A/N: Thanks to Lissy86 and Lazyllama101 for their reviews.
Memorable things
"Hello, dears," Mrs. Dearborn said later one evening, sitting in one of the blue chairs in her living room. She set down her book at smiled at the four teenagers walk into her room.
"Hello," Hermione answered as she and the others found seats on the sofa and the remaining chair.
"How is your research going?" Mrs. Dearborn asked.
"What do you mean?" Hermione questioned innocently as she and the others tried not to react to her question.
"It is very obvious by looking at me that I was not born yesterday. You have been living in this house with me for almost four months now. I am not completely oblivious to what you four have been up to. My only question is why you have not asked me anything. I am a descendent of Ravenclaw. I may be able to help."
The four teenagers shared looks with each other, silently asking if they could trust her with what they were doing. Finally, Harry nodded.
"We are looking for something that can help kill Voldemort," he said bluntly looking Mrs. Dearborn in the eyes.
Her reaction was one that none of them had expected. She smiled brightly. "That is wonderful. Are you looking for the Horcrux then?"
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Annora's jaws all dropped in shock.
"What do you know about Horcruxes?" Harry asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.
"I know that you are trying to find them; that they are objects with pieces of Voldemort's soul in them. I don't know how many of them there are, but I know that you are looking for one of them here. And, that you are correct in assuming that there is a Horcrux here."
"There is? Where is it?" Harry asked.
"I can show it to you. But you should know some things first," Mrs. Dearborn said, settling back in her chair.
"I have mentioned already that I had been watching you on your way here. But I still haven't told you how I was able to do so. I will tell you now. In my family, the oldest living female descended from Rowena Ravenclaw is given possession of a mirror. But, this is no ordinary mirror. It once belonged to Rowena herself. She enchanted the mirror with ancient magic so that only her oldest female descendent would ever possess it. And, if by some chance it did fall into someone else's hands, the rightful owner would be able to call the mirror to her. I received the mirror about five months after my grandmother, my father's mother, died. With her death, I was now the oldest female descendent and so the mirror was mine. I was thirty-five years old at the time. When the mirror came to me, I knew something was wrong with it. Since it is a magical mirror and it recognized me as its new owner, it told me what had happened between the time my grandmother had died and I had summoned the mirror. It told me that Voldemort had gotten a hold of it and had connected a piece of his soul to the mirror. But, for selfish reasons I am sad to say, I did not try to destroy it. You see, I had a husband and children, all of whom I loved very much. I did not want to leave them. So, I stayed quiet about what I knew about the mirror; I did not even tell my husband, Caradoc, whom I had never kept a secret from before. I felt bad about lying to him, but…"
"Hold on a minute," Harry said, interrupting Mrs. Dearborn. "I remember that name from somewhere. Your husband's name, Caradoc Dearborn, I've heard it before."
"I am not surprised. He was killed by Death Eaters during a battle in the first war. People remember it well because his body was never found. His death was very hard for me to deal with, not just because he was my husband and I loved him, but because we had known each other since we were children. We had known each other for thirty-nine years when he died and his death made me feel like a large, very important part of myself was missing. You see, I did not just lose my husband that day, I lost my best friend."
"He was in the Order, wasn't he? That's where I remember hearing the name," Harry said, as Mrs. Dearborn wiped the tears that had been falling from her eyes away with a shaky hand.
"Yes, he joined soon after it formed."
"You said you would tell us how you were able to see us before we arrived?" Annora asked, turning to conversation back to a subject she had been wondering about.
"Right. As I said before the mirror is enchanted; more so than other wizarding mirrors. Rowena's mirror allows a person to seek out another person, simply by asking where they are at that moment. Of course, that is not how I was able to watch the four of you, at least not at first. You see, the mirror also is enchanted to know when someone is seeking it, which is a very good defense for it or the owner of the mirror. The mirror was able to tell that you were seeking it even though you did not know precisely what it was you were looking for. When it realized someone was looking for it, it told me. I had been watching your progress ever since. This is how I knew to drop the wards when you were approaching the house."
"Why did you not tell us this earlier? We have been doing research in your library for almost a month now," Ron asked. All that reading for nothing!
"I know. I debated telling you. But, you see I knew you want to destroy the mirror."
Hermione had been silent until now, just digesting everything Mrs. Dearborn had been telling them. "There is something I don't understand. Earlier you said that you did not want to destroy the mirror, for selfish reasons. Now you are saying that you didn't tell us about the mirror earlier because you knew we would want to destroy it. What is the problem with destroying it?"
"Ah. Now you are catching on. You see, the mirror is linked to the oldest female descendent. This is how I was able to summon it, and how it was able to find me. But, because we are linked, if the mirror is destroyed, I will be destroyed as well."
Quiet settled over everyone in the room, each of the teenagers silently letting the implications of this sink in.
"By destroy you mean that destroying the mirror would kill you?" Annora asked to make sure that her reasoning was correct.
Mrs. Dearborn nodded. "That is why I did not try to destroy it before. I was not ready to die."
"Did Voldemort know any of this, I mean about the mirror, before he connected a piece of his soul to it?" Harry asked, deciding not to think about the implications of destroying the mirror just yet. It was bad enough that he was prophesied to kill Voldemort; now,he had to kill this kind old woman as well. It was just too much to deal with right this second.
"I do not think Voldemort knew. I doubt he would have used the mirror if he had known. It would have been a very foolish thing to do. As I said before, the mirror is enchanted so that all the female descendent has to do is call for it, and it will come to her. And anyway, no one really knew about the mirror. It was not only a family heirloom, it was a family secret."
"So, you have never tried to destroy the mirror?" Hermione asked, attempting to reaffirm what she thought to be true. However, when Mrs. Dearborn answered, she was surprised to find that she was wrong.
"Oh, no. I have tried to destroy the mirror. When my husband died, our sons were still alive, but they too died during the first war. After this, I tried to destroy the mirror, but I did not succeed. I was not really sure how to do it, I just tried to hit them with various spells, but none seemed to have any effect. That is, until my last attempt at it. After common spells and hexes did not work, I researched ancient and rare spells and hexes. Eventually I found one that had more of an effect than any of the others I had previously tried. But, the mirror still remains intact; the spell did not work for me."
"What happened when you tried the spell?" Hermione questioned.
"After I used the spell on the mirror, it started to glow. But a few seconds later, a light shot out of the mirror and hit me in the face," with this, Mrs. Dearborn moved the hair that she always styled to cover one side of her face so that Harry and the others could get a clear view of her face.
The side normally obscured by her hair looked to Harry as if she had been burnt. The scar looked like third degree burns and that, much like Dumbledore's hand, was charred black.
"Do you know why the spell rebounded?" Hermione asked, politely turning attention away from the scar that Mrs. Dearborn was covering once more with hair.
"The only thing I can figure is that I was not strong enough to destroy the mirror. Or maybe, a part of me was still afraid to destroy it. It would be committing suicide after all."
The teenagers sat mulling over everything they had just been told, until they were interrupted by Mrs. Dearborn. "Would you like to see the mirror?"
When they nodded their response, Mrs. Dearborn got up from her chair and walked over to the fireplace. When she pulled on one of the decorative eagles, a scraping sound echoed through the room. Mrs. Dearborn, who was not at all surprised to hear the sound, walked away from the fireplace and led them over toward a painting that took up a large portion of one of the living room walls. She reached out and grabbed the wood framing of the painting and pulled it toward her. Behind the painting revealed a door way where a stone door had moved out the way. This must have been what the scrapping sound they had heard was.
Once through the door way, they walked along a short darkened hallway which led to another stone door. At this door, Mrs. Dearborn pounded her fist against the door three times on two separate stones.
When this door slid open, they entered a decent sized room. The room was bare, except for a mirror which was hanging on one of the walls.
Mrs. Dearborn followed by the four teenagers approached the mirror.
"Here it is. Although no one lives here but me, I try to keep it hidden."
Harry and the others approached the mirror looking at it carefully. If they hadn't gotten to know Mrs. Dearborn well over the last month and so knew that she wasn't lying, they would thing that the mirror was just a normal wizarding mirror. Although it was very decorative, its frame was made of gold and had eagles carved in it, there was nothing extremely spectacular about it. It wasn't even very big. The glass of the mirror itself wasn't much bigger than Harry's head.
"So, how does it work?" Harry asked, looking curiously at it.
"You just ask it where someone is. My friend Melba for example, lives in the nearby town. I will ask it to show her to us," Mrs. Dearborn said, turning away from Harry and the others and now looking directly at the mirror. "Please show us Melba Merriweather."
As soon as Mrs. Dearborn had finished her request, the glass of the mirror began to swirl, twisting and turning until at last it stopped, and, taking the place of their reflections in the glass was now the image of an older woman with curly, short gray hair and brightly colored robes. Harry and the others realized the mirror not only allowed a person to view what another person was doing, the mirror also made it possible to hear what the person was doing. This became obvious to them when they heard Melba Merriweather begin talking to plants she was watering: "Drink up my pretties. You need to grow bigger. I'll never win that contest if you don't grow. Franklin is not going to beat me this year…"
"Okay, enough of that," Mrs. Dearborn smiled. "Why don't we go back to the living room? You can look at the mirror more tomorrow. It is getting late."
The four teenagers agreed but, Harry especially, seemed reluctant to go. He kept looking at the mirror wistfully.
When Mrs. Dearborn and the others returned to the living room, they sat back down and Mrs. Dearborn began telling the girls about her husband. "He was a wonderful man, if a bit clueless in his younger years when it came to feelings…"
While the girls listened to Mrs. Dearborn recount her husband's humorous attempts at courting, Harry and Ron went to one corner of the room and talked quietly.
About an hour later, Harry and Ron said their goodnights and went up to Ron's room to talk some more. They were joined shortly by Hermione and Annora.
"At least the researching is over," Ron said, sighing in relief.
"But don't forget, we now have found out how to destroy it, so the researching isn't really over," Hermione said as she came to sit next to Ron, who groaned at the prospect of more reading. "We don't want Harry to get hurt like Mrs. Dearborn did."
"Hang on. What do you mean by 'Harry?' We are going to help him," Ron looked questioningly at Hermione.
"I know that, but I think -because of what the prophecy said -Harry is the one who has to destroy them. No one else is strong enough to do it."
"That's not true. Dumbledore destroyed one of them," Harry interrupted.
Hermione sighed. "That's true. Well, Dumbledore was the strongest wizard. It makes sense that he would be able to destroy it. But, maybe he still wasn't strong enough. Think about it, his hand was burned, probably when he destroyed the Horcrux. Hopefully when you try to destroy the mirror Horcrux you won't get blasted by the spell."
"I hope. I don't fancy having more scars. I would never be able to hide all of them."
"There's still one thing you're forgetting Hermione. If Harry destroys the mirror, Mrs. Dearborn will die," Annora said for her seat at the foot of Ron's bed.
"I know. I wish there was a way we could keep Mrs. Dearborn from getting hurt when the mirror is destroyed, but from what I remember reading about heirlooms connected to family members is that the 'connection' is permanent. It can't be dissolved."
They sit in silence for a few minutes thinking this over. It wasn't until Annora's eyes began to droop and Hermione yawned that they decided to call it a night and talk about it tomorrow.
Ron had just drifted off to sleep about an hour later when a soft click of his door signaled that someone had entered the room. Ron's eyes snapped open and he listened as feet shuffled across his floor, the shuffling sound interrupted frequently by a sniffling sound.
"Ron," the shadow whispered.
The sound of the person's voice told Ron immediately who it was.
"What's wrong Hermione?" he asked scooting over in bed to make room for her to lie down.
After she joined him under the covers Ron was concerned to notice that Hermione had been crying, which, he now realized, must have been what the sniffling sound had been.
"What is it? Are you okay?"
"I had a nightmare," Hermione answered, snuggling against Ron, but still trembling.
Ron wrapped his arms around her. "What was it about?"
Hermione didn't answer and instead began sobbing.
Ron's eyebrows knitted in concern and he rubbed his hands across Hermione's back and through her hair, trying to comfort her.
Soon, Hermione had stopped sobbing and at Ron's urging once more, told him what her dream had been about.
"When I was listening to Mrs. Dearborn talk about her husband earlier he reminded me of you a little bit. And then, when I went to bed, I dreamt that you died and that I was all alone," Hermione's voice hitched at the end of her sentence and a few more tears fell from her eyes.
One of Ron's hands came up and brushed the tears from her cheeks. "It's okay Hermione. It was just a dream."
"A nightmare you mean. I know it was, Ron, but remember last year? It almost happened," Hermione said, clinging to Ron so as not to let him move away from her.
Ron knew of nothing reassuring to say and so said nothing at all. He wrapped his arms around Hermione's waist as she lay on her side facing him. He leaned forward and kissed Hermione lightly on the lips.