Chapter 15: The Holidays III

AN: Sorry I took so long to make this one, it also is not my best chapter. I will no longer be making any promises on update times, only that this story will see an end. I was hoping to finish the Christmas holidays this chapter, turns out that I will not be able to finish year one without crossing over 100K words, yay. Sorry if I am boring you with the long writing, I am trying to streamline as much as I can.

I need a beta, Sir Dedrick the Cool offered, but I saw no response to my PM. If you are still interested could you please PM me, it would mean a lot?

Rights are to JK Rowling and Warner brothers. Please write a review, feedback would go a long way to improve my work. People are reading but I don't know if they are staying or enjoying it. I don't care if you want to tell me I am the worst writer ever (if you do please tell me why and what I can improve) just tell me what you think!

There is a piece of dialogue missing from this chapter, I will add it later after the school year finishes, it has no bearing on year one other than the interactions of Harry and Dumbledore.

"I am sorry, my lord," A familiar voice spoke.

"I am certain you are," A shrill rasp without weight echoed around the void.

"I tried to get the stone, but the Troll died too quickly,"

"And you never tried again,"

"It was too dangerous, Dumbledore…"

"Is a fool. You could have received the stone whenever you wished. The old man is bare, only his reputation remaining."

"Sir?"

"I will aid you, my servant,"

"How will you…" He began screaming, a terrifying sound of pure pain.

Harry woke. The silent room cradling him with his new cloak. Silently he walked into the restroom, the enchanted lamps flaming to life with a morning glow. Harry strode to the sink to wash his face and rub the sleep from his eyes when no one looked back at him. Despite searching the mirror, no image responded to his movements. After splashing water on his face, he checked again, hoping to see his reflection gazing back, but none appeared.

Harry screamed.

Nothing returned from the reverberations. His voice had gone silent. He pinched his arm and pain jetted from the spot. You still feel. You still are alive. His inner voice reasoned, the dark companion had been missing for a long time, and much like the last time, he returned the malice that commonly accompanied him was missing.

"But I feel ghost, I can touch them."

"Where did I go?"

"Did I die?"

"Dumbledore."

Harry left and exited the common room. He walked the familiar route in reverse, going from his dorm to the headmaster's office. Only before the gargoyle did his mistake come to fruition. He yelled and asked for entrance. His voice did not escape the confines of his head. Gripping the construct had the ever-watchful eyes move more, but the gargoyle didn't ask for a password.

Password.

He could no longer enter his dorm; it was password protected.

He curled into a ball and cried. His tears landed on the floor and stayed there, a small puddle proving his existence.

The gargoyle turned, revealing the hidden stair as the professor came down, dressed in pajamas decorated in unicorns colored pink.

"Professor, help."

Again, his call met no response.

"Homenum Revelio."

A wave rippled from the professor's wand, looking like a breeze carrying the summer's pollen. When the wave reached himself the spell disformed, moving past his position, and reforming behind. Appearing satisfied, Dumbledore turned to leave. Before he could Harry rushed up to him, slamming his body against the professors.

The aged man stayed standing, rocking from the collision, and looking around frantically. Then understanding replaced confusion in his warm blue eyes. "Harry, take off your hood." Harry threw it off.

"Professor." He yelled as the walls responded with the same word in kind.

"Welcome back, my boy. I see you are enjoying my gift." His enormous smile hid the deeper frustrations laying beneath.

"Sir, what happened?"

"You discovered my gift to you, or rather, your father's inheritance. What you are wearing is a cloak of invisibility, and a rare one at that."

"Sir, I felt as if," he paused and centered himself, "like I no longer existed."

"It appears to protect you more than it should, the spell I cast, Homenum Revelio, should have immediately informed me of your presence, all of my experimentings led me to that working."

"You did not know I was here?"

"No, it appears that cloak hid some of its secrets from me."

"Yet I can keep it?"

"Of course, Harry, in fact, I highly recommend it."

The Holidays.

'Twas the day after Christmas and all through school, Tracy was screaming for him being a fool.

"I thought you understood, Harry Potter, that friends walk with each other to breakfast in the morning."

At some point during her rant he stopped paying attention, instead, watching the headmaster at the table who gave his own attention back. The enchanted sky above sent delicate illusions of snow upon its student's heads, those in attendance at least. Amongst the upper years many were missing, those who showed appeared sick. Percy and a Ravenclaw prefect both flipped between stolen glances and keeping down bile.

"Harry,"

Alistair had joined him today, the toad followed close behind him since he left the headmaster's office. The amphibian hopped to him and gave a stony stare, judging Harry for crimes he did not recognize. He sat on the table and watched Professor McGonagall, one teacher still in the school, with feared eyes, the blank stare that normally crafted his face twisted into a look of fear.

"Harry, are you even listening to me?"

"Of course, I am Tracy, of course."

The Holidays.

Breath. Shuffle. Breath.

He worked his cards for the first time in months.

Breath. Shuffle. Ruffle. Breath.

They were stiff in his hands, resistant to his turns and ruffles. The months of unused weighed heavily on the deck as it fought his maneuvers, resisting the attempts to gage the steady flow of magic around him and warp it into understanding. Coaxing the intervention of Thoth or Moirai or some other power to help him read probabilities of tomorrow would be difficult if his medium refused to work.

Breath. Shuffle. Ruffle. Turn. Breath.

The lull of familiarity washed him, and he worked the ridged cards. Despite the well-worn edges of the deck, yearned to be molded but resisted his attempts still.

Breath. Shuffle. Ruffle. Turn. Ruffle. Breath.

In his past he never believed them to be a medium, they always were the future, they were not acted upon by anything but themselves. His study into the art of divination only clouded his vision of the future, instead of opening his eyes to more of the world, the study of magical tarot bottlenecked his progress on the study. Harry's mind closed to the endless possibilities of his youth. But how to return?

Breath. Shuffle. Ruffle. Turn. Ruffle. Shuffle. Breath.

Let go.

The pattern from before instead jumbled and mixed as his cards danced through his practiced hands. Techniques badgered into him by Hogwarts text fell forgotten as he conducted his friends around his fingers. Experimental mid cuts and twist pulling cards from random intervals in the card pile only to flip the entire deck again worked into his act. The full moon decorated the sky above him as he preformed for no audience in the central courtyard, sat in the snow, and hidden below his father's cloak.

He had pushed the snow and scraped the ice from the stone bench before him, an alter to lay his future upon, as he cut and shuffled the deck. The cool breeze of December bit at his skin, though to no avail as the first card sprawled on the seat. Followed by the second and third in tow.

The Six of Cups. The Star. The Three of Wands.

His past modeled itself as The Six of Cups. The titular cups each housed a single five-pointed flower, the stark white contrasting heavily against its yellow backgrounds. Four sat in the art's bottom whilst another sat atop a stone structure. The last cup was a gift, passed from one child to another. They stood before a yellow house and behind yellow walls, a guardsman strolling, marking the only other person in the depiction. Calm. Peace. Pleasantness. Happiness was the principal purpose of the card, though always in the past, a card of remembrance. In his past, it was a good card to have, a symbol of Tracy Davis, his new friend.

A major arcana stood in the center of his past and future, the card noted by XVII. Despite being called the star over one lived in the picture, One and seven decorate the heavens above a nude woman, all holding one and seven points. The card, also called The Dog-Star, or Sirius, or the Star of the Magi. Sirius is called The Star, for he outshines the seven lesser stars in the sky, drawing the attention of all to him. As a child sorting through the cards, The Star brought with it a powerful feeling of comfort, home, protection, and the closest thing to love. The woman below the stars above pours water from two pitchers. One adds to the lake which holds the woman's right leg, rippling over the water as the other drenches the grass below her left knee. Behind her, a bird sits atop a distant tree. A sign of hope. Despite the hope it brings, the card has a more consensuses definition, a time of reflection and contemplation. The rippling waters acting as a mirror of emotion.

A strange habit was forming, of his future being one of choices and hardships, wands again decorated his destination. Three of them. The darkening sky stood above a shimmering sea, reflecting the heavens back as a man stands in a grove of three staves, watching as the ships depart from him. He is robed with a half cape of yellow over his left shoulder. One wand bears part of his load. One could read this card as good; the ships are his and departing to bring wealth and learning, a successful venture. Perhaps instead life is moving past, leaving the man behind to face the setting world alone.

The breeze danced again, dragging the dry winter's chill with it, shuffling his past and present and future with the rest of the deck and into the snow. He lunged forward to collect his treasure and clean it off the soft snow, carefully placing his precious cards into the container and away in a pocket. Above, the moon laughed down with its brightest friend Sirius. Harry laughed back, invisible to the celestial bodies which decorated his past, present, and future.

The Holidays.

Despite the late hour, drowsiness did not accompany Harry on his walk back to his dorm. The full moon invigorated his soul, dispelling the traces of sleep from his body. His cloak offered a new door to a sleepless night, a tactic to avoid the consequences of being out late. Before uttering the password to the doorless entrance, he turned back to the heart of the castle, away from the darkness beyond his dorm and back into the castle proper. The hallways, even during his morning walks, hosted life and wonderment unlike any Harry had seen before, but in the dusk sinister shadows loomed over every corner and banister, clinging to the walls and dragging them into the abyss. He passed a pair of Prefects, a Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, moving to a broom cupboard in a tight embrace. Even passing them he saw no indication they noticed him walking.

His wondering led him to room after room, most empty but others housing wonderful treasures. A Skeleton of a dragon in full, a snake which spoke crude insults to the farmer sharing his portrait, and a wood desk which turned the pages of the book on top of it, though its speed was too quick for any man to read. Then he arrived in a room containing only a strange and towering covered object in the center. After assuring he was alone, trying the spell that Dumbledore showed him successfully seeing a wave of magic roll from his wand. The spell Homenum Revilio did not exhaust or hurt him as other spells did, instead the magic resonated with him, yearning to be called forth more. Harry did not know the intricacies of the spell, nor how he knew if there was a person hidden, but he assumed the magic would tell him. He gripped the corner of the sheet and pulled, the slight tug being the only requirement for the sheet to collapse onto the floor as if the concealed object wished to be free.

Harry saw himself.

An ornate mirror stood before him, tall as Hagrid and as wide as the half-giants' wingspan. Its mass rested on a black metal base and a golden frame with elaborate scrips decorating the walls encased the mirror, drawings of shapes with no direction housed the two sides. The arched top of the mirror had a nonsense word scrawled on it, erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. The most peculiar part of the strange hidden mirror was his self staring back, the magic of the cloak not preventing it from locating him.

Perhaps he could take off the cloak. If the mirror saw him, did it matter?

Was there harm in peeking without the cloak's safety?

The fabric dropped to the floor, ringing around Harry as he fell to his knees. Fire and blood responded to him. The Mirror saw into the heart of the Abyss, the place Harry traveled in dreams. An endless waste, the unkilling heat, the endless nothing. The mirror showed him all he wished to forget. The endlessness of space and the impossible depths of the sea caressed the corners of his mind that he locked out, the fear gripped back at his heart. Then the flames retreated with a flick of water, the waste transformed into a sea of life, and the numbing freeze rendered powerless.

His parents stood behind him, a hand on each shoulder. They touched him, turning did not reveal them but the mirror showed the truth, they were there, with him. James and Lily were protecting him, keeping the dark and evil at bay. Vernon, Petunia, the monsters in places unknown, all could not harm him with his parents near.

His mother's eyes watched him with love, the same eyes he had, the eyes that made everyone uncomfortable only reminded him of her love. His father's grin he gave back a grin he adopted recently. They spoke to him, though the words never reached his ear, the longer he stayed though the more he heard, what once was only a movement instead filled his ears, something near words was forming. Soon the message would arrive.

The sun ruined everything.

Its piercing glare shown into his eyes, ruining whatever his mother's words were. Before he could return to his mirror, one thought came, Tracy. She would kill him if he were not in the common room with her this morning. The lecture he had yesterday dwarfed by comparison. He threw the blanket over the mirror with a vow to return for his parents that night and departed the room, dressed in his cloak of invisibility.

The Holidays.

His entire walk to the common room was a mental exercise, his conscious nagging to return to the mirror. To return and see his parents is all he wanted. It took many tries to clear his mind from the thoughts, with any drop in effort bringing the wish to return. After cleaning in his room and exiting to the common, the drain already felled his steps. The lack of sleep did not help in the exhausting task either.

Tracy was her normal self. She never asked why his eyes drooped or his speech slurred.

During the following hours, the pair strolled the halls of Hogwarts, played devouring kelpie, and avoided the twins. Each hour met Harry with the desire to return to the room with the mirror, its verbiage nonsense ringing in his ear. Harry thought to call it Erised, an easy remembrance of its statement which sounded, unlike every language he spoke. When they walked the halls, he always trailed to the corridor which held it. Harry running from the twins brought him back. Every time he arrived, he would watch and wait by the door as the overwhelming need to enter flushed.

But he never entered, not with Tracy. Erised was special, she was his; it was him and his parents.

That night, under the cover of his fathers' cloak, he went to the room after the curfew hour passed. The devoid common room made exiting a breeze, and the lack of students meant they lessened patrols. After opening the door and tearing down the cloth, he gazed at himself under his cloak, letting it drop to the floor as he saw his parents again, whispering to him in silent voices. His mother's flaming hair danced in the air and his father's smile lit up his world as the door creaked but could not draw his attention away from the mirror.

"Harry, I knew I would find you here," Tracy said, her voice calm and flat. But Harry made no effort to return her statement, nor even care for her words. "Harry." Her voice was louder this time as a flash of flame arose behind him Fawkes and Dumbledore were in the mirror. He could yell, but why bother, his parents would protect him. The glance he took to Dumbledore showed pure horror on the old man's face.

"Harry look away," Dumbledore added to Tracy's words. The girl had gone silent. She had the sense to stay away from the mirror, from him and his family, the ones who would always keep him safe. Dumbledore tried to say something again, but his words no longer reached his ears. His father though, the faint 'I love you' resonated in Harry's ear.

The professor moved, his wand commanding the dreadful cloth from the floor and trapping the mirror again. With a flick, Harry's own wand was in his hand ready to attack the aged man with all the power he could muster, but before the wand could point at him Dumbledore's voice called out. "Harry Potter stop."

He only spoke three words. Dumbledore did not wave his wand. Yet, the authority in which he spoke froze every limb on Harry's body, magic commanded with only words halting any attempt to further move.

"Dumbledore, if you don't let me go."

"Be silent, be still." Like water rushing through him, his body followed the orders.

"Miss Davis, while it pleases me to see you have not peered into the mirror it was foolish for you to come here today, I will subtract 10 points from Slytherin for your misconduct and assigning detention."

Her voice was reserved, all energy depleted. Her quiet response held a sniffle inside, "I am sorry, Professor."

"What led you to this folly tonight? Why did you come to this room?"

"Professor, Harry was acting strange all day. He appeared overly tired, I have never seen him tired, so I got worried about him. Then he kept coming here, well to the hall outside. Professor, it was odd. Whenever we passed here, he stared at that door, but all I wanted was to run. It scared me to be near the door like all I wished was to be as far from it as possible."

"But Harry, he kept coming here, kept coming back. So, when we returned to our common room, I quickly left and hid near this door, to watch for Harry. I didn't see him, but the door opened so I fought through the fear and opened the door. He was just standing there, staring so intently. I tried to talk to him, I yelled at him professor and he did nothing, only stared at the mirror." She was crying. Good, she ruined everything. "Then you arrived in a flash of fire."

Dumbledore's eyes dropped from the anger, the fire and brimstone, to a kind sadness. "I will revoke the detention Miss Davis, it appears you only came with the intentions to save a friend, for that feat I will award fifteen points to Slytherin. But please, next time tell a teacher, you are not responsible for the actions of your classmate, or your friend." A sly grin settled on his face, "Walk back to your common room now, I have to deal with your friend here. If you get caught, I never found you."

"Will Harry be alright, sir?"

"He will, but you can visit him in the hospital wing tomorrow."

Her loud shuffling made it a wonder she evaded capture sneaking here today. When the heavy door closed behind him Dumbledore still made no attempt to talk to him, probably too ashamed for taking Erised away. The old man reached and grabbed the cloak, eyes full of longing directed at the cloth, then returning to the covered mirror holding an even more somber and haunted look.

"Fawkes, could you take Mr. Potter to my office." The creature gripped Harry's shoulder, the long talons gripping tight against his skin and burning the affected area with cold flame as a beautiful crimson fire flashed around him, the hottest sensation Harry had found yet it did not burn him as grease or heated metal. Once the inferno retreated Harry's surroundings no longer were the room holding Erised, instead the familiar office of Dumbledore greeted his vision. Harry attempted to escape once the grip of the phoenix left his shoulder, but the door to the office did not budge at his touch, no matter the force he pushed with the door held firm. His shrill screaming did nothing to open the door either.

A lifetime of pounding and yelling opened the door eventually, though the escape route had an old man preventing him from scrambling back to the mirror. Dumbledore appeared worn, with heavy bags resting beneath his blue eyes, the wrinkles on his face pulled on his face in ways never seen by Harry before. The low flickering lights of the entrance painted a villainous face, the kind man Dumbledore usually displayed disappeared under stress, disappointment, and anger. Dumbledore's knotted wand sat comfortably in his right hand with the silvery cloak draped over his left. Alohomora, that spell may have worked to open the door. The motion of Alohomora was a circle with a strike through, with more power being pushed through with an added twist, going with whatever lock you wanted. Harry always thought the spell acted as a magic key, defining the area, and inserting and twisting a key.

With his mind focused on the spell, the demanding pressure of looking for the mirror diminished slightly, the driving need closer to a burning desire. The look on the professor's face also fell, the kind man returning, driving back the villainous face. "You have been reading the book?"

"Un léger" (A slight).

"Close, but try 'un peu'. That is how I would say a little."

"Thank you, sir."

"Why don't you sit, how was your flight with Fawkes?" He moved from the entrance to his desk. Erised. He could make it; his route would be easy. He would stop you. Five meters, tops.

"It was amazing sir, Fire surrounded me, but did not burn. Also, I teleported, and it didn't hurt." Teleportation was something that still haunted Harry's nightmares. Harry wished for Erised, she would keep the nightmares away, always.

"Harry, why don't you come sit down. There is no reason to leave already." His eyes returning to the present saw Harry at the door to the headmaster's office, ready to leave. Something was messing with his mind. He needed to see Erised to clear his mind from the confusion. "Harry, please shut the door and come here." He cleared his mind, pushing the desire, the lust, the confusion, all of it away, and sat opposed to the headmaster. The blue eyes glistened with the wary emotion searching over his body.

"I am sorry, sir, I just think we should have this conversation somewhere else."

"You mean before the mirror, do you not?"

"That is exactly what I mean, professor, everything makes more sense there. You will see."

"Harry I too have looked in that mirror, which you call Erised, I have seen the depths of despair and trickery that thrice dammed enchantment has caused great men to fall to. I do not wish it upon you, you must not seek it out again."

"But sir, I saw them, they were there, with me. Maybe, together, we can free them, to bring them out to be with me again."

Tears formed in the headmaster's eyes, "Harry."

"I promise I will work hard professor; I will do everything I can to get them out and free. But I need the mirror for that."

"Harry," he tried again.

"They were their professor, talking to me. I could almost hear them. If we go, I am sure they will tell me. Together we can save them, Headmaster."

"Please, Harry."

"Headmaster, we can do it."

"Your parents are dead Harry; no magic can see that undone." Harry stopped his pleading. The headmaster's eyes bore a resemblance again to a sapphire, though because of the stony look of indifference that painted his features rather than his crystal blue.

"But I saw them, they were there, with me."

"I know, Harry, nothing but a lie. A trick made by that forsaken magical mirror to trap victims for eternity."

"You are lying."

"No, I am not."

"You are." He stood.

"You know I am not Harry." The headmaster rose with Harry. "I wish James and Lily back as well; I would sacrifice myself in an instant if it were to bring even one of my friends back." His voice dimmed, the whisper floating over the silent office, Fawkes was nowhere to be found. "The mirror is nothing but falsehoods, a tool to steal life from those who gaze upon it."

"Headmaster."

"My boy, you are smart. You know what you feel is unnatural." He pleaded, placing his hands on his desk, and leaning on the oaken structure for all the support it could muster.

"I know." Harry's response was quieter still. "That does not reduce the wish to make it reality, does it? To look in the mirror as truth? Something that can be?"

"Harry, some things may never be, the mirror shows that. Not only the deepest desire you have, the thing you wish to bring forth with every part of yourself, but an impossibility, or else why would you sit before it?"

The Holidays.

In the hospital wing, the pair sat in silence. After a session with Madam Pomphrey, she left the two in peace. As soon as the matron left sight, the headmaster brought forth his pipe from the endless confines of his multicolored robe and lit it, looking like a child hiding from his parents. The waning moon lit the white hall, the pale tint rolling over the sheets making them dance like a ghost from the wind from the window.

"My parents loved me, right?"

"Yes, they did." The headmaster was the oldest-looking man Harry had ever seen, aged beyond measure of time. He joined the dancing sheets when he spoke, his pale features indistinguishable from the frail cotton.

"You said the mirror showed an impossibility, they loved me in the mirror I am sure."

"They loved you, the mirror taunted you with that love. It is only impossible because you cannot be with them as you are now. That being alive."

"What do you see?"

"That is a very personal question." He aged further. A man already in his grave sat and talked with Harry.

"And one which you know my answer."

"You are not doing a good job at respecting your elders." The clock rewound upon him as a smile graced his face.

"I am starting my teenage rebellion phase." Harry returned his smile, the first since separating from Erised.

"You are eleven, thus not a teenager."

"I am mature for my age."

The headmaster laughed, "You are the shortest child in your class, and probably next years too."

"Details."

They soaked in the laughter, defusing the situation.

"My sister," he whispered.

"You have a sister."

"In the same way you have parents, I also have a brother."

"I am sorry for your loss, sir, what happened to her?"

"That is tactless."

"Sorry, sir."

He paused, "Are you sure you wish to know, it is a long story and may change how you see me."

"I will not be sleeping tonight, and I doubt you will leave me be."

"Correct as always Harry. To begin with, her name is Ariana, and she had the most beautiful singing voice…"

The Holidays.

When the matron entered the hospital wing the next day both residents were awake and lucid and the Matron had bags of tiredness under her eyes and tear streaks. The doors burst open.

"Harry Potter, you have some explaining to do." Tracy Davis had arrived.