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Chapter 3: Visions By Moonlight

Harry soared, and saw.

It was odd, flying this way, and not just because he guided his own body instead of a broomstick now. While he attended, in some part of his mind, to the lift and flatten of tail and wings, most of him paid attention to his eyes, and the many small and shocking things they saw on the ground below.

The ruins of the house where his parents had died and Voldemort had not died enough glowed to his eyes, with radiant, feral energy. Harry saw three distinct shapes stalking through it, or flying. Yes, on his many second glances, all three shapes had wings. They seemed to be birds, but he could not make out more than that. They wheeled and screamed at each other, and sometimes reared back and screamed at him.

After the fourth such occurrence, Harry ruffled his feathers into what he realized almost at once were battle positions and screamed back at them.

His voice grew far louder than he intended, swelling like a trumpet into a harsh and ringing cry. Harry shuddered and listened to it bounce off the ruined house, the more distant houses of the Muggle village, the rocks that lay embedded in the soil, and even what seemed to be the moonlight. The echoes grew fainter, but also sharper, until by the end Harry could hear the desperate cries of the Muggles stirring in their beds.

He wheeled higher, and the moonlight did not disguise the furious red tinge that everything around him had taken.

That cry was a call to war. Harry's thoughts bounced like the initial scream, and fed him grim, gray, sharp images, much as the dreams had. Voldemort had begun the war, but Harry had so far not truly responded. He had lashed out when Voldemort had driven him to it. He had put others in danger when he lashed out. He had survived with help and luck and perhaps a good dose of Voldemort's own stupidity.

No more. He was part of this war, and the prophecy would not let him back away. He could, Harry supposed as he banked and rose towards the stars, still play a reluctant, minor part. He could fight alongside others until the day arrived when he confronted Voldemort and the prophecy came true. He could return to Hogwarts and live as normal a life as he could between battles. He could fight like an ordinary wizard.

But he wasn't ordinary. The prophecy proved it. His scar proved it. Parseltongue proved it. This proved it.

This, of all of the powerful secrets that Harry had encountered in his life so far, was not something that someone had to explain to him secondhand, a dangerous and worrisome curse that he wanted to cast away. This choice could be free, if he let it.

Harry screamed again, and let it.

The energy stalking around the house turned towards him as if called. Harry let loose a third scream, and the three winged shapes flew to three corners of the house and pulled. The magic spilled there ripped loose. The birds hurried towards him, clutching the blanket of power in their claws. It looked like fire, Harry thought as they came, red as blood, red as Mars, red as war.

He let the shapes wrap it around him. Talons scraped him in passing, hot as summer. Harry turned his head and watched one of the winged shapes vanish into him.

No sudden rush of knowledge struck him. He would have to learn what this meant on his own. As the second and third shape hit the middle of his back and his beak and passed into his body, he felt the same. He might know how to fly instinctively, but nothing else about this would come so easily. He had to think.

It felt bloody wonderful.

Harry laughed, which produced a lighter and freer cry than before, and fluttered down to land on the edge of the ruined house. His body thrummed and hissed with the urge to fly for a moment before it dissipated. Harry raised his eyes to the stars and wondered if he was about to become a centaur next. The decisions he would need to make to play out this war seemed written in the sky.

The dog star was there, though the crimson tinge of Harry's vision reduced all the stars to the same dimness and he could not be sure what one was there. Sirius. The godfather, the friend, he had mourned all summer.

Harry ruffled his feathers and shifted from foot to foot. He still mourned, but he also saw aspects to the situation that he had ignored at the end of term. Then, he had simply revolted against Dumbledore, screaming and refusing to listen to reason. The Headmaster had not told him of the prophecy until it was too late. Despite his teary-eyed confession, Harry did not know if he would continue to deny Harry important information in the name of sparing him.

Very well, then. I will have to gain my own sources of information.

Where and how?

Out of Dumbledore's view.

Harry twisted his head until it lay along his back, and stared at the feather that he knew had caused his transformation. It blew and shifted in the wind, looser than the others, dotted with what looked like blood. If it was, it was blood that had not yet spilled. Harry smiled, then wished he could see himself. He had no idea what expression a smile would produce on a falcon's face.

Most of the sources lie inside Dumbledore's view. I think Hermione and Ron would report me to him if I asked them too many questions.

Harry sat and waited for the thought to hurt. It did not. The calm rationality waiting in his head gathered up the thought, spun it around, and then dived on it and broke its neck. Things were simpler, Harry reflected, when he could see what was there instead of assigning blame.

Not Hermione and Ron, then. Most of the Professors at Hogwarts are out of the equation as well. They may not even know as much as Dumbledore. I wonder how many of them even knew about the prophecy?

Muggle sources won't tell me anything.

I can hardly ask a Death Eater.

Harry shifted from one foot to another, again, and ignored the urge to begin preening his tail. There would be time for that later. For now, he was missing one thing, something so incredibly obvious that he knew he should see it. The rationality burned through any irritation he might have summoned, but still. This was war. He must see what lay before him, clear and true.

And then he saw it, and let out a scream that, for a moment, roused a flicker of old magic from the ruined house once more.

The means of information. I should have thought of that. Owls are what carry the Daily Prophet, the letters, coded messages.

Owls are birds. Predatory birds. And abroad at night.

Harry rose from the house and aimed straight at the sky. This time, he did feel a moment of pure wonder at the flight, the sensation of slicing through the air, riding the wind instead of pressing against it, guiding himself with feathers rather than magic—

And then that dropped away, too, dim and faint as the stars in the face of more practical considerations. Harry whirled on widespread wings and dived for the first time as a falcon. The house spun beneath him, rich and dizzy with possibility. Speed licked along his body like the first moments of battle. Harry felt a fierce anticipation growing in him, and it peaked when he threw back his head, flared his wings, and struck out with his talons for the first time.

They closed around his wand, and the shimmering, barely-seen fabric of the Invisibility Cloak. Harry expected to have some trouble lifting them, but his size helped, and the sheer pace at which he had seized them. For a moment he flew level to the ground, still struggling; then he wheeled and climbed back into the sky.

Time to go home.

The patterns of the stars helped now, and the remembered glimpses of Britain from above in his dreams. Harry soared, happier to be returning to Privet Drive than he had ever imagined he could be.

Hedwig came to meet him as he closed over the house. Harry saw her, a keener radiance in the moonlight. He watched with interest as she fluttered up next to him, golden eyes on his face, and then his breast, where Harry suspected the mark of Mars blazed.

She hooted, softly, and Harry saw a faint crimson glow tinge the feathers on her back. He tucked away his questions about that at the moment. He would have to learn to understand, and it was not as though he could ask the questions he wanted to ask in this form. He bobbed his head to his owl and swirled down towards the back of the house. The Invisibility Cloak, luckily, had managed to swathe about his wand in flight, and muffle the still-glowing Lumos charm.

They landed in a large tree near his bedroom window. Harry cocked his head and peered into his room. Hedwig shuffled from talon to talon and gave another inquiring hoot, but when Harry willed her to hush, she did.

His bedroom, to Harry's complete lack of surprise, had several wizards in it. Professor McGonagall stood in profile to the window, her face wrinkled in a worried frown. Another, by the sound of his voice, was Moody, and Harry caught a glimpse of wild hair, brilliantly colored even in his war-vision, which indicated Tonks was probably there. He couldn't see the others.

"I know an illusion when I see one," Moody was growling. Harry found that he could understand the words, though there was an odd pause between their initial speaking and when they made sense to him, as though his mind had to struggle harder to translate. "It feels like him, but it won't wake, and unless you are going to assume that someone crept into the house on your watch and gave the boy the Draught of Living Death—"

"They did not," said Snape's voice. Harry fanned out his tail and defecated on the ground. Hedwig gave him a glance that he could only interpret as amused.

"—there's nothing else it could be but an illusion," Moody finished. "We'll take it back to the headquarters and test it. I wonder how he achieved it?" Harry saw him move closer to the window, the roving magical eye highly visible, and bend over the bed. Harry tensed, ready to fly if the eye saw him, but Moody never glanced out the window.

"I think the more pertinent question," Snape said, "is how Mister Potter removed himself from the house. Or—was removed."

"You would have heard something if your—colleagues took him, surely?" Professor McGonagall sounded strained and hoarse. Harry shifted to see her better, unsure that he had ever heard her sound that way. She stood, wand firmly in hand, staring down at his bed. Harry couldn't see the image of himself from here, but he could see his Head of House's reaction to it. Guilt stole through him, and then the cold serenity pushed it away. It was not as though, he reminded himself, anyone would have believed him or taken him to Godric's Hollow if he asked. Since when could he rely on them?

Snape interrupted Harry's thoughts before they could truly hurtle into self-justification. "Perhaps not. The Dark Lord is moving in unexpected directions. I believe he has acquired a Seer of his own, though I do not know how or from where."

Harry hunched forward. This was information that he needed to know.

So of course Moody said, "We can't discuss this here. Bring the illusion, Tonks, and let's return to Dumbledore."

Harry ruffled his feathers as he watched Tonks catapult to the floor, pick up the image of him, and trip twice more on the way out. At least she would be blamed for any injuries that the image suffered.

They left the house at last, and shortly after, Harry heard the cracks of Apparition. He spread his wings and fluttered towards the house, wondering for one brief moment if the blood magic wards would let him in while he was in bird form.

They did, but he could feel them this time, humming around his feathers and touching the blood that ran in his body still. Harry settled on his bed, glad that he had left the window open for Hedwig and that none of the Order, for whatever reason, had closed it, and then reached over his shoulder and tugged on the feather that had changed him.

The result was immediate. Once again, colors swirled around him, though they all darkened to gray, and his body shook with the force of a violent pull. Then he sat on his bed, human again, panting, one hand on the feather that still clung firmly to his shoulder blade. His wand and Invisibility Cloak had tumbled to the floor.

When he hesitantly drew his jumper over his head, the feather briefly vanished, then reappeared again fastened to his skin. Harry tugged on it again, but drew back the moment the swirling started. It subsided. Harry let out a slow breath, confident now that he could return to both falcon and human form at will.

Then he heard footsteps on the stairs.

Harry scrambled back into his jumper and picked up his wand and Invisibility Cloak. He was an inch from flinging the Cloak over his head when the door opened.

Snape strode across the room and caught his arm in one swift motion. "Mister Potter," he said, his voice cold enough to burn. "I spread a potion on the windowsill that would let me know when you crossed the wards." He shook Harry once, hard. "The illusion is a child's trick that you have somehow managed to make permanent, no doubt with more of your fortune." He could have passed for Voldemort if he'd hissed that last word harder, Harry thought, and wiped at the spittle on his face. "Where have you been? Was not one misadventure, another death, and the injuries to several of your classmates enough to content you?"

Harry was startled by what happened then. He should have been angry, blazingly angry, that Snape referred to Sirius in such a way, that he dared to touch him, that he was once again treating Harry like a child.

But the rationality had traveled with him from falcon form, and Harry reared back his head and stared into Snape's face instead.

"I'm sorry to have worried you, sir," he said, choosing absolute calmness for his words. "I left the house briefly to clear my head, and made the illusion in order to confuse any Death Eaters. I intended to alert the Order, but couldn't find the person watching me. I'll take an escort the next time I go out. I'm sorry."

Snape stared at him. Harry stared back, and didn't worry about Snape reading his mind. Sharp images of Privet Drive, gathered as he flew back home, filled the forefront of his mind. Hedwig swooped through his memory, and hooted. A feather sat in his hand. It was all the stuff of trivial misadventure. It wasn't Occlumency, and Harry doubted that he could keep it up for long, but it was what he thought of, and it made Snape let him go with another shake and a sharp hiss.

"Your life is in danger every moment you breathe, idiot child," he said. "And you are our last hope against the Dark Lord. Perhaps I should kill myself now. It would spare me the torment of watching you struggle, pitifully, to save us all, and fail due to your arrogance and stupidity."

Careful, Harry thought when he pondered his response. I'll have to show some anger, or he'll know something's wrong.

"Shut up!" he shouted, standing and lunging forward. "I don't want to listen to you talk about arrogance, you—"

Snape caught his arm again and gripped it. He made no attempt to look into his eyes. Harry supposed he'd gotten what he wanted, since he was smirking again.

"I came to tell you that the Headmaster has commanded that we resume Occlumency the moment you return to school," he said. "It will come out of your free time as necessary. And you will learn it this time, Potter, and you will make no attempt to pry into my privacy. Is that understood?" The smirk was gone, the hold of his fingers hard enough to hurt again.

"Yes, sir," Harry grated out. Not a word about the Dark Lord's new Seer, the back of his mind, calm behind the mask, commented. Not a word.

Snape nodded at him and strode to the door, robes swirling. "Nox," he said, and the Lumos charm on Harry's wand faded and left him in darkness.

Harry lay on the bed and panted for a moment. Then he heard soft sounds outside the window, and looked up to see owls arriving with his birthday presents.

He snorted and stood to receive them. He did pause when he noticed three winged shadows scattering through the moonlight and hiding in the corners of the room. He waited, but they didn't come out.

I'll figure it out, Harry thought, as he opened the window and then ducked Pig's excited entrance. I'm at war now. Since I can't trust them to tell me the truth, I'll just have to trust myself.

He looked at the owls, and smiled.