Chapter 6
Harry studied Birenze for a long time, as if he no longer recognized the centaur before glancing at the very alive boy next to his mother’s grave and turning back to Birenze with utter confusion written clearly on his face.
“Please tell me your joking.”
Returning Harry’s look of confusion, Birenze crossed his arms in defiance.
“Why would I be joking?”
“You have to be joking.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he isn’t dead!”
“Not now anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I person can’t be killed and then be alive as if nothing happened. And he’s obviously not a zombie or he would have tried to eat me by now!”
Not understanding what a ‘zombie’ was, Birenze wondered what made Harry think that the silent boy would ever try to eat anyone. Instead he decided to continue his explanation.
“Mr. Potter, do you know what a phoenix is?”
Though he felt as if the subject was being changed to avoid his questions, Harry decided to play along for the time being.
“Yea, Dumbledore has one in his office.”
“And do you know a phoenix’s most special ability?”
“They die in a burst of flames and are reborn in the ashes.”
“Your friend has a very similar ability.”
“How can that be possible? He’s human, not a phoenix.”
To this Birenze shook his head.
“That is where you are wrong. He’s a human with phoenix wings.”
When Harry only gave him an odd expression illustrating confusion, Birenze continued.
“A long time ago there was a clan of wizards that could morph between their human forms and into the form of a phoenix. No one in the clan would ever die unless they chose to or if their bodies were destroyed in a way that couldn’t be fix, for you see the clan’s reincarnation process worked differently then a regular phoenix.
‘As you know, when a phoenix die they burst into flames and are reborn in the ashes. But when a member of the clan died, their bodies would remained unchanged and would magically heal and bring back the soul to the body when they where touched by the light of the full moon.
‘However, there were two problems with this. The first problem was if the person’s body was in multiple pieces, whether it has being cut in half or being beheaded, the body couldn’t heal. Secondly once the soul returned to the body they would only have vague memories of their life before and would develop to be a different person.
‘Your friend is a descendant of that clan, of which there is only one other survivor, but since he had been nothing but a babe when he was killed there weren’t very many memories for him to loose and with him being partly a magical creature he become a part of the forest and was raised by the unicorns, fairies and my fellow centaurs.
‘Do you understand now?”
Not answering at first, Harry sat silently as he tried to absorb everything he had been told. A clan of wizards that could never die have only two survivors didn’t make sense for one and if they knew there was another survivor then why didn’t anyone try to return his friend to his family? Who was the last survivor? Was it the boy’s father or an aunt like he had? Was it possible that they knew who the survivor was but just didn’t want to give to boy up?
Shaking his head of those thoughts, Harry realized that at least one of his questions about his friend had been answered. He now knew that his friend was a wizard of sorts, even though he was also some sort of magical creature as well. That made him vaguely wonder if he would ever be studying Phoenix’s in Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures class.
Looking back up at Birenze, Harry felt like asking the questions he has though of before Hagrid’s class came to mind but pushed the urge back. His head way too heavy with the new information to take much more. He just wanted to know one last time before never wanting to talk to Birenze ever again.
“I think I understand the basic point of what you just told me but I have another question.”
“What would that be?”
“How can he talk to you? I mean, humans and centaurs both communicate verbally but he doesn’t know any words excepts from the ones he repeats from me and before we can here he was talking to me almost normally.”
“It’s another gift from the phoenix.”
“And that would be?”
“Telepathic abilities.”
“He can read minds?”
“Mr. Potter, you should know by now that the mind is too complex to read.”
Birenze was suddenly starting to remind Harry of Snape.
Not aware of the scarred boy’s thoughts, Birenze continued.
“He can however sense things about a person, like if they’re happy, sad or in need of comfort. With him, no one needed words to communicate because he understood what he wanted to tell him just by sensing our feelings and he never hid his feelings in return.
‘However, humans aren’t very good at communicating with just emotions, so he’s been trying to learn your words but when he sensed that you felt hurt he looked into your heart to find words so he could tell you what he wanted to say to make you feel better.”
This answer more confused Harry then answered it.
“How is looking into my heart for words supposed to work?”
“The heart knows more then the mind can even imagine.”
Though he still didn’t understand, Harry decided it was best just to let it go. He didn’t need to understand how his friend came to be or the way he did things. All that mattered was that he was his friend and… perhaps more.
Still, he wanted to understand more about the clan. What were all of their abilities? Did they have more phoenix related powers? Why did it die out? Was there anything he could do to protect his friend from loosing his memories if anything happened to him while he was in the forest? More importantly could he protect his friend to keep anything bad from happening to him while he was in the forest?
The angelic boy, who had sat silently by his mother’s grave during Birenze attempt to explain things to Harry, felt Harry’s confusion and was confused himself. He, himself, didn’t understand why he couldn’t communicate with Harry like he could with the rest of his friends in the forest. He didn’t understand Harry’s need for words and symbols drawn in the dirt but he didn’t mind it either.
It was very new to him to purposely make a sound when all others came natural like laughter along with sounds of surprise, pain or aggravation. Yet it was amazing that when he spoke Harry’s words, Harry would usually be happy to hear them and he liked it when he did something to make Harry happy.
He couldn’t really find a way to explain it but he liked Harry more then the rest of his friends. It was probably wrong of him to think that way because he had never preferred one friend above the others before but he couldn’t help it. Harry was Harry and the others weren’t.
Though Harry still looked like he was still trying to make sense of all he had been told, the angelic boy stood from his spot near the grave and moved to sit beside him.
Feeling his friend’s presence, Harry snapped out of his train of thought and turned to him with a smile.
The angelic boy smiled in return, knowing that they has just shared something that they both understood.