of leaves the wind carried. It took just a moment before he remembered what had happened and sat bolt upright, his hands wet from either sweat or the dewy grass beneath them.

He had just been in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic, where he had been lured by Voldemort and his Death Eaters with a false vision of Sirius, his godfather, being tortured.

Sirius…

The Death Eaters had trapped Harry and his friends, but an unscathed Sirius and other members of the Order of the Phoenix had arrived. Harry had been trying to help a jinked Neville get to safety while Sirius battled Bellatrix Lestrange on the dais. Getting too caught up in taunting his cousin, Sirius had taken a spell to the chest. Harry hadn't recalled it being a fatally green jet of light, but Sirius had disappeared beyond the mysterious veil swaying over the dais nonetheless, and the last thing Harry remembered was roaring in anguish, slipping past Lupin's tight grasp around his arms, and diving after him.

"Harry…no…" a sad, somewhat hoarse voice said.

Harry's heart leapt. He hurried to his feet and whirled around, gaping at the sight of a man with dark hair and a worn face. Sirius had emerged from the trees opposite Harry and joined the small clearing. He looked tired and somewhat defeated, though Harry couldn't understand why.

He was alive! They were still together!

"Sirius!" Harry hurried forward, stopping just in front of Sirius. He looked him up and down, fully taking him in to assure himself he was truly standing there. "You're…here…where are we?"

Sirius frowned and shook his head. "You weren't meant to follow, Harry."

"Yeah, well, guess I've developed a habit of going places I'm not supposed to," Harry grinned. "Wonder where I could've gotten that from…"

Sirius smiled wryly and clapped Harry's shoulders, gazing down upon his godson with a melancholic fondness. Harry opened his mouth to speak again, but stopped himself when he saw Sirius' eyes dart upward, beyond Harry's shoulder, his brow suddenly creased in an alert tension.

"Behind me," he hissed, maneuvering Harry around him and pulling out his wand.

"What—?" Harry turned to see what Sirius was looking at and, upon spotting the source of worry, drew his own wand.

Just across the clearing, a rotting, decayed corpse hobbled toward them, moaning and growling in a voice (if it could be called that) hoarser than Sirius'. It approached rather slowly, but still menacingly, tattered remains of clothing hanging from its emaciated limbs like moldy rags.

"It…it must be an Inferius," Sirius whispered, sounding somewhat astonished. "Voldemort was known to have been building an army of Inferi back in our day, but I've never actually seen one before…"

"Do you know how to kill it?"

Sirius nodded. "Fire." He pointed his wand at the corpse and said, "Incendio!"

Flames shot from Sirius' wand and coiled around the corpse before closing in upon it. The corpse growled and hissed more violently as it caught fire, falling to the ground with a pathetic theatricality that bordered on being humorous, as if someone was overacting their death scene in a high school play. Harry let out a nervous chuckle until the corpse kept moving, pulling itself closer to them like an inchworm along the grass.

He looked at Sirius, who glanced back with his own perplexed expression, his eyes calculating as he considered other spells.

A strange, whooshing sound caught the attention of both of them and they looked back to the crawling corpse to see a boltlike arrow in its head. The creature quickly went still.

Harry and Sirius looked up for the source of the arrow and raised their wands with more intent. A man with greasy dark bangs, piercing eyes, and bare, muscled arms stood across from them, pointing what looked like a crossbow in their direction. He appeared to be around Sirius' age, give or take a few years, but he certainly didn't look like any wizard, wearing ripped jeans and a sleeveless black vest.

The stranger spared a slight glance back down at the corpse before his eyes narrowed on Harry and Sirius once again. He took a few slow steps closer to them, seeming just as menacing, if not more so, than the corpse.

"Who the hell are ya?" the man spat. "How'd you do that?"

His accent was unusual to Harry, who looked to his godfather for a cue, but Sirius' eyes were fixed straight ahead at the man, also narrowing as he took the other in. "We mean no harm. Can you tell us where we are?"

The man grunted in derision, slowly moving closer. "'Sides the deepest shit this side of Georgia?"

"Georgia?" Harry asked. "Where's that?"

"Put the damn sticks down," the man snarled.

"Can't do that, mate," Sirius said. "At least not until you put your…er…weapon down."

"Like hell…Where are y'all from? You sound like damn gentlemen at a tea party."

"We're English," Harry said, thinking the man most closely resembled a character from the United States westerns Uncle Vernon would watch on TV.

The stranger stepped forward with a more noticeable bite of aggression. "How'd y'all do that with the fire? What are ya hiding?"

Harry didn't move, wand still raised but without a plan. The Muggle must have seen Sirius use magic from beyond the trees, though that wasn't Harry's primary concern at the moment, as he could always be Obliviated. More worrisome was that they seemed to have been brought to America after going through the veil and that a magical creature had been taken down with more expertise by a Muggle than a wizard. He tried to look to Sirius again without making it obvious that he was clueless about how to proceed, but Sirius seemed to be trying to focus on his own brainstorming, his gray eyes fixed on the stranger's blue ones, both pairs coming off as threatening.

Then, Sirius suddenly lifted his wand ever so slightly to cast a nonverbal spell. Before he could finish flourishing it, however, there was another whistle of air and an arrow plunged right into Sirius' hand.

Sirius yelled and swore in pain, dropping his wand and crouching as he clutched his skewered palm, blood quickly coating his pale skin in a crimson paint. Harry immediately dropped to his godfather's side in worry, looking back up just in time to see the man closing the distance between them.

Harry started to say, "Stupef—" but the stranger kicked his wand from his hand, scooping it and Sirius' wand up in one swift motion.

The man kept his crossbow trained on Harry and Sirius, but glanced frequently at the wands in his hand. He almost looked disgusted. "This some kind of sick joke?"

"You bloody…goddamn!" Sirius snarled. He glared up at the man in a way that made Harry nervous his godfather would tackle the stranger despite the arrow spiked through his hand.

The man grabbed Harry by the arm and yanked him up. "Y'all come with me. Now." When Sirius remained crouched on the ground, still glaring, the man yanked him up too, ignoring Sirius' growl of pain. "Both of ya."

The man nodded toward the opposite side of the clearing, nudging Sirius' shoulder with his crossbow. Harry hesitated, looking at his godfather. Sirius' face was ashen and his breathing ragged as he held Harry's gaze for another moment before nodding at Harry to listen.

They walked through the woods with the man following closely behind them. Harry stayed alert, looking for any opening to try communicating with Sirius, but he wouldn't even be able to whisper without the man noticing. So he remained silent as they trudged, finally emerging from the woods and onto the grassy bank of a wide, empty, country road.

Harry wiped his brow, not realizing how hot and sweaty he was until leaving the trees. He assumed it was from being in such a tense situation, but compared to the events in the Department of Mysteries and, well, the rest of his life, this situation didn't leave him feeling unusually anxious. The sun seemed to beat harder down on him as he stepped closer toward the black pavement and away from the shade of the woods.

When he looked at the road again, it was to see a parked SUV and motorcycle waiting for them. A skinny young Asian man with a rifle leaned against the SUV, looking almost bored, though he immediately pushed himself away from the car upon spotting the man and his captives.

"Daryl!" the younger man said. "Who…what's going on?"

"These assholes think they're some kind of magicians with tricks up their sleeves," their captor, Daryl, replied.

The younger man frowned, looking from Harry to Sirius as if concerned. "What did they do?"

"Brought a walker down with fire they shot out of…" Daryl shoved Sirius to his knees and strode past Harry with a frustrated grunt. He cast the two of them reproachful glares before stopping in front of the younger man and holding up the wands, lowering his voice. "Sticks of wood. Goddamn sticks of wood…"

The younger man took the wands from Sirius and examined them, looking even more confused and hesitant as he looked back up at his friend. "Uh, Daryl…" he said quietly, "you didn't fall in a ravine or anything, did you?"

Daryl snatched the wands back, eyes blazing even harder. "That was one time!"

"Well, what's your plan, man? Are we bringing these people back? I mean, come on, that one's hardly older than Carl."

Daryl looked over his shoulder back at Harry and Sirius. Harry glared back defiantly.

"I don't know, man…" Daryl said, biting at his thumbnail. "They're…sketchy…"

Harry looked at Sirius, whose eyes were growing unfocused, his head bobbing every few seconds as if he was trying not to sleep, his shoulders swaying as he knelt. Panic began to grip Harry as he realized how much blood his godfather must be losing. After everything they'd been through, he was not going to lose Sirius now.

"Please…" Harry said, trying to sound urgent but unthreatening. "He needs help. We aren't here to hurt you."

Daryl squinted from Harry to Sirius while his friend raised stern eyebrows at him. When Daryl didn't say anything, his friend said, "Pat them down and we'll get them in the car. I'll ask them the questions on the way home."

Daryl grunted and strode toward Harry and Sirius. Harry stood at the man's approach and outstretched his arms when Daryl began patting his body from head to toe, knowing it was a useless search since he had no weapons but his wand. Apparently satisfied with his search, Daryl waved for Harry to head to the car and leaned down to pull Sirius up. Not wanting Sirius to be handled any more roughly, Harry hurried to his godfather's side, holding out a hand to stop Daryl and muttering, "I'll get him."

Sirius already attempted to stand on his own, holding his hand against his ribs, and Harry held his hands under both of Sirius' arms, trying to help steady him. He took a hesitant step away to let Daryl conduct his search, but he still held his hands out readily in case Sirius fell. As ashen as he was, however, Sirius still managed to glare at Daryl with the same murderous gaze he had unleashed on Pettigrew at the end of Harry's third year at Hogwarts, holding his arms out loosely at his sides. Daryl either didn't notice or didn't care about Sirius' death stare. He grunted, nodded, and waved his arm toward the car as he had done with Harry.

Harry rushed back alongside Sirius and swung the arm with the maimed hand around his shoulder as they walked toward the vehicle. The entire sleeve of Sirius' robes was blotted with dampness, presumably from blood trickling down the sleeve. Daryl's friend hastened to open the back door of the SUV for them, while Daryl himself watched suspiciously some feet away. Mad-Eye Moody would have been proud to see such constant vigilance, Harry reflected, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes.

It wasn't until Sirius and then Harry slid into the roomy back seat of the car that Harry saw Daryl walk over to his motorcycle and kick it into gear. His friend shut the back door and jogged around the vehicle to the driver's door, acting more like a chauffeur than a captor.

He started the engine and looked over his shoulder at them, grimacing apologetically. "Don't mind Daryl. He's just protective of our people."

"We noticed," Sirius growled.

"What's your name?" asked Harry.

"Glenn. I have a few questions to ask you, but as long as I don't get any bad vibes, we'll bring you back to our camp and get you fixed up."


Daryl rode behind Glenn's SUV, unable to see more than the backs of the passengers' heads, which both consisted of messy, dark hair but were surprisingly distinguishable from one another. Typically, Daryl preferred to ride in front when going on a recruiting run with Glenn. It allowed him to go on ahead to scout encroaching obstacles or potentially opportune discoveries and then hasten back to alert Glenn. This time, however, he wanted to be able to keep an eye on the additions to their party.

The thing was, Daryl was scared. He couldn't remember experiencing such fear since the Governor had thrown him into the ring to fight his own brother to the death in Woodbury, but even then, he hadn't been afraid of the Governor himself; he had been afraid of the immediate choices before him: die by his brother or kill his brother. The perturbation gnawing at him right now had less to do with whether or not this man and boy were malicious and more so to do with what these people could do. Was it not enough that the dead now came back to life?

It also had something to do with the fact that Daryl worried he was legitimately crazy for thinking he saw what he was sure he saw. Either this man and this boy had some kind of magical, supernatural ability, in which case, he and his new family were screwed if the two wanted to harm them…or Daryl was seeing shit and on the verge of some kind of psychotic episode.

He recalled the Chupacabra he was still sure he'd seen years ago. Yet, not only were there logical explanations for why he may have thought he'd seen such a creature, even if it wasn't real, but he hadn't made up the Chupacabra. It was a thing of folklore with an origin story and plenty of other people who had believed they'd spotted it. The idea could have easily been planted in his head and brought to life by Merle's drugs.

How addled must his brain have become to randomly decide that people were shooting fire from a stick?