"Draco. Wake up."
A warm pressure on Draco's face and the sound of his name broke through the dark veil of sleep. He cracked one eye open and saw that it was morning. He rubbed his face and propped himself up on his elbow, then reached for the wand that was always within reach. He transfigured his desk chair into a mirror and tipped it until he could see Harry sitting at the foot of the bed.
"How long was I asleep?" he croaked.
"It's almost ten," Harry said. "You needed it, though."
Draco sat up and reached his hand out so his reflection was touching Harry's head. "Maybe I did," he said, "but I missed you anyway."
"Go shower," Harry said. "I want to go down to Hagrid's place and see if the phoenixes are okay."
Draco remembered the birds and hopped out of bed. He showered and dressed without fanfare, selecting from his predominantly black wardrobe and settling on a finely knit cashmere jumper and neatly tailored slacks. He combed his fair hair into place and grabbed his cloak from the back of the door. He and Harry and the mirror stopped by the Great Hall long enough to pocket something portable for breakfast, and then headed out into the snow.
"I hope they're doing better," Harry sounded concerned. "Do you think they'll be released back into the wild?"
"I imagine so," Draco said, watching his feet carefully as his boots shushed through the fine powder.
"Professor Dumbledore said phoenixes are notoriously hard to domesticate," Harry mused.
"Then I imagine once they recover they'll leave whenever they feel like it." Draco picked his way through the mounds of snow that surrounded Hagrid's dormant melon patch and rapped on his door. A second later it flew open and the huge man beamed down at him. He waved at Harry's reflection in the mirror and invited them in.
"They're doin' better'n I thought they would!" he boomed.
Draco and Harry drew up short and gasped. Hagrid had fashioned four perches and all four phoenixes sat proudly on them with full plumage. Their red and gold feathers had filled in and they cocked their heads inquisitively at Draco and the mirror.
"Professor Dumbledore always said that phoenixes're remarkable creatures," Hagrid continued. "They heal fastter'n you can imagine with a bit o' love and caring."
"Look at them, Draco," Harry's voice was barely a whisper. "They're brilliant."
"Amazing," Draco breathed. He couldn't stop staring at them. They were phenomenal, with red feathers that glowed like embers and gold tips that caught the morning light. He held a finger up to the closest bird and it chirped delicately and bumped its head against its hand.
"Prob'ly knows yeh're the one who saved 'em," Hagrid said, his voice soft with admiration. "Very intelligent birds, they are."
Suddenly the phoenix leapt from its perch and settled delicately on Draco's arm. His eyes widened as it cooed and butted against his head with the flat of its beak. Then a second phoenix leaped from its perch and landed on Draco's other shoulder. It, too, nuzzled him affectionately.
"Well I'll be," Hagrid said reverently.
Harry slowly approached the third phoenix and reached his invisible hand out as if to touch it. The bird ducked its head and leaned like it knew he was there. Harry gasped. "I can feel it!" he said hoarsely. The bird pushed its head against him again and Harry laughed in disbelief. The fourth phoenix launched itself into the air and circled the empty spot where he stood.
"Do they know he's there?" Draco asked Hagrid.
"Looks like they do," Hagrid grunted thoughtfully. "Remarkable creatures," he said again. He let Draco give each one a bit of food to eat, then offered Draco a scone and a cup of tea, which he politely declined. He sat at the table while Hagrid helped himself, and Harry sat in the empty seat next to him. The two birds who had touched him perched on the back of the chair. In the mirror's reflection it appeared as though they were sitting behind his shoulders and occasionally peeking at him.
"How do I get them to go back to their perches?" Draco asked. He had a bird on each arm and no idea how to get them off.
"Yeh don't tell a phoenix what ter do," Hagrid shrugged. "Yeh can ask 'em but yeh can't tell 'em."
"Would you like to go back to your perches?" Draco asked them, swiveling his head and looking each in the eye. They both butted their heads against his face.
"I think they're wantin' ter stay with yeh," Hagrid chuckled. "Don't worry, I'll help yeh learn how teh care for 'em. They're natural hunters so feedin' 'em shouldn't be a problem."
"Do you want to come with us?" Harry asked his birds. They ducked their heads as though stroking against his cheeks, too. Harry gasped, then laughed in disbelief. "Draco, I can actually feel them!"
"He can feel them," Draco repeated, completely stunned. "And it really looks like they can see and feel him, too."
This seemed too important not to share with the group. Draco and Harry bid Hagrid farewell and walked back up to the school. The phoenixes took flight as soon as they were outside and wheeled gracefully against the winter clouds. Draco wondered if they had changed their minds and were leaving, but as they climbed the front steps they landed again, this time all four on Draco, two to an arm.
"Now this is just ridiculous," Draco frowned as he awkwardly opened the door and shuffled inside with four birds perched on him.
"We need to make a home for them," Harry said, "so they won't feel the need to follow us around."
"You're loving this, aren't you?" Draco grumbled as he climbed the stairs. "Meanwhile they're snagging my sweater." One of the phoenixes lifted its foot and cocked its head at a loose thread.
He pushed his way into the library and immediately all activity stopped. The staff and students stared at him, dumbfounded by the absurd sight of Draco Malfoy covered in birds.
"Tell them they can see me!" Harry said excitedly. "Bring the mirror around!"
"If you wouldn't mind," Draco addressed the birds and pointed to a row of straight-backed chairs. The phoenixes launched off of him as one and glided gracefully to their new perches. Draco staggered from the downward force of their simultaneous leap.
"So they're yours now?" Granger said in disbelief.
"Two of them seem to prefer Harry," Draco said. He waved the mirror over near them so they could watch as Harry reached his hand out to stroke their feathers. Everyone murmured in surprise as the bird leaned against his hand and pushed back.
"I can feel him," Harry said in wonder.
"Harry and the phoenixes can feel each other," Draco said.
"Amazing," Professor Flitwick spoke for the group.
"Have they found anything yet?" Harry asked.
"If they'd found something it probably would have been bigger news than the birds," Draco said.
The look on the others' faces said it all. Nothing yet. They sat and rejoined the search, and the phoenixes sat nearby, occasionally chirruping and cooing.
"Oh!" Professor Sprout suddenly sat up straight in her chair. "I think I have something!"
Everyone crowded around until Professor McGonagall ordered them back to their seats. She and Professors Slughorn and Flitwick read carefully and murmured quietly for a moment.
"Share, please," Draco said commandingly. "Minerva, you can't leave Harry hanging like this."
"Mister Malfoy, you will be patient," she said firmly, using the name she reserved only for rebukes.
"It's an interesting spell," Professor Slughorn mused as he hunched over the text. "It is intended to banish demons of the ancient world, if one is summoned and cannot be controlled." He murmured and rolled the sound of the incantation around his tongue. He looked down at Professor Flitwick, "Does that sound like what Seamus Finnegan uttered?"
"Remarkably similar," Professor Flitwick concurred.
"Demons, of course, cannot die," Professor Slughorn continued. "So the banishment sent them to an in-between place where they would be insubstantial to the living world and therefore could cause no harm. A sort of stasis, if you will." He shook his head disapprovingly, "Very dark magic. Very terrible things in this book."
"So that's great, you've found it," Draco said. "How do we bring him back? Do we use a summoning spell?"
"No," Professor McGonagall said firmly. "A demon is the last thing we need roaming the halls of Hogwarts."
"It says the demon will be banished, all but its hooves," Professor Flitwick continued reading. "The severing of its physical form severs its ability to wield magic so that it cannot return on its own."
"Your shoes," Granger said to Harry's reflection. "That's why your shoes were left behind!"
"I'm glad it was my shoes and not my feet," Harry pointed to his toes. No translation was needed.
"That's why the needle moves when he touches his shoes!" Granger jumped up from her chair. "He's reconnecting with his severed physical self!"
"But it only moves part way," Weasley pointed out. "And not every time."
"Sybil," Professor McGonagall turned to regard the frizzy-haired seer with interest. "What was that prophesy again?"
"Uh," Professor Trelawney's eyes bugged out as she tried to remember. "Well."
"The vessel has been emptied and the eternal ichor released to dwell in the vast inbetween realm, neither here nor the other side. The vessel must be recast by the mirrored half with the hand that values no other," Granger recited from a small notebook. She cocked her head sweetly, "I wrote it down."
"That's my girl," Ron beamed at her.
"It sounds right," Draco said. "If as Granger said the vessel is the body and the ichor is the soul, that spell cast Harry's soul into a realm partway between life and death."
"Recasting the vessel must mean reuniting him with his the part he left behind," Granger added. "His shoes."
"We tried that," Harry said. "It didn't budge the needle enough." Draco translated for the rest of the group.
"It sounds like you can't do it alone, Harry," Granger said. "The prophecy says, the vessel must be recast by the mirrored half with the hand that values no other."
Everyone turned to look at Draco. He stood up straight, his eyebrows arched in surprise. "Me?" he asked.
"You're the only one who can hear him," Weasley said.
"And you're clearly in love with each other," Granger said in an uncompromising tone.
"Oh!" Professor Flitwick looked back and forth between Draco and the reflection of Harry. "Of course!"
Draco felt his cheeks burn with humiliation. Not exactly the coming out party he'd imagined. Harry slipped his hand into Draco's and smiled apologetically at him.
"The hand that values no other," Professor Trelawney gasped. "Soulmates!"
"The soulmate is the mirrored half that can restore the soul to the body," Professor Flitwick agreed.
"You're mad," Draco snapped. "I haven't been able to restore anything. I've hardly been able to help him, much less bring him back."
"What do you mean you've hardly helped me?" Harry asked. "You've done everything for me."
"We need to experiment with those shoes," Professor McGonagall shooed everyone out of the library. "Horace, Filius, see if you can parse the language of the spell and come up with an incantation that will reverse it."
Professors McGonagall, Trelawney and Sprout led the way, with Draco, Granger, Weasley and the mirror following along. The phoenixes took flight as soon as they exited and perched in a row along the top of the mirror, angling their heads and regarding the group with interest. They made their way down to the Charms corridor and retrieved Harry's abandoned trainers.
"Now show us again what you were doing the first time it happened," Professor McGonagall instructed.
"I was holding his shoe," Draco said, "And I was looking at the insole." He looked up and met curious gazes all around. "His feet marked the insoles. It's nothing unusual, but I was thinking about how unique the impression was from his feet. Not just the shape, but the pressure, all determined by the gait of his walk. It's more than a shoe," his voice softened. "It tells a story of who he was."
"Who I am," Harry corrected him. Draco looked up into the mirror and saw Harry standing beside him. "I'm still here."
"I know you are," Draco said weakly. "But at the time I was afraid I'd lost you."
"Love," Professor McGonagall said confidently to Professor Trelawney, who nodded in return.
"I was standing here," Draco glowered at them. "And I felt warmth on my hand. That was Harry touching me,"
Harry put his hands out and overlapped Draco's fingers and the shoe. "I was trying to touch you, not the shoes," he said.
"He said he was touching me, not the shoes," Draco added.
"Love," McGonagall repeated.
"And that's when it moved," he said as the needle on the life-death meter hopped towards the Alivemark. "Actually, now that I think of it, every time it's moved has been when he's touching both me and the shoes at the same time," he looked up at Harry. "Am I remembering that correctly?"
"You're right," Harry said wonderingly.
"We're getting somewhere," Professor McGonagall said. "If Horace and Filius can determine what the incantation should be to reverse the banishment, we might have all of the pieces to this puzzle."
They broke for lunch and agreed they would reconvene when the professors had any news to share. Draco and Harry returned to Slytherin house with the four phoenixes and tried to convince them to stay put. They refused stubbornly and remained perched atop the mirror.
They walked back down to Hagrid's hut to learn about caring for the birds, and to give them some time in the sun. Their plumage shone brilliantly as they soared overhead in the wintery afternoon glare, with feathers of fiery reds melting into glimmering golds.
Draco and Harry stood beneath them, as close to hand-in-hand as they ever were these days, watching the birds dip and swoop in a display of aerial gymnastics that was like nothing they'd ever seen before. Harry told Draco about Professor Dumbledore's beloved Fawkes, about the loyalty between the man and his bird, and about the special properties of their tears, feathers and song. His reflection beamed at the lovely creatures, completely transfixed by the flashing colors and movement.
"We'll need to name them," Draco said. "And figure out how to tell them apart."
"Are we really going to keep all four?" Harry asked wonderingly.
"I don't think we'll have a say in the matter," Draco said seriously, eyeing the way the birds flocked together.
"How are you going to keep word from getting out that you have phoenixes?" Harry asked. "They're very ethical birds, you know. They wouldn't favor a Death Eater."
"I'll say they're yours," Draco shrugged.
"And when they're always around you?" Harry asked.
"I'll say you're mine," Draco said affectionately.
"That won't be good for your reputation either," Harry rolled his eyes.
"Well," Draco shielded his eyes and gazed skyward again, "reputation isn't everything,"
"That doesn't sound like Draco Malfoy at all," Harry teased.
"Maybe not," Draco said. "But a fellow can change."