Updated: Sunday 27th February 2005
Disclaimer: See Chapter One
Chapter Thirty Nine: Intervention
Estella's Uncle had not been pleased when he had found out about Estella's encounter with Harry Potter and his friends.
Flashback
"You told the Granger girl that you spent time in Muggle London!" Severus bellowed, incensed. "How could you have been so stupid? What if someone were to hear? What if word got out!"
"But Uncle Sev, I could just say I was saying that to allay her suspicions or something." Estella pleaded. "Please let me go to Uncle Remus' over Christmas! I've spent Christmas here every year! I want to know what it's like to go somewhere for the holidays and you can't take me anywhere because you are on duty."
"No." Severus snapped. "With certain students now at the school and your recent verbiage in the library it will raise too many suspicions if you were not to remain here over the holiday. Consider it your punishment for disobeying my direct order."
Estella's face fell. There was simply no reasoning with the man when he was worked up in such a state.
"Furthermore, I do not find it detrimental to your education to revoke your library privileges." Severus continued. "After all, no other student at your school has such resources to work with."
Eyes wide, Estella felt her mouth drop open. "You… you can't do that! You can't!"
"I can, and I will!" Severus argued. "It's about time you stopped looking at the entire Hogwarts facilities as your own personal playground, Estella. These quarters are our home and from now on you will be confined to them when not in my presence. Do you understand me?"
Estella glared at her Uncle angrily and nodded her understanding reluctantly before storming off to her room to sulk.
It seemed that the invisibility potion would come in handy after all.
End FlashbackChristmas was, therefore, a solemn affair in the Snape quarters. Remus was forbidden to spend the morning with her at the castle and she wasn't even allowed to floo him. Then, her Uncle wasn't even there when she woke up, leaving Estella to open her presents alone. Not even her presents could bring her any joy.
Whilst her Godfather had given her a really thoughtful maintenance kit for the chess set she had brought back with her from their house, it only served as a reminder that he wasn't there to spend the morning with her and that she had no one to play Chess with. Her Uncle in turn, had the gall to buy her a series of supplementary schoolbooks 'since she didn't have access to the School library and could do with a collection of her own' said the card.
After spending the morning throwing wads of wrapping paper into the fire dejectedly, Estella was further alarmed to realise that the Christmas feast had already started in the Great Hall and her Uncle had yet to collect her. She had no idea if he was simply punishing her further by excluding her from the festivities or if he was unavoidably detained. By any means, she didn't want to risk going there on her own steam given the rules her Uncle had so inarguably set forth; so she ordered a serving of food from Lena and sat alone in her room.
Picking at her food for what seemed like an age, Estella couldn't bring herself to eat. The lump that was steadily building in her throat was preventing her from swallowing, despite her rumbling stomach. Pushing the plate of stale, cold food away, Estella jumped out of her chair and started to pace the room agitatedly, feeling all of a sudden closed in and suffocated by the confines of the room as she fought back the tears that blurred her vision.
Starting to sob uncontrollably, Estella couldn't take it anymore. She had to get out of there. Grabbing two vials of the invisibility potion, she downed one and pocketed the other. Once she could see the potion had taken effect, she wasted no time in leaving the quarters and running, just running, as far away as possible.
Severus, meanwhile, was beyond annoyed. Early Christmas morning of all days he had been called away from his quarters to tend to a sick Slytherin who had remained over the holidays.
'Of all the days for Poppy to go visit her family in Wales!' Severus scowled as he administered potions to the fraught child. The child in question, was a pasty first year runt of a child who, in addition to being frightfully ill, was also increasingly homesick and clingy as the fever set in. Severus could hardly leave the room for five seconds without the dependent child convulsing dramatically and retching bile everywhere.
Summoning the child's medical records, Severus was quick to realise that the child was having a severe allergic reaction to the eggnog he had foolishly imbibed the night before. He couldn't believe how a child who knew they were allergic to egg solids could be so stupid as to do such a thing, but yet here they were. Unfortunately, the child's initial symptoms had gone unnoticed by the student's peers and by the time Severus had been alerted the lad had lapsed into the beginnings of anaphylactic shock. Severus was hardly a medi-wizard either, so all he could do was stabilise the child for the trip to St Mungos.
As the child's housemaster, he was effectively the child's guardian until the parents arrived. Unfortunately for Severus, that meant a several hour wait outside a hospital room while the hospital's administrator tried to track the boy's holidaying parents down. At no opportunity, was he able to contact his niece and let her know what was happening. He had tried before lunch to floo their quarters and grant her permission to head on to the feast alone, but the child must have been feeding the fire throughout the brief window of opportunity he had to contact her for he found the floo blocked. He could only hope that someone amidst the Hogwarts staff thought to check on his niece, for he doubted after the dressing down he had given Estella, she would venture out of the quarters alone.
'What if they think she is with Lupin?" Severus' conscience plagued him.
He could only hope, as he hastily met with the boy's parents when they finally arrived well after dinner, that that was not the case. Merlin knew what he would come home to otherwise.
Estella had been running for what seemed like forever. Leaving the ubiquitous dark of the dungeons, she was quick to note that the whole day had in fact passed her by and it was now quite late.
'Perhaps I fell asleep at some point?' her mind struggled to make sense of things as she began to worry about her Uncle. It was not unlike him to be gone the entire day without returning at least once to his quarters. Panic began to set in, for she had yet to see a single living soul. Maybe something dreadful had happened to the entire school and only she was spared! Maybe it was not really so late and a eternal darkness had instead befallen the sky!
It was with such trepidation, that she suddenly found herself in a room of the castle she had never seen before. To her surprise, she was not alone, for there, sitting captivated in front of a mirror was… Harry.
"Harry?" She said aloud in question. "Is that really you?"
The boy in question reluctantly tore his eyes away from the mirror and spun around to face the Estella. "Estella?" He asked, "what are you doing here?"
Estella didn't say anything. Instead, she flung herself into Harry's arms. "Thank Merlin! I though something had happened to the entire school and I was the only one who lived!"
Harry held Estella at an arm's length while he pondered her innocent face. The irony of her statement did not go unchecked, and he gave her a quizzical look. "What planet have you been on?" He asked, shaking his head slowly. "Whatever made you think something happened to the entire school?"
Estella screwed her face up as though she were going to burst into tears. It had been a very stressful day for her, and now fatigue was setting in she could barely keep herself together. "I woke up and no one was there! No one was there all day! Then no one came to see if I was alright or take me to the Christmas Feast and Uncle Sev said I couldn't leave the quarters alone but then he didn't come home all day. He didn't even leave a note or anything!" She said breathlessly. "Finally I had enough and left and just ran and ran and ran… and here I am."
"You were alone all day?" Harry said, shocked. Even his relatives hadn't left him alone on Christmas Day. Fed him scraps through a mail slot on his cupboard door and give him old socks for presents and parcel him off to a babysitter maybe, but never go out and leave him alone in the house all day! He'd seen Professor Snape with his niece plenty of times at the Head Table, and although the man was a absolute bastard to some of the students in his class, he didn't think the man would stoop that low. Harry didn't quite know why, but his blood was boiling. A unexplainable urge to protect Estella and make her smile overcame him. Why, he didn't know. He'd only met the girl a handful of times, and he wasn't even sure if he liked her or whose side she was on.
"Harry?" Estella said, rousing him from his thoughts. "I was alone all day. I've been nodding for two minutes almost!"
"That's horrible." Harry said finally. "I'm sure there's a innocent explanation though. If it's any consolation, I didn't see your Uncle at the feast either. Maybe he was called away from the school suddenly and the other teachers assumed you were with him or something?"
"Um, yeah, maybe." Estella said unsurely. "Least I hope nothing happened to Uncle Sev. Mean my Christmas was awful enough as it is, I don't want to wake up tomorrow and hear something terrible has happened to him. I know he's got a reputation for being a, er, strict teacher, but he's the only family I have."
Harry cast Estella a sympathetic look. "I know how you feel." He said, putting his hand on Estella's shoulder awkwardly. "My Aunt and Uncle are hardly the most perfect people in the world, but they've all I got too."
Estella looked into Harry's eyes in understanding. "Is it, er, really true that you didn't know you were a Wizard until you got your letter?"
"Yes." Harry answered quickly. "And you would have no idea how hard it was for me to open my letter! My Uncle kept burning them and taking them away, Hagrid had to come and hand deliver it!"
"Really?" Estella asked, surprised. "Man your relatives really must not like magic!"
"That's an understatement." Harry said darkly.
"That's horrible," Estella said. "I don't know your relatives, but gee, even my Uncle Sev wouldn't be that awful."
Harry shot Estella a disbelieving look. Estella glared. "What? He's not all that bad you know once you get to know him, really!" She said defensively. "Though he does seem to have it in for you I suppose."
Harry smirked. "Now that's an understatement!" He said. They both laughed.
"Say, have you any idea what this mirror can do?" Harry asked after a few moments of silence.
"Uh, show your reflection?" Estella answered slowly, as though she were explaining its properties to a five year old. "Though seriously, is it magical or something?"
Harry cast her a 'duh-we're-in-a-magical-castle-of-course-it's-magical' look and smirked. "Well we are in a magical school, so magical items do tend to show up from time to time!" He answered in the same sort of explanatory tone.
"Oh ha!" She said, slapping Harry playfully as she passed him to stand in front of the mirror. "Alright then, give's a look."
Estella turned her eyes away from Harry to look at her reflection. Seeing more than just her reflection, she froze, eyes wide.
"Estella?" Harry asked, seeing the blood drain from the girl's face. "What do you see?"
Estella, meanwhile, was looking around her widely, looking at the reflection in the mirror and the empty space behind her incredulously. "You don't see them?" She asked, panicky.
"See who?" Harry asked.
"My parents… your parents… my Godfather and my Uncle!" Estella said, becoming increasingly hysterical. "How can they be in the mirror? Is that where my Uncle's gone? Oh my God it's a mirror to the dead! My Uncle and Godfather are dead! That's what happened today! That's why I was all alone! Oh my God! Oh my God!"
Harry didn't know what to say. He could see his parents in the mirror, and they were dead, so perhaps it was a mirror that showed the dead. Maybe something had happened to Estella's last living family that day and that was why they were in the mirror. Professor Snape had been absent from the feast. He couldn't think of anything else it could possibly be. All he could do was try and comfort the now sobbing girl as she crumpled to the floor with her head in her hands. Getting Ron to look in the mirror for a third opinion on the Mirror's properties was out of the question since he really didn't like Estella very much, plus he was all the way over in the tower. He made a note though, to bring him up here soon.
Suddenly, Estella jumped to her feet and started pummelling the mirror with her fists. "Let them out! Let them out!" she cried, only becoming more and more incensed as the people she considered her family stared back at her lovingly, smiling serenely as though they weren't all dead and she wasn't all alone on this earth. Looking skyward for a moment in silent prayer that this whole day had just been one big nightmare and that she would in fact wake up any moment, something along the mirror's frame caught her eye.
Words.
"Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi." She read aloud.
"What's that?" Harry asked, following her gaze and reading the line himself. "Is it Latin?"
Estella meanwhile, had calmed down somewhat, her mind struggling to put her finger on something she had just within her grasp. For some reason the phrase made her think of the afternoon she and Remus had spent over Spring break going through his record collection, but she couldn't think of why. Then it hit her.
"Of course! That's it!" She cried, slapping herself in the head.
"What!" Harry asked, still confused.
"When I was staying with my Godfather in Muggle London he showed me his Black Sabbath collection." Estella said. "And he told me that people used to think that if you played their albums backwards the songs held satanic messages."
"So?"
"So? Don't you see? The message isn't Latin, Harry! It's English… backwards! A mirror image, if you will."
"You are really starting to sound like Hermione!" Harry groaned. "So what's it say then?"
Pausing a moment while she studied the strange artefact that, until a few moments ago, had tormented her so, Estella worked out the puzzle in her mind.
"I… show… not your face… but… your… hearts… desire." Estella spelled out slowly. "I show not your face but your hearts desire."
"What do you suppose that means?" Harry asked dumbly.
"Um, that it shows not your face but your hearts desire?" Estella replied dumbly, her mirth beginning to return as the pieces all began to fall into place.
Harry looked thoughtful for a moment, looking between the mirror and Estella as though contemplating something. "How come you saw my parents?" He asked quietly. "How do you even know what they look like? They died before you were born!"
"Same night actually." Estella said absently, distracted by the loving gaze her mother's reflection in the mirror was giving her.
"That doesn't answer my question." Harry said quietly.
"Oh, er, what?" Estella answered, coming back down to earth. "Your parents? Oh, they were friends with my parents or something. They're in a few photos I have of my parents. They were at my parent's wedding."
Harry stared at her in awe. "I don't even have any pictures of my parents." He said quietly. "The first time I saw my parents was half an hour ago when I saw them in the mirror."
Looking at Harry as though she was just remembering something, Estella dug her hands through the pockets of her robes frantically as though searching for something. "Here," she said, holding out a gaily wrapped object, roughly the size of a large, thin book. "I found this amongst my Mother's things, and well, it's more appropriate that you have it." She said, pushing it into his hands. "I've had it in my robes all day in the hopes I might have seen you at the feast and been able to give it to you. Merry Christmas I guess."
Harry accepted the gift guiltily. "You don't have to give me this." He said sullenly. "I didn't think to get you anything, I'm sorry."
Estella shook her head. "Don't worry about it." She said. "I was going to give it to you anyway, I have just been looking for the right excuse. Go ahead and open it."
Wasting no time, Harry carefully pried apart the bindings holding the paper in place – it was such nice paper, and since he had never really had the privilege of opening so many presents in one day before, he wanted to savour every moment of it – and revealed a nice pewter picture frame containing a picture of a baby Harry being held by his father, who had his arms over the shoulder of his mother. His mother was snuggled into his father's shoulder, bending down to alternatively kiss either James or the giggling baby Harry on the forehead whilst Harry himself was busy cooing and patting his hands on the belly of the heavily pregnant woman who sat on the other side of James.
"I was born a week after that picture was taken." Estella said sombrely, tracing her finger over the dark-haired woman's features as Harry stared sadly at the scene of himself with his parents. "My father took that photo at your house the last time they saw your parents. 24th of October I think the back of the photo said. I'll have to check the original. I wouldn't have made a duplicate, except it's kind of the last photo of my Mother before she died."
Harry looked up at Estella, an unreadable expression in his watery eyes. "Thank you." He said softly, choking back a sob. "It's the nicest present anyone could ever think to give me."
Putting her arm around the boy-who-lived, Estella rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. "I know how you feel." She said sadly. "Christmas… and birthdays… you always wonder… what it would have been like…"
Harry nodded, tilting his head to rest on Estella's. "If you don't mind me asking, how did your parents die?"
"My mother died giving birth to me." Estella said with a hint of remorse in her voice. "October 31st. Didn't seem to be a very good day for either of our families that day, huh."
"Again with the understatements." Harry chuckled mirthlessly. "How soon after did your father…"
"Oh my father is not dead." Estella said coldly. "He may as well be though. I've never met him. They say he went mad…." '…in Azkaban.' She finished in her mind. "Whatever happened, my Uncle doesn't really talk about it. He never liked my father at all. With good reason now I guess."
"Oh," Harry said, wondering what was worse. Having a father who had died, or having one who didn't want to see you. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Estella said. "I don't know life any differently. I get by. We all do."
Harry nodded. He hated it when people felt sorry for him too.
The pair sat in front of the mirror together in companionable silence, each seeing their own hearts desire.
"So do you and your friends still think my Uncle is evil?" Estella asked sleepily as she rested her head on Harry's shoulder. "Still think he is after whatever is supposedly hidden on the third floor?"
"I don't know." Harry said honestly. "I know he's your Uncle, but he doesn't help himself much." Estella nodded. "But I mean we don't even know what is hidden on the floor."
"I don't get it." Estella said, straightening herself up in an effort to stay awake. "If you 'don't know' so much, what makes you think there is anything there at all? And why think my Uncle is after it?"
"The day Hagrid took me to Gringotts he removed something about the size of a snitch from the vault that was later robbed." Harry began. "Then, one day Hermione, Ron and I were caught on the stairs when they changed, leading us onto the forbidden third floor corridor where we had a nasty encounter with Fluffy, this massive three headed dog that was standing guard over a trapdoor."
"So?"
"So, the coincidences are too, well, coincidental!" Harry said. "Then, a few days after I went to the staffroom to see if your Uncle would return a book he had confiscated from me and I saw him tending to a gash on his leg; and I overheard him ask Filch 'how are you supposed to keep your eye on all three heads at once'."
Realisation dawned on Estella's face. "Oh, I see. Let me guess. You concluded that my Uncle let the Troll into the school as a diversion so he could try and get past Fluffy and steal the snitch-sized-object you only think is hidden underneath?" She asked, incredulously.
Harry nodded mutely.
"Did you not stop to think that there may be nothing there? That maybe, I don't know, it was my Uncle's turn to feed the dog? Or maybe if there is something being protected there and the Troll was let in to create a diversion that my Uncle may have seen through the attempt and gotten injured trying to circumvent the theft?"
"Um, no, admittedly we didn't think of any of that." Harry admitted. "But to our credit your Uncle's reputation…"
"Whatever." Estella said dismissively. "Care to tell me what you think you know about the object that's got you all up in a fizz? Maybe if I had some clue about what it could be I could try and get some idea of where my Uncle fits in all this. Tell you if he would even want to steal it and risk his job – and our home - here."
"Well. For starters, an item 'pertaining to Hogwarts business' was taken from the vault that was later broken into by a as-yet-identifiable powerful wizard."
"Well that rules my Uncle out right there." Estella said, ticking off her thumb. "He's pretty deft with a wand, but not even he could break into Gringotts!"
"Er, right then." Harry said awkwardly. "Anyway, it's pretty strange to have such a dangerous animal in the school like that if it's not protecting something."
Estella considered all of this information thoughtfully. "Well it makes sense then that the teachers would be working together to try and protect whatever it is that is down there." She said. "I mean, come on. My Uncle may act like an evil git sometimes… alright, all the time… but he's a Slytherin. If he had some sinister plot to steal something Dumbledore's obviously been entrusted to keep safe, he wouldn't go about tending to his wounds in a public staffroom for crying out loud! And, for what it's worth, there's no way he'd use something as obnoxiously out-of-the-ordinary as a Troll as a decoy. Trolls maybe make their own way into the school once every hundred years or so. Now, a rampaging hippogriff or plague of bats. That's more plausible."
"Oh, well I suppose you, er, know your Uncle best." Harry said diplomatically, letting the subject of her Uncle's integrity rest.
"So, any idea on who Dumbledore is protecting the item for?" Estella asked. "Maybe knowing that will help find out what it is?"
Harry nodded. "All we know is it has something to do with a Nicholas Flamel. But we don't know who he is."
"Nicholas Flamel, the alchemist?" Estella asked flippantly, smirking at Harry's bewildered look. "Oh honestly, Harry, don't your read your Chocolate Frog cards? He's mentioned on Dumbledore's; surely you have that card!"
"Really?" Harry asked, mentally slapping himself. He'd had Dumbledore's card since the start of the year. The answer had been staring him right in the face!
"No, I'm making it up." Estella said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Still, doesn't give me any ideas about what the item might be… or why someone wants it so badly."
"Me neither." Harry said, crestfallen, as he yawned widely. "Gods, it's late. I really should get back to the dorm before someone notices I'm missing."
Estella frowned. Harry looked at her apologetically. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be insensitive… are you going to be alright?"
"Yeah." Estella said, yawning herself. "I just needed to get out of there and clear my head a bit. I don't think I've spent so much time in there in one go before. If my Uncle's not there when I get back I'll floo my godfather and have him pick me up – I should have done it a lot sooner."
"OK then," Harry said as he rose to his feet and stretched out the cramps. "Do you, uh, need me to walk you back to your rooms? I have a invisibility cloak."
"Nah, I got a disillusionment potion I can use." Estella said. "But I won't even need that. Not like Filch can punish me or anything, I'm not a student yet… and after what my Uncle's put me through today he's hardly going to be in a position to berate me on leaving without telling him where I was going!"
"Your funeral." Harry shrugged, reaching for his cloak. "Thanks again for the picture. I really feel bad for not giving you something in return."
"Don't be," Estella said, grabbing his hand and holding onto it slightly. "You were here for me tonight… and you heard me out. It's the best present I got this year."
Harry looked at Estella blankly. Estella cleared her throat nervously continued in explanation. "Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but I've been waiting to meet you my entire life." She said. "Our parents were friends… had they not died we probably would have grown up together." She paused. "It's hard to explain, but I don't know, meeting you …" She looked down at the photograph in Harry's hands. "I feel closer to knowing my Mother. It's strange I know."
"It's not strange." Harry said, cutting her off. "I mean, I know what you mean."
"I don't expect us to become lifelong friends or anything. I don't want you to feel pressured to like me because of that photograph." Estella said hurriedly. "It's in the past… and I know your friends don't really like me. Or anyone who hates my Uncle really. The sorting hat will probably put me in Slytherin – for us to be even seen together could hardly work out favourably. But I won't lie and say that I didn't need this. Tonight."
Harry stood, mouth agape as he struggled to find the right words. A long dormant part of his subconscious was stirring, making him feel that with their shared histories, Estella could be like the sister he never had… but then the rational side of him was battling his baser instincts screaming 'Snape's niece! Snape's niece!' and concerning itself with how his friends in Gryffindor would react. Basically, he didn't know if he wanted to have her as a friend. It wasn't that he didn't like her, or that she had done something to offend him. Things were just too complicated. Especially at this late hour. He couldn't help but feel, also, on some suspicious level, that maybe Estella was keeping something from him.
"Thank you." Estella said, shaking him from his thoughts as she planted a chaste kiss on his cheek before hurriedly making her exit.
Harry nursed his increasingly burning cheek as though he has just been stung. "Merry Christmas." He whispered to her lingering scent before donning his invisibility cloak and heading off in the direction of the tower.
Arriving back in the dungeons without crossing the path of any of the Hogwarts staff, Estella let identified herself to the complex wards surrounding the potion master's private rooms and said the password, securing her entrance to the quarters she and her uncle called home.
Freezing in her tracks as she noted the blazing fire in the fireplace and the distinct smell of her Uncle's fire whiskey in the air, Estella's face hardened as she took in the shadowed form of her Uncle, who had risen inhumanly fast from his chair as she entered.
"Where in the Hell have you been?" They both snapped at each other.
End Chapter: The Mirror of Erised