Chapter 7: Dead Bird Singing
Whenever Harry watered the garden, it always smelled like earth after rain.
And so, it was one of the chores he actually liked.
He walked around the garden, the water hose extending behind him as he watered a patch of petunias with a thin sprinkle of water. They were a riot of colours, one of the most beautiful pieces in the garden. Harry felt proud of them, because he took care of them far more than Aunt Petunia ever did. God forbid she ever get a speck of dirt on herself, after all.
The sun shone above, glaring and harsh. He didn't have to worry about sunburns, though, so he could just enjoy the earthy smell of a freshly watered garden.
He kept half his mind on Mr. Lord, who was telling him about a game called Quidditch, when his eyes caught on some movement a few feet away. He quickly turned towards it, spotting a tiny, moving black shape, stark against the lush green grass.
Harry hastily shut off the water hose, letting it fall to the ground as he made his way towards it, crouching down next to it.
There, a tiny blackbird with a torn wing feebly flapped its wings.
It fluttered, once, twice, as Harry reached out a tentative hand and caressed it softly, and then it stilled. He settled back on his heels, before he picked it up as gently as possible and laid it out on his lap, stroking it with the lightest touch possible. He could feel it trembling under him.
The torn wing looked painful, and sort of reminded him of when he'd dislocated his shoulder. Except this was worse. He pursed his lips, careful not to jostle the bird and cause more hurt.
"I can heal it," Harry murmured, heart clenching in sympathy.
'Perhaps,' Mr. Lord replied, having paused in his telling of the history of the snitch, 'But healing other beings is harder than healing yourself, especially something with a different anatomy than you.'
"I can do it," Harry said, firmly, as he kept stroking the bird lightly, trying to feel the torn up wing and the twitching movements of the bird.
Anatomy. He hated that word. Mr. Lord was always harping on him about complex healing and the knowledge it requires. He knew it was important, thank you very much, he didn't need to be reminded of it on every turn.
Mr. Lord gave a long suffering sigh, and started guiding him.
Harry gently stretched out the bird's uninjured wing, comparing it to the torn one. He felt lightly along the ridges, burning the image of how a healed wing should look like into his brain. The bird's movements had slowed down to barely a twitch every few seconds. Harry tried not to think about it.
Harry pushed in the tiniest bit of magic into the bird, so as not to overwhelm a non magical creature with foreign energy, according to Mr. Lord. He held the intent of healing, and the image of a healed, healthy bird, firm in his mind.
The bird went completely still under his hand.
Harry's heart plummeted, but he didn't stop.
'Harry.'
He ignored Mr. Lord's pitying voice in his head. He said he would heal the bird, so he would heal the bird.
'Harry,' Mr. Lord's voice got a little urgent as Harry pushed more magic than was safe into the bird, because magic could fix anything, and he would fix this. He knew he could, he could feel the magic beneath his skin, itching to come out, itching to help.
He had to show Mr. Lord that he could do anything he put his mind to.
'Harry, the bird is dead,' Mr. Lord said, speaking over Harry's internal monologue.
"No," Harry murmured. He could feel it, couldn't Mr. Lord see that? The bird wasn't dead, it was just… waiting for something. And he knew he could give that to her. He just had to try a little harder.
He stroked his finger over it, three times, blowing out a long breath in time with the strokes, and imagined himself exhaling out the magic, pushing it into the bird.
Almost. Almost there.
His fingers tingled with a rush of warmth, and he closed his eyes, brows furrowing in concentration.
The bird moved.
Mr. Lord abruptly went silent as Harry let out a cheer and quickly lifted the now fluttering bird to eye level. Its wings were flapping rapidly, a sharp contrast to the feeble twitches of earlier.
'Harry,' Mr. Lord said, and he sounded genuinely shocked. Something Harry had never heard. Harry's lips downturned, did Mr. Lord have so little faith in him?
An ember of pride too, welled up in him. He had done something Mr. Lord didn't think he could have.
'It's not about faith,' Mr. Lord snapped, and Harry frowned. The bird fluttered, and took off from his hands.
But, unlike what Harry had expected, instead of flying away like birds often did whenever someone got too close, this one circled Harry's head in wide rounds, an unwavering black blur. It was like she had never been injured. Harry's frown disappeared, to be replaced with a delighted smile.
'That bird was dead,' Mr. Lord said flatly. He didn't sound surprised anymore. He didn't sound anything at all, really.
Harry pursed his lips, holding out a hand in hopes that the bird might land on it. He grinned, as she slowed and settled down at his wrist, tiny claws digging into flesh. "She's clearly not," he said.
There were a few minutes of silence where Harry just stoked the bird gently, marvelling at the unblemished wings, the smooth, soft, glittering black feathers. The curving claws, black nails. It was such a beautiful creature.
'It doesn't have a heartbeat,' Mr. Lord said, after a long silence had passed.
"Don't be silly," Harry said, even as his hand instantly went towards the bird's chest, looking for a heartbeat, "An animal can't be alive without a heartbeat."
'Exactly.'
Harry felt uneasiness grow the longer the bird beneath his fingers stayed still. There was no steady thrum under his fingers. Even in its death throes Harry had felt the bird's weakly fluttering heart. Shouldn't he be able to feel it now?
"Mr. Lord?" Harry asked weakly, voice a little tremulous. The bird seemed to grow heavier on his arm, and he leaned back just a bit.
'I don't know how you did that,' Mr. Lord said, 'Necromantic magic takes several years to master, and still several people can't do it right. They botch it up in horrible, gory ways.'
Harry grimaces, "Necro– what?"
'Necromantic,' Mr. Lord said, lengthening every syllable, 'Necromancy. Magic arts dealing with death and the dead.'
"Did you do this?" Harry asked, stretching out his arm to put a bit of distance between the bird and him, but didn't have the heart to shoo it off. Necromancy sounded… bad. Death sounded bad.
But the bird looked so tiny, preening itself obliviously as Harry stared.
Mr. Lord scoffed, 'I don't have nearly enough magical power to do this. And, technically, neither should you.'
Harry stayed quiet, watching the bird preen itself in fascination. It didn't look dead. It didn't even feel dead, not unless you tried to feel its heartbeat. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a completely normal bird.
Except it didn't startle away when Harry moved too fast, and it didn't have heartbeat.
Tentatively, Harry bought it closer to his face, watching it intently.
'Blackbirds don't have green eyes,' Mr. Lord commented lightly, seemingly having gotten over his previous shock. He sounded a little unsettled and wary now, instead of emotionless and flat, though he controlled it a lot better than Harry.
"But–" Harry swallowed. At least they weren't too conspicuous. They weren't bright or light green, especially compared to his own eyes, or Snake's scales. But they were unmistakably green, especially if one looked at it closely. A dark, rich, forest green. Like tiny marbles set in its head.
The bird flapped its wings twice and took off from his hand, making Harry flinch. It then landed on his head, claws tangling in his mop of hair. It didn't hurt, just pulled for a second until the bird settled. Harry sat there, frozen in place before unclenching.
"Mr. Lord," Harry whispered after a few minutes of silence where none of them said anything, nor the bird or Snake. "Necromancy. It's… dead, it also means dead people?"
'Yes,' Mr. Lord said, and he sounded a little suspicious. Harry thought that was unfair of him, but continued on with his line of questioning. He didn't know if he really wanted to know the answer, though.
"And, and–" he swallowed thickly, and he knew Mr. Lord could already see what he was thinking. He wrung his hands, which shook slightly. He'd just brought a dead bird back to life. If he could—
'The bird is still not alive, Harry,' Mr. Lord said, and he sounded gentle. Which put Harry on edge, because Mr. Lord was rarely ever gentle. Most of the time he was either snappish or indulgent. Not gentle, not unless he'd had a particularly bad day with the Dursleys. And even then Mr. Lord often sounded more angry on his behalf than gentle.
"But it's–"
'It's animated, it's moving. It's under your, well,' Mr. Lord hesitated, then continued, 'Control. But it's not alive. It does not have a heartbeat, it does not have a soul.'
Harry's breath stuttered. No soul?
Did that mean…
He shouldn't have hoped. Having that hope, possibility, dangled in front of him, only to be crushed. He felt tears pricking his eyes, "So, uh, my… I can't…"
'I'm sorry, Harry. Even if you could control human resurrections, you'd just create inferi. Well preserved, better controlled inferi, but just inferi.' Before Harry could open his mouth again, Mr. Lord continued, 'Inferi are, well. Zombies, you could say.'
Harry's eyes widened, no, that's not what he wanted at all. He'd just thought… Well, if he could do that to a bird, if he could do necromancy, maybe he could've… he'd have been able to get away from the Dursleys. And Mr. Lord said that his mother loved him very much. He could've lived with them.
He roughly scrubbed his hands over his eyes, swallowing down the lump in his throat. He didn't know why he was crying. It's not like he could remember his parents anyway. And he didn't know where they were buried either. It had been a half-brained idea.
'It's okay, Harry. We'll get away from them soon. You won't have to suffer long.'
"That's easy for you to say!" Harry snapped, before quickly sobering. He coughed, wincing, before climbing to his feet. The bird didn't budge from his head. Harry wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers, dirt stained at the knees.
Snake popped his head out of his sleeve, flicking his tongue out in the air, "The air smells different."
'Does it?' Mr. Lord murmured contemplatively.
Harry said nothing, picking up the hose to resume watering the garden, Aunt Petunia wasn't going to let him off on the account of an undead bird. He steadfastly ignored said bird for the rest of the afternoon, and Mr. Lord kept his quiet too.
With a stilted thought from Harry, the bird had burrowed itself inside Harry's shirt. Dudley's cast offs were large enough that the boy could hide half a zoo in there and the Dursleys would be none the wiser about it.
Harry's deliberate ignorance could only last so long, Voldemort knew. And was proven right when he collapsed on his bed that night, ushering both bird and snake out of his clothes. It had been quite a feat to convince the snake not to eat the bird, who kept insisting that it was dead anyway.
"You're too small to eat her!" Harry snapped, making it hiss wordlessly before slipping inside the pillow case.
'Would you have let it eat her if it'd been big enough?' Voldemort asked, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice, but did suppress a chuckle when Harry scowled.
Amusement aside, Voldemort himself was still reeling from the shock of what Harry had done that afternoon. It shouldn't have been possible. Especially not from a five year old, and especially not without a wand.
Well trained adult wixen couldn't accomplish necromancy, not without extensive training in the same. And even then, the most one could accomplish were inferi, which in themselves took immense power and control. Necromancy had so many ways to go wrong; horribly, terribly wrong.
So did healing, for that matter. But this bird, while still a result of healing magic gone astray, wasn't an inferi. Voldemort didn't sense the same malicious, mindless obedience from it. Unlike the rot that clung to inferi.
And the bird, it's body was completely fine, no wears or tears, nothing, so it wasn't quite the healing mishap it could have been. Which often ended up looking like grotesque, stitched together corpses.
It had stepped into a breed of creature altogether. Magic Voldemort had never seen before.
It unnerved and impressed him. He had a few theories as to Harry's… aptitude, in death magic. But he didn't think Harry was quite ready to talk about it yet. Nor was he himself, to be completely honest.
Harry sat cross legged on the bed, the bird in front of him, preening itself. He stared at her, transfixed, before reaching out a hand to poke at it gently. It stilled at Harry's touch. Tilting its head to one side, it stared at him, eerie green eyes dim and lifeless. Yet intelligent.
"Why can't I bring my parents back?" Harry asked after a long moment of silent staring. He shifted in bed until he was sprawled out, face buried in his arms, stomach down. The bird hopped onto his head, a favourite spot of hers, it seemed. Snake too, peered out from inside the pillow case, before slithering over and draping itself over the back of Harry's neck.
Harry shifted again so both the creatures were comfortable against him. He didn't seem all that unsettled by the bird anymore.
'We talked about this already,' Voldemort said quietly. This line of questioning made him more uncomfortable than the dead bird. He'd managed to avoid the topic of the Potters death until now, but everyday was one day closer to when Harry would find out the truth. Because he would. There was no conceivable way to hide it from Harry forever.
"No, we didn't," Harry said, "If I just put in more power– or, or had a wand, I might be able to–"
'No, you won't.' Voldemort said firmly, needing to put this idea out at its base, 'No one can bring back the dead. It's one of the rules of magic, of the world. Absolutely no one can bring back someone from the dead. Either they never died in the first place, or what's brought back is not them at all.'
He would know, wouldn't he? He doubted many others had done as much research into death as him. He knew more about necromancy than most wixen alive. He'd delved farther into the art than any records he could find. He'd never died, either. Thus why he could come back. He couldn't die. And thus he could be brought back to life.
But Harry's parents were unquestionably, irrefutably, absolutely dead. At least Lily Potter. Because the protection magic wouldn't have activated if there had even been the slightest possibility of her being alive.
And he'd killed James Potter too. It seemed highly unlikely that his killing curse would fail twice in the same day.
Now, what to say to Harry, though?
"I just…" Harry scrubbed hard at his red rimmed eyes, "I don't want to live here."
'I know,' Voldemort said, reigning in the rage that bubbled in him at Harry's words. He wasn't surprised, he knew what Harry's thoughts had been revolving around, but it still made him angry. 'We'll get out, I won't let you remain here a day more than you absolutely have to.'
"How?" Harry whispered, giving up on wiping away his tears. He sniffed, curling his hands into fists around the bedsheets. Snake licked at his cheek, making him give a wobbly smile.
'Well,' Voldemort said, not quite sure of the answer. 'I've been having you save up money–' steal it, but he didn't quite care for the distinction. That money should have belonged to him by rights, '–and your control and power is improving in heaps and bounds. Sooner or later, you'll be independent enough to run away. And you'll have me.'
"I always have you," Harry said softly, the tears easing a little. The bird had started preening Harry's hair, and his hands had loosened too.
The boy looked too thin, Voldemort thought, a recurring concern. If Petunia were a little less precise about the food in her house, Voldmeort would have had Harry stealing way more than he did now. But as Harry grew older, the punishments inflicted got crueler.
Voldemort was too cautious to risk it.
There were so many things wrong with this house, this family. He'd thought the orphanage had been bad, but this… this was so much worse.
Voldemort wasn't a stranger to suffering. Nor was he particularly sympathetic to it. He didn't care, really. Most of the time. But dealing with it in such close quarters, once again, he couldn't help but be affected.
He didn't regret any of the murders he'd commited, and any complicated feelings he harboured about killing Lily were reserved solely for its consequences for Voldemort himself.
But for the first time he felt that maybe it didn't just extend to himself, but to Harry as well. The way it affected not only Voldemort, but Harry, a child who now had to grow up like him. Unloved, berated, disdained, derided. Starved, hurt, abused. Damaged.
He didn't understand Harry, sometimes. Most of the time, really. Today was the first time he'd seen Harry actively talk about leaving the Dursleys, openly think about how badly they treated him and how much it hurt.
"Please don't leave me," Harry whispered, startling Voldemort out of his musings.
Voldemort didn't know what to say, but he needn't have worried, because Harry had already slipped off to sleep.
He didn't visit their shared dreamscape that night.
A/N: Next update will be on 21st March.
Also, the snake (who I will name, shortly) uses it pronoun, while the bird (who I will also be naming) will be reffered using it/her.
