Erised

The mirror looks nondescript enough, innocuous, as if there's nothing at all wrong with looking in its silvery depths. It isn't until the curtain is lifted and the dreams appear in the glass that the obsession digs in and takes hold.

He pulls off the cloth and stares at the glass. There it is, a place where people like him can train and be happy and spend the greatest parts of their lives without persecution or disdain. It's a dream that's happening all around him, brick by brick.

There are a lot of people outside in the image, including himself at the forefront, but the picture is strangely still. The people are frozen in time, the owl is trapped in the window, wings outstretched, about to take off but not quite ready. It's slightly unnerving, but beautiful all the same. It's his dream, his obsession, ever since the others first mentioned it, the idea has taken hold and he wants it to work more than anything, more than the rest of them.

A school for people like him. A place where no one is ever worried about muggles finding out, a place where children can grow and live and love and learn. A place where magic can flourish without any confines.

It's his dream and it's coming true. He wants it now, though; he doesn't want it to be simply in progress. He wants to step into the mirror's world and feel the sunlight and watch that owl take off, and travel the halls of his own world made into a reality.

It's never quite enough to see the progress that keeps happening.

The mirror stands in a vacant room covered by a moth-eaten and tattered curtain. It's been here a while. It looks so innocent, sitting there, as if it's just a mirror. It isn't until the curtain is lifted and the dreams appear that the desire can burrow inside and burn like a flame.

He pulls off the cloth and stares at the glass. There he stands, immortal, a ruler, a god among men. His face is shining and he has it all, eternal life, eternal youth, eternal everything, unable to ever die like the fool of his mother had. He doesn't know how he can tell that he's immortal, he just knows.

He hasn't really thought about it before now, but looking back, the desire probably has always been there. If he became immortal, if he ruled the world, if he got rid of all the filth like his father, then they would see that Tom Riddle is no pushover. Then they would understand that fighting someone like him was a death sentence, just the way he'd always wanted.

What shocks him most is that he hasn't realized it before now. He grasped his magic at a young age, why hadn't it occurred to him to use magic to keep from dying the way his mother had?

He stares into the silver of the mirror and wonders how it can show him such a thing he hasn't even realized himself. He tries to read the writing around the top, but the words are lost on him. He hardly spares the frame a second glance. It's the image inside that's burned into his memory.

It becomes what he desires above all else.

The mirror's silvery sheen is dulling slowly but it still looks just as innocent as it used to be, standing in a room with no windows or furniture. It looks like it's nothing more than a simple looking-glass. It isn't until the curtain is lifted and the dreams appear that the mirror's truth can show itself.

He pulls off the cloth and stares at the glass. There he stands, surrounded by family and a loving mother and father. It's the only thing he's ever really wanted, a family to love him and care about him. He sits in front of the mirror, watching it for hours, seeing nothing change but staring at it nonetheless.

His mother is smiling and his father looks proud. There's his grandparents and loads of other people he hasn't met. And his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are nowhere in sight. It's the life he's laid awake dreaming of, it's the way he always wanted to live. The sky is just beginning to light and he knows he'll have to leave the room soon, but it's so hard to simply cover up his dreams.

It's a life he almost had—almost. But it was snatched away before he could really grasp it, and now all he's got left of it all is a mirror telling him what he wants, as if he couldn't tell himself.

The invisibility cloak lays discarded at his feet and he knows he can never have this dream. It's all part of a fantasy that he should know better than to hope for. He hears something behind him but pays it no heed, at least, not until he hears a voice.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry."

The mirror doesn't look so innocent anymore, not in this room and not with what's hidden inside it. It looks like so much more and so much less than simply a mirror, both at the same time. But it isn't until the curtain is lifted and the dreams appear that anything inside can be taken.

He pulls off the cloth and stares at the glass. There it is; the thing he wants most, in his hand. His master is pleased, his master is rewarding him, his master is releasing him for giving him what he needs to regenerate. Now if only he could get it.

But he doesn't know how. He can't reach inside the glass and take it, he can't shatter the glass and pull it from the shards, and he can't say Accio! and have it fly into his arms. His master won't be pleased but there's no way to reach it, it's been so cleverly hidden he certainly can't get it. Dumbledore wouldn't have been stupid enough to make it easy.

There's a noise behind him but he ignores it, watching, willing the stone to simply be in his arms, in his pocket, up his nose if that's what it takes. Just to have it, to gain his master's favor and, hopefully pardon, would make whatever the cost worth it.

But the stone doesn't come to someone like him.

The mirror is hidden in a room in a place where no one will find it. It's covered with a moth-eaten and tattered cloth, and it's words are faded and slowly disappearing, a testament to the desires of a few turning into the mistakes of a thousand. But it isn't until the curtain is lifted and the dreams appear that the total cost of a wizard's plaything, an enchanted mirror, can be fully recognized.