A/N: Disclaimer! Applies!

In which Harry angsts a bit, and you sigh because it's not quite as forlorn and tear-provoking as this summary implies.

5 – Transpose

The next few days were absolutely horrible. Harry woke each day, ready and raring to go, swearing to himself that it must be a dream and he must have a fever to be imagining things that were so real, and every day he was proved wrong by not much more than the feathers on the wings on his back.

He could probably call them his wings, now. His temporary wings, that is. They had redeemed themselves over the past four or five days, yielding to his strong impulse to hide from the truth by closing over him like a shield, balancing him out when he tried to walk on his new, grotesquely twisted feet. Harry snorted sleepily, quashing the urge to roll over. Hermione would probably call them foot-claw hybrids, or something suitably intelligent, and –

He shut his eyes. Ron and Hermione, as far as he'd been able to understand, were coming to visit tomorrow morning, to see the monstrosity he'd become. Harry ground his teeth – one feature that had stayed resolutely the same over the last few days – in anger and helplessness. He'd argued and argued with Dumbledore, told him to just let it wait, let them wait until they'd figured out the problem and put a fucking stop to it and taken the bloody wings off before the old man paraded him for Ron and Hermione. He couldn't stand to let anyone see him like this, much less Ron or Hermione, who would undoubtedly fuss over him and feel sorry for him and –

Aargh!

Need to stop thinking, Harry sullenly told himself, and just like that, his mind went blank. He blinked in surprise for a moment, then cursed under his breath. That had been one of the weird things happening to him over the duration of his stay here in the most private corner of the Hospital Wing, and that was saying something. His mind had become abnormally…abnormally – obedient, that's the only word for it - obedient, clearing of his morbid and unhappy thoughts on direct request, and putting itself to little tasks like imagining Snape being strangled to death by the collar of his irritating black robes with unaccustomed fervour.

Harry turned over very, very carefully, taking care that his left wing did not somehow wedge underneath him as he turned onto his side. To say that the mind thing was the weirdest thing happening to him now would be actually impossible – the weird things that were occurring in his life at the moment were so numerous and so varied and individually upsetting in their own way that Harry could hardly even think to choose the actual weirdest thing of the lot.

To his horror, his mind began to put itself to the task. Harry found his head buzzing busily with thoughts of how weird everything happening was, and could only watch, so to speak, in horror and disbelief, as his abnormally sharpened (did he mention that in conjunction to the weird obedience thing? Well, he should have) mind began to sort through the list.

Well, there's the wing thing. They're weird as hell, and even weirder because they've changed colour and pattern twice in the last five days, and Madame Pomfrey actually says that's an improvement, and that I'm stabilising. How would she know? This has never happened to anyone before, so I doubt that – anyway.

Next on the list: finger-claw hybrid keeps mutating. And by mutating, I mean changing sporadically from my normal, bloody perfect-can-I-keep-them-for-goodness'-sake hands into orangey, violent-looking claws. Only plus side of that is that that bloody wanker of a Snape stays away from me when I'm clawed, so to speak.

Oh, and my foot-claw hybrids haven't changed back. To feet, that is. They change colour occasionally, cycling through every orange and red that can possibly be known to man (more reds when I get cold). Only benefit of them is the possibility of kicking Snape with them.

Some part of my mind thinks I have a territory, and it is here. It also thinks that Dumbledore and Pomfrey belong to me as vassals, and that Snape is a usurper, potential rival, and should be watched at all times. I can't blame it for the last bit, but the territory thing, and the thing with Dumbledore and Pomfrey? Sickening.

When Dumbledore brought Fawkes up to see me just to see if fresh phoenix tears would do anything for me, I attacked him. Needless to say, that territory-grabbing vassal-polluter's not been here again.

Insults. New ones. Weird ones. Enough said.

Pomfrey and Dumbledore keep telling me that I catch fire when really upset. I haven't seen or felt it so far, so I'm remaining very sceptical (and very hopeful that it is NOT TRUE). Benefit of catching fire every single time someone ticks you off? There's no point to even answering.

I react badly to spells of all kinds now, enough that even Snape looks concerned (and I mean concerned, not Snape-forcing-his-ugly-face-into-unfamiliar-emotion-of-concern). But who wouldn't, when a Wingardium leviosa on just one of my feathers drives me to literally take to wing in the Hospital Wing. At least, a Stunner just makes me mildly dizzy for a bit, and most serious hexes only disorientate or hurt me for a few minutes. Imagine if every spell aimed in my direction brought about a disproportionately big reaction as the levitation charm did…all Voldemort would have to do would be to cast a Stinging Hex and watch me die of nerve damage with a smile on his snaky face.

Speaking of Voldemort, still no dreams. The only dreams I have lately involve lots of blood, claws, feathers and something I really hope is not my cock, but looks like it. In really bizarre settings, too. Benefit of this is obvious, but becomes less so if I actively try to remember what went on in my current dreams.

Talking of bizarre settings, I really really want to be in the Forbidden Forest almost all the time. Snape came in smelling like the Forest yesterday afternoon (collecting ingredients for the fifth batch of Stabilising Potion for me. I've gone through four batches in days, because Pomfrey won't let me eat or drink anything else apart from it and water), and I practically pinned him to the door and slobbered all over him. No benefit to this, I think – anything that has me touching Snape voluntarily should be forcibly dragged from my body and blood.

Oh, and finally, speaking of blood, my blood is all weird now. It's very, very red now, redder than my feathers, and (Madame Pomfrey says) it keeps changing compositions, switching between human and phoenix and a weird hybrid of the two. She says they'll know if they can cure me if it eventually stabilises to a finite, essentially separate side-by-side mixture of human and phoenix blood. I think she told me that (completely indecipherable crap) to shut me up when I kept asking her when the hell the wings and everything else was going.

Now, as for which of those weird things is the most pathetically weird –

Harry sat up very quickly. He didn't know what time it was, or what he was going to do when he found out, but there had to be something he could do apart from lying in bed and angsting stupidly about his temporary condition. Harry felt his wings flex behind him as he stood up unsteadily on his bed, and felt an unfamiliar surge of wellbeing as he half-stepped, half-jumped to the floor, feeling foolish. It had been the only way he could get out of bed without assistance since yesterday, when Madame Pomfrey had cast some spell on his knees to determine what was right (or wrong, as the case held recently) with them. They had stiffened almost immediately, and he'd been angry, feverish and unable to move around on his own for the rest of the day.

And had had a head full of fantasies of breaking Pomfrey's knees, too, he couldn't forget that. Harry grimaced, remembering the vivid pictures and sounds he'd imagined – he'd practically grovelled for Dreamless Sleep for the day, and been pathetically grateful to Snape and the fact that potions still worked on him. Incidentally, that was why he was up in this dark hour -

Harry sighed, moving quietly about the small room, restlessness seething in his limbs. He couldn't remember a time when he'd been less happy to be in the Hospital Wing – or, rather, in a weird, high-roofed little room adjoining the Hospital wing. When he wasn't obsessing over doing violence to his vassals (he'd given up trying not to refer to Pomfrey and Dumbledore like that yesterday evening) or to the usurper (he'd not even tried to give up calling Snape that), or feeling distressed at how red he looked lately (the wings, the hair, the blood, the feet-claws…), he was yearning to be outside. Blasting a hole through the wall somehow (somehow) had changed from being an idea only for the mentally deranged to a task that might just be possible, and wouldn't it be lovely if he could actually stretch his wings out without hitting anything and fly, really fly, not that pathetic thing he thought was flying –

Harry sighed, blinking hard, surprised to feel – those weren't tears in his eyes, were they?

Were they?

They were. Harry stumbled stiffly into the tiny bathroom, which was tucked away in smashing privacy behind a bloody curtain next to his bed. He ignored the tingling sensation of anger that this was happening to him, that he was being caged in a miniscule little room and kept out of sight and that anyone even bothered to try and do this instead of just shooting him down with a Killing Curse, because that would have been quicker and far less painful and would have meant he could see Sirius and his mother and father and everyone, everyone would be happy, and they would all just soar away into the clouds and beat their wings happily along with his, and –

Wings?

Harry looked up at himself, and was horrified to see the silvery trail of tears winding down his cheeks and the drip-drip of strangely hot tears down his bare chest. All he could think of for a moment was that he wished he could go back to wearing pyjama shirts again, and he'd never thought he'd miss even the tatty old one that he hated but never quite got round to getting rid of, and that set him off again. Wings seemed to pervade his morose thoughts more than was strictly necessary, but Harry was too busy crying and feeling oddly comforted as his wings folded round him to care.

It took the realisation that the tiny window in the side of the room was now letting in the morning sun instead of merely being ornamental to shake Harry out of the bizarre fit that had taken hold of him, and it took half an hour for him to convince himself to get back into – well, onto the bed. He didn't have sheets anymore, because Pomfrey said it was a waste, because he burnt them up in his sleep the last time.

Which he didn't believe, of course, because that was where Harry Potter drew the line. Wings and claws and claw-foot hybrids were all very well, but setting fire to himself just did. Not. Happen. Whether he could remember the smell of smoke or not was immaterial.

And the fact that he was longingly thinking of bathing in fire (however he'd actually accomplish that) was entirely besides the point, too.

Preview of Chapter 6: Friends Forever? Not Quite

Harry knew it was going to be a real trial when even Hermione was lost for words. Ron was red in the face, and kept avoiding his eye as he struggled to keep still in the downright prison of the cocoon of blankets Madame Pomfrey had forcefully swaddled him in 'to keep him warm'.