(A.N.) The Author makes no attempt to apologise for the leaving of such a gaping abyss between chapters, knowing such a gesture is futile by this point. Instead, he simply turns his heavy eyes upon the date of the last update, which reads: "3rd February, 2012". The Author throws his head back and, in his best Liz Lemon impersonation, cries into the night"Blerg!"

In all seriousness: My bad. Here's Chapter 7...


The storm had left puddles on the floor of the Astronomy tower. For the last half hour since the storm had worn off, they had been sitting silently, motionless. But now, they started to ripple.

A peculiar, wheezing, groaning noise cut through the still night air, and a blue box gradually appeared at the top of the tower.

The TARDIS doors swung open, and a breathless Hermione Granger stuck her head out.

"So we travel through the dimensions…"

The Doctor bounded out of the box.

"…and end up here!" he finished for her, extending his hand for her to take as she too stepped out of the TARDIS and onto the stone floor.

Next out of the box was a sullen-faced Ron, who made a sarcastic whistling noise.

"Ooh, we've moved through time and space - magic!"

He was followed by a quiet Harry, who, while not sharing Ron's resentment for everything the Doctor said or did, was nevertheless not happy that the man they were placing their trust in seemed to be taking the situation so lightly. Because it wasn't a time for laughing, as Harry couldn't stop telling himself. It really wasn't.

"Look," said Ron. "Your box is great and everything, Doctor, but I'm still not sure I even understand what's going on. There's still questions you haven't answered."

The Doctor let go of Hermione's hand (noticing that that was where Ron's glare seemed to be directed) and placed his hands in his pockets, smiling pleasantly.

"Like what?"

"For starters, how exactly can the Angel conquer the universe with a mirror?"

"Oh, Ron," the Doctor groaned, "You're cleverer that that, come on! It's not just any mirror. It's a mirror filled to the brim with magic specifically meant to create images of people's deepest desires. And Angels, as they've already proven once today, have a special talent for taking images and making them their own. If the Angel absorbs the power from the mirror it will have the ability to make anything it pictures in it's twisted, sadistic cesspool of a mind a reality."

"And what would it picture?" asked Harry, speaking up now that they were back to serious business and not watching the Doctor give Hermione a crash-course on how every button and lever on the TARDIS console worked. "What would the Angel's deepest desire be?"

"I don't even want to imagine," said the Doctor, shivering slightly at the thought. "But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say something evil."

"But it's a mirror!" said Ron. "If the Angel looks into it, it'll be looking at itself and it won't be able to move. Shouldn't we just let the Angel find it?"

The Doctor gaped at him for a second, then began clapping his hands wildly.

"Ding, ding, ding!" he sang. "Congratulations, Ron Weasley, for 'Worst Idea In History'! The Angel is not a fool. It's not going to look directly into the mirror. And even if it did, we'd then have another image of an Angel, so if someone ever moved the first one from looking at it's reflection, we'd have two Lonely Assassins running about Hogwarts."

"What about this, then" asked Hermione, holding up the invisibility cloak that the Doctor had insisted they bring. "The Angel seemed very upset when we stopped it getting a hold of this. Is it part of the plan?"

The Doctor took the cloak from her and ran his fingers through the material.

"Probably not," he said. "Probably didn't even know such things existed until it saw this in the corridor. But if the Angel gets hold of this our problem goes from bad to worse." He walked over to the TARDIS, opened the doors, and flung the cloak inside. "It'll be safe in here, for now."

"And if the Angel gets inside the TARDIS?" asked Ron dryly.

"Then our problem goes from bad to apocalyptic," replied the Doctor curtly. "So then, is that it? Everyone done with the questions, can we move on now? Lovely."

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but the Doctor had already spun around on his heels and skipped off down the spiral staircase of the tower.

"Doctor! What about the Angel?" said Harry following after him. "Won't it be looking for the mirror too by now?"

"Of course it will. But don't worry, students and staff should all be in bed by now, and it won't start looking in the dormitories for at least another hour or so."

"Right," said Harry. "Sorry, but I was more worried about us running into the Angel."

The Doctor came to a sudden halt on the steps, almost causing a pileup between Harry, Ron and Hermione who were doing their best to keep up with him on the narrow staircase. After stopping, the Doctor turned and gave Harry a strange, and almost puzzled look. But it soon passed, and he returned to flying down the stairs.

"The Angel is extremely clever but also extremely impatient. It will probably be checking all the obvious places. The Great Hall, Dumbledore's office, the Dungeons - where normal people would hide something important, not where Dumbledore would. Ron and Hermione, this goes for you too: try to stay clear of those places and if we're lucky we won't cross it's path."

"And if we're not lucky?" Harry prodded again.

The Doctor simply threw him a grin over his shoulder.

"Don't blink."

They had reached the end of the staircase and the door that led to the rest of the castle, which the Doctor held open for Harry and Hermione to pass through. When Ron tried to walk through it however, the Doctor closed it in front of him, leaving just the two of them in the tower.

"We appear to have gotten off on the wrong foot," he said to Ron. "I'm sensing a bit of hostility, which is really a shame because we'd get on great if you give me a chance."

"Because you know me so well?" replied Ron, unimpressed.

"I know you feel trapped in other people's shadows," the Doctor countered, which gained him Ron's full attention. "Trust me, it won't always be like that. You, Ron Weasley, are going to do things no one will ever forget. People will write songs about you. They'll name pubs after you. Just… believe in yourself, eh?"

To that, Ron didn't quite know what to say, but he allowed the Doctor to pat him kindly on the shoulder. He then reached for the door, but stopped again.

"Also," he said, with a mischievous grin this time. "Don't worry so much. She's yours."

Ron felt his cheeks go red and he spluttered in response. "Wh-what? What are you talking about?"

The Doctor winked. "Time-traveller, remember? Trust me on that one."

Harry and Hermione waited patiently for the Doctor and Ron to join them, noticing Ron's slightly blank smile when they finally did.

"Come on, you lot," said the Doctor, carrying on down the hallway. "We've got us a Weeping Angel to catch!"

"Doctor?" said Hermione, who had walked over to an open window.

"Look, I know we all still have questions, but we really need to get moving."

"No, but, Doctor," she said again.

"Me showing up will have thrown a wrench in the plan and got the Angel worried. It will have spent the last hour looking for anything powerful to feed on, so we need to move quickly before it gets too powerful."

"But, Doctor - it's warm."

The Doctor, Ron and Harry looked at her strangely.

"I'm sorry?"

"It's warm," she repeated, gazing out of the window towards the school entrance. "And it's clear. It's a warm, clear night."

The Doctor looked at his watch on the underside of his wrist. "It's September. A warm, clear night is not a strange occurrence."

"It is in Hogwarts," said Harry, realising what Hermione had noticed. "Lately anyway."

"The Dementors," said Ron, and soon all four of them were standing around the window.

"You can usually see them, hanging around the gates," Hermione pointed. "But look, they're not there. Doctor… where could they have gone?"

"Dementors," said the Doctor hoarsely. "They're blind, aren't they."

"Yes," said Hermione, then instantly clapped a hand over her mouth.

"What?" said Ron urgently.

"The Angel," said the Doctor, "against an army of extremely dark, extremely powerful, extremely blind creatures. No contest. I think Hogwarts might have to find itself some new guards."

"Taking a whole army of Dementors," said Ron. "How powerful would that make the Angel?"

The Doctor didn't answer. He gave a last look to the now guard-less entrance gates, then set off down the hallway.

"Let's go," he said.


The Doctor pushed his back against the wall and peered around the corner, brandishing a bronze, metallic object which cast a luminous green light down the empty hallway.

"Clear," he said in hushed voice. He turned the corner and hurried forwards.

"Do you even know where you're going?" Harry asked, trailing behind and speaking in an equally low voice.

He had not been a fan of the Doctor's idea to split up; to send Ron and Hermione to check under the trap door in the third floor corridor - the last place the mirror had actually been seen - while he and Harry journeyed down to the Chamber of Secrets ("Where a ruddy big snake sat unnoticed for hundreds of years. That might have given Dumbledore an idea," as the Doctor put it). Talking sense to the Doctor might have been useless, but Harry could at least ensure they were actually moving in the right direction, even if he didn't want to say anything that might result in him leading the way down the dark, and potentially Angel-infested hallway.

"Of course I do," the Doctor replied. "I did help build this place, after all."

"Yes, and Salazar Slytherin managed to sneak in a secret chamber and a basilisk without you realising."

"Oh, for the last time - I took a tea break! He told me it was a roll of carpet for the teacher's lounge!"

"Sshh!" Harry hissed at the Doctor's dangerously high voice.

They stood in silence, listening for any noise or rumblings in the distance, any sign that they had been heard, but none came.

"Sorry," said the Doctor, and they resumed their tip-toeing down the hall, at first without speaking, though that was until the Doctor suddenly said, "So…"

"…so what?" replied Harry.

"Are you going to be alright, back in the Chamber? It might bring back some bad memories."

"Yes," said Harry defensively, though he had to admit he had been quietly reliving that night as they crept closer to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. "Well, no. But don't worry, I'll be fine."

The Doctor gave a hushed chuckle.

"You'll be more than fine, Harry Potter. You were 12 years old and you had to fight a snake you couldn't see and Lord Voldermort himself. And you only went and won, didn't you?"

"You say his name," Harry noticed.

"Yes, I do. But please don't think me daring, I just have issues with names hidden by fear - long story. Anyway, that's beside the point."

"You had a point?"

"Yes," the Doctor nodded. "You. Harry Potter. The boy who lived. Except people keep trying to change that. You're thirteen years old and you've been in more near-death situations than most people are in a lifetime."

"But something tells me not as many as you," Harry quipped, though mainly to try and lighten a conversation that was becoming more personal than he was comfortable with.

"No, as it happens. But again, that's not my point."

"Which point is this, again?"

"Were you frightened, Harry?" The Doctor stopped walking and turned to Harry, looking at him curiously. "In the Chamber, I mean. Against Voldermort, and the basilisk - were you scared?"

"Of course I was," said Harry cagily, the green glow of the Doctor's bronze object shining in his face.

"Were you though? Or were you angry? Were you fighting a snake that wanted to kill your best friend's sister, and the man that murdered your parents, and that distracted you from any real fear?"

"What does this have to do with the Angel?"

"It has everything to do with the Angel. What about with the Philosopher's Stone? Were you afraid, going through that trap door? Or did you just want to stop Snape with every bone in your body that you didn't even think about what might happen to you?"

Harry's grip on his wand tightened and he glared at the Doctor dangerously.

"For someone I've never met you seem to know an awful lot about me."

"I'm the Doctor, I know everything about everyone, and you really must stop getting away from the point."

"Well then tell me what your stupid point is!" yelled Harry angrily.

There was a noise at the end of the hall that made them both jump. The Doctor pointed the light in his hands in the direction of the noise, revealing an open doorway and a clutter of shiny objects spilling out of it - the source of the noise.

Harry let out a very audible sigh of relief, and the Doctor turned to him, eyebrow raised. He looked to Harry's wand hand, which had not shot out in the direction of the noise, but sat lamely by his side. The Doctor looked at him.

"You look frightened tonight, Harry Potter."

Harry stared back, at a loss of how to reply. But the Doctor didn't give him a chance to anyhow, turning and advancing upon the door where the noise had come from. When they reached it, the Doctor used his foot to carefully push it open, and entered inside.

"What is this?" asked the Doctor

"It used to be the Trophy room," said Harry.

He had used past tense, because it had certainly looked better the last time he was here. The room was a mess. The cabinets had been smashed to pieces, and various plaques, shields and cups had been tossed all over the place.

"It didn't find what it was looking for," Harry guessed.

"No," said the Doctor. "And it's starting to get cross. What?"

He had noticed Harry staring at the wall, where a plaque that had a dagger pinned across it hung crookedly.

"Nothing," he said. "It's just, I'm sure they're used to be two daggers there."


After ten minutes of biting her tongue, Hermione finally snapped when they reached the staircase that led to the third floor.

"Oh, just spit it out Ron!"

Ron, who she had seen open his mouth to speak over an over, only to think twice and close it again, gave her an obvious look.

"Okay, I can't be the only one worried about this plan!"

"What's wrong with it?"

"It doesn't exist!" Ron cried, receiving a slap on his arm from Hermione to keep his voice down. "So let's say we find the mirror, which no one has laid eyes on for two years, and the Doctor comes to pick it up in the TARDIS - all of this assuming that the Angel doesn't get to us first - then what do we do? Tell the Angel it's failed and ask it to sod off? All I know is we're putting all our faith in a complete stranger and a plan that isn't even really a plan."

"I trust the Doctor," said Hermione plainly. "I think he knows what he's doing."

"Look, he seems lovely… No, no, back! The other way, please!" said Ron, as the staircase they had been climbing had gotten bored and attempted to swing around to lead them to another destination. At his request, though, it kindly swung back to its original place. "Thanks. Anyway, I just think - "

"The most important thing," Hermione interrupted. "Is that we get to the mirror before the Angel. Once the mirror is safe, then we'll go from there."

Ron grumbled and shook his head, but didn't argue further, and after climbing the stairs they opened the door and entered the third floor corridor.

"Lumos," said Hermione, her wand igniting and illuminating the walls of the empty hall.

"Still expect to see a three-headed dog every time I come through here," said Ron absentmindedly, then began, like Hermione, to search the floor for the opening of the trap door they'd all dropped through in their first year.

"Got it," said Hermione, dropping to her knees and placing her hand upon a groove in the wooden floorboards. "Right. Here goes nothing."

She started to lift up the wooden door, when suddenly Ron's foot forced it back down.

"What?" she said irritably, looking up to see him staring at the door thoughtfully.

"What did they ever do with Fluffy?" he whispered. "After they got rid of the Philosopher's Stone?"

"They set him free in the forest, didn't they?" said Hermione, though even as she said it she felt herself reaching the same conclusion Ron had.

"That's what they said, yeah," he replied. "But if Dumbledore did keep the mirror down there, I reckon he might have kept his guard-dog too."

Hermione's hand came away from the trap door.

"Just to be safe, I think we should get a musical instrument before we go any further."

"Might be an idea, yeah," said Ron.

"The choir room is just downstairs," said Hermione. "They might have a flute or something."

"Okay," said Ron, turning away and walking back to the staircase, leaving Hermione to roll her eyes as she pushed herself back to her feet.

"Oh, don't help me up or anything, Ron," she muttered, though loud enough for him to hear. "Just let me - "

The next thing Ron heard was a rush of wind, and a sharp, frightened intake of breath. He whirled around, and saw Hermione's hair tangled up and holding her in place, while a danger hovered inches away from her neck. Both were in the hands of the Weeping Angel.


"This place has seen better days," remarked the Doctor, his boots splashing into the big puddle of water that flowed from each of the cubicles in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. He turned to the large mirror hung above the row of sinks and fixed his hair. "Right, remind me, which sink is it?"

Harry pointed to the one he was already standing in front of, trying to fight off flashbacks to the last time he'd stood in this run-down, abandoned bathroom, in front of the sink with the image of a snake ingrained in it's tap.

"Good," said the Doctor, coming to his side. "Let's get her open."

"Okay," said Harry, "Just…give me a minute."

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and imagined the snake on the tap was real. He pictured it in his mind, crawling across the floor, eyes glinting in the night, tongue hissing like a rattle. He opened his mouth and…

There was a high-pitched buzzing noise, and Harry opened his eyes to see the sink moving aside to reveal the large pipe that led to the Chamber of Secrets. He turned to the Doctor, who, after a second, realised what Harry had been attempting to do and smiled apologetically.

"Sorry," he said, gesturing to his bronze-wand and smiling meekly. "Sonic Screwdriver. It's got a parselmouth setting."

Harry frowned, but stepped back and allowed the Doctor to take the lead again.

"Thank you," said the Doctor.

He placed his sonic screwdriver in his jacket, straightening his bow tie, stepped towards the pipe and simply said, "Geronimo!" Then he hopped into the pipe and flew out of sight.

Harry peered down the long tube and prepared himself for the same journey. But just before he took the plunge, he cast a glance out of the bathroom window, and hoped that Ron and Hermione were safe.


"Let her go," said Ron through gritted teeth and with his wand pointed right at the grey, emotionless eyes of the Angel.

"Why hasn't it killed me?" said Hermione unsteadily, trying her best to ignore the pain of having her hair twisted and tangled in the hand of the Angel and knowledge that a dagger was aimed right at her throat.

"It's not going to kill you," said Ron forcefully, looking her in the eye.

"Ron you're not looking at it!" she said, and Ron's eyes quickly snapped back to the statue. "And you weren't looking at it before, either. You had your back turned. It could have killed me, but it didn't. Why?" She tried to think, which was difficult given that her usually quick-mind was rapidly overflowing with terror, but she didn't wonder for very long. "It's using me."

"What?" said Ron, fighting the urge to look at her again.

"The dagger, it's a threat. It wants you to tell it where the mirror is."

Ron's eyes unintentionally flicked down to the blade of the dagger, held in the Angel's other hand but close enough that a swift slashing motion would take it right below Hermione's jaw.

"I don't know," he said, looking back to the Angel and desperately trying to convince it. "I don't know where it is. I can't help you, so just let her go!"

They waited for a response, any response. Any sign that the Angel understood. But nothing happened. The Angel remained deadly still, hand still wrapped in Hermione's long brown locks.

"I told you, I don't know where it is!" Ron shouted. "Why doesn't it believe me?"

If he would have been able to take his own eyes off of the Angel, he would see that Hermione's had fluttered closed.

"I think it does believe you," she said quietly.

"So why hasn't it let you go?"

"It can't let me go. Not with you looking at it."

"But if I stop looking it might…" He stopped mid-sentence, as though his mouth refused to even say the words.

"Ron," said Hermione, opening her eyes and looking at him. "You have to go."

"…what?"

"You have to take your eyes away and go," she said, her voice threatening to break at any moment. "There's nothing you can do, so just go."

"Hermione, I'm not going anywhere!" he yelled, looking at the Angel so fiercely he hoped it might burst into flames.

"Ron you have to!" she yelled back, stamping on the floor in frustration. When she did, however, she realised where they were standing, and where the Angel was not. "Oh," she gasped. "Ron, quick! Close your eyes."

"Stop it," he said, his own attempts to remain brave gradually crumbling. "I'm not leaving, there's nothing you can say that will make me leave you."

Hermione clenched her jaw, fearing the Angel would realise what she was doing any second.

"Ron, you've got to trust me, here. Really, properly trust me."

"I'm not going, and that's that."

"Ron, please…"

"Hermione I am not letting it kill you!"

"Oh, for goodness sake, Ronald!"

A number of things happened in the next split second: Hermione raised her hands in front of Ron's face and smacked them together loudly. Ron, instinctively, flinched and his eyes flew shut. The Angel, unobserved, let go of Hermione's hair and swung the dagger towards her throat. Whilst her hands had collided in Ron's face, however, Hermione had used her feet to open the trap door upon which both she and Ron stood, and the Angel was standing just off of. So when the Angel's dagger cut through the air, all it severed where a few strands of Hermione's hair as the two Gryffindors dropped through the trap door below.

Hermione threw her wand behind her as she plummeted into darkness, screaming a spell that was lost in the rushing wind and terrified wails of Ron beside her. The result, however, was that the trap door above them closed itself, and locked. An amazing feat of magic, and one she might have taken pride in, if she had not found herself smacking into cold, hard concrete a second afterwards. Hermione had not considered that Dumbledore may have removed the Devil's Snare once it was not longer needed.

They both gave great yelps of pain upon impact, and then lay there briefly, in silence.

"Oww," Ron moaned, sounding to Hermione like his face was mostly pressed against the floor.

"Are you okay?" she asked breathlessly.

"No," he answered casually. "How about you?"

"Same," she said, and couldn't fight nor explain the laugh that escaped her.

"Why," Ron groaned, as he struggled to a seated position, "didn't you just tell me you were planning on doing that?"

She sat up also, and since it was so dark she couldn't see him, she looked at where she could hear his voice.

"The Angel isn't deaf, Ron. It's not stupid, either. It might have worked out what I was doing if we'd waited any longer. Why didn't you just blink when I told you to?"

"Because I thought you - !"

She never heard the end of that sentence. Ron's voice simply flittered away, and they were left staring into darkness at each other.

"Why hasn't it come after us?" Ron asked, clearing his throat awkwardly.

"It doesn't have the time," she said. "Lumos." She pointed her now shining wand upwards, where they could see the trap door, still very much closed. "The Doctor and Harry weren't with us. It must know they're still out there looking for the mirror."

"Or maybe it's waiting for us to come out?"

"Maybe," she said, turning to him now that she could see his face. "Either way, unless we find the mirror down here, Harry and the Doctor are on their own now."


The Doctor had helped Harry to his feet after he flew out of the pipe-slide. They jumped over the fallen rocks and moved quickly through the tunnel, and before Harry knew it the Doctor was sonicing open two large stone doors, and he once again stood in the Chamber of Secrets.

The Doctor burst into the massive hall and instantly ran off to the sides, scanning with his screwdriver and feeling parts of the wall and the serpent-covered pillars for anything that might conceal a very magical mirror. Harry entered slowly. Almost unwillingly. It hadn't changed in the slightest since he was last here. Even from the other end of the Chamber, he could see the spot of dried blood he knew to be his own, next to the ink stain that had spewed out of Riddle's diary in it's final moments. But, of course, the thing that most caught his eye was the enormous basilisk corpse running nearly the entire length of the Chamber.

The Doctor, finishing examining one side of the room and running over to the other, nearly tripped over the giant snake. He quickly regained his balance though, and gave the basilisk a second glance.

"Oof. He was a big fella, wasn't he?" he mused, giving the snake a quick nudge with his foot to check for a response, before switching his attention back to the hunt.

Harry frowned at him.

"I noticed," he grumbled, subconsciously rubbing his left arm.

"Are you going to help or what?" asked the Doctor.

Harry sighed, but ran over to join him. Together they searched every inch of the Chamber, even working together to roll the basilisk over to check for any hidden openings underneath it. But even this resulted in frustration.

"Blast!" said the Doctor, looking for a second like he wanted to kick the snake but restraining himself. He placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. "I really hoped it would be down here."

"Ron and Hermione are still looking," said Harry with badly forced optimism. "They might find it under the third floor."

The Doctor shrugged.

"Maybe," he muttered, running hand through his untamed hair, and dropping himself down upon the basilisk as if it were a park bench. Harry didn't question this though, too bothered about his sudden lack of enthusiasm; something the Doctor had had in spades up until this point.

"We have to find this mirror," he felt the need to remind him. "We have to."

The Doctor looked up from his boots at him, saw the desperation on Harry's face, and shot to his feet.

"Yes, we do." he said, and then looked at Harry solemnly. "And we don't have time to search this castle top to bottom. The next place we go has to be where the mirror is. So think, Harry! If we were Dumbledore, where would we hide it?"

"If we don't want to waste time, we probably shouldn't try and think like Dumbledore, that won't get us anywhere."

"Why?"

"Because Dumbledore's a genius. A true, proper genius. But he's also completely barmy."

The Doctor looked to have a retort on the tip of his tongue, but it never came. Instead, he looked away from Harry thoughtfully, his eyes flying all over the chamber as though connecting invisible dots. Then he let out a strangled cry of joy and turned back to Harry with a grin almost as wide as the basilisk at their feet.

"That's it! Dumbledore is barmy. He's a complete madman. An unrestrained, absolute raving lunatic!"

"Alright, steady on," Harry warned, but the Doctor didn't slow down.

"This is a man who left a giant, rabid, three-headed dog in his school for a whole year, with only a locked door between it and a castle full of students. Students who spent all day learning spells to unlock said door. Dumbledore doesn't think like normal people - they're boring! - he'd have done something far more interesting with a massively powerful artefact sought after by dark wizards!"

It was only after his last sentence that Harry understood what the Doctor was getting at.

"The mirror isn't hidden!" he cried, his voice echoing across the vast Chamber.

"On the contrary, I'll bet the Mirror of Erised is right out in the open. You probably walk past it every single day!"

"But surely we'd notice," said Harry sceptically. "People would know if a mirror on the wall showed them their deepest desire on the way to Charms class?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, no, no. If Dumbledore put this somewhere in plain sight, he'd have made sure it was also unnoticeable. Tell me, Harry, where in Hogwarts are there lots of mirrors?"

"Err…" said Harry, combing his memory for any clues. "There's a few in the Entrance Hall, I think. A couple in the Teacher's lounge. Some in the Quidditch changing rooms. But apart from them the only other place you'd find a mirror would be in a…"

He looked to the Doctor, who from his face Harry knew had reached the same conclusion. They stared at each other, wide eyed and open mouthed, until they both slowly turned and looked to the entrance of the Chamber, at the tunnel that led right back to the place they had come from.

"…a bathroom." Harry finished weakly.

The run back down the tunnel and up the pipe left Harry's chest stinging, and by the time they climbed back into Moaning Myrtle's toilets he was forced to take a moment to regain his breath. The Doctor, however, instantly scrambled to his feet and began examining the large mirror above the sinks.

"Not seeing my deepest desire," he said disappointedly, eyeing his reflection. "Just a dashing man in bowtie."

"Doctor," said Harry, tugging on the sleeve of his tweed jacket. He pointed to the other end of the bathroom where, just before the row of old and mostly-broken cubicles, was another mirror. It was held against the wall by a wooden beams that didn't seem as aged or battered as the rest of the bathroom, and was in such a place that most would not even notice it, given the much larger mirror above the sinks.

Harry walked over to it, slow and cautiously, as if afraid it might jump out at him. When he reached it, he knew they had found what they were looking for, because he saw before him a sight he had quietly longed to see for two years. His mother and his father, smiling proudly at him.

He tore his eyes away from this sight and gave the wooden border a hard smack with his fist until it cracked and he was able to pull it apart, revealing an ornate golden frame, and an inscription that read 'Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi'.

"This is it, Doctor," said Harry, feeling the Doctor come to stand next to him but returning his gaze to his long lost parents, who both had an encouraging hand placed on his shoulders. "Definitely. The Mirror of Erised."

"Excellent," said the Doctor, though rather stiffly. "We'll just do this then, shall we?"

The sight of his parents was taken away from him, as the Doctor reached out turned the mirror around to face the wall.

"What did you do that for?" Harry asked, finally turning and seeing the Doctor wasn't looking at the mirror at all.

"Told you earlier," the Doctor replied. "I don't want the Angel's reflection to come to life."

"The Angel?"

"Yes," said the Doctor, nodding in the direction he was facing. "It's here, in the doorway. Sorry, did I not mention that?"


End of Chapter Seven


(A.N.) I know this doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I'm going to say it anyway. If you haven't already, go see The Avengers. And if you have seen it, do what I did, and go again. Twice. :D