Harry Potter and the Mirrors of Madness

"There's no way this is safe," Ginny complained as she studied the ritual circle that Hermione was drawing on the floor of the library in Grimmauld Place.

"The ritual has been safely used for thousands of years, it's not my fault that the Twilight cult is extremely good at keeping their secrets," Hermione argued as she continued drawing the ritual circle that would give them the ability to travel through mirrors.

"I've never heard of the Twilight cult," Ginny complained.

"It wouldn't be a secret if we'd heard about it," Harry offered.

Ginny turned and looked at Ron. "Back me up here, nothing good comes from trusting cults."

"If this works, we could walk into an empty copy of Gringotts and rob them blind," Ron pointed out.

"The cult had good reasons to avoid dealing with wizards. Wizards managed to hide the existence of magic from normal people, it's not hard to imagine a group of magic users managing to hide from the ministry," Hermione argued.

"Lay off, it's a chance to help Harry, or did you forget about the farce of a trial they're going to subject him to?" Ron asked, not wanting to lose his chance to help his friend… and loot insane amounts of gold.

Ginny sighed as she realized she wasn't going to be able to talk them out of using this no doubt dangerous ritual. "Fine, if this goes south, I'm blaming Ron."

"What did I do?" Ron complained.

"You’re a pureblood, so of the three you should know better than to use untested rituals," Ginny argued.

Harry cut in before they could get back to arguing, "I'm not fucking Hermione…" he trailed off as he realized what he'd said and how it sounded. "I mean, I'm not a genius," he added quickly before his friends jumped on his poor choice of words and language.

'Don't go there,' Hermione told herself as she finished the last symbol, not noticing the crack in the wood that broke the symbol as she tried to keep her mind out of the gutter.

"I'm not a prodigy or a hero out of legend, I'm just a wizard with a prophecy that has marked him for death followed by at least two thirds of the Wizarding World," Harry complained. "This is a chance to even the score. We could find out everything Fudge is hiding or we could loot the Malfoy's and find evidence that would put them in prison."

"We'd never make anything stick to Fudge and Malfoy would just bribe his way out of Azkaban again," Ginny pointed out, trying to convince him not to use the ritual by shooting down his reasons to use it.

"That depends on what we find," Harry argued halfheartedly, knowing she was right but not wanting to admit it.

"What makes you think they'd believe us? The Daily Prophet has spent all summer slandering your name," Ginny warned him.

"What do you suggest?!" Harry demanded. "Because I'm tired of cleaning everything by hand when your mother could just wave her wand and clean entire rooms before I'd even get the rag out of the bucket or we could tell Kreacher to clean everything, he'd probably appreciate the work."

"We're good," Hermione cut in, trying to keep everyone from exploding. "Gather around and put your hands on a symbol without smearing the chalk and push magic into the circle."

"How much magic?" Harry asked as the group knelt around the circle.

"As much as you can, it takes a lot," Hermione explained, thinking about how the book said that pushing magic into the ritual could make up for less than perfect ingredients.

"Ready?" Harry asked as he looked at his friends.

"No," Ginny complained as she put her hand on one of the symbols, scared that the ritual was going to go sideways, but unwilling to let them do it without her.

Ron smiled as he thought about all of the wealth that he was going to make as he put his hand on one of the symbols.

Hermione blushed slightly when she glanced at Ginny and realized she had a perfect view down the younger girl's shirt. ‘I think she’s gone up a cup.’ She pulled her attention away from the view before anyone noticed that she was staring. "Ready?"

"Ready," Harry replied as he placed his hand on the symbol in front of him and pushed as much magic into the symbol as he could.

0o0o0

"Master is a blood traitor," Kreacher taunted Sirius, knowing that he wouldn't do anything about it.

"My mother was a spiteful bitch-" Sirius twitched when one of the cabinets exploded and the entire house shook. He pulled his wand when Kreacher started screaming and violently bashing his head against the table to stop the pain he was feeling from the wards.

Snape screamed in agony as his dark mark caught fire, burning like a magnesium flare.

"Bloody hell!" Molly sputtered as Kreacher managed to knock himself out and collapsed to the ground unconscious. "What did you do?!"

Sirius reflexively hit Snape with a stunner when the man reached for something in his robes, not sure what the hell was going on but recognizing the location of Snape's dark mark.

Albus drew his wand and worked on containing the fire that was consuming Severus's dark mark, something that should have resulted in his death but wasn't for reasons he didn't understand.

"Sirius!" Molly complained, thinking it might be one of his pranks.

"Don't start!" Sirius snapped as he left the kitchen, heading toward the library to check on Harry since unusual events had a tendency to involve his godson.

"Well, that happened," Tonks offered cheerfully, feeling like someone had opened a couple of windows and aired the place out, but not quite sure why.

Bill Weasley shook his head and wisely kept his mouth shut, knowing they’d have to wait until the wards settled down before they could discover what had happened.

0o0o0

Harry groaned as he woke up, feeling like someone had stabbed his scar with a red hot ice pick then packed it with salt.

"Told you so," Ginny complained as she tried to blink the spots out of her eyes, feeling like she'd just walked into one of her brothers’ pranks.

"Does that mean it didn't work?" Ron asked as he got to his feet, feeling like he'd had too much sugar and needed to work the energy off.

"I don't know," Hermione admitted as she stared at the head-sized section of the library floor that was missing. She pulled her attention away from the ritual circle and glanced at the rest of the group, stopping when she realized that Harry's scar looked like someone had ripped it open, causing a bunch of black pus to ooze out of it along with blood. "What happened to your scar?"

"It fucking hurts," Harry complained as Sirius burst into the library with his wand out. "I can explain…" he trailed off when he realized that he really didn't know what to say.

Sirius relaxed slightly when he realized that everyone was alive and mostly uninjured if you didn't count the fact that Harry's scar was bleeding. He glanced at the ritual circle that looked like something straight out of one of the movies that Lily had dragged the group to before everything had gone to shit because of the prophecy. "I'm listening."

"It wasn't my fault!" Ron blurted.

"I found a book on rituals," Hermione admitted.

"In this library, are you insane?!" Sirius demanded, wondering if she'd lost her mind.

"What? No," Hermione assured him. "I'm not crazy. I bought the book on the way back from the train. The ritual should have let us use mirrors as a means of travel."

"Is there a reason you used a ritual in a sketchy book without asking me to check it?" Sirius asked.

"We were sort of worried about you going overboard, Harry didn't want you sneaking out to get the rest of the ingredients or telling Professor Lupin," Hermione admitted.

"Remus would have helped," Sirius pointed out, making a note to get Remus to give them a lecture on why you shouldn't use empowerment rituals without doing a lot of research first to make sure they were the real thing and not traps set to thin the numbers of the less pure members of society.

"Maybe, or maybe he would have ratted us out to Dumbledore, no one tells me shite," Harry complained. "No one answered any of my letters."

"I'm sorry, Dumbledore said there were concerns about them being intercepted," Hermione offered.

Harry turned to look at Hermione. "That's all you had to say or you could have called on the phone, I mean it would have sent my uncle into a rage but it would have been nice to hear from you and I doubt most of the Death Eaters even know what a phone is."

"He has a point, Albus should have just told Harry that there were security concerns but he's old and his sense of time is a bit warped," Sirius explained as he waved his wand and cleaned up Harry's forehead. He pulled a small vial of phoenix tears out of his robes that he kept for emergencies, that he’d managed to trade Fawkes a couple of fruit baskets for, as he walked over. "Hold still."

Harry glanced at the vial. "What is it?"

"Phoenix tears," Sirius replied as he uncapped the vial and poured a couple of drops on the remains of Harry's scar, causing the wound to quickly vanish. "That should…" he trailed off as he wiped the blood away and noticed that Harry's scar was completely gone. "Huh, if anyone asks about your missing scar, just tell them that one of the books fell off a shelf and hit your scar and the magic had a weird reaction then I rushed in like a hero with phoenix tears."

Hermione stared at Sirius for a couple of seconds, trying to figure out if he was joking. "Do you honestly expect people that believe that?"

Sirius laughed, sounding more bitter than amused. "Wizards aren't exactly known for having common sense, just look at Harry. The wizarding public spent years creating a fictional hero with his name and now they're happily vilifying him because of a few months of bad press."

"There should be libel laws," Hermione complained, wondering if they could take a case to the ICW.

"The British wizarding world has libel laws, the only problem is that you have to prove that they lied in court and the paper currently has the ministry's backing, which means you're basically shit out of luck," Sirius explained.

"Is dueling to settle cases legal?" Harry grumbled.

"Technically, you could challenge them to a duel over besmirching your honor, but they'd just hire a professional duelist and I'm not legally allowed to accept deals given the fact that I'm an escaped felon," Sirius warned him.

"I'm pretty sure you'd need a trial to be considered a felon," Hermione argued, annoyed that the Ministry didn't want to take responsibility for their cock ups.

"We should see if the ritual worked," Ron suggested, trying to change the subject.

Ginny gestured at the destroyed section of the floor. "What part of that looks like it worked?" she asked dryly, looking forward to getting in another I Told You So.

"We're not dead," Harry argued as he walked over to the large mirror that they'd been planning on using to test the ritual. "How…" he trailed off when the mirror shivered like it was a pond someone had dropped a rock in and he noticed that the image in the mirror was smiling while he most certainly wasn't. "How does the mirror work?"

"The book said that you should be able to just step into the mirror…" Hermione trailed off as Harry stepped into the mirror and a version of Harry wearing pressed black slacks and a clean white dress shirt stepped out with a smile on his face at the same time. "Harry?" she asked, confused.

"Hermione!" Mirror Harry blurted out and practically teleported across the distance between them so that he could pull her into a hug.

"What are we, chopped liver?" Ron asked in annoyance, a bit surprised by Harry's reaction.

"Sorry, my Hermione died," Mirror Harry replied as he set Hermione down so that he could study her face, not even looking at Ron.

"What happened?" Hermione asked, blushing at how close he was and the care in his eyes as he looked at her.

"Dementors, she tried to stop Fudge from killing Sirius and the dementors attacked both of them," Mirror Harry admitted, doing his best to hold it together.

"You're not our Harry, are you?" Sirius asked, wanting to make sure.

Mirror Harry spun around and focused on Sirius. "No, he's probably exploring Grimmauld Place or at least that's where the mirror was before I heard a voice telling me that I could see my friends again if I stepped through it."

"Do you always listen to strange voices?" Hermione asked.

"The last time I ignored the voices Ginny died, I'm not making that mistake again," Mirror Harry argued.

"What happened?" Ginny asked, wide eyed.

"We were late rescuing her from the Chamber of Secrets," Mirror Harry glanced at Ron. "Ron never forgave me, never mind that it was his fault we were late."

"Damn," Ron muttered with a wince, not sure what else to say.

"No shite," Mirror Harry replied, not sure how to deal with a civil Ron that didn't blame him for every little thing that went wrong since this one seemed a lot friendlier than his was.

"Is there anything Harry has to worry about in your world?" Sirius asked.

"That depends, how well can he fight and would he leave the house?" Mirror Harry asked, fairly sure the other Harry would be fine as long as he didn't decide to wander around Knockturn Alley without his wand or something equally as stupid.

"Is the house empty?" Hermione asked.

"Like a grave," Mirror Harry replied with a sigh.

"No Kreacher?" Sirius asked as he hit the floor with a silent repair charm, causing the hole to vanish as the boards filled in the missing space.

"Kreacher's dead, he died killing Bellatrix and a group of Death Eaters," Harry offered, not seeing a point in explaining that he'd strapped a vest filled with explosives and silver ball bearings to the traitorous house elf then ordered him to find Bellatrix and set the explosives off. "I was only there because Petunia gets weird around the anniversary of Vernon's death."

"What happened?" Ron asked, knowing that Harry wouldn't miss his Uncle.

"The police said that he slipped and fell into a machine at work, I can't say I'll miss him," Harry replied, looking forward to viewing the memory of Vernon's death that he'd extracted from Kreacher's head once he didn't have to worry about people using Legilimency on him.

Hermione nodded, having heard enough over the years to know that the world was better off without Vernon Dursley. "If he was half as bad as Harry described him, I can't say I blame you."

"Do you have to go back into the mirror for our Harry to come out?" Ron asked.

"Not that I know of, but the voice didn't really explain shit…" Mirror Harry trailed off as a version of him in well worn clothes that didn't fit right stepped out of the mirror. "Harry?"

"What the hell?!" Harry blurted out when he saw his well dressed reflection.

"I stepped out of the mirror when you stepped in," the mirror version of Harry explained. "Any questions?"

"Why do you have a dartboard with Snape's face on it in the library?" Harry asked.

"Have you met the guy?" Mirror Harry asked sarcastically.

Harry shook his head. "I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, I'm just surprised that someone didn't confiscate it."

"That would require the order to actually have a spine or care," Harry replied with a shrug. "I own the house they're using that is warded to hell and back, if they want to continue using it, they can respect the fact that I think Snape is a steaming piece of gobshite."

"Seems pretty fair to me," Sirius offered as he walked over and started comparing the ritual circle with the pictures in the book, wanting to make sure they matched before he erased the evidence.

"What happens now?" Ginny asked.

"That depends, how do you feel about having a brother?" Mirror Harry asked Harry.

"Just like that?" Harry asked.

"My parents are dead and my best friend died defending my godfather from a corrupt ministry, I can't even apologize to her parents because the ministry wiped their memories of the Wizarding World, so they don't even know they had a daughter," Mirror Harry snapped. "So yeah, just like that!"

"What about your vault?" Ron asked, figuring if he was going to leave his world behind he’d at least empty his vault first so he could afford the new life he was planning.

"Already empty," Mirror Harry replied with a shrug, not seeing a reason to tell Ron, even if this one appeared to be better than the defective one he’d been saddled with, that he had a mountain of gold in an expanded coin purse. "I just want a fresh start where I can get away from all the Boy That Lived shite."

"Works for me…" Harry trailed off as he noticed that the mirror was showing his reflection again like it was supposed to be. "I think you're stuck here."

"Fuck!" Mirror Harry cursed when his scar burst open and a dark fog poured out of it.

"Expecto Patronum!" Harry shouted as he instinctively summoned a silvery stag that charged the ghostly figure of Voldemort as it formed out of the black fog, ripping it to pieces before both faded away. "Shite! Great, now they're going to expel me for sure."

Mirror Harry laughed. "The wards should cover it, unless they're a lot worse than the ones in my world," he assured him as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to soak up the blood so it didn't drip on the floor.

"Even if the wards didn't cover it, the ministry can't actually tell if you use magic, just that magic was used around your wand which means they can't actually enforce their rules against underage magic, even if they wanted to," Sirius offered as he helped him clean his forehead and used up another couple of phoenix tears.

"Are you telling me that we could have been practicing this entire time?" Harry asked with annoyance.

"Molly would throw a fit but yeah, basically," Sirius replied.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Harry asked.

"Didn’t want to set off the shitstorm that would follow you all learning of it and because I didn't want you using your wand until after the trial in case they checked it for spells," Sirius explained. "I have a box of extra wands if you want to practice, the shitstorm from Snape catching fire should cover it."

"Why do you have extra wands?" Hermione asked, ignoring the fact that one of their teachers had caught fire, one she had coincidentally set on fire their first year, so she might just have been a bit blasé about it.

"It's tradition to keep old family wands and it made getting away with pranks a lot easier," Sirius replied with a smile.

"I'm going next," Ron said as he stepped in front of the mirror, curious what his reflection would be like. The mirror shivered and he frowned when he realized that his reflection was wearing a weird monocle, muggle clothes with leather gloves, and was holding a strange plastic and metal device that he didn't understand the point of.

'Soldering iron and gloves, what are you working on?' Hermione mentally mused as she studied Ron's reflection who impatiently tapped his watch.

Ron stepped into the mirror before he could change his mind, causing the strange version to step out of the mirror.

Mirror Ron glanced around the room then lunged forward and pulled Ginny into a hug when he spotted her, like he hadn't seen her in years. "You're alive!"

"Let me guess, something went wrong?" Mirror Harry asked.

"You could say that," the mirror Ron complained as he let go of Ginny before she hexed him. "Sorry, I haven't seen you in months and everyone is dead."

"Zombie apocalypse?" Mirror Harry asked, fairly sure it wasn't a zombie apocalypse.

Mirror Ron sighed. "No, Dad and the twins died at the world cup when a drunk death eater unleashed fiendfyre on the campers, Charlie got eaten by a dragon a couple of weeks after that, probably because he was distracted, Mum lost the plot and started killing anyone with a dark mark she could find, she managed to kill Lucius and Fudge before the aurors killed her. Harry got killed by Draco and Ginny died when the spells keeping her safe under the lake failed, which means it was my fault."

"Draco?" Harry asked in disbelief at the same time Ginny demanded, "What do you mean the spells failed?"

Mirror Ron scowled as he thought about the death eater he'd beaten to death with a wrench. "Crouch tampered with the spells."

"How was that your fault?" Hermione asked.

Mirror Ron sighed. "I used a bot to put my name in the Goblet of Fire and the goblet chose me as the champion, the second task involved the lake and a hostage. She was my hostage."

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of Draco managing to kill me," Mirror Harry complained.

"Same," Harry agreed.

"That was sort of my fault," Mirror Ron admitted. "Harry was in the middle of a duel with Goyle and I was running my mouth about how none of Draco's minions were worth a damn and that Draco was too chicken shit to step into the ring. Draco lost his temper and used a spell Snape taught him, he hit Harry in the back of the head. He was dead before he hit the ground."

"Please tell me that he got expelled for that," Sirius said, speaking up.

"No, Snape and Draco's mother managed to convince the board that expelling an upstanding pureblood that made a mistake wasn't in their best interest," Mirror Ron complained.

"That's barbaric!" Hermione snapped.

"If he'd had any common sense he would have convinced the court to toss him in Azkaban for a year as punishment for terminal stupidity, he might have survived," Mirror Ron mused.

"What happened?" Ginny asked.

"Someone kidnapped him. From what everyone could piece together, he went to sleep in his dorm about a month after Harry's death and he vanished. Two days after that, Goyle went missing. Three days after that an owl dropped Draco's severed hand in Snape's soup, after that it was a foot and then his left eye a couple of days later. It didn't take all that long before people realized you could make a couple of Draco's out of the body parts that were showing up around the school."

"Polyjuice," Hermione mused.

"What?" Harry asked.

"Polyjuice keeps a body from turning back when it dies while under the effects of polyjuice," Hermione explained.

Sirius nodded. "Deadman's juice is what it’s called when used to fake a death. Certain dark families keep some on hand for faking their deaths."

"What happened to my alternate?" Hermione asked.

Mirror Ron sighed. "She died in an explosion with half of the board of governors about two months after Harry died. She was obsessed with getting them to expel Draco in case he was faking his death and she managed to annoy them enough that they decided to show up to put the matter to rest. The aurors think she blew herself up with a muggle explosive because they told her something she didn't want to hear. It's been a rough year."

"I could see you getting a bit obsessed," Harry admitted.

"There's no way I'd blow myself up," Hermione argued.

"No, but you might be willing to use polyjuice on a death eater or a Slytherin to fake your death," Ginny pointed out.

Hermione glanced over at Harry and decided that Ginny might have a point, especially if she wanted to make sure the ministry couldn't track her down.

"I should probably check that…" Mirror Ron trailed off as Ron stepped back out of the mirror and the magic on the mirror faded, 'trapping' him in the current world rather than his own.

Mirror Harry slipped his wand back in his sleeve after hitting the mirror with a finite, unwilling to let a Ron vanish back into a world that was worse than his own, just because he was trying to do the honorable thing.

"The house was empty. What's with the muggle stuff?" Ron asked his mirror self.

"I picked up tinkering a couple of months before Hogwarts started, it's pretty awesome," Mirror Ron replied with a smile.

"Seriously?" Ron asked in disbelief, thinking about the junk in the shed that his father worked on.

"Yeah, you can do some interesting things with magitech, I should…" Mirror Ron trailed off when he looked at the mirror and realized he could see his reflection, something that shouldn't happen if the spell was still active. "Shite, I'm stuck here aren't I?"

"If it makes you feel better, at least your family is still alive here," Mirror Harry offered.

"True," Mirror Ron agreed, not all that broken up about getting trapped in another world since he didn't have anything to go back for.

"Do you want to go next?" Ginny asked Hermione.

"Might as well," Hermione replied as she walked over and looked in the mirror. She stared at her reflection, surprised that she was wearing nothing but a t-shirt and looked like she hadn't combed her hair in months. "Huh."

0o0o0