(This Chapter is From the Point of View of Hermione Granger)
Christmas was drawing nearer, bringing with it several feet of snow and a frozen lake, and I was slowly losing my mind. I knew I'd read the name Nicholas Flamel somewhere, but I just couldn't remember! It was driving me to distraction!
Ever since Hagrid had let slip about Nicholas Flamel having a part in whatever it was that Snape was trying to steal, the four of us had spent every spare second we were handed in the library, searching for him. We couldn't find so much as a footnote referring to a Nicholas Flamel. It was infinitely frustrating. So much so that I'd decided that I just couldn't go home for the upcoming holiday, but then neither were my friends, so I didn't mind. My parents were less than pleased, but I didn't mind that either.
Hagrid would disclose nothing more than he already had, no matter how much we pestered him, so we gave up on him for the time being.
Christmas snuck up on me with surprising deftness, but not so much so that I had no time to buy presents. I didn't spend much time wondering if they'd gotten me anything; I wasn't even sure if you were supposed to give gifts to you friends, since I'd only just come to have some.
Christmas morning was a bit of a shock to me, since I sat up and saw a small pile of presents sitting at the end of my bed that couldn't have been from my parents, being too clumsily wrapped in two cases and too painstakingly in the third. The other girls (Parvati and Lavender had both stayed over break) were happily unwrapping their presents and talking to each other, but they never had much to say to me, and I never had much to say to them, either.
I decided to unwrap the one I was sure was from my parents first. It was large and wrapped in brown paper tied with white string, perfectly simple and practical. They'd sent me a new coat, once again full of practicality. I vaguely wondered if I would be getting socks as well as I ripped open the nearest package and a box of sugar quills fell away from book titled Born and Bred: The Complete Memoirs of Glenna Roth. I frowned, wondering if I knew the name. I flipped it open to the first page and read, trying to figure out if I knew who this was or not.
My name is Glenna Roth, though I can't imagine how you could have managed to buy my book without knowing at least that much. At the moment, I am pretty close to being ninety years of age, though you don't have to go telling everyone that. Since this is the introduction, I suppose I should tell you what's so special about me that I would have a book, since you may in fact be reading this long after I held the position of Minister or Magic. Well, I've said it just now: I held the post of Minister of Magic for forty years. I'm quite proud of myself, thanks. Becoming the Minister of Magic when you are born of Muggle parents is nothing to sneeze at, either. I was the first to do it, but since I've slung the door wide open I don't think I'll be the last. In fact…
I grinned and closed the book, already knowing who'd bought it for me as I picked up the card that had fallen free. I already liked Glenna Roth, and sat the book down beside me for future reading. I picked up Draco's gift next, which was wrapped in shiny silver paper. I untied the ribbon and folded the paper away, finding a box of Wizard's Chess playing set. And another book. Well, at least they all know what I like, I thought with a wide smile. The book was Cauldron Bubble: Advanced Potions and Brews. I almost laughed aloud at this. How like Draco to give me a book so that he could borrow it later.
The last package was neatly wrapped, but the paper crinkled in my hands, as if the item it held wasn't solid. Pansy, I thought as I untied the ribbon and the bright paper fell open to reveal a shimmering golden-colored scarf that flowed like liquid in my hands. I gasped and buried my fingers in it, amazed at its softness as I lifted it and wrapped it around my shoulders.
"Wow. That's pretty, Hermione," Parvati Patil said admiringly from the bed beside mine.
"Oh. Well, thank you," I said, smiling at her. "I like your new hat," I told her politely, since she'd pulled on a ruby and gold banded skullcap. She thanked me and went back to her gifts. A tiny book had fallen out of the scarf when I'd wrapped it around myself, and I picked it up in surprise. It was about a fourth of an inch thick and three inches wide both up and down, bound in red leather with black cursive on the cover: Hermione.
I flipped it open to find that there were no pages in the book, just a piece of white paper on the inside of each cover. On the left piece, in Pansy's handwriting, it said, Write something there, with an arrow pointing to the left page. There was a small ink pen cradled in the spine of the book, so I picked it up and wrote Merry Christmas where she had indicated, and gasped in delight when the words Merry Christmas, Hermione! appeared in the place of Pansy's last note, quickly followed by, Do you like your scarf?
Yes! Very much! It's beautiful! I scribbled back, since my earlier note had faded to a blank page again.
I'm so glad you like it! And thank you so much for the bracelets! I'll never take them off! Pansy replied quickly.
This is amazing. Do you have a book just like the one you gave me, then? I asked.
Yes. Draco and I went down to Hogsmeade to shop. Draco bought two sets-for me and you, and him and Harry. Aren't they great?
It's brilliant! I replied. You want to go to dinner early? I'll bet the Hall is wonderful.
See you there!
I closed the book and swung my legs out of bed, but the surprises for the day were not over yet. As soon as I got down to the Great Hall, Harry dragged me, Pansy, and Draco into an empty classroom, practically bursting with excitement.
"Look what I've got!" Harry exclaimed, pulling a shining silvery cloak out from under his robes. I didn't see anything special about it, but Draco gasped in surprise.
"That's an invisibility cloak!" he nearly choked. "Put it on, then!" he ordered abruptly. Harry complied, draping it around his shoulders. I heard Pansy's cry of surprise match mine when Harry disappeared from the neck down, leaving only his disembodied head floating before us. "Wicked," Draco breathed.
"And this note was with it," Harry said, holding out a small square of stiff paper in the general direction of Draco. Looking over the shoulder that Pansy was not glued to, I could see a short note written in narrow, loopy writing that I had never seen before.
Your father left this in my possession before he died.
It is time it was returned to you.
Use it well.
A Very Merry Christmas to you.
There was no signature. We looked at each other in bewilderment.
"Oh God, there will be no end to the rule-breaking now, will there?" I said resignedly, and as soon as it was out of my mind, I knew exactly what the cloak could be used for. "You can get into the restricted section of the library with that!" I exclaimed, suddenly so excited I couldn't stand it. "Flamel. I bet he's there somewhere!"
"You're a bloody hypocrite, you know that?" Pansy laughed, slinging an arm around my shoulders. "And the most bookish rule-breaker I've ever met," she added, laughing, kissing me on the cheek, and tugging the scarf she'd given my over my bushy hair.
The boys were paying us no attention, absorbed in discussing more interesting things to do with the cloak. But then they always seemed to be doing that.
"I'm certain we could find Flamel in the restricted section, Pansy!" I said, undeterred.
"Yes, I know you are, love," she said, linking her arm through mine. I noticed at once that she was wearing the bracelets that I'd bought her, one on each wrist. They were thick and silver, set with faux emeralds, since I didn't have the money for real ones. I wished I had been able to get her real emeralds. Pansy was the truest friend I'd ever had, and I loved her so much more than faux emeralds could express. I wondered if she realized how much she meant to me, as we marched down the chilly corridor arm-in-arm, with the boys trailing behind us.
The hall was amazingly decorated, with a dozen massive Christmas trees and too many thousands of candles to count. We sat together on the end of the Gryffindor table, since the hall was still mostly empty. When Professor McGonagall stopped in front of us with a contemplative look on her face, Draco and Pansy stood up awkwardly, looking as if they weren't sure if they were about to get in trouble for sitting on the wrong table.
"I don't think anyone will mind if four friends were to sit together to eat their Christmas dinners," she said with an unexpected smile.
"Th-thank you, Professor," Pansy said, flushed and grinning as she sat back down and Professor McGonagall walked away from us.
I've never in all my life had such a Christmas dinner. A hundred fat, roast turkeys; mountains of roast and boiled potatoes; platters of chipolatas; tureens of buttered peas, silver boats of thick, rich gravy and cranberry sauce – and stacks of wizard crackers every few feet along the table. These fantastic party favors were nothing like the feeble Muggle ones that my family usually bought, with their little plastic toys and their flimsy paper hats inside. I pulled a wizard cracker with Pansy and it didn't just bang, it went off with a blast like a cannon and engulfed us all in a cloud of blue smoke, while from the inside exploded a flowered bonnet and several live, white mice. Up at the High Table, Professor Dumbledore had swapped his pointed wizard's hat for a rear admiral's hat, and was chuckling merrily at a joke Professor Flitwick had just read him.
Flaming Christmas puddings followed the turkey. Harry nearly broke his teeth on a silver sickle embedded in his slice. We watched Hagrid getting redder and redder in the face as he called for more wine, finally kissing Professor McGonagall on the cheek, who, to all of our amazement, giggled and blushed, her top hat lopsided.
When we finally left the table, we were all laden down with stacks of things out of the crackers, in my case including a pack of nonexplodable, luminous balloons, a strange bottle labeled Hair So Fine, and some nail polish that changed color according to the mood of the wearer. The white mice had disappeared and I had a nasty feeling they were going to end up as Mrs. Norris's Christmas dinner.
The four of us spent a happy afternoon having a furious snowball fight on the grounds, Pansy and I eventually losing to Harry and Draco. Then, cold, wet, and gasping for breath, we returned to the Transfiguration classroom, where Hermione conjured us a wonderfully warm blue fire that hovered above us. I broke in my new chess set by losing spectacularly to Pansy, who'd gotten her own set from the wizard crackers. She went on to defeat a bewildered Draco several times, who eventually gave up and named her a chess prodigy and a cheater.
After a meal of turkey sandwiches, crumpets, trifle, and Christmas cake, we all felt too full and sleepy to do much before bed, so Harry and I parted way with our Slytherin friends and headed for Gryffindor tower.
"Harry…I think you and I should take your cloak for a test run tonight," I mused, no longer so close to sleeping.
He glanced back over his shoulder, and I wasn't sure if he was searching for Draco and Pansy or checking to make sure we weren't overheard. "Where do you want to go?" he asked curiously.
"I want going to look for Flamel in the restricted section of the library. I don't think all four of us would fit under it, or I would have asked them as well," I said, nodding back over my shoulder in the direction that our friends had disappeared.
"Alright then. Meet me in the common room once the other girls have fallen asleep; I have my dormitory to myself, so I'll wait for you," he told me as we reached the portrait hole. I gave the Fat Lady the password and we stepped through into the common room, and I went up to bed to lie awake until Parvati and Lavender fell asleep.
The library was pitch-black and very eerie. Harry lit a lamp so that we could see our way along the rows of books. We walked close to each other, hidden under the invisibility cloak with the lamp floating creepily beside us. The Restricted Section was right at the back of the library. We shrugged off the invisibility cloak and I squinted at the titles of the rows of books.
"Be careful," I whispered. "There's no telling what's in here."
The titles really didn't tell me much. Their peeling, faded gold letters spelled words in languages I couldn't understand. Some had no title at all. One book had a dark stain on it that looked horribly like blood. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Maybe I was imagining it, maybe not, but I thought a faint whispering was coming from the books, as though they knew someone was there who shouldn't be.
"We have to start somewhere," Harry whispered. Setting the lamp down carefully on the floor, he looked along the bottom shelf for an interesting looking book. A large black and silver volume caught his eye. A sudden anxiety filled my stomach as I watched him pull it out with difficulty, as if it was very heavy, and, balancing it on his knee, let it fall open.
A piercing, bloodcurdling shriek split the silence — the book was screaming! Harry snapped it shut, but the shriek went on and on, one high, unbroken, earsplitting note. He stumbled backward and knocked over the lamp, which went out at once.
"Harry!" I hissed hysterically, jerking the book out of his hands and cramming it back onto the shelf. I threw the cloak over us, grabbed his hand, and ran.
We passed Filch in the doorway; his pale, wild eyes looked straight through us, and we slipped under his outstretched arm and streaked off up the corridor, the book's shrieks still ringing in my ears. Only our small size had saved us, since the cloak had managed to cover us both throughout our mad dash.
We came to a sudden halt in front of a tall suit of armor at the sound of voices beyond it. I had been so busy getting away from the library, I hadn't paid attention to where we were going. Perhaps because it was dark, I didn't recognize where we were at all. There was a suit of armor near the kitchens, I knew, but we must be five floors above there.
"You asked me to come directly to you, Professor, if anyone was wandering around at night, and somebody's been in the library Restricted Section."
I felt the blood drain out of my face. Wherever we were, Filch must know a shortcut, because his soft, greasy voice was getting nearer, and to my utter horror, it was Snape who replied, "The Restricted Section? Well, they can't be far, we'll catch them."
We stood rooted to the spot as Filch and Snape came around the corner ahead. They couldn't see us, of course, but it was a narrow corridor and if they came much nearer they'd knock right into us — the cloak didn't stop us from being solid.
Harry prodded my arm and pointed. A door stood ajar to our left. It was our only hope. Harry squeezed through it, holding his breath, trying not to move it, and to my relief I managed follow him into the room without their noticing anything. They walked straight past, and we leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, listening to their footsteps dying away. That had been close, very close. It was a few seconds before I noticed anything about the room we had hidden in.
It looked like an unused classroom. The dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket – but propped against the wall facing us was something that didn't look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to keep it out of the way.
It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi "Look at this," Harry whispered, shrugging the cloak off again.
"Harry, come on. We should go back. This was a bad idea," I whispered, hugging it around my trembling body. I wasn't quite ready to relax yet, and was even less so when Harry stepped in front of the mirror and gave a gasp of terror, wheeling around. All the color had gone out of his face as he looked back at the mirror, then behind him, then at me. His eyes were far away, as if he was barely aware of me even as his strange green eyes stared through me. Then he turned back to the mirror, and the expression on his face made my heart clench in my chest.
I'd never seen anyone look so completely hungry and heartbroken and happy at the same time. He pressed his hands to the glass and leaned forward, as if he hoped to fall through to the other side of the mirror. I didn't know what to do.
"Harry," I whispered after a moment. He jumped slightly and then turned to face me with a large smile on his face and a deep sadness in his eyes.
"Hermione, come look at this," he said quietly. "You can see your whole family in this mirror. It's brilliant." I blinked in surprise; that was what had brought such a deep longing into his eyes? But then I realized that it would, of course, be something he wanted desperately. He'd never had a family.
He stepped back away from the mirror and held out his hand in a beckoning gesture. I meant only to humor him, but when I stepped in front of the mirror, all thoughts of Harry left my head.
"Do you see them? Your family?" he asked pleasantly.
"No," I breathed. On the other side of the mirror I saw myself and Pansy, just as we were now, arm-in-arm. And then we were older and taller, thirteen, fifteen, then twenty. Teenagers and then women, bright and then elegant. Then we were thirty, forty, fifty. Silver-haired and wise and beautiful. Then we were ageless. We were light. We were rain. We were music. We were eternity.
Tears spilled from my eyes, because I knew what this mirror was. Erised…Desire. It showed us the deepest desire of our hearts, and mine was to never be without Pansy, my truest friend and the sister of my soul. Harry saw a family he'd never known.
"Let's get away from here, Harry," I whispered, wiping my face on the back of my sleeve. He followed me silently out of the room, and we ducked under the cloak again.
"What did you see, Hermione?" he asked me when we were back inside the Gryffindor common room, warming ourselves by the fire.
"Eternity," I sighed, but I found that I just couldn't explain what I'd seen; my throat closed and wouldn't allow it. So I went clinical. "It shows us our heart's desire. That's what it said across the top, you know. I've read about it." My voice sounded kind of dead. I couldn't seem to connect my mind and my heart; they were drifting separately from each other, one begging and keening to be back in front of the mirror, the other knowing that it was frivolous. "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafre oyt on wohsi…it isn't Latin or Greek…it's mirrored. I show not your face, but your heart's desire."
"Oh," Harry said, staring into the fire in just the way I was.
"Your family?" I asked. He nodded.
"I'll have one someday. A big family," he said with such conviction that I had no doubt in my mind that he would.
"Me too. I don't ever want to be lonely," I agreed.
"Will you marry me, Hermione?" he asked then. I blinked at him, and saw clearly that he was perfectly sincere.
"Marry you?" I repeated, not sure how to react to this.
"When we're adults, I can marry you and Draco and marry Pansy, and the four of us will be together forever," he said seriously.
"Okay," I heard myself say, just as seriously. "Let's not court, though. Let's not tell the others. Not yet, anyway. It doesn't make any sense. When we're older, we'll date people, then try being in love. Then we'll get married."
"Alright," Harry agreed. It was so simple and dispassionate a plan that it just couldn't fail. So we went to bed, with a distant promise and no butterflies.
(AN: poor kids :) I do love them so much. Hope you're liking it!)
(PS: Review!) (pretty please?)