Product of the Department of Mysteries

[sunnyskywalker]

On oneandthetruth's last DH chapter commentary, an interesting thread compared the Mirror of Erised to the Resurrection Stone in its seductive (and potentially deadly) powers of showing something/someone you want.

There's another object somewhat like that: the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. There are voices coming from behind the Veil - voices Luna believes to be those of the dead - and Harry feels tempted to walk through it.

Well, okay, Harry is being trained to have a death wish. But maybe that just means he's more susceptible.

The Department of Mysteries is a research facility. One which we know has produced tangible items now available for (restricted) public use, such as Time-Turners. (Whether they invented them or improved on an existing idea, we don't know.) I seriously doubt they've only produced one artifact ever. So what else might they have made?

They also have the locked room full of either love or Amortensia, depending whom you ask. The Mirror's ability to reflect your heart's desire is suggestively similar to the potion's ability to reflect the scent of what you desire.

A big glass mirror sounds like a relatively recent invention (unless you posit a long history of magical glassmaking, but wizards seem to adapt Muggle technology more often than the other way around). I propose that the Mirror of Erised is a product of the Department of Mysteries, combining attributes of Amortensia and the Veil which the DoM was able to partially replicate/adapt after long study.

Next question: are the Stone and the Veil related? Maybe Mr. Death, whoever he was, created both, and the DoM only got ahold of one of them. Whether this makes the Veil a fourth Hallow, left out of Beedle's version for numerical reasons, is not clear. Possibly it's a super-Hallow, and you can be Master of Death^TM with it alone? Or it's a death-related magical... thing... which shares some properties with the Hallows, but it isn't the same class of artifact and mastery isn't an issue in its case.

Or maybe the Veil is more ancient and the Stone is a portable adaptation created centuries ago by the DoM's first head researcher, Johannus Mors, along with a couple of other powerful items which also escaped the premises and have not been replicated. (And Death took the second lab assistant for his own...)

Thoughts? Fanfic links?

Comments

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Apropos of attila's suggestion about the mirror being a sorting tool, and throwing in your thoughts about the DoM, maybe the mirror was designed as an interrogation tool. You could plop down an enemy in front of it, and when they're thoroughly hypnotized, ask them what they see. You then (falsely) promise to give it to them in exchange for what they know.

[sunnyskywalker]

Ooh, that's an interesting idea! Now I'm wondering if the mirror-makers were inspired by the Sorting Hat too...

But a closer connection might be that Foe-Glass of Moody's, come to think of it. It somehow knows what you don't want (your enemies) rather than your deepest desire. Not quite the mirror's opposite number, but pretty close. And the Foe-Glass most certainly does seem like something the Ministry might have developed for its own use. Or at least they might have improved on it, if it's an older idea. I imagine something that shows you your enemies would be something people would have wanted to create not long after they figured out they could control magic, even if it took different forms than a mirror.