Fawkes
Dialogue marker: mental communication is italicised and bracketed by single quotation marks.
Black Lodge, 5th November 2003
“You went out, in a time like this, just for fun?” It’s Hermione, huffing.
“You were… a little child, Harry? How small?” Luna, curious.
“Since when are you a metamorph, Harry? Did you nick some of Tonks’ blood and get adopted by her? Why don’t we see the morphs everyday, like Tonks did with hers? You know she’s infamous in the office for that….” Neville, interested… and somehow eager.
“I request that you bring me to the doorway, when next you go there.” Zabini – so formal!
“Were you much different, when you’re small? Is that why you didn’t show us?” It’s Justin’s contribution, rising above the clamour… professionally interested; as in, I feel like a sample of something under a microscope.
And George wheedles for a chance to test his products on my child version.
And Susan is too silent, just staring thoughtfully at me… which might mean many, many things.
All, because Teal’c encouraged me to come clean about what he and I did yesterday till early this morning, after a panicking and stressed Hermione tore him apart verbally… and nearly physically… when she caught us returning from our camping excursion just after dawn, with me thankfully following behind Teal’c in my adult Harry Potter morph. She accused him of “kidnapping” me for the whole day without directly informing her beforehand, and I didn’t like it, so I acquiesced to Teal’c’s request during breakfast… and regret it, now, being under such bombardment.
I glare briefly at Teal’c, who is seated to my right at the dining table, munching contentedly on a buttered toast like a cow on grass, then transfer the glare first to Hermione, then to Justin.
“I need some rest because of times just like this, Mione,” I address the fuming bushy-haired witch, first, then point a finger at Justin while insisting, “And you, I shan’t give you and George any details if you’re going to go ‘mad scientist’ on me.”
Justin grins to that, unbelievably. “Where did you get the reference for mad science, Potter? Thought you’re all wizarding-like?”
I simply move the pointing finger back to Hermione, who glares sulkily back at me.
And then, before anybody can say anything else, Odi pops in with a pile of letters and ledgesrs in his arms.
“Bless you, my good elf!” I exclaim with dramatic relief, although I usually despise having to do paperwork and look at reports in relation to the Houses I’m in charge of.
I grin when the elf hands the load over with a blush and a bemused smile. Then, while shouting “Thank you” to Odi, I dash out of the dining room with all alacrity.
On arriving in my bedroom, though, doing my duties to the Houses is the farthest thing in my mind, especially as Teal’c has just stepped in after me, bearing the remnants of my breakfast – plus some, it appears – on a tray.
“We need to find a way how you can send the Jaffa to me, don’t we?” I muse aloud as he sets the tray on my desk beside my pile of work. On spying his quirked eyebrow, I hastily add, “Umm. Thanks for the breakfast, by the way. You could sit wherever you want, if you’d like to stay. We can brainstorm, then. I wish Fawkes were here, so I could ask if he could fly people between planets.”
“Fawkes?” he inquires.
I open my mouth to explain. Before I can say anything, though, my ears catch the notes of a beautiful, etherial, wordless song. It plays softly at first, as if from afar, then gradually gets louder and louder, though it’s still not certain from which direction it’s coming. It’s not like my and Zabini’s singing from before, when we healed Teal’c, but in a way it’s pretty similar.
And Teal’c notices it.
“Your doing, Harry?” He looks quizzical but calm, perhaps soothed by the calming quality of the song.
“No, it’s a phoenix,” I whisper, confused but awed and increasingly ecstatic. Then I call softly to the empty space between the bed Teal’c is seated on and my own seat at the desk, “Fawkes? Is that you?”
A brilliant burst of white and yellow and orange and red fire is the answer, which then contracts into a flaming ball like the sun, which then moves slowly into shape as if an invisible sculptor were moulding some fiery clay into the figure of a bird.
And Fawkes glides there, red-golden, with fiery wings wide-spread and head held up high on an arched, slender neck, crooning joyously.
A split-second after, I’m up and hugging him with a wide, wide smile on my face, my eyes wet and burning.
“I thought you were gone,” I breathed into the feathers on his back. “I thought you went with Professor Dumbledore. Nobody ever saw you after.”
He chirps and grooms my hair. My chest aches. I miss such gesture from Hedwig, even after seven years.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell him. “Feel free to stay, or visit.”
Loosening my embrace, I turn him gently towards the still-quizzical-but-calm Teal’c, then, and introduce them to each other.
The phoenix looks at me sharply, deeply, when I cap the introduction by asking if he can fly from planet to planet.
Then, without any warning, he strikes forth and nips at the lobe of my left ear, drawing blood.
“Ow! What–!” But he already cries on the small wound before I can complain further.
And before I can persist with the half-vocalised complaint, a voice that is neither mine nor Teal’c sounds in my mind, male and rather young and terribly amused. `You asked me if I could fly from planet to planet,` it says. `I assumed that, by asking about it, you would like to visit other planets. By bonding us together, I can use you or items and properties that belong to you as anchors whenever I am travelling.`
I glare at Fawkes, who is now gliding high, far away from the reach of a startled and rather angry Teal’c. “Is that you talking in my mind, Fawkes?” I accuse the phoenix.
`Who else?` the mental voice chirps. Damn bird.
My glare intensifies. “I don’t appreciate you bonding with me without telling me.”
`I would not be able to talk mind to mind with you if I were not bonded to you,` the voice – Fawkes – sounds exasperated, now. `Unless if you shift to your true form, that is. But now I can also talk to those whom you are tied to, like your angry friend over there, not just to you.`
“My true form?” I scowl. “How could you know about that? Is that a phoenix’s power – to detect a metamorph’s true form?”
Fawkes bobs his head. He says nothing to me, though, afterwards, but rather directs his beady black eyes to the glaring Teal’c.
Whose glare lessens a little, soon enough.
`Your new friend is one stubborn and overprotective man, Harry,` Fawkes grouses to me, afterwards, as he glides down to perch on my desk. `Or should I say, Loki Laufey-childe?`
“Huh?” I gape. “You know very well that I am Harry James Potter, Fawkes,” I sigh. “Have your time elsewhere muddled your memory? I thought Dumbledore talked about me, at least sometimes, with how he’s interested in my doings and all.”
`Oh, he did,` the phoenix sniffs, torn between irritation, exasperation, amusement and disgust. `He was obsessed with you, rather. Harry this, Harry that – he planned everything and put plans atop plans for various possible outcomes.`
My heart twinges. – I rarely thought of Dumbledore post-Voldemort, partly because Andy despised him so much. But Rita Skitter’s book – as well as Andy’s own acerbic but shrewd viewpoint about him and his actions and decisions – have shaken my faith and view on him so much. To think that I admired him so, and was proud to declare myself Dumbledore’s man before everyone who would challenge me or the old codger…. But sometimes, I wish I could return to the before-revelation period, to obliviously believe that I’ve got someone who protects me from all the ills of the world I was reentering, to have someone whom I could view as a grandfather.
`Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?` Fawkes croons sympathetically while grooming my hair again. `But you must see truth, friend, or you might turn as blinded as he was.` He sounds sad and regretful, now. `Albus believed that he was doing good for the world and for you. I nearly left him numerous times. I did not because he managed to convince me to stay, and because I was yet uncertain about my own decisions, given that I was fairly young and inexperienced when I bonded with him. My mother lectured me for years after he died and I returned to her.`
I snort listlessly. Idly playing with a quill, I redirect the conversation back to the earlier point – the point that he hasn’t touched upon. `Where did you come up with ‘Loki Laufey-childe’ for my name? It’s so far-fetched, even for my wildest imagination.`
He sniffs again. `From you, of course. It’s imprinted on your escence. I can’t help but see. It’s more powerful than ‘Harry James Potter’, although ‘Harry’ is equal to it. Then again, mother-names are always more powerful than anything else.`
`I’ve got only one mother, you know, so my name is ‘Harry’, not whatever-it-is,` I point out. The feather of the quil is shredded, slowly but surely, in my rising agitation. – There’s something that I’m about to know that I’m afraid to know but I must know, and I don’t like it.
Fawkes seems to notice it, and sympathise with me in a way, because he rushes to say, `No, you are not just human, Harry. You are human, now, but you weren’t before, and that previous you surfaced recently – probably in the last few years, since I didn’t notice this while I was with Albus. I don’t know who your previous body’s mother was, but her name seems to be Laufey, judging from the form of your own name.`
The quil breaks in my trembling hand, just so.
`I am… a reincarnation?` I venture out, with my hand now gripping the broken pieces of the quill spasmodically. The look and feel of my true form passes across the fore of my mind, then, and Fawkes acknowledges it with a mental nod.
`That form is much more powerful than your human form, not to mention existing prior to your human form, so it makes sense that it has become your baseline form,` he muses.
`The mother of my previous self is dead, then, by now?` Grief floods me, although I’ve never even known that this other woman ever existed.
` I don’t know.` Fawkes flaps a wing slightly, which is apparently his version of a shrug, as he transmits a mental one to me at the same time. `She might be alive, still. You feel terribly young, so she might be not as old as you might think. If you would permit me, I could come in there and try to find a link that might tie you to her.`
`Link?` I ask, while mechanically spooning porridge into my mouth from the bowl that is suddenly set in front of me.
`Soul bond,` he explains, then snorts. `Not what you might read in some books and magazines, however.`
I laugh, mentally, and feel the edges of my lips twitch in a nearly irrepressible grin, despite the grief that’s still hounding me. `How did you know? Did Dumbledore like such reading materials? Or you?`
`Tease me more and I shall not help you,` the phoenix retorts primly, so I give him the mental version of my hands-up.
`Maybe not now, though?` I remind him. `I still need to help Teal’c fetch his people – the Jaffa – who need help from me, and they live in other planets.`
`When you are more settled,` he agrees. `But not too long, I think, or you will… what the Muggleborn like to say? Chicken out?`
I can’t help it. I laugh, both mentally and out-loud. `Yes,` I tell him. `I wonder, though, why not ‘bird out’?`
He sends me a double dose of mental and physical glare, then flicks his tail at me as he turns away to address Teal’c… who is apparently still seated on the bed and has discreetly fed me the rest of my breakfast.
`Now,` he announces pointedly, perhaps due to me still chuckling softly, `let us talk about the Jaffa that need our help, Teal’c of Chulak. I have linked the three of us together, so we can hear what each of us say to the others.`
And with that, I gladly set aside my newfound personal issues.