Pain.

It was all Harry knew.

Pain. Burning. A flash of red. Burning. A shout. Burning. And finally darkness.

When Harry woke up, he was told it had been thee days since he and Ron went down into the chamber.

It felt like years.

Years of burning and burning, as if fire were flowing through his veins instead of blood.

He didn't remember getting out of the chamber of secrets, but he supposed he must have, as he woke up in the hospital wing, Hermione sitting next to his bed waiting for him to wake up. All he could remember was the basilisk biting him, and Fawkes crying into the wound, and then burning.

Hermione had screamed when he first woke and looked around, partly because the sheets had begun to smoke, and partly because his eyes had changed. The whites were completely gone, leaving a large pupil surrounded by green, the way he remembered Fawkes' looking when he had cried into his arm.

After that, she had seemed slightly scared of him, and although Madam Pomfrey was able to put out the small fire at once, she would not let him leave the hospital wing. She kept checking his temperature and feeding him potions and asking him questions. Harry only spoke when asked a direct question, the sounds and smells and lights of the hospital wing too much.

He could hear students walking down the corridor towards the hospital wing when they came in with injuries, and Professor Binns' voice droning on about the Medieval Assembly of European Wizards four floors below. He could smell the elves' cooking in the kitchens before each meal, and taste the individual ingredients in each of the potions madam Pomfrey handed him. The white sheets on his bed practically glowed, lights merging into each other, resulting as a white mass of blurs and brightness that his eyes couldn't handle, like the world was on fire.

Harry couldn't sleep. His thoughts kept returning to the chamber and to Ginny. If he had only been faster, stronger, better he could have saved her. He span his wand in his fingers, remembering Tom Riddle's pale face; the scrape of the basilisk's scales on the floor; the burning pain in his veins.

The last thing he saw before everything went black was dark smoke curling from his hand as his wand crumbled to ash.

The next time he woke, the castle was unusually quiet.

Harry couldn't hear students walking between lessons, or cauldrons bubbling in the dungeons, and the smell of cat was not as strong. Professor Dumbledore explained over a plate of ham sandwiches that the Hogwarts had broken up for the summer early after the events of the year, and the express had left that morning. Gryffindor had won the house cup. Harry couldn't bring himself to care. He would not be coming back to Hogwarts. His wand was gone and the smells and sounds were overwhelming.

By the end of the day, Madam Pomfrey declared that he was healthy enough to go home, and that evening Harry found himself stood outside Privet Drive with his trunk.

The Dursleys hadn't been happy to see him alive, apparently having been told that he had been in a bad accident at the end of term, but one glance at his strange eyes convinced them to stay out of his way. Uncle Vernon hadn't even tried to hit him.

Under the pretence of needing to pack his trunk before he left, Harry had managed to slip away to the library and had... liberated a few books from Hogwarts. When he wasn't wandering around Little Whinging, he was in his room, the lights off and curtains drawn, reading up on basilisks and phoenixes, trying to work out what had happened to him.

The conclusion he came to was not fun.

Phoenix tears self-regenerated until all injuries were healed, and neutralised most poisons and venoms. Basilisk venom on the other hand was so saturated with magic, that it perpetually stayed within its victim's body. Presently, Harry had both constantly running through his veins, Fawkes' tears inundating his body as they tried to destroy the venom. The venom wouldn't leave his system until he died, and Fawkes' tears wouldn't let him die as long as there was venom in his bloodstream. The combined magic saturated his body and changed his physiology, altering his eyes and his senses.

It took Harry a while to get used to the changes. His skin seemed ultra-sensitive, the complete opposite to his vision during the day which had become a blur of colours. All his other senses were now so overloaded that they seemed to compensate for his lack of sight: He could tell where people were standing by the sound of their breathing and the smell of any perfume or deodorant they were wearing. He could cook, using the heat the cooker gave off and the scents of different foods. He could run down the street, listening to the sounds of cars going past and feeling the vibrations people and animals made as they walked.

It had come as a large shock to all involved when Harry had caught on fire when Dudley and his gang were chasing him, and Harry had been careful with his emotions since then, finding that any strong feelings would cause him and his clothes to spontaneously combust.

At night, Harry practiced his new magic in the relative privacy of the dilapidated park in Little Whinging, sunglasses perched on his nose to hide his unnatural eyes and to block the brightness that light had become. He learnt to control his fire and block out the unnecessary sounds and smells.

But always was the constant burning throughout his body, every nerve on high alert for danger, seeming to warn him about possible threats before they happened. The Dursleys left him alone, and although he had no friends in Surrey, Harry was happy, for possibly the first time ever whilst living at Privet Drive.

The first time he had accidentally pulled a cupboard door off its hinges, he had been rather scared of his strength, but since then he had taken to using Dudley's punch bag in the garage, keeping fit whilst also improving his strength and agility.

Ron had not forgiven Harry for being unable to save his sister. He had sent him a letter, angrily detailing how they were no longer friends, and how Harry was an attention-seeking brat who deserved to be locked up.

In anger and desperation, Harry poured more effort into his practicing, mostly for something to do. By July, he had finally worked out a way to fly, by shooting small fires from his bare hands and feet to act as tiny rockets.

Harry zoomed around the park, hidden by the darkness and the trees surrounding him, revelling in the feeling of flying without a broom. He closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation, and as such did not see the red dart shot from the edge of the treeline hit him square in the chest.