Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Flare	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21799 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Title: Flare

Disclaimer: These characters belong to J. K. Rowling and associates. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Draco, mentions of Ron/Hermione

Warnings: Creature!fic, angst, sex, some violence, OC character death.

Rating: R

Summary: Caught in the middle of a misfired curse, Harry is half-transformed into a phoenix, to the point of carrying wings on his back. He arranges with the Healers for research that will hopefully cure him--only to find that Draco Malfoy has a strange vested interest in him keeping the bloody things.

Author's Notes: This is a story that I've had in mind for a long time, though not always in its present form. The creature aspect is an important part of the fic, so don't read it if that's not your thing. I'm anticipating a story of about 15 parts, with fairly short chapters.

Flare

Chapter One--Adoleo Phoenici

            There was only the former Death Eater in front of him, Hyperion Rosier, one of the minor ones while Voldemort was alive but one of the worst troublemakers since, a murderer, a rapist, a torturer. There was only Rosier and the need to capture him.

            Later, Harry would wish there had been other things in his mind.

            Rosier was dodging through the Forbidden Forest, where Harry, Ron, and a hastily-gathered Auror strike force had tracked him after months of hard work. He kept firing curses over his shoulder, but his breath was coming short, his feet were stumbling, and Harry knew that he couldn't last much longer or have that much more power for magic. The others had long since fallen behind. He didn't know exactly what part of the Forest they were in; it was dark and the trees that flashed past him all looked the same.

            It didn't matter. What mattered was that Rosier couldn't possibly run much further, and there seemed to be a charm he hadn't cast on Harry's feet that night, sparing him all the roots and holes that could have broken his ankle, all the times he could have stumbled and been left behind, all the little creeks that he could have splashed through that would slow him down.

            What mattered was Rosier, and the chance to put the last free Death Eater behind bars and finally, finally, call the war done.

            The moonlight went out as Harry plunged beneath a cover of thick, tightly-entwined branches, following Rosier. He was tracking more with his ears than his eyes by then, listening to the harsh and hurried pants from ahead, the swish of Rosier's robes, the leaves he shuffled through. He was five meters away.

            Three.

            One.

            Harry sprang.

            There was a moment when Rosier writhed beneath him like the enchanted wish-giving fish in Rose's favorite story, and Harry thought he might get away. Harry tightened his grip and cast a spell that would stick his hands to Rosier's skin, come what may. This was the end. This was the end of all the nightmares that everyone had faced since the last few Death Eaters gathered together and tried to "revive the Dark Lord's ideals." For the children murdered in their beds, for the acquitted wizards who were just trying to forget the Dark Marks on their arms, for Harry's own dark dreams. The end.

            Rosier screamed once as he tried to fight free and only found himself dragged back down. It was the scream of a trapped, maddened animal. Harry chuckled deep in his throat. He could do the same thing, if he wanted. He had been tempted to make the same sounds during the long years of hunting and hoping and never finding. Or dragging in Death Eaters and watching them walk away because there was conveniently "lost" evidence that would have implicated them. The day they finally dug out the Death Eater sympathizer in the Auror Department was one that Harry would remember with satisfaction for a long time.

            Perhaps Rosier sensed the darkness in Harry, his willingness to answer violence with violence. He went limp suddenly. Harry lay on top of him, too wise in the ways of Dark wizards by now to let him go, and sent up a spray of green sparks with little more than a thought. The spells Hagrid had taught them to use all those years ago were still some good now.

            Rosier shifted around slightly. Harry tightened his hold and whispered, "Don't move. I will kill you before I let you go."

            Rosier said nothing, but his arms went tense. Harry suspected he was digging his fists into the earth, getting ready to stand. Well, Harry could counter that, too. He shifted his weight to the side and waited.

            "Adoleo phoenici!"

            Rosier hadn't been trying to stand. He had been casting a spell. Harry ducked his head and cast a Shield Charm around himself, moving so fast that for a moment, he believed it had got there before the spell struck him.

            As it turned out, it hadn't. He really had been paying too much attention to Rosier and not enough attention to possible defeat.

            The fire that consumed him was brilliant, eye-searing, red and gold. Harry had seen those flames before, when Fawkes was reborn, but this was worse, bigger, painful, stinging along his nerves, melting and reshaping his bones as if they were glass. Harry's only satisfaction as the fire leaped through him, golden and swallowing, was that he had heard Rosier also shriek in pain. If he went to his death, it wouldn't be alone.

*

            "I can't believe he would survive that..." A hushed, wondering voice.

            "I can. He's Harry Potter." Ron's voice, familiar and oh so welcome right now. Then Ron was on his knees beside Harry, shaking him insistently. "Harry. Harry. I know you're awake now."

            Harry blinked and opened his eyes. He was staring at green leaves that shimmered faintly against the rising sun. The Forbidden Forest, he remembered with a start. Rosier.



            He tried to roll to his feet, but four things happened simultaneously to prevent that. He realized he was naked under a blanket and a set of spare robes. Tingling pain shot through him, burning pain that lit up his nerves. Ron reached out and held his shoulders down.

            And something else moved with him, enormous billows of red and gold like sails, snapping against his arms and shoulders the way that Harry imagined one of Dudley's robes would, if he had ever worn robes.

            "Easy, mate," Ron said. His voice was soft and soothing, but it faded into insignificance as Harry stared at the folds that were draped over his arms, sprawling and rolling and falling as though they were made of water. It was really more like cloth than anything else, he thought half-mindlessly, the part of his mind that had been trained to observe criminals working erratically, filling his thoughts with snow.

            Wings. He had fucking wings.

            They were huge, rising above his head in elongated arches, reaching beneath his ankles. Harry didn't know why they hadn't hurt when he was lying on them, but suspected that being unconscious might have had something to do with that. The pain along his nerves was fading as the wings seemed to settle into his back and shoulders, becoming more and more a part of him. Harry reached back and groped for where they began, and after a single, flinching movement, Ron let him.

            They sprang from just beside each shoulder blade, he found, in the middle of his back between them. From what he could feel by exploring with his fingers, each wing connected in a--a sheath of some kind, a pouch of skin that was fastened to his back and seemed to extend over to the spine. He shifted again, and the wings trembled in the corner of his vision, leaning over his head, trailing behind him. Now that Harry could see them more clearly, the sense of them as just huge tapestries of cloth was departing. They had looked like that because the fire-colors had overlapped so smoothly. He could see the individual feathers now, the red and gold splatters like coats of paint crossed over each other, the occasional spark of blue and white and orange. God, they shone. And he could feel the faint heat from the feathers against his back.

            "Rosier?" he asked, licking his lips and wondering why he hadn't thought to ask that question right away. Perhaps his mind was trying to compensate for an exclusive focus on Rosier by overfocus on his wings right now.

            Merlin, he had wings.

            "Burned to death," Ron said quietly. "Near as we can tell. He used a spell that--I've heard about it in legends, Harry, I've never seen it." Harry reached out and held on hard to Ron's hand. At least someone was feeling the same mixture of fear and helpless wonder that he did. "But from what I remember, it's supposed to immolate someone it's cast on, burning them up completely, the way a phoenix's flame does."

            Harry raised his eyebrows. "I managed to get a Shield Charm up before he could launch the spell at me."

            Ron nodded. "Then maybe that has something to do with it. The charm rebounded the spell on him, and he burned, but you--some of it got through to you. Or maybe it was your scar, or something to do with the way you saved the world. Who knows." Ron's voice had stopped shaking. "But we need to get you back to the Ministry, mate. We didn't want to wake you up or move you until you woke up on your own. But we'll have to figure out who to tell about this--"

            "No."

            Ron fell silent at the sound of his voice. The other Aurors with them had retreated to what Harry assumed had to be non-hearing distance, or he would have someone protesting already.

            Harry stared at Ron, trying to make him understand the importance of this. Ron stared back, then frowned. "I'll support you whatever you choose, mate. But why not the Ministry?"

            "They would try to keep it secret," Harry said. "Decide who needs to know. Make it some new means of isolating me, or trying to keep me out of danger, or figuring out how to use me." Someone had tried all those things with him in the last few years, including telling him that he shouldn't be involved in the hunt for the Death Eaters because it was "too dangerous" and Britain might lose a "national treasure." "I'm going to St Mungo's instead. If anyone can find a way to help me reverse this, they can." He leaned on Ron and began to stagger to his feet, trying not to step on his wings this time.

            "Uh," Ron said, standing up with him. He looked as if he was having trouble keeping his eyes on Harry's face, instead of his wings. Harry knew the feeling, although it made him furious to think about it. "I've never heard of someone becoming part-phoenix. And managing to recover from it, to boot."

            "I know," Harry said. "No one ever survived the Killing Curse, either. Someone's got to be the first, Ron." He smiled at him, and Ron smiled back, cautiously, as if he wanted to know whether Harry would take off flying in a random direction. "In this, too."

            "And you don't want to keep them?" Ron eyed the wings again. He reached out, hesitated, then continued at Harry's nod. Harry had been afraid the wings would be sensitive, but at least the part that Ron touched wasn't. It just felt like someone smoothing a finger over his hair.

            "Blimey," Ron said.

            Harry shook his head. "Maybe if so much other shit hadn't happened to me, I might want to. But this is just the last straw. I want to be as normal as I can, now, while still leading my life. And phoenix wings don't fit into that." If they're even phoenix wings, he had to add in his head. They didn't look like anything he'd ever seen on Fawkes, or the phoenix feathers he sometimes came across in Auror work. Too many colors, too oddly-shaped, too big.

            "Yeah, I see." Ron reached out and picked up a set of robes and trousers that he had lying off to the side. "We think your old clothes burned up with Rosier. But I don't know what to do about a shirt."

            Harry made a disgusted noise. Neither did he. The swellings that produced the wings could extend through slits in the back of the shirt, maybe, but they would still bulge oddly beneath the cloth. He pulled the trousers on, half-tripping on the feathers, and reached out. "Give the robes here, and I'll try to fold the wings under them. I might look like I have a hunchback, but there are worse fates."

            For the first time, he concentrated on his wings, trying to order them to obey, to fold. They shook around him, and Harry had an odd, uncomfortable sensation that he'd grown another set of arms--

            Then they collapsed in on themselves, laid along his shoulders, still as long as they had been and as tall, projecting them above his shoulders, but far narrower. Harry sighed and draped the robes over them, then glanced at the snickering Ron and shook his head. He'd need a cloak, too, so that he could try and cram it over the curves of the wings that nodded next to his cheeks.

            "At least we can laugh about it," he muttered, cracking a smile of his own.

            Yes, this was bloody inconvenient, but a temporary setback. By a few months from now, at the most, Harry was confident he would have his life back again.
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