AN: I finished
Phoenix Song. I have nothing to do. I will have nothing to do for a week. And
thus I write fanfiction. This story is entitled "Pawn of Darkness". It is sort
of an alternate universe Phoenix Tears. Phoenix doesn't get and Elemental and
Elementals don't exist in this world. The next few chapters will be directly
taken from Phoenix Tears with minor adaptions. Then the story will start to
change, and the second volume of this "Knight of the Lion" will be almost
completely different. I beg you to review.
1
Phoenix
Argent had always seemed to be a perfectly normal ten year old. She was not short or tall, and had
brown-blond hair that waved down past her shoulders (which
she hated, as she'd always loved red hair.)
She was bright in
all her classes, and performed well outdoors. Her parents ran a greenhouse in their
Britain hometown, wonderfully colorful
and long-lasting blooms.
They were perfectly normal, except for the fact that they were often
over-excited around
Halloween, which they celebrated by dressing up as
magical-folk. Phoenix laughed at their
antics during the family's favorite holiday.
Phoenix's
only exceptional feature was her eyes.
They were normally a hazel color, but went green when she was
happy, brown when she was scared or upset, and the brown
often turned even reddish when she was particularly angry. This
unnerved many of her friends and teachers, and her parents
even more.
One warm,
mid-August night Phoenix sat alone in her room, curled on the bed with a book
the night after her tenth birthday, dreaming about wonderous creatures like her
own namesake, unicorns, centaurs, and mer-people. Suddenly she sat up with a jerk.
Voices and footsteps were approaching, coming up the stairs. She sat, silent, listening as the people
talked among themselves.
"The girl
has to be around here somewhere," a man's voice whispered. "Crabbe, Goyle,
start looking." Then came
two deep voiced replies of "yes, sir."
Phoenix
had assumed at first that they were robbers, but they sounded like they were
after her. She had to get out of
the room, climb out the window or something. Go to her
friend Tara's house and call her parents and the police.
The door
opened, and a man with silver-blond hair came in, wearing garments very similar
to her parent's Halloween
outfits, and carrying a long wand, again like the ones her
parents had at Halloween. Phoenix
resisted the urge to laugh at his strange dress. He smirked at Phoenix. "Well, hello," he said, looking directly at
her, "Are you ready to go?"
Phoenix
stared at him, eyebrows raised. Then
the man raised his wand at her, and shouted "Imperio!"
The
sensation Phoenix felt was similar to being pulled upward by a large bunch of
ballons. She felt light-headed, like
she was drifting away.
Then a voice drifted across the nothingness she was in.
Come,
follow me…
But
Phoenix didn't want to. Make me, she screamed
in her head to the other voice.
Come…
No, I
want to stay here…
The voice
was cut off and Phoenix was back to herself again. She stared at the man, who looked angry and also
startled. Two
lumbering men, probably the deep voiced people, came to stand behind the one
with blond hair. Phoenix's
eyes flashed, and red sparks were gathering in them. "Stop!" she told the first man.
The man
looked defininitly mad now. He raised
his wand and shouted "Stupefy!"
Phoenix
saw a bright jet of light, and all the world went black.
****
Phoenix
rose in a dark room. She remembered the
men who had been in her house and tried to sit up, but was
restrained by some type of strong, thin cords. Her mind raced. She had to have been kiddnapped, there was no other
explanation. But
what had the blond man done to her? Why
had he been able to do those things, to knock her out and send
her into that nothing place where she couldn't think?
A door
creaked open. She set her face rigidly,
waiting for whoever it was. She was
surprised to see a woman with
cascading golden hair walk in, carrying a tray of food. Her eyes were nervous and wary, but her
mouth was set in a smile.
"Hello,"
the woman said, setting the tray down and turning on a light. Phoenix saw that she was tied onto a large,
cannopied bed, in a luxorious room that was mostly emerald green in color. "I'm glad you finally woke up."
Deciding
not to trust the woman yet, Phoenix stared some more and saw another wand, like
the man's, in a pocket in
the woman's gown.
The lady
began to unknot Phoenix's bonds.
Phoenix chose to take a risk and find out whether the woman was on her
side, whether she would help Phoenix escape. "Where am I?" she asked.
"In a
house."
"A little
more specific, please."
The lady
laughed, not unfriendly, but amused.
"In a house, in Britain, and I, well I can't tell you more, or he'll
get
upset. In my house,
and my name is Narcissa Malfoy." She
offered Phoenix some food, which the girl took gladly.
"Who is he?
And why can't you tell me where I am?"
Red was welling up in Phoenix's eyes.
The woman
looked agitated and upset at Phoenix bringing this up. "I really can't tell you, not now."
"Please—"
But
Narcissa was already moving toward the door.
"You'll learn soon, I should think," she said, mustering another
smile, "I—I—Goodbye."
Phoenix
sighed and lay back down on the bed.
Looking around the room, she saw that it was windowless; and that
although it was richly furnished, it was quite
cheerless. A cell.
She sat
down and forced herself to sleep.
****
A loud
banging roused Phoenix next, and loud footsteps. A familiar voice, the blond man's, and a high, cold one,
were talking. She
sat upright, tense, wondering if they would hurt her. The door burst open.
Involuntarily, Phoenix gave a small gasp. The man who had just walked in was the tallest she had ever
seen. And he
was even stranger.
His fingers were horribly long, his skin ice white. The blazing eyes were bright red. His mouth was in a
mirthless, twisted, smile—not friendly at all.
Phoenix
decided to glare. This tall person was
on the blond man's side, and was thus a bad guy. She sat there,
staring, as he swept into the center of the room, the blond
man stayed near the doorway.
"Leave
us, Lucius." The imperious beckoning
sent the blond man bowing from the room.
Then the red eyes turned
themselves on Phoenix.
With a wave of his wand, he closed the door.
"Welcome,
Phoenix Argent. My name is Tom Riddle."
****
Phoenix
said nothing. The man hardly seemed to
care. Waving his wand again, he moved a
chair next to him.
What was
this, wondered Phoenix? Was it
magic? Magic—like she had dreamed about
since she was old enough o read about it? She was enthralled, but kept her face
straight and emotionless.
Some of it
must have shown, however, because Riddle spoke again. "Do you enjoy this, Phoenix?
You can do it too? Didn't your
parents ever show you magic?"
What was
he talking about? Her parents weren't
magic. She wasn't magic…
"In fact,
I can teach you, if you want. Give you
a wand, give you the power…" Suddenly,
all the furniture in the
room except the bed Phoenix was sitting on and Riddle's
chair rose into the air and started spinning around. After a minute or
two, it all settled gently back into its places.
Phoenix
managed to say, "But, I can't… I'm not magic…"
Riddle
laughed. "But you are. You have a gift so strong I sent my Death
Eaters to fetch you. You might be
almost as strong as I am, in fact, stronger than Dumbledore." He spat the last word venomously. "Do you want to learn, to have a chance to
use your talents?"
"Well,
yes," said Phoenix. "I think."
"Very
good then. We will visit Gregorovitch's
in one hour, and Narcissa will bring you your lunch shortly. Don't be
alarmed if you hear people, by the way, nobody here will
hurt you." And before Phoenix had time
to marvel at how he could
possibly know about that, Riddle had disappeared with a
small pop.
****
Phoenix ate her small lunch
silently. She felt a bit odd. Hardly noticing when the lunch tray zoomed
out of
the room on its own accord, she sat, deep in thought, mind
roving. This was happening to quickly
and was too odd. She'd
have to look at what cards were played on the table next, as
she didn't really understand.
She
hadn't even noticed footsteps before her next visitor came. It was a boy with the same hair as the blond
man,
Lucius, had. He looked about fifteen or sixteen; his blue eyes
were like a frozen lake, cold, like everyone else's seemed to
be. There were
bandages wrapped around his wrist, which was red. "You're to come down now," he told her, and she
stepped out of the room, curious about where she was.
"Who're you?"
she asked, not knowing whether she could find out more from him.
"Draco,
and this is our manor. It really is a
pity our Lord insisted on putting you in one of the smaller chambers, you
won't get to see the rest of the place."
"Are you
magic too?"
"Yes, in
training. School's a bore, I'm on a
holiday, but I'll be going back soon. I
do think you'll be having much
more interesting studies."
Phoenix
shrugged. They made their way down the
seemingly endless maze of stairs and hallways until they walked
into a large room with an enormous fireplace and huge oaken
doors.
As the huge
clock struck one, there was a small gust of air, and Riddle appeared
suddenly. Draco bowed low, and ran from
the room.
"Are you
ready, Phoenix Argent?" asked Riddle.
She nodded. "Good." He grabbed her wrist and popped her away.
The room
rippled, and suddenly she was standing in a cold building with shelves of long,
black boxes along it. A man
came running out of the back, bowing low. He had a gray goatee and a large bald
patch.
"Good
day, my Lord—" he said, but he was cut off.
"We are here for the girl's wand," said Riddle, "Help her
find one, I have business in these quarters and will be back shortly."
He strode out of the room.
Phoenix
stared at the shelves and the man, who she assumed was Mr. Gregorovitch. He was beckoning something,
and a large tape measure zoomed toward them. "You have a right wand hand, I guess?" He
spoke with an accent.
"No," Phoenix said, "Actually
I'm left-handed."
The man
looked surprised, but covered it up and walked around the room, collecting
boxes. "Try some of these
wands. Nine
inches-maple and unicorn hair." Phoenix
took the wand but it was snatched away.
"Rowan and dragon
heartstring, ten and a half inches… Oak and leprechaun fire…
Thorn and griffin talon… no, no, no…"
Phoenix
continues waving wands, with nothing happening. Another wand was passed to her.
"Eleven and
three-quarters inches, redwood and phoenix feather, nice and
sturdy—oh, bravo!"
Phoenix,
the moment she had taken the wand, had felt a wonderful warmth spread through
her fingers. As she twirled
it experimentally, a fountain of gold and silver sparks shot
out of it towards the ceiling.
As she
continued to shoot sparks, now she had them coming in the colors of the
rainbow, and then swirling around in
the air, the door opened again.
Riddle,
smirking, walked in. He stared at the
display of sparks, then twisted his fingers and they stopped. Phoenix was annoyed; she had been having
fun. "I assume that that is your wand,"
he said, talking to Phoenix, then he turned.
"Gregorovitch, how much?"
"Um, it
would be seven Galleons, sir." The
money dropped out of nowhere onto the floor behind him. Phoenix
noticed it was very odd money. "Got the feather from a bird in the Himalayas."
Riddle left
the shop. She followed Riddle outside, where
there were many other shops, each very odd.
"Your first
lesson," Riddle said, "Will be Apparation.
You simply tap yourself with your wand, and visualize where you want to
be. Visualize the room you were in when
we left. I will be waiting." Then he
disappeared.
Phoenix
closed her eyes, pictured the huge room, and tapped herself. There was the same blur of color, and then
she
saw the room coming out of the blur.
"Very
good," Riddle praised from behind her, "Tomorrow, your real lessons begin."
