Haaaarry… Potter.

Harry blinked his eyes open, but nothing changed. Had he blinked, he wondered. He knew his senses were fine. He felt like he was blinking, except the image he saw didn't change at all. It was pure darkness. That's when it hit him. He was unseeing.. He tried breathing, but he found he couldn't. He didn't panic though, because he was starting to recognize the otherworldly feeling of being disincorporated in the magicscape, or a mindscape, or whatever this was…

Memories came flashing past him, and in front of himself he saw them replay in the whateverscape he was in. Everything around him felt… oily, somehow tarnished, and all that he saw was semi-opaque, flowing and stretchy, both somehow wet, and yet foggy, like a cool summer morning after a nighttime rain.

In front of himself was he, sitting at his desk in front of the unassuming journal, holding quill in the air, not writing.

He watched as he dipped his quill tip into the bloody little nick in his skin, allowing his blood to steep into the black ink. Fascinated as he was by all this, Harry Potter didn't begin his occlumency exercises right away, and simply kept on watching as a silent explosion reverberated throughout the mindscape. His scar throbbed for a brief instant. He had used rudimentary blood magic to ink his will into the journal, and it had reacted violently and caused an explosion, sending him flying across the room, headfirst into the stone wall.

Harry observed himself lying unconscious in his dorm room, and the whateverscape rippled profoundly, the colours twirled and flashed and reformed. Harry kept observing as his past-self materialized into a great whiteness, walking, reaching a brick wall barrier, and crossing it.

So far, he had been still, and the picture kept morphing around him, the point of view changing and following his memory self. Now, he was on the outside of the barrier, and he kept looking on, waiting, even though his other-self had already crossed through. He remembered the Mind Arts Most Arcane, and began to focus.

Finally, he decided to move, and his disincorporated consciousness flew right through the barrier as if it weren't there, no sensations or anything.

That same, cold voice that had brought him back to reality, whispered again. Harrrrry…. Potter.

Harry extended his senses in every direction, but he only felt the platform 9 ¾, himself, his other self, and the little, fell creature. His memory-self was vomiting, and the sheer, utter wrongness of whatever that little creature was wafting over to his disincorporated being, infecting him with its essence.

Why… did you… take me… with you?

The world Harry's visions showed him burst into flames. Black, oily, evil flames. The whiteness of the expanse surrounding the ephemeral platform began to fill with angry, black smoke, much like a terrible storm brewing on a hot summer afternoon.

Memory-Harry, oblivious to the chaos that disincorporated Harry was experiencing, picked up the infant of darkness, and carried him onboard the moving train. The Hogwarts Express burst into black flames as the duo set off into the distant darkness.

All around him, the whateverscape was devolving into an imbroglio of twisting black shadows and fog, and oily flames of darkness, and thunderous lightning.

WHYYY!?

The single word was roared so loudly it blasted Harry out of his reverie.

He blinked his eyes. He could feel pain in his body. His four poster bed was burning, being consumed by the same black flames as from his vision. He took a deep breath in, and his lungs complained. He coughed hard, for the air was acrid and terrible in his room, and only getting worse. Harry started to crawl away from the blistering heat all whilst coughing, blindly, for the smoke burnt his eyes burnt and so he kept them shut. Pain shot across his limbs and flesh with every move he made.

Having reached the wall, he used it as support and sat, heavily leaning against it. He summoned his wand from wherever it was into his hand, and it was there, tip glowing, and ready to defend its master.

"FRESHNAIR! AGUAMENTI! FRESHENAIR! AGUAMENTI!..."

For what felt like an eternity, but was only an hour, Harry fought with the vicious flames.

"FRESHENAIR!"

Harry bellowed out the spell once again, and the air started to feel a little bit less hostile. He looked, and saw that his suit was ripped, burnt, and stained. He was sitting in a bloody puddle, and everything was soaked by his spell work. His body was bleeding heavily, and sported many wounds besides burns. He looked around his room, and saw the remnants of his desk. It had exploded into hundreds of splinters, much like anti-personnel hand-grenade fragments, and the larger chunks had been set on fire.

"Ha… Ha… HA-HAHAaHAHAHAHaaaAAaaAAHAAHHA-HAHA!"

Tears burst forth from the boy. His heart was still beating. His hands were shaking, and his head was swimming. He was physically in more pain that he had ever been before, and magically… he was beyond exhausted.

"Jojo!"

After a few seconds, his elf appeared, and looked around the room, shock plastered on her face.

"Don't let… anybody… in the room… Clean up… best as you… can… Don't touch… that… book… very evil…"

"But, but, what-what about, about young master?! Health is more important than room?!"

Harry winked at the little creature that was in tears, and bellowed out a word.

"Faaaaawkes!"

Flames exploded from the air, and down dropped a majestic phoenix, immediately beginning to sing, whilst slowly flying to Harry in a way that defied muggle-understood laws of physics.

Landing gracefully on the wounded youth's shoulder, both exploded into flames.

Harry passed out.

Harry Potter.

Instantly recognizing the comforting embrace of his own mindscape, Harry began to fortify his barriers and mindshields.

I am wind…

The infinite expense of the mindscape was filling up with trees, and a forest stretched out into every direction. The trees were growing bigger and bigger, and the wind was picking up.

I AM WINDDDD!

Gusts of angry wind were ripping through the forest. Trees were swaying, branches were creaking, and leaves were whipping around everywhere.

I AM WIND IN THE LEAAAAAAAAAAAAAVES OF SWAYING TREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

Vortices and tornadoes were forming. Branches and trunks, torn asunder, were circling the point that was Harry's consciousness. A river that had been coursing through the forest of his mindscape was now feeding into the forming maelstrom that had encircled the young wizard. He was in the eye-of-the-storm.

WHOOOOOOO AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRE YOOOOOOOOOOOOOU?! WHAAAAAAAT DOOOOOOO YOOOOOOU WAAAAAAAAAAAAANT?!

Harry's mind echoed dangerously throughout the scape.

Then the music started. A phoenix song picked up. Not one voice, not two, but a multitude. The wind calmed down, and the leaves settled to the ground. The river resumed its peaceful flow.

Harry blinked. He had eyelids again. The soothing music didn't let him frown. He recognized the song; it was like Fawkes… but more.

He looked at his body, for he had incorporated, and he observed he was uninjured, and feeling no pain. He exhaled slowly, luxuriating in the feeling of a throat that didn't ache, and lungs that weren't burned by cursed smoke. He stretched deeply, and reached out with his hands, opening and closing his fists. He couldn't help but smile.

His gaze reached out, and he noticed his forest was mangled, trees uprooted, broken branches everywhere.

Harry smiled sadly, and sat down on the soft ground cross-legged. He closed his eyes. He began to breathe and started to extend his senses outward much like Nicholas had showed him. All around him, the forest started to return to a pristine state, slowly, surely.

As his senses reached further and further out, more of the detritus was reverting to its original its place, leaves back on branches, branches back on trunks, trees back in the ground. The phoenix song ended.

Harry opened his eyes, and fell back from his position. Phoenixes, at least ten, were sitting in the branches of the trees surrounding him. Each was a different colour and a different size. The biggest one looked a bit like a vulture, the smallest like a sparrow. He didn't see Fawkes among them.

Although none were singing anymore, Harry was hit by an overwhelming rush of magic, like nothing he had ever experienced before. Sharing a mindscape with so many Birds of the Living Flame would be impressive even for beings such as Dumbledore or the Flamels, nevermind a twelve year old wizarding boy.

"Harry Potter," voiced a phoenix, although Harry couldn't tell which one it was. "Fawkesorphos has brought you to us. We had been preparing to carry out a collective burning, but now we believe we have a new course of action to take."

Harry was confused, what was a collective burning, he wondered.

"Ah, yes," a different voice continued, seemingly in response to Harry's unvoiced question, "we phoenixes go through burnings. Young Fawkesorphos has had seventeen so far. With each successive burning, a phoenix gathers more magic within itself. For a collective burning, each phoenix must have the magic of hundreds of individual burnings. Collective burnings allow us to take on our next form, that of the Simurgh. We have been waiting a long time for the stars and planets to align, and on the very evening we were to go through it, you have been brought to us, Child of Prophecy, by our youngest."

"But Fawkes isn't here?" Harry could tell the phoenixes were smiling.

"Indeed, he is not. He brought you to our nest, dying, bleeding, and broken. You had been carrying a terrible evil, and it burst forth from whatever had been holding it these years."

Harry could feel a cold wind pick up. There was anger in it, and he could faintly make out words.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRY POOOOOOOOOOOTTER!

"What's going on?" Harry frowned.

A third voice continued, "Harry Potter, you have had a shard of Voldemort's soul in you. It was isolated from you by powerful magic. Somehow, it was able to overcome the protection, or perhaps bypass it, and you were savagely attacked. Your body was severely damaged by dark magic, and even our tears could do nothing for it. There was only one way to save your life, Harry Potter."

Harry wasn't sure he was understanding what was being said. "W-what?" was all he had been able to stammer out.

One of the phoenixes beat its wings and a hot breeze warmed Harry up.

"We are in your mind right now, Harry Potter. When Fawkes brought you to us, the only way to save you was for us to forego our transformation into a Simurgh. We had decided instead on an unusual course of action, and now we will hope it is the right one. We also hope you will forgive us."

"Huh?" Harry didn't know what was going on, at all. The phoenixes, twelve they were, flew off the branches in the trees and started to fly in slow circles around Harry, getting ever closer. The boy, naturally, was mesmerized.

As the birds approached the youth ever closer, Harry started to sweat. It was hot, and only kept getting warmer, yet he did not move.

Harry could feel the feathers of those phoenixes closest to him as they glided gracefully in a hypnotic fashion around him. The heat was starting to become stifling.

One by one, the phoenixes grazed him with their wing tips, and each spot they touched burst into flames.

Harry looked at his skin, and it was on fire. The phoenixes were a blur now, a tornado of fire, and Harry was on fire, and the pain was monumental, yet he did not cry out, nor did he resist in any way. Harry watched his body burn, and his consciousness burned as well.

He watched as he became the forest, and watched the forest burn. The cold wind that screamed was no match for the blazing inferno that was Harry Potter's mindscape.

Unknown to the boy, but his body outside of the mindscape was on fire as well. The phoenix nest in the field of the sacred Gaokerenas where Harry had been brought to by Fawkes had been ready for the phoenixes' collective burning. They embraced Harry's dying body, and together, the dozen of ancient phoenixes and the Child of Prophecy, began to burn.

Inside Harry's soul, Voldemort had been lurking. He had been kept at bay by the sacrifice of Harry's parents, an ancient magic far stronger than the Dark Arts that Voldemort employed to anchor his mortal coil to the realm of matter. Harry's act of kindness, of love, to not abandon the baby at the train station, had let loose the shard of Voldemort's soul that had been stuck inside of him.

The diary had been able to take advantage of the blood Harry had given it, and together the two soul shards had almost been able to take out the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry won, but his body was failing. The phoenixes took the boy's dying body, and included it in their collective burning, hoping that perhaps they were right about all this. They had sensed Voldemort's soul, beaten and broken, yet still causing suffering. They had cast the die, and now was the time to see the result.