Pawn of Darkness

It was the third week of October when Phoenix did something drastic. For a few weeks Liz had been coming into the tower disheveled and with a tear streaked face after dinner, and after everyone else had come up. Phoenix decided to find out what was going on to make her friend so upset.

Phoenix sat next to Liz at dinner, chatting amiably with the Muggle-born girl. And when Liz slipped off after dessert, Phoenix waited a moment before following her outside.

Liz walked slowly to a small room. Inside was Draco Malfoy, flanked by two thugs of his Phoenix noticed he dragged around the school with him.

"You're late, Mudblood," Draco drawled.

Phoenix bristled from outside the door.

"I-I'm sorry," Liz stuttered.

"Immobilius!" the blonde boy laughed.

Without looking, Phoenix knew Liz was frozen into a statue.

"Chicaposi!"

The Itching Curse? Phoenix puzzled. The she got it. The Itching Curse made the victim want to scratch desperately, and the Immobilization Jinx would stop Liz from being able to scratch. She always had thought of Draco as something of a bugger.

Phoenix slipped into the doorframe, unnoticed. Then she pointed her wand at Liz and said "Finite Incantem!"

Liz fell onto the floor, trembling like a leaf.

"Don't do that again," Phoenix said quietly, eyes scarlet. "I'll find out if you do."

"And do what?" Draco sneered.

* * * * *

One dank, Thursday Potions class, Phoenix noticed Professor Snape looking particularly murderous. Of course, Professor Black had been ecstatic that morning in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, so Phoenix rather suspected the prank-pulling, boyish, Snape-hating professor had pulled some sort of prank on the Potions master earlier that day that he was still angry about.

Chris and Phoenix were stirring up something new - a Dream-Talking Potion. It sounded difficult, but was actually quite simple, even for the normal students.

"Today," Snape spat bitterly, "Your potion will allow you to read your partner's mind in your sleep. Notice the Sleeping Draughts on your desks. Do not touch them until I tell you."

Phoenix grew worried. She didn't want her thoughts read. She doubted the greasy haired professor cared what she wanted.

Of course, Chris took a poke at the bottle right away, giggling silently and then quickly drawing her hand away as the Professor looked to their table and putting on as face of mock innocence - Phoenix decided to give the poor girl lessons on keeping a poker-face.

"When you have finished preparing the potion, each of you take a cup-full and put a hair from the other person in it. The hair will dissolve. When you have taken the Dream-Talking Potion, take the Sleeping Draught and if you've done it right you won't suffer any side effects."

"Real encouraging," Phoenix whispered.

"Right," Chris agreed as she ground up some poppies. She began to whistle.

"Stop whistling," Snape snapped.

"Sheesh, who put hot-sauce on his pancakes," Chris grumbled.

"Probably Professor Black," Tam whispered from behind them, grinning.

"You know, he just might have," Chandler muttered. "I saw smoke coming out of his ears up by the Infirmary after breakfast this morning...might have been one of those Weasley Wizard Wheezes Pepper-Pops, or maybe an overdose of Fire-Flakes. Those haven't be released yet, but I've seen advertisements and I think Professor Black has some sort of arrangement with the Weasley Twins."

"Shhhh, back to work, quick!" Chris snapped as the Professor came over.

The potion was a crystal clear color. So was the rest of the class', but the odds of the entire class and Phoenix Argent getting the potion wrong were pretty low. Chris and Phoenix each took a glass full, and dropped the other's hair in. The glass with Chris' hair turned cerulean. Phoenix's turned a vivid crimson.

"Pretty colors," Kara said. Her had turned hot pink.

"One, two, three," Tam and Chandler said together. Neither of them drank, and they burst out into quickly smothered laughter.

Phoenix drained her glass. It tasted like fresh pines and grass and the outdoors.

Chris fanned the air around her mouth. "Yours is spicy," she groaned, picking up the Sleeping Draught. Chris hated spicy foods.

Immediately after draining the goblet of the Sleeping Draught, Phoenix conked out on her desk.

It was a swirling, tumbling mist...

She was picking out Chris's thoughts.

"Dang, Chandler's cute...those bleached blondes are so killer..." "Snape's such a bugger, I hope Professor Black really did do something to his pancakes..." "This isn't working..."

It wasn't working?

Of course. Phoenix should never have been worried. Riddle had put some sort of mind-probe blockers on her to stop the teachers from knowing what had been planned. But Chris would be getting worried. Phoenix struggled for a moment, then sent one thought past the mental wall:

"Snape really is a slimy git."

Phoenix felt Chris's relief clearly.

Then they were both up, with Snape drenching the class in a torrent of water.

"Arrggg!" spluttered Liz.

"What was that for?" one of the Avin twins shouted at the smirking Snape.

"To wake you all up, you've been sleeping for an hour, Gryffindors."

There was a great deal of mumbling as they left the Potions dungeons, although Phoenix dutifully performed drying spells on each student as they left.

"That was a neat potion," Kara admitted.

"I know who Kara likes!" Liz sang out.

Kara tackled her friend. She was blushing furiously.

"Brrrr, I'm cold still," Tam shivered, glancing hopefully at Phoenix.

She gave him a Warmth Charm and he thanked her, face thoughtful.

"I know someone who can get back at Snape," he told her, eyes dancing, but face straight. Maybe Tam could give Chris the poker-face lessons.

"No," she said flatly, "I will not let you get involved in this teacher war."

"How are you going to stop me?" he teased.

"Lets see...there's the Full Body-Bind, the Immobilzation Jinx, the Icicle Hex..."

"Alright, alright, I won't ask Professor Black to do something else to Snape."

"Yes you will."

"But you just said - "

"I said that you wouldn't get involved. We will."

* * * * *

She heard more reports from Chris about Voldemort, more people dying. She began to wonder how she would stand against the evil wizard. She knew she was powerful, but with tales of Voldemort's power, she began to panic slightly. How well could even she stand up to him?

Phoenix's biggest shock came on the last day of the term, right before most students were going home, although Phoenix was staying. Professor McGonagall was watching them turn earmuffs into fuzz balls, and Phoenix, already done, was dozing quietly as the rest of the class struggled with their muffs.

"Miss Argent!" McGonagall barked in her ear. Phoenix jumped, and the rest of the class turned to look. Liz giggled. "Step outside, please." The please sounded like an after-thought.

McGonagall shut the door quietly behind them. "Phoenix Argent, I have noticed you seem to be finding this all rather simple. Do you find your Transfiguration assignments easy?"

"Well, yes, a little," Phoenix had been dreading something like this since the first day of school. McGonagall did, of course, have the right to know what her students could do, she supposed, but she felt like she shouldn't have to show her talent to the professor.

"Show me what you can do, please. I would like to know the full extent of your talents."

Phoenix figured that she might as well show what she could do. She waved her wand and pointed at the clips holding up the teacher's hair. Each one turned into a small, crimson dragonfly. McGonagall looked shocked.

"Is there anything else, Miss Argent?"

"Well, yes, I suppose." She pointed her wand again, this time right at McGonagall. She waved it, and the Professor became an owl, flapping among the still hovering group of dragonflies.

It took a moment for the owl to turn back. "My! I haven't had anyone do that to me since I was a seventh year!" McGonagall told her, looking shocked. "How on earth do you manage to do that?"

"Well...I just kind of want something to be something, focus what I want to change, and it just, well, does." That was actually precisely true - It was what she told Riddle and how she changed things. "Miss Argent, you have an extraordinary talent. I don't think anything I could give you would be much of a challenge to you." Then her eyes lit up, "Unless...Miss Argent, how would you like me to teach you to become an Animagus sometime soon?"

"What's that?" Phoenix asked, looking nervously at her teacher.

"A witch or wizard who can turn into an animal at will. If you want to, come back tomorrow around nine and I'll tell you a bit more."

"Yeah, I'd love to try it, sure."

"Wonderful. Now go back to your seat, Miss Argent, and don't tell anyone about this."

Phoenix sat down, elated. Chris bent over and asked her, "What was that about?"

"Nothing, I'm not in trouble."

* * * * *

Phoenix slid into Professor McGonagall's room precisely on time. She had been waving goodbye to her friends as they boarded the Hogwarts Express home for Christmas. Only Tam and the Avin twins had stayed out of the first years. Panting, she skidded to a halt in front of McGonagall's desk, and looked around for the teacher but saw only a tabby cat sitting on McGonagall's desk with odd marking around it's eyes and an enormous, shaggy, black dog on the floor, both looking at her.

"Professor McGonagall?" She asked the cat tentatively, "Is that you?"

Both animals transformed into humans. The cat was McGonagall, the dog was Professor Black. Phoenix giggled a bit as she realized something about the Professor's name - Sirius, the Dog Star.

"Hello, Phoenix," Black greeted, "I'll be helping McGonagall teach you about Animagi and becoming an Animagi."

"Well, let's get started. Becoming an Animagi requires getting a few things that aren't normally on hand, but we have them. The law says we should report you doing this to the Ministry of Magic, but as we are engaged in a minor dispute with major factions of the ministry, we think it would be best to not register you."

"It'll do that pompous windbag Fudge good not to get everything handed to him, too," Black added. "It's about time we stopped reporting everything.

Professor McGonagall glared at Professor Black to be silent. It might have been years since she taught him, but she was still his teacher, and he didn't say anything else on the topic of Fudge, the Ministry of Magic, and reporting things to them "The first thing you need to do is complete the potion Professor Black and I have brewed. A phoenix feather, a dragon's scale, and a unicorn tail hair. These ingredients have been added to a potion with cat and dog hairs, and a bird's feather. You need to put in three of you own hairs, and stir it thirteen times, counterclockwise."

"Then," Black said, "You draw a pentagram, we studied those already in class, as I'm sure you remember, and put yourself inside. Then you say the spells, and we'll see what you become. The first few minutes are hard, when you bind with the animal minds around you."

Phoenix turned to the potion she had just noticed in the corner. It was blindingly white. She pulled three hairs and put them in under the teacher's watchful eyes. Then she stirred, and the potion became pure gold.

When the pentagram was complete, and she was inside, she looked to the teachers. McGonagall handed her a slip of paper, and Phoenix read,

"Animals magic,

Witches magic,

Phoenix, dragon,

Unicorn magic.

Animal sides to my heart,

Witches sides to my heart,

The phoenix and dragon,

And unicorn sides to my heart -

Let them come together."

Then she was shrinking, growing smaller and smaller. She looked at herself, and saw downy, feathery masses, indicating she was a bird. In the mirror Professor Black had picked up, she saw she was a brown merlin with lighter golden streaks.

With a wave of sensation, she became aware of the network of birds everywhere. Hundreds of owls, starlings and sparrows on the grounds, and the mind of a bird-lord in the very castle. The animal part of her heard a whole web of birds - all the avians in the castle and on the grounds. She felt most acutely the mind and spirit of the bird-lord, a phoenix, which was coming out of a window and gliding - it was coming to her!

Phoenix checked in with her human part. She hadn't known there was a phoenix in the castle. She felt it coming, and saw it glide in the open window. It came and sat in the pentagram with her, and the phoenix stared at her. Phoenix found the bird had an almost overpowering presence when she was a bird.

"That's Fawkes," McGonagall cried, "What's he doing here? He normally stays in Dumbledore's office."

Fawkes, if that was the phoenix's name, stared at the merlin as though confused by this creature that was a bird, but different from his other subjects.

"Fawkes must be confused by Phoenix, look. He can't understand how she seems to be a bird, but has a human mind. Turn back, Phoenix, let Fawkes know what you really are."

She popped back into her human body, and Fawkes gave a trill of understanding. Phoenix stared at Fawkes, it was the first phoenix she had ever seen. It had crimson wings, with gold tip feathers and a gold tail. Fawkes was the size of a large and beautiful swan, its crest brushed below her hips, and the tail curled in a radiant plume. He was absolutely gorgeous, the first truly magical creature she'd seen.

"So, am I an Animagus now?" Phoenix asked the teachers.

"Yes, everything seems to have gone right. What type of bird were you, by the way?"

"A merlin, Professor," she told McGonagall, "A hunting bird."

"Ah, well, see if you can do that again, just to make sure."

Fawkes took a step back when Phoenix turned into a merlin. She looked back at him, and noticed he was very big from a merlin's point of view.

"Wonderful, Phoenix. You've done something very few people ever try in their lives. Oh, by the way, don't tell anyone about this. It might come in handy to keep it a secret." Black beamed at her, "And if you want to take a test flight out of here, go ahead. I think there's always a window open in Gryffindor Tower, and Fawkes will be your escort up there, he should he able to teach you the ropes of flying."

Phoenix chirped and sailed out the window. She flapped pathetically, flying was harder than she'd thought. And so tiring, to keep flapping. She looked at Fawkes, who wasn't having any trouble. Can you help me, Fawkes? she asked in her head. Somehow she felt so connected to birds as a merlin that she thought she could probably talk to them, or at least get a point across.

Fawkes trilled behind her. In her head she was suddenly shown an easier way. The crimson bird told her to glide, and catch currents of air instead of battling with them. She got the hang of it quickly, gave an appreciative cry, and set off for the Tower.