"Ow... son of a—Merlin's beard, my head..."
Louis groaned and pressed both hands against his skull, convinced someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. The asphalt beneath him was cold and unforgiving, and when he cracked his eyes open, the sunlight hit him like a physical blow.
Everything hurt. His brain felt like a percussion section—dozens of tiny goblins with drums and cymbals going absolutely wild between his ears.
He forced himself to sit up, blinking against the glare, and tried to piece together what the hell had just happened.
Five minutes ago, he'd been sprinting toward Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, heart pounding with excitement, luggage rattling behind him. Hogwarts. He was finally going to Hogwarts.
See, Louis wasn't exactly a normal eleven-year-old. His soul belonged to a twenty-something college student from the twenty-first century—a guy who'd shoved a kid out of the path of a runaway truck and earned himself a one-way ticket to the afterlife. Or what should have been the afterlife.
Instead, he'd woken up in the body of a young wizard living in Surrey, England. Same name, different everything else. And just a few weeks after his eleventh birthday, an owl had arrived with a letter bearing the Hogwarts crest.
For a die-hard Harry Potter fan, it was literally a dream come true.
He'd bought his supplies in Diagon Alley, packed his trunk with trembling hands, and made his way to King's Cross Station with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious pilgrimages.
Then he'd taken a deep breath, aimed himself at the barrier between platforms nine and ten, and charged.
Bang.
Stars. Pain. Darkness.
No magical passage through the wall. No Hogwarts Express waiting on the other side. Just cold, hard brick meeting his skull at full speed.
"So where the hell did I end up?"
Louis staggered to his feet, head still swimming, and finally got a good look at his surroundings.
His blood ran cold.
The street stretched out before him—wide, empty, and wrong. Cars lay overturned and abandoned, some with their doors hanging open like gaping mouths. A fire hydrant had been sheared clean off, water long since stopped flowing. Broken glass glittered across the sidewalk, mixed with newspapers that rustled in the wind like dead leaves.
The buildings were all wrong too. Massive skyscrapers loomed overhead, their surfaces plastered with billboards advertising brands he didn't recognize, featuring celebrities he'd never seen. Everything screamed modern American city—but one that had been abandoned for weeks. Maybe months.
And the smell. God, the smell. Rust and rot, thick enough to taste.
Louis stumbled toward his luggage, fighting down the panic clawing at his throat. His vintage leather suitcase lay a few feet away, miraculously intact, though several textbooks had spilled out onto the pavement. He dropped to his knees and shoved them back inside with shaking hands.
That's when he heard it.
A low, guttural moan, carried on the wind.
His head snapped up.
At the far end of the street, a figure shambled around the corner. It moved slowly, jerkily, like a puppet with half its strings cut. The thing wore what had once been a business suit, now torn and stained. One arm hung at an impossible angle, and its face—
Louis's stomach lurched.
Dark red. Ruined. Wrong.
Then another appeared. And another. They emerged from the shadows of buildings, from behind wrecked cars, from doorways and alleys. Dozens of them, all moving with that same horrible, shuffling gait. Their mouths hung open, releasing sounds that weren't quite human anymore.
Memories he'd buried deep—memories from his first life—came flooding back. Late nights binging zombie movies. Resident Evil. Dead Rising. The Walking Dead.
No. No, no, no—
"Merlin's soggy socks," Louis breathed, his voice cracking. "I'm supposed to be going to Hogwarts, not Raccoon freaking City!"
But there was no time for a breakdown. His survival instincts kicked in hard, overriding the shock and terror. He'd seen enough horror movies to know exactly what he looked like to those things: a walking Happy Meal.
His eyes darted around, calculating. Fifty meters to his left—an office building with shattered glass doors. Closest cover. Best option.
He grabbed his suitcase and was about to bolt when gunfire shattered the silence.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The walkers nearest to him crumpled, dark holes blooming in their skulls.
Louis spun around. A tall man in a police uniform was sprinting toward him, revolver raised, eyes scanning the street with practiced efficiency.
"Hey! Kid! You okay?!" The man's accent was thick, unmistakably American—Southern, maybe. Another nail in the coffin of Louis's desperate hope that this was all some weird magical mishap.
Before Louis could answer, the officer reached him, grabbed his arm, and practically lifted him off the ground.
"Move it! Gunshots draw more of 'em!"
Louis's feet barely touched the pavement as the man hauled him toward the office building. He managed one glance back and immediately wished he hadn't. Walkers were pouring in from every direction now, converging on the sound of the shots like moths to a flame.
They burst through the broken doors, and the officer immediately started shoving furniture against the entrance—a couch, a filing cabinet, anything he could reach.
"Okay... okay..." The man leaned against the barricade, chest heaving. After a moment, he turned and fixed Louis with a sharp look. "Kid. Why the hell are you out here alone?"
"I... I don't know." Louis was panting too, his heart hammering against his ribs. "I think I'm lost."
"Lost." The officer let out a humorless laugh. "Hell of a time for that."
He holstered his pistol and extended a hand—not for a shake, just a gesture of reassurance.
"Name's Shane Walsh. Deputy Sheriff, King County. Listen to me, kid—it's dangerous out there. Real dangerous. You stick with me from now on, got it?"
Shane. King County.
Louis felt the blood drain from his face.
He knew those names. He knew exactly where he was now.
This wasn't some generic zombie apocalypse. This was The Walking Dead. The TV show. The one where basically everyone died horribly, over and over again, for like twelve seasons.
Where's Hogwarts?! Where's Voldemort and the Ministry of Magic and Harry goddamn Potter?! How did I crash headfirst into a zombie apocalypse?!
You want me—an eleven-year-old wizard who doesn't know a single spell—to fight walkers?
With what? My forehead?!
Louis's vision swam, but he forced himself to stay upright. To stay calm. The man in front of him had just saved his life. Breaking down now wasn't an option.
"Okay," he said, and was proud that his voice barely shook. "Okay, Officer Walsh. I understand."
Shane studied him for a moment. "Good kid. Tougher than you look." He clapped a hand on Louis's shoulder. "Stay here. I'm gonna check upstairs, see if there's another way out. Don't move."
He drew his gun again and moved cautiously toward the stairwell, footsteps fading into silence.
The moment he was gone, Louis collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor.
"My life sucks," he muttered, wiping cold sweat from his forehead.
Okay. Okay, think. The situation was bad, but maybe not hopeless.
If this really was The Walking Dead, then at least he knew the plot. He knew who survived, who died, where the safe zones were, which people to trust and which to avoid like the plague. That knowledge was worth something.
And if his magic had survived the second transmigration...
He pulled his suitcase onto his lap and unlatched it with trembling fingers.
Inside, his Hogwarts textbooks lay in a neat stack. The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1. A History of Magic. Magical Theory. A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration. A few extras he'd picked up for fun—Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Encyclopedia of Practical Spells.
Beside the books sat a long velvet case. He opened it carefully.
His wand. Thirteen inches, ebony wood, with a thunderbird tail feather core. It practically hummed with energy, dark and elegant and powerful.
And at the very bottom of the case, folded beneath everything else...
His fingers brushed against fabric that felt like liquid moonlight. Cool and impossibly smooth, shimmering with an almost ethereal quality.
The Invisibility Cloak.
His magic was still here. All of it.
Outside, the walkers groaned and shuffled, their shadows moving past the barricaded windows.
His wand. His books. His cloak.
Louis closed the case with a soft click.
"Better than nothing."