Troll: 45. Erised

Chapter 45: Erised

Violet Potter
Hogwarts, Great Britain

I woke up a few days after Christmas in the middle of the night. Groaning, I wiped the crust off the corners of my eyes. My bed curtains were drawn and I could barely see a few inches in front of me. I stuck my hand past the curtains, fumbling around my bedside dresser until my fingers closed around my wand.

“Tempus,” I muttered. Wispy light curled up like smoke until it solidified into glowing numbers. It was one in the morning.

Groaning, I plopped back onto my bed. My cozy, warm bed with luxuriously soft blankets and a pillow fluffier than a cloud. I waited, staring up at the bed canopy. 

I didn’t usually wake up in the middle of the night, a natural consequence of having a family like mine. I was used to waking up at the crack of dawn to cook breakfast so I learned to get my sleep when I could. And when I did wake like this to tinkle, it didn’t take me long to go back to sleep.

Not this time. I grunted in frustration. Lying here felt… unsatisfying. My bed was soft. The heating charms were working. The pillow was fluffed and cool. But no matter how I tossed and turned, I just couldn’t get comfortable. Something was calling me. It was a dull, insistent tug at my navel. I felt as if I’d forgotten to shut off the oven.

Magic, it had to be. Professor McGonagall was always saying we should be sensitive to unusual circumstances.

I drew the curtains aside. Gingerly, I laid my foot on the dorm floor and hissed. Unlike the enchanted canopy beds, the floor lacked any heating charms. It sent a javelin of cold straight up my spine.

Shivering, I tiptoed across the room. I slid on a pair of sweatpants. As much as I loved Hogwarts, muggles definitely made better loungewear. There were a couple stores in Hogsmeade that sold muggle outfits with a few, basic enchantments thrown in.

Now that I thought about it, I wondered what purebloods wore to bed. Parvati preferred short-shorts and a t-shirt like me, but I couldn’t imagine those stuffy Slytherins like Lyra or Daphne wearing muggle pajamas. They probably had special “sleep robes” or something, probably made from the silk of a magic silkworm that had been orphaned and starved a la Oliver Twist.

I thought I’d been quiet enough, but apparently not. I heard the curtains for Parvati’s bed draw open. “Vi? What are you doing up?”

“It’s nothing, Parv. I just gotta pee,” I said hurriedly.

The point of her wand came alight. She took one look at me and began getting out of bed herself. “Yeah, right. You’re getting dressed to go outside. Where are we going?”

“We?”

“We.”

“It’s one in the morning.”

“Which is why you shouldn’t wander the castle alone.”

“I mean–I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I just feel like I need to go somewhere,” I said truthfully. Part of me was relieved to have her. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but we weren’t supposed to be out at night, not even during the holidays. “Is this normal?”

“Do other witches wake up in the middle of the night with a compulsive need to explore a most definitely haunted castle?”

“Yeah, that.”

“No, you’re crazy,” she said with a flippant grin.

I reached into my pocket and threw the first thing I grabbed at her. “You’re such a bitch.”

“Hey, are those socks?” she yelped as the wooly ball bounced off her head. “Wait, are these those socks?”

“Yes, Parv. They’re those socks.”

It’d become a bit of a running gag between us. Blaise said I could bribe a magical, four-eyed goat with them, but it wasn’t like Hogwarts had goats, never mind the magical, four-eyed variety. Or maybe we did? No one ever really knew what Hagrid was up to in the Forbidden Forest.

Still, I’d kept them in my pocket like he asked. Blaise had a habit of being annoyingly correct. The worst part was that I usually had no idea what he was talking about until it happened. He could be clearer; he just refused to explain himself because he was a dick.

I didn’t know who started it, but we stopped referring to these wooliest of socks as Blaise’s socks. They were those socks, like He Who Must Not Be Named, but warm and comfy. I’d forgotten they were even there.

Parvati threw them back to me and I stuffed them back in the pocket. “You could just go back to sleep, you know. It’s probably nothing.”

“Or, this is the moment those mysterious socks become useful. Maybe you’re being summoned by the magic, four-eyed goat.”

“Or, hear me out, I’ll just end up in the kitchens, raiding the house elves’ snack supply.”

“Then I guess we can be foodie felons together. Besides, you’ll just wake me up again when you come back,” she said. She shrugged on her jacket, a puffy, pink number that she said she originally bought for a skiing trip last year. Padma had a powder-blue one that looked just like it. 

“Alright, fine. Don’t blame me if we get caught and get detention.”

“Meh, it’s not like we’ve got class in the morning. I’m sure they’ll just give us a warning.”

X

I led Parvati through the halls. It was her idea to squeeze beneath the invisibility cloak together. She felt nice and warm next to me, smelled nice, too.

I doubted anyone would be up this late, but sneaking around like this reminded me of those spy movies with impossible gadgets. Which, now that I thought about it, probably wasn't impossible, after all. I wondered if a good enchanter could make all the cool stuff James Bond had, but real. A muggleborn could probably make a lot of money crafting stuff like that.

Eventually, we found what had been calling to me in an abandoned classroom. It was a large, full body mirror, the kind that stood on its own and was taller than I was. It was obviously ancient, the frame carved from a wood that looked like it’d been first varnished by the Founders. Despite this, the glass was pristine and seemed to ripple like the surface of a lake.

“Woah, Vi, look,” Parvati whispered. She was pointing, not at the mirror, but at the frame around it. Tracing the glass was an inscription, “‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi…’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

I nudged her aside so I could stand in front of the mirror. “Guess we’ll find out.”

Then, I held my glowing wand to the mirror and froze.

There I was, standing in the mirror. Wool jacket, tank top, and sweats. My hair was a rat’s nest from having just got out of bed, not that my usual hairstyle was much better. My glasses were a little crooked, but that wasn’t what grabbed my attention.

Next to me were two adults. I knew instinctively that these were my parents, James and Lily Potter. Dad… He had the same, messy hair that I did, with warm, brown eyes. He wore a cocksure grin, as if laughing at a secret only he knew.

Mom was gorgeous in that way all teenage girls wish they could be. She was a redhead, and like everyone said, I had her eyes. They were deep pools of emerald, so vibrant that they almost seemed artificial. Unlike me and dad, her hair fell in a wavy cascade over her shoulders, as if she’d somehow tamed fire itself. She also wore an earring, I noticed, just a simple, silver stud that somehow accented her beauty all the more.

She looked at dad, then me, with a smile that made something tighten in my chest. It was such a casual, loving smile, so honest and wholeheartedly welcoming, that I almost felt inadequate. With a sheepish, self-conscious smile, I raised a hand to my own ears, the many studs I’d gotten just to piss off Aunt Petunia. They seemed so immature now.

The scene expanded. Mom took me, the me in the mirror, aside as the world faded into clarity, revealing a cozy dining table. There was glazed ham, and pie, and probably more casseroles than we could eat. There was a perch, with Hedwig eyeing the ham with murderous intent. Behind them was a fireplace and a Christmas tree, the kind that had been taken from a vivisected pine tree, not one of those plastic ones.

The three of them sat at the table as a fire danced merrily in the fireplace. They laughed at something dad said. He probably had the worst dad jokes. The moment a slice of ham got served on mirror-Violet’s plate, Hedwig lunged, taking her tithe like the relentless predator she was. It was perfect, everything I’d ever wanted in a holiday dinner.

No, that wasn’t right. I didn’t give a damn about a movie-perfect holiday dinner. But the family? My parents, laughing as I told them about all the shit that happened this semester? It made my heart ache with physical pain.

The scene changed. Mirror-Violet was on a broom. She flew in a perfect dive, leveling out just inches away from the bleachers. There, dad cheered her on, having as much fun as she was as she made a beeline for the snitch. Mom was shouting, though cheering or scolding, I didn’t know.

Then they were in a potions lab. Mirror-Violet put a pinch of something into the cauldron that made it spark erratically. Mom scolded her with a worried frown as dad watched proudly. I bet he’d have been the type to insist that I took more after him than her.

I was jerked back into my body by Parvati shaking my shoulder. “Vi? Violet? You there?”

“I-I’m fine,” I told her, a little dazed. I felt a trickle of liquid on my cheeks. I’d been crying. I hadn’t noticed. “H-How long have I been staring at it?”

“A few minutes. You just kinda spaced out. What happened?”

“The mirror… It showed me my parents.”

“Your parents? Where? I want to know what they looked like. Even Professor McGonagall says you’ve got your mother’s eyes, and your dad’s hair.”

“Well, you can,” I said. I took her hand, dragging her to the center with me. “There, can you see them?”

“No, I don’t. I see… I see myself, and Padma? We’re at some kind of gala, or maybe a fashion show. Padma is… having fun? Holy crap, she’s having fun. It’s like half of everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“Seriously? And what’s the other half?” I asked, amused by how surprised she seemed. Then again, Padma really wasn’t the type to enjoy those sorts of events.

“To have fun with her, obviously,” she laughed. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve tried to get her out of her shell? I mean, books are great, but sometimes, I want her to enjoy my hobbies too, you know?”

“You… You really don’t see my parents?”

“No, you don’t see Padma?”

I shook my head. Then, the scene changed again. This time, mirror-Violet got off the Hogwarts Express. She was holding the twins by their hands, dragging them to mom and dad. Behind her, Blaise followed with his patented, knowing grin, cane twirling in a complex pattern off his hand.

One by one, mirror-me introduced them to mom and dad. Padma was grilling mom about something or other. Parvati stood next to her sister, eyes rolling goodnaturedly. Dad and Blaise shook hands. Dad was doing that overprotective, manly handshake thing I saw in TV shows while Blaise pretended his hand wasn’t being crushed.

I felt my cheeks color. Would dad have been the sort to do that? Were all dads like that? Or was it just a natural reaction to Blaise specifically?

I chuckled quietly. Of course, it was Blaise. He was so shady that anyone would instantly peg him as the omen he was. In the mirror, my counterpart scolded dad, her face a tomato-red.

“I think I know what this mirror does,” I said quietly. The image in the mirror was everything I’d ever wanted. Family. Friends. Precious people who were happy to be a part of my life. “It shows what we desire most…”

“You might be right,” Parvati said. She wrapped me in a warm hug. “Your parents. Me, I guess I miss my sister. We’re still close, but… not as much as we were when we were kids.”

“You still can be. We can eat with her more, even when school starts again.”

“It’s not just that. We grew up, and apart. We learned that we liked different things. That’s fine, but… but I guess I wish she’d enjoy the things I enjoy, too.”

“Maybe in small doses? You know, exposure therapy,” I said with a fond smile. What I wanted most… My parents were part of it, but so were Parvati, Padma, and Blaise. They were still here.

“Maybe. You’ll have to help me out. Peer pressure can be a good thing. You know, where fashion is involved.”

“Of course, because I’m famous for my fashion sense.”

Just then, I heard the door open. Behind us, a genial, distinctly bemused voice said softly, “Violet, Parvati, I see you’ve found the Mirror of Erised.”

Turning, I felt blood drain from my face. Somehow, Professor Dumbledore had found us. He stood tall, looking as wise and kind and fashionably disastrous as always.

He was in an ankle-length nightgown that depicted an entire scene of Santa’s workshop. Elves assembled toy trains, carved wooden blocks, and strung together puppets. One elf was even having an argument with another elf over which snack to feed the reindeer. All this, while Rudolph smooshed his brethrens’ noses in pools of glitter. Maybe he wanted them to all light Santa’s sleigh together.

At worst, I expected Filch. The castle caretaker was loud. He stomped everywhere and his oil lamp was like a searchlight. It was like he was trying to be as noticeable as possible to stir the waters and see which unfortunate student panicked at his approach.

“Professor,” I squeaked, caught out. I definitely hadn’t expected the fucking headmaster to be the one to find us. I panicked and did the first thing that came to mind. I dug into my pocket and presented the socks. “For you!”

The headmaster looked at the socks in my hand. They were brown, and made of fluffy, soft wool that was so thick that it'd probably raise the wearer’s foot size. More importantly, they had little, felt antlers on the ankles, and crimson tips bespeckled with glitter.

Rudolph. They were Rudolph socks. I thought they were cute. Now, with horrifying clarity, I realized just who they were for.

Professor Dumbledore took them with a genial smile. “Oh, they’re wonderful, Violet. You know, I’ve always wanted a nice, warm pair of winter socks. I don’t know why everyone insists on sending me books for the holidays. Merlin knows I have quite the library here already.”

“N-No fucking way,” Parvati gasped, then broke out into hacking coughs to mask her laughter.

“Is something the matter, Parvati?”

“N-No! Nothing’s the matter, professor!”

He eyed us with that knowing smile, eye-twinkle and all. We squirmed under his gaze. Silence, and the weight of awkward expectations, settled over us like a heavy blanket. I wished I could say I withstood this interrogation with aplomb and courage, but that’d be a lie.

I squealed in seconds. So, I naturally blamed the one who was truly responsible for all the dumb shit in my life lately.

“Blaise made me do it,” I blurted out.

“Blaise Zabini made you wander the halls at night to deliver a belated Christmas present to me?” he asked.

“W-Well, kinda…?”

“Violet.” One word, yet so full of grandfatherly disappointment.

“He gave me socks! And told me that I should keep them with me to bribe…” I trailed off. Somehow, calling the headmaster a “magic, four-eyed goat” sounded inappropriate.

He eyed me knowingly. I had a feeling he knew exactly what had happened. Now that I had a half-second to think, he probably came because someone activated the mirror. Maybe it was enchanted with those wards I kept reading about.

Rather than scold us further, he eyed the mirror with a rueful smile. He reached out and ran his fingers along the edge, tracing each word. Taking out his wand, he tapped the glass.

Light flowed from the tip of his wand to the letters, filling in each groove. One by one, each letter lifted itself into the air.

“Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi,” he said softly. “Tell me, girls, what is this mirror?”

“It… It shows us what we want,” Parvati volunteered. “I saw Padma and I having fun at a party. Violet saw… her parents…”

“Indeed, it is but a pale reflection of our dearest wishes.” The glowing letters rearranged themselves. They’d been mirrored, like a reflection. “‘I show not your face, but your heart’s desire.’ Curious, is it not?”

“My heart’s desire… is to have fun with my sister?”

“I suspect your sister is the key there, Parvati. The image is but a representation, a pale reflection of what we cherish most. It is, after all, just a mirror.”

“W-What do you see, professor?” I asked tentatively. Professor Dumbledore was said to be the greatest wizard of the age. What did a man like him cherish most?

He looked down at his new pair of socks. “The happiest man in the world would peer into this mirror and see his own reflection, just as he is.”

“Because he’d have everything he cherishes in his grasp.”

“Indeed, Violet. Not long ago, I desired a warm pair of socks.”

“Right…” I muttered.

I could smell the bullshit being fed to me. Still, I supposed it wasn’t really my place to ask. He probably dreamt of world peace or something equally lofty yet high-minded.

I gave up on questioning the almighty wizard in favor of peering into the mirror some more. Mirror-Violet was now older, in crimson robes, with a graduation cap of red and gold on her head. She laughed with her friends as mom and dad beamed with pride.

The Hogwarts graduation. It seemed so far away, but it was more than just an end to schooling for me. To me, it was peace, freedom, the conclusion of all this nonsense about the Girl Who Lived. Maybe, when I became an adult, people would stop using that ridiculous title. Maybe, by then, I’d have precious people who saw me for me.

I started when I felt the professor’s hand on my shoulder. “Many have gotten lost within the mirror, Violet.”

“It’s… It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

“It is, as dreams and wishes so often are. But they shall remain forever beyond our reach if we remain standing still.”

“I… I understand, professor.”

“Then run along, you two. Do not seek this mirror; I will be sure to move it,” he said, dismissing us with a final, grandfatherly smile.

X

Albus Dumbledore

I gazed into the Mirror of Erised as the girls headed back to their dorms. Inside, I saw my ancestral home. I was younger, as was Gellart. We laughed about something or other as Ariana tried to insert herself into our conversation, as younger sisters were wont to do. Behind, Aberforth rolled his eyes at our antics.

It was a memory, a time in which I had no worries. My heart was filled with curiosity and a sense of wonder, eager to explore the boundless promised land that was magic. I had my family, my sweet sister whose life I took for granted. I had my love, whose vision and ambition captivated me so.

Yes, I’d been truly happy then, though I didn’t know it at the time.

I sighed as I summoned a curtain over the mirror. Truly, regret was the surest way to resist the mirror’s siren call. 

It was perhaps a tad heavy-handed of me, compelling young Violet to seek the mirror, but it was necessary. I wanted to know, to hear of her heart’s desire in its purest form. More than that, the mirror needed to take her measure so that it might recognize her in the future.

Hearing her wish filled me with a sense of melancholy. She knew of loss, of pain and isolation. Those precious, ephemeral treasures that I squandered in the hubris of youth, she clung to with the desperation of a drowning man. Perhaps, she would avoid making the mistakes of my youth.

I couldn’t help but feel that it was this, not her magical talent, that truly made her Tom’s rival. They grew up in remarkably similar positions, unwanted and isolated. Yet, one clung desperately to human connection while the other scorned it with every fiber of his being.

The Chosen One, the Child of Prophecy. Hers was the “power he knew not.” And certainly, for all his forbidden knowledge, Tom never did learn of love. Not from Merope, nor here in Hogwarts. 

I felt it in my bones. The time for their first encounter was fast approaching. Once again, I swore to assist her, to buy her what time I could. If that meant I had to nudge things along, then so be it.

Between this and the return of Sirius Black, the next semester promised to be an eventful one. 

Author’s Note

There’s your mirror scene. I think Harry found the mirror when he was hiding from Filch in canon. That feels a bit too much like coincidence so here, I just decided that Dumbledore arranged for the encounter, meaning it’s something that’d happen whether or not Harry learned about Flamel in the restricted section of the library.

Did Blaise foresee this exact thing? No, of course not. He was just messing around. 

Albus is always interesting to write. I need to be careful about what he says because, as the person with the most power and information, he most closely mirrors the perspective of the author. 

Animal Fact: Darwin's bark spiders have the strongest silk in nature, ten times stronger than kevlar.

Some of you probably know this because it comes up in Worm so often that it may as well be part of the fanon, so here are a few more fun facts for you: They can spread their webs across entire rivers, up to 25 meters (82 feet). However, only females produce this ultra-strong silk.

Scientists found that silk from a female bark spider is twice as strong as the silk of their male counterparts. This is because females are anywhere from ten to a hundred times heavier than males across bark spider species. They have to catch more and bigger food to support that mass.