What if Harry had a phoenix?

Here's the premise: when Harry's 7 or so, the Dursleys are going on some outing somewhere and don't want to bring Harry but can't leave him at home for some reason (repair guy's there and would report a kid left home alone? whatever). So they leave him at a weird little shopping center where he wanders around and finds a strange little nicknack shop. He goes in and wanders around till he's drawn to a shelf in the back where he finds this odd little egg in among a bunch of other random junk. It's about the size of a robin's egg, and is this lovely green-blue-aqua color. The shopkeeper (a wizard who recognizes Harry, not that Harry realizes, or alternatively just a very kind Muggle) tells him it's a petrified egg, but no one knows what kind (and this is true, as far as he knows). Since the shopkeep sees how much Harry likes the useless little thing, he gives him the egg to take home for free (aw).

So he goes home and a year or so passes. He doesn't understand why, but he really likes this little thing and carries it around with him all the time. Dudley probably sees him with it at some point and makes fun of his imaginary friend being a stupid blue rock, but that's just Dudley for you.

Anyway, some random night, the egg goes and hatches, and since it's a phoenix, that means lots of fire. The house catches alight and is badly damaged. Everyone makes it out, but Petunia has some bad burns and inhaled lots of smoke (I'm justifying her injuries being worse than everyone else's by saying that she sleeps with earplugs because Vernon snores like a fucking jet engine). So, Dumbledore's aware that this has happened, both from Mrs Figg and from the wards, but he sees that no one died and that the house can be repaired, so he's not especially fussed and goes back to his regularly scheduled programming.

But Vernon is FREAKED and is positive that Harry lit the fire on purpose to try and kill all of them, so first thing after Petunia's in the hospital, he takes Harry to Child Services or whatever and gives him up. I think he would want to accuse him of starting the fire, but then would have to explain why his nephew was sleeping in a broom cupboard under the stairs, soo… So Harry's placed with a foster family, who just so happen to be the Grangers, hey! Shortly thereafter, Petunia dies of her injuries, which breaks the blood wards on the house, tipping Dumbledore off that something actually quite serious has happened after all and he goes to try and recover Harry and put him in a safe place, but he's already with the Grangers and the Muggle authorities are actually paying decent attention to him now that he's in the foster care system. I guess if he were really serious he would Confund someone and get himself declared Harry's grandpa or something and take him away, but that can't happen because of the story, so for some reason he doesn't or can't. One thing I think would be funny though is that he should try to ward the Granger house a whole bunch but the phoenix magic keeps screwing them up so he just gets more and more frustrated and confused. Noo, we don't like torturing Dumbledore, nooooo.

Now, Harry's the one actually narrating this thing (unless you wanna do Dumbledore POV chapters to show all the stuff we just talked about, in which case have a blast), so here's what he's been thinking this whole time: as soon as the phoenix hatched, he and the phoenix formed a psychic connection. This is sort of a phoenix's version of a nascent fixation. But then I think the phoenix either got left behind at the Dursleys' when everyone got out of the fire, or like flew away shortly after hatching, so Harry hasn't seen it since before getting put in foster care and he's scared that it won't know how to find him again. Silly human. Of course your phoenix can find you. (Quick note: this bond between humans and phoenixes should be almost impossibly rare. Not only are phoenix eggs almost unheard of, but since they live practically forever, most of the people they live with are just normal witches or wizards, not ones they're born with and bonded to. Basically what I'm saying is that Fawkes isn't bonded with Dumbledore. You think that guy needs even one more thing to be fancy and knowledgeable about? No. Fawkes is wicked old and Dumbledore is just the latest human he's living with.)

So the phoenix finds Harry at the Grangers' and they start figuring things out. It's not like the phoenix is born knowing all the things it can do: it may be psychic, but it's still like a baby. Harry knows some basic legends about phoenixes, mainly the living forever and reborn from fire bits, but there are lots and lots of weird powers that don't necessarily get talked about, certainly not by Muggles. So Harry doesn't figure all of these out right away, but here are the powers he eventually gets:

-He's able to use fire teleportation independently (we see Dumbledore do this with Fawkes, but my interpretation is that that was Fawkes doing the thing, not Dumbledore, so here we're giving Harry that power for himself. He can take people with him via side-along if he tries hard.) This should be really tricky to learn though, maybe it's just one that he knows he'll be able to learn as he gets better control but he doesn't have during the actual story. Otherwise that gets a bit convenient.

-He is able to use his voice to calm people. The phoenix has a beautiful, mesmerizing song, and the human it's bonded to can soothe troubled feelings in others. This is definitely one that gets stronger with time-at first it's probably just like he can make someone who's having a bad day feel a bit better by talking to them with the intention of helping them, but when he gets older and stronger he should be able to like, excise horrible deep-seated anger and pain and stuff. I dunno, this one's still a bit vague, but I like the concept.

-He gets some sort of healing ability. Not tears like the phoenix itself though. I'm imagining it has something to do with conjuring a small flame that sucks out malignancy somehow. I dunno, also super vague, this is another one he can learn about slowly and improve at over time.

-Aaand last but not least, the vaguest power of all! So what we want is for him to have an ability that, when he is in physical contact with someone, lets him sense the entirety of their soul. Maybe this includes sensing their intentions, either just in the moment or in the long term, but it definitely includes sensing the location of their soul. This is pretty straightforward for almost everyone since peoples' souls generally live in their bodies, but this is the way we're thinking of having him defeat Voldemort. What we're thinking right now is that in first year when he's facing off with Quirrel, when he makes physical contact for the first time, he can sense Vodemort's soul, and all the little pieces off in Horcruxes. He's then able to either A) pull all those pieces together out of their containers (including himself) back into Quirrel's body which is sufficiently traumatic to kill at least Quirrel himself, if not also Voldemort, OR B) he's able to somehow use phoenix flame powers to burn out the Horcrux pieces, so the bit of Voldemort left in Quirrel is all that's left, OR (surprise 3rd option I just thought of) C) he applies his healing ability out through the soul connections and tries to take out the evil and malignance, but since that's all that Voldemort is it just burns him all up instead and he's dead. (I think I like B or C, partially because it's more dramatic, partially because if Harry dies in the process and is then resurrected in however many of the ways that could happen then that's extra epic, and partially because if all the Horcruxes spontaneously go up in flames, you get the mental image of Lucious Malfoy staring at the little soot mark where the diary used to be, just like O_O and I think that's worth it.) But anyway, Harry should have been super confused about the little sliver of soul in himself that the phoenix has been sensing in him ever since he hatched, and maybe he brings it up with Dumbledore once, but he basically goes "What what do you mean tiny bit of soul attached to you that's nonsense pure poppycock in fact who spiked your tea this morning boy you don't have a little bit of soul in you noooo no way that would be crazy and impossible go do your homework." LOL. So clearly there's still a lot to be worked out with this one, but that's the gist.

Anywho, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Harry lives with the Grangers from the age of 8 onwards and he and Hermione become very close, being raised as siblings and all (and they are NOT the ship, OMG. I'm not even certain if there is a ship, actually. If we're ending the story in first freaking year that's a little early to start thinking about dating.). How does he keep a growing phoenix secret from Dr and Dr Granger you ask? Unclear. Maybe he just tells them it's a weird parrot. (Pffft, no, that would be hilarious, but no.) But Hermione DEFINITELY finds out about the phoenix, like within a week of Harry living there (because the phoenix should find him within a couple of days), and that's part of what helps them bond as friends and siblings, because she tells him some of the stuff she can do that no one else can, aww. I'm imagining a bit of a time skip between him getting established with the Grangers and getting their Hogwarts letters (though actually since Hermione's a Muggle-born they'd send McGonagall to explain the whole thing, wouldn't they? Or does having Harry there sort of supersede that? Hmm.). So however they're introduced to the magical world, they go to Hogwarts and probably get sorted canonically (though the Hat would be having a FIELD DAY with all the weird stuff it finds in their minds during the Sorting, hahaha. Actually, is there a reason for them to both go to Gryffindor? Other than the fact that I want them to be friends with Ron still? Hmm. Well, it can go any number of ways, but in any case!) and Dumbledore is immediately like "Well hello little Harry, what have you got there?" and Harry with his soul-sensing power is like "Wow, you've got ulterior motives for days, don't you?" and Dumbledore's like "Uh." But he does help Harry figure out his powers, mainly by going through super old legends that nobody believed were real till now, because, again, being bonded to a phoenix is vanishingly rare.

So his first year of Hogwarts is a mix of research with Dumbledore and learning more about his bond with the phoenix and the powers that come with it, hijinks with friends (like he still gets on the Quidditch team and all that, and he should probably still duel Draco at some point cause why not, but the troll thing either goes very differently or doesn't happen at all since he's already friends with Hermione), weird stuff with Quirrel being weird at him since I don't think it should be a secret that he has a phoenix so Voldemort's like a lil worried about that (haha, and everyone's like "Great, I get to bring my owl or toad or whatever while Harry Freaking Potter over there is like 'Have you met my Phreaking Phoenix?'?"), and whatever else needs to happen to make the year fun and exciting. And then I think it would be really funny if it really just were completely done and ended by the time year one wraps up and the rest of his Hogwarts time is just normal except he also has a phoenix. That just tickles me.

Now, what could the phoenix's name be? (Also I just realized that we never decided if it was a boy or a girl. My strongest instinct is that it doesn't matter, but if I had to choose I'd say girl)
Sunny - I honestly think this would be super sweet. Lil 8 year old Harry with his baby phoenix being like "Do you like the name Sunny?" and the phoenix being like "Yes! ^w^" It just shows how good and innocent he is
Eos - Is the name of the Greek Titaness of dawn, related to Latin Aurora, and I think it would be cute if Hermione plopped down with this big book of Greek mythology (that you just know she had) and started going through names that were sort of thematic
Onyx - would be cool sounding, keep the X sound that 'phoenix' and 'Fawkes' both have, and also be a nice contrast because phoenixes are so bright and onyx is the prototypical black stone
Lazarus - a pretty obvious idea, and generally giving to males, but the nickname of it could be 'Lazy', which I think is funny