A/N: This is my first ever Hogwarts! AU. The general idea has been with me for a while, but I've only recently decided how I wanted to write it.
The title was taken from the song "Confrontation", from the Jekyll and Hyde Musical.
I also published this fic on AO3 (username: MidnightHalo27)
Disclaimer: The Magisterium book series belongs to Cassandra Clare and Holly Black, not me. The Harry Potter series belongs to J.K. Rowling.
I hope you like it! Reviews, kudos, etc are amazing! Constructive criticism is very welcome, but flames will be used to roast marshmallows.
I'm What You Face When You Face in the Mirror
by: GakuenAlicefan27
"I think I figured it out." Tamara announced, sitting across from Aaron and Call and smiling triumphantly.
Aaron raised an eyebrow in confusion, then looked at Call, silently asking what Tamara was talking about. Call shrugged.
"Figured out what?" He asked.
Tamara looked around, checking to see if anyone might be eavesdropping. The closest students were several seats away, basically on the other side of the room, but she still answered in a low voice.
"The location of the Alkahest."
Aaron stiffened, and Call choked on his food, which resulted in a coughing fit that took nearly a minute to die down.
The Alkahest was an instrument of incredible power, believed to be the key to winning the war against The Enemy of Death. It had been in Master Joseph's possession in the Great War, and he had used it to kill Verity Torres while Constantine Madden executed The Cold Massacre. It hadn't been seen since then though, and there were many rumors going around that claimed the Enemy's forces had hidden the weapon in a safe place, where it could be retrieved when they deemed fit.
Many mages had tried to find it over the years, but no one had succeeded. Call, Tamara, and Aaron had been trying ever since they found out Aaron was a Makar, but to no avail. Wherever the Alkahest was, it was well-hidden.
"Are you sure?" Call asked, voice raspy because of all the coughing.
"I can't be a hundred percent sure." Tamara admitted. "But I have a very good theory, and it won't hurt to check."
"Uh, not that I don't think finding the Alkahest is important, but I'm pretty sure Master Rufus is going to throw us to the giant squid if we sneak out of Hogwarts again." Aaron said, apprehensively drumming his fingers on the table.
"That's the thing, though." Tamara said, once again checking their surroundings just to make sure. "I believe the Alkahest is hidden in the school."
"What?" Call said, eyes wide.
"I was doing research in the library this morning, reading about magical artefacts," Tamara began explaining. "When I found a passage mentioning the Mirror of Erised. You know what it is, don't you?"
Aaron nodded. "It's a mirror that shows a person their deepest heart's desires, isn't it? What does that have to do with the Alkahest?"
"I thought this was its only use too." Tamara said. "But today I found out that the Mirror of Erised can also be used as a kind of safe to protect magical objects. According to what I read, it was used at least once to hide a philosopher's stone, and it worked very well."
"So you think the Mirror is being used to protect the Alkahest?"
"Exactly."
"But we don't know where the Mirror of Erised is. How can you say that it's in the school?"
"My parents told me." Call looked at her in disbelief. "Well, okay, they didn't tell me specifically, but I overheard them talking about it a few years ago, when they thought I had already gone to bed. They said it was in the Room of Requirement."
Aaron frowned. "How does that work? Isn't the room ever changing?"
"It is. It changes according to what a person needs, so if you need to hide something, it becomes a room full of junk and other things people have hidden over the years."
"But why would Master Joseph choose to hide the Alkahest within the mirror then? If it's here, it sounds like too much of a risk."
"It's brilliant, actually. Don't you see?" Tamara said. "No one would think to look for the Alkahest in Hogwarts."
Call made a face. "I see how it could be brilliant, but I also see how it could backfire spectacularly."
Tamara grinned so sinisterly it sent a shiver down Call's spine. "We'll make sure it does."
And to think he was supposed to be the Evil Overlord.
~x~
Getting into the Room of Requirement was easy; they had done it before when they had needed a place to keep Havoc without anyone finding out. The logistics were a bit different, since imagining a room for Havoc was not the same as imagining a room to hide things, but that wasn't too challenging either.
The problem, as it turned out, had been when they were faced with the Mess™ that the room for hidden things proved to be.
"It's gonna take a decade to look through it all." Call said.
Tamara bit her lip. "We don't need to look through it all. It's a big mirror, so we won't need to check inside drawers and such."
"Half a decade then." Aaron murmured, and Tamara flickered them both in the ear.
"Less talking, more searching. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish. Come on!"
~x~
In a typical white-person-in-a-horror-movie move, they decided to split up. Aaron, he could understand, but Call had seriously expected better from Tamara. If they got murdered by some psycho who liked to live in cluttered, disappearing rooms, Call would like his tombstone to have the words "IT WAS THEIR FAULT", with an arrow pointing at Aaron and Tamara's graves.
He cursed, taking in the halls upon halls of objects; some looked recent, while others looked like they had been in the room for some good centuries. He had already been looking for at least an hour, but there had been no sign of any mirror at all.
Call looked around to see if he could spot either Aaron or Tamara, but there was no trace of them. He looked back, and realized that he had long ago lost track of the path he had previously taken; it would be just his luck if he couldn't find his way back after all this.
He muttered another curse, angrily stomping around a corner, when he saw it:
It was not a particularly beautiful mirror; its frame was made of old wood, plain and dull with no design or pattern carved into it. It was big though, with at least two feet in height that made it stand out from the junk strewn all over the room.
That being said, his attention was soon diverted to what the Mirror was showing him, despite his knowledge of tales about people who had gone mad looking into it, and it was in that precise moment Call felt his heart plummet to his stomach.
Instead of his reflection, Constantine Madden stared back at him.
For a moment, Call was too stunned to register what he was feeling, his eyes fixated on the figure staring back at him from inside the Mirror. Then, he felt a terror, sudden and fierce, like nothing he had ever felt before spread from his chest to every inch of his body. Trembling, he tried to take a step back, and Constantine mimicked the motion; a faithful reflection.
He knew this was Constantine, even though he'd never seen a picture of the man in his life, because of the disfigured half of his face and because of the eyes. The same storm gray eyes Call saw every day when he looked at an ordinary mirror.
"It's the eyes", Master Joseph had said.
Call felt a scream build up in his throat, but he was frozen in place, too shaken to let it out. Or maybe he had let it out, he couldn't be sure.
It's wrong. He wanted to yell. The Mirror got it wrong. Call didn't want to become Constantine again; Call was not evil. He wasn't interested in power or glory or conquering death.
He began hyperventilating, but the image didn't change. Call could only stand there shaking like a leaf as his mind came up with the scariest thoughts, like the notion that the Mirror didn't make mistakes, and if Constantine was what Call saw, then there must be a small, hidden part of Call's heart that was corrupted; that there must be some part of him that still yearned for everything Constantine wanted to attain.
That Call was wicked in his core and he was gonna end up hurting people sooner or later.
"Call!" Someone said, but Call couldn't bring himself to knowledge it over the dread that had settled in his bones.
They called again, closer this time, and in a few seconds Aaron was standing in front of him, blocking his vision of the Mirror. "Call, what's wrong? Why did you scream?" Call tried to say something, but nothing came out.
Aaron turned towards the Mirror. "What are you looking –?!" He didn't finish the sentence. Call heard the breath catch on Aaron's throat, and then watched as his knees buckled and he fell, looking pale as a ghost, and clearing Call's view.
Except the Mirror was not there anymore. Instead, in its place was a pile of bodies: Tamara's, Aaron's, Master Rufus', their friends'; all of them with open, lifeless eyes. Call stared transfixed at his own dead body in the pile, not understanding what was going on.
"Boys!" Tamara cried out, running to them from the other side of the hall. She took in Aaron's terrified face and Call's shocked one and ran faster.
When she got to them, her eyes instantly fell on the scene they were staring at. She stumbled momentarily, but her expression was quick to harden. Then, in a movement so fluid Call barely had the time to register, she took out her wand and said:
"Riddikulus!"
Call blinked as the pile of bodies swiftly changed into a bunch of deflating air balloons. The sound they made as the air slipped out was so comic that Call couldn't help but laugh.
Almost immediately, the balloons disappeared, flying over to a closet that shut itself. Call stared at it for a few seconds, and it was only then that his poor scrambled mind caught up to what had happened.
"Oh." He thought, feeling like a huge weight had been lifted from his chest. "That wasn't the Mirror of Erised." His eyes prickled with tears, but they were of relief, so he let them fall.
Aaron, who was slowly getting out of the boggart's terror-induced state, got up from the ground on shaky legs. He heaved a great sigh, then looked at Call and Tamara and pulled them both into a fierce hug.
They stayed like that for a while, and when they separated, Tamara took hold of their hands and tugged lightly, indicating for them to follow her. "Let's go." She said. "We've searched enough for today."
And if neither let go of her hand, they weren't ashamed of it.
A/N: Thank you for reading!
You can find me on tumblr as agarotado27dejunho