Hello!

This is my most current story, anyone who remembers my Harry Potter story knows I admitted to having a lot of ideas but never having time to write them, but I'm really passionate about this.

I own neither Harry Potter nor Walking Dead, and as much to my knowledge I have not copied any ideas from anyone else's story. Please let me know if you see anything similar :)

Hope you enjoy!

Crossfire.

Fear. Fear was all she could feel.

She had run when she was asked to stay and now, she was trapped with no place to go.

The walkers were snarling at her, trying desperately to reach her legs from where they were dangling down from the tree. She had been trapped here for a day, at least. Her throat was burning something fierce from the hot Georgia sun. time was started to run out for her, and she knew it, a distraction was needed, but how? She was too weak to attack the walkers outright, even if she could fashion a weapon from an old branch, and there was no way so would be able to drop down and run away from four walkers when they surrounded the base of the tree.

But maybe... aha! There! Two thick branches crossed each other a little further up the tree, if she was careful, she could tree jump and maybe find her way back to her mom. So, she stood, she got her balance, she knew if she even put one foot wrong, she would be plummeting to the ground and she would definitely be walker bait. One foot above the other, as firm a grip as she could make and… PULL! She had done it! She wanted to scream and shout with joy, but she knew that she would attract more attention than she could deal with right now. Refocusing, she managed to make another two jumps into different trees before she realised the walkers were still following her progress, they were slow she knew, but so was she having to jump from tree to tree, she couldn't risk falling out by going faster, in a pack, 4 though they were, they could swarm her quickly. The distraction was becoming more and more crucial by the minute.

Suddenly, a loud CRACK rang out through the forest, and it sent the walkers stumbling away towards the sound rather than focussing on her, she made another jump through the trees, and another, and another, and finally she was away from any immediate danger.

Taking a quick rest, she observed her surroundings as keenly as she could from high up in the clump of trees, she had managed to get herself into, but at least it was providing her first bit of protection from the sun. she decided she needed to take a chance and jump down a few branches to see what was around the forest floor, she was particularly adept at climbing down trees, her small frame meant that she could scoot around the tree trunk and just balance for a second on branches as the need arose. She noticed a tent laying a few yards away from her tree, it was torn and bloodied, indicating something had gone horribly wrong here. She was about to jump down to investigate when faint snarling met her ears, looking around she was shocked to see a walker hanging from a tree, a rope around its neck and it's bottom half literally gone, torn or eaten away, but if he hung himself and he was already dead, why would the walkers..

'Don't think about it!' she told herself, firmed, double, triple, quadruple checking that the coast was indeed clear from all but the man in the tree she jumped out and ran towards the tent like her life depended on it, which she supposed it did, after all, if she was caught she was a goner.

The girl managed to scavenge a couple of bottles of water and some snacks and she shoved them into a discarded backpack, before she darted back into the trees and got safely off the ground.

Her mom had once taken them to a shelter, a safe haven, and she remembered a lot about the place. Mainly how the staff were with her. She had never met people like those, so kind and caring, they helped get her new clothes and have her food, she remembered how her dad had locked her away, no food, no water, just left her in the dark for two days until her Mom got her out. When they got to the shelter, the staff had given her water to drink and she had guzzled it all down… before sicking it all straight back up. The nurse lady that was seeing to her had comforted her, she remembered how she had cried hysterically, terrified that she would never be able to eat or drink again without being sick. She had cursed her dad, and shouted about how unfair it was that he got to live such a good life all because he beat her and her mom and they were both too scared to fight back so they did everything for him, she had gotten so worked up she was sick again. The nurse had sat on her bed with her, holding a new bottle of water to her lips and saying 'slow sips now, dehydration isn't nice I know but small sips will help more I promise,' remembering that advice, she took small sips now, until a quarter of one bottle had gone, sighing, she sat back and looked through the snacks she had managed to save, she chose a pack of biscuits that were still wrapped up before looking through the rest of the bag. Finding more rope, a flashlight, a sharp knife and a handgun, with extra ammo! She knew that even though it had been dangerous she had made the right decision going for the tent. Deciding then and there to only use the gun in an emergency, she thought back to watching her dad load and shoot guns in the fields of their farm, running away when he caught her and threatened to shoot her with those very same guns. She had been through a lot in her 12 years, everyone underestimated her, but the truth was… she was a survivor, first of abuse, then of the apocalypse, and survive is now exactly what she would do. She was terrified, but fear drove people to do extraordinary things.

Running was all he seemed to do nowadays, not that he minded really, he was just worried about the boy he was running with, he was only 12, he didn't deserve a life like this.

The man wondered how the world had come to this, to the dead walking the earth.

It was supposed to be a family vacation, except his grandmother, brother and sister all cancelled so it was just him and his son, on a tour across the American states. He'd always wanted to go, as a kid he never got too, and he wanted his son to be old enough to benefit from a trip like this, each state had something to offer. They began in New York, then down to Chicago, Washington, Ohio and Kentucky before heading to Florida via Georgia. That's when the world went to shit. Whist in Kentucky, they had seen an incident at the derby that had given everyone cause for concern. A little boy just stumbled onto the track, he looked sick, really sick and when the cameras closed in on him you could see the sweat from an outrageously high fever, pale skin and blood covering the front of him. A medical standby rushed out to meet him and just as he got five steps away, the boy collapsed into convulsions, before finally laying still. There was so much commotion as EMTs tried to resuscitate him, and just as they were about to give up, the boy opened his eyes, they had gone milky white, and the growl he released was magnified by the microphones attached to the nearby cameras, a paramedic picked the boy up, but he went feral, bit the man's forehead and pulled a chunk away chewing loudly before going back for his neck, it was horrible watching on a big screen, there were other paramedics trying to pull the boy off but they ending up helping the boy pull out the man's neck. And that's when panic kicked in, the crowd had been horrified watching the first bite, but the second spurred them all into action and everyone ran from the stadium. There were initial rumours of it all being fake, but then there were reports of more and more people getting sick, and whatever it was, it was deadly. He took his son and carried on, fully thinking it was just isolated to something in Kentucky, he got them to Georgia but; reports from all over the world came in and by that night, everyone knew and believed the dead were walking, no one knew how it had started, but it was the new reality, a bite was quicker than a scratch, but no matter how you died; you came back.

He knew people wouldn't believe it; they were all pinning their hopes on surviving as long as you weren't injured by one of the creatures. But he had seen the proof, a nursing home that had took him and his son in after they had made their way into Atlanta, the staff there had been posing as gangsters to keep strangers away, he had been there when they got into a fight with a man dressed as a police officer, before that man realised why they wanted guns and he let them keep some. A few nights after they'd got the guns, one of the older residents had died in their sleep, natural causes, there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent it. But before any alarm could be raised the man had reanimated, started to eat another resident, and managed to infect the two others who had lived in the same room and had woken to the snarling sounds and seen the horror. The screaming finally woke the staff, but by then it was too late. The undead spread quickly, and the staff, they couldn't raise their guns on family, so they were swarmed for their hesitancy and they perished quite quickly.

The man managed to get his son out, apparating away to the roof of the apartment complex across the alleyway. He held his son and they both cried for the people they had come to know, he kept his sons head turned away from the carnage, despairing at not being able to save anyone, when all he could see were undead, he sent an apology prayer to those he had known, and bundled his son up to begin apparating out of the city. He scoured every rooftop before he moved on so that he could be certain they would be safe, luckily, he could minimise the typical CRACK that accompanied apparition, so no undead were alerted to their location.

After a night of no sleep so his son could get some, he found a car abandoned, still in good condition and still full of gas, he warded it with everything he had been taught as an Auror that he thought was relevant, and finally they both had a safe place to sleep. He decided that whilst in the city he should look around, try and scavenge more supplies, whilst he could conjure water, food was different. He found a mostly untouched grocery store, he supposed that Atlanta was overrun too quickly to clear out any of the good stores, he had not seen anyone running around the city, that was alive anyway, other than the sheriff from a few nights ago. Shoving anything currently edible into a backpack, he ran back to his son, he didn't see the point of gathering lots, he was going to try and make it to one of the family safe houses, ride out the storm, hopefully have a working floo network so he could get back to his family.

They drove out of the city the next morning, the rolling countryside of Georgia was gorgeous, he could see they would have loved spending time here before going to Florida, they travelled along a highway heading west when they were set upon by a large horde, at least 300 of the undead were flooding around the car, his son was terrified and could not stop the whimpers that were coming out of his mouth which was just egging the creatures on more, they were pressing against each other and banging on the glass of the windows so hard he feared that they would break. Quickly, he threw up a scent rewarding ward, a silencer and a spell that blacked out the windows so that the undead would hopefully lose interest in them. Hours went by before he deemed it safe enough to at least take down the blackout spell, just to make sure they were safe enough to move from the car. His son was asleep and safe, so he carefully exited the vehicle and cast a relatively new spell his sister had managed to get to him, Ostendere quomodo mortuum. It was an edited version of the Hominum revelio spell, and it revealed all living matter for a 5-mile radius, what could he say, his sister was a genius.

The spell was astounding really, it brought up a mini map in front of the caster, showing every landmark in the radius and then it had green dots for humans, blue dots for animals, and red dots for the undead. There was now luckily minimum red dots around, a few in the woods nearby, although he did notice a larger collection of them milling around in a building on a farm around three mile away, he vowed to stay away from that place, there would be no good coming from that place at all. Especially seeing as there was also a high concentration of green in a building pretty much opposite, assuming it was a farm, he wondered how they had survived so long there, the blue dots obviously meant animals so how had the undead not been attracted there? Is that why there were so many in the other building? Had they perhaps trespassed but been caught before they manged to do any harm? But then that led to the question of why they were still, for lack of better terms, alive? He continued scouting out the map, and just as he was about to close it, a single green dot entered to the west side of the radius, then followed by 4 red dots, he hated the idea of anyone trying to survive with those odds, and whilst with it being a single green dot the likelihood of it being an adult was high, he wasn't about to leave another human to die.

Jumping back into the car, he quickly shook his son awake, whilst the car was safe, he wasn't about to leave a twelve year old alone in a car, if he woke up there alone, every instinct that he had was screaming that he would try to find his father, and he would be damned if anything happened to his child.

"C'mon, we have to go" he said

"Mm... dad?" came the mumbled reply.

"Come on, someone's in trouble, wand out"

His son was immediately alert, wand in hand, seeing this reaction filled the man with pride and regret, he wished more than anything his son wasn't having to deal with this, didn't have the battle hardened instincts that he himself had had to have as a child, but he couldn't help being proud of how quickly he had adjusted.

"Like Father like Son" he chuckled bitterly in his mind.

The girl was tiring, it couldn't be helped, she had been alone for nearly two days, trying to navigate the forest around her whilst still trying to stay up in the trees so she was hidden, but she had amassed more followers, another four walkers were following her footsteps, she knew there was no way to get away from them, the rustling of the trees too loud in the silent forest but there was no other way she could travel especially seeing as the forest was probably littered with traps and ditches she wouldn't see until it was too late, and if Walkers were following, the probability that they'd fall down the same ditch and land on top of her was too high for her to risk if she wanted to get back to her mom. She had tried to get some sleep during the night, using the rope to secure herself to the tree so she didn't fall, but it's hard to sleep in a tree, so she barely settled. Sighing, she decided to have the last of her water, before continuing on, she hoisted herself up, but her foot slipped. And down she fell…

Father and son had made quick work of trekking the two miles to the lone dot, the man had shifted into his Animagus form and carried his son on his back, running towards the forest the fastest he could without throwing his son off him. Upon entering the forest the panther smelt the human before he heard her screams, scrambling to pick up speed and running through the low bushes to his left he burst out through the trees and spotted a young girl, perhaps the same age as his son, clinging from a tree branch about 7 feet from the floor. Underneath her were the four undead he had spotted, desperately clawing at the girl, but she was just out of reach thank god, but if she was any lower, they would be able to grab her and drag her out of the tree. The large panther knelt on the ground, signalling his son to get off his back, before, with a mighty roar, he entered the clearing, knocking all the undead off their feet. His son had been aware enough to climb into a tree and start sending cutting hexes at the monsters, trying to pick them off from above so his father wouldn't have as much to do. The panther, quickly used his nails to gouge deep into the head of one of the undead, making sure that he dug deep enough to puncture the brain. Whilst the panther had attracted enough attention that the remaining creatures went after him, his son had landed a cutting curse directly to the head of one, leaving bone and brain exposed, and was aiming for another when the panther shoved it into the path of the next oncoming curse. The girl had finally managed to get a good enough grip of the branch to hoist herself up, and she threw a knife at the lone remaining undead, she hit her mark, but the knife didn't embed enough, probably from her being exhausted, so the panther pushed it in the rest of the way with a huge paw. The panther looked around, listening and smelling for any further undead milling about the place, but once he deemed it safe enough, he shifted back and called to his son that it was safe.

Looking up and noticing the girl staring at him, he shot a quick smile, before fussing over his son making sure nothing had happened even though he knew it hadn't. looking back at the girl, he noticed she was bloody, exhausted and in need of a good meal by the looks of it.

"Come down, we won't hurt you" The man said quietly trying to seem as unthreatening as possible, and to not draw any attention to them.

"Mister you just turned human from a giant cat, forgive me if I'm cautious of what you say" the girl shot back.

The boy spoke up then, and the girl seemed to marginally relax at someone her own age being nearby and clearly not a hostage.

"Are you alone? How did you end up here?"

"I have a group, we were on a highway when a horde came through, I hid under a car but one of the Walkers fell and saw me, I panicked and ran. Our leader came after me and found me about to be bitten in the river, he got me free and led them away, I was supposed to stay but another walker came for me and I ran again, I thought I was going back to the highway but I must have… yeah I'm lost" she finally admitted.

The man looked at the girl with sadness, he supposed she must have been terrified but how she had managed to survive? That was amazing.

"You appear to have done a good job of hiding though, well done, how about you come down and we'll help you find your group? Scouts honour, we won't hurt you"

"My names Sophia" the girl said finally hitting the soft ground of the forest

"Well Sophia, it's a pleasure to meet you, I'm Harry, Harry Potter"

"And I'm Teddy, Teddy Lupin-Potter"

And thats chapter one! Please review, like, favourite. Whatever your hearts desire!

Crossfire.