mirrordraco
Draco

Draco wondered the halls, pale cheeks tinged with red. Potter just thinks he can get away with anything, he thought angrily. All I did was call him and his 'friends' a name, and he thinks he can joke about my father! The nerve! He quickened his pace, not really knowing where he was going, but not really caring, either. Sure, my father is a Death Eater. Weasley seems to think that it makes me one, too!

At this point, Draco stopped walking. In reality, he was a Death Eater. He pledged his loyalty to the Dark Lord, tortured several Muggles, and had the Dark Mark branded upon his arm. But it was the stereotypical thinking of them that made him mad. Just because they were Slytherins, they were automatically called evil and were avoided. Why, the nerve--

Draco's thought was never finished, for at that moment he came upon a giant portrait. It showed a man of about thirty with jet-black hair and black eyes staring at the space in front of him. Unlike other portraits, this one did not move. It simply looked straight ahead. But that was not the reason Draco stopped. Under the picture was a name that he admired, like any other Slytherin did: Salazar Slytherin.

He looked up and down, surveying it. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it, yet Draco sensed that it was hiding something. It was an unknown instinct that he had, and he wasn't about to abandon it. He hesitantly reached a hand out and touched the surface...only to have it go right through the picture. It didn't take a genius to figure out that there was a secret room behind it, and Draco stepped inside, expecting to see more portraits, a classroom, maybe even a room full of suits of armor.

What he saw was an empty room. Disgusted, he turned to leave, but a flash of gold got his attention. Turning around, he saw a mirror. It was unusual, too, with an inscription that said, "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi". At the top was carved, Mirror of Erised.

As soon as he saw the word "Erised", he realized that it was the Mirror of Desire. Father told him of its power when he was a small child. It gave one the chance to see his heart's deepest wish. Father ordered him never to look in it or he would go mad. Smiling, he stepped in front of it and looked inside, already knowing what he would see. He would see himself drinking from golden goblets while servants waited on him hand and foot, and all the while his beautiful wife would be swooning over him. Therefore, when he saw what he was really looking at, his smile quickly faded.

There was nothing showing. Not even his reflection.

Draco smacked the mirror with his hand lightly to see if it was malfunctioning. Nothing happened. It continued to show nothing. It didn't even show the reflections of the walls behind it. It was just glass. Like staring into air. Now Draco knew it wasn't working properly. It was supposed to show him what he wanted most in life, not air! Once again, he turned to leave, but he stopped and turned back around. This mirror gave him a new feeling. He tried to identify it, and the word popped up in his mind. He felt at peace.

Peace? Was that it? Did Draco just want peace in his life? Just some clarity, without worries or fears? Was he not satisfied with his life at the time being?

No. Draco shook his head. The mirror just didn't work right. That's why it was in an old room behind a trick picture of one of the Founders. Dumbledore didn't want people to find it, so he sat it there. Yeah. That was it. He turned for the last time and walked out of the room without looking back. Back in the hallways, he met up with his bodyguards, Crabbe and Goyle, and they all left together heading for the Slytherin dungeons. Once inside, they headed up to their dormitory, and he pulled the curtains around his bed for privacy. Then he picked up a book, Magical Artifacts, and opened to the chapter about the Mirror or Erised. He quickly scanned the paragraphs and found nothing about them malfunctioning, so with a smug smile, he shut it and didn't give the mirror a second thought.

If he had, he would have turned the page and found the sentence that said, "The Mirror of Erised has one quality that has been proven countless times. This quality is the fact that it is never wrong."