XIII
The methods of communication used by phoenix are similar to legimency, but not. While expert legimens can read one's thoughts and memories by going through their mental barriers and causing them mental stress in the process, a phoenix can only hear the thoughts of others when there's physical contact and they're the ones who broadcast to them to him. Phoenixes can also communicate with others by broadcasting their own thoughts but as they're not humans, they don't talk. Instead, they give ideas, impressions, memories—abstract concepts.
Harry can talk because it doesn't matter how long he stays in the form of a phoenix, he'll always be a human and think like one. That being said, he can only use English, French, and a few Italian phrases thanks to Zabini, so maybe he's lucky he's mastered how to communicate like a phoenix and now can easily project his thoughts.
Using that, he shows the young man how everyone has a feeling to them and his is the strongest he's felt so far. He makes his curiosity known and the memory of himself waiting to see him but that never happens. He tries to convey his worry by picturing cells and human experiments. He finally mentions his plan if only to see his face at his memory of two big birds throwing a dead bear from high in the Sky.
At some point, the young man Harry starts calling Doc because of the lab coat, grabs a notebook and starts writing, but it's clear his attention never leaves Harry so he isn't annoyed. Then he presumably answers but Russian isn't a language he knows. At least he realizes this quickly without Harry having to point it out, but it still doesn't help.
He may have to use the other option and connect their thoughts by touch. He usually would be opposed because he doesn't know him. But now that he's finally meet him, Harry is curious about how his sort of magical core feels up close as he can't get anything aside from its electrifying flavor from this distance.
Harry gives him a mental image of him touching his wing and wearing a 'Eureka!' face while Harry radiates smugness as they mentally talk. Doc gives him a weird look but complies and—whoa. He's really warm. It's as if he has a fire inside him, too. A green one, like his hair. It tingles pleasantly on his skin and Harry can feel his own flames reacting. His tail actually shines a bit brighter.
Before Doc can panic, Harry shakes his head and concentrates on the other's surface thoughts. Or tries to. It's just his luck Doc's thoughts are so fast he can't get a miserable grasp on them.
It reminds him of Hermione's thinking process. Just worse. Much, much worse.
Bloody geniuses.
Oh, what the hell.
'Can you speak English?' he thinks, followed by, 'Tu sais parler le francais?' and 'Parli Italiano?'
He receives a startled expression that doesn't quite erase his amused, knowing look. "I can speak English."
Bloody figures.
XIV
Of course someone knocks the door before they can say anything else.
Doc and Harry exchange glances before they turn as one to the door where a male voice is speaking some gibberish he doesn't understand. His companion answers with a bored tone and a roll of his eyes, but that doesn't dissuade the person behind the door. If anything he gets more insistent and… eager?
'A friend of yours?'
The Doc hums as he continues listening. "Just a constant colleague," he murmurs. "He wants me to go and see your winged friends. Get my opinion as I may have studied zoology."
'Have you?'
"In passing." He looks at him. "I admit I'm curious. I may not be into ornithology, but even I know strange behavior when I hear of one. Two birds of prey on a human-infested space? Not normal."
'I know. That's why I used it,' Harry says, preening slightly and giving him a phoenix-worthy look. The Doc is not really impressed, which is a nice change from the awe he often receives. He can see the Doc is more curious than awed, seemingly liking the possibilities of a being like him bring. He wants to study him, Harry can feel it, but the natural respect he makes others feel for him seems to work on the Doc, too. So he's safe.
Well, not exactly safe as the intensity of his curiosity is on a level he hasn't encountered before. It intimidates him slightly, but after some many years of being a friend of Hermione it also fills him with nostalgia.
He shakes his head and huffs. 'I should tell them to stop throwing the bear before they completely ruin the body just for helping me. It's still winter and they need to eat.'
"Are you going to leave, then?" the Doc asks, his grip tightening slightly on one of his feathers. It doesn't annoy him as it would once upon a time. He can get the idea of what the other must be feeling as he experienced something similar when he met Fawkes.
On the other hand, Harry likes those green feathers.
The Doc releases his tail when he catches Harry's pointed look. Though perhaps he isn't expecting him to use the same long feather to touch his cheek and keep enjoying the buzzing sensation he can feel prickling under Doc's skin.
By the way Doc half closes his eyes and leans into his touch, Harry wonders what the other feels. Is his magical core? The same power they both have? He doesn't know.
Actually, Harry doesn't know a lot of things about this world. It's time that started to change. He doesn't want to be caught flat-footed once again for his lack of knowledge, after all.
He locks eyes with the Doc and says, 'I wish to return. I still don't know if you're okay, do I?'
The curious intensity is back. "Of course. I've so many questions myself, too."
'Just don't be greedy, Doc.'
With a parting soft croon that makes the other stagger, Harry leaves in a burst of flames.
XV
Dmitr, or Zeleny as he's called in here, is a german young man with a stroke of weird luck, whose genius was quickly recognized thanks to her mother being the assistant of a university professor. She was born in Russia or in what now people call USSR and because of the fact they lived in the 'correct' side of Germany. With the so-called Space Race going on, he quickly grew interested in space, especially after the news of something called Sputnik. Three years after starting learning about it, at nineteen, he created a basic blueprint of a ship capable to send a man to space and it was thanks to it that he was snatched to the USSR to make his design a reality.
Unfortunately for the USSR, Dmitr gets bored quickly. He needs constant new projects and there is so much to learn about engineering that isn't aerospace technology. The places where he works luckily is full of people with different specialties so there are always various materials to study. No one bothered him because of whatever interest he had that month, usually ended with a new discovery or numerous valuable inputs.
Sadly, for all their differences those specialties were still associated one with another and there would be a day when he finished learning all he could.
On 1962, a year after the USSR sent a man to orbit, that day came. The people on charge noticed too late that Dmitr has a rather unique way to view the world in which honestly doesn't care about much unless he has something interesting to study and is entertained enough with it.
Not that it would help them, he's already bored with the USSR style and no amount of books can appease him. He wants to leave and everyone can see that.
It doesn't mean they will let him, though. He has many of their secrets and besides, someone with his brilliance in the hands of others? Yeah, no. They still have hopes to make him interested again but it's obvious if he keeps not helping them win this Space Race, they'll have to bring the big guns.
It's the end of 1963 and the USSR space program is already getting frustrated with him and his new interest in anatomy.
'You're kind of fucked, then.'
That startles a snort of Dmitr who's now using some kind of microscope to look at his burning tail.
"I am not. They may keep the obvious volatile toxins away from me, but there are many others that one can easily get their hands on and are highly explosive."
Harry looks steadily at him. 'You plan to explode the place?'
"Of course not, I'd only use it as a distraction to get everyone away from me." He uses the table as a leverage and pushes the chair he's sitting on to the opposite side of the room where a small fridge is. He pulls out what looks like a bottle of soda. "In here, there's a solution that can easily knock an adult man unconscious for a couple hours."
'You're going to drug them?'
"I do need time to collect my things and get a safe distance away."
'Right,' Harry says, carefully not looking at the disorder around them. 'And you can't kill anyone as that would get the USSR on your back, right?'
That statement surprises the Doc again, which is nice as it lets Harry know that for all his apparent indifference, there are things he'll not consider doing. If he had lips, he'd be smiling in relief. As he has none, he settles by brushing one of his long feathers to the piece of skin closest to him, which is his hand.
XVI-THEN
A phoenix was more than often used as the face of Light magic because of their regal beauty and amazing ability to read one's character, but the harsh truth he came to realize was that a phoenix doesn't really care about wizard's designations or their laws. Intelligent beings they may be, but they still are magical creatures driven by their instincts, only tempered by age and experience. They don't know or care about morality though they do know one's intention with only a look.
He admitted sheepishly to Hermione that the righteousness he was expecting to feel never came. He told her and his curious friends how it really took him by surprise the first time he flew above Knockturn Alley and realized his phoenix's brain was indifferent of the dark magic below. He knew it was dark, but the evil taint he expected to feel wasn't there and while he knew ugly things were happening, things he could hear—he did nothing. The indifference was great, making him alien.
They're still pure beings, like unicorns, but what damages them is not the dark magic as he thought but the intention behind. Magic itself wasn't good or bad, it simply was, he realized. A simple notion yet one he wouldn't have thought of for many years without being able to turn into a phoenix.
A wise creature, they called them, but maybe everything was only matter of perspective. Not that it really mattered. Peace for him only lasted three months. The word went out, the newspapers were buzzing with the news. He was no longer Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived, The-Man-Who-Conquered. He now was Harry Potter, the man whose animagus form was a phoenix.
And that was the only thing they cared about.
At least they haven't hyphenated this into a long title, was his first thought, the newspaper of that day still on his hands as he saw numbly the photo of a phoenix going to an alley only for it to turn into himself. Then the dread set in.
I'm fucked, was his second thought.
And how right he was.