Make a Wish (SNIPPET)

Chapter Summary

Harry finds the Mirror of Erised, with the Philosopher's Stone already concealed within, accompanied by Hermione. They make a wish. Harrys, Hermiones


It hadn't been difficult to convince Hermione she should join Harry in exploring the castle. The chance for new knowledge was always a draw, and while they were risking double points, she felt that with her along, Harry would be less than half as likely to get in big trouble, so maths dictated she accompany him, even from the standpoint of House points.

Hermione had explained a phrase called "survivor's bias" that social science had coined. Things weren't all fine, even though they'd survived.

"Picture what a dead Harry and Hermione would be saying right about now about how safe this place was," she put it.

That was all too easy for Harry, now. He had been feeling almost cocky. Voldemort was gone, again, and no one but his host died. But WHAT IF.

The troll could have done for them both, or all three of them and Ron. The Cerberus could have gotten lucky and bagged them all (and Neville). Finally, if Voldemort had felt he was about to be exposed and defeated, he could have started flinging killing curses around. He hadn't scrupled at making a reasonable try at killing Harry.

Which is why, in addition to being interesting, and Harry was the kind of boy who hated being bored, he thought their foray now was so important. They were going to experiment with the Mirror of Erised. Probably Dumbledore would hide it forever after tonight.

Harry shouldn't really be out of the Hospital Ward. But Hermione had had a brainstorm. The Mirror knew people's innermost thoughts - even the things they knew without knowing them. But more than that, it was clairvoyant. It could show you things based on the skeleton of a wish you'd have no means of already knowing.

If they had a year to use it, it would be a valuable weapon, but they did not. Hermione's other brainstorm was to wish for an alternate universe where Voldemort wasn't back. Maybe by examining how people in the mirror world lived, they'd come up with ideas to fix their own world. Ideas they could pass on to whichever authorities didn't have their heads out for bribes from Voldemort's gang. They didn't even have to admit to using the Mirror, if they could get Harry back to the ward in time.

Hermione Granger and Harry Potter were bored. Bored to tears, in fact. Hermione would have to confess that her family had always been safe, comfortable, boring. Harry had a heritage of adventure on both sides, but that just made things worse, he claimed. Things had been so desperate for James and Lily Potter that they'd taken a dreadful chance to bring Voldemort out. Their friend Peter Pettigrew had taken Voldemort's dark mark. They'd arranged for him to kill a young Muggle who was already dying of cancer. Being doped up on pain medicine had actually blocked the touch of Cruciatus that Peter could muster, as well as the pain of cutting curses and knife slashes. Time eventually told its tale, and Peter was well-trusted by the Dark until his real status as a traitor cost him his life.

As for James and Lily, they'd "died" when Harry was a toddler. They wore thin armour that wouldn't stop a killing curse, but would weaken it. And so it happened. Pettigrew Crucioed their "corpses" and surreptitiously shocked their hearts at the same time. "They're dead, alright," he told the Dark Lord. When he felt a pulse in both necks, he immediately switched the saliva in their mouths with the Draught of Living Death he kept in a couple of vials in his robes.

Pettigrew had gotten a posthumous Order of Merlin first class, and was, in fact, the only Light casualty that night.

The Potters and Longbottoms, along with Black and Lupin, had to allow four Death Eaters access to the Longbottom grounds, breaking the Fidelius through Peter, again. But there were slowing enchantments and other hindrances they hadn't counted on.

The Potters, with Black and Lupin, arrived "just in time" to save the Longbottoms from permanent harm.

They followed an agreed-upon list for Death Eaters: Bellatrix and Rudolfus Lestrange and Barty Crouch, Junior, were killed on the spot, and Rabastan LeStrange was captured and interrogated for days before being handed to the DMLE.

Meanwhile, the Potters quietly recovered. And they resolved, apparently, that their children would have the most boring lives possible.

Harry couldn't even be a daredevil on his broom. Narcissa Snape's child, Draco, had taunted him that his father had been neutered by a Mudblood woman who was terrified of Magic.

His mother was brilliant and beautiful and brave, so Harry disregarded most of what Pure-bloods said about her.

The charge that he was living in cotton batting, however, was irrefutable. And when Hermione Granger's Muggle dentist parents, who really were terrified of Magic, had gotten to know the Potters, they were overjoyed to meet another couple who had common sense, something they believed was all but lacking in the world of witches and wizards.

Of course, he wouldn't have admitted even that much to Draco Snape, whom he despised. But his mother would never have put up with him attacking a boy whose birth father Harry's parents had killed during the War. So he held his tongue in general around Snape.

Harry had found many treasures in Knockturn Alley. They had gotten Sirius Black and Remus Lupin to smuggle a Vanishing Cabinet out of Hogwarts - the house elves had found it in some sort of secret room only they knew about. And Harry identified one right in plain sight at Borgin and Burke's, and got it for a song.

Knockturn Alley, too, had been neutered by the Light side. But Harry would never tell his parents about his adventures there. A dark bookstore had given them a clue as to where the Mirror of Erised had been relocated to. It had resided in Hogwarts in Harry's parents' era.

Xenophilius and Pandora Lovegood were the new custodians, in consultation with Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel. Harry knew his family was descended from the Peverells. He and Hermione had worked hard copying everything they found in the books Harry was allowed to read (and a half dozen he wasn't) on the Peverells' Deathly Hallows in exchange for permission to study the Mirror.

Hermione already had a lot of workmanlike theories about the artefact. Today, they were going to test a couple of them.

Their parents were ecstatic when Harry and Hermione became best friends - both sets of parents put Safety First, after all, so they couldn't help but be safer together.

But the query today (and Hermione's first hypothesis was that the Mirror could be queried, in a sense) was the opposite. They wanted to wish for a world where there was still excitement, danger, meaning as there had been during the War. Yes, things were terrible then, but they were also terribly alive.

Furthermore, Hermione claimed, there was something phony about the world their generation promenaded around in. A lot of the people from the War were still around, and unpunished. A lot of the prejudices and problems had simply gone underground. If they could view a world where the War hadn't ended so smoothly, they'd know who was capable of destroying their society, who was probably lying doggo, who was a time-bomb waiting to explode. They could give a list to the DMLE or the DOM if nothing else.

Harry said, when she proposed the idea, that it was ironic that they were going to work to make future generations' lives even MORE boring.

"There is a Chinese symbol called the Tai-chi Chu, Harry," she said. "It's two comets wrapped around each other with a single eye in each. A black comet with a white eye wrapped around a white comet with a black eye. The meaning is that each generation generates something the next generation won't want, and will push back against."

If we make society too boring, it will become exciting and deadly, because people become complacent. But they can't live under nerves and fear forever, so they'll push for a peaceful world again."

Harry only understood her as far as different generations pulling in opposite directions. He barely paid attention to Hermione, sometimes, but he re-focused as she said "also, we don't want to be so addicted to danger that we become dependent on evil people to make our lives interesting. That's not fighting them, it's joining them. It's exactly why I want us to go into politics - it's what you do when you want to deal with the really intractable issues."

Then he got distracted again, because the mirror had gone empty for a few minutes, and now it was back with a Harry and Hermione that clearly wasn't in the future. But both of the people in the mirror were staring back at them.

Hermione paused her lecture to say, "I think they see us, Harry. Which shouldn't be possible, but it's proof, as if I really needed it, that my ideas were correct."

Harry had long ago given up the struggle to not chuckle when she got like this.

"Did you cast any spells, Harry?" she suddenly asked.

He shook his head, still amused.

"What, then ... What were you thinking?"

"About our discussion, mainly."

"Our discussion, hunh." at that, Hermione noticed her counterpart had gone up to the mirror and put her hand up to it. On the spur of the moment, she did the same, and beckoned the Harry in the mirror to do likewise, which he did.

"Go ahead, Harry, maybe we can communicate!"

Harry was always far more game for recklessness and adventure than Hermione, so he wasted no time on caution.

"Look, they're trying to communicate with us!" Hermione said, almost dancing in place. "And look at them, he's four inches taller and in far better shape. And she looks like she's had a happier life at Hogwarts than I've had. Oh, Harry, we've done it! If we can just talk to them. We'll be famous for something you can remember this time!" She almost felt some warmth through the mirror from the hand of her counterpart, but that was probably delusion on her part. Harry was helpfully following her lead.

"I just wish that we lived in that world," Harry said, wistfully.

"Oh, me too, Harry. But this might be the next best thing if we can't get our wish."

Erised was amused. Since she'd been trapped in this frame of glass - this indestructible frame, regardless of what the rogue wizard running this insane asylum of a boarding school believed - she'd had few chances to influence events. Driving selfish or weak people insane had to suffice. At first, she'd felt a little guilty about how she relieved the boredom, but later she just felt unsatisfied.

Harry Potter had, unknowingly, partly activated her powers. Both Harrys had asked, immediately, "who is Erised?" And while wizards would have smirked knowingly, it turned out to be the correct question. Yes, her name, spelt backwards in Modern English, made the word "Desire" and prompted the legend some later wizard than the one that entrapped her had carved on her frame. To have fit at the time she was trapped, her name would have had to be Rerised. Since even desire/desiren hadn't entered Middle English yet, from French. But it was not. Erised was a perfectly common name in her time and place. And it would have fit better if her name was Gnunliw. And who has a name like that? He was an old wizard and spoke in old ways.

Even better, both Hermiones had said, sensibly, "I don't know." Even though both had started to puzzle out the inscription.

All the wizard who entrapped her had said, at the time, was that if she wished to see others constantly gazing at her with wilnung, he would grant her wish.

A powerful curse like that couldn't be made foolproof. If someone realized that the mirror was her name, even absent-mindedly, as Harry Potter had, they'd activated her in a way she normally wouldn't be.

If the Harrys and Hermiones had only known it, Hermione was quite right about how they could direct the mirror to show them how to get to their desired outcomes - or, rather, an actually achievable approximation, with lots and lots of compromises.

But they would not be getting there today. Because the Harrys and Hermiones had placed their hands together with their counterparts and made a wish.

Back when she was freshly immured, and still had all her magic at her command. Well, at the jealous wizard's command, technically. He'd experimented with two non-magical children. Had both of them touch the mirror and make a wish. It so happened, they'd each wished for something the other had, and when the wish was granted, they had looked horrified. He'd already read their minds, of course, and realized they were foolish and heedless and would bitterly regret their wishes, which is what made them ideal for his purposes. They'd each thought the other sex had it easy in the world, as best Erised could make out. The old wizard sent them home with a smile. She hadn't felt power like that until this year, when another old, cruel wizard hid an artefact of great power in her. She'd felt it thrumming inside ever since.

Erised was prevented from granting wishes, per se. But she could exchange wishes, so she did.

Hermione really wished she could actually be there in that mirror world, even for a little while. You could only learn so much from gestures. Maybe she should send Harry to get parchment and quills, or try to conjure them …

She felt a momentary twinge, then a strong feeling of being disoriented. She looked to where Harry was, and he was gone!

Then she realized she felt a warm body next to her (it was chilly at night in Hogwarts, even in June). Harry was suddenly on her left side, not her right! Even weirder, he still had his hand pressed to match the Harry in the mirror. And if she wasn't mistaken, that Harry, and his Hermione, looked as shocked as she felt!

For the first time in decades, Erised remembered why it was such a pity that mirrors couldn't laugh.