Much to Hermione's delight, Harry quit putting up a fuss about spending so much time in the library. He did not bother to correct her assumption that he was finally buckling down to his first year of N.E.W.T. studies. In fact, when he went off searching through the stacks, he was researching mirrors and their enchantments. He'd kept trying to discover what sort of spell had been cast upon his little mirror which allowed him to speak with his long-deceased mother.

So far, his efforts had come up blank, but he hadn't given up. Also, Harry had attempted many times to contact Sirius in the round mirror, and James Potter as well, but to no avail. When he asked Lily about speaking to his father and godfather, she'd smiled sadly and shaken her head, telling him it simply wasn't possible.

"But why?" Harry asked his red-haired mother's reflection. "WHY can't I speak to them, if I can speak to you? Why is it different with you, Mum? I want to be able to talk with all of you. Why won't the mirror let me do that?"

His mother's emerald eyes filled with pained understanding of her son's frustration. "I can't tell you that, Harry. But when you figure out the mirror's function, you'll have your answer." She paused before adding, "In truth, we should not be able to communicate at all. I'm – an anomaly, Harry. And I should caution you … if you do discover the magic behind this mirror, it might well put an end to our ability to converse." Her fingertips grazed the outer edge of the reflective surface. "Choose wisely, my son."

Harry's shocked gaze stared into his mother's eyes. "You mean – we could never see each other again?"

"Not in this life. Your life, that is," Lily clarified. "We will be reunited at the end, and your father and Sirius and I will all be waiting for you, darling."

The younger Gryffindor couldn't bring himself to return his mother's smile. He'd been ready to die in the Ministry of Magic last spring, when Voldemort had possessed him, but that seemed so long ago now, and he felt himself surrounded by life again, especially when his attention often strayed to a certain red-haired Fifth Year…

His own life stretched into an uncertain future, where he dreaded having to face killing Voldemort in order to live, and he feared failing fulfilling the Prophecy if it meant dying while the Darkest Wizard continued to survive.

"However long it takes, Harry." Lily's silken tones brushed softly across her boy's distracted thoughts.

"Hmm? I'm sorry – "

Lily smiled warmly. "We all want you to live a long and very happy, completely fulfilled life, Harry. But we'll always be here, waiting. Never doubt that."

He gave a jerky nod, fighting a sudden impulse to cry. He wanted to be with his parents and Sirius so badly … but not just yet.

"So, what stories would you like me to tell you today?" Lily appeared to be settling in for an extended chat. "Last time, we got pretty serious. What about changing the pace to something more light-hearted?"

"And silly?"

"Why not?" Lily laughed. "I could tell you about a very embarrassing Christmas shopping trip when I was fifteen."

"Embarrassing?" Grinning, Harry tucked his feet up, sitting cross-legged in the broad window seat at the juncture of two long corridors on the fifth floor. This corner of the castle was seldom used after classes ended, and he could spot anyone coming from either of two directions from this vantage point. To play it safe, however, he'd thrown his father's invisibility cloak over himself before contacting Lily, so he could now listen to his mother's story in unseen privacy. "How embarrassing could a Christmas shopping trip be, Mum?"

Lily laughed aloud, her emerald eyes shining with mirth. "It makes for a good story now, but at the time, I was absolutely mortified!"

"Go on, then! Tell me," begged Harry, eager to hear of his mother's teenage adventures.

"Very well." Lily tossed her long hair back over her shoulders as Harry stared into the small round mirror. "We'd gone to a vast department store in Muggle London, so crowded with holiday shoppers that I couldn't take a step in any direction without bumping into a stranger. I got separated from my family for a while, but it suited me all the same, since Petunia was being a – was being quite unpleasant toward me."

Harry grinned. He could just imagine it…

"I found myself shoved this way and that, finally bumping into the fragrance display counter. The women's end was jammed elbow to elbow with shoppers, all trying out perfumes to see if they liked them, in the women's case, and in the men's, if they thought they could stand to smell it on whatever female they gifted it to."

Harry laughed. "Perfume shopping is a tricky business, isn't it?"

Lily nodded. "Very tricky. I worked my way past the women's perfumes and ended up down by the men's colognes. For some reason, I was the only person at that end of the glass counter, and I took a quick breather from being jostled by other shoppers. Suddenly, I spotted a large glass display bottle of a men's fragrance which I'd seen advertised repeatedly on the telly. The male model in the commercial had been ruggedly good looking, and I wanted to know what he'd smell like when he wore the cologne."

"Oh, Mum!"

"What can I say?" Lily shrugged with a nostalgic smile. "I was fifteen, a bit boy crazy, and you can't blame a girl for fantasizing!"

"Go on!" Harry's wide grin matched his mother's.

"So I unscrewed the cap and lifted this huge, heavy glass bottle to my nose to inhale the scent, closing my eyes, imagining I was smelling that good-looking man on the commercial."

"Did he smell good?"

"Oh, yes!" Lily sighed happily. "Every bit as good as I'd ever imagined. And then it happened…"

"Let me guess – you opened your eyes and the man was standing there right in front of you!"

"HA! Not even close!"

"So what did happen, Mum?"

Lily shook her head. "I suddenly got bumped – HARD – by a passing shopper, and I dropped that humongous, heavy bottle – it must have held a good pint of cologne – and it crashed down onto the glass countertop!"

"It broke?" Harry's eyes widened in horror.

"No, not quite, thank goodness. But that was sheer luck. From the sound of the crash, it's amazing the counter itself didn't break, and for some reason, neither did that huge bottle."

"Wow!"

"But the cologne did spill, and a lot of it splashed onto my arm, soaking into the plushy fake fur sleeve of my winter coat!"

"Oh NO! And it was MEN'S cologne!"

"Exactly. And I was SATURATED with it!"

"Oh, Mum!"

Lily laughed softly. "The saleswoman was glaring daggers at me as I tried to screw the cap back onto the bottle. I left the fragrance counter and pushed my way through the crowd, desperately trying to escape from that moment of humiliation."

"I don't blame you!" Harry shook his head sympathetically. "Actually, that sounds a lot like something that would happen to me!"

"Anyway, it was easy enough to lose myself in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, but I noticed a lot of people turning to stare at me as I passed, and they all seemed to be sniffing the air… "

Harry doubled over with laughter, clasping the little mirror with both hands. "Oh, Mum! That's awful!"

"Seriously!" agreed Lily, rolling her eyes. "I mean, I absolutely REEKED of a very pungent men's cologne, and people simply couldn't believe their noses!"

"I thought you said it smelled good?"

Lily scoffed. "NOT on a fifteen-year-old GIRL!"

"Oh! Right!"

"You don't even want to think what our car smelled like after I'd ridden in it. Or my closet."

"Whew!" Harry shuddered theatrically. "And I'll bet your parents had something to say about it."

Lily shrugged. "They were actually more amused than anything. In fact, Dad said he wouldn't mind finding a smaller bottle of that cologne under the tree on Christmas morning, just for him!"

"Did you give him one?"

"Not that year!"

"I'll bet Aunt Petunia had an opinion or two about the smell."

Lily grimaced. "Don't remind me."

"Okay." Harry gave his mother a bright, too-innocent smile. "Now – what OTHER embarrassing incidents did you have as a teenager?"

His mother stared at him. "More? You want to hear MORE?"

"Sure!" Her son laughed. "It helps to know I'm not the only one these things happen to."

Lily chuckled in spite of herself. "Fair enough, I suppose. Well, there was the time my family went to a furniture store – looking for a new sofa and matching lounge chairs – and I got stuck in a waterbed… "

-:- -:- -:-

As the weeks passed, Harry made time each day to chat with his mother. He learned more and more about who she was as an individual, so much more than a smiling face in a moving Wizarding photograph. Favorite color – purple as a girl, blue as adult. Favorite foods – homegrown tomatoes, fried oysters, chocolate anything, fresh pears, home-baked breads, pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Favorite hobbies – inventing Charms … well, trying more often than succeeding, but still fun! … crocheting, swimming and diving, reading Muggle action/adventure novels and mysteries. Up until now, Harry had only been told how kind his mother had been, and that he had her eyes. Speaking with Lily's reflection opened up a wealth of knowledge about his mum, and she always had some wonderfully entertaining anecdotes to illustrate her passion for her various likes, or even dislikes!

Lurking in the background, however, remained the spectre of knowledge – the knowledge of how the mirror worked, possibly leading to the end of Harry's ability to communicate with his mother. He'd stopped researching mirrors altogether, fearing now to learn the secret. More than anything, he wanted to keep talking to Lily on a daily basis, and he refused to do anything which might jeopardize that possibility.

He never dreamt that simply overhearing a conversation between two passing professors would prove to be the beginning of the end…

" …always looks so sad, so defeated," Minerva McGonagall was commenting as she strolled through the Hogwarts rose garden. Magic preserved the beauty of the blooming roses year round, even through the coldest winter, and under the October sun, the lovely petals glowed with rich color.

"You can hardly blame him," replied Filius Flitwick, shaking his head. "Imagine how you'd feel if your only living child had been bitten by a vampire, turning her into one of their kind? Such a tragedy … such a terrible tragedy. She was one of my best students, too, just … seven years ago, wasn't it?"

McGonagall nodded silently, but Harry could see the tip of her pointed hat tilting forward in acknowledgment above the top of the thick rose hedge. "Yes, it's very sad indeed. Some vampires manage – somehow – to lead a reasonable existence after they've been turned, but this young woman chose to victimize helpless children, turning them to her own tragic condition." She sighed heavily. "The Ministry had no choice, really. She refused to reform her ways, and they were forced to stake her." McGonagall's pointed hat shuddered. "And her poor father is understandably devastated."

"He's a good man," Flitwick stated. "Always has been. But he's suffered far too much tragedy for one lifetime. His wife and son murdered by Death Eaters just last year, and his only remaining child then bitten, and later condemned and executed for being a dangerous vampire… It's taken the life out of him entirely."

"Yes, it has," murmured McGonagall. "You can see it in his eyes – so empty now, where they used to dance with life."

Flitwick sighed in agreement. "They do say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. And his eyes look as bereft of soul as if Dementors had already Kissed him."

"And yet, he must live on, poor dear." McGonagall sighed heavily again, sadness imbuing her voice. "I only hope he can heal eventually. It will take time, though – a very long time. I do worry about him… "

The two professors slowly strolled away, leaving Harry to puzzle over who the man was, who his vampire daughter had been. Surely, the official staking of a vampire must have been reported in the Daily Prophet? His heart went out to the unknown father. Harry could well understand the emotional repercussions of uninvited tragedy.

Sighing himself, now, he returned his attention to his Defense essay and quickly scribbled a conclusion, which Snape would undoubtedly shoot down. He left the roll of parchment laid out along the sun-warmed stone bench for the ink to dry. Capping the ink bottle, he yawned and stretched, relishing the late October sunshine warming his upturned face. The angled sun shone red through his closed eyelids and he indulged in a brief fantasy of how wonderful it would be if summers at the Dursleys involved nothing more than lounging about under the warm sun.

Oh, well… At least he wouldn't have to think of Little Whinging until next spring. He gathered his school materials, stuffed them into his bag, and decided to find a quiet corner in the castle for a quick chat with Lily before supper. Twice in one day – wouldn't she be surprised!

-:- -:- -:-

"But darling," Lily smiled, "Time doesn't really matter where I am."

Harry frowned. "Well, it matters to me," he said, looking into his mother's emerald eyes. "I thought you'd be pleased to see me again today."

"Of course I'm pleased!" she chuckled. "I just didn't realize that this was the same day for you. That's all!"

"Oh. Okay!" Now Harry smiled at her. "It's just that I love you so much, I didn't want to wait till tomorrow to talk to you again."

"I understand, Harry. And I love you, too, so very much. I cherish every moment I can spend with my son."

Mother and son smiled at each other, love shining in both pairs of emerald eyes.

"So, what's new with you?" Lily asked.

"Nothing, really." Harry frowned again. "I just – well, I overheard a couple of professors talking, and it reminded me of how much you mean to me."

"Eavesdropping on your teachers, Harry?" Lily's voice sounded stern, although Harry thought he detected a faint glint of amusement in her eyes.

"No, Mum!" he protested. "I wasn't eavesdropping, honest!" Harry shook his head. "I was writing my Defense essay in the rose garden when McGonagall and Flitwick walked – "

"PROFESSOR McGonagall and PROFESSOR Flitwick, Harry," his mother admonished.

"Right – they walked past, talking about some poor man whose wife and son had been murdered by Death Eaters a while back, and now his daughter had been staked by the Ministry because she was a dangerous vampire, who'd taken to biting children – "

"How awful!" exclaimed Lily.

"Yeah," agreed Harry. "And they were going on about how devastated the vampire's poor father was, how you could see it in his eyes… "

Harry paused, remembering something else, something Flitwick had said… Was that? Could it be the reason…?

"Mum?" he said slowly, still trying to sort out the bits and pieces of information whirling through his gray matter.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Everyone has always said we have the same eyes… "

"Yes," Lily said, smiling. "Other than that, you look exactly like your father."

"So, when I look into this mirror, I see my eyes, but they're also your eyes… "

"Yes?"

"Professor Flitwick said that the eyes are the windows to the soul – is that why I can talk to you? Is that the anomaly you spoke of? My eyes should be the windows to my soul, but because we share the same eyes, I'm able to connect with your soul? Is that how the mirror works?"

"Harry – "

And before the boy's inquiring emerald eyes, Lily's stricken face suddenly vanished.

"Mum!"

Harry frantically clutched the little round mirror. "Mum! Come back! Please come back!"

But the small mirror reflected only Harry's face.

"Oh, Mum… " he gasped quietly, trying not to break down entirely. "I ruined it, didn't I? I ruined it all… "

His pale reflection stared disconsolately back at him.

-:- -:- -:-

Over the next few days leading up to Halloween, Harry slumped into a depression. He shrugged off Hermione's concerned queries and gentle hand on his arm, and he avoided Ron's invitations to spill his guts all over the dormitory floor. "Just let it all out, mate?" Ron would urge. "You'll feel better if you unload your problems. I always do." But since Harry had not told either of his friends about the mirror when he was using it to speak to his mother, he felt compelled to keep it quiet now, especially after the mirror had stopped working.

Except … it hadn't.

He didn't realize it at first – just thought it to be a weird shadow, or a stain upon the silver backing. But he couldn't deny it when the shadow grew … and grew…

Harry had frantically tried to force his mother's image to return to the little round mirror, but to no avail. The day after she'd vanished, he was trying yet again, only to sweep his fringe off his forehead in frustration after umpteen more failures to contact Lily. And that's when he saw it – his pale red scar had turned black.

Well, the broom cupboard was a bit dark – probably just a lack of proper illumination made his lightning-bolt scar appear darker than usual.

But the next day – in good daylight – the scar still looked black, and a dark smudge had begun to seep across the skin around the outline of his scar. Frowning, he rotated the mirror, but no matter which way his face got reflected, the smudged black scar didn't change.

The day after that, the smudge had darkened so much that he couldn't even see his scar. The smudge itself had grown noticeably larger, darkening a larger portion of the skin on his forehead.

When he'd looked into the mirror over the sink in the Gryffindor boys' bathroom, however, his scar appeared the same as it always had – pale red against normal skin tone. He held the little mirror flat against the larger one and quickly shifted his eyes back and forth, back and forth, and his scar went from black smudge to red line, black smudge to red line, depending on which mirror reflected it.

Frowning uneasily, Harry held the little mirror in the palm of his left hand, using his right forefinger to hide the black smudge from his view. He stared into his reflected emerald eyes, murmuring, "Oh, Mum… Where are you when I need you?"

His own eyes continued to stare worriedly back at him.

-:- -:- -:-

Darkness fell early on a heavily-overcast Halloween afternoon, although the Wizarding Weathercaster indicated that the skies would clear before moonrise.

Ron was already gabbling on about the upcoming Halloween Feast, while Hermione steadfastly ignored him from behind her propped-up Ancient Runes textbook. Harry kept his nose buried in his Charms text, listening half-heartedly to his best friend's happy anticipation for the looming Feast, but after an hour or so, he was becoming rather desperate to make a break from the Gryffindor Common Room.

Harry rubbed at his scar, wondering whether he should ask… Neither of his two friends had mentioned seeing his scar changing, but he wasn't sure whether they simply hadn't noticed or whether he was losing his own mind.

"Is your scar bothering you, Harry?"

Trust Hermione to get straight to the crux of the matter. He might as well ask.

"A bit. Does it look any different to you?" He held up his fringe to bare his forehead to her scrutiny.

Hermione inspected his scar from across the table, then shook her head. "Looks about as usual, I'd say. Does it hurt a lot?"

"No," Harry denied quickly. "It's more like an itch, I guess. A bit annoying, that's all."

"Oh. I suppose that's all right, then," she said before diving back into her translation.

"I hope they have those molten chocolate Bludgers again this year," Ron said dreamily. "I love to cut into them and watch the chocolate ooze all over… "

Harry couldn't stand it anymore. "I'm going to stretch my legs. Meet you guys in the Great Hall, okay?" He forced a bright smile on his face.

"Right, mate! See you there!"

"Bye, Harry!" Hermione peeped briefly at him over the rim of her book.

Exiting the Common Room, Harry hesitated before heading for the marble staircase. After being cooped up in there with Ron's obsessions concerning food – sweets in particular – he decided it might help him if he could work off some excess energy, and he fancied a quick run down the stairs and back. He paused momentarily at the top, staring over the stone railing, looking down countless flights in the stairwell from the dizzying heights of the seventh floor. Then, he stepped off the edge and ran down, down, down-down-down to the main entrance level. Barely slowing, he turned to the right and continued his downward journey to the first dungeon level, then the second.

Technically, he wasn't really in Slytherin territory, since their Common Room lay quite a distance from the main stairs. But Slytherins liked to claim any space in the dungeons as their own, so Harry did a quick about-face and trotted up the stone steps once more.

He made it past the upper dungeon level, all the way to the entrance hall without seeing anyone.

Where to now? The Halloween Feast wouldn't begin for nearly another hour, so there was no point in going into the Great Hall yet.

The library! Of course! He needed to know what was happening to his scar's reflection. He'd only stopped doing research on mirrors for fear of losing contact with his mum, and now that that had happened anyway, he might as well continue trying to discover what made the mirror work. Maybe – just maybe – he could discover a means to bring Lily back.

Quickly, Harry ran up the staircase to the third floor and headed for the library. He'd barely rounded the final corner and could see the tall doors framing the library entrance at the far end of the corridor when he heard fast footsteps behind him. Turning, he spotted a familiar blond head and realized that Draco Malfoy was rapidly closing in on him.

"Potter!"

The Slytherin's voice had not lost one ounce of contempt for the Boy-Who-Lived during all the years they'd spent at school. If anything, Malfoy had perfected lacing his contempt with a good dose of Snape-ish sneering sarcasm.

Harry stopped, his wand automatically at the ready. "Malfoy," he acknowledged, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible. With his luck, Snape would pop out of the woodwork and order Harry into detention right before the Feast, just for breathing the same air as his favored Slytherin.

The Death Eater's son approached, more slowly now, his eyes more calculating. "What were you doing in the dungeons, Potter? A bit far from your end of the castle, wasn't it? Wanted to see how your betters live, hmm?"

"It was a bit far afield, I suppose," Harry agreed lightly, keeping an eye on Draco's own wand. "I do live in the UPPER END of the castle, after all. When it comes to the dungeons, I guess you could say that I decided to … go slumming." So what if Snape appeared like a bolt from the blue and put him into detention? Nothing required him to take Malfoy's insults without giving as good as he got.

"Petrificus Totalus!"

"Protego!"

Harry's Shield Charm easily deflected Draco's spell, and the duel was on!

Draco cast Incarcerous, a knee-reversing hex, a Jelly-Legs Jinx, and Tarantallegra in rapid succession, only to find each one instantly rebuffed by the Gryffindor's lightning-fast reflexes. Harry couldn't help but note that all of Draco's offensive spells were intended to render him helpless, one way or another, and he began to suspect that Draco had intentions more sinister than simply casting random curses at his rival in the hallway. If he went down, Draco could easily hit him with another Petrificus, and he'd be at the Slytherin's mercy…

Given that they were barely a stone's throw from the library, Harry was surprised nobody had appeared from the other end of the corridor to stop the duel, not even Madam Pince. Surely, at the very least, Mrs. Norris should have alerted Filch to magic being used in the corridors! And shouldn't Peeves show up to get in on the action? As for the library, did no one study in there just prior to the Halloween Feast? Harry couldn't remember actually doing so himself, and even Hermione was camped out with her books in their Common Room at that very moment…

The Gryffindor slowly backed in the direction of the library as Draco advanced, the blond seeming to plot his next bit of strategy with every careful step he took.

Draco lunged, casting silently – or so Harry thought, as he shouted, "Protego!" once again. In reality, the Slytherin had feinted, not casting at all. His true move came a second too fast for Harry to counter after just casting his Shield Charm…

"Expelliarmus!" shouted Draco, and he heard with satisfaction the hollow, wooden clatter of his opponent's wand bouncing across the stone floor.

"Foolish, foolish Potter," sneered the blond Slytherin, utter contempt distorting his pale features. "All out of magic, aren't you?" He lazily pointed his own wand at Harry's wary face as he strode confidently up to the Gryffindor. "The celebrated son of the late James Potter, the Not-So-Golden-Gryffindor, helpless as a newborn flobberworm!"

Harry stood quite still, poised carefully for balance on the balls of his feet. Just a little bit closer, he thought, just a little bit closer… Harry maintained unwavering eye contact with the other boy. If Draco had been a Legilimens, he would have seen what was coming. As it was, his ignorant arrogance proved to be his undoing.

Knowing he had just one chance to get it right, Harry stared into the Slytherin's gloating, silver-gray eyes until Draco was just in position…

KICK!

The toe of Harry's worn trainer slammed upwards, and Draco dropped like a rock onto the cold stone floor.

"You think you're so smart, Malfoy? It doesn't take much to cut you down to size, does it?" Harry stepped past his groaning opponent to retrieve his wand.

"You'll pay, Potter!" gasped Draco, doubled up beneath his robes.

"Famous last words," Harry sneered, but some sixth sense caused him to turn his head just before he reached his wand.

Draco's back was to the corner where they'd first entered the corridor, so he did not see Severus Snape rounding that corner. The sight of the approaching Defense professor distracted Harry for a split second – just long enough for Draco to lurch forward, jabbing something into Harry's ankle.

"Hey!"

The echo of Harry's startled shout continued to echo off the tall walls long after the two boys were Portkeyed away.

Snape sprinted toward the spot where they'd been, just half a moment before, but the corridor lay empty. Except…

Slowly, the dark man bent his knee, his long hair swinging forward … and, extending a pale hand, he picked up a familiar holly wand.

For countless moments, Severus Snape continued to kneel upon the unforgiving stones, rolling Potter's wand delicately between his fingers. He'd had no inkling that Draco had planned to abduct Potter on Halloween. Snape had believed that his Slytherin's appointed task lay in an entirely different direction.

Now, without warning, Potter was gone … and wandless.

Dumbledore. He had to tell Dumbledore –

Snape's left arm abruptly burst into a burning agony. The Dark Lord was calling … summoning him to a Death Eater meeting … where, obviously, Harry Potter was slated to provide the evening's entertainment.

His soul shrinking at the realization, Snape knew that this dark night of Halloween had barely begun.

-:- -:- -:-