Zombie Moon

There you are, spinning silently in that great blazing void.

The sunset spills up and over the tree tops of the Forbidden Forest and creeps down slowly onto the Quidditch Pitch where I stand. I can feel my eyes burning in the burnt sunlight, see the fire setting off the kindling in my hair. Each freckle on my pale china forearm sparks to life and I can feel the heart of it burning deep into the muscle.

But still, you’re there. You’re not where you’re supposed to be, we both know it. So what are you doing there, huh? No one wants the Moon here, hanging in their perfect sunset, disrupting it. The great white mass that blocks out the singed colours of sundown and offers nothing in return. No, people don’t want the Moon here.

No one wants the Zombie either.

I don’t think that that’s what I am. I can feel my skin on fire and the crushing void where my chest used to be. I know that that’s not what I am, because Zombies don’t feel anything. Not that I feel happy things, like love or pleasure, but I still feel. I think.

Because when there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

Each blade of grass beneath my bare feet is being burnt to a crisp. I can see it shriveling up and curling in on itself. Poor, poor Grass. No one cares about that either, stepping on it all the time.

My legs bend slowly and then I’m sinking down on the damp earth. Its’ softness conforms around my body and then the Sun is beating down on me with all it’s setting power. My feet are wet and cold and I think to myself vaguely why I didn’t wear shoes, but the thought is fleeting and flurries through my head like a snitch in flight.

The Zombie and the Moon. Unlikely companions, but fitting nonetheless. The rejects, the castoffs, the unwanted, the untouchables, the Moon and the Zombie.

But I know I’m not the only one. We always travel in groups, the Zombies. There’s never less than two and after three weeks of careful observation, I know I’ve found them. The other. Singled them out.

The insides of my cheeks ache slightly for a moment and I bite down gently on them to force away the feeling. The bile in the back of my mouth slides gratefully back down towards my belly and hopefully will stay there. A breeze picks up and my face is covered for a moment by my hair, la vie en rose at last, but then it’s gone and the smoking strands lay still once more, forgotten and windblown.



There’s a movement up the pitch to my left and I lay as deep into the grass as I can, hoping to conceal myself in the fading orange glow. Maybe the moon will swing free of its perch in the sky and come crashing down to earth, obliterating me into the core of the planet. I would become one with the molten rock, red and hot and pulsating, and push myself up and out. I would explode into the sea, cool and gray and hard, and finally I would sit cold and still on the ocean floor, forever a part of that crushing nothingness.

Anything rather than be found out lying on the Quidditch Pitch in just my nightgown as the day fast approaches night.

I pinch my eyes closed and try to summon all the wandless magic I know I’m capable of. Nothing comes to me and seconds later I’m still just as bare as before and the footsteps of the stranger on the grass are reverberating through the ground harder and louder than before.

I can hear their breathing now, fast and unsteady, as though they had run here from the Castle. My body freezes and for a moment an almost unbearable heat is pouring through my veins while my heart and lungs forget how to work and I know I’m dead. Then the sun vanishes behind the trees and I’m consumed by shadows.

My breath whooshes out of my chest in a way that makes me feel normal again and the heat in my veins seeps slowly out of my body through the pores in my skin, leaving it hot and tingling. I slowly part my eyelids and strain to see out of the corners of my eyes.

It’s a man. I can tell that much from the broad shoulders and height, but his silhouette is black against the still illuminated and shimmering Castle. His shoulders droop and his head hangs while his hand goes up to cradle it. I can just make it out in the twilight. His fingers smooth over his eyes then his chin and mouth and nose before he lets it drop against his side carelessly. As he approaches slowly I can see the Moons’ light reflecting off a pale head and I finally recognize him.

“Oh, it’s you. What are you doing here?” My voice coming out of the darkness startles him and he jerks around, looking for me.

“Where are you?” His voice is urgent and panicked and I don’t know whether to snicker or cry.

“I’m down here, in the grass. Idiot.” I clip the insult on the end, wondering whether I’ll get a reaction or not.

He walks closer towards my voice and I can tell by the way he’s stomping that I’ve gotten my reaction.

“Who’s the real idiot? Last time I checked, I wasn’t the one lying in the wet grass in the dark in just my bed clothes, Weasley.” He’s standing above me now, sneering down at me, although the sneer is really just a ghost of itself. He’s dressed in a charcoal sweater that looks like it could be cashmere and starched black dress pants. His shoes are black suede and a few shades darker where the damp grass has come in contact with them.

“It’s really quite nice.” I respond, ignoring his jibe. “Care to join me?”

“I think not Weaslette, some of us can afford real clothing, and I for one prefer not to ruin mine.” He crosses his arms over his chest and looks off into the dark borderline of trees.

I’m shocked, truly I am. This is much more than I could ever hope for, maybe there’s still some left over for myself.

“Careful Draco,” I admonish, “I know what you are.” I lower my head back onto the grass and stare past him up into the night sky at the first star of the evening. His left arm flexes unconsciously and he runs his right hand fingers through his hair. Lately it’s been left uncared for and long and I can see a pale shadow of a beard on his face. I can feel him staring down at me, trying to judge how much I really know. After a few long moments of this he seems to have made his decision.

“And so you do.” I don’t know whether to feel gratified with myself for finding my Second or pity for Draco that he has to be the unlucky soul, doomed to the same fate as I. I’m still just as torn when in a flash, he’s lying spread eagle on the grass just below my right arm.

“What are you doing?” I ask skeptically.

“Stargazing. What does it look like I’m doing?” He snaps back at me, but I can see the will it takes for him to do it in his eyes.

“Succumbing to my will.” I could almost grin but I don’t.

“In your dreams Red.” This time it’s weaker, there’s less force behind his words. I can see him slipping back into his Zombie.

“Perhaps.” I reply. This ought to throw him off.

“Are you implying that you dream about me?” He’s perked up now, and I’m glad that I can hold off the Draco Zombie for the time being. I myself am another story.

“Maybe, I don’t dream and tell. Why don’t you ask her?” I’ve gone completely bonkers, I know it, but it is time I had a bit of fun.

“Ask who? Is there someone else here?” His anxiety is back again and I can tell I’ve just bought myself at least another half hour of normal Draco.

“No. I was talking about her.” I can tell he’s looking up at me again and I motion wildly towards the night sky.

“Are you talking about the Moon? Have you really gone completely loony?” He raises his head to stare incredulously at me and this time I can’t help but grin slightly to myself.

“I like to think so.” A peculiar look passes his face and I can’t quite decipher it but I think he understands what I mean.

“Well why on Earth would I ask her?” He stresses ‘her’ and the sarcasm in his voice really does impress me.

“Think about it.” I answer. “She sees everything. Well, only really at night I guess, but still, everything. She’s watching us right now....I can feel it. I wonder what she’s thinking.” I trail away and stare up at her, brilliant and pearly in the crisp night air. She’s particularly clear tonight, it’s as though I’m looking at her through a telescope, such is the definition of her face.

You look beautiful tonight.

“You understand you’re talking about a giant hunk of floating rock, right?” His voice is different now, quieter, as though I’ve almost convinced him and he’s speaking just to keep up appearances.

“Yes.” I whisper and I can feel his eyes on me yet again. This time they run the length of my body and back up again. I’m too tired to bother raising my head.

I can feel the opal light radiating off my skin and into the darkness and I know I must look phosphorescent. My nightgown is thin and my skin is taut with cold and goose bumps beneath it. My feet twitch slightly of their own accord and the muscles in my calves jump sporadically. The side of my body that rests against the ground is soaked through now and I can feel my body heat being sucked out of my flesh in to the earth.

“Aren’t you cold?” His voice is very soft now, I almost have to strain to hear him. He must be freezing himself.

“Yes.” I croak out. My mouth has suddenly gone very dry and I want to be back in my bed in my dorm with a cold glass of water. The fire roars in the hearth and the Moon is blocked out by thick red velvet, in a place where I don’t have to think about Her. Draco too.

We lay there shivering on the grass for what feels like seconds but I know is hours.


Eventually the stars and the Moon run together, until they’re one giant pulsing mass of light in the sky. I swear for a moment I can see it lurch and jump, and for one second I feel my body shut down in fear, ready for the mass to begin it’s plummet towards me. But then my eyes focus again and the swimming colors shift against each other until She’s back in one place and piece. I want to look at Draco but I know I can’t, because we always travel in groups, in packs, but we would eat each other if we had to.

My blood rushes through my veins. Down my neck and into my chest, through my belly where it splits and runs the length of my thighs, my legs, my feet, my toes. Then back up again to my shoulders, and biceps and forearms, wrists, palms and fingers. Under the nail it pools and rests there for a moment where it tingles and turns the pads of my fingers blue and purple. But they’re still cold. Then the blood is rushing back up to my head where it fills my eyelids and turns them deliciously warm and heavy. They float down slowly over my eyes and my Moon is gone and my Zombie walks away.

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The next day I wake up warm and soft in my own bed in my dorm, with a glass of lukewarm water on my bedside table.

And it’s not enough that I can’t remember the way his cashmere sweater and chest felt beneath my cheek, soft and smooth but hard like marble at the same time. And it’s not enough that I can’t recall the way his hands felt against my bare leg, the way they were ice cold but still burned all the way through to the bone anyway. And it will never be enough that I can’t still feel his lips, chapped and dry, as they grazed across my forehead and left a trail of starlight behind them.

But at the same time, it is enough. It will always be enough.

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And that is how you kill a Zombie under the watchful eye of the Moon. The end.