Terrible, Cursed Mirror
A thud and some hurried steps chased out of earshot, waking Catallena from her once peaceful slumber. She stretched her arms and legs and gave a yawn that shook her entire frame. She sat for some time with sleep in her eyes and wondered why it was so dark if people were already awake in the Ravenclaw common room.
Oh right, the blanket. It wasn’t night, she was just hiding underneath it so Death wouldn’t be tempted to pull her out of bed by her ears. But she soon found herself drowning in her powder blue bedding – it threatened to swallow her whole, to suffocate her in the linen. She blew it out of her mouth, kicked at it and thwacked it off her head but it was heavier than she remembered. By the time she had surfaced for air her hair was a static mess floating about.
What had happened?
She rubbed her eyes and then rubbed them again. She must need glasses; nothing looked the way it had when she fell asleep last night. The proportions were all wrong. The walls raised over her like they never had before. As always, blue ribbons and curtains of different shades cascaded from the ceiling to the sides of her bed frame but now Catallena had to crane her head all the way back to see them disappear behind Lisa Turpin’s upper bunk bed. Bookcases looked like towers. The cheering and leering quidditch players in Harper Knut’s moving posters had grown to three times Catallena’s size.
Even Princess Kisa, on top of Catallena’s now enormous pillow, looked as if Catallena could fit into her fanged jaws quite comfortably.
Catallena’s breathing quickened. Was she dreaming still? Why wouldn’t she wake up?
The view from the tall window right next to the bed was dizzying. Catallena felt as though she might simply fall down if she got too close to the glass. The dark purple and blue snow on top of roofs, treetops, rock formations and fields was beginning to turn to a deep orange and lilac splatter as the sun slowly crept closer to the horizon. She would have thought that it was beautiful if her heart wasn’t currently trying to escape through her mouth.
Bad eyesight doesn’t do this to a person, Catallena thought. If it did, she didn’t know how Harry – who wears glasses – does this every day. How small must he feel when he takes them off…
But it mustn't be so , she thought, looking down from the edge of her bed where it was usually a low drop to the ground. I just… I woke up extra small today . She let her legs hang over the edge, wondering if she dared test getting out. She thought she might break her legs if she jumped now. She couldn’t just lay there the whole day, though, could she? She had made a promise to Harry and Ron that she would meet them for breakfast that morning.
Kisa meowed from the pillow and after much contemplation Catallena let herself drop to the ground (not at all gracefully).
At the faint sound of her bones rattling against the floor, laughing broke out from behind the room's door. It was a hushed kind of giggling, the kind that had Catallena expecting a paper crane to hit the back of her head in class. The door opened slightly and warm light flooded in, drawing shadows of whoever the intruders were over the carpet.
Catallena turned in her fright and tried to hide under her bed, forgetting the pain of falling awkwardly, but she was picked off the ground by the back of her ruffled pyjama shirt and suddenly she was soaring through the air toward a huge smiling face. Her legs flailed when she could no longer feel the floor underneath and she tried grasping the fingers that pinched her clothes behind her head, but could not do anything to stop the giant.
“Oh stop wiggling or I’ll just drop you,” the giant said. Her smile was partly replaced with a wondrous look as she turned and twisted Catallena in her hands, poking her cheeks and pulling at her hair whenever she got the chance.
“I think it worked quite wonderfully, don’t you?” a giant boy laughed as if he was proud of his doings. “Look at her. She looks petrified.”
“Awake now, little pet?” the girl holding Catallena asked, pushing her face so close to Catallena, the now tiny witch could count the eyelashes she had on one eye. “Cat’s got your tongue? Alright then, I think she’d like to open presents with us downstairs,” the girl declared and began walking out of the dorm room with Catallena tightly clasped in her hands. Catallena wanted nothing but the suffocating blankets back over her head.
Have I turned into a hamster? Catallena shook and cried all the way down the steps that led to the common room. Or a finger puppet, maybe? This is a nightmare!
One more giant Ravenclaw sat at a round coffee table reading the Daily Prophet. A blonde woman wearing venomously red lipstick and a fashionable pencil skirt shook hands with a smiling gold-haired man on the page visible to them.
”Cho! Take a look at Sam’s handiwork! Close your eyes and give me your hands, palms up,” dared the girl carrying Catallena.
Cho smiled shyly, folded her paper to the side and did as she was told. Catallena was swiftly deposited onto her palms. “What is this?” Cho asked but was no longer humoured when Catallena tried escaping by sliding down her extended arms onto the plush couch.
Cho screamed when the mysterious object in her hands moved. She recoiled, dropping the girl far away from her. Her now open eyes took in Catallena, who was currently looking for a way down from the couch, and when the shock wore off she turned to her friends who had done something quite horrible.
“That’s a student!” she stammered.
“I mean, is it though?” Sam joked and picked up Catallena much like how the giant girl had before. “I think she looks more like a Christmas ornament,” he chortled and hung the girl by her collar from the christmas tree next to the fireplace.
“Don’t you think that’s cruel?” Cho protested weakly, her charcoal eyes reflecting the softly glowing embers of the fireplace, but the other girl waved a hand at her dismissively.
“No, no. We’re just including her in the gift opening.” The girl took a present from under the tree and tossed it at Sam who had also sat down on the couch overlooking the cozy set up they had. “Besides,” The girl sang, “I don’t see any presents signed for ‘the Homeless’, ‘Mudblood’ (Cho gasped behind her hand), ‘Loopy’ or ‘Ghostie’, anyway. She’s got no presents to open. I should think she’s happy to spectate from the tree. It must be so awfully lonely being her.” She didn’t sound like she thought any of that awful.
“Tessa, using magic on another student is wrong,” Cho insisted. “And you shouldn’t call anyone that word. It’s not nice at all!” She kept looking at Catallena from under her black bangs, but was frozen on the sofa.
Tessa gave her a present wrapped in brown wrapping paper and soothed: “Lighten up. It's Christmas! It’s your first year here so you should enjoy it while you can. Sammy knows what he’s doing because he’s a sixth year, see? When you’re older you’ll need to practice spells during the break, too, so that you’re prepared for exams. They get harder each year.”
“Yeah, I’ve been practicing loads, “ Sam taunted, glancing at the tree where Catallena was stuck next to hanging bulbs, snowflakes, birds and nutcrackers. The more she writhed, the more pine needles pricked her sides. Surely the pain would have woken her up already if this were a nightmare? Tinsel mixed with her static hair. Glitter stuck to her face that was wet with tears. A real candle warmed her dangling feet.
“The Reducio charm is so easy I could just make you small too,” Sam smiled at Cho and when she kept her mouth closed, he started unwrapping a custom made wand handle.
And so Catallena resignedly hung there, sniffling as an ornament, unable to get herself free. She watched the three Ravenclaws open presents and enjoy sweets, though Cho seemed reluctant. Tessa would get excited whenever she unveiled a book or other thoughtful gifts like the fancy leather gloves she got from her grandmother. Sam ate mud cakes and snagged Cho’s Daily Prophet when he got bored of making faces at Catallena.
Catallena didn’t hate many things and she definitely didn’t hate climbing trees. In fact, she loved hiding between branches and looking up toward the sky and the leaves above her. It was one of her favourite pastimes; it calmed her and gave her an opportunity to wonder. She wondered about many a thing, but here on the Christmas tree with her every sense assaulted, with the fire that was threatening to char her soles if she didn’t curl her feet away from it and with the awful grin on Sam’s face, she could only panic.
Cho didn’t look very festive either even though she had just opened a present to find a beautiful oil painting kit.
It was when the sun was completely above the cool yellow horizon that Sam and Tessa decided it was time to go down to the Great Hall for some breakfast. Soft Christmas music played from the gramophone and discarded wrapping paper crinkled in their hands as it was gathered into a pile and then vanished with a spell.
In the few moments when no-one was looking, Cho hurried to pick Catallena off her tree and set her free on the ground. Cho’s hands were cold and their tremor shook Catallena from her panic. “Sorry,” Cho whispered before she slid the puppet sized girl carefully across the floor, sending her as far away as discreetly as possible. Catallena scrambled to her sore feet and fled for her escape, not before catching sight of Cho’s apologetic face.
Catallena had managed to hobble over to the common room entrance when she heard the beginnings of Sam’s fit. “Where’d she go? Where’d you put her?” he could be heard asking.
“I didn’t do anything. I was just looking out the window,” Cho defended, but Catallena left it far behind her.
She wasn’t advancing as fast as she would have liked. Achy, stupidly short legs. There were so many stairs she had to drop down one by one. When Tessa, Sam and Cho caught up to her and passed her by, Sam was whining still. Catallena made herself as flat as she could against one of the stairs to make herself unnoticeable and sighed a great heave after she was alone once more. She wiped some big flecks of silver glitter off her forehead.
She had to find someone who would help her. It was becoming alarmingly clear that this hadn’t been some nightmare. Surely there was a spell that would make her normal-sized once more. Catallena didn’t want to get used to hanging from trees as an ornament.
And how would she get to classes daily when she was already late for breakfast? An alarming thought entered Catallena’s mind: If she couldn’t go to classes would she be kicked out of the school? The thought of returning home and never seeing Harry, Ron or Hermione again was a surprisingly sad one for her. It gave her a new kind of determination.
The hallways stretched for an eternity now and the small bumps and rolls in the rugs proved bigger obstacles than before. Hunger burned almost as painfully as her desperation. Once at ground level, Catallena pushed on to enter a courtyard that led closer to the Great Hall. That’s where everyone must be, enjoying a lazy breakfast under the bright sunshine of the magical ceiling. If she was quick enough, she might catch them there.
The sun lit up the courtyard too, making individual snowflakes sparkle beautifully. The sight made Catallena nearly forget her predicament for a short moment. And oh, how thirsty the sight of snow made her! Catallena picked a few unique snowflakes out of the bunch and melted them on her tongue, replenishing her thirst. It was familiar to her, though she didn’t dwell on that fact; sometimes when she had been banished from home for the night as a child, she had eaten handfuls of fresh snow to stop her stomach’s growling. She fancied herself quite resourceful at times.
Reminded to keep going by the chatter of her teeth, Catallena hopped from one foot mark in the snowy courtyard to another. Her ankles burned as the snow and cold air bit at them relentlessly, getting under her pant legs despite her efforts. The burning and tingling only intensified when she entered the grand staircase where the air was very warm in comparison. A couple of sharp turns got her closer to her destination, the sweet smell of plum kissel pulling her along.
A confused ‘mrrow’ from one end of the hall Catallena was in made the hairs on the back of the girl’s neck stand up. The bristling intensified when she turned around and met the red eyes of Mrs Norris. Never before had Catallena hated a cat or wished that she were hanging as an ornament from a tree more than now, taking off running toward the Great Hall with the scruffy cat running after her in this game of cat and mouse. As if a window had been opened, freezing temperatures took over the once warm corridor.
The cat’s bounding footsteps drew closer and closer, the soft padding now thunderous to Catallena who didn’t have the time to catch her own breath. It felt as if her breath was being suspended by an icy cold hand around her throat. Catallena had to dive down and away from a swiped paw, getting carpet burns on her palms. The dark coat of Mrs Norris that brushed past her cheek in her fall felt eerily similar to the cloak of Death, and the smell of dead rodents on the feline’s breath sent Catallena back to her last night in front of the Mirror.
A curved claw caught onto Catallena’s shirt hem, hooking her to her Death, whose bone white teeth chattered in excitement.
You might’ve heard that cats play with their food. Might’ve seen it too. The small prey would be flung a little ways away, then chased, then caught in the mouth of the beast and shaken violently from side to side. And when the prey is disoriented and on the floor the cat waits for it to start moving again to administer these actions a second and a third time.
Catallena wished at that moment that no-one else had to ever experience being the food of Mrs Norris. More importantly, she didn’t want her horrible Death to come to her, only to send her back on her way to Life with a few punctures from cat teeth to mark where she had once been killed.
Sometimes, the prey can outrun its hunter. Sometimes, by sheer luck, salvation might come in the form of a foot wearing a worn grey sneaker.
Catallena ran into a sneaker clad leg which nearly stomped her to the ground from surprise. “Whoa!” Harry exclaimed and jumped back.
“What–” Ron’s voice was paired with shoes that were an odd blueish brown colour. “It’s– Is that…? Catallena!”
Again, Catallena found herself high above the ground. Only this time the hands were much smaller and gentler. Harry wouldn’t even imagine dropping her.
“Shoo, ugly cat! Leave her alone. Go bully someone your own size!” Ron chased Mrs Norris away. The hallway got warm again.
“Are you alright? What happened to you?” Harry asked. On the verge of another onslaught of tears, Catallena stared into his incredibly green eyes. In them she saw her own frazzled reflection gasping for air. Her heart was still hammering furiously against her insides. “How are you so small?” Harry tried, cradling Catallena awkwardly as if she were a bird. The back of her throat burned uncomfortably and she opened and closed her mouth some, but no noise came.
‘ Cat’s got your tongue?’ Tessa’s voice taunted in her head.
“Obviously it's magic,” Ron answered for the girl. He, too, came close and examined her. He took a string of tinsel out of her hair and continued: “You’re lucky Mrs Norris didn’t get you.”
“We should try to find someone who can turn you back into yourself," Harry said, immediately thinking of Professor McGonagall.
“Yeah,” Ron nodded. “Preferably before anything like that happens again. You’re perfectly the size of an owl’s breakfast!” This got Catallena crying again, which startled Harry and Ron to get a move on.
They ran toward Professor McGonagall’s office, figuring that the transfiguration teacher was their best bet. Many of the professors had gone home for the holidays, but they knew for certain that she was spending her time at the castle, having seen her during meals. She had eaten breakfast at the Great Hall only recently, so she couldn’t have gotten far.
Ron ran faster than Harry, who was trying to be quick without shaking Catallena too much with each step. She hung desperately onto his left thumb. It was oddly calloused for an eleven year old.
“No running in the corridors,” Snape’s demanding voice cut them short and Ron almost ran head first into his dark robes. Harry came to a halt too, dreading this interaction as he did every other interaction he had with Professor Snape. The man seemed to loathe him so.
“What could possibly have you this frantic so early in the morning? Care to explain, Mr Potter?”
“Oh, well…” Ron began but couldn’t think of an explanation fast enough for Snape’s liking. “Cat’s got your tongue?” Professor Snape asked and Catallena squeezed Harry’s thumb tighter. The squeeze made Harry decide to quickly hide Catallena behind his back. It was a last minute decision. He knew Snape would find a way to blame him for whatever happened to Catallena.
However, Professor Snape caught the sudden move and became almost pleased to see Harry squirm under his unwavering stare. ”Stolen something, have we?” he asked and stalked closer to the boy, pushing Ron out of his way.
“No!” Harry denied it slightly louder than he had meant to. “We were just–”
“We were just late! For uhh…” Ron tried but failed to be very helpful. He couldn’t think of anything they could possibly be late for during Christmas day.
“I do not tolerate lying, Mr Weasley,” Snape threatened and Catallena could hear the teeth in every word. She didn’t quite recognize this Snape and it confused her.
Harry was slowly backing away from his professor, wishing that this whole ordeal wouldn’t land him in detention on Christmas, when the sudden sight of McGonagall allowed him to breathe again.
“Severus? What’s going on?” McGonagall asked them. She walked over, her short heels clicking on the granite floor of the hallway.
“Mr Potter was just about to lie to a professor. I heard the two of them running all the way down from the grand staircase.”
“Lie about what?” she asked them all, but upon seeing her students’ red and pleading faces she continued: “It seems they were in a hurry. Let me take care of it then. I am their head of house, after all.”
Professor Snape seemed very reluctant to leave. He shot the two boys with dark glances down his nose on his way past them and down the hallway. Harry and Ron shared a look and followed McGonagall to her office, leaving the thoroughly annoyed man behind.
McGonagall sighed when she shut the door to her office. A neat wreath decorated the door and her office smelled strongly of spiced mulled wine. “What is it you’re up to then? Don’t think it wise to rile Severus up during Christmas.”
“We need help,” Harry explained and brought his hands forward as if trying to show a butterfly that he had caught between his palms. McGonagall backed away a little and pulled her glasses down from atop her head to see – to her great horror – a miniature Catallena.
“Good Godric! What– Give her here!” Catallena was hastily put onto McGonagall’s desk. A magnifying glass was conjured into the professor’s hand and Catallena felt even more exposed being studied so closely. She couldn’t look into the light grey-green eye that was magnified above her.
“A reducing charm,” McGonagall mumbled to herself in confirmation, her voice shaking with some kind of emotion. “Bigger head… you never… simply reduce a person , it can alter the proportions…”
“ ‘Alter the proportions’ ? Can you turn her back?” Ron asked in a high pitched voice, having been listening closely. Harry felt his stomach turning. He felt quite horrible for Catallena, who sat there on McGonagall’s table next to a small box of orange caramels that was bigger than her.
Harry imagined having to keep Catallena in his pocket during classes, feeding her crumbs of her favourite desserts and using his newfound money in Gringotts to buy her a doll house. Oh, but the Dursleys wouldn’t allow him a doll house, nor would they appreciate a magically reduced girl under their roof. They hated everything magical and odd. And she really was so small that Harry feared he might some day step on her or see her get eaten by his owl Hedwig. Where would Catallena go and what would become of her if she had to stay so little?
“Please tell me you can make her normal again,” Harry begged his professor, who was still examining Catallena.
“Yes. Yes. I can make her bigger again,” McGonagall said to their relief, but didn’t sound all too confident or cheerful. Catallena almost melted into a puddle upon hearing this, but tensed once more when McGonagall continued: “It’s the proportions I have to be mindful of.”
The professor then took out her wand and held it out toward Catallena, a calculating expression on her face.
Catallena covered her face when a sprout of banana yellow magic erupted from McGonagall’s wand. It tickled her sides but she couldn’t find it in herself to laugh at the moment. When the tickling ended, she lowered her hands and found that she was no longer ornament sized. The box of caramels fell to the ground. Harry smiled at her with a toothy grin and Ron refrained from cheering aloud.
“Can you move your fingers?” McGonagall asked, and Catallena wiggled them to show. “Can you count to ten still?” and Catallena did so. Her answers made McGonagall less worried that the spell had gone awry. Thin cuts down Catallena’s face and neck that disappeared under her collar, however, were still very much worrisome. The carpet burn on her palms pulsed and stung uncomfortably.
“Mrs Norris got to her,” Harry explained the cuts, which had come from the cat’s claws and teeth. They were thankfully very shallow scratches that a few waves of McGonagall’s wand cleaned. The puncture marks on Catallena’s clothing mended themselves the same way.
“What buffoon thought this a good idea?” their professor asked, referring to Catallena’s downsizing. For a second she looked around accusingly. “Spells like these are strictly forbidden from students to use against one another. And for good reason!”
“It wasn’t any of us!” Ron defended himself and Harry. “We found her like that!”
“Who was it, then?” McGonagall’s voice was coloured with barely concealed anger. It had gone up an octave, similarly to her expecting eyebrows.
Catallena wiped more glitter and tears off her face. When she finally uttered her answer it came out very shaky. “Sam wanted to practice his homework.”
“Samuel Snicket,” McGonagall huffed after a moment, seeming to already be familiar with the boy, and walked around to her writing desk to look for something. “Has he been bothering you before?” Catallena shook her head no. “And you are sure you are quite alright now?” their professor confirmed, getting a nod from Catallena. Harry reached out to pull a feather from the girl’s hair.
McGonagall stopped her rummaging of her desk to look at the trio with softened eyes. “Breakfast is over, but I’ll ask the elves to send something to the Gryffindor common room, if you two would take your friend there,” she asked Ron and Harry. “An exception, of course, only for today,” McGonagall added. “I think it best to spend Christmas with friends.”
“Yes, Professor,” Harry said, thankful.
McGonagall then ushered the three of them out, making sure that they knew Samuel would not be an issue going forward. She sat at her desk and finally found a few slips to write letters on: One for the Snickets, one for Professor Flitwick and one for headmaster Dumbledore, who was out giving his Christmas greetings to old friends.
McGonagall let her frustration show this time in her letter to Dumbledore. She had brought up Miss Nocturne’s housing situation to him before. She had tried to pry any information she thought the headmaster might have regarding the student, but it was all in vain. Dumbledore didn’t seem nearly as concerned as McGonagall felt. The old man could be too carefree - too breezy - at times.
And now McGonagall couldn’t help but feel even worse for the child who was seemingly being bullied by older students. The professor felt she had to do something to protect the girl – to make Dumbledore see. So she folded the strongly worded letter she wrote, signed and then rolled it into a scroll and gave it along with the other letters to her owl, which dove out of her window with a screech.
McGonagall then sank into her cushy armchair that overlooked her study. Her heels were changed into a pair of tartan slippers despite the early hour. She sipped her mulled wine and absentmindedly flipped the pages to a random book she had left open the previous night, feeling quite drained by Catallena’s case. She darkly spent the noon hours by planning the detention Samuel Snicket would be getting if it were up to her.
The Gryffindor common room was even better than Catallena had imagined. No flying lions or chandeliers, but it was so wonderfully red and warm. The three kids sat on the ground in front of the big fireplace, eating a late breakfast consisting of warm bread, sausages, chocolate porridge, plum kissel, pastries and sizzling hot chocolate. Ron and Harry helped themselves to their third servings as well.
“We were wondering where you had gone,” Ron explained as he chewed his mouthful of egg custard pie. “We were coming to look for you when you nearly ran under Harry’s shoe.” Catallena nodded in recollection.
“Why did Sam do that to you?” Harry asked, still feeling quite horrible for Catallena.
“Yeah and why is there glitter everywhere you touch?” Ron grimaced, flicking another glitter piece off Catallena’s shoulder.
Catallena shrugged and picked at the glitter glued to her neck. She really didn’t know why Samuel – or any of the other kids, for that matter – did the things they did to her. “It’s funny?” she guessed aloud. “They don’t like me very much?” was her other bet.
“I can’t imagine why,” Ron said, earning a kick to his folded shins from Harry. “Ow! That hurt! You know I’m still bruised from the snowball fight! What I meant was,” and he turned to look at Catallena when he said the next part, “that you are a little off-putting. OW , Harry! No, I don’t mean it as a bad thing! It’s just that… well… You just act a little strangely and look a little unusual too. And you don’t really say anything, either, so I guess that does make you a good target.”
Ron had to scoot away from Harry to defensively add: “I’m not saying it’s right. They’re all gits.”
Catallena looked thoughtful rather than offended. She supposed if Ron thought so then it must be correct. It was just that she didn’t know what about her precisely was so off-putting that she could change.
As if Harry could read her mind, he said a little embarrassedly: “I like you the way you are. ‘Off-putting’ or not.” He squinted at Ron, who reached for another sausage. Then after thinking for a bit longer, he tentatively pointed out: “You just don’t really speak up for yourself often.”
Ron agreed. “You could try to defend yourself. You defended us when Malfoy cornered us at the library. You need to start speaking more to do that.”
But Catallena couldn’t really tell them what had driven her to do so back then. It was something instinctual, something she didn’t feel when it was her that was being teased. Besides, she had only gotten lucky when she had stood up for her new friends and caused some sort of magic surge that scared Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle away. In her experience, standing up for herself never ended up very well.
Catallena looked at the paintings of long since passed Gryffindors all along the walls of the cozy room they were in, each portrait picturing an important face, each braver than the other. She thought Harry’s face would surely one day smile down from one of them, Ron’s right next to it. They were both brave, far braver than her. She couldn’t bring herself to defend herself against the mean people Harry and Ron were urging her to defend herself against.
She couldn’t, and didn’t see a point in doing so, either. She reminded herself of the fact that not only were Harry and Ron far more brave compared to her, they were also far more vulnerable. They had their lives to lose, she didn’t. It made sense defending the two of them, and Hermione too, because they could end up in a painting otherwise. Catallena had seen Death and didn’t think she would ever see the inside of the frames that waited for her. Why fight back?
“I don’t speak to people I don’t like,” Catallena concluded out loud. “I like you.”
It made Harry blush and Ron laugh a short laugh. But it was true. She hardly spoke unless it was with the three Gryffindors she had been meeting up after lessons to look for Nicholas Flamel’s name in the library.
“This is you speaking?” Ron joked. “I’ve heard you say maybe fifteen sentences total.” It got a slight smile and nod from Catallena.
After they had finished their meal, Harry went and got the homemade caramel fudge he had gotten from Ron’s mother, Mrs Weasley, to share with the other two.
“Mum really knows her recipes,” Ron sighed, reaching for another. “I just wish she stopped giving me the same burgundy sweater every year. I keep asking for green but she says that’s Percy’s colour. She even threatened to make me a yellow one this Christmas if I didn’t like the burgundy.”
“I like mine a lot,” Harry spoke earnestly and looked down at his own dark blue sweater with a big grey ‘H’ on the front. Ron’s had a knit ‘R’ in the bright yellow that had been used to threaten him.
“That’s because it isn’t practically the same colour as your hair,” Ron complained. “What did you get for Christmas?” he asked Catallena.
“Nothing,” she answered as if that was expected. She hid a big chunk of fudge in her cheek.
“Nothing?” Ron exclaimed, getting slightly flustered and red. Harry’s face morphed into a frown. He pushed the box of fudge closer toward Catallena, not finding any proper words to share and instead listening to the back and forth between Ron and Catallena.
“Nothing,” she confirmed.
“Your parents didn’t get you anything?”
“I don’t have parents.”
“No parents? Why not? Ouch , Harry, stop doing that!”
“They died.”
“...”
“...”
“Sorry.”
“...”
“No-one else in your family sent you any presents either, then?”
“There is no-one.”
“...Really? Who do you live with?”
“The ghosts.”
“Right, of course. The ghosts. Quite self-explanatory that one. And don’t come any closer, Harry, I swear to Merlin.” Ron pulled a pillow down from one of the sofas and placed it between him and Harry. “I really am sorry, you know. About your parents,” he said to Catallena looking a little bashful, at least.
Catallena shook her head. What did Ron have to apologise for?
“My parents are dead, too,” Harry offered quietly, hoping to show some kind of solidarity. “I live with my aunt’s family.”
Harry wasn’t sure how much Catallena knew about him, to be honest. She had never talked with him about… well… much. But she had never talked with him about Voldemort or Harry being the so-called ‘Chosen One’, specifically – not even in their efforts to find out who Flamel is. Word travels, however, and he wouldn’t be too surprised if she had heard whispers in the halls or read recounts of the day of his parents’ death from books.
Harry had never before found someone in such a similar position to him as her. He felt bad for thinking, even for a second, that it was comforting to not be alone in it. But when he saw Catallena perk up a little at his admission of having no parents, he thought that maybe it wasn’t something to feel bad about, after all. They shared an understanding. They shared a feeling that couldn’t really be put into words. And both found themselves glad and sorry to have someone understand it.
“Yeah, and my mum loves him already,” Ron grumbled but there was a smile there somewhere. “I’m sure next year you’ll get plenty of gifts from her as well. She always wanted a daughter and though she has Ginny now, once I tell her more about you she’ll surely want to meet you along with Harry and Hermione.”
To Catallena it was a lovely thought. She let herself wonder for a moment what the next Christmas might look like.
“Speaking of Hermione,” Ron went on now that the tension had been broken, “She’ll be very mad with us if we don’t find out more about this Flamel.”
Harry, thankful for a lighter subject, agreed. “We need to get to the restricted section in the library soon. I don’t want Snape to figure out what it is that we’re doing before that.”
“He really has it out for you – for us,” Ron echoed. “He really wants what’s hidden behind Fluffy.”
“Fluffy?” Catallena asked.
“Oh, right. A little while back we accidentally ran into a three-headed dog. Hagrid calls it Fluffy. It’s huge.” Ron’s nose was wrinkled as if he thought that Fluffy was something entirely unpleasant.
“Hermione noticed it was guarding a trap door. That must be where whatever it is Dumbledore is hiding is hidden! The secret package Hagrid got from Gringotts,” Harry explained, looking around to make sure no-one else had come into the common room. “We need to find out what it is and what it does. I think Snape wants it for himself and it can’t be for anything good.”
Catallena did think there was something the matter with Professor Snape and how he treated Harry and Ron earlier that day. The three Gryffindors even swore that the man had been the one to try to throw Harry off his broom during the first quidditch match.
“I might be able to convince Fred and George to play a prank on him to slow him down,” Ron began plotting playfully. “Maybe he should receive a box of slightly tweaked exploding bonbons from a secret admirer.”
Ron kept coming up with more ridiculous prank ideas, making Harry and even Catallena laugh.
They decided to find Fred and George then and ended up spending the day losing to Ron at wizard’s chess and playing around with the gobstones the twins had gotten as a Christmas present from their friend Lee Jordan.
Catallena got to rest her continuously sore legs for the rest of the day. Nicholas Flamel could wait one more day of Christmas break.
Except that night Catallena found herself – to no-one’s surprise – unable to sleep. It bothered her, not knowing what it was that went on between Nicholas Flamel, Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape. Most of all she wanted to lift the burden of scouring the library off Harry and Ron’s shoulders.
So she found herself tiptoeing the cold corridors all the way to the Central Hall and then down to the big dark library. It was even more quiet at night although Madam Pince kept things in order during daytime. Catallena’s hair lit the way to the restricted section’s gate, which easily opened a crack so she could slip past it.
Dust particles rose in the air like snow in reverse, picked up by the breeze of her movements. It smelled strongly of ink and paper and something sharper, something metallic.
Catallena ran her hand along the spines of some of the old books, feeling the different textures and reading the books’ names. She was about to pull one off the shelf to examine it closer when a warm flood of light entered the library and quickly advanced toward where Catallena stood.
She let out a breath, preparing for the kind of detention she would get for being out of bed and in the Restricted section after curfew. The sight of what it was that stopped a few paces away from the restricted sections iron gate, however, was not that of an annoyed Professor doing their nightly rounds.
Instead of a Professor, it was a hand. A hand holding a lantern, to be precise. Before Catallena’s heartbeat could pick up any further, a body connected to the hand emerged from thin air, revealing a perplexed Harry.
“Catallena? You’re here too?” He exhaled in relief when she nodded slowly.
“Yes?” she confirmed. Harry hurried past the gate and set down his lantern onto a small side table.
“I wanted to try my new Invisibility cloak,” Harry explained. “ I thought I could look through these books if no-one could see me here.” He showed Catallena how when he wrapped the fabric back around himself, his body disappeared from sight. Catallena took a step closer to poke his arm through the cloak, finding that she could still feel him there even though, to her wonder, she found herself looking through him at the dusty ground.
“It was a Christmas present. Apparently it was my dad’s before he died. Don’t know who gave it to me, though. They only left a note that wasn’t signed.” His voice took on a new edge – a slightly bitter-sweet one. He was happy about having something of his dad’s yet sad that he was dead.
“You look funny,” Catallena declared, seeing as she could only see the boy’s head floating before her.
“Yeah,” Harry acknowledged, holding in a laugh. “I do.”
Catallena held the cloak in between her fingers. A chill ran down her spine and reached the very top of her head. The light fabric felt eerily similar to that of Death’s cloak.
Harry, however, got to work looking through the section of books. He let the cloak flop to the ground before walking to a book that had been chained shut with a thick metal chain.
He picked one of them off the shelf, his knees buckling a bit under the heavy weight of it, but struggled to open it. He put it back after a while of trying and failing and kept looking. Catallena tried to shake the dreadful feeling the Invisibility cloak gave her by joining him. She had skimmed through a couple books filled with odd and disturbing pictures when all of a sudden a loud screaming made the dust on top of the shelf fall on top of the two of them.
Harry was panicking, struggling to close the book he had opened to reveal a face in the pages, screaming to be let out. Together with Catallena they wrangled it closed and hastily pushed it back onto the shelf where Harry had got it from. Catallena felt a little bad for the book that didn’t seem to want to be a book.
In the light of her glow, she watched the paleness rise to Harry’s face when out from the near distance they could hear Mr Filch shouting about a student being out of bed after curfew.
Harry took Catallena’s wrist and pulled her to the Invisibility cloak that he threw over both their heads, accidentally knocking over the lantern on the table with his elbow in the process. The breaking of glass had the caretaker bounding over to the restricted section where Harry and Catallena stood frozen and invisible. Catallena tried not to think too much about the feeling of Death’s cloak on her skin.
“Who’s there?” Filch bellowed and opened the gate. Holding their breaths, the two children shot past him and out of the gate that closed behind the caretaker, before taking off in a hurried half-run. How curious was it that they could go unseen by everyone thanks to a cloak, Catallena thought.
They ran far away from Filch, fearing that Mrs Norris might be lurking nearby. Harry feared that the cat could smell and tell on them. He hadn’t yet tried the cloak around animals and therefore wasn’t so sure that it worked on them as well. After the previous morning, Catallena didn’t need any reasons to avoid the awful cat. They ran as quietly as possible, not needing any encouragement from the other.
They were about to round the corner of some winding corridor when they found themselves coming face to face with Professor Quirrell of all possible people. They nearly crashed into him – would have, if it weren’t for Professor Snape.
“There you are,” Snape drawled menacingly, making Harry’s blood run cold even though it wasn’t aimed at him. “You’ve been avoiding me.” Snape stated coldly and Quirrell shook like a leaf when he turned to face his accuser.
“M-m-me? A-a-a-avoid-ding y-you?” Professor Quirrell laughed nervously, sweat forming on his brow. Snape took the professor and shoved him against a wall by the collar in one easy sweep. Harry rubbed his stinging scar, and backed away from the two men with Catallena by his side.
“Don’tact dumb.” When Professor Quirrell went to nervously babble something as a response, Snape pressed closer, his nose nearly touching the cheek of the man trying to look away. “If I were you I would make sure to think very carefully where my loyalties lie, Quirrell.”
Harry and Catallena stalked around them. They were nearly past the pair when Harry’s hitched breath turned Professor Snape’s head to their direction. The children didn’t dare to even blink when it felt like the professor looked right at them – or through them – with his intense black eyes. It seemed as if he was about to reach his hand in their direction before Mr Filch limped over to the two professors, flinging his arms in the air and coughing about students being out of bed at this hour.
Catallena and Harry sped away, desperate for someplace quiet and out of reach of teachers whose footsteps they could hear following after them. Harry led their way, clearly the more desperate one out of the two to get out of detention. He took multiple turns and ran up a few staircases to try to lose the one hot on their tail, ending up in a corridor far too familiar to Catallena.
No, not this room! Catallena tried pulling on Harry’s sleeve and arm, but he was determined not to get caught by Professor Snape. He pushed the door open in a hurry and tugged Catallena behind him so he could shut the door to keep anyone else away.
Even the smell of the room – dust and aconite flowers – was enough to have Catallena scratching at the door and reaching for the handle that Harry was guarding with his life. The girl’s eyes were screwed shut. She didn’t want to face the Mirror even through the slightly obstructing invisibility cloak.
“Shhh! He’ll find us!” Harry whispered desperately. “Calm down, there’s no-one else here. Just be quiet for a moment, please,” Harry begged quietly. He slipped from under the invisibility cloak and wrapped it tightly around Catallena to keep her from thrashing any longer. He couldn’t see her twisted face under the cloak, but they both quieted down to hear the fast approaching and retreating footsteps of someone on the other side of the door.
When no other sounds could be heard, Harry released Catallena by dropping the invisibility cloak. It pooled to the ground and Harry’s relieved expression turned guilty. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Are you alright?”
“We shouldn’t be here,” Catallena tried warning him instead of answering. Her words had Harry already looking around the room they had found themselves in. Catallena knew he had spotted it, by the way his eyes fixed onto a location at the back of the abandoned classroom behind her shoulder. Harry took a step to walk closer to it to examine it but Catallena rushed to block his way and pull him to the door.
“Don’t look in the Mirror,” she breathed, her eyes attempting to say everything her mouth refused to. “It’s a really bad Mirror.”
Harry tore his eyes away from it and looked down at her. Moonlight reflected from his circular lenses. “A really bad Mirror? You’ve been here before?”
“Yes,” she swallowed, her mouth feeling as dusty as the room. Harry swallowed with her. The girl looked absolutely terrified.
“What happened? Why is it really bad ?”
Catallena wrung her hands together in distress. Her hair pulsed glowing light erratically as she thought of how to explain herself. “It lied to me,” she finally admitted to Harry and to herself.
Harry watched as her admission brought tears to her cheeks and her hair was completely snuffed out. He wanted to comfort Catallena. He didn’t really know how to do such a thing, but he took her hand regardless. His blue sweater sleeve dried her cheeks tentatively. “It lied to you?” he asked further, hoping that it was the right thing to say, to ask questions.
“It gave me my mum. Promised me that I could be with her again. Terrible, cursed Mirror.” Catallena had never sounded so heartbroken to Harry. It made his throat constrict and burn.
“Your mum?” Harry muttered and glanced back at the Mirror, still standing firmly against the far end of the room. A magical mirror that showed Catallena her mum. Dead mum. It was very tall, a misty surface framed with golden arches engraved with words he was not familiar with. The room was empty save for a few school desks stacked on top of each other in a corner and the Mirror. Big windows lit the dusty ground and the purple-blue flowers sprouting in front of the Mirror. The air was thick with something that couldn’t be named.
Catallena looked up, both their glistening eyes meeting.
“Do you… Do you think the really bad Mirror would show my mum, too?”
Catallena rubbed her eyes and studied Harry’s expression. His lips were tight with emotion and the slight curve of his slim cheeks was exaggerated by the moon light and by the way he ground his teeth together in thought. But in his eyes was a dangerous glint of hope.
Catallena knew the kind of hope it was and protested weakly when Harry walked past her closer to the Mirror. Catallena was faced with a difficult decision whether she should go with him or flee the room.
She looked at their foot marks in the dust. If she looked hard enough, she could see where she had once broken her nails dragging her corpse to the Mirror. She couldn’t bring herself to abandon him.
So when Harry stepped over the aconite flowers that still sprouted lushly from the floor, Catallena joined him by his side, shaking like she was one of the leaves on the flowers, trembling in the slight winter breeze that entered the room from a slightly cracked window.
She gave Harry’s hand one last desperate squeeze but it was already too late.
Harry looked into the Mirror and gasped when he saw something past his left shoulder. He took a step back, one of the flowers ending up crushed under his slipper, and turned to look behind him, where there was no-one. The room was empty save for the two children.
Harry was breathing heavily, turning wildly to look behind him multiple times, never finding whatever it was he was looking for.
“Do you see them?” he asked Catallena, whose eyebrows were drawn together in a sad furrow. “That’s! That’s my mum!” Harry exclaimed, getting so close to the Mirror his breath made the surface foggy. “I know it! I just do! And that’s my dad!”
Catallena’s chest constricted painfully.
Harry stepped back again and set his hand on his own shoulder, expecting to feel something there. Something that wasn’t real. His eyes were wet too.
“Can you see them?” he asked again, this time a lot softer. He pulled Catallena in front of him to finally face the Mirror. The sight of two fluffy ears was enough for her. She shook herself free, sidestepped and sank to the floor facing Harry so that the Mirror was just out of her sight.
“It lies,” she said, hugging her sides and shaking her head. “I don’t see them.”
Harry sank to the floor as well. They sat quietly for a long while, Harry looking into the Mirror and wiping his face every once in a while. Catallena drew lines in the dust on the floor and sniffled.
Harry finally broke the silence, though only barely. “They died when I was a baby. They were killed by a dark wizard. Voldemort. That’s what everyone says, it’s what Hagrid told me.” His voice trembled a bit but Catallena listened very carefully to every word he had to share.
“I don’t remember much about that night. I was very little,” he said.
It was very hard for Catallena to picture an even smaller Harry than the one sitting in front of the Mirror in the flower patch, hugging his knees. She didn’t know very many small children. Catallena tried imagining Harry in the form of the ghost of the small Green boy who lived back at her home. He was much shorter and chubbier than Harry was and his forever-flailing limbs gave the impression of a very fussy baby. But the Green boy had very proudly told Catallena that he was five years old and Catallena had gathered that it must be at least a few years too old for a baby.
So the next best thing she could imagine a smaller Harry might’ve looked like – the next most logical mental image – was a Reducioed Harry, hanging like an ornament from a tree. The thought made her shudder.
“My mum is really pretty,” Harry broke the silence again a few moments later, sniffling. “She has red hair. Not like Ron, less orange. She looks nice. She smiles a lot – and her eyes are like mine.” Catallena silently drew the description into the dust, making sure that the eyes were lovely.
“My dad looks like me. We even have the same hair and glasses. He’s a lot taller, though. He’s smiling too.” Catallena drew Mr Potter next to Mrs Potter, making sure he had the round glasses and messy hair Harry had.
“They won’t say anything,” Harry told Catallena sadly, referring to the reflections. He turned and noticed the drawings she was drawing and the corners of his lips twitched upwards a little. He added a sweater vest onto his dad’s picture and a necklace to his mother’s. He curled the ends of Mrs Potter’s hair so that it flared away from her face and lastly added a dimple to his father’s right cheek.
Harry felt encouraged to keep going, knowing that Catallena was listening carefully and sympathetically.
“Voldemort tried to kill me too, when he killed them. It’s why I have this scar,” Harry lifted his hair away from his forehead, where the lightning bolt scar stood pink and jagged against his otherwise smooth skin. “I survived even though no one else has ever survived the killing curse. I don’t know why.”
Catallena was shaken at his admission. Had her friend died and come back to life like she had? Was she not the only one to have done that? Then again, Harry hadn’t seen Death gnawing at the air below his feet when he had dangled off his broom at the first quidditch match. And he had said that he ‘survived’ Voldemort’s attack, hadn’t he?
Harry continued his story, oblivious to Catallena’s running mind: “Hagrid brought me to my aunt’s house that night with Dumbledore. I grew up there, with my cousin Dudley. I didn’t know I was a wizard until I turned eleven, because Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon hid it from me,” his soft voice was a bit bitter by the end, but he never took his eyes off his parents in the Mirror.
“I wish I could have lived with them instead,” he professed his disdain toward his aunt and her family. “They don’t like me very much at the Dursleys. Aunt Petunia always has me tending to the garden or cleaning the house and Dudley has never once been nice to me – neither has Uncle Vernon. I wonder how different it would have been with mum and dad. Hagrid says they loved me lots.”
Catallena pet Harry’s chunky sweater in an effort to soothe him, feeling very sorrowful for him. The action stilled Harry’s hand that had been ripping aconite flowers from their stems.
The reflection of his father looked sad in the Mirror and it was very hard to believe that it wasn’t really him in there. Harry’s mum mouthed Harry’s name, but no sound came out.
The Mirror lies. That’s what Catallena had said.
“What does your mum look like?” Harry asked thoughtfully. He didn’t want to push but he was curious.
Catallena, still not looking into the Mirror, started drawing into the dust next to the Potters, a rabbit. “She looks like a bunny,” she explained to the perplexed Harry, “White with brown spots. Eyes… like gold. Very warm.”
Harry nodded slowly with her, not really knowing what to think of it. “Her ears look very soft,” he offered clumsily yet sincerely. Catallena agreed. They sat until yellow light painted long streaks onto the floor.