Warnings: Zombies. Well, Inferi. Nothing particularly explicit, but they're there, doing the things they do. Character death (also par for the course). A certain genre-appropriate understatement of the likely psychological impact on our heros.

Note: This is what I turn nightmares into.

The Breach

Hermione kept calling it the zombie apocalypse. Harry, whose introduction to muggle horror films had started and ended with fighting Dudley over the TV remote, wasn't sure if they should be called zombies, but thought "apocalypse" was fitting.

Over centuries, Hogwarts had been known as the safest place in the country. Harry thought that it must have never been tested more thoroughly than in the weeks leading up to The Breach. When the singular sightings reported in The Daily Prophet turned into regular sightings, Hogwarts shut down. The school remained shut down when The Daily Prophet stopped reporting them, and finally, when The Daily Prophet stopped being delivered altogether.

When Hogwarts was shut down, it meant business. The secret passages were sealed. Statues and suits of armour paced the perimeter, teachers were posted at every gate, garden door, and delivery entrance, and their best defensive spells fortified the ground-floor windows. Prefects patrolled the halls at night. The Hogwarts owls were roaming free now, with no regular postal service to occupy them, and they knew better than to fly into the dead and dying cities.

Eventually, they also cancelled Quidditch.

"Bummer," said Ron, and if not for Hermione, who was wearing her "There are bigger issues than Quidditch right now" face, Harry would have agreed. It had only been a couple more weeks until their final match against Ravenclaw, and he had been itching to play.

Surprisingly, life inside Hogwarts went on pretty much as usual. They still had classes (During Defence Against the Dark Arts, Professor Snape found his students unusually attentive. Being Snape, he did not know what to do with it, and continued to insult them merrily.). Several duelling clubs had sprung up, some teacher-instructed, some rogue.

But unexpectedly, to Harry at least, the Gobstones club was more popular than ever. So were book clubs, study groups, and even a bi-weekly baking competition.

"Of course they are," Hermione remarked in a knowing tone when Harry asked her about it. "People keep busy. They're distracting themselves from the things that are no more there."

Indeed, they weren't. No more Hogsmeade visits, no more packages full of sweets from home, no more OWLs and NEWTs because the examiners had gone missing (Hermione had been pretty distraught about this herself). It worked pretty well most of the time, but whenever a tired, hungry owl did turn up with a message from the survivors scattered in the countryside, it was met with a roaring, house-uniting cheer and more than a few sobs.

Hogwarts would probably be able to carry on indefinitely, thought Harry – the house elves were immune, and they were the only ones allowed to leave the premises. They collected food and checked every morning that the mountain spring that supplied Hogwarts with drinking water was still uncompromised. But apart from Hermione, who of course rallied against this endangerment of house elves, Harry was the only one who thought it shouldn't go on indefinitely. Sure, most of them were kids and they should be protected. But were they expected to grow up and then old here, in the confines of the castle, with nothing to occupy them but the books?

And what about the fight against Voldemort? What about the Horcruxes? Did Dumbledore hope the problem would solve itself?

He didn't seriously imagine a zombie Voldemort, did he? Harry didn't. Because it was insane.

He'd tried talking to Professor Dumbledore about it, but the man was just not available these days. Harry was at his wits' end at what to do. He knew he needed to do something, and it wasn't Gobstones.

Of course, they had tried to figure this out on their own, he and Ron and Hermione, as usual when the grown-ups veiled themselves in secrecy. Rumours had it that Lord Voldemort had been raising an army of Inferi –

"And knowing the bastard…" said Ron –

– yeah, he probably had. What had happened then next anyone's guess. Hermione had said it snowballed. That Voldemort had let things spiral out of even his terrifying control.

"Nah," said Harry. "It must have been on purpose. He wants to rule. He doesn't care whether his kingdorm is burning, only that it's his."

He coughed. Just his luck that he was also coming down with a cold.

Things finally came to a head, so to say, on a fine sunny day in June that would henceforth be known as the day of The Breach. Harry was a bit relieved. To his credit, he was also a bit ashamed about being a bit relieved.

A shaky and ill-looking Professor Dumbledore had just announced that the school year would be continuing on a bit into the summer holidays. Just until all this had blown over. Mid-speech, a gigantic black bird soared down out of nowhere, dropping an ugly grey round thing right on the teacher's table.

It was Lord Voldemort's head.

And it was still alive.

Being undead did not make the man any more pleasant, Harry thought numbly, as the head bounced in an unfortunate arc and buried its teeth in the neck of the nearest teacher, which unfortunately was Hagrid. Hagrid, rather than calmly accepting his fate, wrenched it off reflexively, now-infected blood gushing from his neck. He set the head flying across the table, where it bit two more teachers and scratched its teeth across another three or four.

Three or four. The problem was that someone had lost count. Because, in the ensuing panic, no-one really noticed Professor Slughorn slipping away from the breakfast table. In fact, only Luna did, but she mentioned it dreamily about nine days later, when Slughorn's fever had taken its course and their Potions master had long vanished off the Marauders' map.

By then, they had a whole host of other problems.

"Of all the places to die," moaned Ron, in a variation of his usual pre-bedtime litany, "did it have to be the Divination classroom?"

Hermione opted for rolling her eyes. Not being a huge fan of Divination herself, apparently she didn't have the heart to explain again why the Divination classroom, with its retractable ladder, was easily the safest room in the entire castle.

Still, the three of them strictly used it for sleeping. Being stuck here at night with thirty of their surviving schoolmates was bad enough. During the days, the classroom was oppressive in the blistering summer heat, with no bathroom and not much entertainment apart from Tarot cards and thirty identical exemplars of Unfogging the Future. They had to roam about the castle for their sanity's sake.

At least Professor Trelawney had shut up with her prophecies. She'd replaced them with an endless stream of "I told you so"s, which was easier to tune out.

"Ron's right, though," said Hermione. "I suggest we hole up in the library instead. There has got to be historical reports on how Inferi have gone wrong. Anyway, if I die there, I'll die happy. Happier." She mused on that,

"What does it look like when Inferi go right?" said Ron. "Anyway, I vote kitchen. Just from a survival point of view."

It wasn't a strong argument. The house elves still popped in with food three times a day. Even they seemed grim and hopeless now. No wonder. The teachers did their best to seal off the areas that were overrun with zombies – damn it, he was calling them zombies now –, but it was futile. There were too many.

And if there was one thing that made house elves sad, Harry thought, it was the mounds of food that went uneaten now.

"Harry?" said Ron and Hermione in unison, as if expecting him to settle the argument.

Harry caught himself staring out of the window. The distant Quidditch hoops reflected the light of the setting sun.

"Outside," he said. "I mean it. There is no future in here."

Hermione was looking at him with a sad expression and he guessed she thought there was no future out there either. At least here, they had books, that was what her expression said. But before either Ron or Hermione could reply, there was a disturbance in the form of Dennis Creevey, breathless from the usual sprint along mostly deserted school corridors.

"Harry – hi – it's good to see – " he panted, "anyway – Dumbledore – his office – he asked for you."

All of this was so completely normal, so completely six weeks ago, that Harry just stared dumbly for a moment. Dennis looked so hopeful. And of course, everyone had listened in.

"Maybe they found a cure!" suggested Hannah Abbott.

"And you think they want to try it out on Potter first in case it's poisonous?" sneered Draco Malfoy.

"Shut up, Malfoy," said Harry reflexively, but Malfoy only crossed his arms, leant back in his armchair by the fireplace, and grinned. Admittedly, his Slytherin nemesis had perked up somewhat since the delivery of Lord Voldemort's diseased head. He now seemed almost relaxed, or at least as relaxed as a suspected teenage Death Eater and confirmed little shit could be amidst a zombie apocalypse.

He also didn't have his cronies anymore, and was less likely to talk back.

"Maybe they found a vaccine," insisted Hannah, "but they only have enough for a select few, and everyone knows Dumbledore thinks Harry's important and – "

"Maybe the Americans finally landed," said Luna Lovegood. "You know their army trains with Inferi but the government hushes it up? They have all these instructional movies, really popular –"

"And obviously, Dumbledore will inform me first if that happens," said Harry, hoping he did not sound too much like Malfoy, who was smirking. "Anyway, Ron, Hermione, let's see what this is about."

"Dumbledore said Harry only," Dennis Creevey piped up.

"Yeah, right," said Ron. "No less than three on the corridors, that counts for you, too, Creevey. Give me that crossbow."

"Fewer than," said Hermione. "It's fewer than three. You know," as she picked up a second crossbow from their pathetic arsenal, her voice hardly shaking, "of all the things that could have gone wrong with Inferi, I really hate that they're impervious to magic."

Dumbledore's office was guarded by Professor McGonagall, and surprisingly, she really didn't let Ron and Hermione in with him.

"You're losing time," she told him curtly when he tried to stage a protest on their behalf. Obviously, he looked at Hermione.

"Just go," she said. "You can tell us afterwards."

McGonagall pretended not to hear while shoving him in the office. Inside, Harry found not only Professor Dumbledore, who was sitting tired and frail-looking at his enormous desk, but behind him, like a tall, rigid black vulture, Professor Snape.

"Late, Potter," said Snape in lieu of a greeting. "We have little time."

"You realise you could have called on me any time in the last six weeks?" said Harry.

Snape merely bend down to Dumbledore, saying sotto voce, "You are sure he is the one?"

Dumbledore nodded. He looked as if he were in pain.

"Are you okay, sir?" said Harry tentatively.

Dumbledore stared up at him. He didn't look okay. But then, he smiled. "I'm an old man," said Dumbledore, "and quite springy for my age. But best carry on. Quickly."

"You're still wasting time, Potter," said Snape. "Do you know what this is?" He gestured towards an ugly round thing hovering under the domed ceiling. Harry peered up.

"That is – blimey!" he said. "That's Voldemort's head!"

"That's Voldemort's head, sir," said Snape, but even he looked as if his heart wasn't in the pettiness. "And it's not. It is a time sphere, an incredibly complex spell conjured by Professor Dumbledore. It contains the Dark Lord's head."

"Amazing," said Harry. "What's a time sphere?"

He deliberately addressed his question to Professor Dumbledore, but again it was Snape who answered.

"A time sphere is a localised disturbance in the fabric of the world, a fracture of causality itself," said Snape, apparently thinking this was enough explanation.

And that was exactly why Harry usually brought Hermione. "So why is it called a time sphere, then? Sir?"

"Because time does not flow inside it," said Snape. "Without time, there is no causality. Nothing inside the sphere can cause effects outside the sphere. That's why we put an illusion of the Dark Lord's head on top of it, or we wouldn't even be able to find it."

It really was a bit like those Russian dolls that Ginny was so fond of, Harry thought. "And you put Voldemort's head inside it because –"

"Because Lord Voldemort's sickness has consequences," said Dumbledore, and his voice sounded thin and sick. "And we needed to halt them."

There was an ominous pause. Harry didn't really want to appear too stupid, but between these two, he felt like someone was giving him a lecture on metaphysics in the middle of a Quidditch game. While it was raining. "What consequences?" he asked.

"First things first," said Dumbledore. "Harry, I am old. And I am dying."

"What?" said Harry, taken aback. "You mean, now?" In his head, it had sounded more compassionate.

"Sit and listen, you petulant child." That, of course, was Snape.

"No, not now," said Dumbledore. "In about an hour. It is a long story," he added, gesturing towards his black and shrunken right hand, "and I'm afraid we don't have enough time to do it justice."

"But sir –"

"Silence."

"That will be enough, Severus," said Dumbledore sharply. "Harry, I am going to die, and when I go, so will that time sphere. And when the time sphere blinks out of existence, Lord Voldemort's sickness will start having consequences again."

He looked up at Harry, who felt as if he ought to say something. But Snape was still glowering at him.

"We talked about Lord Voldemort's soul," said Dumbledore, "And the terrible deeds he committed to tear it apart. So you know he can't truly die unless – "

"Unless I destroy the Horcruxes. I remember," said Harry. He didn't add that he was itching to do exactly this.

Dumbledore sighed, a long, sad, defeated sigh. "I had a plan, you know," he said. He turned his head towards the window, a long sorrowful glance down on the courtyard, where even now a group of rotting first years were shuffling in circles. "But best," he said, stumbling over his words, "best not to dwell on this. Because you don't have much time."

The way Harry saw it, he had nothing but time. He certainly couldn't see anything else in this dying world to be spending his time on.

After some deliberation, he expressed this opinion.

"No, Harry, you don't," Dumbledore said. "You weren't supposed to know until the end, but –" he paused, a cough rattling his skinny old chest, "but too late for that. Harry, you are the seventh Horcrux."

There was nothing Harry could say to this except "I am the what."

"It means," interjected Snape helpfully and with a certain amount of glee, "that a piece of Lord Voldemort's soul has attached itself to you."

There was nothing Harry could say to this except "… Ew."

"It's why you speak Parseltongue," said Dumbledore. "And why you had such unique insight into his thoughts. And I am so, so sorry, Harry, it's why you are infected, and it's why that infection will start spreading again when the time sphere collapses."

Holy shit, thought Harry. They, Dumbledore and Snape, had been sitting on that knowledge for weeks and only just now thought to tell him?

"Can you make another time sphere?" he demanded of Snape.

The man shrugged indifferently. "Professor Dumbledore's abilities far surpass my own."

"I see," said Harry, and turned towards Dumbledore. "Can Professor McGonagall make another time sphere?"

"I'm afraid you, like me, are beyond help," said Dumbledore. "By our estimation, you have about six days until you turn – "

"That's more than a day per Horcrux – " said Snape helpfully.

"So best gather your friends and go," said Dumbledore. "Don't wait up for me. It is that important."

Harry thought he really needed a quiet moment to think all this through, but apparently, he wasn't getting one.

"So what are you going to do?" he asked Snape.

It was Dumbledore who answered. "I asked Severus to protect the school," he said.

"Yeah, well," said Harry. "Good job so far."

He turned away without another word.

In the end, it wasn't so bad, thought Harry a few days later as he conjured up the protective spells around their tent. Of course, Ron and Hermione and he had always been a good team.

Finding Dudley Dursley alive had been a bit of a surprise, but the additional muscle and violent disposition wasn't unwelcome against the zombies.

Hermione was in a pensive mood these days.

"You still think he did it on purpose?" she said, coming up next to him, as he was putting the final touches on the shield charm. "Because I'm starting to think he did."

"Who?" said Harry.

"Voldemort," said Hermione. "You know. He must have known about the link between you. Infecting you like this has got to be one of the only ways to get past your mother's protection."

They watched as, on the other side of the shield charm, a flock of zombie muggles were gutting a dead Rottweiler.

"You think he let the world burn," said Harry slowly, "just to get to me a month earlier than he would have anyway?"

That explanation was strangely fitting, he thought. On the surface, it looked like terrible impatience. But if they let only one Horcrux live, then, in time, Voldemort would rise to rule again.

And no-one would be in his way.

He looked at Hermione, who shrugged. "It was just a thought," she said.