Harry Potter was flying. That, in itself, wasn't unusual; the boy was so adept on a broom that several professional Quiddich teams were considering courting him, if he survived the month. No, what was unusual was that he wasn't on a broom.
It was the first time he was trying out his animagus form outside the Rooms of Requirement, and while the Forbidden Forest wouldn't have been his first choice, he couldn't risk being seen. He wanted to keep this one thing for himself, and for the memory of his dogfather Sirius, and the reporters would never let him alone again once this was discovered. Not that they let him alone much as it was. And while a normal animagus like a mouse or a dog wouldn't be too hard to hide, his particular form was...rather exotic. There would definitely be inquiries if a rare, exotic tropical breed of phœnix were to show up at the exact same time that Harry Potter was missing from his dorm, particularly as said phœnix had green eyes and a patch of pale gold feathers in the exact shape of his famous scar.
Besides, it had to be admitted that the Forest was beautiful...when you weren't tracking injured unicorns, running from acromantula, or trying to fend off a werewolf while helping a convicted murderer escape. It was rather peaceful, even. Harry should have known it was too good to last.
Harry had been thinking that he'd never felt so free. It was liberating to not have to worry about staying on a broom, and the cool, spicy night air fluffed up his pale feathers and brushed lightly over his wings as he soared. Daredevil, impossible dives were easy for him now, and as a phœnix, not even an acromantula would dare attack him, not that it could even if it tried. When he grew tired of flying, he practiced flashing from place to place, here and gone in a burst of unearthly blue fire.
He had just decided to perch and catch his breath when something crashed in the underbrush, and he launched himself off the branch with a startled squawk and landed, ruffled, a few feet away. When the sound was not repeated, his natural curiosity took over and he lifted off again and flew to where the disturbance had originated, landing on a springy branch. A dark shape lay motionless in the dappled shadows, his pale mask showing corpse-white in a band of moonlight. A Death Eater. Harry might have been afraid, except that the Death Eater's robes were plastered to his body with something dark and wet, and his ebony wand lay nearby, snapped; this Death Eater would never hurt anyone again. Harry wondered who it was and hoped vaguely that it was Bellatrix.
Then a rush of morbid fascination overtook him, and he landed noiselessly in the wet leaf mould, changing back almost before his feet hit the ground. Hesitant, ready to run if the Death Eater got up, despite subconsciously knowing he couldn't be a threat, he walked up to the man and knelt, sliding a thin finger under the mask. Then he yanked it off, harder than was probably necessary. And then he stopped dead, the black velvet cord of the mask still wrapped around his fingers. It was Professor Snape.
Harry was paralyzed. He had known for a long time in a rather vague and intellectual way that Snape was a Death Eater and Dumbledore's pet spy for the Light, but to see him like this, dressed in full Death Eater paraphernalia and soaked in blood made it suddenly real.
Which was why he was still kneeling there, the skull mask dangling from his fingers, when Professor Snape's eyes drifted open. Harry flinched backwards, but Snape was too out of it to notice.
"Lily?" he rasped, clouded dark gaze catching Harry's emerald one.
Harry had a moment to think 'What the Hell- he thinks I'm my mom!?' before the Potions professor coughed up a pool of blood and became suddenly lucid.
"Get...Dumbledore." The man gasped, seizing the front of his robes in a desperate grip, his whole body shuddering with the effort. "He'll want a report...attack on Hogsmeade...must warn him...Voldemort knows my- everything...
"Dumbledore's at the Ministry." Harry responded, close to panicking, "And we need to get you to a mediwitch."
"No...time..." Snape gasped. "Too late for me...floo the Headmaster...maybe Aberforth..."
Harry was trying desperately to think. He could fetch Dumbledore in a minute by flaming to him, but that would necessitate reveiling his illegal animagus form and the fact that he had been out after curfew in the most dangerous part of the grounds, and the explanations would take too long; Snape might even be attacked by something from the Forest of he didn't die of his injuries. Same went for flaming to Madame Pomphrey. He couldn't get Snape to Hogwarts in time to save him, unless he flamed, and for all he knew, phœnix teleportation could exacerbate his condition. And every second he deliberated Professor Snape was loosing more blood.
He had always hated Snape, but he didn't want him dead, and he knew that after all the people he'd seen die, he'd never forgive himself if he didn't save him. Which meant that since he was hopeless at any healing spell stronger than a 'episkey', he would have to go to Madame Pomphrey. Maybe her Healer's Oath would cover his secret, or maybe he could get her to swear an Unbreakable Vow.
And so he did something so utterly Gryffindorish that it probably could have won him the house cup, if there was a house cup for stupidity*. He shoved his wand into Snape's hand with a quick "Here, I'm getting Madame Pomphrey," transformed, and flashed to the hospital wing in a glory of blue fire.
Pristine white walls and rows of mahogany cupboards swam into view amid pale yellow afterimages as Harry materialized, dropped to the floor, and transformed. The hospital wing was nearly deserted, and lit only by shafts of moonlight spilling out across the floor. Harry wasted no time.
"Madame Pomphrey!" He called anxiously, turning on the spot. "Madame Pomphrey, Ma'am?"
"She went out."
Harry whirled around, to see a Hufflepuff firstie lying on a cot in an overlooked alcove, half asleep amid a wreakage of chocolate frog wrappers and textbooks. "When will she be back?" He snapped, nearly panicking with worry.
"Dunno," responded the girl drowsily. "She said - Oh, yes. 'Fessor Snape wasn't here to brew her skêle-gro, so she had to go buy some." The girl paused at this juncture to show off her boneless wrist like a spoil of war, all the while chattering nonstop- apparently she'd gotten it in DADA, when a Ravenclaw had mispronounced a blocking hex- but Harry had already turned away and was rummaging through the cupboards more or less at random, trying to remember anything he might have read or heard about healing.
Harry, as was often the case, no longer had anyone to go to. Madame Pomphrey was out and he couldn't wait for her, and the only ones besides the mediwitch with any kind of healing expertise were Professor Snape himself and the Herbology professor, Professor Sprout, who wouldn't be available this late at night and couldn't heal anything worse than a scraped knee anyway. Some of the 7th year Ravenclaws took basic healing as an elective, but even if he managed to break into the Ravenclaw Common Room, he doubted any of them would or could break multiple school rules to help the greasy bat of the dungeons. So Harry would have to save Snape himself. Seriously, would it hurt to have help once in a while? What was he - fate's squeaky toy?
Still, Harry had been in the hospital wing often enough to have picked up a few tips, and before a minute had passed he had ripped the pillowcase off a hospital wing pillow and shoved a bundle of bandages, several blood replenishers, a few phials of daffodil-yellow anticrucitus, and an unlabeled bottle of a thin, pale blue substance, smelling of cloves and lotus blossoms, that he knew without looking to be Wizarding painkiller, having had to take it often enough himself.
Ignoring the startled exclamations of the Hufflepuff girl, he closed the cabinets as fast as he could without slamming them, and raced for the door. Halfway there, he realized he had no time to run through all of Hogwarts, or to dodge Filch. He would have to flash. In front of the firstie, who was still trying to prevent him from 'stealing from the hospital wing.' In front of a firstie who would doubtless have spread the story all over Hogwarts by noon the following day, and sent a letter to the Prophet the next. And he didn't have a wand, as he'd given it to Snape in the Forbidden Forest.
Praying it would work, Harry sent a weak wandless 'Obliviate' at the Hufflepuff before transforming and vanishing with his bundle in a spray of blue sparks.
Madame Pomphrey arrived moments later, but by then the sparks had winked out and the Hufflepuff with the boneless wrist was curled up in a nest of blankets, sniffling and fast asleep amid her textbooks.
And if said Hufflepuff dreamed of heros and birds birds made of fire, or if a few potions turned up missing, no one ever knew.
Harry materialized in mid air, a few sparks skittering around him like ghostly fireflies, and landed heavily next to Professor Snape, still clutching his bundle tightly.
Snape did not look well. He was already unconscious, and the only sign that he was even still alive at all was the thread of blood trickling ceaselessly from the corner of his mouth, and the jerky rise and fall of his chest.
Harry rummaged blindly in his pillowcase, trying to find the bottles of blood replenisher. His fingers brushed against cool glass, rough cork, but when he drew out the bottle, it was anticrucitus. He didn't have time for this! And then, as if in a dream, he could hear Ron's voice ringing in his ears: "Are you a wizard or not?"
Grabbing his wand from where it lay centimeters from Snape's nerveless fingers, he shouted "'Acio' blood replenishers!" and three bottles flew into his lap. Harry snatched one of them and yanked the cork out with his teeth, then laid aside the other two and knelt by Snape, pressing the cool rim of the bottle against his lips and muttering 'Lumos' around the cork in his mouth.
In the sudden wandlight, Snape shuddered and then swallowed obediently, glassy black eyes half open and fixed on nothing. Then his head fell backwards onto the bloodied leaves again.
Harry had put off assessing the damage for as long as he could. He had to see Snape's injuries at some point, before he could even begin to try to heal him. So, with shaking hands, Harry conjured a knife and sliced away Snape's Death Eater garments, and the teaching robes beneath them, and adjusted his wandlight to have a look. The damage was sickening. Thousands of little cuts, blistering burns from scorching hexes, and other wounds, obviously caused by dark or even illegal magic scored his skin, and his stomach has been slashed so deep that his viscera gleamed wetly in the moonlight. There was no way a few blood replenishers and some painkiller would be able to heal damage of this magnitude; even St. Mungo's would probably be at an impasse.
Harry swallowed down his nausea, trying to think. There had to be something he could do. He couldn't just sit here watching Snape die. And then the answer came as hard as if he'd been pole-axed.
[Flashback]
The Chamber was enormous, flooded with faint olive green light, like an undersea grotto. Beyond the lolling head of the basilisk, its blinded eyes still leaking deep red blood, ornate columns stretched into the distance, the cold, accusing eyes of the carven snakes glinting amber and emerald. Nearby, on the chamber floor, the engraved Sword of Gryffindor caught the light, egg-sized rubies glowing red as the viscous blood smudgeing its flawless blade and caking the sand on which it lay, while further on, Ginny's motionless body lay in crumpled against a sculpted wolf. The air was musty with the dust of centuries, permeated by the scent of reptiles and blood, and the cucumbery odor of pit vipers.
Harry was slumped against the wall next to the monkey-faced statue of Salazar Slytherin, watching as the world distorted and fell away in patches, blinded with unbearable pain. Fawkes was pressed up against his side, glowing warmth alleviating just a little of the agony pulsating from his envenomed forearm, and he was crying. Nearby, Tom Riddle was propped languidly against the wall, tapping impeccable fingernails against his folded arms, watching Harry die.
"You're dead, Harry Potter," said Riddle's voice above him. "Dead. Even Dumbledore's bird knows it. Do you see what he's doing, Potter? He's crying."
The world swam in and out of focus.
"I'm going to sit here and watch you die, Harry Potter. Take your time. I'm in no hurry. So ends the famous Harry Potter," said Riddle's distant voice. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You'll be back with your dear Mudblood mother soon, Harry… She bought you twelve years of borrowed time… but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must…"
But the pain was no longer overwhelming, and Harry raised his head, lifted a trembling hand to stroke the phœnix...
"Get away, bird," said Riddle's voice suddenly. "Get away from him — I said, get away —" He shot a curse like a gunshot, and Fawkes swooped away with a squawk that might have been triumphant or possibly just startled, winging his way among the sculpted columns.
Riddle was still in shock. "Phoenix tears…" said Riddle quietly, staring at Harry's arm. "Of course… healing powers… I forgot…"
Harry still remembered the frustration on the 16 year old Riddle's face as he remembered the power of phœnix tears, and he still remembered the cool, healing droplets on his skin. And he knew exactly what to do. And in a moment, he had changed into his phœnix form and began to cry pearly tears onto the myriad little cuts and burns pitting Snape's chest.
It wasn't working. Oh, to be sure, the little cuts and burns were healed courtesy of Harry's efforts, but except for a little curling at the edges, the enormous gash that sliced into Snape's vitals wasn't healing, and the man's breathing was growing increasingly labored, so much that at times, Harry thought it had stopped.
Harry, frankly, was about to give it up. It wasn't as if Snape had ever done anything for him, and he'd tried his best. Hell, he'd done more than anyone else he could name, and it wasn't really his responsibility, to act the Healer for Dumbledore's pet Death Eater. He wasn't actually that happy with Dumbledore, either.
But something in Snape's face made him keep going- he knew that his 'saving people thing' would never let him give up while there was still the slightest chance. He pushed back the tiny voice in his mind that said that his 'saving people thing' had gotten Sirius killed, and focused on the dying man again. Not that that improved his mood. What could he possibly access that was more potent than phœnix tears?
And that was when some hidden phœnix instinct reared it's head, and he knew what to do. He burned.
Azure flames shot into the sky twenty feet in height, enveloping them in fire. Luminescent blue lapped at Snape's skin, scorching his robes away, cauterizing and healing his wounds, leaving pale unblemished skin. And Harry began to sing, an ancient phœnix melody rebounding from the rocks, echoing into the treeline, powerful and pure and tingling with Old Magic.
Snape writhed as the flames licked his skin, silent tears sliding down his cheeks, sizzling and burning off into streaks of salt. Harry's human mind registered fear and concern, even as his whole body was shuddering with agony, but the part of him that was a phœnix embraced the cleansing fire, knowing this was Right, knowing that if they survived this trial by fire everything would be ok.
Gradually, through a haze, as his scar was beginning to throb agonizingly, he became aware that there were no more wounds to heal, but the magic flames were still burning, scorching away the residue of dark magic clinging to the Potions Master, destroying compulsions and curses so long embedded in the man's mind that he had forgotten when and how he had been effected.
Then the healing fire attacked the Dark Mark, and Snape clutched his forearm with a moan of pain as the Mark turned a protesting red and vanished entirely. Snape slumped back unconscious from excessive pain, his body still too weak. And still the flames burned.
At this point Harry could no longer think. Pain, originating from his scar, had taken over his whole body, and his head felt as though Gawp had taken a bludgeon to it. It hurt so, so much, worse even than Voldemort's crucitus, or the basilisk's bite. And then everything went black.
Chapter 1, A Forest Flight