Like a Phoenix

It's in the very last moments before that sickly green light hits him that Harry realizes something.

I don't want to die, he thinks as the Killing Curse makes its way to him, path unimpeded. I don't want to die, he repeats it like a mantra and closes his eyes, trying to escape the sight of the spell hurtling towards him.

(It's no use. In the relative darkness of the forest, the green light of the Killing Curse is bright enough that Harry can see it even with his eyes closed.)

It would be so easy to step to the side. To lob a spell at Voldemort or Bellatrix. To fight as he always has instead of standing here, waiting for his death.

But he can't. He won't.

It doesn't matter what he wants, it doesn't matter that he's scared even as he's resigned to his fate – none of that matters.

Because for the good of the wizarding world, Harry must die. For the good of the wizarding world, the horcrux that lives within Harry must be destroyed for Voldemort to truly die.

And so he does.

(And it is.)

"I've got to go back, haven't I?"

"That is up to you."

"I've got a choice?"

"Oh yes."

When Harry wakes, it's a surprise.

Dead.

He'd been dead.

He'd seen … Dumbledore? The horcrux inside of his head?

And now he was alive.

Somehow, he felt more like himself than he thinks he's ever felt. Like some fog has been lifted – like he's just now able to see clearly, think clearly for the first time in his life.

A strange sort of energy is thrumming beneath his skin and it takes everything he has not to squirm as he plays down on the ground, then in Hagrid's arms. The tingling sensation only gets worse in the final moments of his battle with Voldemort and he swears he sees some sort of orange flame wafting off of his body out of his peripherals, but when he turns to look, after Voldemort is dead and gone, there's nothing there.

He pushes the strange instance to the side. While, after seven years Harry is very much desensitized to the wonders of magic, the idea that he had somehow spontaneously caught caught on fire but hadn't felt the heat and hadn't gotten hurt was simply too ridiculous to entertain. So he tries to forget seeing that orange flame. He tries to convince himself that he'd hallucinated it in the wake of coming back to life.

It works, only because Harry doesn't have time to think about it. After the war, Harry attends funeral after funeral after funeral, even for the people he had never met. It was his fault they had died in the first place, because if he'd defeated Voldemort earlier they'd very likely still be alive, so was only right he'd be there as their families mourned – as he mourned – to remind him of all of his failings and to give the deceased a proper send off.

So while it's very easy to stay busy and keep himself from thinking of the newest way in which he's an outlier even among wizards and witches …

It's not as easy to ignore the energy that burns beneath his skin, that sets every nerve from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet a light, that won't even give him reprieve for one moment.

In the weeks after the war, the feeling only gets worse. There's an aching loneliness that comes to him late at night, a yearning that leaves him light–headed and shaking. For what, Harry can never name. The burn – the warmth – it always gets so much worse during these times and as a result, Harry never quite manages to get enough sleep during the night.

With shaking hands, dark under–eye bags, and an unhealthy pallor combined with his already unhealthy weight (having never gained back what he'd lost during what should have been his seventh year of Hogwarts, but decidedly was not) – Harry imagines that he looks even worse now that he had during the hunt for Voldemort's horcruxes.

And the dreams when he does manage to doze off, those are almost the worst part. The warmth is so much more intense as he sleeps and they're so hazy, but there are people in his dreams, important people and when Harry wakes, he can't remember what they look like or why they're so important to him.

It reeks of magical shenanigans. Something is going on with Harry's body, with his brain, and he can't even ask Hermione to help him research because she'd gone off to Australia with Ron to try and find her parents. Harry knows, however, that if he were to send her an owl explaining exactly what's going on she would come back. She would do it because, along with Ron, she's his best friend and she would never not help if it was within her means to do so.

And that's why he can't send her a letter.

What she's doing in Australia is infinitely more important than any strange dream that Harry has or the persistent warmth that bubbles beneath his skin.

He can figure this out on his own. He can. He will, if only to get a good night's rest.

With that new goal in mind, Harry sets out to craft a research strategy, just as he's seen Hermione do before. He makes a list of all the possible reasons for his ailment, lists too, where he can gather books to do his research. He goes to bed pleased – at least until the ache starts back up once more, the yearning for something that Harry couldn't name, not even if he wanted to.

With his anger and lack of sleep feeding into his somewhat impulsive nature, Harry decides, wrapped in three blankets and wearing his snitch–patterned pajamas and a rather fearsome scowl, that instead of sitting in bed and waiting for this feeling to pass …

Instead of another wistful, unfulfilling dream where he wakes known he's missing something or even several somethings …

Instead of doing that –

He's going to go where this feeling is telling him to go and follow the longing wherever it takes him.