Penny smiled to herself as she slipped out her dorm window once more late at night. Once again she was climbing up to Gryffindor Tower to cuddle with Harry at night so he wouldn't have nightmares. She chuckled to herself as she noticed that a couple of her dorm mates weren't as asleep as it seemed, sending her winks or thumbs up at her doing this. It was nice to know her classmates were so supportive of her in this. Slipping through the window, she began clambering up the wall, her tail swaying inside the otter tail of her onesie to keep her balance.
She was only halfway to the roof, however, when she saw someone easing themselves back off the roof and onto the wall. While the angle wasn't the best for identification, the broom was readily recognizable, especially with how close it was staying to the climber. There was only one person at Hogwarts with a Nimbus 2000, after all. "Harry?" she called out quietly as she raced up to him as he got all the way onto the wall and off the roof. "What are you doing?"
Harry blinked at her and smiled sheepishly. "Uh...I was climbing down to spend the night with you?" he offered hopefully. "Since you taught me to climb, I figured we could take turns?" He shifted his grip slightly, only to tighten it as his broom pressed against his back to stabilize him.
Penny couldn't help but giggle at that. "That's sweet of you, Harry," she offered warmly, leaning over to nuzzle him. "But something tells me that Professor Sprout would be a lot less okay with that than with me climbing up to you." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Not sure on my dorm mates versus yours, either."
"Why not?" Harry asked in confusion.
"Well, there is that spell preventing boys from climbing the stairs to the girl's dorms," Penny pointed out uncertainly. "Pretty sure that means it's against the rules for boys to be in the girl's dorms...or at least very frowned upon."
"But it's okay for girls to go into the boy's dorms?" Harry asked curiously.
"Well, there's no spell preventing that," Penny pointed out logically. "So that must be okay."
"But why the difference?" Harry questioned petulantly. "What's wrong with a boy in the girl's dorm that's not wrong about a girl in the boy's dorm?"
"I dunno," Penny offered with a shrug. "Wanna climb in the library window and see if Hogwarts: A History has an answer?"
"Isn't that against the rules?" Harry asked worriedly. "It is after curfew, after all..."
"Actually, the rules only forbid wandering the halls after curfew," Penny pointed out with a smile. "I checked. As long as we don't go into the halls, we aren't breaking the rules, and the library has a window last I checked."
Harry couldn't help but chuckle at that. "Why not?" he offered warmly. "Lead the way."
Smiling brightly, Penny began climbing the wall around the castle, heading where she was certain the library window was.
Albus Dumbledore carefully positioned the Mirror of Erised in the empty classroom. It was a little bit early, but winter break was only a couple of days away. Harry would be receiving his father's Invisibility Cloak for Christmas, and of course he would feel all but compelled to try it out late at night. That's just how children were, after all, and Hogwarts rules and curriculum were designed to nurture that. He'd already made sure that the Professors and Prefects who would be on patrol during winter break after Christmas Day would avoid the area around this classroom, so that Harry would find his way to this mirror when he went wandering.
He hated manipulating the boy - and so many others - like this, but he had to cover all his bases. Whether the prophecy came true or not, Harry had already proved to be adventurous. He chuckled fondly at both the memory of the chase through the halls with Fluffy, and the sight of Harry and Penny racing each other through the halls...along the walls. Neville - coming up behind them - had breathlessly pointed out that the rules only forbid running in the halls, and racing on all fours along the walls technically wasn't running. The expression on Serverus' face as Neville said that to him of all people had nearly sent Albus into gales of laughter. The look on Neville's face when he realized he'd just said that to Professor Snape nearly gave him an aneurysm holding the laughter in.
Between that and the fact the group already knew that a Philosopher's Stone was being protected, the odds that Harry would find his way through the corridor to the Stone when Voldemort's agent - whoever it was - sought to steal it was far too high to not take precautions to ensure that Harry knew about each of the hurdles that defended the Stone. None of them were actually intended to stop Voldemort's agent - anything strong enough to actually halt him would either make reaching the Stone prohibitively difficult for Albus himself, or simply push the agent to using hostages to get past the obstacles - with only the Mirror truly halting them. As such, Albus had made certain that the first year lessons covered everything except the Mirror and Fluffy in terms of the magical nature of the obstacles. The Potion puzzle and chess game were delaying tactics and challenges well within the scope of Harry's friends' talents, and the nature of Devil's Snare had already been covered in first year Herbology. There were any number of solutions to the flying keys, but with Harry's talent for Quidditch all that was truly needed was making a broom available. Tom had never been a skilled flier, and it was unlikely any agent he chose would rely on flying as a solution. Still, each of the hurdles would send him an immediate alert telling him both that they had been passed and how, though unfortunately he was unable to set the alarm charms up to silently tell him who without letting others know about them...and he was keeping that to himself, just in case Tom's agent was in on the planning somehow.
And thus here he was, positioning the Mirror of Erised where Harry could stumble across it, reluctantly maneuvering the boy into a possible confrontation with Voldemort, or at the very least someone who had an adult's skill and learning. He could only hope that between what teaching he could offer, the boy's pleasantly surprisingly large group of friends, and whatever luck he possessed would combine with whatever protection had allowed him to survive the Killing Curse so long ago would see him through it with minimal harm, should it come to pass. If Harry were to come to harm due to Albus' manipulations, it would be yet one more thing he would never be able to forgive himself for.
...he truly wished that list weren't so long already...
Hearing a scuffle by the window, he quickly cast a Disillusionment before stepping swiftly to the back of the classroom. He had to suppress a smile as he saw Penny Wyrm's head pop over the window edge. "Uh...this isn't the library..." she offered apologetically.
"Well, can we take a break in there anyway?" Harry's voice called out from outside. "My arms are starting to get tired."
Penny quickly clambered over the windowsill before leaning out to help Harry into the classroom. "Well, we can probably figure out where the library is from here...maybe..." She rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "I'm...not so good with compass directions..."
"In that case, why not track the library by Hermione's scent the way you can track Fred and George?" Harry asked as he stepped in. "She's in the library more than almost anywhere else."
"She never goes near the window there, though," Penny pointed out sadly. "Couldn't find it from outside."
"Well...I could duck through the door and look?"
"Don't do that!" Penny insisted firmly. "Then you'll be in the halls after curfew, and that breaks the rules!"
Albus did his best to suppress a soft chuckle.
"But if I'm not going anywhere, does it really count as wandering?" Harry asked curiously.
Albus worked harder to control his amusement.
"I don't wanna take that chance if Professor McGonagall or Professor Sprout are on patrol duty tonight," Penny offered worriedly as she went towards the door. "I really don't want to risk upsetting either of them to the point they decide to actually do something about us sleeping cuddled up together."
"Yeah, me neither..."
Albus glanced over to see why Harry's voice had trailed off so sadly...and sighed softly. Harry had stepped in front of the Mirror of Erised and was now looking into it. He found himself wondering what the boy saw...but the look of sadness and longing suggested a possibility.
"Harry, what's wrong?" Penny asked, quickly racing to his side and taking his hand in hers.
"In...in the mirror..." Harry managed to get out. "I...I see...so many people. They...they look like me...?"
"They do?" Penny asked excitedly, turning to look into the mirror, gently nudging Harry slightly sideways so they were both in front of the Mirror...both in the range of its magic. "...huh. All I see is us, me holding your hand."
Albus raised his eyebrow at that. Honestly, given how warm and open Penny was and how happily she greeted life in general, it wouldn't be that surprising to learn that the Mirror could find no deep seated yearnings to lock onto to ensnare her...but then why did she mention holding Harry's hand? She was doing that anyway...
"But...but then why do I see all these people..." Harry began, only for his voice to fade again as his eyes widened. "Wait...Mom? D-Dad?"
Albus closed his eyes with a wince, ducking his head in sorrow. He should have seen this coming. Even with Penny giving Harry all the affection and comfort he'd been denied for so long, what else would be his most desperate desire than to know the family that would have loved him?
"You see your parents?" Penny asked, her voice soft and gentle.
"I...I think so," Harry allowed uncertainly. "And...and so many others...my family?"
Penny lifted her eyes to look at the top of the mirror. "Hmm...Erised stra ehru...oh! This is the Mirror of Erised!"
Dumbledore blinked in surprise. He did not expect her to know what the artifact was on sight.
"The what?" Harry asked in confusion.
"The Mirror of Erised," Penny explained readily. "It's a mirror that reflects the deepest, most heartfelt desire of anyone who looks into it. It even says so, see? The inscription is reversed, but when reflected it reads, 'I show not your face but your heart's desire'. Great-Uncle Merry told me about it as something to watch out for as a possibly dangerous artifact."
...Albus made a mental note to figure out just who this 'Great-Uncle Merry' was at some point. As far as he could tell from checking paperwork, neither of Penny's parents had Uncles, after all, and no one by that name had received all of the educational honors she'd casually mentioned of him. That would be a search for another day...
"But...why is it dangerous?" Harry asked uncertainly. "It...it's showing me my family..."
"Because what it shows isn't real," Penny offered sadly. "It only shows what you want deep down...and the sight of it has ensnared many people over the centuries until they simply waste away staring into what is little more than a visual representation of a dream."
Harry was silent for a long time. "...yeah, I can see that..." he offered sorrowfully. "If...if you weren't here with me and I realized what the mirror was showing me, I...I don't know if I'd make it back to the dorm tonight."
Penny quickly pulled Harry into a tight, comforting hug. "It's okay, Harry. You aren't alone anymore." Harry returned the embrace earnestly, plainly desperately needing the comfort. Once he started to calm down, Penny tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Think we should see if we can bring Hermione, Ron, and Neville to see it?"
"What?" Harry asked in surprise. "Why? Didn't we just establish it was dangerous?"
"Well, yeah, if you're alone and don't know what it is," Penny pointed out logically. "But if you have friends with you to break you free of it and know it's just a reflection of your deepest desire...well, it's not necessarily a desire you know about, right? Could be interesting to know that about ourselves."
"Does that mean your deepest desire right now is to be there for me when I need comfort?" Harry asked, his voice somewhere between playful sarcasm and soft yearning.
"Either that or I don't have any desires I'm not already living out," Penny allowed thoughtfully as she gently guided Harry to the window. "If someone who is truly content with who they are, what they are, and how they are living their life looked into it, according to legend they could use it as an ordinary mirror."
"Huh," Harry mused thoughtfully as he sat on the windowsill, grabbing the bricks above as he prepared to climb. "You know, maybe we should ask Professor Dumbledore if the Mirror could be incorporated into the Philosopher's Stone defenses." Albus nearly choked at how casually Harry brought that up.
"Really?" Penny asked in surprise.
"Yeah," Harry pointed out easily. "If you could somehow put the Stone inside the Mirror, the only way to get it out would be if you wanted to find the Stone but not use it. If you wanted the stone to use - or to give to someone else so they could use it - then you'd see yourself using the Stone, or giving it to the one you wanted to use it."
"And he could key the spell to his own magic to give himself a back door," Penny pointed out as Albus tried not to make any noise. "After all, if it's Nicholas Flamel's Stone, then Professor Dumbledore would want it to give it back to him...and of course he knows Nicholas would use the Stone to keep himself alive, so he couldn't get it out either. But if the spell was keyed to unravel to a specific spell cast by Dumbledore using Dumbledore's magic, any attempt to disassemble the spell to get the Stone would instead cause it to be lost forever as the retrieval conditions broke down."
"Could he make that a backup system instead?" Harry asked curiously as he climbed out. "So that if the spell was broken down he could retrieve the stone despite the broken retrieval conditions?"
"I'm not so sure about that," Penny allowed as she followed. "I don't really know enough about combining enchantments with artifacts to be certain..."
As their voices faded with distance, Albus dispelled his Disillusionment so he could see himself as he wrote down what they had discussed. He should definitely make certain of that in one way or another before he actually put the Stone in the Mirror, after all...