For three challenges at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum:

The All-Era Endurance Test Competition Round 2 - "write about your OTP"

The Fairytale Challenge - Snow White

and The Second Competition That Must Not be Named - "write without mentioning the names of any of the characters in your story"

Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who is the fairest of them all?

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Once upon a time there was a boy who lived in a crooked house at the edge of a village set amongst rolling hills. Since he was from a poor family, he should properly have been the youngest son. However, he was in fact the eldest of six brothers, and had also a little sister, the youngest of them all, born when he was ten years old.

There were no rich furnishings or luxuries in the crooked house, but there was a lot of love and laughter. The boy's father worked hard to feed and clothe his family, and his mother worked hard looking after the house and the little ones, and cooking and knitting and sewing. There were only two small mirrors in the house, one in the bathroom and one in the bedroom where the boy's parents slept. That did not matter, as none of the family had time to worry about what they looked like. Indeed, sometimes they looked quite odd in their home made, worn out or hand-me-down clothes, so perhaps the lack of mirrors was a good thing.

Despite this, the boy knew he was handsome – "always very handsome," his mother said fondly – and as he grew older, he learnt too that he was clever, and talented at magic. He was glad of that because he knew that when he grew up, he would have to make his own way in the world.

When he left school, he found a job as a curse breaker, a job as exciting as any hero could wish, and one which might not make him a fortune, but would allow him to live independently and would even furnish him with some of the luxuries his childhood had lacked. The only disadvantage of his job was that he worked far from home, in a hot country of sand and wide blue skies, very different from the green countryside of his childhood. He grew to love the country, but he missed his family, and they missed him. Still, he was happy, until the prospect of war loomed and turned his life around.

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A few years after the boy, a little girl was born in a large and gracious house in a foreign land. The girl's family was rich and she lacked for nothing. The house where she grew up was comfortable and luxuriously furnished, with large mirrors in many rooms, the largest of all in the girl's own bedroom. She would look in the mirrors many times a day, because she was very beautiful, as well as being clever and magically talented. She regarded her beauty as the greatest of all her gifts, and dreaded lest it be dulled or tarnished in any way.

Heroines in fairy tales are often sweet of nature and kind, but it must be admitted that our heroine was neither of these things. Her concern with her looks made her self-centred and vain, and careless of the feelings of others. The only people she regarded as her equals were her mother and her little sister, who both shared her beauty. Even her father, whom she loved, she regarded as being beneath her because he was not handsome in any way. She rather wondered at her mother for having married him, and resolved that when she married, she would find a man who could match her beauty with his own.

The girl went away to school, where her looks made her popular with the other students, and her abilities made her a favourite of the teachers. But her vanity and her concern with her beauty meant that she never became really close to anyone else, as the boy born in the crooked house far away was close to his brothers and his sister and his friends. She did not mind. She was beautiful, and that was enough for her.

When she was eighteen, and nearly ready to make her own way in the world, the girl flew in an enchanted carriage with others from her school to take part in a competition over the sea. It was there that she saw the boy – who was now a man – for the first time and very fleetingly. She saw that he was tall and very handsome, and she thought to herself that this was the kind of man she would find for herself one day.

The competition did not go well for her, and her pride in her abilities was hurt, but she found that she cared more about the death of one of her rivals – a good-looking boy with a broad smile and kind eyes – than she did about a silver cup, and a coveted title. For the first time in her life, she truly looked outside herself, and found the world beyond both uncertain and a little frightening.

She returned home amongst rumours of the rebirth of a wizard so evil that no one dared speak his name, her self-confidence dented and her plans for her future suddenly less certain than they had been. For the first time, she considered that her beauty might not be enough, and that events outside her control might affect her more than she would like.

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Even the most beloved of heroines reaches a point in her story where she must go her own way, and the girl resolved to travel back to the foreign land where she had competed, to earn her own money, to learn to live on her own, and to improve her command of the language, which was harsh and unmusical compared to the softer cadences of her own tongue. Her father was influential, and was able to secure her a job with the goblin-run bank of the country, and the whole family went with her to help her unpack in the tiny flat that was to be her new home. It had none of the space and luxury of her parents' house, or even of her school, but it was cosy and warm, with a wide fireplace in the main room, and even a tiny balcony that looked over the street below. She hung a new mirror, framed in gilt, in her bedroom, and felt that the place was truly her own.

But when her family left her alone, and she faced day after day in a strange country, with no one to talk to, no one to cook or eat or walk or play with, and with work made more difficult by her unfamiliarity with the language, she found that she was very lonely. Every night and every morning, she would look in her mirror, and while her beauty was undimmed, the light in her eyes was diminishing, and she did not smile at her reflection any more. For the first time in her life, she found her beauty to be a handicap. The women she worked with were jealous and acted coldly towards her, and the men were over-attentive and clearly only interested in her because of how she looked.

The reflection in the mirror no longer made her happy. She felt truly alone and very sad.

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The threat of war had brought the man back to his own country, both to be near to his family and to play his part in the fight against the dark wizard whom they dared not name. He worked now in the high-ceilinged bank where the goblins ruled and where the girl from across the sea had found her own employment. He recognised her from the competition he had watched her take part in, but he did not share the admiration many of his colleagues had for her undoubted beauty. He had heard tales from his younger brothers of her vanity and pride: he was not interested in such a girl.

But one day, returning from lunch, he saw her at her desk, choking on her own tears. It was not in his nature to ignore someone so clearly miserable, and he went and spoke gently to her. He made her smile. He even gave her chocolate.

And that evening, he took her out with him to the green countryside that he loved. They ate a meal together, and he discovered something of the real person behind the beautiful face. She held aloof from him as was her habit, not sharing too much about herself, but he knew enough of people by now to know that behind her beauty was a girl, not so unlike his own little sister, a girl who wanted to be loved for who she was.

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He was the first person in this cold and dreary country who had cared for her, who had treated her as more than a beautiful face and body. He took her home and saw her to her door like a true gentleman, and when she went to her bedroom and looked in her mirror, she saw that her eyes were brighter than they had been for many a day, and she smiled.

She slept deeply that night and dreamt of the man, who was as tall and as handsome as she had remembered him, but who was kind and funny and gentle as well. This was a man worthy of her beauty, a man she could come to love as her equal.

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In the way of all good tales, the man and the girl fell rapidly and deeply in love. He found the real person behind the beautiful face, and although she remained vain and proud of her looks, his love softened her and made her more willing to consider others, even those she had once thought of as being beneath her notice. In him, she found a man who was not only her equal, but her superior. She longed to please him, and found herself changing in order to do so. A year to the day after they first spoke, he asked her to marry him.

With his ring gleaming on her finger, she held her head high and was considered by many of her acquaintance to be as vain and as remote as ever. But she did not care what others thought. She had found a man – a kind, clever, brave and handsome man – worthy of herself, and nothing and no one else mattered. Even the opposition and hostility of his mother and sister did not shake her faith. Nothing could separate them now.

The war continued on around them, closer every day, and he played his part, as did she now, for if she was to be his wife, she would share his dangers as well as his joys. One terrible day, an urgent message summoned her to a hospital where he lay unconscious, his handsome face ravaged by gashes inflicted by the monster who had attacked him. His mother sobbed over him, lamenting the loss of her handsome son and the end of his chances of lasting happiness with the girl he loved. The girl pushed her aside in fury. This was the man she loved, and his scars did not matter.

"They show that my husband is brave!" she raged, and she snatched the ointment from his mother's hand and began to smooth it over his altered and broken face.

When he woke, hours later, she was the one who was by his side, and she was with him too when they brought him a mirror and he saw how he was changed. She held him close as the mirror fell from his hands and shattered on the floor beneath his bed, murmuring that it did not matter, that she loved him still and always would, that the scars were nothing because of the man he was and the love which they shared.

They were married a month later, and moved to the cottage by the sea which they had found and chosen to be their refuge from the world. It became a refuge for others too as the war raged on, and such was the change which love had made in her, the girl – who was now a woman – did not mind, but gave all she could of herself to those who had been displaced, who were lost and hurting and frightened and alone.

The gilt-framed mirror from her tiny flat hung in the bedroom, but she scarcely had time to look in it now. She had discovered a beauty that was more than skin deep.

When the war ended, and she and her husband went forward into their life together, scarred and battered and mourning for those they had lost, but rejoicing in the victory of the light they had fought for, they knew that they had found what was truly important in each other and in themselves. Theirs was a love which would carry them through anything in the years ahead.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who is the fairest of them all?

Your face is fair, though years have passed,

Though better still is love which lasts.