Stumbling back from Astronomy class in the darkness of the Hogwarts corridors, Jessica groaned. It had been almost a year since the Triwizard Tournament had ended and Zebediah Killgrave had returned to Durmstrang, but she knew she would never be the same.
Somehow, nobody had realised that strong-willed Jessica had been being controlled by the Imperius Curse to spend all of her time with — and sleep with — Killgrave. Had she been cursed to behave as if she'd been in love with him? The tragic part was, not at first. Only when she started to realise how wrong everything was and in his words, "act out".
She'd tried turning to firewhiskey, but nothing quite matched the level of weightlessness she'd had whilst under the Imperius Curse. She told herself she needed to have some level of oblivion before she recovered, but she kept on pushing away recovery.
Someone had stupidly left a cauldron on the floor right by the wall, and Jessica tripped over it. As she fell to the ground, she noticed white light coming from the doorway of a room a few feet away.
She still had her curiosity. That was one of the only things he hadn't managed to take away from her. So she crawled to the room, hoping it would be something interesting and not dangerous. The last time she'd gone wandering around the castle at night, she'd found a boggart. It had turned into him, whispering words to her about how they belonged together. She'd cast a Riddikulus spell and high-tailed it out of there.
The thing casting the light into the hallway was an ornate mirror, with writing on the frame. "Lumos," she whispered, putting the tip of her wand on the mirror.
When she saw what was in the mirror she gasped, feeling a pain in her chest.
It was him. With her. He was kissing her neck, and she was smiling. This wasn't a mirror designed to give people nightmares. No, it actually looked like she was in love in the mirror — there was no tightness around her eyes.
She pressed a hand to the mirror and fell to the floor, looking up at the couple. What did this mean? Was there some alternate universe where they were happy and he didn't feel the need to curse her? Whatever the mirror was meant to be, for her, it was another form of oblivion that was more effective than firewhiskey.
She spent hours there, eventually falling asleep curled up against the mirror.
When her sister Trish went looking for her the next morning, she found Jessica asleep but smiling, looking as happy as she'd been when they'd started Hogwarts. She bit her lip and carried Jessica out.
She never mentioned the incident to Jessica, but when Jessica went looking for the mirror the next night… and the next… it was gone.