A/N: Part 2 of 3, lovely readers. Things get a touch more interesting. Please REVIEW post-story and tell me what you think!


Draco stared into the mirror and tried not to see. It was interesting paradox. Didn't work, in any case. Draco saw everything, oh yes, he did. Made him want to scratch out his eyeballs, of course, but the sight would still be imprinted on his brain.

It would be much, much easier if the mirror simply showed him his reflection. Draco would still be presented with a tragic spectacle (he was under no illusions when it came to his current physical appearance), but that one would be expected. It wasn't that Draco had ever really admired his own looks, but he was aware that the previous few years hadn't exactly brought much improvement.

Service to the Dark Lord had come at a great price, and that price included a tax on the health of each individual Death Eater. The circles under Draco's eyes looked like smudged ink on a careless student's parchment. His pointy face had sharpened, and now looked thin in a mean, miserly way. The overall effect of his exaggerated pallor and obvious sleep deprivation was to make him look as sickly as a werewolf on the eve of a full moon. Not exactly the complexion desired by the masses.

Still, he was rather used to mirrors of the ordinary kind. He avoided looking in them, of course, but he knew what he'd find if he bothered to check. To be honest, he found it a wonder that anyone would want to look at him in this state – and yet Draco could have sworn that Potter had been watching him from the Gryffindor table that morning at breakfast. Trust Potty. Then again, Potter was a famous companion of werewolves. Or had been.

Draco shivered.

As hideous and depraved and terrifying as this mirror's reflection was, Draco found that he just couldn't stay away. He had to see. He had to see so he could reassure himself, over and over, that it wasn't what he wanted to see. Every few minutes, his eyes would flick over to the foreign words carved into the mirror's frame, and he would pretend that he didn't understand them.

"Still admiring yourself, Malfoy?"

Draco's shoulders snapped taut with tension, and he fought to suppress a startled squeak. Surely not again.

"Stop stalking me, won't you?" asked Draco, with little hope of ready acquiescence. "It's getting old."

In an infuriatingly casual and resigned manner, Potter dared to shrug.

"Nothing better to do, to be honest. I'm not particularly afraid that you'll think any less of me for continuing along with my well-worn stalkerly ways."

Draco bristled. Logic had no place in these contestations.

"Why would you care what I think of you, anyway?" he said eventually, glaring steadfastly at the glass before him. "Go back to your devoted masses, why don't you?"

"If I wanted people fawning over me all day, Malfoy, I'd hardly strike up conversation with you, would I?"

Despite himself, Draco smiled.

"A voyeur and a masochist – my, my, Potter, this is getting interesting."

Potter snorted. "You don't want to hear my opinion of you, Malfoy. Especially not the part about what I think of your hours spent staring into that mirror."

"I know what you think of me." For some reason, Draco couldn't summon the will to sharpen his tone to a sneer. He stared forward into the glistening glass, and traced grey eyes with his own. He felt like crying, but he would not give Potter a repeat performance, never never.

When Potter spoke, his smirk was audible. "Do you, Dorian?"

Draco's eyes twitched from the mirror. Incredulity snatched away from his sense of the immediacy of his impending doom. "Have you finally gone wrong, Potter? I know you never use my first name (and hardly have permission to do so), but I would still expect–"

"Dorian Gray, you twat," said Potter, and yes, his stupid lips were curled up into a stupid mocking smile. The lips lowered a little after a moment, when Draco continued to glare his confusion into Potter's stupid face.

"A character from a famous Muggle story," Potter offered, prompting Draco to roll his eyes in instinctive derision. "He traded his soul for eternal beauty. When he did evil things, they were reflected in his portrait instead of on his face."

Draco widened his eyes in false shock. "You think I keep this fit by selling my soul?" It was a hilarious suggestion. The irony was palpable. He refused to look into the mirror.

For a moment, Potter seemed to choke. Absently, Draco wondered if he'd finally managed to harness some wandless magic and subconsciously sent a startled crucio across the room.

"God, no!"

"Well, thanks a lot, then," Draco sniffed, feeling ridiculously put out.

Potter looked like he quite wanted to change the topic of conversation. Immediately.

"So who's the fairest of them all?"

"I beg your pardon?" Draco was sure he'd misheard.

"Well, I just assumed it was an evil mirror."

It sounded almost like Potter was grinning. Lunatic.

"Oh, it is," Draco hastened to agree, "it is. Evil. Wrong. Completely, completely untrue."

A faint noise from the doorway presaged a quiet gasp, as if Potter had stumbled forward a pace without meaning to.

"Surely not," he said (rather cryptically, thought Draco with a considerable twinge of irritation). "It couldn't be."

"Oh, I assure you, it is," said Draco, eager to correct any such misapprehension. "I've never seen such a disgracefully foul reflection in my life, and I've shared a bathroom with Cra–" The words died out in his mouth. Draco's eyes slid slowly shut, and he had to breathe through his nose for a moment.

Potter, with uncharacteristic sensitivity, stayed silent.

"Sorry," Draco said eventually, his own voice sounding odd and rough to his ears. "I believe I was just commenting on the truly evil and malicious nature of this mirror."

"Alright, now I'm curious," Potter said as he stepped forward, and, with unbelievable impudence, settled to his knees on a patch of carpet rather too close for Draco's comfort.

"Curious?"

"I just remembered where I've seen this particular mirror before," Potter said quietly, gazing forward into the glass with an intensity that filled Draco with dread. If he looked too hard, Draco thought (rather illogically), Potter might see what Draco was seeing, and then the entire world would come to an end, and Draco would have to off himself immediately with, well, whatever he had in his pockets, and he was pretty sure that was only an acorn husk and a sandwich wrapper, so it was sure to be a messy death.

Draco fought a swift onslaught of vertigo, and suddenly noticed that Potter was being rather too quiet for his liking.

"You always keep a mental stock of mirrors?" he said, throwing a bit of a wild insult into the mix. Draco was never at his best when contemplating his own acorn-inflicted suicide.

With a disconcerting suddenness, Potter glanced around to Draco, an odd look in his eyes. The green was offset with something terribly akin to sympathy.

"You know what this is, don't you?"

"I do know what a mirror is, Potter," replied Draco, and the sense of dread reached its second wind, and gleefully intensified.

"Dumbledore told me what is was in first year," said Potter, and he turned back to the mirror and stared almost hungrily at the surface – or perhaps deeper. "He told me not to dwell on what I saw. It shows not your face, but your heart's desire, you know," he continued, with a certain unbearable compassion directed at Draco from behind those awful glasses.

"It doesn't," Draco whispered fiercely, and then wished he'd spoken a bit louder, so he didn't sound quite so terrified. He cleared his throat. "It really doesn't. Really," he added, just to be very, very clear. Not that Potter could see what he saw.

Draco fingered the acorn husk in his pocket.

"You know what I see?" Potter said, and again, his attention was directed at the mirror.

"A speccy berk with a blind surrealist for a barber?"

This brilliant piece of rapier wit was either unnoticed, or ignored, by the speccy berk in question.

"It's just like it was back then, or almost," Potter began, and his voice was light and wistful, and his words made no sense. "I'm surrounded by my family – except Dumbledore's there. And there's Professor Lupin," he said, smiling, "still got the same scratched-up briefcase as third year. And Sirius," Potter murmured, and Draco was truly startled by the desperate longing that shone in those green eyes.

He'd been privy to gossip of Potter's connection to the Sirius Black scandal during his time at Voldemort's side. Despite all appearances to the contrary, Draco did feel deeply sorry for his schoolyard nemesis, bereft of everything that resembled a father figure. Then again, more recently, he felt increasingly jealous.

"Er," Draco began, and felt that his loquacity had rather let him down. "I'm, well, I'm sorry."

He really was. It surprised him. It worried him, too, and he kept his eyes firmly cast away from the mirror before him, lest he begin to panic.

"We're all sorry, aren't we?" said Harry – no, Potter, damn it! Draco was quite sure that Potter didn't mean his words to sound quite so sickeningly sanctimonious, but he chose to follow that interpretation because Draco existed to fulfil his role as the metaphysical thorn in Potter's side, no matter what that stupid mirror showed.

"Yes, we're all so very sorry," Draco sneered, and felt a little bit better for quashing that annoying internal yapping supposedly called a conscience. "I bet you cry into your pillows at night, positively brimming with regret for having saved the entire world and cementing your eternal position as society's worst-dressed hero."

Draco could have continued in a similar vein for quite some time – and yet he felt his mouth swinging shut as Potter directed an extremely pointed dagger of a look at his face.

"Do you cry into your pillows at night, Draco?" he said, and his voice was so quiet and serious that Draco almost forgot to be completely outraged at Potter's unprecedented use of his first name. Potter didn't wait for an answer, and besides, Draco had none prepared. "I do. Can't sleep most nights."

Not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do, Draco looked away from those eyes that saw too much, and massaged his neck with an unsteady hand.

"I'm guessing that's why you come here," Potter continued, and Draco could tell that those emerald eyes hadn't shifted an inch. "Or, at least, why you came here at first. I suppose you keep coming back for the same reason I do."

Draco's eyes shot up at that, and he was caught and held by the incisive gaze that met him.

"Why do you come back?" he breathed, feeling the old familiar panic crash straight back into his veins like a lightning bolt.

Potter climbed to a kneeling crouch and paused for a moment, looking down at Draco with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Curiosity."

He left. Draco, head bowed, listened to the sound of departing footsteps fade over the threadbare carpet, and entirely failed to remove the image of knowing green eyes from his head.