A/N: This will be a four or five chaptered fic. It's a response to Ashka's challenge on the HPFF forums. Enjoy :)

Mirrored Desires

Chapter One

"So what now?" Hermione asked, sighing as she sat down at the table in the small hotel room.

"I've been thinking we should perhaps go back to Hogwarts," Harry replied from his seat on the mouldy old sofa, "it might be a long shot but it's possible Voldemort may have hidden a Horcrux there."

It was nearing the end of October, and they'd been looking for the Horcruxes since the end of July. They'd left The Burrow the day after Bill and Fleur's wedding, at first travelling to Godric's Hollow as planned, and then going to Albania in September to look for any clues as to the whereabouts of the Horcruxes.

So far, they'd had no luck. Every lead they thought they'd found turned out to be false, and Harry was beginning to get annoyed with himself and with the task he had to fulfil.

"Will they let us back into Hogwarts?" Ron asked curiously, "It's shut."

"I know," Harry said, "but it's a place that would have been important to Voldemort. We can't leave it as a possibility that he won't have hidden one there."

"I suppose," Ron replied, "how will we do it? Through one of the secret passages?"

"Yes," Harry mused, "the one from the Shrieking Shack might be best. We also ought to go at night, less chance of being discovered."

"Do you think there's still people at Hogwarts?" Hermione put in, "Guards or something? I don't think they'd leave it completely empty, there's too many valuable things there."

"Well there's only one way to find out," Harry said grimly, "we'll just have to go and look. We'll go tomorrow night."

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Luckily for the three friends, the next night was overcast and gloomy. The clouds provided the perfect cover for moving through Hogsmeade unseen, but Harry still insisted that they put disillusionment charms on themselves; it couldn't hurt to be too careful.

Since leaving in July, they'd had no contact with any of the Order or the Weasley's, and that was how Harry wanted it to stay. He knew they were probably worried sick about them, but that couldn't be helped. If they were going to do this, they needed to keep it a secret – if Voldemort somehow found out they were trying to destroy his Horcruxes the consequences would be disastrous.

Still, Harry couldn't help but feel a longing for it all to be over. He wanted to end this, and soon. He wanted to be able to be with his friends like any other teenager, not having to worry about disillusionment charms and the fact that an evil megalomaniac wanted to kill him.

But for the moment, that was the way life was, and if he wanted the life of freedom at the other end, they'd have to keep going, keep trying to find ways of defeating Voldemort.

They were nearing the Shrieking Shack by this point, walking in silence, eyes alert. The night was still, the only sounds to be heard the hooting of an owl in the distance, and the scurrying of a fox in the hedgerow. The abandoned house rose tall and shadowy in the gloom, looking very much like something out of one of those horror films Dudley used to watch.

The door to the shack was old and falling from its hinges, so it wasn't hard to get inside. Once there, they made their way to the room that held the trapdoor, and still in silence, they lowered themselves into the hole in the floor.

"What do we do if there're Auror's crawling all over the school?" Ron whispered as they made their way down the rocky tunnel.

"Try and get past them," Harry replied, "but I don't think there will be. The Auror's have got far much more to do nowadays than patrol an empty school."

Nearing the end of the tunnel, Harry began to feel a little apprehensive about returning to Hogwarts. The last time he was there, it had been the day after Dumbledore's funeral, just before they were sent home.

Pushing the knot in the whomping willow, and climbing out of the passageway, he felt a wave of sadness overcome him as he looked up at the great castle and across its grounds.

Everything was still, no breeze to rustle the leaves of the trees and no students out after bedtime. It was eerie, and made Harry feel uneasy.

"Come on," he muttered to Ron and Hermione, "let's see if we can get in."

He led his friends not to the front doors of the school, but to an entrance on the west side of the castle. It was an entrance he and Ginny had found when they'd been taking a stroll in the grounds last summer. Half covered with ivy and not visible at first glance, they'd discovered that it led up to a small, dusty sitting room tucked away in the west wing of the castle.

Harry remembered how he'd checked the Marauder's Map and found no mention of it, and how he'd felt a strange feeling of pride that he'd found a secret passage that his Father had not.

At the time, he'd not told Ron and Hermione about the passage, he hadn't wanted to as the sitting room had provided the perfect place for he and Ginny to escape to when they wanted some time alone.

Pushing aside the ivy and lifting the latch, Harry was glad to find that the door wasn't locked in any other way, coming to the conclusion that no one else knew about it. Ron looked a little peeved that Harry hadn't told him about this entrance, but allowed Harry to lead them up the stairs without too much fuss.

When they entered the sitting room, Harry was surprised to find he was hit with a strong wave of nostalgia. Surprised, because it had only been five months or so since he and Ginny had come here. He was also hit by the sharp feeling of longing for her, something that happened nearly every day, but that he always tried to push away.

But now, here in this room where they'd whiled away lazy Sunday afternoons, kissing and talking and just being together, the feeling was almost overpowering.

But they had a task to do, and so he once more pushed the feeling away and left the sitting room, coming out onto the landing of the third floor. The door to the room was hidden behind a large tapestry, which he pulled back into place before peering around.

"Where to now?" Ron asked.

"Well, I had the idea that we could try and talk to the Sorting Hat," Harry replied, his voice just above a whisper, "the hat will have seen inside Tom Riddle's head, it may be able to help us."

"That's a good idea," Hermione said, sounding slightly annoyed that she hadn't thought of it herself, "but you know that'll mean trying to get into Dumbledore's office?"

"I know," Harry replied, "and we probably won't be able to get up there."

He didn't add that he wasn't even sure if he wanted to go into Dumbledore's office. But, nevertheless, it was a plan and so they began to make their way down the many staircases.

Everything in the school looked the same, the portraits on the walls, the empty classrooms that they passed with parchment still on the desks and equipment still lining the walls.

Although he'd walked through the school late at night like this before, he'd never been struck with such a sense of unease before. Back then, he'd always encountered one of the school ghosts or seen a prefect out doing their rounds. But now…now this emptiness was overbearing, unsettling.

He could tell that Ron and Hermione were feeling the same way; Hermione looked worried and had kept a deathlike grip on Ron's hand ever since they'd left the sitting room, and Ron's face was pale, his freckles standing out starkly on his fair skin.

Finally, they reached the stone gargoyle that guarded the entrance to Dumbledore's office, and it was here that Harry almost faltered, doubts creeping into his mind. But he forced them aside, and glanced at Ron and Hermione for reassurance, before speaking the password that he'd last seen Dumbledore use. Half expecting it not to work, he was a little surprised to hear the grating noise of the gargoyle moving aside, and so when the moving staircase appeared, he stared at it dumbly for several moments before Hermione nudged him slightly and he stepped onto it.

"This is strange," Ron muttered as they neared the top, and out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione elbow him in the ribs.

"It's all right, Hermione," he reassured, "it is strange."

All of a sudden, the stairs stopped moving. They had reached the top. With bated breath, Harry reached for the handle and pushed the heavy door open. It creaked loudly, as though it hadn't been opened for a while, and then they were standing in the office.

It looked the same as the last time Harry had been there, just like everything else in the empty school. Dumbledore's peculiar instruments still lined the shelves, his pensieve was still in its locked cabinet, and the Sorting Hat, what they wanted to find, was still standing tall and proud.

Harry tried not to look at the portrait of Dumbledore, but his eyes were drawn there anyway. He didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that the old headmaster was still sleeping in his frame, but there was nothing that could be done about it.

"So are we going to try and talk to the Sorting Hat?" Hermione asked.

Harry nodded, and moved across to the other side of the room. He was about to reach up and lift it down from the shelf, when something on the other side of the room caught his eye. It was half-hidden in an alcove, not immediately visible if you weren't looking at the right angle, but it was definitely there.

Lowering his hand, he began to walk towards it, his eyes fixed and dazed.

"Harry?" Ron asked, "What is it?"

"Look," Harry breathed, "over there."

Ron and Hermione came to stand next to him, and they too looked into the alcove.

"The Mirror of Erised!" Ron exclaimed.

"Yes," Harry replied, moving closer, "but it's not the same."

"What do you mean?" Ron asked, "It's definitely the mirror, look, there's the inscription 'Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi'."

"No, it's the same mirror," Harry said, now standing in front of it, "but it's different. I can only see my reflection."

"But…it's supposed to show your inner desires," Hermione said, "from what you told me in First Year and from what I've read, it always shows your inner desires. There's no way of switching it on and off, or anything like that."

By now, all three were standing before the mirror, gazing at their reflections in its glassy surface.

Harry reached out and touched the ornate gold frame, but jerked his hand away as though it had been burned.

"What happened?" Ron asked.

"It…there's some sort of magical charge around it…painful to touch." Harry replied, and was about to tear his gaze away from the mirror when its surface began to ripple, their reflections blurring as the glass undulated slowly.

"What's happening to it?" Hermione asked, her voice sounding slightly scared.

"I don't know," murmured Harry distractedly, as he reached his hand out to touch the rippled surface.

"Don't!" Hermione shouted, reaching out to try and stop Harry from touching the glass.

Harry ignored her, and carried on reaching towards the mirror. There was something entrancing, enticing about it, and he couldn't tear his eyes away. And then, suddenly, his fingers touched the rippling glass, and sank into its surface. His whole hand was now inside the mirror somehow, and it was only then that Harry seemed to snap out of whatever enchantment he'd been under, and tried to pull his hand away.

But he found he couldn't, it was stuck, and then he felt something pulling him through, something pulling on his hand from somewhere within the mirror, and the last thing he heard before being entirely engulfed by the undulating ripples, was the sound of Hermione screaming his name.

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A/N: Thanks for reading and please review!