𝐀𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬- 𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐏𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬

Harry- 7. Mirror Mayhem

Warnings: mentions of blood and drowning

_

"Isn't this funny?"

His dead voice snapped her to reality as she clenched her eyes in the realization that she had been staring...almost for an hour.

"Sorry?" She was quick to slip the piece of mirror inside her layers of clothes.

It had been in her routine, nowadays- patrolling out of the tent in turns, few discussions about the increasingly nebulous Horcrux hunt, then getting lost within the horizon of the small mirror and sometimes striking a small conversation with Hermione. It pained her to see Hermione so brittle after Ron had left.

"I had been thinking," he repeated, his gaze sternly fixed on her, "isn't this funny that you prefer to ogle at an ordinary shard of the mirror rather than talking to someone alive?"

He didn't sound larky and joking as he did months ago...years, really.

But what he didn't know was that this mirror wasn't ordinary.

It seemed like a trick of eyes to her, at first- the way the blasé mirror didn't stare her back like always. But thinking it was just her hallucination after the near escape from the ministry, she didn't think about it; slipped it inside her boots for future use.

But the next time she had to stand up to it again was when it actually tore off a portion off her feet.

Bloody mirror.

And she felt like a daft idiot picking up the blood sodden mirror (she had to blink for at least five minutes to make sure that her conscience wasn't fooling around her) because it just didn't show her eyes...it reflected back a pair of unsettlingly, lush green eyes along with hers.

She had to whelve the small gift by Dumbledore as her breath hitched at the sight.

She had made a decision, and she was going to stand by it.

So there was no surprise when she shot an irritated yet quick glance sideways at his amusing comment.

He had observed too, quiet from sometime, how she started diverting her path as soon as she would see him, became the first one to wake up and needless to say, the first one to leave at night, and started talking to them meagerly...like he was a stranger to her now.

He well knew that the glass she had been pouring herself over was in Dumbledore's will. Quite useless, unless you really count the fact that it could help you slaughter something in the absence of a wand.

"Fine. It's quite settled then," he slowly stood up from the drawf and dusty chair he had occupied, and snatching the locket from around his neck, dropped it onto her lap. "You are welcome to talk to me when I am dead."

She kept her head down as he left her mallowing in guilt.

The little image of Harry and Ginny bombarded somewhere in her brain as silvery tears slided down her cold cheeks.

Ginny was definitely better that her- she had mastered the bat-bogey hex, was a member of the Slughorn club, a famous quidditch player; while she- just a simple witch who never got any attention (not like she craved it). She seemed so minimal compared to her friends that people never acknowledged her existence with them turning their group into the Golden Quadlet...just a side kick to the Golden Trio.

Honestly, it hurted.

Hurted even more than piercing stabs or nose-blowing punches. And cascading the ugly, obnoxious locket strangled her breath.