Desire Behind Glass

Christmas was coming. Slowly, but it was coming.

One morning in the middle of December, colder than any morning had a right to be even in that part of Scotland, Hogwarts woke up buried in snow. It lay in thick white blankets over the roofs and the grounds, and it went on falling, and to Harry it looked like something out of one of the American Christmas films he'd never been allowed to watch, which he'd only ever glimpsed over the top of the sofa before Aunt Petunia noticed him and sent him to his cupboard. The lake had frozen into one solid slab, and the Weasley twins were at it again. They had only just been punished for bewitching a set of snowballs to follow Professor Quirrell about the grounds, bouncing off the back of his turban, and they'd gone straight on to a new line in Christmas baubles, which hung on the trees looking perfectly ordinary until somebody touched one, when they burst into a shower of live slugs.

Hardly any owls could get through the storms. The few that did were the old ones, grumpy and battered and hard as nails, and every one of them had to be nursed back to health by Hagrid before it could fly again. He was surprisingly gentle about it, cooing at them as he wrapped them in blankets by his fire.

'Look at the state o' them,' he said to anyone who'd listen. 'Poor little beggars.'

Nobody could wait for the holidays to begin. The Gryffindor common room and the Great Hall had fires roaring in them, but the corridors were as draughty as ever, and had become about as icy as Snape on one of his better days. A bitter wind rattled the old windows in every classroom.

It was in one of those freezing corridors, on the way down to Potions, that Harry was ambushed.

'Potter!'

A hand came down on his shoulder from behind and gripped it, and for a second Harry wasn't in a corridor at all. He was in the garden at Privet Drive with Dudley's hand on his shoulder, being spun round so that Dudley could shove a water bomb into his face. He didn't decide to do anything. He simply found that he had both hands locked round somebody's arm, hard, and that his heart was going like a drum.

The corridor came back. The arm belonged to Dracina Malfoy, and she was looking at him with her mouth slightly open.

Harry let go.

'Personal space, Malfoy,' he said, and his voice came out rougher than he'd meant it to. 'I'd have thought you of all people would know about that.'

Malfoy tutted at him and smoothed her sleeve where he'd gripped it. But there was something odd in her face as she did it, something that came and went too fast for Harry to put a name to, and she didn't say anything cutting, which was unlike her.

'What do you want?' said Harry.

'Nothing I want,' said Malfoy. She lifted her chin. 'My mother has asked me to extend an invitation to you. To Malfoy Manor. For the Christmas holidays.' She said it as though she were reading out somebody else's shopping list. 'I've no idea why. I expect she's taken leave of her senses.'

Harry stared at her, and then he laughed. He couldn't help it. It was so obviously a joke, or the first move in some prank, that he was almost impressed she'd managed to say it with a straight face.

The laugh did something to Malfoy. Her shoulders went back and her nose went up, and she was suddenly every inch the girl from Madam Malkin's.

'You're too stupid to see a good thing when it's handed to you, Potter,' she said. 'It's a wonder you can tie your own shoes.'

'Yeah, all right,' said Harry, still laughing, and he walked off down the corridor towards the dungeons, shaking his head, not believing a word of it, and not aware in the least of the pair of silver eyes that followed him all the way to the corner and bored into the back of his robes as he went.

Potions, down in the dungeons, had become a lesson in staying alive. Their breath hung in the air in front of them and they huddled as close to their cauldrons as they could get without setting fire to their robes.

'Just imagine,' Dracina Malfoy said one afternoon, to nobody in particular and the whole room in general, 'all those poor sad people who have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because nobody wants them at home. Unless, of course, they have friends to invite them somewhere. Not that they do.'

She leaned on the word friends in a way that sailed clean over Harry's head. Crabbe and Goyle sniggered, as Crabbe and Goyle always did when Malfoy said anything with Harry's name in it or near it.

Harry, who was measuring out powdered spine of lionfish, ignored her. As far as he could see, Malfoy had been even more unpleasant since the Quidditch match than before it, and he couldn't make head or tail of that. He'd seen her cheering when he caught the Snitch. He'd seen it with his own eyes. Then something seemed to have reset inside her, like a robot that had been switched off and on again, and the bully had come straight back.

She'd tried, the week before, to get the whole class laughing at the idea of a wide-mouthed tree frog taking over from Harry as Seeker, since the frog would at least stay on its broom. Nobody had laughed. Harry had simply said, without looking up, that he'd stayed on a broom that was doing its level best to throw him off from fifty feet up, and he'd like to see a tree frog manage that, and several people had said, yes, that had been brilliant, how had he done it? And Malfoy had gone quiet and sour and sat with her arms folded for the rest of the lesson. She hated it, Harry thought, when the attention went to anybody but her.

And yet she still went funny whenever he looked at her. He'd catch her watching him and she'd look away so fast it was a wonder she didn't crick her neck.

So now she'd glanced at Crabbe and Goyle for an audience and gone back to her favourite subject, which was Harry having no proper family to go home to. He regretted very much what he'd shouted at her that night on the Quidditch pitch. He'd known at the time that she'd use it against him, and here she was, using it.

It was true that Harry wasn't going back to Privet Drive for Christmas. He wouldn't have gone if they'd begged him, and they hadn't. Professor McGonagall had come round the week before with a list of students staying at school for the holidays, and Harry had signed it before she'd finished asking. He didn't feel sorry for himself in the least. This was going to be the best Christmas he'd ever had, and that was before Ron had come to find him with the news that he and his brothers were staying too, because Mr and Mrs Weasley were off to Romania to visit Charlie. So Harry wasn't going to be alone after all, whatever Malfoy liked to suggest.

When they came up out of the dungeons at the end of the lesson they found the corridor blocked by an enormous fir tree. Two huge feet stuck out at the bottom of it, and a loud puffing from somewhere inside the branches told them Hagrid was behind it.

'Hi, Hagrid, want a hand?' said Ron, pushing his head in among the needles.

'Nah, I'm all right, thanks, Ron.'

'Would you mind getting out of the way?' said a cold drawl behind them.

Malfoy was there with Crabbe and Goyle, and she was looking at Ron with a dislike that seemed, even for her, to have come from nowhere.

'Trying to earn a bit of pocket money, Weasley? Hoping to be gamekeeper yourself when you leave, I suppose. I expect Hagrid's hut looks like a palace next to what your family's used to.'

Ron went for her. He had the front of her robes in both fists before Harry could move, and that was the moment Snape came up the stairs. Harry had the strangest impression, in the half second before Snape spoke, that Malfoy had smiled.

'WEASLEY!'

Ron let go. Harry had been reaching to pull him off, and found himself with nothing to pull.

'He was provoked, Professor Snape,' said Hagrid, poking his great hairy face out from behind the tree. 'Malfoy was insultin' his family.'

'Be that as it may, Hagrid, fighting is against school rules,' said Snape silkily, 'and laying hands on a young lady's robes is contemptible. Five points from Gryffindor, Weasley, and think yourself lucky it's no more. Move along. All of you.'

Malfoy looked, for a moment, furious, and it seemed to Harry that she was furious with Snape, which made no sense at all. Then she clicked her fingers at Crabbe and Goyle and shoved past the tree, scattering needles everywhere, smirking as she went.

'I'll get her,' said Ron, grinding his teeth at her back. 'One of these days, I'll get her...'

'I hate them both,' said Harry. 'Malfoy and Snape.'

'She's still a girl, though, mate,' said Ron, as if he'd only just remembered it himself. 'I can't hit a girl. What was I thinking?. I'd drive Mum spare. That bloomin' Malfoy though.'

'Oh, cheer up, it's nearly Christmas,' said Hagrid. 'Tell yeh what, come an' have a look at the Great Hall with me. Looks a treat.'

So Harry and Ron, and Hermione, who had heard about the business with Malfoy from somebody on the stairs and had come to find Harry as fast as her legs would carry her, followed Hagrid and his tree into the Great Hall, where Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick were putting up the Christmas decorations.

'Ah, Hagrid, the last tree. Far corner, if you would.'

The Hall was a wonder. Garlands of holly and mistletoe hung round every wall, and no fewer than twelve enormous Christmas trees stood about the room, some glittering with tiny icicles, some blazing with hundreds of candles.

Across the Hall, Harry noticed Malfoy. She was on her own for once, with no sign of Crabbe or Goyle, standing under one of the bunches of mistletoe and looking up at it with the most peculiar expression on her face, as if it had asked her a question she couldn't answer. Harry watched her for a moment, baffled, and then decided it was none of his business and left her to it.

'How many days yeh got left till the holidays?' Hagrid asked.

'Just one,' said Hermione. She wasn't looking at Hagrid. She was looking at Malfoy, who had turned and was looking straight back at her, and the two of them were glaring at each other across the whole length of the Hall as though there were nobody else in it. 'Which reminds me. Harry, Ron, we've got half an hour before lunch. We ought to be in the library.'

'Oh, yeah, you're right,' said Ron, tearing his eyes away from Professor Flitwick, who had golden bubbles pouring out of his wand and was draping them over the branches of the new tree.

'The library?' said Hagrid, following them out. 'Day before the holidays? Bit keen, aren't yeh?'

'Oh, we're not working,' said Harry brightly. 'Ever since you mentioned Nicolas Flamel we've been trying to find out who he is.'

'You what?' Hagrid looked shocked. 'Now, listen here. I've told yeh. Drop it. What that dog's guardin' is nothin' to do with you.'

'We only want to know who Nicolas Flamel is, that's all,' said Hermione. She had given up glaring at Malfoy and had moved rather closer to Harry's side, and Harry, glancing back, saw Malfoy scowl and turn away, sticking her tongue out at him as she went, as though to make it quite clear she hadn't been looking.

'Unless you'd like to tell us and save us the bother?' Harry added, turning back to Hagrid. 'We must have been through hundreds of books, and he's not in any of them. Give us a hint. I know I've seen his name somewhere.'

'I'm not sayin' a word. Not one,' said Hagrid flatly.

'Then we'll just have to find out for ourselves,' said Ron, with the exact look he'd worn the week before while he took Harry's king apart at chess, and they left Hagrid looking thoroughly put out and hurried off to the library.

They had been hunting for Flamel's name ever since Hagrid let it slip, because how else were they going to find out what Snape was after? The trouble was knowing where to start, when they had no idea what Flamel might have done to get himself into a book. He wasn't in Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century, or Notable Magical Names of Our Time. He wasn't in Important Modern Magical Discoveries, or A Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry. And then there was the sheer size of the place: tens of thousands of books, thousands of shelves, hundreds of narrow aisles.

Hermione took out a list of titles and subjects she had decided to work through, while Ron strode off down a row and started hauling books off the shelves at random. Harry wandered over to the Restricted Section. He'd been wondering for a while whether Flamel might be in there. Unfortunately you needed a signed note from a teacher to read any of those books, and he knew he'd never get one. They were the books of powerful Dark magic that was never taught at Hogwarts, and only the older students studying advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts were allowed near them.

'What are you looking for, Potter?'

Malfoy was behind him.

'Nothing,' mumbled Harry, trying not to look suspicous.

'That's the Restricted Section.' She said it in the voice of someone showing a visitor round. 'Full of all sorts of nastiness. You need special permission to read any of it. Even Father can't get in there without asking. But if you want some help...'

Harry had opened his mouth to ask how, exactly, Malfoy thought she could help, when Hermione came round the end of the shelf at something close to a run.

'We don't need your help, Malfoy,' she said, and took Harry by the sleeve and towed him away.

He looked back once. Malfoy was still standing by the rope, on her own, and he supposed she was sulking, though it didn't quite look like sulking. It looked, if anything, like someone who'd been left out of something. Then she turned her back, and he stopped thinking about it.

Harry went out into the corridor. He, Ron and Hermione had already agreed that they couldn't ask Madam Pince where to find Flamel. She would almost certainly know, but they couldn't risk Snape hearing what they were up to. He waited to see whether the other two had turned anything up, without much hope. They'd been looking for a fortnight, after all, but only in the odd minutes between lessons, and it was no great surprise that they'd found nothing. What they needed was a good long search without Madam Pince breathing down their necks.

Five minutes later Ron and Hermione came out shaking their heads, and they went off to lunch.

'You'll keep looking while I'm away, won't you?' said Hermione. 'And send me an owl if you find anything.'

'And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is,' said Ron. 'That'd be safe enough.'

'Very safe,' said Hermione dryly. 'They're both dentists.'

Harry privately thought that a bit of distance might do Hermione good. He was very fond of her, and he was sympathetic about the troll, which had plainly rattled her more than she let on; she still had a way of appearing at his elbow the moment he turned round. But he needed some space, and some time with Ron, doing lad things. Hermione had never approved of the Farting Game, for instance, which Harry and Ron had invented one wet afternoon. You cupped your hands over your mouth and made the biggest, wettest noise you could, and the echoier the corridor, the better. Hermione thought it was disgusting, and said so, so they'd stopped playing it in front of her, to spare her feelings. It would be nice to have the corridors to themselves.

Once the holidays began, Harry and Ron were having far too good a time to think much about Flamel. They had the dormitory to themselves and the common room was nearly empty, so they could take the best armchairs by the fire. They sat there by the hour, toasting anything that would go on a fork, bread and crumpets and marshmallows, and plotting ways of getting Malfoy expelled, which were a pleasure to discuss even though none of them would ever work.

Ron also went back to teaching Harry wizard chess. It was just like Muggle chess, except that the pieces were alive, which made it feel a good deal like commanding an army. Ron's set was very old and battered. As battered as Harry felt anytime he played against Ron. Like everything else he owned, it had belonged to somebody in the family first, in this case his grandfather, but old chessmen were no handicap at all. Ron knew them so well that they did whatever he told them. Harry was playing with a set Seamus Finnigan had lent him, and the pieces didn't trust him an inch. He wasn't much of a player yet, and they kept shouting different advice at him, which didn't help.

'Don't send me there, can't you see his knight? Send him, we can spare him.'

On Christmas Eve Harry went to bed looking forward to the food and the fun of the next day, and expecting no presents at all. When he woke early the next morning, the first thing he saw was a small heap of parcels at the foot of his bed.

'Happy Christmas,' said Ron sleepily, as Harry scrambled out and pulled on his dressing-gown.

Harry had never once been given a Christmas present. He'd never even asked for one. He stood looking at the pile and didn't know what to do with himself. Somewhere in the back of his head the Dursleys' voice, quieter these days but never quite gone, told him he didn't deserve them and they must have been left at the wrong bed. He shoved the voice away.

'Happy Christmas, mate,' he said. 'Look at this. I've got presents!'

'What did you expect, turnips?' said Ron, turning to his own pile, which was a good deal bigger.

Harry picked up the top parcel. It was wrapped in thick brown paper with To Harry, from Hagrid scrawled across it, and inside was a roughly whittled wooden flute. Hagrid had obviously carved it himself. Harry blew it, and it sounded a bit like an owl. Harry loved it all the same because it came from Hagrid.

A second, very small parcel held a note.

We received your message and enclose your Christmas present. From Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia.

Sellotaped to the note was a fifty-pence piece.

Ron gave Harry an odd look, and Harry could see him wondering why anybody's relatives would send Muggle money instead of a jumper, or sweets, or anything at all.

'That's friendly,' said Harry.

Ron, though, was fascinated by the coin.

'Weird!' he said. 'Look at the shape of it! This is money?'

'Keep it,' said Harry, laughing at how pleased he was. 'So that's Hagrid and my aunt and uncle. Who sent these?'

'I think I know who that one's from,' said Ron, going rather pink and pointing at a very lumpy parcel. 'My mum. I did tell her you weren't expecting anything, honestly, but she likes to fuss and... oh, no.' He groaned. 'She's made you a Weasley jumper.'

Harry had already torn it open. Inside was a thick, hand-knitted jumper in emerald green, and a large box of home-made fudge.

'She makes us one every year,' said Ron, unwrapping his own, 'and mine's always maroon.'

'That's really kind of her,' said Harry, who had never owned a knitted jumper or tasted home-made fudge in his life.

And for just a moment, holding it, he felt a hot little stab of something at Ron, who had a mum, a real mum, who knitted him jumpers and made him fudge and didn't hit him round the head with a frying pan when he overcooked the eggs, and who was moaning about it as if it were some kind of insult. Then Harry caught the thought and held it still. Ron didn't know about the Dursleys. Ron had never been without a family, and Harry had given up trying to explain what the Dursleys were like a long time ago. Teachers hadn't understood, and neither had other children, however hard he'd tried, and he'd accepted that it was simply his lot until the day Hagrid knocked the door down. None of it was Ron's fault. Ron was his best mate. Harry tried the fudge, which was very good indeed, and the stab went away.

The next present was sweets as well, a big box of Chocolate Frogs from Hermione. That left one parcel. Harry picked it up. It was very light. He unwrapped it, and something fluid and silvery grey slid out of the paper and down to the floor, where it lay in shining folds.

Ron gasped.

'I've heard of those,' he said, in a hushed voice, dropping the box of Every-Flavour Beans Hermione had sent him. 'If that's what I think it is... they're really rare. And really valuable.'

'What is it?'

Harry picked the shining stuff up off the floor. It felt strange, like water somebody had managed to weave.

'It's an Invisibility Cloak,' said Ron, in awe. 'I'm sure it is. Try it on.'

Harry swung it round his shoulders, and Ron yelled.

'It is! Look down!'

Harry looked down. His feet had gone. He ran to the mirror, and there was his head, floating in mid-air with no body under it. He pulled the Cloak up over his head and his reflection vanished altogether.

'There's a note!' said Ron suddenly. 'A note fell out of it!'

Harry pulled the Cloak off and snatched up the letter. It was written in a narrow, loopy hand he had never seen before.

Your father left this in my keeping before he died. It's time it came back to you. Use it well. A very merry Christmas to you.

There was no signature.

Harry stared at it. Ron was stroking the Cloak.

'I'd give anything for one of these,' he said. 'Anything. What's up?'

'Nothing,' said Harry.

He felt very strange. Who had sent it? Had it really been his father's? He thought of Professor McGonagall and the old school reports of his father's matches she'd promised him. She still hadn't brought them. He supposed she'd forgotten, and he hadn't liked to remind her in case it annoyed her. He'd love to know more about his father. Anything at all.

Before he could think any further, the dormitory door banged open and Fred and George Weasley bounded in. Harry stuffed the Cloak under the bed. He wasn't ready to share it with anyone yet.

'Merry Christmas!'

'Hey, look, Harry's got a Weasley jumper too!'

Fred and George were wearing blue jumpers, one with a big yellow F on it and the other with a big yellow G.

'Harry's is better than ours,' said Fred, holding it up. 'She obviously tries harder when you're not family.'

'Why aren't you wearing yours, Ron?' George demanded. 'Come on, get it on, they're lovely and warm.'

'I hate maroon,' Ron moaned, without much conviction, as he pulled it over his head.

'You haven't got a letter on yours,' George observed. 'I suppose she reckons you don't forget your own name. But we're not daft. We know perfectly well we're called Gred and Forge.'

'What's all this racket?'

Percy Weasley had put his head round the door, looking disapproving. He had plainly got halfway through his own presents, because he had a lumpy jumper over his arm, and Fred seized it.

'P for Prefect! Get it on, Percy, come on, we're all wearing ours, even Harry's got one.'

'I... don't... want...' said Percy thickly, as the twins forced it over his head and knocked his glasses sideways.

'And you're not sitting with the Prefects today either,' said George. 'Christmas is for family.'

They frog-marched him out of the room with his arms pinned to his sides by his own jumper.

Harry had never seen a Christmas dinner like it, and he'd never dreamed one existed. A hundred fat roast turkeys. Topside of beef and rib of beef, legs and shoulders of lamb, sides of smoked salmon, mountains of roast and boiled potatoes, platters of fat chipolatas, tureens of buttered peas, silver boats of thick gravy and cranberry sauce, and stacks of wizard crackers every few feet along the table. These were nothing like the feeble Muggle crackers the Dursleys bought, with their little plastic toys and their flimsy paper hats. Harry pulled one with Fred and it didn't just bang. It went off like a cannon and swallowed them both in blue smoke, and out of it burst a rear admiral's hat and several live white mice.

He never, ever wanted to go back to the Dursleys. And there, right on cue, was the little voice, reminding him that whatever he wanted, he'd be on the train back to them in the summer, and it laughed at him. It had all three of their voices at once. It spoilt the moment, the way it always did, the way they always had. They'd never once let him be happy, and it seemed they could do it even from four hundred miles away.

Up at the High Table, Dumbledore had traded his pointed hat for a flowered bonnet and was chuckling at a joke Professor Flitwick had just read him. Flaming Christmas puddings followed the turkey. Percy nearly broke a tooth on a silver Sickle buried in his slice. Harry watched Hagrid go redder and redder as he called for more wine, until at last he kissed Professor McGonagall on the cheek, and to Harry's astonishment she giggled and blushed under her lopsided top hat.

When Harry finally left the table, with the voice louder than it had been all day, he felt more alone than he had any right to feel at the end of a meal like that. He went to find Ron, hoping for something to take his mind off it, and it worked, because Harry and the Weasleys spent the afternoon in a furious snowball fight in the grounds. Then, soaked and frozen and out of breath, they came back to the fire in the common room, where Harry lost spectacularly to Ron at chess, and suspected he'd have lost less badly if Percy hadn't tried so hard to help him.

After a tea of turkey sandwiches and crumpets and trifle and Christmas cake, everyone was too full and too sleepy to do much before bed except watch Percy chase Fred and George round Gryffindor Tower because they'd pinched his Prefect badge.

It was the best Christmas Day Harry had ever had. And yet something had been nagging at the back of his mind all day, and it was only when he climbed into bed that he was free to think about it: the Invisibility Cloak, and whoever had sent it.

Ron, full of turkey and cake, with no mysteries to keep him awake, was asleep almost as soon as he'd drawn the curtains of his four-poster. Harry leaned over the side of his bed and pulled the Cloak out from under it.

His father's. This had been his father's. It was the only thing he had ever owned that had belonged to the father he'd never known. He let it run through his hands, smoother than silk and lighter than air. Use it well, the note had said.

He had to try it. Now. He slid out of bed and wrapped it round himself, and looked down, and saw nothing of his own legs at all, only moonlight and shadow. It was the strangest feeling.

Use it well.

All at once Harry was wide awake. The whole of Hogwarts lay open to him in this Cloak. He could go anywhere. Anywhere at all, and Filch would never know.

Ron grunted in his sleep. Should Harry wake him? Something held him back. It was his father's Cloak, and this first time he wanted it to himself. He crept out of the dormitory, down the stairs, across the common room and out through the portrait hole.

'Who's there?' squawked the Fat Lady.

Harry said nothing, and hurried off down the corridor. Where should he go? He stopped, heart racing, and thought, and then it came to him. The Restricted Section. He could read for as long as he liked, for as long as it took to find Flamel. He set off, pulling the Cloak tight around him.

The library was pitch dark and very eerie. Harry lit a lamp to find his way along the rows, and the lamp seemed to drift along in mid-air on its own, and though he could feel his arm holding it, the sight of it gave him the creeps.

The Restricted Section was at the very back. He stepped carefully over the rope that cut it off from the rest of the library and held up the lamp to read the spines. They told him very little. The peeling gold letters spelled out words in languages he didn't know, and some books had no title at all. One had a dark stain down its cover that looked horribly like blood. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. He might have been imagining it, but he thought he could hear a faint whispering coming from the books, as though they knew somebody was there who shouldn't be.

He had to start somewhere. He set the lamp down on the floor and ran his eye along the bottom shelf for something promising. A large black and silver book caught his eye. He worked it out with some difficulty, because it was very heavy, balanced it on his knee, and let it fall open.

A piercing, blood-curdling shriek split the silence. The book was screaming.

Harry slammed it shut, but the shriek went on and on, one high, unbroken, ear-splitting note. He stumbled back and knocked over the lamp, which went out at once. He heard footsteps in the corridor outside, and in a panic he rammed the shrieking book back on to its shelf and ran for it. He passed Filch almost in the doorway. Filch's pale, wild eyes looked straight through him, and Harry ducked under his outstretched arm and tore off up the corridor with the book's screams still ringing in his ears.

He came to a sudden halt in front of a tall suit of armour. He'd been so busy getting away from the library that he'd paid no attention to where he was going, and perhaps because of the dark, he didn't recognise the place at all. There was a suit of armour near the kitchens, he knew, but he must be five floors above that.

'You told me to come straight to you, Professor, if anyone was out of bed at night, and somebody's been in the library. Restricted Section.'

Harry felt the blood leave his face. Wherever he was, Filch must know a short cut, because that soft, greasy voice was getting closer, and to his horror, it was Snape who answered.

'The Restricted Section? Well, they can't have got far. We'll have them.'

Harry stood frozen as Filch and Snape came round the corner ahead of him. They couldn't see him, of course, but it was a narrow corridor, and if they came much closer they'd walk straight into him. The Cloak didn't stop him being solid. He backed away as quietly as he could. A door stood ajar to his left. It was his only chance. He squeezed through it, holding his breath, trying not to move it, and to his relief he got inside without their noticing a thing. They went straight past, and Harry leaned against the wall and breathed, and listened to their footsteps die away.

That had been close. Very close.

It was a few seconds before he noticed anything about the room. It looked like a disused classroom. Desks and chairs stood in dark heaps against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket, but propped against the wall facing him was something that didn't belong there at all, something that looked as though it had simply been put there to be out of the way.

It was a magnificent mirror, as tall as the ceiling, in an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. A line of carved words ran round the top, and however he read them, they made no sense.

Now that there was no sound of Filch or Snape, his panic was fading, and Harry moved closer, wanting to look at himself and see no reflection again. He stepped in front of it.

He had to clap both hands over his mouth to stop himself screaming. He spun round. His heart was hammering far harder than it had when the book shrieked.

There was nobody behind him. But in the mirror, there were people all round him.

A man who looked like Harry, only taller and older, with untidy black hair. A woman with dark red hair and eyes exactly like Harry's own. An old man with Harry's knobbly knees, and beside him an old woman with the sort of kind, lined smile that spoke of old recipes and warm kitchens. Another old couple behind them. A small boy, and a smaller girl, holding hands and gazing up at him.

His mother. His father. Two sets of grandparents. A little brother. A sister. He could see it, all of it, as though he'd always known. They were waving at him, every one of them, beckoning him to come and meet them, and their faces were so warm, so glad to see him.

The voice in his head was silent. For the first time in Harry's life, it had nothing to say at all.And that felt so sweet

Here was everything he had ever wanted. No Dursleys. No cupboard, no fists, no frying pan. People who wanted him as much as he wanted them. He put out his hand to touch his mother's, and his fingers met cold glass.

Everything he had ever wanted, behind glass. Just out of reach.

The voice found that funny. It started to laugh, No one ever really wanted him. So Harry looked at the mirror again and tried to drown out the voice. Perhaps he could pretend. Perhaps he could imagine what they'd really have been like. A dad who taught him Quidditch in the garden. A mum who gave him cuddles and sat with him when he was sad. Little ones who looked up to their big brother. Why couldn't he have it? It wasn't fair. Everyone else got a mother and father, brothers, sisters. People who wanted them. All Harry wanted is a family, people who wanted him. And it wasn't real. The real thing was Privet Drive, and the shouting, and the cold. He never knew anything else so he never felt anything else. Now Harry felt anger bubble within him like a cauldron as he sat, stared and pretended the image was real.

He looked, and looked, and went on looking, until a distant noise somewhere in the castle brought him back to himself. He couldn't stay here. He had to find his way back to bed. He dragged his eyes away from his mother's face, whispered, 'I'll come back,' and hurried out of the room.

For the first time he could remember, Harry Potter felt so lost and he wanted his mother and father back.

'You could've woken me up,' said Ron crossly, at breakfast.

'You can come tonight. I'm going back. I want to show you the mirror.'

'I'd like to see your mum and dad,' said Ron eagerly.

'And I want to see your lot, all the Weasleys, you can show me your other brothers and everyone.'

'You can see them any old time,' said Ron. 'Just come round ours in the summer. Anyway, maybe it only shows dead people. Shame about Flamel, though. Here, have some bacon. Why aren't you eating?'

Harry couldn't eat. He'd seen his parents, and he was going to see them again tonight. He'd almost forgotten about Flamel. It didn't seem to matter much any more. Who cared what the three-headed dog was guarding? What did it matter, really, if Snape stole it?

'You all right?' said Ron. 'You look odd.'

What Harry was most afraid of was that he wouldn't be able to find the room again. With Ron under the Cloak as well, they had to go much more slowly the next night. They tried to retrace Harry's route from the library and wandered the dark passages for the best part of an hour.

'I'm freezing,' said Ron. 'Let's forget it and go back.'

'No!' Harry hissed. 'I know it's here somewhere.'

They passed the ghost of a tall witch gliding the other way, and nobody else. Just as Ron started moaning that his feet had died of cold, Harry saw the suit of armour.

'It's here. Just here. Yes!'

They pushed the door open. Harry let the Cloak fall from his shoulders and ran to the mirror. There they were. His mother and father beamed at the sight of him.

'See?' Harry whispered.

'I can't see anything.'

'Look! Look at them all. There are loads of them.'

'I can only see you.'

'Look properly. Go on, stand where I am.'

Harry stepped aside, and with Ron in front of the glass, he couldn't see his family any more. Only Ron in his paisley pyjamas. Ron, though, was staring at himself as if he'd been turned to stone.

'Look at me!' he said.

'Can you see your family all round you?'

'No. I'm on my own. But I'm different. I look older. And I'm Head Boy!'

'What?'

'I am! I've got the badge on, like Bill used to, and I'm holding the House Cup, and the Quidditch Cup. I'm Quidditch captain as well!'

Ron tore his eyes away from this splendid vision to look excitedly at Harry.

'D'you reckon this mirror shows the future?'

'How can it? My whole family's dead. Let me have another look.'

'You had it all last night. Give me a bit longer.'

'You're only holding the Quidditch Cup, what's so interesting about that? I want to see my parents.'

Harry pushed him. He hadn't meant to push so hard. Ron had a family. Ron had everything, a mum to knit him jumpers and make him fudge, and he was standing in front of a mirror admiring a badge, and Harry had nothing at all except what was in that glass. He shoved him again.

'Don't push me...'

A sudden noise in the corridor outside put an end to it. They hadn't realised how loud they were being.

'Quick!'

Ron flung the Cloak back over them both as the lamp-like eyes of Mrs Norris came round the door. Ron and Harry stood stock still, both wondering the same thing: did the Cloak work on cats? After what felt like an age, she turned and went.

'This isn't safe. She might've gone for Filch. I bet she heard us. Come on.'

And Ron pulled Harry out of the room.

The snow still hadn't melted the next morning.

'Fancy a game of chess, Harry?' said Ron.

'No.'

'Why don't we go and see Hagrid?'

'No... you go...'

'I know what you're thinking about, Harry. That mirror. Don't go back tonight.'

'Why not?'

And what did Ron know about it, anyway, with his big family and everything he could ever want? All the things Harry wanted. Ron had never had to look at them through glass.

That third night he found his way faster than before. He was walking so quickly that he knew he was making more noise than was sensible, but he met nobody. And there they were again, his mother and father smiling at him, and one of his grandfathers nodding away. Harry sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him staying here all night with his family. Nothing at all. Except...

'So. Back again, Harry?'

Harry's insides turned to ice. He looked round. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall, as comfortable as if he'd been there all evening, was Albus Dumbledore. Harry must have walked straight past him, so desperate to reach the mirror that he hadn't noticed him at all.

'I... I didn't see you, sir.'

'Strange, how short-sighted being invisible can make you,' said Dumbledore, and Harry was relieved to see that he was smiling. 'So,' he went on, slipping down off the desk to sit on the floor beside Harry, 'you've found your way, like hundreds before you, to the Mirror of Erised.'

'I didn't know it had a name, sir.'

'But I expect you've worked out by now what it does?'

'It... well... it shows me my family...'

'And it showed your friend Ron as Head Boy.'

'How did you know...?'

'I don't need a cloak to be invisible,' said Dumbledore gently. 'Now. Can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?'

Harry shook his head.

'Let me put it this way. The happiest man alive could use this mirror like any other. He'd look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?'

Harry thought about it.

'It shows us what we want,' he said slowly. 'Whatever we want.'

'Yes and no,' said Dumbledore quietly. 'It shows us nothing more and nothing less than the deepest, most desperate wish of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing round you. Ronald Weasley, who has spent his whole life in his brothers' shadow, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. But the mirror gives us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away in front of it, lost in what they saw, or been driven mad by it, never knowing whether what it showed them was real or even possible.

'Children's wishes are generally simpler things. The mirror didn't draw young Mr Weasley back the way it would draw a grown man with a lifetime of regrets. And yet it has taken a powerful hold on you, Mr Potter. Your wish burns very brightly. It is one of the simplest things a human being can need, and one that was never given to you. Love. A family.'

Dumbledore sighed.

'I am sorry, Mr Potter,' he said.

And for a moment Harry had the odd impression that something very heavy was resting on the old man's shoulders, something that had been there a long time. Then it was gone, and Dumbledore was himself again.

'The mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I am going to ask you not to go looking for it. If you ever do come across it again, you will be ready for it now. People like you and me, Harry, we go on living, burdened by destiny. We have our regrets, The things we wished we didn't do and wished weren't done to us. It is so easy for one such as yourself to look at this mirror and feel robbed by the world. To seethe at those who take for granted that which has been denied you. This mirror is a danger to people like us. It lets us dream of something better without lifting a finger to make it real, or it shows us a better world than there could ever be. And one can't live on dreams, however sweet the dreaming. Living can be joy, suffering, love, and sadness. And the pain comes with all the love that no dream will ever match. Remember that. Now. Why don't you put that admirable Cloak back on and go to bed?'

Harry stood up.

'Sir? Professor Dumbledore? Can I ask you something?'

'Plainly you can, since you've just done it,' Dumbledore smiled. 'You may ask me one thing more, however.'

'What do you see, when you look in the mirror?'

'I?' Dumbledore turned and looked into the glass, and smiled at what he saw there. 'I see myself holding a thick pair of woollen socks.'

Harry stared at him.

'One can never have too many socks,' said Dumbledore. 'Another Christmas come and gone, and not a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.'

It was only when he was back in bed that it occurred to Harry that Dumbledore might not have been entirely truthful. But then, he thought, as he pushed Scabbers off his pillow, it had been rather a personal question.