Hermione rushed blindly through the halls, eyes brimming with tears. She could hardly see her way around, and for once, she was speechless. All she could think about was how angry Ron and Harry could make her. She thought that offering to help Ron with his homework was a kind, generous offer. But no. Ron got angry and accused her of wanting to make herself look good by doing his homework perfectly. Harry just sat there and watched the whole argument. He didn't even come to her defense! It was too much to bear.
She didn't have any more energy to run, so she stopped and leaned back against the dusty wall, trying to stop crying. Crying will do you no good, she told herself sternly. And yet, the tears didn't stop. Giving up on her goal, she sank to the ground and sobbed miserably. They just didn't understand. Not at all.
Suddenly, she fell backwards. It happened so fast that one minute she had been staring at the wall in front of her in despair and the next thing she knew, she was staring at a dusty floor. Hermione sneezed and quickly sat up to avoid doing it again. Wiping dust from her robes, she looked around and realized she was in a new room she'd never seen before. Even though she knew no one, not even Dumbledore, knew all of the secret passages of the school, she couldn't help but be amazed.
Something glittering caught her eye. Turning around, she saw the back of a tall piece of furniture. It was the back of a mirror. Hermione started to turn around and walk away. She didn't want to see how she looked, with her puffy eyes and dusty figure, she knew it wasn't good. But before she could, the unusual carvings caught her eyes. They were curving, going left to right, up and down. It was like the ocean waves.
There was an inscription on it. It read, "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi". Hermione frowned slightly and started going over it, trying to find its meaning. "Erised?" she said, hoping that saying it aloud would help her figure out what it was. After all, it was the Mirror Of Erised, it said so at the top. She stared at it a moment, then switched the letters around.
"I show not your face but your hearts desire!" she whispered triumphantly. It was the Mirror of Desire! She had read about it back in third year. It showed more or less your hearts desire. Her first reaction was to step in front of it and see exactly what her heart's deepest yearning was, but she then remembered a passage from the book that clearly said people had been wasted in front of it, living off of what they saw in the mirror. Some even went mad.
She shoved the precautions aside, for once. Taking a deep breath, she stepped in the mirror's view with her eyes closed. She opened them and glanced at the glass. She gaped.
It was her, Ron, and Harry, all standing together. They all seemed to be about nineteen or twenty, and they were joking around and laughing with one another. The mirror made it seem like they had no worries at all. As she watched, Ron slipped his hand into hers and Harry smiled knowingly. She then laughed, it must have been some kind of an inside joke between them.
Puzzled, the real Hermione stepped back away from the mirror's surface. Her heart's deepest desire was to laugh and joke with Ron and Harry when they got older?
The realization hit her like a bucket of ice water. They were all older in the picture, already graduated from Hogwarts. From the looks of it, they were carefree adults. That meant she was planning on them all to survive and live to see those days. Her heart's deepest desire was for them all to grow up and survive whatever the dark side had for them and still be able to laugh and joke with one another.
Shaking her head, she turned and started running towards the doorway where she came. As she suspected, the door was only a trick one, and she soon found herself back in the halls of Hogwarts. She started running towards the common room, all the while thinking of the mirror. It's not if we grow up, it's when, she told herself firmly.
When.
