Disclaimer: Walking Dead and Harry Potter are not mine, and never will be. This story is a a 'What If' created for entertainment purposes, no profit motive included.

Enjoy

Why Cats?

There were times he was called paranoid bastard. Something he could agree with.

And looking at the state of the world today, he was bloody glad he was.

It wasn't exactly new, though the comment had been rare during the war. With the entirety of the wizarding population in fear of the Dark Lord, later his remaining followers, and the tosser's showing up constantly like a cut-rate production of The Grudge to make attempts on your life, people tended to be more understanding. Especially of the need to check for or neutralise anything that might be bad for your health.

After the War, however, even Hermione's eyebrows had started twitching upwards in disbelief. Keeping stock-piled supplies, a veritable armoury and keeping constantly up to date with weaponry, warding and fighting styles alike was apparently 'wasteful, and unnecessary'. He should be concentrating on a career! He didn't need to be a soldier anymore, she'd tried to explain gently. After all, the Death Eaters had been all but eradicated and blood prejudice stamped out. Well, the violent tendencies, anyway.

He'd frantically stopped her before she'd even managed to finish 'Everything was fine and nothing was going to happen.'. Seriously, had she learnt nothing in Hogwarts? The events that had landed them in this side of the Veil? Or even the years that followed the end of this Blood War?

The Sirius-named Potter Luck had resulted in no less than three unplanned and supposedly impossible trips to the deep past, and more than twelve magical or artefact related incidents with odd side effects. And that was after an unplanned trip to another reality that had yet to end. Not that he didn't enjoy being able to see straight without glasses. But the eerie hawk eyes and hyper-sensitive hearing he could have done without. In his defence, none his fault.

Well, he paused, shoulders deep in an expanded cupboard and trying not to sneeze. Mostly, anyway. How was he supposed to know that the glowing rune casket would open an interdimensional portal just because he looked at it funny?

The Unspeakables had in the end given up trying to figure out how he did – or didn't – act as a nexus for random acts of improbability, and just given him a job. Easier to manage damage control and gather data when you were already on scene, after all.

He cursed as he banged his head on the opening, glaring daggers at it briefly, before moving to the fridge.

Where his train of thought promptly derailed.

What the hell? A table in a fridge? Why – Just, why?

"Better not knowing" He sighed, closing it with finality. Knowing the average Magical, there was no knowing just what end result was intended by the previously comely witch, with a fixation for weird food and garish pink, named Agerta Wellsbridge. Now dead undead. Bah, too many double negatives.

Still in a bad way, it was laughable. He nearly snorted as he summoned and shrank what was still edible from the counters, including a spice rack.

After all the magical threats he'd faced, caused and now instinctively prepared for, it was irony itself that it was a muggle-made plague that justified his apparent paranoia.

Funny, for all that Dudley had scoffed at (and would never in a million years have admitted being scared by) horror films, and even after finding out about magic, zombies had never registered to him as something real. An over-used shock tactic; gore, screaming, utter assholes surviving and damsels in distress dying. Etc. Never would he have thought it would actually happen, let alone from a muggle virus. Nor had he ever stopped to contemplate just what it would mean.

Too many had died, the taste of ash on his tongue evidence of it. Parents, siblings, children: the weapon hadn't passed by anyone, young or old. Magical or muggle.

He opened yet another cupboard and was rewarded with a blast of cold air. The chilling charms hadn't faded yet – good, there might be something salvageable. And…. Nope. He liked cheese as much as the next person, but this was ridiculous: the latest packet got thrown into his bottomless pouch with a bad tempered scowl.

Oh, he knew about Inferi: had dealt with them far too often, the darker families Grimoires practically giving step by step instructions on their creation – and unfortunately accessible to Death Eaters. Apparently, after the first Blood War Tom had been fairly conservative here, couldn't rule over Muggles if they were all shambling corpses after all: his followers hadn't been nearly so thoughtful after his demise. It was the similarity that had caught out a few of the magical populace in the beginning.

They came close to what this was: unstoppable unless you had Fiendfyre or killed the magical power-source, the puppeteered corpses had the look down to a T, and the hunger to destroy anything living was certainly familiar. But Inferi were tied to the source of power – Rune stone or Wizard, it didn't matter – and their fluids weren't infectious (or possible venomous?) like this muggle strain. Oh, a decently strong fire spell would immolate them, true, but infection was always fatal: fever, hallucinations, then death. It took anywhere between minutes and hours for the body to get up, hungry and soulless. No magic involved, not connection to break.

And thus was the new life-cycle of the human race, apocalypse addition. Who said there wasn't life after death?

He couldn't help a grim smile at that.

Ah, gallows humour. Likely Hermione would have slapped him senseless for it if she knew. This Zombie outbreak hadn't been kind for anyone involved, and everyone had lost someone by now (not him. Not yet. But then, aside from Hermione who did he have to lose?) – though the Magical world had fared better than the muggle. Then again, any one of the Blood-War Children (as their generation had been dubbed) rarely had fond memories of shambling corpses, if such a thing was possible anyway, and usually a healthy set of survival instincts to boot.

And apparently her father had been bitten just two hours before Kingsley had managed to issue a warning, finally compiled the survivors reports of the first couple of 'attacks'.

Opening another cupboard, he found himself face to face with a kitten adorned set of china – the third so far – and scowled. The outraged 'meows' he received from the enchanted plates for closing the door with a slam were promptly ignored, in favour of moving to the living room.

Did Hermione like cats? Yes. Was he going to collect those for her? Hell no.

He nearly twitched when he reached the living room. Apparently Agerta had had a fascination for knitted sweaters, blue cheese and sneakoscopes but little else. And he wouldn't trust her to decorate a cupboard, let alone a house.

The chorus of wailing – thank the Gods for his automatic use of Silencing wards – only reinforced the thought.

Thankfully, most of the Order was alive and uninfected, if not very shaken. He hadn't been the only one prepared to repel an attack of some kind, and Inferi had been used often enough during their skirmishes with Dark Tossers that the specialised (lost) Wards he'd brought back with him from one of the unplanned trips to the past had been installed with almost unanimous agreement. Even Hermione had let him recharge them periodically for all her preaching of peace. Fort Grim housed most of them now, with Wards strong enough to immolate any Inferi or Zombie trying to come near.

He'd never thought his need to not unnecessarily complicate things would ever come in so handy. If he'd brought back the more in-depth, admittedly stronger version, focused on the specific magic animating inferi, rather than the more general one that blocked something without a soul, 'dead', entering the Ward, they would have been useless against the Muggle version.

The words 'I told you so' had been on the tip of his tongue when she'd turned up in the Apparition point bedraggled. A suicidial urge, sure, but so tempting.

Still, there was a good thing in all of this. Because they came back with no soul, and the magical core was tied to the soul rather than the body, a magic using Zombie was very, very improbable.

He nearly shivered, halfway through stuffing a sneakoscope in a pocket that really should have been too small to fit it. He loved magic, but that was a disturbing thought.

That didn't mean that the magic didn't cause an issue, nothing was ever that easy: apparently a magical person made for a temporarily more intelligent Zombie. Something to do with magical residue trying to activate more of the consciousness and heal the host body, either from inside the body or from magically saturated areas. He'd honestly zoned out after the virology part of it. Kill Zombies, it's airborne, but avoid getting bitten or scratched. Knowing what parts of the brain it affected was not helpful in this endeavour.

At any rate, it made the magical version – or those near magical areas - intelligent enough to hide and hunt in packs.

Gods alone knew what the Muggles attributed it to. All he knew was it was a pain in the arse. Agerta, for instance, had had two buddies of questionable origins and gender, and they had clearly planned an ambush of whoever entered the kitchen.

Unfortunately for them, he hadn't been having a Good Day. The Alleys and the magical residential areas had been evacuated by Kingsley as soon as humanly possible, but enough had slipped in infected and hidden once turned, not to mention pounced on looters that later tried to take advantage, that walking around corners had become a dangerous occupation for anyone trying to scavenge in them.

Corpses trying to hug and eat you at the same time was not and never had been his idea of fun, even when it had just been Inferi. More than six had tried in the two hours before he'd gotten to Agerta's abode.

Looking over for anything useful, he came to the conclusion that there wasn't much more to the bungalow. Still, he couldn't help the shudder as his eye caught on a particularly ugly cat staring at him from a vine wreathed tea pot. Agerta had probably been a very nice old witch, but her fondness for pink and cat themed table ware reminded him of Umbridge far too much.

"Cats, cats everywhere." He couldn't help muttering in disgust as he turned the pan-cake faced teapot so it wasn't facing him – creepy, death glaring enchanted feline growling in displeasure–

It was then that it glowed a sickly shade of green, and the familiar sensation of a hook embedded itself in his navel, the living room disappearing into a vortex of colour.

Well, fuck.