Chapter Seven, Year One: The Mirror of Erised (p. 212) and the Torture of Books

Disclaimer: Same old, same old.

That third night he found his way more quickly than before. He was walking so fast he knew he was making more noise than was wise, but he didn't meet anyone.

And there was his mother and father smiling at him again, and one of his grandfathers nodding happily. Over in a corner was his beautiful wife, smiling happily at him and bouncing his son. It was terrible that his son hadn't lived past birth. Salazar sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him from staying here all night with his family. Nothing at all. Besides, no matter how much one could wish for a corporal form, it still didn't replace the ache you could feel from being away from family.

Except-

"So, back again, Harry?"

Salazar felt as though his insides had turned to ice. He looked behind him. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall was none other than Albus Dumbledore. Salazar must have walked straight past him, so desperate to get to the mirror he hadn't noticed him. Salazar cursed his preoccupation and his weakness.

Deciding to air on the side of caution, Salazar opted for the truth. "I-I didn't see you, sir." And winced as he realized how guilty that made him sound.

"Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you," said Dumbledore, and Salazar was only partly relieved to see that he was smiling. He wondered how many other times Dumbledore realized what was going on, and wondered why Dumbledore decided to step in now, since he had obviously had known what Salazar had been doing (Salazar, for one, hadn't seen Dumbledore in the hallway, and if the Headmaster was lurking the corridors invisible, he could only wonder why). He smelt a plot.

"So," said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, "you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised."

"I didn't know it was called that, sir."

"But I expect you've realized by now what it does?"

Salazar resisted the urge to roll his eyes, sigh in impatience, or do anything that suggested that he was tired being treated like a toddler or knew what the Mirror did. "It-well-it shows me my family-"

"And it showed your friend Ron himself as head boy." Warning bells went off in Salazar's head as he heard this.

"How did you know-?"

"I don't need a cloak to become invisible," said Dumbledore gently. Salazar tried to think of what innocent activities a person could possibly do in peacetime while invisible. He didn't think of any. He was broken from his thoughts as Dumbledore asked, "Now, can you think of what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?"

Salazar shook his head, hoping that Dumbledore wasn't a Legilimens. He kept his eyes firmly fixed one of Dumbledore's ears instead as a precaution.

"Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?"

Salazar thought, and decided that he would use this to test to see if Dumbledore would dare use Legilimency on "Harry" at such an early stage of his trust developing. Then he said slowly, "It shows us what we want…whatever we want…"

"Yes and no," said Dumbledore quietly. Salazar couldn't figure out if this was because Dumbledore realized he was lying, or if he just liked to build up suspense like that.

"It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.

"The mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don't you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed?"

Salazar had listened to the entirety of that speech expecting Dumbledore to announce that desire is the devil's vulture that searches out weak victims, devours them, and brings back the corpses to suffer eternally in hellfire, or some other Puritan fanaticism (A/N: sorry to any Puritans!). His thoughts then went back to the idea that Dumbledore was a bit of a manipulating git when he was told that the mirror was being moved, that he might find it again and that Dumbledore knew about the cloak.

Salazar stood up, and abruptly asked, "Sir-Professor Dumbledore? Can I ask you something?" He said it as innocently as possible while trying to be as annoying as hell.

"Obviously you've just done so," Dumbledore smiled, as Salazar thought, 'Damn, it didn't work!', "You may ask me one other thing however."

"What do you see when you look into the mirror?"

"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks."

Salazar stared. Did the old man really think him that naïve?

"One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."

It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Salazar that Dumbledore had, in fact, expected him to believe that he was obsessed with socks, and that Dumbledore was definitely attempting to manipulate him. As he shoved Scabbers off his pillow (perhaps a bit more roughly than usually his norm) Salazar decided that, when the time came to defy Dumbledore at least a bit, he'd do so with zeal. He was not one to be manipulated.

……………

Draco sighed as he received the morning mail. He was required to go back home again for the holiday. While normally, he would have agreed to without question, he was irritated that his research on Nicholas Flamel would have be halted, or at least hindered, for a brief span of time. So far, all the books he had come across had stated the same thing. And while, at the manor he would have access to a different class of books all together, he wouldn't be able to make any true headway with his father breathing down his neck.

With these thoughts weighing on his mind, as well as the nagging one that kept asking why he cared what Potter and Co were doing, and both of these coupled with the cold and the fact that he would have to attend Potions first thing that day, did not put Draco into a good mood.

Once Draco arrived, set up his tools and began to make the potion, Draco decided, as usual, to lay into Potter, Weasley, and Granger to expend some very much unneeded frustration, "I do feel so sorry," said Draco, "for all those people who have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because they're not wanted at home." He stared pointedly at Potter.

Crabbe and Goyle chuckled stupidly, and Draco felt the insane urge to just punch them. They always seemed to ruin his perfectly good comments with their laughter. He bet that the majority of the time they didn't understand what a name was, let alone an insult. It was truly insulting that he seemed to be only capable of attracting idiots to him.

But it was even more insulting that neither Potter, nor anyone else seemed to care about what he said. Besides, what would have happened if Potter had swallowed the damn snitch. Draco still maintained the belief that almost swallowing a snitch should not be permitted. After all, if he had swallowed it, it would've been destruction of school property!

And Draco's thoughts continued much in this fashion. Belittling Potter and just about the entirety of the school. Draco grit his teeth and began chopping up his root viciously. Snape passed, raised an eyebrow at his behavior, and mentally made a note to suggest that Lucius give his son some anger management advice.

The class ended without little incident. Longbottom melted his cauldron as usual, and everyone, except for a select group of about two people, was in a jolly festive mood. It was enough to make Draco violently ill.

And then, it occurred. Potter and his merry band of do-gooders decided to be obedient little elves and help Hagrid practice some long unused socialization skills. And everyone decided to be happy that the four were happy and put up with this obstruction happily, and the whole of Hogwarts was just too fucking happy! Like little dancing teletubbies happy! Not that he watched such a foolish muggle children's show. No, he was a pureblood, he had morals!

So, like any good boy scout who looked after the elderly, Draco decided to do something about the blockage before Dumbledore came down to inquire after the traffic and broke a hip. "Would you mind moving out of the way?" he asked, a bit less snidely than he intended, so he had to make up for it with the next insult. "Are you trying to earn some extra money Weasley? Hoping to be gamekeeper yourself when you leave Hogwarts, I suppose-that hut of Hagrid's must seem like a palace compared to what your family is used to."

And as luck would have it, Weasley attacked him right as Snape was coming up the stairs.

"WEASLEY!"

'Ah, life is good,' Draco decided, 'I get to insult Weasley, get away with it and cause Gryffindor to lose points all at the same time!' He did wonder at the fact that he didn't insult Potter at all, but put that out of his mind as he felt hunger pains.

……………

Draco's left eye twitched for what felt like the thousandth time that hour. When he found out that his father wasn't going to be home for another few days, he barricaded himself in the Malfoy library and refused to come out unless it was to take care of basic bodily functions. His mother thought it was homework.

Resisting the urge to incinerate a few books, Draco made a list of what he knew about Flamel:

1. He is an alchemist

2. He created the Philosopher's stone

3. Said stone could give either eternal life or infinite wealth

4. He is really old

5. His wife's name is Perenelle

Draco sighed as he realized that he could probably cross out the last two. The third one wouldn't really help either. So he created the Philosopher's stone; it was obvious to any half-wit that he and his wife had already used the stone…unless it didn't have to be melted down and mixed with potion's ingredients. But then the stone would still be in the Flamels' possession. They wouldn't just lend it out to the school without due concern.

'Maybe someone is trying to steal it,' Draco reasoned. 'No, what sort of thief would give advance notice of a burglary? Maybe, if an individual only has to be connected to the Stone in someway, then maybe the Flamels think they're going to die soon. But let Dumbledore inherit it? They have to have great-great-great-great-great grandchildren running around at their age.'

Draco blinked as he realized his train of thought was being derailed. Since burglary seemed like the best choice out of the two, he decided to go with that. He flipped over the piece of parchment, and wrote another list:

People with the power to take/would want the stone;

1. Voldemort…dead

2. Grindlewald…dead

3. Father…can't do that with Dumbledore

4. Some other Dark Lord aspirant…can't do that with Dumbledore

5. Dumbledore…if it's at Hogwarts to botch an attempted burglary he's going to protect it.

'Well, that went far,' he thought sarcastically. He still didn't know why the Stone was at Hogwarts in the first place, or who would want to steal it, if it was going to be stolen.

Draco quickly scanned the library again to see if he had missed skimming any books that could pertain to Flamel. He didn't see any. Instead, he saw a ripped apart library that would be hell to try to rearrange, even with House Elves.

Before his eye could begin twitching again, Draco called for a house elf. He would've called for more than one, but with his mother home and preparations for Christmas already underway, she definitely would notice if more than one elf would go missing. Draco could only hope that she didn't make them (the elves) dress up in those green, red and gold costumes again. It was far too Gryffindor.

Draco shook his head to clear his mind of the weird images and began reluctantly helping the elf, who looked like he was going to fall over in disbelief. In between re-shelving books, he belatedly wondered how much luck Potter was having researching Flamel.

A/N: Sorry I haven't updated in such a long time. My apologies must be getting repetitive by now. However, now that it's summer, I should be able to update more frequently if my language course doesn't get in the way.

Hey, no explanations!

Reviews:

1. Twin Kats: I didn't update for a while, so I hope you're still reading. I'm glad that you enjoyed the little YYH bits. I'm a rabid fan I'm afraid.

2. Lillian Marie Potter: I'm glad you liked it so much that you left such a long review. O.o;; I'm actually rather intimidated right now…well, I'm sorry I didn't update.

3. Silver-Entrantress-Elf: I'm glad you liked it. Slytherin Harry is great isn't it?

4. bandgsecuritiyaw: I'm sorry if I spelt your name incorrectly. Really, I am! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

5. Nic'sim87: Yes, the plot is unoriginal, but my story in and of itself isn't (at least that's my opinion). When something is clichéd, or in this case unoriginal, it's the writer's job to attempt and make something original out of it. If what you're trying to say is that my own work isn't original, (or that perhaps I'm infringing on someone else's work) then I'll just have to try harder.

6. hermoine21: I didn't update soon but I updated!

7. Unseen Watcher: I'm glad that you're glad that I'm continuing. Where in the story were you referring to with the spell thing? Was it the duel?

8. SSC: Lol. I totally agree with you there. I'm glad to know that there's at least one other person who shares my view on that.

Thank you to anyone else who took the time to read, and I hope you enjoyed the previous chapters, as well as this one.