Chapter Thirty-One of 'Black Phoenix'- Turn, Turn, Turn

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Thirty.

Title: Black Phoenix (31/33)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Lucius/Narcissa
Warnings: Violent, some angst, somewhat crackish humor
Rating: R
Summary: Humans weren’t the only ones watching the day the world changed, and now Harry is receiving delegations from those magical creatures interested in joining his court. Meanwhile, he’s got to deal with the Ministry, the upcoming election, keeping his relationship with Draco secret, and keeping his phoenix from eating people. And that’s in his spare time.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to Easy as Falling, and thus the second prequel to my one-shot “Charming When He Needs To Be.” I suggest reading both of those if you haven’t yet.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-One—Turn, Turn, Turn

Harry appeared just outside the gates of Hogwarts, and pounded towards them as hard as he could. He knew that he could have appeared inside, right next to Persephone, but he didn’t know where she was at the moment, and that could have been in midair or in his office or in the middle of the grounds. He might have to look out for innocent bystanders or prevent himself from falling to his death.

When he found Gorenson and started tearing him apart, he wanted to give him his full attention.

He could feel his magic flickering and surging as he ran, the changes that had first alerted him to something happening with Persephone. Now and then it rippled as though Persephone’s was grabbing at it and it was being pulled towards her. Then it would start back towards him.

In one way, this was the same cycle that Gabrielle had told him about. Harry had never been able to feel it so well before, but that might not necessarily be alarming.

Maybe. But he had never felt it like this, and for it to begin when he had been away from Hogwarts and had been more than half-convinced that Gorenson was already waiting for Persephone’s burning day was too coincidental.

As he crossed the boundary of the grounds, he felt some of his power rise in him like a fountain, shaking and spreading through his limbs. Harry gasped. He was so tired. He had dangerously exhausted himself saving Draco and the other people he could save at Malfoy Manor.

But he could no more have left that undone than he could have stayed away from Persephone when he began to feel that she was in danger. Persephone wasn’t more important to him than Draco, but he had started to feel that they were equally vital to his survival, equally a part of his soul.

The flickers had increased. Harry stopped, despite the pulsing in his blood that urged him to run, run, run, and concentrated. He ought to be able to tell where Persephone was now and Apparate directly there.

She was in his office, he decided after a moment when his hand swung up and down in front of him like a divining rod, and then settled pointing directly towards the center of his castle. How had Gorenson got inside the wards?

Harry shook his head. He was wasting time. Gorenson probably wasn’t there physically with her, anyway, but was influencing her from a distance the way he had so far managed to do.

Harry wrapped his arms close enough to himself to ensure there would be no Splinching, and Apparated, soaring through empty space and ending up in his office, close to Persephone’s perch. He immediately took a step back and studied her, determined to know what he was up against when it came to Gorenson’s magic.

Persephone had her wings out, as though she had tried to soar off the perch, but she was still, the way she had been when she was floating in that dreadful blue bubble in Gorenson’s office. She was blinking in and out, ripples of magic interrupting her very existence. Now and then Harry saw straight through her, her beak or her back or her talons turning transparent; now and then blue-black flames roared along her outline and obscured it; then she would snap back into being. She saw him, and cried miserably.

Harry reached out a slow hand. This looked different from the attack he had expected from Gorenson, which would be an acceleration of her sickness until she faded.

“My Lord!”

Harry jerked around hard, a streak of killing magic flaring up in his palm before he held it back. He realized it was Briseis in the doorway of the office in enough time to keep from hitting her, but he had to bite his lip, hard, as the magic darted back down and earthed itself in his blood. He twitched his head in response to her instead.

“Briseis, now is not the time.” She had parchments in her hand, and she probably wanted him to sign something.

Briseis simply shook her head, eyes frightened but steady. “The Veela woman said that Persephone’s burning day was here.”

The Veela woman? Madame de Lis? But there wouldn’t have been that neutral tone in Briseis’s voice when she spoke of her.

Gabrielle.

“No,” Harry whispered. “No, this is Gorenson interfering, it has to be…” He turned around and stared at Persephone. She was holding out her wings still, and crying, and shimmering. He had been so sure that Gorenson was trying to force her from existence.

She was burning.

“She said that the burning can’t complete normally because she’s not a normal phoenix.” Briseis was speaking in that collected way she had, but faster than Harry had ever heard her do.
“You’ll have to do whatever you were going to do. Reabsorb her back into your body, or cast a spell, or something. A ritual. Something.”

Or the flames would rise. Harry knew that now. Persephone wasn’t a normal phoenix, and the burning wouldn’t consume only her. He had made her out of Yaxley’s spell, the fire that had tried to turn his own magic against him and destroy him. If Gabrielle was right, that was one reason for the instability between his own soul and Persephone’s. Let her fade or die without setting it right, and the magic would expand and explode, his own power and Yaxley’s spell.

It would destroy a lot more than him, in the end.

Harry scooped Persephone up and cradled her close. She was a fluctuating weight in his arms, sometimes heavy and sometimes light. Harry nodded to Briseis and strode past her, straight for the Great Hall, calm himself now that he knew what he needed to do.

As he walked, doors flew shut, stones rose up like steps, and walls began to press in and curve and herd students towards their common rooms. It wasn’t mealtime, there wouldn’t be many people to remove from the Hall. Harry raised his head, and his voice began to speak from every corner of the school.

“Go to your rooms. Stay there until I say that you can come out. Remain calm. You will be safe.”

He could still hear some distant screams, but that was to be expected, and the school would take care of them and guide them. Corridors would open and staircases would operate only in the right directions, back to their common rooms, or their chambers in the case of the professors. If they tried to go the wrong way, towards the Great Hall, then the stones would rearrange themselves into walls blocking the corridor or the stairs would turn into smooth ramps or swing away in midair.

No one would be harmed. No one would interfere.

Harry held Persephone close, and ran like fire through the tunnels that opened for him.

*

There was so much he had meant to do, when he’d first had the idea of renewing and changing the cycle of magic that flowed between him and Persephone in the middle of the Great Hall. Check, and double check, and triple check, the school’s defenses against any power leaking out. Look up spells that functioned similarly, and information on normal phoenixes, in case they had any ideas for him. Bring in books defended with tough charms and consult them as he worked. Ask Hermione to brew some strengthening potions for him.

Now there was only him, and Persephone, and his magical exhaustion, and her burning day come early.

It couldn’t matter. He would not allow it to matter.

Harry deposited the shivering Persephone on the Gryffindor table, and reached down into the floor under him, into the stones. Hogwarts responded with a flowing of strength so fast that it was like being caught in the middle of a river in spate. Harry shivered in annoyance and turned to Persephone, whose flames were spreading rapidly up and down the middle of her body. He stretched out his hands and arranged them with his fingers flared, somewhat mimicking the way Persephone would spread her wings in flight.

He was going off no more magical theory than he had told Hermione when he revealed his original plan to her and Ron. He would have to choose instinct instead, and the dizzying plunge into nothingness, trusting to his magic.

He flapped his fingers, and thick webs of light came into being, rolling back and forth and tangling between each finger of his hands and the primaries of Persephone’s wings. She couldn’t move them in response, but that didn’t matter. Harry was seeing the cycle that had been there between them all along, the unstable and crazy shifting of soul that Gabrielle had identified.

All the webs shone red or gold or blue or white or orange, the colors of fire. Harry took a deep breath. This was the hardest part of the spell, or ritual, or whatever-it-was, the part he had hoped to study a little more so he could lessen the pain.

Harry took another deep breath that pushed so much air into his lungs and out again that it made the bonds of light sway. They couldn’t be affected by normal interaction with the physical world, but then again, this was hardly normal, was it?

His breath came out, and the air came with it, and Harry set himself on fire.

The flames sprang from his skin and radiated up and down the middle of his spine, the way that Persephone’s flames were burning her. Harry shut his eyes against the pain, then screamed. Why not? He had warded the Great Hall so strongly that no sounds would pass out of it to alarm anyone else.

The flames only danced, though, hurting but not consuming him. Harry swallowed. It was always good to know that he had been right about the danger when conducting a suicidal magical ritual.

The bond between him and Persephone still contained the magic of that first curse that Yaxley had flung at him, the one that had ignited the whole bond between them and the creation of Persephone in the first place. It would burn, and forever burn, if he kept it moving.

That was what he had done when he set up the cycle. Let the flame swell and weaken, going back and forth between him and Persephone, stronger at some points than others, but never dissipating.

It had to dissipate, though, or all the weaknesses of the bond as first created would remain. Persephone would suffer painful burning days on a shorter cycle than a normal phoenix, a testament to her struggle to contain the Dark magic, and her failure. Harry would have his soul stretched between two poles, because Persephone and he shared the fire that had tried to eat him—the fire that in the case of a normal phoenix was confined to one being alone.

And Persephone would still need to eat human flesh, because her first source of sustenance outside the bond had been that, and she could only replicate her experiences with such a cyclic bond, the way she would replicate her initial period of nastiness, then a sweeter one, and then her sickness.

Again and again. Unless Harry could stop it.

The magical exhaustion was making him shake, and the pain was worse than normal. Harry rocked back against the support that the stones of Hogwarts pushed into his feet. This would have been still worse without them.

Harry closed his eyes. Destroying the contained magic of the ring at Draco’s house had damaged him and tired him. If he had known what was waiting for him here, he wouldn’t have done it.

But it also gave him the idea, which had never been more than half-formed before, about how to take the fire burning him, and convert it. Destroy it. Whatever you wanted to call it. He reached over his shoulder and touched the middle of his back, letting the flames there hop onto his extended finger.

The flames billowed up and down the minute he touched them, crisscrossing, the waves of heat flowing so fast that Harry winced a little. Then he swallowed, and his eyes rose to the ceiling of the Great Hall.

He had planned to let that particular cyclic magic help and ground his own, hadn’t he? About time he took advantage of it.

He reached out, touching the edge of his bond with Hogwarts and the magic that lingered near the ceiling, cycling it through the weather and the times of day. It manifested in his hand as a curling sparkle of light, coiling there like a drowsy golden serpent.

Harry jerked his hand down, and crossed the light over with the flame that represented his bond to Persephone.

There was a shriek that might not be sounding anywhere outside his own head, and the floor beneath him bounced, and tears ran from his eyes. Harry could feel his spine on fire, now, the flames sinking into his skin, burning him, the way they never had before. He staggered, head down.

But that was the way he had felt when Yaxley first cast his spell, and he thought he would never have a chance of calming it. He couldn’t simply fall down, or the spell would take him after all and Yaxley would win. The Ministry would win. Gorenson would win.

Harry lifted his hands, serpent and flames, gold and other colors, entwining him, and listened to Persephone’s dismal crying. Well, if sacrificing her was what he needed to do to survive, then it would have to be. His bond with Hogwarts was first and primary. He would have to choose the school if he had to choose something. But he doubted he would get the chance if he didn’t tame this magic. It would simply eat him before he could slow it down.

His arms were ringed with flames, dancing up and down around his wrists and along the insides of his elbows like a three-dimensional tattoo. Harry grimaced, digging his teeth into his lip when nothing else would work, and brought his hands slowly and painfully together. The flames fought and fought against him, and his inner mental walls trembled, and perhaps even the walls of his magical core. This would have been so much easier if he wasn’t exhausted.

But he still forced his hands together, the way he had when confronting the magic of the ring outside Malfoy Manor, and the flames shrank down. Now they were an even more concentrated and shimmering pearl of power, and Harry briefly envisioned the destruction that would take over if he let that magic escape.

He would not. He could not. He looked at the glowing ball of Yaxley’s spell, and his bond with Persephone, and his bond with Hogwarts, and he swallowed.

Then he turned and confronted Persephone. She was still perched on the table where he had left her, her neck hanging and swaying back and forth like a pendulum. She forced her head slowly up to regard him, her eyes blurry.

“Hey, girl,” Harry said softly. “Just a little more of this, I promise, and then we can do whatever you want.”

Persephone didn’t respond to the teasing. Harry took a deep breath, hoping that he understood all the magical theory that would actually render what he was going to do next workable instead of mental, and extended his hand, with the shimmering ball of power bobbing in the center of his palm.

“Come and get it, girl,” he said.

Persephone’s wings flexed, and another of those static shocks trembled through her. Then she managed to lift off the table and fly, with limp wingbeats, towards him. Harry braced himself, and managed to keep the smile on his face.

Persephone landed on his arm, no weight in one second and then a light pressure in the next. Her eyes fastened blankly on the seed of power. Harry smiled at her again and waggled his fingers encouragingly.

Persephone dipped her head and swallowed the ball of magic. Harry saw the motion of her throat as it passed along.

And then the cycles went crazy.

Harry went to his knees as his magical core shrieked inside him—yes, there was a noise, whether or not there had been one before—and something in the back of his mind ruptured, and the flames ate into him from above and below, and he bellowed and sank into the circle of his own arms.

He glanced down and saw the skin and bones of his arms burning away.

Harry flung his arms up. There was nothing to keep him from screaming now, and he did it, the sounds ringing out louder than the cries of Persephone as the flames immolated her from inside and out.

The flames reached out to Harry—

Harry crouched low, digging his feet into the floor to absorb strength from the stones as they too began to burn, wrapping his arms around his head with a low wail—

And he vanished into the fire.