A/N: This has not been beta'd. I just got this error message in my master Shiny and Blue Microsoft Word doc that said "There are too many spelling or grammatical errors in "ADHP Master" to continue displaying them. To check the spelling and grammar of this document, choose Spelling and Grammar from the Review tab." I laughed really hard and then was irritated that I couldn't fix my spelling in my master doc—but it was still pretty funny. I just hit 400 pages single spaced, so…woot.
Chapter 56: Fire Burn
It was three in the afternoon on Sunday the 22nd of December, 1957. The sun was low in the sky, and Harry had just finished his pair of gold tongs. They were crude and loose, but they would work for what Harry and Albus needed for the potion. It had taken all day for Harry to finish the tongs, but Harry was still proud of the fact that he did it in less time than Nicolas said he would.
It was three in the afternoon, and sunset was at 3:54, so Harry and Albus started making the potion.
Albus provided a huge cauldron, which Nicolas then turned to gold using the stone, and Albus enchanted it to withstand high heat. They had used all of the phoenix tears on Nicolas's exploded hand, so Harry turned back into a phoenix and Nicolas and Albus goaded him into crying again (which was not difficult; Harry's emotions were so volatile in his phoenix state that he could basically cry on demand). Once they had a substantial amount of tears, they poured them into the bottom of the cauldron. The tears barely moistened the whole bottom and Harry expected them to evaporate immediately when he lit the flame, but, as Albus assured, they didn't.
After about eight minutes, Harry checked the cauldron and was shocked by what he saw.
"Albus—I think there's something wrong with the potion."
"Oh no, what is it?"
"The cauldron—it's over three quarters full!"
"Ah, yes. Did I not mention? Phoenix tears expand when they are heated."
"I knew that—but I didn't know they expanded this much! This is…it's like—"
"Magic? Yes. Amazing creatures," said Albus. "Didn't you wonder how you were going to submerge yourself in a potion if you thought there was only a little bit at the bottom?"
"…No," said Harry sheepishly.
The phoenix tears in the cauldron began turning a golden brown color, so Harry and Albus added the puree of mandrake root.
While Harry was making his pair of tongs, Albus had spent the day preparing ingredients for the potion like the mandrake root puree.
Harry stirred the potion counterclockwise seven times with a golden rod, and the potion got darker and darker with each turn until it was black.
Next was the most difficult step: the unicorn hair and the bezoar. Harry had to put a circle of unicorn hair on the surface of the potion, and when it sank to exactly half way down the potion, he was supposed to drop a bezoar through the center of it. Albus had created a little charm that would track the bezoar's altitude, and using trigonometry (or as Albus called it, Arithmancy) that was significantly over Harry's 11 year old British local school level, determine the half way point in the potion and create an alarm that would go off right before the unicorn hair hit that point.
So Harry carefully picked up the circle of unicorn hair—two hairs tied together to make a circle—and carefully dropped it in the potion so that it made a nice even ring. The potion immediately turned transparent, and Harry could see all the way to the golden bottom of the cauldron.
Harry picked up the bezoar and waited for Albus's alarm. It went off about a minute later and Harry dropped the bezoar into the potion. The potion splashed up and the splashes turned into sparks, and soon the whole surface of the potion was sparking. Harry grabbed the tongs he'd worked so hard on and listened closely for the thunk of the bezoar hitting the bottom of the cauldron.
When bezoar did hit the bottom of the cauldron, it hit with a loud bell tone like the anvil rather than a thunk like it would in a normal cauldron. Harry quickly reached into the potion with his gold tongs and fished out the bezoar. He noted briefly that the unicorn hair circle had dissolved in the heat, and then deposited the bezoar into a pan in Albus's hands.
Albus pointed his wand at the flames below the cauldron and made them shrink down to a low blaze.
"Ok," said Harry. "Now…we wait?"
Albus looked at the watch Harry had given him with the planets.
"About a half hour, I think. We should move to a place where we can see the sunset. Perhaps my chambers? There is a large, West-facing window."
"Oh, oops. I guess we should have started up there. I forgot."
"Fortunately, the situation is easily remedied." He pointed Harry's wand at the cauldron and the whole cauldron and fire lifted itself off the office floor. "After you?"
They marched up to Albus's bedroom with the floating cauldron and fire in tow.
Albus did have a very large window in his room through which they could see Hogsmeade to the South and the forest to the West and the mountains beyond all. The sun was slowly dipping towards the mountainous horizon. Harry and Albus sat on the edge of Albus's bed and looked at each other in the orange glow.
"You can do the next step," said Albus.
"Yeah. Guess so. I just…light the potion on fire?" Harry was distracted by the light on Albus's face, the orange shine on his glasses.
Albus nodded and handed Harry one of his own phoenix feathers.
Their hands brushed as Harry took it. They were so close together. Harry thought he could just…lean forward. He wanted to see what a sunset would taste like on Albus's lips.
"It's almost time," said Albus looking out at the sunset.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to look directly at the sun?" asked Harry, searching for the blue behind the glare of Albus's glasses.
"Yes, but I've long since decided that it would be pointless to have eyes if I did not use them to look at beauty."
Harry smiled. "That sounds like the Dumbledore I knew…"
"Mm, yes. Your professor. Your headmaster. It is interesting having someone think of me as an old man."
"I don't," said Harry, regretting having mentioned the older Professor Dumbledore. "Not at all."
"Oh?"
"I think of you as a colleague." Equal, he wanted to say. "A partner." Companion. "A friend." A man. "I hope you don't think of me as a student."
"I've never met you as a student, Harry. What I have seen of you as a child is like a photograph."
Harry was relieved. He and Albus looked at each other for another moment.
"The sun is almost down," said Albus, not looking away from Harry's face.
"So it is," said Harry looking out the window to the West.
Albus stood up and Harry followed him past the cauldron to the window. The sun sank lower and lower until it was a crescent perched on top of the mountain, then a sliver, and then just a bead of orange.
And then it was gone.
Harry missed the green flash, but Albus evidently saw it and said "Now!" Harry snapped his fingers, and the surface of the potion lit on fire with a sudden roar.
Harry bent over the now flaming cauldron and began stirring it with the phoenix feather. The feather did not shrivel in heat or catch on fire as Harry stirred, but the flames got darker and darker until they were the same color red as the feather. When they matched, Harry stopped stirring and laid the feather on the windowsill.
"Done," he said and turned to look at Albus.
In the afterglow of the sunset and in the light of the flaming potion, Albus looked back at Harry steadily.
"I don't think of you as a student; I think of you as an equal," Albus said. Harry, surprised, took a second to figure out what he was talking about. "A companion," Albus continued. He paused for a moment. "A...man."
Harry bit his lip and smiled down at his hands.
Sunrise on December 23rd was at 8:05 in the morning, so Albus and Harry woke up at 7 to prepare. The potion had burned all night, and at sunrise they would add the final three ingredients.
They had prepared Harry's phoenix tears, and one of Harry's phoenix feathers. Harry had also extracted, from his mind, a memory of Fawkes. He chose the memory of Fawkes coming to his rescue in the Chamber of Secrets. It was the first moment he had heard the phoenix song and felt its infectious confidence. To get the memory out, Harry remembered the scene unfolding, and Albus used Harry's wand to extract it.
These three ingredients (the tears, the feathers, and the memory) were the most important parts of the potion. Harry and Albus had based them off of Voldemort's ingredients: bones of the father unknowingly given, flesh of the servant willingly given, and blood of the enemy forcibly taken.
Harry was excited to put the potion to use. He'd been through a lot (being kidnapped by the phoenix that he'd accidentally killed, learning to blacksmith) and he was ready for an end to the long chain of unfortunate phoenix-related events.
He was jittery when he took his freezing draft at 7:45. Albus turned away and Harry reluctantly stripped off his clothing and climbed into the flaming cauldron, goosebumps rising all over him. When only his head was visible, Albus came back over.
"I'm going to enchant your lungs to hold more air. You'll be able to be submerged for the whole seven minutes without breathing."
Harry nodded, holding his knees to his bare chest. Albus waved Harry's wand at Harry. Harry noticed that he no longer needed to breathe as fast. "Thanks," he told Albus.
"It's 7:58. Let's begin. You should be submerged." Harry ducked his head under the surface of the potion. The liquid felt cool because of the freezing draft and Harry's resistance to heat, and everything in the cauldron was reflecting gold and the red of the fire. Harry's ears were full of water, but he could hear Albus start the spell.
"Feather from your host, willingly given, you will create a new body." Albus dropped in a feather from Harry's animagus form.
"Memory of your essence, lovingly contributed, you will bring back what was lost." Albus poured in the silver memory, and it wound its way down through the potion in front of Harry's eyes.
"Tears of your killer, grievingly shed." Harry winced. "You will undo what you've done."
The potion around Harry began to boil and spark, and Harry knew the sun was rising. The potion got more and more violent, color flashing in front of Harry's closed eyes. Just when Harry felt like his lungs were going to burst, the potion stilled and darkened. He hesitated for a moment before allowing himself to bob to the surface. He wiped some potion off his face and looked at Albus.
"Did it work?" Harry asked, catching his breath.
"Is there a phoenix in there with you?" Albus asked.
Harry quickly sloshed around patting down the bottom of the cauldron, worried that there was a drowning baby phoenix somewhere…There was not.
Harry shook his head.
Albus's face fell. "Harry, I'm sorry. We'll try again."
"Yeah…" said Harry
Albus conjured a bath mat just outside the cauldron so that Harry wouldn't drip on the floor, and put a pile of clothes and a towel next to it. Then he crossed the room and sat on the end of his bed facing away from Harry.
"Do you think I can get my memory back?" Harry asked while stepping out of the cauldron and toweling the potion off. Despite the failure of the potion, he felt quite rejuvenated. He thought it probably had something to do with being submerged in phoenix tears for over seven minutes.
"Yes," said Albus. "I'll get it out when you're dressed."
When Harry was dressed, Albus stood over the cauldron and swirled Harry's wand around in the potion as if it were a fishing line and he was trying to catch a fish. Then he pulled the wand out, and Harry's memory was dangling, attached to the end.
"Would you like it back in your mind?" Albus asked.
"Guess so," said Harry.
Albus put the wand tip to Harry's head and Harry felt the memory worming its way back into his mind.
Albus sighed. "Well, what would you like to do now? Would you like some breakfast?"
Harry suddenly felt like he had water in his ears—Albus had come out all garbled. He whacked his head against his hand a few times trying to get any potion out.
"Sure…that sounds…good."
"I'll get…"
The rest of Albus's words were completely obscured.
"Sorry?" Harry asked.
"…"
Blackness started creeping around the edges of Harry's vision and Albus looked like he was getting farther and farther away. He felt like he was falling—and he was falling, collapsing onto the ground, but he felt like he was falling even after his vision went completely dark. Falling deeper and deeper until…
He was standing in the Chamber of Secrets. His younger self, Ginny Weasley, and Tom Riddle were in front of him, and Fawkes, the present-time Fawkes who was living inside Harry's mind and causing him so much trouble, was perched on his shoulder.