Warnings: Slash later in story.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

—

Ch 7 - Yule Holidays

Harry spent the next few months working on spells and reading up on the Wizarding World. There was plenty of fascinating books in the Restricted Section and as that part of the library wasn't restricted to him, he could read those books just fine. He was aware of the many failed attempts Hermione Granger did to follow him, though he couldn't understand why, and knew he would need to do something about it soon, before she got the illusion they were friends.

Honestly, he was started to be creeped out by her.

Now Harry was aware that humans were social creatures and could go insane if confined alone for too long and had come to the conclusion that he would, someday, need friends. However, as Harry had never had a friend before and those he had been close to becoming friends with having been chased away by Dudley and his gang, he had no idea how to make said friends. The first step he knew, was conversation. Than came the next problem.

How the hell would he find someone to talk with that wasn't obsessed with him!?

Really, the British magical community was so strange and ridiculous.

Harry turned the page in the potions book he was reading in his room and tried to concentrate. Christmas was coming and in a few days, many of the students would be going home to celebrate it with their families. Harry had no such thing (he would never consider the Dursley's family) and as such, would be staying at Hogwarts during the holidays. Harry didn't mind that, in fact he loved it, but he also knew that very few people would be staying and the castle was already big enough. It would be different with not so many people around. On the other hand, he might actually be able to find the kitchen's now.

He wanted to have a talk with the cook's on proper nutrition.

Harry wouldn't exactly say that he was lonely. He had been alone for so long he didn't know what it was like to have a friend. But, from time to time, he sometimes wished to have a friend. Someone to share secrets with and maybe have fun with. And so far, the only ones he could imagine being friends with were the Weasley twins. He had contacted Gringotts and gotten confirmation that the twins, Charlie, Percy and Bill Weasley had never gotten any money from him. It was just the parents, and the two youngest children. Not that that was much of a comfort, his money was still being given away like it was candy and he couldn't stop it until he became Lord Potter.

So the Weasley twins were the solution. They were going to be his friends and to be honest, he had always wanted to prank someone. It was on his to-do list before he died. Hopefully, they would be open to helping him prank someone, preferably Snape. That man hated him for no reason at all and to Harry, it was time someone got back at him.

Harry put away the notes he had written in a muggle notebook. Why he would bother with a quill and parchment when a simple pencil and paper was more efficient and easier, he didn't know. The book was placed on the bookshelf and he left the room. He was going to find the twins and see if they were up to a prank with him. Maybe that would be enough to start a friendship with them and he didn't need to bother with the conversation thing.

He walked passed the hallways until he came to the library. He had seen them there before looking up spells and hopefully they would still be there. He had no desire to search the entire castle for them, no matter how much he really wanted to prank Snape. Honestly, the castle was so big he could probably get lost and no-one would notice for a good fifty years. It kind of scared him a little bit, but he had learned to ignore it during the months he had been at Hogwarts. He wondered if there was other schools in the UK. For some reason, he doubted it. And then he wondered how many people with magic existed in Britain when it couldn't be more then eight-hundred people at Hogwarts.

The library was quiet and quite empty when he entered. Harry walked through the shelfs and searched. Just when he was about to give up he saw them. They were bent over a map on a table and were speaking in hushed voices with each other.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

The Weasley twins looked up with a deer-in-the-headlight look and looked at each other before the one on the left spoke. "Nothing. What are you doing here?"

"I want to prank Snape. You up for it?" it would be better to get it put at once and avoid the awkward silence he hated.

Harry looked as the one on the right, who he could now say was Fred, spoke. "We're always up for pranking Snape! What do you want to do? We've got a ton of ideas."

—

The next day was a friday. It was snowing outside and the weather was nice. It was also the day that the train from Hogwarts left to take those that would be spending Christmas at home to Kings Cross station in London. Harry on the other hand was sitting in the Great Hall at the edge of the Ravenclaw table, waiting for the prank to take effect. They had put a potion in Snape's drink that would turn his hair neon pink and another one in his food that would make talk like a chicken for three hours.

Harry watch with poorly hidden glee as the potions took effect and the twins grinned at the Gryffindor's table.

He looked away to stop himself from laughing and studiously ignored those that looked at him to gauge his reaction. The Headmaster was casting spells after spells trying to undo some kind of spell he thought had been used, in the end only making it worse. Snape now had pink skin and claws.

—

Christmas morning came and Harry slept. When he woke up it was already passed ten o'clock. Harry yawned as he looked around his room, apparently the presents were supposed to come straight there. He was pretty sure he was not going to get any presents though, the Dursley's would nerve give him anything.

Therefor it was a surprise when he saw a small pile of presents in the corner of his room. He made his way there and sat down on the floor in front of it. The first thing he picked up proved to be a box of different sweets from the Weasley twins and a book on jinxes and hexes that he had never seen before. The next was a blue knitted shirt in with a bronze 'H' on it from Mrs Weasley. He would check it for spells later, but he was grateful. Even if it was most likely hit with a tracking charm or two. The nest present was a shimmering fabric and for some reason he got the feeling this was the Invisibility Cloak that had been taken form his vault by Dumbledore. There was a note with it.

Your father left this in my possession before he died.
It is time it was returned to you.
Use it well.
A very merry Christmas to you.

Harry scoffed at the trick Dumbledore was trying to pull. His father had not left anything with Dumbledore, he had stolen it.

But nonetheless, it was one thing less he needed to worry about finding and getting back. He may resent Dumbledore, but sometimes the man schemes fell right into his lap and who was he not to take advantage of it. Harry bit back a curse when he realized he had missed breakfast.

The rest of the day passed in the common room where he read his new book. He snacked on the sweets from time to time and ignored the few others that had stayed over the holidays. It was when the time got closer to ten in the evening that he realized he was supposed to meet Fred and George at the library. They were supposed to talk about more pranks they could pull but he had completely forgotten about it.

He cursed as he hurried up to his room and grabbed his new cloak. It would probably had some type of trace on it but he was only going to the library. It wasn't like he was going down to the dungeons to break into the Slytherin common room.

Harry walked through the halls and cursed his faulty sense of direction because damnit, he was so lost. It was the stupid staircases fault and their moving around. How anyone could find their way to where they needed to be in the place was a mystery to him. They should put of a map in all the common rooms. And everywhere else. Because honestly, he had the feeling he was going away from the library instead of towards it. He wanted to stop but as he had no idea where he was, his best bet was finding a teacher and asking for directions back to his dorms. He would probably loose a bunch of points, but he didn't care about that, and maybe get a detention if it was Snape who found him. As it was he was lost and beggars couldn't be choosers.

After a while he came across an abandoned classroom. He was about to leave it when he saw the giant mirror in the middle of the room. There was an inscription carved around the top:

Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

Harry blinked and pulled off the cloak. He stood in front of the mirror and looked into it. At first, he didn't think there was anything special about it. Then after he had looked at it for a few moments, he noticed something. In the mirror there was a hand on his shoulder. When he followed he saw a red-haired woman, a woman he recognized as his mother Lily Potter from the one picture he had managed to find when he cleaned the attic once. He had managed to hide it from Petunia for over a year, he had dreamed about her being alive and picking him up from the Dursley's and taking him somewhere else.

As he looked, more people formed in the mirror. He thought that one of them had to be his father but more then that he couldn't tell who they were.

—

For the next few nights, he would find his way to the mirror and guess who was who. He could spend hours in that classroom and the more he did, the more he ceased to care. He thought that maybe there was some kind of spell on it that got him to want to return, but then he realized that it was because he saw his parents. He didn't miss them, he couldn't miss what he didn't remember, but he would have liked to have known them. As it was, no-one would tell him anything about his parents other than "You look just like your father with Lily's eyes." and he was getting sick of it. He wanted to know who his parents were and what they were like, and so far this mirror was the only one that provided any answers.

Harry was sick of the way no-one answered his questions regarding his parents, he was their son, he had a right to know.

Until one day Dumbledore entered while he was looking at the mirror. If he had wondered if the cloak had a tracer on it, he knew now. Harry ignored the Headmaster and continued watching his mother. He wanted so bad to have red hair like hers, but he couldn't chance Dumbledore finding out he was a metamorphmagus. If he didn't already know, it could only end badly for him.

"Back again, Harry?"

Harry stared at the mirror. "I didn't see you, sir."

"Strange how short-sighted being invisible can make you." said Dumbledore and Harry was not relieved to see that he was smiling. When Dumbledore smiled, it spelled bad things for Harry. He got the feeling he had done something exactly like Dumbledore had wanted and he didn't like it. He was no puppet.

"So," said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, "you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised."

"Is that what it's called?"

"Yes, Harry, and I expect that by now you've realized what it does?"

"It show you what you want the most. How didm you know —?"

"I don't need a cloak to become invisible." said Dumbledore gently. "The happiest man in the world would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, he would see himself exactly like he is. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible. The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you dot to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now why don't you punt that admirable Cloak back on and get off to bed?"

Harry stood up. "Professor Dumbledore, what do you see when you look in the Mirror?"

"I? I see myself holding a pair of think, woollen socks."

Harry stared.

"One can never have enough socks." said Dumbledore.

When he laid in bed that night he thought that Dumbledore had probably not been truthful at all. It had been a personal question though, but Harry didn't really care about that.

Really, the Wizarding World was utterly barmy.

—

By the time New Year's Eve came around, Harry had read a few more books, played two more pranks on Snape with the twins and managed succeeded in the Switching Spell. With the twins help of course, but he was much better at it now. Fred and George had also showed him the abandoned classroom they used to brew their potions. They had used the books they had gotten from Bill, their oldest brother, to ward it so no-one not invited could find it and so the potion fumes would have somewhere to go. They had no desire to have greasy hair like Snape.

It was fun, being with Fred and George, they didn't worship him because he was Harry Potter or want his autograph. And they were good friends — because, yes, they were friends now— that didn't have a problem with him not knowing how friends were supposed to act and his tendency to ignore them in favor of his books.

Seriously, he couldn't count the number of times they were hanging out and he started reading, completely forgetting they were there.

Harry sat in the chair in the corner of the classroom and looked up when one of the twins finally managed to get his attention away from his book on norse runes.

"Yes?"

Fred — he was pretty sure it was Fred — smiled and said. "We said, there is a three-headed dog on the third floor and according to our map, his name is Fluffy."

Harry blinked. "Oh, you mean a Cerberus."

"Yeah! We saw Snape leaving the room they keep it in with a limp. Do you think he tried to do something to it?" asked George.

"He probably just got to close," said Harry. "cerberus's are guard dogs. In Greek mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades."

The twins looked at each other and communicated in that weird way they did. George started. "We're going to —"

"— ask Charlie to —"

"— get us a book —"

"— on Greek mythology."

"It sounds awesome!" they ended together.

Harry laughed. For some reason, whenever the twins spoke in that way that was so hard to follow, it always lifted his spirits. It also helped that he wasn't the only one confused about it. He supposed it was a magical thing, perhaps other magical twins that grew up in a magical house-hold was the same. Though for some reason he doubted it. He had a feeling that this was something that was unique to the Weasley twins.

By the time the new year started, Harry had made one resolution. He was going to have fun this year and screw what anybody else said. It was his life. And it would start with help of the Weasley twins pranking skills.

Yes, this was going to be a great year.

And if he drove a certain Headmaster insane in the process, well… who could blame him?

Controlling a magical school always presented risks to ones psyche.