A/N: I'm glad you guys seem to like this story - especially since it is very fun for me to write. Thanks for the reviews. I hope you enjoy this next chapter.

edit: 6/17

Rekindled - Chapter Two - Tinder and Kindling

The moment Harry realized the amount of eyes upon her, she immediately wished for her Invisibility Cloak. Unfortunately, it was locked away in her trunk at Hogwarts, and who knew how far away that was from… wherever she was. So, not having the option to turn invisible, she instead gathered her Gryffindor courage around her like a makeshift cloak, and positioned the Sword between her and the eyes.

Upon getting a closer look at the starers, her grip tightened on the Sword until her knuckles whitened. She nearly jumped in surprise when she felt the mysterious feather tattoo on her palm warm slightly.

"My my," murmured the Hat, its tone caught somewhere between interest and astonishment. "If I'd ever had doubts about the greatness you are destined for, slaying a basilisk aside, this would have erased them. Only someone very special would ever be able to stumble across an entire flock of phoenixes."

Before Harry could tell the Hat where exactly she'd like it to shove all the talk about her 'specialness' - or even just ask if they were experiencing some sort of shared hallucination (could hats even hallucinate?), she was distracted by movement coming from the flock.

One of the mythical birds - slightly small than the rest, she noticed - flapped its great wings, once, twice, easily gliding across the distance between them. It halted only a yard away from the tip of the Sword Harry was warily brandishing, and tilted its beautiful scarlet head to the side in a typical gesture of avian curiosity.

Despite her death grip on the Sword, Harry nearly dropped it upon hearing the phoenix chirp questioningly at her. For instead of simply hearing bird-song (albeit bird-song with magical properties - she was already feeling a little more steady), she had also gotten the distinct impression of a young, bubbly voice asking, "What are you?"

Before Harry could even begin to comprehend the fact that she had just heard a bird talk, another of the phoenixes (plural, as in a group of them!) flapped itself forward to stand beside the slightly smaller one.

"Please, take no offense to this young one's lack of manners." Here, the phoenix cuffed its smaller counterpart lightly on the head - a strangely playful action, as though it was a chiding older sibling. "He is but three centuries old. I'm sure what he meant to say was that we have never encountered one such as you, and are naturally curious," the new phoenix chirped - except instead of a chirp, Harry had heard a voice she imagined belonging to a calm, middle-aged woman.

Harry manage to cobble an answer together inside her brain and force it pass her lips.

"I'm a human," she told them, still holding the Sword in front of her as she tried to understand what exactly was happening.

When the group of birds in front of her simply stared in skepticism at her answer, she specified a bit more.

"I'm a witch," Harry explained, wondering how they could so immediately tell the difference between a muggle and a magic-user - and didn't witches count as 'human' to them?

There was a commotion amongst all the phoenixes at her words. They began to chatter back and forth to each other in a chaotic mess of noise. Harry could distinguish small murmurs of what sounded like English mixed in with the bird-calls and chirps.

"Preposterous!" the somewhat pompous voice of an old, cranky man rang out.

One of the largest birds in the flock pushed himself to the front of the crowd, and hopped toward her. He ignored the point of the Sword swung toward him, and fixed her with a piercing eye.

"I've felt witches and wizards before, girl, and you most certainly are not one of them!"

Harry stared at him.

"I've been a witch my entire life," she told him, lowering her sword a bit at the lack of hostility, "I've gone to a school for them for the past two years. I think someone would've noticed if I couldn't do magic."

"I didn't say you weren't magical, girl!" The older bird's beak snapped in impatient irritation. "But you are definitely not a witch!"

"Yeah!" the young boy's voice from earlier piped up again as the smallest bird hopped forward a bit.

He craned his head backward to examine Harry's face in wonderment.

"You feel like one of us - even if you have funny feathers," he said matter-of-factly, referring to her hair.

The other phoenixes went abruptly silent at the declaration from their youngest. Their stares intensified threefold, until it felt as though they were trying to burn her with their gaze.

"Could it be…?" the calm voice of the female phoenix had a tinge of astonishment in it.

"Girl! What world are you from?" the old phoenix demanded suddenly.

"World…?" Harry asked in puzzlement.

"Where did you come from?" he asked, annoyed that she hadn't immediately understood the answer he wanted.

"Hogwarts," she answered in confusion. "Why? Can you send me back?"

The phoenixes, however, ignored her questions and the tumultuous muttering started up again.

"That was where Fawkes had gone," one of the birds declared in a deep, solemn voice that cut over the whispers of his fellows'.

"He had planned on starting a new life cycle soon, when he returned after his companion died," another voice declared, this one that of a young woman. "It would have only been a couple of years from now, so why would he do this instead…?"

"You were dying, girl, weren't you?" the old man's voice asked shrewdly. "But how could a little girl receive a wound so severe that it couldn't be healed by phoenix tears?" he asked incredulously. "Fawkes has always been a softy, but even he wouldn't do something this drastic unless there was no other choice."

Confused and irritated by the phoenixes all talking over her head, and getting the distinct impression that they knew what was going on even as she was left in the dark, Harry was starting to get very annoyed, "I was bitten by a basilisk!"

In unison, all the birds let out hisses of distaste, some of them puffing up their feathers with anger.

"Why was a young girl such as yourself in any proximity with one of those Death-gazers!" the middle-aged woman's voice asked, a hint of maternal outrage in the incredulous question.

But Harry wouldn't answer any more questions without some answers of her own.

"Will someone please tell me what's going on!" she snapped. "Where am I, and what are you talking about? How could you possibly know that I had almost died? And what are you saying Fawkes did to me?"

"Calm yourself, child," the deep, solemn voice soothed. "Becoming agitated will do you no good."

"Hmph. From what I can tell, she'd have every right to get agitated. No one's told her anything, after all, and she only looks to be about twelve years old - as good as a baby," the old man's voice sniffed, before the phoenix it belonged to turned to face her once again. "You, girl, are in the Mountains of the Sun, home to every phoenix in the universes."

Before Harry could question what he meant by 'universes' - as in plural - he continued to talk.

"As for what we were talking about, it ties into your other questions," he stated. "Since most humans are ignorant of our abilities, I shall have to explain it to you."

He coughed, clearing his throat as though in preparation for a lecture.

"I assume you at least know that phoenixes are immortal?" he asked her, barely waiting for her to nod before continuing. "Good. Now, as I'm sure you can imagine, immortality gets boring after a while. Once a phoenix starts feeling bogged down by the weight of their years... At that point, many decide that they want to move on to the next great adventure. There are only two ways of doing so."

Harry, at this point, couldn't help but interrupt. "You mean they choose to die?"

She couldn't help but be a tiny bit incredulous - after all, the year before, she had been protecting a Stone that could grant immortality with her life. Considering how valuable it had been, and what lengths those after it had gone to, it was a bit surprising for her to hear that anyone - or anything - would voluntarily give it up.

"Yes," the old man, crotchety though he may be, seemed to understand that she was only young, and thus might not be able to comprehend their motives completely. "But as I was saying, there are two ways. One, the phoenix can choose to start a new life cycle. This allows them to move on, and creates a completely new phoenix in their place."

He extended a wing outward, curving it around the smallest one, who was shifting from foot to foot in a antsy fashion. "Tarva here was the most recent result of this. He's only three hundred years old."

The old man's voice paused in its cadence, seemingly to give him time to gather his thoughts. The younger one took his chance to wiggle his way free, and hopped a few feet to the side. The old one took no notice as he suddenly became very somber, no trace of the tetchy personality he had shown before.

"The second is only rarely used, as it lessens our population every time. There have been very few cases of it happening in our history." he announced gravely. "A phoenix, instead of starting a new life, is capable of giving up their own life-force to save another - someone who is on the verge of death, and not able to be saved in any other way. It also requires a magical bond between the two, which makes the process even rarer, considering how careful we are with those."

Harry listened with wide eyes. Her right hand - the one with the new feather tattoo - clenched slightly. Her wand had… melted into the same golden color as whatever magic Fawkes had done. Was it possible that the feather inside it had been one of his? Did that count as a magical bond? And Fawkes… he had died to save her? She wasn't sure how to feel about that. She didn't exactly want anyone to die for her - she had already lost her mother that way.

"Don't you be feeling guilty now," the old man said sternly, reading the expression on her face. "Fawkes made his decision, and it wasn't through any plan of yours! Besides, didn't you hear earlier? He was planning on heading on soon anyway - that human of his is getting on in the years, and that was all he was holding out for."

It seemed a bit odd to think of it that way for Harry, but she tried. It was weird to think of Dumbledore being that old when he always seemed so energetic.

The old phoenix interrupted her thought as he continued. "But anyway, in the only previous cases of this happening, along with a new chance life, the recipient of the life-transfer was also fundamentally changed," he stated directly. "To put it plainly - their magic completely integrated the new essence, and they partially became a phoenix, gaining the abilities of one in the process."

Harry nearly dropped the Sword in her shock as her mind went numb. Too many things were happening to her in too little time. Even with her rather well-developed ability to adapt to new situations, this was a bit much. After all, when she discovered the world of Witchcraft and Wizardry, it had simply been her discovering what she had been all along. But now, she was apparently changing species, just to escalate the weird happenings in her life.

"I'll bet my beak that's how you got here, too," the old bird continued thoughtfully. "With no real control over your new talents, it'd only be a simple matter of wishing to be somewhere else for your ability to flame travel to manifest itself. You're quite lucky that you ended up here, instead of somewhere you'd get eaten as soon as you landed - but then, since you are technically part-phoenix now, it could just be that your magic instinctively recognized the Mountains of the Sun as 'home', and thus 'safe,'" he hypothesized. "Still, we'll have to train you up a bit before you go back to your original world. Can't have you causing any accidental damage, can we?"

But Harry didn't hear his thoughts on the matter, because with the combined impact of adrenaline-loss, magical metamorphosis, and the bombshell dropped on her head, she had passed out, dropping like a stone to land on a bed of brilliant orange-red flowers.

"Oh honestly, Coriakin, couldn't you have put it a little more gently?" the calm, middle-aged woman's voice chided softly.

The female phoenix hopped up toward the tiny, prone form of the previously-human girl, and started to soothingly comb her beak through her hair.

"Pish," the newly identified Coriakin scoffed. "She looked so dead on her feet that she would have dropped even if I'd sang the whole thing to her. Don't tell me you've already decided to mother her, Alambil."

"Hey, does this mean I get someone new to play with?" Tarva piped in eagerly, his wings fluttering faintly in excitement as he gazed curiously at Harry.

Before the youngest's query could be answered, the deep voice from before interjected. "Whatever the case may be, the young one should be moved somewhere more comfortable, or she will be stiff upon waking."

The others straightened slightly at his instruction - after all, though he wasn't the eldest, out of all the phoenixes, he had the greatest gift for leadership.

"Yes, Ramandu." they chorused.

"Lilliandil should carry her, as she is the smoothest flier of us all," Ramandu stated.

When he saw Tarva pouting as the young female phoenix picked up their guest, a twinkle of a smile appeared in his serious black eyes.

"Tarva, you may carry her Hat."

The youngest phoenix perked up a bit at being given a task, and waddled over to snatch up the Sorting Hat that had fallen from her head. Ramandu himself clutched the Sword of Gryffindor in his talons, and as one group, the small flock of phoenixes took to the air. In a matter of seconds, they had disappeared behind the top of the clouds, headed for their home in the top of the mountains.

A/N: Just so you know, the names for the phoenixes are all stars (some actual heavenly bodies, some characters) from the Chornicles of Narnia. Tarva means Lord of Victory, and Alambil means Lady of Peace. Ramandu was the old star that Caspian and Co. met toward the End of the World, while Lilliandil was the name given to his daughter for the 2010 movie (she was unnamed in the books.) Coriakin was the star left to tend the Duffers as a punishment.