Disclaimer: I do not claim to own any names, places, or things from the Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling.

Forwards: Whoever caught that in the last chapter I made an error, kudos. I meant ENTRANCE HALL, not GREAT HALL. Too lazy to change it, so that's just clearing that matter up.
Did You Find What You Were Looking For

Chapter 11: I Show Not Your Face...

By: Taiyourshoes
Lily was lost again. Hogwarts was just too new to her.

"I'll NEVER get this right," she whimpered, making her way up a flight of stairs to where she hoped Gryffindor Tower would be. She would have followed some of her new friends (who apparently knew where they were going) back to their House, but she'd forgotten her bag at the table and had to go back to get it. Stupid her, she'd told them she'd catch up.

Which seemed unlikely to happen, as nothing looked familiar the second Lily stepped out of the Great Hall.

Lily reached the platform and, to her chagrin, saw just another unfamiliar corridor lined with hundreds, if not thousands, of doors. Sighing, Lily turned to go back down the stairs.

But she found she couldn't—there was a door in her way.

Stunned, Lily dashed her head around. She was stuck in a Hallway of Doors with no way out... except maybe through a door. Lily turned back to the door that stood where the staircase should be.

Lily reasoned that, if she just stepped through this door she'd find the staircase and her way back to the Entrance Hall.

...where she could scream until someone gave her directions.

She turned the doorknob and slipped into, alas, yet ANOTHER unfamiliar place. Lily went rigid, seeing nothing but mirrors before her. It was like a maze of mirrors that she would INEVITABLY run into.

Hundreds of Lilys blinked at her as she glanced in every direction. Mumbling that she'd probably be lost in the Hallway Of Doors forever, Lily spun around to exit from where she entered...

But she forgot one thing: magic was not on her side that day. The door was gone and had been replaced by ANOTHER MIRROR.

Groaning, Lily got out her wand and began prodding the place where the door had been while saying things like, "Ickory, pokery, this is a jokery!" and "Open sesame!" which proved to be as useless as Lily's attempts at cooking.

Frustrated, Lily turned on her heel and started toward the entrance of the maze, where she hoped she'd find a way out on the other side.
Someone had once told her that if she put one hand on the side of a wall in a maze, she would always be able to find her way out, as she wouldn't be going in circles or anything. This, as it turned out, was either VERY wrong or this was a VERY long maze. Lily felt as though she'd been walking for hours with her hand trailing across mirror after mirror after mirror...all to no avail.

"You know," Lily thought aloud. "I wouldn't even be LOST if James Potter hadn't made fun of my red hair today. He got me so angry I forgot my bag and NOW look where I am."

"Where are you, dear?" a motherly voice asked. Lily nearly jumped out of her skin as her eyes darted about for the person to whom the voice belonged. It turned out a MIRROR had spoken, the one that Lily almost had her hand upon, in fact, as it was the next mirror after the one she was touching. Lily ripped her hand away from the wall as if it had been scorched.

"I—in this maze, ma'am. I'm in a mirror room..." Lily stuttered, dumbfounded.

"Are you lost?" the mirror asked, it's voice coming from seemingly nowhere. Lily could only tell the mirror was speaking because it vibrated in a wavelike way whenever it spoke.

"I am," Lily admitted, shaking now. Through her mind raced the fear that she really wasn't a witch, just a girl living in a dream world. Even though she'd known about Hogwarts for two months now, she still couldn't believe she was witch. How could she be? Weren't all the strange things that happened around her just coincidence? And wouldn't she be better prepared for a talking mirror if she WAS a witch?

"If you really want to find your way through, just walk through me. I'll take you to your heart's desire."

At that moment, the only desire Lily could think of was her desire to GET OUT and go back to the girl's dormitory so she could cower under her blankets for hours.

Lily nodded, though warily, as she stepped toward the mirror. Briefly, the image of Platform 9 and ¾ flashed through her mind. It had been so difficult to convince herself to charge at the obviously solid barrier, but once she did it, she realized there was nothing to be frightened about. Psyching herself out, she closed her eyes tightly and leaned against the mirror with all her weight, wondering if she broke it, would she still have 7 years bad luck in the Wizarding world?

Lily felt herself fall through the mirror and hit the ground on the other side. Dizzy, Lily's eyes snapped open. The mirror that she had come through now just appeared to be a cement wall. Upon further investigation, Lily found that she was in a small, dark room, with two torches to keep it lit. Lily shivered as she glanced about at her new surroundings. Wherever she was, this was NOT the way out she'd been hoping for.

There were no windows, no furniture, just two torches and something glimmering on the other side of the room. When Lily's eyes adjusted to the dark, Lily was aggrieved to see that the glimmering thing was nothing more than a mirror.

...Or was it?

Lily clambered to her feet and walked towards the mirror so that she was standing before it. It was very tall—as tall as the ceiling. It had an ornate gold frame and stood on two clawed feet. The inscription carved around the top read, "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi," which sounded like another language to Lily.

Her eyes roved to the mirror itself, where she expected to see her reflection... But she didn't JUST see her reflection. She saw the reflection of a boy, about eleven (like herself) with untidy black hair, spectacles, and hazel eyes standing behind her. He was smiling at her, holding out his hand for her to take...

"J... James?"

Lily leapt around, searching for James Potter who, according to the mirror, should have been standing right behind her.

But he wasn't. She was still alone in a room with nothing but a mirror and two torches. Lily glanced back at the mirror, and it appeared James was still there, except she couldn't see him. Gulping, Lily extended her hand to feel if perhaps he was invisible and the mirror showed invisible people. Nope. No James Potter there.

Lily suddenly felt a rush of disappointment. Any familiar face, even James's, would have made being lost a lot less scary. He was, after all, the first person she'd met at King's Cross, and it was his family who had told her how to get through Platform 9 and ¾. They led her to school, so couldn't he lead her back?

It appeared he wanted to, in the mirror at least. He was still holding out his hand with a fond smile on his face.

"Where do I go?" Lily asked James's reflection. She put her hand up to the mirror, to where his hand would be.

James beamed at her, pointing over his shoulder to a mirror on the other side that hadn't been there before.

Lily whirled around and saw that there WAS a mirror there now. It was standing as tall as the Mirror Of Erised (the title she had gotten from the frame) and was probably the same mirror that she'd come through.

"Thank you, James!" Lily whispered over her shoulder. "Can I get through it?"

Mirror James nodded, pointing for her to walk through.

"And I can find my way out?"

James walked up to the mirror and breathed against it until it was foggy. With one finger he wrote,

You can find exactly what you were looking for.

Lily sighed in relief and waved good-bye to Mirror James. Making a beeline for the other mirror, Lily noticed the inscription on the Mirror of Erised made SENSE through another mirror. "I show not your face but your heart's desire," she read. With that she walked through the mirror and back onto the platform with all the doors, except this time she could make out the staircase just down the hall.

Lily would find that she wouldn't ever be able to find her way back to the magical room with mirrors (not in her waking hours, anyways), but she had found her heart's desire.

She just hadn't known it at the age of eleven.
Lily felt as though she'd dropped twenty feet after having a sharp blow to the head—which was exactly what happened—every inch of her ached. With difficulty, Lily opened her eyes.

She was in the hospital wing. It was probably very late at night, since the moon was out and it was dark. Lily looked at her bedside table, where a few candies and "Get Well Soon!" cards were laid out.

Mind buzzing, Lily wondered how on earth she could have ended up in the hospital wing. The last thing she could remember was James coercing her into a game of Quidditch and...

James! The dream flooded back to her. Only, it hadn't been a dream; it was a memory that she had long since forgotten.

In first year in the first week of classes, Lily had gotten lost. She had tried every stairway imaginable to get back to Gryffindor tower, but she couldn't find the right one. Eventually, she'd ended up in The Hall of Doors and somehow found herself in a maze of mirrors. The Mirror of Erised (or of Desire) had been real as well.

And what Lily had seen in the mirror was what she'd seen in real life: James Potter leading her out of her place of fear and back to Main Hogwarts. But for some reason, Lily had forgotten about the mirror, forgotten about the maze and Mirror James. That is, until a day two years later...

That's what Lily had gone to confront James about in the library. She'd wanted to tell him that she... she...

Lily in the hospital wing realized that, even back then, she'd had no words to say to him. She just had to see him, to tell him something that was unable to be put into words.

He was, after all, her heart's desire.

But her heart had been shattered when she saw James in the library with Abigail O'Brien. It was as though her heart had stopped beating and her whole world went raw. She felt dizzy and aching, and had left the library as quickly as she could.

James Potter had broken her heart, and he wasn't even aware of doing so.

And somewhere in the back of Lily's mind, she'd always known that. Every time he asked her out, or when he flirted with her, Lily felt her heart give a twinge of regret. She couldn't hurt like she had when she was only thirteen years old. Not ever again.

But whenever James stepped a toe out of line, she needed to right him again. He'd led her in the right direction when she was lost, why shouldn't she return the favor?

People asked Lily why she never went out with James even though she used to like him. They asked why she was always so hard on him when he was just having a little bit of fun. They asked and they asked and they asked about James Potter.

And Lily had always known the answer. She just didn't want to admit to anyone, even to herself, that she said no because she didn't want to leave the walls she had built up for herself, to hide her broken heart and her unshed tears.

"Yes," Lily decided, a lonely tear building at the corner of one eye, "I do not like flying. I want to stay on the ground and never leave it again."

I never want my heart to shatter ever, ever again.
Taiyourhoes: I always thought Lily liked James, didn't you? In book five I thought, "She's either a very strict Prefect or a friend trying to straighten out a guy she knows can act better than he's acting."

I was with my sister today and the idea suddenly came to me. "What would Lily and James see if they looked into the Mirror of Erised? Something unexpected?"

I ran to my computer to type it all out, to connect my ideas before they were lost. And then I found that there was a missing link. How would she remember? And then my beautiful AIM icon shouted QUIDDITCH and I followed the advice.

I've been planning the heartbreak thing for a very long time; I'm so glad I've got it committed to page now.

Anyways, I hope you all like this. I'm updating twice in one day, which should keep you all happy for a bit, yeah?

Thanks for reading, review please!

Love from,

Tomfoolery =D