A/N: It's been four years but I thought I'd try to take this challenge back up.
Disclaimer: Even all these years later, I still don't own Harry Potter.
Day 16: Song
A young man walked alone through a forest. It was a place he had never been before. A place he knew about only from a friend's letter months before -had it truly only been months? It felt like a lifetime. His friend had written to him about the beauty of the forest, about how it was filled with the most magical of creatures. Then, the young man had been filled with a sort of jealousy. He should have been there with his friend, traveling the world together as they had planned.
How foolish he had been then. Now, the young man scarcely noticed the forest's beauty, paid little heed to the signs of magic everywhere around him. He had come here because it was the farthest away he could think of from his home. From the place where they had just buried his sister, where his brother had declared at her funeral that her death was all his fault – and his brother had been right, this much the young man knew.
Lost as he was in bitter thoughts, in guilt and remorse, at first the music seemed to the young man to be within his own head – his own sorrow given voice in a melody that was both eerie and beautiful.
But slowly he realized that the song came not from within his own mind but from somewhat up ahead. And for the first time, the young man raised his head and seemed to notice the forest around him, for the first time his strides became purposeful instead of listless and automatic, for quite suddenly, he felt he must find the creature who was singing that song, at once, the most beautiful and the saddest thing that he had ever heard, that he must find this creature who seemed to be as broken as he was.
Time seemed to be behaving strangely as the young man followed the song deeper and deeper into the woods. It felt as if he had been walking for hours, yet at the same time as if it had only been seconds since he had first heard the music. Then at last, he strode through the trees into a clearing and the music seemed to be coming from nearly directly overhead. The young man's eyes swept the trees around the learning until he spotted something out of place. Hanging in one of the trees was a strange contraption, a sort of small sphere that looked to be woven from vines, like a cage. Crammed inside this strange cage was a bird, it's mouth open in song. The bird was huge, filling nearly every inch of the cage, and it was as beautiful as the song it sang, covered in magnificent red and gold plumage.
The young man knew instantly what the bird was, remembering some description in a book read long ago. A phoenix. And for the first time in what seemed like a very long time, he felt something besides sorrow and guilt, a bolt of white hot fury. Who could do something like this to such a beautiful creature? Another part of his friend's letter came back to him. The friend had mentioned how the forest was plagued by magical poachers who wished to capture the rare, magical creatures it contained, for many of them were very valuable -either dead or alive. The young man knew there must be powerful enchantments on the cage, for phoenixes had powerful magic of their own and it would be no easy feat to hold one captive. Well, it was a good thing the young man happened to be the most brilliant wizard of his age.
He pulled his wand from his robes and pointed it at the cage, murmuring soft incantations. The words pured from him steadily, almost becoming a song of their own, rising in harmony with the song the phoenix still sang. At last, after what must have been nearly half an hour, the cage burst open. The young man and the bird fell silent almost as one. The young man's throat felt scratchy and sore from the prolonged use of his voice, though he doubted the bird was having the same problem.
The bird was staring at the open door of it's cage, and he thought he could detect a wariness in it's face, as if it didn't quite trust that this wasn't some trick. He reached up toward it, holding out a hand toward the phoenix. "Go on," he murmured, his voice slightly hoarse, "You're free. Come on out."
Slowly, the bird emerged from the cage, its taloned feet closing gently around the young man's arm. He brought his arm down slowly until he and the bird were eye to eye.
For a moment, the two studied each other, and the young man felt the bird was seeing into him, like it could see everything about him.
The young man felt almost as if the moment would last forever, but it did not. The bird shook itself, spread its wings and took off into the sky, it soared around the clearing, seeming to relish the ability to move freely again, and once more it began to sing, but this time the song was filled with pure joy.
The young man watched the bird for a moment, then sank to the ground, his back against a tree. He leaned back against it and closed his eyes, feeling a curious mixture of joy and sadness. He could not help but join in with the bird's joy that it was free, and yet, he knew that it would leave now, and he would once more be alone in his sorrow. The song faded, and the young man knew the bird must have departed with it, and yet he still didn't open his eyes.
And then he felt a heavy weight land in his lap. His eyes opened in surprise, two bright blue orbs blinking down into two large golden ones. The phoenix hadn't left, after all. It regarded him quite calmly from his lap, as if it was perfectly natural for it to be there. And somehow, the young man felt that it was.
This one turned out to be much longer than all the other ones I've written for this story, but I hope you enjoyed it. I'm going to try to catch up, since it's a few days later into January than where I left off, and after that I'll do my best to post one chapter a day.