'Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi'.

I'd learnt the message that was on the mirror off by heart because of the number of times Lily had said it. I was exhausted, and honestly didn't care about the mirror anymore, after almost six hours of poring over books, trying to figure out what the message meant.

But Lily was somehow still determined to find out. It was curfew in ten minutes, and she was still reading through translation dictionaries like there was no tomorrow.

"Lily," I said, looking at my watch. "We might have to call it a night, it's almost curfew."

When she didn't respond, I said, "We might lose our badge by staying out too late."

Lily sighed, then pulled her hair tie from her hair and let it fall loose. "Alright... alright, let's go."

We walked together to the common room, and Lily didn't stop talking about the mirror on the way back. She was completely obsessed, and I was almost glad to split away from her and her new obsession to go to my dormitory.

"Remus!" James cried when I entered the dormitory. "Where have you been all afternoon?"

"Library," I said. "Lily and I were trying to figure out this thing we saw last night... it was a mirror; it was really weird though. It... hang on, James, do you have your invisibility cloak?"

"Yeah," said James.

"I'll show you guys if you want," I said.

"OK..." said James, grabbing the invisibility cloak from his trunk, "squish in, guys."

We all moved together, then James threw the invisibility cloak over us, and we crouched down to hide our feet, then walked out into the common room, then into the halls of the castle.

It took me only five minutes to find the room with the mirror, and when we were in there, with the door closed, I stepped out from underneath the cloak and approached the mirror, and looked again at a version of myself with no scars. I stepped out of the way of the mirror, then told my friends to come over, too.

"One of you stand in front of the mirror," I said.

Peter looked at me. "Why?"

James walked forward, and sure enough, when he was in front of the mirror, he gasped, then looked around the room, then back at the mirror.

"What the hell...?" he started.

"What do you see?" I asked.

"Evans," said James. "She's standing beside me... she's hugging me... she's kissing me..."

"What!?" Sirius cried, walking up to stand next to James, facing the mirror.

"She's gone!" James cried. "Sirius, move, I want to see Evans again!"

"James, you move," I said. "Let Sirius in front of it for a second."

James gave me a look of mock betrayal, then stepped aside so that Sirius was alone in front of the mirror.

"What do you see?" I asked Sirius.

"My... my family," said Sirius. "But they're happy, they're proud of me. No. It's not real. It's this mirror... what is this mirror?"

"I don't know," I said. "And look at that message, up the top. It's some other language... Lily and I couldn't even figure out what language it is."

"I don't think it's Latin," said James. "That's the only language I at least sort of know other than English, and even then, I only know what we've learned from spells..."

"It's not French," said Sirius, stepping away from the mirror, so Peter could stand in front of it. "Peter, what do you see?"

"Myself... with a prefect badge and holding results from an exam... it says I got 100%," said Peter. "And there are other people, from our year, they're all waving at me, laughing at my jokes."

"This doesn't make sense," said James. "Why are we all seeing different things? What did you see, Remus?"

"Just myself without any scars or anything," I said.

"But what is that message?" Peter said, looking up at the message again.

"That's the thing, we don't know," I said.

"It probably explains what's going on with the mirror," said James, "What sort of spell is on it."

"Maybe we should ask Professor McGonagall," said Peter.

"What, and tell her we've been out of bed after curfew?" said Sirius.

"Why haven't they told any students about this, if it's just sitting in the school?" James wondered aloud. "Maybe it's dangerous..."

"But why is it in the school, then?" Peter asked. "Why would..."

Suddenly, we heard footsteps just outside the room we were in. Peter silenced himself quickly, and we all looked at each other. James grabbed the invisibility cloak and threw it over the four of us, and we adjusted to our crouched positions, just as Filch and Mrs. Norris walked into the room.

"Students... out of bed... I heard you! You can't hide!" Filch was saying, walking slowly through the room. My friends and I placed ourselves against the wall. "You can't hide from me!"

I saw James drawing his wand out of the corner of my eye, and my thoughts were, Don't do whatever you're thinking to do, James, but I couldn't say anything, otherwise, Filch would hear us.

"Leviocorpus," James whispered, and then Filch was being lifted by his ankle upside down, and he let out a shout.

"Let me down! What is this!?"

"C'mon, let's go," whispered James, and we all shuffled out of the room, closed the door, and after the door was closed, we heard a loud thud.

We walked through the entire school, going as fast as was physically possible while all being stuck under a cloak together because we knew it wouldn't be long before Filch tried to find us.

We entered the common room and threw the cloak off, all of us letting out a long breath of relief.

"We need to find out what's up with that mirror," said James as we began walking up the stairs to the dormitory.

"I reckon we ask Professor McGonagall," said Peter.

"We can't-"

"We as in Remus," said Peter, cutting Sirius off. "And Evans. Because you two saw it during a patrol, didn't you? You won't get in trouble for stumbling across a mirror, will you?"

"Alright... but I won't tell Lily that we all saw it together because she'll probably get us in trouble for being out at night too," I said. "I'll just make it seem like it was my idea to ask McGonagall."

"D'you think she'll know, though?"

"She's a teacher," I said. "Teachers seem to know everything about the school."

We were walking to Transfiguration the next day, and I was walking ahead of the other marauders so I could talk to Lily about the mirror.

"So, we'll stay behind after the lesson and ask her?" Lily asked as we walked into the classroom. I nodded.

The Transfiguration lesson went by painfully slowly that day, as I couldn't stop thinking about the mirror. I'd seen myself with no scars or cuts or anything. My biggest insecurity was gone just like that. But it wasn't real, no matter how real it looked. Part of me wanted to go back and see it, but part of me felt like if I did, I'd be caught up in a vision of myself that wasn't true, and I'd probably feel even worse about my appearance than I did already.

Finally, after one hour that felt like five, the bell rang and everyone else left the classroom, leaving just Lily and me alone with Professor McGonagall.

"Miss Evans... Mr. Lupin... are you two alright?" Professor McGonagall asked.

"Yes..." said Lily. "Professor, we were just wondering... well, when we were on patrol the other night, we found a strange mirror, and it had some sort of message on it that was in another language... the mirror made us see things that weren't true, and we were just wondering if you know what it is?"

Professor McGonagall looked at us both in silence for half a minute before she said, "Did the message that was on the top of the mirror begin with the word 'Erised'?"

Lily and I looked at each other, then nodded.

"Tell me, what does the word 'erised' say backwards?" McGonagall asked.

"Um... desire," said Lily, and then she gasped. "It's just backwards English, isn't it?"

Professor McGonagall nodded, then grabbed a piece of chalk from her desk. "Do either of you remember what the message said word for word?"

"Yes," said Lily. "Down to every letter."

Professor McGonagall handed Lily the chalk. "Please write it on the board, with no spaces between any letter."

Lily took the piece of chalk to the chalkboard and wrote:

erisedstraehruoytubecafruoytonwohsi

"Now, write that in reverse," said McGonagall. Lily did as instructed, and wrote:

ishownotyourfacebutyourheartsdesire

"That's the message translated," said McGonagall, looking at the board. "'I show not your face but your heart's desire.' So, it shows your heart's greatest desire."

I suddenly felt my heart rate increase and my face heat. My heart's desire was to not have scars? I'd say my greatest wish would have been to not be a werewolf at all, so maybe that was the mirror's way of displaying that.

But from knowing what the others saw in the mirror, it all made sense. James's heart's desire was to be with Lily, Sirius's was for his family to accept him, Peter's was to get good grades and be more popular, and Lily's was to get along better with her sister.

"I'm going to ask for you two not to go near the mirror anymore," said McGonagall. "It can get you too caught up in something that's not real. I'll ask Professor Dumbledore to move it somewhere else now. I'll see you both next lesson."

Lily and I thanked her, then left to go to the Great Hall for lunch, in silence.

"What did you see in the desire mirror?" Lily asked. "I mean, you know what Isaw..."

"Oh, um, I saw myself surrounded by all the chocolate in the world," I said. I didn't want to tell her the truth, because she didn't even know what my scars were from, and she'd never asked, but I didn't want that conversation to be brought up.

We entered the Great Hall together, and she went to sit with Snape, and I went over to the marauders, who all turned all their attention to me the moment I walked through the door.

"It shows your heart's desire," I said. "Like, what you want more than anything in the world."

"Well... that makes sense," said James. "I would say what I saw was pretty accurate to what I want more than anything in the world. Can we go again tonight?"

"No, she's getting Dumbledore to move it," I said.

"Oh, seriously?" said James, frowning. "So, I can't pretend Evans is kissing me again!?"

I shook my head, and James sighed.

By the time Hallowe'en arrived, we'd all moved on from the desire mirror, and we were ready for 'the most epic party Hogwarts has ever seen', according to James.

We were all already stuffed to the brim with sweets after the Hallowe'en feast, but that wouldn't hold the marauders back from sneaking into Honeydukes and taking a tonne of sweets for the party (and leaving ten galleons on the bench for the worker, as well as a note apologising).

However sick everyone in the common room felt already, they all stuffed themselves with even more sweets, and some people had also somehow managed to get alcohol for the party and had painted the bottles orange and painted faces on them to make them look like jack-o'-lanterns.

Mary was in charge of music, and she had somehow managed to get a muggle record player delivered to the school for her and was blasting muggle songs that were considered somewhat scary throughout the common room.

"Alright, Gryffindor house!" James cried, standing at the front of the common room. "Who's ready for the GREATEST PARTY EVER!?"