Okay, so this was done for a FanFic Challenge on another site. I came joint third place with it in the end. (of which I am immensely proud...lol) The parameters were to include as much blood as possible, amongst other things. So, if you're squeamish...
'Two Margheritas for £1.50'
Luna Lovegood hummed to herself as she began to pack her things into a bag, waving her wand to check for Dust Dragons every few minutes. She was getting ready to leave the small London flat she had called home for the last three months, which she had grown quite fond of. She hadn't been living there alone, though. She shared the relatively small space with four other people: Neville, Harry, Ron and Hermione. Ginny Weasley would have once made it five, but they rarely spoke of the events of last summer.
Ginny had been killed by the former Hogwarts Professor Severus Snape. He had used one of his own inventions on her, a spell which had slowly destroyed and forced up the entire contents of her body out through her mouth; organs, blood, bone and all.
Without Ginny, Harry had soon grown tired and had enlisted the help of the 'Ministry Crew' to help him in his search for what he had called 'Horcruxes'. What he didn't realize was that they were actually Destabilized Doppelgangers from the Future, but when Luna had mentioned this, it had caused a rather heated reaction. Luna tended to refrain from voicing her opinions so freely anymore, as she knew the others just wouldn't listen.
Rifling through the piles of junk on her desk, Luna quickly began to separate out the things she wanted to keep. The rest she left for her friends to sort through, but as she flipped the pile over, one of the Muggle leaflets that had come through the front door fell from her grasp and caught her eye.
'Pete's Pizza Place' it read in big, rounded letters. Underneath was the announcement ''Buy two Margheritas for £1.50 and get a third FREE!''
Luna raised her eyebrows. Margheritas were supposedly muggle 'pizzas', though she had always thought of them as small, pink, fluffy birds that used to fly in kitchen windows and steal the margarine tubs of anyone who was not paying attention to their cooking.
Shrugging, she placed the leaflet back down on the desk and went back to organising her bags. It was only then that she noticed one of the little pieces of paper had fluttered off her desk and onto the bed. Picking it up, she gave a gasp of surprise as she realized that the note she was holding was covered in dried blood.
It was at that moment that Hermione chose to walk in. She screamed when she saw what Luna was holding, which brought the boys running in.
Harry gingerly took the note from Luna and began to read it aloud:
"In the home of the triangle slice, you're bound to digest something nice. And though you'll never journey twice, lives will come to a halt thrice."
"What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?" Ron butted in.
Hermione looked as though she was thinking very fast. "It's both a warning and a cry for help." she said softly. She reached towards the table and held up the pizza leaflet. "In the home of the triangle slice…" she repeated.
Luna nodded, and watched as Harry suddenly stood up straighter, comprehension dawned on Ron, and Neville's face drained of all colour.
Hermione abruptly dashed for the telephone in the hallway, flipping the leaflet over as she went. They heard her dialling a number and followed her into the hallway. They waited in silence as Hermione drummed her fingers on the receiver.
After a moment she frowned and put the receiver down.
"There's no dialling tone." She said quietly.
"That'll be because the line's been cut." replied Neville's voice. He was staring at the wall just below the table that the phone sat on. As they all turned to look, they saw that the line was lying in tatters next to the skirting board.
As the group turned back to face Neville as one, all seemed to be thinking the same thing; how had Neville known how Muggle phones worked and who had cut the wire?
It was Harry who spoke next. "We go there, to this pizza place." He said firmly. "Digest something nice…they have something we need."
The rest nodded in agreement and within moments they had Apparated to the address on the leaflet.
The small shop itself was boarded up. It was in a dark, empty street in London, on the end of a road that led to Merlin-knew-where.
Luna led the way in through an unbarred side door, saying "Come on, there's no Nargles, I checked."
They were instantly hit with the intoxicating smell of blood, death and stale air the moment they walked in. While the outside had looked perfectly normal (except for the fact that it was boarded up), the inside certainly looked nothing like a takeaway or a restaurant. In front of them was a corridor, with two slightly ajar doors to the sides and one closed one at the end of the corridor. The walls, they were quick to notice, were all damp and peeling.
A slight, shallow wheezing noise came from the room on the right, as if someone was struggling to breathe. Luna immediately stepped towards the sound, as did the others, wands in hands.
The body inside the room was that of an almost unrecognisable Horace Slughorn. His once rather overly- protruding stomach had been ripped away, exposing a mangled bloody mass of intestines, heart and lungs. It was an extremely large miracle that Slughorn was still alive.
The floor was soaked with blood and chunks of flesh, and a rotting skeleton sat in the corner. There were no windows in the room; the only light that from their lit wands. A metal pipe was wedged firmly into Slughorn's left arm, revealing the bone which poked out of his elbow at a very odd angle. Thick ropes were fastened to his wrists, securing him to the floor.
They all jumped when they suddenly heard him speak.
"I-know-w-what-you-d-did la-st-summer." He choked out. "T-thank-y-you."
And then the light faded from his eyes and he lay motionless, blood still cascading from his chest.
That was another thing about last summer they never talked about. Harry had saved Slughorn's life but never told the man so, for you just didn't shout about saving people's lives. It happened all the time in war.
Luna watched as Harry took a step closer.
"Shit!" he gasped suddenly. "That's the locket." And sure enough, buried in the coils of Slughorn's intestines was a round glint of gold, sparkling sinisterly in the wand-light.
Slowly, tentatively, Harry pointed his wand at the locket and whispered a Levitating Spell, paying no attention to the blood still seeping underneath his feet. Giving the locket a little shake when the chain stayed entangled with the man's insides, he slowly brought the locket closer to him, muttering Cleaning and Disinfectant Spells all the way before conjuring a small, padded bag and dropping the locket inside it. They all saw the snake imprinted on the gold that was Slytherin's mark.
There was a moment's silence.
"We'd better get going." said Neville quietly. "This is obviously a Death Eater hideout. We can tell the Ministry what happened and they can keep an eye out for anyone who comes back here."
"Good thinking, Neville." Harry agreed. It was a mark of how serious the situation was to have him push aside his dislike and distrust of the Ministry to inform them.
"But what about…" Ron jerked his head in the direction of Slughorn's body, keeping his eyes averted from it. He had his arm around Hermione's shoulder, and they both looked very green. Hermione was crying silently.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Do you honestly think it's worth trying to move him?" he replied.
Everyone shook their heads emphatically and briskly followed Harry out of the door. Luna, however, lingered behind for a moment. This wasn't Death Eaters….this was the work of Giant flesh-eating Bicorns, if the lumps of misshapen flesh scattered about were anything to go by. And that meant there would also be…
"Inferi!"
Luna hurried out into the corridor to see what looked like a small army of shrunken, mangled bodies, their eyes dull and skin white, almost transparent. They were coming from the room at the end of the corridor, and as she made to join her friends, she distinctly heard Neville's voice whimper:
"We're all going to die."
While Hermione and Ron continued to fire various jinxes at the advancing army, Luna noticed that Harry was repeatedly shouting only one spell.
"Incendio! Incendio! INCENDIO!"
It seemed to be working better than all the spells the others were using, and so she joined him, aiming spells at both the main crowd of spreading Inferi and at those trying to sneak around the sides of their group to surround, engulf and strangle them.
Cold, slimy hands kept trying to grasp at her arms and throat, but she beat them away and continued to fire spells until her voice grew hoarse.
But the bodies just kept on coming.
She resorted to non-verbal spells, noticing as she did so that the others seemed to be weakening.
Hermione and Neville were the first to falter. They both fell to their knees, exhausted, and the Inferi immediately pounced on them. This momentary distraction was enough to take Luna's mind off the job and she soon felt a cold hand enclose around her throat, dragging her down too.
Oh Merlin. We're going to need a miracle to win this one.
The hands tightened around her throat and in a last-ditch attempt to remove them, Luna wordlessly conjured one last spell, trying to ignore the pain scurrying through her bones and chilling her blood to ice. Nothing…
If she hadn't already, she would have had her eyes forced closed as a blinding crimson and gold light swept across her vision, and through her eyelids. The next thing she knew the hands had vanished and she was gasping frantically for breath.
A wet, shaking hand grasped her wrist and tried to pull her upwards but she quickly wrenched her hand away.
Luna opened her eyes slowly to see Ron's pale face hovering over her. She accepted the help and staggered to her feet, her eyes slowly taking in the scene around her.
The Inferi were gone, the floor covered in copious amounts of slime and blood. Harry was busy administering Cheering and energy-recharging Charms to Hermione and Neville.
Luna drew in a deep breath.
"Thanks." She murmured to Ron before taking a few steps to join Harry.
"Thanks." She repeated to Harry, who merely turned to look at her and shrugged. After all, saving someone's life was no big deal. It happened all the time.
"No problem."
Hermione suddenly screamed. "Oh my God! It's moving!"
Luna clearly heard the squelching, splattering sound of guts and insides falling to the bloody floor, and came face to face with yet another Inferi in the form of the late Horace Slughorn. A well-timed "Incendio!" sent him crumbling to the floor, though, and soon the five young adults were hurrying out of the door before anything else could happen.
Out in the darkened street, Ron was the first to recover his voice.
"So much for Margheritas, huh?" he said.