CHAPTER 9
Mirror, Mirror: Is A Quidditch Win In Our Favor?
I woke up in the middle of the night suddenly. There was no reason as to why I had awaken; but the minute my eyes opened, I knew I would not be able to fall asleep again soon.
Ron was still in bed, snoring the night away like a baby. When I looked at Harry's bed, he was gone. Honestly, I wasn't worried, but just in case, I grabbed my book, Famous Witches and Wizards of this Century, and made my way down to the Gryffindor common room to wait for him. The fireplace crackled, and I dazedly stared into the flames as they leaped.
Yawning, I opened up my book to the page I had bookmarked. I lazily scanned the text, but after reading a few sentences, the words started mixing themselves around. It seemed that my dyslexia had decided to return once again, attempting to make my life a whole lot harder. Luckily, a few days ago, Mom had sent me the potion to temporarily obstruct my dyslexia. Without taking the potion, I wouldn't be able to read anything, and because I knew that going back to sleep was not an easy option, I got up, stretching my arms and dropping the book on the couch. I trudged towards the girls' dormitories, not caring if I made any noise, as all of the girls in my dorm had gone home for Christmas break.
I walked into the room sluggishly, my feet shuffling towards my trunk. As I opened it up and grabbed the vial filled with golden Occulta Semideum, I noticed a piece of folded paper in my trunk. Curiosity shook away my lethargic stupor and I snatched up the paper.
The first thing I spotted was gold lettering. After a few moments of confusion, I managed to focus on the words instead of the fancy font and color.
Happy Holidays.
Winter frost and festive cheers.
Sunshine is the best.
Well, that was a weird message, but I would decipher its meaning another time. I placed the paper back into my trunk before taking a swig of the potion. The Occulta Semideum felt like fizzy water in my mouth. Almost immediately, my vision blurred and I had to hold onto my trunk for a second, blinking, but the dizziness disappeared as soon as it had come.
I bounded down the stairs back into the common room, book in hand, only to suddenly stop when I saw Harry lying on the red couch, staring into the leaping flames in the fireplace.
I cleared my throat before whispering, "Harry."
He jumped, turning quickly to look at me.
"Why're you awake, Ivy?" he whispered.
I walked over to the sofa and took a seat next to him. "I could ask the same to you. But to answer your question," I held up my book so he could see it. "I was planning on catching up on some reading to see if there was anything about Nicholas Flamel."
Harry nodded. I looked at him only to see him staring at his invisibility cloak, which I hadn't noticed before.
"Harry," I said, "did you use it? Tonight just before I saw you?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I went to the Restricted Section of the library to see if I could find anything. Filch nearly caught me, though, and I ended up running into a room where…" he trailed off, gulping.
"Yeah?" I encouraged.
Harry took in a breath. "I saw my parents."
I didn't know how to respond to what he had told me.
"Harry -," I paused to rearrange my words, "that's not possible. Your parents aren't alive."
"No, Ivy, you don't understand. There was a mirror and I saw my parents!" he said, grabbing my hand in desperation. He looked down. "I finally got to see them, but now that I have, I miss them more than ever."
A few seconds passed. Harry was surprised when I pulled him towards me and wrapped my arms tightly around his body. After a few moments, he relaxed and placed his arms around me, too.
"Thanks, Ivy."
I smiled. "Anytime."
"You should take me next time, too!" said Ron as he grabbed three pieces of french toast to his right. "It'd be great to meet your parents, Harry."
"I'll be able to see your whole family, too, tonight!" Harry replied.
Ron shook his head, stuffing a piece of french toast. "You can see my family any old time."
I rolled my eyes at Ron's appetite, but nonetheless, smiling. "Slow down, Ron. We've got a lot of time to eat."
"Yeah, yeah," he said, reaching out for a potato pancake. I grabbed an English muffin with jam smeared in the middle; promptly taking a bite of my muffin, I looked over to Harry. He was staring intensely at his empty plate.
"What's up, Harry?" I questioned. "What're you thinking so hard about?"
He looked up and gave me a soft smile. "Just excited to see my parents again tonight."
I smiled gently. "I'm glad that now, you've got something to look forward to."
That night, all of us shuffled underneath Harry's invisibility cloak. It was pretty cramped with the three of us attempting to huddle together so that we would be hidden completely.
"I'm freezing," said Ron. "Let's just forget and go back."
"No!" Harry objected. "I know it's here somewhere."
I didn't say anything, but I wanted to turn back, also, and get back to the cozy Gryffindor common room. We had been wandering the halls for nearly an hour, Harry not recognizing anything yet.
I poked Harry in the back. "What are you looking for, anyway? I might be able to help you find it."
"I'm looking for…" Harry said, trailing off. "Ahah! The suit of armor!"
He quickly ran towards the door next to it, pulling us along with him. When we made it in, he flung the cloak off and made his way to the mirror in the middle of the room. Ron and I were left near the door, and I urged Ron to go to Harry while I closed the door and picked up the cloak. After I did so, I saw that Harry and Ron were shoving each other in front of the mirror.
"Let me have another look -"
"You had it to yourself all last night, give me a bit more time."
"You're only holding the Quidditch cup, what's interesting about that? I want to see my parents."
Hurriedly, I grabbed the both of them. "Be quiet! And stop pushing each other."
We heard a noise outside of the door, so I grabbed the cloak and was about to throw it over our bodies, but before I did, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, standing besides Mom. She smiled at me, and for a moment, I paused and looked at her bright smile that she hadn't had in a long time.
"Quick, Ivy!"
I snapped back into reality, throwing the cloak over us just as Mrs. Norris rounded the corner of the door. Holding our breaths, we stood as still as statues; it seemed like years before she turned and slowly slinked out the door.
"This isn't safe - she might have gone for Filch, I bet she heard us. Come on," said Ron, pulling us out of the room. Safe in the Gryffindor common room once again, we took seats on the couch and armchairs around the crackling fireplace to warm our shivering bodies. It was quiet for a few minutes; I stared into the jumping flames, my mind wandering.
Ron cleared his throat. "I'm sorry that I argued with you, Harry. I know how much you wanted to see your parents."
"No worries; you were right. I did get to see them the night before," Harry said before turning to me. "Ivy, sorry, we were so busy arguing that you didn't have a chance to look in the mirror."
"That's okay!" I exclaimed hurriedly, not wanting them to put the blame on themselves. I paused, looked down and smiled, thinking of my mother's bright face. "I got to see my mom's smiling face right before we had to put on the invisibility cloak. She was standing next to me."
And for the rest of the night, the memory of Mom's smile was constant in the back of my mind. When I woke up in Seamus' bed the next morning, the air was a sharp contrast on my face to the warmth of the heating pads underneath the sheets. I crawled out from beneath the covers a few minutes later, and before setting off to my own dormitory, I shook Harry and Ron awake to let them know that I would meet them downstairs in the common room before we went off to the Great Hall for breakfast.
I only had to wait another half-hour before the boys shuffled down into the common room. It was almost silent as we made our way to the Great Hall, Ron and I attempting to talk to Harry as he stayed silent.
"Come on, Harry," I said, nudging him in the shoulder with my own once we were seated at the Gryffindor table. "Cheer up. Eat something."
Ron nodded, continuing as I grabbed a chocolate chip muffin. "Want to play chess, Harry?"
"No."
I shared a look of worry with Ron. "Why don't we go down and visit Hagrid?"
"No… you go…"
A sigh of frustration escaped my lips, and I looked at him. "I know what you're thinking about, Harry. You want to go back to that mirror."
"Don't, Harry," Ron agreed, nodding.
"Why not?"
Ron looked uneasy, but continued on. "I dunno, I've just got a bad feeling about it - and anyway, you've had too many close shaves already. Filch, Snape, and Mrs. Norris are wandering around. So what if they can't see you? What if they walk into you? What if you knock something over?"
"You sound like Hermione," Harry said.
"Harry, please, don't go," I pleaded. "You don't know if you'll get lucky again. You might get caught this time."
Harry stayed silent.
"We can't make you not go," I said, "but we just don't want to see you get in trouble over this, Harry."
But Ron and I could see that Harry had already made up his mind to go and that there was no way we would be able to convince him otherwise.
That night, when I heard Harry sneak out of the room and down the stairs, I pretended to continue sleeping and just hoped that overnight, he would somehow realize that that he couldn't keep acting impulsively like that.
And oddly enough, that did happen. Harry told us about his meeting with Dumbledore and their conversation. The invisibility cloak stayed folded at the bottom of his trunk for the rest of the Christmas holidays, thanks to Dumbledore's advice. But around that time, too, Harry started having these nightmares about his parents, a green light, and a high voice that cackled with laughter. Ron and I worried, but there was nothing that we could do about these horrible dreams, except support Harry.
Hermione came back the day before term started, and she was not happy about how Harry had been out of bed three nights in a row and how we hadn't made any progress on our search about Nicolas Flamel. Once the term started, though, the hunt was on again for any mention of this mysterious person. We skimmed books every chance we could, including the small ten-minute breaks in between classes. Harry and I had less time than Ron and Hermione, though, because Quidditch practice had started again and Oliver was working us even harder than before. The endless rain had no effect on Oliver; he kept right on pushing us so that we could win. The Weasley's complained that Oliver was becoming a fanatic, but both Harry and I agreed with him. If we won our next match against Hufflepuff, we could overtake Slytherin in the house championship for the first time in seven years.
During one of our particularly wet and muddy practice sessions, though, Oliver revealed some bad news to the team. The Weasleys kept dive-bombing each other and pretended to fall off their brooms; as a result, Oliver had gotten very angry with them.
"Will you stop messing around!" he yelled. "That's exactly the sort of thing that'll lose us the match! Snape's refereeing this time, and he'll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Gryffindor!"
George actually fell off of his broom when Oliver said this.
"Snape's refereeing?" he spluttered through a mouthful of mud. "When's he ever refereed a Quidditch match? He's not going to be fair if we might overtake Slytherin."
The rest of the team landed next to George, too, and Harry and I followed their lead.
"It's not my fault," said Oliver. "We've just got to make sure we play a clean game, so Snape hasn't got an excuse to pick on us."
I bit my lip, knowing why Harry suddenly had a sullen face. At the end of practice, Harry and I hurriedly changed, unlike our other teammates who, like usual, hung around to talk to each other after practice. We made our way straight to the Gryffindor common room, wasting no time. When we got in, we found Ron and Hermione playing chess.
"Don't talk to me for a moment," said Ron when Harry and I sat down next to him. "I need to concen-"
He noticed our worried faces. "What's the matter with you two? You look terrible."
I looked around and gestured for them to lean in so that we wouldn't be overheard by our peers in the common room. Harry explained our dilemma about Snape's sudden desire to be a Quidditch referee.
"We don't know what he'll do," I said uneasily. "What's he planning?"
"Don't play," suggested Hermione.
"Say you're ill," said Ron.
"Pretend to break your leg," Hermione suggested.
"Really break your leg," said Ron. I smacked Ron in the shoulder.
"Honestly, Ron," I scolded. "That's not going to help. What we need to do now is -"
I was abruptly cut off by the sound of someone toppling into the common room. It was Neville. His legs seemed to have been stuck together by the Leg-Locker Curse. I felt sympathetic as I thought of his struggle up the tower. Neville groaned and everyone in the common room laughed, with the exception of Hermione and I. Quickly grabbing my wand, I performed the countercurse before Neville embarrassed himself further.
His legs sprang apart and he shakily got up. Hermione rushed over to Neville, grabbing his arm and leading him over to sit with us.
"What happened?" she asked him.
Neville sighed, his voice trembling as he spoke. "Malfoy."
That was the only word needed for me to become instantly irritated.
"I met him outside the library," he continued. "He said he'd been looking for someone to practice that on."
"Go to Professor McGonagall!" Hermione urged Neville. "Report him!"
Neville shook his head abruptly.
"I don't want more trouble," he mumbled, looking down at his hands in his lap.
"You've got to stand up to him, Neville!" said Ron. "He's used to walking all over people, but that's no reason to lie down in front of him and make it easier."
"There's no need to tell me I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor; Malfoy's already done that," Neville choked out.
I put my arm around him in an attempt to console him. "Neville, don't think that way. You're a much better person than Malfoy. He's only a bully."
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a Chocolate Frog, handing it to Neville, who looked like he was going to cry.
"Ivy is right. You're worth twelve of Malfoy," Harry said. "The Sorting Hat chose you for Gryffindor, didn't it? And where's Malfoy? In stinking Slytherin."
Neville's lips twitched in a weak smile as he unwrapped the frog. "Thanks, guys… I think I'll go to bed… D'you want the card? You collect them, don't you?"
Harry held the card in his hand as Neville walked up the stairs.
"Dumbledore again," he said. "He was the first one I ever -"
He gasped, staring at the back of the card. Then he looked up at Ron and Hermione.
"I've found him!" he whispered quickly. "I've found Flamel! I told you I'd read the name somewhere before. I read it on the train coming here - listen to this: 'Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel'!"
At these words, Hermione jumped to her feet. I swear, I had never seen that girl more excited than at that moment.
"Stay there!" she said, and she sprinted up the stairs to the girls' dormitories.
Harry, Ron, and I barely had time to exchange looks of confusion before Hermione came speeding down the stairs once again, clutching a gigantic old book.
"I never thought to look in here!" she whispered excitedly. "I got this out of the library weeks ago for a bit of light reading."
"Light?" said Ron incredulously, but Hermione told him to be quiet until she'd looked something up, and started flicking frantically through the pages, muttering to herself. At last she found what she was looking for. "I knew it! I knew it!"
"Are we allowed to speak yet?" said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.
"Nicolas Flamel," she whispered dramatically, "is the only known maker of the Sorcerer's Stone!"
"Oh!" I shouted loudly as I jumped out of my seat. A few people stared at me as I realized how loud my shout had been.
"Sorry," I whispered, sitting down and looking at my friend.
"I'm sorry. What?" Harry asked.
"I'm with Harry," Ron agreed. "What is that?"
"Honestly, you guys. How could you not know about the Sorcerer's Stone?" I said, rolling my eyes.
Ron huffed. "Not everyone has read as much as you two."
"Look - read that, there," said Hermione, shoving the book towards the two boys and pointing to a passage. I could see the text upside down, and as Harry and Ron read, I whispered the words out loud in excitement.
"The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Sorcerer's Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal. There have been many reports of the Sorcerer's Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera lover. Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight)."
"See?" said Hermione. "The dog must be guarding Flamel's Sorcerer's Stone! I bet he asked Dumbledore to keep it safe for him, because they're friends and he knew someone was after it. That's why he wanted the Stone moved out of Gringotts!"
"A stone that makes gold and stops you from ever dying!" said Harry. "No wonder Snape's after it! Anyone would want it."
"And no wonder we couldn't find Flamel in that Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry," said Ron. "He's not exactly recent if he's six hundred and sixty-five, is he?"
The Sorcerer's Stone was on our minds at all times. During Defense Against the Dark Arts, our assignment was to copy the different ways of treating werewolf bites. While Hermione and I worked diligently on the task at hand, Harry and Ron, who sat at the table to our left, whispered to each other. A few seconds later, our attention was diverted from the notes when Hermione was poked on the arm by Harry.
"I almost forgot about Snape and the Quidditch match," he said. "I'm going to play. If I don't, all the Slytherins will think I'm just too scared to face Snape. I'll show them… it'll really wipe the smiles off their faces if we win."
"Just as long as we're not wiping you off the field," said Hermione.
As the match drew nearer, however, Harry became more and more uneasy, something that he told me during our next practice. He wasn't the only one, though. We all were nervous. The idea of overtaking Slytherin in the house championship was wonderful, but no one had done it for seven years. Would we even be given the chance to, with such a biased referee?
The fateful day arrived in the blink of an eye, and as Hermione and Ron said good luck to us, Harry and I knew that they were wondering if they would ever see Harry alive again after the match. If I was feeling this anxious, Harry must have been feeling even worse than I did. Oliver's pep talk did calm me down a little. On the other hand, Harry woodenly stared at the ground for the duration of Oliver's long speech. Right before we were getting ready to go out, Oliver had a private chat with Harry. Fred and George pulled me with them to look out the door.
"The whole school's out there!" exclaimed Fred, peering out of the door. "Even - blimey - Dumbledore's come to watch!"
"Dumbledore?" Harry asked, dashing towards us and peeping out. He looked at me and grinned in relief.
A minute later, we found ourselves marching onto the field, Hufflepuff doing the same from the other entrance. Oliver and the Hufflepuff captain shook each other's hands, nodding once before turning back to their own teams to get in position. Snape blew the whistle and we shot off up into the air. The only thing I could focus on was the Quaffle that Alicia had grabbed the moment it had been thrown into the air. She zoomed forward on her broom towards the goal, but because the Hufflepuff chasers were closing in on her, she tossed the Quaffle over to me, which I snatched out of the air in a snap and continued to race towards the goal.
In the background, I could faintly hear Lee Jordan commentating. The whistle blew loudly, the shrill noise ringing throughout the stadium. Snape had awarded Hufflepuff a penalty because George had hit a Bludger at him. We continued to play, but a few minutes later, Hufflepuff had been awarded yet another penalty for no reason. I huffed in frustration, but there was nothing that I could do. And then the Quaffle was in the arms of Angelina and I snapped back into action, speeding towards an open area and keeping an eye out for the infamous Bludgers.
All of a sudden, there were gasps and cheers coming from the crowd. Everybody stopped to stare as Harry pulled up sharply from a fantastic dive, his arm raised in triumph, the Snitch clasped in his hand. The stands erupted. I had never grinned so largely. He had caught the Snitch so quickly that it must've been a record.
I flew down alongside the rest of my team, crowding around Harry. Gryffindors were spilling onto the field, shouting in glee. After wiggling through the crowd, I made my way next to Harry.
"You were great, Harry!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms around him in a tight hug. "It had barely been five minutes!"
He smiled broadly, and before we knew it, the rest of the team had joined us and we were caught in the middle of a huge celebration, Gryffindors all around. I was relieved and grateful that nothing bad had happened. Everything had worked out perfectly, even better than I could have hoped for.
With a heart full of happiness, I let go of my worries and enjoyed our triumph amidst the company of my second family.
