Phoenix Rising

Every forty to sixty years, without fail, a new phoenix is created. No one is particularly sure where the phoenix originates. No one is sure why the planet is not surging with such creatures if their number never naturally decreases. No one is sure about anything about phoenixes that hasn't been verified centuries ago.

No one was willing to tie the arrival of a new phoenix with the birth of a new terrifying evil.

A phoenix had been created during the winter solstice of 1926, mere hours after the birth of one Tom Marvolo Riddle. There had been one created Halloween of 1871, a week after the birth of a man who would later call himself Grindelwald. The dates continued back, in a mockery of counting down: 1825; 1770; 1724; 1660, and further back before people recorded the years of Phoenix arrivals.

Within thirty years of every phoenixes' arrival came a terrifying evil: Voldemort; Grindelwald; Vladimir the Exterminator; the extinction of the glorious Russian Firebird, which nearly caused the wiping out of all of Wizarding Asia; the horrifying discovery of an underwater monster that would attack any ship or harbor with a wizard or witch on it, cutting down the already low number of magical beings by another thirty percent; the resurgence of the witch trials, which cut the population down sixty percent. More examples continued back, but the exact dates of phoenix creations were unknown.

At the start of the seventeenth century, there had been over a six million wizards worldwide, one percent of the international world population. By the start of the nineteenth century that number had been dramatically slashed to one point six million. We have yet to truly recover.

Are phoenixes truly wondrous creatures, then? If in the wake of their initial flight comes such pain, such chaos and disorder? Are they truly blessings if they were heralds of destruction? I do not know. The world is in denial to the evil that follows the phoenix.

Even Albus Dumbledore refused to see the truth. He would not acknowledge that his own Fawkes signified the birth of Tom Riddle. No one would listen to Severus Snape, who had done more research on this subject than he would dare admit. No one listened, not even when one rose on January first of 1980. No one listened to him, but he kept watch on all the children born in that year. He became a Professor at Hogwarts solely to watch them. He watched them closer than he watched any other year in his profession. He had his list with Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter at the top.

Dumbledore continued denying his knowledge until his death in 1999 at the hands of one of the 1980ers. No one believed Snape; no one believed his exclamations that those children should be locked away before they eliminated the entire magical world.

At the start of the twenty-first century, Severus went silent. He quit his job as Professor and went into the mountains near Hogsmeade. He built a cabin on its lonely face, watching silently as the world passed by, watching silently as the army belonging to a 1980er destroyed Hogsmeade in one swoop. He was watching silently as the school of Hogwarts was taken over. He silently read the papers as they screamed of the Ministry's fall. He listened silently to the Wireless as it hysterically proclaimed the 1980er leader of darkness had taken over and that they had lost before the station was taken down, replaced with a puppet media.

The war ended in 2015, and Severus came down from the mountain. He remained silent, wandering through the ravaged streets of wizarding communities while posters and banners of the new Ruler were placed on every building, every street corner. He watched silently as the repression continued, how Hogwarts was set up as a throne for the new Ruler, how people soon became resigned to their fate. He watched it all, never saying a word. He had tried warning them of their impending fate, but no one listened to him. No one listened.

The magical world continued in its enslavement to the Dark Ruler born in 1980. The Ruler took a spouse, though Severus died before he saw the Heir take the throne. He did not live to silently witness the further corruption and despair as each generation took control, the population of magical beings constantly dwindling.

He did not live to see that no phoenix rose in the twenty-first century. No phoenix ever rose after the one in 1980.

The Darkness never fell.