Luna Lovegood watched with horrified eyes as the thing that used to be her mother looked at her with eyes that were no longer human. She backed away on trembling legs, head shaking in denial but unable to tear her gaze away from her mother's, the thing's, own eyes. The mirrors that had replaced her mother's eyes bulged as if something was trying to break out of them, and her mother let out a high-pitched, utterly inhuman blibbering sound as the bulges stretched outwards.
The shadows beneath the mirror surfaces rushed forwards, and Luna fell backwards as they burst out, hitting her head on the edge of the bench behind her. When she finally opened her eyes again her mother was collapsed in front of her, unbreathing.
The aurors ended up ruling that her death was a spell-crafting accident.
oOo;
Harry Potter listened avidly to the librarian reading the story to the children clustered around her. It was a fascinating story about a girl named Alice, a White Rabbit, and a Queen of Hearts. Eventually he had to go or else be late getting home from school and get punished.
He ended up dreaming about Wonderland for many nights afterward, and his dreams caught the attentions of something Wonderful.
oOo;
Alice shook her head at the rabbit. "I can feel him calling me! I just can't find a way to get to him. It's like he's stuck in a block of glass or something, somewhere the Maze doesn't reach," she explained in a frustrated tone of voice. "You can feel it too, you know he's been chosen just like I was!"
The White Rabbit nodded. "Him, and the other one, that girl. I haven't been able to get to her, either. We might have to wait until they descend on their own..."
She scoffed at the rabbit, "No, no no no! What if the Caretakers find them first? Or the Deconstructionists? We can't wait until then, we have to save them before anything worse happens to them. Did you see, in his dreams? They're not feeding him!"
They both shuddered as reality itself flexed in response to her declaration, and the White Rabbit nervously nodded in response. "Yes, you're right of course, we must get him away from there as soon as possible," he said, relaxing slightly as reality returned to its normal, static state.
oOo;
'As soon as possible' ended up taking literal years. However he was being protected, it wasn't easy to breach, and while they tried, Harry Potter was accepted into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
oOo;
"Here, come quickly!" called the White Rabbit. "He's visiting the mirror again!"
Alice rushed over to the portal. Harry was sitting on the floor right outside, staring into the mirror with a longing gaze. His forehead drew her attention as she let out a small gasp. "What is that in his head?" she asked. It was pulsing, a malignant bundle of darkly-emanating vileness. He didn't seem to be aware of it but she could see it soaking up his aura with every pulse.
"I don't know," the rabbit answered. "Whatever it is will have to be removed, it looks like it's slowly eating him. We might have to have one of them help."
"No, I don't like that idea at all. What about the Makers? One of them could remove it without a problem, right?" she asked in response.
The White Rabbit sighed. The Makers were distant at the best of times, and besides... "What if it twists him?" he thought out loud.
Alice shrugged. "Think about who he is, what he is. He won't come out worse for wear, will he? Wonderland would never let that happen," she said with certainty as she stepped forward and stood in the portal. "Besides, our time is up. He's got company."
The rabbit nodded and said, "I suppose you're right. Let's get him to a Maker, then." The Whorl behind Harry looked dangerous.
oOo;
'I show not your face but your heart's desire,' Harry read silently to himself. 'Mirror text for a mirror.' It made sense, but the blond girl he saw in the mirror didn't feel like his heart's desire at all. Harry was fairly certain he'd never seen, imagined, or even dreamed of her before. She wore a blue dress with a white smock over the top and was young, maybe all of seven years old, and was grinning at him.
He really wished that it would show him his family again. This was the third time he had decided to go out wandering after everyone had gone to bed, and now here he was again in front of the mirror holding an invisibility cloak.
He considered the girl in the mirror who now appeared to be beckoning him forward. He stepped forward as she held her arms out while thinking, 'I know this is stupid, all I'm going to feel is glass. I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't be looking at this trap.'
Another step forward, and he heard the distinct sound of the doorknob being turned and someone opening the door and stepping into the room. The girl in the mirror peeked in the direction of the door and then motioned him urgently forward.
As he touched the glass he heard the familiar voice of the Headmaster saying, "Back again, Harry?"
And then as he turned to look, his hand slid through the glass and the girl grabbed it and pulled him in.
oOo;
They tumbled to the ground with him halfway on top of her. He could feel her breathing rapidly and when he got up he could see her eyes open wide with fright, locked on something behind him. Turning around he jumped backwards and then scrambled back away from the mirror as quickly as he could.
Professor Dumbledore was examining the mirror. That wasn't scary. The twisting column of pale light he was surrounded with wasn't really scary either. The big shadowy thing behind him that had its arm in him, moving him around like a puppet was much scarier.
"Wh-what is that? What's it doing to him?" came the questions tumbling out.
The girl slowly got up and backed several paces away from the mirror before she answered, and Harry was quite glad to keep to her side. "The mirror is a doorway. The old man there is a whorl. I don't know what that other thing is," she explained in a shaky voice. "We're safe now. Whorls can't follow us into the Linear Maze."
Eyeing the twisting column of light Harry asked, "Whorl? Is that the spinning-"
"-light. Yes," the girl answered. Taking one more step away she turned to him and with a curtsy introduced herself, "My name is Alice. Pleased to meet you."
Harry watched the Dumbledore-puppet wave its wand at the mirror. The motions seemed agitated. Shaking his head slightly he nodded politely to the girl and replied, "My name is Harry. Harry Potter. What's happening?"
Before he could ask anything else she interrupted with, "I'm here to save you, Harry. And I'm here to give you a very important message."
"Save me from-," he started to ask.
"Save you from that!" She pointed at the Dumbledore-puppet. "But not just that. We're here to save you from everything bad in your life. You wished for someone to help you for years and years, but we couldn't get to you until now. I'm sorry, we tried and tried and tried, but we couldn't find you until just now!" She sounded desperate and sad and almost like she was begging him to understand.
Harry looked down at his feet and mumbled, "It's okay, I'm fine really. It wasn't really that bad." He heard a cough from behind the girl, and saw a white rabbit nearly as big as he was wearing a waistcoat.
Suddenly the young girl was clinging to him, and almost sobbing as she said, "B-but we tried! You belong here, with us, n-not with th-that thing! And never with the people that hurt you so much, never with them ever again!"
"My uncle and aunt, and my cousin?" Harry asked.
She nodded into his shirt and then pulled away from him a little with a sniffle. "Oh!," she said in a slightly happier tone, "the message! Harry, you are Wunderkind, and Wonderland loves you. We'll always be here for you."
"Wunderkind? Wonderland, um with the White Rabbit and the Hatter and the Duchess and the Queen?" Harry asked while searching his memory for the rest, but it had been several years since he'd listened while the librarian read the book to the children's group there.
The rabbit nodded.
"But how can Wonderland love me? Isn't that like saying that my cupboard likes to cuddle me?" he asked.
In a slightly firmer tone of voice she stated, "That cupboard should be charged with child abuse!"
Harry blinked at her with a small frown. 'She looks only seven or so, but she isn't acting like it at all.' Carefully he looked over Alice again, confirming his first opinion. She was something like four or five years younger than him.
"Wonderland does love you, Harry. You and just one other person," Alice said with a nod. She started away from the Mirror-portal with the proclamation, "We need to rescue her soon too, before she turns into a Whorl too!"
oOo;
The Linear Maze isn't much of a maze,' Harry thought to himself. 'It doesn't curve or anything, it's just all one big straight line.' He was following Alice away from the Mirror-portal, glad to leave the Dumbledore-puppet behind. Thinking of it again he had to fight off another shudder.
"Alice," Harry asked, "how can this be a maze? There aren't any turns or anything, it's all in a row!"
Alice nodded and answered, "It's because it's one long straight line that it works so well, Harry. Whorls can't follow it, they have to curve around instead of going straight."
"How do they turn into Whorls?" Harry asked.
Alice shrugged. "I don't really know, but most people at this school are already Whorls. Even if you can't see the Whorl, you can tell because they do the same things over and over again instead of changing to make things easier," she explained. "Like that blond-haired boy that you keep meeting-"
"Malfoy," Harry noted.
"-Malfoy, yes. He keeps acting the same way over and over, right?" Alice asked.
Thinking over the school year so far, Harry nodded.
"Your aunt and uncle and cousin are all whorls too," Alice said. "They do the same things over and over again and again too."
"Who else are we going to rescue, Alice?" he asked.
"Her name is Luna, and she was chosen when her mother died. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but Wonderland noticed her then," Alice answered. "We haven't been able to find her. She's like you, a magician, but she hasn't gone to that school you were in yet."
A thought occurred to Harry. "I bet Hedwig could find her!" he said. "She can find anyone, I bet. We could write her a letter!"
She nodded distractedly. He noticed that she had been giving his forehead sidelong glances for a while now, and with a sigh he pushed his hair out of the way so that she could see his scar. "Here, go ahead and look. It seems like everyone wants to see my scar," he said somewhat angrily.
She looked startled and hurriedly explained, "No, it's not your scar I was looking at! It's the thing um... inside the scar."
The rabbit nodded in agreement and added, "We're looking for a Maker to help us remove it from you. Whatever it is, it looks almost like it's trying to eat you, or at least your magic."
Harry blinked. 'Something in my scar, trying to eat me? Looking for a what? Maker?' he thought. "What's a Maker?" he asked the rabbit.
"Looking Glass Makers build and maintain the Linear Maze," the rabbit explained. "They're really really good at building things and taking things apart, and so one of them might be able to help remove that thing from your scar."
Alice made a small sound of satisfaction, and pointed. "There's one! Let's go," she said.
Harry looked towards where she pointed. Apparently a Looking Glass Maker was half a meter taller than he was, and made out of some weird combination of metal and flesh. It was spinning stuff out of nothing, and building a room with it, furniture and all. When it noticed them approaching it stopped, and then it took a step towards Harry, reached out, and...