A/N Sorry it took so long. I've had loads of other things on my mind…or to be more precise, on my heart. The wonderful person to whom this story is dedicated should know! ;)
For a few moments, Harry stayed statue-still, staring in shocked silence across the Entrance Hall at the great oak doors which were still slightly open. The little of the grounds he could see through the crack between the doors were growing dark and forbidding, radiating an air of dejected hopelessness which gave Harry an ominous feeling he couldn't quite explain, as if it was describing his own situation.
As he heard the last of Ginny's fading footsteps on the stone steps outside the doors, he jolted to his senses and tore down the marble staircase after her, only to be grabbed to a halt by Hermione at the bottom.
"Harry, don't!" she protested, clinging firmly to his arm.
"What are you doing?" Harry demanded. "I've got to go after her..."
"Don't," said Hermione again. "Not yet, Harry, she won't listen to you."
"How do you know?" said Harry quickly.
"Trust me," came the firm reply, and from the serious look on her face, it seemed clear she knew what she was talking about. "I know her, and I know how I'd react if I was in her shoes, and I'm pretty sure she'll be far too upset at the moment to sit quietly and listen to what you have to say to her."
There was a touch of certainty in her voice that put a sudden stop to Harry's struggle to free his arm.
"I didn't mean what I said in that way," he said in what was almost a whine. "I think the world of her, you know I do! it's just that I'm so close to the family and..."
"I know how you meant it," Hermione interrupted. "But Ginny doesn't, and as far as she's concerned, the only person who ever saw her for who she was, was lying about everything he told her. Poor kid's probably devastated. That's why you should wait a bit before you talk to her. Let her calm down a little, or you'll never get her back."
"But -" Harry began.
"Listen," said Hermione, "I'll go and try talking to her now. You go off and, I don't know, play some chess or do some homework. Leave Ginny to me for the time being. I'll tell you when you..."
"I love her!" Harry burst out desperately, making several passing Ravenclaws stare. The words sounded strange when spoken out loud, but nothing could have felt truer. "You will tell her that for me, won't you?"
Hermione glanced quickly at Ron for support before saying, "That's something only you can tell her, Harry," rather quietly.
"Hermione's right, Harry," said Ron, placing a hand on Harry's shoulder. "If Hermione says it for you, Ginny could think she was making it up to cheer her up and won't believe you when you tell her."
Harry sighed and hung his head slightly. He could feel Ron and Hermione exchanging glances as he stared down at the polished marble floor.
"I'm going to talk to Ginny," Hermione said after a pause, then turning to Ron, added in an undertone, "I'm sorry about this. We'll talk later," to which Ron replied with an understanding nod.
They watched Hermione leave through the double doors in silence. Once she'd gone, Harry turned around and climbed the marble staircase without another word to Ron, who stared after him in apprehension.
Harry trudged miserably and blindly through a blur of corridors, staircases, hidden passages and tapestries, his mind far too occupied to pay any attention to where he was going. He could be crossing Professor Trelawney's classroom, could be the Honeydukes tunnel, could be the hidden chamberpot-room Dumbledore once mentioned...he neither knew nor cared.
The words he'd last said in Ginny's earshot echoed in his mind.
"She's just like a sister to me....how could anyone like me possibly love someone like Ginny?...How could I possibly love her?...she's your sister..."
Poor Ginny, he thought, his stomach writhing in such a painfully sickening way that the threat of throwing up returned. To anyone who didn't hear the rest of the conversation, it really would seem like he'd lied about everything he told her. Not only would it make him appear to share the same view as everyone else's about Ginny's maturity and rights to a normal teenage life, he'd actually convinced her he was the only one whose opinion of her couldn't be more different. He had to admit, there's no logical reason in the world she'd ever want to talk to him again...
"But I didn't mean it that way!" he shouted suddenly to the empty corridor he was walking though, his desperate cry echoing vacantly off the walls. "I didn't mean there was anything wrong with her, or that she's not good enough for me or anything... I meant how could someone so close to the family, to the extent that he used to see Ginny as his own sister, logically and legitimately fall in love with her?"
This was precisely what had happened all right, but to anyone else it would seem almost illegally wrong. Not to mention the fact she's his best friend's sister, which in itself was another barrier blocking all reason from such a relationship...
Harry's thoughts came to an abrupt halt as he smashed straight into someone else's face. Stumbling backwards feeling slightly dazed and massaging his aching nose, Harry stared at the person he'd literally bumped into.
Staring back at him through the half-darkness was a black-haired, bespectacled, green-eyed face he recognised, after a moment's confusion, as his own. Blinking curiously, Harry shook himself and looked again.
He was in a disused classroom off a disused corridor in one of the less accessible parts of the castle. He felt quite sure that if Filch or any of the teachers found him there, he'd be in trouble, but on the other hand the place looked maddeningly familiar...
The answer to that riddle was the ceiling-high, gold ornate-framed mirror that stood in front of him, with "I show not your face but your heart's desire" carved backwards over the glass.
And in the centre of the group of people smiling at him from behind the glass, stood two tall figures, the untidily-black-haired, blue-eyed form of his father, standing by his pretty dark-red haired lime-green-eyed mother. The old sadness he'd felt five years ago when he'd last seen the Mirror of Erised returned, making him temporarily forget the Ginny fiasco and take a step towards the reflection of his family.
As he did so, the picture rippled slightly, as though the glass was in fact the super-still surface of a lake which had just had a small pebble dropped into it. The ripple only lasted a moment, but when the image cleared it was considerably and curiously different.
The reflection of the sixth-year student had vanished, the surrounding family members had were completely different people, though Harry couldn't make out their faces, and though the couple in the centre were still there, there was something very different about them too.
The tall red-haired woman on the right now had soft freckles sprinkled lightly over her nose and cheeks, her smile had changed to a slightly cheekier one and her previously bright green eyes had been transplanted to her husband, to be replaced with warm caramel-brown ones, which twinkled when Harry looked at them.
The untidily-black-haired man with his arm around her, had suddenly acquired a flash of dark crimson on his forehead, showing clearly through the gap in his untidy fringe. His squarish glasses were replaced by round ones and his eyes were undoubtedly the same as Harry's. Both adults, however, were standing in the exact same position as they were before the ripple, and apart from those few differences, were almost exactly as they had been.
Utterly bewildered, Harry sat on the nearest desk, hands in his robe pockets, and stared at this curious apparition, trying to make some sense of it. His hand brushed something very thin and rectangular and as he pulled it out of his pockets, he found himself gazing down at the King and Queen of Hearts Ginny had given him last night. A small lightbulb of understanding would have flickered on at this point, had the magic of Hogwarts not disengaged all electric appliances in the area.
He glanced from the royal couple in his hand to the one behind the glass, and felt his heart triple its beating pace. Smiling down at him in the Mirror, were an older version of himself and Ginny, surrounded by the Weasleys, Hagrid, Sirius and Dumbledore, and a few pairs of smaller bright green eyes Harry didn't recognise. Could this possibly mean...? Were he and Ginny meant for each other, in the exact same way his parents were? Was this some kind of prophecy or prompting of fate?
No, Harry decided. Dumbledore had specifically said that this Mirror does not tell the future, nor does it give neither knowledge or truth. "Men have wasted away before it, driven mad by what they have seen…" he had warned Harry, five years ago, and had Harry continued along this train of thoughts, he would have gone mad, too. Instead, he realized what was going on.
The Mirror of Erised's job is to show the deepest more desperate desire of its user's heart, so if Harry saw both the image of his parents and family and the apparition of himself and Ginny being in the same position, this didn't necessarily mean he couldn't make his mind up. He simply had two desperate desires, linked together by certain elements, and this meant that whether he realized it or not, he wanted him and Ginny to be together, as his parents were, more than anything else. Whether the Mirror was reflecting the future as well was no longer important. His priorities suddenly slid into proportion and his prime concern now was to reach his reflection's state.
"I have got to get her back," he said out loud to the two cards and the people in the Mirror.
"Good luck," winked his reflective self, as Harry turned around and hurried out of the room in search of Ginny, and his dreams.
