Part 7: The Solution

This Harry Potter story was written for fun. All rights belong to the wonderful lady (JK Rowling) who gave the world Harry Potter to read and enjoy.

(++**++)

How did mankind survive the zombie apocalypse? Zombies are swarming over the world! And they don't rot! How can wizards and muggles survive? Warlock Hagrid must use his knowledge of magical and mundane creatures to find a solution.

(++**++)

HEADING: Hagrid's Project

From the walls of Hogwarts, Hagrid and the other adults watched zombies stumbling around Hogsmeade. When the creatures appeared in the village on 4 September, Alastor Moody hid every broomstick he could find. While Hagrid hated to agree to the ban on flying over the village, the headmaster understood why no one could attempt to help the villagers. Three families had moved to the castle from the village before the end of August but many more ignored the warnings.

"Eventually, the zombies will wander away from Hogsmeade if the people stay quiet," Remus explained with a frown.

"Is that bad?" asked Freddie Swenson.

"They'll smell us… or hear us… and come to stand in front of the hedge," the DADA professor explained.

"Will the hedge keep them out?" asked Poppy from the back of the group of adults watching the creatures who'd once been living people.

"The hedge is safe." Alastor explained, "I used every spell in the Auror's handbook and couldn't even set a single leaf on fire, let alone advance one millimetre through the branches. We're safe in Hogwarts."

Later, when the adults weren't watching them, some of the boys climbed the stairs to the wall to see the zombies. Neville and Harry stayed the longest and when Sirius found them there, they had many questions that the godfather attempted to answer.

"So, what do zombies want?" asked his godson.

"I don't think they 'want' anything, Harry. They're dead so it's just animal instinct that drives them to kill and eat. Remus watched them carefully and he thinks they're blind but they can hear. He's not decided if they can smell us or not."

"I saw him watching the zombies through the binoculars and making notes on some paper," Neville said.

"He wouldn't let us look at what he wrote and he wouldn't let me use the binoculars," Harry reported.

Sirius nodded, "This isn't like in a book or on the telly. Those are real people being killed."

"And there's nothing we can do about it," Neville said.

Sirius nodded but then argued, "We did tell everyone it was coming and offered them a place to be safe."

Neither boy ate much supper that evening though they weren't allowed to waste any food.

)(**&&**)(

After supper, Hagrid held a class on magical creatures for the third-year students from every house with many parents joining for the lecture and demonstration for the care of Nifflers. Younger brothers and sisters sat in the class as three of the little fellows crawled over everyone and stole coins, bracelets and earrings.

Hagrid returned all the bright and shiny items at the end of the class by turning the nifflers upside down and shaking out their treasures. Seeing the sad look in the eyes of each of the creatures, Harry hurried to his room and returned with a galleon as a gift for each niffler.

"As Harry can attest, do not ever feed a niffler a lot of carrots; if you do, you'll have four nifflers on your hands before morning!"

"Headmaster, if the zombies aren't going away, is there some animal that could eat them?" asked Theo Nott.

The headmaster sat on his chair after looking through his books of British magical animals, he answered the question saying, "There's only crows in Britain to eat carrion. They're not big enough to make a difference with millions…"

"What's carrion?" asked the youngest Creevey boy.

"Dead and rotting things… Like roadkill," Colin explained to his younger brother. The muggle boys had to explain the concept of 'road kill' to the magical children but the adults in the room were encouraged at the exchange of information without feeling one culture was better than the other.

"It's a shame we don't have vultures here in Britain," Sirius remarked motioning toward Augusta Longbottom's giant hat. She'd worn it when she and Neville came to the castle late on the 24 August with his comatose parents and most of the healers who'd come to the Longbottom home. She wore the hat to dinner every night for good luck.

"Now that was a magical creature!" Hagrid explained. "The Nazgul vulture lived in Africa and they were a favourite food of Nundus. To survive the Nundus, the vulture hatched and matured in a single day. The parents made certain to leave a carcass of some kind in the nest for the chick to eat while they flew around to distract any Nundu in the area. By the end of the day, the Nazgul chick flew away to begin the search for more food."

Remus sighed and said, "Even if we had vultures here, there'll be millions of corpses to eat. They could start tomorrow and still be eating a hundred years from now."

"It's a shame that vultures can't explode into four new vultures like Nifflers then!" Harry said crossly. For some reason, that comment by the Boy-Who-Lived stayed with the headmaster.

"Okay, kids," Mrs Greengrass said, "Everyone head toward the dorms or your parents' apartment. Brush your teeth and get to bed before 10:00!"

"Yes, Mrs Greengrass," chorused the children and Sirius as they made their way out of the Great Hall.

+)(**)(+

After a few minutes, Hagrid called Gertie to his side. They whispered for a time before the elf shook her head and pointed toward the sleeping Founders. When Hagrid argued with his elf, she crossed her arms and scowled at the headmaster.

"Gertie nots bring those books to Hagrid Stupid Half-Giant. Crusty buries those books in… secret place not even other elves know."

"But I need…"

"Not-wizard talks with Stupid Salazar or Gerties tells head elf!"

Then Gertie threatened Hagrid, "If Gertie tells Crusty, this makes Crusty mad and he makes Not-wizard wear tight underclothes for a month to push brains back up to top!"

"But…"

"Talks to Stupid Salazar!" demanded the elf.

"Okay, okay," Hagrid said as he moved his chair close to the portrait of the four Founders and woke them.

)(**&&**)(

As the recognized leader of the Founders, Helga Hufflepuff came forward and greeted Hagrid. After hearing the headmaster's request, her face turned sour while Rowena began throwing things at Hagrid from inside the portrait. Books, goblets, and pillows accumulated at the edge of the portrait for almost three minutes before Salazar Slytherin rose from his chair and interrupted the tirade.

"Rowena, you were the Founder who insisted that we make it compulsory for us to educate the current headmaster when he asks for knowledge," the wizard said.

The witch turned on Salazar and threatened him with her copy of Hogwarts, A History for a moment before throwing it to the floor and flopping back down in her chair without saying a word.

"Headmaster, why do you want to know about hatching a basilisk?" asked Godric from the other side of the portrait.

Hagrid cleared his throat and replied, "Well, you see, we need something to eat zombies… something to eat lots and lots of zombies really quickly."

"A basilisk won't eat zombies," Helga snipped. "It can't even kill them or petrify them – they're already dead."

"Yes, ma'am. But I don't want a basilisk," Hagrid explained. "I just want to know how Salazar hatched one. How did he get it to have the characteristics of different animals – a snake, a Medusa, and how did it grow to such a giant size."

Salazar asked, "Do you plan to write it down in a book so someone can breed more basilisks later?"

"No sir, you talk to me and I'll keep the ritual secret…" Hagrid assured the Founder. This simple statement made Salazar laugh, and the other Founders stared at their companion strangely.

"You never laugh," Helga stated.

"Why is this funny?" Rowena demanded to know. Godric remained silent to not attract attention.

"Because there is no ritual," the fourth Founder exclaimed. "Even the weakest squib can hatch a basilisk if he can get his hands on the proper ingredients and understands the process."

"Merlin's nose!" swore Helga.

"Why aren't we up to our armpits in basilisks then?" asked Hagrid.

Salazar shook his head and motioned Hagrid closer before he whispered, "Adding characteristics at the right time during incubation… it's all about timing. I believe the muggles today call it embryology."

"What does that mean?" asked Rowena, but Salazar remained silent, just watching Hagrid think.

Hagrid went back to his chair and slowly began nodding before he took out a piece of parchment and wrote up a schedule for the incubation of chicken eggs – twenty-one days and he made note of the different stages of development of the bird during the three week period; he'd studied gestation and embryology of many animals and birds in his private studies over the last fifty years.

Gertie brought him a giant mug of tea but otherwise remained silent. In the portrait, three of the Founders returned to their chairs and fell asleep once more. After about an hour, Hagrid approached the portrait of Salazar Slytherin again and they talked in quiet tones regarding how the Founder 'hatched' his giant basilisk a thousand years before.

"And ye added the Medusa finger nails on the seventh day?"

"Yes, the primary magical factor was added that day. I added a dragon scale on the second day to get the basilisk to grow to her huge size. Snake skin was added on the fifth day," Salazar said.

Waving away the Founder's information, Hagrid said, "I need a creature that eats carrion and lots of it, grows up fast, and makes lots of little carrion eaters every day!"

Salazar shrugged. "I'm not going to be much help…"

"You've been a great help! We'll beat the zombies with vultures and nifflers!" Hagrid exclaimed suddenly standing up to his full height and raising his arms above his head. "Thank ye, Wizard Slytherin, we may save the world because of your knowledge!"

"Gertie," he called and when the elf appeared, Hagrid sent her to the library for books on vultures of Europe. There were eight different books on the birds of Britain and Europe. The largest vulture was the Griffon vulture found in the Balkans and Sardinia.

)(*&*)(

In the morning, Harry arrived in the Entrance Hall before anyone else and found a sleepy Hagrid at the table in front of the Founders. All five were involved in an acrimonious discussion about birds, breeding seasons that couldn't be forced in the fall, and the distance from Scotland to some place called Sardinia.

"I won't take the chance on an elf not making it that far!" Hagrid said vehemently. "What if he didn't have enough magic to make it back, what then?"

"Like everyone else, the elves know what we're up against," argued Salazar.

Hagrid snarled, "But we'd be worse off with one less elf!"

"Hagrid… Headmaster Hagrid, what's wrong?" Harry asked.

Welcoming the boy to the Entrance Hall, Hagrid took the time to tell Harry about his need to get some of the Griffon Vultures. Gertie popped into the hall with a glass of juice for Harry while he spent time with the headmaster.

"I want to see if those birds can help us with the zombies but their homelands are too far away for Hogwarts elves to reach. We'd have to use a lot of magic to get one elf there and we'd not know if they could get home."

"What about in the zoos here in Britain?" asked Harry.

Hagrid turned to Harry and asked, "The what?"

Harry explained about muggle zoos and Hagrid marvelled at the idea of exotic animals housed across Britain. Once everyone gathered for breakfast, the headmaster asked Madam Pence for her help and once his request was understood, she took every adult available with her to the huge Hogwarts library to search through the books for information on zoos and for information on vultures in the zoos.

Before noon, Hagrid knew that the Chester Zoo, near Liverpool had an exhibit of Griffon Vultures. A pair of strong and experienced elves were sent to explore the zoo with orders to avoid muggles and zombies. The elves reported back to Hagrid before the middle of the afternoon with news of the vultures being hungry but alive and healthy.

"How are you going to get eggs from these birds in September?" Sirius asked when he had time to consider Hagrid's plan. "Do birds lay eggs just anytime?"

Hagrid sat and thought about the question before he said, "I think chickens lay eggs most of the year and some ducks lay eggs enough for people to have 'em to eat."

"We don't eat swan eggs," Harry mentioned.

"In the spring, song birds, swans, vultures, hawks, and geese lay only as many eggs as they can incubate and feed," Hagrid explained.

"That makes sense," Sirius said.

"And that means we're back to chicken eggs," Remus said.

"Salazar, a thousand years ago…" Hagrid began to ask when the Founder jumped into an answer.

"We saw a few chicken eggs in the spring but certainly not this time of year. I hatched my basilisk in June."

"Really?" snipped Godric Gryffindor. "You sat on the egg yourself? I always heard that you used a toad…"

The children and most of the adults laughed at Godric's joke while Hagrid seemed lost in thought.

)(**&&**)(

The elves returned to the zoo in Chester to gather as many flight and down feathers as possible from the Griffon vultures. There were other zoos in Britain with different vultures in exhibits and the elves popped around the island gathering more feathers for the rest of the day.

)(**&&**)(

"Are you out of your mind?" Augusta asked the headmaster when he asked for her hat that evening.

"I need the feathers from the Nazgul to make my vultures mature in a single day," Hagrid explained. "I need a vulture that can start eating zombies the same day it hatches."

But…" the elderly witch said as her hand went to her hat for a moment. Then she glanced at the children watching and began to remove the magical pins that held the hat in place on her head.

"If my hat can help, of course you may have it Headmaster Hagrid."

"But we're still going to have to wait for spring for your clutch of vultures to make baby vultures," Sirius said. "This is not going to help us this fall."

Hagrid grinned and said, "Think about the lesson the other night with Nifflers."

Sirius noticed that Harry figured out the clue first and the boy explained, "Hagrid's going to make the vultures so they explode like the Nifflers when they've had too much to eat. Every vulture will make four new vultures every day with all the zombies out there."

"How…" Sirius asked as curiosity got the better of him.

Hagrid grinned, "I know when to add Niffler hair to the nest and I'm going to use Nifflers as the 'mother' for each egg."

Harry asked, "How can you get 'em to sit still for twenty-one days?"

"There's a charm to make the Niffler broody and happy to sit on the egg to keep it warm for twenty-one days," Hagrid explained. "You'll learn it in fifth year and it's usually on the OWL examination."

The way the headmaster answered that last question lifted everyone's spirits – the children would have the chance to complete their education.

)(**&&**)(

In a deserted but protected chamber on the ground floor, Hagrid, Harry and Gertie gathered a dozen small boxes, with lots of vulture down and feathers made into nests. A dozen fertilized chicken eggs were provided from the henhouse, and a dozen Nifflers were recruited from the Forbidden Forest.

Bending to the demands of Salazar Slytherin, Hagrid had Gertie bring a landscape picture into the room and he allowed the four Founders to leave their original portrait to spend time in the room with the Nifflers sitting on the chicken eggs.

0(**++**)0

HEADING: Feeding the First Grifflers

(26 September 1993)

"How are a dozen of these vultures going to save us?" asked Pomona Sprout watching the hideous feathered creatures gulping down the rotting chicken parts. Four days before the anticipated hatching date, Hagrid had the elves slaughter a dozen chickens and leave the carcasses intact until today.

Now the little vulture-like creatures were tearing apart the pieces thrown into their pen. The 'Grifflers' as Hagrid named them, certainly seemed to crave the taste of rotting flesh.

"Where'd you get the name Griffler, headmaster?" asked Remus who had plugs in his nostrils to be able to be this close to the smell.

"Harry helped me name 'em," Hagrid admitted. "They're a combination the Griffon vulture and the Nifflers; so Griffler."

Standing a good distance from the others, Pomona Sprout and Filius Flitwick watched Hagrid, Harry, Neville, Remus and Sirius who appeared to enjoy watching the strong, sharp beaks tear apart the flesh, feathers, and bones before gulping the offal down their growing throats.

Neville and Sirius turned green and left after the first bucket was gobbled up but Harry and Remus seemed determined to watch and learn everything with Hagrid. Xeno Lovegood promised to write the textbook on the creatures but he was unable to remain in the room as soon as the first bucket appeared with the 'supper'.

"Ye can almost see 'em growing!" Hagrid insisted as he emptied another bucket of rotting flesh into the pen – this time the contribution came from a sick pig that they'd put down but didn't eat. There was plenty of the pig left for the dozen 'little ones' as the headmaster called them.

Without looking at Pomona and keeping his eyes on the spectacle in front of them, Flitwick said, "According to Headmaster Hagrid, they will gorge and 'explode' tonight. Tomorrow morning there will be four dozen Grifflers."

Sprout didn't look convinced but Flitwick pressed ahead with his explanation. "They mature in a single day and will begin eating zombies until there are no zombies left."

The Herbology professor's eyes glazed over but Filius was determined she understand the reasoning.

"Remember the story about the nifflers exploding after eating all the carrots and each of them turned into four small nifflers?"

"Yes, but…"

"Hagrid was very particular about when he added each of the different materials to the nest with the niffler sitting on the vulture egg."

"He added hair from the nifflers first – that gave the creature the ability to split into four new creatures after eating too much food. And nifflers can get inside locked doors and houses! They'll be able to find zombies inside locked buildings."

"Then he added the feathers from the Griffin vulture – the original vulture to give them their strength and flying ability."

"Next he added the feathers from the Nazgul vulture, the ones from Augusta's hat. That vulture matured in a single day after hatching because they had to avoid Nundus in Africa."

"Finally, he added the feathers from postal owls to allow them to travel great distances in short amounts of time."

Filius grinned, an evil thing to see on the half-goblin as he said firmly, "Once they're turned lose, there'll not be a zombie left around Hogwarts, then Hogsmeade and the whole of Scotland!"

"How soon?"

"In eight days, there will almost two hundred thousand Grifflers eating zombies… they'll be in England by then because there won't be many zombies left in Scotland!"

"How can… two hundred thousand? Are you certain?"

Filius handed the parchment with the multiplication figures showing that in ten days, there would be just over three million Grifflers.

"What will they do after they eat all the zombies here in Britain?"

Hagrid moved closer and answered the question, "Vultures can smell something dead from miles away. Our Grifflers will smell the zombies across the water. With those strong wings, they'll be Ireland and France before the tenth day. Then they'll spread across Europe, Africa and Asia."

"How do we get them to America?" Sprout asked suddenly. "I bet the muggles and magicals are hard pressed in the States and Canada."

"Aeroplanes maybe?" suggested Filius. "I never did well with muggle studies."

Hagrid went in search of his muggle friends, the Creeveys, who might know where they could find someone in the British muggle government.

)++**++(

The next morning, Gertie appeared in the Great Hall in tears as she ran up to the headmaster, "They be gone! The griffon-vultures be gone. They eats all the pig and they be gone!"

Just after Gertie delivered her message, Alastor Moody ran into the room with a look of satisfaction on his face when Hagrid asked, "Alastor, would you be so kind as to take a couple Aurors with you on broomsticks and see if our Grifflers are in Hogsmeade this morning?"

"No need. The Grifflers are just outside the hedge-wall," the Auror reported. "Freddie's on guard duty and he heard them whistling as they dropped from the castle walls onto some zombies wandering around the outside of the hedge. Said it's pretty gruesome but they've already taken down a dozen zombies this morning. I think they'll be full and explode before lunch time."

"If they can explode more than once a day, that'll speed things up," Sirius said.

Hagrid nodded and added, "It'll depend on the amount of… the number of zombies available. When there's lots of zombies, the Grifflers will feed and multiple constantly. When there are fewer zombies, they'll not multiple."

"What happens when all the zombies are gone?"

Hagrid replied, "That's an excellent question. Like all magical creatures, the Grifflers depend on magic. There's magic in each zombie… once they're gone, I think the Grifflers will go too… Like the Siberian Mammoth… They lost their magic and faded away thousands of years ago."

The children grew excited and noticed the adults were just as excited but no one was allowed to leave the Great Hall and watch the Grifflers eating zombies.

Augusta Longbottom said, "And there'll be no one going to see it while their stomach is full!"

)++**++(

Griffler Numbers (based on gorging and exploding at least once each day).

Day 1 (Sept 27) 12 Grifflers

Day 2 (Sept 28) 48 Grifflers

Day 3 (Sept 29) 192 Grifflers

Day 4 (Sept 30) 768 Grifflers

Day 5 (Oct 01) 3,072 Grifflers

Day 6 (Oct 02) 12,288 Grifflers

Day 7 (Oct 03) 49,152 Grifflers

Day 8 (Oct 04) 196,608 Grifflers

Day 9 (Oct 05) 786,432 Grifflers

Day 10 (Oct 06) 3,145,728 Grifflers

Day 21 (Oct 27) Britain Free of Zombies

It took nine days but the Grifflers eliminated every zombie through the whole of Scotland. By that same day, Grifflers were already in York and flying toward Manchester and Liverpool. In England and Wales, it took another eleven days for the millions of Grifflers to eat all of the dead zombies. Even before Britain was free of zombies, Grifflers flew to Ireland. Others were attracted to the continent and flew from Dover to Calais in France and began cleansing the continent.

(++**++)

HEADING: Notable Deaths and a Couple Rescues

The following rescues and deaths occurred in the months of September and October but the events are not always presented in chronological order. During an apocalypse, the particular date of an event seems less relevant.

(++**++)

SCENE: 10 September / Bartemius Crouch

The appearance of real zombies in London was still denied by the Ministry for Magic for several days until the creatures were everywhere in the city, eating people – muggle and magical alike.

After a nasty battle – a losing battle – at the ministry, Bartemius Crouch, Sr. made it home through a floo in the atrium and once he landed on the rug in his living room, he called his house elf.

"Winky, douse the flames! Don't let anyone else into the house!" he told the anxious elf who noticed the blood on his arm but followed her master's orders without question.

He made his way to a bathroom while elf put out the fire in the grate and removed the soot and ashes from the carpet.

Crouch quickly treated the bite and decided it wasn't all that bad – surely a wizard's magic would protect him from a muggle zombie disease. After three shots of fire whiskey and a pepper up potion, Barty decided that perhaps, just perhaps, the bite would be the end of him. He waited another hour and accepted his future as the fever raged through his body and made his mind feverish.

"Winky," he called and blinked slowly when the elf appeared with a pop.

"Yes, Master Crouchs?"

"Where is Junior?"

"Bartemius Crouch Jr be in his bed sir, like always."

"Good, now Winky, you are going to go to Hogwarts and become a Hogwarts elf," Crouch told the elf as she burst into tears.

"But Winky not…" the elf tried to say as Crouch handed her a shirt that he'd retrieved from his closet earlier.

"Go and never come back to this house," Crouch ordered the elf as she tearfully popped away. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. When he heard a crash from the back of the house, he opened his eyes, rose painfully and made his way toward his son's room.

He pushed open the door, stepped inside and never saw his son rise from beside the bed with a knife in his hand. Junior buried the sharp bread knife in his father's lower left back, driving the blade upwards.

"Hello Daddy," Junior shouted. "Have a nice day at work?"

"Junior…"

"It's a good day to die, Daddy. And I'll be free to bring back my Dark Lord. Voldemort…"

Bartemius Crouch Jr ended his dialogue when he noticed that his father was dead – talking to a corpse wasn't fun. Searching through his father's pockets, Barty found his wand and money pouch. There wasn't as much blood as he'd expected but Barty seldom killed with a crude weapon like a knife.

"Thank you for freeing Winky," the son did tell his father's corpse. He missed the first twitch of his father's hands as the virus took control.

"You've been so distracted this week you'd let the spells weaken and only Winky's magic kept me enthralled under your commands. Freeing her, set me free."

"Now, let me find some clean robes, and I'll find out where my friends are…"

The low moan from the corpse confused Barty, who asked, "Did you not die already? Do I have to kill you again?"

When he reached down and rolled his father over, Barty was surprized by the strength of his father's arms as the zombie pulled the younger wizard down onto the floor beside him and bit deep into the son's neck. There were only a few screams before the older zombie simply fed from the corpse of a dead wizard.

Crouch father and son moaned and wandered about the inside of their home for over a month without feeding on another living being. In late October, the zombies heard a whistle outside as a flock of strange looking vultures appeared in the neighbourhood and began eating the zombies wandering the streets. It was another full day – not that zombies measured any passage of time – before Grifflers found their way inside the house and consumed the zombies.

When the Grifflers left through a back door that wasn't locked quite a tight as the owner had believed, they left a few blood-stained robes behind. Every scrap of rotting flesh and bone had been consumed.

These events rescued Winky; at first, she became a reluctant Hogwarts elf but she found she enjoyed helping to feed and care for zoo animals across Britain and for farm animals. When her work at a dairy farm was directly related to saving and feeding children around Britain, she adopted them as her 'family' and provided safe milk that helped many families survive.

(++**++)

SCENE: 9 September / Severus Snape

Hiding in a rented room over a potion shop for the last month, Severus Snape spent his time silently observing the idiots running back and forth in Diagon Alley as the news grew more fantastic with each day. Lucius Malfoy refused him refuge at Malfoy Manor and Severus made certain the last package of potion ingredients sent by delivery owl from the shop below was laced with irritants for the digestive system of anyone who consumed any potion made from them.

He recognized the ingredients for virility potions in the order – Severus hoped Lucius and Narcissa enjoyed the end results. The shop owner stopped coming to Diagon Alley after 24 August. The man apparently didn't pay the necessary bribes to obtain an exemption for his floo from the ban on all travel. Severus quickly sealed the shop's front door and all the windows – he could subsist off nutrient potions with the meagre amounts of real food, while the rest of the world fell to pieces.

His hair and eyebrows grew back slowly and his memories and potion brewing skills returned. When he'd been released from St. Mungo's in the middle of August, the staff returned all his personal belongings including the three trunks filled with potion ingredients for the coming year at Hogwarts. He bargained some for rent, others for food, and yet more for information.

From Dawlish, Severus learned that Albus Dumbledore had invoked some ritual and summoned a terrible power – accidentally of course – but the magic manifested as a terrible disease that would rival the Black Death. Venturing into Muggle London, Severus spent an afternoon at a public library and read several books and articles on the black death that swept across the world and destroyed multiple cultures.

'And Albus had to create one with the added benefit of zombies,' Severus sneered in his mind. 'One hour with Dumbledore behind closed doors and him without a wand. I'd like to show him what a zombie could do to his greater good.'

His first instinct was to return to Hogwarts for sanctuary but that damn hedge made it perfectly clear what would happen if he ever stepped close enough to grab once again. Severus shuddered and pulled his arms in close to his side for a moment.

The rejection from Lucius ended what hopes he'd had for surviving this apocalypse – they'd never been true friends but they'd valued each other's abilities to survive the Dark Lord, Dumbledore, and the Ministry's grasping hands. Letters offering his capabilities as a potion master to Nott, Parkinson, and the DMLE were never answered.

'I should have fled to Australia years ago,' he muttered to himself.

There'd not been any screams from the alley in several hours now and Severus decided to venture out to the Leaky Cauldron. The proprietor kept the doors open, offering food and safety to anyone who wasn't bitten. The floo reportedly still functioned though where anyone could travel was questionable.

He hurried down the stairs to the backdoor – well warded and blocked with heavy stones as well as locked with muggle chains and wizarding locks. It took him three minutes to open the door. He then cast an invisibility spell on himself – one that would last for ten minutes. Quietly, he made his way around the shop and out the gate, pausing to look both ways in the alley. There were zombies gathered at the doors to Gringotts – they could hear the goblins inside, reportedly engaged in a civil war over who would rule the ruins of Magical Britain.

Severus Snape stepped into Diagon Alley, making his way around a few lumps in the street that once were people, and passed the few shops where silent eyes peered out, fearfully watching the dead wizards walking about. Just as he approached the doorway to the Leaky Cauldron, a zombie reached out to grasp him. He froze, expecting the creature's arms to slide passed him. But the zombie was able to grasp hold of Severus's left arm, as though the invisibility spell didn't hide him at all.

The low moan from the zombie summoned others hidden in doorways, and from the steps of Gringotts. Struggling with the zombie and knocking the creature's head back to keep the teeth away from his flesh, Severus realized his mistake – invisibility didn't help. The zombies were blind! It was noise and smell that drew them to him, drew them to him from all sides now.

Severus screamed as the zombies fed on his arms, face and neck. He was dead before they tore into his torso and his head never became a zombie – one creature chewed its way into his brain from the open neck.

(++**++)

SCENE: 24 August / Cornelius Fudge

After a tumultuous day that saw him get rid of that thorn in his side named Amelia Bones, reduce the budget for the DMLE, and put a wizard on his side in charge of the Aurors, Cornelius Fudge had signed the order that enforced the ban on all floo travel, all apparition, and all portkeys from today until sometime in October. Effective at midnight, magical households would be safe from the infection that the plague among the muggles.

He'd continued signing Ministerial Decrees that Delores kept handing him – an exception for floo travel between the Ministry and employee homes, an exception for the Floo at the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley (Delores loved to have lunch there practically every day), and special portkey licenses for key persons such as Lucius Malfoy.

Cornelius smiled – Lucius was pleased with the dismissal of Amelia Bones and the removal of most of the difficult Aurors. He'd not been as pleased with the travel ban – Malfoy's businesses were shut down for the next… forty-something days.

'Well, Lucius has enough money already…'

Sitting alone in his office after the small celebration in another office, Cornelius was surprized when his door opened and Narcissa Malfoy, wife of Lucius Malfoy, slipped into his office. Her robes, hair and makeup were perfect as always.

There'd always been a coldness to her eyes though that kept Cornelius at a distance. The witch was powerful in many ways and her husband was incredibly protective of her and their son.

"Good evening, Mrs Malfoy. Do they need me to return?"

"I believe they are finished with you, Minister."

Not understanding the full meaning in those words, Cornelius moved on and asked, "And what can I do for you this evening?"

Sitting in the chair her husband used during his visits, Narcissa smiled but the smile never reached her eyes, "I want to report a murder."

"Murder? Here in the ministry?"

"No, at Azkaban," Narcissa replied in a conversational tone as though she was discussing the colours in Umbridge's robes that caused more than one person to have a headache this evening.

"Azkaban? What about that damn place would you be concerned about?"

"My sister was a prisoner there and you killed her."

"Sister? Who is your sister?"

"My sister was Bellatrix Lestrange."

"The crazy witch? She can't be your sister," Cornelius cried as if denying the fact would make it go away.

"Yes, and you murdered her," replied Narcissa with a flat, cold tone in her voice.

Cornelius decided to use a tone of voice that often worked with 'wives', especially wives of strong wizards.

"Now, Mrs Malfoy, this is a matter you must leave to your husband. Wives have no business getting involved with government matters!"

For a moment, the witch remained silent and simply stared at Cornelius who was beginning to sweat.

"My sister was a devoted follower of the Dark Lord," Narcissa admitted. "But I loved her nonetheless and you signed the order that killed her. I understand the stones in Azkaban closed up all the holes, the doors and the windows. My sister was crushed by tonnes of stone and suffocated to death."

Wiping away a real tear with one hand while not smearing her makeup, Narcissa said, "My prayer is that her death was faster than yours will be this evening."

"What?" asked the surprized wizard.

(++**++)

Delores stood in the hallway leading to the minister's office, her cloak in her hand and her small bag under her arm. She'd come to say 'goodnight' and invite Cornelius to visit later if he wished (which of course he would; she never really gave him the option). But she'd seen Narcissa Malfoy, beautiful, slender Narcissa Malfoy with her perfect robes from Milan, slipping into Cornelius's office with no one else around.

'Cornelius is mine! Why does Narcissa need him when she has Lucius Malfoy in her bed?' Delores wondered, remembering a thousand slights from pretty witches when she'd be a fat child with no friends.

Her memories distracted her so much that Delores found herself stumbling through the floo into her home and lying on the couch, crying herself to sleep for five minutes before rising and seeking her more comfortable bed.

'I can deal with Cornelius and Mrs Malfoy, tomorrow!' were her final thoughts on 24 August.

(++**++)

Narcissa rose from the chair, her wand visible in her hand as she cast spells that silenced the minister and stuck him to his chair. She never approached him, never drew closer than the opposite side of the desk, as she began a long incantation; some arcane spell that slowly took settled on Cornelius as he felt an increasing weight on his chest.

"My sister and I were daughters of the Black family, Minister. We were taught that family comes first and while my sister may have forgotten that in her slavish devotion to that half-blood Dark Lord, I never forgot."

"This spell is from the family Grimoire and it will slowly crush your lungs, your ribs and your heart. It will take most of the night for you to die and in the morning, they'll find you with your ribs protruding from your back."

Smiling now as she moved toward the door, Narcissa turned back and smiled once more, this time the smile did reach her eyes and Cornelius shivered in the evil happiness he saw there. Whispering just loud enough to be heard, Narcissa said, "This is what happens to the wizard who kills my sister!"

(++**++)

SCENE: 11 September / Delores Umbridge

Delores couldn't believe what had happened. Death, darkness, imprisonment, and loneliness were not acceptable for a pureblood witch – yes, she was a pureblood witch and she'd make Lucius Malfoy regret every unkind word he's spoken to her just a week ago in this very office! Her office now that Cornelius was dead!

'I'm supposed to be minister! When someone assassinated Cornelius, that made me minister!' she fumed. 'Everyone pretended there were problems with 'zombies' and ignored me for a week.'

It all began that terrible night, 24 August, the night of Cornelius's triumph with enforcing the ministry's will on the whole of Britain! For forty days no one would apparate or use portkeys or even the floo while the muggles dealt with their zombie mess. But that night, she'd seen Narcissa Malfoy go into Cornelius's office – alone – without her husband.

'Why didn't that witch leave my wizard alone?' she wondered again.

Then Cordie was found dead in the office the very next day.

Once Delores recovered her spirits – two whole days she mourned Cornelius Fudge – then she'd written that letter to Narcissa Malfoy, addressing the harlot as she deserved.

When she'd returned to her new office – yes, she was Minister of Magic – after an aborted lunch in Diagon Alley where screams and rumours of zombies sent everyone fleeing, she'd found Lucius Malfoy waiting in his usual chair.

Pretending to not be surprized by his appearance in the ministry, she poured herself a small shot of brandy – not fire whiskey here at work – and took her chair behind the desk.

Lucius said nothing for a moment until Delores huffed and said, "Well? What do you want?"

"My wife received a most interesting letter this morning. Something about you calling her a 'whore' and a 'loose woman' because she was having an affair with your supposed lover, Cornelius Fudge."

"She was! They had an assignation in this very office only hours before he was murdered…" Delores raised a hand to her face in horror as she looked at Lucius Malfoy anew and said, "It was you. You killed my Cornelius because he stole your woman!"

Malfoy looked almost amused by the woman's accusation.

"My visit today is merely to warn you, Delores. I don't care about your muggle mother or your squib brother… You can service a purpose if you will mind your manners."

"Madam Minister!" the woman behind the desk insisted. "You will address me…"

The stupefy caught her off guard and the next thing she knew, Delores was transfigured into a portrait frame with a painting of a naked cupid flying about a pleasant summer scene and hung on a wall.

"Stay here a week or so," Lucius said. "If you can be reasonable, perhaps you may play 'minister' for a time. If not, there are other permanent solutions to your tendency to make wild accusations and threats."

He'd left her hanging on the wall and when he closed the door to the Minister's office, she was left in the dark with no way to tell how long she'd been there. There weren't any visitors to the minister's office except for John Dawlish one evening. The Auror was drunk and crying about the end of the world until he finally fell asleep on the sofa underneath her painting.

Today, she finally changed back into her normal self and fell from the wall, crashing through a side board that held liquor and spirits. She cast the spell for the date and found she'd been transfigured for eighteen days – Lucius was more powerful than she first thought.

For the next twenty minutes, she'd pulled glass out of her backside while tears and poorly aimed healing spells ruined the entire morning. Whiskey and brandy burned when combined with cuts and slivers of glass.

After the pain of the glass shards and burning of the alcohol in her wounds, she forgot her earlier fear of Malfoy. In a mirror she determined that these robes were ruined! Her lips thinning with the anger she felt, Delores swore, "Lucius Malfoy will regret threatening me!"

She marched out of the office but came to a sudden stop when she found the ministry deserted. Most of the 'forever lights' were out – something that was impossible to happen. And from the lower levels… or was it the upper levels, she couldn't be certain which, came low and nasty moans.

"Who's there?" she demanded, making the moans grow in volume and number.

"I'm Acting Minister Umbridge! Answer me or you'll go to… you'll be in trouble!"

But no one replied except to moan and Delores made her way toward the Atrium only to find the entrance blocked by boulders and conjured objects that she'd never be able to move or banish with her magic. And from the Atrium, she heard more of the moans and one scream as though some good wizard was suddenly bitten by… one of the evil muggle zombies!

Now determined to find some answers, Delores hurried toward the DMLE offices.

'What's his name? Rufus Swinglender? Something… I'll just call him Rufus,' Delores decided as she turned the last corner before the DMLE offices.

She stopped and clamped one hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. At the end of the hall, in front of the doors to the DMLE, figures in bloody robes were banging against the door, attempting to get inside. Their low moans filled the hall and Delores turned to run.

She made some noise; something loud enough to attract the attention of the zombies that moaned and began to shuffle toward her. Without looking back, Delores ran through the halls and took refuge once again behind the door of her new office.

With the door shut, locked and a large sofa pushed in place, she was safe for the moment. She hurried to the fireplace and managed to cast the spell to start the fire after the third cast.

"DMLE Director's office!" she shouted. "Rufus are you there?"

&&%%%&&

He'd been Director since 24 August and it'd been a mess since that first afternoon. Bones was right about everything and she'd made the choice to cut and run that very day.

Rufus Scrimgeour stared at the barricaded door and at the bandage on his leg. He'd fought hard against the 'infirni' in the Atrium last night and hadn't seen the one that had been Dawlish crawl over until it bit his leg. He cast a spell to blast creature's head that left Rufus splattered with brain matter as the last of his men fell. Running away, Rufus made his way back to the department offices, barricaded the outer door and then barricaded his office door.

He sat at his desk, drank some cheap whiskey he'd lifted off a drunk in Diagon Alley several weeks ago and never poured down the drain. As he drank, he felt the fever travel up his leg and begin to take him.

The letter from Bones – he remembered the letter about the hidden drawer. Pulling it out, he read the directions and began to cast the spells to open the drawer before it was too late.

Ignoring the line of runes that would destroy Diagon Alley, Rufus immediately began pressing the runes to destroy the Ministry building underneath London.

'I want to die before the fever makes me one of them… Five minutes, that's what the letter said. Bones was too honest to lie about something like that.'

'Almost there…' he thought as he took another drink from the bottle.

There were thirty seconds left and Rufus welcomed the coming promise of death, but suddenly the floo flared and the voice of Cornelius Fudge's toad roared through the flames, "Rufus! You must come rescue me!"

"Go to hell, witch!" he replied.

"I am Acting Minister…"

$$()()$$

Furious for the director to the DMLE to use abusive language no matter what the situation was, Delores planned to fire the man the instant she was safe in her home.

"I am Acting Minister…" she began to yell through the flames when the fire did the strangest thing – it reached out, surrounded her and in an instant of white-hot pain, Delores Umbridge was burned to ashes.

(++**++)

SCENE: 19 September / Hannah Abbot

Hannah was bored and she knew her brothers were as well. They'd played every board game fifty times and coloured every colouring book three times. She'd read all their story books, muggle and magical, aloud several times.

Her father slept during the day so he could keep watch at night and her mother walked from room to room throughout the day, scanning the yard, the surrounding homes, and the streets for signs of the zombies. Lately, Hannah heard her mother catch her breath and slowly move to the side of a window while watching something but she'd never tell her daughter what she saw.

When her father woke and Mother made 'breakfast', their only large meal of the day, Hannah knew her mother and father spoke quietly about the things her mother had seen.

Her father kept his wand in his hand at all times and drilled Hannah in how to 'fast draw' her wand from the wrist holder he'd given her to wear at all times.

"Never take it off!" he insisted.

When her brothers whined about not having 'wrist holders' or magic wands, her mother took the time that evening before sleeping to sew two small wrist holders while her father made 'wands' from a pair of chopsticks left over from Muggle takeaway before the world ended.

The excitement in her brother's faces the next morning was as if Christmas had come early. They spent the day practicing 'fast draw' and pretending to cast spells with Hannah. She caught her mother with tears on her face several times that day.

Trouble arrived in the middle of the night. Hannah was awakened by shouts from the front of the house and spell fire as a gang of wizards began to dismantle their wards and other protections. Her father and mother had drilled Hannah on what to do; cast silencing spells on her brothers and herself, hide in the hidden closet in their parent's bedroom.

With her brothers shivering and holding each other, crying with silent tears, Hannah crouched beside the peep hole. Her mother was thrown back on the bed and some filthy wizard began to…

Shutting her eyes, Hannah looked away.

"There's kids here!" one of the wizards called out and brought Hannah out of her shock. "Find 'em. They can be bait to catch zombies to practice on."

A sickly voice was sing-song calling, "Here kiddies! I got supper for you!"

"Hey, did you bash the bitch's head in?"

"Naw, she's not dead," the sick voice replied.

"You mean, she's not dead yet. Damn Flint, what did you do to this one?"

Hannah moved carefully and looked through the peep hole to see Marcus Flint, a Slytherin student from Hogwarts, standing over her mother with his wand in his hand.

Silently Hannah begged, "Help! Someone help me! Please help me!"

Suddenly, she remembered feeling safe at Hogwarts – if her family had gone to Hogwarts in August, they'd be safe now.

"Hey, that wizard we killed coming in the front door is turning. Let's bring him upstairs and watch him eat his wife!" called the sick voice.

(++**++)

At Hogwarts, Fawkes sat up and tilted her head first one way and then the other, listening to voices, to a plea no one else heard. She called out across the Great Hall where three people stood up, compelled by her voice.

His wand already slipping into his hand, Alastor Moody lifted his other hand while Harry Potter dodged his godfather's hands and grabbed hold of Moody's restored leg while Amelia Bones grabbed him around the waist. The phoenix flashed across the Great Hall, to vanish with Moody, Bones and Harry Potter in a ball of fire.

(++**++)

Marcus Flint enjoyed the apocalypse; he got to kill, rob, and rape without consequence. He'd teamed up with a couple other wizards, one a former Auror who was booted out of the ministry when he got caught stealing from muggles too often.

They'd looked for this house for two weeks – the strong notice-me-not kept them away but they'd finally mapped out the street well enough to understand 'where' another house stood. After that, it was merely a matter of time finding the corner and tearing a hole in the wards using zombies as cannon fodder.

The wizard put up a good fight and killed one of their gang before they put him down. They found a good supply of food and a healthy, shapely witch. Since it was Flint's turn to go first, he'd taken his time, biting her, cutting her, and then breaking her bones to make her scream.

(++**++)

The room was suddenly filled with a bright light as a phoenix appeared with an angry scream, something that put fear into the heart of someone who'd turned his back on being a man to be a savage, like Marcus Flint.

Marcus barely had time to blink before a cutting spell took off his head; Alastor Moody felt his two passengers roll away from him as he ran from the room, firing reductos and bone shattering curses in chains that sent two more wizards running up the stairs back down to the ground floor in a dozen pieces. He cast two more spells that bashed in the heads of two zombies stumbling around the ground floor, both were bloody from the earlier fight that left them dead.

"Potter, with me, secure the house," Moody ordered. "Bones, find the children and care for the mother."

Harry ran down the stairs and cast shields around Moody as the retired Auror cast spells that repaired the front door, restored the wards and vanished the blood. They headed for the back of the house just as the silencing spells upstairs faded and the cries of the two boys were joined by the screams of their sister.

Only the house was secured did Alastor let Harry head up the stairs. In the bloody bedroom the body of the mother lay on the bed. Someone had cast a bludgeoning spell at the head to prevent a zombie from sitting up and trying to eat anyone. There was no sign of Fawkes, Amelia or any children.

Harry noticed a photograph beside the bed, the mother and father with two little boys and a girl that he recognized – Hannah Abbot. He took the photograph to return to the girl later.

"Where'd they go?" Moody asked and then answered his own question, "Hospital wing – those kids'll need to be with healers to help them."

Staring at the head of the first wizard that Alastor had killed when they landed in the house, Harry announced, "Professor Moody, I know this wizard! I played Quidditch against him at Hogwarts last year! He's name is… was Marcus Flint."

"Stupid waste of magic," Moody swore. "Damn him and all his evil…"

"We need to get ready for when Fawkes returns," Moody said changing the subject. "Grab the kid's toys, more photos and the girl's stuff."

At Harry's confused look, Moody said, "Her hair brush and jewellery box. Grab the mother's jewellery box too. They're always important to the children later."

While Harry did gather things for Hannah and her brothers, Moody gathered all the food and potions the Abbots had stored. Looking in the hidden closet (called a safe room in muggle homes), Harry found two wrist holders with kid sized pretend wands in them. Imagining the two boys playing wizard with their sister, he added them to his pack.

Fawkes suddenly appeared with an angry Sirius Black spitting fire with his wand out and cursing Alastor Moody.

(++**++)

It took two weeks before Sirius Black would allow his godson to return to training and Moody limped from stinging hexes that Black continued to rain down on the professor who took his godson into battle. Fawkes and Amelia finally settled the tension by forcing Black to sit through a counselling session for Hannah and her brothers.

Susan and Amelia Bones, Harry Potter, and Headmaster Rubeus Hagrid sat with the three children while the healers worked with each of the Abbot children individually to relieve nightmares, and deal with some memories of that night.

There were many tears but the tears grew fewer when the boys both wanted to play 'wizards' with the wrist holders their mother made them and the 'wands' their father made.

(++**++)

"Next time, take me!" Sirius shouted at the phoenix. "Take Harry again before he's thirty and I'll stuff you into a cushion for the headmaster to sit on at dinner!"

Harry listened to the conversation – one-sided conversation between his godfather and the phoenix with some fear – Fawkes was an incredibly powerful magical animal. But Harry heard a note of acceptance in her song afterwards and he did catch his godfather petting her feathers.

(++**++)

SCENE: 8 October / Minerva McGonagall

As the zombie threat around Hogwarts disappeared down the throats of Grifflers, Hagrid and the professors focused the attention of their students on their lessons, helping with food packages for people they knew to be stranded, and once again, thinking about a future.

On 7 October, everyone who was magical felt the ministry wards fall that prevented portkeys and apparition. After informing Hagrid and gaining his permission, Professor Moody and Deputy Headmistress Amelia scheduled increased numbers of adults on watch throughout the day and night. That same day, a few refugees did appear in Hogsmeade looking for food and shelter that was provided there in the village without involving Hogwarts.

The next afternoon, during the preparations for a lecture for students in the Great Hall, Hagrid stopped walking toward the hall, turned around and headed out of the castle.

His instructions were clear as he called, "Lupin, Moody, Black, with me. Bones keep everyone else in the castle."

As he passed the 'decontamination' station with two healers on duty, Hagrid said, "Call in at least two more healers. We'll need teams of two men and two women to check some new arrivals."

In the two months they'd been resident in the castle, the adults had come to understand that Headmaster Hagrid was a warlock of few words but he meant for his directions to be followed when there wasn't time for discussion or 'what if' scenarios. Apparently, this was one of those times.

Auror Swenson was on duty along the walls above the hedge-wall where the gate to Hogwarts stood. As Hagrid and the three wizards approached the hedge-wall, the limbs separated and the opening for the gate appeared for the first time since 24 August. Hagrid led the wizards through the gateway without pausing so they hurried after him.

In the field between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, a group of individuals were approaching the gate – it appeared to be three adults, a teenager, and four children.

"Lupin, you'll be needed to talk with the three children on the left," Hagrid said.

"Hello," boomed Hagrid's voice when the group was on the castle's side of the red flag that Swenson had planted months ago.

"Help us," came a woman's voice. "Please help us."

The man beside her said, "We just left Perth; everything and everyone there is dead."

"And ye came to Hogwarts because…?"

"We went to school here. Our children will come in another few years," the wizard replied.

"Walk up slowly and you'll be allowed to enter Hogwarts," Hagrid said.

"Sanctuary!" demanded the second woman's voice.

"Ye'll be granted sanctuary if ye're not infected," Hagrid said. "Our healers will check each of ye."

Remus approached the three boys standing a little to the left of the group of five. They were terribly thin, filthy and dressed in rags. His senses kicked into high gear when he got a good smell of them – werewolves. He slowed his approach, put his wand away despite a complaint from Sirius.

"Stay back!" Remus growled at Sirius who heard the intensity of his friend's voice and instantly obeyed. Sirius lower his wand and stop advancing toward the three children as Moody and Hagrid talked to the other refugees, the couple, their two children and the woman who kept her head covered.

"Pack," Remus whispered to the boys. "You'll be safe here in my pack."

The oldest – a boy maybe thirteen years old, placed himself between the tall man who smelled like a wolf and the two younger boys.

"Greybeard and all the others are dead," the boy said. "Zombies got 'em."

"Good," Remus said. "We don't need Greybeard here. You'll be safe, get plenty of food, and go to school."

The older boy took a deep breath at the mention of school, while the two younger ones had looked around at the mention of 'food'.

"We're wolves," the older one said.

"Me too," said Remus with a smile and he transformed into his wolf form. The wolf stalked toward the boys slowly but steadily; the three children froze, seeing an alpha wolf approach them. The grey wolf circled them, nudging them gently with his nose to get a good smell, and then Remus reappeared, kneeling beside them.

"It'll all be okay," he assured them. "We'll go through the hedge and then see the healers, get you some new clothes and then supper and bed."

"Real supper?" asked one of the boys. "Real bread?"

"Real bread and milk," promised Remus.

Leading the three boys toward the castle, Remus asked Sirius, "Where'd the others go?"

"Hagrid took them through the gate and up to the decontamination room in the castle. Take your time walking up there."

"We've got to go through the hedge," Remus said. "We won't overlap with the others."

As they approached the hedge rather than the gate that was overgrown again anyway, Sirius asked, "Where did you find the other people?"

"We were in the edge of the forest, making our way to Hogwarts when they appeared in the middle of the field. One of the women called us to join them."

The teenager paused and then continued, "The three of us walked here from near Dundee. Greybeard led the pack there to hide when the dead people started eating wizards, muggles and werewolves."

"The zombies eat werewolves?" asked Sirius.

"It's terrible messy," the youngest boy said very seriously.

The teen said, "At first, the zombies just made Greybeard angry. We were in the forest for a couple weeks without much to eat. He took the grown-ups out to hunt and they came back with a whole herd of dead people following. Me and the boys climbed a tree while the wolves transformed and fought 'em. They killed hundreds of 'em, but the dead people kept coming and finally got 'em down on the ground."

"We waited two days for the dead people to wander away." The teen shrugged and added, "Then climbed down and started here."

"How did you know to come here? To Hogwarts?" asked Sirius.

"I lived in Hogsmeade before I got bit four years ago."

"Are your parents still there?" Remus asked.

The boy shook his head, "After I got bit, they threw me out. Didn't think they'd let me back in… I just wanted some food for me and the boys. Their house was broke open but we found a little bit of food and I decided we'd try the castle for more. Hoped you'd give us some, and some blankets before we went back to the house to sleep."

"We'll keep you here," Remus said. "You'll be part of my pack now."

"Other wolves?" asked one of the smaller boys, with some fear in his question.

"No, just one mangy dog," Remus said pointing at Sirius who grimaced but transformed into his large, black, grim. The dog immediately plodded over and began sniffing and then licking the two younger boys.

"It tickles!" the youngest declared, the fear gone from his voice.

When they reached the hedge, Remus reached out his hand and said, "Now this is a new friend."

"A plant?" asked the teen and Padfoot laughed as only a dog can.

"It's more than a plant, this is the hedge-wall that protects Hogwarts from the zombies. Because we're werewolves, we have to walk through the hedge our first time going through."

"Will it hurt?" asked the middle boy.

Sirius had changed back by now and said, "Not if you listen and do what the hedge tells you to do."

"Will you go with us?"

Sirius grinned and said, "I'll carry you; Remus will carry… What're your names anyway?"

The youngest boy replied, "My name is Frank."

Then he pointed at the middle kid and said, "He's Mike."

The teen said, "I'm Tony."

"Well, Tony, you take my hand," Remus said as he lifted Mike with his other arm.

"And Frank's with me," said Sirius as a green door made of limbs opened and a warm light appeared within a green room. The two wizards led the three young werewolves inside.

(++**++)

SCENE: De-contamination

"And then the hedge farted," Frank told his new friend, Harry.

"The hedge did what?" asked Harry, with a grin on his face.

"It farted!" the little boy confirmed with a smile as if he were telling the funniest joke in the world.

Mike, the middle boy, explained, "Remus said that the hedge got rid of the bad part of being a wolf and had to explain…"

"Expel," Remus corrected the middle boy while helping Frank get dressed in clean jeans and a jumper. Sirius stood nearby with socks and trainers for the two youngest boys.

"Yeah, 'expel' the bad parts but it sounded just like a giant fart."

"And it smelled like a giant fart, too!" insisted Sirius holding his nose and waving his other hand which proved hard to do with the trainers and socks he also held.

"So, the hedge got rid of the bad parts of being a werewolf?" Harry continued.

Now Frank nodded. "And when we grow up, Professor Siriuses will teached us how to change into a wolf like Professor Remus can do."

"That's great!" Harry said with a nod. "And Tony, when will you…"

"Tony can start in a year, probably about the same time you do Harry," Sirius said. "We have to a lot of transfiguration theory and exercises to get through first."

"Will you be a wolf too, Harry?" asked Mike.

"I won't know until I get closer to changing."

"I'll be a wolf," said Frank. "Like the pack."

Remus and Sirius smiled at all the boys before Harry asked, "Is Tony going to be in third year classes with me?"

Yes," Remus replied. "Headmaster Hagrid said we'll help him with revision to catch up with theory and spells."

"When you get sorted, we'll have a party to celebrate!"

Sirius asked, "And you don't care about which house he gets sorted into?"

Harry grinned and said, "We've decided that houses don't matter anymore. We want all our classes together every day and the only thing we're going to use 'houses' for is to determine who is your faculty sponsor."

Once the three new students were dressed in new, clean clothes, Harry led the boys toward the Great Hall. Remus glanced between the reports and the boys before Sirius pushed him toward the hall.

"Go be their alpha and reassure them," Sirius said. Then he sighed dramatically and added, "The wonderful Padfoot will make his way through the reports on his own…"

Snorting, Remus vanished quickly following the boys to where the lights and smells of dinner drew others. Sirius read through the reports from the healers; the couple were graduates from Hogwarts and both of their children were in the book to attend in the future. Half-bloods on both sides, he had worked for the muggle government in conservation and she worked as a school teacher in Scotland before the plague.

"Both with valuable skills we need," Sirius mused.

Then he opened the report on the lone woman who'd come with them into the castle.

(++**++)

Seated in the Great Hall for dinner, Hannah Abbot fidgeted and worried about her brothers.

Susan slipped an arm around her friend's shoulders and said, "They're fine. Luna is with them playing games and telling stories."

"What if they get scared?"

"Poppy is with them and she'll hold 'em just like always until you get back… until we get back."

"Susie, I don't know how I'd make it…" Hannah started to say before Susan wrapped her arm around her best friend.

"We've always been sisters," Susan replied. "So, I can help take care of my brothers too."

Nodding her head, Hannah blocked away the worst memories and turned back to the present. They were safe in Hogwarts; her brothers were safe… she was safe. Auror Moody, Aunt Amelia and Harry Potter had saved them! They killed the wizards who killed her Mum and Dad! Fawkes the phoenix who guarded the school heard her and came for them!

They were safe.

With Susan's arm around her, Hannah turned back to the meal that had appeared on the table and to Harry who was introducing three new friends to everyone – Tony, Mike and Frank were kids that just arrived this afternoon. Professor Lupin sat with them rather than with any of the adults.

"Not too much, Frank. Eat all that slowly and then you can have more," Remus said placing a chicken leg on the boy's plate.

"And Mike gets one too?"

Harry poured small mugs of milk for the two little boys while the older one brushed away tears as he ate a piece of soft bread. Hannah began helping and added, "And there'll be biscuits for dessert."

(++**++)

For some reason, Hannah looked up from the table as one of the new women walked between the old Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables. Hannah was seated at the old Hufflepuff table but could see the hooded figure stepping carefully to not bump anyone and draw attention. Her face was covered but her hands were visible and there was a ring on her right hand. A ring with a large M in gold on a black background.

Suddenly, Hannah remembered a day from summer… her Mum and Dad talking to Professor McGonagall at their house… about not coming to Hogwarts… a woman's voice saying, "It's not safe at Hogwarts…" and the gold ring on McGonagall's finger.

'How can she be here? Mum and Dad didn't… wouldn't come because she said it wasn't safe…' Hannah wondered.

(++**++)

"She's having a flashback, Susan," Remus told the girl trying to get Hannah's attention. "Boys, move over to the other table quietly."

From his place on the other side of Susan Bones, Cedric Diggory helped the three new boys move their plates and mugs to the Gryffindor table so they could continue to eat. Harry moved to the other side of Hannah while Remus sent his Patronus to summon a healer.

"No!" exclaimed Hannah as she stood up from her seat and climbed up on the table.

Again, Hannah declared, "You don't get to be here!"

She walked across the table, stepped down onto the bench vacated by Harry moments earlier and then across to a space at the Ravenclaw table before stepping up on the table and continuing forward.

"You don't get to be here!" Hannah declared again as she tracked the woman who like everyone else in the Great Hall had stopped what they were doing to follow the girl climbing over the tables. But now, Susan Bones and Harry Potter were following Hannah across the tables, plates and food flying in different directions as people tried to move out of the way.

From his place at the end of the hall, Headmaster Hagrid rose, concerned for the cause of Miss Abbot's distress more than for her behaviour. Professor Sprout was moving as quickly as possible between the tables to reach Hannah and professor Flitwick moved from the other direction.

From the doorway, an angry Sirius Black stormed into the Great Hall while Professor Moody sat very still, hopeful that he was not the object of Black's ire this time.

(++**++)

Standing before the woman with her hood still up, from above her on the Ravenclaw table, Hannah declared, "You killed them! You killed my Mum and Dad!"

Then Hannah leapt upon the woman, knocking her back against the Slytherin table. In a rage, Hannah grabbed the woman's shoulders and began to bang her head against the Slytherin table.

"You don't get to be here! You killed them!" she screamed as Professor Sprout, Hannah and Harry all reached them at the same time. "You don't get to be here!"

Struggling against the arms of friends trying to stop her, Hannah screamed again, "No! She's the reason Mum and Dad are dead! I'll kill her and feed her to a zombie!"

With a wail, Hannah cried, "They were going to feed my Mum to a zombie!"

Sirius arrived and cast a sleep spell on Hannah that allowed Susan and Harry to sit her on the bench at the Ravenclaw table while Pomona turned to the woman that Hannah attacked. The hood fell back to reveal the face of Minerva McGonagall.

(++**++)

SCENE: Sanctuary

"I claim sanctuary," McGonagall declared. "Hagrid offered everyone sanctuary at the gate."

"Who did?" demanded Sprout of her former co-worker. "Who offered everyone sanctuary?"

"With a sour expression, Minerva said, "Rubeus Hagrid offered me and everyone I travelled with sanctuary."

"And what authority gives Rubeus Hagrid the right to offer you or anyone else sanctuary in Hogwarts?" Sprout again demanded, her wand pressed against McGonagall's breast with a red reducto spell ready to fire.

"He's the headmaster, damn you!"

Sprout sneered. "You declare he is Headmaster? Headmaster of what?

"Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft," McGonagall spit. "And his offer of sanctuary can't be revoked for me unless you throw out the others."

Remus gathered the three former werewolf cubs together and whispered, "You won't have to leave. I won't let them push you out."

The couple with the two children shouted out, "No! She just appeared in Dundee as we were leaving. She apparated near us but not with us!"

McGonagall shook her head, "It don't make any difference. The 'headmaster' offered us sanctuary together so long as we didn't have the virus."

"You'll never be welcome here," Sirius said. "Leave!"

"It's too dangerous out there."

"The zombies are just about gone in Scotland," Sirius argued.

"But there's still wild men and food is going to be scarce. You don't have wild men here and you have plenty of food." McGonagall wouldn't look at anyone when she added, "Besides, once things settle down, the government will return and Hagrid will be sent back to his shack."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Filius swore. "Woman, Rubeus Hagrid is the only reason the world is going to survive! He's the warlock who created the Grifflers – the vultures that are eating all the zombies. He'll be the head of any magical government that forms after this is over."

"What? He bred some creature!" she asked and turned toward Hagrid.

She shook a finger at the headmaster and blasted him saying, "Merlin, you've violated the laws left and right and think you can get away with it!"

"No, that's not Merlin. His name is Hagrid but I think he puts Merlin in the shade. But what do I know?" asked Sirius.

"Sirius Black! Your headmaster stomped all over the prohibition against breeding new magical creatures and the Statute of Secrecy!" McGonagall swore. "The ICW will lock everyone in this castle away and obliviate the world!"

A girl's voice spoke up and said, "I don't care. You don't get to be here!"

Hannah was awake again, and she stood up, again standing over the seated McGonagall. "You're the reason my parents are dead."

"No, I didn't kill your parents, if they're dead," McGonagall said. "How do you know they're dead?"

Hagrid banged his staff against the floor and everyone fell silent. He seemed to be listening to Hogwarts for a minute before he said, "Hogwarts wants to hear the reasons why we should deny sanctuary to this witch."

"Hogwarts? How can a castle judge me?" Minerva demanded. "How can you let a child's words condemn me to the hell outside these walls?"

"What if it's a lot of kids who say you don't belong here?" asked Harry.

"Mr Potter, be quiet!" McGonagall demanded but Harry shook his head and turned toward Hagrid before he pointed at McGonagall.

Then Harry announced, "Headmaster, I agree with Hannah, this witch doesn't get to be here!"

(++**++)

It took a few minutes to arrange for a large picture frame to be moved into the Great Hall but once it was in place, the four Founders stepped into the frame and everyone bowed (except for McGonagall) to them.

Hagrid formally explained the situation and asked for their judgement.

"Tis a terrible thing to deny sanctuary," Godric announced when he heard that the witch was from his house in the school. "But we'll hear these children and their complaints against the witch."

"Minerva McGonagall, come forth!" demanded Godric Gryffindor. As McGonagall slowly moved toward the portrait, Fawkes flamed into the room with the sorting hat that she threw into the portrait. Inside the painting, Godric caught the hat that began laughing at the look of surprize on the faces of the other Founders and adults in the room.

From the image of the sorting hat, Godric drew forth his sword and said, "I am Godric Gryffindor and I shall judge if this witch, named as Minerva McGonagall, from my house, if she be fit to be given sanctuary here in Hogwarts."

Fawkes sat on the edge of the picture frame and whistled a single, sad note that left no one comforted.

Not waiting for anyone else to say anything, Hannah stood and declared, "My name is Hannah Abbot. This woman… this witch is the reason my parents are dead."

"How did she bring this about?" asked Godric.

Taking a deep breath, Hannah said, "Back in summer, we were talking at home about coming here to Hogwarts. The letter came early and invited my whole family to come here. The stories from the muggle papers said a plague was coming."

"But McGonagall visited us one day while Dad was at work and then she came back that same night to talk to both Dad and Mum. She talked about how Hogwarts wasn't safe, that Hagrid was crazy and not a real headmaster. She said we'd be safer to stay in our home."

Hannah turned to McGonagall and said, "But that was a lie and you know it because you've come here asking for sanctuary."

"A gang of wizards broke into our home. They killed my Dad and then… then they… my Mum…"

She took another deep breath, "I saw them… I heard them saying there were children in the house and they planned to catch us. I heard 'em saying they'd use us as bait to catch zombies. My little brothers were going to be bait!"

With tears streaming down her face, Hannah said, "You killed my Mum and Dad!"

(++**++)

"Do we have another child who will speak against this woman?" asked Godric Gryffindor from the picture frame.

"I will speak against giving her sanctuary," said Cedric Diggory standing up. "My parents didn't listen to McGonagall's complaints against Hagrid but Cho Chang's parents believed every word of it. They wouldn't come to Hogwarts and they kept Cho and her little brother at home. Her brother's name has been marked through in the attendance book; that means he's dead. The owls won't take any letters to Cho so I think the whole family is gone."

"We'll speak against her and we don't think that this witch should be allowed to stay here," Percy Weasley said, standing at a table with Penny on one side and the twins on the other.

Fred nodded while George explained, "We tried to get Mum and Dad to come to Hogwarts and our brother Bill argued too. I thought we'd made progress and they'd come with us on the early Express. But the night before the trip, she came to the Burrow and spent an hour with Mum and Dad, telling them about Hagrid not being smart enough to protect the castle and the kids."

"She told 'em that we'd run wild without supervision because she wasn't here," Fred said.

"And our brother Ron didn't come with us when the left to come to Hogwarts anyway. Bill said that Mum sat and cried but wouldn't come to school because she said it wasn't going to be safe."

Harry Potter stood up again and said, "I don't think this witch should be here. She's the reason why my friend Hermione Granger and her parents wouldn't come. She convinced them that Hagrid was stupid, Remus – Professor Lupin was dangerous and Professor Black was a murderer."

Now the boy-who-lived frowned as he levelled a dark look at his former head-of-house, "And she told Hermione that she couldn't use any magic to defend her home and family. She told her that the Statue of Secrecy meant the Grangers would be without magical protection from zombies and the 'evil men' she's mention. She didn't want Hermione using charms to hide their house or give them clean water or anything like that."

Next, Pomona Sprout stood and said, "I say she can't be here. When I visited the Smiths… Zach Smith's parents, they told me that McGonagall had been there and told them that everything in the Daily Prophet was true! That Hagrid was…"

"She went to every student from every house and did her best to convince them to not come to Hogwarts. We have only half of the older students here and I lay part of the fault at this witch's feet that many of those children are not here."

The herbology professor took a deep breath and paused for a moment. Then she looked directly at Minerva and said, "You killed these children and their families as sure as you set fire to their homes like a Death Eater. In fact, it would have been kinder if you slit their throats rather than leaving them to be eaten alive."

(++**++)

SCENE: Duel to Death

Now Professor Flitwick stepped forward and said, "Minerva McGonagall, I challenge you to a death duel!"

Dismissing him with a wave of her hand, McGonagall said, "No, you're a half breed and I don't have to accept such a challenge from a creature who is less than a man!"

McGonagall knew the charms professor would make mincemeat of her in less than a minute so she used the insult to reject his challenge.

"And what about me?" asked Pomona Sprout. "Can you create a reason why you're not willing to face me?"

McGonagall's face betrayed her feeling of triumph – she could take Sprout in a duel with one hand strapped to her side.

"I accept," Minerva said.

Hagrid summoned the elves to clear away the supper and then remove the tables and most of the chairs. The muggle parents took most of the younger children away toward the classrooms were the interrupted supper would be continued. The wizards and witches, and all the students from Harry's class and older stayed.

Minerva took a deep breath and glanced about the Great Hall, the children were united behind Hagrid and he had a strong group of professors, food, magic… It would take her ten years to work her way back into a position of authority here.

Seeing Pomona step forward, Minerva noticed that the woman was focused on the task ahead of her and not overly nervous.

'Only a fool wouldn't be nervous to face a death duel,' McGonagall thought.

The two witches faced off and Filius announced, "Begin."

Sprout's shield took Minerva's first barrage of piercing and bone breaking spells without a hint of denting, and then Pomona put the skills learned from Alastor Moody to use. She dodged her opponents spells with the same skill she used to dodge around dummy zombies in the training room and returned offensive spells equal to McGonagall's best.

Then Pomona threw increasingly powerful bludgeoning spells that shattered McGonagall's shield, and she actually caught a transfiguration spell on the tip of her wand before throwing the spell back at McGonagall. The other witch fell to the floor to avoid being transfigured into a lump of coal. As she fell, McGonagall began the transformation into her cat form – she'd dodge Pomona's spells to run close, transform back and finish her opponent off with a reducto directly in her face.

But Sprout expected this move and immediate cast the spell to call Minerva's wand to her, followed with a petrification spell that arrived at the same moment as the 'cat' appeared on the floor. With McGonagall's wand in her hand, and a petrified cat at the other end of the duelling field, Pomona had won.

The audience waited silently to see what would happen. Filius stepped forward and announced, "With the animagus transformation, McGonagall is unable to proper communicate her surrender. Sprout has the option of killing her now or allowing her to change back and accepting her surrender before she's banished from Hogwarts, never to return."

First Sprout placed McGonagall's wand in a pocket and then with her own wand, cast a sticking spell on the cat. Once the cat and Minerva were not going to rise from the floor until Sprout allowed, the herbology professor removed the stupefy and followed that with the spell that forced an animagus back into its human form. McGonagall screamed from the pain of the forced transformation but no one offered her any relief.

"You've won, kill me," she hissed.

"I don't want to kill you," Pomona replied. "I just want you gone."

"No! Either you kill me or give me back my wand and we continue until I kill you!"

Professor Sprout seemed to weigh her options before reaching into her pocket and pulling out McGonagall's wand. Pomona removed the sticking spell and appeared to be considering her next move.

"Well, if you insist," Pomona said just before she threw the wand to her opponent. McGonagall leapt to her feet, grabbing her wand and planning to blast the other witch with an explosive spell.

But as McGonagall grabbed her wand from the air, her figure was jerked into a spin and she disappeared with a surprized look on her face.

"Oh dear," Pomona said with a disappointed tone. "Was that the wrong wand, Minerva?"

When the vanished witch didn't reply, Pomona shrugged and said, "Maybe she got that last wish to die granted."

Filius stepped closer and asked, "What did you do?"

Pulling McGonagall's real wand from her other pocket, Sprout explained, "Well, she wanted to die so I transfigured one of my hair pins into something that looked like her wand. But that particular pin was also a portkey the headmaster gave me for emergency use. I think I made it a portkey aimed at Diagon Alley."

Filius cleared his throat, "I told you this morning that the alley's full of zombies."

Sprout smiled and added, "That's right, you did. And since the Grifflers haven't reached London yet, I granted Minerva's wish to die. She just landed in Diagon Alley without a wand."

Filius Flitwick was speechless for a moment but then bowed before Pomona Sprout and said, "I fear you woman and that's the greatest compliment I can give anyone!"

(++**++)

SCENE: 16 October / Granger Family

Their food supplies running low, Dan and Ophelia Granger debated if they should attempt to reach one of the government shelters that the BBC had mentioned a month ago. For the last week, the radio only carried occasional updates on the situation around the kingdom. They'd seen some neighbours eaten by zombies and evidence of gangs driving by but never stopping at their house.

"The spells you cast made the difference in us not being found," Ophelia told her daughter. "Headmaster Hagrid knew what he was doing sending that information."

"I still…"

"Hermione, the world is changed," her father said. "We are lucky to still be alive and to be together."

Nodding her head, Hermione cast the notice-me-not spell on the Range Rover in the garage.

"As soon as you open the garage door, the spell on the door will be broken. I don't know how good it will be on the Rover," she told her dad.

Dan moved quickly to lift the door – it made a tremendous amount of noise in the still morning air of a zombie-occupied Crawley. He was in the driver's seat with this daughter in the passenger seat and Ophelia in back – with her wand, they thought it better for Hermione to sit up front to cast spells as needed.

The Rover cranked without any problems and moved down the drive, ignoring the few zombies in the yard, already drawn to the house by the noise. Dan ran over the first one at the bottom of the drive way as he turned onto the street.

They didn't recognize any faces, but the number of zombies increased before they reached the entrance to the neighbourhood. As Dan drove, more and more of the creatures went under the tires and he found the steering growing sluggish. Just as they reached the pillars that marked the entrance to the neighbourhood, the vehicle halted.

"They're caught underneath," Dan told his wife and daughter. "Their bodies are caught up in the wheels."

"Oh no," Ophelia whispered while Hermione desperately tried to think of any spell that would help.

In the short time they'd been stopped, more zombies gathered around the Range Rover, bitten faces and rotting hands were pressed against the glass on every side and the moans were growing louder as the zombies smelled living flesh nearby.

Tears on her cheeks, Hermione didn't know what to do. Dan was growing desperate – this had gone belly-up incredibly fast.

Then louder than the moans of the zombies they all heard a whistle, like one large bird calling to another. The noise didn't change the behaviour of the zombies but Dan kept looking out the windows and suddenly sucked in his breath.

From the north, a flock of some type of vulture descended upon their street. Zombies and giant vultures would wipe them out in another minute.

"What is it Dad?" Hermione asked, leaning forward to look out the window on her side of the Range Rover. "What is that?"

Then the vultures landed on the zombies, carrying them to the ground and tearing at the rotting flesh. The birds lifted their beaks to help direct the flesh toward their stomachs but then bent back down to tear out another chunk.

"What are they?" asked Hermione; she'd never studied birds in her exploration of knowledge.

"They're vultures, birds that eat dead things, and there're so many of them!" Ophelia exclaimed.

"They're everywhere!" Dan added, allowing a glimmer of hope to grow as moans of zombies began to die away, replaced by the apparently happy whistles of feeding vultures. The sky grew dark with the numbers vultures descending on Crawley – there were thousands of them on the street around the Range Rover with the trapped Granger family. It took several hours of feeding, and Dan saw several vultures waddling underneath the chassis to get to the corpses tangled up in his Range Rover's tires.

"Look!" Hermione said pointing toward several vultures who were obviously stuffed full of zombie flesh and bones. The vultures appeared to settle on the ground, clap their beaks a few times as they pulled in their wings and necks, the body settling on their feet, before they exploded.

"What was that?" asked Ophelia as Dan and Hermione sat back from watching out Hermione's window.

"That vulture just exploded."

"Like a bomb?" asked her mother.

"I don't think so…" Dan replied while Hermione looked through the window again and stared in disbelief.

Instead of parts of a vulture lying around, there were four balls of feathers lying there. After ten minutes, the balls of feather shook open and four small vultures hopped around, latching onto zombie parts or carcasses, and beginning to feed.

The little ones hopped underneath the Range Rover and ate from the zombie carcasses lodged underneath.

The process repeated itself around them through the entire afternoon – the large vultures ate the zombies, puffed up when stuffed, and exploded into four smaller vultures that began eating within ten minutes.

"The little vultures get bigger as soon as they start eating," Dan said.

"Where did they come from?" asked Ophelia. "It's just like magic!"

While a few of the vultures continued to pull zombie parts out from underneath the Range Rover, others would fly up to the surrounding houses, sniff around and fly on to the next house or hop to the front door or large windows but then disappear.

"Now I know it's magic!" Ophelia announced. "Those birds just go 'into' houses they want to."

"Why some houses and not others?" Dan asked.

His wife was quiet for only a moment before she replied, "Some house must have zombies trapped inside. Others don't have anyone trapped or they're still alive inside."

"Almost every house has vultures going inside," Dan said.

(++**++)

It was late afternoon when the last vulture left the Range Rover, flying off to seek more zombies. A large number of vultures were gathered at the entrance to the neighbourhood where zombies continued to gather, lured by the smell of the Granger family trapped in their vehicle.

Dan decided it was time to return home, turned over the engine, and made a U-turn in the street, running over the curb, to drive the Range Rover back toward their house. Along the way, they saw a few bundles of clothes and the occasional shoe where the vultures left few bits of evidence that a zombie had been consumed. Once again safe inside their garage with the door closed, Dan and Ophelia helped Hermione back into the house and onto a sofa.

Dan made certain to lock the garage door and retrieved his gun with all the ammunition from the vehicle before he closed, locked and blocked the door to the garage. At his wife's unasked question, he replied, "Until she's over this shock, I won't ask her to cast that not-spell again."

Hermione slept for a long time and woke up in the middle of the night, her mother coming to her side instantly.

"Where's Daddy?" she asked in a sleepy voice.

"He fell asleep over there," Ophelia motioned toward another sofa. "The neighbourhood is quiet except for the occasional whistle by one of the vultures. Apparently, they can see well enough at night to keep hunting and eating."

"I thought it was all a dream," Hermione whispered sadly. "The zombies, the vultures, magic… all a dream."

(++**++)

There was a bright light in the kitchen just before dawn. The entire family was awake and waiting for the new day – they'd begin exploring surrounding houses for any food that might have survived. Hermione's spells provided all the water they needed but they had to have food. When they stepped into their kitchen and found the package, Hermione and her mom opened it immediately.

It was a large package of food including apples, bread, a jar with milk, cooked meat, a small container with some butter and even some greens for a salad.

There was a note that Dan opened and read before handing it to his daughter to read with her mother.

(++**++)

Hermione – your notice-me-not is too freaking powerful. Turn it down some, we couldn't find you until now. Here's a food package and we'll send more in two days if you want us to. Sign this letter and then tap it with your wand to send it back.

Hope you're keeping up with your lessons – Headmaster Hagrid is strick about keeping up classwork.

Your friend, Harry

(++**++)

SCENE: 4 September / Parkinson, Nott and Malfoy

Lucius Malfoy, his wife and son waited on breakfast without much conversation. There were few newspapers delivered now and the Daily Prophet was good only for lining the owl cage in Lucius's office. There'd been no response to letters to distant family on the continent and Narcissa's family here in Britain was gone; her parents apparently died in an incident with these zombies on 1 September in Kent where the Black family holdings were concentrated. One sister dead in Azkaban when the minister shut it down and the other sister blasted from the family tree for marrying a muggle would be dead soon – their house in Muggle London wouldn't survive the hordes of undead.

Lucius smiled to reassure Narcissa; her cool exterior was shaken by these creatures. When news of the minister's assassination was announced, he'd been unhappy, well displeased would be the better word, when he realized she'd been the one to dispatch Cornelius Fudge. He didn't really mind that she'd eliminated the wizard because he had additional flunkies who could take over the role of Minister, but he'd been irritated that she'd been seen entering his office – and by the queen of blackmail, Delores Umbridge.

That woman's days were numbered for certain after she sent that insulting letter – 'his' wife with Fudge? More likely the Wizengamot would elect a mudblood to be Grand Warlock five times in a row than for his wife to allow…

Images appeared that had to be driven from his mind.

There was a shout from the front of the house and an elf popped in, "Master, the Parkinson family be at the door."

"Whatever can they be thinking?" Narcissa asked her husband. "It's not seven o'clock yet!"

There was a loud, persistent banging on the front door as the Malfoy family hurried from the first-floor family dining room. Draco outpaced his parents and he threw open the front door as soon as he reached it, allowing the entire Parkinson family to fall inside. Edmund grabbed the flung-open door and shut it without saying anything to Draco; the boy wanted to protest but then fell silent under Mr Parkinson's glare.

From up the stairs, Narcissa noticed that every member of the family was still dressed in their night clothes with robes and bedroom slippers, not shoes or boots. This was unusual for Bette Parkinson – the woman was a meticulous with her appearance as Narcissa.

Lucius noticed that Bette and Pansy both were in tears, the small boy was clinging to his mother, and Edmund looked wild!

"Lucius! The zombies are here in Wiltshire! The wards didn't stop them, they just pushed their way into my home!"

"How did you escape?" asked Draco.

"I kept three broomsticks on the floor where we sleep. Those things were all over the ground floor of my house! They didn't pay any attention to the wards!"

"Did you lead them here?" asked Lucius. The question made Parkinson return to the window and peer outside.

"I don't think so," the man replied.

"Good, then after breakfast, we can deal with the zom… the creatures around your manor. Your elf will have everything cleaned up before nightfall."

Before they could return up the stairs to the dining room, the floo flared with a traveller – the Malfoy manor was one of the private homes with an exemption from the travel ban. Ambrose Nott fell through the flames and collapsed on the marble floor.

For a moment, no one moved to help him and the wizard scrambled to climb to his knees and point his wand back at the floo. He cast a spell that extinguished the flames and broke all floo connections.

"Nott! That's my floo!" protested Lucius.

"You're welcome," Nott replied ignoring the complaint. Zombies… they were all over my house… ate my wife… I didn't want any to follow me here."

"Where's Theo?" asked Pansy.

Nott didn't answer as he realized the Parkinson family was present in nightclothes. He hid the small bite on his left hand and asked for coffee or tea.

"Dusty," Narcissa called. The elf appeared, bowed and waited for orders. "Bring Mr Nott a cup of coffee with cream."

"Thank you, Mrs Malfoy," the wizard replied.

(++**++)

As the three wizards exchanged stories, and the two wives helped settle each other's nerves by watching their husbands plot and plan, Draco and Pansy shared cups of tea with some toast. Pansy's little brother ate toast as well though he kept his mother in his sight at all times.

"What happened?" Draco asked.

"Just after dawn, I woke up when something crashed downstairs," Pansy explained. "I came out of my room to find my Dad yelling and firing cutting curses at infirni… uh zombies, wandering around our downstairs, knocking over furniture and falling on the slippery floors."

"Why did you leave, then?" Draco asked. "They can't climb the stairs from what the papers say."

Pansy looked at Draco as if she'd never seen him before. Her brother snuggled into her arms and she held him tightly.

"They moaned, it was like a hungry animal and they looked up… well their heads all tilted up where my Dad stood on the stair casting spells at them."

"They stinky," said the small boy.

Pansy nodded. "They were rotting and the whole house smelled horrible."

The husbands continued planning – the cutting spells didn't seem to have been effective and so they planned to use banishing spells and bludgeoning spells.

"Aim for the heads," Edmund said. That's what I did wrong this morning. I aimed for the torso but should have been aiming for the head."

"Perfectly understandable," Lucius remarked. "Zombies were inside the house!"

While Narcissa was concentrating on spells to remove the smell that appeared to linger around the Parkinson family, Bette kept her eyes on the men and noticed that Nott repeatedly squeezed his left hand as though it hurt. His wand cast a couple healing spells surreptitiously, and the mother glanced over at her two children.

(++**++)

After a small breakfast, Edmund and Bette retired to a guest room to refresh themselves. Pansy and Henry, their son, joined them and the family took stock of the situation after casting multiple privacy spells, searching for any listening charms, and spelling the heat ducts to not carry sound. Their house elf, Mason, responded to Bette's call and brought them clothes. The elf also collected the brooms from the front stoop of the Malfoy home where they'd left them.

Bette decided not to mention Nott's injury until after her husband made his decision about their course of action today.

"I don't know how well this venture against the zombies will go this morning," Edmund said. "But you and the children will be safe here."

"Not for long," his wife replied. "Narcissa won't allow us to remain – they're not as well provisioned as we are for the coming problem."

"Or she simply lied to you about the stores she laid in to feed her family."

Nodding her head to concede her husband's argument, he asked her what she proposed. Sighing the woman said, "I don't know."

"I do," chimed in Pansy. "We should fly to Hogwarts."

"Honey, that's several hundred miles and we can't make it in one day…" Bette replied and her husband seemed lost in thought.

"We can stop along the way and sleep on top of houses or other tall buildings," Pansy explained. "I've seen pictures of the muggle cities and some of them have buildings hundreds of feet high."

"And Mason can bring us food and drink along the way when we stop for the night," Bette said. "We have him put the manor into lockdown. The zombies don't seem to see him and any left inside can rot there."

"We'd be breaking the Statue of Secrecy," Bette worried.

Edmund grunted and said, "That's gone out the window with the potion cauldron. No one is going to be looking at the sky – everyone is looking over their shoulder to make certain a zombie not coming to bite them!"

"I like to fly!" declared Henry.

"Will our broomsticks carry us that far?"

(++**++)

While the Parkinson family plotted their escape, Nott nursed his aching hand, and Lucius sneered that his lovely, quiet morning was interrupted by the arrival of 'friends' and zombies. In the privacy of his office, he learned that houses of his tenants, Goyle and Crabb, were overrun with zombies. He'd sent his personal elf to silently observe the families in the houses and the elf faithfully reported that the mother and son in one family were hiding upstairs while in the other house, the entire family had perished before morning because their house only had rooms on the ground floor.

"That should keep the zombies fed this morning," Lucius muttered and wondered how to protect Narcissa and Draco. If the creatures just walked through the powerful wards…

'Wards affecting living creatures or weapons and spells,' he realized. 'These things are not living, not weapons wielded by another…'

He rose to check his library for a book on adjusting the wards to exclude all things that moved.

"I need time!" he declared when he found the extensive chapters on wards and the process to adjust them.

"That's something none of us have," Nott said, surprizing Lucius with his stealth entering the study.

"Where's Parkinson?"

Nott grinned, "Excellent question! He and his family flew away from the balcony of that bedroom you loaned them. Heading north it appears."

"Flew away?" Lucius asked. "Where on earth would they be going?"

(++**++)

When it was time for lunch, Narcissa was disturbed to learn their guests had fled without proper thanks or goodbyes. Draco was quiet, watching the adults, and not asking questions.

Lucius noticed that Ambrose was not eating properly – with the feared food shortages on the horizon, Lucius hoped the elves wouldn't allow the almost full plate to go to waste. He'd speak to Narcissa about speaking to the elves.

"And they just flew away?" asked Narcissa as Nott told the story about the Parkinson departure.

"I stood at the window in the room you provided," Ambrose said. "Suddenly, Edmund, the daughter, and then Bette with the little boy in front of her flew by the window. I watched them climb and head north."

"Hogwarts," Draco announced. "They must be headed for Hogwarts. They think they'll be safe there."

"That's a long journey on broomsticks – it'll take what… three days?" asked Lucius.

"At least," Ambrose replied. "Broomsticks have to have down time to recharge the charms each day."

"And the little boy, how could he hold on that long?" asked Narcissa imagining traveling by broomstick with Draco when he was small.

"He's stuck to his mother with a charm most likely…" Lucius explained.

"And tied with some rope, no doubt," Nott added.

"No doubt," replied Narcissa.

(++**++)

Nott and Lucius took two of the Malfoy broomsticks and flew over the estate. From the air, they could see a growing number of zombies stumbling along the lanes and through fields not surrounded by stone or wooden fences.

"I had no idea muggles were this numerous in Wiltshire!" Lucius admitted.

"Even more in London," Nott said. He kept both hands on the broomstick as the fever grew stronger.

They surveyed the Parkinson house from the air and didn't bother to land. They flew over the houses where Goyle and Crabbe had lived. In all cases, zombies appeared to be wandering about but then Lucius noticed that more and more of the creatures were stumbling along in the direction of his home. He strained to listen and couldn't hear any noises from his family and worried that it was smell that drew the zombies to his home.

"Let's head back," Lucius said and turned just in time to see Nott's face transform, his eyes glazed over, his mouth yawned wide as the zombie rammed his broomstick into Lucius. It wasn't an intentional collision, just fate that directed the front of Nott's broomstick to collide with Lucius. The wizard fought the grasping hands and gnashing teeth until the ground stopped their descent. The zombie that was Ambrose Nott in life was able to get several bites from Lucius's face. The bones in both bodies were so shattered that one never moved away from the other. Lucius never turned into a zombie – his brain was so damaged by the landing, it couldn't reanimate.

(++**++)

From the third-floor balcony of his bedroom, Draco Malfoy watched the mid-air collision between the wizards and his father's fall. Draco rushed to find his mother and tell her but Narcissa refused to believe it until she withdrew a copy of the memory from his mind and viewed in a small pensieve in her husband's study.

"Mother, we need to go," Draco insisted when she withdrew from the memory. "We need to leave."

"Go?" she asked. "Leave? What do you mean? Where would we go?"

"We follow the Parkinson family to Hogwarts," Draco said.

"Draco, they'll never make it on broomsticks," his mother said. She looked around and went to the sideboard where Lucius kept his liquors. Pouring herself some brandy, she took a sip and then argued with her son, "Besides, we are purebloods and we'll never bow to a half-giant as headmaster of Hogwarts."

"You and Father bowed to the mudblood Riddle," Draco reminded his mother.

Narcissa slapped her son's face, took a bigger drink of brandy, and then held the growing teenager close, "We did what we had to do to survive. The Dark Lord was too powerful to deny at the time."

"And look at the times now!" Draco insisted. Ignoring his mother's protests, he went to his father's books and pulled out several maps.

"How much did Mr Parkinson know the muggle world?"

"What?"

"How well did Parkinson know the muggles? Their cities?"

"I have no idea," Narcissa admitted as her son pulled out a map of England and Scotland with hundreds of names on it and different coloured lines connecting the different names.

"What is this?"

"Before I started at Hogwarts, Father made me learn to read muggle maps. He wanted me to see how far away from home Hogwarts is, and how powerful magic is when it can move us hundreds of miles instantly."

"This is the map of the roads and major cities in England and Scotland that we used," Draco said. He located their home – marked with a dot of blue ink by his father and then ran his finger along the roads that would take them north.

"They'd go to Birmingham, then to York, and then cross into Scotland up to Edinburgh."

"How far is this?"

Using the key on the map, Draco measured the distances with marks on a piece of parchment. After many minutes, he said, "A hundred miles to Birmingham and then another one hundred and thirty miles to York. Edinburg is two hundred miles further north."

He consulted the map again, looking for the blue dot that indicated Hogwarts. "That's another two hundred miles."

"Over six hundred miles on a broomstick? No one can make that trip!" Narcissa declared.

"Not in one day," Draco admitted. "But, if you find a safe place to stop for the night, the broomstick's charms will recharge, and you can fly on the next day."

"No," Narcissa refused. "We're perfectly safe here…"

At just that moment, a large crash came from downstairs as zombies pushed their way into the manor trough the French doors in the lounge.

(++**++)

Pansy proved to be the best spotting things from broomstick. When the family flew into the muggle area named Birmingham after two hours in the air, she spotted the tall building that appeared to be constructed of glass. There was a large, flat roof where Edmund led his wife and daughter. Bette, Henry and Pansy immediately sat on the roof but Edmund waddled toward a nearby doorway that he locked with four different wizarding spells and then blocked with a conjured boulder.

"Get rid of the boulder!" Bette called. "It's too heavy and might fall through the roof."

Banishing the boulder, Edmund conjured up chains that he stuck on either side of the door, draping them back and forth several times.

"I tired of flying," Henry told his mother three times and she smiled and agreed whole-heartedly.

"Mason! Mason, come here!" Edmund called. It took some time for their elf to make the trip but he arrived with hot chocolate for the children and tea for the parents.

Pansy walked around the roof while her parents took turns going behind the structure with the door to relieve themselves. Henry was content to pee on a pipe that stuck up from the roof.

Standing close to the wall that marked the edge of the building Pansy was astonished to see the extent of the muggle construction. There were multiple tall buildings, roads, and scores of zombies wandering about chasing muggles who kept slipping away.

"Are you alright?" Bette asked her daughter.

"I hardly know," she replied. Then she motioned with one hand toward the city below and said, "Look at this, Mother. We live in a few small villages and think we're better than them… but look what they build!"

"Come away from the edge," Bette told her daughter. "We'll rest for at least an hour before pushing on to York."

"It's better to walk around some," Pansy told her parents. "Draco… the Quidditch team always walked or ran around for ten minutes after a match or training session."

"My legs are stiff," Edmund admitted.

(++**++)

"Mummy, look!" Henry shouted about an hour after they landed. The Parkinson family prepared to leave Birmingham when they turned to follow the little boy's hand, pointing toward a figure on a broomstick approaching them.

"Draco?" Pansy said with surprize in her voice. It was indeed Draco Malfoy who landed beside them on the rooftop.

"How? Where?"

"Greetings Edmund Parkinson, may I travel with your family for safety's sake?"

"If you offer aid, we shall give it in return," replied Edmund in an old pureblood greeting between travellers who sought safety in greater numbers.

They delayed their departure for a time to allow Draco to walk off the cramps from sitting on a broom for two hours and to tell his tale.

"Nott was bit when he came to the house," Draco explained. He changed while flying with my father, rammed into him and they both fell to the earth. Father never moved…"

"And your mother?" asked Bette.

Shaking his head, Draco admitted, "She refused to leave the manor even though zombies broke into the ground floor and filled it up."

"Did you…"

"I tried to force her, but my mother is powerful witch," Draco admitted. "She didn't harm me but she couldn't be persuaded to leave with me."

Everyone was quiet for a time and then Draco said, "And I brought something else."

Pulling four shrunken broomsticks from a pocket, he explained, "These are spares in case one of your broomsticks fails. My elf shrunk them down and with the tap of your wand, they return to normal size."

He handed a shrunken broomstick to Pansy, Bette and Edmund, returning the last one to his own pocket.

"When we get to Hogwarts, we'll charm one to fly really low to the ground for you Henry," Draco promised the young boy. "You can fly on the quidditch pitch where all the big boys fly."

"Like you?" the young boy asked.

"Like me," the young wizard replied.

(++**++)

The Parkinson family and Draco Malfoy arrived at Hogwarts on 7 September where they were welcomed by Headmaster Warlock Hagrid and offered the sanctuary of the castle on the condition that Edmund passed through the hedge wall. His dark mark was removed and the man was ill for a day but once the taint of Tom Riddle was removed, Edmund found a new lease on life. He accepted that he would remain probation for the duration of his stay in the castle. With the help of his wife, Edmund became a Grey wizard and saw his children grow up healthy and happy.

Draco sent a Hogwarts owl with a letter to his mother but the owl returned with the letter unopened and still attached to its leg. He didn't send another. His aunt, Andromeda Tonks, and cousins, Sirius Black and Harry Potter, slowly built bridges with Draco to support him as he grew up without parents.

(++**++)

SCENE: 1 October / Albus Dumbledore

Once Albus awoke in his cell after the hearing with the ICW Council, he managed to convince a jailer to provide him with clean robes and though it broke his heart, he wore the plain brown robes from then on and never wore his colourful robes again. The jailers were unwilling to break protocol and speak with their prisoner but they did provide him with newspapers from different cities around the world with translation charms cast to turn the text into English.

Since Albus was the author of their death, the ICW council wanted the wizard to remain informed on the progress of his catastrophe. As long as the papers from South America appeared in their offices, the jailers made certain the newspapers made it to the only occupied jail cell in the building. The papers from Latin America quickly dwindled as the entire continent fell to zombies in August; the last pictures from Bogota Columbia were heart-breaking.

'The Council is pulling out all the stops to try and convince me this is real,' Albus decided.

For several days, the papers from Paris and Berlin were full of information on how to protect magical homes and how wizards could defend themselves from the muggle zombies. In a complete turn-about, the papers announced that wizards would turn into zombies once they were bit and the tone of the editorials turned more toward reflections on the 'end-of-world'.

Finally admitting to himself that zombies were real but still unwilling or unable to blame himself, Dumbledore was amazed at the Daily Prophet's denial of the entire affair longer than any other paper.

'What is Cornelius attempting here? Or is it Malfoy?' Dumbledore wandered. 'That wizard will never accept that we need the muggles… who else will grow our food and spin our cloth?'

Then the daily paper from Britain arrived with the news that Rubeus Hagrid had assumed the role of headmaster at Hogwarts and even more incredible, his former groundskeeper was reported to be a warlock.

'What idiocy is this? How can they think I'd believe these hippogriff droppings?' the former headmaster raged inside his head.

There weren't any papers delivered after 6 September, and after 20 September, the jailers didn't stop by the door at all. Food and clean clothes continued to appear each day. Taking a wooden spoon that came with his dinner, he began rubbing his hands back and forth along the wood to force some of his magic into a temporary focus for his magic.

He also saved half of each meal to eat later and after 28 September, delivery of food stopped.

On the last two days of September, Dumbledore called out occasionally but stopped once he heard screaming and then low moans at various times.

On 1 October he tried the door of his cell and found it unlocked. Rather than carrying the small amount of food he'd horded with him, Albus ate it all. Then he took the wooden spoon he'd made to act as the focus for his magic and ventured forth into the deserted headquarters of the ICW.

(++**++)

Making his way along the hallways from the cells toward the offices, Albus listened carefully and used the spoon to focus his magic and pull several doors shut, trapping the 'zombies' inside. The papers insisted the zombies couldn't open doors or climb stairs.

Rather than risking use of the elevators, Dumbledore used the enclosed stairwell that led up from the level of the jail. Careful to as silent as possible without casting a spell, Albus made his way up four flights of stairs to the main floor where the floo room lay. Cursing himself for allowing the Council to implement the 'safety protocols' to prevent port keys from working in the building, Albus peered through the small window in the doorway leading to the hallway off the floo room.

From the angle of his view, he could see three fireplaces each with flames still burning – the floo connections to Geneva, Stockholm, and St. Petersburg remained open. He froze when a zombie shuffled passed the fireplaces without paying attention to the flames but it was the only dead creature he saw.

Considering his options for a moment, he thought about his wand.

'Damn, evidence and personal belongings are kept on the jail level too!'

He hurried down the stair case a little faster than he had climbed without paying attention to the low moans coming from the other side of the doors on each level.

(++**++)

On the same level as his cell, Albus once again was cautious to find the office labelled 'Evidence'. Slowly opening the door, he was relieved to discover that the room held no occupants; dead or dismembered. Finding a cabinet that was easily opened with a wandless spell to open the lock, he searched for ten minutes before finding his wand – the Elder wand. For a long moment, Albus wondered what would have happened if he held all three of the Deathly Hallows at this moment.

'If only, I'd found the ring while I had the wand and cloak!' he mourned. 'Then today would not have happened!'

Casting aside the spoon, Albus lifted the wand and found it responded to his commands. There wasn't as much power at his command as before – without considering his weaker state, Albus assumed the ICW had placed some restrictions on the wand's power.

Rather than wasting time on his robes, Albus turned to the stairwell once again and made his way up the four flights of stairs again, without being as careful to be quiet this time. He was halfway up the stairs to the second floor when the door behind him on the first-floor landing crashed open from the wright of zombies pressing against it.

Dumbledore paused seeing one Council member and multiple ICW Aurors with tore skin, missing limbs and bloody robes reaching for him from the first stair. Some of the zombies fell forward onto the stairs and as they pulled themselves up, they were a step closer to the living human.

'They'll work their way up if the ones behind them keep pushing them down,' he realized though one fell backwards rather than forwards the second time.

Hurrying up the stairs with the moans of the zombies filling the stairwell below him Albus didn't bother checking the doors on the other levels – zombies would be there waiting for him.

At the fourth level, with the floo room, he didn't hesitate to open the door and hurry toward the burning fireplaces.

'There! A container with floo powder!' he thought triumphantly. As he stepped up to the floo, an arm stripped of the flesh grabbed Dumbledore's robes and pulled him back.

The wizard slashed the arm away with a cutting curse and didn't hesitate when he saw three more zombies shambling toward him; he cast a fire whip and cut the zombies in half while setting them on fire. Forgotten for the moment, the original zombie that'd lost one arm, latched onto the headmaster once again and this time it pulled the wizard to the floor and bit his neck.

Withering in agony from the bite, Albus failed to extricate himself from the teeth of the creature as it ate his neck. The burning upper halves of the other zombies drug themselves closer to feed upon the last wizard in the ICW.

The flames spread as all fire suppressing magics were failing. The nondescript building burned brightly the entire evening and offered a suitable pyre for the once-great Albus Dumbledore.

In the struggle with the zombies, the Elder wand was snapped and its magic, like so much other magic that summer, was returned to the world.

+**)**(**+

HEADING: Epilogue

That Halloween at Hogwarts was a sombre affair but it still offered hope to the more than four thousand witches, wizards, muggles and children safe behind her hedge-wall. Under the watchful eyes of Aurors and Grifflers, everyone turned out to help plant a hedge-wall around Hogsmeade in single day.

Tentative contact was made with survivors across Scotland and then northern England. Food packages were delivered by elves and owls while muggles found ways to bring people together in fortified towns. The few gangs that attempted to create trouble were handled by the army or Aurors working undercover.

+**)**(**+

By December 1993, the surviving British government began to organize the survivors and bring order to the towns and cities. Much of the armed services survived though there were grave losses in the first two weeks. Sailors from ships that were safely at sea were pressed into duty on land and put to use. The Queen survived and made certain that everyone knew she intended her kingdom to prosper once again now that the realm was safe.

News spread abroad of the miracle birds that 'ate' the zombie carcasses. First, American and Russian transport planes flew to Britain and were loaded with the meek creatures to be flown back to North America and the vastness of Russia, while Grifflers flew on their own wings to Ireland and to the continent. With cooperation from the British government, other nations sent passenger planes to fly Grifflers to all parts of the globe.

Across Europe, Russia, China, India, Africa, Asia, South America, North America, and Australia, the arrival of Grifflers saved humanity from extinction.

(++**++)

It was a full year later, in December 1994, that the British government ordered a census to be taken and every human was counted. In March 1995, No.10 Downing Street announced that just over ten million people survived in Great Britain. This made Britain one of the largest nations in the world only surpassed by Russia (fifteen million), USA (sixteen million), China (seventeen million) and Australia (eighteen million).

Once the last zombie corpse was consumed, most of the Grifflers 'dissolved away'. Of special note, any scientist who attempted to dissect a Griffler for study woke the following morning with an overwhelming revulsion to ever attempt such a study again. All muggle recordings and notes of such dissections were blurred and unreadable.

After the majority of Grifflers 'dissolved away', approximately thirty million of the birds remained and they nested near concentrations of human population. Now, whenever anyone died, their corpse would reanimate and try to restart the zombie apocalypse, but Grifflers always appeared within minutes of the death, to eat the corpse down to nothing but a few bones and ragged clothes.

Another full year passed before Magical Britain formed a skeleton government once again. In January 1996, the Ministry for Magic was established in an otherwise abandoned office tower in London, but unlike the previous ministry, this one functioned under strict controls and oversight by the 'mundane' government and the Crown. The Queen refused to grant the Wizards free reign and the new Wizengamot was an elected body that had to conform to British Common Law.

The first wizard to become Her Majesty's Minister for Magic in this new government was The Honourable Sirius Black. He immediately appointed Amelia Bones as the Director of the DMLE as it was rebuilt and once again important in Britain.

That May, in a private ceremony at Windsor Castle, still the official royal residence since the apocalypse, Queen Elizabeth knighted Sir Rubeus Hagrid, Royal Warlock, and gave him numerous honours for saving the world.

The former groundskeeper was most pleased to be confirmed as "Her Majesty's Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Magic and Wizardry". That year Harry Potter would begin his studies to become a warlock like his first friend, Rubeus Hagrid.

(++**++)

A little over a century after the 'Zombie Apocalypse', a smart graduate student (Harry's great-great-granddaughter) at Cambridge University composed a thesis on the creatures that saved mankind. In her final thesis, Potter 'estimated' that at the height of the plague, there were twenty-five billion Grifflers in the world.

(++**++)

"While it remains a mystery how 'Griffler Hagridus' appeared so suddenly in Scotland during the first months of the plague, we know that the carrion eaters reproduced asexually in a geometric pattern; (i.e., each day a single Griffler consumed up to 25 kg of carrion and then divided into four individuals that immediately began to eat. The next day the Grifflers were full grown and sought new sources of carrion and repeated the process). With a voracious appetite and staggering numbers, the Grifflers rid the world of zombies.

In just thirteen days after consuming almost fifty million corpses in Britain in October 1993, there were 400,000 Grifflers in Britain. With the zombie population here under control, the majority of Grifflers took flight and went to France to repeat their geometric multiplication and consumption of dead people. Shipments of Grifflers occurred via aircraft to every continent and major island. In late February 1994 when flocks of Grifflers descended on India from east, north, and west, the sky was said to be 'dark for days' with the migrating carrion eaters. Population numbers for Grifflers are estimated at around 25 billion and in eight months, they consumed the flesh of eight billion zombies. Then all but a few Grifflers disappeared, again almost like magic.

This creature is the only reason that 'normal life' resumed. All mankind owes its existence to an almost magical event."

Lily Potter (b. 31Oct2088 - d._)

"Salvation from the Highlands"

Cambridge University December 2114

(++**++)

And that is how Rubeus Hagrid saved the world.

(++**++)