A/N: A note! James is trans in this-there's a moment where he sees a reflection of a man and wants to look like that (makes more sense in the story). However, never once do I want to imply that looking a certain way is indicative of gender. It's way more than that, obviously. And that does actually get covered in this too-I just wanted to mention it in case you're not in the right headspace for that, because it's not quite body dysphoria, but it's kind of on the edge. So just be safe and take care!
Erised Circus was open for business.
It was more of a noise than a circus. A sound, rather than an experience. Every second summer, Erised rolled into town, a bustling array of wagons and clattering carts. The workers constructed pitch-black tents in the fields just outside of town, each one glittering in the moonlight. Arched posters appeared in the pubs and shops, reflective bits of silver pinned to walls and postboards, displaying only the curiousness of your own face and the curling script: Erised.
"You're going, aren't you?" said Sirius that night, from where he was slumped against the bar.
James poured another pint and sent it down the bar towards a waiting customer. He looked at his friend, his best friend, taking note of the shadows under his eyes and the weariness in his figure. And even though it would hurt him, he couldn't be anything less than honest.
"I'm going," he said. "The Wild Hunt couldn't keep me away."
Sirius snorted, tipping his glass this way and that, amber liquid rolling near the rim. His gaze was bitter, resigned. The pub wasn't so rowdy tonight, everyone on tenterhooks as they waited for the circus to open, drinking sparingly and with nervous hands. You didn't want to forget a single thing that happened in Erised. It was best to have a clear mind.
"Sirius," James said, voice soft with sympathy. "You don't have to worry."
"I'm not worrying. I'm mourning. Pre-emptively."
"He's still out there," James said, a little louder. "You've heard the stories. Erised never lets go of what it gets."
"Why d'you think I'm mourning?" Sirius said. "It got him, and now it'll get you. And it'll never let go. So forgive me if I want to drink myself into a stupor so I don't have to think about losing my best friend as well as my brother."
He threw back the drink. James poured him another and pretended not to see the tears on his cheeks. Remus came to pick him up an hour later, and when he leaned over the bar to give James a hug, he felt his heart splinter.
"I know why you're doing this," he said. "I'd do the same. Sirius would too—I think he'd do it now, if it hadn't been a whole year. He doesn't want you to go, but he trusts you with this, James. So make sure you come home."
"I promise," he said.
James watched them go, both of them holding each other up. He didn't know if he could keep his promise, but he would try his hardest. For them. And for Regulus, who would never forgive James if he got lost trying to find him.
James got off work early and bought his ticket from a street-side vendor. The man tipped his hat and handed over a thin rectangle made of solid glass. His name and the date were engraved in the top right-hand corner. James hadn't told him his name, but that didn't unnerve him. He'd done this before. He tucked the ticket in his pocket and took the dirt path out of town, through the creaking gate and out into the fields.
Tents billowed in the distance. Silver flags and white lanterns beckoned him forward. He joined the stream of people heading along the thin road until they blossomed into a crowd, all of them huddled in the rich night. The night was so dark that the grass looked black. The flowers that grew were whiter than snow, with petals like sharp spokes. He stepped on one outside the ticket booth; it cracked beneath his boot.
"Ticket, please," said the ticket-lady.
She was just a shadow. Two eyes burned like coals inside her dark face. She held out her hand for his ticket, and swallowed it whole.
"What kind of tokens would you like? Space, currency, or time?"
"Time," James said, his pulse ticking like a mad old clock. "As many as you can give me."
The shadow's eyes narrowed in thought. She passed over a velvet pouch crammed with tokens, and the gate opened wide behind her.
"Indulgent sort, aren't you?" she said, as he passed by. "Next!"
"Not indulgent," he muttered to himself, gripping the pouch tightly. "Desperate."
The noise hit him all at once. A tall man on spiralling stilts came striding by, his ballooning laugh echoing across the fields. Laughter and shrieks swept over him in a fine, dizzying wave. Someone was singing in the distance, and the shrill noise set all his teeth on edge, goosebumps prickling his skin. James grit his teeth and held his head up, buffeted this way and that by women with silk-thin wings and children clutching sweets made of glass.
He squeezed through a gap and came out beside a tall moss-green booth. Jars of moonshine hung from thick ropes along the back of it. The salesman picked his teeth with a twig and waved James closer. He tried to step back, to decline with a faintly apologetic smile, only to bump into a slender figure.
"Drink this!" a violet-eyed girl said, pushing a flute of silver liquid into his hand. "You'll never feel thirsty again!"
James smiled politely, and lifted the glass to his lips. He didn't drink. The silver liquid stained his shirt, and he laughed, tossing the flute aside.
"Whoops!" he said. "You'll have to forgive me. All this excitement got my hands shaking."
The violet-eyed woman's eyes hardened, and her smile was forcibly polite. She vanished after a moment, lost in the crowd. James took a deep breath and pushed through, ducking each beckoning call and skirting the edges of the gleaming booths. None of it held any interest to him. It couldn't call to him over the pounding of his heart. He ducked and weaved, eyes sharp and searching, and eventually found a night-dark path that led around the largest tent.
Silver flowers lined the edge. He saw his face reflected briefly in the petals, and sucked in a breath. This was it. This was where he wanted to go. He went down the path without a second's thought, following it away from the noise.
Erised Circus began to fade. It grew quieter and quieter. James followed the path with single-minded focus until it eventually came to a stop near the edge of the forest. He hadn't seen it coming, but now that he was here, all he could see were trees for miles ahead. He peered into the darkness. There was no path through, but that wouldn't stop him.
"Oh," said a voice. "Usually nobody comes this way."
James whirled around. There was a figure standing in a booth, right there on the treeline. He was tall and thin, built like a needle, and his sharp eyes glittered with intrigue. James couldn't tell what his face looked like; every time he tried to focus, to pick out a specific feature, the image blurred.
"Where did you come from?" James asked.
"I was always here. You were too busy nosing around to see me."
That might have been true, or it might have been a trick. Either way, it didn't matter. He approached the booth and slid the pouch of tokens across the surface. The man paused. He picked up the pouch with careful fingers and undid the drawstring, pouring the tokens into his hands.
"That's an awful lot of tokens," he said. "Surely you don't want to spend them all in one place, do you?"
"The hall of mirrors is inside the forest, isn't it?"
"The forest is the hall of mirrors."
"But it's a forest." James paused, momentarily stumped. "Aren't halls usually, you know, inside buildings?"
The man put the tokens back inside the pouch, humming. "I suppose so. For some people, a hall is a room used for meetings or events, concerts or receptions. And for others, a hall is the space just inside an entrance. The forest has always been a place of music and meetings, and once you enter, you won't ever want to leave."
James stayed silent. The truth was, he didn't want to leave. He wanted to march into the forest and go as deep as it would allow. He was looking for something, and he didn't want to leave until he found it. He wondered if that would matter, if it would make it easier for the forest to grip him and hold him tight, to lure him further in.
"But we can talk about etymology all night," the man said, pocketing the pouch. "For now, let's put some of these tokens to good use."
James's heart gave a painful squeeze. Etymology, spoken in that slight drawl, only reminded him of Regulus. He'd endured many lectures about proper punctuation and pronunciation. Regulus's bookshelf still sat in his home, wedged under the window and packed with all sorts of novels, journals, and notes. He refused to dust it for the first month after Regulus went missing, hoping that he'd come back just to tell him off and rant about proper maintenance of books.
But the man wasn't Regulus, and didn't care about his books or lectures. He came out of the booth and closed the gate behind him, and then he walked with James to the edge of the treeline.
The first step froze him. The second resolved him. He strode through the branches, head held high, the man trailing along at his heels. The trees grew thick and thin. Weeping willows brushed each other in a sorrowful embrace. Spruces ruffled their feathers. Cedars stretched their branches tall, and pretty ash trees wound high into the sky.
And laid into each trunk, nestled in the rough bark, was a mirror.
"It helps to have an idea of what you're looking for," the man said, after they'd been walking for a while. "A starting point. A hope or a wish. At least, that's what I'm told. Otherwise it's very easy to get lost."
"I know," James said, with a bitter edge. He stopped in a nest of pine needles and whirled around, staring the man down. "You're a lot more helpful than the guy that ran this place the last time. He didn't tell us what we were walking into. Just took all our tokens and waved us off. I didn't even know there would be mirrors in here, let alone that you could get sucked into one if you weren't careful."
The man stared back at him for a moment. Quiet fell upon the forest. And then he tipped his head ever so slightly, and said, with an unsure note: "Us?"
James inhaled sharply. He turned again and strode on, ignoring the closest gleaming mirror, set into the base of a wide oak tree.
"You've been here before," the man persisted. "You came with someone else?"
James's throat clicked as he swallowed. "I did. Two summers ago. We didn't… I was the only one who made it out. And I promised myself that I would come back and find him the moment Erised came to town. I promised that I would bring him home."
"What was his name?"
They had come to a stop near the edge of a clearing. Trees ringed a pool of grass, and each tree held onto a mirror like a lover, keeping it close in their embrace. James caught a flash of violet inside the nearest one, and drifted a little closer.
"Regulus," he said. "His name was Regulus Black."
Almost before he'd even spoke, the mirror turned pitch black. Wild constellations of starlight skittered across the glossy surface. His mouth unbuckled. He drifted nearer still. The man was silent, but James could hear his breathing change, the hitch in his voice when he spoke next.
"Do you know what Erised stands for?"
James wasn't listening. He reached out and grazed his fingertips against the black surface of the mirror, a certain craving roiling around in his stomach. If he concentrated, he thought he could hear that voice that he missed so much, the one that haunted him all the time, darkly amused and aristocratic, sweet in secret and lightly knowing.
"It stands for Desire," the man said, sounding strangely breathy. "The mirrors show you every reflection of yourself, even the ones that hurt or cut you. And the forest lures you deeper in with whatever you desire. Everything you could ever want is in these trees, these pieces of glass. Do you really think you can find your lost one?"
"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," James said.
And as his desperation piqued, he plunged inside the nearest mirror. He heard a cut-off cry, a strangled noise of alarm and distress behind him, but the world turned to moonlight before he could make eye-contact with the man. The forest vanished. He held his breath, sinking through molten silver. When he stepped out on the other side of the glass, the mirror was dark and empty, showing nothing but the bare wood panelling.
Silence fell. Now that he'd come through, the craving was absent, and he felt strangely cold. He turned to survey the room, finding nothing but a long corridor with dusty floorboards and off-kilter paintings. A clock ticked at the end of the hall, but it did so silently.
"Reg?" he called. "I know this is a long shot, but if you're there, mind making this easy on me and coming out of whatever book-nook you've buried yourself in?"
There was, of course, no answer. He fidgeted on the spot. Something told him that this was the wrong place, that the mirror hadn't led to what he desired most. He suddenly missed the quiet forest and the man who led him through it.
"I need another mirror," he said. "There's got to be one in this place."
The house shifted around him. The walls melted away to reveal rooms without doors, staircases without handrails, windows without glass. He remembered what the man said as he walked carefully through the space, sticking to the hallway. This was a place full of entrances, and he was in the space just outside.
James passed closed doors and rooms with wailing women trapped inside. There was no fear inside him, but rather a sense of going down a slide, as though he had no choice but to keep descending, everything rushing past in a dizzying blur.
He came to a stop outside a parlour heaving with deer-headed men and lingered in the doorway. The room was velvet-lined. The walls, the floor, the ceiling; all of it was papered in midnight blue, lined with streams of gold. Men with antlers springing from their skulls danced inside it. They were dressed in their finest greenery, moss protruding from their cheekbones. They waltzed across oak floors in twos and threes, disturbing the pine needles strewn at their feet, smoking jackets hanging from their russet shoulders. They stretched out their hands, beckoning him to join their dance.
It stole his breath away. It seemed like the sort of place you could dance forever, caught up in the movement of it all, the ever-turning motion of time.
James took a step forward. The pale, dusty floorboards of the hallway creaked, and then gave way to plush land. It was like walking on moss, if that moss lay over a pond. All his weight landed on one foot, and just as the moss gave way—something pulled him back.
Weightless, he flew from the room. He slammed back against the hallway wall, gasping. The door to the velvet room sealed over like stitched skin, rippling until there was nothing but silence and wood panelling again. He tried to catch his breath, move away—but something was holding him tight. It wasn't the hallway wall he was leaning on, but something altogether much softer.
"I leave you alone for one minute," Regulus murmured, right in his ear. "You spill trouble wherever you go, James Potter."
"Oh, you bastard," James said breathlessly. He clung to the hands wrapped tightly around his waist, holding him close against a wildly beating heart. "You absolute bastard. I missed you."
"I should think so," Regulus said, but despite the airy words, there was a thickness to his tone. He dropped his head down against James's shoulder and kept his face hidden; he felt tears dampen his neck and bit his tongue, trying not to cry too. But it was almost impossible. He felt angry and terrified, but most of all the longing was rising up like ocean water, salt-ridden and surging through him.
Desire could be a violent thing. What he wanted most, right then, was to see the man holding him, and he was willing to fight to get it.
"Let me turn around," James said, struggling in his hold. "Let me see you. It's been two summers, you arsehole, let me—do you have any fucking idea—Reg, let me see you!"
Regulus caved. His arms fell away and James turned in a heartbeat, cupping his face, reaching for him, pulling him into a desperate kiss that brought him up to his tiptoes, stealing both their breath. He twisted his fingers in Regulus's hair, a frantic noise escaping his throat. And Regulus held him too, clutched him close, digging his fingers into his back and waist and the nape of his neck, holding on hard enough to bruise.
Music filled the air: each note was perilously high and haunting. He'd never heard anything like it. They broke apart but didn't move far, breathing in each other's air, lips still brushing.
"Time's almost up," Regulus said, breathing heavily.
"I bought all the tokens I could. We should still have hours."
But Regulus shook his head and dipped into his pocket, withdrawing a familiar drawstring pouch. "I had to use most of them to come in after you. This isn't my hall of mirrors, so it wouldn't let me in unless I gave up something. But I couldn't let you get lost too."
"You…" James stared at the pouch blankly. "You were the man in the forest."
"I didn't know who I was until you said my name. Erised takes almost everything you have, and it never lets go. I didn't know you, and then you vanished through that mirror, and I remembered."
"How?"
Regulus huffed a laugh, pressing their foreheads together. "I think, perhaps, my desire to kick your arse for getting into trouble was stronger than the circus's desire to keep me."
James closed his eyes. There were too many feelings pressing down upon him, too many emotions tugging at his heartstrings, playing an unfamiliar chord of sorrow and hurt and relief. He gave Regulus one last, soft, lingering kiss, and drew away.
"If we don't have much time, then we'll need to find a mirror out of here. I promised everyone that I'd come home, and I'll be damned if I don't bring you with me."
Regulus's expression cracked briefly in two. "Sirius?"
"He's hurting." James found his hand and held on tight. "Let's make sure he doesn't have to hurt anymore."
Regulus nodded, drawing himself up. He led James through the rickety winding hallway, past more staircases and rooms full of musical laughter. One mirror held a warm glow, a dining table surrounded by long-lost people. James hurried by it before the smell of blackberry pie could twist his insides with longing.
"It will be the mirror that hurts the most to look at. The one you want the most. The one you desire. You'll have to turn away from it if you want to make it out of here."
"If we want to make it out of here," James corrected him, tightening his hold.
An itch took root in his chest. Regulus touched his elbow and dragged him further into the house. Deeper and deeper they went. It was a two-story building and a store and a house with four floors and a forest quaking with sound and light. It was a beast of a place. It was swallowing them whole.
James was determined not to let it.
And there, soon enough, was the mirror. It was a broad mirror that rooted itself firmly at the end of the hallway, with a great arching back and a velvet carpet leading up to it. He held his breath and followed the carpet right up to the glass, peering in.
His heart dropped. And then it soared.
There was a reflection in there. It was him, but it was so much more. His jawline was sharp, angled, not as soft. His hips weren't quite as round. When he tipped his head back to shout with laughter, boisterous and strong, he saw the bump in his throat. The image deepened, the colours brightening. He wanted it almost bitterly. He almost reached out to touch it.
But then Regulus took his hand and whispered James Potter lovingly into his hair, like it was the name he'd always had and not the one he'd picked, and suddenly the image blurred.
It wasn't gone. Not completely.
"You've never needed to look any different to be who you are," Regulus said. "You told me that yourself, once. It's harder to believe here, but do try."
There was a wealth of knowledge in Regulus's voice. A tinge of sorrow, regret, old longing. It made James angry. He shut his eyes, biting down on his bottom lip harshly. Regulus could be a lot of things, but nobody deserved to see this sort of thing, have it waved in front of them for a cruel price. He wondered what he'd seen, what had kept him here. It must have been something awfully deep and wounding, if it kept him from coming home, kept him from coming back to his family. That only made James angrier, and it gave him the strength to stand up tall.
"Mm, you're right." James opened his eyes again and stared at the image of him in the mirror. It was him, that was for sure, and it still opened a vein in his chest, but it wasn't more than what he already was. It didn't change anything. He reached around to kiss Regulus, turning his back on the mirror and drinking him in. "I know exactly who I am."
The hallway vanished. Not that he saw. He was too busy holding Regulus tenderly, cupping his jaw and trading soft, knowing kisses. He didn't see the mirror shatter silently, shards disintegrating into dust. He didn't see the house melt away. A breath of cold swept over his skin. The smell of pine needles permeated the air.
He could hear birdsong. Sharp and trilling, but there.
"We made it out," James murmured, drawing back.
"We made it out of the mirror," Regulus warned him, though he looked a little lost, as though he hadn't really believed they could get this far. "The whole forest is the hall of mirrors."
"Yes, I know. You told me that when you were busy being all cryptic in your little booth."
Regulus huffed an incredulous laugh and muttered something unsavoury under his breath. James almost felt relieved that he was still his old self. He glanced around at their surroundings, ignoring the muttering.
They had landed in the clearing. An oak slumped against the ground a few feet from them, the mirror they'd come through pitch-black against its enormous weight. Hand-mirrors glittered in the branches. James turned this way and that until he found a gap in the trees, and headed towards it, tugging Regulus along.
"What are you doing?" Regulus asked.
"What does it look like? I'm taking us home."
"Erised won't want us to just leave," Regulus said.
"Well, too bad."
Regulus huffed a laugh, fond and affectionate. James almost stumbled. It seared him. He'd missed that noise more than he could say.
"I mean it," Regulus said, though he was following him still, willing to take the risk. "It stands for desire, and it wants us to stay."
"Well, that's lucky then, isn't it?" James said, taking his hand and turning towards the treeline. "Because what I desire most is to go home with the man I love, safe and sound, and I'm pretty sure that's stronger than anything else."
[Word Count: 4,047]
