"Bloody hell... my head's splitting open..."
The words came out slurred, barely coherent. Lucien's cheek was pressed against cold asphalt. His skull felt like someone had taken a cricket bat to it, then decided to have another go just to be thorough.
Sunlight stabbed through his eyelids when he tried to open them, sending fresh spikes of pain through his already throbbing brain. He groaned, rolling onto his side.
He was pretty sure he was dying on a street somewhere that definitely wasn't King's Cross Station.
Five minutes ago, or was it longer? Time felt weird. He'd been standing in front of the barrier between platforms nine and ten, his vintage leather trunk clutched in sweaty palms, his heart hammering. And it had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with finally getting to go to Hogwarts.
He'd been a university student in his previous life. Nothing special, just another bloke studying business management and wondering what the hell he was doing with his existence. Then a kid had run into traffic, a lorry had been going too fast, and he had made a split-second decision that had ended one life and started another.
Waking up as an eleven-year-old wizard living in Surrey had been... well, mental, obviously. But also brilliant. He'd grown up reading Harry Potter, rewatching the films until he could quote them backwards. This was the dream, wasn't it? Magic was real, he had a wand, he'd gotten his Hogwarts letter right on schedule.
Everything had been perfect.
So he'd done what any sensible witch or wizard would do, bought his supplies in Diagon Alley, which was just as amazing as he'd imagined, maybe better, packed his trunk, and made his way to King's Cross.
The barrier between the platforms had looked so ordinary. Just a brick wall, worn and grimy like everything else in the station. But he'd seen it in the films a hundred times. You just had to run at it, trust it would let you through, and...
And then he'd hit it. Like running full-tilt into a brick wall, which, in retrospect, was exactly what he'd done.
He remembered the impact. The explosion of stars across his vision. The sensation of the world twisting sideways, reality folding in on itself like a piece of origami made by a drunk person.
Then nothing.
And now this.
Lucien finally managed to drag his eyes open, squinting against the harsh daylight. For a moment, his brain refused to process what he was seeing. It was like someone had taken a normal city street and run it through an apocalypse filter.
"What..."
The street stretched out before him, wide and utterly deserted. But it wasn't the emptiness that made his stomach drop, it was everything else.
Overturned cars littered both sides of the road, their windows smashed, doors hanging open. A fire hydrant had been knocked clean off its base, water long since stopped flowing but leaving dark stains across the pavement. Shattered glass crunched under his palm when he tried to push himself up.
Newspapers skittered across the sidewalk in the breeze. A massive billboard hung crooked from the side of a building, advertising something in English but with an American spelling he didn't recognize. The skyscrapers towering overhead were wrong too.
This wasn't London. This wasn't anywhere in Britain.
And it definitely wasn't Hogwarts.
"Where the hell am I?"
The smell hit him then. He'd been too disoriented to notice it before, but now it rolled over him. Rust, rot, and something sweet-sick.
Death. That's what it smelled like.
His trunk was lying a few feet away. A couple of his textbooks had spilled out. The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 was lying face-down in a puddle of something dark, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them had landed in a pile of broken glass.
He scrambled over on hands and knees, ignoring the way the pavement scraped his palms, and started shoving everything back into the case. His hands were shaking. Everything was shaking. His whole body felt like it was vibrating at the wrong frequency.
"Okay," he muttered to himself, "okay, this is fine. This is... this is not fine. This is not bloody fine."
That's when he heard it.
A low, gurgling moan drifting on the wind.
Every muscle in his body locked up. That sound... it wasn't human. Not quite. It was like someone trying to make human noises with a broken voice box.
His head snapped up.
At the end of the street, maybe fifty meters away, a figure was shuffling around the corner. One arm hung at a strange angle, and its gait was jerky.
Then another figure appeared. And another.
They were dressed in normal clothes, but the clothes were torn, stained with things. Their skin had a grey-green tinge that looked nothing like any living person he'd ever seen.
And their eyes...
Memory slammed into him like a second truck. Late nights in his previous life, watching zombie films with his flatmates. Night of the Living Dead. 28 Days Later. Shaun of the Dead, though that one had been more comedy than horror.
And the show his roommate had been obsessed with. The one with the sheriff who woke up in a hospital to find the world had ended.
The Walking Dead.
"No," he said out loud. "No, no, no..."
But the dead, because that's what they were, kept coming.
Survival instinct kicked in so hard it felt like a shove. He snatched up his trunk, nearly dropping it because his hands were slick with sweat, and looked wildly around for somewhere to run.
Left... more of them shambling out from a side street.
Right... blocked by an overturned bus, and he could see shapes moving behind it.
Straight ahead... an office building with its glass doors smashed in. Maybe twenty meters away. The nearest option that didn't involve running directly at the walking corpses.
The dead things were getting closer. Close enough now that he could see the details he really wished he couldn't. The dried blood caked around their mouths. The chunks of flesh missing from their arms and faces.
One of them, a woman in what used to be a waitress uniform, spotted him. Her head swiveled with a crack of vertebrae, those milky eyes locking onto him, and she let out a shriek.
The others responded immediately. Heads turning. Bodies lurching into faster movement. All of them focusing on him with single-minded purpose.
"Shit!"
He ran.
He'd never been particularly athletic. In his previous life, he'd considered walking to the corner shop adequate exercise. In this life, he was eleven and skinny and had spent most of his time reading rather than playing football.
But terror made him fast.
He sprinted toward the office building, his trunk banging against his leg with every step. Behind him, the moaning grew louder, joined by the sound of dragging feet and shrieking.
Don't look back. Don't look back. Just run.
He looked back.
There were dozens of them now.
One was faster than the others, a man in a torn police uniform, half his face missing.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The sound of gunfire split the air.
The fast one's head snapped back, a spray of blood painting the pavement behind it.
Two more shots. Two more of the dead things went down.
Lucien spun around, nearly tripping over his own feet, and saw a man in a sheriff's deputy uniform running toward him. The guy was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair.
"What the hell are you doing out here?!"
American accent. Deep South, if Lucien's ear for accents was any good.
The deputy didn't wait for an answer. He grabbed Lucien by the arm and hauled him off his feet.
"Move!"
They ran together, the deputy half-dragging Lucien toward the office building. More shots rang out behind them, each one making Lucien flinch. He'd never heard real gunfire before. It was louder than in the films.
The dead things were closing in from all sides now. He could hear them.
The deputy kicked through the already-broken glass door of the office building, shoved Lucien inside, and immediately started dragging furniture to barricade the entrance.
Outside, the first of the dead reached the door. Hands slapped against the glass. More crowded in behind, pressing forward.
The deputy put his shoulder against the barricade. "That should hold for now."
Lucien slumped against the wall, his legs finally giving out. His chest felt like it was on fire, each breath burning in his lungs. His heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his ears and fingertips.
The deputy turned to look at him, and for the first time Lucien got a proper look at the man. Mid-thirties, maybe. Strong jaw, dark eyes. His uniform was rumpled, stained with sweat and dirt, and there was a name tag pinned to his chest.
S. Walsh. King County Sheriff's Department.
"You alright, kid?" The deputy's voice was rough, but not unkind. "You hurt?"
Lucien shook his head.
"That's good." The deputy holstered his revolver and ran a hand through his hair. "Hell of a place to find a kid on his own. What's your name?"
"L-Lu..." He cleared his throat and tried again. "Lucien."
"Okay, Lucien. I'm Shane. Deputy Shane Walsh." Shane crouched down to Lucien's eye level. "I need you to tell me something, and I need you to be straight with me. Is there anyone else? Your parents, anyone you were with?"
Lucien's mind raced. How was he supposed to explain this? Sorry, officer, I was trying to get to a magical school when I accidentally dimension-hopped into a zombie apocalypse?
"I... I don't know. I got separated. And I was... there was..." The lie stuck in his throat. He settled for something closer to the truth. "I don't know where they are."
Shane's expression softened slightly. "Alright. That's alright. We'll figure it out." He stood, checked his gun and looked around the lobby they'd taken shelter in.
The reception desk was overturned, papers scattered everywhere. There were dark stains on the floor. One of the elevator doors hung open, the car missing, just an empty shaft leading down into darkness.
"Listen to me, Lucien." Shane's voice pulled his attention back. "Those things out there, you saw what they are, right?"
Lucien nodded.
"They're not people anymore. You understand? They're dead. And if they bite or scratch you, you become one of them." Shane's eyes were hard, making sure the message got through. "So you stick close to me. You don't run off. You stay quiet. We're gonna find a way out of here, and we're gonna get somewhere safe. Got it?"
"Got it," Lucien managed.
"Good kid." Shane moved to the barricaded door, peering through a gap in the furniture at the crowd of dead gathering outside. "Damn. More of 'em showing up. Gunshots must've drawn every walker in a three-block radius."
Walkers. That's what they called them in the show. Lucien's mind was starting to catch up with reality, sorting through what he remembered from late-night binge-watching sessions.
A sheriff's deputy named Shane Walsh, King County, walker...
The Walking Dead.
He knew this story. Or at least, he knew how it started.
Which meant Rick Grimes was in a coma somewhere, and the world had ended while he was unconscious. Which meant this was the beginning, right after everything had gone to hell.
"I'm gonna check the rest of the building," Shane said, pulling Lucien from his thoughts. He looked at Lucien seriously. "You stay right here. If something happens and I don't come back—"
"Nothing's going to happen," Lucien interrupted, surprising himself with the firmness in his voice.
Shane's mouth twitched slightly. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Just sit tight, kid. I'll be back in five."
He disappeared up the stairwell.
The moment he was gone, Lucien let out a shaky breath. His hands were trembling. He pressed them against his knees to make them stop, but it didn't help.
He was supposed to be a wizard, learning spells and flying on broomsticks and maybe fighting a dark lord if he was unlucky.
Instead, he was in a zombie apocalypse with nothing but...
His trunk.
He looked down at the battered leather case he'd somehow managed to hold onto through the chaos. His fingers fumbled with the latches, then popped them open.
Everything was still there.
His textbooks, a bit battered but intact. The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1. A History of Magic. Magical Theory. A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration. Plus the supplementary reading he'd picked up, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Practical Spell Compendium.
Beneath the books, wrapped in velvet, was his wand. Thirteen inches, ebony wood, thunderbird tail feather core. He'd nearly cried when Ollivander had presented it to him.
And at the very bottom, folded carefully, was the single most valuable thing he owned.
The Invisibility Cloak.
He pulled it out. He'd found it tucked away in the attic of his inherited home in Surrey, wrapped in brown paper with a note in handwriting he didn't recognize: For when you need it most.
At the time, he'd thought it was just good luck. A nice bonus to go along with the whole "being a wizard" thing.
Now, looking at it, he wondered if someone had known.
His magic was still there. He could feel it. The wand hummed faintly when he touched it, recognizing him.
But magic didn't mean much when he didn't know any spells. He'd been planning to learn at Hogwarts. All he had were theory books and a wand he barely knew how to use.
He repacked his trunk, making sure everything was secure. The cloak went back on the bottom. The wand in its velvet box. The books stacked neatly on top.
"Better than nothing," he whispered to himself, echoing his earlier thought. "Has to be better than nothing."