oitatorge…
saticorta…
seirac…
sitrom…
…uoy leef I...!
Harry sat strait up, the room was quiet. No sign of house elf or med witch. But the scratching was still there. Soft, as soft as a cat in the carpet,still it had woken him. The air felt wrong, to thin, brittle…
No, (Wait… this isn't the infirmary!) He moved quietly from the bed, pressing his back to the wall. (Have I been captured? But how? How would they have taken me without my notice? And why capture and not kill me… no guards… no one watching… so not captured, but what?) The scratching came again; he followed the sound to a basket in the corner of the room. It was still for a moment. Then suddenly rattled violently! Producing the muffled scratching sound, along with what sounded almost like…swearing? Harry raised an eyebrow, lowered his hands to open the basket, and froze.
Not his hands, these hands were all wrong! To hard, the nails to sharp, the palms to rough, and white! So bloodlessly white! Panic set in, Harry sprung back but of course the hands followed, they were attached! The hands led to the arms, to the elbows, further up…
"…I, I need to find a mirror!"
Voldemort opened his eyes slowly, they widened.
A moment later across the room in a shadow he crouched silently, alert but still. (Captured, no. no defenses. I don't know these walls; I don't sense the mark nearby… damn.) He reached down to where his wand usually rested, and grabbed air. (…no wand.) The hand clenched into a fist, but he kept his silence. (Locate it, retrieve it. Get out.) He reached out again, and pulled back disgusted. (Drugged?) The pathways he had forged over so many years to allow him to scan outside himself were foggy, many invisible. Resigned to fight his way out he shifted, and froze. (…feathers, I do not have, feathers…)
The phoenix floated through the air with a bemused cawing. The wizard holding onto its feet hummed along until they landed on the hill, and there he grew very still indeed.
"…Fawkes, do you feel this?" the bird dug beak into the soil, and raised its head with a soft croak. "…yes, yes I know… something interfered here… something has gone terribly wrong…" Dumbledore reached up and adjusted his spectacles. "…Well, it's a good thing we decided not to make any rest stops. Shall we go on?" Fawkes hopped onto his shoulder, and together the two went down the hill. The phoenix sang under its breath...
It is not a matter of wrong or right,
Or how our stories may end.
Know only this and may your path be light.
My enemy's enemy… is my friend.