Chapter 32 - Reflection
Iris flipped through the pages of the potions book yet again. How was it that all of these books combined were just as helpful as not reading any of them?
She had been combing the library up and down for information about their latest potions assignment, but somehow, had come up empty. All the books said was what Snape had already told them. They had to craft a talisman and use it to capture the Trait. Although how they were supposed to go about doing that was still a complete and utter mystery.
All the books had told her was that the talisman was supposed to be an object that would symbolize the process to her, and the way she'd use it would depend on the object. Which was singularly unhelpful. She supposed that it would probably be something different, depending on the person, and which objects they'd strongly associate with it.
"Any more ideas? I'm still drawing a blank here," grumbled Iris.
Tracey perked up. "Well, I feel like historically, the best way to capture a person's character was to write about them."
Iris raised an eyebrow. Trust the resident history-nut to interpret it like that. "And what? You like... gonna run around with a history book? I mean I guess you do that already..."
Tracey rolled her eyes. "Not quite. Nobody writes history with a book. You do it with a quill."
Huh. Well, maybe. But it didn't feel right for her. She could think of tons of other ways that seemed to fit better. But, she supposed, for Tracey, it might actually work.
How would she capture someone's character? Her thoughts involuntarily turned to her Night Elf, but she had a strong suspicion there was a large difference between actual personality traits and stats in an RPG. So taking a screenshot or something was probably off the table.
How in the world had Snape done it? Well, to someone like him, everything was probably something that could be quantified, measured, brewed and bottled. And maybe that's just what he did? Maybe that vial had been his talisman?
But that also wasn't going to work for her. Potions was Potions, it didn't have much to do with the rest of her magic. If there was any defining characteristic here, it was light. So far, pretty much all types of magic she had seen were in some way or another related to light. Even if sometimes, she seemed to be the only one able to see it—Maybe it was just her magic making it look like that? That's why she suspected that even a captured Trait would in some way be related to light.
But how on earth was she supposed to capture light of all things? Creating it, that was easy. But apart from a black hole, she couldn't think of anything that would actually capture light. It would just instantly bounce in all directions and vanish. Well, technically, in a way, anything that somehow utilized the light? Like plants...
But no matter how much sense that made, she couldn't see herself using a plant of all things for something like this. And the only other thing that came to mind wouldn't work either. Even if technology actually worked at Hogwarts, she had no way to get solar panels here, especially in just a week's time.
And creating anything herself would prove even more impossible, what with her prodigious lack of Transfiguration skills.
Even if she used like two mirrors, it would just...
"I'm thinking less capture, and more trap," came Theo's pondering voice.
"What do you mean?" asked Tracey.
"Well, if you want to trap someone's personality, someone's character traits, and get them stuck in the place you want them to, you'll need manipulation, and deception."
Iris was officially intrigued. "And how would you symbolize that?"
Theo shot her a look, and opened his palm to reveal a silver sickle dancing between his fingers. "...Money?"
He tossed it in the air and caught it in his hand, the coin landing heads. Then, he flipped it over onto the back of his other palm, and lifted up his hand, to reveal-
"A two-faced coin?" Iris asked incredulously.
"You said it's all about simplicity."
"I guess..." She chuckled. "I really don't know what I expected with you."
Iris still thought that was a bit of a stretch. But in the end, it was probably mostly about what the person themselves would think works best. Like with a ritual, except the only perception that mattered was your own.
...Huh. There was an idea.
An idea that was immediately smacked back down. There was no way she'd mess around with rituals again, especially for something like this. It just didn't seem worth the risk.
~V~
Harry turned yet another page, read the contents, and sighed. They only had two days left to complete their potions assignment, and he still had made no progress whatsoever. Hermione had transfigured herself a copy of the pocket tape recorder that her father had been using to document patients—never mind the fact it didn't even work at Hogwarts—and Ron had somehow convinced himself that a chess pawn could work.
Neither of which seemed like applicable choices for him. Which was why he'd been studying his arse off to try and come up with some idea for what to use. And yet, this whole day had been yet another failure. He had no idea how late it had already gotten, the sun had set some time ago, and there weren't any clocks anywhere in the whole bloody library. Most of the students had already left, the only other remaining occupant was a black-haired Slytherin girl from his year with glasses, reading by herself. She hadn't even moved for the past hour, apparently content to just sit there all alone, submerged in her literature. He guessed he could relate.
How on earth would he go about capturing someone's character traits? He had no idea how one would do any of that. When he tried to judge someone's character, he mostly went with his gut-feeling anyway. He wondered what Iris had picked. Or if she even had found anything yet. She probably had; she was pretty intuitive about those kinds of things. The only thing he was good with intuitively was flying. And probably Transfiguration, he guessed. Also, maybe Defense, in a way.
Maybe Iris was just a bad standard to compare against when it came to magic.
A motion from the corner of his eye caught his attention as the girl suddenly seemed to move. He had almost forgotten she had been there with how still she had been sitting. She removed her glasses, pocketed them, snapped her book shut, and got up to leave without a word.
Harry stared after her forlornly as the footsteps faded, until he realized he could hear another pair of steps, right behind him.
"Hey Harry!"
He whirled at the sound, only to sag in relief as he was met with his sister's gaze.
"Let me guess... you're still stuck on your potions homework?" she asked with a smile.
His gaze fell. "Yeah. Well, not for a lack of trying..."
Iris plopped herself down in a seat next to him and glanced at his book.
"What's astronomy got to do with our assignment?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Well, probably nothing. I'm mostly grasping at straws here... What about you? I guess you've already got it figured out?"
Iris blushed. "Uhm... That's kinda why I was looking for you."
"You think I can help? I mean, of course, but I really have no idea where to even start with my own talisman..."
"Well, I have a general idea, but... it's an object that... doesn't really exist yet."
Harry was officially intrigued.
"Let's have a look at yours first. What have you got so far?"
Harry shrugged, looked at the ceiling, and sighed. "Pretty much nothing."
Iris looked thoughtful. "What do you associate with the idea of capturing a personality trait?"
Harry groaned. "That's exactly the issue. That sounds way too clinical! I couldn't analyze someone like that by their character traits, I mostly go by gut-feelings with these things, you know? I pretty much just... know how they feel, what kind of person they are, at least sorta..."
Iris gave him a smirk. Of course, she'd figure it out in an instant again. "And what object in your possession might symbolize knowing how someone feels?"
Harry was still drawing a blank, so he gave her an annoyed look.
"One that might even regularly help you randomly capture someone else's emotions?"
Randomly capture someone's... Oh. Harry promptly facepalmed, then withdrew his hand to look at the friendship bracelet still adorning it. Still, he couldn't help but smile. It just figured that the solution would not only come from his sister, but also be literally tied to her.
"Yeah. I guess that could work," he finally said.
"Great! So, about my talisman then. Basically, the idea was that I'd have to find an object that would somehow capture light, because, duh."
Of course. Harry just nodded.
"Well, unless they want me to somehow bring a black hole to Hogwarts, I figured the only practical solution was to build a sort of mirror trap. I still have one of these mirrors from one of Vector's experiments that didn't pan out. But, well, it's just a flat mirror. If I want to use it to actually capture and trap light, I'd have to at least make it a box."
That made sense, he guessed. But he wondered where she was going with this.
"Well, the mirror is supposed to be almost perfectly reflective, but from what I read, a big part about total reflection is the angle. And since I don't see a good way to make it a sphere without basically breaking its magical properties, I figured I'll go with the middle ground."
She reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of parchment with a hand drawn sketch on it. There was a lot of intersecting shapes, but he couldn't make heads or tails of it. The main thing he recognized was that most... no, all of them seemed to be pentagons.
"It's called a Dodecahedron. Pretty much just a bunch of mirrors with five edges formed into a sphere. And it'd still be big enough to open it."
She reached into her bag again and started to pile a small number of pentagonal mirrors on the table.
"Now we can't just transfigure the whole thing, that'd probably destroy the magical properties of the mirror. I've already cut it into the shapes with Diffindo, but we still need to fuse the edges together. And since I'm famously pants at Transfiguration, that's where you come in."
Oh. Well, he supposed he could help with that. Just transfiguring part of the object instead of the whole wasn't something that was usually done in class, but he had plenty of experience with it, if only from his earlier failed attempts that had only resulted in partial transfigurations, so he thought it might be possible.
Harry withdrew his wand, then said, "Okay then, how are we going to do this?"
Iris placed down one piece on the table, then held another two adjacent to it so that the edges formed a single corner.
"Here's the idea. You'll try to transfigure the edges—and only the edges—to seamlessly fuse together. You'll have to really focus to avoid changing any other part of the mirrors that won't be directly fused. I suspect it'll lose its total reflectiveness if we transfigure any part of it. Also, just the edges probably are gonna be really hard. It was already pretty difficult to just cut it into pieces. The mirror mostly just reflects any magic you throw at it, you'll have to somehow soak it, approach it from the sides, or something, you'll figure it out."
Harry narrowed his eyes, and imagined the three pieces seamlessly fused together, as if one single crystalline mirror that had an intersecting edge in the middle. Forcing his mind into that familiar state of focus, where all his thoughts would just revolve around the object within his mind, looking at it from all sides, inspecting every single detail, as if he was immersed in one of his fantasy books, except a lot more precise.
He reached for his magic, and pushed, willing reality to obey his whims, trying to force the shapes to conform to his desires. But the magic failed to take hold. As she had said, it seemed to just slip right off the silvery reflective material.
He closed his eyes and tried to feel for his magic. It was there, somewhere, around the object, trying to do what it did best, yet it couldn't quite reach. But it wasn't impossible, she had managed it as well. He'd just have to somehow make it work. Careful to leave the rest of the mirrors as-is, he focused on the three intersecting edges, and drowned them with his intent. All his magic forced into three intersecting lines of magic that seemed to almost glow within his mind, and the picture he held within. It built up brighter and brighter, until the refractive glass almost seemed to melt, and suddenly, it gave way, and seamlessly fused together into a single whole.
Harry let out a breath, and opened his eyes. "How was that?"
Iris picked up the three connected pentagons and inspected them in the low light of the oil lamps. Then, her fingers started to emit an iridescent glow as she ran them along the edges, peering intently at his work. Finally, she placed it back down, and smiled. "Perfect!"
Harry let out a deep breath, and smiled back. That had been the most exhausting piece of Transfiguration he had ever done. His gaze was met with a smirk.
"Three down, nine more to go."
Harry did his best not to groan.
~V~
Iris was gazing into the crystalline pendant resting in her palm, just barely small enough to be able to close her hand around it. Her mind lost somewhere in the infinitely repeating reflections inside the glass object, making it appear like it was so much larger than it actually was on the inside, almost like a portal into another dimension.
Of course, things hadn't gone to plan. Although whether that was actually a bad thing remained to be seen. Originally, she had planned to leave the last piece on a latch of sorts, in order to be able to open it, draw light inside it, and then snap it shut to trap it inside. Except that would leave one edge that wouldn't have been perfectly sealed, and she wasn't sure how well that would work. But as they had gotten to that point, something else had happened.
The whole contraption suddenly turned translucent in her hand, its insides turning into the infinite madness of reflections that she was currently looking at. And she had even found that if she focused, she could turn it back to its completely reflective state.
Given this new discovery, she had decided to try fusing the last panel in place as well. This should probably make it a much better trap once it was closed, but in turn, she had no idea how she'd properly trap light in it in the first place, while it was still translucent.
But that seemed like something that could be figured out. Just the fact that her pendant seemed to have spontaneously developed this strange property made her feel like she was on the right track with this. Running the chain they had attached to it through her fingers again, she followed the maddening kaleidoscopic patterns as she turned it. The sight made her wonder how the talisman would react to her light.
Holding it out in front of her, she started to call her iridescent light into her hand, and more specifically, into the mirror trap. She could see the inside lighting up, her colors filling every corner of the available space, and more, yet the glow seemed to be somewhat weaker than she had expected. She kept pouring in light for some time, as it slowly grew brighter and brighter, until she couldn't make out the insides anymore, and then cut it off.
Yet the glow remained. The pendant was still glowing in all the colors of the rainbow, painting the room in the familiar shapes of chaos. She kept staring at it in awe, as the small spherical object just kept glowing by itself. Slowly, the light started to dim as she kept sitting there, forlornly staring into nothingness. She couldn't help but smile. It was actually working. Even if not in the way she had expected.
Turning it opaque for a second caused the light to cut out completely, and as she turned it back, the light resumed from the exact brightness it had been at, before starting to fade further.
Lost in thought, she watched it fade away, until even the last specs of color had escaped the pendant and it had returned to its original kaleidoscopic state. Finally. After racking her brain for the past week, she'd figured it out, and made it work. Well, her and Harry. She should probably get back to her room, but right now, she really couldn't bring herself to care. After all these days, finally being done with it actually felt-
She blinked, as she noticed a faint silvery blue glow inside the pendant. That was kind of pretty. What was it? Was-
Her eyes widened, and as if on instinct, she snapped the mirror trap shut, the dodecahedron turning fully reflective in her hand. Iris was breathing deeply, her state of utter calm completely shattered, and yet, she didn't care. She lifted up the pendant, and carefully drew the chain around her neck.
One Essence of Serenity, check.
~V~
"I hope that all of you have been more... attentive to your recent assignment than your past performance would suggest, as those who haven't might find themselves required to... reflect on their actions."
Professor Snape had commenced the class as usual, then jabbed his wand at the blackboard, where the second set of instructions appeared.
"You will begin separating the base you prepared in the previous lesson, and adding your talisman to your own cauldron. The process of brewing the potion itself will extract the Essence, allowing you to recover the talisman after it is done."
Iris noticed Hermione's uncertain expression as she held what looked like a pocket tape recorder above the cauldron, causing Iris to raise an eyebrow at the interesting choice in talisman. Finally, the girl firmed her jaw and dropped the device inside the bubbling cauldron. Iris watched in awe as the colors molded together, the bright blue glow filling the hole and merging with all the other colors. Once it had settled down, Iris followed suit, removed the pendant from around her neck, and slowly lowered it into the cauldron.
But unlike with Hermione, nothing seemed to happen. Uncertain about the result, she still held onto the chain. Had she perhaps not managed it after all? But it had definitely been the Essence of Serenity, hadn't it? It had looked and felt very similar to the vial Snape had shown them...
Or maybe... the problem was something else? Maybe her talisman was just too good at what it did? It was supposed to be a perfectly reflective mirror after all, and mirrors worked both ways. Narrowing her eyes, she focused, willing her pendant to turn translucent.
With a sudden explosion of color, her cauldron was flooded by the essence, the very same color mingling into the potion, and she couldn't help but smile. Once she saw that the colors had settled down, she pulled the now inert pendant back out of the cauldron and began to clean it off. No reason to risk damaging it further.
Iris kept watching the cauldron in wonder as she continued following the instructions. From the moment she had added the Trait, the whole potion had changed completely. This was entirely unlike any potions she had brewed so far. When Reactive Potions had been more like chemistry, this was much more like art. Or ritual, she guessed. Every added ingredient, every stir, every single change flowed much more naturally, the magic singing with her own, the potion and her feeling much closer than a soulless substance had any right to be. She wasn't even looking at the recipe anymore, the potion seemed to know what it needed, she only had to figure out how to best provide it.
Gradually, she had settled into the flow, into an utter state of calm, as she kept stirring, brewing, the world around her vanishing into a meaningless void. Was it the potion affecting her, or her affecting the potion?
Or maybe she had just inhaled too many fumes...
All too soon, she dropped the final measure of lavender leaves into the roiling liquid, and it instantly cleared up, stopped bubbling, took a faint blue color and became inert. It didn't even feel hot anymore. Was... that it? Was she done?
A glance at the instructions confirmed that, yes, she was. How had she known how to do that? Looking back up however, she realized that someone had been standing right in front of her cauldron, and was staring at her. She hadn't even noticed.
"Professor?" she asked hesitantly, as he was just staring at her with an undecipherable expression. A glance around the room showed students huddled over cauldrons of all colors and different states of boiling. Apparently, nobody else was done with their potion yet.
He was still just standing there, unmoving, as he looked between her and the potion with a conflicted expression. Finally, he spoke up.
"Where is your talisman, Miss Potter?"
With a sheepish expression, she lifted the pendant from her neck, causing his eyebrows to raise.
As his gaze fell onto the small reflective pendant, she almost thought she saw a slight hint of disappointment flash across his eyes.
"I removed it once the Trait was completely released, sir."
"Did you now?"
He approached the cauldron, inserted a small glass ladle, withdrew some amount of the clear blue liquid, and held it up against the light, then smelled it.
"If you were to ingest this, your experience would likely be rather... unpleasant, given the amount of peppermint oil that was used."
Well, yeah. Not like she hadn't tried to prevent exactly that. Never mind the fact they had used the exact amount from the recipe in the end.
"We tried honey, but that didn't work, so we re-did it from the start."
"Clearly. Honey contains traces of primary reactive components, which obviously must be avoided for the base of any Reflective Potion. The correct way would have been to sacrifice stability in the base and make up for it once the Essence is added."
Iris blinked. That... kind of made sense. Also, somehow, she had managed to get him to go on one of his enlightening rants with barely any thinly veiled insults lined into it. She wondered if he was sick or something.
But before he could comment any further, he was interrupted by a visibly relaxed Hermione, who had bottled her result, and was apparently eager to be the first one to hand it in.
Iris set to bottle her final result as well with a smile. She wouldn't be getting full marks for this, but she had gained something a lot more valuable. She had really come to like Snape's roundabout way of teaching. Even if he was much more of a pain than even McGonagall had ever been, but somehow, she couldn't bring herself to care. She was fine as long as he just insulted her for something she did, and not something she was.
~V~
Iris was late. Once again, she had gotten bogged down practicing in the detention wing, and once again, she had completely forgotten that she had promised Harry to join him during the feast. She just hoped she wouldn't be running across any more porcelain kittens in the corridor this time.
She turned into the passage heading to the second floor and took off down the hallway lined with stained glass windows. She really should have just taken the shortcut through the shadow realm. But she had promised Harry to be more careful with those. And she really wasn't sure about using them so casually anyway, especially since it seemed that the only thing wizards knew about them was that people kept disappearing in them.
Reaching the end, she made her way to the grand staircase, but then stopped, as she saw a silhouette of someone sitting by the side of the entrance, leaning against a statue of a jolly rotund wizard with a cylindrical hat and a cane. Torn between curiosity, and wanting to get to Harry, she finally decided on the latter. She noticed the shape of the body, and her hair, and... Tracey?
No... Upon a further glance, it wasn't. She had black hair, not brown, her face was completely different, deep blue eyes staring in a far-away look, lost in her thoughts.
"...Lily? What are you doing here?"
The girl flinched at the mention of her name. At first she didn't react, but then the girl's expression shifted, through surprise, embarrassment, then realization, fear, and finally despair. What on earth?
She carefully approached and knelt down in front of her old roommate. Iris had honestly almost forgotten about the girl, they hadn't been getting along all that well anyway, and she had mostly blended into the background of their classes for the past year.
"Are you okay?" she asked concerned.
Bright blue eyes kept staring at her, frozen between fear and resignation.
"I-it's you..." Lily whispered.
Iris really had no idea what to do here, she had no idea what happened, why the girl was acting like this, or how she could help.
"What's wrong? Did something happen? Did... anyone do anything to you?" she asked hesitantly.
The clearly distressed girl only shrunk further into herself, hugging her knees to her chest, and edging further away from her.
Iris carefully reached a hand. "You can talk to me. I swear I won't tell anyone."
She finally looked up, and her eyes were no longer just filled with despair and fear, instead, now there was anger.
"Why would I talk to you? You never talked to me!"
Iris blinked, pulling back at the outburst. That... wasn't true, was it? Well, she meant, she hadn't really talked to her all that much, but...
Iris frowned as she tried to recall their few interactions. Lily had kept asking about what she was doing, sounding as if what she did was super scary, and she had in turn tried to make it sound as normal as possible, without really explaining it, hoping to get her to ease up. Thinking back on it, it probably made her look like she wasn't interested in talking with her at all. And maybe, there had also been some truth to that. She hadn't really been thinking about it all that much at the time.
Iris felt a renewed pang of guilt about her former roommate. What on earth had happened to her ever since she had traded rooms to join Tracey? Iris edged back forward, trying to look into her eyes.
"I... listen, I'm sorry that-"
Lily shoved her back. "Leave me alone!" the girl yelled, scrambled to her feet, and took off running down the hallway. Iris kept staring after her, her thoughts trapped in a circle of worry and confusion. She almost didn't notice someone else approaching her from the side.
"Iris? Are you okay?"
She jumped and whirled to the side to face the concerned visage of her brother. "Harry? Aren't you at the feast?"
He almost flinched and looked around the corridor in worry.
"Uhm, well... I went looking when you didn't show up, and then... There was this voice... Could you hear it too? It sounded so big, so old, and... angry. Like it wanted to hurt someone..."
A voice? She hadn't really heard anything. Iris shook her head.
"You didn't? But... It was right... It came from somewhere over there!" he said and pointed down the corridor she had just come from.
Her eyes went wide, and without a word, they took off back down the corridor. They didn't have to look for long. Iris still had no clue about the voice Harry had heard, but the scene they had stumbled upon seemed of greater concern right now. Iris kept staring, lost in rampant thoughts. Somehow, only one of them made its way to the surface.
Well, at least, it wasn't made of porcelain.