An old witch hobbled unevenly from the narrow, forbidding gloom of Knockturn Alley, flickering lamplight not penetrating the shadows beneath the drooping brim of her pointed hat. The ordinarily-cheerful width of Diagon Alley seemed nearly deserted this long after the supper hour on a rainy night in late August. She made her way from one lamp post to the next, appearing briefly in each pool of yellow light before becoming little more than a moving shadow in the darkened spaces between posts.

Gringotts had closed hours ago, and one by one, so had the other businesses lining the sides of Diagon Alley. Most still boasted darkened window displays, but several stores had closed out their inventories in the past few weeks and boarded up their glass against minor vandalism, since the protective wards would fail soon after the former owners had taken their leave. Rumor had it that nearly half the stores would be closed by the end of the month, now that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had officially returned.

The witch paused momentarily, shifting her gnarled cane from one hand to the other as she gazed in disbelief at the garish displays fronting Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Her wrinkled mouth twisted unpleasantly as she read the advertisement for "U-No-Poo". Quite honestly, this was one store she wouldn't be sorry to see close! Unfortunately, the popular joke shop seemed to be doing more business these days than half of Diagon Alley's remaining merchants combined.

Sighing, she shifted the burlap sack slung over her bent shoulders and hobbled onwards toward the courtyard of the Leaky Cauldron. She failed to notice the telltale clink of an object falling to the wet cobbles from a hole in her long skirt's pocket. The disc-shaped object landed on a narrow edge and bounced from stone to stone, finally stopped by bumping into the doorstep of the joke shop. It wavered on edge before falling flat, the spell-protected mirror unbroken as its upside-down reflection of the Daily Prophet's shingle became dotted with raindrops.

-:- -:- -:-

As Harry Potter and the youngest Weasleys eagerly approached Fred and George's eye-popping business, Harry stepped aside at the last second to allow a frazzled witch with three tween-age children to exit.

"No, no, and NO!" the mother declared adamantly, her lips pursed in disapproval. "You absolutely are NOT going to get U-No-Poo. Not even for your birthdays, not even for Christmas. And if you keep begging, I'll have to ground all of you until school starts."

The blond boy pouted and began dragging his feet across the cobbles, muttering under his breath until one of his sisters whispered just loudly enough for Harry to overhear, "Don't worry, Kenny – we'll Owl Order from Hogwarts!"

Harry had to grin at the way the boy's face lit up, then fell into a more sober expression so his mother wouldn't suspect anything.

"I daresay Madam Pomfrey is not going to be too thrilled with a ward full of non-pooing patients," Hermione murmured as she passed Harry to follow Ron and Ginny into Wheezes.

Harry grinned at the back of Hermione's bushy brown hair, but as he stepped forward, his left toe tapped something lying on the cobbles by the stone steps. Looking down, he spotted a small round mirror, about three inches in diameter. Thinking the frazzled mother might have dropped it, he ran after the family to return it to her, but she shook her head at the mirror, guiding her children toward the courtyard beyond the magical barrier at the end of Diagon Alley.

Harry stood uncertainly in the middle of the Alley, turning the mirror over and over in his hands. Finally, he shrugged and tucked it in his trousers pocket. It might come in handy during Sixth Year. Sometimes, it was hard to get a glimpse of his reflection in the Gryffindor boys' bathroom mirror in the mornings. Seamus and several other of the guys kept blocking the mirror as they all tried to deal with their pimples – some with magical soap, some with potions, and others by employing the tried-and-true squeezing technique. After one badly-aimed Charm had removed a howling Fourth Year's earlobe, however, nobody seemed keen on using magic to zap their blemishes. Madam Pomfrey was not even a last resort; only desperate girls turned to her sympathetic clucking for assistance with their complexions.

Making sure that the mirror was safely cushioned in his pocket, Harry finally entered Wheezes, and he didn't even take a close look at his new find until a couple of weeks later in Gryffindor Tower.

-:- -:- -:-

All through Transfiguration, Harry's mind had kept wandering, and his constant inattention to his class practical work had earned him more than one sharp reprimand from Professor McGonagall.

He couldn't get his mind off that unnerving moment before breakfast when he'd looked into the small mirror and seen … eyes … emerald eyes … which he would have sworn were not his own…

Harry decided to skip lunch in the Great Hall right after Transfiguration. He'd be off to Herbology right after the lunch break, but he just had to have some alone-time with that mirror. It was probably just his imagination – or maybe the early morning light glaring off the Black Lake through the dormitory windows. Some logical explanation for the mirror's seeming to show someone else's reflected eyes. But he had to be certain.

Telling Ron and Hermione to go on to lunch, he rushed up the marble staircase, listening to the dull sound of his pounding trainers echoing off the portraited walls.

The Sixth Year Boys' dorm lay quiet and deserted as clear afternoon sunlight streamed warmly through the leaded panes. Harry pulled out the round mirror before sitting on his bed, and he studied the thick wooden border surrounding the glass. Various faint designs had been burnt into the wood on the surface facing him. They didn't look like anything from Hermione's Ancient runes textbook, but he couldn't tell what the figures were meant to symbolize. The reverse side was plain wood, although the outer rim's edge had various scuffs and scrapes, probably acquired from many years of regular use.

Having refrained from actually peering into the reflective area, Harry finally took a deep breath and turned the mirror over again. His own face appeared as the angle changed, and he stared at his reflection for several minutes. His own dark eyebrows with the pale red lightning-bolt scar above, his own emerald eyes framing the narrow top of his nose behind the round spectacles, his own unsmiling lips between lean cheeks which had long ago lost their childish pudge… Definitely, the mirror reflected Harry James Potter and none other. Harry sighed, staring into his reflected eyes. It must have been a trick of the light earlier in the morning. He'd created a mystery out of nothing.

His vision rippled from having stared unblinkingly into the mirror for so long. Quickly, he blinked to clear his focus, and suddenly – he was staring into the eyes of a stranger…

The mirror slipped from his startled grasp and he frantically tried to catch it before it hit the dorm floor. Once, twice, it bounced off his fingertips, but the third attempt recaptured his trinket and he whipped the mirror into position, only to see his own eyes staring widely back.

Momentarily disappointed, Harry continued to stare and stare, never blinking, until finally his drying corneas blurred and he was forced to blink…

And again – There were the eyes of a stranger! Emerald eyes to be sure, but not Harry Potter's, even though the stranger's eyes were surrounded by the familiar features of Harry's own astonished face.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

One of the strange eyes winked at him –

And then his own eyes reappeared.

Although he tried repeatedly to duplicate the process which had twice produced the stranger's eyes, he could only see his own determined eyes reflected in the small round mirror.

Neville rushed in for his Herbology textbook and gloves at the end of lunch, and Harry trailed after him on their way to the greenhouses, his face scrunched into a frown of serious, concentrated thought.

-:- -:- -:-

As a N.E.W.T. student, Harry had precious little free time beyond his studies, detentions with Snape, and Hermione dragging him and Ron off to the library every moment between. After finishing Slughorn's written assignment, Harry excused himself to the other two at the Gryffindor Common Room study table and made for the prefects' bathroom, which wouldn't be off limits until curfew in forty-five minutes. He figured if Ron decided to look for him, the redhead would automatically head for the seventh floor boys' bathroom instead, since the dorm bathrooms were always crowded at night with First through Fourth Years taking showers.

Given the lateness of the hour, the prefects' bathroom was empty, as Harry had anticipated. Since he didn't plan to turn on any water taps that might attract Moaning Myrtle's attention, Harry hoped to remain in quiet solitude while he tried to figure out how to make the mirror work again.

Settling down on an aged oak bench, he stared into the reflections of his own eyes until the image blurred and rippled. He blinked – slowly, this time – and there! The stranger's eyes looked back at him, crinkling slightly at the outer corners, as if the stranger might be smiling with an unseen mouth.

"Who are you?" Harry asked quietly, not wanting his voice to bounce off the bathroom walls. Then, deciding he might as well make a proper job of introductions, he added, "My name is Harry. Harry Potter."

The emerald eyes crinkled even more, and Harry smiled back. Part of his mind buzzed in warning, remembering his Second Year experience with Tom Riddle's diary, but he kept that memory at a mental arm's length as he gazed into the green depths of the stranger's eyes.

"Can you speak?" he asked.

The hint of a finer eyebrow than his own seemed to rise in a brief quirk somewhere behind his reflection. It made him think that the stranger's entire face lay waiting behind his own, if he could just figure out how to access the full image. Perhaps if he did, he might be able to hear the stranger speak. There was no telling whose mirror this was, but it made Harry wonder: could a wizard actually … lose … his reflection to an enchanted mirror? Would the stranger to whom the emerald eyes belonged ever be able to see his reflection in any other mirrors, if he'd lost his reflection to this one? Could it even be a vampire's reflection, trapped forever in the last mirror he'd peered into just after being bitten long ago?

Harry lost track of time as the minutes passed, and he continued to stare into the stranger's eyes. Something lingered at the edge of his subconscious… He felt he should be able to figure this out…

It was odd that the stranger should have eyes the exact shade as his own. Maybe it was just the mirror's enchantment coloring them to match Harry's? Like, if Ron had seen the stranger, would the eyes in the mirror have been blue? Or brown, in Hermione's case?

The only person Harry had ever even heard of who'd had eyes the same color as his was his mother, Lily. Everyone always said he had her eyes. Aunt Petunia's eyes could only be said to turn green when she was consumed with material envy. Or jealousy!

His mother's eyes…

The breath left Harry's lungs as if some invisible fist had just punched him in the stomach.

Could it… Could it be?

Harry swallowed convulsively a few times before he could get his voice to work, and then, just barely.

"Mum?" he croaked faintly. "Mum – is that you?"

The mirror glowed as if sunlight had suddenly struck it, and the stranger's eyes abruptly looked at Harry from a woman's face – a very familiar face.

"Mum! It really IS you!" Harry gasped in amazed delight as Lily Potter smiled at her son.

"Hello, sweetheart," she said brightly, her oval face surrounded by flowing red tresses. "I've longed to speak to you, Harry – and now I can! You've found a way to reach me at last!"

Harry's eyes brimmed with tears, even as he grinned widely enough to split his face in two. "Hello, Mum! I've wanted so much to speak to you, too!" He brought the small mirror right up to his face, almost touching noses with Lily's image. He didn't know how any of this was possible, but he was going to speak with his mother. In his mind's eye, he could see Arthur Weasley raising a warning finger, but he shoved that image aside in favor of the red-haired image in his mirror.

-:- -:- -:-

It was inevitable that Severus Snape caught him on his way back to Gryffindor Tower, two long hours after curfew had gone into effect.

Still, after a long conversation with Lily's reflection, Harry felt so happy that he literally shrugged off his Defense teacher's sharp accusations and prying questions.

Snape stared at the Gryffindor suspiciously. Potter was always recklessly self-serving, but the boy had never before seemed so insouciant when caught out after curfew. Normally, he projected an arrogant defensiveness. But tonight, Potter looked as if he didn't give bowtruckle's spit about being caught.

Potter was obviously Up To Something.

"Turn out your pockets."

"Really, Professor – "

"Turn them out, Potter, or I shall turn them out for you, and if I am forced to take such action, you'll undoubtedly be placing an Owl Order to Madam Malkin for a new uniform." The dark man glared blackly at the boy's casual attitude.

"Okay. Whatever." Harry started with his shirt pocket, removing a dozen or so chocolate frog cards, a length of dental floss, and a large fuchsia button that he'd found on the Common Room floor and had been meaning to return to Lavender Brown. Predictably, Snape sneered at the button.

"Why, Potter – I had no idea you fancied pink buttons. Perhaps I should get you a mixed assortment for Christmas."

Harry shrugged. "Whatever. I'll just pass them on to Lavender. This one came off the front of her … blouse." Actually, Harry knew that she'd caught her coat sleeve button on the portrait door.

Snape's eyebrows drew together. "When?"

Harry allowed himself to smile slightly, as if remembering something very pleasant. "A gentleman never talks about such things." Snape could take that either way!

A split second of indecision in the black eyes … then Snape loomed menacingly over the slight Gryffindor. "Your trousers pockets, Potter."

Harry smirked, pulling out several Wizarding coins, a pencil stub that needed sharpening, a small round mirror, a Sopophorus Bean, a polished flat pebble from the shores of the Black Lake, a wrinkled paper wrapper that surrounded a blob of previously-chewed Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, several broken fragments of a cherry-flavored Sugar Quill, and a crumpled piece of parchment. Harry's smirk disappeared when he saw the scrap of parchment, for Ron had passed him the note in Defense Against the Dark Arts just that day. He focused hard on one of Snape's innumerable coat buttons so as to avoid eye contact with the professor. Maybe Snape wouldn't look at it.

But of course he did.

After an unbearably long silence…

"Detention, Potter! Two weeks. For disrespecting a staff member."

"But I didn't write it, Professor!"

"Weasley will join you in detention, Potter. Rest assured. Twenty-five points apiece."

"Twenty-five apiece? For a NOTE … that I didn't even write?"

"Would you prefer to make it fifty?"

Harry's shoulders slumped. Damn it all! He should've Incendio-ed the note after class…

"Explain to me please, Potter, what you are doing with a Sopophorus Bean? You, who perpetually maintain that you have never stolen potions ingredients from my personal stores." Snape's lip curled most unpleasantly as he snatched the bean from Harry's upturned palm.

Harry faltered momentarily. He really had no idea of why the bean was in his pocket. He certainly hadn't stolen it. He tried to visualize that day's Potions class, and suddenly he knew. "Goyle had a bean go missing during class today. They were flying all over the classroom when people tried to cut them up. Professor Slughorn told him to get a new one – you can ask Professor Slughorn. I guess Goyle's bean landed in my pocket somehow."

Snape's sneer seemed permanently frozen on his face. "Are you quite certain that you didn't lift it from Mr. Goyle's workspace, Potter?"

Harry nodded emphatically. "Goyle was two tables away. You can verify that with Professor Slughorn, too."

The Sopophorus Bean disappeared into a pocket in Snape's trailing robes. "Oh, I shall, Potter. You may depend on that."

Harry shrugged again, as if it were immaterial whether Snape checked up on him.

"Now to the crux of the matter. WHY are you out of your Common Room after curfew?"

"I was just stretching my legs and getting some fresh air before bed."

"Fresh … AIR?" the Defense teacher's utterly disbelieving tone made it clear that he found that to be one of the lamest excuses ever offered by a student breaking curfew.

"Sure. You know how warm and stuffy the Common Room can get, with everyone crammed in there at once, studying in the evening."

Snape snorted. "Gryffindors. Studying. Wonders never cease."

"May I go now, Professor?" Harry was biting the inside of his cheeks to keep a lid on his emotions and his urge to say … SOMETHING.

"You'll have an additional week of detention, Potter, for breaking curfew, as well as losing another twenty-five points."

"May I please go, Professor?"

The Defense teacher quickly and silently cast something unrecognizable upon the Gryffindor, causing Harry to take an uncertain step back. "A tracking and monitoring Charm, Potter. If you don't go straight to your Common Room, I'll know about it. If you so much as poke a single nostril outside the portrait door during curfew again, I'll know about it."

Harry frowned. "How long does it last?"

Snape's grim smile made the student shiver involuntarily. "Wouldn't you love to know." With a whirl of long, black hair and endless ebony robes, the dark man spun on the heel of his boot and billowed away, vanishing around the nearest corner.

Sighing, Harry stuffed his remaining odds-and-ends back into his pockets and headed directly to the Fat Lady's portrait.

-:- -:- -:-