FIREBIRD
Celebwen Telcontar: I am messing with history here. Where one of the characters in this story was considered a traitor, I also made him a heretic. He was a Catholic in the reign of a very powerful and sadistic Protestant king, and so, instead of being hung, as he was in history, he was burned at the stake. Since the history says that that particular King cracked down severely on Catholics and broke with the Pope, I am just upping the time scale a bit.
Balrog: Remember, Rem—
Celebwen Telcontar: Don’t go giving them any ideas, Balrog! Please read and review!
CT&B
“Great,” Shoji snarled as the Firebird conference came to a close. “We have done nothing useful these past few days. Absolutely nothing.”
“Rawk On!!!” Stone cried, the technicolored Hippie gryphon doing a cannonball into the ocean.
“If we have to put up with that menace, I won’t be happy,” a Firebird named Kilimanjaro snapped, shaking her head at Stone’s antics. The grey skies were filled with ash, and the Firebirds were all hyper because of it.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Pummice cried, running up to a Firebird that Bandamon hadn’t been introduced to yet. Pumice’s tail gyrated out of control and her wings were everywhere at once. She slammed into Bandamon, and shook her head with youthful exhuberence. Bandamon wanted to go and find a Snitch, but he had been chatted to all day long.
“Righteous! Righteous! Righteous!” Stone cried as he swooped from the ocean like a heat-seeking missile. He flailed his bright body over the entire mob, getting everyone wet. A Firebird that Bandamon didn’t know snarled at the perpetually-stoned Firebird, and the volcanic island they were on began to smoke. Bits of rock flew in all directions as the volcano gave a small eruption; small in comparison to the recent Yellowstone catastrophe.
“Good Gods of Fire,” Lahar said softly to Bandamon. “One would think that a little ash wouldn’t spark such a party! Thank goodness we’re not Humans and we aren’t in some high-populated urban area!”
“Firebirds are so cooooool…” Stone put in lazily from just above Lahar’s head. The female Firebird jumped, and turned to her attacker. Her claws were soon tangled in the bright Firebird’s scalp, sending magma-colored blood spilling everywhere. “Chill out, Dudette!” Stone cried, backing off from Lahar. The red-orange blood clashed horribly with his electric-green feathers, and he soon was flying high above everyone else. His voice drifted down to them from time to time, and he sang a very off-key version of Dick Van Dyke’s “Stepping Time”, making odd passes at the massed Firebirds off and on.
“Stay out of our flock, plant wannabe!” an older Firebird named Pyro snarled to the Hippie.
“Hang loose, Py!” Stone called, swooping on the other Gryphon. Pyro looked perfectly placid; until about two seconds before Stone would have swooped up from his stoop. Pyro fisted a talon and gave the Hippie a nasty bruise on his chest, causing the tie-died bird to go flying out of control “Far out!” they heard him call as he went sailing. “Psychedelic!”
“Maniac!” Pyro snarled in response.
“Idiot,” Lahar said conversationally. “Now you’ll never get rid of him.”
“I agree,” Celebailin said as she approached the podium. “If you don’t react, he’ll grow tired of it. Now, Firebirds, we need to go to England.”
“England?!” Kilimanjaro asked, obviously confused. “Why? If we go to England, it will cause hot spots to form in the very fabric of that land.”
“We can all access the mantle from our own aeries, I’m sure.”
“I can. I’ve been using my own aerie for a while now as my power source,” Bandamon said.
“Very good, Bandamon. Now, let’s head on out! Everyone, move!” She took off, as everyone did so at once. Bandamon felt squashed, and he yelped as a head hit him. A body smashed into his, and dragged him up above the flock. He caught a glimpse of neon colors before he was dropped again, to uproarious laughter.
“Stone!” he cried out. “Don’t do that!”
“Oh, have a little fun, Flower Child!” Stone protested.
“I don’t want fun, I want to go home and deal with Voldemort!”
“Who’s got a wart?!” an ancient male named Blackrock asked.
“He said Voldemort!” Sand, Blackrock’s mate, cried into the old Grypnon’s ear.
“You’ve got a molded fart?!” Blackrock asked, misunderstanding again. Sand shook her head in despair.
“A molded fart?” one of the twins asked.
“You could—”
“Light your—”
“Own farts!”
“Instant blowtorch!” Surge and Flow finished as one. Lahar groaned in annoyance. How long would this nonsense go on?!
The Potions Professor walked through the door, rubbing his face with his hand. Since his return of sanity, he had had a difficult time with the classes. They were more rowdy, and a flying piece of anything could land in someone’s caldron and make the entire school go the way of Mt. St. Helens. He looked at the fireplace, and saw a Firebird, sitting calmly next to his couch.
“Who are you?!” he snapped. He knew this wasn’t Harry; this Firebird’s crest was too tame. Its eyes were killing-curse green, the same as Harry’s, and its coat was the same shade as his son’s, however the unknown Firebird also was smaller than Harry, and its beak was more golden.
“Hello, Severus,” the Firebird started, revealing that she was female. Severus looked at the creature, and nodded at it.
“Yes, Firebird?” he asked acidicly.
“You still haven’t lost your wit, have you, Severus?” The voice woke a part of him he thought was dead.
“Lily…” he whispered.
“Yes, Severus. I returned. Please, take a seat. What I have to tell you cannot be said lightly. I forgive you for your harsh words on that fateful day.” She lowered her great aquiline head, and rested it on the arm of his couch. Instinctively, he began running his fingers through her feathers, smoothing down her crest even more and gently removing loose feather sheath and feathers. “That feelsssssss heavvvvvenly, Sssssevvvvv,” Lily purred. Her eyes drooped and she all but fell asleep under his loving ministrations.
“I am so sorry about that,” he whispered to the Firebird almost curled around him.
“I lovvvvve you, Sssssevvvvv,” she whispered softly, so soft he could hardly hear her.
“Lily,” he said, carding his hands through her feathers. “You’re married.”
“That’s not true, Sev. The marriage I had with James was annulled when we died; the exact wording was ‘Til Death Do You Part’. We parted at death, and both made our separate ways to the Yellowstone caldera. In point of fact, James, was already there when I arrived. I very nearly ate him.”
“You almost ate James Potter?” Severus chuckled.
“I did. He was there in his stag form, eating grass. When I saw him, this nice, fat, juicy deer eating all alone, I decided to hunt. As I stooped, he turned, saw me, and turned into Norris. I was so startled that another Firebird was there that I nearly shredded him. He still has a few scars from my talons, unfortunately.” By then, Severus was laughing, wishing he could have seen his beloved Lily going after her own husband. “When I pulled up, finally, and untangled my talons from his scalp, I had knocked him out. I dragged him over to a cliffside cave, and I woke him up by beating him with my wings. When he awoke, he instantly cowered against the side of the cave, and his babbling told me who he was. He had no idea that I was a Firebird. We thought that Harry was dead as well, and were waiting for him to show up somewhere as a Firebird.”
“You nearly killed James by accident?!” Severus howled in mirth.
“We decided not to reaffirm our vows after we realized who we were. We are still friends, and I know that Norris would like me to live with him again, but my aerie and his are different. I love you, Severus Snape, and no thoughtless words or forgiven actions are going to change that!”
“Gods, I love you, Lily,” he whispered against her soft feathers. “I love you so much…”
“And I you. It’s a pity that I’m not human, nor are you a Firebird.”
“I know,” he murmured. She enclosed him in her soft wings, holding him against her with forelimbs and wings, where they both fell asleep. He had totally forgotten the amount of respiratory aid potions he needed to make to counter the effect of the ash in the air.
He was standing on legs which refused to bear his weight. Having one’s hip and knee joints ripped from their sockets was not a pleasant experience. His ankles and wrists still bore rope burns from the rack, and his throat was raw from screaming. Well, he still believed that the King was wrong, and he would go to his grave with that thought! The rough wood scraped against the open sores on his back; it was like the Savior’s wounds during His Passion. The wood was being stacked about him on the cold late January day, and his bare feet were freezing. Soon he would be warm though; soon he would be with God and His Son in Heaven. He began to laugh maniacally as the wood was lit. The flames leapt up the fuel and caught on his prison garb. Then, they caught on his flesh and he screamed with the pain of it.
As the end drew near, he began to see in different spectrums. The fire encased him, and he felt his head grow light and he became dizzy. He fell, the shackles having no hold on him anymore. His screams abated to a fierce avian shriek, and he felt his very bones morph, crack, shatter and reform. Then, he passed out.
He hadn’t had that dream in years, especially since King James had died. He resettled his wings and looked at his human. The human was having the same pattern of actions that the former English king had used; no tolerance against people of other religions. No mercy for anyone found to be a Death Eater (The oily human was an exception). And he hated all Slytherins, it looked like. If he had been a Wizard when he was human, the bird would have probably been in Slytherin. Well, he was going off to find the Potter boy and help him. He knew the old adage: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!
The bird quickly put an image in his human’s head, and his human went mad.
“You want to put Voldemort in the middle of Muggle London?! In the Muggle seat of politics in England?!!!” he yelped, having accidently blown up a couple delicate instruments in his shock. The bird nodded. “Why?!” The bird quickly placed an image of his human self in his human’s mind, making sure the human knew who he had once been. “You intend to lure Voldemort into the middle of Muggle Parliament while the Parliament is running, then blow up the entire building?!” the human squeaked. The bird nodded. “You need serious help, Fawkes.” The phoenix clicked his beak at his human.
Celebwen Telcontar: Well, it’s kind of short. Shorter than the last chapter, that’s certain. Please tell me if you enjoyed it, and if you’ve figured out who the bird was!
Balrog: Well, that’s new. I never expected a technicolored Hippie Gryphon.
Celebwen Telcontar: He came in, set up shop, and now refuses to leave. Annoying, isn’t it?
Balrog: I suppose so. Please review, people!
CT&B
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