Chapter Nine: Mirrors
In the wake of the troll's attack on Halloween, Willow found her spirits soaring. Not only did her brother definitely not hate her, but she had gained two new friends in the form of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Granted, Harry had never shown any signs of ill will towards her before, and Hermione had merely seemed like her Gryffindor counterpart in the bookworm department. Having four friends in Gryffindor – Neville was still a sweetheart – seemed at some times to be a true blessing.
Unfortunately, her associations with Gryffindor house had further strained her relations with her own housemates throughout the month of November. Given that Willow was forced to deal with the other Slytherins far more than she was permitted to spend with the Gryffindors, she was finding her post-Halloween life to be borderline miserable.
Not all of the Slytherins were contemptuous of her. Many of the older students merely regarded her as an oddball first year and paid her little or no heed. There were three second years who sometimes asked her for help with research projects, and in return they left her alone. It was an unspoken agreement between two parties with mutual interests: the second years' in passing their classes, and Willow's in simply getting by. The 'black-eyed freak' nickname was still around, but 'research girl' was gaining in popularity.
Pansy Parkinson was Willow's most frequent antagonist, but compared to Cordelia Chase, she was positively tame. The pug-faced girl seemed to have the most ludicrous ideas of what was insulting, and seemed to relish taunting Willow about things she couldn't care less about. Willow simply hung her head and remained silent, letting Pansy have her fun while Willow quietly smirked at her self-styled rival's idiocy.
Draco Malfoy was an enigma. On the one hand, he had clearly been furious at her following the incident at their flying lesson. But on the other hand, he had been going out of his way to appeal to her ever since. He didn't seem afraid or in awe of her, but he did try to entice her with what he seemed to think was the unlimited appeal of being associated so closely with the Malfoy family. Since he wasn't being openly antagonistic, Willow managed to arrange her face into a polite smile as she constantly avoided his advances. In private, she felt dirty at the racist boy's attempts to woo her favor.
After all had been said and done, Willow had a unique niche for herself in Slytherin house. Some of the students – mostly first, second, and third years – displayed their contempt for her in some form or another. It was mainly through sneers, jeers, whispers and harsh laughter. Willow could only guess at what they were saying, and the unknown taunts were far more unnerving than anything Pansy Parkinson could ever aspire to. But the house had not forgotten her display of power at the flying lesson, and Willow made sure to remind them if it ever seemed like they were forgetting. Her studiousness paid off in the form of house points, which might have caused some otherwise hostile Slytherins to tone down their aggression.
It was very hard, though, as Willow had a secret that she had yet to reveal, and after reading Hogwarts, a History, she believed that her secret was the one thing she had for her that kept her truly safe: no one knew that she was born to two non-magical parents. After reading about the founding of Slytherin House – and its namesake's breakaway from the other four founders – Willow realized that she was the equivalent of a lone Jew in the heart of Nazi Germany, hiding her true identity.
Given all that she had learned, Willow found it even more difficult to find it in her to muster any enthusiasm whatsoever to go outside and cheer for Slytherin in the upcoming Quidditch match against Gryffindor. The event had a lot of work to do to convince her of its merits. Sports and Willow did not mesh well together, nor did Willow and cold weather. Sitting in high-up bleachers in the wind and the cold while watching a bunch of people flying through the air playing a game whose rules she did not know was just not cutting it for her. And she didn't even want her own house to win: Harry, Fred, and George were on the Gryffindor team, and she would much rather see them happy than any of her own housemates.
So it was that on the day of the big Quidditch match, Willow found herself indoors, exploring Hogwarts Castle. The place was a marvel in every sense of the word. It was beautiful and full of history, and the magic in it was so harmonious and powerful. There were certain spots that Willow would stop and sit on the ground or place a hand on the wall, just to feel the magic within. Each bit of magic had its own flavor, feel or voice to it that was unique. Willow didn't know what it all meant, but she knew that she was dealing with something that was truly infinite and wondrous.
As she walked, Willow could have sworn that someone was following her. She turned around and looked behind her a few times, but she didn't see anything. All the same, she knew that there was something there. Maybe it's shy, she figured. It could be a ghost lurking out of sight. Or… What if it's Peeves? The school's resident poltergeist was not someone Willow was fond of running into. He might not tease her about her looks or her bookishness, but he would pelt her with random bits and pieces of whatever was lying around and create the general need for running away.
But nobody – human, ghost, or poltergeist – was anywhere to be seen or heard. Sighing to herself, Willow rounded a corner and found herself in front of a closed door. She tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. Looking from side to side to make there was still no one else around. Willow recalled a charm she had read about in a book she had read for extra credit for Professor Flitwick's class.
Placing her hand on the knob again, Willow closed her eyes and let her magic flow into the lock, probing it and seeking out the mechanism that kept the door from opening. There were cogs and gears and tiny bars of metal, and they all fit together in a neat little design. With a gentle nudge of magic, Willow convinced the lock to open, and she quietly entered the room.
It was dark inside, and only a bit of faint torchlight was coming in from the hallway. Willow smiled at the chance to practice her magic without fear of being called 'wandless' in that insulting way that the Slytherins seemed too afraid to do, but that she could sense was always on the tips of their tongues. Holding out her hand, Willow said,"Light," and a sphere of light formed in her palm. Holding it up to the air, Willow willed the ball of light to flow upwards and illuminate the room.
As the darkness gave way to light, Willow found herself in what looked like a classroom that had been packed up. All the chairs and desks were off to the side and neatly stacked atop each other. But in the center of the room, there was one thing that stood out.
Willow walked towards it very slowly, feeling a strange magical sensation from the object that she hadn't felt before. It felt very old, but where Hogwarts was also old, it was lively and vibrant. This thing felt tired and worn, but with a bit of hidden slyness just waiting out of 'sight.'
Finally, Willow found herself standing in front of an impressive full-length mirror. At the top there was an inscription written in a language she didn't recognize. "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. Huh. I wonder what language you are. Hey, wait a second!" Willow felt as though the ancient mirror was laughing as Willow quickly deciphered the riddle. She had done enough puzzles like this in elementary school to recognize that the 'ancient inscription' was simply an English phrase written backwards and broken up at different spaces to form a 'language.'
Willow read the inscription again, this time as it truly was. "I show not your face but your heart's desire. Wow. Let's see… What do I want?" she pondered, but the mirror was already beginning to answer her question for her.
In the mirror, Willow saw her own reflection, but there were other people joining her. She spun around to look behind her, but she saw no one. Reminding herself that the mirror's magic was at work, Willow let herself look into it and wait.
The other people started out rather hazy and unformed, but they slowly began to take shape around Willow. Two child-sized people stood on either side of her, and two adults stood behind them. Their faces soon became clear, and Willow found herself looking at Xander, Jesse, and her parents. Not the Weasleys, but her real parents from back in Sunnydale.
They were all smiling at Willow. Xander and Jesse were making faces that they had always made. Their own little private jokes that never failed to get a laugh out of Willow. Her parents each had a hand on her shoulder, and they were saying something, but Willow couldn't hear anything. She looked carefully at their lips, and her heart soared at what they said.
'We love you,' they said.
Willow felt tears building up in her eyes at the horrible things playing out in front of her. The mirror, true to its word, was showing Willow her heart's desire. She wanted nothing more than to be with Jesse and Xander again, and to have her parents tell her that they loved her. But her parents were dead, and Willow would never know if they had ever loved her at all.
The mirror, she decided, was the worst sort of bully. It looked into her heart, saw exactly what she wanted most, and then taunted her with what she could never have. Willow frowned and spat on the mirror's glass, though her saliva seemed to simply merge with her reflection and give it an even brighter sheen. Disgusted, Willow turned on her heel to leave the cursed mirror where she'd found it.
"I do say," an elderly voice said, and Willow jumped when she saw Professor Dumbledore blocking her path, "I have seen many reactions to this particular mirror before, but rarely one so insightful as yours." He was smiling, and his eyes twinkled with hidden knowledge.
Willow suspected that he had been following her all along, but she didn't dare confront him about it. Hogwarts was his school, after all. "I-I'm sorry, Headmaster. I was just-"
"Please, Willow, do calm down. I am not angry or upset with you. Indeed, I am quite proud. Not many people have the strength to walk away from the Mirror of Erised of their own will with no intention of returning to it."
Willow huffed. "'Erised, right. You mean 'Desire,' don't you? Uh, sir?"
Dumbledore chuckled. "Indeed, you are correct! It amuses me to no end how many wizards have slaved away over that inscription's meaning when the answer is in plain sight if they just know how to look at it."
A confident smile decorated Willow's face. "Puzzles like that are common in the non-magical world. Maybe someone who was born to non-magical parents created that inscription."
"It would be highly unsurprising. But then, neither would it surprise me if a pureblooded witch or wizard had created the Mirror and its riddle. Creativity and invention are gifts to all who seek them out, after all." Dumbledore hadn't raised his voice at all, but the reprimand was clear, even if it was a soft one.
"Uh, right. I don't think my spit messed it up, but if it did, I'll try to fix it, sir."
Dumbledore chuckled. "That's quite thoughtful of you, Miss Rosenberg, but I doubt there is any lasting damage. I'm far more concerned, as a matter of fact, about you. I hesitate to think what kind of vision could send you away from the Mirror in anger. You must not feel obliged to share, as it is a rather personal experience. All the same, the visions of the Mirror are powerful, as are the emotions it elicits."
Willow felt her face flush with heat, and she looked away from the Headmaster. She made a point of not looking at the Mirror again, no matter if she was scared of looking Dumbledore in the eye. "I… I saw my best friends from back home. A-and I saw my parents. My real ones, that is. And they were saying that they loved me." If Willow hadn't known she was speaking, she would have barely heard her own voice, hardly louder than a whisper.
A swell of anger overtook her at the memory of her vision, and Willow found the courage to look Dumbledore in the eye. "My parents didn't love me. Or if they did, then they didn't show it very much. And they're dead now, anyways. The mirror was lying to me. It was teasing me with fake promises. It's a cruel thing, and it shouldn't exist. Sir," she spat venomously, not bothering to soften her direct address to the Headmaster.
Dumbledore did not seem upset by her angry response, though he did look a bit concerned. "I wish I could comfort you, Willow, and tell you that all parents love their children as they should. I wish that I could say with certainty that your parents were merely aloof, and that they truly did love you, even if that love was distant. And while I might even believe that second statement, I doubt it would bring you any comfort, and it would likely seem equally cruel for me to lavish you with what must seem like false promises. I can say, however, that I am truly sorry for your sadness, Willow. It is hardly fair, but I would urge you to take solace in the knowledge that you do have people here, at Hogwarts, who love you and care for you. They may be new to you, but if you give them the chance, I would like to think that they will become as close to you as true family."
Willow felt tears welling up in her eyes, but she stubbornly refused to cry. "Th-thank you, sir."
"You are most welcome, my dear. And as it so happens, I was hoping to find you so that I could give you something," Dumbledore said as he rummaged through a pocket in his robes. "Consider it an early Christmas present, if you will."
Willow scowled. "I'm Jewish, sir. I don't celebrate Christmas."
"Ah! Well, please forgive an old man a careless oversight. A weakness of being old and clever: one tends to think that their sum experiences are worthy of so much certainty in any given event. A good surprise can be most humbling, and I beg your forgiveness."
Willow shifted nervously as the very powerful Headmaster of the school actually apologized to her. "Uh, it's okay, sir."
"You're very gracious, Willow. But here you go now," Dumbledore said, handing a flat parcel wrapped in brown paper to her. It was about a foot and a half long by one dimension and maybe nine to twelve inches across.
Willow pondered the wrapped object, wondering if she could suss out what it was by feeling for the magic in it. "What is it, Headmaster?"
"Open it in private when you have the chance, Willow, and you will receive what I hope is a satisfactory explanation," Dumbledore said with a small smile.
"Oh. Okay. Um… May I go now, sir? I'm not really comfortable being so close to that thing," Willow said, spitting out the last word in reference to the Mirror.
"Ah. Of course, I'm so sorry. Please, do enjoy the rest of your weekend. But before you go, I would ask that you tidy up after yourself," the Headmaster said, gesturing to the ball of light hovering above them.
"Oh! Right! Sorry, sir. Um, let me just concentrate. Those books you sent me – the one about meditation – have been really helpful. Now, let's see…" Willow closed her eyes and held her right hand out, palm open and facing upward, as she felt for the magic of her ball of light. As the currents of magic became clearer, she willed them back down towards her hand until she felt the warmth of the light against her skin. Closing her palm, Willow said, "Lights out,"and the ball of light was extinguished.
She opened her eyes to find Dumbledore holding the classroom door open, providing just enough light for her to find her way out. "Quite impressive," he said with a warm smile.
"Thank you, sir," Willow said, feeling quite awkward at the Headmaster's gentle praise. "Uh, have a good day, sir."
"And you as well, my dear," Dumbledore said with a polite bow.
Willow walked past Dumbledore until she was out of his sight and then started running towards the Slytherin dormitories. Kindly Dumbledore might be, but he also gave her the wiggins.
Once she had gotten into the dungeons, Willow stopped to catch her breath, small puffs of vapor visible from her mouth in the cold air of the underground corridors. After a short while, Willow continued to walk – more leisurely this time – towards the dormitory.
After giving the wall the password, Willow headed straight up to her dormitory and into her bed, closing the curtains around her. She carefully opened the brown paper wrapping, trying not to rip it at all.
A piece of parchment was soon visible, and Willow extricated it and began to read the loopy handwriting:
'In your hands you hold one half of a pair. While this half is closer to your eyes, the other half is closer to your heart. I suggest you examine it very closely at precisely nine o'clock in the evening on Christmas Day. For your own peace of mind, do not tell anyone else about this gift. Use it well.'
Her curiosity piqued even further, Willow kept trying to gently remove the paper, though in her haste she tore it in a few places. When all was said and done, Willow found herself somewhat disgruntled to find herself looking at yet another mirror.
It had a wooden frame and handle, though just below the glass was a clock. The hands were off, though. Willow looked at her watch and saw that it was just after one o'clock. The watch on the mirror had the minute hand in the same place, but the hour hand rested near the Roman numeral for five. Strangely enough, there was another circle around the numbers of the watch that Willow now saw was another part of the timepiece. A drawing of the sky surrounded the watch, with the sun and the moon opposite each other. The sun was very near the numeral three, and if Willow had to guess, it would move counter-clockwise as the day went on to show the sun rising in the east.
But the sun was not just rising. It was high in the sky right now. And it wasn't early in the morning, but shortly after noon. Not in the mood to look at another magical mirror right now, Willow tucked it into a drawer in her nightstand and made a note to herself to pull it out again closer to Christmas. The attached message found a home just underneath the mirror.
A rumbling in her gut told Willow that she was hungry. After the stress of looking into the Mirror of Desire, a good lunch seemed to be in order. Putting Dumbledore's gift out of her mind, Willow set off for the Great Hall.
As November faded into December, Willow looked back at how far she had come in the past few months since she had burned down her old house back in Sunnydale, and the results were spectacular. She had gone from an introverted, shy young bookworm with two friends to a slightly more confident, slightly more outgoing bookworm with a larger circle of friends. All in all, it wasn't a whole lot objectively, but it felt like a great deal had changed for the better.
Willow still missed Xander and Jesse fiercely, but she thankfully had other things to distract her. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had spun a grand tale of how Harry had nearly fallen off of his broom during the Quidditch match against Slytherin, and they'd claimed that Professor Snape had been jinxing his broom. Willow found that particular comment hard to believe. Sure, Snape wasn't exactly Mr. Warm-and-Cuddly, and yes, he did seem to enjoy singling out Harry rather maliciously, but attempted murder was something else entirely.
And then had come the tale of the three-headed dog in the out-of-bounds corridor that Hagrid had apparently named 'Fluffy' of all things, and the trap door that it was guarding. One thing had led to another, and Willow found herself busy in the library helping her friends look for clues as to just who Nicolas Flamel was.
Personally, Willow thought that her three friends were just asking for trouble, but the feel of a good puzzle to be solved had Willow hooked. And the extra knowledge gleaned from all the books they failed to find Flamel in was icing on the cake. So, in the name of greater knowledge, wisdom, and her own bookish idea of fun, Willow found herself spending ungodly hours in the library helping her friends look for the mystery man who was somehow tied to the mystery object guarded by one of Cerberus's descendants, if the story was true.
Willow felt a bit bad that she didn't have any similarly wonderful stories to share, save for her encounter with the Mirror of Desire, and she didn't even share that with anyone. Given Dumbledore's presence, and her own upset feelings over the encounter, Willow had no wish to spread the knowledge of the Mirror to anyone else.
The holiday season was upon them before they knew it, and Willow was faced with a problem she hadn't anticipated in her search for gifts for her friends. Mail-order was a lot more difficult for wizards than it was for non-magical folk, as one not only needed to send an order to the merchant, but also an attached note confirming a one-time withdrawal from a Gringotts account, with identical copies sent to the bank, the merchant, and a third copy kept as a receipt of purchase. And that was before the purchase even took place. Then came the actual withdrawal, the confirmation of purchase, and finally the actual shipment of goods. It was all terribly hectic and full of hassle.
Just before the turn of November into December, at her new dad's urging, Willow had begun a correspondence with her eldest brother, Bill, regarding credit cards and their possible introduction to the Wizarding World. Bill was a curse-breaker, meaning that he was less of a paper-pusher and more of an adventurer, but he seemed to have a keen instinct for business all the same, and according to his latest letter, he was looking into the prospects of a patent for a possible Wizarding version of a credit card in Willow's name!
Ecstatic at the idea of impacting the Wizarding World so greatly, Willow was now looking forward to the summer even more, as that would be her first opportunity to meet Bill face-to-face and hammer out the details of such an arrangement. For the time being, however, Bill had been kind enough to shop for her holiday gift list in person and send the lot of it to Willow. Thus it was that Willow found herself with presents for each of her friends at Hogwarts, as well as a great bag of assorted sweets that she intended to share with her housemates in the Slytherin common room as a peace offering.
On Christmas Day, Willow woke up to find a number of presents gift-wrapped and delivered to the foot of her bed. It might not have been politically correct, but Willow was honestly unsure of when Hanukkah was in any event. She'd always relied on her parents' calendar to tell when Jewish holidays were. For all she knew, it was one of Hanukkah's eight days right now.
Putting aside thoughts of religion, Willow opened her presents and tried to ignore Pansy Parkinson's shrill voice in its horrid imitation of glee. Hermione had sent her a book about famous wandless witches and wizards throughout history, which Willow vowed to start reading as soon as she could. Her parents had sent her a green sweater with the letter W embroidered on it. It was clearly handmade, and Willow felt her heart go out to her new parents. Neville had given her an adventure novel that the jacket said was about a wizard lost in the Muggle world without his wand, with only his wits to survive. Willow snorted in laughter at the summary, but she supposed it must have seemed marvelous to Neville. They'd probably have a good time talking about its various truths and untruths.
Last in the pile was a tiny cardboard box with a scroll of parchment wrapped in a gold ribbon. Willow opened the letter first:
'Dear Willow,
Happy Holidays! I know you'll probably get this on Christmas Day, and I know you're not Christian, so I'm sorry about that. But I hope you'll like what I got you. It's a charm bracelet. It's supposed to bring good fortune to whoever wears it. Professor Sprout says that there's nothing magical about it, but it's always been good to me. I swore I felt it heat up just a bit right before I met you in the robe shop over the summer.
Anyway, I don't know if you need the luck or not, or even if it works. But even if it doesn't, then I'd ask you to wear it as a friendship bracelet. I'm trying to make myself a new one, but I don't know if I'm doing it right. You have a way with magic that I could never dream of, so if anyone can tell anything about this bracelet, you can. And I guess if you could help me make a new one, then it could be something fun we could do together. I hope that doesn't sound too selfish, me asking that of you.
I hope you're having a great holiday, Willow. All the best to you.
Love,
Tara'
Willow felt tears in her eyes as her chest began to heat up from the love she could hear in Tara's letter. All of her other presents were wonderful, but none of them had struck a chord in her heart like Tara's had. She let her tears flow, content with knowing that they were tears of joy.
Willow opened the small box to find a small bracelet with beads and buttons and a small pentagram dangling from it. Willow felt something from it. It was magic, to be sure, but it wasn't like any magic in Hogwarts. It almost felt like a bit of home, but she didn't think it was from Sunnydale. It was more like a connection to the world outside of Hogwarts and the rest of the Wizarding world. It was a bit of the plain, humble earth beneath their feet, now wrapped around her wrist.
Smiling to herself, Willow skipped down the hallway down to the common room to wish her housemates a Happy Holiday. Nothing could spoil her good mood, and she was determined not to let anyone else's holiday be spoiled either.
Christmas Day passed by in a flash, with every meal stuffing Willow's stomach to capacity and then some. So few people were actually at the school that there were enough total students to have some group activities, so Willow got to enjoy some quality time with Harry, Ron, Fred, and George. She tried not to let Percy get her spirits down too much.
By the time dinner had come and gone, Willow was quite content and ready to go to bed. As she put away her hairbrush, Willow saw the hand-mirror that Dumbledore had given her, and she cursed herself for almost forgetting.
Wondering what sort of mystery the mirror would hold or reveal, Willow spent the hour leading up to nine o'clock making faces at the silly thing and watching her own reflection.
As the hour hand drew closer to the numeral nine, Willow began to feel nervous. Dumbledore had given this to her for a reason. But what was it? What did it matter if she missed this deadline or not? And why did the watch on the mirror look like it was nearing one o'clock, and the sun just passing the top of the timepiece?
Sighing to herself, Willow held the mirror up to her face and tried to look as brave as she could. The second hand ticked closer and closer towards one o'clock.
Just before the hour turned, her reflection began to change. The image in the mirror began to shift to and fro, until she wasn't looking at her reflection at all. The background wasn't her four-poster bed, either.
Finally, Willow could see the image clearly, and she could hardly believe her eyes. What was more amazing was that it looked like the people in the mirror were looking back at her.
"Willow? Is it really you?" one of the faces in the glass said.
Willow hoped against all hope. "Xander?" she whispered.
"Yes, yes, yes! She really is alive! Youare alive, Willow! God, I've missed you so much!"
"So have I," Jesse said, and the mirror tilted to show her other friend's face smiling at her. "I hope you got our letter. We were worried when we didn't hear back from you. But you're okay!"
"Yeah, I am," Willow said, hardly believing it. "And… Is that Mister Giles back there?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, it is," the British man said, coming into view as the tweed-clad man she remembered from the museum. "You have truly loyal friends, Willow. And the strangest man in the world gave me this mirror to give to your Jesse and Xander. But that can wait, I'm sure."
"Yeah, that can wait," Xander said. "What have you been up to? Where are you? Tell us everything!"
"Oh, I will." Willow grinned like an idiot, happier than she'd been since she'd last been in Sunnydale. "But Mister Giles, before I have to go to sleep, remind me to ask you something."
"Of course, my dear. About what?"
"Just something a friend was curious about," she said. "Something about a guy named Nicolas Flamel."
