Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chapter Ten: When the Firestorm's Within
Author's note: Thanks to everyone who's stayed with the story and reviewed (and another thank you to my anon reviewers YOSIV and Spatula, as I haven't thanked you yet). This chapter illuminates a couple things… and gives the plot another serious push.
XxXx
Harry Potter gazed fixed, eyes watering against the brightness, upon the wretched old, oak tree in front of him. The whole thing was creaking dangerously as flames engulfed it. Too many flames, he thought, one could barely make out the dark shapes of the branches for all the light that was being put off.
Sniffling, but otherwise reasonably focused, Harry held his wand at ready. Reassuring himself that it was just a burning tree, he tried to ignore the savage and almost sinister undertone to the flames. And hoped that Voldemort had nothing to do with this.
He, Ron, and Ginny stood united, one half of a circle, and shivered against the deep chill of the forest. As close as they stood, the fire flickered madly between blue and white, but put off no heat to counter the dead cold. The air around them splintered and sparked; there was no moisture, no wind, and way too much built up energy.
A little ways around the tree, Hermione, standing amongst a couple of the professors still in their night garb, was also transfixed by the fire. She had suggested getting their help, but the fire, though obviously magical in origin, was unlike what any of them had seen so far, natural or otherwise. As it burned savagely, it sent chills of alarm across her skin. When they had thought to investigate the fire coming from the forest, this wasn't what they had thought to find.
Who sets mysterious cold fires deep in the Forbidden Forest? And why limit it to a particular tree? Especially one blackened, old tree? It was odd how the fire wasn't spreading. If the Death Eaters were behind this, Hermione couldn't quite see how they thought this could benefit them.
Unless… It wasn't Death Eaters at all. Remembering something that Luna had mentioned once in passing, Hermione stared hard at the dancing shadows within the burning core of the flames. It couldn't be… Luna would believe it. She would probably take great delight in it. Could it really be? Hermione stared harder into the flames.
Ron tightened his hold upon the edge of his cloak. When Hagrid had come across him in the Great Hall and reported a fire in the forest, he had almost laughed out loud. A fire in the forest! Well, it had definitely seemed like a wonky idea.
And yet the rickety and ugly tree was definitely on fire.
Ginny rose her wand when Hermione gave the signal, and watched as five other wands rose in a circle around the burning, screaming tree. Six jets of a viscous liquid all hit the base of the tree trunk. The liquid spat and hissed against the mad flames, but did little to counter its intensity.
They all stood there for a moment. The fire-stopping spell was doing almost nothing. If anything, the flames were now intensifying against the agitation from their spells.
Then from around the tree, Ginny saw a large, angry fireball fly out towards her, alight against the darkness of the forest. Looming too close overhead, it screamed, a horrid shriek that vibrated wickedly against her ears.
Throwing herself down to avoid red hot talons as they snatched at her face, Ginny hit the ground hard and rolled as something blistering hot scorched through the space she'd formerly been occupying. Then looking up at its underside to see it swoop frantically away in Harry's direction, she got a good look at the fireball, and blinked.
Harry cursed loudly when the fireball sent zooming torrents of flames cleaving close enough over him to ignite the hairs along the back of his neck.
The circle of six witches and wizards breaking for cover, dove out of the way as the fireball turned in midair, and screamed murderously at them as they retreated.
Looking back over his shoulder, Harry could just see the fireball flying erratically about behind them. Rocketing recklessly, it cycled around the tree as it darted and displayed aggressively in huge flares of orange, blue, and white. But it didn't follow them.
As they made their way quickly along the path towards the edge of the forest, the furious screams of the fireball did not leave them. Whatever that wild fireball was, it was still putting up a furious uproar long after they were out of sight. Harry rubbed the back of his neck.
The six of them stopped 60 or 80 meters away from the edge of the forest to catch their breath and check numbly for burns. Two still stared back at the tree.
After having the scorched mark on his neck dismissed as superficial, Harry turned to the others, "What was that?"
Ron shrugged, opened his mouth, shrugged again, and closed it. No one else spoke.
Finally into the choked silence, Ginny tore her eyes away from where they could still hear the screaming protests of the fireball, "It was Fawkes. He attacked us."
Harry stilled. Fawkes? Dumbledore's faithful familiar who had saved Harry's life not that many years ago could not have turned into that raging beast in the forest. As full of fire as it was, that thing in the forest was dark. Dangerous. Not Fawkes.
Ron spoke Harry's thoughts aloud, "That couldn't have been Fawkes, we all knew him. That wasn't anything like him. Fawkes didn't scream like that."
Ginny shrugged, "I guess he does now. He attacks us now too." At Ron's venomous look, she added, "what else do you think it could have been besides a phoenix."
Harry swallowed, "If it was a phoenix, we only know one of those it could be, and I haven't seen him since the funeral."
Hermione with her hands bearing down against her knees and her scorched hair in disarray, spoke up at that, "Luna saw him a couple weeks ago. From how she described him at the time, that definitely could have been him protecting that tree…." She paused here, catching her breath before adding what had caught her attention back at the burning tree, "And I think there was a second one in the flames."
Ron, the first to react, gaped at the idea of dealing with two territorial, fiery beasts. "Perhaps we should just leave them alone then. But why the bloody hell did he have to attack us for?"
Harry said nothing, and just stared back into the forest. His neck was still all blistered and hot. It couldn't have been Fawkes. He knew Fawkes. It just couldn't.
XxXx
Safe and secluded away from the heated chatter and excitement lower in the castle, Luna clutched her moonstone in one cold hand, and peered feverantly out the small window of her alcove. She could see some sort of wild flare whizzing about in the breeze like some sort of falling star. It exploded every other second into displays of bright blue or white.
Maybe this was what fireworks were like. Luna liked it as she stared down, transfixed, excited. The flare seemed so blissfully separate from the backdrop of the forest swallowing up behind it. Oblivious, its enthusiasm daring, it confidently danced and sang a challenging song.
Was that what it was like to be a Gryffindor? She'd felt something similar deep behind Hermione's eyes. That's what it felt like when Hermione kissed her. Suddenly, viciously, she wanted that feeling again.
It was wild. She could feel the power rise within her, an answer to its bewildering dare. Even against the Forbidden Forest, which was full of razor-sharp feralness, the flashing flare stood out. What could be wickeder than that which was usually found in the forest?
Luna kept up her visual at the window all night.
XxXx
For three nights following the attack, Hermione studied phoenixes in the library. It wasn't very helpful. She could find references and references about what to do with phoenix feathers, tears, semen, ect but nothing beyond the usual myths about how they actually lived.
It seemed that the only references she could find mentioned a couple phoenixes who had been passed down through a family for a generation or two, but then any record of either of those phoenixes just stopped. She was certain that Dumbledore did not inherit Fawkes; he had befriended him from the wild. Supposedly.
Except Hermione could find no information on how you would go about doing that. Nobody, it seemed, had written it down. And Dumbledore had never explained how he had managed to bond such a powerful creature.
Had those other phoenixes eventually gone feral too? Is that why the records just stopped? Did the families not want to admit they had lost their prized birds?
Hermione rubbed her forehead; there was just so little information available about the firebirds beyond their uses in spells and potions. How were they to help Fawkes, if they didn't know how he'd been tamed to begin with?
She glanced over the half dozen inches of notes that she had managed to collect, but she had already exhausted the extensive collection of books in the magical creatures section. Maybe the old headquarters' library would have something useful, she would have to owl Remus and ask him if he had time to go check it out.
She quickly set about her next task of referencing spells and making additional notations for the DA, it would not do to have a repeat of Sectumsempra this year… And Harry's mysterious source of battle spells and defensive magic would surely run out eventually.
And quite frankly, Hermione was worried that some of the younger years would need simpler spells that wouldn't require as much magic up front much sooner than that. She happily set about referencing those, now that she finally had a subject with a decent amount of material to work with.
Not far into her third book on defensive transfiguration, Hermione glanced up in surprise as a body crashed merrily into the seat next to her. Luna offered only a slight smile before pulling out her potions' essay and proceeding to scribble about on it as it suited her fancy. Hermione rolled her eyes, hadn't Ginny been complaining about that essay being due yesterday?
Hermione bemusedly moved her inkwell inside Luna's reach, and turned back to the book she was skimming.
After awhile of quietly juggling what three different transfiguration texts had to say about dueling, Hermione tilted her head a bit at Luna, she hadn't seen her much in the library over the last several days… Hadn't really seen her much since she'd embarrassingly gotten ink all over her hair. Discreetly checking her hands over for ink stains, Hermione took the opportunity to examine the other girl for the first time in some days.
Her hair was its usual state of wayward neglect, though given her own bushy mane, Hermione could hardly fault her for not keeping her hair in an orderly knot instead of preferring to just let her hair do what it would in the direction it wanted.
And Luna did give some attention to her hair; it just wasn't exactly to tame it. But it was sort of sweet, the way she had taken lately to braiding brightly colored feathers, pebbles, and bottle caps into her hair; who else could really do that and not have it look silly or out of place? Luna was also wearing her pinkish sweater under her half-opened robes, the one that Hermione couldn't decide if it had been white or red in its former life. Her wand, absent for once from the knot atop Luna's head, was currently peaking out of a shirt cuff. The shit itself was unbuttoned at the top. In short, Luna as usual looked anything but put together.
Hermione pulled distractedly at her neatly done up necktie, as she continued looking the girl over, she looked good. She was currently bent close over her essay, scribbling furiously as the thoughts came to her and then pausing now and again to doodle something in the margins… or sometimes right in the middle of the essay. All of that happened without any sound save that of her quill. Hermione smiled, as much as she enjoyed studying with the other Gryffindors, very few of them seemed to find time or silence necessary to think.
Sometimes, when she wasn't brainstorming about dealing with Voldemort and the war, she thought what it would be like to have been sorted into Ravenclaw. Sometimes, such as now, she wondered if she wouldn't have liked it very much.
Hermione sneaked another look at the girl beside her and had to giggle a bit as she moved her inkwell for the second time out of range of Luna's elbow, the girl was sort of amazing only sometimes.
It was certainly amazing how the girl could think across the page like that; writing cramped in some spaces, sprawling in others, slanting this way and that as it moved her, and generally looking like a good three or four people had all sat down and alternated writing different bits of each sentence.
Hermione thought she would probably get a headache if she were the one reading that, but then, she'd never particularly been fond of Slughorn anyway.
But the girl was just well, Luna. She was smart, unconventional certainly, but with a certain overlaying glossiness… She wasn't awkward; she wasn't trying to be something she couldn't, or obsessed and wanting to prove herself to anyone. There was an absentminded sort of dignity that Hermione could admire about the girl.
She could be upset but still understanding, and she was definitely open-minded in a way that left few things impossible to her. She enjoyed books and learning, and Hermione had to grant it that out of all her friends… she had the most of the little things in common with Luna.
Hermione looked down and traced her small, precise writing across the page… they weren't exactly alike, and they certainly didn't hold many opinions in common. They didn't often think in similar patterns, and Hermione undoubtedly couldn't figure out what the girl might say or do next like she could with Harry, Ron, or even Ginny.
But maybe, Hermione thought as she watched Luna tap out a soft, irregular rhythm against her knee, the girl did seem to be full of nervous energy a lot of late, Hermione was simply finding something in her that she had missed amongst her Gryffindor housemates.
But seriously, there was nothing wrong with appreciating that not all of her friends were obsessed with quidditch. Even if she talked about imaginary creatures and strange conspiracies instead.
Even those were somewhat more entertaining than quidditch early in the morning. Hermione fondly looked across their table at all their scattered books and notes and half-thought comments. Really in a way they were sort of a team.
Touching Luna softly upon the wrist, she smiled a little when the distracted girl glanced up hurriedly between thoughts, and then she pulled out some more of her own homework.
Perhaps she'd ask Luna later on if she knew anything about wild phoenixes.
XxXx
For nine long nights, Fawkes' burning tree stung out against the night sky every time Harry's eyes were drawn towards its place in the forest.
Harry avoided looking at the forest, and instead focused on his current correspondence with Snape. It would take Dumbledore's fiery familiar attacking him to make even Snape seem reasonable.
But Harry could understand why Fawkes might have turned from them. If Harry had a choice to pull away from all of this mess, would he? Would he turn his back on Voldemort and the prophecy, and be content to live out an ordinary, uninspired life? Was it okay that that was so appealing to him?
Harry went back to writing his letter. Then he finished his transfiguration essay. Then he rewrote Ron's transfiguration essay. He was still restless.
It was with relief on the tenth night that he detected no telltale sharp glow from deep within the forest. Perhaps Fawkes had moved on. Harry refused to feel sad, and instead he destroyed the headmaster's office again in the Room of Requirement. Everything but Fawkes' old stand burned.
Then he slept.
XxXx
When Fawkes sang a loud, violent warning at her, Luna knew she was coming close to the nesting site. Was she surprised to see that the glowing light had led her back down the old path to the worn out oak tree? She wasn't sure.
Hermione and the others had said that the tree had been engulfed in flames, but now it stood as nothing more than an ashy charcoal outline of where it had once been. Bright eyed and amazed, Luna stared, but the lone phoenix atop the nest narrowed its eyes and screamed; yet remained still. Luna crept ecstatically forward… careful not to turn her back on the bird, but reveling giddily in his blazing wildness. She clutched her moonstone in her right hand.
This was Fire. Crashing, unpredictable, turbulent, a focused chaos. She had the potential for most of those things too.
She could be wild and free and unfettered. She hadn't the focus of a flame to guide her, but it couldn't enclose her either. She could drift just as quietly as an ember could glow, and she could rage louder than a firestorm. She could make a firestorm, if she but knew how.
She could feel the currents stirring around her, filling her.
She shook her head at that, gathering her scattered thoughts before she distracted herself once again. Ten long nights she had watched blazing glow grow dim in the forest from her alcove. The whispers around Hogwarts had said that Fawkes was back and breeding.
The first bit was completely false of course, Fawkes had never left. But breeding? Fawkes was breeding? Everything made sense, had he been breeding before Dumbledore caught him? The cold moonstone in her hand, it glowed. Phoenix fire was cold. Was the stone his, or was it the other phoenix's?
Luna gazed, unconcerned, moonstone in hand up at the nest. Her stone glowed faintly, dimmer than the thousands of brightly lighted stones that made up his nest. To think it might have one time been up there… Her eyes widened.
Her moonstone was of Fire; its potential was wasted in her experiments… Fire was just as focused as Earth was, and a lot more volatile and flexible too. It was a better match for air magic. Luna practically hummed with excitement. Air had an affinity for fire magic. What would happen if she channeled her magic through the stone?
The earth focus she had used as a child had limited the flow of magic through her on that fateful night when she was nine, how much better could she have done with a stone based in Fire?
Creeping forward, her eyes reflecting the wild light shining in front of her through the night, she wafted to where she had first found her lone pebble.
Had Fawkes bred here in this spot before? It would be amazing. Dimly and unimportant beside the cold throbbing of the pebble she held in her hand, she heard a screaming racket build up around her. Her magic piercing through her, she kneeled down to stare at the ground before her, missing the angry wing beats joining the bird in the tree.
The wild mate, responding to Fawkes' angry plea, pecked Luna swiftly from behind sending Luna fumbling forward and scrabbling for her wand as furied bites burned down the side of her head and neck. She felt rather than saw the power that was Fawkes rise from the nest to join the attack.
Magic within her stirred and rebounded against the stone clutched tightly in her other grasp, a small answer to the wild demand before her.
But still, the blazing magic rose instantly around her and now crying franticly at the cold flames chasing her from without and within, Luna ran. The phoenixes following swiftly above, darting down and across Luna's path to burn, scorch, and cut across her in wicked delight. Fire once hot in their defense, now burned out of control, and the birds gave chase.
With the hot wind in her ears, cold stone in her hand, and burning pain consuming her being, Luna forced herself to keep running. Half thoughts and wild glimpses of metaphysical magic burning out of control cut into her. And the stone kept on churning a volcano of magic through her. Given little direction, the small stone turned Luna's full currents into a raging torrent, and she knew nothing to stop it.
She ran.
Dizzy and confused from the lack of oxygen, she could not think, could not aim, could not defend, and could not see in the dense, burning foliage of the forest. She had to get out.
Stumbling madly as the magic within her sang pulsing through her currents as it had done only once before, Luna could smell the sizzling from her hair. She was ripped and tattered, magic going everywhere, and still the stone kept pulsing.
She could feel the wildness descend upon her, holding her within its spiral… building into the tempest that might save her from the phoenixes only to tear her up itself.
Tears as yet unnoticed stung freely down her face she felt the pain and burns crash repeatedly against her magical channels; her thoughts, a wild gale burning wetly through her veins. She knew not which damage was from the phoenixes or from within her. Breathless and a little hysterical, Luna could only try to outrun it all.
With the flaming attack of the wild phoenixes hounding at her back, Luna broke free from the opaque, hot air of the forest. Turning quickly and almost falling, she ran parallel to the edge of the trees, forcing the birds to pull slightly ahead and away from her.
And then grasping her wand, she did the only thing that she thought could save herself. She let it all go.
"Pluvioinundantia!" Luna gestured wildly over her head as the overshot phoenixes careened willfully down towards her, fiery screams echoing madly in pitch as the phoenixes gained speed.
Luna tripped and went down flailing as a wall of water crashed down upon her. Her body screamed, but the wicked fire's hold on her lessened.
Then choking painfully against the force of her own spell, she rolled over, cradling her burning aching body together into a tighter and tighter circle as the cold, frigid water poured down over her still.
Her skin, already flickering with magic and heat, sizzled against the chilling flood. Petrified and her currents burning fiercely within her, Luna fell into a deep fever, lost and adrift in molten shock and pain.
She moved not again for a long time.
XxXx