An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/6
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Characters: Harry Potter, Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, Guns, Gore, Unethical Experimentation, Minor Character Death, Happy Ending, Zombie Harry Potter, Alternate Resurrection Ritual, Science Fiction Elements, Dubious Consent, Consent Issues, Softcore smut, Body Horror, Pseudo-Necrophilia, Bathing/Washing, Long-Haired Voldemort, Gratuitous Violence, Treating a Zombie as a Body Pillow, Salazar Slytherin's Locket, What if an EVIL WIZARD knew how SCIENCE worked?, Title from a The Killers Song, lots of gore okay, The Male Loneliness Epidemic, no beta whoops, graphic description of violence
Summary:
For ten years, zombies have ravaged the British Isles.
For ten years, Lord Voldemort has searched for a cure.
The dead fear sunlight. They hide during the day and surround Voldemort's hideout at night. Inside, he scrapes a solitary existence from the bones of an empty city. One day, a zombie with abnormal behavior patterns catches his eye. It is docile, it is still, and most strangely of all it stands in daylight without fear. Voldemort recognizes the zombie-messy hair, green eyes, and a scar-as the corpse of his fated vanquisher. He resolves to capture the zombie as a test subject, but his plans are thrown off completely at an impossible discovery-Harry Potter's heart still beats inside his chest.
After ten years, this may be the break he's looking for in his research.
But, even undead, the Boy-Who-Lived has a way of always disrupting his carefully laid plans.
Harry’s body felt stiff, as it always did at first. He tilted his head all the way to the right and felt his neck snap with a satisfying pop. He was still sat on the ground, his empty grave behind him, when Louis came lumbering over.
“You’re finally up,” he said, holding out his hand to help Harry to his feet. “I’d have started to worry if you weren’t late every year.”
“I’ve been dead longer than you,” Harry reminded him, wincing as he stomped his foot to get rid of the needles and pins feeling running up his leg. “It takes me a little longer.”
“Well come on,” Louis said, stepping towards the gate of the cemetery. “It’s nearly midnight already.”
“Can you wait for me?” Harry asked. “My fingers are still numb.”
“Of course,” Louis told him, taking one of Harry’s hands in his own and rubbing some feeling back into it. Harry shivered, and offered up his other hand when Louis finished. “You’re absolutely covered in dirt, you know.”
“As if you’re any better,” Harry scoffed.
Louis brushed his hands roughly over the shoulders of Harry’s suit, knocking some of the dirt off. It was useless though, as dirt seemed woven into the fabric of all their clothes after so many years of burying and unburying themselves. Louis brought his fingers to Harry’s face, using a gentle touch to wipe some of the grime from his pale skin. Harry closed his eyes and leaned into it.
“I don’t know how you get so much grass in your hair,” Louis tutted, doing his best to pick some of it out. In his efforts he unearthed a small beetle that fell onto Harry’s shoulder. “Gross.”
Harry smiled at the bug and plucked it up between his fingers, depositing it safely on the ground.
“Are you ready now?” Louis asked, holding out his hand expectantly.
“Yeah,” Harry nodded, sliding his hand into Louis’.
Together they walked hand in hand beneath the street lights, passing the few stragglers walking to and from Halloween parties who barely glanced at either of them. It was easy to go unnoticed on Halloween, to pretend that they were on their way home to wash away the dirt and the grime and to fall into a warm bed together and sleep, as if they hadn’t spent the past three hundred and sixty four days sleeping.
“There’s a bowl up ahead!” Harry pointed out excitedly.
They ran to the deserted porch and hungrily delved into the large plastic cauldron, filling their pockets with the leftover sweets. They filled their empty bellies with chocolate and caramel and nougat, until their mouths were sticky and their spit had turned thick and syrupy sweet.
“I always forget how hungry I am until I eat,” Harry groaned as they went looking for another abandoned candy bowl.
“I hate to say it but sometimes I start to wish people would leave out plates of vegetables for Halloween,” Louis said. “I can’t remember the last time I ate anything that wasn’t sugar.”
“Here,” Harry said, picking out a peanut from the candy bar he was eating. He held it out for Louis. “There’s a vegetable.”
“Peanuts aren’t vegetables, Love,” Louis smiled but ate the peanut anyway. “Nuts are some other thing.”
“Oh. Maybe we could find some seeds or something and plant some vegetables between our graves. Then by next year they’ll have grown and we could harvest them.”
“Maybe,” Louis said, taking Harry’s hand back in his. “I like this though, hunting for sweets with you.
“We could still do that,” Harry reminded him. “We’d just have some carrots to go with all the chocolate.”
“Maybe,” Louis said again with a smile. “If we happen to find any seeds laying about.”
They kept walking, unwrapping more of the candies in their pockets until they only had one Cadbury bar left which they passed back and forth between them. They walked until they reached their favorite hill, the one that loomed over the village and allowed a nice view of the stars. They knelt down to the ground, their joints still a bit stiff, and settled on the soft grass with Harry’s head on Louis’ shoulder.
“I dreamt about you, you know,” Harry said after a while. “I always do.”
“Me too,” Louis told him, kissing his temple. “All of my dreams are about you.”
“What happens in your dreams?” Harry asked.
“All kinds of things,” Louis said, wrapping his arm around Harry’s back. “I dream about waking up in the day time, already next to you. Sometimes we’re just laying in the grass, or we’re in a real bed. I dream about cooking for you, or introducing you to my family. Sunbathing out in the yard. Kissing you in the grocery store. Doing normal things.”
“I wish I could do those kinds of things with you,” Harry sighed. “I miss the sun. I dream a lot about us in the sun. Having one of those windows that faces East so you wake up with the sun in your eyes and your pillow’s warm. I dream about waking up and turning over and shoving my face in your chest and falling back asleep with the sun on my back.”
“That sounds nice,” Louis said, closing his eyes and smiling as if he was picturing it.
“At least we have this,” Harry said. He turned his face and pressed a kiss to Louis’ shoulder.
“I wish we had more.”
Harry straightened up to kiss the wistful look from Louis’ face, both of their mouths still sugary and sweet from all the candy they’d eaten.
On their way back to the graveyard Harry knelt beside an overgrown bush and shoved his hands between the leaves, uncaring of the thorny vines.
“What are you doing?” Louis asked, standing behind him.
“Close your eyes and hold out your hands,” Harry told him excitedly.
Louis followed his instructions and felt Harry fill his cupped hands with something soft and round. When he opened his eyes he found a pile of wild blackberries, bleeding purple onto his hands. Louis grinned and popped one in his mouth, dancing happily as he chewed.
“Thank you,” he said, bringing three more to his mouth. He pressed a berry tinted kiss to Harry’s cheek.
“I can’t let you get scurvy,” Harry grinned, eating his own handful of berries. They were soft and overripe so late in the season but they gobbled them down eagerly. When the sky began to lighten they walked back through the cemetery gates, taking a longing look at the sunlight just ghosting over the tops of the trees.
Louis left his own grave empty, instead following Harry to his.
“Maybe if we lay together our dreams will sync up,” he said as they climbed beneath the earth. “Maybe we’ll wake up together in the sun.”
Harry kissed him as sleep overtook them both, their arms tight around each other as the dirt pressed them closer together.
For anyone who is wondering, I am still working on zombie Harry. The quick chapter ended up begging for more beefing up, so the twink chapter is becoming a bara beast. Lots of stuff is being explained and there's a fair bit of action and feels to. Also, a cliffhanger. But if you don't mind waiting a little longer the reward will definitely be worth it! Go bother meetingyourmaker now, she's amazing and deserve some love.
When you know love...that's what makes this life worth it. When you live with it everyday. Wake up with it, hold on to it during the thunder and after a nightmare.
When love is your refuge from the death that surrounds us all and when it fills you so tight that you can't express it.”
― Carrie Ryan
I am Dead...
...a rotting shell wondering without any direction...
...a lifeless body cursed to walk around this barren wasteland we used to call home...
But I have learned to live with it. Though Living is not entirely a word used to describe what have become of us.
What was I before? I could have been a teenager yet to lose his virginity to his long term girlfriend...I could also be a baker in a little shop owned by his parents...a famous pop star everyone wanted to be...a young man wanting his dreams to come true...but sadly I am none of those...for I could hardly remember what my life was before...
Oh...Im sorry, I havent actually introduced myself... My name is...or was Harry...My name is the only thing I can remember, it was the only memory binding me with my past life. Almost everyone of us has no name, hardly all had forgotten what they were before. I was one of those lucky ones or ...unlucky...that have a tiny recollection of life...our names were what was tying us with what it means to be human.
Death had been kind to me. I had yet to entered the decaying stage. My skin had turned to a shade of grey, stiff were my movements, and I was emanating a slightly unpleasant odor which smelled like death itself.
Before dying, I had actually groomed myself. I was wearing a rather nice white undershirt with a navy blue blazer over it and some uncomfortable skinny pants...so so much uncomfortable now because of my stiff movements. I would like to think I was a snappy dresser back then.
My friend, Liam...he was one of those who remembered their names...had often joked that I could pass as a living man with the choice of clothes I was wearing. We had casual conversations...if by grunting and groaning was a means of communication...well yes we had those kind of conversations. And if we were lucky enough some string of words would escape our mouth.
The problem of being us is that we have so much to tell but since our body processes had shut down, we cannot do what we normally could back when we were living. We cannot read, we cannot talk because words are no longer needed, we only grunt and moan, and simply because our lips had almost rotten off of our faces.
None of us has really any vivid memories of our lives. Just that we were part of a world that was now gone. We recognize the civilizations we once lived in but we play no personal role in it, we were wondering cadavers searching for food in this post apocalyptic world.
Sometimes I like to speculate with Liam.
What could that guy over there ,tearing up that body, be in his past life?...
What could she be doing before she resorted in eating flesh?
...what could their past life be before being this creatures that haunted living preys?..
"I bet he was a doctor then with the way he intricately opened up the body"
"She's a waitress, i guess"
"I think he had a loving wife and probably had 3 sons"
We may appear mindless but we assure you we are not. Inside this skull, inside of what was left with our brains, we are still figuring out what lies for beings like us. Is there life after the undead life we are currently in?.
Sometimes I wish I could feel again...feel how one person's touch could bring goosebumps to your skin, feel how a smile could light up your world...feel what another hand feels like intertwined with yours...feel what love is...feel your heart racing fast when you see that special someone...sadly I dont have a beating heart anymore...just this piece of muscle asleep inside my chest.
