Hogwarts Reimagined

After the near miss at New Years’, the last of the holidays flew past. Rhiannon felt as if a rug had been pulled out from under her feet, as suddenly she faced the year 2002 and less than six months until the end of the school year. The pressure in schooltime ramped up and Rhiannon grew sleepless and stressed as she settled back into her routine of schoolwork and sports. Her best subjects were still primarily Charms and Transfiguration, she did competently in Potions theory but consistently poorly in the practicals due to nerves. According to the first-term report, she was an apt History of Magic student but too ‘politically-minded’ in class, affecting her marks. Defence Against the Dark Arts was a joke of a class, she was forced to admit. Rhi had wanted to give shy Professor Quirrell a chance, but now almost half-way through the school year there was still no consistent curriculum and she learned more from her textbook than the professor.

In the new year, Oliver was released from his first-term punishment and the Gryffindor team did better in their weekly games with on-field leadership than they had in the first term. Still, Rhiannon had no opportunity to coast and she went into the game March 3^rd tense and cautious. She was thankful for the new gloves now that it was finally warm enough to discard the full-length ones.

The Quidditch game of March 3^rd was the quickest Rhiannon had ever played, lasting under half an hour. She received a scolding from Oliver for not giving the Chasers more time to accumulate points before catching the Snitch, but it was a win for Gryffindor over Hufflepuff nonetheless. Hufflepuff’s Seeker was also the captain, Leila McCloskey, and Rhiannon was both intimidated and flattered when the older girl congratulated her on the game.

Between school, sports and her problems with some of the Hogwarts residents, it was an incredibly stressed, sleepless Rhiannon who took to wandering the corridors at night. Sometimes she spent hours at night in the library, others in the Astronomy Tower staring at the constellations in search of some clue to the future. One night she wandered the second floor aimlessly, dodging Caretaker Filch and his lantern easily enough as she had become familiar with his rounds. Her slippered feet began to tread the familiar path to the library when some instinct tugged at her, diverting her attention from the library’s towering archway to a space further down the corridor. A door stood ajar, and that same instinct that drove Rhiannon away from the library nudged her inside.

It appeared to be a disused classroom. Desks and benches were stacked neatly against the walls and an upturned waste basket lay to one side, but Rhiannon’s attention was immediately captured by the room’s only other meaningful inhabitant. A great mirror that stretched to the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet and propped up by a third in shadows. In a room of dust and discarded rubbish baskets, it did not belong – in fact, it was so gaudy that it appeared it had been put here just to keep it out of the way.

Entranced, Rhiannon padded closer in her fuzzy slippers, until she could read the inscription carved in a strict, formal script across the top of the mirror. Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. The words made no sense to her and she stepped closer still, one hand outstretched as if by touching it she could glean its’ secrets. And all at once Rhiannon’s thin, disheveled form was not alone in the mirror’s impassive face. She stood before a neat room, evidently a bedroom – it had to be hers. Her glasses were unbroken and straight, her hair was neat, she looked healthy in a way the real Rhiannon had never had the chance to. A card rested half-open in Rhiannon’s mirror-self’s hands, the first line clearly visible – to our dear daughter Rhiannon. Rhi’s hands flew to her mouth and tears sprang to her eyes. Someone else stepped into the frame, and her features were blurred and incomplete but the waterfall of red hair marked her as Rhiannon’s mother, Lily. The mirror Rhiannon was enveloped in a hug by Lily and joined by a man she dimly recognised as James Potter, and gradually the background of the bedroom was filled up by others, some faceless – all that was clear was their expressions. They were there for her.

Overwhelmed, Rhiannon stepped back and turned away, and immediately the image blinked out of the mirror. It was nothing but a featureless sheet of glass once again. She sat down cross-legged on the dusty floor facing the mirror, and once again her image appeared in it. Almost the same image, all that changed was Rhi’s position, and tears ran down her face as she reached out a hand to the image as if by touching it she could make it real.

Rhiannon sat there before the mirror for hours, absorbed in the life of her mirror-self as she watched the mirror-Rhiannon go about her day even as the hours of the night slipped into early morning. Eventually she roused herself from her fixation, tearing her eyes away from the image of her family and stretching out stiffened limbs. “I’ll be back,” she whispered, glancing at them one last time before she slipped back upstairs to the Gryffindor common room.

___________________________________________________________________

The reactions of Rhiannon’s friends were mixed, to say the least. “You could’ve told me, before you went wandering the castle by yourself,” Hermione grumbled. She didn’t seem angry, only worried, but still Rhiannon felt as if she had let her friend down somehow. Ron was distrustful of the idea of such a mirror, and reiterated advice from his father about enchanted objects, and worried for Rhiannon’s health after contact with it. Faye and Parvati too were less than impressed, but they at least were more understanding than Ron about why such a thing would have had such an effect on Rhi. Only Neville had no admonishments for her, just his quiet support.

So Rhiannon stumbled through the next day on very little sleep as she had the past few months, but this time with the promise of seeing her family again once the day was done. As before she tried to slip out of the Gryffindor common room in the dead of night, clad in purple flowery pyjamas and fluffy kitten slippers, but this time when she got down the stairs from the dormitories Rhi found her friends waiting for her. None of them seemed particularly surprised to see her there, and she struggled to explain herself. Seeing that there was no chance they would convince her otherwise, they – Faye, Ron, Neville, Parvati and Hermione – instead decided someone should accompany her on her night-time wanderings. Ron was first to volunteer, and so the two of them left the Gryffindor common room and found their way downstairs to the library, where Rhiannon retraced her steps back to the room in which the mirror had stood.

Rhiannon felt a sort of reluctance to show her friend the vision she had seen in the mirror, and hung back from it. The night before had been private, here she felt as if she stood under a microscope. So instead she let Ron inspect the mirror, wishing for the first time since coming to Hogwarts that she could just be alone. Ron’s brows knit, and he studied the inscription in the mirror’s frame. Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. Just as it had been the night before, words that made no sense to Rhiannon.

“I show... not your... face, but... your hearts – desire. I show not your face but your hearts desire.” Ron muttered, his tongue sticking out one side of his mouth as he concentrated on the inscription, then reading it aloud more confidently once he’d figured it out. He shook his head and stepped back, arms crossed defensively. “That’s it, I don’t trust it. Anything that can see something that deep... it’s not safe, Rhiannon, we shouldn’t be here.”

And that was the end of that, as far as Ron was concerned. He shepherded Rhiannon back upstairs to the common room, and the next few nights when she tried again she was foiled by watchful friends. Eventually Rhi gave up, and lay awake sleepless in the dark for nights on end. She didn’t try again until mid-way through March, and this time found no-one downstairs to stop her.

Thinking herself safe, Rhiannon relaxed somewhat as she pushed aside the sleeping portrait and so was taken totally unawares, tripping directly over Neville who was curled up on the floor outside. Then followed a muffled exchange in which both tried to justify themselves, ending in muted rueful laughter as both realised their own hypocrisy. Neville had been planning to visit the mirror himself but lost his nerve and forgot the password to get back in. The impasse was solved by an agreement that they would instead visit the mirror together.

So the two eleven-year-olds crept away from the slumbering portrait that guarded Gryffindor tower and made their cautious way down-stairs, Neville’s pudgy hand firmly clasped in Rhiannon’s scarred and bony one. The two of them avoided the patrolling prefects and finally entered the dim, dusty room where the mirror was kept. Both were hesitant, tentative to move closer, and eventually they chose to stand together. Both entranced, neither seeing the same image nor anything outside the mirror they stood so close to, drawn forward as if a single step could carry them through.

“Back again, Miss Potter, Master Longbottom?”

Rhiannon was shocked from her reverie and whirled around, feeling as though her blood ran with ice. Seated behind them on one of the desks against the wall was none other than Minerva McGonagall. Rhiannon felt Neville’s trembling hand creep into hers, and a hot flush of shame flooded through her. They had been so desperate to get to the mirror they must have walked straight past the Professor. There was no use in denying it, Professor McGonagall looked as if she had been seated there for some time. “I-I, I didn’t see you, p-pr-professor. S-s-sorry, um. We’ll- we’ll go back to bed.” Rhiannon stammered, averting her gaze so that she didn’t have to see the disappointed expression she imagined McGonagall wore.

“No, you won’t. Come, sit.” Minerva replied, and she shifted herself from the desk to a position cross-legged on the floor. The professor indicated the floor before herself with her cane, and the two students sat down hurriedly, sharing a worried glance between them. The professor always read as stern, and both worried that she would be furious. “It is a sorry thing, how short-sighted desire can make us. I imagine I know something of what you both saw. It is only natural for two such as yourselves to have been drawn in by the enticements of the Mirror of Erised – that is its’ charm, and its’ danger.” the professor went on, her voice losing its’ admonishing edge. Rhiannon squeezed Neville’s hand gently and looked up, peering at Professor McGonagall from under an untidy hanging section of her hair. Were they not to be punished?

“This mirror shows neither knowledge nor truth. Some of the greatest wizards of our age and past have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen as you were, or been driven mad, uncertain of what it shows is real or even possible. It is a cruel spell that plays upon our most fundamental natures as human beings, and had I known... a disused classroom is no place to hide such a thing.

It is a failing on the part of myself and Hogwarts that either of you ever came into contact with this artifact. It will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Rhiannon, Neville, and I must ask that you do not seek it out again.”

Rhiannon’s lips trembled, and she dashed away tears with her free hand as the professor spoke. She opened her mouth to protest, and Minerva shook her head. “No, lass. I know why you sought it. And that is precisely why it is so dangerous to you, and Neville alike. I’ve seen you both struggling this past term. Come, both of you, and I’ll have Madam Pomfrey sort out a sleep potion – don’t tell me you don’t need it, you look more haggard than my N.E.W.T. students.“

There was no arguing – Minerva McGonagall was kind, but as implacable as ever, and the two let themselves be shepherded out of the room and across to the other side of the second floor to the hospital wing. Before she left them, the Professor extracted a promise from them both to talk to her should they be so adrift again, and Rhiannon fell asleep staring at charmed stars cast upon the dark ceiling of the hospital wing.