Chapter Nine of 'Flare'- Flight into Flight
Chapter Eight.
Title: Flare (9/15)
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.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nine-Flight Into Flight
By the time that the knock came on the door, Harry was grateful to hear it. He’d had just about enough of lying around on his stomach in bed, wings draped over his body as though they were giant feather dusters, and feeling sorry for himself. He stood up, stretched with a few careful strokes that managed not to knock over any tables, and shuffled towards the door.
He opened it, and Hermione stepped in and nodded to him. His wards didn’t react to her, of course. He had fine-tuned them so that they never stopped his friends, although they would react to someone who was merely imitating one of his friends with Polyjuice or glamours.
“You realize that your flight is all over the papers and the wireless?” Hermione asked. She took a seat in the kitchen and looked at him expectantly. Harry poured cold tea into a cup and floated it over to her. She could warm it up if she wanted to.
Hermione grinned at him and did. Harry leaned back against the counter-lofting his wings high first-and waited. This was the way they always were when he got himself into some sort of mess and Hermione came over to try to pull or reason him out of it. They would half-battle, and squabble, and smack, and snarl, and agree, until they reached the point where they were comfortable with each other again.
Hermione Summoned the cream and dumped enough into her tea that Harry finally snorted. “The goal isn’t to turn it into milk.”
She shrugged at him. “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not bliss for other people,” she said, and closed her eyes as she sipped. Then she sighed. “Ahhh.”
“Listen to you, acknowledging opposing perspectives and all that,” Harry said. “Not something you do much in your line of work.” Hermione had made a habit in the past few years of running down people who didn’t agree with her. It was the only way to get a lot of legislation past a lot of crusty old wizards, but it could be annoying when she was with her friends.
“Sometimes I do have to do things like that,” Hermione said, and her smile flickered on and off like a torch passing over a window. Then she leaned forwards intently. “What did the Healers say about your wings? And Malfoy? Ron seemed to think that he was going to help, somehow.”
Harry saw no reason not to tell her everything, so he did. It was possible that Hermione would see a way no one else had.
She didn’t seem to. Her frown grew harder and harder as he went on, and she finally put her cup down with a firm clink in the middle of the chair arm. “Shit,” she said. “Things like this only happen to you.”
Harry nodded. “But there’s something I’ve thought of that might give me hope.” He actually hadn’t thought of it until he was talking to Hermione, but he wouldn’t mention that, because it made him feel stupid for not thinking of it before. “Malfoy is a Potions master, and Redusson did say that some potions have removed unwanted body parts before. What if he could brew something to take them off?”
Hermione raised her eyebrows. “He might be able to,” she allowed. “But would he want to? He seems to like them fine right where they are.”
Harry grimaced and rubbed his neck. “Yeah, I know.” The feathers brushed against his fingers and sent up stinging little sparks, as if they knew that he planned to cut them off and didn’t like it. Harry snatched his hand back, shaking it. “But I figure it’s worth a try. This can be a test, in a way. If he really likes me as much as he claims to, then he’ll brew the potion, or at least do what he can. If he doesn’t, if having me keep the wings matters more to him than anything else, at least I’ll know.”
“Yes, at least there’s that,” Hermione echoed, and then sighed. “What are you going to do about the press?”
Harry fluttered his lashes at her. “Why, Hermione. I hoped that you might help me, given your expertise in that area.”
“I know how to hold a press conference,” Hermione pointed out, leaning back in the chair and sipping the tea again. Harry didn’t know how she kept her eyes from crossing at the sweetness. “That doesn’t mean that I can stop the publicity from spreading. Your having wings is huge news, Harry. It would be even if they were the decorative kind that fall off in a little while. That you can use them to fly? So far, there’s at least five big public opinions.” Hermione began to count them off on her fingers. “That this is a Ministry plot to make you a more effective Auror, and they won’t admit it. That Voldemort cursed you to have them before he died.” Hermione rolled her eyes to show what she thought of that one. “That you’ve had them all along and only now revealed them. That you’re a dangerous beast with inherited phoenix magic, which means one of your parents wasn’t who they claimed they were, and we need to search through your genetic records. And that you’re telling the truth.” She laid her hand down in her lap and shook her head. “Flying in front of the cameras wasn’t very smart, you know.”
Harry sighed. “I know. But I was angry.” He tried to stretch his arms and rammed his elbow into the curve of the left wing. He cursed. It didn’t hurt, not really, but he hated the subtle ways that the wings restricted his freedom of movement almost more than the obvious ones.
“Can I…”
Harry looked up. Hermione was leaning forwards, almost literally on the edge of her seat, her eyes fastened longingly on the wings.
“Can you what?” Harry asked warily.
“Can I touch them?”
Well, he should have anticipated that the question would come up sooner or later. And Hermione was one of his best friends. Harry nodded.
Hermione approached him as though the wings were wild animals that would dart back into the forest at her approach. Well, for all Harry knew, her caution was justified. The wings might at least start to life and drag him off the ground, and one of the things Harry knew that he didn’t want to try was flying in his tiny kitchen.
When Hermione reached out as if she would stroke the wings, Harry bit his lip and held still. Hermione seemed to understand his tension; then again, she spent a lot of her time working with magical creatures, so it made sense that she would. She turned her hand so her fingertips would touch the feathers instead of her palm, and then she only let them rest there, instead of caressing the way Malfoy had.
Harry blinked, then smiled. The touch was warm and steady, like Hermione, and although you could argue that it only felt that way because of how she held her arm, Harry didn’t think so. He had to accept that Malfoy was right about some things, including the honesty the wings enforced, and that was Hermione all over.
“Wow,” Hermione said, and then she moved back and gave him the first glance of full-on sympathy he’d got from someone other than Ron. Healer Redusson seemed to grasp how he felt about the wings, but not enough to feel sympathetic if he cut them off. “Yeah, having them around and dangling over your shoulders at all times would hurt. I hadn’t realized they were so heavy.”
Harry shrugged. “It’s not the weight so much as the fact that I can’t really control them or estimate where they’re going to go next,” he said. He tried to move his left wing out of the way so that Hermione could go back to her chair, and only succeeded in hitting the kettle with the edge. Harry scrambled for it, and managed to stop it before it spilled. “It’s not-they aren’t part of me, or they only seem like part of me when I want to fold them or fly with them, or when I really, really concentrate. It’s not like I’m suddenly half-bird and have all the instincts that go along with it.”
“Even infant birds have to practice before they can fly,” Hermione murmured. Her brows were drawn down hard. “They don’t just leap out of the nest.” She stepped back and sat down again, cocking her head this time as if she wanted to look at the wings’ colors from all angles. Obediently, Harry tried to spread them and show her as much as he could, though he winced as the wings scraped against the counter. “What other traits do you have?”
“Healing tears,” Harry said, and grimaced. He could have chosen a better way to find out about that, such as any way in the universe. “And fire, apparently. I lit a mediwizard’s hair on fire before I left hospital.”
Hermione’s face lengthened. “That means that people who want to call you a dangerous beast will have someone to talk to.”
“Yeah, I know.” Harry sighed and told his wings to fold down. They did, although the feathers sparked and hissed as usual, and he honestly wasn’t sure that they would stay folded if he tried to move suddenly. “But I didn’t do it on purpose, and that’s all I can tell anyone who asks. They won’t believe me, but they don’t anyway.”
Hermione gave him a sympathetic smile and reached out to squeeze his hand. “Then I think that’s what you should do with the reporters. Give them a single clear story, the way that you did when everyone clamored to know how you defeated Voldemort, and let them fight it out among themselves with the interpretations and the assumptions and the claims that they know something secret you didn’t actually tell anyone.”
Harry nodded and rubbed his hand over his face. The more he thought about it, the better Hermione’s advice sounded. It was the same way he had handled his fame back when that was all he had to worry about. “Thanks, Hermione. This is the first step to living with the wings, I reckon, and treating them like-like they’re inconvenient, but not something that can dominate my life.”
Hermione squeezed his hand again in response.
*
The second knock came that evening, after Hermione had left and Harry had already made himself a simple dinner of a cheese sandwich and a small can of soup. He opened the door, expecting Ron, not satisfied with Hermione’s report of how he was doing, or perhaps Mrs. Weasley with a huge basket of food.
Malfoy stood there, looking calmer and smaller than he had that afternoon in the lab. His eyes rested on Harry’s face, although Harry thought he also let out a little sigh of relief when he saw the wings. Harry snorted. “Did you think I would find time to cut them off in between the last time I saw you and now?” he asked. “No. They’re still here, the precious appendages that you’re so fond of.” He wriggled them to demonstrate and nearly ended up chipping off part of the door. The knob rattled ferociously, and he hissed as his wing ached.
“No,” Malfoy said quietly. “But I heard about the way you left hospital-long after I should have, but I was working on my potions and not trying to monitor the newspapers-and came to see if you were all right.”
“Never better,” Harry chirped. “I should be used to the newspapers calling me a freak by now, shouldn’t I?”
“Will you stop?”
Harry blinked and stared. He had been about to go on, but Malfoy had leaned forwards, and his eyes were so passionate that Harry blinked and fell silent.
“You’re not a freak,” Malfoy said. “I know very well that you haven’t changed who you were, completely, because of the wings.” He paused, and a mist seemed to steal over his eyes, but then he shook his head and it was gone. “Even though you’re much more than I ever thought you were,” he murmured, but the next instant he was off and running again, and Harry didn’t have the time to ask him what he meant. “I’m attracted to you because of them, but not only because of them. They just gave me the courage to approach you, because I thought you might be more open to trying new things now. I tried to make that clear. I don’t think it sank in. You have someone interested in defending you, in giving you the time and the ability to make your own decisions. Do you want that? Do you want me to help you?”
“Yes,” Harry said, still reeling a bit from the words but glad that the chance to say something had come up so quickly. “Healer Redusson said the same thing you did, that cutting off the wings probably wouldn’t work because then I would either bleed to death or they would just come back. But she did say that St. Mungo’s sometimes uses potions to remove fur or tails or donkey ears that people have inflicted on themselves. Could you do that? Could you make me a potion that would remove the wings?”
Malfoy’s face shut down, and he shifted his weight. Harry was watching his face, and he caught the flash in his eyes.
He thinks that he can do that. He just doesn’t want to. Harry had seen that look on the face of informant after informant who was trying to weigh the benefits of speaking to the Ministry against the risks of betraying their friends.
“If you can brew it,” Harry said, “then I’ll pay you, and I’ll let you into my house, and I’ll let you touch the wings as much as you want to and have as many feathers as you want to. And the wings are yours when they fall off. No more sex, though,” he felt compelled to add. “Not unless I ask for it.”
Malfoy licked his lips. “And if I think that I can’t brew it?”
Or if I want to persuade you to keep the wings and stay a freak? Harry knew that the words were hovering behind Malfoy’s lips. Perhaps the last one would be slightly different, but every other the same.
Harry glared coolly at him. “Then I shut you out of my life, and find another Potions master who’s willing to try. He gets all the same benefits.”
Malfoy stared at him. “You would rather trust someone who doesn’t have any reason to think the wings are beautiful or functional?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “Because I can’t really trust you, even if you think I can. You’ve shown that you don’t care about what I want, or what I feel. You care about the chance for romancing me, and you outright said that you thought the wings would render me more emotionally vulnerable. That’s not something I particularly wanted to hear.”
Malfoy reached out, asking permission with a glance sideways. Harry rolled his eyes, but the honesty properties of the wings seemed to work, and he knew that Healer Redusson wasn’t the kind of person who would have lied about that to him even if they didn’t. He let Malfoy put his hand on the feathers.
The warmth tingled through him, and the pleasure. This time, though, Harry could ignore it and keep his gaze fixed on Malfoy’s face. He had things he needed a lot more than he needed whatever kind of shag Malfoy was offering him.
“I touch you so that you can know that I’m honest,” Malfoy said. “I didn’t want to think about you as emotionally vulnerable, although I’ll concede that I should have thought about it, in hindsight. I just thought that, with something new tearing your life wide open, you might be willing to think more about the future than the past.”
Harry shook his head. “I want my normal life, without the wings. As normal as I’m ever going to get,” he added, because he saw Malfoy’s mouth opening and knew his answer would contain some reference to being the Chosen One and a star Auror. “But you keep talking about the wings as beautiful. That’s the point. What you think of them doesn’t matter. What I do does. And if you can’t get that through your head, then I don’t want you helping me.”
It took a long, silent moment of struggle beneath the surface of Malfoy’s skin, the surface of his eyes. Harry watched a dozen emotions dance there, and never knew from one second to the next which was going to win out. Malfoy’s mouth twitched up as if in a snarl; it relaxed as if it would smooth into a smile; he lowered his eyes and lifted them again; he raised a hand and let it fall.
Then, finally, he nodded his head. “I want you to feel as normal as you did,” he said. “As normal as you can. If that means getting rid of the wings, then it means getting rid of them. And I can always use phoenix feathers.”
Harry relaxed. “Good. Now. What kind of payment do you want?”
They settled on a certain amount of Galleons, and Malfoy even took a creamy scroll of parchment out of the sack slung over his shoulder and wrote down a contract. Harry read it carefully, but couldn’t find any sort of horrible, two-sided Malfoy dealing. Of course, that probably only meant he was missing it, so he asked Malfoy to swear it was real with his hand on Harry’s wing.
“It’s real,” Malfoy said, his hand on the right one, his fingers stroking the feathers in a reflex that he apparently couldn’t subdue. “More real than everything else in my life.”
There was a single emotion in his eyes this time, but Harry forbade himself to read that.
Chapter Ten.
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