Chapter 53: True Thoughts
After escaping the storage cupboard, the two of them wound their way through several deserted corridors.
Tamara did not relax for a second. Filch had the persistence of mould and twice the smell, and she had no faith whatsoever in the old caretaker's ability to give up on a hunt once he thought he had prey nearby. To avoid the risk of him doubling back, she led Harry through a side passage and then into a classroom that looked as though no lesson had been held there in years.
The room was cold, dusty, and almost entirely empty.
A few broken desks and chairs had been shoved into a corner beneath cobwebbed windows. Moonlight leaked in through the cracked panes in pale, watery strips. Dust hung in the air like silver mist.
And in the middle of the room stood a mirror.
It was enormous, reaching nearly to the ceiling, its frame made of heavy gold worked into curling patterns of strange beasts and vines. At its base were two clawed feet. Across the top ran a line of carved words:
Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
Harry stopped as if someone had seized him by the heart.
The exhaustion, the panic, the thrill of sneaking through the Restricted Section, all of it drained out of his face in an instant. He stared at the mirror with a strange, almost dazed intensity, then walked toward it slowly, as though he were being called.
Tamara remained by the door.
Her patience had already been ground thin. Tonight had brought her Filch, Potter's idiocy, soul resonance, and a system notification so disgusting she could still feel the aftertaste of it. She had no desire to indulge another one of Harry Potter's childish fascinations.
"What is it?" she asked coolly. "Do not tell me you've found yet another book you want to make scream."
But Harry did not answer at once.
He had reached the mirror now. His breath caught.
Then he turned, and for the first time since they had entered the room, Tamara saw unguarded wonder on his face.
"Tamara," Harry said, his voice shaking with astonished joy. "Come here. Quickly."
She frowned.
"If this is another of your Gryffindor discoveries, it had better be worth my time."
"It is," Harry insisted. "Come and look. My parents are here."
Tamara's step faltered almost imperceptibly.
"Your parents?"
James and Lily Potter were dead. She knew that better than anyone. The memory of green light and collapsing bodies remained as clear as ever.
Harry turned back to the glass, his eyes bright and almost feverish.
"They're right behind me," he said. "My mum's smiling. My dad too. They're both here."
Tamara's expression did not change, but a small thread of understanding had already begun to tighten in the back of her mind.
She crossed the room and came to stand beside him.
In the mirror, she saw Harry's reflection. Pale, messy haired, glasses crooked, face lit with desperate hope.
Behind him, there was nothing.
No mother.
No father.
Only the empty room.
Tamara arched a brow.
"Are you hallucinating, Potter? There is no one there except you."
Harry looked at her in disbelief.
"What are you talking about? They're right there." He pointed into the glass, voice rising. "Can't you see them? That's my mother, and that's my father. They're smiling at me."
Tamara studied him for one brief moment, then turned her gaze back to the mirror.
Understanding settled into place.
The Mirror of Erised.
A device that revealed not truth, but desire. The deepest wish in a person's heart, stripped of caution, shame, and restraint, then cast back at them as if it were already real.
Harry Potter, orphan and saviour, seeing the parents he had never known.
How fitting.
"I see," Tamara murmured.
A faint, dangerous curve touched the corner of her mouth.
This, then, was interesting.
She had long known what Harry Potter lacked. Family. Belonging. Love. The kind of sentimental hunger that made weaker people so easy to manipulate. But what of herself?
What would the mirror show her?
Power?
Immortality?
The moment Dumbledore finally knelt?
Or perhaps something even greater than any of those?
"Move," she said.
Before Harry could react, Tamara placed a hand against his shoulder and shifted him aside. Then she stepped directly before the mirror.
For one breath, she saw only herself.
A small girl in Slytherin robes. Pale. Dark eyed. Composed.
Then the surface of the mirror rippled.
Her reflection blurred.
And something else began to take shape.
Tamara held very still.
Expectation flared through her like a match dropped into oil.
There he was.
No longer trapped in this slight, underfed body, but restored. Whole. Tall. Elegant. Beautiful in that terrible way only power could make a person beautiful. Tom Riddle stood within the mirror as he ought to have stood in the world, clad in black, his bearing regal, his face cold and perfect.
In his hand was the Elder Wand.
Around him, the world burned.
He stood atop the highest tower of Hogwarts, looking down over a conquered Britain. Below him knelt ranks of Death Eaters, their heads bowed. Far in the distance, the Ministry of Magic was engulfed in flame. Smoke blackened the sky like a second night.
And at his feet lay a body.
Harry Potter.
Still. Empty eyed. Dead as roadkill.
The scar was dark.
The threat was ended.
The prophecy was nothing.
Only she remained.
Tamara's breath thinned.
A thrill so sharp it was almost pain ran through her from scalp to heel.
"Perfect," she whispered.
Yes.
That was it.
Not merely survival. Not merely immortality. Not even simple dominion.
It was completion.
The final, flawless shape of victory. A world purged of obstacles, prophecy strangled, Dumbledore broken, the saviour reduced to carrion, and the Dark Lord standing alone above all things as he was always meant to stand.
For one exquisite instant, she let herself want it without disguise.
Then the system intervened.
[Ding! High risk mental induction detected.]
[The induced content contains extreme violence, homicidal intent, anti social domination fantasies, and other values inconsistent with the Virtue System core framework.]
[Emergency purification procedure initiated.]
[Positive Energy Filter overlay activated.]
Tamara's face went blank.
"What?"
Before she could even finish the word, the vision changed.
Her restored adult form vanished.
The Elder Wand vanished.
The ruined Ministry vanished.
Harry Potter's corpse vanished.
In their place appeared a new image so grotesque Tamara almost forgot how to breathe.
She was wearing a nun's habit.
Not even a severe one. It was trimmed with delicate lace, offensively holy, the sort of thing that looked as though it had been stitched together by sentimental lunatics who believed smiling was a form of magic.
In her hands there was no wand.
There was a book.
Its cover read: Morality and the Rule of Law.
Tamara stared.
Behind Nun Tamara stretched no battlefield, no empire, no kneeling followers.
Instead there was a meadow.
A bright, sun soaked, revoltingly cheerful meadow.
Children were gathered around her, laughing and holding hands. Gryffindors and Slytherins stood side by side. Ravenclaws were smiling. Hufflepuffs beamed as though they had just discovered pudding. Even a handful of Muggle children were there for reasons the system presumably considered inclusive.
All of them were looking at her as though she were some saintly guiding light.
And Harry Potter, who by every right should have been dead at her feet, was standing in the very front, alive, healthy, holding a bouquet of flowers and gazing up at Nun Tamara with shining admiration.
Above them floated white clouds arranged in the words Love and Peace.
Tamara went utterly still.
Her expression emptied.
Then cracked.
Then twisted into something so vicious that even Harry, who could not see what she was seeing, took an instinctive step back.
"What," Tamara said very softly, "is that?"
Her voice sharpened into a snarl.
"What is that supposed to be?"
She could feel actual pressure behind her eyes, as though the mirror itself were attempting to blind her out of mercy.
She wore a nun's habit.
A nun's habit.
She was apparently a public moral instructor.
Surrounded by happy children.
Harry Potter was giving her flowers.
Her hand trembled.
"System," she said in her mind, each word sounding as though it had been ground out between knife edges. "Explain."
[Host, please remain calm.]
The system's tone was maddeningly mild.
[This is your true inner desire after the unhealthy and violent content has been filtered out.]
[To be loved. To guide others. To become a moral example for the wizarding world. To lead society toward a brighter future.]
[The Mirror of Erised does not lie.]
Tamara's mouth opened in pure disbelief.
Then rage flooded in.
"That is not my desire."
[The evidence is directly before you.]
"That is fabricated nonsense."
[The system merely helped reveal your heart in a healthier form.]
"Healthier?" she thought, horrified. "You dressed me like a sanctimonious old church ornament and turned Potter into my flower bearing admirer."
[Host's rejection may indicate emotional avoidance.]
Something in Tamara snapped.
She raised her wand.
Not on Harry.
Not on the room.
On the mirror.
One blasting curse. One perfectly controlled burst of force, and she would shatter the thing into a thousand useless fragments and never again suffer the sight of herself radiating benevolence in lace.
Harry moved before she could cast.
"Tamara, don't!"
He lunged forward and caught her arm with both hands.
The force of it jarred her aim.
Harry's face was pale with alarm.
"Please don't smash it!"
Tamara rounded on him, fury still blazing in her eyes.
"Why not?"
"Because..." Harry's voice broke. "Because it's the only place I can see them."
That stopped her.
Not because she cared.
But because, for one infuriating second, she could not blow apart the mirror in front of Harry Potter without destroying months of carefully cultivated image. The concerned older student. The cold but kind guardian. The useful Slytherin exception.
If she obliterated the mirror now, Potter would see not protection but cruelty.
Worse, he would ask questions.
And if the system interfered again, who knew what other obscenity it might project for him to see?
Harry stood between her and the mirror, stubborn despite the tremor in his hands.
"It's not false to me," he said quietly.
Tamara stared at him.
Then at the mirror.
Nun Tamara still stood there, smiling in spiritual fulfilment while a pack of children sang around her beneath a sky preaching peace.
Tamara felt a deep and unusual sensation rise in her chest.
Powerlessness.
It was intolerable.
She lowered her wand with visible restraint.
"...Fine."
The word sounded like it had been torn out of her throat.
She turned from the mirror as if turning from an enemy she could not yet kill.
"You have seen enough, Potter."
Harry hesitated, glancing once more at the image of his parents only he could see.
Tamara's voice sharpened.
"Indulging in fantasies until your brains dribble out of your ears will not bring them back."
She strode toward the door without looking behind her.
"If you intend to stand there drooling at illusions until dawn, do it without me. If not, come along."
Harry looked at the mirror one last time.
Then he followed.
"Wait," he said quickly, hurrying after her. "Tamara."
She did not answer.
The corridor outside was cold and dark. Their footsteps echoed over stone.
Neither of them noticed the figure still standing in the classroom's shadows after they left.
Albus Dumbledore stepped forward slowly from behind a stack of ruined desks, the blue of his robes almost black in the moonlight. He had witnessed more than enough.
His eyes, bright behind half moon spectacles, rested thoughtfully on the empty doorway through which the two children had gone.
"How very interesting," he murmured.
He turned his gaze to the Mirror of Erised.
He had not seen what Tamara had seen. The mirror did not offer its secrets so generously to onlookers. But he had seen her reaction, and reactions often revealed more than reflections.
Most who stood before the mirror were caught by it.
They lingered.
They drank in the vision.
They yielded.
Those with dangerous desires were often the easiest to read. Power. conquest. glory. immortality. The mirror showed them what they wanted and they embraced it like starving men offered bread.
But Tamara Riddle had not surrendered to what she saw.
She had recoiled from it.
She had grown furious, not enraptured.
And though her anger had been considerable, she had still chosen to walk away.
Dumbledore folded his hands lightly over the head of his wand.
"Temptation rejected," he said softly. "Not merely resisted, but rejected."
A faint smile touched his face.
"Whatever she saw in that glass, she found it intolerable enough to leave behind."
He stood there for another moment in silence, thinking of Severus Snape's suspicions, of the girl's talent, of her strange contradictions, of coldness paired with intervention and disdain paired with action.
Then he gave the mirror one final thoughtful look.
"Severus," he said quietly into the empty room, "I rather think your conclusion may have been somewhat premature."
.....
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