Chapter 88: Chapter - 88 : A Cloak of Secrets
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"They're just in the mirror," I said slowly, working out that whatever the mirror showed was specific to the person in front of it. It wasn't really there. When I'd stepped in front of it, it hadn't known which one of us it should change for, so it had just showed us. "Harry, what else?" I asked again, now incredibly intrigued by the item. A magic mirror, a staple of Muggle fairy tales, and here was a real one, right in front of me!
"She's got eyes like ours, same shape, same color," he muttered, stepping closer. "And she's… she's crying." He frowned. "But she's smiling, too. I think… I think they're happy tears. There's a man next to her, he just put his arm around her. He's tall, and he's got glasses. His hair's dark and it's really messy… like mine."
Harry had been stepping closer the whole time he was talking, and now his nose was nearly pressed to the glass. I don't know if he'd realized it or not, he seemed so entranced by the people in the mirror. So was I. Hair and eyes like us, a man who sounded like an older Harry, and a woman who was like an older version of me.
"Mum?" Harry whispered to the mirror, echoing the feeling, the idea, the hope that was welling up in my chest. "Dad?"
Whatever happened in the reflection then, I didn't know, but Harry pressed his hands to the glass, staring hungrily, his eyes darting here and there. His expression was torn between sadness, joy, and longing, and I knew then that whatever the people in the mirror had done had confirmed it for him. It was our parents he was seeing there.
"Move!" I said, suddenly desperate. "Move, let me, let me see!"
I darted to the mirror, shoving Harry aside roughly, and clutched the frame so tightly that the carvings I'd been so interested in before were cutting into my palms, but I couldn't bring myself to care, because now I could see them too.
The woman was just like Harry had described. She looked like I imagined I would when I was older, and there next to her was our father. They both smiled at me, my father raising his hand in a wave. Slowly, I pulled one hand free and waved back cautiously. His mouth dropped open in a silent but full-hearted laugh and mum's shoulders shook as she chuckled too, one hand dropping to rest on his hand around her waist.
My parent stepped up beside me, placing their hands on my shoulders. I shivered, trying to imagine the warmth of a hand really resting on me, but I couldn't. From behind my dad Harry stepped, keeping slightly behind him. The expression on his face was a normal smile, one he might give me now.
I stared at the image desperately, trying to figure out what I was seeing. I could see my parents, myself, and Harry, obviously. I knew that. But what exactly was that image to me? What did this mirror show? Was it designed to make you happy? To torture you with things you knew you could never have? It could go either way, really.
I remembered the near-desperation and the half-strangled joy on Harry's face as he stared at the mirror and it clicked suddenly. Possible or not, this mirror showed us what we wanted. What we really wanted, deep inside us, beneath trivial things like good grades or an easy class, beyond pipe dreams like being a millionaire or an astronaut. It showed the truth of our desires.
And that was when, with a horrible sort of clarity, the truth of what I was seeing in the mirror washed over me. My desire was two-fold. Harry saw only family, but I saw my family and something else. My parents stood beside me, their hands on my shoulders, their focus on me, while Harry stood almost in the background.
I saw a scene in which I was the important one in our family, and Harry had taken my place as the 'extraneous Potter.'
I was horrified, wrenching myself away from the mirror and turning from it. Heart pounding, I burst out of the classroom and fled down a floor and into the safety of a passageway Fred and George had told me about. I collapsed against the wall and slid down onto the ground, clutching my upper arms and panting wildly.
Was that me? Was that really what I wanted? Was I truly so jealous, so bitter, that Harry's fame had turned me into a twisted creature that would desire pride of place in her family so much that a mirror like that would show it? The truth of it slapped me in the face with my own selfishness, and I was horrified.
I was not a good person. I wasn't, and I could be worse, I could certainly be worse, but I wasn't good. I was jealous and angry and bitter and sad and selfish and terrible things like that. I couldn't look through rose-colored glasses and tell myself it was just house prejudice or that it was just an outside perspective. No, that mirror showed only myself. I couldn't blame anyone but myself for what it showed.
I slowly came to realize that I was curled into a ball, sobbing quietly and clutching myself. The cold stone had soaked into my bones and settled deep inside me. Or maybe that coldness had always been there with all those other bad things and I was only just now realizing it was there, had always been there. The idea made me cry harder and I clutched desperately at my mouth, trying to muffle the sobs.
They only came harder, like I subconsciously wanted to get caught, like I wanted someone to find me like this, find me curled up in pain and offer their comfort. I wanted someone to wrap me up in their arms like my dad had wrapped his arm around my mum; supportive, caring, soft.
But I was also deeply ashamed to be like this, to be reduced to this state by something I should have known about myself. In fact, I think I had already known part of it. I had known that I was jealous of the way Harry was treated compared to the way I was treated. I was angry that he got that and I didn't. I'd already known, but I hadn't understood.
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