Hermione froze as a jarring number of conflicting emotions lanced through her.
The girl with the silver eyes was lounging in Harry's lap, in their alcove far from the fires.
Except she didn't have just silver eyes anymore.
She had one green eye.
And Harry had one silver eye.
What?
Was she through their Looking Glass and didn't even realize?
No. No, this was real. She was sure that she would be able to tell, now.
Would she?
The blond girl with the mismatched eyes had no chains, not like the rest of them.
Hermione was worried. She trusted her Lord, trusted Harry, but…
He hadn't been himself this year. If he even knew what himself was.
Her capricious Lord.
She sat down warily while Daphne laughed.
Daphne would never question their Lord's judgment.
"I think that means that she has you beat, Harry. You at least managed to make it to Halloween before murdering a student."
Harry and the girl laughed. Draco also looked unsure.
Oh god, were there two of them?
Harry's Alice spoke in a high, melodic voice.
"Miss Mary hasn't quite slipped away just yet, even if she has misplaced her feet. Your Lord has promised me a nice, nice surprise, if I wait. I do hope it's worth it, or I might have to make everything taste like radishes for the foreseeable future."
Harry just laughed.
"It will be well worth it, Luna. Don't worry."
Hermione couldn't help herself.
"Harry… are you sure-"
She was suddenly looking into Luna's eerie mismatched eyes.
Falling into her eyes.
Falling falling falling.
Hermione landed on the black sand of an otherworldly beach with confusion.
She should know, if she went through a Looking Glass.
She opened her eyes and felt her Lord's amusement in the back of her head. He didn't stop her or deny her his power.
What was going on?
She tried her best to use the eyes to parse what she was experiencing, to separate the dream from reality.
She didn't know if she failed or not. Her eyes told her that this was real. She knew it was real. But she also knew that part of the illusion could be knowing that it was real.
Round and round she went, on her knees on the black sand.
She wasn't getting anywhere. She stood up.
Endless milky white waters lapped at the edge of the beach. Silvery mist hung in the air and obscured anything too far away. She stood alone on a long beach of fine black sand that sloped up and away until it faded into the mist.
What…
She looked up and fell back over, scrabbling backwards on the coarse grit.
In the sky was a single, enormous blue eye.
It was bigger than anything Hermione ever imagined. A great planet in the sky, spanning from horizon to horizon. It was too much; it should be ripping apart the world and she was sure that everything would end from the sheer scale of the staring orb. It hung in the endless white sky above her as she tried to comprehend its magnitude, tried to call on her eyes and her insight…
The eye blinked.
Hermione writhed on the sand as her mind twisted.
She tasted sounds, the delicious vibrating screams passing over her tongue and out of her own mouth.
She heard scents, the particles landing in her ringing ears as she heard the salty breeze of the ivory sea and the obsidian sand beneath her.
She tried and tried to keep herself together, as her mind quivered and threatened to crack under the torrent of sensory upheaval.
"Now now, Alice. We need our Curator to be sane, whereas we cannot. I think she's had quite enough."
Hermione felt the sense of childish disappointment that permeated the very fabric of the dream.
It was a dream.
This wasn't real.
Why had she been so sure that it was real?
She could always tell when she was within her Lord's looking glass.
Apparently, Alice's dreams were… more…
More… something. Whatever they were. Whatever the eyes were.
She was sitting in the Slytherin common room.
Luna blinked and smiled at her.
Hermione shivered.
"Never mind," she said.
And opened her book to pick up where she left off yesterday.
Oh god, there were two of them.
…
The teachers and then the Aurors searched the school for Marietta Edgecomb.
They didn't find anything.
Maybe she just ran away.
Maybe she went into the forest and got eaten by spiders.
Who knows?
Certainly not Harry.
…
Harry added the last flourish to the runes in the complex ritual circle.
Luna clapped excitedly from where she perched on the statue of Slytherin's left nostril.
This ritual was more complicated than the last. Many things were similar; an unwilling sacrifice, a shard of the soul of which Harry was the empty vessel. The main difference was the participants, and the way that they were to be bound.
Alice had her own silver chains, after all.
She hopped down and skipped over to him, surveying his work.
"This is quite the surprise indeed, my Mad Hatter. Mummy's ritual wasn't half this complex."
Harry looked up at her and decided whether it was worth opening Pandora's box.
Harry giggled.
Maybe just one question?
"Did she split her soul too?"
Luna bounced as she considered him with a tilted head.
"How else would I have become empty?"
How else indeed.
He hadn't considered that.
Being a Horcrux had made him into the empty vessel?
Which he was trying trying trying to fill.
Luna's was already full. Full of eyes.
Interesting.
Enough questions. Enough thinking, for now.
It was time for Magic. A time of blood and pain and death and music and power.
Marietta hung upside down over the center of the wide ritual circle, her feet-less legs kicking frantically in the air. She screamed into her stitched up mouth, the ring with the eyes in a basin beneath her.
How it raged at him. It was wonderful.
Harry and Luna took their places on either side of the circle.
Alice and her Mad Hatter.
The Mad Hatter and his Alice.
An eye for an eye for an eye.
Together, they let their magic flow into the paths prepared by the ritual. Light and Dark intermingled and spiraled around them as the air grew thick and heavy with power and potential.
Stars and teeth and eyes eyes eyes.
They spoke together, voices echoing and rising high over the roaring vortex of power.
"By our Blood and our Souls, we are Bound!"
They each cut their wrist over their own wooden chalice, filling them with delicious crimson wine.
"We are the Vessels of Eyes!"
They traded cups.
Harry stared across the circle at Luna.
"Together, we will achieve tranquility."
She stared back as he fell into her mismatched eyes.
"Together, we will be whole."
They each drank the blood of the other, deep and delicious as their power flooded through them.
They spoke through ruby stained lips.
"Together, we will create beautiful symphonies!"
She smiled and tumbled into his own mismatched windows.
"Together, we will open our eyes!"
They each knelt and slid their knives into the sides of Marietta's neck, cutting in opposite directions as her lifeblood flowed like a river into the basin below, splashing across the circle. The runes glowed with eldritch light.
The ring screamed.
It was Harry's turn to speak alone.
"By my Blood and Soul, I call this fragment back to me. By Death and Anguish, I claim it as my own."
The blood in the basin boiled and chains of emerald and silver circled them in the hurricane of Light and Dark.
"As Lord of the Empty Vessel…"
The ring screamed as the blood dripped dripped dripped.
His Alice's high voice joined his for the final intonation.
"We claim our rightful eyes!"
Harry felt the raging, writhing soul of Voldemort fade as his own eyes opened, adding another infinity to his unholy collection.
Harry felt the silver chains of Luna's empty soul pierce his flesh and his soul as he was bound to her, in blood and death and love forevermore.
He felt his own emerald chains lance and lock into her beautiful soul of blue eyes and silver stars.
He smiled widely as his empty chalice was filled once again. Filled with new crimson eyes.
She was his, his Alice.
Just as he was hers.
And it was glorious.
…