Phoenix Trilogy: Together Again

Chapter One - Birth and Death

Harry set down his quill and blew lightly on his parchment to dry the ink on his letter; it was his seventh that month to Dumbledore concerning the violent dreams that Voldemort had been sending him.  Harry ran a finger over the lightning shaped scar that was on his forehead.  It still burned as if he´d woken up screaming from the dream minutes before when it had actually been a little more than an hour ago.  The pains in his scar were becoming more and more frequent and lasted longer.

He rubbed his sleep-filled eyes and leaned back in his chair.  The lamp on his desk was now quite dim compared to the brilliant sunrise just outside his window.  It filled Harry´s room with its golden light, spreading its warmth through Little Whinging. 

As Harry squinted out the window, he saw a huge shape coming towards the house on Privet Drive.  He proceeded to rub his eyes to make sure he wasn´t dreaming.  Six owls, one of them his own snowy owl, Hedwig, were flying towards the house.  Harry, stumbling the entire way, cleared the window space in a hurry.  His room was suddenly filled with light hoots and the quiet rustling of feathers.  Each owl appeared to be anxious to rid itself of its parcel first and crowded around Harry, jostling and pushing each other.  Harry laughed quietly so he wouldn´t wake his aunt, uncle, and cousin, and pulled the letter off the tawny owl that he recognized as Dumbledore´s.  He peeled off the seal with his fingertips and read the letter:

Dear Harry,

As you well know, both the Weasleys and Sirius offered to take you in halfway through summer break.  You´ve anxiously waited, no doubt, to get away from your current housing.  Of course, it is your choice who you spend the rest of your break with, but I suggest that you make the choice quickly.  I will be sending you another letter in a few days.

Sirius has asked me to send you his warm wishes on your birthday and to include the gift attached to the owl.  He also said, "Have a very happy birthday, and don´t let the Dursleys bother you too much!"

Sincerely,

Professor A. Dumbledore

"Well, that´s cheery," Harry murmured, a brief smile stealing across his face.  He glanced back at the tawny owl and pulled the package from it.  It nipped gently at his fingers and hopped away, perching on the edge of Harry´s desk.  Harry attached his letter to the owl, adding, "Thanks for the letter and the gift.  By the time of next letter, I should have my mind made up." Harry deftly attached the letter to the outstretched leg of the owl and watched it fly out his window.  He turned his gaze back to the gift: it was rectangular and wrapped in brown paper, much like that of a paper bag.  He picked it up.  It didn´t weight that much, but it could have been enspelled to be lighter than it actually was.  Harry pulled the paper off of the object, pulled the lid off of the box, and pulled out a handsome red journal bound with a ribbon, and a pen that looked very much like a quill, but instead of a feather from a bird of some kind, the top was made from deep cherry oak, carved in the shape of a phoenix feather.  Harry admired it for a moment or two until he heard grumbling and the bed bouncing up and down in the room next to his.  Without another thought, he pulled up the loose floorboard under his bed and placed the book in without investigating it further.  He placed the letter from Dumbledore beside it and glanced at the next owl.

It was a barn owl that had a letter from Hagrid and a cake that looked like it contained something it shouldn´t.  He placed that in beside the journal and quill, not really meaning to eat the cake.  Maybe I should give it to Dudley, he thought with a slight grin.

The third owl (another tawny) had the list of supplies for Harry´s fifth year at Hogwarts.  He placed that on his desk, promising himself that he´d read it later. 

Ron Weasley´s gift contained yet another book on the Chudley Cannons, Ron´s favorite quidditch team.  Shaking his head gently and chuckling, Harry placed it in along with the cake and journal.  After shooing an over-excited Pig out the window, he started on Hedwig´s parcel.  Hermione had written a letter on some strange smelling paper:

Harry,

Guess what!  I´ve been made a prefect!  Can you believe it?  Ron wasn´t made one, much to his immense relief, and to Fred and George´s, too (for some strange reason).  Do you know if you´ve been made one?  Crookshanks took off with my letter after I received it, so I couldn´t check.  He´s been a bit grumpy recently.

Have you heard from Sirius lately?  He sent both Ron and me letters asking us if we would like to come and stay with him if you want to stay there.  Who are you going to choose for that?

Hope to hear from you soon, and have a very happy birthday.

Love always,

Hermione

Harry smiled again and opened up the gift.  He wasn´t the least bit surprised to hear that Hermione had been made prefect. 

Harry frowned when the small box he´d been holding fell open and a flash of gold leapt out at him.  He caught it easily and knew that it was far too light and slow to be a snitch, which was what he thought that it was at first.  He held it up and looked curiously at it.  It was a very small golden lightning bolt on a gold chain.  He put it around his neck.  It fit just under his shirt.  He put everything else away quickly and noticed that there was one more owl with a small package, and a letter.  He grabbed the parcel and the owl flew out the window before he could stop it.

Harry shook the box gently and heard something inside shifting.  He opened up the package and a badge that looked vaguely familiar.  A large "P" was on it.  Harry groaned.  He looked at the letter and his fears had come true.

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been made a prefect at Hogwarts, school for witchcraft and wizardry.  The following list of students have also been made prefects.  You will sit with them on the train for the first ten minutes of the trip.  After that, you may sit where you wish.

Harry looked up and down the list.  To his amusement, he noticed that Draco Malfoy had not been made a prefect.  A smile crawled across his face, and he knew that this year would definitely be better than any of the previous years.

Stretching and rubbing his eyes again, Harry headed downstairs to have breakfast, and to see if whomever he had heard creeping down the stairs had remembered his birthday.

Harry stopped near the bottom most step.  Someone was whispering, but Harry knew that no one (aside from him) was normally up this early.  He stepped down one more stair and leaned towards the entryway, straining his ears to hear what was so important that it had to be said while everyone was supposedly still asleep.

 "...Er...no...but why the sudden interest in him?  I know that you´ve just been interested in collecting information for that Dark Lord of yours for the past couple of years, but why the sudden action?"  Harry immediately recognized the voice as Uncle Vernon´s.  Harry pressed himself up against the wall and tried to ignore his noisy heartbeat.

"Quiet, Muggle. You are not overly important, and we could replace you on a whim."  Harry furrowed his brow.  The second voice sounded familiar, but he couldn´t quite put his finger on the owner.  From behind him, a floorboard creaked, and Harry spun around as quietly and quickly as he could.  Dudley was standing at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes, and yawning widely.  Harry prayed that the men below wouldn´t hear him.

Dudley had lost enough weight on the diet from the year before to fit into the second largest size that his school was able to outfit him.  Harry believed that after that ton tongue toffee that the Weasley twins left him the year before, he might have abstained from even flaming Christmas pudding during the holidays, which he spent with his parents.

"Who's there?  They woke me up!" Dudley asked in a loud whisper.  Harry wildly motioned for Dudley to be quiet.  To Harry's surprise, Dudley didn´t object.  He crept down the stairs, closer to Harry, and began to listen as well.

"He should be spending the rest of the summer with those wretched wizards-the Weasels," Uncle Vernon said, ignoring the previous comment.  Harry´s brow furrowed even further.  Who is Uncle Vernon talking to? he wondered.

 "I´ll notify the Dark Lord immediately.  Oh, and one more thing," the man (Harry presumed it was a Death Eater) said.  With a sudden shock, Harry realized that Vernon Dursley was talking to Lucius Malfoy.  Harry felt the blood drain from his face.

"Go!" he hissed as quietly as he could to Dudley.  "Get back upstairs!"

"Why?" Dudley whispered back, looking confused.  "It´s just Dad and his friend from work."

"Go!" Harry repeated, beginning to push his cousin up the stairs.   Dudley budged a few inches, and then stopped.

"No!"

 "Yes?" Uncle Vernon asked, covering the grunt that Harry gave as he tried to shove Dudley up the stairs again.  I wish I had my wand! he thought desperately.

Mr. Malfoy muttered something that Harry couldn´t catch, but he knew what it was immediately when he saw a flash of green light and heard a rushing sound.  "I am a wizard, you fool," Mr. Malfoy said.  He laughed a terrible, diabolical laugh, and then the sound of the front door snapping shut sounded.

Harry stopped trying to push Dudley and slowly peeked over the top of the stairs, almost dreading what he knew he was about to see.

Vernon Dursley lay flat on his back on the wooden floor, a surprised look on his face.  His bulging eyes stared up at the ceiling.  He was dead.

~*~

Harry sat on the couch watching as a police officer tried to comfort Aunt Petunia as paramedics looked over Uncle Vernon´s dead body.  Harry could have told them that they wouldn´t find anything to help them with his cause of death, but he decided that it would be wiser to keep quiet.

By the time the police and the paramedics had left, three owls sat on the fence dividing their yard from the neighbor´s.  Harry got off of the couch and walked to the owls.

Pig seemed overly delighted to see him twice in the same day, and Harry was slightly surprised to see a thick wad of letters attached to his tiny leg.  Harry pulled them off and tried to shoo Pig away, but the little owl seemed to have other things in mind.  He swooped around the yard for a while, narrowly missing becoming snack for Mrs. Figg´s cat, Tracey.

The Weasley´s seemed to have heard about the incident already, since there was a letter from Mrs. Weasley and Mr. Weasley, and Fred, George, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione in another.  Mrs. Weasley had sounded frantic with worry, while Mr. Weasley just sounded curious about what had happened.  Harry had to stifle a laugh when he looked at the younger Weasleys and Hermione´s letter:

Harry-

Dad owled five minutes ago saying that a Muggle had been killed.  We didn´t think much of it You didn´t think much of it, Fred.  Give me back the quill, Ginny!  Harry, are you all right?  The wizarding wireless said that it was your uncle!  Did they kill Dudley, too?  George, what a horrid thing to say!  Did they?  Harry, just ignore them.  Forget the rest of them.  Are you still in one piece?  Did you see who it was?  Never mind.  Just send us a letter telling us that you´re okay.  If he wasn´t okay, he wouldn´t recie George, don´t say things like that!  I´m telling Mum!  Mum´s busy sending a letter.  Harry, I do hope you´re not hurt!  They would have reported it, Hermione.

Write us back as soon as you get this!

Fred, Ginny, Hermione, George, and Ron

Harry grabbed Pig (who was teasing Tracey now by flying in circles two feet above her head) and pocketed the owl, before looking at the next two.  There was a very tired looking barn owl that looked as if he were no more than a year or two younger than Errol.  Harry gently pulled the letter from its leg, and watched it fly off as if it were going to fall down to the ground in a heap.  The letter was from Sirius and Remus.

Harry-

If you´re still interested in coming to my house Our house, Sirius.  Yes, that, then meet us at the deport station for the Knight Bus.

Sirius will be in his dog form, and I´ll be with him, so don´t worry.  Why would he?  Considering his uncle was just killed?  He could have had a heart attack.  A wand induced heart attack, then.

Sirius and Remus.

Harry sighed and pocketed the letter.  The third owl had a far more interesting letter from Dumbledore, and a small whistle in the shape of an owl was included.  However, before Harry had the chance to read the letter, Aunt Petunia walked out the door and yelled, "Boy!  Pack up your things; we leave in a quarter of an hour."  When Harry turned back to the owl, it had flown off.  Harry sighed again and walked through the door.

The entire house was a mess.  The police had been searching for the majority of the day and had found nothing.  Dudley was sitting cross-legged on the floor by an enormous suitcase; Harry thought he was taking things quite well, for someone whose father had just died by something Muggles were not supposed to know about.  As Harry passed him on the way to the stairs, Dudley looked up.

 "So Dad worked for the guy who wanted to kill you," he said in a monotonous voice.

Harry stopped and turned to face his cousin.  "I guess he was."

Dudley looked back down at the floor and began to trace circles in the carpet with one porky finger.  "Now I know what you´ve been through."

"Pardon?" Harry said, slightly confused.

"Losing a parent," he answered calmly, almost indifferently.

Harry took a step back and nearly fell over another suitcase that Aunt Petunia had just set down.  "I never even knew either of my parents, so don´t go saying that you know what I´ve been through!" Harry told him.  For some reason, anger was settling into the pit of his stomach.  "You have all these memories of Uncle Vernon.  I have the scenes of my parent´s deaths."  He waved an exasperated hand.  "They haunt me.  The only way that they´ve spoken to me was through a reverse echo-a shadow of some sort that retained my parent´s appearance and character.  It wasn´t really them.  Be glad that you´ve at least spoken with your dad and have gotten to know him, gotten to learn things about him while he was still in school, before he died."  Harry felt his nose and eyes burning and willed him to banish the sadness that had replaced the anger.  Dudley´s look of calm suddenly evaporated into pained sadness, and Harry felt worse than he had before.

~*~

Late that night from a motel room just outside of Surrey, using the only the moon to light the letter that Dumbledore had sent him.

Harry-

After word came of the death of your uncle and how it came to be, the Ministry decided that it is no longer safe for you to live with your aunt and cousin.  You will stay with Sirius and Remus for the remainder of the summer (unless you would prefer to stay with the Weasleys), and until further notice you shall stay at the castle for all holidays.

The whistle that has been included is intended for your aunt.  Should something happen that puts her life or the life of your cousin in danger, tell her to blow on the whistle.  An auror will come to her aid within half a minute.

Please reply to this letter as soon as you find the time.

Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School

Harry sat in silence and wondered what to do next.  It was much too late to be barging into the room that his aunt and cousin shared, even though Harry could hear the occasional sob coming from his aunt.  He sighed and wrote a reply to Dumbledore.  He told him that even the Weasleys were in danger now, since the Death Eater that had killed his uncle had seemed to take too keen of an interest in them.

"My life´s such a mess," Harry murmured almost angrily.

 After sending the letter off with Hedwig, he lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling.  After what seemed to be an eternity, he closed his eyes and drifted into sleep plagued with dreams of Vernon standing over Harry´s dead parents, laughing mechanically.