“They’re not in any alphabet I recognize. They look like randomly oriented chicken-scratches drawn by Tolkien elves.”
“Read them anyway. Iss not dangerouss.”
“The runes say, noitilov detalo partxe tnere hoc ruoy tu becafruoy ton wo hsi—” Harry stopped, feeling more prickles at his spine.
Harry knew what the rune for noitilov meant. It meant noitilov. And the next runes said to detalo the noitilov until it reached partxe, then keep the part that was both tnere and hoc. That belief felt like knowledge, like he could have answered ‘Yes’ with confident authority if somebody asked him whether the ton wo was ruoy or becafruoy. It was just that when Harry tried to relate those concepts to any other concepts, he drew a blank.
“Do you undersstand what wordss mean, boy?”
“Don't think sso.”
Professor Quirrell gave a soft exhalation, his eyes not leaving the golden frame. “I had wondered if perhaps the Words of False Comprehension might be understandable to a student of Muggle science. Apparently not.”
“Maybe—” Harry began.
Really, Ravenclaw? said Slytherin. You’re pulling this NOW?
“Maybe I could try again to understand the words if I knew more about the Mirror?” said Harry’s Ravenclaw part, which had assumed direct control.
Professor Quirrell’s lips quirked up. “As with most ancient things, scholars have written down enough lies that it is hard to be sure of anything by now. It is definite that the Mirror is at least as old as Merlin, for it is known that Merlin used it as a tool. It is also known that after his death, Merlin left written instructions that the Mirror did not need to be sealed away, despite it having certain powers that might normally cause one to worry. He wrote that, given how painstakingly the Mirror had been crafted to not destroy the world, it would be easier to destroy the world using a lump of cheese.”
This statement struck Harry as not entirely reassuring.
“Certain other facts about the Mirror are attested by famous wizards who were reasonably skeptical, and whose word has otherwise proven reliable. The Mirror’s most characteristic power is to create alternate realms of existence, though these realms are only as large in size as what can be seen within the Mirror; it is known that people and other objects can be stored therein. It is claimed by several authorities that the Mirror alone of all magics possesses a true moral orientation, though I am not sure what that could mean in practical terms. I would expect moralists to call the Cruciatus Curse by their name of ‘evil’ and the Patronus Charm by their name of ‘good’; I cannot guess what a moralist would think was any more moral than that. But it is claimed, for example, that phoenixes came into our world from a realm that was evoked inside this Mirror.”
Words like Jeepers and what his parents would have termed inappropriate language were all running through Harry’s head, none very coherently, as he stared at the golden back of the Mirror.
“I have wandered the world and encountered many stories that are not often heard,” said Professor Quirrell. “Most of them seemed to me to be lies, but a few had the ring of history rather than storytelling. Upon a wall of metal in a place where no one had come for centuries, I found written the claim that some Atlanteans foresaw their world’s end, and sought to forge a device of great power to avert the inevitable catastrophe. If that device had been completed, the story claimed, it would have become an absolutely stable existence that could withstand the channeling of unlimited magic in order to grant wishes. And also—this was said to be the vastly harder task—the device would somehow avert the inevitable catastrophes any sane person would expect to follow from that premise. The aspect I found interesting was that, according to the tale writ upon those metal plates, the rest of Atlantis ignored this project and went upon their ways. It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. I recognise certain echoes of my own experience that one does not usually see invented in mere tales.” A twist in the dry smile. “But perhaps that is merely my own preference for one tale among a hundred other legends. You perceive, however, the echo of Merlin’s statement about the Mirror’s creators shaping it to not destroy the world. Most importantly for our purposes, it may explain why the Mirror would have the previously unknown capability that Dumbledore or
Perenelle seems to have evoked, of showing any person who steps before it an illusion of a world in which one of their desires has been fulfilled. It is the sort of sensible precaution you can imagine someone building into a wish-granting creation meant to not go horribly wrong.”
“Wow,” Harry whispered, and meant it. This was Magic with a capital M, the sort of Magic that appeared in So You Want To Be A Wizard, not just a collection of random physics-violating things you could do with a wand.
Professor Quirrell gestured at the golden back. “The final property upon which most tales agree, is that whatever the unknown means of commanding the Mirror—of that Key there are no plausible accounts— the Mirror’s instructions cannot be shaped to react to individual people. So it is not possible for Perenelle to command this Mirror, ‘only give the
Stone to Perenelle’. Dumbledore cannot state, ‘Only give the Stone to one who wishes to give it to Nicholas Flamel’. There is in the Mirror a blindness such as philosophers have attributed to ideal justice; it must treat all who come before it by the same rule, whatever rule may be in force. Thus, there must be some rule for reaching the Stone’s hiding-place which anyone can invoke. And now you see why you, called the Boy-Who-Lived, shall implement whatever strategies the two of us devise. For it was said that this thing possesses a moral orientation, and it may have been given commands reflecting the same. I am well aware that on conventional terms you are said to be Good, just as I am said to be Evil.” Professor Quirrell smiled, rather darkly. “So as our first attempt—though not our last, rest assured-let us see what this Mirror makes of your attempt to retrieve the Stone in order to save the life of Hermione Granger and hundreds of your fellow students.”
“And the first version of that plan,” said Harry, who was beginning to finally understand, “the one you invented on Friday in my first week of Hogwarts, called for the Stone to be retrieved by Dumbledore’s golden child, the Boy-Who-Lived, making a selfless and noble attempt to save the life of his dying Defense teacher, Professor Quirrell.” “Of course,” said Professor Quirrell.
It was a poetical sort of plot, Harry supposed, but his appreciation of that elegance was being hampered by the surrounding circumstances.
Then another thought occurred to Harry.
“Um,” Harry said. “You think that this Mirror is a trap for you—”
“There is no way beneath the heavens that it is not meant as a trap.”
“That is to say, it’s a trap for Lord Voldemort. Only it can’t be a trap for him personally. There has to be a general rule that underlies it, some generalizable quality of Lord Voldemort that triggers it.” Without conscious awareness, Harry was frowning hard at the Mirror’s golden back.