Erised

12 year old Harry Potter stared into the dusty mirror in front of him and frowned.

He had, of course, come in to contact with The Mirror of Erised twice before.

On the first occasion, he had spent night after night staring at his own reflection, flanked by the figures of his mother and father, long since departed from his world. And then he had come up against Professor Quirrel at the end of his first years and his deepest and most desperate desire had, momentarily, become the need to stop Voldemort from getting his hands on the Philosopher's Stone.

But now...

Harry squinted past his glasses, looking into the mirror again.

This was... the strangest thing.

He had stumbled upon the mirror again quite by accident, when a rogue staircase had changed rather too quickly and left him on one of the lesser-frequented floors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Dumbledore's warnings had hung in the back of Harry's head as he'd approached the mirror, which was seemingly discarded in an old classroom with other weird and wonderful items. Still, he had thought, it wouldn't hurt just to take a little peek.

And so he had, fully expecting to see his parents. Even prepared, perhaps, to see himself defeating Voldemort in one final showdown. But not prepared at all for....

No, this had to be some kind of mistake.

Clearly, this mirror was not the same one he had looked into previously, despite its obvious similarities. It just couldn't be.

Deciding it was probably wise to get to his next class before he was late, Harry left the room behind, trying to put the strange images to the back of his mind.

∞∞∞

After a whirlwind of adventure during his first year, Harry had come back to down to earth with a bump when he found himself back at 4 Privet Drive that summer – back to being 'just Harry', the inconvenience that was merely tolerated.

He'd been thoroughly grateful when Ron and his brothers had come to liberate him of course, and enjoyed spending the rest of the holidays at The Burrow, although that too had served as a reminder of the one thing he didn't have, would never have – a family of his own.

He would never have a mother who fussed over him, or a father who glowed with pride upon hearing his misgivings. Nobody would put his face on a spoon and attach it to a clock to keep track of where he was, because the simple truth of the matter was: nobody cared all that much.

Things hadn't gotten much better when term began either. First, there was the whole incident with the flying car, swiftly followed by what Harry had now dubbed 'Snake Day' and the whole horrible misunderstanding which had left most of his fellow students believing he had set the cobra on Justin Finch-Fletchley, or worse, that he was the Heir of Slytherin.

After that day, things had taken an even weirder turn, and it had all started with a missed study session.

Sick and tired of the hushed whispers and suspicious glances in his direction, Harry had left the study hall prematurely one evening with full intentions of returning straight to the Gryffindor common room. Instead, he had somehow found himself sitting on the cold stone steps which led down to the dungeons.

He wasn't sure exactly how long he'd been sat there, and he was completely lost in his own misery until his least favourite teacher appeared in front of him.

"Mr Potter," a soft, silky voice cut the air like a knife and brought Harry to his senses. "Might I ask what you are doing?"

"Oh, uh... nothing sir. Just sitting," Harry told him, wondering why of all the teachers in the school, it had to be Snape.