A/N: Honestly, I have no excuse for the time – so I'm not gonna bother. At least I'm not dead? Please enjoy.
Rekindled - Chapter Seven – Volcano Day
A sigh of pure contentment filled the steam-filled air. Lilliandil grinned as best as she could with a beak, smugly entertained by her bipedal friend's reaction.
"I told you that you'd like it," the phoenix proclaimed. "It's just like one of those 'spa day' things you showed me in your Mirror!"
"Forgive me if I wasn't very eager to dive into a volcano solely on your word, Lily," Harriet replied languidly, too relaxed by the heat of the magma to get worked up by her friend's gloating. A teasing smile crossed her lips. "Previous experience has taught me that you sometimes don't take into account the differences between phoenixes and phoenix hybrids."
She absentmindedly Vanished her clothing, which had caught on fire and was flaking away. Though Transfigured from the leaves of a fire-fruit tree – and thus retaining their heat resistance – a volcano was a bit much for them. Besides, it wasn't like the phoenixes had any concept of (much less taboos about) human nudity to adhere to.
"Oh, c'mon Harry! It's not my fault that I forgot you don't have talons!" Lily exclaimed, poutiness coming through in her tone as she aimlessly splashed her wings through the lava – as though she was simply a normal bird in a normal birdbath.
"Or wings," reminded Harry, not bothering to open her eyes as she sunk down a bit further, up to her neck.
"Yes - or wings."
"Talons or wings which are very necessary if you insist on forgetting me at the bottom of one of the mountains, considering I have yet to completely master teleportation," Harry noted.
Lily sulked for a moment or two before her entire countenance brightened. "Can't you just turn yourself into one of us – physically, I mean? You've shown me magic users who can turn into different forms in that Mirror of yours, and the body you have now is so… impractical!" she chimed, gesturing with a wing at Harry's form, which was soft and relatively hairless, lacking in feathers, wings, and any sort of natural weapon like talons.
"Yet you seem to be forgetting what I told you about the Animagus transformation. While my alternate form would most certainly be a phoenix, the magic is a very dangerous process, and its highly recommended to have an expert Transfigurer supervise everything in case of accidents," Harriet explained calmly and patiently. "And while I would come back if I straight-up died, I don't fancy having to kill myself or something just to return to normal if I accidentally Transfigure myself horrifically."
She cracked open a green eye to peer at her 'spa' partner. "Have you been spending a lot of time around Tarva? Because you seem to be picking up his simpleminded forgetfulness."
Lily puffed up with mock indignation (literally, her feathers stood straight up and out). "I am not simpleminded, nor forgetful!" She squawked – or it would have been a squawk, if phoenixes were capable of sounding unpleasant. "And Tarva isn't that bad either," she added as an afterthought.
A small smile curled Harry's lips. "If you say so."
And with that a lull came in the conversation as the two females simply let the heat of the volcano sink in, basking in the warmth and good company. Harry believed the matter to have been dropped, but the conversation had started spinning the cogs in Lily's mind.
When everyone had gone to sleep that night, all cuddled together in their nest of feathers, Lily carefully extracted herself from the downy pile, and soared out of the cave. She flew just far enough that the sound of rushing fire wouldn't wake anyone, and then teleported away.
The next morning, the birds – plus Harry – rose with the sun, as was in their nature. Tarva immediately noticed the absence of his favorite playmate.
"Where's Lily?!" he exclaimed.
It looked as though a sudden breeze had whipped up as all of the phoenixes' feathers fluffed out in surprise.
Ramandu, their de facto leader, turned to ask Harry if she had any idea where Lily might have gone, the hybrid being the female phoenix's usual companion. The question went unasked as he recognized that Harry was as startled as the rest of them.
Realizing that there was something she could do, Harriet quickly stooped down, picked up a feather from the nest, and placed it atop her tattooed palm.
"Point me Lilliandil," she ordered. The feather whirled like a top, but never came to a rest, the spell fueling its spinning unable to pierce inter-universal barriers.
"This is most unusual," Alambil remarked, a small thread of worry sneaking into her voice. "Lily should know to let one of us know when she is going to leave the Mountains."
"Oh pish," Coriakin spoke up grouchily. "The lass can take care of herself. We may be immortal, but I don't intend to waste my time fretting about something like this."
Harry, though still somewhat concerned about her friend, took that as a cue to get started with her daily training schedule. Coriakin could be quite sadistic with his lessons if he became irritated – which just went to show that Light didn't necessarily mean nice. (Though in all honesty, Harry had an odd sort of soft spot for the crotchety old bird, who despite his irritability was also bluntly truthful with her.)
Her newest lesson in teleportation was the trickiest to perform yet. To pass on to the next technique, she had to successfully teleport into midair and grab onto Tarva's talons as he flew by. Not only did she have to take into account the location, which was the norm, but she also had to time it exactly right or she'd plummet to the ground. Thankfully, she was lightning-quick with her spellwork, because without the use of a particular Slowing Charm she would have broken nearly every bone in her body from previous failed attempts.
So, though excited to be progressing with her teleportation powers, Harry grimaced as she got to work.
Meanwhile, Lilliandil was perched in the boughs of a tree in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Currently, she was just out of sight of a small group of tourists, within which was her target.
One Sirius Black, endeavoring to get out and enjoy the world. His face, though colored healthily by a nice tan – much improved from the pallor Azkaban had lent him – still held lingering lines of grief.
Lilliandil examined him with sharp, black eyes, attempting to find similarities between this man and the girl who had become her best friend. When the two girls had spoken while relaxing in the volcano, two points had formed in Lily's mind.
First, her friend's humanoid form had her at a disadvantage sometimes – particularly considering that the training she was going through was designed for avians. While the ability was available to Harry, the witch-phoenix refused to attempt it without another magic user from her original dimension present to supervise responsibly.
Second, when her friend had Vanished her own clothing without hesitation, it had occurred to Lily exactly how much Harry's mindset had altered from when she had first appeared in the Mountains. Lily and the other phoenixes didn't care either way about clothes, but one of the first Transfigurations Harry had insisted on learning was one to make new coverings. At this point, Harry thought more like a bird than a humanoid – and while Lily certainly wouldn't mind if her friend decided to stay with them and live as they did, she also acknowledged that Harry was not solely one of them. Harry had another part to her, a human part, which had gone long-neglected in the company of the flock.
Serendipitously, Lily had a solution to both of these issues, and that solution was Sirius Black.
Sirius Black was himself an Animagus, meaning that he knew exactly how the process should go and what to avoid. Additionally, he was human through and through – and while his long term imprisonment may mean that he wasn't exactly as up to date or well-practiced in 'normal' human things, he was currently travelling the world in search of the best bits to enjoy. This meant that the man had experience a wide range of humanity, from worst to best, and he would be able to talk with Harry about it.
Which brought her to another point of interest – this man would be willing to talk and interact with Harry. He would want it even. From what she had seen of him through her friend's scrying, half the reason Sirius had performed the incredible feat of escaping Azkaban was to see his goddaughter. While Lily didn't know much about these things (phoenixes didn't exactly have biological/familial relationships similar to those of humans), she believed this meant that at the very least the man felt a strong emotional connection with Harry, and a positive one at that.
And Harry, while never having met him, had watched him in her Mirror more than once (which was how Lily was even aware of him in the first place). Though she knew that Harry was happy in the Mountains of the Sun, Lily had noticed a sort of wistful curiosity that came over her face whenever she peered into her original dimension – particularly when Sirius was the subject, and even more so when she peered into the past to see the man doting over her infant form.
Phoenixes weren't good with "could-have-beens" or with reflecting on "what ifs". Their long lives made them avoid such mindsets, for the sake of their own health and sanity. But as she had thought before, Harry wasn't entirely phoenix – and from what Lily had seen, humans were some of the worst about thinking on things they couldn't change. It didn't seem to do them much good either.
Perhaps it would help, to bring Harry the object of her potentially unhealthy "what if" thoughts – dragging him out of her past and into her present and her future.
'Really, there's no way that this isn't a good idea,' Lily nodded to herself.
And with that, she swooped down from her perch, latched on to a stunned Sirius' shoulder, and vanished in a plume of fire, leaving the poor guide to futilely try and calm down the remaining, panicking tourists.
"What the hell!?" Sirius exclaimed, completely bowled over by his abrupt relocation, as well as the fact that he had a phoenix attached to his shoulder.
The exceedingly rare, mythical firebird chirped at him, entirely unhelpful.
He looked around for a moment, registering the fact that, no, this had nothing to do with hell given the beauty of his surroundings – except for maybe the heat, which was even worse than the rainforest he had just been in a moment ago.
Another 'fwoom' noise which could only come from a suddenly appearing fire caught his attention. His head whipped upwards to see a young woman with an eerie resemblance to what he thought his goddaughter might look like, had she been alive to grow older. She still had wisps of flame curling around her form – and she was currently freefall, having failed to grasp the extended feet of (another!) phoenix which had swooped near.
"What the hell?" he breathed.
For a moment, the girl slowed in her descent – obviously the result of a spell of some sort. Then she happened to catch sight of him standing there, gobsmacked. Her face took on a similar expression, and her concentration broke, leaving her to plummet to the unforgiving ground, landing not even ten meters away.
There was a sickening crunching noise, bones failing to be cushioned by split flesh.
"What…" the unfinished question escaped Sirius' mouth in a near whimper, before his legs gave out on him at the sight of someone who looked exactly like his goddaughter dying gruesomely.
The phoenix on his shoulder gave a disgruntled chirp at the sudden drop, and glided to the ground. He ignored that in favor of the sight of the broken body before him spontaneously combusting like some higher power decided to cremate her. When the fire died away, what was left was a person he had only really seen on the front page of the Daily Prophet above the article detailing her death.
His twelve-year-old goddaughter, resurrected from the dead, sitting in a pile of phoenix ash.
"…the hell?" he whispered.
Then his eyes rolled up, and his limp form dropped to the ground in a dead faint.
Harry, completely ignoring what was only her second rebirth, stared at his unconscious form with wide eyes. She turned to her previously "mysteriously missing" friend, who returned her look with an almost sheepish rustle of her feathers.
"…Lily, what did you do?"