So! Did you like it? I hope you did. I certainly enjoyed writing it! Oh, can anyone tell me where we've seen wings in Harry Potter before? Computer cake and a reply to anyone who gets it.
-o-
"Love is how you earn your wings."
- Karen Goldman
His hands caught a bundle of wet feathers. They were long and glossy black, with golden tips, and seemed to be... attached to him. Harry pulled on them and frowned as he felt a pain where they seemed to be rooted. He skated his hands up and over, to where he could feel bone and muscle, then followed that to the base, where it melded into... him. He flexed his shoulders and ducked reflexively as large wings beat the air above him. Harry's eyes grew wide. She had said that it would manifest in strange ways, but he had never thought she meant this! It would appear that he, Harry Potter, had wings.
-o-
Harry froze, not believing what his fingers were telling him. Slowly he flapped the wings, his wings, above his head. He could feel the air against his feathers, although that was wrong as normal people didn't have feathers. But his life had never been normal, now had it? After being hit by a car and taking no injuries, seeing his dead Godfather, and having some creepy woman give him unknown powers, he was just going with things as they happened.
"Okay. I have wings. I... have wings." Awkwardly, he folded them into a slightly painful shape so that they would lay flat along his back. They still stuck out two meters above his head and touched the ground, but they no longer filled the damp alley he had appeared in. There was no way he could go out into Muggle London like this, or for that matter, the Wizarding World. He had never seen anyone with wings before and knowing how Wizards reacted to anything sentient and non-human, well, he was in for a rough time. Would he be allowed back at Hogwarts? Would he have to go on the run? What if the Ministry snapped his wand?
Calm down. Harry flinched at the voice inside his head, as it most certainly wasn't his. You can easily hide them. Use the ring.
"What?"
Harry remembered the wooden ring in his pocket and pulled it out. The dull wood sat heavily in the palm of his hand and he hesitated before slipping it on. Harry took a step forward in surprise, the wings didn't hurt anymore, it was like they weren't there... He turned around and succeeded in scraping his wings against the walls of the alley, only it wasn't painful. A tingle passed through him and he realized that his now transparent wings were inside the wall. He reached out to touch them and his hand met nothing but air. Yes, they are invisible and intangible to everyone but you. And a few others. You cannot fly when they are in this form.
"Fly?!"
That caught Harry's attention. If he could fly without a broom, well, then maybe this was worth the trouble it was causing. Yes, the voice was laughing at his sudden eagerness. When you are not wearing the ring you can fly. There have been other changes, but I'll leave those for you to figure out. You have all summer after all.
"Other changes..." Harry repeated. "Wait, why did you do this? Why did you choose me? Just because I'm the Boy-Who-Lived?" His voice twisted in bitterness at the last three words.
No, of course not. You're the Boy Who Lived because of me. I chose you when you were born, and reinforced my protection the night you defeated the other Heir. Without me you would be long dead, with most of the Wizarding World alongside you.
"What? I..."
No, learn for yourself. I hear that books are a good place to start. May I suggest the nearest Muggle Library, section 719.2?
And then she was gone, leaving him alone in a dark alley. A car drove past and Harry shuddered, trying to get memories of the other car out of his head. He walked to the edge of the alley and peered out, trying to see how many people he would have to run from if the ring didn't actually hide the wings. There was no one out on the streets, it had been raining too heavily and for too long for anyone to feel comfortable walking around quite yet. Harry took a deep breath and stepped out of the alley, his ghost wings unfurling by themselves and hanging in the air next to him. Fighting off the urge to flap his wings, he rolled his shoulders and started walking towards Privet Drive. A few jewel colored curtains twitched as he walked past, but as there were no screams or horrified gasps, he assumed that the ring was doing what it was supposed to.
The gravel crunched underfoot as he dragged himself up the walk to number four, and he couldn't stop himself from hesitating before entering the house, treasuring his last moments of freedom. A window box of petunias made threatening sounds as the breeze rustled them slightly, tapping against the glass as Harry opened the door and stepped inside. The soft click the door made alerted his Uncle to his presence in the house.
"Boy! Here!"
Wishing he could desperately escape, Harry walked into the living room. His uncle was lying on the sofa with a tub of ice cream, looking for all the world like a bloated walrus, bristly mustache and all. "Yes?"
"And what sort of time do you call this? Dudley was home an hour ago! I won't tolerate this, no sir, you're not leaving your room until school starts again! You're lucky you're not back in the cupboard, you..." Harry's anger flared as his uncle kept talking. It was all well and good that his last remaining family hated him with a passion, but now they were chaining him to the house like a dog? Chaining him inside? No way.
"No." The quiet declaration stopped his Uncle like he'd been slapped, his tirade stopping mid-word. "No, I will not. You will allow me to leave when I wish and how I wish." An idea began to grow in Harry's brain and he smiled, hopefully it would keep the Dursleys out of his feathers, sorry, hair until the end of the summer.
"Because I am not Harry Potter." Vernon's face went white as old porridge and he stuttered meaningless words. "Harry Potter died this night, hit by a car in the street. You have failed as guardians."
With a thump that shook the entire house, the fat man slipped off the sofa and onto the floor. Harry heard his Aunt shriek in the other room and run to her husband, her cleaning gloves swinging from her boney wrists as she reached down to help her husband. She looked up at Harry, her face pinching in rage at his appeared insubordinance. Harry turned to the woman and gave a creepy smile, before continuing his charade.
"Harry Potter is dead. His spirit will continue here before it moves on. Do not speak to him. Do not react to him. Do not realize he is there."
Harry could see that they were getting skeptical of what he was doing and decided that it was time to use his biggest weapon. Slowly, praying that this would work, he moved his wings into position, slightly above his head. They filled the entire room, arching above him and behind the furniture. With a bit of satisfaction he saw that when he made them tangible he would be knocking over one of Aunt Petunia's prized vases, a horrible old thing with fleur de lis all over it. He slipped the ring off his finger and watched with a detached fascination as his wings seemed to blush from his back, color filling from his shoulders to the tips of his feathers, until the entire set was stretched out in the room. The vase crashed to the ground, and it struck Harry that they were huge, definitely enough to lift him into the air. His relatives shrieked in fear at the apparent angel in front of them and scrambled on the floor.
"Leave him alone, or else he will have his revenge."
Harry slipped the ring back on and watched as his wings faded into the background, leaving empty space. He carefully schooled his expression, it wouldn't due to show amusement at the way his relatives were squirming. For a minute he wondered if he was going too far, but dismissed the thought quickly. It wasn't as if he would ever really hurt them. Harry barely made it to his room before he started laughing. The looks on their faces! If this worked and they left him alone, that would definitely be one of his favorite memories.
Harry collapsed on his bed, trying to hold in the explosive laughter that would surely make the Dursleys realize that it was all a trick, when he caught sight of himself in the mirror on the wall. Harry sat up and looked closer. It hadn't been a trick of the light, he was different.
Harry's eyes were the first thing he noticed, his glasses were gone, but he could see just as well as ever, as if he just didn't need them anymore. His pupils were larger and the color took up more of the white than it had before the wings had come. His eyes looked a lot more like the sparrows' he saw in the park. The woman's words flitted through his head "There have been other changes, but I'll leave those for you to figure out." Was this what she had meant?
He quickly looked down at his body then turned to the markings on the wall. He had started these when he first moved in and recorded his height in the wall when he left for school and came back. The last marking, the one made three weeks ago, barely came up to his nose. She must have changed his height to help with the wings.
Harry ran towards the bathroom and stepped on the scale. It was a special heavy-duty one that Aunt Petunia had bought to help monitor Dudley's diet, apparently under the impression that he wanted to lose mass, but it would suffice for Harry's needs. He had always been small and skinny, weighing in at barely eighty pounds when he started at Hogwarts, but he was shocked as he saw the number sixty flashing on the scale. He looked up at the mirror, his mouth open against his pale face, and noticed that he didn't look emaciated, rather he looked more filled out than before. Where had the weight loss come from? It couldn't be fat, he still had at least some of that on his body. He supposed it could be water, but he wasn't thirsty. Dimly he recalled hearing somewhere that birds had hollow bones, was that where it came from? Could she do that? Take away the insides of his bones without him feeling a thing?
The knowledge made him shiver. If she could do that, who was to say that she hadn't changed his very essence? His personality? Other changes, what did that mean? Harry decided that he needed to stop thinking about it, he was scaring himself with this line of thought. The black haired boy nearly ran back to his room and closed the door behind him. He slowly sat down on his bed and removed his shoes, not bothering to get undressed. Harry swung his feet into the bed and lay on his side, unfocused green eyes staring at the moonlight on the wall. His owl clicked her beak inside her cage, chuffing good night at him, and he smiled.
"It's been a very weird night, Hedwig."
She made a sound that might have been the owl equivalent of a laugh and shuffled on her perch. Her feathers glowing in the moonlight was the last thing Harry saw before closing his eyes.
-o-
The same green orbs fluttered open, hours later, to see the other wall of the smallest bedroom. For a minute Harry lay in bed, his mind blank with delightful sleep, before the events of the day before hit him.
"MORGANA'S HIPS! I have wings!"
Harry jumped out of his bed, his heart pumping as if he'd just run a marathon, the events of yesterday racing through his mind. The cat, the car, Sirius, that weird voice inside his head, the Dursleys, how he'd changed, Sirius! As if his life couldn't get any weirder. He rested his head on his arm, leaning against the wall and gave a muffled laugh.
What would Ron and Hermione think? No, wait, stupid question, he knew what they would think about this. Ron's voice seemed to float out of thin air: "Bloody hell, Mate. What did you do to yourself this time?" Hermione's soon followed, "Harry, this isn't normal. I'll see if I can find a way to remove whatever spell this is."
Ron would sulk and Hermione would research, and the worst part was, that he didn't know if they would stand by him. Sure, they were his best friends, but Ron had abandoned him last year over a stupid competition, and Harry didn't know whether or not he wanted his wings gone. He hadn't tried flying yet, but they felt natural, a part of him. It would be like Hermione was offering to research how to remove his legs. If he had suddenly sprouted another pair of legs.
Harry pushed that train of thought to the back of his mind, deciding that he would deal with that hurdle when he came to it. Standing up, he greeted Hedwig and ruffled her feathers the way she liked. If she wasn't allowed out to fly it was the least he could do. He walked downstairs and started to make himself breakfast. Flying. Thoughts of soaring through the air with nothing but himself to support him tantalized Harry all through his bowl of cold cereal. Deciding that he couldn't wait to try it, he swung himself out of his chair, dumping the bowl of cereal in the sink. None of the Dursleys were up yet. Not inconceivable, given that it was a weekend, but his Aunt was usually up by now and cleaning something. Harry shrugged the feeling of wrongness off, noticing that the family's car wasn't in the drive as he left the house.
Harry walked along the streets for a good hour before he reached his destination, a broken down shack. The windows were punched out, graffiti scrawled on the walls, and half of it had collapsed into itself, the green paint faded and burnt by the sun. It was also halfway into the park of thick trees that would hide him from the view of anyone, even if they happened to be looking here. Carefully, Harry stepped inside the building, avoiding the broken glass and refuse that littered the ground. Making his way to the stairs he stopped and looked up a bit nervously as the building shrieked and moaned in the wind. If it fell over, he would be in big trouble.
The stairs were steep and grey, looking like they had been crammed in at the last minute, after the rest of the building had already been built, with no railing. Harry carefully started his way up, to get to the roof, hoping that he wouldn't slip on the rain that had come through the holes in the walls last night. A tinkling noise caught his attention and he saw a beer can rolling across the floor in the wind. The light got brighter as he went up, one floor, then another, and finally he reached the roof.
It wasn't much of a roof, there were more holes than flooring, and Harry was extremely careful of where he stepped. Hoping to avoid a broken ankle, Harry didn't explore the roof, but rather walked over to the edge. Looking over it, he smiled. There was next to no undergrowth and the spot he had chosen opened up onto an expanse of grass that might once have been a lawn but was now choked with weeds. Harry gripped the ring on his finger tightly, was he really going to do this? The giant black and gold wings slowly blushed out from behind him, catching the air as they formed. Harry barely had time to realize something was wrong before he was in the air.
The wind tossed and turned his wings, mussing up the feathers and contorting them painfully. Harry flapped them desperately, hoping to right himself in the air, but the wind cruelly flipped him back again. He was getting higher and higher with absolutely no control, his breathing speeding up as he realized that he had no idea how to fly. His original plan had been to step off the roof and glide gently to the ground, not this! Harry tried to pull in the wings, to fold them, but the wind was holding them outstretched. Bizarrely, Harry supposed that if any Muggles were looking up right now, they would think him a fallen -or drunken- angel.
Suddenly, magically, the wind in his ears slowed and, with a popping noise, stopped. Harry was disoriented, wondering where the wind had got to, when he realized that his wings were flapping, on instinct. A breathless laugh tore itself from his lungs.
"Oh my god, I'm alive. I'm alive! AND FLYING! WHOOOHOOOO! I'M FLYING!"
Then Harry made a grave error, he looked down. And fell. Meaningless exclamations of terror flew from his mouth as he desperately tried to figure out how to pump his wings again. The air slipped by his grasping fingers, making his hair stand straight up as he hurtled towards the earth.
One hundred meters. Harry was gasping, hyperventilating as his lungs worked fiercely in terror. Ninety. Seventy. The shack looked so small from this high, like he could crush it with his foot. Sixty. Fifty. A chilling thought struck him, his bones were hollow, were they not? So falling from this high... would break everything in his body.
Forty. Thirty-five. Harry wrenched himself into a face down position and started to roll his shoulders frantically, not knowing how to use his new muscles. Thirty. He started flapping his arms, trying desperately to do anything, anything at all with the useless wings that were pulling him down to the ground faster. Twenty-five. Heart pounding, Harry braced himself for impact. Any second now, any second Harry would be dead again.
And...
Nothing happened? He opened one eyes and then quickly the other as he realized that his arm flapping must have triggered something in his panic-hazy mind, some instinct or other that would not let him fall to his death. The wind was slipping by his fingers, but in a good way this time, it felt like cold water flowing over his body, caressing him. His feathers started to emit a low humming noise as the wind flew through them, adding to the surreal feeling of the situation. Harry was flying, actually properly flying, with wings on his back and everything, heading towards the clouds.
His eyes seemed to burn in the wind for a moment, before something slid into place over them, protecting them from the breeze. He was so high already that the shack below him looked like one of those thumb-sized toy houses Dudley had, before he stepped on them. Harry realized that he must be riding a... what was it called?.. a thermal. A warm pillar of air, that birds used to climb up high, before gliding down to earth. Harry turned his face to the sun and flew higher, high on adrenaline and laughing hysterically at his brush with death. This was far better than Quidditch.
-o-
Josie Reynolds watched as the Boy-Who-Lived left the house and frowned. He wasn't supposed to do that. The boy was supposed to stay inside, to be safe. Fingering the golden pin that marked her as a member of the Order of the Phoenix -a bad habit she was trying to break-, Josie watched him walk down the street. She wasn't stupid, she knew what had happened to the boy a month ago. Rumors had been circulating that not only had his godfather died, but the boy had also had direct contact with Voldemort. Now he was leaving, looking like he didn't want to be noticed by anyone. Josie disillusioned herself and followed her errant charge, she wanted to give him a little space, not quite agreeing with Dumbledore's orders of constant surveillance, but never let him out of her sight for long.
They reached a broken down shack and the boy stepped inside. He looked around, as if checking that nothing was going to fall on him and Josie debated wether or not she should reveal herself and make him step away from the obviously derelict building. He went up the stairs and she cursed softly, moving forward quickly. Her foot hit a can lying on the ground, sending it spinning across the floor and she ducked back into the shadows. Disillusioned or not, she would still cast a shadow. He moved on and she breathed a sigh of relief, Dumbledore had said that no one was to contact the boy until it was absolutely necessary.
He went up the stairs and she followed, treading softly enough that he never turned around. They reached the roof and she watched nervously as he walked to the edge and looked over. Was he going to do what she thought he was doing? They were three floors up, a jump from here would mean death. Just as she canceled the disillusionment, she saw something that made her choke. The boy had wings. Huge, feathered, gold and black wings! She barely had time to recognize what she was seeing before they were gone. He was in the air, flying.
She watched in amazement and then in horror as it became apparent that he had no control over his direction. The wind was pushing him around and she could see the wings struggling to close. He was being pushed higher and higher, until he was barely the size of a normal bird. She raised her wand and cast the first spell that came to her mind, and watched, relieved, as the small shape seemed to find it's place in the air. Josie was just about to leave, she needed to report this to Dumbledore, now, when she saw the boy fall. He was already near the ground, she could see his terrified face as he fell to the earth.
Josie pulled her wand out, intending to cast Arresto Momentum, but the tip snagged in the fabric of her pocket, frantically, she tugged at it. If Harry Potter died on her watch, there was no telling what would happen. Braced to hear a wet thump any second now, she ripped her wand free, tearing the fabric of her robe in the process, only to see the boy, Harry, gliding up and away with an insane smile on his lips.
She turned on the spot and Apparated to the gates of Hogwarts. She waited impatiently as the old metal gates recognized her Magical Signature and opened. Josie ran up the huge lawn and pounded on the huge wooden doors of the castle, yelling for the Headmaster. A glowering Severus Snape led her inside, taking his own sweet time to get her to the Headmaster's office, and enjoying the look of frustration on her face. She burst in as soon as the Gargoyle let her pass, and changed Harry's life -again- with just a few words.
"Headmaster, the boy's got bloody wings!"
