Archive of Our Own

“I told you to go easy on the clutch!” Ron hissed at Harry, who couldn’t deny he was rather poor at driving. In his defence, he was under a good bit of stress at the moment. It was difficult to remember what order the pedals needed pushing, and that was without bothering to consider that Mr Weasley might have jumbled them all up on purpose.

Harry gritted his teeth and shifted gears, eliciting another grinding scrape from the car. Ron swore at him, turning in his seat to look behind them.

The horde was advancing, much faster than any horde had any right to do. It reminded Harry viscerally of a horde of geese, flapping and honking and chasing him down en masse when he was seven. Dudley had laughed until he cried. Harry had no desire to repeat the scene now, even if he didn’t classify Inferi as slightly worse than geese.

If only the bloody car could still fly, none of this would be problematic. But of course, of all the potential vehicular maintenance issues an ageing Ford Anglia could have, its after-market ability to fly had croaked first.

Mr Weasley was going to be cross, but that was resting pretty far down Harry’s list of immediate concerns. Hermione would undoubtedly be more cross, and that did merit a higher ranking.

It was still below the Inferius horde, however. He’d have to tell her later that she’d almost made the top spot, but not quite.

“Will you pay attention?!” Ron screeched (as if reading Harry’s train of thought, he was nearly channelling Hermione right here in the car) and Harry whipped the wheel to the right, narrowly missing an open manhole cover in the street. They blasted through several orange traffic cones and Harry heard the ominous sound of one trapped beneath the car’s underbelly.

Maybe more than one. That rhythmic flapping from beneath couldn’t mean anything good.

Was it his imagination, or was the car beginning to slow? Harry urgently checked the floorboard and the status of his feet, finding nothing misplaced. He had the pedals right. He tried to downshift without the clutch and swore in unison with Ron.

Something big and heavy clunked into the road from underneath the car. Ron’s neck cracked as he whipped around to stare out the back windshield, releasing a low and miserable groan.

“No, oh no, oh no…” said Ron, and Harry decided he was better off not asking.

The car’s momentum continued to dwindle and Harry frantically rifled through his pocket for the charmed Galleon he still always carried with him. He’d learned over the years it was handy to keep around. Hermione worked in the Department of Mysteries, he and Ron were Aurors, and every so often, trouble did occur.

This counted, not that it had a single thing to do with their chosen profession. Harry retrieved the Galleon at last and steadied the steering wheel with his knees. He aimed his wand at the coin and Ron snatched it out of his hand.

“Don’t Galleon and drive. Give me that.”

“Muggles drive like this all the time.” Harry still flipped the coin to Ron, who bobbled it. “Get a message to Hermione. We can run faster than this, and in a minute, we’re about to be.”

He wasn’t looking forward to this. He was barefoot. They both were.

“Where the hell are we?”

“I dunno, some road near Brighton. Figure it out.”

Ron cursed again and took aim. The second the coin had taken the message, Harry flung the door open. The car was still rolling, barely, and it was time to make tracks.

His feet hit the asphalt and he took off, Ron hot on his heels. For a minute or two, and then Harry noticed that Ron had fallen a bit behind. Looking back, Harry saw Ron fumbling with the tie at the waist of his swim trunks.

“Falling off,” Ron grunted.

“Let them, you wanker! We’re about to get overrun!” Although Harry couldn’t blame him. The prospect of getting eaten was bad enough. Somehow, having it happen while stark naked was worse.

Harry skidded to a stop at a dead end. Shit. Shit bugger bugger shit. He backed right into Ron, who was diligently working on a double-knot. “Not this way. Go!”

But the horde had cornered them. Harry raised his wand and fired his first incendio. The Inferi lurched to the side (Harry insisted to himself this was a coincidence, and the corpse wasn’t actually dodging him) and the curse caught the Inferi right behind it.

Good, but not excellent. How deep did this horde go?

They fired incendio after incendio, picking off one at a time. It wasn’t enough. The horde of Inferius crept ever closer, looming.

He tried not to panic. Where was Hermione?

Ron released a squeak and a gulp, sounding strangled about it, and when Harry turned he saw Ron already on the ground.

“No!” Harry roared, blasting the Inferi off. But he hadn’t used flame, not wanting to set Ron ablaze too, and the Inferi shook it off and came right back.

A partial Inferi grasped Harry’s leg hair, the only thing that could have made Harry move any faster. He scrambled back until colliding with an alley dumpster.

Another grasped his foot and their collective tug-of-war resulted in Harry on his arse. Hands crawled up his body, semi-toothless mouths open and gaping. He had nowhere left to go. This was it.

Ron was similarly subsumed beneath a growing mound of corpses. Harry yelped as a hot mouth descended over his pinky finger. It was all over, the tip of the iceberg, down went the Titanic into the watery depths of death.

He waited for the bite of teeth to remove his finger but it didn't come. Another Inferi latched onto his other thumb, and yet another actively stroked his leg hair.

To his amazement, one Inferi shoved another out of the way with a rough hand that sloughed off some skin in the process. It dipped its head to Harry’s foot and sucked in his big toe.

What… the fuck?

Ron was cackling hysterically (at least Harry presumed it was hysterics, the dying death gasp of ridiculousness), and when Harry could next glimpse a thin view through the squirming, shoving, jostling mound of dead bodies, he understood.

Well, no; he didn’t understand, because it made no sense, but he saw. Ron was laughing hysterically because Ron was more ticklish than any person Harry had ever known in his life - especially when it came to his feet. And right now, Ron’s feet were being suckled by no less than four individual Inferi. Harry had no doubt if more could fit alongside one another, they would be.

He must be dead already. His brain must be playing some sort of afterlife trick on him, making this process less terrifying than it actually occurred. Because now, the only image he could pull up was that of a mother sow lying on the ground with a half dozen piglets suckling at her teats.

His own index finger was slurped up and he wanted to hurl. The thing’s tongue was far more dexterous than it should be, slithering between his fingers (though, in fairness, Harry had never spent much time thinking about the muscular tongue potential of a reanimated corpse). It picked his hand up by the wrist and got greedy, sucking two of his precious fingers deep into its mouth.

He now had Inferi attached to both feet and both hands. Three had begun to fight over Ron, who couldn’t stop laughing long enough to notice. That was a pity, because Harry could not remember any other time in which Ron had been fussed over more than Harry. This could be a banner day for Ron.

“Fascinating,” he heard from above, through the only window of sight still open to him. Hermione perched on a ledge above, leaning on the wrought iron railing and biting into a green apple. Draco bloody Malfoy was beside her and Harry did wish he wasn’t on the ground beneath a writhing pile of corpses.

An Inferi’s elbow pressed directly into his sternum as it positioned itself across his middle and Harry grunted. It leaned in close, dousing him in its pungent stench, and promptly latched onto his chin.

“You’re going to have a record number of love bites, Potter.”

“I know that!” he spat out, the movement of his chin nearly dislodging the Inferi. It reattached itself with more sucking fervour.

Hermione crunched another bite of her apple, the sound mimicking what Harry had imagined would be happening to him by the horde of Inferius. Alas, it was not to be. Those sounds were a lot more… sloppy. Wet. Debauched.

“You know, Malfoy, you’re pointy enough they’d have plenty of bits of you to suck on!”

Hermione cast an appraising look over Malfoy and cocked her head in silent agreement. “Who’d have known? I’ll have to bring this up at work on Monday.”

“What part?” Malfoy asked, taking the apple from her to crunch off a big bite of his own.

Doing her best swot (Harry wasn’t feeling as charitable as he usually did), Hermione did a perfect imitation of herself in their first year, teaching him and Ron how to perform a basic hover charm. “Obviously that they’re flesh-sucking, not flesh-eating.”

“Yes, yes, it’s a bloody marvel,” Ron choked from beside him. “Care to help out? Wouldn’t either of you like to show off a bit?”

“Are you asking me for help, Weasley? Wonders never cease.”

“I wonder if the original inventor of the Inferius curse knew what he was doing,” said Hermione.

Malfoy turned to her, openly pondering this as two piles of bodies writhed on the ground in a combination of slurping and trying not to be slurped. “You mean, did he do it specifically to create a creature that liked to suck?”

“Well, yes.”

Malfoy’s grey eyes glossed back over Ron and Harry, who was beginning to feel rather hen-pecked. One was trying to work its slimy fingers up the legs of his swim trunks, and Harry couldn’t even use his own hands to stop it.

“What do you think, lads? Would a bloke make a creature for that kind of purpose smell like this?”

Harry had to agree with Malfoy that he, at least, would not. Nor did he much care for the idea of his swim trunks lost to the cause. Ron had been right, it turned out. The double-knotting of the tie was a solid idea. His own wasn’t nearly so reinforced.

“Hermione,” he croaked. “I’d like to leave my Inferi virtue intact.”

Malfoy burst out laughing. “Say ‘please,’ Potter. Hermione’s busy taking notes.”

“Is now the time?!”

“Oh, now, Potter, you know there’s no better time. She’s got to take them while it’s fresh!”

“Nothing happening down here is fresh!”

“I wonder if they’re the regular kind of Inferi,” Hermione mused next, tapping her conjured quill against her cheek. “Or some special sucky kind. Maybe we should take one with us.”

Malfoy looked both concerned and tempted. “How about it, Potter? Would you recommend it?”

“Being sucked dry by a corpse horde? Are you joking?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” scoffed Malfoy, which Harry found rich. “They’re not vampires.”

Harry somehow had one Inferi on every finger. They shouldn’t all fit. Their persistence at making this work made him woefully afraid for his toes.

“I recommend it!” said Ron. “Take a few with you. Take six or seven. Preferably the six or seven on me.”

“So generous, Weasley.”

Hands (plural) were now steadily making their way up Harry’s trunks. He’d never been less in danger of getting hard, but penises were disobedient things.

Malfoy and Hermione were conferring atop their little perch. She was gesturing with the quill in one hand and the apple core in the other. An Inferi blocked Harry’s view for a moment, but then he heard the impact of a body landing in the alley.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Malfoy crooned, sending grotesque chills right up Harry’s flattened spine. It brought gooseflesh to his skin that the Inferius seemed to like, and a tongue licked straight up his foot to cradle his ankle bone.

But one by one, hot, wet mouths left Harry’s appendages with a nauseating *pop* from each (this provoked more gooseflesh, which only meant the most enthusiastic Inferius stuck around, but things were improving).

“Heeeeeere, kitty, kit - oh, shit,” said Malfoy, his voice moving further away.

Ron was able to sit up before Harry, his personal horde having dispersed to lumber after Malfoy instead. He was rather pointy and provided ample fresh temptation.

“Wow, they’re really picking up speed,” said Ron as Harry shook the last Inferius off his left thumb. It gave him a plaintive look that reminded him a bit of Scabbers, long-suffering and deprived, before turning its attention to the rest of its kin.

Harry’s glasses had been through much worse, and he only had to straighten them to follow Malfoy’s progress (or lack thereof).

To his left, Ron was covered in slobber, not unlike the unfortunate day his wand had backfired on him to make him puke up slugs for three hours. That had more of a mucus-y tinge to it, but Harry could see the resemblance.

Draco had run the wrong direction. Nothing was that way except two more gigantic garbage bins and a chain link fence stretching too far overhead. Hermione heaved an audible sigh. Her feet landed solidly on the ground and she raised her wand hand.

With an expert flick, she conjured a rope of flame, lassoing the lot with an extremely effective swipe. She missed only one but shrugged it off with an air of nonchalance.

With a sly grin at Harry, she said, “Nobody’s perfect.”

This was accepting mediocrity in a way Harry had never known her to do, but then again, she had just treated the alley like her own American rodeo. If it was her first lasso attempt, it was a remarkable one. That much did fit.

The horde struggled and whinged (in grunts and groans), pinned in together. Harry straightened his swim trunks and flicked away stringy corpse saliva. Ron triple-checked his knotted waistband with pride. With a scowl, Harry flipped him off.

Hermione strode confidently down the alleyway, whistling a jaunty tune.

Ron leaned in close. “Did she miss that on purpose, d’you think?”

Harry hadn’t considered this. He blinked. “Why, though?”

Draco went down with a high-pitched yelp as the one remaining, highly-motivated Inferius tackled him.

“Bit useless, inne’?” Ron scoffed.

Hermione shot him a dirty look but also did not seem inclined to assist - at least no more than she had to corral the rest of the herd in the first place. In Harry’s (unspoken) opinion, the fact that Hermione took on 96% of the Inferi and left Malfoy with the last straggler spoke volumes.

She stepped forward with a squint. “I think it’s getting fresh with him.”

“You think?”

Now that he wasn’t the one being groped, Harry hit himself with a nice, pleasing tergeo. Ron did the same but missed a few spots, more interested in watching the show at the end of the alley.

“I’ll send this lot to the Inferius Farm in Cheltenham. They’ll be well cared for,” said Hermione, nevertheless sounding cross about this. “But that one there…”

Her tone was rife with possibility: research and studying and data. Harry could see her mind turning with delight, watching the Inferi suck her husband’s index finger with devoted reverence. Disgusted, Malfoy was clearly still reluctant to redirect it to somewhere else.

“Makes better eye contact than Lavender does,” said Ron. Hermione snorted.