Chapter 2: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The remembered scene into which they fell was one of chill winds and pitch-black night, with only the dim glow of a wand ("lumos") to see that it was Fawkes and Dumbledore, creeping silently into the neglected cemetary. Pushing through the weeds, they advanced upon the kudzu-covered monument which marked the grave of an obviously once-important aristocrat.

Fawkes circled the monument, surveying its weathered surface, and then perched himself upon a ledge partway up the monument, pointing at a statuette of what looked like a house-elf guarding a small opening in the side of the monument.

Dumbledore gazed intently at the statuette, and then at Fawkes. "Ah, you've found him." Dumbledore then tapped the small statuette with his wand, and uttered a spell he had learned decades ago as an exchange student in Canada: "Quando Omni Flunkus Moratati!"

And with a ghastly groan, the statuette lay down as though dead, allowing access to the chamber behind it. It contained only one item. "There it is.", whispered Albus, shining his light onto a small covered pale gray pot made of carved stone. What it most resembled was an incense burner.

"That was the horcrux, wasn't it?", blurted Hermione. Ron shot her a glance that clearly remembered her earlier scolding. "Patience, Mione; he'll show us what it is." Fawkes shook his head. "At the time, we both thought the horcrux was within the incense burner, but things turned out a bit more complicated than that."

As the memory continued, Dumbledore then pulled from his pocket a small vial of blue goop, and dipped the tip of his wand into it. And from the wandtip there issued a bluish-white fog, which drifted around the incense burner. As Dumbledore gazed into the fog, a look of dissapointment crept across his face. He had fully expected to see an image of Lord Voldemort within the fog. Instead, he saw only symbols. Symbols he recognized as those of a summoning charm. This was no horcrux. Perhaps, though, it was meant to summon one.

Fawkes added a bit of explanation: "We went back to Hogwarts after that, for it was quite late. A lengthy series of tests revealed the details of the summoning charm. The incense burner, when lit under a full moon, should call to its location the horcrux. And so we waited, until the next full moon."

The memory then jumped to the scene of a brightly-lit open clearing. There was a thin cover of snow on the ground, and the full moon was high overhead. The air was still, and the only sound to be heard was the crunching of Albus's shoes upon the crusty snow. He placed the incense burner atop a large fieldstone, and took aim with the wand. "Igneo!"

The incense burner began to glow an odd shade of greenish magenta, or, as it is also known, peuse. A thin wisp of smoke drifted skywards, as Fawkes and Albus sat waiting for whatever would find them.

At the edge of the clearing there was a rustling of the leaves. Fawkes and Albus turned slowly towards the sound, and saw the small, graceful form advancing towards them. It was a unicorn.

All the color drained from Albus's face. This was bad. If for his horcrux Voldemort had indeed chosen not only a living animal, but of all creatures, the pure and innocent unicorn, which one must never kill lest one be forever cursed, then Albus was going to have to either let the horcrux exist and the dark lord be immortal, kill the unicorn and be cursed, or figure out some way to extract the bit of evil soul without harming the poor creature which contained it.

The first option was simply unacceptable. The unicorn-turned-horcrux would almost certainly run straight to Voldemort and alert him to what Albus was doing. He cringed at the second option... was being forever cursed the price he would have to pay for his part in finishing the dark lord? As for the third, he had no idea how to proceed. In general, the way to destroy the fragment of soul within a horcrux is to destroy the horcrux itself. The unicorn was by now only a few feet away.

"PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!" It was the only thing he could think of at the moment. At least this way the unicorn could not run off, and he would have a moment to consider what to do next. "petrificusss totalusss!", echoed a ghostly wail that seemed to come from somewhere above the unicorn, and then Albus heard a loud "clunk" beside him. He turned to see Fawkes, lying motionless on the ground. From above the unicorn there was now to be heard a mirthless laugh, a sound that was as much a signature of Voldemort as was the dark mark itself. A thin white vapor was rising from the unicorn's fur, coalescing into a small, vaguely Voldemort-shaped cloud which sat astride the beast's back like a jockey.

Albus had expected a trinket, some item to be delivered to him, containing a more inert form of horcrux, as the Tom Riddle diary was. Instead, here was an active fragment of ghost, fully capable of casting spells. Worse, it was protected by the purity of the unicorn. He was quite unprepared for this. He remembered the last time he had faced Voldemort, in the Ministry of Magic. There, he had other Order members with him, and had used a suit of armor to block the Dark Lord's death curse. But now, there was only barren ground, an incense burner, and the now immobile Fawkes.

Raising his wand, Albus had intended to separate the bit of Voldemort ghost from the unicorn and imprison it within the incense burner. But it was already too late. "Expelliarmusss!", echoed the ghostly jockey, and Albus felt the wand being torn from his hand. And he knew what was coming next. The Green Light, the Unforgivable Curse, the end of his days on this Earth, the Avada Kedavra.

What possesed Albus Dumbledore to do what he did next must surely have been the fact that there was absolutely nothing else that he could have done, except to have done nothing, to have been killed right where he stood, and to not only have failed to kill a part of Voldemort, but to have the dark lord alerted to the fact that his horcruxes were being targeted. Or maybe it was just sheer blind panic.

Albus grabbed his petrified phoenix by the feet, and swung him like a baseball bat at the one-seventh ghost of Lord Voldemort. Whatever he expected to accomplish by this, I'll never know. Strangely, even though it was only a ghost, only an insubstantial vapor, it was as though he had struck an anvil, and his hand stung from the recoil.

An instant later came the fiery explosion.

Albus awoke to find himself lying on the ground, his hand blackened and smoking. Fawkes was sitting quietly on the scorched ground, atop a small pile of his own ashes. Nearby lay the unicorn. Dead.

Sitting up, he surveyed the morbid scene with his weary eyes, which soon brimmed over with tears. Tears of shame, for he had indeed killed a unicorn. Tears of terror, for he now would surely be forever cursed. And tears of guilt, for he had cost his poor phoenix Fawkes yet another of his lives. Albus doubled over in pain, a pain next to which the Cruciatus curse would have seemed like mere scraped elbow. A pain of the heart, a pain of the soul, a pain that felt like it was ripping him in two. Screaming like a banshee, he clutched at his heart, from which a grayish-white vapor was escaping. His soul had indeed been torn, and a part of it was leaving him.

Fawkes took notice, and quickly hopped over to Albus. And like a smoker taking a long drag from a pipe, the phoenix inhaled that vapor, taking into himself the piece of his friend's soul that had been ripped away.

As the two of them limped their way back to Hogwarts, Fawkes consoled his still-sobbing friend: "You did what you had to, Albus. You did something a good many would give their lives to do: you destroyed a part of the Dark Lord."

Albus Dumbledore said nothing for the rest of the trip back, although his tears had stopped. It was only as he was climbing into bed, and the phoenix was stepping up to his perch, that Albus turned to Fawkes with a look of curiosity. "You can talk ?"

And there ended the pensieve trip. Fawkes opened his beak and vacuumed up all of the shimmering silver mist fromt the big mixing bowl, restoring the thread of memory to his own mind.

Review response:

Knights of Ne: I'm a Fawkes fan too. The fact that Albus chose a phoenix shows he had wisdom early on. What other creature could swallow the Avada Kedavra and live to tell the tale? I plan to reveal in detail the secret powers of phoenixes.

And again, reviews are greatly appreciated.

Chapter 3 is mostly dialogue, and and explains in more detail what it means to be a phoenix.