"Hello." He said.
Because what else were you supposed to say to an odd girl in a mirror. And she was odd. Her hair was incredibly bushy and her face a little stern. Her uniform suggested that she did indeed attend Hogwarts and yet something about it wasn't quite right. She was rather plain in general, not the sort of person he would've paid attention to had she not appeared in a magical mirror, and yet there she was.
"Hello." She replied, composing her features. "I'm Hermione Granger."
"Pleasure." He said. There was no point being rude to the girl, at least not yet. He wanted to find out what the mirror was exactly and why it was showing him this strange girl.
Neither said anything else for a while. They merely examined one another, wondering why the other was there, invading their respective sanctuaries. The silence didn't last, however, her face became irate and she placed her hands on her hips impetuously.
"Well…" She said.
"Well what?" He said innocently.
"Don't you have a name?" She asked, her voice a little waspish and impatient. He imagined that she was the sort to not like being wrong.
A smile appeared. "I do."
"And what might that name be?" She crossed her arms.
"I'm sorry- Miss Granger was it? I'm not accustomed to giving my name to strangers in enchanted mirrors." Tom suppressed a smirk at how truly indignant she looked.
"Well…" She started, as if to argue, but then she reigned herself in. "Well, I suppose that's understandable. Do you know what this mirror is?"
He didn't yet. "Do you?"
"No, it just appeared here."
"Where are you?"
A small, triumphant smirk graced Hermione's features. "Sorry, I'm not accustomed to giving my location to strangers in enchanted mirrors."
Tom narrowed his eyes at her, but refrained from an outright sneer. "Whatever. I already know where you are anyway."
"What? How-"
"It's the Room of Requirement isn't it? There's nobody around and that room doesn't resemble any I've seen in Hogwarts so I very much doubt it's a common room. And those chairs and blankets aren't at all appropriate for a classroom. They appear to be just about right for a lonely girl trying to hide from something though."
Her face contorted into one of mild outrage. "I'm not hiding. I study here."
"If you say so." Tom smirked.
"And if you're in the Room of Requirement then what does your room say about you." Here she leaned forward, trying to look around him to see what lay in his room. "Gloomy, and solitary, and not a comfortable chair in sight. Even your fire looks sad compared to mine."
"I don't require such frivolities to study." He replied, not in the least offended by her assessment. Gloomy and solitary was better than cheerful and crowded any day.
"But if we're both in the Room of Requirement why aren't we together? Does it divide if more than one person is in it at the same time?"
"Perhaps. But then why bless us with this?" Tom gestured to the mirror.
"I- I don't know. I've never seen it before."
"It has an inscription."
"It does? Oh yes I see now."
"erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi." They read in unison.
Hermione repeated the phrase under her breath, starting to pace back and forth in front of the mirror.
Tom continued to squint at it. What could it mean? It wasn't in any language he knew. He supposed it could be a shift code such as they used in the muggle world but that seemed an odd choice for a clearly magical artefact. It just looked so bizarre, so jumbled.
"Aha!" The girl declared suddenly racing back to her chair. Tom followed her with his eyes, startled by her revelation. She couldn't possibly have figured it out before him.
Yet she came back, pen and pad in hand, scribbling down a translation he assumed. As she did so he finally realised what was wrong with her uniform; despite looking neat he skirt was above regulation length and she was wearing a boys tie, not a girls one. Surely she would be sanctioned for that. Unless she was a boy. She was quite easily ruffled for a girl. A little too confident for a girl too. But then why would he wear a skirt…
His derailed musings were cut short by a small harrumph.
"I thought that would be it…"
"Show me." He said, startling her. His hand was outstretched.
"Oh, sure." She said, passing the notebook to him.
He took it in his hand and started scanning the words as she began to explain her reasoning.
"You see, as odd as the inscription is I don't think it's in another language. For one thing the letters are all in line with latin based languages so it couldn't be Arabic or Chinese or Egyptian or anything with other characters. However it doesn't appear to have any relation to any languages that share the same characters as English-" She rattled on.
Tom wasn't listening he was looking at her words. "ishow no tyo urfac ebu tyo urhe arts desire" Of course, reflected writing on a mirror, how original. But where she was frustrated by a continued lack of vision, Tom was able to see clearly. It was a confusion of letters. They were purposely put together to baffle. How juvenile, and yet, evidently effective. "I show not your face but your heart's desire." He smiled to himself. But then he considered the implications of those words.
He knew precisely what he wanted. And it was definitely not her.
He glanced up.
Hermione, meanwhile, was staring agape at him.
Oh no, she hadn't figured out the message as she'd been ranting had she? If she had he could only imagine the trouble that would follow.
"What?" Tom asked calmly, waiting for her to say something stupid. Though she didn't respond as expected she didn't disappoint on the stupidity front.
"You have my notebook." She answered, tonelessly.
Tom looked down at it nonplussed. Yes. Why did she care? It wasn't as if he'd stolen it. She had given it to him.
She had passed it to him…through…the…mirror.
