Out of the Ashes

Disclaimer: All familiar characters are not mine, I'm only borrowing them. Poem by Catallus (84-54 BC).

~:~:~

The book fell open at the well-read page:

Over land and sea come I

Brother dear, to say goodbye;

To hear the ancient words I dread,

muttered softly o'er the dead:

Ash to ash, and dust to dust;

Though you hear not, speak I must,

And tell your silent body how,

In bitter grief I mourn you now;

Custom's servant, not her slave,

Stand I weeping at the grave;

Take this wreath, as tolls the bell,

Brother dear, a long farewell.

"In bitter grief..." Albus Dumbledore shut the volume with a heavy sigh, and pressed his forehead wearily into his fingers. "In bitter grief I mourn you now..."

That book knew the Dumbledores' grief: a slim, black calf-bound collection of muggle poems entitled "At Times of Sorrow." It had belonged to their mother, rarely leaving her bedside table ever since Ariana had been attacked. Now it – and the sorrow – was Albus's.

Kendra's taste had not been for that particular poem: the older daily-reading crease mark opened at Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar." But Albus felt that Catallus, in his far-off Latin grief, had been only one word wrong.

Put 'sister' there instead... his little, frail, damaged sister … ash and dust …

Albus opened his eyes again, and stared somewhat dully at the piece of parchment on the desk, which had sent him seeking poetic consolation in the first place. It was a crumpled piece of parchment, almost a scrap, which showed every sign of having been torn off the bottom of an old invoice for Ogden's Firewhiskey. In blotted ink, his brother's familiar, for many years irritating, scrawling hand had written:

Not this month – Aberforth.

"Not this month." Albus repeated it out loud. "Not this month." He supposed that, like the broken nose, was really better than he deserved.

He had tried. Now that it was too late, he had tried. The Dumbledores, as a family, were gone. The house in Godric's Hollow had been given up, their possessions divided. Albus had the books; Aberforth had Arianna's few things – and the portrait. Albus had said nothing when his brother had pointed at their mother's last, and best, artistic effort. The sullen grunt had broken the silence of packing for the first time in hours: "Mine."

Ariana would have wanted her portrait to go to Aberforth. The brother who had resented her frailty was not going to forget her face, even without a picture. To sleep was to dream, and in the day, Boggarts are all too easy to come across...

He could not get away... Nor did he want to. To get away – that was where all this had come from, the desire to shed an unwanted fate. And it had led to this. And now it was too late. Too late to live with what he had; to tend and protect and appreciate. All he had left was his shame.

Shame – and Aberforth.

At Hogwarts, he had always felt those two were somewhat combined, in the tiresome stream of interruptions from many sources – friends, enemies, teachers. Your brother's in a fight; your brother's in detention; your brother's in the hospital wing; your brother's been in a brawl; your brother's been drinking; your brother's been bottom of the class for nine weeks in a row...

But Aberforth had been right. Rude, unlettered – and much wiser.

The folly and the shame was his own.

It was too late to be wise; only to live with what he had now: bitter grief – and shame – and Aberforth.

And so, he took the blow at the funeral – and he tried. Once a month, since Aberforth had taken the job as assistant bar keeper at the Hogs Head, Albus called. Never the same day or date, never the same time – if Aberforth knew when to expect him, he would probably go out. With the element of surprise, he was usually there; a tall, surly figure behind the bar. Never looking pleased to see him – but at least not walking out. A half-pint of mulled mead would pass one way across the bar top, a sickle back for payment passed the other way.

"All right?" Albus would ask as cordially as he could.

The half-minute silence never varied, nor the answer: "After a fashion."

It was all he could do. But it seemed, this month, it was what he could not do.

Not this month.

Albus stared at the words. This month – was the third anniversary. Three years were a very long time.

Perhaps, to somebody like Nicholas Flamel, or even someone who was just happy, it was no time at all. But there were one thousand and ninety-five days in three years. Too many – and too few. Each day was too many since his folly; too many since Ariana had lain still and cold and dead upon the floor. And yet a thousand days were too few: too few to dim his grief and pain; too few to stop envying Catallus. For anyone who had come 'over land and sea' had only bitter grief to bear, not bitter regret as well. He did not live with pressing shame, nor fear one piece of knowledge...

Perhaps, Albus pondered with a slight, bitter smile, the note could be interpreted as meaning that three years had been enough days to dim his brother's rawest anger. He had obviously settled on not wanting to see Albus, rather than on wanting to punch him on the nose again.

Three years...

For three years he had had what he had wanted. Peace – instead of Ariana's helpless pestering. Quiet – instead of Aberforth's riotous presence clattering through the house singing tavern ballads. And wisdom – wisdom to know that what he had lost had been of far greater value than anything he had gained, or could ever gain. Love, and loyalty, children's tales, and innocence... and the patient gifts of warm, woollen socks from someone who had been so proud to have learned how to "turn" the heels (whatever that meant) herself, once Kendra was not there to do it for her.

Albus still wondered exactly how Aberforth had known how to do it himself in order to teach her.

No socks came in the post now, only letters, books, journals. Aberforth's note lay on the top of a fairly typical stack: a dissertation from Adalbert Waffling; a "with author's compliments" copy of the latest Transfiguration monograph by Miguel de la Refigure; the new edition of Journal de Alchemie Internationale; copy proofs for his next article in European Magical Theory; and a heap of flattering letters.

Albus leafed through them slowly. They were all the same: praise, admiration, requests for further contributions, an invitation to attend some Transfiguration convention somewhere. All the same – praise, glory. All he had wanted; all dust and ashes in his mouth.

And nothing about his letter to the Prophet.

He hadn't expected praise from that, but –

Albus smiled mockingly at himself for expecting any response at all. Would he never stop being arrogant? The letter had been published – his assumption that almost anything signed "Albus Dumbledore" would be accepted had proved to be true. But, or so it would seem, rising young stars of Transfiguration and Alchemy are not supposed to write passionate letters to the papers in defence of muggle rights – or will be politely humoured and ignored if they do.

No responses at all – not even outrage or argument or – anything! No irate pure-blood supremacists writing stinking letters of rebuttal – nobody! Albus had a moment's vision of Aberforth as the letter's only reader, snorting in contempt and feeding the column to the goats. Perhaps that was all it was fit for. Perhaps it had been foolish to think he had any right to say anything, that when you had thought and dreamed and planned what he had, however much he might regret it now, you could not go back and try and put it right. Perhaps...

Albus sat up from his slumped posture in the chair sharply. There was no good brooding. If Aberforth didn't want him, if the Daily Prophet readers didn't want him, well–! He jerked the letter about the Transfiguration convention out from the bottom of the stack. International convention – Persia – complimentary ticket – the exact week of the anniversary. He would go.

It wasn't, after all, as if anybody needed him here.

~:~

Persia was – different.

While wizarding Britain maintained its Statute of Secrecy in little pockets dispersed across the country, Persian wizardry had converged. A few nomads and isolated households still lived scattered across the mountains, but most of magical society had gathered itself up and crammed into the ancient city of Persepolis; hidden behind layer upon layer of protective charms that made muggles see only shattered marble ruins, broken old classical columns eerily hung with encroaching scrub and echoing silence.

In reality, the columns did echo, but with the teaming life of a vast magical ghetto. Shouts, chatter, laughter, the rapid-fire Persian of a fierce haggle in the market place, and soft whisper between two girls peeking at a turbaned lad leaning on a nearby column.

The wistful face of the smaller girl made Albus think of Ariana, but there were far too many people bustling about for him to stop and brood. Witches, wizards, and children everywhere – the Persians, it transpired, did not maintain a single boarding school for their magical youth, but taught them here in assorted classes all over the city, between which eager or reluctant scholars hurried or dawdled as they chose.

"Persepolis – the centre of learning!" said the plump wizard who ran the hostel the convention delegates had been sent to, when Albus enquired politely about the small boy 'minding' the front desk and doing Arithmancy problems on the back of the day's menu. He was, it transpired, the proprietor's youngest son, only eleven, and "an outstanding mind." It sounded familiar.

Persepolis, centre of learning – and centre of carpet making. Carpets and Persia seemed inseparable from the start. The Portkey was a direct link, London–Persepolis; the only other person taking it a man whose surname on the passenger list was 'Bashir.' He was extremely vague about his first name, and said he was going out to buy carpets. Carpets were the first thing of Persia one saw – starting with the threadbare if well-cushioning charmed one the Portkey landed on, and from that point on, there seemed to be carpets everywhere...

The centre of Persepolis was a vast, classical agora, worn ancient paving surrounded by a marble colonnade with shops behind. Here and there, a sign for an Apothecaries or silk trader stuck out, but most of the shops made and sold carpets. Rolled carpets leaned on the walls, stacks of carpets covered the paving, while skeins of brightly coloured yarn hung on lines suspended between between columns, so that someone as tall as Albus had to duck to walk under them. Inside the shops, or sometimes in the doorways for better light, the looms were busy, weavers standing by to direct the enchanted threads as they sped in and out of the warp, or to brandish murderous looking shears at the finished pile and any loitering passers-by. Nobody's signs bothered to state whether they made floor carpets or flying carpets. Some booths made one, some made the other, some made both – the only way to tell was by the position of the stacks of rugs on display. Albus was fairly sure he saw the other man from the Portkey haggling at a booth where the piles of carpets floated by themselves three foot off the ground.

Out of the main agora, Persepolis seemed a little less like one had landed in a textile explosion. Wizarding homes and gardens and shops – all with a foreign style, the bookshops selling scrolls and each house having its flying carpet hitched up in a roll by a string outside the door – but basically the same. The transfiguration convention itself could almost have been anywhere. True, the couple of European conventions Albus had been to had not been held in an open-air amphitheatre, with receptions in another colonnaded agora afterwards, but the proceedings were completely unaffected. Speak, listen, and then stand about for several hours holding a goblet of wine and discussing deepest magical theory, with blithe disregard for the rather battered state of the column one might be standing under. The amphitheatre was on the edge of Persepolis, where it petered out into hill-scrub. The protective charms were not quite so good or long standing here, as various warring muggle dynasties had demonstrated by rampaging through, smashing and burning. Reparo charms had generally served well for architectural restoration, but where bits were lost, the columns had been stuck back up anyway, regardless of structurally important chips missing out of them.

On the third night, Albus squeezed out from the thickest crowd under the wonkiest column to the dusty strip of grass outside. Tonight was – well, not the night he wanted to be alone; and yet he was suddenly sick of the endless convention chatter that was the other option. Aberforth's description of learned gatherings had suddenly come to him mid-discussion with a group of particularly voluble American witches – "jabbering like a bunch of starlings."

Aberforth. Where was Aberforth tonight? Alone, or had he company? Albus suspected he probably had; for most of their childhood, Aberforth's preferred company at times of great joy or sorrow had been that obtainable by sitting on an upturned bucket in the goat shed.

The other person who might remember tonight?

Somewhere, out there...

A hand touched on his arm.

"Have I the honour of speaking to Mr Dumbledore?"

Albus turned with a start. A short, middle-aged, Asian wizard in black and silver patterned robes somewhat eccentrically combined with an Eton collar stood beside him, head tipped in Oriental enquiry. "Have I the honour?" the strange wizard repeated.

Albus proffered his hand with as much politeness and as little weariness as he could muster. "Albus Dumbledore."

The man was obviously another one; another one of the brilliant or learned or merely eccentric leading lights of Transfiguration gathered at this convention; with their one concern their subject and their one subject of conversation his latest paper in Transfiguration Today; the sort who invariably opened with "I read your article-"; one of the thousand scholarly moths absorbed around their own candle-flame, lost in their study, heedless of any gathering darkness...

Why had he come?

The strange wizard shook hands with surprising enthusiasm. "Mr Dumbledore, I read your article-"

Albus donned his politely attentive smile. Transfiguration Today... brilliant work... outstanding research... such breadth of talent... such deep understanding... remarkable... I have so wanted to meet you...

"-in the Daily Prophet. And– " the little wizard was beaming like a child at Christmas. "I have so wanted to meet you since then!"

His primed, standard reply stalled. Albus stared blankly back. "The letter?" he queried faintly.

"The letter!" The little wizard's head nodded up and down, somewhat reminiscent of a demented house-elf, but even more enthusiastic. "About the muggles! A brilliant piece! Outstanding! Such understanding! Remarkable! For" – the little wizard made a wide, sweeping gesture towards the rest of the chattering crowd – "who else bothers?!

Who else bothers? Who else bothers about muggles? Beyond the scholars in the sweep of the Asian wizard's arm was the darkness of the hills about them – for one moment Albus seemed to see a face of menacing passion in that darkness. Who else bothers?

"I take it that it – it interested you?" he replied awkwardly, dragging his eyes back to his present company.

"I am interested," said the little wizard simply, "in right."

"Might," he continued with an emphatic nod, "does not make right. No matter what we think we are going to use it for. There is great danger in it. In our magic there is power, and there is great danger in that – that we may trample upon others pretending it is for their own good. Danger – I see danger – danger in power and danger in ignorance and danger in those who bury their heads in their books–" He waved agitatedly again at the crowd. "Who cares? Who cares? That is what I think – and who else cares? And then I read your letter in the English Prophet and I find that someone does! And so–" the little wizard beamed up at Albus again " –I am honoured to have met you!"

"I am Jellaludin," he added as if in hasty recollection a moment later. "Fitzwilliam Jellaludin; my father an Englishman, Mackintosh? You may have heard of him? Quite notable – then he went to the muggles and died."

Albus blinked at the abrupt halt. "I fear you over-estimate me," he said slowly, finally finding one of his 'company phrases' appropriate. "One letter to the Prophet is so little-"

"The little and the least may be the most important." It wasn't said as a compliment, merely a statement of fact, which Jellaludin ploughed on past before Albus had time to agree. "That is what I tell our people, I tell them, I tell them! Because muggles do not have our power, that does not mean we should trample them or ignore them! But they say to me, 'you are a nomad, you do not know.' I live as my fathers before me – the way of the hills – but that does not change what is right!"

He looked up to catch Albus' gaze. "I have suffered from those muggles," he said simply, with a sudden change of tempo. "As I think you yourself must have done, to write with such feeling; but that is when we must defend all the weak even more..."

Muggle rights take a long time to discuss, especially when one's company tends to break off in excited Persian and wave its hands about. The eventual dousing of the lights around the colonnade brought Albus out of the debate with a start – but it didn't seem to douse Jellaludin's enthusiasm at all:

"The night is yet young! After all, if it cannot be said or thought beneath the thousand eyes of heaven–" he gestured expansively at the firmament – "should it be said at all? But I fear I have wearied you of my presence?" He shrugged before there was time to reply. "I have been honoured to meet you. Honoured, honoured – so I bid you adieu."

He bowed at speed several times, and then vanished back beneath the colonnade towards the main city.

Albus stood for a moment, listening to the sudden silence. So somebody at least had read his letter. That was nice – if it made any difference that an excitable little wizard in Persia of uncertain nationality and no fixed address had read it. And now – it was dark. He consulted his watch. The night was very far from young. But to walk back across the agora on the direct route to his lodgings right away was probably to catch up, or at least seem to be following, Jellaludin – and he didn't quite fancy another such enthusiastic conversation all the way back to the hostel.

Neither did he really feel like sleeping. It must be almost exactly three years...

The dry grass sloped up into the darkness to his left. Albus turned towards it. "Lumos." No need to be invisible; the one man whose presence he feared was hardly likely to be wandering a Persian hillside, given his blue-eyed, blonde-haired Durmstrang contempt, over and above the contempt for muggles, of "coloured races."

He would just walk for a while.

~:~

Little paths led everywhere over the hillside: over dry, crunchy grass; among low bushes; across barren stony patches; through head-high scrub. Albus wasn't sure if he was still in magical or muggle territory, apart from the few places where the wafting scent proclaimed wild mountain Flutterby bushes – but it didn't matter. Here and there, wherever the paths led in the darkness – it was the perfect landscape for wandering when you didn't really want to think too much, just wander.

It was, Albus reflected, years since he had just wandered beneath Jellaludin's thousand eyes of heaven. Too much time spent indoors, in books, in pursuing knowledge and missing wisdom.

Aberforth was wise. He would be safe beneath a pool of lantern light in a stable tonight. And someone else – was out there, in the darkness. And that left himself, wandering, between dark and light, in his world of dust and ashes. Weary, burnt, companion-less...

The path turned and plunged into a patch of taller scrub, changing the darkness of the hour before dawn to the deeper darkness of a wooded canopy – and then into the flickering light of flame.

A fire. A small fire, like a camp-fire, in a clearing. Unattended.

For one moment Albus froze in anger at the person mad or bad enough to set and leave a fire in this dry land – and then he fell on his knees beside the flames. For in the dying embers, something moved.

Small, dark. He could make out no more than that, for although the fire was still high enough to check his first impulse to reach in and rescue the moving thing, the flickering shadow made clear vision impossible. 'Lumos' was no use; Albus flicked his wand for a single ball of pulsating light to hover over the embers. The thing was still moving. Head, body, tiny flightless wings and golden bill – a phoenix struggled in the ashes.

Albus knelt and stared. He knew by heart the description of a phoenix in Fantastic Beasts; he had read many, many other accounts of them. But nothing, nothing had ever expressed just how small, and how vulnerable, and how frankly exceedingly ugly a baby phoenix was.

The phoenix shuffled and floundered and tumbled, and eventually came up sort of upright, and looked at him for a moment. For something so tiny, it was a very knowing look.

It opened its beak. Nothing came out – and then a high trill of startling frailty and exquisite purity, followed almost immediately by a raucous squawk that somehow reminded Albus of Aberforth singing alternative versions to Christmas carols. Next a deep note that shuddered with evil; a minor note of bitter regret; and then, as if the phoenix had learned from its four wrong notes, it lifted its head fully into the first golden ray of light and began to sing.

No book has ever expressed how perfectly a new phoenix can sing, either.

"The song of the phoenix gives strength and hope to those it sings for, increasing the courage of the pure of heart and striking fear into the hearts of the impure..."

Thus said Scamander– but that did not say how the song seemed to be inside one; how the song felt as though it said everything Albus wanted to say, in the rising new day – a song of beginning again. Sometimes organ music got close to that swelling possession – but never like this – this eternity of music.

The song went on and on, in the rising light. And then it stopped, and with a little enquiring flourish, the phoenix hopped unsteadily out of the ashes – and onto his arm.

"Hello?" Albus stared, and then blinked some, for it would seem that a young phoenix rises again with all its talons intact, every single one of which was now sinking into his arm. He didn't dare move, he barely dared breathe, but the phoenix didn't seem to be in the least perturbed. It looked him up and down, and then uttered a single note of warm, friendly greeting, and settled down with a ruffle of its stubby plumage as if the matter was decided.

He was kneeling on a Persian hillside with a phoenix on his arm.

He tried to lift a few talons. Each successive one merely sank back deeper. He stood up. The phoenix balanced itself perfectly and stayed put. He held his arm out to a nearby branch. The phoenix closed its eyes in dignified rebuttal of that suggestion.

Albus racked his brains. Phoenixes are powerfully magical, living in mountainous regions across central Asia, with a sub-species that prefers desert habitats in Egypt. They roost in trees, nest on mountain tops, are very private. Size of a swan, gold bill and talons, their tears are powerfully healing, and their tail feathers used for wand cores. Immensely strong, rarely domesticated, 'moste determynede in their loyaltyes... chusing a bonde unto deathe...'

'Moste determynede...' Yes, the deep talons in his arm bore that one out.

"Chusing a bonde unto deathe..." And it had chosen him?

Albus looked back down at the bird on his arm. Its plumage was a little thicker now, the bright fuzz beginning to cover completely. Not the frail white beauty of a unicorn, nor the sturdy, determined belligerence of a dragon, but still magic; brilliant red and gold, out of the ashes.

Out of the ashes...

Albus stood straight again, and looked about for his path down the hillside. There was a new day, now – and he and his companion could talk along the way. No point sitting in the ashes – nor in forgetting them.

"Have you a name? No? Then what do you think about... 'Fawkes'?"

~:~The beginning~:~