The Necromancer

Chapter 39

Harry realized at once what he’d said and then he couldn’t think of anything else to say. They stared at each other for a long while as more and more decaying corpses hauled themselves out of the water and surrounded them.

“I… er…” Tom swallowed once, twice and then seemed to shake himself out of whatever stupor had come over him. “I have feelings for you, too. Very severe and real feelings.”

Harry bit his lip so he wouldn’t burst out in laughter. He was so, so glad to see that Tom was worse at this than he was.

“I’ve just never had those feelings before, for anyone,” Tom continued, voice pitching higher and higher the more he talked.

“So what you’re saying is that there’s feelings and they’re real and they’re freaking you out a little bit,” Harry summarized when Tom looked like he was on the verge of hyperventilation.

“Yes, exactly,” Tom eagerly agreed, seeming very relieved that Harry had understood his mindless rambling.

“Let’s stick with that for now.” Harry closed the small distance between them and gave Tom a sound kiss. “I meant what I said about this gift, though. Best gift ever.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Tom sounded uncharacteristically shy and quickly cleared his throat. “How are we going to get them to Magica?”

“I’ll open a portal to my yard and store them there while we dig some more bunkers around the island.” Harry raised his hands and felt for the magic that surrounded the inferi. “This is fascinating, how you’ve reanimated them,” Harry said with a huge smile, looking between Tom and the inferi and back. “It’s like you needed to travel from here to the entrance thirty feet away but you decided to take a detour past London, Antwerp and Paris first before arriving at your destination. The magic is sound, but there’s just a lot of unnecessary steps involved.”

“Dumb wizard, dumb wizard,” V crowed while chattering in Tom’s direction.

Tom waved both their comments away with a roll of his eyes. “Yes, yes. Soon enough I’ll learn to do it the right way.”

Harry got a portal opened in no time at all, and as the inferi stepped through it, Tom released command of each of them to Harry. It was a heady feeling, to suddenly have a few hundred inferi more in your power, but Harry resisted the urge to just bask in this delicious dark magic that bloomed inside of him. He kept focussed and after half an hour or so they’d emptied out the lake and stepped through the portal to Magica.

The bedraggled inferi stood spread out across Harry’s yard looking very out of place in the bright sun. The Thestrals were spread out amongst the corpses and it took Harry a moment to realize those fucking things were nibbling on his amazing gift.

“They’re eating the inferi!” Harry cried, running towards the nearest Thestral who had a whole decomposing hand in its mouth. “Shoo, shoo!”

V took to the air and cawed, “Bad mule, bad mule. Shoo, shoo!”

Meanwhile Tom stood bent over at the waist, laughing hysterically in a way that made it clear he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.

“Keket!” Harry yelled at his oldest friend, who sat sniggering as she watched the show. “These fucking things are your subjects. They’re not allowed to eat the inferi. Do something!”