The last night before the end of the holiday, Harry woke to the sound of the window clattering in the wind. Still half-asleep, he slippered his feet and shut it properly. Then, just as he was tucking himself back into bed, he realised Ratty was gone.

Harry jumped up, suddenly wide awake, his heart lurching into a terrified sprint.

The cage was empty, but Ratty had proven himself an escape artist and it wasn't dangerous for him to roam their dorm room.

Somehow Harry just knew though that his pet was much farther away. He looked around, seeing the door was ajar.

For a second he hated Ronald, loathed him with all his body and soul. He'd asked the boy for literally one, simple thing, to keep the bloody door shut, and the idiotic Weasley couldn't even do that.

But Ronald was just a stupid boy; Harry should never have trusted him. Like with the flick of a muggle light switch, he was suddenly directing all that anger at himself. Why, why, why hadn't he thought to cast a tracking spell? He was supposed to be responsible for Ratty and now the poor thing was likely roaming Gryffindor Tower. She'd get them both into trouble.

The only good part in this was that there weren't any cats in the dorms, at least not until the other students returned the next day.

Harry yanked on his shoes and a robe before hurrying from the room. He pocketed some treats and lit his wand, lest he tumble down the stairs and wake prissy Percy.

To his absolute horror he found the low-burning firelight shining on the back of the Fat Lady's portrait. The passage was wide open.

"Finally! Come here boy," the Lady was already sputtering at Harry. "It's awfully drafty, I don't know what's gotten into you lot. So irresponsible—"

"Have you seen my rat?"

"Goodness, how rude. Youth aren't how they used to be, back in my day—"

Harry raised his wand at her and donned his best Stern Look.

"I have seen a rat," she said, "How am I supposed to know if it was yours?"

But Harry was already rushing through into the corridor. "Which way?"

"Left, but boy, you must—"

There was a shadow moving over the steps towards the rest of the castle. Harry ran.

xoxox

He followed it down stairs, up corridors, through tapestries, until finally the shadow slipped under a classroom door. Harry's body sagged with relief as he let himself into the room. He didn't want to imagine what would have happened if Mrs Norris had found Ratty first.

For good measure, he cast a spell to seal off the door. Then Harry looked around.

It was a quiet room, with dust whirling through the moonlight that was pouring in through the windows.

How odd, Harry thought. It had been a new moon only the week before.

The only furnishings were some cupboards off to one side, with half the doors hanging askew. Beside that was what must have once been the professor's desk. Harry had thought he'd recognised this room when he'd come in but it looked all…wrong. This had been an old divination classroom back then, full of round tables and seemingly endless shelves of cheap tea sets.

Harry set down some treats for Ratty by the cupboard to lure her out.

Although he didn't think much of divination, the entire room felt off. He had helped set up enough pranks that he could tell when something looked staged. This furniture had been made to look like it had been abandoned here half a century ago. There was even an ominous-looking sheet half-draped over a mirror on the far end of the room.

With a start Harry realised he'd already taken a few steps over, as if the mirror had some kind of magnetic pull on him. Was this the only remnant from Professor Mesmer's days?

Harry firmly turned his back on it and examined Ratty's treats. There was no sign of her yet, but he knew she had to be in here.

Or did she?

This entire thing was feeling increasingly like something Sirius and James would have cooked up: lure him out of bed, make him run wildly through the castle, bait him into this room with its creepy divination mirror.

Hook, line, sinker.

Gods, he had been so stupid. Harry turned around to face the prank, the trap, whatever it was. He watched the sheet billowing for a while, though he was certain there wasn't a draft.

This was almost as creepy as Ollivander's shop.

He raised his wand and levitated the sheet off so that it would stop moving. "Ratty?" Harry called out softly, "Are you here Ratty?"

There was nothing, not even the pattering of tiny feet against wooden furniture.

Right, best to get it over with. Harry steeled himself and stepped towards the mirror, careful to keep his face blank and his eyes peeled for when this trap swung shut on him. He wasn't going to scream and he certainly wasn't going to cry again like some baby .

Relax, Peter, we're just kidding. Merlin, learn to take a joke.

(I thought you were a Gryffindor.)

Harry couldn't decipher the meaning of the writing on the mirror's frame. He stepped even closer.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

On the other side of the frame he could see himself, safe in bed with Ratty curled up on his covers. Harry turned away, disappointed. No wonder they had left this stupid mirror behind, it didn't divine anything more interesting than an image from two hours in the past.

Where was the rest of the prank? Harry glanced back to the front of the room but Ratty still hadn't showed up, if she was even in here at all. He peered suspiciously out the window at the unnatural view of the black lake under a full moon. Wisps of clouds made it hard to see the stars that would at least have told him which month this window pointed to. The plants only told him he was looking at a time from late spring to early summer. There wasn't any other clue if this was future or past...except—

—the Whomping Willow wasn't there. Just gone, like it had never existed to begin with. Harry shuddered, only then realising how freezing cold it was.

"Hello Harry," a familiar voice greeted.

He whirled so fast he only just managed to not fall over. The man looked like Dumbledore. Harry checked the shoes: deep purple suede. This was the Headmaster himself.

"I'm sorry, sir," Harry said, "I was looking for my rat. I think someone set me up as a prank."

He could already see the faces of a hundred Gryffindors returning from the holidays to see their house points down by half. The Slytherins would be ecstatic, of course, and Draco would prance around bragging for the next month's worth of potions classes.

Oh, fuck, the headmaster was still speaking, why hadn't he been paying attention? "...makes you think this is a prank?"

That question was easy enough, thank the gods, Merlin, and Morgana herself. "The moonlight from the window makes the room look extra creepy, but the illusion is all wrong. This is a summer night at least twelve years ago, likely viewed—" he looked out again to check "from the front of the Transfiguration room, sir."

Harry examined the man's suede shoes while the silence bloomed between them. Harry felt like he was in Greenhouse four, where some carnivorous plant was preparing to pounce on him.

"I am beginning to understand that you are a lot cleverer than most people give you credit for, my boy."

It was hardly Harry's fault that people weren't ever looking at him properly. Upon realising Professor Dumbledore was expecting some kind of response, he shrugged.

"Do you know what that mirror does, Harry?" the Headmaster asked.

For a second Harry was reminded of the Dark Lord. What do you know about...about prophecies? Was this some kind of test, too? Would his answer change the number of house points he lost for being caught out of bed after curfew? "Some kind of divination, sir?"

"Well done Harry," Dumbledore said. "This is the Mirror of Erised, it shows you nothing more or less than your heart's desire."

What? Harry's mind skittered. He leaned back into the frame; there he was, Ratty nearby, sleeping peacefully in his four-poster. Perhaps that was it? Harry hadn't slept well since...as long as he could remember, over thirty years of life. But it seemed a bit shallow for his heart to desire rest.

"I don't understand, sir."

"I can't explain it unless you tell me what you see," Dumbledore said, and suddenly it all fell into place.

Waking up to the window banging open. The shadow-rat that he'd chased through half the castle. This dusty room with its carefully-crafted illusions.

Perhaps the Weasley twins would have managed one of those things, but all of them together made for a complex web of carefully-woven magic far beyond any schoolchild. And all of it, apparently, to tease this one answer out of Harry.

He studied his reflection for a moment. "Peace," he decided to call it. "I desire peace." Then he looked away, tired of being played. "What about you, Headmaster?"

The man's wrinkles softened into a strange kind of smile. "I see myself holding a pair of hand-knitted socks."

"Okay." Harry didn't care to trade more lies. "May I please go to bed now, sir?"

"Certainly, I'll be happy to accompany you. Alas, I was under the impression you came here searching for something." At this he pulled the little piebald from his pocket. Ratty wasn't moving.

No.

Surely Dumbledore wouldn't have—

"He's sleeping," the old man said, passing the rodent into Harry's cupped palms. "You should keep a careful eye on him in the future, just in case."

"Ratty's a girl," Harry potested, cradling her to his chest. Besides, it had been Dumbledore's actions, not his own negligence, that had caused Ratty misadventure. "May I please go to bed now? I know the way."

xoxox

Harry was very proud of how he held himself together as he walked back to Gryffindor tower. The next day during breakfast he managed to pretend nothing had happened at all; things were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

But just in case, he performed a little ritual on the next full moon to remove all traces of foreign magic from Ratty. By the time he was satisfied with all his protections the cage was warded even more than his trunk, and enchanted twice as big on the inside for good measure. He even cast seven kinds of tracking charm on Ratty.

It wouldn't do for anyone to accuse him of being irresponsible again.

xoxox

Professor Quirrell's presence was always a bit confusing to Harry. On the one hand the man was a great teacher whose lectures were so much more interesting for that he told them as stories. His practicals though, were a mess. Quirrell's magic seemed to stutter as if through a misshapen pipe, refusing to cooperate at the most unhelpful times.

Harry was reminded of himself, back when he'd been dependent on Remus to help him with classwork. It was inspiring that someone with a stutter like Quirrell's could even become a professor, but Harry also found it frustrating.

As Harry's silent casting had improved he was struggling less with his magic. For him to be better at some spells than the teacher demonstrating them was just embarrassing.

Still, Quirrell was much preferable to Snape, who had made it perfectly clear from day one that he loathed Harry Potter down to the marrow of his bones.

Harry knew James had been one of Snape's biggest bullies throughout their Hogwarts years, but to hate James' son for it seemed a bit extreme.

At the same time, Harry rather thought the man had grown up to be…almost admirable. As a boy he'd been pitiable and as a teen he'd just been a mess, but now? Snape's hair was still greasy and his fingers had grown unproportionally long even with the man's looming height—yet there was something intense to Severus Snape.

He could capture a whole room's attention with a whisper.

Harry enjoyed watching the way Snape would whirl dramatically, his cloak snapping behind him.

The man's sharp, acerbic wit was brilliant.

Harry's fellow students truly were dunderheads, even if only because they were first years. And it was funny to watch Snape threaten to poison Ronald's gnome next time the thing interrupted class with a belch.

The gnome was an awful thing anyway, some kind of underdeveloped runt that looked like it shouldn't be able to prop up its potato head with that spindly body. Only the Weasleys would think a common garden pest could make a pet. For a second Harry laughed, picturing Petunia's sour face should gnomes ever begin to dig up her begonias.

"Potter, five points for not paying attention," Snape hissed from just behind him.

That was fair. "Sorry sir." Harry swiftly added the ginger root to his potion and set his flame down to simmer.

"How do you do that?" Neville whispered from Harry's right.

Harry helped Neville fix his potion, ignoring Hermione's huff from Neville's other side. Sometimes Hermione was too book-clever, unable to see the big picture over her own scrunched nose.

"You have to add celandine after you reduce the heat, Neville, or it won't turn yellow."

The colours indicated what magical acidity their potion had. Potions class was all just magical chemistry.

"I know, I know," Neville whispered back. "You explained it all to me last week. What I meant is, I don't understand how you're so unaffected by…" the boy nodded towards Snape.

Harry shrugged back. In the past he'd stood aside as his friends had dangled the man in the air, calling him Snivellus as they stripped off his underpants. He'd watched Snape clutch Lily's corpse to his chest and make the most terrible sounds of heartbreak, all for a woman who had thoroughly rejected him.

Some days, Harry thought it was only fair for Snape to take out all his pain on the people around him. Harry had contributed to that suffering and he was determined to face the consequences as a Gryffindor.

The rest of the time Harry looked at Snape and saw a kindred spirit. Their circumstances had pushed them both to make some truly terrible decisions, and by the time they'd try to redeem themselves it had been too late.

"I have my father's hair and my mother's eyes," he whispered back.

Occasionally, when the killing curse blinked back at him as he brushed his teeth, Harry thought he'd inherited the worst parts of both of them.

xoxox

"What have you learnt this week, Harry?" Flitwick asked, his body brimming with enthusiasm—as if he hadn't been asking this same stupid question for half a year of Thursdays.

Harry contemplated the merits of responding with mulish silence.

An hour of silence would be extremely boring, though. He knew because he'd tried it once.

Today, though, Harry really wasn't interested in talking about Expelliarmus, the Wit-sharpening potion, or his most recent enchanting work in Elder Futhark. It just all seemed...tedious of late. Like he was empty, and everything was shaded the same monotonous grey.

Hoping to feel something real, he'd taken to sneaking back up to the astronomy tower more nights than not.

"If I don't sleep enough I get very tired," Harry said. It was, after all, something he had learnt.

"That sounds very human of you."

Distracted momentarily, Harry peered at the half-goblin. "How much do goblins sleep, professor?"

Flitwick laughed. "My mother needed one hour's nap four times a day, according to my father. I get by on under five hours every night if I have a small siesta after lunch. I don't know to what extent that is representative, though."

"Oh." It made sense that every being was a bit different, but he'd somehow never thought about it before. "So that's why you meet me every Thursday? Professor McGonagall said she'd ask Professor Sinistra but then it ended up being you instead. Is it because you don't have to sleep so much?"

"You know, Harry," the charms master said, steepling his fingers, "I was expecting you to ask about this back in September."

That was simple enough to respond to. "I didn't want to know then."

Flitwick was smiling calmly, his moustache quivering with every exhaled breath. Harry thought that owning a moustache must be one of the most distracting things in the world.

"Your muggle teachers were teaching you the muggle methods for helping autistic children interact better with the world around them," Flitwick explained. "I am going to be teaching you the magical method as soon as your core is stable enough. That's what your monthly checkups with Madam Pomfrey are for, and she says your magic is almost ready."

Despite the feeling never growing intense enough for Harry to bother asking, he had been curious about the reason behind those diagnostics. "What's the magical method to make me Well Adjusted, Professor?" In retrospect, there had been suspiciously little holding up of cards with different faces on them; he'd gone ages since the last explanation of Smiling means Happy, Frowning means Upset, and other such delights.

"Legilimency."

Harry's mind stuttered to a halt. What?

"Using weak surface legilimency encourages you to meet people's eyes as you're speaking, and you can divine your conversational counterpart's emotions." Flitwick made it sound so normal.

Like using a pneumatic jackhammer to hang a painting on the wall, this wasn't overkill—it was madness. And Harry knew about such things, after all, Vernon's company made drills.

He swallowed. "Isn't there a better way?"

But Flitwick didn't seem to mind Harry's apprehension. "It's the way things are done, you mustn't worry. In fact, many youths on the spectrum develop the skill as a facet of their controlled accidental magic. Professor Snape will be teaching you once you're ready, but before learning legilimency it is vital that you learn occlumency." Flitwick was beaming even more than usual. "The reason I am your counsellor instead of Professor Sinistra is because I can teach you the self-defensive branch of mind magic."

Harry sat in stunned silence, letting the convoluted logic of it slither through his mind. It made a perverted kind of sense, in the same way the Statue of Magical Brethren in the Ministry's entrance made sense.

"I think I preferred it when I thought she just needed to sleep more."

"You mustn't worry," Flitwick repeated. "The mind arts can be fun!"

Harry thought of Snape rooting around in his brain, his presence just as slimy as the Dark Lord's had been when that monster had crawled his way through Peter's memories.

Sure. Yes. Fun.

xoxox

I love all the support you lot give me, it makes me really look forward to posting. To my lurkers, thank you for reading. To my reviewers, see you in the comments.

To the impatient, there's more already posted on ao3.