A Summer of Reflections

Chapter 6

"Sirius’s letter!" gasped Harry aloud. "It’s Sirius’s letter!"

He couldn’t believe it!

Blinking twice to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him, Harry stared through the surface of the dusty, old mirror once more, wondering if the image he’d seen a moment before had merely been a figment of his overactive imagination and nothing else. But sure enough, the purple envelope was still there, peeking out of the box on top of the largest, towering pile of cartons in the supposedly empty closet.

What luck! Harry thought. What sheer fantastic—

"What did you say?" said Hermione, following his gaze immediately, a touch of incredulity littering her steady voice. "But how—?"

Harry, however, was so elated at their discovery; her words didn’t quite register in his foggy brain. Instead, he grasped both of her hands in his and exclaimed, "Hermione, you’re brilliant!"

"Well, uh, I—"

And not noticing her puzzled look behind her half-smile at his declaration, he spun her around in a circle before she could respond any further, their reflections in the mirror a laughing blur of color amidst a gloomy, gray backdrop. When they stopped spinning, Harry had a broad grin on his face, but Hermione was eyeing him very skeptically. Despite the fact that her cheeks were glowing from their little show of exuberance, her lips were frowning slightly and there a small crease between her brows.

"What’s up?" asked Harry, finally taking note of the fact that Hermione did not seem nearly as happy as he felt at that moment. Why was there such apprehension in her eyes?

And all at once, Harry wondered if they were seeing the same thing in the mirror, or if – by some strange chance – he was only seeing what he wanted to see. Haunting words from years past suddenly came rushing back to him like a whirlwind, as clear to him now as they were on that day:

"… this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."¹

Those had been Dumbledore’s words, cautioning him, counseling him, on a night long ago…

And for the first time since Harry had seen this mirror, he was reminded of the Mirror of Erised. It had been during his first year at Hogwarts when he had happened upon it; that enchanted mirror that showed a person’s deepest desires. Its reflecting image was completely unique to whomever was standing before it. And while the mirror he stood before now was similar in shape and size, the gilt-frame comparable to that ancient one in many ways, there were no ancestors of Harry’s staring back at him from the other side. The loving images of his parents were nowhere in sight.

Still, that did not mean that this mirror was not magical. Indeed, it seemed it was and had to be – for was there not a closet full of things visible in front of Harry, when not minutes before he and Hermione had been searching an empty space? And were there not other sorts of magical mirrors? He distinctly remembered one in the room he’d stayed at the Leaky Cauldron that had talked nonsensically at him and called him "dear," similar to the one that could be found at the Burrow; that one had liked to tell him when his hair was untidy, his clothes were scruffy, and his shirt was untucked.

Yet, Harry could not help being unnerved at the idea that perhaps Hermione was not seeing the same things he was when he gazed into the old mirror, magical or not. One way or another, he had to be sure.

His left hand still clasped in hers, Harry pulled her a little closer to him and asked, "Don’t you see it? A purple envelope, just there."

He pointed with his index finger to the smudge he’d made earlier on the mirror’s dirty surface. Underneath the fingerprint, one corner of the letter was quite visible amongst the other items in the box: notably several yellowing pieces of parchment – rolled, sealed, and tied together in a bundle – stuffed next to a handsome, leather-covered book that looked very similar to the one that was locked in Harry’s trunk. He wondered if the album had old photos or mementos of the Black family, like his so distinctively had of the Potters.

Harry waited for a long moment, the silence in the room almost deafening to him, as Hermione's eyes squinted at the spot where he was pointing.

Please Merlin – let her see what I’m seeing! Harry thought, his brain darting around the implications if she was not.

A second later though, Hermione gasped in astonishment as well, to which Harry gave a grateful sigh of relief.

She did see the same things he did! That meant this mirror was not like the Mirror of Erised!

But then a thought struck Harry harder than a hammer on his head. If Hermione was only now seeing the closet full of boxes, why had she led him over to the mirror in the first place? Had she seen something else in it? Something about which she was not telling him?

Just as Harry was going to question her on this, Hermione pulled her hand away from his and gestured animatedly at the mirror before them. Mourning the loss of her warm fingers in his, Harry tried to ignore the itching feeling he had to grab her hand back and pull her closer to him. She was speaking now; he had to force himself to focus on her words.

"Oh, I’ve read about mirrors like this! You do know what this means, don’t you, Harry? For a moment I thought—But it doesn’t matter… Oh, Harry! This is remarkable!" she exclaimed excitedly.

Fascinated, though not really understanding a word she was saying, other than the "remarkable" bit (and that was something he’d worked out for himself), Harry watched Hermione’s gleeful face as she tried to piece out the puzzle before them.

"I wish I had access to those books right now, Harry! I mean, there’s a whole section in the library at Hogwarts on mirrors alone, and that’s not including the ones in the Restricted Section. And there’s no telling exactly what this mirror does without—but oh, I forgot! Mr. Black’s study! There’s bound to be books in there on the subject. Lupin told me he was an avid reader, though I can only imagine what kind of books he liked, but—"

"Hermione!" interrupted Harry, his head swimming from Hermione’s words. There was, however, one fact he had caught amidst her drawn-out babbling.

"Mr. Black had a study? Here in this house?"

"Well, of course, here in this house. He did live here, you know," she said, in that tone of voice she often used with Ron, and occasionally – like this moment – with Harry; the one that sounded like she was trying to explain something extremely complicated to a two-year old.

"Lupin told me Sirius’s father spent a lot of time in his study pouring over books, though no doubt they were all full of dark magic. I suspect that’s the reason we haven’t been allowed in there."

At these words, there was a hint of apprehension in her eyes. Harry wondered if it was occurring to Hermione, as it had him, that the mirror could very well be under some dark spell. Perhaps it was another dangerous magical item like those they had found in the house the previous year. Harry remembered vividly a set of old purple robes that had tried to strangle Ron when he’d attempted to get rid of them and a cranky grandfather clock that liked to shoot heavy metal bolts at anyone who walked by it. There could, no doubt, be a similar sinister spell on the mirror as well. Sirius’s parents, after all, had not exactly been the nicest of wizards.

"Maybe if I ask Lupin tomorrow, he’ll let us have a look around the study," continued Hermione, the note of trepidation in her voice just barely audible. "Until then—"

"Until then," Harry broke in again. "We’re on our own?"

Hermione nodded. For a second, she gazed at him uncertainly.

"It is rather late, Harry. Maybe we should—"

"I’m not tired," he stated evenly.

How could she think of sleeping now? Surely, she wasn’t that worried about the mirror being unsafe. If that were the case, Sirius would have insisted it be removed with all the other items they’d gotten rid of last year. Yet, even as he thought this, Harry was quite positive the anxious look Hermione was giving him had nothing to do with the mirror.

"You can go if you want," he added when she didn’t say anything more. "I’ll stay for a while and see if I can work this thing out."

"No," Hermione protested almost instantly. "I want to stay, too. It’s just that—"

She paused and took a step closer to him, the concern evident in her dark eyes.

"You should really get some sleep, you know?" she told him in a soft voice. "Maybe if you tried—"

"I’m not tired," he repeated again quite steadily, though now he understood her uneasiness was for him alone.

Harry knew and appreciated how much Hermione cared about him. He knew that she was only worried about his recent lack of sleep and his restless wanderings, but there was an impatience welling up inside of him that left no room for fatigue.

They were one step closer to finding Sirius’s letter. The question was – how were they going to retrieve it from a seemingly empty room? Harry didn’t think he could sleep – or even make an attempt at sleeping – unless they tried to figure something out tonight.

"How do you suppose the mirror works?" he asked Hermione, hoping against hope she would stay and help him work out the mystery. "I mean, there’s clearly nothing in that closet."

He moved away from Hermione and the mirror and strode over to the empty room.

"I suppose there could be some sort of Invisibility Charm on the closet," said Hermione, sighing. She followed quickly in his footsteps, for which Harry was very glad and gave an inward sigh of relief.

Hermione paused in the doorway; he could feel her eyes watching him walk around the room, waving his arms through the empty air.

"I don’t think that’s what it is though," Hermione continued, her voice sounding eager again to work out the challenge. "We would be able to touch all the things that the mirror revealed. You would be knocking into boxes and turning stuff over."

"Making a mess, in other words," added Harry dryly.

She nodded.

"You certainly wouldn’t be walking through everything."

Harry spun in a circle, examining the little room. The walk-in closet was not overly large, but spacious enough to hold more than a few bulky cardboard boxes. The walls were white and bare, and there was a small, hexagonal-shaped window in the middle of the wall opposite the doorway; dim light was shining through the foggy windowpane from the moon outside, casting thin rays upon the dull and unpolished hardwood floor.

Harry took a step to his right, where the towering pile of boxes should have been – but there was nothing there. The air, however, was rather chilly in this spot, and he concluded that the draft had to be coming from the window nearby.

He walked the few steps over to the other side of the room, which was considerably warmer from the opposite end. Pressing his hand to the wall, he wagered the room behind the locked door was just on the other side of his splayed-out fingers.

"What are you thinking, Harry?" questioned Hermione, who was still watching him from the open doorway. Turning to see her form silhouetted there, Harry had a sudden thought.

The mirror had shown only a quarter of the closet doorway from its angle on the other side of Buckbeak’s room. What if there were other things, perhaps along the wall where Harry was standing, that the mirror revealed? Something that they were missing?

At once, Harry had an idea.

"Hermione, do you think we could move the mirror to face the entire doorway? Maybe to point in this direction?"

He gestured toward the blank wall.

Nodding her head as though she had caught his line of thinking, Hermione marched over to the mirror – though Harry noted her eyes still looked a little apprehensive about what they were doing. He followed after her until they stood in front of the large, gilded frame once more. Bracing either end of it, their eyes locked together as Harry counted off to three.

The mirror was enormously heavy, more so than even Harry had anticipated. He’d been certain that together they’d be able to swing it just enough to show them the entire doorway of the closet, but he hadn’t predicted the great frame would be totally immovable. Wishing the mirror had wheels, Harry tried to lift his side off the ground to no avail. Frowning, he paused, watching as Hermione attempted to do the same thing. But if he couldn’t even move one end of it, there was no way that Hermione was going to be able to move her side all by herself.

"Maybe if we tried pushing it."

Harry watched as Hermione grasped the mirror’s gilt-frame again, placing her heel on the claw-footed bottom; she was putting all of her strength and weight against the mirror instead.

Thinking she had the right idea, Harry was moving around to help her with her side when it happened in the space of an instant: Hermione’s foot slipped against the bottom of the mirror and she lost her grip on the frame!

Falling backward, Harry caught her just in time, but the force of Hermione’s body slamming against his chest sent him reeling back as well. His arms fully around her, they both fell to the floor in a heap of moans and tangled limbs. Hermione was the luckier of the two, for she landed on top of Harry, who had broken her fall completely with his body. Harry, on the other hand, smacked his head against the floor, and it started pounding immediately from the pain.

"Oh, Harry. Are you all right?"

His eyes tightly closed, he could hear the anxiety in Hermione’s voice as he felt her squirming around to face him. His brain was coherent enough though to wish she wouldn’t move quite the way she was against him. Though his head was aching, the lower regions of his body were tingling with an altogether different sensation.

"Harry?"

He opened his eyes to see her leaning over him. Her hair was curtaining her concerned face, the long tendrils resting on his shoulders and tickling his neck just above the line of his sweatshirt. One of her hands was on his chest, the other brushing his hair from his forehead; her fingers were warm and soft against his skin. She was resting heavily along one whole side of his body, from his ribcage all the way down past his knees. He couldn’t have moved had he wanted to, but at the moment the last thing on Harry’s mind was pushing Hermione away from him.

Focusing on the dark eyes staring at him in distress, he managed to mutter, "I’m fine."

He felt the relieved sigh Hermione gave as she exhaled warm breath lightly against his cheek. With her face so close to his, thoughts about earlier that night – the ones he’d been so desperate to keep out of his mind – came rushing back to him all at once.

It wasn’t that he had forgotten about their kiss outside his bedroom; how could he, after all? It wasn’t exactly something that was easy to forget. Nor did Harry want to forget it. But ever since it had happened, he’d been trying to block it from his mind for reasons he wasn’t even sure he understood.

But now…

Now with Hermione poised above him, the feelings he’d had when they had kissed earlier that night flooded back to him in an intensified wave. And he found himself wanting to kiss her again.

He could see the recognition in Hermione’s eyes as her look of concern turned to something else. Electrified, Harry could feel the energy between them changing, as a subtle shifting of emotions was taking place between them, awakening his senses in an entirely new way.

Thought no longer mattered as the pull of Hermione’s dark eyes drew him in, and suddenly aware that his arms were still around her, he slid one hand through her bushy hair until it rested at the nape of her neck. Drawing her ever closer to him, he pressed his lips to hers.

A willing participant, Hermione had dipped her head lower, pushing against him with further intensity. This was no kiss like outside his bedroom! That had been much lighter, sweeter… but this! This kiss was filled with a neediness and yearning so impassioned, Harry didn’t know from where it could have possibly sprung.

The throbbing in his head totally forgotten – for by now his body was throbbing from something else entirely – Harry let free one hand from Hermione’s back and pushed them upward ever so slightly. Rolling them over in one swift motion until Hermione lay beneath him, Harry cushioned her head under the hand that had started running fingers through her silky hair.

Merlin, he didn’t know what was happening!

Multiple sensations were overwhelming Harry. Hermione’s tongue was locked with his in a sultry tango, their bodies moving to a rhythm all their own. Her fingers were dancing along the muscles of his back, sliding down to his hips and back up again to grasp tightly at his shoulders; the motion caused little shivers to race up and down his spine. Harry’s hand moved unthinkingly to the tie of Hermione’s dressing gown, letting it loose with a gentle tug. Free of the outer garment’s constraint, he slid one hand underneath her pajama top and rested it against her warm, bare skin. Likewise, Hermione’s hands had swept underneath his sweatshirt; he could feel cool air contrasting the heat of her hands as they grazed up his back in a positively sinuous motion.

Perhaps it was this more than anything else that set Harry’s mind back in motion, the blast of air freezing his brain back in place. Or maybe it was the slight scratching of Buckbeak’s claws against the floor as the slumbering animal (which Harry had completely forgotten was even there) shifted in sleep that caused him to raise his head from Hermione’s, breaking their lips swiftly apart at last. Whatever it was that caused Harry to look up, nothing could have stopped him from catching their reflections in the mirror.

Startled by the images of their bodies intertwined on the dusty floor, Harry jumped back as though he’d seen someone else entirely in the mirror: a ghost, a phantom, but surely not his own image staring so wild-eyed back at him!

Hermione’s arms fell limply to her sides from beneath his sweatshirt. She instantly rose up on her elbows, appearing confused, as he scrambled a few feet away from her.

Feeling dazed, Harry ran one hand through his messy hair, staring in disbelief at the disheveled-looking Hermione before him. Her shirt was pulled up, revealing her smooth, bare stomach; her robe was flapping open and pooling expansively around her. Her hair was a wild mass framing her face, which was red-cheeked and just as wide-eyed, staring back at him.

For a minute, she looked like she wanted to come closer to him as she sat up fully, but there must have been such a wariness in his eyes that instead she backed away from him as well. She appeared as though she wanted to say something to him, but instead she put a hand on her forehead as though she was suddenly feeling faint.

Guilt suddenly rose up in Harry from an unknown place and he turned his eyes away from hers.

What had they done?

And why?

Why…

Hanging his head in his hands, Harry was trying to sort out something to say to her. An apology… anything…

But it was Hermione’s voice that rang out clearly in the room. He hadn’t even noticed that she had shakily stood up.

"I’m sorry, Harry."

He looked up at her in surprise.

Again, she appeared as though she wanted to say something else, but instead she simply shook her head. After a moment of silence between them, a moment that stretched across them like a deep, unfathomable chasm, Hermione spoke up again. Her voice was quiet this time, her tone almost pleading.

"Please, Harry… I—please, forgive me."

She turned to go – and though he wanted to stop her, some part of Harry was holding himself back from calling out her name.

In truth, her words had wounded him – and he could not move from the pain. The guilt that had risen so swiftly inside was turning quickly to regret and that feeling was tearing through him like sharp claws upon vulnerable skin, knifing their way through his heart.

The last thing he wished was for her to leave him this way, but Harry found he could not think of anything to say at that moment that would have drawn her back to him.

Watching helplessly as Hermione crossed the room, Harry’s eyes stayed locked on the door long after she had closed it quietly behind her. And in the gaping silence that followed, it never even occurred to Harry that they’d forgotten all about Sirius’s letter.

________________________

1 – From HP & the SS (U.S. Edition), page 213.