Chapters 81-90

Your Heart’s Desire

The door opened with a hesitant creak, as if it knew that it shouldn’t open onto the seventh floor or for two First Year girls. The attic beyond it had obviously not been used in years. An inch-thick layer of dust covered the floor. The pane of one of the high dormer-windows was cracked, as if a small object had hit it in full flight. The room appeared to be empty save for a high, rectangular board covered with grimy sheets at the left side of the room, where a wall of brick-stones disappeared between huge rafters.

‘This is going to help me?’ Alina frowned.

Prue shrugged. ‘It should be something that will help you find out who your father was. Shall we go in?’

‘Sure.’ Alina took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The dust under her feet whirled upwards in a thick cloud. Prue sneezed and rubbed her nose, then her eyes. She sneezed again. ‘It’s the dust,’ she explained, dashing tears from suddenly red-rimmed eyes.

The door closed behind them with a low groan.

‘All right,’ Alina said. ‘Now what?’

‘I—ACHOO!—I think we should try that thing in the corner.’

Alina nodded and carefully inched towards the blanketed board. When she touched the edge of the fabric a cloud of dust-motes swirled up, glittering in the rays of sunshine that filtered through the windows at the end of the room. Clenching her teeth, she tugged at the sheet. With a whooshing sound it slid down to the ground, raising up a cyclone of dust that left Prue wheezing and sniffling.

The object it revealed was a splendid mirror that stood higher than the door. Its frame gleamed with the rich colour of gold and its feet reminded Alina of dragons, huge paws with sharp claws. Above the mirror glass a dark inscription was carved into the wood.

Alina recognised the inscription at once. Hermione had advised her to read ‘Hogwarts: A History (Revised Edition)’. Alina had taken the advice to heart, and although quite fat, the book hadn’t been exactly boring and had certainly revealed many useful details about the school (for example: the entrance to the kitchens, very useful knowledge if you needed a midnight snack once in a while).

And the story of the ‘Mirror of Erised’. For a long moment Alina just stared at the words that made up the inscription. Somehow she felt almost as if she was in a museum.

‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.’

‘What is that?’ asked Prue.

‘It’s a magical mirror. It shows you your heart’s desire.’

‘Then it will show you who your father is, won’t it?’

‘That depends,’ Alina replied. ‘If that is really my heart’s desire, then yes.’

‘But wouldn’t you know that?’

‘You should certainly think so, huh? Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out.’

Alina closed her eyes, took a deep breath and a step back. Another deep breath. She opened her eyes.

The mirror showed her a long, dark room. Alina frowned. Not exactly a room. Rather a hallway. Or a gallery. There were pictures on the walls, paintings, portraits, in golden and wooden frames. She narrowed her eyes and blinked. The people in the portraits didn’t move. They stood frozen. Like Muggles!

The mirror seemed to focus on a portrait on the left-hand side. It showed a young man. He was pale, as pale as Alina was, with the same almond shaped eyes and short, non-descript brown hair. His expression was worried and nervous, his chin weak. His lower lip looked as if it was trembling like the nose of a nervous rabbit. He was dressed in black teacher’s robes.

There was writing on the frame of his portrait, but when Alina stepped closer to the mirror, the painting seemed to withdraw.

‘Do you see anything?’ mumbled Prue. By now her eyes had swollen down to narrow slits.

‘I think so…I’m not quite sure.’ Alina cast a dubious glance at the image in the mirror. She tried to memorize the painting. The frame. The nervous young man. The carpet, the outline of a staircase in the distance. ‘It’s certainly not what I expected. It’s not an answer. More like a clue. I think I’m looking at a gallery that contains a painting of my father.’

Prue sniffled. ‘Does this mean your heart’s desire is that you want to find out who your father was? Not the answer, but the finding-out part?’

Alina frowned. ‘Either that, or the mirror is broken.‘ Glancing at her suffering friend, she sighed and resolutely turned her back on the mirror. ‘Thank you, Prue. And I think we’d better get you to Madam Pomfrey now.’

oooOooo

Someone pounded on the portrait frame in the dungeons corridor. Hermione hurried down and flung open the frame.

‘Where is he?’ Harry asked. Writhing and curling ticker tape draped around his neck, he was already sprinting past Hermione and up the stairs.

‘Hello, Harry.
‘Nice to see you, too.
‘…my husband’s in the library.’

What had happened now? A sense of foreboding slithered down her back with an icy shiver. Hermione closed the portrait again and dashed back to the library. She was just in time to hear Severus’ greeting.

‘Potter. What an unpleasant surprise. Whoever let you in here?’

Hermione pushed through that door. ‘That would have been I.’

‘If you think I’m an unpleasant surprise, you haven’t seen this yet,’ Harry announced and grabbed the ticker tape that was making a valiant attempt at strangling him at the moment. For a second he looked at the slithering strips with disgust, then he threw it down on the floor and pointed his wand at it. ‘Transcribo!’

The tape coiled up and changed form. Suddenly a parchment with the next day’s edition of the ‘Alo’—short for ‘Alohomag’ (‘the juiciest gossip of the wizarding world’)—was floating in the air.

The headline read: ‘Ex-Death Eater Tortures Illegitimate Daughter’.