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The Face in the Mirror
Part 1 of 1
Synopsis:  Late one night, Harry takes a look in the mirror Sirius gave him.

The Face in the Mirror

    All was dark in Little Whinging, Surrey, on a night when even the moon had decided not to shine.  Everything was quiet, too, as even the most vocal of dogs had long since joined nearly everything else in sleep.  But in Number Four, Privet Drive, there was one who was still awake.

    He was a lean sort of person, as though he had hardly ever had enough to eat, with careless black hair that had won every battle it had had with a comb.  At present, his glasses lay on the table beside his bed, but still he stared blankly at the ceiling with bright green eyes.  His name was Harry Potter, and he had a lot on his mind.

    Six years ago, he was "just Harry," an ordinary enough young boy who was bullied by his fat cousin Dudley and shunned by everyone else.  Then, on his eleventh birthday, he had learned that he was a wizard—just like his parents—and one of the most famous people in the entire wizarding world.  He, Harry Potter, was The Boy Who Lived, the only person to ever survive an attack by the infamous He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Dark Wizard Lord Voldemort.

    So much had changed in those years.  Harry had faced Voldemort again four more times—including the physical memory of Tom Riddle, Voldemort's sixteen year-old self—and survived each of those encounters... but not everyone else had.  The first was Cedric Diggory, Hufflepuff's Seeker, who had been murdered by Voldemort after he and Harry had won the Triwizard Cup.  The second was Sirius Black, Harry's godfather.

    It was the second which hurt worse, as Harry still couldn't believe he was gone.  Cedric... he had seen his body, had carried it with him back to Hogwarts at the request of Cedric's own departing spirit.  But Sirius was just gone, with nothing of him remaining behind.  A year ago—just after Cedric's death—Harry had believed he would have given anything to get the wizarding world to understand that he, Harry Potter, had just witnessed Lord Voldemort's return.  He hadn't known, though, that the price would be so high.

    So Harry lay in bed, staring blindly at the ceiling and thinking.  He did a lot of thinking by himself these days, scarcely emerging from his room and never speaking to his aunt or uncle beyond the occasional "yes" or "no."  Dudley openly avoided Harry, still believing that his cousin had been the one responsible for his close call with a dementor, and not, instead, the one who had saved him from the dementor.

    It was the middle of June, and school wouldn't start until the first of September, so all Harry had left to do was think.  He thought about Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger—his two closest friends—and Neville, Seamus, and Ginny... and the rest of the group they'd come to call Dumbledore's Army.  But mostly he thought about Lord Voldemort, Sirius Black, and his parents.

    He'd always known his mother to be sweet and gentle and caring, and had always believed his father to be noble and kind.  Then he'd witnessed one of Professor Snape's memories in the Pensieve, and learned that James Potter had been rebellious, a troublemaker, and a little cruel to those he didn't like.  Remus Lupin and Sirius Black had tried to explain his behavior to Harry, but he'd been only more angry and confused.  He'd seen the look on his mother's face when his father was tormenting Snape, and it hadn't been one of love and certainly not one of approval.

    How he wished he'd never seen that memory!  It seemed as though everything Professor Snape had told him about his father was true, and Harry hated it.  He wished there was someway he could remove the memory, but there wasn't.

    At that moment, light began to fill the bedroom, emanating not from the window but rather from the cracks around the edges of the wardrobe door.  Harry bolted upright, his glasses perched on his nose before he'd even thought to reach for them.  It was a silvery kind of light, like the glow given off by a Patronus, so Harry crept forward and opened the door.  A wrapped bundle on the wardrobe floor was the light's source, shining brightly even through the old T-shirt covering it.  His heart in his throat, Harry carefully unwrapped the mirror Sirius had given him—a mirror he was certain he'd broken—and peered at its surface.

    Unruly black hair and round glasses stared back at him.  Disappointed, Harry began to put the curiously warm mirror away, but suddenly realized his reflection didn't have a scar!  "What?" he asked himself, confused.

    "Harry?" his reflection asked.  "Harry, is that you?"

    Harry froze.  "Dad?"

    James Potter smiled.  "Harry, how are you, son?"

    "I'm fine, Dad," he answered, though his mind demanded he scream a dozen questions at his father... if it was really him and not some hallucination.

    "I don't believe that.  I go to all this trouble to reach through the Veil and all you can say is, 'I'm fine'?"

    For a moment it seemed as though Harry's words would catch in his throat and choke him, but he finally managed to ask, "Why were you so mean to Snape?"

    James seemed taken aback, as though that was the last question he'd expected to hear from his son.  "What?"

    "You were cruel to him, Dad.  And Mum wasn't very happy with you, either... you weren't very nice to anyone and—"

    "You think your mother would have married me if I was?"

    Harry glared at the face in the mirror.  "I saw it, Dad.  I saw Snape's memories in the Pensieve and you were terrible to him!  It's no wonder he hated you, all those cruel jokes you played on him... sending him to the Shrieking Shack when Lupin was a werewolf... and Mum tried to defend him, but you—"

    "Harry, I was fifteen," James said.  "Think how much you've changed between eleven and fifteen, and how much more you still will.  Don't you think I changed after sixteen?"

    "I've changed because I've had to," Harry snapped.  "Because of Voldemort, I've changed.  What could possibly have changed you?"

    James smiled wistfully.  "Your mother.  The only way Lily would ever have me was if I'd straightened up my act.  And I did, so much that I was made Head Boy.  Haven't you ever felt that way?  That you could change the world for one person if she asked you to?"

    No, Harry thought sadly, knowing that he'd never felt that strongly for Cho Chang.  "No," he answered his father.  "I haven't."

    James' smile faded.  "No?"

    "No."

    A look of sudden realization crossed his father's face.  "Ah.  Well you see, Harry, that is how you and I are different.  I would have changed the world for one person... you've changed yourself for the whole world.  Which of us is the stronger?"  He shook his head.  "Harry, I just wish—"

    "I do too, Dad.  I wish nothing had ever changed... but it did."

    James nodded.  "My time is growing close, Harry, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to do this again.  I just wanted you to know that your mother and I love you very much."

    "I love the both of you, too," Harry sighed.  "And tell Sirius I miss him."

    "Sirius?  He's not—"  The mirror suddenly dimmed and went cold.

    "Dad?" Harry asked, but the reflection in the mirror echoed his movements.  James Potter was gone, but the echo of his last words reverberated in Harry's head.

    "Sirius?  He's not—"

    "He's not what?" he asked himself aloud, then decided to try various ways to end that confusing, unfinished sentence.  "'He's not dead, is he?'"  There, that was probably the most logical ending to the sentence.

    And yet...

    "'Sirius?'" Harry tried again, trying to match his father's tone.  "'He's not... He's not here?!'"  Could it be?  Harry's parents had passed beyond but Sirius wasn't there?  But Nearly Headless Nick had said that Sirius would not be one of those who would choose to stay behind... unless he wasn't really gone...

    He fell asleep that night, troubled.

    When he awakened the next morning to the light of the sun, streaming through the bedroom window, his first thought was of the mirror and the conversation he'd had with his father's spirit.

    Or had he?  Quickly, he glanced around, looking for some sign that he hadn't been hallucinating or dreaming.  He tossed back the bedcovers, searched under the pillow, and scoured the desk, but the mirror was nowhere to be found.

    Of course, he admonished himself.  It's been in the wardrobe all this time.  He crossed the room, opened the wardrobe door, and reached down to pick up the bundle in the bottom.

    His fingers met only the wardrobe's floor.  He stood quickly, turning around to spot the mirror on top of the dresser, exactly where he'd placed it after his father had left.  Clutching the mirror, he sat down on the bed, thinking again on his father's final words.

    "Sirius?  He's not—"

    "Sirius..." Harry sighed, and looked down at the mirror his godfather had given him.

    A skinny boy of nearly sixteen looked back at him, dark hair tousled by sleep, green eyes bright behind his glasses.  And his scar was there, too: the famous lightning-shaped scar given him by Lord Voldemort the night he'd murdered Harry's parents.  The scar, Dumbledore had explained, was what marked him Voldemort's equal, and that was what made him different from everyone else.

    I don't want to be his equal, Harry thought in despair.  I didn't want to be The Boy Who Lived.

    The scar now served as a constant reminder of what Harry had to do.  A Prophecy had been made about himself and Voldemort, a Prophecy which stated that one of them could not live while the other survived.  Harry had to either kill Voldemort or be killed, and that was the only way of things.  His scar was the connection between himself and the most evil wizard ever to walk the planet, and Harry was the only one who could stop him.

    His father was right: Harry was one person who had been changed for the whole world... but would it be enough?

    "I'm not a murderer," he muttered to himself, looking once more at his reflection.  "I can't..." But the face in the mirror had no comfort to offer, no reply to make.  He merely stared back.

    The sun continued to shine on Number Four, Privet Drive, oblivious to the darkness surrounding one who was inside, one who still had a great deal more changing to do.

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