38) Ear Worms
"Tell me mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall: thought you said you had the answer to it all… never told me I was gonna take a fall… tell me mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall."
-Mirror, Mirror Diana Ross
I have changed the time this song was released and played freaking EVERYWHERE by a year – from December 1981 to December 1980. I'm old enough to remember it playing every freaking where. Yes. I'm old.
This short is almost all exposition. But it's short, so if you decide to imbibe, it won't be too harsh, I don't think.
~~ this ain't no movie ... but it is some disco ~~
Of all the things that Lily missed about the muggle world – telly, ringing up friends, taking a taxi, even (though she'd never admit it aloud) lemon squash – the ubiquitous pop songs were not amongst the list. It was almost Yule. She and James would be going into hiding soon, and she was picking up what muggle necessities she could store.
Voldemort was such a toerag. Targeting her baby. Oh, if she ever found who put the idea into that wretched man's head, she'd skin them alive.
Harry was such a joy. An endless bundle of energy, yes, but a joy nonetheless. She'd get some muggle books and toys for him on this trip. She'd already put the wards around Petunia's house, with her sister's blessings. Petunia hated magic, but she'd take protection from the magical world.
"tell me mirror mirror mirror on the wall…" she hummed then cursed. This insidious melody would be in her brain for weeks. She scanned the shelves of the used bookstore as she sang to herself. Then she stopped.
Was it a sign? Could it be that easy?…
~~ time skip ~~
Dumbledore put Harry down. He stood for a moment, feeling the wards Lily had already placed. She was such a bright witch. Now, with the infusion of her and young Harry's blood, these wards would be nigh on impenetrable. He knew the key was the mother's love. It was so beautiful.
As he walked away without a backward glance, he'd not know just how wrong he was.
The first time Vernon tried to hit the intruder, he hit himself. Never mind that he was trying to smack a toddler, so he hadn't put much force behind it. No. It was odd how he had meant to smack the brat, but instead had hit himself in the family jewels.
He didn't try to hit Harry again for weeks, but when he did, once again wanting to smack the wailing toddler (they had fed him the previous day, why did they need to feed him again?!), his testicles once again took a spanking. This time, it was harder.
It only took Petunia one horrific yeast infection – when she'd refused to treat Harry's diaper rash – to treat her nephew with kid gloves. There was no love, but she was extremely careful to treat him – at least his physical form – respectfully.
The wards around the house were primed and hyper-charged, due to the influx of the blood from both mother and son taken directly after the ritual sacrifice. Anything detrimental aimed at Harry was getting reflected on the person who tried to harm him.
When Vernon or Petunia tried to say bad things about their nephew, it somehow turned around to be about their own son. They were angry but had no outlet. They end up treating him as a not-particularly-wanted guest.
By the time Harry left Privet Drive – and they were so glad to be rid of him that Petunia actually accompanied him to Diagon Alley to get it done as quickly as could be – the wards had calmed, somewhat. Almost ten years of relative peace (even Dudley's gang never tried to beat on Harry) had quieted the hyper-vigilance.
Of course, going to Hogwarts caused a flare-up within months.
When the troll swung at Harry, the club kept going and smacked the behemoth in the noggin, knocking it out. Harry fell from its grasp, pulled a sobbing Hermione to the hall, and helped her rush away from the scene of the attack. The two became fast friends: trauma often does that. Harry hadn't really been friends with the youngest Weasley before, but now he'd avoid the bully like the plague.
Of course, that meant that Neville, Hermione, and Harry were the ones caught trying to help Hagrid (though the twins were still able to deliver the dragon hatchling to their brother in the tower). And when the unicorn-killer spied the boy hero, it rose from its meal to confront the child. As it tried to attack Harry, the unicorn it had begun to feast upon rose and gored it in the flank.
Quirrell stumbled for the rest of his tenure.
The rest of term was mostly quiet. When Quirrellmort tried to attack Harry, he burned up. What is this magic, indeed? What is that disco in my head, Harry thought, as he heard some song about a mirror. He supposed it was subliminal – Aunt Petunia was always listening to the radio – and that was one gaudy mirror in the corner.
~~ summary of what would be a long fic ~~
The remainder of his Hogwarts years passed similarly. When forced to duel Malfoy in his second year, Harry was still outed as a parselmouth. After all, snakes weren't detrimental to Harry at all, so his magic didn't see it as an attack.
Of course, size does matter. The basilisk had no such luck, and when the horcrux possessing Ginny tried to get the snake to attack Harry, the snake bit the diary instead, killing Tom again.
The snake, having killed its master, set off a protection spell. Salazar was evil but not stupid. If the snake ever betrayed his bloodline, it would implode.
The mess was huge, but Harry survived, as did the new littlest Weasley. And they had a long climb back to the toilet.
The dementors, after attacking Harry once on the train, avoided Harry Potter like the plague. They didn't like having their power sucked from them. And as they were all connected, it was the death of quite a few of them during the train ride in September that spurred the eventual mass revolt. All of the dementors stayed at Azkaban, not to leave until they died out.
That dementor power allowed Harry to destroy the soul piece in his scar without even knowing it. And his mother's reflection spell gained even more power.
Though Pettigrew was revealed, he still escaped. Harry was bummed that he couldn't live with Sirius, but he had a stable place to stay with the Dursleys, so he didn't mourn too long.
And he could call Hermione as frequently as he liked. The Dursleys encouraged days out with his friend. He took advantage.
When the goblet of fire spit Harry's name out of the cup, the paper caught fire. The fire flew back into the goblet, causing it to explode. The eight who were already bound felt the tie on their magic – when had that formed? – fall away. No one would ever use the cup to bind a wizard's magic again.
Barty was pissed that his plan didn't work, but he kept trying until he finally was able to slip a stunning portkey on the boy hero during a Hogsmeade weekend. The magic lashed back at Faux Moody, but it was too late; Harry was gone.
Pettigrew used an incarcerous to tie the comatose boy to a grave decorated with a stone rendering of the grim reaper. The homunculus version of Tom Riddle urged the ratman to reenervate the boy, and the ritual proceeded. Harry was horrified by what was happening but powerless to stop it. But when Pettigrew attempted to stab Harry, the protection flared and Pettigrew stabbed Nagini, who was guarding Potter, instead. The snake reared. She had been hit in one place that was actually quite vulnerable – her eye. The knife had gone deep enough to penetrate her brain and she was in death throes. She lashed out at Pettigrew and he flew into the cauldron, coated in her venom and blood.
What rose from the unintended elixir was a strange, rat-snake hybrid with Voldemort's magic held captive in its form. Pettigrew's magic faded, and so Harry was able to come down from the gravestone. He gave the corpse of the huge snake wide berth. Popping his wand from his protected holster, he threw the strongest finite he could at the weird construct, just on a whim. Nothing happened. He summoned the thing, again with as much power as he could muster, and ducked as it came flying. It was skewered on the scythe of the grim-reaper-gravestone marker. A black spirit came screaming out of the thing, vowing revenge upon Harry, who thought there must have been some crazy drugs in the chocolate he'd got from Honeydukes.
When someone finally tracked him down, and got him back to Hogwarts, he heard strange stories of a Moody who wasn't Moody hitting him with a portkey. When asked what happened, he shrugged, not really trusting his memory of the utterly insane evening he'd had.
The headmaster, not content to let things be, forcibly tried to read Harry's mind to find what happened. As usual, the mirror ritual protected Harry and showed Harry the Headmaster's own thoughts. Everything Albus Dumbledore knew, suspected, and hoped about the Voldemort situation was revealed, though he did not know it. Instead, he passed out with the illegal legilimency ending.
Harry thought back to the train ride the year before, and how the dementor magic he'd sucked up had killed that scar that the headmaster had been so obsessed with. He thought about the diary that the basilisk had killed, how the Headmaster had managed to get Fawkes to get it for him to confirm his findings.
Harry didn't know exactly what a horcrux was, but he hoped he'd not run across any more.
Unfortunately for Harry's plans, Lucius Malfoy had decided to make another bid for his master's return. He knew Bella had a cup that was as powerful a resurrection tool as that diary had been. He pulled the cup from her vault and compelled Delores Umbridge to drink from it. As the toad faded from existence, her magic supplied the fuel for a new form of Tom Riddle to walk the earth.
Unfortunately for him, she didn't have much magic.
He had only one option left, as this was the last horcrux any of his followers had access to. He did a ritual to pull the magic from his other horcruxes, returning them to himself. It took the summer, and a ritual vampire sacrifice, but Voldemort was back. Horcrux-less, but back.
And he had to get that prophecy. It must hold the secret as to why Voldemort was continually vulnerable to the stupid brat who lived.
Unfortunately for Dumbledore, though the soul pieces were gone from the horcrux, the other curses were not. He pulled the ring from the shack, and seeing the resurrection stone, donned it. Severus was able to stop the wasting curse, but the clock was ticking.
It was cold comfort to him that the horcrux was already dead.
Tom Riddle, being informed by Severus Snape that Dumbledore was laid low decided that the opening night of Hogwarts was the perfect time to announce his return. He and his death eaters swarmed the great hall, Draco Malfoy and his ilk smirking at the obvious victory.
When Riddle demanded Harry's presence, Harry walked forward.
When Riddle tried to crucio Harry, the spell rebounded. It was amplified by Harry's own will and passed through the dark marks to all of the marked wankers.
Voldemort couldn't seem to stop casting, and Harry stood, just watching, as the entirety of the terrorist movement were felled by their own master.
"Harry, you must let this go," Dumbledore demanded, horrified as the death eaters fell, one by one, to the horrific curse they had used with such impunity in the past.
"I'm not doing anything, Headmaster. It's simply Riddle's own spell that is being reflected and amplified."
"No, no this cannot be." Dumbledore protested as he shook his head. "Your mother's love would not cause this harm."
"My mother's love?" Harry's voice held both question and derision. But he held eye contact with Voldemort, willing the man to continue to pour magic into the terrible spell.
"A mother's love, Harry." Dumbledore's voice was calm and confident. "It flows through your veins. It is what I believe, with my not inconsiderable intelligence, is what protected you when Tom attacked you and, in the years, since."
"Are you thick?" Harry shook his head and laughed. As though no other mother whose child was killed actually loved their child. "It's pretty obvious that my mother developed new magic. She knew couldn't block the unforgiveables, but she could reflect them. She did a ritual sacrifice to reflect any detrimental spell sent my way back to the caster. I think you tying it into the wards at Privet Drive made it even stronger. By the way, it's so strong it worked on my muggle relatives."
Albus could not believe a muggleborn with so little training could succeed where he could not. Of course, he wasn't guided by a pissed off fate who wanted a champion now that war had his own champion.
And as war's champion and the last of the eaters of death faded into that same cruciatus-induced coma Bellatrix had once gifted to the Longbottoms parents, Dumbledore rubbed his dead arm. Harry, now completely avenged, looked down the comatose dork lord, at the still quivering terrorists, at the dead arm of the terrorist of a different sort, and smirked.
He hummed as he went back to his seat, watched by the entire hall, the tune a jaunty one from before his time. Somehow, Diana Ross just fit his mood.
~~ and there you have it ~~
The Song, which sounds different than I remember. But alas, I was just a lass. (see what I did there?) you can youtube it.
My muse is back. Springtime walks, school coming to a close, and healed injuries all make for a more loquacious birdwoman. Most of my muse has been for HP fic, and mostly in the form of a bunch of shorts or stories that would need huge fleshing out.
I am working on Life After Death, but most of the scenes that I'm writing are for chapters after this one (past 4th year). I'll get there.