Title: The Mirror and Its Boy
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters,
names, etc. are property of J.K. Rowling, all publishers concerned and Warner Brothers.
The only things owned by the author are the plot and any names not featured in
the official Harry Potter books or movies. No money is being made from this,
and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Remember the mirror that Sirius gave Harry
as a Christmas present? (The one that once belonged to James Potter)... This is
a short, one-shot tale of how Harry mends the broken looking glass and what he
discovers as a result...
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3023
Author's Note: There is the possibility of a sequel for this story, though I need the time to write it. Constructive criticism is not only welcome but also openly encouraged. Hope you all enjoy and please let me know what you think.
Dedication: Dedicated to The Heir of Paravel, for without her I would not be half the writer, or half the person I am today. It is with her love and support that I continue. Thank you, Angel.
It had taken him an age to do it. Hell, he didn't even know why he'd done it. In a fit of broken grief last year he'd picked the thing up, thrown it down and watched as the glass had splintered and shattered and showered his feet in shimmering light. Now, all that had been spread across a wooden floor was back inside its frame, where it belonged. Every last piece had been picked up off the floor or removed from the wood in which some parts had been imbedded deeply.
He gazed into it and saw neither spider-web like cracks, nor even a trace of any damage bar the slight warping of the reflective surface in the top right corner. The mirror had been restored, and now Harry didn't know what he was going to do about it. Originally he had been so wrapped up in the idea, so consumed with a want, a need to do something, that he'd never even entertained the very thought of what he'd do once he'd finished his self-appointed task.
And so, there he sat, alone in the drawing room – the room with the huge tapestry that was the last remaining remnant of a once proud and (as they liked to think) noble pureblood family, the Black's. From where he was positioned upon the dark, leather sofa, Harry could just about make out the burnt holes that signified where those Black's who had stood apart from the family's ideals once existed in the family tree.
There, between Narcissa and Bellatrix, should have been Andromeda. But, because she had fallen in love with - and married - a muggle-born, she had been smote from the family like a mongrel dog that has been found gnawing at the table legs, bringing muddy paw prints into the kitchen. No dog deserved that kind of treatment, and certainly no human being either.
But, sadly, this despicable act of family treachery occurred to everyone who didn't fit in with the family as a whole. Among others, Harry's own godfather, Sirius Black, had been kicked out from the family. No longer wishing to stay with such people, he had fled from the family home at number twelve Grimmauld Place, and had lodged in with Mr. and Mrs. Potter, otherwise known as Harry's grandparents.
Staring at the tapestry brought back a memory Harry didn't want to experience, because with it came feelings and emotions, and Harry didn't want either of them right now. So, instead, he focused on the object resting like a phoenix reborn in his hands.
"Hello?"
The simple welcome brought no answer to Harry's ears. He was willing to give the mirror just three more chances this time, and now it had used up the first. Slowly, Harry positioned the last gift his Godfather had ever given him so that reflected emeralds were aligned with his real ones.
"I would like to talk to Sirius Black," he said, highlighting each syllable clearly – just the same as he'd heard the muggle news reporter speak. "Please," was added as an afterthought a good ten seconds later.
No reply.
'That's it,' he thought, 'one last try and then I'm never using it again. It can just go on the pile of things Kreacher keeps trying to hide from us.'
A brief but futile burst of resentment towards the foul, demented house-elf arose in Harry, though he'd long since shaken off any mal-intentions and feelings towards Kreacher. The poor thing had simply been a product of the mad ravings of his family – more specifically, Mrs. Black, Sirius' mother – and so had interpreted anything and everything said to him by Sirius as an order. It wasn't Kreacher's fault, when told to "Go!" he had thought it meant "away from the house." It wasn't Kreacher's fault that he'd gone to the only remaining Black that he could easily get along with – Narcissa Malfoy. And no, it was most certainly not Kreacher's fault that Lord Voldemort had discovered Harry was Sirius' godson.
One more chance – that was all that the mirror had left to it now, or to Kreacher its destiny fell.
"I just want to talk to someone – isn't anyone going to answer?"
Five minutes later, the mirror remained firmly lodged in his left hand. 'Okay, I'm going to give you one more try,' he thought towards his reflection.
To the mirror, Harry merely appeared to be concentrating most determinedly upon its top-left corner, where, for some outlandish reason, the world seemed to be deformed.
'What a strange little boy this is,' thought the mirror. 'Seems familiar someway.'
Memory works in weird and wonderful ways – especially in objects where the chemicals and brain cells usually associated with it are unmistakably missing. The mirror, being only able to attain information of the outside world through the images it reflected, thus remembered an image of a similar boy, with messy jet-black hair and thin-rimmed glasses from only a short time ago (relatively speaking).
The boy blurred around the edges and other images whizzed by in the dim background. Rarely had the mirror observed this sensation, but it knew it to be movement. The mirror wished that it would stop soon – it didn't like it one bit.
"Please, stop blurring so much," said the mirror – or, rather, the face of the mirror's guardian.
Harry continued walking, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the little voice he thought his hand had just emitted. Just a little further down the corridor, he thought, down these steps, through a few doors, past the kitchen, bypassing a couple more rooms and he'd be at Kreacher's part of the house. So why was he now going in completely the wrong direction and back the way he came?
"Please," repeated what Harry still thought was the voice of his left hand, "you're shaking me rather too much. All I ask is that you please sit down."
So, Harry did. In exactly the same seat he'd been thinking in earlier, before he'd gone off on his little sojourn through the corridors.
"Thank you," could be heard, meekly, as if the owner of the voice was recovering from a nasty shock. The last remaining Potter and heir to the Black fortune dared to look downwards, to gaze upon the thing he now realized had been speaking to him. He almost dropped it as a convulsion rippled the tendons in his hands – a gut reaction to the surprise of gazing into rather familiar, but unexpected eyes.
"H-how… wh-why… what?!"
"Hello there," said the image to which both the sapphire eyes and the voice belonged. "You look familiar, somewhat. Have we met before, perhaps?"
"…" Said Harry. It was all he could say, really - his ability to speak had packed its bags and gone off for a two-week trip along with his comprehension skills. Common sense, after ruling out the other five - as it so often did - rallied around and brought up some words that could well have been, "H-he-hello… Professor? Umm… err…" just to help out.
"Good grief, my boy, a professor? I am but a simple mirror," it said with what it thought must have been some kind of chuckle. It quickly became apparent that laughing wasn't something inanimate objects should do.
"Y-yes… but why do you look like…"
"Oh… yes… well… you should really ask them why…why it is I am the way I am."
Harry was confused to say the least, but he guessed that the mirror must have been talking about Sirius and his father, James. Quite how a mirror could talk though, much less remember people that had spoken through it, Harry didn't know.
"There is a reason for my consciousness," the face in the mirror said quietly. "When I was used more often than I am now, there was a boy, very similar to you in fact, though his eyes were hazel rather than that most striking of greens you possess. He and a friend created my counterpart and I, and, with a few charms, we became self-aware. For some time we remained faceless, allowing the two to communicate through us. But, there came a point when an urgent and rather hurried conversation took place between them."
Harry gazed at the mirror, as if urging it to continue by the force of his stare alone. Others would have spoken far sooner, had they been given the same look, however the mirror was different. For one thing, it was a mirror, and thus used to being stared at. Secondly, the mirror was busily trying to remember the conversation that had taken place.
"I am afraid I cannot explain what was entirely said, for my counterpart holds one half the conversation. I know that the one who looks like you, he was worried about something - about someone gaining access to the secrets of the 'Marauders' if he found us. As a result of it, those two friends took out their wands, aimed them at us and uttered a strange spell. I felt a strange, almost pleasant sensation and when the hazel-eyed boy gazed at me he gasped, and that was when the realization of what they had done hit me. They had not just given us faces, and speech - they had given us life."
Harry, though being nearly silent almost all day, fell into an even more silent reverie. Words, the power of speech, left him seemingly forever. Sometimes he wished he were Ron, who made his way through life not insisting that words first be shuttled past the brain on the way to their ultimate destination. In that regard, Harry was sometimes (not always, though) envious of his red-haired best friend.
"So… so you mean… to say that, my godfather and my dad… gave you life… because they were afraid of… "someone"… finding out all of their secrets?" asked Harry, his eyes betraying a mixture of feelings and thoughts to the mirror. It had seen faces so many times that it could recognise emotions from the tiny movements of peoples eyes, lips, eyebrows and any number of other facial features.
"Yes."
'Well that was a helpful answer,' thought Harry.
"Well… what… do you… do you know who it was, the person they were afraid of?" he asked, now partly intrigued to know if the person he assumed Padfoot and Prongs had been scared of was indeed the same person Harry was thinking of right now.
"They mentioned a name, yes, if that's what you mean," replied the mirror after a second or two of silence.
'Great, first I thought it was a talkative thing, and now it's acting like…'
"Voldemort, I think they said."
'…Whoa…'
"Of course, I could be mistaken…"
'…Bugger…'
"Then again…"
"Okay, I get the picture!" Harry quickly looked at his feet, wondering why the silver-backed mirror wasn't melting from the heat he felt radiating from his skin. He hadn't meant to shout like that. "I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have… I'm sorry."
"Do not be, my boy. There is no reason for it. I have been shouted at before, in my time. Quite often, I seem to remember…"
Harry still felt quite ashamed, but the warmth receded from his cheeks, and he was sure he no longer looked like Ron's hair, a fact that brought a small, hardly noticeable curve to his lips.
"Do you remember much about Sirius and my dad?" he asked the mirror, slightly curious as to what secrets the mirror could reveal to him about his dad, and the closest thing to a father figure Harry had ever known in his life.
"I remember a lot of things, really - hard to tell them apart sometimes. If you described them to me, I would then be able to discuss what I know of them more readily."
And so it was that the mirror relearned the tale of Sirius Black and James Potter – what they looked like, things they had supposedly done. Obviously it knew half the story, for it had been a large part of their lives, when they had still been living them.
While the boy was speaking, the mirror took every word in, every detail of the boys face. It noticed the emerald eyes, the way the jet-black mess stood in clear defiance of all laws of gravity and common sense. The thin, oddly shaped scar stood out, as white and visible as the walls of the house were black.
In accordance with the unspoken arrangement, once the boy had finished, the mirror began to recount a little of the history it knew. The boy sat in spellbound quietness, absorbing knowledge, consuming every detail, as though it were a catechism to be learnt by heart.
"D'you think you could, umm, talk to your counterpart? I mean… I'd like to talk, with Sirius again…"
The mirror was puzzled slightly by the sensation if felt when it tried to contact its counterpart, and thus Sirius Black. Its counterpart was still there but…
"I cannot communicate with my counterpart - there is something wrong," it said hurriedly. "I know it is there, but we do not seem able to connect with each other."
"What if… what if someone could… go and get your counterpart… would it work then, d'you reckon?" asked Harry, not sure if his brain had been consulted before the words had been uttered.
"Naturally, my boy, if it could be retrieved, I feel sure communication could be re-established. The question is, from whom and how is it to be retrieved?"
Something appeared to be lodged in Harry's throat, preventing an answer. He knew where the mirror was… but if he could retrieve the mirror… why would he then need it? He didn't want to think along those lines just yet, and so instead focused on how he could rescue the other mirror from beyond the veil. It was a daunting prospect, and for some reason the words of Arthur Weasley echoed back to him. 'Never trust something that you can't see where it keeps its brain.'
At some level, a momentary fear took hold of him and refused to let go. What if someone untrustworthy had the counterpart and was seeking to use the mirror system to corrupt and mislead him? No, that could never happen - Sirius himself had given Harry that mirror as a present. The fear withdrew grimly in mute defeat.
"Sirius has it...or," Harry bitterly corrected himself, "had it. But there's a problem… in the Ministry of Magic there's a room… and in that room, on a raised dais, is a stone archway…" the words came from his mouth kicking his teeth on the way out. It pained him to even mention the Ministry. "Sirius fell through that archway, through a veil… but he didn't come out the other side… people say he's… that he's…"
"Ah. I see the problem, my boy," said the mirror. "Well… if you can reclaim my counterpart - if you can reunite the two pieces to the puzzle - you might discover a larger picture."
'What is it talking about?' Harry's mind screeched. 'If only Hermione were here…'
The mirror debated with itself. If it could converse with its counterpart again, it could remember so much more… it would be restored to life. Yet, in so doing, it would ask such a price of the boy. How could it repay him?
"The price for retrieving my counterpart would be high," the mirror continued, hesitantly. "But might be worth the cost given the knowledge to be gained..."
"So what you're saying," said Harry, "is that though I'll have to pay a price… what I'll gain will be worth far more… right?" Seeds of doubt had been sown and were now nascent in his stomach.
"That is entirely correct. Without my counterpart, I could not even hope to tell you anymore than I have. You see I am but one half of a much greater holder of knowledge. My back is not made from silver, but from something much more weighty. Look at it… does it not remind you of something?"
And it was right. Harry did recognise the material from which the mirror's back had been made. Thus far he had seen it twice in his life, and all within the previous two years at Hogwarts.
The backing had been made from something he'd seen only in stone bowls with ancient runes – thoughts had been spun together so finely they resembled a miraculous blend of silver and smoke.
"You're… you're like a pensieve," Harry breathed, more than a little stunned.
"Possibly. If I knew what one was, I might consider myself like it."
Harry had to withhold a snort of laughter. He'd begun to actually like this mirror. It wasn't anything like the one in the Leaky Cauldron. 'Blasted thing,' he thought, remembering its insufferable wheezing and snide remarks about his hair.
Sometime later, the mirror being more learned of pensieves and suchlike, the conversation drifted onto other matters… The mirror and its boy spent long hours talking to each other, finalising their plans and other such things.
By the end of the conversation, the mirror had come to quite like the boy who looked like the other boy it had known. It had spent a good deal of time talking about numerous things that worried the boy with the scar – death, losing his friends, his awful upbringing, Lord Voldemort - all things that, the mirror surmised, had made him the person he was today, and, lastly, a man known as Sirius Black. The mirror vaguely remembered communicating with its counterpart, and through that connection it had witnessed a younger version of the man described to it.
There was no moral to this tale, of that the mirror was sure. Not everything in life made, or needed to make, sense. Sometimes, things just… happened. Be they for better or worse, that was only up to the people who experienced them to decide. The mirror had not really experienced all that much, considering the fact that, for all intents and purposes, it was just a mirror and could only offer its reflections on life.
~*~ Finis ~*~