Written for the Quidditch League Round 4: Reserve, Caerphilly Catapults!

Keeper: Phoenix

Words: 921

Enjoy! :D

The old headmaster peers up at his friend and previous boss, Armando Dippet, snoozing happily in his painting right behind the headmaster's desk. He wishes that his friend had taken better care of his body, for sure he had many more years in front of him.

Sighing and pacing around the circle room, as he always does, thinking about his new found position and what he wants to do with his authority, Dumbledore comes to a conclusion that he doesn't deserve it. The single moment in his life when he had an unbreakable friendship, his family under control, and a legacy at school, everything fell apart. Once before he has thought to be better than everyone else, but look where that's landed him, and it was all for the 'greater good.' He doesn't deserve this authority at all, and its sad and lonely up here.

Dumbledore turns on heel and walks over to his pensieve wondering if he would dare to pick a scab, something that he's made his peace with only recently. He goes ahead and dips his head right into the liquid nitrogen like substance. He watches himself sitting on his bed at his parents, a silly teenager infatuated with his best friend whose sitting right next to him. He smiles down at the younger Dumbledore, shoves a book in his hands and ruffles his hair with a smirk. Dumbledore notices the smirk because it was his favorite, and it was the last time he saw it before ... well, he wasn't smiling the next time they saw each other which was the last time he would see him, ever.

He extracts himself from the memory, feeling the scab over his heart rip but not bleed. He had made his peace with everything that had happened, and after the last year of dragging himself through the suppressed pain, and guilt, he can watch his happier memories without crying. He can watch them without yearning, and wishing, and wanting to change his past. He's living for the here and now, which is the current headmaster of Hogwarts. So he picks himself from the ground that he had fallen to.

Upon turning around he stands and sees something from the balcony, a red bird perched right on the railing. He walks over to it cautiously, trying not to scare it away.

"Hey birdie ... you're a phoenix aren't you?"

The bird wails out to him. The type of cry that doesn't seem happy. It wails again and stares at him.

Dumbledore can see the urgency in the bird's features and scans it's body quickly. He can see that it's a female bird because of the deeper colors of the plumage. Unlike in the Muggle world, birds that have brighter colors are females. She wails again in pain, a squawk that would hurt your ears, like a bad falsetto. The phoenix is in pain. He reaches a hand out very carefully, slowly, trying to show the bird he won't hurt her. Once his hand is inches away, the phoenix's beady eyes stare hard at him while Dumbledore touches it's head. The feathers are soft and the bird closes it's eyes in relief.

"Are you hurt little bird? I can help, let me just take a look?"

He touches the phoenix gently again on the head, and makes a slow start down to the shoulders. From there his fingertips reach down to the wing, but the phoenix squawks at him again, and flinches away. The death glare in its eyes say never to touch her again. He looks at his hand and wipes the blood on his robes.

Dumbledore points his wand at the phoenix's left wing with a smile, and says, "Vulnera sanentur."

The wounds stitch themselves up and the bird flies into his room and lands on the back of his chair. She croons a song, one that happy phoenix's make. Dumbledore smiles at the creature before him, a beautiful creature with red and gold plumage, that has majestic stature and a great wingspan. Wouldn't it be nice to have a pet up here to keep him company when he's lonely? He would love to make friends with a phoenix.

Red flashes in front of his horrified eyes, and he flinches away from the sudden orange flames engulfing the bird perched on his chair. When he gets a hold of himself, the headmaster rushes forward with his wand pointed at the bird. He whispers augumenti to the flames, but it doesn't put out the fire. Dumbledore can't help the tears that well up and fall fresh over his red cheeks. Everything good that's ever happened to him turns into a catastrophe. His knees hit the floor, and here is the Headmaster of Hogwarts kneeling and sobbing on the floor, over a bird that has died in his office. It's a lifetime of sadness for him.

He hears something though, a small and quiet chirp. A little noise that a fully grown phoenix wouldn't make, so he stands to look around but his piercing, blue eyes are met with a baby bird. A bird that barely has red downy fluff and a tiny chirpy voice. He looks up at Dumbledore then picks itself up to stumble towards him, but trips over it's own feet twice. Dumbledore picks up the unstable, baby bird and brings it to his puffy, blue eyes and the bird closes its own beady eyes and rubs its head on Dumbledore's cheek lovingly.

"I know, I'll call you Fawkes."