To Kill a Phoenix
Muggins
Author's Note My first ficlet. This is initially suppose to be a one shot, but I may in fact continue it and make it into a short story, depends on the reviewers. :)
Summary: A short ficlet about phoenixes and an anonymous wizard.
For a Phoenix to die, it must drown, willingly or otherwise...
Hope is Phoenix, water is misery, despair and chaos.
It will always come back if it has something to come back to, forever burning bright.
Hope can be left to die to stop the suffering.
Hope can be smothered by the pain.
But even the it is not that simple; It is mostly determined by instinct or power.
Instinct, because no one wants to die, and without hope that is surly what we'll do. Power of will, the will to hope, the little voice in your head that tells you that if you lose hope others will lose the hope they placed in you; That ever present voice that keeps looking for things to hold on to, to attach your hopes to.
Normally the Phoenix merely drowns as it's internal fire is extinguished. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but always in varying degrees of pain.
One lose, if it is important enough to them, is all it takes for some to make them ignore that voice in they're head. Those to who this happens have usually never lost anything important to them.
Sometimes the Phoenix fights, it's fire slowly going out, feeling the pain of the water the whole way. If removed it may or may not survive; But never twice.
A suffering hope that wants to hold on. Its hopes acting as anchors, holding onto anything it can; But we can only have so many anchors...
On occasion, the phoenix's primal instincts of preservation kick in and it withdraws within itself, bringing it's fire with it. If the Phoenix is extracted or removed from the water soon enough, it's fire can be rekindled, stronger than before. Some tests have shown that if it happens that they come into contact with water again they may or may not survive.
Seemingly no longer there, hope can become a spark, ready to set alight anything it can, burning higher and brighter than ever. Our own will determines whether we're ready to hope again or if we've felt to much pain, only to go through it again.
If the Phoenix can survive long enough under water time itself with help, bringing evolution to the mix. The Phoenix will grow accustomed to the water, it becomes something it may not be able to live without.
It may become steam the breath of life;
Dumbledore has seen so much death that it's only a numbness around him; He has suffered so much that he knows that pain all to well and doesn't want others to feel it as well, placing their pain before his own.
Or it may become smoke, the cloud of death.
Voldemort, having grown up in a orphanage was always hoping to be adopted, but as time wore on that hope was extinguished, the lose of his own hope becoming a raging monster inside him, and that monster causes him so much pain that it clouds his mind and makes him think that either the only way to get rid of the pain is to inflict it on other, or that, if it happened to him, others should feel likewise.
Lastly, if the Phoenix is powerful enough, it's will strong enough, it may be able to cause the water around it to evaporate by exceeding such a level of heat that it will remove the oxygen from the water around it, and without oxygen water is only hydrogen.
Like me, I realize that if I let the coldness of it affect me and lose hope people will lose the hope the place in me, causing chain reaction that will lead to everyone in the world losing hope. The loss of loved ones and the ones I held close engulfs me but rarely touches me. I grieve their loses but don't lose myself in the grieving. I can sometimes even make jokes, they do say laughter is the best medicine, except if you've just received and appendicitis.
Because, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger...