Disclaimer: Characters owned by J K Rowling, obviously. The Mirror, imagined/owned by myself.

Summary: For everything in this universe, there is an opposite. Yin and Yang, Fire and Water, Light and Dark. So, for the Mirror of Erised, that shows you the deepest and most desperate desires of your heart, surely there must be an opposite? Beware, for when you look into the Mirror of Cosmaruri, you will see the darkest, most terrible nightmares – you will see whatever you fear the most.

WARNING! This story will contain SLASH, as in two blokes, in love. You have been warned.

The Mirror of Cosmaruri

Mnemophobia

Sometimes, when it's late at night and the whole world's asleep, I lie awake.

I lie awake and let my mind wander, exploring every twist and turn of fate, every maze-corner of my life.

I let myself drift, let my subconscious rise to the forefront, wandering free amongst the sparse planes of my mind.

I lie awake, my glassy eyes picking out pattern after leering pattern in the flaking ceiling.

I lie awake, and my memories creep up on me, like a slowly rising tide that I never quite notice until its freezing cold waters are biting at my toes.

By then, it's too late to resist.

They puddle around me, rising in rippling, undulating waves of torment, rising, covering my ears and turning the world to a muffled shell, the only sound that of the distant sea.

The thoughts climb higher, spilling over my face, covering my nose and mouth – my senses consumed by the past.

The last to go is always my eyes.

My sight flickers, blackness dripping across my vision, sending me spiraling helplessly backwards, flying, falling, remembering…

I remember such horrible, terrible things.

I remember anger, and pain, hot and red and burning bright.

I remember sorrow, melodic and gentle, like the steady drip of tears, of rain pooling at my feet.

I remember times when my anguish was so complete, so soul-consuming, that I would lose myself in it.

I remember times when I was beyond hurt – beyond feeling.

I remember times when all I could do was breathe, letting the sadness, and the fear wash over me in waves of inky blue and the deepest crimson.

I remember so much… So much death and devastation.

I wish…

I wish I could forget.

I wish it was all a dream, a story that could have an end.

I wish I could wake up.

It was almost inevitable really, Harry decided, that he had started hearing things. It was actually just damned predictable. After all, he was the Boy-Who-Lived, and nothing ordinary would ever dare to happen to him. And, well, it wasn't like it wasn't expected – what with the various emotional pressures in his life. He'd heard voices before anyway. But… This… This wasn't parseltongue. This was different, colder, darker – older. The strange humming was echoing through the walls, through the very bones of the castle, following him as he hurried down the candle-lit corridor. It'd been chasing him for days now. Sometimes the cheerful laughter of his friends managed to drown it out, but otherwise it was always there. When he was eating in the Great Hall, when he was going to Potions in the Dungeons, even when he was scrabbling up the ladder to Divination class, it was there. It was worst at night. Then, the whisperings grew in volume and quantity, until there was a cacophonous roar of voices, calling to him. And now, he'd given in. They whispered of power, of destiny, of answers to questions he didn't know he'd asked.

Even heroes have their weaknesses… Harry reasoned, the soft pad of his bare feet inaudible as he wandered through the corridors, his invisible form casting no shadow in the darkness. Eventually he slowed to a stop, and placed a shaking hand onto grey stone. There. He could feel it, throbbing through the rock, a vein of pure power, fizzing and sparking, drawing him in. He smiled softly, and leant forwards, pressing his forehead to the wall. He could hear it, an ominous hum that pulsed though his blood filling him with power and determination. He pulled out his wand, and stepped back. He didn't even need to verbalize the spell – it was as though his trusty holly bough knew which spell he wanted to cast, and the Reducto charm burst out in a blaze of unrestrained red magic, turning the wall to dust.

Harry grinned, and coughed. He stepped forwards through the grey clouds of gaseous rock, unafraid and determined. He wasn't being brave or heroic – it just didn't even occur to him that he should be afraid. Blinking, he looked around, taking in a small dark chamber, fashioned with the same ancient, carved decoration he'd seen once before. Frowning, he reached out, pale fingers tracing over the patterns on the walls – roses entwining, climbing upwards towards the cavernous ceiling, snakes disguised under their thorny boughs. Twisted faces leered out from narrow crevices, sneering gargoyles following him with their cold, dead eyes. Harry shivered, and took another step forwards, his hand still brushing along the wall. It ran through something cold and wet and he leapt back, a shriek just shy of tumbling from his lips. He raised his hand, staring at it – but it was too dark for him to make out anything but the general shape. Gulping, he wiped his hand on his pyjama trousers, and kept walking, his wand grasped tightly in his hand, ready to curse at a moments notice.

He could feel the power building, reeling him in, drawing him closer, and with every step he could feel himself losing the will to turn back. I… What is this? This terrible, ancient power… I can feel it calling to me, and the closer I get… The louder it calls… He took one last step, eyes blinking rapidly, adjusting in the darkness, and screamed.

The noise was loud and sudden in the silent chamber, and Harry jumped, his heat pumping, adrenaline surging through him in a burst of shock and terror. He had been mentally preparing himself for whatever the source might be – another Basilisk, a Dementor – even Voldemort himself could have been standing there, and Harry wouldn't have screamed. It was just… He really hadn't been expecting to find himself face to face with Cedric Diggory.

The older boy was pale and ghostly, and quite clearly dead. His eyes were rolled back and glazed, and the flesh of his cheek had rotted and caved in, a trickle of bugs crawling from his decomposing mouth, and down his cadaverous neck. And yet somehow, somehow, he was talking.

"Hello Harry. Aren't you pleased to see me? You should be happy, Harry. We've all come back to you – everyone you ever killed. All those innocents that you murdered. We came back, Harry… Aren't you going to greet us?" Harry couldn't move, let alone speak. He stared at Cedric in undisguised horror, his mouth dropping open as the ghostly forms behind the former Hufflepuff took solid shape. His mother, her hair reduced to clumps of rotting scarlet, her eye sockets empty, leering and cold. His father, his glasses still perched on a face of bones. And there, pushing his way to the front, a grin on his moldering face – Sirius. Harry screamed once more as Sirius waved, his bony fingers laced with strips of broken flesh, and said "Hey kiddo. Long time, no see…"

Harry shuddered, gasping, and shoved his hands over his eyes, his wand falling to the floor. They aren't here. They aren't. They can't be. Dumbledore said… Dumbledore said there was no spell to bring back the dead. They're not here. It's a trick. Just a trick. Like a Boggart. A Boggart! His Seeker training kicking in, he snatched up his wand and shrieked, "RIDDICULUS!"

To his surprise, instead of turning the zombies into happily smiling replicas of his dead loved ones, the spell simply bounced back towards him in a jet of silver, the curse-light glinting off an enormous sheet of what appeared to be glass. Harry ducked the rebounding curse automatically, and took a hesitant step forwards, his mouth falling open in surprise.

It was a mirror.

Though, thought Harry dazedly, the word mirror hardly does it justice. It loomed ominously out of the darkness, three times the height of a man, and framed ornately in old, antique gold, spotted black with age. The glass, however, was unscathed by the turn of the centuries, and was as clear and smooth as the surface of the Black Lake in the dead of winter. Harry tentatively reached out and traced the frame, his fingers brushing over the twining limbs of trees, encrusted with skulls and shooting stars. He frowned and closed his eyes, the patterns reminding him horribly of a dim and distant memory… The Mirror of Erised…

He'd found that by accident too, and it had been covered in strange carvings and letters, hidden away in the heart of the castle. Harry frowned. Did that mean that Dumbledore had hidden this mirror here too? Somehow, Harry didn't think so. This mirror was too cold, too… Strange. Dumbledore would never have allowed it to be put anywhere near the students. And besides, Dumbledore probably didn't even know this mirror existed. After all, he had told Harry that the Mirror of Erised was the only one of its kind.

But… It's almost as though it's the other half – two sides of a coin, two pieces of the same puzzle. They just… Match.

Harry tilted his head backwards, and squinted up to the top of the mirror. There. A dull thrill of excitement and fear shot through him as he found what he was looking for.

Inscribed along the top of the mirror, in twisted, archaic letters, were the words:

Eu nu arata chipul tau da Cosmaruri din inima ta.

Harry frowned. Okay... Not quite the same then. The Mirror of Erised was a simple backwards-spelt inscription, which said… 'I show not your face but your heart's desire,' or something along those lines. This is way more complicated. I'll have to remember to tell 'Mione, she loves a code-

Harry's inner ramblings were cut short, for the moment he thought of Hermione, the reflection of the mirror – which had gone to being just that, a reflection of him, as soon as he realized what it was – had changed. Instead of his own bespectacled face, it was… Tom.

Tom Riddle was staring out of the mirror, his red eyes glazed with anger. Harry gave a start and leapt back. They really did look remarkably similar, and for a moment… Harry could have sworn it was himself, his eyes red and bleeding. But, no. It was young Tom Riddle, angry and wrathful, his handsome face twisted into a sneer. Riddle raised his hand, and placed it flat against the glass, and Harry couldn't help but reach up and place his shaking hand palm-to-palm with Tom. His breath caught in his throat, and he leant forwards, resting his forehead against Tom's glass one. His eyes fell shut, and all he could hear was his own terrified breathing. But…

He could feel Tom's hand, warm against his own. He could feel the other boys hair, tickling his cheekbones. He could feel Tom Riddle's breath ghosting across his face, surprisingly warm. Suddenly, Tom's fingers twitched, and his hand was crushed in Riddle's grasp. Harry's eyes snapped open in horror, and Tom smiled, and started to chant.

The words were evil, cold and sibilant. Parseltongue. Harry felt something inside of him respond, and he couldn't stop his treacherous mouth from opening, his betraying tongue from forming the foreign syllables, his traitor's lips letting the spell spill forth, the two of them chanting, chanting in tandem, ancient, evil words, again and again and again…

Harry closed his eyes, tears welling up, his hand shaking in Tom's cold grip, as his voice continued to sound, echoing through the chamber. The rhythmic, archaic chanting was conjuring all sorts of nightmarish images to form beneath his tightly shut eyelids – leering, twisting, writhing monstrous forms that poured out from the mirror, seeping into his mind in a torrent of ice-cold malice. A jet-black python reared up before Harry, its leering eyes spitting red fire, its forked tongue flickering manically, as though in anticipation. For a moment, they were still, suspended in time, boy and snake locked a death-gaze, unable to tears their eyes away. Then, with a glint of fangs, and a shrieking hiss, the snake lunged forwards, Tom let go of his hand, and Harry was plunged into darkness.

He was falling, faster and faster, through the heady, impenetrable darkness of a thundercloud lost in deep space, his screams sent spiraling, unheard, through the air. He fell, further and further, weightless, his eyes rolling, his mind dazed, until he landed spread-eagled, with a curse and a crunch of bones. He tentatively opened his eyes, and even though he'd yet to move, he found himself curled up, knees clasped to his chest, his breath coming in sobbing gasps.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Vernon!" The words tore themselves unbidden from his throat, bitter tasting and raw as poison. "I'm sorry!" He was five years old again, and the dark walls of the cupboard were closing in around him, crushing him, making it impossible to breathe. His eyesight had blurred into fizzing whiteness, and in his desperation to move, to see, to breathe, he felt himself slipping towards unconsciousness.

Everything imploded in a blast of chaotic green, a chilling, rasping voice echoing around Harry's head, those words - those unforgettable, hideous words -

"Kill the spare!"

Harry screamed once more, and found he was able to move, flinging his arms over his head as something cold rained down over him – a shower of dirt. He was being buried alive. He opened his mouth in an automatic, desperate gasp for air, and could taste the rotten taste of soil and decay. The cold and the dark pressed down on him, like an iron cloud, the icy burn of death flooding his veins, his breath catching in his chest.

I'mgoingtodie…

Slowly, slowly, he could feel his arms moving, twitching, sending electric spasms of pain shooting towards his heart - and then he was back in the chamber, his robes soaked in muck and filthy water, tearing the basilisk fang out of his arm in a spray of blood and glistening venom. He stared, bewildered, at the bloody gash in his arm, and fell backwards, his eyes rolling up into his head, falling backwards, backwards…

And then it was Sirius Sirius falling back through the veil, falling away from him, leaving him forever. Harry's heart gave a pang, and he could feel tears dribbling over his face, smearing over his glasses. The glasses suddenly vanished and he was Tom Riddle again, brandishing his bone-handled wand and shrieking the Killing Curse in that horrible falsetto, over and over… Bellatrix was there, writhing on the ground, her shrill screams shattering his eardrums, his teeth clenched so hard that it hurt – and then he was Harry. Just Harry. Holding his holly-wand, and casting the Cruciatus Curse – and meaning it. The burning rage, the fiery thirst for revenge that burnt in his heart, twisting him, blackening his magic… Just like Tom.

Bellatrix's screams suddenly turned to the deeper, more desperate cries of Professor Quirrel – the first man I ever killed – as he burnt away to dust, Harry's touch cremating him alive, as though he were made of the same stuff as the Sun itself.

Tom was back, his whispering voice sneaking into Harry's mind like tendrils of devil's snare. Look, Harry… Look at us… We are the same, you and I. We both kill – to prove our worth. To stake a claim on our very existence… Isn't it lonely, Harry Potter? Isn't it so horribly, terribly lonely?

"Shut UP!"

You can't deny it, Harry… It's right here… I'm right here, in your blood, in your SOUL…

"SHUT UP!"

His scar was on fire, and he could feel his head splitting open, blood running down his face, spraying the world with scarlet and-

Green. He was running, and the world around him had blurred into streaks of green, emerald, lime and chartreuse. The forbidden forest. Branches were scratching at his face, roots clawing at his feet, until he stumbled and fell, through the leaves and insects and dirt, and into a cavernous pit, filled with darkness and-

Bodies. Harry cried out in horror as he recognized the bloodied face of his godfather, and the graying hair of his favorite professor, Remus Lupin. And there, Hermione, her mouth still slightly parted in shock, and Ron, his face deathly pale beneath its many freckles. His father, his mother, Cedric, Dumbledore, his own cadaverous face, Draco… It took just one look at those silver eyes frosted over, glazed and lifeless, for Harry's heart to shatter.

"NO! NO! I WON'T LET YOU!" His voice was raw, and he couldn't have stopped his tears for the world.

"I WON'T LET YOU TAKE HIM FROM ME! I WON'T LET YOU TURN HIM INTO ONE OF MY NIGHTMARES!" He fell to his knees, the stone chamber swimming back into view.

"I… I have nothing to fear from you. These are just... Memories. My memories. All you do is show me my life as a nightmare! But I'm already there, living it. I… I have nothing left to fear. Nothing."

Nothing.

Harry slumped forwards, his world shattering into a thousand shards of shadowed light, knocking him unconscious before he even hit the floor.

Author's Note:

Okay, a couple of apologies here… Well, sorry it took so long for one thing! And I don't think its one of my best-written chapters either… A bit surreal, and dreamy. And then, or course, there's the lack of our favorite Marauders! But don't worry, that'll be explained later.

Mnemophobia – A fear of memories.

Next Chapter: What on earth could Severus Snape, greasy haired, ex-death eater and giant Bat of the Dungeons possibly fear?