"What is this?" Harry asked himself, expecting no reply as he looked around. He was in a small dark chamber, roundish. He could see nothing outside the chamber but there were no walls. There was a torch light in the middle of the chamber that showed that there were no walls, just an island amid a mist of black. He shuddered, and repeated, "What is this? Where am I?"
He got an answer.
A voice answered him, like fire the voice burned through his mind and went right through to the heart of his dark dark soul.
"Harry Potter," Fawkes said, it seemed the voice was coming through the torchlight that gave off the eeriee yellow light. "Have you made your choice yet?"
"W-what are you talking about?" Harry asked. It seemed he had tunnel vision because he could see nothing but the torch light. "Where am I?" He repeated again, angrily.
"What are you going to choose? Good or evil? Both paths lay open before you, both paths will lead you to your destiny."
"What is my destiny?"
Harry could almost see the phoenix smiling in the torchlight.
"Death," the phoenix said, and Harry felt an intense flash of pain pound on his head.
"What?"
"Death," the phoenix repeated. "Now tell me, Harry Potter, will you fight for the light? Or will you cling close to the shadows?"
"I-" His first response was darkness of course. He was a death eater for godsakes, and a follower of Lord Voldemort. But then a thought floated up to the top of his mind, like oil floating to the top, he thought about how... he did not really want to take the mark, did he? He did not want his soul to be marked and mutilated.
"If you choose the light, I can heal you," said Fawkes. "If you choose the darkness, I can make you strong."
"I-" He was at a loss, he had to think about this. If he chose the light... this was too surreal to consider. It seemed like a bad fantasy novel or something because he had never faced this choice before and... he felt afraid.
"Choose! Now!"
"I need time to think," Harry weakly responded.
The flames from the torchlight rose up in the black sky and circled around Harry like a snake, red and black, menacing. "I will make you choose," said Fawkes. "Right now, Hogwarts is fighting a battle against the order of the skull. Will you defend Hogwarts?"
"Maybe," Harry said vaguely. In truth, if he had the chance, he would run, or would he? He thought of Rose, his sister, and he thought of flying over the trees and the lake, in and around Hogwarts like he did almost everynight. Now he was not so sure.
Harry could feel Fawkes getting frustrated, "Look, I don't - You just sprang this up on me. I can't make decisions like this so easily and..."
He paused. The phoenix waited. "Aren't you creatures supposed to be light?"
"No," said Fawkes. "That's just a myth."
"Right," said Harry. He sighed and sat down on the cold hard floor of the darkish chamber, not knowing what to do. "Can you take me back?"
"No," said Fawkes. "You will stay here and train for three years."
"What?" Harry asked, shocked.
"You will need that much time to fight the necromancers. This is the chamber of time, where time stops and reality bends. A minute in the real world will be a year in here."
"That's-" he was gobbling like a fish. "That's crazy!"
"It is, isn't it?" Fawkes seemed amused, even though Harry couldn't see Fawkes. All he could see was flames, he was surrounded by flames, green, yellow, red, blue, black, they rose and fell like the tide.
"If I pick the dark, I won't have to fight the necromancers, right?"
"Wrong. That is your price for having a phoenix ally," Fawkes said. "I need you, Harry Potter. I need you to fight the order of the skull."
"WhY?" Harry demanded. "You people are immortal! You don't-"
"I do," Fawkes said morsely. "A necromancer is the only being that can murder a phoenix."
Harry gaped.
"They are not magically powerful," He continued. "Not magically skilled, even. Not that much. But they have a different power, the power of my opposites."
"What is your opposite?" asked Harry in curiousity.
Fawkes's eyes shined golden from completely black fire. "A dark phoenix."
"If I chose the darkness... wouldn't I have a dark phoenix? I am getting confused," said Harry.
"You don't understand. No matter what you choose, you will have to fight the order of the skull. No matter what path you choose to follow, I will aide you and help you, despite the fact that it might be against my code of laws."
"You really want to fight these order of the skull folks, huh?"
"Yes, I must," Fawkes said. "Let's begin your training, now. You can choose your path in three years. How's that?"
Harry nodded, "Okay, you are saying I have three years of training? That's unreal."
"It's true. I will train you myself, through fire contested."
"That's from the sorting hat's song!" Harry said.
"Indeed," Fawkes replied, his voice a musical trill coming from the fire. "Now let's begin. We will train in the arts of sword fighting, and only sword fighting. That's the only thing that can affect necromancers. They are too good in magic for you to fight them with."
"Sword fighting...?" Harry asked. "I don't have a sword."
"You seem slow on the uptake. I will provide you with a sword." The fire receeded back into the torch light in the middle of the round chamber, and now in front of the chamber there were two swords. One was made of the whitest and brightest metal Harry had ever seen, and the other was made of the blackest metal Harry had ever seen. "What is this?" Harry demanded.
"What do you mean?" Fawkes asked. "Choose your sword. The white one is Gryfindor's, the black one is slytherin's. I personally recommend Gryfindor's. It has better-"
"No, this is another one of your manipulative questions isn't it?" Harry said. "You wan't me to make the choice between good and evil so bad... maybe I will." With that he went over to the black sword.
"No!" Fawkes cried. "Reconsider, you can-"
Harry smirked. "So I was right." He looked at each sword carefully and then got a sudden inspiration. He grabbed the handles of both the swords.
"I want to train with both of these," Harry said. "For better balance."