Chapter 21 - Of Mirrors and Maladies
Written by Nemesis
Tom woke up at seven o'clock the next evening with moonlight burning his eyes. Blinking rapidly, he sat up, aching a little but otherwise back to normal. The chain of the Antidaimenus felt cold against his skin, and as he looked down, he saw that the light it exuded was now a constant emerald green. He tried to yawn, but it made his face hurt. "Madam Viola?" he called tentatively.
Madam Viola poked her head in and promptly rushed over to Tom's side. Her attention went not to the remnants of his injuries, but to the Antidaimenus, whirring and humming at his chest placidly. She reached out and plucked it up in her hand, forgetting that the chain was still around his neck. "Oh my," she muttered, starting to walk away with it. Tom choked and tried to get the chain off of his neck. "But… you have all the signs… how can you not be--" She frowned down at it and tapped it with her wand.
"Madam Viola!" Tom wheezed, struggling to find a clasp. He soon discovered there was none.
"Just a moment, Mr. Riddle," she said absently.
I'm a trap door and a slipknot short of being hanged over here!"
Madam Viola glanced at him, then dropped the Antidaimenus. "Oh, Tom, I'm sorry, I was a bit distracted."
"I noticed," Tom said dryly, removing the pendant and cringing. "So what's the verdict? Am I possessed or not?"
Madam Viola did a classic double-take. "You heard--?"
"Yes," Tom replied, "your light woke me up. But that hardly matters. Did the little demon detector find anything or not?"
The nurse bit her lip. "Nothing," she responded. "Nothing at all."
Tom blinked, not exactly believing this. "Then… then what could it possibly have been?"
Madam Viola shifted uncomfortably, her eyes on the floor. "Professor Dumbledore is going to take a look at you," she said.
Tom narrowed his eyes. "Dumbledore? With all due respect to the man, what medical knowledge does he have?"
"A bit, I'm told, but it isn't the medicine he's concerned with right now. We're trying to find out what did that to you, if not a demon. You see, Albus Dumbledore has much experience in battling the Dark Arts, and only something affiliated with the Dark Arts could have--" Madam Viola broke off, wincing.
Tom sighed heavily. He was tired of the whole ordeal and would have preferred to avoid any sort of interaction and just drop it altogether. However, there was a certain finality in Madam Viola's voice, and Tom thought it best to go along with whatever she asked. He ate the breakfast she bestowed him in silence, his mind going over the night's events with a fine-toothed comb. He as good as knew where the Chamber of Secrets was, but was not about to let that preoccupy his mind right now. While he was obsessed with finding it, he thought that analyzing the dream (as well as what came of it) was probably more important, and he squashed his obsession for the time being.
"May I have a sheet of parchment and a quill?" Tom asked the nurse, shoving his breakfast trey aside.
"Of course," Madam Viola replied distractedly, shuffling through the papers on her desk to find what he wanted. "Dumbledore will be here in about twenty minutes."
"Thank you," Tom said graciously, seizing the quill and parchment the instant they were within reach. When Madam Viola had exited his sleeping area, Tom flipped his trey over as a makeshift clipboard and smoothed the parchment out on top of it. Dipping the quill in the ink, Tom chewed on his lip as he wrote out vague outlines of all of his nightmares.
1. Hallway, Mirror (Look in mirror, see Specter)
2. Woods, Mirror (The Same)
3. Woods, Little boy with lightning cut (Specter in trees)
4. Hallway, Mirror (Specter in room, look at mirror, two sides), white room
5. Prison-like room (Specter performs Cruciatus Curse, etc)
Tom twirled the quill slightly and cocked his head. There was only one thing that remained consistent throughout the nightmares, and that was his Specter. And the Specter always tried to kill him--either that or convince the boy that he was not Tom, but somebody else. And somehow, Tom had got the impression that he was someone different the dreams about the white room and the cell. Come to think of it, in the last dream--the one with the cell--the Specter had even called him a "foolish pacifist." Tom was anything but a pacifist. Either the Specter was a tad bit daft, or Tom really was someone else in his dreams. He seemed even to take on another's personality.
Tom tried to work all of this out, but he soon found himself completely lost. He was not Freud, and even Freud would have had trouble finding a meaning for a dream such as this. Especially considering that the latest one had physically harmed its bearer. All Tom knew was that this had something to do with the headaches he'd been having, and the arguing voices in his head. Aside from that, he was in the dark.
He was jerked from his pensive state by a sharp knock on the metal frame of his curtain. Tom looked up immediately to see Professor Dumbledore, looking unusually grim. "Hello, Tom," he said, sounding rather like a psychiatrist greeting a patient. "You're looking better than you did last night."
"You saw me last night?" Tom asked suspiciously.
"Yes, of course. Madam Viola called me in the moment you dropped off." Dumbledore sat down in a chair at Tom's bedside. "What's that you're writing?" he asked.
"Nothing," Tom said quickly, shoving the paper into his pocket. Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "It's just homework," Tom lied, though his humors were so poor that he was too weak to make it convincing.
Dumbledore continued to look at him suspiciously, but he said nothing more about it. "Tom, I'm going to run a few tests on you to see exactly what did that to you," he said quietly. "First off, have you ever had something like this happen before?"
"No," Tom responded, then rethought his answer. "Sort of," he clarified. "A while back--bloody hell, it had to be in my third year--I woke up thinking my shoulder was ripped open. Turns out it wasn't, but I could have sworn I felt blood."
Professor Dumbledore took note of this, looking as though this were the last thing he wanted to hear. "Any unusual dreams?"
Tom bit his lip. He wanted to be honest, but something in him was telling him that he should lie, just about the dreams. "No," Tom replied. This was without a doubt the most foolhardy lie he would ever tell, but he had no bolt from the blue to inform him of this. Dumbledore simply gave him a suspicious look and scribbled something on his notepad uncertainly. Tom's resolve faltered a bit, but he did nothing to correct the error.
Dumbledore had Tom answer a few more questions--miniscule and unimportant things. With every answer Tom gave, Dumbledore looked more and more preoccupied. Finally, he sighed and set his notepad down. "There's one other exercise I want to try out," he said. "I have a magical tool in storage which I think may point us in the right direction. I'll leave you alone long enough so you can change into your robes, and then we can go."
Professor Dumbledore ducked out and closed the curtains behind him, and Tom got out of bed painfully and changed into his school uniform. Once he had finished, he used his undamaged arm (the one on the right) to throw the curtains aside. Dumbledore was pacing, to Madam Viola's great annoyance, but he stopped when Tom walked out. "Are you ready?" he asked. "Good. Now, I want you to promise me you'll be totally truthful about everything, you understand me?"
"I will be," Tom exclaimed promptly. Dumbledore nodded and led Tom out into the corridor. After walking for a few minutes, they came upon a door Tom had never seen before. Dumbledore stopped there.
"Here, you go in by yourself," Dumbledore persuaded him, a pained look suddenly passing over his face. "I don't much feel like seeing Catherine again."
"Catherine?"
"My wife," Dumbledore said shortly, the pained look growing even more pronounced. "She's been dead for eight years."
"Then how could you…?" Tom started to ask, but he stopped, deciding that pursuing the subject further might provoke his teacher to actually cry. Still looking quite confused, Tom lifted the rusty iron latch, stepped into the room, and carefully closed the door behind him.
Turning around, Tom immediately discovered that the room was almost empty. There was a harp at one end of the room and a gilded mirror at the other. Inches of dust lay on the floor, as though no one had been in here for ages. Cobwebs hung from the walls, and the moonlight coming through the window caught the dust in the air in silvery shafts. Tom, who had always been a fast learner with any sort of musical instrument, plucked one of the strings on the harp and listened to the melodious sound this evoked. His heart turned over. No matter how prickly he was around people, Tom had a soft spot for music. He played a few more notes on the harp and chanced to look across the room, where the gilded mirror was facing him.
The reflection in it made him jump. It was almost as though he had double vision when he looked into it, but it depicted two different scenes that melded together, and bright colors flashed across the surface. Intrigued, Tom abandoned the harp and went up to examine the mirror. It was well-made, with gold rims and clawed feet. Carved along the top was a curly-lettered inscription, which Tom read with difficulty. Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. Tom frowned. The words were in no language he had ever seen before--but there was something about them that made sense. Once again squinting to make out the letters through the obstacles of darkness and need of reading glasses, Tom read the message backwards. I show not your face but your heart's desire. So that was what Dumbledore had meant--he did not want to look in the mirror and see his dead wife again.
Tom looked down at the squiggly reflection once more. This was his heart's desire? It was his life's goal to live in a place with bright flashing colors and swirling lines? And yet, he got the impression that he was seeing double. He covered his right eye. Abruptly, the image on the mirror morphed. It showed Tom, but he looked different--less pale, more cheerful. He was talking to two people. Tom's stomach tightened. He knew those people. Lili and Hannah. Seeing them again was agony. His mother was sitting next to him, and, to Tom's amazement, his father was there too, except he and Tom's mother seemed to be getting along. Tom felt a pang somewhere around his chest and he pressed his hand to the mirror. The shadows took no notice of him. Instead of the warmth of their love, Tom felt only the numbingly cold surface of the glass.
Uncovering his eye, Tom released a breath he had not known himself to be holding. From the way his heart was wailing, that was certainly his heart's desire. Simply out of curiosity, Tom covered his left eye, so that he was looking at the mirror through his right. What he saw was so utterly different from the first scene that he gasped in shock. There he was, but much older, about twenty-six, and he somehow did not look quite right. He was wearing black robes, rather more elaborate than the simple Hogwarts uniform and made of velvet instead of wool-cotton. He had got a bit taller, a tad thinner, and much paler, but he still retained his characteristic good looks. The older version of Tom was standing on top of a craggy hillside in what looked like the kind of weather one usually experienced in Scotland (dreary and grey), his wand in his left hand. A smooth white tragedy mask was clutched in the right. The Tom-who-was-not-quite-Tom was surrounded by men in dark hooded cloaks, black robes, and masks, all of whom were speaking to him with bowed heads.
Tom thought hard. That probably meant his other heart's desire was to be admired, a leader. The mask, however, he could not understand at all. All he knew was that it terrified him, and it was this that made the whole scene seem frightfully wrong. Beginning to feel uneasy, Tom took his hand away from his left eye.
The scene remained the same.
A state of sudden and inexplicable panic overcame him. Tom rubbed his eyes frantically, trying to convince himself he was seeing things. When he opened his eyes again, the mirror had gone back to its old swirl of color. Tom sighed with relief, though he could not have told himself exactly why he felt relieved. He covered his right eye and saw the people he loved once more, but when he uncovered the eye, it went back to the nonsensical swirl. Tom had no idea what to make of it. Feeling uncomfortable again, he quit the chamber.
He nearly collided with Professor Dumbledore, having been too distracted to remember that the teacher was even there. Tom blinked a few times in the torchlight, chewing on his lip. "Well?" Dumbledore prompted. "What did you see when you looked in the mirror?"
Tom was torn once again. Part of him told him to tell the whole truth--in fact, it was almost begging him to. On the other hand, the other part of him invoked him to make up some falsehood. Tom was leaning toward the former voice, but he heard mendacity flow from his lips before he could do anything to prevent it. "I saw myself as Head Boy," Tom heard himself say, an intangible shrug lilting at his voice. A sudden, vague pain twinged in his left side, but Tom ignored it.
Professor Dumbledore looked both confused and disturbed. "That's your heart's desire?" he asked slowly, looking as though he expected more than that.
Tom was possessed by the sudden urge to yell the truth, but he heard his voice cheerfully reply, "Yep." That inexplicable panic he had felt in the Mirror Room returned with a jolt.
Dumbledore bit his lip. "Nothing about Lili, then?" he asked gently.
Tom struggled to get the words out, but his body and voice did not seem to be in his control. The nasty little voice in his mind was laden with schadenfreude when it once again seized command of his vocal cords and said, "Not that I know of. She could be somewhere in the background, but I didn't see her."
"SHUT UP!" the other voice shot back--except the bad side had finally backed down, and Tom accidentally said these words out loud. He clapped a hand over his mouth, but the damage had been done.
Professor Dumbledore's light blue eyes flashed with concern, and he stared at Tom unblinkingly. "Tom, what just happened?" he asked urgently.
"I--I don't know!" Tom murmured through his hand, falling back against the wall and sliding to the floor. Inside, he was in tumult--the voices were going mad, fighting violently and hurling insults so noisily that Tom could barely hear anything else. "God, be quiet," he whispered, but this only provoked the voices to start yelling more loudly to drown him out.
Dumbledore, too alarmed to bother with being gentle, grabbed Tom's shoulders and shook him roughly. "TOM!" he shouted. "Tom, tell me what's the matter!"
Tom could not reply. He was near tears by now. Through the shouting, the small smidgen of his mind that remained unified spoke through as the voice of sanity. "Why is this happening?" Tom whispered, hugging his knees to his chest as he used to when he was young. "Why me? Make them stop, please make them stop…"
After a few agonizing minutes, the voices died down, and Tom looked up from his hands to see Dumbledore before him, face contorted. "Are you all right now?" he asked tentatively.
Tom winced and nodded, a sharp, stabbing headache radiating from somewhere around his left ear. "I want to go back to the common room," he said blankly, rubbing his forehead. "Don't test me anymore, please!"
Dumbledore said nothing, and Tom got to his feet after a few moments. The professor did nothing to stop him when Tom raced off in the direction of the Slytherin commons. Dumbledore got to his feet, staring after his student with a mixture of worry and dismay. "If only you didn't lie so often, Tom, I might be able to help you," he thought grimly. He turned around and slowly made his way back to his own office.