Chapter 59: Cauldron Bubble
When Harry opened his eyes in the morning, it took him a moment for him to figure out where he was: he was still on the couch in the Astronomy Tower with the sky above him. Then he wondered how he could have possibly slept so long; the sun wasn't up yet, but the bright dawn light made Harry squint. Harry leaned forward to see over the rounded parapet, but an arm circling his waist stopped him. He turned around to see that he'd fallen asleep leaning against Albus. Albus was still asleep, his glasses hanging off his long nose. Harry reached around and carefully pushed them back up.
Albus's eyes flew open.
"Good morning," he said. "What time is it?"
Harry shrugged. "Some time before eight forty-four."
"Tempus!" muttered Albus. "8:15" appeared in red numbers in front of them.
"Oi!" said Harry. They only had a few minutes to get ready for the final part of the potion.
They got up off the couch and Albus summoned a bottle of freezing draft with Harry's wand. Albus helped Harry extract the memory of Fawkes hatching, and Harry climbed into the cauldron by 8:20, shaking with cold.
"Your wand, Harry?"
"What? Oh," said Harry. His stomach dropped. He'd forgotten about the last ingredient of the potion. Shaking harder and harder, he held out a dripping hand.
Albus handed Harry the wand.
Harry held it in both hands just outside the rim of the cauldron. His treasured Holly and Phoenix wand was cold and unresponsive. Everything about this felt wrong. Harry bit his lip bitterly.
"—Wait," said Albus. Harry looked to him. "You—" Albus's voice caught in his throat, "You may never be able to do magic again."
Harry shook his head and didn't say anything. He wouldn't be able to break it if he thought about it at all. He closed his eyes, pictured Fawkes, and snapped the wand before he could even think.
Pain and nausea ripped through him; he didn't remember it this way when his broom broke. Maybe he'd blocked it from his memory, but the moment he broke the wand, he felt like part of him had been snuffed. Like a bright candle had gone out, there was now nothing left but smoke to choke on. The wand clattered to the ground outside of the cauldron and Harry sank below the surface of the potion, unable to keep himself up. He coughed and potion flooded into his lungs.
Harry didn't hear the splash as Albus tossed the blue crystal into the potion, nor did he feel it when the crystal hit him on the head before sinking deeper.
"Feather from your body, carefully preserved, you will create a new body," chanted Albus, but Harry didn't hear him. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears like an ambulance siren.
The potion suddenly got hotter and lighter, rising to the surface like the liquid was no longer liquid, but fire, burning Harry's lungs.
"Memory of your essence, lovingly contributed, you will bring back what was lost."
The potion instantly turned from flaming red to the color of mercury, and it kept getting hotter.
With Harry's fading consciousness, he realized that he hadn't given Albus any more tears.
"Tears from your killer, grievingly shed. You will undo what you've done!"
The potion went silent.
Everything was dark.
Harry couldn't see, couldn't feel anything.
He was in the darkest night.
He was under thirty covers in a stifling, dark room.
And then the potion exploded with green light, and Harry knew he had, in fact, cried for Fawkes because he was feeling exactly what he'd felt when he'd done so, and more. His mouth was open and he gasped in potion, choking, swallowing, crying. It was like someone had put the Aurora Borealis in the potion and now it was suffocating Harry, drowning him. He wondered how Albus could possibly find that emerald green color beautiful.
Something fluttered in front of him in the green. Something red. A tiny red sun in green outer-space, and it grew.
Then the red was a storm, twisting and shining in front of Harry's fading vision. Harry swallowed more and more potion; he was drowning. All of the breath left him, and he lost his grip on the world of red and green, favoring the black of unconsciousness.
What he didn't see was that the potion was very quickly turning all red, and fire was blossoming from the surface of the potion.
And then the surface exploded as a fully-grown phoenix rocketed out of the potion, dragging Harry with him, upside down, his talons ripping into Harry's feet to maintain a grip.
"Harry!" shouted Albus.
Potion was rushing out of Harry's open mouth and Fawkes shook him up and down in the air to get all of it out. Then, Fawkes hastily laid Harry out on the stone floor of the astronomy tower. He was naked and immobile and his feet were bleeding from Fawkes's talons.
Albus quickly knelt by Harry's head.
He checked to find that Harry's heart was beating faintly, but he wasn't breathing.
Albus pinched Harry's nose and swooped down to exhale into his mouth.
Once…twice…Albus checked his breathing again.
Three, four…
Five, six….
Seven—Harry spluttered, arching forward. He gave a few weak gurgling coughs, fighting between taking in much-needed air and accidentally drawing in more fluid from his throat.
"Harry? Can you hear me?"
Fawkes was by Harry's feet, his tears mixing with the potion and blood from the wounds he'd caused lifting Harry.
Harry's breathing slowed and his eyes focused on Albus.
"Did it work? Is Fawkes…is Fawkes alright?" he croaked.
Albus smiled. "Yes, though I admit, for a moment there I thought you…"
And Harry never knew exactly motivated Albus to do what he did next, but the next moment Albus had leaned down and kissed Harry full on the mouth.
Fawkes began to sing with joy, and his song seemed to fill the whole sky. Harry's heart leapt into his throat and he could hardly breathe.
And suddenly Harry really couldn't breathe and he shoved Albus off him in order to cough up more potion.
As soon as Harry finished coughing, Albus was stuttering in apology. "Harry—I..I don't know what came over me—you almost…I'm sorry—it…you just—"
Harry quickly grabbed the front of Albus's robes and pulled him down for another kiss, and it was even more amazing than the first. Albus stabilized himself with a hand on Harry's bare hip, and Harry let his eyes fall shut, beginning to feel warm all over despite the midwinter air. Harry lifted a potion-soaked hand to push a dangling lock of Albus's hair behind his ear, and Albus let himself sink closer to Harry on the floor of the tower.
"What the—"
Harry and Albus looked up. Harry felt hot blood flood out of his extremities and into his face, and he reached past Albus to the couch for their blanket.
"I…I'd just gotten back and I was walking across the lawn and saw a green light coming from the tower and came up..." said Minerva. "I've never seen it in person—but I thought maybe Avada Kedavra..."
Harry felt an intrusive flash of annoyance that Minerva could possibly have reached the age of thirty three without knowing what an Avada Kedavra curse looked like, and then softened, realizing that that was a mercy.
"So... I came up here to make sure everything was alright."
Minerva fiddled with her hands for a minute, nodding slowly as she took in the scene.
"But I see that I'm not needed. Er…Happy new year," she finished.
"Happy new year," said Harry and Albus together. Harry didn't know what to say.
"As you can see," said Albus cheerily changing the subject, "we created a potion. Fawkes is free, though I don't know where he went. He was here a moment ago."
"I can't imagine how he possibly slipped away without either of you noticing," replied Minerva tersely.
They were all quiet for a moment. Albus was looking at various points in the sky, and Harry was looking at the ground. Minerva tapped her wand absently on the stone parapet.
"Thank you for the books, Minerva," said Albus. "I've always wanted to read about tropical fish."
"You're welcome," she said stiffly. "Thank you for the hat, Albus. And thank you for the gifts, Harry."
"You're welcome," they both said.
"Right, well, I'm glad you're all better, Harry, and I really have some paperwork to do now," Minerva said very quickly. Her eyes flashed, her lips tightened into the thin line that Harry hadn't seen in a long time, and she turned and marched down the stairs with her head unnaturally high.
Neither Harry nor Albus said anything for a minute as her footsteps receded down the tower's spiral staircase.
"Breakfast, Harry?"
Harry shook off his daze and nodded to Albus. The two of them made their way to their feet, Harry still wrapped in the blanket.
"Do you need...?"
Harry reached automatically inside for magic to clothe himself.
"I'm not sure I can...It feels like a," he winced, "like a sore muscle. Lumos! Ow." A little dot of light appeared in front of Harry's eyes and went out. He made eye contact with Albus and couldn't help smiling in relief that he had magic back.
"Allow me— I don't have a wand, but I've been having better luck wandlessly lately." Albus waved his hand, and Harry's skin was mercifully warm and dry. "Did that work?"
"Yeah, thanks," Harry nodded gratefully.
"Perfect." Albus waved his hand a second time, and the blanket vanished.
Harry looked down and back up at Albus.
Albus glanced over his half moon glasses and his lip twitched. "Oops."
Castle breakfast was over, so the two of them retreated to Albus's dining room. There, two house elves spread a meal for them. As they sat down, a flame leapt up in the middle of the table and vanished leaving a single red feather and the Elder Wand.
A stack of Harry's Christmas presents sat at one end of the table, and at Albus's insistence, Harry began to open them.
Minerva had given him a book on rare magical objects. He flipped through it briefly to see that Minerva had circled all of the ones that had ever been documented in Harry's vault.
Professor Flitwick had given him a Dueler's Watch—an item that would count down the incapacitation time and even help identify foreign spells—and a heartfelt note saying that he wanted to share a meal to discuss technique. Harry then remembered that Flitwick had been a dueling champion at one point and he wondered if that had occurred yet. Flitwick couldn't have been too much older than 40.
Pomona Sprout had given Harry a nifty little plant; in the dark it, and its pot, would shrink down to fit easily on one face of a galleon, but in the sun it expanded to a flowering tree about the size of a ficus.
Nicolas and Penny had given Harry a copy of a new book that they had co-authored: Magics of the World, which showed the different interpretations of magic in different countries. Just as languages are formulated differently, there were different incantation guides and different structures for enchantments. In many parts of the world, Nicolas had told Harry, magic wasn't channeled through wands, but through rings or staffs or pendants.
There was also a small pile of gifts from various students; there were sweets from some of his older students, and—Harry couldn't believe it—a lumpy purple wool sweater from somebody named "Lucretia Prewett." Harry unfolded it to find "DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS" written on the front in blue. Harry grinned and put it on.
Albus chuckled. "You know, you can track back for centuries—the tradition of making Christmas sweaters has been passed down for generations from mother to daughter in that family. I used to get sweaters from her mother, Melania Black when I taught Lucretia, and I was friends in school with Melania's mother, Druella McMillan. Druella's mother made me a sweater or two, too.
"That's fantastic," said Harry. "I got a sweater every year from Lucretia Prewett's daughter, Molly." Harry smiled. "And even Ginny started knitting after we had James. She said she was doing it 'ironically,' but she never stopped. I wonder if Lilly will start knitting when she grows up…"
Albus smiled, leaning into the details of Harry's former life. It was healing to be able to talk to Albus about his family like this.
"Did…Nicolas..er give you anything else?" Harry asked.
"He did give me this box of yours. He said he wasn't sure what to do with it." Albus flicked his wand and a moment later a light wooden box with a hinged lid zoomed up to the table and landed in front of Harry. Harry tilted it away from Albus and peeked inside. There were the items he'd told Nicolas about—the parts for Albus's gift that he hadn't had time to assemble.
"Which reminds me, Harry, I'll be right back," said Albus. He got up from the table and left the room. This gave Harry the moment he needed.
He quickly got out of his seat and crossed his fingers—he really hoped this would work. He concentrated very hard and…
It worked! He was quickly shrinking down into his phoenix form. He couldn't believe he could still get into this form without Fawkes.
He quickly shook a particularly long and shiny feather out from his body and changed back into a man. He picked up the feather and quickly fitted it into a metal quill tip (which Nicolas had taken the liberty to turn gold) with Albus's full name engraved into it. He put it back into the box, where there was also a little gold ink pot with Albus's name on it, and shut the lid just as Albus came back into the room with an iconically shaped package.
"This is for you," said Albus.
Harry looked from the package in Albus's arms to Albus's face and back.
"Albus…did you buy me a broom?" asked Harry, stunned.
"No, of course not," said Albus, twinkling. He handed Harry the package.
Harry, thoroughly baffled, opened the package. It was a broomstick, but one unlike Harry had ever seen before. The handle was crimson with swirls of gold around the shaft. The tail was literally on fire with unnaturally dark crimson flames.
"I didn't buy it," smiled Albus. "I took the liberty of making it. After all, I broke yours."
Harry was silent, admiring Albus's work in awe.
"It can do everything yours did, and I added a few things. That's Gubraithian fire on the tail, so it will never go out. I thought it looked a little too flashy, but the fire is necessary for some of the new additions. For instance, that broom can vanish and reappear with its rider. Nicolas and Rudolph helped me instill it with phoenix teleportation and speed."
"Albus, this is amazing. It's beautiful—I…" he laughed, not really sure how to convey just how much he loved it. "I…wow."
"I must admit, though," said Albus. "It's not a unique gift."
"Oh?" asked Harry.
Albus snapped his fingers and another Phoenix broom zoomed up the stairs and into Albus's waiting hand.
"I decided you wouldn't have fun without a little competition on the pitch. I thought I might provide some myself…"
Harry laughed. "Challenge accepted."
Then he remembered his own gift for Albus and grimaced. He didn't want to go down the anxious rabbit hole of comparing his gift with Albus's, but well...he resolved to be a bit more focussed and a bit less kidnapped.
"Er…This is for you."
He quickly shoved the box over to Albus.
"Can I open it?" asked Albus.
Harry pursed his lips and nodded.
Albus lifted the lid and smiled serenely at what he saw. He lifted the quill and ink pot out of the box and examined them, smiling. "Thank you Harry," he said. "These are beautiful."
Harry nodded. "And that ink pot…I didn't know what color ink you wanted, so I got you color change. I wanted the kind that keeps changing as you write, but I'm not sure if that's been invented yet and this one just stays one color after you write for the first time. I didn't know if you'd want black as usual or purple or something so I left it up to you…" he trailed off.
Albus absently snapped his fingers to conjure some parchment. With his new quill hanging an inch above the parchment, looked Harry right in the eye for a moment, dipped the quill in the ink pot and started drawing a butterfly in emerald green.
Harry stared.
This was the moment when Albus Dumbledore decided to change from black ink to his trademark green? Harry couldn't figure out why Albus liked that color in the first place. Green made Harry think of Avada Kedavra and nauseating Floo travel and snakes and traffic lights and Slytherins and drowning in potion. He was about to ask Albus why he picked green, but Albus spoke first.
"Thank you, Harry," he said. "This is very thoughtful."
"You're welcome. Er…there's something else in there. It's silly…it's just..." Harry bit his lip.
Albus put down the quill and opened the box again. He fished out the last item from the box: a small squashy paper-wrapped package. Harry held his breath as Albus carefully picked the tape off with his long fingers. The wrapping finally fell away to reveal…
"Harry, you know, every other gift I received this Christmas was a book. People insist on giving me books, but all I ever really wanted was a pair of thick, woolen socks."