Disclaimer: All characters from the Harry Potter universe belong to J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Inc., AOL/Time Warner and associated companies. No offence, legal or otherwise, is intended by the online publication of this story. Neither is profit. Make love, not lawsuits!

Notes: Some are born Dark, some achieve Darkness, and some have Darkness thrust upon them. Harry/Harry slash written for Rushlight, Pogrebin and McTabby.

As I walk'd by myself, I talk'd to myself
And myself replied to me;
And the questions myself then put to myself,
With their answers I give to thee.
- Bernard Barton, 'Colloquy with Myself'

Cold seeped through the thin fabric of his Cloak, and the stone was unyielding behind his back. Harry wanted to pull away, but couldn't--the slightest movement could draw attention to him, and he really didn't want that.

He pressed himself tighter against the wall, leaning his head forward a bit in order to see the two figures talking quietly in the corridor, lightly dusted as they were by moonlight.

Severus Snape. Albus Dumbledore. They were talking about the mysterious oblong object that had arrived at Hogwarts' doorstep this morning, followed by a train of anxious-looking Goblins. If there was one thing Harry had learned, it was that things were usually very bad if the Goblins had cause to be anxious. Harry's scar hadn't hurt when the... thing... cloaked as it was in black cloth, had been levitated into the Great Hall. But there had been an aura around the object, an unmistakable shiver of Dark magic, that had made Harry's hair stand on end.

The Hall had fallen silent then--students caught in the midst of lifting spoons of cereal to their mouths--and the Headmaster had stood up slowly, eyes darkening with concern, as the Goblin leader (or at least, he looked like he was the leader) stepped up to the staff table and started speaking urgently.

Harry only managed to catch a few words: we can't keep it anymore please please you must take it you must they want it they want it now--but before Harry could understand anything else, Dumbledore had said quite firmly: 'I think we should continue this conversation in my office, Gbrath,' and Snape had followed them as well, guiding the hovering object with his wand, as Headmaster and Goblin left the suddenly-murmuring Hall.

It must be something to do with You-Know-Who, whispers around Harry said, and people glanced at Harry and then away, as though they expected him to do something about it. As though they expected him to know.

But how the fuck was he supposed to know anything when Dumbledore kept secrets from him? Like the Prophecy... like the... the...

... No. Wouldn't do to think about that now.

This was why he'd decided to follow Dumbledore, this was why he'd decided to spy--because if they weren't going to tell him what he needed to know about Voldemort, he'd bloody well find out.

Harry firmed his jaw and leaned his head forward a little bit more, careful to keep his unruly fringe within the Invisibility Cloak's hem. Just a little bit more... just a little... Yes.

Snape and Dumbledore both came into his line of vision beyond the wall's edge, Snape gesturing frantically.

'We can't keep it here,' Snape was saying, cold voice tinged with fear. 'Albus... it's Dark, it shouldn't be here--anything that's Dark draws Him... can be used by Him...'

Harry didn't have to wonder who Snape was talking about.

But Dumbledore, surprisingly, seemed unruffled. 'The Goblins can't keep it anymore, Severus. Their wards are failing, they're in danger, and if we let them keep it then it surely will fall into His hands. We had an agreement, ages past... surely you've read of it, Severus? They keep Daerd, we keep its twin... but should any one of us fail to protect our charge, the other would take over.'

Daerd? Harry thought. What?

'Are you saying that you'll let some ancient scroll determine how you protect this school?' Snape's voice was sharp and very much out of line--Harry blinked. Usually Snape never got that angry with Dumbledore...

But the Headmaster only reached out to place a calming hand on Snape's arm, and Harry thought he saw Snape flinch.

'It is more than an ancient scroll, Severus,' Dumbledore's voice said quietly--but it was that voice--that deep, hard, cool voice that Harry had heard so rarely from the Headmaster. 'It's a binding. We have to keep it here until the Goblins find a better way to ward it--it could be days, weeks, even years. But we cannot let Voldemort have this--do you understand, Severus?'

Snape flinched again--and Harry saw, with a sense of shock, that Dumbledore's hand had tightened almost cruelly on Snape's arm.

Then he let go, rather suddenly, and Snape stepped back. Harry wished he could see Snape's face.

'I see,' Snape replied, just as quiet as Dumbledore's voice had been earlier--but in it Harry sensed a deep anger, a deep resentment.

Dumbledore turned around--towards Harry, and towards his office. 'Good night, Severus. We'll put up more wards around it tomorrow morning.'

For a moment Dumbledore's eyes swept towards Harry and paused on him--and Harry froze, thinking that perhaps Dumbledore had seen him after all--but then Dumbledore's gaze swept away, casually, and he murmured back to Snape: 'Yes, I think that we should definitely keep it at least a few days, Severus. It might... teach us a few things.'

And then, without another word, Dumbledore vanished into his office--and Snape stood outside, fists clenching and unclenching, a strangely frantic look on his face. His eyes darted around for a moment--almost as though he were looking for someone--but then he turned around and stalked away, down the stairs at the end of the corridor, presumably towards the dungeons.

It occurred to Harry that it was a bit strange that Dumbledore had even talked about this outside his office rather than inside it--but the urgency of needing to know more about this Daerd overtook his mind. He shifted slightly until he took out the Marauder's Map--old, crumpled and more than a little the worse for wear--from his pocket. He unfolded it carefully, not letting his Cloak slip off--and whispered a quiet Lumos inside the dark enclosure of the Cloak. 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,' he whispered, tapping the map with his wand--and immediately the familiar maze came into view, little dots clustered in clumps around the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw towers, as well as the Hufflepuff dorms and the Slytherin dungeons. All asleep, then.

Harry felt a tightening in his heart when he thought of Sirius using this map, holding it just like Harry was holding it now... How many years had passed? Could a young Sirius, bent on making mischief, ever have understood what was to happen to him?

A shudder wracked Harry's body, dangerously close to a sob--but he stifled it, viciously angry with himself for getting distracted. This was important, damn it, and who knew what that object was? He couldn't very well ask Dumbledore, since the man had a fondness for lying to Harry 'for his own good'--but he could certainly go looking for the object himself.

He looked frantically at the map for any sign of anything that looked like Daerd--but there was nothing.

Of course, Harry thought. Dumbledore must have warded it.

But just then, almost as though the map were reading his mind, an oddly stretched-looking black dot appeared on the parchment, in a hidden cell quite close to the Slytherin dungeons. The word Daerd was written under it.

Huh.

Bizarre.

It raised Harry's suspicions immediately that what was presumably a warded object could suddenly become unwarded--but there was nothing he could do, nothing, except to go down there and find out.

What it was, why it was, how it was, and what on earth it was doing manipulating the Marauder's Map.

* * *

The trip down to the dungeons was tricky, as always--Harry took almost painfully slow footsteps, despite his eagerness. He couldn't afford to be heard, so his feet had to be careful and silent--and while Filch didn't usually patrol the Slytherins quite as conscientiously as he did certain other houses, Harry wasn't going to let down his guard.

As a result he was highly strung, a bead of sweat rolling down his face, when he carefully--painstakingly--inched closer to where the map said the hidden enclosure was.

When he got there he brushed his palm over the stone, as cool and lightly bevelled as a young snake's skin--and as soon as he thought this his fingers caught on a crack, a sudden and rather deep one, and...

... The wall swung open.

Harry gaped. He looked to his left and his right frantically, hoping that the slight grind of stone hadn't woken any of the Slytherins up--and there had better not be spy-charms in this corridor, or Harry was in serious trouble.

Well. With Snape, at least. And that was enough trouble as it was.

But nothing happened--and after minutes of staring into the dark hollow of the opened wall and back into the corridor, Harry made up his mind. He slipped into the door quietly, taking a step forward in pitch-blackness--and then, with a sudden gust of stale air, the door swung closed behind him.

Harry jumped.

A cold grind of stone on stone--and he was trapped, in here, in a place he couldn't fucking see, with what was presumably a Dark object.

Perhaps, Harry thought in a sudden moment of panic, Snape was right. Maybe I am too fucking reckless.

But then he remembered the tight grip Dumbledore had had on Snape's arm, and the fact that he'd hidden so much from Harry in the past, and suddenly Harry wasn't so afraid anymore.

I have to find out. I have to. If I don't... someone like Si--... someone could die again.

And so Harry whispered yet another Lumos, which lit the darkness around him in a circle of dull-grey, paved stone--and he took a step forward, and another one, until he felt the darkness lighten ahead of him. Candle-light, Harry noted with faint surprise. Candles in little sconces began to line the walls on either side of him, leading him down a thin corridor. Nox, he muttered again, since he no longer needed the light from his wand--and then suddenly he was stepping out from the corridor into a wide hall, hung with a few weakly guttering candles, air heavy and dank in the gloom.

But there was one glimmer in the semi-darkness, one bright shard of light that reflected the candles ten-fold. Harry felt his breath catch in shock as he took in the object in the middle of the room--the heavy, ornate frame, the little pair of claws that held it up--and of course the glass, the glass as luminous and smooth as tears, and Harry felt the word pulled from his mouth even before he thought it.

'Erised,' he whispered.

The mirror gleamed.

* * *

For a few long moments Harry just stood there, staring in disbelief, before he dared to take a step forward--and there was a sudden hunger in him, a sudden, deep hunger, to know if Erised would show him the same things again. His parents. Or maybe Sirius. Yes. Sirius. And maybe... maybe...

But as Harry stepped close, heart pounding, he was surprised to see, on the still-water surface of the mirror--

--Nothing.

Nothing.

Harry felt the breath leave his lungs in a shocked breath, fogging the cool glass. Harry stared and stared, and stared some more, but all he saw looking back at him was himself.

Harry Potter.

Confused, yes, eyes wide with shock, but Harry Potter nonetheless.

What was it Dumbledore had said? Only the happiest man on earth would see nothing but himself in Erised...

Harry nearly laughed. Oh, right. If he was the happiest man on earth, what with the people dearest to him dead, then Erised had some strange ideas about happiness indeed.

So Harry stepped back, heart still pounding, confused and frustrated. This made no fucking sense at all--and Harry ran his hand through his hair in frustration, watching his reflection do the same. He stepped around the mirror, looking at its back, and then circled it until he was standing in front of it again, studying its frame for any idiosyncrasies. Any faults. Anything that might explain why Erised was showing him, the most unhappy of souls, himself.

Perhaps this is the Dark artifact, Harry thought wryly. It drives a person mad with frustration.

But just as he thought this, Harry realized one thing--the words around the frame of this mirror weren't the same.

They weren't the same as the words on Erised.

Immediately, almost before he knew it, his wand was clenched tight in his hands--and everything made sense--this wasn't Erised, so why should it show him what Erised would have showed him at all?

Harry remembered Dumbledore's words. They keep Daerd, we keep its twin...

Daerd.

Harry turned the word around in his head, just as one turned 'Erised' around to get 'desire'.

What he found made Harry's gut clench.

Dread.

He studied the carved rim again, tracing the words backwards, just as he had done with Erised. Only this mirror didn't say Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi, or I show not your face but your heart's desire.

No. What this mirror said, in same the strange reverse-carving, was:

Daerd stra ehru oyt ubsma erdru oyt on laere kami.

'I make real not your dreams but your heart's dread.' Harry's voice was soft with awe. Make real? What did that mean? Erised had only shown... and that too, pleasant things...

Harry stepped back quickly, almost tripping over himself, and pointed his wand at the mirror.  He was braced for something nightmarish--for Voldemort to come leaping out of the mirror, or at least an image of him--but nothing happened.

Again, Harry found himself staring at the mirror.

And staring at it.

And staring at it.

And all he saw was himself.

'This is getting ridiculous,' he muttered, nearly throwing up his hands. Perhaps the mirror was damaged in some way. Perhaps that's why the Goblins thought that it needed safe-keeping...

But just as Harry was about to turn away, about to tuck his wand back into his pocket, he saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.

Immediately he whipped around, wand raised again, heart nearly in his throat with shock. What? What? His mind kept asking.

But still all Harry saw in the mirror was a reflection of himself, wand held aloft and eyes bright with fear, face flushed and slightly sweaty.

This time, Harry didn't lower his wand.

He didn't look away.

And, as he looked, he saw the face in the mirror change.

Oh, it was still his face. Still Harry. But the fear in those eyes slipped easily out, as if it had only been a mask, and Harry found himself staring into eyes that were as green as his, yes, but nowhere near as hesitant.

The Harry Potter in the mirror smiled at him, teeth gleaming--perhaps it was the gleam of the mirror's surface itself, but that smile seemed rather predatory. The boy in the mirror lowered his wand, causing Harry to jump--Harry hadn't lowered his own wand, so this was obviously the reflection's own doing--and then a quiet voice, shockingly like Harry's in tone and timbre, said:

'I agree. This is getting ridiculous.'

Harry, who saw his reflection's mouth move to form the words independent of himself, felt nearly faint with shock.

'Now, now,' the image in the mirror smirked. 'Don't faint on us, Harry. That would ruin such a lot of fun.'

Oh, this was not good. Harry didn't know what the fuck was going on, but whatever it was, it was not. Fucking. Good.

He backed away slowly.

He didn't lower his wand.

The Harry in the mirror pouted. 'You're such a bore, honestly! Do you think I'd hurt you?' The question was phrased innocently, but there was a spark in those green eyes that caused Harry's chest to tighten convulsively. 'Come now,' the mirror said, then paused. 'Well, I didn't mean it like that. But truly. You're me, Harry. Why on earth would I harm you?'

Harry couldn't believe a mirror was talking to him. Talking to him. And not like the usual enchanted mirror either. This was... different, somehow. Very different. He felt a chill run up his spine.

'I'm not...' He swallowed, realizing suddenly just how hoarse his voice was. 'I'm not you.'

'Aren't you?' The reflection inclined its head in mock thoughtfulness, eyes sweeping up and down Harry's form. 'Well. Let's see. We look the same. Scar included. We dress the same. We have,' here the reflection shook its wand, 'the same wand. I can't quite say that we aren't the same.'

'Who are you?' Harry asked, voice still trembling.

The cruel mouth--and when had Harry's mouth, the same mouth, usually so soft, become so cruel?--turned upwards in a smile. 'Why, didn't you read the inscription, Harry?' The reflection gestured around itself, indicating the mirror's carved frame. 'I make real not your dreams but your heart's dread.' The reflection stepped forward, if that were possible, until its hands were pressed against the glass.

'I don't understand,' Harry said, even though some part of him did, and that part of him frightened Harry most of all.

'I think you do,' said the reflection softly, and suddenly there was a hunger in those eyes, a hunger that sent strange prickles across Harry's skin. 'I think you do understand, Harry. You see, I am your heart's true dread.' The boy smiled. 'I'm you.'

* * *

'No!' Harry shouted--or wanted to--but actually he was shocked into silence, into a deep, almost placid silence--and the mirror's words reverberated through him like an echo.

'No,' he finally said, calmly. 'You're not me. You... you do look different. I mean. Your face. Your--your--'

'Expression,' the reflection supplied carelessly.

'Yeah.' Harry took a deep breath. 'Your expression.'

'But I am you, Harry--I'm just that part of you that never gets to wear an expression, because you never let it show. Not once, not anywhere--although you did come close that day, didn't you? In the Department of Mysteries.'

Harry froze.

'Ah, when you cast the Cruciatus on Bellatrix Lestrange. How happy I was then. A pity you had to stop--a pity you couldn't go through with it--it would have felt good hurting her like that, wouldn't it? Well.' The reflection sounded disappointed. 'Now if it were me, of course, just me, with none of your meddlesome scruples interfering--then I would have ripped that bitch's guts out, I'd have plastered them all over the bloody fucking wall--I'd have made her scream so hard she died of it.'

Harry couldn't move if he wanted to. For a moment that same thing rose in him--that raging monster, teeth bared--and he remembered Sirius falling, falling... And the sheer wrath in his mind when he'd cast the Cruciatus.

His mirror-image was smiling almost beatifically, eyes lit as though with a distant dream. 'Oh, yes. That'd feel good. And there was that time after the Quidditch match again--do you remember it? Ah, I see you do--do you remember the soft give of Malfoy's flesh? Right under your knuckles, caving and caving and caving... and you almost got hard at that, didn't you? At the thought of plunging your fist into his stomach, at the thought of ripping out his heart... I still remember it, you know. The flutter of the crushed Snitch. The flutter of Malfoy's crushed pulse.'

Harry was finding it difficult to breathe. Somehow the reflection's words were bringing back those feelings to him--the fierce hatred, the fierce joy, the wish to destroy. 'I'm not that... I'm not... I'm not...' It took him a few moments to realize that he was saying that, and a few more to realize that the reflection was shaking its head at him pityingly.

'Of course you aren't,' the reflection said soothingly, mockingly. 'But you don't understand why I'm here, do you, Harry? You don't know what I'm here to give you, what you've been missing.' It lifted its hand and beckoned Harry. 'Come here. You'll understand if you come just a little closer... put your hands on the mirror. Where mine are. Do that, Harry.'

No. He wasn't going anywhere near that thing.

'Oh, don't be a spoilsport. Didn't you come down here to understand me? Or rather, my vessel? You came here to understand Daerd. If you go now, you won't know a thing. And who knows what that bastard Dumbledore is hiding from you, and who it'll get killed this time?' A strange spasm crossed the reflection's face, and Harry thought he saw an instance of real grief. Could it... could it be? That his reflection mourned as much for Sirius as he did?

That alone brought him a step closer to the mirror. Then he stopped. It could all be an act. He wasn't used to... acting, but this reflected version of him didn't seem to have Harry's usual scruples.

'I won't hurt you,' the mirror was coaxing. 'I'll only give you knowledge, Harry. No harm in knowledge, is there?'

There was something in Harry that balked at that--some knowledge is dangerous--but almost against his will he was stepping forward, drawn by his own face, called by his own voice.

'Here,' his reflection was saying softly, and Harry couldn't get over how much it sounded like him, it sounded just like his own voice did inside his head when he spoke, but this was from the outside...

'Here,' the mirror said again. Those green eyes gleamed in victory when Harry finally stood directly before it, and the reflection reached forward to spread its hands against the glass. 'You do the same,' it whispered, and Harry, almost before he knew it, had slid his wand into his belt and had reached out with his own hands, gasping when they touched cool glass.

'Yes,' Harry's reflection sighed, closing its eyes.

Harry was transfixed--it was almost as though were standing in front of a window with his hands pressed against it, seeing himself on the other side.

The glass warmed against his hands, almost as though the reflection's hands, on the other side, had begun to give off a heat of their own.

'Curl your fingers,' the reflection murmured, opening its eyes again. 'Hold my hands.'

Hold his hands? How on earth could he do that through a mirror? But Harry curled his fingers carefully, and felt a frisson of shock run through him when the glass gave way, as cool as water, and Harry felt warm fingers close over his own.

He almost backed away then, heart hammering, but the reflection's hands tightened over his and its eyes gleamed, and there was that hunger again, that hunger Harry had seen before.

'Pull me,' the reflection was saying, raw longing in its voice. 'Pull me out, Harry. Step back--don't let go. Pull me out. Pull me out.'

Pull me out. Almost as if in a dream, Harry took a step pack, pulling gently at the hands entwined in his. The surface of the mirror rippled--silver, silk--and then a black shoe was stepping out of it, followed by another, followed by arms in white school-sleeves, followed by a face, smiling, dark hair wild and green eyes shining.

'I'm out,' said the other boy in wonder, eyes wide with a joy that, to Harry, suddenly didn't look evil at all. Or even remotely dangerous. He stared back in a wonder that was just as intense--this was himself, only not himself--another body that looked just like this, a face whose contours he knew so well that he was almost tempted to reach out and touch it.

They were standing very close to each other, hands still entwined, and Harry became aware of the other's gentle breathing, the warmth of another body close to his own. It was... comfortable, in a way that Harry couldn't quite put a finger on, and he didn't flinch when a hand disengaged itself from his and raised itself slowly, slowly, to rest against Harry's face.

'So much like myself,' the reflection said, as though Harry were the false one, the new one, and Harry almost smiled.

'So beautiful,' it murmured, and that startled Harry, because he'd never thought of himself as... well, anything.

Then gentle fingers were running along the cool edges of his glasses, and down the warmer skin of his face, and Harry felt a strange sort of haze enter his mind.

'Beautiful,' the reflection said again, and then warm lips brushed his own.

Harry would have jumped back, he would have, if he'd even realized what was going on. Of course he would have. He wouldn't have stood there, shocked, startled, frozen as a mouth so familiar and yet so different, different since he was feeling it from the outside, moved over his lips gently, a soft brush back and forth, back and forth, until Harry was slightly dizzy.

Something like fear started to wind its way through that dizziness--a fear that said what are you doing what are you what are you--and then Harry found himself pulling back, not suddenly but slowly, as though his mind were still in a haze.

His brain was coming up with the rather nonsensical thought that this wasn't like Cho at all, but his mouth, clever thing that it was, came up with something more suitable. 'Wh-what are you doing?' And why did his voice sound so husky?

The other boy's lips curled--and Harry was struck again by how different the same features could look as long as they had a different expression on them. Like the expression his reflection was wearing currently--something between Draco Malfoy's and Severus Snape's smirks. 'I'm kissing you, Harry,' said the reflection teasingly, flexing its left hand inside Harry's in a gentle caress. 'I thought that was obvious.'

That snapped Harry out of it--and he stumbled back, wrenching his hands out of the other's grip. 'I don't... I'm not... You're..'

'Hmm,' said the reflection, looking slightly put out at losing Harry's proximity. 'Let's see. What were you going to say? I don't kiss boys. I'm not a faggot. You're me.' That smirk again. 'Yes?'

Yes. Harry realized, distantly, that he was shaking--and that his wand was in his hands again, pointing at the boy in front of him.

Who rolled his eyes. 'Go on,' he said easily. 'Hex me, Harry. For telling you the truth--and you know it--because this is what you dread, isn't it? I am what you dread, Harry. I'm the part of you that likes to hurt people. I'm the part of you that isn't afraid to enjoy causing a bit of pain. I'm also,' here he smiled, 'the part of you that watches Ron in the showers, that thinks of hurting Malfoy until he screams, until he comes. Isn't that right, Harry?'

No. No, it isn't. 'Silencio,' Harry said, wand steady in his hands--and he didn't know why it was so important to silence this other self if what it said was false. 'Silencio,' he said again, but nothing happened, and the boy opposite him only laughed.

'Your magic won't work on me, Harry.' The cruel mouth curved. 'Alas,' here the reflection gripped its own wand, 'my magic won't work on you either--we're something of a spatial anomaly, you see, we occupy the same magical space.'

The same...

'But I can hurt you in other ways.' The reflection's eyes gleamed. 'I can hurt you with my hands, Harry, I can touch you. I can.' There was something strange in the boy's face for a moment, something that looked almost wistful--but then he was saying, 'And if I chose to fight you, if I defeated you, I could walk right out of here, Harry, leaving you dead on the floor.'

Harry gasped.

'No one would ever know, you see? And even if they did, would they hurt me? Could they hurt me, for killing myself? It wouldn't be as simple as murder--and they wouldn't imprison me anyway, not the great Harry Potter, the only one destined to fight Voldemort. I could live your life, Harry. I could live it better than you. I could do all the things you're afraid of doing.' He licked his lips. 'I could Crucio Bellatrix Lestrange. And mean it. I could fuck Draco Malfoy until he was too ashamed to look me in the eye. I could... I could touch Ron.' Harry thought he saw a flash of that wistfulness again, but it was gone swiftly. 'I could be everything you're afraid of, Harry, everything you hate yourself for, everything you dread yourself for--everything you think makes you a freak. Like good old Vernon Dursley always says.'

Harry was starting to think, at this point, that escape was a viable option. This creature was a lunatic. He began to inch towards the door.

'I could avenge Sirius. You think you love him? I love him as much as you do, Harry. More. I could make every--one--of--those--Death Eaters--pay for what they did to him. I could. I could make them scream. I know I can. I'm not afraid of using what Voldemort gave to us, Harry. I'm not afraid of being who I am.' A moment of silence, and then, softly: 'I'm not afraid of being you.'

Harry made a lunge for the door.

And in an instant, swifter than a flash of light, there were arms around him--pulling him back--a hand in his hair, yanking cruelly--and Harry gasped at the force of it, the strength of it, as his reflection turned him around and threw him against the wall.

Stone cracked against his head in a blaze of white pain--and colors burst across his eyes at the shock of it, but his reflection didn't show any pity, any at all, only seeming to relish Harry's cry of pain all the more. There was a whispering voice in Harry's ear--and through the haze of pain he finally started to make out the words.

'Your dread made real, Harry. That's me. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? When you came down here, when you looked at me, and you didn't even recognize me for what I was?' A hand--much tighter and crueller than Harry could ever had expected from himself--curled around Harry's neck. 'I want to live, Harry. I want to do everything that you've failed to do, because you're too fucking weak, Harry, because you can't even take revenge for your godfather's death.'

Sirius, Harry thought, and felt a sob rise in his throat--but anger rose along with it, anger that almost matched the mania on his reflection's face, and he tried to push out of the forced embrace.

But the other boy only chuckled and pushed back harder, grinding Harry's back painfully into the stone. 'You can't fight me, Harry,' said his reflection hoarsely. 'Because you can't win. You can't. You can't hurt me like I can hurt you, because you're too bloody afraid to hurt anyone, to really hurt them--but I'm not, you see, you see, so I can. Defeat you. I will.'

A sudden sinking of teeth into Harry's throat--not hard enough to pierce the skin, but hard enough to bruise--and Harry yelled, fear overflowing in his mind, terror blanking it. He began to struggle--but this boy was somehow so much stronger than him, much more so than a boy his size should be.

'So beautiful,' the reflection was murmuring again. 'So beautiful. So weak. I'm going to take your life, Harry. I'm going to live it. This is what you dread, isn't it? That you'll do the things I'm capable of doing. Oh, yes. I'll do them. In your name. You can't win against me by fighting me, Harry. You can't.'

Harry scrambled for his wand, fingers desperate and slick with sweat--pushing against the other boy, managing to raise his arm behind the other boy's back to point his wand at the mirror, planning to scream: Convello! Planning to shatter the source of his nightmare altogether.

But those hands found his and pushed them back again, crushing his wrists cruelly against rough stone--and Harry's wand dropped from his nerveless grasp, clattering to the floor loudly.

No, Harry thought in horror, No, and his knees almost buckled with the loss of it.

'Didn't you hear me, Harry? You can't win by fighting. The only way you can win, the only way you can send me back there,' the reflection jerked his chin towards the mirror, 'is by accepting me. By telling yourself that you can do all the things I can do, that you won't shrink from yourself anymore.' A sneer widened that thin, hatefully familiar mouth. 'But you can't accept me, can you, Harry? You're just that afraid of me. You hate me that much. And that, after all, will be your undoing. That you could not accept the thing you dread.'

Accept the thing you dread. Accept the thing you dread. Harry was shaking his head, at the impossibility of it, at the madness of it, but then his double's mouth was crushing his, forcing it open, and a tongue both thick and familiar, hot and unwelcome, flooded his mouth.

Harry instinctively tried to fight back--but the fists holding his hands against the wall only tightened, and the tongue inside his mouth became only more thorough, sweeping around his teeth in a hot rough brush of salt, of blood, of pain, and Harry wondered if he'd bitten himself or his enemy.

This was rape, it was sickening, but suddenly the other boy's hips were grinding into his own, rocking forward in a cruel press of heat--and with a gasp of horror, fingers bruised against the wall and back arching, Harry felt himself hardening.

'Yes,' chuckled Harry's voice--no, this stranger's voice--in his ear. 'Hate yourself, Harry. Hate yourself, hate yourself...'

Hate yourself. Harry found that very easy to do--it was an easy habit to fall into, and when his erection brushed against the other boy's--his own--rough clasp of cloth between them making it only rougher, sweeter, Harry felt tears of rage and hatred spill out of his eyes.

Hate yourself. But then his reflection's words came back to him--the only way you can win is by accepting me--and Harry, with a viciousness he had never known he possessed, had never been willing to acknowledge that he possessed, lifted his hips up to grind against the other boy's, opening his mouth willingly to the other's assault.

A gasp of surprise, and the reflection tried to pull back--but the grip on Harry's hands had loosened, and Harry immediately brought his hands down--not to hit the other boy, no, but to curl around the nape of his neck, tilting his head back to kiss back, kiss deeper, lifting his legs to wrap around the other's waist.

Accept the thing you dread. Harry wasn't going to lose this fight. He wasn't. He couldn't afford it. He couldn't afford to--he couldn't--let this freak escape. He couldn't.

That unnatural strength seemed to be leaving the reflection--and Harry realized, with a hot rush of triumph, that he was winning. I'm winning, he thought, I'm winning--and he didn't think for the moment of what he was doing, only that it felt good, and that he was winning, and he'd cut this boy in half if it meant he had to win.

Accept the thing you dread. Become me. Become me. Before Harry realized it he had turned them around, forcing his now weaker self against the wall, just as the other had done to him--and his mouth was hot wet busy on the other's, and his hand was slipping down, down a familiar chest to the familiar contours of a school belt, and Harry didn't even have to look down to see what he was doing , because he knew this body so well, and already knew how to undo that belt without looking, in the dark--and then his fingers where in there, wrapping around his other self's cock, hot and hard and velvet in his palm, and he stroked it fast, just the way he was meant to.

His reflection was struggling now--or was it thrusting to meet his strokes?--and those gleaming green eyes now had something a lot like fear in them, a lot like defeat, and they gazed at Harry with a desperate hunger, with a desperate hate. It was almost like the look Malfoy had given him, after that Quidditch match...

'Hate yourself,' Harry murmured back into the boy's face, twisting his hand harshly around the other's cock--just the way he knew always worked--and then the other boy was arching, gasping, something like a silent scream working his throat, and he was spilling himself in hot pulses over Harry's palm.

Harry found himself tensing too, thrusting once, hard, into that cloth-clad thigh--and then he was coming too, just as urgent and hot and sweet, his teeth biting the other boy's neck. The taste of blood filled his mouth--salt and harsh and bitter--and he felt his own come fill his underpants, equally hot, wet and uncomfortable--and in that instant, panting, Harry forgot everything--everything about winning, everything about surviving, because this was the hardest he'd ever come in his life, and the wet heat over his knuckles meant that someone else had come as well.

For a few moments he just leaned his hot forehead against his twin's shoulder, panting, and he didn't realize until later that he could hear his own voice, but not from his own mouth, whispering: 'I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.'

Harry looked up, blinking slowly, his vision blurred and eyelashes clumped with tears--had he cried when he'd come?--to see that his reflection had turned its face away, pale and weak, and was whispering I hate you over and over again.

It looked almost as though he were looking at his old self--and that he was the one from the mirror, not this weak, snivelling thing. Harry brushed his mouth tenderly over the other's, enjoying the weakened flinch, and said: 'But I don't hate you.'

And the moment he said that there was a flash of light--from the mirror behind them, bright as silver, bright as dawn--and suddenly the body in Harry's arms was melting away, into something that looked like smoke, green eyes growing milky with mist.

Don't send me back, a voice was pleading, but Harry chose not to listen--don't send me back, Harry, please--but then Harry was stepping back, letting his arms fall, and the ghost-like body in front of him dissolved altogether, sucked in a single stream of light backwards, back, and Harry turned around to follow its arcing path across the room, swift as white lightning, before it hit and and was absorbed into the mirror.

Daerd, Harry thought, and the mirror rippled like a still pond when a stone had been thrown into it--and suddenly Harry felt a fierce joy from that mirror, a joy that startled him, sent his mind reeling, and Harry tried to grasp what had happened.

He was tired. His wrists were bruised, with little cuts from the stone wall coagulating in droplets of blood against his skin--and his pants felt heavy and wet with cold come--disgusting--and suddenly he felt so very tired.

Something told Harry that he should smile--that he had just won--but Harry picked up his Invisibility Cloak and his wand with shaky fingers, not looking back at the mirror again, and quickly stumbled out of the secret chamber.

* * *

The next morning dawned cool and fresh--and Harry felt exhausted when the first ray of light finally made it past his bed-curtains, a dull red glow that lit his pillow and his face.

He hadn't slept all night. How could he have? And it was Saturday now, and he'd promised to go with Ron and Hermione to the greenhouse to collect ingredients for their Potions project, but suddenly Harry had other plans altogether.

Best to do it before everyone went to breakfast, before he talked to his friends--because he had to get this done now, without interruptions.

Quickly, before anyone else woke up, Harry reached out for his Cloak again--and then, on footsteps as silent as he could make them, Harry slipped out of the Gryffindor dormitory and down the stairs, past the common room and past the Fat Lady, walking as quickly as he could towards the library.

* * *

His hands ached, even though he had cast healing spells on them--the surface wounds had healed, but Harry still felt his bones throb with the after-effects of being crushed against a wall.

Breakfast arrived, and Harry made a token appearance to sit with his friends. When Hermione noticed something amiss, asking: 'Harry, are you all right?' Harry only nodded, not looking away from the staff table.

'I have to talk to Dumbledore,' he said to her in a quiet undertone.

Ron, who was leaning over Hermione's shoulder to reach for the jam, widened his eyes in worry. 'Is it... is it about...'

'Yes, Ron,' Harry said tiredly. 'It's about Voldemort.'

They both flinched when Harry said that name--and something new, something vicious in Harry thought: Cowards--but he shut away that voice immediately, carefully, because he couldn't allow that part of him to show here.

Acceptance was all well and good, of course, as long as one wasn't stupid enough to let everyone else know what one had accepted.

So Harry walked away from them, working up something like a smile, and headed over to the staff table.

'Professor Dumbledore, I'd like to talk to you, please.'

Dumbledore didn't look the least surprised--in fact, when he raised his face to look at Harry, he looked almost... relieved.

Snape was a pocket of tense silence to his left--Harry ignored him. 'Now, please, Headmaster.'

Now a few of the other professors looked up in surprise--there was something sharp in Harry's voice, something that smacked of disrespect--but before McGonagall could open her mouth to take house points, Dumbledore was already standing up, calmly wiping his hands on a napkin, inclining his head politely.

'Follow me, Harry,' he said, pushing back his chair.

Harry did.

* * *

It was strange to be standing in Dumbledore's office now--because everything felt different, clearer, and Harry wasn't so foolish now as to feel a sense of comort here.

This wasn't a place of comfort.

It was a place of deceit.

The Restricted Section had been most enlightening--and Harry had spent the two hours before breakfast there, poring over every book he could find on magical mirrors. There was a lot on Erised--and even more, to his surprise, on Daerd.

Daerd had been the work of the student of the wizard who had originally made Erised--and while the master had not been Dark, and had not sought to create something deliberately harmful with Erised (although, ironically, people had occasionally ended up losing their minds in front of it), the student had been a follower of the Dark Arts, and had apparently been obsessed with the concept of fear. With fear itself, and what it revealed about a person--and how it could be used, both as a weapon and as defence, against an enemy. Or, in the quest for self-knowledge, even against oneself.

Hence he had built Daerd as something of an advanced model of Erised, a twisted tribute to his dead master--a mirror that not only showed, but also brought real a person's worst fears. Nothing as easily dispelled as a boggart, this--each fear had its own unique way of being fought, and unless the victim solved the puzzle of how to fight back, they would perish in front of the mirror, suffering their worst imagined fate.

Dark, indeed.

Harry had smiled humorlessly when he'd read about how the Goblins had volunteered, soon after the creator of Daerd had died, to protect this Dark artifact from misuse--and how the Order at that time had made a pledge to help them should they need it, to keep Daerd in their stead should the Goblins ever prove unable, for whatever reason, to protect it.

So this much that Dumbledore had said had been true.

But the more Harry thought about it, about the conversation he had overheard between Snape and Dumbledore, the more one thing became apparent to him--the words Dumbledore had spoken were all true, but the situation in which he'd spoken those words had been a lie.

It was all so terribly obvious now. Obvious to a Harry who was never again going to hide from himself--would never protect himself with platitudes. Wouldn't let Dumbledore feed them to him.

No.

What Harry understood now was that it had been strange that Dumbledore had chosen to discuss this in a corridor, where a certain boy in an Invisibility Cloak was lurking--that he should see the boy, because Harry knew now that Dumbledore had seen him--and that he should still turn away, leaving Harry in what he must have known was a near-obsessive curiosity.

And that the wards Dumbledore had placed around the mirror should suddenly vanish, revealing its position to him on the Marauder's Map--wasn't that just so fortunate, too? Harry, being the fool that he was, had fallen right into the trap--driven by eagerness and a need to know, down into the dungeons and into the secret chamber--the chamber where he'd met Daerd.

Where he'd met himself.

Now, as he stood in front of Dumbledore's desk, noting the shadow of almost-guilt in Dumbledore's eyes, Harry wondered. He wondered at the purity of the hatred he suddenly felt, the sweetness of it, and he wondered if, when the time came, he'd kill Dumbledore too--but then he remembered the lesson what this encounter had taught him, what Dumbledore had tricked him into learning, and he found he didn't mind so much.

Dumbledore had only made him stronger, after all--had pulled Harry out of the grief for Sirius that had shadowed him everyday--he had made Harry such a sharp weapon now, so clear-minded, so lacking in hesitation when it came to strike. So much more prepared to fulfil the Prophecy in their favor.

Dumbledore had strengthened him.

At the price of his trust, of course, but strengthened him nonetheless--and Harry, now looking at the Headmaster again, didn't say: Are you happy with what you've created, Headmaster?

No.

What Harry said, instead, was: 'I'd like to resume my Occlumency lessons with Snape.'

Dumbledore's eyes widened in surprise--and Harry had a moment to savor that, the novelty of that, before Dumbledore's face smoothed out again. 'It's Professor Snape, Harry. And are you sure? I would be pleased to teach you myself, as I had promised--'

'Professor Snape, please,' Harry cut in, not bothering with whether he sounded insolent. 'I won't be rude to him anymore. I promise.' And he wouldn't be. The time for childish grudges was over--Snape was a harsh teacher, a good teacher, and Harry had come to see that. If he had to tolerate Snape's company for a few hours every week--if he had to use Snape--so be it. There were bigger things to take care of now, and Harry had to arm himself--he had to arm himself so that he could hurt, because he was no longer afraid to hurt, because the Lestranges were still alive, because Sirius' death hadn't yet been avenged.

Dumbledore looked troubled; he was watching Harry carefully. But Harry kept his face blank.

'Very well, Harry,' Dumbledore agreed finally--voice quiet, eyes questioning.

But Harry didn't answer Dumbledore's unspoken question--instead he nodded curtly, once, and turned towards the door. Before he left, though, he glanced back at the Headmaster--and heard his own voice saying, as if from a distance: 'Did you ever face the mirror, Headmaster? Did you hate yourself?'

Dumbledore froze.

Harry, as he closed the door behind him and headed down the spiral staircase, relished the expression that had flashed across Dumbledore's face.

It was, quite simply, fear.

Well.  Harry smiled. By tomorrow he'd know at what times he'd have to report to Snape's office--and when he wasn't learning with Snape, he had so many other things to do. Reading up on the theory of the Cruciatus in the Restricted Section. Helping Ron and Hermione with their Potions project.

And, of course, finding Draco Malfoy.

Perhaps he could even find Malfoy today, after finishing with Hermione and Ron. Lure him into an isolated place. He thought of Malfoy's fragile hands, his fragile skin--all so easily breakable, and all so deserving of it.

And he knew, suddenly, remembering both Malfoy's pride and Dumbledore's fear--that whatever he did, however much Malfoy bruised or bled, that he wouldn't tell anyone--and that Dumbledore, even if he knew, wouldn't do anything.

Harry's smile widened.

Saturday.

It always had been his favorite day of the week.