Chapter 30: Erised's Reflection, Midnight Lemon Drop (Patreon)

The third night after Christmas, the whole castle lay in dead silence.

At the corner of the dungeon corridor, the air suddenly shivered with the faintest ripple, like water. Then a half-lifted Invisibility Cloak revealed Harry's face, shadowed with dark circles and a little dazed.

"Brother Raven."

Harry kept his voice low, his breath coming fast. "It's in that old abandoned classroom up ahead… I'll show you the mirror."

For the past two nights, Harry had slipped off to that abandoned classroom almost every time the castle went quiet.

Ron had looked into the mirror and seen himself as a prefect and Quidditch captain. Harry had seen the parents he had never met.

That bone-deep longing had swallowed nearly all of the boy's attention, which was why tonight he wanted Raven to see it, no matter what.

Raven wore a dark black wool coat, hands in his pockets, and followed Harry through a wooden door choked with cobwebs, his expression calm.

The room was crammed with dusty old desks and chairs. In the empty space at its center, impossible to miss, stood an extraordinarily ornate, tall mirror.

Its gilded, carved frame stretched up to the ceiling, and it rested on two claw-shaped feet. Along the top of the frame ran a line of strange backward writing: "Erisedstraehruoytubecafruoytonwohsi." (I show not your face but your heart's desire.)

"Look, Brother Raven!"

Harry dashed up to stand directly in front of the mirror, pressing both hands to the cool edge of the glass, his eyes slightly red. "They're right here… my dad and my mum. They keep smiling at me."

Raven stood two paces back, studying the hulking thing by the cold light of the moon.

Under the gaze of [Circuit Sight], the frame held no offensive spellwork at all. Instead, a deeply arcane array of mental refraction hummed within it, one that adaptively resonated with the neurons of whoever stood before it.

"Come and stand here, Brother Raven," Harry said, turning around and urging him on. "What do you see in it?"

Raven didn't refuse. He stepped up in front of the mirror.

The ghostly images of the Potters on its surface melted away like snow. After a few seconds of stillness, deep within the quicksilver glass, Raven's own reflection slowly surfaced.

The figure in the mirror looked a few years older than he was now. It wore an ancient mage's robe swirling with starlight, its fingertips poised in the air, and the countless laws of magic bent to it like obedient threads, woven and cut at its will. It carried the ease of someone who stood above the rules themselves.

And half a step beside that figure stood a girl with long, softly curled platinum hair.

She wore a slim-cut emerald robe with a small teardrop silver pendant pinned to the chest. Her chin was lifted high and her pride was undimmed, but those clear, watery grey-blue eyes rested on the young man beside her without any reserve at all.

Raven watched the scene with an impassive face, his eyes clear as water, untouched by indulgence or wavering.

"What did you see, Brother Raven?" Harry leaned in curiously.

"Just a pile of meaningless illusions." Raven stepped back, his tone as flat as if he were appraising an ordinary oil painting. "This mirror can show you the greediest wish in your head, but it can't give you so much as a single real herb."

"Mr. Capet is quite right."

An aged, gentle voice drifted out of the darkest corner of the room.

Harry jumped, whirling around. Albus Dumbledore was sitting on an old desk against the wall, though neither boy could say when he had arrived. His robe was embroidered with silver stars, and behind his half-moon spectacles his bright blue eyes glimmered softly in the dark.

"H-Headmaster?!" Harry stammered, backing away half a step and clutching the Invisibility Cloak tighter.

"Don't be alarmed, Harry." The old Headmaster smiled and slid off the desk, strolling over to stand beside them and gazing down at the great mirror. "Like thousands of others who have stood before it, you have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised. But it can give neither knowledge nor truth… It does no good to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

Dumbledore reached out and patted Harry's shoulder, soothing the flustered savior with a few words. Then his gaze shifted to the calm, black-haired boy.

"Though I must say, Mr. Capet has surprised me a little."

The old Headmaster studied Raven, his eyes full of undisguised curiosity. "Many people stand before it and go mad with longing, even knowing it is an illusion. You are one of the very few first-years I have ever seen whose gaze did not waver for a single second."

"Because the real world is worth controlling more than the illusions in a mirror, Professor Dumbledore."

Raven met those wise, profound blue eyes squarely, his tone neither servile nor arrogant. "Asking a mirror for comfort is a weakling's escape. If I had to rely on a piece of glass to hand me my future, that would be far too pathetic."

Dumbledore was taken aback for a moment.

In the depths of this old wizard's eyes, a man who had lived a century and watched countless geniuses fall, something shook, a rare thing indeed.

In Raven he saw none of the violence that greed and the lust for destruction had twisted into Tom Riddle all those years ago. Nor did he see the narrow, obsessive blood-zealotry of the ordinary Slytherin.

The boy before him was clear-headed, calm, rational to the extreme.

"A remarkable insight."

The old Headmaster fell silent a while, then fished a small tin from his wide sleeve and picked out a pale yellow sweet that smelled sweet and sharp. His expression had softened considerably as he held it out. "Try one. A Sherbet Lemon, a Honeydukes specialty. Sometimes even the most resolute seeker can afford to enjoy a trifling sweetness on the tongue."

Raven took the sweet and put it in his mouth. The tart sweetness dissolved crisp and cool across his tongue.

"This mirror will be moved tomorrow, Harry," Dumbledore said to the two boys with a smile. "I hope you will both go back to your dormitories and get a good night's sleep."

"Yes, Professor," Harry answered quietly.

They left the abandoned classroom and passed through the cold corridors on the way back to the dungeons. In Raven's mind, the System's notification chimed, steady and well-timed:

[Ding. Direct intervention at a key mainline node, "Trial of the Mirror of Erised," detected.]

[Causality Reversal Points +200.]

[Current remaining total Reversal Points: 1680.]

Raven descended the steps, his face calm, the crisp chime still in his ears.

The illusion in the mirror was only an illusion, after all. But that platinum figure standing at his side, silver pendant on her chest… in this real winter, she was indeed drawing closer to him.