Hermione managed to land on a stool, while screeching like a cat as she clung on breaking several nails.

She watched as the others crashed, smashed, and slammed onto the tables and chairs around them in the dusty, cold classroom.

Except Harry, who landed in front of the Mirror of Erised. His weary face fell at once to a look of gentle, tender longing she only ever saw for a brief moment as he gazed down at that photo album. His usually swift fingers on any task grazed the very edge of the mirror's surface now like it was yet another treasure he feared getting a single smudge on, lingering in place now as if to never vanish again.

She knew what it was thanks to her boys, but she hesitated to rush over now and see it for herself at the first opportunity. She knew what Ron would say it would be, especially as he came over with that smirk that always got her blood boiling for whatever remark was about to come out of his mouth.

"Going to see yourself standing in an endless library?" He offered her a hand up while Harry started calling frantically for Sirius to come join him.

"Going to see yourself down in the kitchen?" She lobbed back as she took his hand and hopped up, flexing her fingers and carefully drawing her wand to remove the splinters.

Despite Harry's unmistakably jubilant shout, Sirius only seemed to hear the volume as he rushed past them causing their hair and robes to gust around as if somebody had landed late.

Harry brushed aside his frantic wand waving and yanked his godfather into position, his heart betraying his longing to share as he still kept his eyes on them as long as he could until Sirius stood in the center.

His wand fell to the floor. Sirius's face went from anxious to slack before the clatter of the wood even echoed in the room. His thin, weathered hand pressed flat against the glass hard enough, the soft brittle sound of crackling glass should have come next even above his whispered, "Prongs?"

Harry was still under his other arm, his grip around his shoulders just as tight like he still had half a mind to pull him away as they remained rooted to the spot.

Professor Lupin came around the carved wooden feet long after the damage was done to ask in concern, "Sirius?" His own wand cautiously drawn.

"What do you see?" Harry asked eagerly.

"A birthday I should have had." His voice was a broken, incomprehensible mess as it choked, and then tears began gushing as his legs gave out.

"Whoa!" Both Harry and Remus tried to support him, but Sirius refused any curvature that broke his line of sight, his neck straining to keep those deep, haunted gray eyes on the image only he could see as his stuttering breaths and shaking limbs refused to cooperate and tried to send him sprawling.

"Sirius, get away from it," Professor Lupin was trying to aim his wand around Sirius nearly plastered to the surface while Harry frantically tried to explain, "it's not supposed to hurt him, I didn't know!"

Their rising concern didn't seem to make a tick on the man in question, who was still freely crying and nose to nose with the image as if wishing to fall through.

It was all broken by Malfoy's snide voice reading, "The Mirror of Erised?" In somehow the most smarmy, demeaning voice on the planet.

He was sprawled out on the desk with the book where nobody had again paid him any mind. Until now, as Neville launched over and snatched the book out of his hand, the red spine trembling in his hand as if the blood of Malfoy's nose were about to join any second. "Haven't you any respect!"

"For an old madman weeping?" He sneered as if the act of answering were beneath him.

It snapped them all out of it. Sirius fell back onto his rump, finally at just the wrong angle it was only him and Harry in the image once more, his godson looking up at him with vivid eyes of concern of a long lost sister.

Harry didn't need another look. The glimpse of the new image for introducing his mum and dad to Ron and Hermione with Sirius laughing in the background had more of a foot in reality than fantasy for once as he stayed tucked up under his godfather's arm as he hastily wiped at his eyes.

Sirius harshly cleared his throat and was shaking out his hair.

"Remus, Moony, here, have a look," Sirius was using his friend's steady arm to get back to his wobbly feet and trying to steer him into the center. There wasn't a trace of shame on Sirius's face to cover his own moment, he was genuinely trying to share it.

"No, Sirius, I don't want," his protests were lukewarm at best, as Tonks had gone over to get between the squabbling boys and his feet shuffled under Sirius's will. When he got a glimpse of his own, and only his own reflection, his desire only lasted but a fleeting moment before he snatched his arm away and backed from the wooden frame altogether. "I know what it is Sirius," his voice was brisk, a snap of inevitable winter cold there was no point in fighting. "I don't need a reminder."

Then he walked over to Neville and said not unkindly, but with unmistakable lack of argument in his voice, "here Neville, why don't you have a look? I'll hang onto that until we're all ready to get out of here."

"Yes sir," Neville handed it over but felt no need to look himself. He'd see in it exactly what he could in the hospital. Sightless eyes seeing right through him no mirror could ever fix.

"And I just saw a bunch of stupid trophies," Ron muttered as Harry and Sirius stayed whispering on the edge of the frame.

"I don't think we get to choose our hearts desire," she said. There must have been something more than the usual exasperation in her voice as she answered him, because his eyes lingered on her in confusion.

Tonks was already walking forward, and to her surprise, Ron gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Her reluctance didn't vanish, but she gave him a grateful smile as she studied Tonks's reaction carefully underneath listening to Harry's fantastic Christmas in the castle. She'd yet really had one of those here.

Tonks took a sharp breath, was smiling in anticipation when she stepped into frame. Then disappointment flooded her. She pulled on a lock of pink hair in confusion if the blasted thing would even work on her, as her reflection shimmered back plain and boring. Mousy brown hair in a forgettable face smiling as brightly back as she had been moments ago.

Only, her reflection wasn't looking at her, but out of the side where even she couldn't see, while rubbing her swollen stomach, the radiance she'd only seen in others glowing off of her with life. There was an arm around her waist, she saw now as she absently copied herself. It could have been male or female, the skin shimmered a different color every time she tried to get a closer look, because the person didn't matter.

She stepped away still rubbing away in confusion. She loved her job, she half thought it was a trick. She'd only just gotten her license, in what world except that one would she want to give it all up for a family right now?

Ron looked all around and saw nobody else seemed likely to jump in, so he gave Hermione a confused push forward.

She took one fumbling step, for the first time in her life dreading an answer. One she couldn't get out of a book. She loved magic, she loved learning something new about the world every day. Was that all she was going to see? Her S.P.E.W. campaign had gone nowhere, she should be studying for her coming O.W.L. exam's right around the corner, and yet the last thing, and what she most expected to see in that reflection, was taking tests. Endless studying, with nothing to show for it. A library. If all she saw in her heart were books and cleverness, then she would never accomplish anything more than that eleven-year-old helping Harry get to Voldemort that first time; and she never would.

In the book, Harry was in here talking to Professor Dumbledore now, and she looked on disapprovingly to him for a moment asking such a personal question of the esteemed headmaster who had defeated Grindelwald and discovered so many cures and invented so many spells in the world it was stranger not to come across his name in a book with the subtitle of his accomplishments taking up half the page. Socks.

Professor Dumbledore saw himself being gifted socks.

Sirius gave a wet snort and was rubbing at his eyes as he whispered with Harry who gave a soft chuckle back, the kind Hagrid brought out when he was sharing what few stories he had about Harry's mum and dad, the ones that were exhausted and repetitive by third year, but Harry kept asking for them.

Ron gave her an encouraging smile and a thumbs up as she took another step closer. Maybe it would be okay if she did just see books, or socks, or just got a stomachache out of it like Tonks seemed to have gotten as she kept up the motion while looking uneasily out the window. Knowledge was the gift, and she would decide what to do with it. She would always regret this more if she didn't do it.

She was looking down from above into a great circular room, the benches stacked so full of people some were nearly standing on top of each other, herself in the middle speaking, only her bushy brown hair visible as it moved all over the place from her passionate speech and always talking too fast.

Confusion and horror slammed into her as she meant to flee. This was exactly how Harry had described the courtrooms. Why would she ever wish to be on trial?

She caught a familiar glimpse of red in the crowd though, saw Ron and Harry's faces front and center, and they were applauding. Most people were nodding, some like Fudge were even giving begrudging approval as he signed something.

She was changing their mind.

She was changing the world with her speech.