The Maltese Phoenix

With a jaded strut, Harry stepped out of the fireplace into a room with high, vaulted ceilings and bookcases lining the walls. At the end of the room were a tied-up Ginny and Hermione kneeling on the floor; next to them stood Voldemort leaning against his large mahogany desk. As soon as Harry stepped into his office, the Dark Lord’s head turned with a triumphant smirk.



“Good evening, Harry,” Voldemort said while uncrossing his arms from over his chest and allowing his left hand to elegantly gesture towards a small black bird on his desk. “Since I got the Maltese Phoenix and find myself in a good mood, I will allow you to have the girls back if you give me the spell.”



“How do you know I have the spell?”



Voldemort pushed his body off the desk, chin held high, and crossed over to a small bar facing his desk. His silk robes rustled almost imperceptibly.



“Ginevra let slip that you had come to trust Malfoy more than her,” he said pouring himself a shot of whiskey. He looked up, shot glass in hand. “When I found out Malfoy was dead, I surmised that he would’ve told you the spell to get his revenge on me for,” he turned to Ginny with a smirk, “frolicking with his wife.”



Harry sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest as Voldemort put his empty shot glass down.



“I’ll take Hermione, you can keep Ginny.”



Voldemort threw his head back and let out a loud laugh. Harry was taken back, it wasn’t high-pitched as he had expected it to be.



“Oh, Harry . . . I knew the blindfold would fall off at one moment or another. Very well, you shall have your mudblood when I get the spell.”



“I want to see the bird first.”



The Dark Lord narrowed his red eyes slightly, but then summoned the bird from his desk and had it float into Potter’s grip. Harry wrapped his hands around the bird’s cool surface and was surprised to find it weighed surprisingly little. The Phoenix’s long neck arched like a swan’s under a small black head. Harry couldn’t help but be reminded of Fawkes, he felt a painful stab in his chest as Dumbledore came to mind. Yet, at the same time as he studied the bird’s eyes, he knew that everything would be alright.



“I want a vow from you to safeguard Hermione and I,” Harry said, looking up and walking over towards the desk where he placed the bird.



“I set the terms,” Voldemort replied coolly while waltzing towards his desk where Harry stood.



“But I get to modify them if they are unfair.”



“I will do the elf-loving Mudblood first,” Voldemort said withdrawing his wand and looking down at Harry. “After you show me you have the spell, I will do yours.”



“No, Hermione gets sent home, and then I get the vow.”



“Harry, that puts me at a disadvantage,” Voldemort said lightly. “How do I know you won’t run off seeing as I can’t kill or hurt you or her?”



“Because I’m not stupid, and I know that the vow is temporary, and that you will come after me after it has run its course.”



“Very well,” Voldemort said with a slight nod before looking over his shoulder and extending his hand towards Hermione who was raised off the ground and levitated towards them. As soon as she reached them, Voldemort withdrew his wand and mumbled an unbinding spell after which Hermione frantically stood up.



“Finito incantatem,” Voldemort muttered, pointing his wand at her after which Hermione opened her mouth and turned towards Harry.



“Harry! What are –”



“Go home, Hermione,” Harry said interrupting her while eyeing her coldly.



“Harry, you can’t give him the spell!”



“Hermione, that’s my choice to make now go home before I have him keep you along with Ginny.”



Hermione bit her lip and gave him a worried look before stalking off towards the fireplace. Harry then turned towards Voldemort who held out his left hand while holding his wand with his right. Harry took his outstretched hand and repeated the vow Voldemort uttered, once the simple vow had been made, Harry turned towards the statue and got out Malfoy’s letter from within his pant pocket. He could feel Voldemort’s intense gaze behind him.



“Avis ex malta, valde rutilus volucris EGO quaeso vos communico vestri opulentia quod vox me. Conservo quod impendo meus incendia oh immortalis creatura.”



He tried reciting it a number of times, in different tones of voice, but nothing seemed to work. Just when he was about to start reciting again, he was roughly shoved out of the way by Voldemort who ripped the letter from his hand and began reciting.



Harry walked over to where Ginny was and took off the silencing spell. Ginny stared up at him blankly. Harry sniffed humorously, the corner of his lips tugging up into a smile.



“You are very good . . . very good indeed.”



Ginny let out a small frown and shook her head. “Sometimes I really wonder about you, Harry.”



She looked like she was about to say more, but then they both turned to look at Voldemort who was getting more and more frustrated by the moment and was now ending each recital with a string of curse words. Harry had to bite his lip to keep himself from smiling. Suddenly, one of the Dark Lord’s long-fingered hands shot out and knocked the bird sideways onto the desk where the black paint chipped, revealing what appeared to be white plaster. The Dark Lord picked up the statuette and looked closely at where the paint had chipped, he grazed the area with his fingernail and more black paint mixed with white plaster dust flaked onto his impeccable desk. Harry and Ginny watched in apprehension as Voldemort drew in a loud breath, and his back contracted. With a shriek, he grabbed the bird and flung it next to his desk at the balcony whose tall windows shattered as the statue went through them and broke into a dozen pieces when it hit the veranda. The Dark Lord whipped around, wand in hand, and turned his livid red gaze towards the redhead who was yanked up to her feet by Harry who threw his arms around her waist and Disapparated to Voldemort’s scream of rage.



When they landed at their destination, Harry dropped Ginny onto the grass right outside of Hogwarts. He waved his wand over her, taking the silencing and body-bind spell off, after which Ginny stood up tentatively and looked around at her surroundings. Harry watched her silently, mixed emotions in his eyes.



She smiled and twirled around. “Oh, how I miss Hogwarts!” She took Harry’s hand and led him through the doors to the Entrance Hall, and into the Great Hall where the tables had been put away for the summer, only the grand chandelier hung from the ceiling.



“This is where our table was,” Ginny said motioning to an area of the empty space. “You would sit there.” She pointed to a spot on her left. “I would always look at you when you weren’t looking, one time I even poured sugar onto my eggs instead of salt because I was so distracted by you.”



Ginny smiled fondly before turning to face Harry, she went up to him and placed her hands on his chest. “And now I finally have you.”



She closed her eyes and brought her lips towards his, Harry grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away holding her at arm’s length. Ginny’s eyes opened up alarmingly fast as she stared at Harry.



“I am done with your games, tonight you come clean.”



“But, Harry I have no more secrets, I –”



“Give it up, Gin, you lost,” Harry said, a smirk on his face. “For the first time you were beat at your own game. I have a basic understanding of what your play was, but I just need you to confirm the details.”



Ginny’s eyes were wide open, her mouth open and gasping like a fish out of water.



“You’ve always hated having been born poor; I remember you despised wearing second-hand clothing and being treated like filth by the upper-class for being a Weasley. You wanted to belong to them, so you decided to take a page out of the Slytherin’s book for a chance to be accepted by them. You used your pretty face and body to charm Malfoy and work your way up the pureblood ladder, once you had him in your pocket you snared Rodolphus Lestrange who had seniority over Draco, and while lower in rank than Malfoy because of his lesser fortune, Voldemort would have listened to him over Draco any day.”



“Harry, where are you getting this from? I –”



“Come on, Ginny, drop the act. You know it is true, don’t you?” Harry asked, pulling her towards him so that she looked into his eyes. Ginny’s innocent façade quivered as she looked down before looking back up at him, her eyes hard. “Yes.”



“After Draco proposed, and you accepted, you had to go meet the Dark Lord by which time a good word had already been put in for you by Lestrange; so you seduced Voldemort and began seeing him as well. From what Voldemort told me, you already knew about the Maltese Phoenix’s existence; however, you wanted it for yourself, but you knew he would never give it to you so you convinced him to send you along with your husband and Lestrange to retrieve the bird. Voldemort didn’t know you had Lestrange in your pocket, he didn’t think you would try to steal it. Am I correct so far?”



He tightened his hold on her upper arms to dissuade her from lying.



“Yes,” Ginny said meekly.



“Once in Constantinople you retrieved the Phoenix from Kemidov and told Malfoy that you should keep it for yourselves. However, he was always deathly afraid of the Dark Lord and turned down your offer, so you turned to Rodolphus who you knew would be in on it not only because you were sleeping with him, but because Voldemort had been sleeping with Bellatrix, and he had never been able to do anything about it. What I’m not clear about is how you got Voldemort to come to Constantinople so that you could have Draco walk in on you two, yet you still got to keep the bird instead of your master taking it.”



Ginny shrugged. “He had been on a trip when we got it so Draco and Rodolphus didn’t get to tell him we had it, and he didn’t really talk about the bird with me so he didn\'t expect me to say anything about it. Whenever the Dark Lord contacted me or viceversa, it was always just for sex so there was nothing really for me to plan, that’s just how it always was.”



“So, after Draco walked in on you two, which I am sure Rodolphus helped orchestrate, Malfoy was in no mind to tell Voldemort about the bird, and so Voldemort assumed you hadn’t gotten it yet and left?” Harry pressed on, his green eyes digging into her brown ones. She nodded.



“Draco started beating you and he was stopped by Rodolphus after which you had Malfoy arrested for domestic violence and thus, got rid of him that way. You and Rodolphus fled to Hong Kong where you made a plaster copy of the bird and gave the real one to the Paloma’s muggle captain so that you would have time to get rid of Rodolphus while knowing the bird was safely on its way to Britain. By this time, Voldemort had gotten a wind of your treachery, and he sent Macnair to Constantinople to investigate; once there he found out about Malfoy’s incarceration and broke him out. On the other side of the pond, you and Rodolphus were now back in London hiding out. You told me that Rodolphus believed the Phoenix had been stolen from your rooms; however, Voldemort told me that you got Rodolphus to go to the Port with you by telling him that the ship with the bird was arriving, so which is it?”



“Both, I sent the real one with the Muggle and kept the fake in our room. I charmed the fake so that when the cleaning lady touched it it would disappear, and so Rodolphus would think the bird had been stolen. One morning when Rodolphus was out of the hotel room, the cleaning lady came, and after she touched the portkey bird and was transported, I took some fainting potion so it would look like Draco had stunned me and taken the bird. When Rodolphus woke me up, I told him that Draco had taken the phoenix so as to present it to Voldemort along with our treachery. We rushed back to London to kill Malfoy, but then Rodolphus met with another Death Eater in secret who told him that Draco had returned empty-handed that morning from Constantinople. Rodolphus came to me in a rage and threatened to kill me; left with no choice, I told him about the ship.” Ginny stopped here and swallowed. “He said that he would get the bird from the muggle, present it to the Dark Lord along with me, and use that to have his life spared. I couldn’t have this, and so I went looking for you to help me get rid of him.”



“So you came, and spun us a yarn to get us to shadow Rodolphus. That night you told Rodolphus that the ship was arriving, and so you went to pick the bird up. Once you were at the port you pointed Ron out who was polyjuiced as Macnair, and told him that the Dark Lord must’ve sent him to kill you two and that Rodolphus should kill him first. However, Rodolphus refused because he knew Macnair was a better dueler and jumped in the channel and swum away. You had hoped that Rodolphus would attack Ron because you knew your brother could easily defeat and kill him, and if Rodolphus won and killed Ron, he would be apprehended for Ron’s murder and go to Azkaban where he would stay to evade your master’s wrath. Either way you would’ve won, but neither of these things happened, and so you killed Ron because you knew we would assume Rodolphus had done it, and if we caught him, he wouldn’t deny it because Azkaban would be a safe haven for him. Ron’s coat was buttoned up when we found him, he hadn’t even attempted to draw his wand out because what could he have to fear from his little sister, right?”



Harry tightened his grip on Ginny who winced slightly.



“Rodolphus was convinced that Voldemort was trying to kill him now, and that no matter what he presented to him, his life would not be spared; so he decided to make a run for it. Unfortunately, he was caught by his master, and murdered. When you found out, you realized that Rodolphus had probably told Voldemort everything about your treachery, and so you came back to me for help. You spun me another yarn, and jumped to bed with me to get me to stop questioning you and aid you.”



“Not really, I have always had feelings for you, Harry,” Ginny piped in. “I had sex with you because I wanted to, I promised myself that you were the one for me and that I would never again sleep with anyone else because I loved –”



“Yet you did Voldemort the next morning.”



“My life was at stake!”



Harry smiled. “Exactly, you seduced Draco and got him to marry you to escape poverty, you bedded Lestrange to get rid of Malfoy and get closer to the Dark Lord, you slept with Voldemort to get the Phoenix, you slept with me to get me to help you and stop questioning you . . . see a pattern, yet?”



Ginny was eyeing him with angry, tear-filled eyes.



“The day The Paloma arrived, you went to the Harbor, got the bird, killed the captain so that he couldn’t be questioned by Voldemort, and went to find your husband. He wouldn’t give you the spell, so you killed him –”



“I didn’t kill him, he killed himself,” Ginny hissed.



“How did Voldemort get Hermione?”



“Voldemort came back to the penthouse where Malfoy had just killed himself, I was searching his pockets for the spell, but he didn’t have it. I struck a deal with Voldemort that if I gave him the bird and helped him get the spell, he would spare me. So I did, and then he said that Draco had probably given you the spell, so he asked me to lure you to the mansion. I called Hermione and told her to come to my hotel room to help me move some things, when she came I stunned her and brought her to the mansion.” Ginny bit her lip and shrugged. “I wanted to be with you, though, because I loved you, and so I told Voldemort to tie me up along with Hermione so that it would look like he had kidnapped me, too.”



Harry sneered. “The only reason why you want to be with me is so that I can take the fall for Ron’s murder.”



Ginny’s eyes widened, “No, Harry! Of course not, and besides Ron’s murder can be attributed to someone else, we can come up with something.” She moved closer to Harry and tried to kiss him.



“So, now you’re trying to get me to help you pin your crime on some innocent person?” He let out a bark of laughter. “Well, I’ve got news for you, I am turning you in.”



Ginny’s eyes widened, the color draining from her face. “Harry, you can’t do that! They’ll kill me!”



“The rightful punishment for someone who murders their own sibling for greed,” Harry hissed tightening his hold on her upper arms.



“Harry, I’m not proud of it! I regret it. Ever since I got close to you I wanted nothing more of my original plan, I love you, Harry, and I just want to be with you.”



“Of course you do, otherwise who would protect you from big, bad Voldemort, no?” Harry said mockingly. Ginny started crying, Harry smiled.



“Where’s the real Phoenix?”



Ginny sniffed. “I don’t know, I thought the one I gave Voldemort was the real one.”



Harry smiled, and chuckled silently. Ginny looked up.



“So, how does it feel to be speaking the truth for the first time?”



Ginny stared at him at a loss of words.



“When you made the two copies in Hong Kong, you got them mixed up. You turned the real one into a portkey which was sent out with the cleaning lady, and you killed and betrayed this whole time for the fake, plaster copy that was on the boat.”



Ginny’s crying had stopped; her tears were now glistening in her eyes as the full realization of her actions hit her.



“I did research on the bird and found out that there was a very fine inscription around the eyes of the Phoenix. When I asked to see the one Voldemort had, I saw that it lacked the inscription, and that it is why I gave him the spell, I knew nothing would happen.”



Ginny swallowed, and blinked away tears as a smile graced her face. “I don’t know where I sent the portkey bird to, but at least now it is safe from Voldemort.” Ginny placed her hand on his chest. “Harry, remember when I told you that I was keeping secrets from you but it was all to accomplish a greater good? Well it is done and now we can be together.”



Harry sniffed. “How daft do you think I am?” He then drew out his wand and raised it high over his head letting out red sparks.



“Harry!” Ginny snapped as he finished calling the Aurors. “You can’t do that!”



“Why not?”



“Because I’m pregnant,” she whispered looking up at him with doe eyes, “and if I get sent to Azkaban, Voldemort will break me out and kill the baby and I. You can’t let him hurt your baby, Harry, your parents gave their lives for you when you were a baby.”



Ginny let out a cry and a gasp as Harry backhanded her. His eyes were on fire and his lips were set in a line.



“Don’t you fucking dare bring my parents into your manipulations, and if you really are pregnant, then why are you worried about what your master will do to you? I am sure he will spare you until his child is born.”



“But, Harry, it is yours,” Ginny said in a high voice tainted with desperation. Harry tightened his hold on her arms and jerked her forwards roughly. “I am infertile thanks to your master’s attack on me when I was a baby.”



What little color was left in Ginny’s face completely drained as she finally realized she had hit a dead end. With a cry like a banshee, she went down on her knees. Harry let go of her and let her sob into her hands as he stepped away and withdrew his wand which he pointed at her. Just then four Aurors rushed into the Entrance Hall. Harry shot them a glance, and then grabbed Ginny by the arm dragging her towards the men before giving her one final shove so that she stumbled and landed in the arms of the guards.



“You all know she’s a Death Eater, but she also murdered Ron,” Harry said briefly, and without a second glance stalked past them towards the grounds where he Disapparated with a pop.