Heartsong

Prologue: Remembering

He was getting old, even he knew that.

He, who had always joked, "I've been targeted so many times and survived so many times that I'll probably live forever!"

He, who had held his wife in his arms and whispered, "You'll never be rid of me, you know that?" and watched as her fiery hair swirled around her head as she whispered back, "I know, I married you, didn't I?"

He, who could almost always out fly, outthink and outwit everyone until they would shake their heads and say they would never try to challenge him again, but always ended up doing just that anyway. Chess had been the most difficult feat to master, but he had learned, with the trick of having Hermione nearby, that he could even beat Ron. Although Ron had argued that using Hermione was cheating....

Thousands of children had grown up and been cared for by him and his wife. Their children had children of their own, and their children had children, all loved dearly by him and his wife. Her eyes had always sparkled when the children ran forward with cries of, "The story, the story! Tell us THE story!"

He, who loved with a passion that rocked the stars, was watching his own light fade out.

He, who could beat any challenge brought forth, was losing to Death. Again.

A low trill brought his attention to the phoenix sitting on the perch by his seat in front of the fireplace. "What's wrong, Heartsong? What's the matter?" he asked the regal creature.

Heartsong gave him a blazing look and a sharp chirp that told him that she wasn't fooled, that she caught his depressed mood and wasn't put off by his attempt to be light-hearted. How like his wife she was.... He got up and walked away from the fire, toward his own bare room.

In a way, Heartsong was his wife, only in animal form. She had been born of the flame that had claimed his red-haired temptress and the love that burned within his breast. He could still remember the day that Heartsong had come to him.....

The sun had started to rise when the flames of the burial mound had died down. The sky was a violent explosion of sapphires, rubies and violets, but he couldn't see the beauty through the hole in his heart and the tears in his eyes. Dirt was drying on his clothes and running in streaks down his face. He had just buried and burned the last bit of peace he had-- he had no appreciation for beauty now.

He turned away from the dying ashes, turned away from the dying reminder that his only hope was gone, that his life no longer had any meaning when a sharp cry stopped him.

It was so like the final, desperate cry that his wife had uttered that he spun around so quickly that he almost fell, a wild desperate hope, almost like a physical pain, billowing in his chest....

But no wife's reawaken form greeted him, just a form he had seen once in his old Headmaster's office: A wrinkled, featherless cross of a chicken with a hawk, a baby phoenix, pulling itself out of the ashes.

He had turned away then, not caring if the baby lived or died, the empty feeling once more eating away at his chest, when the baby phoenix cried again, making his heart constrict.

The sound was so plaintive, so frantic that he had turned around and walked toward the phoenix until he was right in front of it. Then he looked it in the eye. And gasped.

They weren't the usual amber or golden hue of phoenix eyes, but a warm chocolate brown. Like eyes that had softened whenever she held one of their children or many grandchildren, eyes that held a hard, blazing look whenever she saw injustice in the world, eyes that had sparkled like twin gems whenever he told her he loved her....

His wife's eyes.

He had held the phoenix's gaze, a new trail of tears flowing down his cheeks. Yet, these were tears of hope instead of despair. Tears that told of a brighter tomorrow that was just over the horizon.

Tears that told of a day when this pain wouldn't be so unbearable.

He had picked up the phoenix and held it tight against his chest, determined that nothing would harm her, nothing would cause her pain. He walked away from death and back into life.

"But I never forgot you," he whispered, staring at the only other thing in the room that spoke of someone living there, beside the bed and table: a photograph of a group of teenagers, smiling and waving at him.

They were underneath a tree, the four of them; two redheads, a boy and a girl, a bushy, brown-headed girl and a raven-headed boy. It was taken during her last year of school and they all were smiling. The War was over, everything was at peace and they all were together.

He reached out, as if he could have reached across time, and stroked the red haired girl's cheek. Her smile seemed to grow and her wave grew more enthusiastic. The other occupants also smiled more and the raven-haired nodded solemnly.

"How could I forget you?" He sat down at the table, where ink and parchment were always at the ready. He stared, not into space, but across time and saw her face again. "You were the one that held me together, made me remember I was human, made me whole. I could never forget you!"

He pulled the parchment and ink toward him, still talking to his photographed love, still talking to the past. "I'm going to tell our story. You would like that, wouldn't you? I'll start at the end of sixth year. I'll start at the end of my dearest friend and mentor and at the beginning of my War."

So Harry Potter put quill to paper and started to write of his fight for survival, for the hope of mankind, both wizard and Muggle, and for the love of his life.

His heartsong, Ginny Weasley.