Encore of the Phoenixes


Years ago I was posting a fanfic called "Harry Potter and the Return of the Phoenix". But then, the last book in the Potter series came out, some other stuff happened, and I stopped posting, leaving the fanfic unfinished.

Although, I did have an "encore" chapter finished, which was the end of the story with a bit about Fawkes. There is a big gap in the plot, though...

But then, 11 years have passed since I last touched this fanfic.

This last chapter has just been sitting here on my computer's harddrive, until something got my attention: activity on this fanfic site. And so, I'm going to go ahead and upload it...

This, then, is just an encore for phans of the phoenix;
Fawkes, and the hen of his dreams.


Fawkes was at a small farm in the Yorkshiredales, one of the many trips he would be taking in search of the bits and pieces of Lord Voldemort, the horcruxes that would have to be destroyed, lest the Dark Lord come back to life yet again.

With his human friends, he was exploring the area of the chicken coop, under which, according to a potion of identification, should be hidden an iron spur that might contain one seventh of Tom's soul.

There were many birds on this farm, mostly chickens. But Fawkes recognized a few of his own kind mingled in among the flock. He looked around, taking in a beucolic scene of a kind that was, these days, all too few and far between.

But it wasn't until he looked up at the barn roof that he saw that which would change his life forever.

There she was, perched high atop the cuppola, a phoenix unlike any Fawkes had ever seen before. Her indigo plumage glowed irridescently in the light of the setting sun, and her obsidian eyes gave the look of one who knew the secrets of the universe.

Fawkes froze, not wanting in his nervousness to make an idiot of himself, and ruin his introduction. But one of the older hens interrupted his hesitation.

"Arrr, ye have eyes for Hiasobe, do ye?", she cackled.

The indigo phoenix heard this comment, and flew down to the lawn for a closer look. "Have a look, Hiasobe, 'tis Fawkes, the phoenix from Hogwarts." Fawkes could think of no words to say, at least none that wouldn't sound like pure blather, but he did manage a stately bow.

Perhaps she would start the conversation, he hoped.

Oh Merlin how he hoped.

And his hopes were quickly answered, though not quite the way he was thinking of.

Hiasobe opened her beak as if to talk. But instead of words, she breathed out a shimmering silver mist, and Fawkes suddenly found himself immersed in thoughts that were not his own.

He found himself, yet not himself, taking off in flight from a high hilltop, soaring out across a secluded bay. Or perhaps it was a lagoon; this seemed to be an island they were on. Other winged forms were vaguely visible among the mists. Gigantic flying beasts; these were most definitely not phoenixes. Soaring along the shoreline, he let out a blast of flame, boiling a small school of fish. Then, dipping his lower jaw into the waves, he scooped them up. Savoring the flavor of well-cooked tilapia fish, he flashed a toothy grin to the rest of his flock, and headed for the low forest...

These weren't Hiasobe's thoughts, either. They were the memories of a dragon! She must have taken the dragon's soul when it died. Other amazing memories followed; some of magical beasts, some were simply of mundane animals living extraordinary lives.

When the shimmering mist faded, Fawkes began to see again the scene around him, swimming back to the here and now as he came out of what seemed like a trance. Hiasobe was so amazing! What could Fawkes possibly have that would compare to all that? Again, he could think of nothing.

"Holy Merlin, Hiasobe; what an amazing collection, where on Earth did you find all that?", he blurted out without even thinking. Hiasobe looked into Fawkes' eyes with an expression of what looked like curiosity, and if phoenixes could blush, Fawkes would have been turning several shades of embarrased. Certainly his comment must have sounded like sheer stupidity.

"Albus Dumbledore ?", she asked, in a tone of pure surprise. "My word, you sound just like him; has he died? Is he in there?" Fawkes' nerves began to calm, and a little confidence crept into his voice. Yes, there would be something to talk about. "I have half of him; the rest has passed on." He moved closer, his expression a bit more serious. "And a few others as well."

Fawkes had no idea how to share memories directly without using a pensieve, so he hopped over to an empty water dish, and motioned for Hiasobe to follow. There, he pulled threads of memory, pooling them in the dish, and invited her to join him in it.

Hiasobe relished nostalgically the life of Albus Dumbledore, from his humble beginnings through his rise to Headmaster, through his trials and triumphs to his ultimate demise, and her heart wept for Fawkes at the loss of his longtime friend.

Then she froze in beak-dropping terror at the realization that Fawkes also had some of the Dark Lord, he-who must-not be-named, hidden inside him. "What on Earth are you doing with... with.. HIM ?", she demanded, backing away in revulsion.

Fawkes had to call upon the part of him that was Dumbledore in order to explain himself without stammering. "Something had to be done with him, Hiasobe. There were seven horcruxes of the Dark Lord, and I dared not simply let them loose. In all likelyhood, they would not pass on, but hang around as ghosts, ready to resurrect the evil fiend all over again."

He gave Hiasobe a reassuring look. "When all the pieces of his soul are rounded up, when he is dead and gone, then I will take these bits of soul and pulverize them. He will not come back again."

A tear escaped Hiasobe's eye at the thought of what her new friend was tasked with, his part in the fight against evil. She looked upon him now as a war hero with battle scars; and yet, still a gentle bird.

She passed her beak gently along the back of Fawkes' neck, smoothing down a few rough feathers. Fawkes collected his thoughts from out of the water dish, and followed Hiasobe to the coop, where all the birds, whether phoenix or chicken, found places to lay down their heads, and as dusk turned to nighttime, safely inside their wooden enclosure, they all drifted off to sleep.


During the remainder of the war (into which I won't go into detail since the series is long since over and this is just an encore), Fawkes returned whenever he could to visit Hiasobe, sharing thoughts of Albus Dumbledore, various animals, and, when he dared, select bits of Voldemort; the both of them sharing the details of their lives apart and enjoying what time they had together. And as the two birds were getting to know one another, the ghosts and fragments of ghosts within them were doing the same.

And when the final battle was over, when victory had been celebrated, when the bodies were all buried, Fawkes returned to the Yorkshiredales. His human companion dead, his days at Hogwarts were behind him.

Well, almost behind him.

Fawkes and Hiasobe were wed on the Quidditch field at sunset, upon the 21st of June, the Summer Solstice. In attendance were flocks of phoenixes, beasts of every description, numerous ghosts, and a sizable crowd of humans.

Hermione officiated the ceremony, having studied at length the details of phoenix custom, and Ron, Harry, and Ginny helped build a bonfire. And as evening turned to night, The bride and groom allowed the ghosts and fragments of ghosts within them to appear before the gathered crowd.

A shimmering dragon went soaring about above the Quidditch field, a sea turtle "swam" around, and many other ghostly beasts, some from Fawkes and some from Hiasobe, stood, sat, or mingled with the crowd.

A ghostly Albus Dumbledore gave the crowd a rather lengthy speech; commemorating the event at hand and the two birds being joined; reflecting on the events of past years; and, in what amounted to a farewell speech, expressing his eager anticipation of learning how to fly, and a bit of trepidation at the thought of being fed bird vomit for the first few weeks of what would be his new life as a phoenix.

The night ended with Fawkes and Hiasobe flying off into the starry sky. They would spend their honeymoon in a place only a phoenix could love: high atop a volcano, within the caldera itself.

The newlyweds arrived in Hawaii at daybreak, and spent the day building a nest of fresh pumice among the lava pits. They would spend the night creating some fire of their own.

Fawkes led Hiasobe in a dance of the kind commonly seen among seagulls. Bobbing their heads, wagging their beaks, preening one another's feathers.

But that's where the similarity ended.

As preening turned to caresses of beaks upon feathers, their plumage began to billow plumes of white smoke. The dense smoke danced around them as the two birds ignited in flame and merged into a single blazing inferno.

Ghosts were dancing in the smoke; the ghosts of beasts, the partial ghost of Dumbledore, souls that Fawkes and Hiasobe had scavenged from beings at their moment of death. Dancing, disintegrating, recombining; loving, living, dying, being born anew.

For months Albus Dumbledore had been getting to know the dragon; now he WAS the dragon! The sea turtle, accustomed to the undersea world, suddenly knew human thought, knew how to breathe fire, KNEW what it was like to actually FEEL the wind on its wings as it flew.

There were even a few bits of Voldemort worth keeping; the rest, fawkes had, as promised, pulverized.

Various other beasts that had once lived were now awakened to the full experiences of one another, because all the individual souls and fragments of souls had ceased forever to be as individuals. No longer confined within the phoenixes who had found them, they were all combined in a single vortex of flame.

A celebration of fire and molten lava, a white-hot thermonuclear exchange, a dissolution of the boundaries between matter and energy, between particle and wave, between corporeal forms and the spirit realm; a magnificent furnace of creation.


And as dawn approached, as the tornado of fire began to die down, as the lava nest began to cool and resolidify,
there could be seen upon the nest three birds.

Three birds, two parents and a chick,
sitting on a nest in their natural habitat,
living life as life has been lived since the dawn of time.

The End.