Birds of a Feather

By: Sleeper3173

Chapter Two

A/N: There was such a massive positive response to this story that I am bowing to the masses and turning this from a one shot that was supposed to make you imagine what happens next, to a full-length fan fic. I hope you enjoy!

They were finally free of the Dursleys.

But they weren't free of the pain.

Harry had long assumed that the sensation of being squeezed through a tube while apparating was just that: a sensation.

It wasn't.

While it was impossible to know what Hedwig was feeling, his own pain had to be close to hers. His ribs, which if they weren't broken before, were certainly broken now. His skull felt like someone had dropped a 50-pound anvil on it. If he had been able to, he would have been screaming himself hoarse. It took every shred of his will to keep his mind focused on their destination.

With the eternity that always seems to pass when one is under extreme pain, Harry and Hedwig finally appeared outside Grimmauld Place with a crack loud enough to set off every car alarm on the block, and the magical shockwave stripped several nearby trees of their leaves. Luckily, no muggles were outside in the street to see their violent arrival.

Harry looked up at the front door of the building with some relief before he took an unsteady step forward, both his and Hedwig's faces coated with blood and tears of pain. That one step was all he took before he dimly realized two things. The first was that the effort to take that single step was too painful and his body went limp, and it was only another measure of extreme mental will so that he merely sank to his knees.

It was here that the second thing that became alarmingly apparent. There was already a massive amount of blood on the pavement, and it was slowly expanding. Panicking, he quickly checked Hedwig for a more serious injury that he had missed earlier then stopped dead. His face took on a blank look as he stared at the bleeding stump that was all that was that remained of his left hand. He had splinched himself, badly. His mind vaguely went back to his apparition lessons, and the instructor telling him that few splinches involved blood loss, but those that did had to be corrected immediately or the permanent loss of the affected limb was guaranteed. He had no doubt at all his hand was now lost… and that was the best-case scenario.

"Hedwig…" he said with a small whimper. "We are in a lot of trouble… I don't think we are going to make it."

Hedwig lifted her head to look at him.

"No Master Harry!" she exclaimed, her sudden fear giving her strength. "We are going to make it. We just have to get inside and contact Lupin."

Harry looked at her for a few seconds before nodding and using his wand to cast a tight binding spell above the stump of his hand to stop the blood loss. He tried not to look at the bone that was visible. Using each other for support, they managed to struggle back to their feet, and staggered drunkenly up the steps to the front door, a trail of blood left behind them on the street. It took him two tries to open the front door with his blood-soaked left hand before managing to get them inside.

"Master Harry." Hedwig gasped with pain. "I remember hearing Sirius telling Lupin that he had connected his house to the Floo network for emergencies. You need to…"

"I know." Harry gasped out, already steering them to the main fireplace. They passed the portrait of Mrs. Black, who didn't scream at them for a change, just looked at them with a strange expression on her face before walking out of her portrait. This struck Harry as unusual, but he quickly dismissed it as an irrelevant thought in the face of the current crisis.

Finally reaching the large fireplace, which in the past has been used to cook potions, the two of them sank to the floor in front of it. Panting with pain, Harry summoned the flowerpot to him, then cast an incendio at the remains of the wood in the fireplace, and soon as the flames settled down, tossed almost the entire pot into the flames. Not even waiting for the flames to settle down again, he pushed his head into the flames and called out Lupin's name.

Once his head stopped spinning, the first thing he noticed was how sparse Lupin's apartment was. More importantly, he didn't see Lupin anywhere in his range of sight.

"Lupin?" he called out hesitantly. When there was no answer, he tried to still the fear in his heart that Lupin was out.

"Remus Lupin!" he yelled out as loud as his painful ribs would let him. To his surprise, he heard a squeal of surprise and the sudden sound of items falling.

Suddenly, a door that Harry hadn't seen during his very brief initial glance around the room was wrenched open, and the sight that greeted his eyes would have left a healthier Harry Potter a blushing blabbering idiot.

"Harry! What are you doing here?" screamed a very nude, very sweaty, and a very very pissed off Nymphadora Tonks, her hair a flaming red that would have put the Weasley's to shame.

"You're supposed to… be... at… oh my god Harry!" Even from across the room, and through the flickering green flames, Tonks could see the large amount of blood coating the side of Harry's head.

Lupin, alerted by the sudden panic in Tonks' voice, barreled out of the other room pulling on a bathrobe. Harry just smiled, the pain in his head and the loss of blood starting to pull the veil of darkness over his eyes.

"Moony…" he said weakly. "Tonks... help us… Padfoot's place… please…"

The last of his strength utterly spent, his eyes closed, and his head started to fade from the fireplace.

"Harry!" screamed Tonks and leapt over the couch in front of the fireplace and latched onto Harry's ears, getting pulled through the Floo and out of the fireplace of Grimmauld Place. Lupin stood there in shock for a few seconds before hurrying to grab his medical kit and apparated away.

Tonks, meanwhile, was shocked by the scene that greeted her after tumbling out of the fireplace. Blood coated the ground, turning her skin red when her knees slipped, and she landed face first in it. When she got to her knees again, she saw a stunningly beautiful girl Harry's age with snow white hair pulling his head into her lap while repeatedly murmuring "Master Harry" softly. She went for her wand, then blushed slightly when she realized that not only was she still naked, but she hadn't even grabbed her wand before foolishly leaping for Harry's head.

"Who are you?" she asked the girl, who looked at her with tears coursing down her face.

"I know you won't believe me right now," she said softly, clearly in a lot of pain. "But I am Hedwig, Harry's owl." She grabbed Harry's wand and weakly handed it to Tonks. "Please… save him…"

Tonks's mouth dropped open.

"Hedwig?" she gasped, the multiple shocks in such a short amount of time almost overwhelming her.

"I can't… possibly… explain… what has happened…" Hedwig gasped out. "But please… just…save him…"

"What happened? How are you both so injured?" Tonks asked, using Harry's wand to run a medical diagnostic spell on first Harry, then on Hedwig.

"His uncle… attacked us…" Hedwig answered, almost on the verge of passing out as the adrenaline started to ease out of her system. "He hurt us pretty bad… don't worry about me… save… Master… Harry…"

At this point Lupin burst into the room, already very pale from the sight of so much blood on the street outside of the house and paled even more when he saw the bloody mess that greeted his eyes now.

"Nonsense." Tonks said with false cheerfulness. "We are going to save you both. Lupin is an expert at patching people up. Just relax, ok?"

Hedwig nodded once, then lost her fight to stay conscious and passed out. Lupin and Tonks stared at each other for a few seconds before nodding and going to work.

~B.O.A.F~

It was the ticking of a clock that was the first sound that made Harry realize that he was indeed alive and waking up. It took him a few tries, but he finally succeeded in opening his eyes slightly before immediately letting them shut again. The sunlight streaming into the room was too much for him to handle immediately.

He cracked his eyes open again and painfully waited for them to adjust to the light. When he was able to, he opened them fully, and then discovered that he wasn't wearing his glasses, and the room was barely more than a blur. Regardless, he looked around the room anyways, trying to see where he was. To his relief, even with the blurry vision, there was no disguising the silvery white hair that belonged to Hedwig in a bed next to him. The blurry rise and fall of her chest signified that she too was alive… as well as the fact that she was still in her human form.

After watching her for a few more minutes, he let his eyes continue their sweep of the room they were in. Even though he couldn't make out details, he quickly realized that they were in the makeshift infirmary the Order of the Phoenix has set up at Grimmauld Place. He heaved a small sigh, noticing that his ribs no longer hurt. Hedwig had been right; Lupin had been able to save them.

The soft sound of a throat clearing to his right attracted his attention, and he looked over to see his glasses floating in the air inches from his face. He gratefully grabbed them and slipped them on. As the world came into focus, he suddenly paled. Sitting in the chair next to bed was a flame haired, very pissed looking Tonks, who got up onto his bed and straddled his waist so that she could get her face right down to his.

"Harry Potter." She growled out. "If you should ever Floo call like that again and catch me naked… so help me god…"

She trailed off and Harry gulped and felt his forehead burst out in a nervous sweat. Suddenly, Tonks laughed as her face split into a wide smile and her hair shifted to its usual spiky bubblegum pink.

"You had best be able and ready to do something more than just look." She finished with a soft purr before grinding herself on him and giving him a wink and light kiss on the cheek close to his lips before getting off and sitting back down. Harry blushed so hard and so fast that he felt lightheaded and almost passed out again.

"Don't joke around like that Tonks." He finally managed to croak out.

"Who said I was joking?" Tonks replied with a smirk. "My fool of a mother named me Nymphadora for a reason, and you DID interrupt us before we were anywhere near done. Now don't go anywhere while I go get Remus. He'll be very happy to hear that you're awake."

Harry was left pondering what Tonks had meant as the metamorphmagus walked out of the room. Finally deciding that he would just ask her later, he turned his attention back to Hedwig. He still couldn't believe all that had happened to them, and more specifically, her. He hoped that Lupin would be able to tell why she had changed.

Before he could wonder any longer about what had happened, he heard the sound of someone running through the hallway outside and the door burst open, revealing a panting Remus Lupin with a smile wider than any Harry had ever seen on him.

"Harry!" he exclaimed as Harry sat up slowly in bed. "We thought you would never wake up!"

"How long have we been out?" Harry asked, already dreading the answer.

"Two weeks." Remus answered, his smile fading from his face. "It had only been the last couple of days that we were certain the two of you weren't going to die on us."

"How bad was it?" Harry asked, now suddenly scared to look under the covers where his left arm was. That feeling only got worse when Lupin looked away. "Tell me Remus."

"Look under the sheet Harry…" Lupin said softly.

Gritting his teeth, he gripped the sheets with his right hand, and then slowly drew out his left. He hissed in his breath when he saw not a stump, but a hand made out of gold. It looked exactly like the one that Voldemort had given Wormtail after he had completed the resurrection ritual. He flexed it and was amazed that he couldn't tell a single difference between this fake hand and his own.

"I'm sorry Harry." Tonks said softly from the doorway. "We went to your home as soon as you were stabilized and the police had left, but Petunia had already carried it outside and all that was left was some charred bone. Still not sure how she managed to pull that off. You may or may not be pleased to know that your uncle survived without lasting harm."

"I thought these hands were made of silver." Harry said softly, still flexing his hand, while trying to ignore the news about his uncle.

"You can actually make them from anything you want them to." Remus said. "It's just that silver looks better because it can fit in with most situations better. However, I know what you would think every time you saw the silver hand, so I chose to go with gold. I think it fits your personality better anyways."

Harry nodded and examined his new hand closely, particularly the coat of arms on the back of the hand, and the intricate patterns covering the rest of it.

"Who did it?" he asked curiously.

"Remus provided the power, I provided the design." Tonks said with a slight worry to her tone. "I thought that since no matter what you do its going to stick out, you might as well not make it plain. I looked up the Potter family crest and used it as the central design, then just let the rest flow onto it as it formed. Umm… do you like it?"

Harry looked at his hand for a few more seconds before smiling as wide as his weakened body would let him.

"I love it." He said, much to Tonks's relief. "How does it work?"

"Well…" Remus said slowly. "So as to not make it too confusing for you, it acts like the muscles are still connected to a real hand, so there is no hesitation in it doing what you want it to do. It's powered by your magic, but it takes no more energy than it took to keep your old hand alive. Don't worry; it won't fall off for any random reason."

Harry nodded, still staring at his hand.

"What else about us was injured?" he asked, still wanting to know the extent of Vernon's rage.

"Your skull was broken in the back and on the top." Remus answered with a sigh. "A piece of it broke the skin, which is why there was so much blood there. Frankly, we were both shocked that you were able to do as well as you did for as long as you did. The right side of your rib cage was completely shattered, shredding a lot of internal organs. Any longer and you would have died, magic healing or not."

"What about Hedwig?" Harry asked, his mind whirling around everything he had just heard.

"She had her left arm…err…wing…arm… completely shattered, as well as hair line cracks or breaks in most of her other bones. We feared that her skull might have been crushed, but all she had was a severe concussion. Don't worry. She'll be fine."

Harry fell back into the bed, feeling the tension leave his body. They had both made it.

A sudden thought crossed his mind and he slowly worked himself back upright to look Lupin in the eyes.

"How long did you say I was out again?" he asked slowly, not believing what he had thought he had heard before. Remus fidgeted.

"Two weeks" he finally answered. Harry groaned and buried his pale face in his hands. Merlin knew what had been going on since that night.

"I'm sorry Harry." Tonks said, sitting on down on his bed. "You two were just so badly injured that we kept you asleep rather than have you wake up and feel the pain we had to put you through in order to save you."

"After that." Remus continued. "We felt it was just a good idea for you two to wake up on your own rather than to force the issue, and let your bodies fully heal. We had some indications both of you would wake up today, just wasn't sure of when."

"We would have brought you to St. Mungo's," Tonks said. "But we know You-Know-Who has spies there to keep track of those who have been wounded in the battles against his forces. You wouldn't have stood a chance there."

Harry was about to make a comment about that, but movement in Hedwig's bed attracted his attention. To his joy, he saw Hedwig stir, then open her eyes. Like him, she quickly clenched her eyes till they got used to the bright light, but before long; they opened and soon latched onto his.

"Master Harry?" she said softly, almost uncertain that she really believed what she was seeing. Harry swallowed hard.

"I'm right here Hedwig." he said softly. "We made it. We're alive."

To everyone's shock, Hedwig bolted out of the bed and flung herself at Harry and started kissing him rapidly between small shouts of "Master Harry!"

Tonks giggled, clearly wanting to watch what developed, but Lupin had other plans. With a slight blush on his face, he gently tapped Hedwig on the shoulder, and she jumped in surprise.

"Umm…" she said, her face a delicate pink. "Sorry… I… umm…"

"It's ok Hedwig." Tonks said with a laugh. "We…" Lupin interrupted her with a small cough. "Alright, I, understand that reaction perfectly."

"However," Lupin said. "I think that it is important you two get down to the kitchen and start getting some real food into you. Then… we have a lot to talk about."

(A/N): Happy Fourth of July! Keep it safe and sane! As always, leave a review, and feel free to vote on the poll in my profile!