Chapter 2
“Okay, I can’t keep referring to you as ‘it’ in my head, because that would be rude. Just to cover my bases, are you non-binary or intersex?”
Steve didn’t precisely know what those words meant, but he knew he was male somehow. He really hated having no memory.
“Female?”
Steve shook his head. He was actually kind of flattered that this child thought his bird form was pretty enough to belong to a woman.
“Male then?” Harry barely waited for a nod of the bird’s head before continuing. “That actually makes sense. Female hawks are supposed to be even bigger than you are, no offense.”
Steve wasn’t actually sure whether or not to be offended, but whatever. This was too interesting to stop because he got huffy.
“Do you have a name?”
Steve nodded. This whole conversation would be much easier if he could speak. However, he was well and truly stuck in bird form, so that wouldn’t be happening, at least not today.
“I just realized you can’t tell me what it is, so this might take a while,” Harry muttered, apparently to himself. “Still, I don’t have anything better to do, and you don’t seem to either. I’m assuming you’d just fly back out through the window if you did.”
Steve nodded, though he wasn’t entirely certain that he needed to. It seemed courteous somehow.
“Okay, I’m going to start going through the alphabet. Nod your head when I get to the first letter of your name, yeah?” Harry felt stupid, but he really didn’t have anything better to be doing.
By the time Harry had figured out his name, Steve was ready to hunt again. He was hungry and bored, a killer combination. As much as he enjoyed speaking to another human being, the yes-or-no conversation was going to get old real fast. He flew out of the window just as Harry was about to ask another question.
“Apparently not.” Harry turned to look at his beloved owl. “I’m sorry Hedwig. I wish that could be you too.” She crooned back at him, and Harry half-smiled before laying back on his bed. “I do wonder what happened to Steve though. This isn’t the type of thing you hear about all the time, after all.”
Steve decided to find a vegetable garden to get some food for Harry. His relatives definitely weren’t feeding him, and he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be fresh vegetables even when they did. Getting a small zucchini free of its plant was not an easy task with bird anatomy, but Steve managed somehow. Worse, the thing was unwieldy and kept trying to escape his claws. Harry had better appreciate this vegetable, because it took far more effort than Steve was convinced it was worth. He dropped it off on the boy’s window sill before turning back to find something for the owl to eat, after he ate of course. It probably wasn’t getting enough food either, locked up in that cage all the time. The first thing Steve was going to do when he had hands again, other than maybe hug Harry, would be freeing Hedwig from that cage. If he couldn’t open the lock somehow, he’d borrow something that could break it off or break the cage open. Even having only been a conscious bird for a day, Steve would never give up flying for anything.
Harry blinked at the vegetable that appeared in his window on little notice. He turned to thank Steve, but the bird was gone again for an unknown reason. Steve sounded like a fake name, now that he thought about it. Was his name actually Steve, or was he lying to Harry? He didn’t have a reason to lie to Harry, not unless this was all some elaborate plot. Harry really didn’t like the thought of that, but the Death Eaters would definitely get a kick out of poor orphan Harry complaining about his life to some random bird that he didn’t actually know the face or name of. Still, Steve hadn’t given him a reason not to trust him. Worse, Steve hadn’t actually given Harry a reason to trust him beyond bringing him food. Had Steve really paid that close of attention when Harry started talking to him? That was both kind of sweet on the bird’s part and incredibly embarrassing on his. Steve, if that was actually his name, swooped back into Harry’s room before he could continue too far down that particular rabbithole. The bird deposited the small creature he’d caught right into Hedwig’s cage this time, and Harry was actually very glad he didn’t have to touch another small dead animal.
“You know the neighbors are going to get suspicious if you keep flying in and out of my window, right?”
Harry would swear that the bird was looking right at him when he called out. Luckily, his feathers smoothed back down after that, so Harry considered the matter settled.
“As long as you’re aware. Thank you for the food, by the way.”
Steve just nodded.
Harry rubbed the vegetable clean the best he could before he bit into it. He hadn’t actually eaten zucchini before, or at least he didn’t think he had. It had definitely been cooked or otherwise disguised if he had eaten it before, that much Harry was sure of. Still, the vegetable was plenty juicy for all that it was bland, and Harry was glad for that. Aunt Petunia hadn’t given him any water today, so he was slightly more dehydrated than usual. The seeds in the dark green vegetable were a somewhat unwelcome surprise the first time he ran into one, but they actually provided some nice texture. If the seeds were somehow poisonous, he trusted that his magic would heal him. Either that, or he’d die in a way that would at least send a big middle finger to Voldemort. The seeds couldn’t be much worse for him than the dirt that had been on the vegetable and whatever lingered on Steve’s talons. Harry shrugged and took another bite. He’d take possible food poisoning over no food, but his stomach was pretty strong at this point from eating so much questionable food during his younger years.
The next few days continued in the same way. Aunt Petunia hadn’t let him out of the room since the snake incident other than his twice daily timed bathroom break, but she’d at least given him a can of soup and a cup of water for dinner each day. With the food that Steve was producing for him, Harry was better fed than he ever had been at the Dursleys’ house before. He was slightly concerned about the bird stealing food for him three times a day. He wasn’t concerned about the fact that Steve was stealing food because the bird seemed smart enough to take food from those that wouldn’t miss it. No, Harry was concerned that someone would set a trap for Steve, manage to injure him when fighting him off, leaving Harry no knowledge of where his bird was, or report him to Animal Control for them to capture and make disappear. Harry was slowly growing used to the bird’s constant presence, and something about him actually helped drive out the nightmares. If for nothing else, Harry wanted Steve around so he could keep sleeping.
The first time Hedwig and Steve met brought up more nervousness in Harry than he’d cared to admit. Steve hid outside when Uncle Vernon came into his room and came back in to find Hedwig temporarily free of her cage. Hedwig had groomed Harry while staring Steve down, obviously staking her claim, and Steve backed off until he was sitting on one of Privet Drive’s lampposts. Hedwig hooted her satisfaction and shot out of the window, coming just close enough to Steve to startle him. He stayed outside until Hedwig returned to Harry’s room. Their encounters after that had been increasingly less chilly. Hedwig still groomed Harry when she had the chance, but she didn’t intimidate or fly at Steve anymore. Harry would take whatever wins he could get and just be grateful that his two birds of prey had at least decided against being antagonistic enemies.
Still, Harry wasn’t getting any mail from his friends. The only birds coming to his window were Steve and Hedwig, and as much as he loved them, he sometimes wished they were different birds, Pig or Errol maybe. Sirius wouldn’t be sending him letters via tropical bird anymore because he was back in London, but he was sure that someone Sirius knew or was spending time with had access to an owl if Sirius didn’t have one himself. Hedwig was coming back without the letters attached to her legs, so Harry knew that his friends at least received his missives. He just didn’t know why they refused to respond. On his more pessimistic days, Harry wondered why Steve stayed with him and when the bird would leave. Harry might be the only one that knew he wasn’t actually a bird, but still. Steve could go anywhere, free on the wind, and no one could stop him. He was obviously a good enough hunter to survive on his own based on the fact that he brought food back for both Hedwig and Harry, so why did he stay? The longer he stayed, the more likely Harry would get him killed, just like he’d gotten his best friends almost killed over and over, and Ginny almost killed, and Cedric actually killed.
“No,” Harry muttered aloud. “Must not think of Cedric. It was my fault he took the Cup, but I wasn’t the one who killed him. I wasn’t. It wasn’t my fault, right?”
Steve listened to Harry’s questions with growing alarm from his regular perch on his bedpost. He knew the child had nightmares sometimes. He always woke up to them and tried to wake Harry up out of them by dropping random pieces of clothing on him. Flailing arms and fragile bird bones were not a good combination, so Steve did what he could. It never felt like enough, and he cursed his inability to actually help and transform back into a human. For now, he quietly whistled out a question, hoping that talking about this Cedric person would help Harry somehow. He did want to understand more about the boy he’d come to care for, but Steve mostly just wanted the night terrors to stop and the haunted look in the child’s eyes to fade away. He might not be able to hug the boy yet, but he could listen, attempt to react reasonably, and, most of all, try to turn back into a human. Something deep inside told him that he was all too familiar with survivor’s guilt, though Steve had no clue why. He hated having no memories.
“I guess you want to know about Cedric then?” Harry chuckled with no joy in his tone.
Steve nodded.
“Are you sure? This isn’t exactly a happy story.”
Steve nodded again, multiple times when once didn’t seem to convince the child that he was being honest.
“Just remember, you asked for this,” Harry warned. He apparently sensed the impending frustrated screech and started talking before Steve could stir up trouble. “I’ve mentioned that I go to Hogwarts, a school for witches and wizards like me, right?”
Steve nodded, hoping that Harry was going to actually continue his story this time.
“Last year was my fourth year there. I actually had hope that nothing bad was going to happen to me, which seems stupid in retrospect because something bad always happens at the end of the year.”
Steve cocked his head to the side in question.
“I’ll explain later. Anyway, last year Hogwarts hosted the Triwizard Tournament, a competition between the three top magical schools in Europe, Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and, of course, Hogwarts. I’m actually not sure if there are more magical schools relatively close to us, so maybe it was just the two closest schools to Hogwarts that were invited. That’s not really the point though. The point is that the two other schools sent some of their upper class students to compete in the Triwizard Tournament with the goal of them winning some prize money and some tripe about eternal fame and glory. As soon as my friend Hermione told me that it’d been canceled in previous years because too many of the contestants died, I should have run the other way as fast as possible, or at least tried to escape the situation somehow.”
Steve stayed quiet and motionless. He got the sense that Harry was only going to tell this once and that any interruptions would shut him down faster than he could screech.
“I didn’t though. Hogwarts’ Headmaster is this guy named Albus Dumbledore, and he’s the most powerful wizard alive right now, at least in the UK. He performed some magic called an age line that would prevent anyone not of age or older from putting their names in the Goblet of Fire to compete. So, all of the people who wanted to compete that were seventeen or older put their names in the Goblet for it to decide who the contestants would be. I have no clue how it decides, but when the day came, my name came out of the Goblet too. Beyond the obvious problem of me being fourteen instead of seventeen, I was the fourth contestant in a competition made for three. Apparently something about having my name come out of the Goblet of Fire meant that I had to participate in the Tournament even though I wasn’t the one to put my name in the bloody thing! Worse, no one believed me, not even my best friend Ron!
“Well, I’m actually not sure if Ron is still my best friend because I haven’t heard from him or anyone else this summer, but that’s another story. Anyway, I’m forced to compete in this deadly competition when I didn’t want to and when the entire school hated me. My school rival, a ponce named Draco Malfoy who’s hated me for a long time, even made badges that said ‘Support Cedric Diggory: the REAL Howarts Champion’ and changed to ‘Potter Stinks’ when pressed. A clever bit of magic that, but the badges spread to the entire school before long. In addition, the new Defense Against Dark Arts teacher was this half-mad guy named Mad-Eye Moody, and he’d both shown us what the Unforgivable Curses - curses forbidden by law because they can be used to control the mind, torture someone to insanity, and kill someone without a way to block it - and practiced the mind control one, Imperio, on us.
“Moody was also the only teacher who’d offered me any help with the first task, and my entire strategy came from him. Hagrid, my friend and the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, might have shown me the dragons, but Moody helped me figure out how to get past it. I didn’t think anything of the unusual interest he was showing me at the time, though I definitely should have in hindsight. Anyway, the first task happened shortly after I warned Cedric exactly what the task was. I’m told to get past a mother dragon the size of a house that’s protecting its eggs and grab the fake golden egg out of her nest. I managed it by flying on my Firebolt, the best racing broom out there, and only got slightly burnt. The school’s opinion of the Tournament and of me changed for a bit after that, but this vicious tabloid reporter named Rita Skeeter published a whole bunch of articles about me and how terrible of a person I was in the Daily Prophet. Most wizards take whatever’s printed in the Daily Prophet as the truth, so almost all of my schoolmates went back to hating me in no time.
“The one good thing that the first task brought was Ron. He finally decided to get his listening ears on and realized that someone would have to be crazy to enter the Triwizard Tournament in the first place. Those aren’t his exact words, but they’re pretty close. Come to think of it, Ron never actually apologized for getting jealous of me and abandoning me instead of listening to me. That’s actually one of the reasons I’m not sure I’m willing to just trust him again willy-nilly. Things after that were fine, I guess, at least for a while. Less people wore the stupid badges, and I was able to focus back on school. I was supposed to be figuring out the clue in the golden egg I’d taken from the dragon’s nest, but I really was not in the mood, probably too glad to have Ron back to rock the boat by trying to figure out the next task.
“Cedric was actually the only reason I figured out the second task at all. He told me to take the egg for a bath. I thought he was crazy and just having me on until I actually tried putting the egg underwater. Instead of the horrible screeching noise that the egg had been making when I opened it, there was this singing. It basically said that something the contestants would miss would be taken from them and placed at the bottom of the lake, and that we’d have an hour to retrieve it. I’m not exactly the best swimmer, Dudley made sure of that by trying to drown me during the few swimming lessons that I got to attend, but the bigger problem was not being able to hold my breath for an hour underwater.
“All of the other contestants were much more advanced than I am at magic. All of them were in their last year at school and close to the top of their classes. Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of my schooling and am generously in the middle of my grade range. All of them did complex magic to make it so they could breathe underwater, but I had no clue how to even try any of it. The only reason I made it through the second task was because of Moody, though I didn’t know it at the time. He manipulated one of my friends who’s absolutely crazy about plants into telling me about gillyweed, a herb that would give me gills and fins for an hour. My crazy house elf friend Dobby - I will explain him some other time because he’s tied to the craziness of a previous year - stole the gillyweed from one of my professors.
“I didn’t think he’d had time to source it responsibly, but I didn’t really think about it. I still had no clue what had been taken from me, and I hadn’t seen Ron all morning. I thought he’d gotten mad about the Tournament again and stormed off in a huff, so finding him unconscious at the bottom of the lake was a rather unwelcome surprise. Apparently, the judges of the Tournament decided to take whoever the champions took to the Yule Ball as hostages. The Yule Ball was a few months before the task and a right mess. I ended up spending almost the entire night with a sulking Ron instead of with my date to the ball or Hermione. Hermione enjoyed herself and had been taken by one of the other champions, a guy named Viktor Krum that Ron basically worshiped. I’m still not sure if he was jealous that Viktor asked Hermione out before he did or that Viktor didn’t ask Ron himself to go to the ball with him.
“I managed to save both Ron and another one of the hostages. I stuck around to make sure that everyone got out safely, and it was pretty clear that one of the other champions wasn’t going to make it to her hostage after both of the other champions had come and gone and the time limit had passed. So, I took her hostage back up to the surface along with Ron because the song said that we wouldn’t get what had been taken from us again if we didn’t get them back ourselves. Rita Skeeter managed to spy on us when we made it back to the platform and published some scathing articles about me and my friends, especially my friend Hermione. I just thought she’d come in disguise or something, because I was too busy shivering in the February air to pay close attention, yet another case of the staff at the school not planning something out or thinking through the actual consequences of their actions.
“Did that sound as bitter out loud as it did in my head? Oh well. The third task we were told outright was a dangerous maze with a whole bunch of different life-threatening traps. We had a month to prepare, so I did my best to find and practice spells above my level because I knew that at least I could try to get close to my competitors. I have honestly no clue what was taught in my classes that month. I’m definitely going to regret that this year, but I didn’t have to take the end of year exams and was a little more focused on the life-threatening danger ahead of me to worry about school. I would study now if I could, but my books are all locked in my old room, the cupboard beneath the stairs.
“I keep getting sidetracked, but you haven’t flown out yet, so I’m going to assume you’re at least pretending to listen. Anyway, I made it through the maze without too much trouble, again due mostly to Moody’s influence. He was actually taking out my competition to ensure that I would be the one to make it to the center of the maze. I ended up saving Cedric from him, but I should have just left him and gone on by myself. But no, my stupid nobility meant that he and I both ended up getting to the Triwizard Cup at the center of the maze around the same time. Whoever touched the Cup first would win the competition and be transported out of the maze in an instant. I’m actually not sure what would have happened to the rest of the contestants, considering the other two were injured and had to be taken out by the teachers.
“All this is to get to this point: I convinced Cedric to take the Cup with me. Both of us were too stubborn and self-sacrificing to take the Cup on our own. I didn’t need more money or fame. I already have too much of that as it is, but with us being both from Hogwarts, I was able to convince him that if we both grabbed it, Hogwarts would win. More than anything, Cedric wanted his dad to be proud of him, so he agreed and grabbed the Cup after I talked to him about it for long enough. We both grabbed it at the same time, and it took us somewhere else, just the way it should have. It just didn’t take us to the place it should have.
“See, the Cup was a Portkey, something that transports you somewhere else when you touch it. We landed somewhere dark and gloomy, somewhere definitely not in Hogwarts or its grounds. Both of us thought that it was part of the task at first, but we figured out pretty quick that it wasn’t. Peter Pettigrew and Voldemort, two people that have repeatedly tried to kill me specifically now, were waiting for us there, and Voldemort ordered Pettigrew t- to- to ‘Kill the spare’ like Cedric was just a waste of space! So he did. You see, Cedric’s death was entirely my fault. If I hadn’t made him take the Cup with me, he’d still be alive.”
Steve had a lot he wanted to say to that tale. Ron was not a good friend, though it seemed unlikely that Harry actually had any good friends based on Steve not seeing anything from them in the days he’d been there.. If Cedric had decided to take the Cup himself, he probably would have died anyway. If Cedric had been slower through the maze or a little less competent against its obstacles, Harry would have gone alone. Most importantly, Cedric signed himself up for the Triwizard Tournament. It sounded like the Tournament had a long and bloody history, so he should have been prepared to die no matter what reassurances were given to him. It was Cedric’s choice that led him to be in that position anyway, and Harry was not at all responsible for someone else deciding to kill Cedric instead of him. Beyond that though, Steve could tell Harry wasn’t done yet, so he kept quiet and still even though everything in him wanted to cry out and tell Harry how wrong he was
“Pettigrew tied me to a gravestone. I had no clue what was happening. I guess I must have been in shock about Cedric’s death, because I didn’t fight back much against him. By the time my brain was even kind of working again, Pettigrew was halfway through a ritual designed to bring Voldemort fully back to life. He was like this ugly husk of a baby before, and that wasn’t exactly the image a powerful and fearsome leader could afford to have when trying to take over the world again. Pettigrew took bone dust from Voldemort’s dad’s grave, the one I was tied on top of, took blood from my arm, and cut off his own hand as ingredients for this ritual to bring Voldemort back into a body. He dropped baby-Voldemort into the cauldron, and a fully grown Voldemort stepped out, though he was all snakey and gross.
“Once he had a body back, Voldemort summoned his minions, these people who wear capes and masks and call themselves Death Eaters, and basically yelled at them for failing to find or help him. They groveled for a bit before he finally remembered his extra special enemy audience. He freed me, made me pick up my wand, and then made me duel him. Our wands formed this weird connection, and eventually I won in the battle of wills. His wand started showing his previous spells. I- I saw my parents. Voldemort killed them when I was a baby, and their shades came through his wand when he lost. They told me they were proud of me and that they could only give me a moment. Cedric’s shade was there too, and he asked me to bring his body back to his parents. Of course, I agreed. I’d gotten the bloke killed, so the least I could do was bring his body back.
“I managed to break the connection between our wands, and the shades rushed him before they disappeared. It’s only because they distracted him and because Voldemort was too proud to have his Death Eaters join in the fight against me that I managed to get away. I made it to Cedric’s body and summoned the Cup to me just in time to get us both out of there. I landed back at Hogwarts in front of a cheering crowd, people who had no idea that Cedric was dead and that Voldemort had come back to life, both because of me. They realized something was not right pretty soon though. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone scream the way Cedric’s dad did when he realized his son was dead.
“Moody pulled me away from it all, got me back up to the castle, and sat me down to talk about what happened. I realized eventually that Moody was not who he said he was, mostly because Moody mentioned a graveyard when talking to me, and I hadn’t told him where I’d been taken at that point. Moody realized that I knew and was about to kill me when the teachers rushed in. Professor Dumbledore apparently realized Moody wasn’t actually Moody when he’d taken me away, though I’m surprised he didn’t realize that earlier because they were supposed to be these great friends or something. The teachers saved me, questioned not-Moody and learned that he put my name in the Goblet of Fire and ensured that I would make it through all of the tasks, and had been the inside man all year to make sure that Voldemort would be resurrected.
“Eventually, I made it to the hospital wing and got some treatment. I’d been bitten by a venomous spider before I touched the Cup, among other things, so I was out of it for a long time. When I truly woke up, I found out that I’d apparently won the Triwizard Tournament even though my ‘win’ was engineered and the money should have at least been split with Cedric’s parents. They wouldn’t take the money, and I couldn’t stand to have it, so I gave it to Ron’s brothers. I knew they wanted to make a joke shop, so I told them to consider it an investment. Anyway, the school year ended pretty soon after that and I ended up back here. My friends haven’t gotten in touch either, so I have no clue what’s going on in the Wizarding World right now or how they’re doing.”
Steve had really quite a lot he wanted to say. His shape limited him, so he settled for gently settling on the stomach of the boy who was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling with tears running down his face. He spread his wings out, doing his best to hug Harry even if he couldn’t actually hug the child. Harry was the victim in this, victim of the orchestration of whoever had been playing Moody all year and Voldemort. Cedric’s death was not Harry’s fault, nor was it his fault for being a highly unwilling participant in a ritual meant to bring his greatest enemy back, especially since he’d been poisoned at the time and unable to fight back against grown men who were fully prepared for him due to the physical, emotional, and mental shocks of fighting his way to the center of the maze and seeing a classmate die in front of him. Steve couldn’t say any of this, not yet, so he settled in for the next best thing - the best hug he could manage while still a bird.