Phoenix Triumphant, Chapter 1

NOTE: This is the second story in the Phoenix Chronicles arc, after Phoenix Burning. I suggest that you read that first, because otherwise this will not make nearly so much sense. See also Phoenix Files, for more in this AU!

The war was over, and Harry Potter did not know what to do. Oh, to be sure, there were all sorts of things in the short term. The particular afternoon that our story starts, for instance, he was in the Hospital Wing, assisting Madame Pomfrey.

"Cho, it's going to be ok."

Said girl cast him a worried glance with her milky-white eyes. "How can you say that when not even Madame Pomfrey can do anything?" she asked, nearly out of her mind with worry and pain. She had been hexed with a painful dark blindness hex that no one could recognize after the battle had actually officially ended, and not even the experts called over from St. Mungo's could figure out a cure. Not to mention that crying only seemed to make the curse more painful, and she had been doing her fair share of that, since her best friend, Marietta Edgecombe, had died in the Battle of Hogwarts. She'd been further traumatized by having to fight her reanimated body, but Madame Pomfrey had been able to help her- somewhat- with coping with that, by giving her mild sleeping potions and counseling.

Harry hesitated, then slowly reached out. "Cho, I'm going to have to touch your face, maybe even your eyelids. I'm going to try to cure you."

The girl trembled, but sat perfectly still as Harry reached tentatively out to touch her eyelids, making her wince at the pain exacerbated by even the slightest pressure. Harry winced in sympathy- his phoenix magic told him that the curse on her eyes was a very dark and nasty one, probably a pureblood family secret- but did not draw away, only let his magic out naturally. She gave a little cry, shuddering all over, and then opened her eyes and stared at him. Harry started. Her eyes were the palest of lavenders now, rather than their usual deep brown, but they seemed to be fully functional. "It...I can see!" she burst out in a breathy whisper. Then she was throwing her arms around him, her breasts squishing awkwardly against his chest, piña colada scent seemingly everywhere, and he gave her a little pat on the back and tried not to squirm. Despite all the things that Harry had gone through in all his years at Hogwarts, girls were the one thing he couldn't understand and found it difficult to deal with. It might even have gotten more awkward still, as Cho didn't seem like she was going to let him go anytime soon, but then Madame Pomfrey came over to ask him if he could use his powers to try to heal Neville's irreparably-scorched arm.

"Sorry Nev, no promises," Harry said nervously, laying his hands on his friend's arm.

"It's fine," Neville responded, letting him lift the ruined member. "I got Bellatrix good; it's almost a trophy, you know. At least that's what Seamus says. Personally, I'd rather have my arm, but..."

"Yeah," Harry said noncommittally, internally angry with Seamus for likening his friend's ruined arm to a "trophy". Still, there was nothing he could do about it except heal the boy's arm, and Harry, although reasonably sure he could do it, had not exactly tested his healing on more than a mortally injured Professor Snape and several minor wounds and hexes that his friends had received in battle. He let his magic do what it was going to do, and abruptly the withered, blackened arm began to smooth and turn a healthier color, albeit slower than most of the wounds he had tried to heal. In approximately fifteen minutes (the longest a healing had ever taken short of the time that he had brought Snape back from the brink of death) the arm had mostly healed, except for some redness, stiffness, and slight blotchy discoloration. "I think that's all I can do," he said finally, rather disappointed.

Neville, however, was looking at his once-again functional arm in awe. "Sweet Merlin, Harry," he said, staring at it. "You did it!"

Harry blushed a little and replied with a "yeah," before Madame Pomfrey called him over to help her with another badly-injured student. Harry spent the rest of the afternoon helping in the Hogwarts Hospital wing, patching up the combatants with his formidable phoenix magic, as, while Madame Pomfrey could heal most things, there were a number of injuries which could be healed more efficiently, more cleanly, or more completely with phoenix magic.

At last, there was only one more student left in the hospital wing who had not yet been looked at.

"Yes Miss Brown? Where are you hurt?"

"I...I got bitten." Lavender Brown responded nervously. "Werewolf or regular wizard; it wasn't a vampire. Can you scan me?"

Madame Pomfrey didn't look too worried at this, but she drew her wand. "Even if it was a werewolf," she lectured, "there is a sixty-percent chance you don't have lycanthropy since last night was not a full moon, but I can check if you want me too. I suspect that you will only have had miniscule exposure, which would only give you violent mood-swings around your time of the month and possibly give you a preference for rare meat."

"Please do the scan," was the Gryffindor girl's tentative response.

Madame Pomfrey moved her wand in a quick, even, repetitive movement, casting a full-body scan on the Gryffindor girl. All at once, she paled and cast it again. And again.

"Ma'am?"

"Miss Brown, I'm so sorry..."

Lavender's eyes overflowed with tears. "At least I'm still alive," she said quietly. "Maybe I can find a job in the muggle world."

Harry stepped forward. "Maybe I could try?" Why hadn't he thought about trying to cure lycanthropy before?

Lavender shot him a wide-eyed, hopeful look, but Madame Pomfrey was already shaking her head. "I don't want you to try that, Harry; a werecurse is not like a regular bite wound. You have no idea what it could do to you; it could even make you a werewolf yourself!"

"So I'll turn into a ravening animal every month and have to lock myself up. And? It'd be horrible, but it's only once a month..."

"You have an animagus form, Mr. Potter. If you were to be turned, you could die or become a warpwolf, that is to say, a werewolf with some of the characteristics of your form. I can't have you risk it."

Harry was tempted to go ahead with it anyway- he could sense that his power would be equal to safely containing or destroying the curse, but he didn't want to risk it, not yet. "I'll figure something out, Lavender," he said determinedly. Perhaps this was the more long-term goal that he was looking for, trying to find cures for the incurable. But it hurt, to see his innocent, if a little ditzy, housemate be afflicted by something which would shave ten years off her life and make it more miserable than it might have been, as well as making her less valuable to the job market. "I'll figure something out," he repeated, looking into her frightened brown eyes. "Maybe I can extract some of my magic...distill it, maybe, so that I won't be harmed when casting. Or Professor Snape could make the wolfsbane and I could try to infuse it with phoenix magic. Hmm..." and he picked up a stack of leftover forms for something-or-other and began writing on the back with a no-spill quill, brainstorming. If he could find a cure for lycanthropy, he could help Remus, help so many other wizards who were considered second-class citizens because of an ailment they could not help. And perhaps finding a cure for lycanthropy was what Sirius had meant in his vision, when he had died at Voldemort's feet and gotten a chance to talk to his godfather. Sirius had said something about "Voldie's not the last or even the biggest problem you've got ahead of you. Of course, since you're immortal, you've got one hell of a lot of problems to deal with, at least until you chose to die, but I hope you're not going to be joining us anytime soon..."

Harry was still muttering and writing when Madame Pomfrey told him to shoo, and so he gave Lavender an absent-minded pat on the shoulder and left the hospital wing, heading for Professor Snape's office. Today was the last day of the impromptu holiday that they had all been given after the battle, to be used for post-war parties, funeral and trial attendance (Pansy Parkinson had actually been sentenced to a year in a now mercifully dementor-free Azkaban, and there were a few more trials coming up, although Harry had not had a chance to keep track of them all) and other activities, although they all knew that this entire school year was likely to be a wash, what with all the various deaths and incarcerations of family members, especially the Death Eater families, the crusade that the media and ministry were waging against anything "dark", and on and on.

And Harry still did not know what he was going to do in the long term. Not to mention that for him, the "long term" was the next few millennia, until he decided to move on.

So yes, I'm back, and this is the first chapter in the second book of the Phoenix Chronicles sequence! Welcome, and I hope you enjoy the next installment!