Hello! Here is yet another story for the houses competition!

House: Slytherin, Class: Charms, Category: Standard, Prompts:[Scenario] Onlooker (A character not being involved in the 'action' but looking in on it). / [Object] Broken Mirror, Wordcount: 1592

I had SUCH a plot-bunny for this one, so I hope you enjoy!

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I don't know how it happened. I might know where it started, though.

~ 0 ~

"Draco, can you change your tie? I know you picked out that red one, but I did happen to wear Slytherin-green for the party, and I really don't want us to look like Christmas decorations for the ball this year." Hermione turns the corner from the bedroom, adjusting her shoes and hopping along as she goes. For a moment, I am stunned. Fuck, she looks beautiful. Then she looks up at me, almost nervously. "What is it, Malfoy?"

"Granger, you look fantastic," I say, breathless.

The way the satin slips over her, the way her hair falls, the way she smiles at me, blushing.

"I love you," I say for the thousandth time today. "Now, which tie do you require me to wear?"

It is as I turn around to look into the mirror on our wall that I first notice it – something off.

We bought the mirror about a month ago at a flea market on the outskirts of town. It was broken when we bought it, but Hermione has really been into worn vintage items for a while now – even better if they look like real antiques. This one certainly does, with its gilded edges, and its cracks and splinters in the glass, breaks webbing like it was made from spiders.

Hermione likes it. I do not favour it, but I do favour her.

It's as I'm putting the tie on – something silk and bright green just like her dress – that I see myself do something in the mirror that I was not expecting.

My reflection winks back at me.

I don't think about it; it's just a trick of the light, something spectacularly unordinary.

~ 0 ~

It keeps happening, in different ways. And even though we'd found the mirror at a Muggle flea market, I quickly begin to think of it as magical. The way that my reflection glances back at me, the way he adjusts the marks in his face where my hands don't wander. The way he looks at the room around me when I am just looking at him. The fractals of his features splinter across the glass, and my heart twists.

"Draco, are you coming? Dinner's ready."

I swallow thickly and look away from the mirror. "Yeah, I'm coming."

~ 0 ~

Sixty-three days ago, the broken mirror consumed me completely. I had been brushing my teeth in the hallway, as Hermione was brushing hers in the small bathroom that we share. She was humming away, and I smiled at her. Then I turned to that broken mirror and saw Other Draco grin.

It was like nothing I have ever felt before. Cold, clammy hands reached out from the glass, and gripped the sides of my head. I took a swan dive into the mirror and ended up somewhere completely unfamiliar. A dark, damp room. No real walls, but a sense of nothingness surrounding me. And that mirror, as my only window into my own life, like a sick television screen.

And all I could do was watch as Other Draco poured himself into my life.

He finished brushing his teeth and sauntered over to Hermione. He kissed her full on the mouth and dipped her deep. It's nothing I haven't done before, but there is a crassness to it. Then Other Draco squeezed her, and turned to me, with a sly smile on his face.

He'd won.

In the last sixty-three days, he's shown me every single way in which he has won. The way he speaks to Hermione, and how she responds. How they kiss, and she squeals back at him. I know that she thinks I must have become some ravaging beast, turned spectacularly virile and loving.

Maybe I had been doing something wrong this whole time. Maybe he is trying to show me up.

What kills me the most is that she doesn't notice.

I have screamed through the mirror, I have yelled, bellowed, hollered. I have tried to speak to Hermione, I have tried to cast magic, I have tried all that I can think of to split through the mirrored glass and stop becoming the onlooker to my own life. It all feels like an awful dream, trapped here in the darkness.

Maybe this is what happened to Other Draco. Maybe he went mad. I can't think where he would have come from though. There isn't anything else here in this world, other than the mirror. I can't change channels; I can only observe my girlfriend with another man who looks like me, sounds like me, and acts almost the same.

This Draco is harsher. He is manipulative. He doesn't love her.

I have no way of telling her.

I lay back on the floor of this godforsaken room and stare up at the damn mirror. Fuck it. Fuck it all to hell. I watch Hermione saunter through the corridor of our house, chased by Other Draco. I watch him kiss her, I watch them go off to cook together, wearing practically nothing. I watch Hermione love another man who isn't me, and – ouch.

During the war, she was one of the only ones who made a consistent effort to speak to me, to get to know me. It was hard enough being a spy for the Order without feeling the wrath and hatred of Potter and the Ginger One. It was hard to not feel like a Death Eater when you're playing pretend. And it was easy to fall in love with a woman like that.

In the pitch darkness of nightfall, as the mirror dims into evening, I murmur, "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

~ 0 ~

The days drift by, and then weeks. Watching my life has become my only source of entertainment, aside from remembering odd lyrics from songs that I used to listen to. Other Draco watches me back, and I have become his onlooker. It's strange to think that I used to be a part of that world – a world where I could hear things aside from their two voices, and a world where I could be touched and loved.

The mirror is a new form of torture, and I must succumb to it.

I don't get hungry; I don't get thirsty. I can only assume that I am immortal here. And that I am doomed forever to watch my life wither away until some other person takes that mirror.

One evening, Hermione is insistent on inviting my mother over for dinner, and Other Draco tries to refuse. Hermione questions it, asking him why he is so determined to keep her away. She almost looks suspicious.

"I just want to enjoy our alone time," Other Draco says, and then bites her ear affectionately. I see his face when he pulls away, twisted, and cracked. This fractured version of myself is not a loving man.

My mother is almost suspicious too, looking into the mirror for an excessively long time. She asks him about it, where it came from, who it belonged to. I wonder, briefly, if she sees something. I stand up, look at her. I wave, I shout, I cry against the bitter screen that divides us. Her eyebrows twitch.

"Hm," she says, and turns away.

I lay on the ground for what feels like days after that.

~ 0 ~

I do not know what will become of me. I do not know whether my life will change, or improve, or whether I am doomed to remain behind this glass. Idly, I hope that my mother figures it out. I hope that she comes over more often. I hope that she tries spells and enchantments to break this curse on my life. She is caring, really, but her choices in life have often been misguided by my father.

~ 0 ~

One day, Other Draco taps on the glass, tormenting me. I spit at him.

~ 0 ~

Hermione breaks up with him. I don't hear everything, having become so disorientated with reality. I only really hear the shouting. It's the first real sign of discontent that I've heard from them - other than a few distressed mumbles. Most of their conversations are too far away from the mirror for me to hear. But I do hear this:

"You've become so distant, obsessed with yourself. I don't know who you are anymore, Draco!"

He laughs. "I am exactly who I am supposed to be."

"I don't even know what that means! You're always talking in riddles. There's something seriously wrong with you, and I hate the way you look in that mirror. Is there something on it that I can't see? You're obsessed with staring into it, and – I don't know! You're being weird, and I need space away from you, okay?"

His body is rigid, frozen in place. Yes, his plans have fallen apart. He is losing what he wanted.

"I understand," he says coldly. Then he walks away, as if nothing in his life can keep him tethered to this place. I suppose this is true. This is not his girlfriend, this is not his house, these are not his clothes, his possessions. He does not have memories or fondness for these things, or for the world that he has chosen to inhabit.

As he slams the front door, she bolts for the mirror.

"Hermione, please, no! Don't do this!"

I bang on the glass, desperate. For half a second, she seems perturbed. But then –

"Fuck you, you stupid mirror!"

~ 0 ~

The glass shatters, and the light disappears. I am trapped in the dark.

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Thanks for reading!