Soleil
Tom had believed that he did not need a teddy bear, but he found in the weeks after the bombing that nearly destroyed Wool’s that it was much harder to sleep. He might not have noticed, except that everyone was having nightmares, and even though the phoenix was supposedly his she seemed to consider it her duty to soothe anyone in the building who was having a bad night. That was how he discovered that without the theoretically negligible weight of a firebird on top of him, he would dream that she hadn’t been there when the bomb fell. He would wake from nightmares of being torn apart by flying rubble in the darkness. And every time, he couldn’t breathe again until she reappeared in a lick of flame. Light, and warmth, and a promise of protection if the sirens were late again with the warning. She always seemed to know when to come back.
He named her Soleil. It was just too vexing to hear the others call her a thousand stupid nicknames they made up. It was like at school all over again, except they called her things like Sing-Song and Teddy Bird instead of Spiky. None of them knew she could turn into a girl, either. They hadn’t ever figured out that the angel the night of the bombing was the very same creature. Person. Being, he supposed, was the technical term. He told them to call her Soleil, and that she was a secret they couldn’t tell adults like Mrs. Cole about, and for some reason they listened.
Then there was the night in early August when everyone settled down comparatively quietly, including the little ones, and he lay there thinking instead of falling asleep. Soleil reappeared while he was still awake, landing on the foot of his bed and stepping carefully across the mattress. Her feet weren’t oversized anymore. Her tail had grown into a long draping thing easily as magnificent as the one Dumbledore’s phoenix had. In Tom’s opinion, Soleil’s plume was nicer - it had more of those odd, slim curlicued feathers in it. They were shinier than the other kind of feathers. He thought normal birds didn’t have curly feathers at all. It must be a phoenix thing.
He lay still and watched her fold up her long heron-like legs and sit down on the bed next to him. She crooked her neck and peered at him in return.
“If Mrs. Cole knew I had a girl in my bed, she would be furious,” he remarked quietly. Soleil let out a soft chortling sound and laid her magnificent head on his chest.
He hesitated for a bit before taking one hand out from under the covers and petting it. She made that strange purring noise. It wasn’t really like a cat’s purr, but he didn’t know what else to call it.
“Are you really a girl? Or are you really a bird?” he asked. “Is Dumbledore’s phoenix a girl, too? Or - I suppose he says he’s a boy.”
To his utter astonishment, the next moment there was a winged woman laying on top of him instead of a phoenix sitting beside him.
“Eek!” he squeaked, just managing to stifle the sound so it wouldn’t wake the babies across the room.
She wasn’t naked this time, although at first he thought she was because her arms were bare. But no, she was wearing a dress with very short sleeves. It was white and had enormous red flowers on it. She folded her arms over his chest and rested her chin on them as though he were a piece of lounging furniture.
“I could be a girl if you want,” she informed him.
“Most girls don’t have bloody great wings on their backs,” Tom pointed out somewhat faintly. Her hair was quite as blonde as her feathers, and had just as many curlicues as her plume.
“I didn’t say I could be most girls,” she pointed out, quite sensibly. “I can be something like the girl I used to be, though. I hadn’t considered trying to be a boy.”
Tom thought about that and tried to adjust to the peculiar experience of having a conversation with someone who seemed to think it was appropriate to just… lay on top of him. If she’d been properly human, he would have removed her from his person immediately. Only she wasn’t. Even shaped like this, she weighed hardly anything and her magic was hot enough to feel through his pyjamas. It was a different kind of hot to the stifling August air. Tom wasn’t even certain hot was the right word for the sensation; it was just the closest he could think of.
“I didn’t know you could talk to me,” he said.
“I talk to you all the time,” she replied. “You just don’t listen very well because you don’t really care what I’m saying.”
He couldn't actually argue with that.
“You don’t seem all that offended,” he noted. She shrugged.
“Most people don’t really care about the things I say. Why should you be any different?” she asked.
Somehow, Tom was fairly certain that was an insult, no matter how unconcernedly she’d said it. Or maybe it was an insult precisely because of how unconcerned she was. As though she didn’t expect any better of him than the average person.
“You’re unsettling,” he muttered.
“I suppose I am,” she agreed easily. “Would you like me to be a bird again so that you can go back to ignoring me?”
And that was an insult, too.
“No,” he snapped before really thinking about it.
“Oh. Well, okay,” she said, and she had the gall to sound pleased about it.
Tom immediately regretted not taking the opportunity to get her to stop being - whatever it was she was being.
“Why are you laying on me?” he demanded in a hushed tone.
“Because your magic shivers less when I do, and then it doesn’t make me feel like sneezing as much,” she replied.
Tom opened his mouth and closed it again without responding. What was he even supposed to say to that?
“There’s a word for the shivering, I think,” she mused after a moment. “Discombobulate. Disembark. Dipsa - oh, no, that’s a kind of snake. Hold on.” She held up one finger and closed her eyes. Tom stared at her in fascinated dismay. “Discord. Not quite. Hmmmm -” And she hummed a sound that was quite discordant indeed; it wasn’t like her usual noises, even those that contained more than one pitch. “Dissonant. That’s it. Your magic is dissonant, and it makes me sneeze.”
Tom very much wanted to know what the hell that was supposed to mean, and also very much did not want to lose whatever game they were playing by asking.
He couldn’t decide whether she seemed more dangerous like this or when she was shaped like a bird. True, at the moment she didn’t have a beak or claws that could tear metal like it was paper. On the other hand, if she was able to shield against a bomb strike without breaking a sweat - if she even could sweat, which maybe she couldn’t - she was obviously plenty able to work deadly magic in this form as well.
It was unnerving to have such a dangerous creature sprawled on top of him.
And yet, Soleil had protected him, hadn’t she? She was, in fact, the first person in the history of his existence, with the exception of his dead and nameless mother, to bother doing so. Even Mrs. Cole’s basic care wasn’t particularly protective. She treated all of the waifs under her purview like duties she’d reluctantly accepted. But that night, he’d seen Soleil’s eyes inches from his own, wide and blue and alarmed on his behalf.
He would have died.
“What do you mean, you used to be a girl?” Tom asked.
“Exactly what I said,” Soleil replied. Then she turned back into a bird and nestled her terrifyingly sharp beak under his chin like she meant to sleep there. Even though he was fairly certain she never slept.