Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
Warnings: minor swearing
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It was a modestly warm, dry Sunday morning when Harry was released from the hospital wing with Fawkes in tow. He couldn't believe he'd once again managed to get himself back there and it seemed no matter how hard he tried he always just did stupid stuff like, well, flying over the Great Lake at night and yesterday's "mirror incident", to name a few.
Quite frankly, it scared him to see himself that way, so angry and afraid that he just lashed out and got himself hurt- even more concerning is that, with the latent powers he had acquired in his hands, he could easily hurt other people if he were in the right mood. Harry shivered, thinking back to the moment he had stopped pounding into the mirror and looked right back at the image reflected to him. That was the moment he felt he didn't know who he was anymore. Freak, not-a-freak, attention mongerer, good friend, insane- just what was he anymore?
He'd be whatever he had to be to keep his hands secret. There had been too many close calls, like the accidental magic during DADA, and the possibility that Seamus could have walked in on him all bloodied and glowing at any time. He would have to be even more careful than he usually was, especially now with his hands becoming more "reactive" than they had ever been before. He could hurt other people and, even if it were Draco Malfoy calling his mom a mudblood, he was going to make damn well sure that he didn't. He couldn't help but shudder when he imagined what would happen if his secret got exposed and... well, the point is, he has to be cautious for whatever was coming.
Soon. That was the one word that reverberated in his head like the waves of sound that would echo off of an overlarge, baritone drum. The boy just knew it. He could feel it deep within himself like how a man with a broken arm can tell a storm is brewing from the ache in his bone. His hands, this 'destiny', the dreams, the phoenixes- everything- was all just waiting to culminate into one great event which would completely change the course of Harry's life. He wished it wouldn't, he wished he could just keep a scrap of normalcy, but everything decided to happen to him. He was fate's favorite play toy.
Nonetheless, he'd go on with life like everything was fine. He'd pass around the quaffle with Ron, he'd help Neville with potions and watch Hermione dig into stacks of books with the occasional eye roll. It would also help to refrain from punching mirrors. He'd pretend like everything was great until whatever is going to happen to him, happens to him. Although, if his sense of mental-preservation allowed it, and his curiosity overwhelmed him, he wouldn't mind finding out more about 'old magicks'...
With those ominous yet comforting thoughts in mind, the boy set off from the hospital wing to the Gryffindor common room, spending the rest of the quaint Sunday doing homework and saying yes, he is still alive to various people. Hermione wasn't so convinced.
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School commenced with its usual flare and, slowly, Harry got used to the routine that came with it. As his roles slipped from school to dorm to Great Hall and back again, the boy derived a slight comfort in not having to worry about anything disrupting his schedule. By this point in time people got tired of going out of their way to purposely make his day worse, and while he was still treated coolly by many students, it was in no way as bad as it was before. It was almost as if they had forgotten about him, which made the boy smile stupidly to himself from time to time.
The boy grew to enjoy classes which were pleasantly dull, like History of Magic, or Divination, which were filled to the brim with the inane drivel spouted by the professors and had little to no practical magical application. They gave him a little bit of leeway from having to worry about controlling his performance in class, which became a near constant worry on his mind, especially in Transfiguration. It seemed that ever since the first week, McGonagoll had taken to watching him like a hawk, all because he forgot his strength and transfigured the damn dishplate into a mushroom too quickly.
The magic that resided in his palms seemed to try and do anything to leap out and affect everything within its vicinity, and actively trying to control it in some manner was a task the boy was entirely unaccustomed with. Many times he had found himself performing something to a level that was far too advanced and he often could not find a proper balance between using no magic at all and using it in an overpowering way. This, of course, resulted in many suspicious glances thrown his way by the students because his participation had always been mediocre in class.
Harry knew the first time that he had been asked to be tutored by someone, when such a thing had never occurred before in all of the time he spent at Hogwarts, he was in deep trouble. Not able to deny the poor kid, Harry agreed. He probably wouldn't of if he had known that that was only the beginning.
Ever since then, more people started taking notice of his latent magical talent and asked him for help too. At first this was confined to people only in his year but this quickly expanded outwards to include first years and even three or four seventh years. The boy could've sworn he even saw a few kids with concealed Snake crests begged him to show how Aguamenti worked.
Shrugging sheepishly at the jealous glances Hermione threw him every day or so, Harry's reputation as a 'good tutor' became quickly known until the numbers of kids he taught outshined that of Ravenclaw's prefects. Even though he continually told himself that he shouldn't be doing this, that it was dangerous, suspicious looking, and this would ultimately be the death of him, the boy couldn't help but have the greatest feeling in his chest when he'd see that proverbial light bulb pop above someone's head.
As his teaching reputation surged upward, his performance in class did too without him even noticing it. He didn't really notice that he was, time after time, one of the first students to successfully perform a spell or complete a complex project. The boy may not have admitted it to himself yet, but he loved the unfamiliar feeling of being praised by teachers and the resultant academic achievement. He loved the feeling of magic in his hands being freed; it was like he could feel the very core of himself releasing something and letting it flow out of his hands. The sensation resonated deeply within some part of himself.
Magic before always seemed, well, hard. In everything except for defense, it was a daily struggle to get his core open and airy and accepting... it was almost like he had to physically drag it through his veins and get it to shoot out in an often ineffective result. But now, his magic accepted him and he accepted it. At first it was as if they were two separate entities living in the same place, but now it felt as if it were truly apart of him, something not necessarily controlled by him but more so a symbiosis between him and the magic which occurred. He couldn't believe that it was only now that he recognized his magic with such clarity in all his time at Hogwarts. It had its own personality and feelings, and it reacted differently to different situations, as well as to other cores, but he knew if he tried to describe this to somebody that they would give him an odd look and cart him straight off to St. Mongo's, so he refrained. It sounded insane, after all, but to him it was so vibrantly real. It was so vivid, in fact, that the question in his mind morphed from 'how can I see it?' into 'how can other people not see it'?
One sunny morning, Harry felt that his magic was being particularly restless and decided to take a walk through the grounds. He found that often this was effective in quelling whatever anxieties tended to leak out from his head into his core, and had started doing this regularly. Fawkes, of course, was perched on his shoulder and seemed to be enjoying the boy's recent relaxed attitude.
Tracing along the dormant, gritty stone walls of the castle he circumvented, he had looked out towards the Forbidden Forest that was some distance away from him at the moment. The boy didn't know how he felt about it and avoided thinking on it whenever he could, often averting his gaze because it reminded him too much of the worrying dreams he'd been having, yet on this particular day he just stopped and stared.
It looked like it always had- lush, green and properly ominous. Harry, knowing he hadn't done much to sate the growing curiosity bubbling in his stomach as of late, carefully approached right to the very edge where the grass was no longer tidy that marked the beginning of the untamed forestry. The boy squinted, taking a step further, and peered through the vast expanse of trees, as if trying to rekindle the lost memory of his going out into the forest that one night back a while ago. The forest felt like it always had yet there existed a weightiness which wasn't previously there only a couple of months ago. It reminded him of the Great Lake.
He peered into its depths that looked so much like the black recesses that existed within the lake, feeling like he should attach some meaning to it all but finding none he knew of.
Soon. The word popped back into his head again, making him immediately anxious.
"You shouldn't be here yet."
Harry jumped three feet in the air, whirling around to the unexpected, faintly dreamy sounding voice that sounded in his left ear.
It was only Luna. Placing a hand on his booming chest, the boy grinned with a chagrined expression. "Don't scare me like that," he laughed. Fawkes settled closer on Harry's shoulder, watchful. He was waiting for something.
Luna blinked, smiling back. "The house elves told me that you should be prepared."
The boy felt a weight of horror drop in his stomach, "What? Prepare for what?"
"Such strange little creatures, don't you think? They are rather perceptive. All they told me was to tell you 'soon.'" she proclaimed, grasping her necklace stringed with odd little figurines and staring up towards the sky.
Harry tapped her, "Are you sure they didn't say anything else to you? It's really important, Luna."
She ignored him once again, still looking upwards. "The nargles say that birds are coming here." she commented blithely, and thrusting her pointed finger to the air, added, "Look, there's one now!"
The boy blinked, searching the skyline until he found what Luna was looking at. When he did, his face paled to the color of soggy oatmeal.
A phoenix. It was a phoenix. Not unlike Fawkes, yet its delicate plumage was a combination of deep and light greens. "That can't be possible. Phoenixes tend to avoid populations of people, right? They live in solitude, right? What would it be doing here? I'm not awake, I can't be awake."
She peered at Harry with glassy eyes, watching his expression darken with untold horror. "They tend to get together when something huge is about to happen, at least that's what the nargles tell me."
The boy trembled like a card house in a gust of wind. The green bird beamed right at the boy, appraising him, before swooping through the sky and settling on his other shoulder. She stared jealously at Fawkes.
"May I?" he asked, and the bird lowered its head so Harry could feel his soft feathers. "And there are more of you on the way?"
Yes. There are more of them.
Phoenixes. Phoenixes are coming to Hogwarts and that could only mean one possible thing: Soon.