“Why not?”
“Because I still would’ve been surrounded by idiots, and I wouldn’t have been able to kill them,” Professor Quirrell said mildly. “Killing idiots is my great joy in life, and I’ll thank you not to speak ill of it until you’ve tried it for yourself.”
“There’s something that would make you happier than that,” Harry said, his voice breaking again. “There has to be.”
“Why?” said Professor Quirrell. “Is this some scientific law I have not yet encountered? Tell me of it.”
Harry opened his mouth, but couldn’t find any words, there had to be something had to be something if he could just find the right thing to say—
“And you,” said Professor Quirrell, “have no right to speak of happiness either. Happiness is not what you hold precious above all. You decided that in the beginning, all the way back in the beginning of this year, when the Sorting Hat offered you Hufflepuff. Which I know about, because I received a similar offer and warning all those years ago, and I refused it just as you did. Beyond this there is little more to say, between Tom Riddles.” The Defense Professor turned back to the cauldron.
Before Harry could think of any way to reply, Professor Quirrell dropped in the last bellflower, and a burst of glowing bubbles boiled up from the cauldron.
“I believe we are done here,” Professor Quirrell said. “If you have further questions, they must wait.”
Harry shakily rose to his feet; even as Professor Quirrell took up the cauldron and poured out a ridiculously huge volume of effulgent liquid, more than seemed like it could fit in a dozen cauldrons, onto the purple fire that guarded the doorway.
The purple fire winked out.
“Now for the Mirror,” said Professor Quirrell, and he drew forth the Cloak of Invisibility from his robes, and floated it to drop before Harry’s shoes.
Chapter 109: Reflections
Even the greatest artifact can be defeated by a counter-artifact that is lesser, but specialized.
That was what the Defense Professor had told Harry, after dropping the True Cloak of Invisibility to pool in fuliginous folds near Harry’s shoes.
The Mirror of Perfect Reflection has power over what is reflected within it, and that power is said to be unchallengeable. But since the True Cloak of Invisibility produces a perfect absence of image, it should evade this principle rather than challenging it.
There had followed a series of questions in Parseltongue establishing that Harry currently did not intend to do anything stupid or try to run away, and further reminders that Professor Quirrell could sense him and had spells to detect the Cloak and was holding hostage hundreds of lives plus Hermione.
Then Harry was told to don the Cloak, open the door that lay beyond the quenched fires, and advance through the door into the final chamber; as Professor Quirrell stood well back, outside of that door’s sight.
The last chamber was illuminated in lights of soft gold, and the stone walls were of gentle white and faced with marble.
In the center of the room stood a simple and unornamented golden frame, and within the frame was a portal to another gold-illuminated room, beyond whose door which lay another Potions chamber; that was what Harry’s brain told him. The Mirror’s transformation of light was so perfect that conscious thought was required to deduce that the room inside the frame was only a reflection, rather than a portal. (Though it might have been easier to intuit if Harry hadn’t been invisible, just then.) The Mirror did not touch the ground; the golden frame had no feet. It didn’t look like it was hovering; it looked like it was fixed in place, more solid and more motionless than the walls themselves, like it was nailed to the reference frame of the Earth’s motion.
“Is the Mirror there? Is it moving?” came Professor Quirrell’s commanding voice from the Potions Chamber.
“Iss there,” Harry hissed back. “Not moving.”
Again tones of command rang forth. “Walk around to the back of the Mirror.”
From behind, the golden frame appeared solid, showing no reflections, and Harry said so in Parseltongue.
“Now take off your Cloak,” commanded Professor Quirrell’s voice still from within the Potions room. “Report to me at once if the Mirror moves to face you.”
Harry took off his Cloak.
The Mirror remained nailed to the reference frame of Earth’s motion; and Harry reported this.
Shortly after there came a hissing and seething, and a balefire phoenix melted through the marble wall behind Harry, the ambient light in the room taking on a red tinge as it entered. Professor Quirrell followed behind it, walking out of the new-made corridor that had been carved, his black formal shoes unharmed by the red-glowing molten surface beneath. “Well,” Professor Quirrell said, “that is one possible trap averted. And now…” Professor Quirrell exhaled. “Now we will think of possible strategies for retrieving the Stone from the Mirror, and you will try them; for I prefer not to let my own image be reflected. I give you fair warning, this is the part that may prove tedious.”
“I take it this isn’t a problem you can solve with Fiendfyre?” “Ha,” said Professor Quirrell, and gestured.
The balefire phoenix moved forward in a rush of crimson terror, the red light casting writhing shadows on the remaining marble walls. Harry jumped back before he could think.
The dreadful dark-red blaze rushed past Professor Quirrell, surged into the golden back of the Mirror, and disappeared as fast as it touched the gold.
Then the fire was gone, and the room was tinged scarlet no more.
There was no scratch upon the golden surface, no glow to mark the absorption of heat. The Mirror had simply remained in place, untouched. Chills went down Harry’s spine. If he’d been playing Dungeons and Dragons and the dungeon master had reported that result, Harry would have suspected a mental illusion, and rolled to disbelieve.
Upon the center of the golden back had appeared a sequence of runes in no known alphabet, black absences of light in small lines and curves, arranged in a level horizontal row. The thought occurred to Harry that some minor concealing illusion had been consumed in the Fiendfyre, a far lesser enchantment that had been added to prevent children from seeing those letters…
“How old is this Mirror?” Harry said in almost a whisper.
“Nobody knows, Mr. Potter.” The Defense Professor reached out his fingers toward the runes, a look of something like reverence on his face; but his fingers did not touch the gold. “But my guess is the same as yours, I think. It is said, in certain legends that may or may not be fabrications, that this Mirror reflects itself perfectly and therefore its existence is absolutely stable. So stable that the Mirror was able to survive when every other effect of Atlantis was undone, all its consequences severed from Time. You can see why I was amused when you suggested Fiendfyre.” The Defense Professor let his hand fall.
Even in the middle of everything else, Harry felt the awe, if that was true. The golden frame gleamed no brighter than before, for all the revelation; but you could imagine it going back, and back, into a civilization that had been made to never be… “What—does the Mirror do, exactly?”
“An excellent question,” said Professor Quirrell. “The answer is in the runes that are written upon the Mirror’s golden back. Read them to me.”