Chapter Twenty-Three - The Elephant Rock and The Phoenix Feather

There was a distant crack outside and Harry jerked out of his state of semi sleep.

He straightened his glasses on his nose and looked around the lakeside but couldn't see anything despite the clear morning light. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Hermione was still sleeping in Ron's sleeping bag, curled up into a tight ball, and he turned around to look back outside. He flinched at the sight of Ron crouching beside the freshwater pool just outside the opening in the rock face, washing his face and hands and running his wet fingers through his hair. Harry ran to him and dropped to his knees at Ron's side.

"Are you ok? Where did you come from? I was just looking for you a second ago," Harry blurted as Ron smiled at his friend's eagerness to get information from him.

"I'm ok, somewhere called Bossiney Cove, and I've been here since I apparated mate. Did you have your glasses on when you looked the first time?"

Harry let himself relax enough to get embarrassed.

"Oh well they were a little wonky when I was looking I admit."

Ron laughed and got to his feet with a groan.

"Are you hurt?" Harry frowned as he watched Ron rubbing the back of his neck.

"Nah, I just slept funny,"

Harry couldn't help but find that amusing.

"You can say that again."

He and Ron walked over to a rock beside the pool and sat down on it.

"So I have a quick question for you," Ron said with a wince as he massaged his aching neck.

"What's that then?"

"How come I'm not wearing the hoop and yet I still have my arm?"

Harry smiled and heaved a deep sigh.

"You persuaded Hermione to let you go alone. It was a tough sell but you did it."

Ron's eyebrows disappeared into his hair and he gave an amazed whistle.

"I bet that wasn't a barrel of laughs for you stuck here with her after that, did I say why I needed to go alone?"

Harry shook his head. Ron looked thoughtful for a moment before looking at Harry with about as much understanding on the matter as he had.

"Well it was quiet when I woke up there, no scuffle or inferi or anything, and no horcrux either."

"What, nothing at all?" Harry frowned.

"Well there was a nest, a birds nest, and a kind of familiar looking feather."

"How do you mean familiar?"

"Well I mean it's the same kind of feather that used to show up with messages from Dumbledore to the Order."

"A phoenix feather?" Harry gasped and Ron nodded, "Was it Fawkes?"

"Can't say, it was just a nest and a feather, there wasn't any sign of a phoenix and there wasn't any fresh scraps of food laying around so it hasn't been there for a while anyway."

Harry pondered why Ron needed to go to an empty phoenix nest alone. Maybe he was just there to check that it was empty and not a trap. The three of them would've been harder to defend than just Ron and an invisible spirit who had the ability to perform wandless magic through him. Ron seemed to have been having the same thought.

"I reckon I was just supposed to see it in my conscious state so I could apparate you both back there and we could have a proper look around."

Ron glanced over Harry's shoulder and back at the shelter as he said this.

"Speaking of the three of us, where is our missing third?"

"She's curled up in your sleeping bag waiting for you to come back, she's been a wreck, I'm not sure if you're going to be on the receiving end of a good or bad welcome to be honest."

Ron huffed and decided to brave it; he got to his feet and set off for the shelter.

"Wish me luck."

"You're not going to wake her up are you?" Harry said with a disapproving look at his departing friend, "She hardly slept as it is."

"No but I want to be there when she wakes up...well I want to be there for her so she doesn't worry anymore than she already has at least," Ron shrugged before stepping into the cave.

Harry turned back to the lake and whispered a thank you just in case the spirit still lingered, watching over Ron in the daytime as well as the night, and let himself relax on the rock now that he knew they had been right to trust him with Ron's life last night after all.

"Wow, you're getting really good at this side-along apparition Ron," Harry said, sounding impressed at Ron's ease in transporting the three of them to Bossiney Cove all at once.

"Yeah well, I won't be held responsible for missing eyebrows or anything you may find you've lost along the way, I'm still not comfortable with dragging one person with me let alone two."

Harry chuckled and let Ron lead the way up to Elephant Rock. Harry could see why Ron had called the towering rock above the cove by that name, it looked exactly like an elephant with its head bowed, and he tried to see the spot Ron had spoken of before they left for Bossiney Cove. He had mentioned dangerously uneven stairs that led up to the abandoned phoenix nest. Ron was leading Hermione by the hand, she had been greatly reluctant to let go of him since he had got back, and Harry shivered as the chilly coastal wind cut through his three layers of clothing. The summer was well and truly over now and camping was going to become much more of a hardship for the three of them.

Harry watched Ron as he pulled Hermione into the gap between the elephant's hind legs and jogged along to keep them in his sight, and to warm himself up a little, and he reminded himself to make sure Ron slept in warm clothes in future. He had only just been rejuvenated by the life restoring meditation and he didn't want him to get ill all over again. Maybe they should all keep their shoes on when they slept too, he thought as he saw Ron and Hermione looking up at the most crooked stone steps Harry had ever seen.

"Blimey Ron, it's making me dizzy just looking up at them!" Harry exclaimed.

Ron threw a warning glance over his shoulder to Harry.

"You wait until you start climbing them, it makes you feel sea sick, it's like you're climbing while rotating three hundred and sixty degrees. That was why I needed to get myself together when I first apparated back, I thought I was going to throw up."

Hermione took a hesitant step onto the first stone step; it was pretty even but bowed in the middle.

"Any tips before I start?" she asked Ron nervously.

Ron placed the hand he was holding upon a rusty handrail to Hermione's left.

"Just make sure you hold onto this the whole time," he said as he watched her swaying slightly and readied himself to catch her if she fell, "you'll feel as if you're walking sideways sometimes but you've just got to remind yourself that while you're holding onto the handrail you're the right way up. It's all an optical illusion."

Hermione took a deep breath and gave a nod before starting up the steps. Ron followed closely behind, Harry assumed he wanted to be ready to catch her if she became dizzy, and then it was Harry's turn. He looked up to the top of the stairway, he could see that the handrail was pretty straight the whole way up and it was just the steps that jutted out at odd angles. At one point, halfway up, they seemed to disappear altogether and after that they were almost a vertical wall. Ron was right about it being a trick of the mind. Harry had seen drawings like that before. He could do this, he told himself, and stepped up onto the first stone step.

That was when the nausea hit him.

The steps ahead suddenly seemed to be moving, he felt himself tipped to his left and gripped the handrail as firmly as he could, this was worse than Ron had warned them it would be. His eyes were being tricked and his brain was being fooled into adjusting his balance when there was really no need to. That was what was throwing him off centre. Harry closed his eyes and felt his way up the next three steps. It was much better now, as long as he didn't let the dizzying illusion fool his senses he would be able to get up this stairway just fine. He extended his foot for the fourth step by couldn't find it. He stretched his free hand out and felt for the next step up but there didn't seem to be anything ahead of him. He reluctantly opened his eyes a crack to see where he needed to put his foot and the walls started to rock from side to side around him.

He staggered to his right; it felt as if he was on a boat as it sailed through the roughest of seas. He struggled to hold on to the handrail but his instincts told him he should be letting go of it and righting himself to his new centre of gravity. No, Harry told himself, it was a trick, Ron told him to trust the handrail. The handrail was the only constant thing on that climb. It was straight and true and he would be fine as long as he kept a hold on it.

"Harry are you alright back there?" he heard Ron calling from several steps ahead of him.

Harry could only nod as he forced his eyes closed again and the walls seemed to stop rocking from side to side. He felt his head clear and his stomach settle.

"Harry mate, I'm really sorry but you've got to climb this with your eyes open, I know it feels better to close them but the steps are so uneven you'll twist an ankle or a knee and go down like a sack of spuds."

Harry took a deep breath in.

"I'm beginning to realise that," he managed to say before forcing himself to open his eyes and step onto the next stone step.

He saw Ron and Hermione ahead of him, Hermione was practically crawling up on her hands and knees and Ron looked as if he was walking along the wall rather than on the ground. He was still griping the handrail though, Harry tightened his own grip of the rusty metal, and he reminded himself to trust the handrail over his instincts. Trust the handrail over his eyes. Trust the handrail over gravity.

There was a dreadful vomiting sound ahead of him now and Harry heard Hermione sputtering and coughing before apologising to Ron.

"Don't worry about it, just keep going ok?"

Harry needed a distraction from the need to be sick himself now and called out to Ron, feeling that a conversation might make it pass, and staggering up another step that was broken into four pieces that sat at different angles.

"Ron!"

"What?"

"Couldn't you have just apparated us to the top and save us all this?"

"Not possible," Ron began before Harry saw him grip the handrail with both hands and rest his forehead against the wall, taking a couple of deep breaths, "the ceiling's really low."

Harry forced himself up another two steps and saw Ron bracing himself to continue.

"We'd have taken our heads off."

Harry felt a pull and gasped, he thought that his feet were lifting off the steps altogether and dangling freely until they touched the wall; he closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again he saw that he was still standing on a stone step, still holding on to the handrail, but still feeling as if he was hanging at a right angle. He threw his right leg forward to the next step, missing on the first attempt but getting a decent purchase on it with the second, and lifted himself up onto the next step. Suddenly the world righted itself once again and Harry almost fell to his knees as the ground seemed to shift beneath him.

He looked up; Hermione was crawling off to one side now and Ron was sitting on the top step with his eyes closed, taking deep breaths; and he knew he didn't have far to go now. He was almost there.

He struggled up another three steps and was almost upon Ron, who had forced his eyes open again, and suddenly felt as if the handrail was a limp strand of spaghetti in his hand. His balance was thrown, he had nothing to hold on to, and he felt an awesome pull behind him that threatened to hurl him back down the steps. Harry was about to call out when Ron grabbed him and pulled him up the last two steps and threw him beside Hermione on the gritty floor of a ledge deep within the side of Elephant Rock.

Ron had been right, Harry thought as he tried to get used to things not spinning any more, the ceiling was only about four feet high and it would've been impossible to apparate there. Hermione was trying to calm her seasickness, or stair sickness as it was to be more accurate, and Harry turned around to see that Ron was still sitting on the top step with his eyes closed and taking deep breaths.

"Ron, you alright?" Harry croaked.

Ron didn't open his eyes. Instead he spoke rapidly through his enforced deep breaths.

"Can you get me off of here please?"

Harry realised that Ron was still being affected by the vertigo and had lost his bearings now that he was no longer holding on to the handrail. As Harry crawled over to his green-looking friend and grabbed him by the arm, Ron was loosing his battle with gravity and began to tip forward; he heaved his friend back off the step with all his strength.

"Oh no you don't," Harry strained as they both fell flat on their backs.

After taking a moment to clear his head Ron finally spoke.

"Thanks."

"No problem mate," Harry sighed, "I can't believe you held it together right up to the top."

"It's a lot easier going down I can tell you."

Hermione crawled over to the two of them as they sat up and she looked very pale and slightly ashamed.

"You sure you're ok Hermione?" Harry asked her.

"Just a little embarrassed," she managed to smile, "a lady doesn't tend to want to throw up in front of her boyfriend, at least not so soon into the relationship."

Ron managed to laugh at this and rubbed her back.

"Has it passed yet?"

She nodded.

"Thanks for your help, I couldn't have done it without you," she smiled and wiped her mouth self-consciously.

Ron mumbled something about paying her back for all the help she'd been giving him recently as Harry crawled over to the abandoned phoenix nest and began to investigate.

There it was, the golden phoenix feather nestled in amongst the twigs and leaves and even some sheep's wool, and he reached in and picked the long feather out and turned it over in his hands.

"D'you think it's Fawkes' or another phoenix's?" Ron asked as he looked over Harry shoulder.

Harry turned to see that, even on his knees, Ron had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the roof. Ron really did look uncomfortable, Harry thought, and wondered if this was why his neck had been causing him so much discomfort that morning.

"I can't say, I've only ever seen one phoenix my whole life and I didn't really pay all that much attention to individual feathers at the time."

Hermione linked her arm with Ron's and frowned at the feather in Harry's hand.

"I've just had a thought," she began, "what if Ron's guide is Dumbledore?"

"What?" Harry gasped, not able to believe that he hadn't thought of that himself.

"Well if it was then that would explain why he's looking for Fawkes wouldn't it?"

Ron looked from Harry to Hermione, trying to read their expressions, and didn't seem to know what to think about this new suggestion.

"That would explain Ron trusting him," Harry said aloud to himself.

"It would also explain how he knows where to look for horcruxes and clues," Hermione nodded, "and of course all that power he has when he's sleepwalking."

Harry couldn't allow himself to get too excited about this theory though, there was always the one niggle that he would never be able to forgive the spirit for no matter what he did to redeem himself to Ron.

"Would Dumbledore have put Ron in Regulus Black's coffin?"

Ron's eyes now didn't look at either of them, dropping to examine the feather with intensity as if it were the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen in his life.

"I don't know Harry," Hermione looked at Ron sadly and bit her lip, "I don't know him well enough to know how far he would go but he did know about Ron being an oracle, Mrs Weasley said."

Harry didn't want to go into Dumbledore's motives, if indeed it was him, and decided to concentrate on the feather again.

"Could Fawkes, or the phoenix in question, have been guarding a horcrux?"

Ron looked back up at this change of subject and glanced around the tiny enclosed ledge.

"Well Vol...he knows that we're looking for them now doesn't he? Maybe he moved it and the phoenix followed it wherever it went."

Harry nodded.

"That makes a lot of sense."

Ron sniggered and nudged Hermione in the side.

"Hark at me eh, I'm making sense!"

Hermione and Harry laughed.

"There's a first time for everything," Hermione teased before taking the feather from Harry thoughtfully and staring at it, growing gradually unhappier, as she seemed to be forming a plan of action that she didn't really want to have to follow through.

"What's the matter?" Ron asked her with concern.

She swallowed and looked him in the eye with a determination to be strong.

"I think we should put you to sleep and see what the spirit has to say for himself about this, he can tell us if this is a clue or a dead end, and that way we don't have to wait around until nightfall to move on with the search. He said so himself didn't he? We've got to start using your somnambulism in the daytime so the three of us can spend our night's actually sleeping."

Ron took in what she had to say before turning to Harry and shrugging.

"What d'you think?"

"Well I don't know," Harry frowned, "it's a crazy idea, that's for sure, sleeping in the night time?"

Ron broke into laughter and Hermione rolled her eyes at the both of them.

"Go on then Minnie, knock me out if you must," Ron chuckled.

"Minnie?" Hermione growled as she turned her fierce gaze onto Harry.

"What? I didn't say it!"

"No but you're the only one who could've told him about Ivor's little nickname for me," she said as she punched Harry on the arm.

Harry rubbed his sore arm and turned on Ron.

"You call her Minnie and I get punched, how is that fair?"

Ron was visibly amused and gave a shrug.

"Hey I'm the one getting knocked out, count yourself lucky mate."

Harry grumbled incoherently about the 'couple' ganging up on him while Hermione pointed her wand at Ron and instructed him to lay down.

"The deep sleep charm totally relaxes every muscle in your body, I can't do it if you're sitting up, you'll hit your head."

"What harm can that do," Ron asked as he lay flat on his back; "all you'd do is knock me out twice as much?"

"A deep sleep charm and a fractured skull are very different things Ronald, now take a deep breath," she instructed in her bossiest tone, "your breathing drops straight into slow even breaths and it can be risky if your not relaxed."

"I'm bloody relaxed ok?" Ron snapped in the most un-relaxed way possible, "Godric Hermione, will you just get on with it?"

Hermione looked annoyed and flicked her wand at Ron.

"Obdormio!"

Ron fell silent, his eyes closed, and he lay still. Harry frowned at a still somewhat annoyed Hermione.

"That wasn't the deep sleep charm, that was just a sleeping charm."

"I know that Harry, he wasn't prepared for the deep sleep charm so I've put him into a state of relaxation myself," she paused to glare down at the sleeping redhead, "obnoxious idiot!"

Harry was about to defend Ron, after all he had done nothing more than call her Minnie really, when Hermione pointed her wand back down at him and cast the deep sleep charm on him.

"Sopor!"

Ron was very still now, his breathing slow and deep, and Hermione turned to rummage in her back pack for something. Harry knew exactly what she was looking for. She withdrew the silver hoops and slid one on Ron's arm, all the way up to his bicep, and then put the other on herself. She leaned over him and whispered into Ron's ear.

"You're free to go wherever you want as long as you stay in my sight."

She stroked his hair away from his face and kissed him on the lips before looking up at Harry with a softer expression on her face now.

"Sorry about before, I just hate the fact that I'm getting somewhat addicted to using the bond of blood on him."

Harry blinked; he had no idea this was happening to Hermione at all.

"But I thought you hated putting the hoops on, you always seem so reluctant to use them."

"I am, but last night when he was wandering alone without me I was...it was just so hard, I missed the control."

She looked disgusted with herself.

"I missed having that power over him Harry, how awful is that?"

Harry smiled at her and rubbed her arm for comfort.

"You're not getting power-hungry Hermione, you see the hoops as a way to protect Ron and last night you felt as if you'd let him go off into a dangerous situation completely defenceless, that's not a bad thing. You're not letting the control the bond of blood gives you go to your head I swear to you. I'd have noticed."

She sighed heavily and seemed to at least partially believe Harry's words. Before she could say anything more, however, Ron sat up and opened his eyes.