Written for Those Voices The Mirror or Erised Competition
She was in front of the mirror again. It wasn't abnormal to find the new Ancient Runes professor staring at her own reflection. Daphne Greengrass had always been rather vain as a girl. She never grew out of that. This wasn't just an ordinary mirror, however. She learned about this mirror while she was still back in Hogwarts. She heard that god forsaken Potter-squad talking about it. It shows a person's deepest, innermost desire. It took her all of her school years to locate it, and even some of her teaching career.
When she was looking for it, she assumed she knew what she was going to be looking at when she seen the mirror. Herself with a big diamond ring and a modeling career. It had been her dream since she was a child. She wanted to marry a man with money, and she wanted to be known for modeling. She had they body for it, anyone could see that. She became the Ancient Runes professor instead, and to put the icing on the cake she was still single.
Needless to say her taste in man was lacking a certain thing called common sense. Theodore Nott turned out to be a Death Eater, she dated him in her fifth year. He was arrested shortly after the end of the war. Blaise Zabini was the ultimate player, she dated him in her sixth and seventh years, only to find out she was being used. He didn't want her just something warm and female.
Out of school she dated a few pureblood boys from Durmstrang. One cheated on her., one hit her, and another tried to sleep with her already married baby sister. Needless to say, she figured in the mirror she'd see herself married to a successful man, with a career in modeling.
She was only about half right. What she saw in the mirror sent Daphne Greengrass to the floor without warning. Draco Malfoy, Astoria's husband and the father of her child, had his arms wrapped around her waist as he slipped a diamond onto her ring finger.
She tried to deny it. She was not jealous of her little sister, she was happy for the girl. She was excited to be an aunt she loved little Scorpius to pieces. Sure, she was a little bitter that her younger sister married before her, it was generally unheard of for an attractive, well-off, pureblood girl to remain unmarried for even a year after graduation.
In fact, she was very surprised her parents hadn't arranged something. She wanted Draco Malfoy. She had a crush on him in school of course, but back then that was the guy everyone thought Pansy would fall for. Instead there the girl was married to Blaise. It surprised everyone when they announced their engagement, and then her pregnancy. Daphne had been the maid of honor, she took the same place in her sister's wedding too.
She didn't cry, it wasn't something Slytherin girls allowed themselves to do. They were the unemotional, cold, bitch type. They were manipulative and usually made perfect trophy wives. Here she was anyways, balling her eyes out. She felt guilty. This desire she had plagued her conscience, which wasn't something that usually bothered her either.
She'd never tell anyone what she saw in the mirror. Not a soul, and especially not her sister. It wasn't something she focused on. Her deepest desire was something that was inaccessible. She just tended to avoid her sister, and her husband. She definitely made sure never to be in a room alone with the man anymore.
She was a Slytherin girl, and Slytherin girls didn't cry. She had to admit she broke that rule quite often these days. More often than not the Ancient Runes professor cried herself to sleep at night, wishing for something that she could never, and would never, have.
