Dark Devices: The Mirror of Eris
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deathtocapslockDark Devices: the Mirror of Eris.
Excuse me, that was Erised. How silly of me. Eris was the goddess of discord, and according to Hesiod (Works and Days), she sometimes worked by planting unsatisfiable desires in men’s hearts:
She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. But Strife is unwholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar….
Completely different thing from what that mirror does, got it.
Jodel suggested in “The Quirrell Debacle” that Dumbledore had set up Harry to look into that mirror. She argued that the headmaster had first moved that Mirror away from the heart of the labyrinth, and then had had Filch and Snape herd Harry to the appropriate room, primarily because Albus wanted to learn Harry’s heart’s deepest desires. Letting Harry gaze into that mirror, in that view, was Dumbledore’s test to make sure Harry wasn’t another future Dark Lord in training.
I think that there was something more going on than merely Albus’s test of Harry. If I am correct, I earnestly hope that Severus and Argus were not implicated in Twinkles’ plots.
*
First, let’s look at how Harry ended up before that mirror.
We’ll take as a given Jodel’s point that the Mirror could only have been in a room easily accessible to students by Dumbledore’s will. Once the Stone had been moved to Hogwarts for safekeeping in August, the Mirror’s place was obviously at the end of Dumbledore’s labyrinth as its final, and untrickable, guardian. So for the Mirror to be discovered anywhere else was proof that Dumbledore himself had moved the Mirror for some overriding purpose.
And the purpose clearly involved Harry. To test the boy, as Jodel thought, or what?
Let’s start with how. How did Twinkles induce the child to look into that mirror? Was Harry “herded” there by Filch and Snape alone, or what did bring him to that room and make him look his fill at what the mirror showed him?
It happened Christmas day, after a long, happy, tiring day and a lazy supper (PS 12): “everyone felt too full and sleepy to do much before bed.”
Harry and Ron went to bed, both replete, satisfied, and exhausted… except Harry couldn’t sleep. Why not?
It had been Harry’s best Christmas day ever. Yet something had been nagging at the back of his mind all day. Not until he climbed into bed was he free to think about it: the invisibility cloak and whoever had sent it.
Ron, full of turkey and cake and with nothing mysterious to bother him, fell asleep almost as soon as he’d drawn the curtains of his four-poster. Harry leaned over the side of his own bed and pulled the cloak out from under it.
His father’s… this had been his father’s…. Use it well, the note had said.
He had to try it, now. He slipped out of bed and wrapped the cloak around himself. Looking down at his legs, he saw only moonlight and shadows. It was a very funny feeling.
Use it well.
Suddenly, Harry felt wide-awake. The whole of Hogwarts was open to him in this cloak. Excitement flooded through him as he stood there in the dark and silence. He could go anywhere in this, anywhere, and Filch would never know.
Ron grunted in his sleep. Should Harry wake him? Something held him back—his father’s cloak—he felt that this time—the first time—he wanted to use it alone.
He crept out of the dormitory…..
Where should he go? He stopped, his heart racing, and thought. And then it came to him. The Restricted Section in the library. He’d be able to read as long as he liked, as long as it took to find out who Flamel was…..
The Restricted Section was right at the back of the library. Stepping carefully over the rope that separated these books from the rest of the library, he held up his lamp to read the titles.
They didn’t tell him much….
He had to start somewhere… A large black and silver volume caught his eye. He pulled it out with difficulty, because it was very heavy, and, balancing it on his knee, let it fall open.
A piercing, bloodcurdling shriek split the silence—the book was screaming!... Panicking, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside—stuffing the shrieking book back on the shelf, he ran for it. He passed Filch in the doorway; Filch’s pale, wild eyes looked straight through him, and Harry slipped under Filch’s outstretched arm and streaked off up the corridor, the book’s shrieks still ringing in his ears.
He came to a sudden halt in front of a tall suit of armor. He had been so busy getting away from the library, he hadn’t paid attention to where he was going. Perhaps because it was dark, he didn’t recognize where he was at all. There was a suit of armor near the kitchens, he knew, but he must be five floors above there.
“You asked me to come directly to you, Professor, if anyone was wandering around at night, and somebody’s been in the library—Restricted Section.”
Harry felt the blood drain out of his face. Wherever he was, Filch must know a shortcut, because his soft, greasy voice was getting nearer, and to his horror it was Snape who replied, “The Restricted Section? Well, they can’t be far, we’ll catch them.”
Harry stood rooted to the spot as Filch and Snape came around the corner ahead. They couldn’t see him, of course, but it was a narrow corridor and if they came much nearer they’d knock right into him—the cloak didn’t stop him from being solid.
He backed away as quietly as he could. A door stood ajar to his left. It was his only hope. He squeezed through it, holding his breath, trying not to move it, and to his relief he managed to get inside the room without their noticing anything.
[underlining mine]
*
So. How, exactly, did Harry end up in front of that mirror?
Death’s cloak, gifted to him by Dumbledore that morning, brought him nearly straight there.
He’d been thinking about the cloak all day. Despite being surfeited and worn out, he couldn’t sleep for obsessing over it. He felt he “had” to try it out. Immediately. And as soon as he donned it his exhaustion dropped away. He thought of waking Ron to share the adventure—but “something held him back.” He didn’t know where to go —“and then it came to him:” the library. Where the first book that caught his eye tripped an alarm, and he fled blindly “up the corridor.”
He ran, not conscious of where he was going. By sheer coincidence he halted (suddenly) by a suit of armor. Immediately AFTER he’d passed by the open door of a certain room.
None of this happened by Harry’s conscious agency—he didn’t even know which way he was running, he just ran—possibly in a circle, for Filch to come from the library and end up around a corner in front of him. And then, for no reason, he stopped dead. Just beyond a room whose door was ajar.
And then he saw Filch and Snape and he felt that “his only hope” of escaping them was by slipping into that room.
All perfectly unconscious, yes? At every decision point something outside his conscious mind directed his actions.
Except for the last decision that took him into the room itself. That one was logical. As Harry reflected, even if he was invisible he was still solid, and they might discover him accidently by bumping into him.
Except….
When I was growing up, one of the favorite games in my neighborhood was “Starlight Moonlight,” an only-in-the-dark game that combined tag and hide & seek. Hiding in the dark is very different from daylight hide & seek. The most secure places to hide, in fact, are places that the seeker would overlook because they aren’t (in the daylight) hiding places at all.
And the very worst scenario in any tagging hide and seek game is to let yourself be trapped in a space with only one exit if the seeker is at all likely to search it seriously. Even if it’s pitch black, a methodical seeker could quarter the area and find you, and if s/he keeps between you and the exit, there’s no possible chance to run free.
Harry, of course, did not spend his childhood playing light-hearted games with his neighborhood friends. But he did have a decade’s experience of “Harry Hunting,” and we’re told he often won. Surely some of his experience was at night?
And surely he learned that general rule against about never trapping himself?
When Harry heard Filch and Snape speaking ahead of him, and looked wildly for a place to hide, he was standing in front of a large suit of armor. Given the cloak, the best place to hide was to flatten himself against the wall next to the suit. As his seekers walked past, they would automatically veer far enough away from the wall to miss the armor, and would therefore be certain to miss one skinny boy. And since it wasn’t a hiding place for anyone visible, they wouldn’t be looking for him there. (This is assuming he can control his breathing—but with two of them, talking, that’s not such an issue as it might be. And that consideration already held—they were already in the same corridor as Harry; if he were panting loudly enough to be heard, he’d already lost.)
The second-best place, as the Trio proved hiding from Umbridge in Hagrid’s hut, was flattened against any random patch of wall, trusting to luck that the seeker wouldn’t brush against the hider. And be ready to dodge and run like crazy if they did—a strategy that had already worked once that night with Filch.
The third-best thing, was to turn and retreat before them, hopefully in utter silence, and slip away down a side passage.
The very worst thing to do was to go through a door that was ajar if there was any chance at all of brushing the door while the seekers could see. Because, as even our Harry of little brain realized, if he moved the door his pursuers would know exactly where he was, and he’d be trapped without any chance of escape.
But to Harry it seemed that going through that one door, temptingly ajar, was the “only hope.”
Yes, that door—that room—was a trap. And the cloak lured him into it. I think the cloak was ensorcelled to entice Harry to use it (solo), and to bring him exactly to where Dumbledore wanted him to go.
Regarding Snape and Filch—if their conversation was authentic (not established: they could have been acting parts at the headmaster’s behest), Harry at some point doubled back to near to the library. They seemed (note the verb) to be ranging out from the library, and they were now in front of Harry.
And, whatever the tricks of the staircases, do we ever see, in canon, any other instance of the Hogwarts corridors shifting into an un-navigable maze?
Depending on the headmaster’s control of the castle, that might be possible. But, Occam’s razor—we have evidence the cloak was influencing both Harry’s emotions and his thoughts, producing, in order, obsession, invigoration when he donned it, and the desire for secrecy even from his best friend—and quite plausibly suggesting Harry’s first destination, very close to the ultimate one. Even, perhaps, guiding Harry to pluck a book with an auditory alarm charm on it from the shelves of the Restricted Section so he would be sped mindless on his way to his true destination (or maybe any book in that section does that if opened without permission, in which case inducing the idea to do research there would suffice to assure the eventual alarm).
But I don’t think the corridors moved, and I don’t think Filch and Snape had a shortcut. (A shortcut could only be effective if they knew where the trespasser would try to go from the library, and Harry didn’t know that himself.) I think that Harry was drawn to his true destination, which means he may have turned himself around with realizing it and headed back towards the library. He came to a halt, remember, just after passing the room Dumbledore wanted him to enter, and just before hearing Filch’s voice.
Were Severus and Argus being used by Albus to herd Harry into that one room where waited a certain Mirror? Clearly.
Did they know what they were really doing, and why? Less clear. They might have been told by Albus to herd “a Disillusioned student” into that one room, and deliberately ignored the signs of Harry’s presence once he’d entered the selected room. They might simply have been alerted that “a student might try to break into the Restricted Section of the Library tonight,” responded appropriately when he did, and herded Harry inadvertently.
In either case, it’s a damned odd coincidence that they caught up with the trespasser just where they did. I mean, if they’d caught up with Harry (even though they didn’t realize it) coming from around any other corner, Harry wouldn’t have ended up in the right room.
Or Severus and Argus might have been told by Albus exactly what he was intending to do to Harry, and that the boy had an invisibility cloak bespelled to draw him to the right place, and lurked in wait around the corner to chivvy the child to meet his fate.
I hope it’s not that last, but canon leaves the possibility open.
Or, in fact, there’s one other possibility.
They might not have been there at all.
If Albus was there the third night, and invisibly there the second night, he was undoubtedly invisibly there the first night as well to study Harry’s reactions. But if Albus was waiting in the room to watch Harry confront that mirror, it becomes perfectly plausible that Albus might have created either an illusion or a hallucination of Filch and Snape to herd Harry finally into the room when the boy didn’t enter it on his own. That’s really the only explanation that doesn’t make their “appearance” at the precise place and time to herd Harry exactly where Albus wanted him to go a staggeringly large piece of luck for Albus.
In which case Harry might never have been turned around at all, but just run straight through the corridors to his destination, came to a sudden halt (for no cause that he’s aware of), and then was given a compelling reason to slip immediately through the temptingly half-open door.
*
Twinkles deeply wanted Harry to face that mirror.
So, what were its effects?
“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.” (PS 12)
Let’s ignore Albus’s words and look at actual effects.
Well, Harry was almost immediately entranced. He paid no attention to time passing; he was unaware of cold or exhaustion. He only roused himself to break away from it when he heard a noise that made him fear he’d get caught. And his burning thought then was how soon he might return and look some more.
The next day, our ice-cream-every-hour Harry was unable to eat for thinking of the mirror. And he didn’t care any more about solving the Flamel-puzzle that had been obsessing the children for months, or even whether Snape might steal whatever the Cerberus was hiding.
When he tried to take Ron to see it the next night, Harry refused to give up the quest even when it took over an hour of wandering (frightened, cold, and tired) to find the room. As soon as Ron had had a brief glance, he and Harry fought physically over who got to continue to look in it. When Mrs. Norris came in and frightened the boys with the threat of discovery, it was limited-exposure Ron who insisted that they leave—and he had to physically pull Harry out of the room.
The next day Ron told Harry that he had a bad feeling about that mirror and that Harry shouldn’t go back. (The same reaction, note, that Ron later had to Riddle’s diary.) But Harry didn’t care.
Harry didn’t care about anything by then, except going back to the mirror. Not playing with Ron, not visiting Hagrid, not eating, not sleeping.
All Harry could think about, by then, was his next fix.
The images he saw in that mirror were more real and important to him than his living friends or his body’s needs. Hmm. Kind of like how the images produced by the Suicide Stone were more real to him than his own body or his living friends, making them seem like ghosts to him.
Harry was a Mirror junkie, and the addiction was induced by a single (prolonged) exposure.
This is a majorly-worrying artifact.
Why did Dumbledore want Harry to be exposed to it? A mirror so addictive—he admitted—that grown men had died or been driven insane by it?
Jodel suggested that Dumbledore wanted to read Harry’s heart’s desire. Albus himself said to Harry that now that Harry knew what the Mirror did, he would know what to expect if he saw it again—suggesting that the fatal confrontation between Harry and Quirrell!mort was anticipated (possibly eagerly) by Albus. (Jodel, more lenient to Albus than I, thought that the headmaster planned to use Harry to retrieve the Stone from storage once Tom’s current incarnation were defeated and the shouting done.)
But there may have been another effect anticipated by Albus. A long-term effect; indeed, it might have been a life-long effect.
The images in that mirror were more important to Harry than any living being, including his real-life first-ever friends. And the images were of Harry’s dead family, especially his parents, whom he previously didn’t remember.
The immediate aftereffects of Harry’s looking in that mirror were vivid nightmares of his parents’ deaths. Before, his only memory or nightmare about it was a flash of green. In fact, if you look closely, his previous nightmares about that night were not about his parents at all—he was dreaming about his own injury, a “flash of green” followed by a flash of pain. We’re told that Harry assumed the memory/dream was connected to the “car accident” that killed his parents, but what he dreamed was specifically the infliction of his own scar.
It’s only after the Mirror that Harry “dreamed about his parents disappearing in a flash of green light, while a high voice cackled with laughter.”
“Over and over.”
What one sees in the mirror is NOT what one most desires, but a visual symbol of it, a representation. And I think that part of the addictive quality of the mirror is that what it shows is the underlying desire being fulfilled in a manner that the victim believes (or knows) to be impossible in reality. The image in the mirror makes the victim feel their deep desire to be unsatisfiable. Unattainable.
So that looking in the mirror again is the only possible way to come close to one’s heart’s desire.
Men have gone mad… not sure if what they see is real, or even possible.
Because there’s one very important similarity between Ron’s experience of the mirror and Harry’s: neither came away inspired to take steps to attain his heart’s desire. Harry wanted to be surrounded by people who love him—and he ignored his real-life friends to obsess about returning to the mirror. Ron wanted to stand out, the most accomplished of all his brothers—but the next day, he wasn’t inspired to study like Percy or invent things like the twins or even practice Quidditch like Charlie. No, he suggested playing or visiting Hagrid.
My own real=life experience is that being reminded forcefully of what I want tends to make me more motivated to take the steps to make it happen. (Ask any athlete in training whether focusing on the goal makes it easier or harder to endure discomfort.) Yet with both Harry and Ron, looking in that mirror has the opposite effect. Harry wants to be surrounded by people who love him—and he ignores the people who do. Ron wants to be outstanding, to shine among his accomplished brothers—and he ignores everything he might do to make himself stand out.
Which is a perfectly reasonable reaction if what one sees in the mirror, what one longs for, craves, thirsts for, is unattainable. I can lose weight and get in better shape than I am now, fine, no problem. However, nothing I can do will ever make me an Olympic athlete. If I saw myself getting an Olympic gold medal in that mirror, the only way I’ll ever see that again is … by going back and looking in that mirror.
In fact, realizing that what I truly want is to be an Olympic-class sprinter, and nothing less will ever satisfy me, and it ain’t ever gonna happen, would have a rather depressing effect on my motivation to keep myself in tolerable shape by exercising every day. Why bother? It’ll never get me what I really want….
I mean, seriously. An orphan’s deepest desire is surely not to see his family, but to have one. It was all a mistake; his parents didn’t really die; they were thought dead but really were in a coma for a while and afterwards suffered amnesia, and upon seeing him accidentally in the street one day, they miraculously recover their memories. Or failing that, his dad’s cousin has always longed for a little boy just like Harry. Or even, a Daddy Warbucks takes one look at Harry and wants to make him his own….
An orphan yearns for a family that loves him to belong to.
But instead, Harry sees the dead. Looking at him lovingly, but forever out of his reach.
That’s his deepest desire? To SEE the love and belonging that he’d irrevocably lost? Never to have it again?
No, I don’t think so. I think that’s the Mirror, showing him what he wants in such a manner that if he accepts that as the image of his desire, he can only have access to it by returning to the mirror.
The Mirror is designed to be addictive, and to use its victims’ most deep-seated but unsatisfied needs and longings to enslave them. And to do so, it must make the unsatisfied need seem unsatisfiable.
Unsatisfiable, that is, except by returning to the Mirror.
Harry saw himself surrounded by love and acceptance. All from dead family, accessible now and forever after only by gazing in a certain Mirror.
*
So. That abomination’s primary effect: instant attraction. Immediate addiction if the first dose is sufficiently prolonged, or the victim especially vulnerable. Looking in the mirror again is more important than food or friends or duty.
Secondary effect: the image displayed by the Mirror displaces other ways the victim had visualized having that need met or that desire satisfied.
Tertiary effect: suppression of the victim’s ambition/ability to attain that particular desire by other pathways. Since nothing attainable in real life can live up to the dream shown by the mirror….
That mirror is in the business of producing a dependency, of drawing people back to it.
If we’re to trust Dumbledore at all (or if the children’s reactions are representative), people are drawn to that mirror in lieu of living their lives in a manner likely to achieve the deep desire the mirror shows them.
Think of Ron. Do we ever, in canon, see Ron ACT in a way that would make him stand out among his brothers, much less win him the Head Boy badge, the Quidditch captaincy, or the cups? Ron has five highly accomplished older brothers; he is under no illusion that greatness, or recognition of greatness, happens without work. He may not have vivid memories of Bill’s or Charlie’s school careers, but he sees Percy studying nonstop and trying to follow and enforce the rules to earn his Head Boy badge, the twins tirelessly developing new pranks and original spells, and all the Quidditch captains (until Harry) being nuts for scheduling practices.
Ron? Ron is lazy. And seeing himself as outstanding in the mirror makes him more so, not less.
Ron never does do anything about that ambition of his, does he? He never tries to hone his Quidditch skills to earn the captaincy (we see Harry practicing and practicing, but not Ron), he never tries to study hard or behave properly or act as a leader among his peers to earn being made Head Boy. Seeing his heart’s desire, acclaim that must be (and that might be) earned, he slides firmly into mediocrity as a permanent sidekick. (He hadn’t earned being made even a Prefect, and all three of the trio know it. If it was an award for good behavior, it should have gone to Neville; for leadership (at least of the trio), to Harry; for good school work, at least to Harry before Ron, but quite likely to Seamus or Dean before either.)
And Harry? Family is his heart’s desire, yes? So how does he react when it is offered?
Mrs. Weasley reaches out to him, welcoming him to her family; he never reaches out to her. The Weasleys invite him to visit; he doesn’t ask to come. At the beginning of PoA, he stays alone at a pub rather than asking to be allowed to go to the Burrow. In GoF, he doesn’t ask Molly and Bill to attend the final task; it’s their idea to invite themselves as his surrogate family. The only person he seems inclined to accept as family-substitute is Sirius—who’s strongly connected to his dead father, and who (as Molly pointed out) often acts more like Harry is James Mark II to him, his lost brother, than as a godfather. Like Hagrid, Sirius ends up being a pseudo-brother whom Harry feels he must protect, rather than a father-figure.
(And note how Dumbledore helps to foster this dynamic….)
Now, consider the implications of our supposition that Albus was present watching Harry the first night as well as the second and third. The third night he revealed himself, and warned Harry away from the further use of the Mirror (and told him it was being moved so he couldn’t find it again).
The first two nights “a noise” roused the mirror-watchers.
So why, even if Albus wanted, first, to test Harry’s heart, and second, for Harry to know what the mirror did, would he leave the boy entranced long enough the first night to become addicted? A very short exposure, like Ron’s, apparently doesn’t produce outright addiction. (Though, as mentioned above, even that short exposure may have stunted Ron’s ability to work towards fulfilling the desires the mirror showed him.) Why didn’t Albus create a noise in the hall as soon as Harry’s whisper of “Mom? Dad?” confirmed what images the orphan saw, and send Harry hurrying off, eager to return but not an already-desperate junkie?
I think that Dumbledore hoped from the first that the mirror would show little orphan Harry his parents. And left him to gaze into it long enough to become addicted to Erised after confirming that it had.
I think that Dumbledore expected the result to be Harry’s parents’ becoming real to him, their loss felt more immediately, his grudge against Voldemort moving from, “You orphaned me,” to “You killed my mum and dad, those people, forever lost, who loved me perfectly!”
And quite possibly, to make Harry resistant to attaching himself to anyone else as parental substitutes—and as possible rivals to Dumbledore’s influence.
Those recurrent nightmares of his parents’ deaths were the result that Albus HOPED FOR from Harry’s addiction. That’s the only reason I can come up with to let the boy gaze long enough the first night to become a junkie.
I mean, sure, the Dursleys had done their part in making sure Harry would feel the loss of his real parents. But how could Dumbledore explain to Molly Weasley that treating Harry as though he were her seventh son (and rather obviously favored above her sixth) is, er, very kind of you I’m sure, but interfering with Harry’s scheduled programming to suicide upon turning 17? (Note that Dumbledore let Harry become addicted to Erised AFTER noting that Molly had sent the orphan a Weasley sweater for Christmas. It might not have been part of his original plan.)
And even if he could figure out an excuse to stop Molly from mothering Harry, what if Harry formed a bond to some other Wizarding adults, not in Albus’s control at all, who offered him the family that he grew up deprived of? That was one of the primary purposes of sending Hagrid as Hogwarts’ first emissary, after all, that the boy’s first bond of affection in the WW not be with a functioning adult, but with someone who behaved like an oversized baby brother.
But if the Mirror conditioned Harry that his thirst for family love could only truly be satisfied by his blood family, now all dead, the potential influence of any other father- and mother-figures would be eliminated or at least weakened. (My father died when I was eleven; I assure you that an adopted parent-figure can be an extremely potent influence on one’s life.)
Moreover… the sharper the loss, the sharper the anger at the loss, and the more intense the desire to exact vengeance (if that’s in one’s make-up). So presumably the more bitterly Harry mourned the loss of his Mum and Dad, the more bitterly would he hate Voldemort for killing them.
And Albus expected that bitterness to become the reason Harry would eventually sacrifice himself to destroy Tom.
Look at how Albus characterized what Harry saw in the Mirror the last time he looked in it (at Tom’s behest rather than Albus’s). Twinkles spoke of it in that inspiring little scene in HBP 23 where he explained to Harry that a thirst to murder Voldemort showed Harry’s incorruptible capacity for love, and solicited and received Harry’s final commitment to kill or suicide to “finish” Tom.
“If Voldemort had never murdered your father, would he have imparted in you a furious desire for revenge? Of course not! …
“In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart’s desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches.” [emphasis mine]
That’s why he steered Harry to the Mirror—to create a person incapable of recovering from the loss of his parents, incapable of desiring anything more fervently than to “thwart” the murderer who’d deprived him of them, even if thwarting him came at the expense of his own life.
The perfect eleven-year-old suicide bomber, primed, aimed at his proper target, and ready to train.
*
Excuse me, that was Erised. How silly of me. Eris was the goddess of discord, and according to Hesiod (Works and Days), she sometimes worked by planting unsatisfiable desires in men’s hearts:
She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. But Strife is unwholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar….
Completely different thing from what that mirror does, got it.
Jodel suggested in “The Quirrell Debacle” that Dumbledore had set up Harry to look into that mirror. She argued that the headmaster had first moved that Mirror away from the heart of the labyrinth, and then had had Filch and Snape herd Harry to the appropriate room, primarily because Albus wanted to learn Harry’s heart’s deepest desires. Letting Harry gaze into that mirror, in that view, was Dumbledore’s test to make sure Harry wasn’t another future Dark Lord in training.
I think that there was something more going on than merely Albus’s test of Harry. If I am correct, I earnestly hope that Severus and Argus were not implicated in Twinkles’ plots.
*
First, let’s look at how Harry ended up before that mirror.
We’ll take as a given Jodel’s point that the Mirror could only have been in a room easily accessible to students by Dumbledore’s will. Once the Stone had been moved to Hogwarts for safekeeping in August, the Mirror’s place was obviously at the end of Dumbledore’s labyrinth as its final, and untrickable, guardian. So for the Mirror to be discovered anywhere else was proof that Dumbledore himself had moved the Mirror for some overriding purpose.
And the purpose clearly involved Harry. To test the boy, as Jodel thought, or what?
Let’s start with how. How did Twinkles induce the child to look into that mirror? Was Harry “herded” there by Filch and Snape alone, or what did bring him to that room and make him look his fill at what the mirror showed him?
It happened Christmas day, after a long, happy, tiring day and a lazy supper (PS 12): “everyone felt too full and sleepy to do much before bed.”
Harry and Ron went to bed, both replete, satisfied, and exhausted… except Harry couldn’t sleep. Why not?
It had been Harry’s best Christmas day ever. Yet something had been nagging at the back of his mind all day. Not until he climbed into bed was he free to think about it: the invisibility cloak and whoever had sent it.
Ron, full of turkey and cake and with nothing mysterious to bother him, fell asleep almost as soon as he’d drawn the curtains of his four-poster. Harry leaned over the side of his own bed and pulled the cloak out from under it.
His father’s… this had been his father’s…. Use it well, the note had said.
He had to try it, now. He slipped out of bed and wrapped the cloak around himself. Looking down at his legs, he saw only moonlight and shadows. It was a very funny feeling.
Use it well.
Suddenly, Harry felt wide-awake. The whole of Hogwarts was open to him in this cloak. Excitement flooded through him as he stood there in the dark and silence. He could go anywhere in this, anywhere, and Filch would never know.
Ron grunted in his sleep. Should Harry wake him? Something held him back—his father’s cloak—he felt that this time—the first time—he wanted to use it alone.
He crept out of the dormitory…..
Where should he go? He stopped, his heart racing, and thought. And then it came to him. The Restricted Section in the library. He’d be able to read as long as he liked, as long as it took to find out who Flamel was…..
The Restricted Section was right at the back of the library. Stepping carefully over the rope that separated these books from the rest of the library, he held up his lamp to read the titles.
They didn’t tell him much….
He had to start somewhere… A large black and silver volume caught his eye. He pulled it out with difficulty, because it was very heavy, and, balancing it on his knee, let it fall open.
A piercing, bloodcurdling shriek split the silence—the book was screaming!... Panicking, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside—stuffing the shrieking book back on the shelf, he ran for it. He passed Filch in the doorway; Filch’s pale, wild eyes looked straight through him, and Harry slipped under Filch’s outstretched arm and streaked off up the corridor, the book’s shrieks still ringing in his ears.
He came to a sudden halt in front of a tall suit of armor. He had been so busy getting away from the library, he hadn’t paid attention to where he was going. Perhaps because it was dark, he didn’t recognize where he was at all. There was a suit of armor near the kitchens, he knew, but he must be five floors above there.
“You asked me to come directly to you, Professor, if anyone was wandering around at night, and somebody’s been in the library—Restricted Section.”
Harry felt the blood drain out of his face. Wherever he was, Filch must know a shortcut, because his soft, greasy voice was getting nearer, and to his horror it was Snape who replied, “The Restricted Section? Well, they can’t be far, we’ll catch them.”
Harry stood rooted to the spot as Filch and Snape came around the corner ahead. They couldn’t see him, of course, but it was a narrow corridor and if they came much nearer they’d knock right into him—the cloak didn’t stop him from being solid.
He backed away as quietly as he could. A door stood ajar to his left. It was his only hope. He squeezed through it, holding his breath, trying not to move it, and to his relief he managed to get inside the room without their noticing anything.
[underlining mine]
*
So. How, exactly, did Harry end up in front of that mirror?
Death’s cloak, gifted to him by Dumbledore that morning, brought him nearly straight there.
He’d been thinking about the cloak all day. Despite being surfeited and worn out, he couldn’t sleep for obsessing over it. He felt he “had” to try it out. Immediately. And as soon as he donned it his exhaustion dropped away. He thought of waking Ron to share the adventure—but “something held him back.” He didn’t know where to go —“and then it came to him:” the library. Where the first book that caught his eye tripped an alarm, and he fled blindly “up the corridor.”
He ran, not conscious of where he was going. By sheer coincidence he halted (suddenly) by a suit of armor. Immediately AFTER he’d passed by the open door of a certain room.
None of this happened by Harry’s conscious agency—he didn’t even know which way he was running, he just ran—possibly in a circle, for Filch to come from the library and end up around a corner in front of him. And then, for no reason, he stopped dead. Just beyond a room whose door was ajar.
And then he saw Filch and Snape and he felt that “his only hope” of escaping them was by slipping into that room.
All perfectly unconscious, yes? At every decision point something outside his conscious mind directed his actions.
Except for the last decision that took him into the room itself. That one was logical. As Harry reflected, even if he was invisible he was still solid, and they might discover him accidently by bumping into him.
Except….
When I was growing up, one of the favorite games in my neighborhood was “Starlight Moonlight,” an only-in-the-dark game that combined tag and hide & seek. Hiding in the dark is very different from daylight hide & seek. The most secure places to hide, in fact, are places that the seeker would overlook because they aren’t (in the daylight) hiding places at all.
And the very worst scenario in any tagging hide and seek game is to let yourself be trapped in a space with only one exit if the seeker is at all likely to search it seriously. Even if it’s pitch black, a methodical seeker could quarter the area and find you, and if s/he keeps between you and the exit, there’s no possible chance to run free.
Harry, of course, did not spend his childhood playing light-hearted games with his neighborhood friends. But he did have a decade’s experience of “Harry Hunting,” and we’re told he often won. Surely some of his experience was at night?
And surely he learned that general rule against about never trapping himself?
When Harry heard Filch and Snape speaking ahead of him, and looked wildly for a place to hide, he was standing in front of a large suit of armor. Given the cloak, the best place to hide was to flatten himself against the wall next to the suit. As his seekers walked past, they would automatically veer far enough away from the wall to miss the armor, and would therefore be certain to miss one skinny boy. And since it wasn’t a hiding place for anyone visible, they wouldn’t be looking for him there. (This is assuming he can control his breathing—but with two of them, talking, that’s not such an issue as it might be. And that consideration already held—they were already in the same corridor as Harry; if he were panting loudly enough to be heard, he’d already lost.)
The second-best place, as the Trio proved hiding from Umbridge in Hagrid’s hut, was flattened against any random patch of wall, trusting to luck that the seeker wouldn’t brush against the hider. And be ready to dodge and run like crazy if they did—a strategy that had already worked once that night with Filch.
The third-best thing, was to turn and retreat before them, hopefully in utter silence, and slip away down a side passage.
The very worst thing to do was to go through a door that was ajar if there was any chance at all of brushing the door while the seekers could see. Because, as even our Harry of little brain realized, if he moved the door his pursuers would know exactly where he was, and he’d be trapped without any chance of escape.
But to Harry it seemed that going through that one door, temptingly ajar, was the “only hope.”
Yes, that door—that room—was a trap. And the cloak lured him into it. I think the cloak was ensorcelled to entice Harry to use it (solo), and to bring him exactly to where Dumbledore wanted him to go.
Regarding Snape and Filch—if their conversation was authentic (not established: they could have been acting parts at the headmaster’s behest), Harry at some point doubled back to near to the library. They seemed (note the verb) to be ranging out from the library, and they were now in front of Harry.
And, whatever the tricks of the staircases, do we ever see, in canon, any other instance of the Hogwarts corridors shifting into an un-navigable maze?
Depending on the headmaster’s control of the castle, that might be possible. But, Occam’s razor—we have evidence the cloak was influencing both Harry’s emotions and his thoughts, producing, in order, obsession, invigoration when he donned it, and the desire for secrecy even from his best friend—and quite plausibly suggesting Harry’s first destination, very close to the ultimate one. Even, perhaps, guiding Harry to pluck a book with an auditory alarm charm on it from the shelves of the Restricted Section so he would be sped mindless on his way to his true destination (or maybe any book in that section does that if opened without permission, in which case inducing the idea to do research there would suffice to assure the eventual alarm).
But I don’t think the corridors moved, and I don’t think Filch and Snape had a shortcut. (A shortcut could only be effective if they knew where the trespasser would try to go from the library, and Harry didn’t know that himself.) I think that Harry was drawn to his true destination, which means he may have turned himself around with realizing it and headed back towards the library. He came to a halt, remember, just after passing the room Dumbledore wanted him to enter, and just before hearing Filch’s voice.
Were Severus and Argus being used by Albus to herd Harry into that one room where waited a certain Mirror? Clearly.
Did they know what they were really doing, and why? Less clear. They might have been told by Albus to herd “a Disillusioned student” into that one room, and deliberately ignored the signs of Harry’s presence once he’d entered the selected room. They might simply have been alerted that “a student might try to break into the Restricted Section of the Library tonight,” responded appropriately when he did, and herded Harry inadvertently.
In either case, it’s a damned odd coincidence that they caught up with the trespasser just where they did. I mean, if they’d caught up with Harry (even though they didn’t realize it) coming from around any other corner, Harry wouldn’t have ended up in the right room.
Or Severus and Argus might have been told by Albus exactly what he was intending to do to Harry, and that the boy had an invisibility cloak bespelled to draw him to the right place, and lurked in wait around the corner to chivvy the child to meet his fate.
I hope it’s not that last, but canon leaves the possibility open.
Or, in fact, there’s one other possibility.
They might not have been there at all.
If Albus was there the third night, and invisibly there the second night, he was undoubtedly invisibly there the first night as well to study Harry’s reactions. But if Albus was waiting in the room to watch Harry confront that mirror, it becomes perfectly plausible that Albus might have created either an illusion or a hallucination of Filch and Snape to herd Harry finally into the room when the boy didn’t enter it on his own. That’s really the only explanation that doesn’t make their “appearance” at the precise place and time to herd Harry exactly where Albus wanted him to go a staggeringly large piece of luck for Albus.
In which case Harry might never have been turned around at all, but just run straight through the corridors to his destination, came to a sudden halt (for no cause that he’s aware of), and then was given a compelling reason to slip immediately through the temptingly half-open door.
*
Twinkles deeply wanted Harry to face that mirror.
So, what were its effects?
“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.” (PS 12)
Let’s ignore Albus’s words and look at actual effects.
Well, Harry was almost immediately entranced. He paid no attention to time passing; he was unaware of cold or exhaustion. He only roused himself to break away from it when he heard a noise that made him fear he’d get caught. And his burning thought then was how soon he might return and look some more.
The next day, our ice-cream-every-hour Harry was unable to eat for thinking of the mirror. And he didn’t care any more about solving the Flamel-puzzle that had been obsessing the children for months, or even whether Snape might steal whatever the Cerberus was hiding.
When he tried to take Ron to see it the next night, Harry refused to give up the quest even when it took over an hour of wandering (frightened, cold, and tired) to find the room. As soon as Ron had had a brief glance, he and Harry fought physically over who got to continue to look in it. When Mrs. Norris came in and frightened the boys with the threat of discovery, it was limited-exposure Ron who insisted that they leave—and he had to physically pull Harry out of the room.
The next day Ron told Harry that he had a bad feeling about that mirror and that Harry shouldn’t go back. (The same reaction, note, that Ron later had to Riddle’s diary.) But Harry didn’t care.
Harry didn’t care about anything by then, except going back to the mirror. Not playing with Ron, not visiting Hagrid, not eating, not sleeping.
All Harry could think about, by then, was his next fix.
The images he saw in that mirror were more real and important to him than his living friends or his body’s needs. Hmm. Kind of like how the images produced by the Suicide Stone were more real to him than his own body or his living friends, making them seem like ghosts to him.
Harry was a Mirror junkie, and the addiction was induced by a single (prolonged) exposure.
This is a majorly-worrying artifact.
Why did Dumbledore want Harry to be exposed to it? A mirror so addictive—he admitted—that grown men had died or been driven insane by it?
Jodel suggested that Dumbledore wanted to read Harry’s heart’s desire. Albus himself said to Harry that now that Harry knew what the Mirror did, he would know what to expect if he saw it again—suggesting that the fatal confrontation between Harry and Quirrell!mort was anticipated (possibly eagerly) by Albus. (Jodel, more lenient to Albus than I, thought that the headmaster planned to use Harry to retrieve the Stone from storage once Tom’s current incarnation were defeated and the shouting done.)
But there may have been another effect anticipated by Albus. A long-term effect; indeed, it might have been a life-long effect.
The images in that mirror were more important to Harry than any living being, including his real-life first-ever friends. And the images were of Harry’s dead family, especially his parents, whom he previously didn’t remember.
The immediate aftereffects of Harry’s looking in that mirror were vivid nightmares of his parents’ deaths. Before, his only memory or nightmare about it was a flash of green. In fact, if you look closely, his previous nightmares about that night were not about his parents at all—he was dreaming about his own injury, a “flash of green” followed by a flash of pain. We’re told that Harry assumed the memory/dream was connected to the “car accident” that killed his parents, but what he dreamed was specifically the infliction of his own scar.
It’s only after the Mirror that Harry “dreamed about his parents disappearing in a flash of green light, while a high voice cackled with laughter.”
“Over and over.”
What one sees in the mirror is NOT what one most desires, but a visual symbol of it, a representation. And I think that part of the addictive quality of the mirror is that what it shows is the underlying desire being fulfilled in a manner that the victim believes (or knows) to be impossible in reality. The image in the mirror makes the victim feel their deep desire to be unsatisfiable. Unattainable.
So that looking in the mirror again is the only possible way to come close to one’s heart’s desire.
Men have gone mad… not sure if what they see is real, or even possible.
Because there’s one very important similarity between Ron’s experience of the mirror and Harry’s: neither came away inspired to take steps to attain his heart’s desire. Harry wanted to be surrounded by people who love him—and he ignored his real-life friends to obsess about returning to the mirror. Ron wanted to stand out, the most accomplished of all his brothers—but the next day, he wasn’t inspired to study like Percy or invent things like the twins or even practice Quidditch like Charlie. No, he suggested playing or visiting Hagrid.
My own real=life experience is that being reminded forcefully of what I want tends to make me more motivated to take the steps to make it happen. (Ask any athlete in training whether focusing on the goal makes it easier or harder to endure discomfort.) Yet with both Harry and Ron, looking in that mirror has the opposite effect. Harry wants to be surrounded by people who love him—and he ignores the people who do. Ron wants to be outstanding, to shine among his accomplished brothers—and he ignores everything he might do to make himself stand out.
Which is a perfectly reasonable reaction if what one sees in the mirror, what one longs for, craves, thirsts for, is unattainable. I can lose weight and get in better shape than I am now, fine, no problem. However, nothing I can do will ever make me an Olympic athlete. If I saw myself getting an Olympic gold medal in that mirror, the only way I’ll ever see that again is … by going back and looking in that mirror.
In fact, realizing that what I truly want is to be an Olympic-class sprinter, and nothing less will ever satisfy me, and it ain’t ever gonna happen, would have a rather depressing effect on my motivation to keep myself in tolerable shape by exercising every day. Why bother? It’ll never get me what I really want….
I mean, seriously. An orphan’s deepest desire is surely not to see his family, but to have one. It was all a mistake; his parents didn’t really die; they were thought dead but really were in a coma for a while and afterwards suffered amnesia, and upon seeing him accidentally in the street one day, they miraculously recover their memories. Or failing that, his dad’s cousin has always longed for a little boy just like Harry. Or even, a Daddy Warbucks takes one look at Harry and wants to make him his own….
An orphan yearns for a family that loves him to belong to.
But instead, Harry sees the dead. Looking at him lovingly, but forever out of his reach.
That’s his deepest desire? To SEE the love and belonging that he’d irrevocably lost? Never to have it again?
No, I don’t think so. I think that’s the Mirror, showing him what he wants in such a manner that if he accepts that as the image of his desire, he can only have access to it by returning to the mirror.
The Mirror is designed to be addictive, and to use its victims’ most deep-seated but unsatisfied needs and longings to enslave them. And to do so, it must make the unsatisfied need seem unsatisfiable.
Unsatisfiable, that is, except by returning to the Mirror.
Harry saw himself surrounded by love and acceptance. All from dead family, accessible now and forever after only by gazing in a certain Mirror.
*
So. That abomination’s primary effect: instant attraction. Immediate addiction if the first dose is sufficiently prolonged, or the victim especially vulnerable. Looking in the mirror again is more important than food or friends or duty.
Secondary effect: the image displayed by the Mirror displaces other ways the victim had visualized having that need met or that desire satisfied.
Tertiary effect: suppression of the victim’s ambition/ability to attain that particular desire by other pathways. Since nothing attainable in real life can live up to the dream shown by the mirror….
That mirror is in the business of producing a dependency, of drawing people back to it.
If we’re to trust Dumbledore at all (or if the children’s reactions are representative), people are drawn to that mirror in lieu of living their lives in a manner likely to achieve the deep desire the mirror shows them.
Think of Ron. Do we ever, in canon, see Ron ACT in a way that would make him stand out among his brothers, much less win him the Head Boy badge, the Quidditch captaincy, or the cups? Ron has five highly accomplished older brothers; he is under no illusion that greatness, or recognition of greatness, happens without work. He may not have vivid memories of Bill’s or Charlie’s school careers, but he sees Percy studying nonstop and trying to follow and enforce the rules to earn his Head Boy badge, the twins tirelessly developing new pranks and original spells, and all the Quidditch captains (until Harry) being nuts for scheduling practices.
Ron? Ron is lazy. And seeing himself as outstanding in the mirror makes him more so, not less.
Ron never does do anything about that ambition of his, does he? He never tries to hone his Quidditch skills to earn the captaincy (we see Harry practicing and practicing, but not Ron), he never tries to study hard or behave properly or act as a leader among his peers to earn being made Head Boy. Seeing his heart’s desire, acclaim that must be (and that might be) earned, he slides firmly into mediocrity as a permanent sidekick. (He hadn’t earned being made even a Prefect, and all three of the trio know it. If it was an award for good behavior, it should have gone to Neville; for leadership (at least of the trio), to Harry; for good school work, at least to Harry before Ron, but quite likely to Seamus or Dean before either.)
And Harry? Family is his heart’s desire, yes? So how does he react when it is offered?
Mrs. Weasley reaches out to him, welcoming him to her family; he never reaches out to her. The Weasleys invite him to visit; he doesn’t ask to come. At the beginning of PoA, he stays alone at a pub rather than asking to be allowed to go to the Burrow. In GoF, he doesn’t ask Molly and Bill to attend the final task; it’s their idea to invite themselves as his surrogate family. The only person he seems inclined to accept as family-substitute is Sirius—who’s strongly connected to his dead father, and who (as Molly pointed out) often acts more like Harry is James Mark II to him, his lost brother, than as a godfather. Like Hagrid, Sirius ends up being a pseudo-brother whom Harry feels he must protect, rather than a father-figure.
(And note how Dumbledore helps to foster this dynamic….)
Now, consider the implications of our supposition that Albus was present watching Harry the first night as well as the second and third. The third night he revealed himself, and warned Harry away from the further use of the Mirror (and told him it was being moved so he couldn’t find it again).
The first two nights “a noise” roused the mirror-watchers.
So why, even if Albus wanted, first, to test Harry’s heart, and second, for Harry to know what the mirror did, would he leave the boy entranced long enough the first night to become addicted? A very short exposure, like Ron’s, apparently doesn’t produce outright addiction. (Though, as mentioned above, even that short exposure may have stunted Ron’s ability to work towards fulfilling the desires the mirror showed him.) Why didn’t Albus create a noise in the hall as soon as Harry’s whisper of “Mom? Dad?” confirmed what images the orphan saw, and send Harry hurrying off, eager to return but not an already-desperate junkie?
I think that Dumbledore hoped from the first that the mirror would show little orphan Harry his parents. And left him to gaze into it long enough to become addicted to Erised after confirming that it had.
I think that Dumbledore expected the result to be Harry’s parents’ becoming real to him, their loss felt more immediately, his grudge against Voldemort moving from, “You orphaned me,” to “You killed my mum and dad, those people, forever lost, who loved me perfectly!”
And quite possibly, to make Harry resistant to attaching himself to anyone else as parental substitutes—and as possible rivals to Dumbledore’s influence.
Those recurrent nightmares of his parents’ deaths were the result that Albus HOPED FOR from Harry’s addiction. That’s the only reason I can come up with to let the boy gaze long enough the first night to become a junkie.
I mean, sure, the Dursleys had done their part in making sure Harry would feel the loss of his real parents. But how could Dumbledore explain to Molly Weasley that treating Harry as though he were her seventh son (and rather obviously favored above her sixth) is, er, very kind of you I’m sure, but interfering with Harry’s scheduled programming to suicide upon turning 17? (Note that Dumbledore let Harry become addicted to Erised AFTER noting that Molly had sent the orphan a Weasley sweater for Christmas. It might not have been part of his original plan.)
And even if he could figure out an excuse to stop Molly from mothering Harry, what if Harry formed a bond to some other Wizarding adults, not in Albus’s control at all, who offered him the family that he grew up deprived of? That was one of the primary purposes of sending Hagrid as Hogwarts’ first emissary, after all, that the boy’s first bond of affection in the WW not be with a functioning adult, but with someone who behaved like an oversized baby brother.
But if the Mirror conditioned Harry that his thirst for family love could only truly be satisfied by his blood family, now all dead, the potential influence of any other father- and mother-figures would be eliminated or at least weakened. (My father died when I was eleven; I assure you that an adopted parent-figure can be an extremely potent influence on one’s life.)
Moreover… the sharper the loss, the sharper the anger at the loss, and the more intense the desire to exact vengeance (if that’s in one’s make-up). So presumably the more bitterly Harry mourned the loss of his Mum and Dad, the more bitterly would he hate Voldemort for killing them.
And Albus expected that bitterness to become the reason Harry would eventually sacrifice himself to destroy Tom.
Look at how Albus characterized what Harry saw in the Mirror the last time he looked in it (at Tom’s behest rather than Albus’s). Twinkles spoke of it in that inspiring little scene in HBP 23 where he explained to Harry that a thirst to murder Voldemort showed Harry’s incorruptible capacity for love, and solicited and received Harry’s final commitment to kill or suicide to “finish” Tom.
“If Voldemort had never murdered your father, would he have imparted in you a furious desire for revenge? Of course not! …
“In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart’s desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches.” [emphasis mine]
That’s why he steered Harry to the Mirror—to create a person incapable of recovering from the loss of his parents, incapable of desiring anything more fervently than to “thwart” the murderer who’d deprived him of them, even if thwarting him came at the expense of his own life.
The perfect eleven-year-old suicide bomber, primed, aimed at his proper target, and ready to train.
*
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no subject
Date: 2015-05-14 06:39 pm (UTC)The Mirror is designed to be addictive, and to use its victims’ most deep-seated but unsatisfied needs and longings to enslave them. And to do so, it must make the unsatisfied need seem unsatisfiable.
Unsatisfiable, that is, except by returning to the Mirror.
What an evil thing that mirror is! And what an evil thing to do, to lure a couple of vulnerable children to stand in front of it. One thing that occurred to me: this meta furthers the idea that invisibility cloak itself is a dark object. Whatever Albus's machinations, (and I don't think Snape and Filch were consciously involved) like was calling to like when Harry put on that cloak for the first time. The cloak itself was helping bring him to the mirror. And I think Albus knew that it would do so when he gave it to him.
Great essay!
Addictive
Date: 2015-05-15 04:47 am (UTC)Yes, when you actually READ Jo's description of the effect on Harry, both immediate and intermediate-term, that mirror is a horror. Harry can't eat, he can't sleep, he has no interest whatever in his friends or normal activities or uncovering Snape's evil plot, he loses his sense of self-preservation--the only thing that matters to him is returning to that mirror.
And then when he can't go back to it he has constant nightmares, for months, on a subject he never had before....
In fact I think the addiction to the mirror is what later made him so vulnerable to Dementors--notice that the "memory" the Dementors evoke is that same "nightmare" that he'd never had before gazing in the Mirror.
Agree with you on the cloak--it really does take Harry right to the mirror, doesn't it?
Plus, it SEES Harry in the cloak--it reflects him while he's still in it.
OH! There's another point--remember what sunny posited to be the negative effect of that Hallow--insulating/isolating the wearer from other people--that is ALSO the effect of that Mirror for BOTH Harry and Ron. Harry sees himself surrounded by the dead--and belonging with, accepting love from, only them; Ron sees himself literally alone. And the two of them FIGHT each other, physically, over who gets to look, until Mrs. Norris interrupts them--the first-ever fight between Ron and Harry.
Like calling to like, just as you said. And I already mentioned how similar Harry's experience being called in the Cloak to the Mirror was to his experience of being escorted by the Suicide Stone shades to his death at Tom's hands.
Good catch, Mary!
Hmm--I wonder if Harry's SHARING the cloak with Ron the next night defused it a bit. I mean, as far as we know the Cloak passed as a gift, but we don't know of anyone else who actually shared it while they owned it. Even James apparently didn't share it with the Marauders, or even just with closer-than-a-brother Sirius--Remus said of the cloak (POA 17), "The number of times I saw James disappearing under it..." That's NOT how Hermione or Ron would talk to Harry's kid about their own familiarity with that cloak.
Maybe Harry's impulse of generosity helped protect him from some of the Cloak's worst effects. Notice too that the second night Harry had a hard time finding the Mirror--when he was wanting to share it with Ron.
And yeah. What an evil thing to do, to lure a couple of vulnerable children to stand in front of that monstrosity. And I really don't think that anyone can manage to excuse Dumbledore from complicity in that. There's no way a thing like that just happened to reside in an unsecured room in the middle of the school.
"Oh, I'd just taken it out to dust it--it was getting so dirty down in that dungeon where I'd been using it as part of the traps around the Philosopher's Stone. So I brought it up to be polished over the holidays, and I forgot to bring it back immediately. Heavens, no, it wasn't in an open room near the library as a trap for a student! What can you be thinking?"
Re: Addictive
Date: 2015-05-15 07:34 am (UTC)raisin-gal@livejournal@com#1539.html?thread=15363
"Your Mirror of Erised analogy is really interesting as well. It would make so much sense (at least way more sense than this story being a straight-forward children's tale) if at the end of the Epilogue the narrator suddenly went: "And all was well, and then... Hey, quit pulling on my elbow! And why do you keep calling me Lily?" --and then found herself back on the grass, with Petunia frantically trying to pull her out of the trance of an evil magic mirror..."
Snape and Albus's Use of the Mirror
Date: 2015-05-15 04:54 am (UTC)Yes, I tried to write THAT speculation as a drabble, but it didn't quite gel. Maybe it will.
Of course the BEST part is, Albus always presents the Mirror to Severus as a reward.
And Severus accepts his fix as such.
Re: Snape and Albus's Use of the Mirror
Date: 2015-05-15 05:12 am (UTC)Explains his appearance. I wonder how he manages to spend the summers at Spinner's End.
Re: Snape and Albus's Use of the Mirror
Date: 2015-05-16 02:40 pm (UTC)Re: Snape and Albus's Use of the Mirror
Date: 2015-05-16 05:01 pm (UTC)There was a Muslim sect that formed in the 11th century that had a secret order of spies/assassins. When the Crusaders showed up in the Middle East they came to fear this group and passed on interesting tales about them. The tales got further embellished by Marco Polo.
From Wikipedia:
The name "Assassin" is often said to derive from the Arabic word Hashishin or "users of hashish",[2] a misnomer thought to have been derogatory and used by their adversaries during the Middle Ages. Originally applied to the Nizari Ismaelis by the Mustali Ismailis during the fall of the decaying Ismaili Fatimid Empire and the separation of the two streams,[3] it is possible that the term hashishiyya or hashishi in Muslim sources was used metaphorically in its abusive sense (i.e. "social outcasts", "low-class rabble", etc.), while the literal interpretation of this term in referring to the Nizaris (as hashish consuming intoxicated assassins) may be rooted in the fantasies of medieval Westerners.[4]
Re: Snape and Albus's Use of the Mirror
Date: 2015-05-18 10:56 am (UTC)Re: Snape and Albus's Use of the Mirror
Date: 2015-05-16 07:50 pm (UTC)Sure Dumbledore is ruining Snape's life, but it is for the greater good.
The Real Potterverse Vampire
Date: 2015-05-17 09:33 pm (UTC)It's great to see you posting again.
Great catch re Severus! That makes perfect sense. It can also apply to almost all of the troubled people Albus "helped": Arabella Figg, Mundungus Fletcher, brother Aberforth, and Argus Filch. Only Hagrid can be left out because he's simpleminded, and therefore easier to dupe.
But of the others, they all act like Severus: beaten down, passive, dependent, sucked dry. It's as if their independent wills have been sucked right out of them. Like human shades, they just drift along on the fringes of society, doing Albus's bidding whether they want to or not, because they seem incapable of getting away from him and making their own lives.
Even the other teachers at Hogwarts seem curiously passive. They all let DD do whatever he wants, from hiring blatantly unqualified teachers, to endangering everyone's safety, to covering up violent crimes, just because he says so. I wonder if he gives them all occasional Erised treatments to keep them in line.
Your remarks about Snape also tie in very well with what I wrote in Part 3 of my analysis of The Prince's Tale (posted November 2014). Here's part of it:
"The last scene affirms my belief Severus has finally begun to grow up and free himself from Dumbassbore’s oppression. After nine months of running the school while running interference between the DE staffers and the students, as well as running the gauntlet of double agenting, Severus Snape is a different man. Although enormously stressful, triumphing over these experiences has given him a tremendous sense of power, accomplishment, and independence. Freed from Dumby’s constant oppression and in a position of authority himself, he has finally learned what it feels like to be strong, confident, and in control.
The portrait of Phineas Black has just told Snape where Harry is located on his camping trip. Black calls Hermione a “mudblood,” and Severus corrects him. When Snape goes to fetch Gryffindor’s sword, Dumbledore continues to try to control him from beyond the grave via his portrait. But Snape isn’t having any of that."
At one time, people thought Snape was a vampire. It's clear the real vampire of the Potterverse is Albus Dumbledore, who sucks the will, self-respect, and independence out of everyone in his orbit. He is an emotional vampire of the most pernicious kind.
Re: The Real Potterverse Vampire
Date: 2015-05-17 11:44 pm (UTC)Though I'm not entirely convinced about the others you mention. Arabella and Argus are Squibs -- given the apparent view wizarding society has of such, simply giving them jobs and decent housing could be enough to win their loyalty. Aberforth could simply be determined to be as *opposite* as Albus as possible. And I'm not convinced Hagrid is simpleminded so much as juvenile --- he's never been encouraged to 'grow up' either mentally or emotionally.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 12:48 am (UTC)Hmm. How long did Albus himself gaze into the mirror while he was dealing with it? What did *he* see at this point in his life? Ariana? Gellert? The destruction of Tom? Himself with the 3 Hallows (prompting urgency to get rid of the cloak)? Himself admired by the Wizarding world after Tom's defeat?
BTW there was one thing Ron did that eventually got him to stand out in a way - he stuck close to Harry (and Hermione). This is what made him the alternate Prefect and what got him whatever fame he got as one of the defeaters of Tom and whatever fame he got as temporary Auror.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 04:37 am (UTC)Albus has a mirror
Date: 2015-05-15 05:26 am (UTC)See, that's the only way I can see Albus surviving an encounter with the Mirror. (Or anyone, really--Harry and Ron survived only because Albus had arranged for them to be interrupted--panicked!--before the entrancement became too deep.)
Only if Albus were arrogant enough to imagine himself able to face that mirror, I can't imagine him retaining simultaneously enough intelligent self-doubt to arrange to be interrupted in case he fell into his visions in it.
So I find it hard to start a speculation with "Albus saw in the Mirror of Erised...", because I can't imagine him surviving the view.
(Which, btw, is the summary of that chapter of UA: Dumbledore has a mirror which reflects one’s deepest desires. If one can survive the view.)
Re: Albus has a mirror
Date: 2015-05-15 05:30 am (UTC)Detailed analysis
Date: 2015-05-15 05:08 am (UTC)If Albus is either wise or smart (but is he either?) he will never look in that mirror himself.
And, you know--even if Albus is neither wise, nor as intelligent as he wishes to believe himself--the one thing we believe he learned from his early mistakes is to mistrust his own desires.
After all, if he EXPECTED to see Gellert or some such, Albus wouldn't have WANTED to look in that glass.
That mirror does reflect you, after all. In a very revealing manner. And Albus, I think, didn't much want to see himself. Still less, to be seen by another!
(Go on, tell me who knows his Boggart....)
Ron... sigh. Yes, he stuck (sort of, sometimes) with Harry and Hermione, and got a reflected share of Harry's glory.
And he was as half-assed about sticking by Harry as he was at Quidditch practice, wasn't he?
Re: Detailed analysis
Date: 2015-05-15 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 05:31 am (UTC)Splendid deconstruction of the whole situation there. And exactly the kind of thing that Albus would do. After all *he* can't be held responsible for what anyone sees in that mirror.
And now I'm wondering who made it. Particularly given the oddity of the Cloak functioning as a part of the lure (although that could have been a short-term compulsion spell that wore off. Can't have the kid being dragged off into the basement once the Mirror gets moved. Or can we?)
Antioch Peverell presumably died fairly quickly after he was handed the Wand. We don't know how long Cadmus lived with the shade of his lost fiance before she convinced him to follow her.
But we do know that Ignotus lived for decades after he demanded the cloak. What was he doing during that time.
We also know that Albus doesn't believe in a personified Death and is convinced that the Peverell brothers created those artifacts themselves.
In Godric's Hollow?
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 05:56 am (UTC)Of course, he'd have had to convince himself that Death couldn't find him from the position of his reflection in a mirror.
And y'know, what the Mirror seems to do really does sound *way* too similar to the operation of the Suicide Stone. I am suspecting that it was quite deliberately a derivitive piece of work.
And that goes double and in spades if the Peverills really did create the Stone. Bit of sibling rivalry there? Do something that's the same but different?
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 09:11 pm (UTC)We know that the other two gifts were booby-trapped. But something that no one seems to have taken account of regarding the Hallows is that they didn't just come *from* Death, they *belong* to Death. Ergo: I don't think that any wizard *ever* really had the mastery of that Wand. Or not until Harry got delivered right into Death's own country, picked himself up, and walked back out under his own power. Consequently, *anyone* should be able to get it away from them, since it wasn't ever really *theirs*. Any shade called back via the Stone was somebody that Death had already taken into his own keeping. And he seems to have been a kindly master, because *none* of them ever had a bad word to say about him. Quite the opposite in fact.
And the Cloak was his *own* property, and had been designed to facilitate *his* work since the first living organism cropped up in the course of the world.
We never hear of any of the imbroglios that Ignotus found himself in from hiding under that Cloak. But I certainly don't doubt that he found himself in a number of them. And Death didn't follow him around, but he knew that even though this one managed to avoid the obvious trap, any living thing will eventually come full circle and meet him again.
I'd say that of course Death knew where Ignotus was, Cloak or no Cloak, and got a fair bit of amusment from the sort of situations the little fool got himself into by trying hide himself from Death -- and Life as well.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-24 06:31 pm (UTC)Maybe the son to whom he gave the Cloak. Who wanted his father's counsel. The Stone was lost to the family by that time. And the report of how the shades brought back by the Stone were unhappy to be here had managed to travel. So young Peverill was trying to create a window which would enable him to communicate with his father, without dragging him back into the world.
Fueled by his own desire to see him, of course. So it stands to reason that the desire had to be enhanced and sustained in order for it to work.
Or in other words, he trapped himself. And the vision was not even necessarily true, for he had no way of controling that. The Mirror shows you what you want. And if you don't want anything it will give you a desire that it can show you.
Mind you, if there really is an image in your subconsious or your memory that the Mirror can use, it will show it to you. It's not impossible that the images of family members that Harry saw were legitimate representations of the families of other, earlier wearers of that Cloak.
One even wonders if the little old man with the knobby knees was Iggy.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 07:26 am (UTC)If he had something like that in canon, a lot would've been different.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-16 02:38 pm (UTC)Also, re: the title, "Erised" can be viewed as a past tense for "Eris", in a "you've been pwned" kind of way. Everyone who's looked into the mirror is already a sucker.
Albus's perspective?
Date: 2015-05-15 01:33 pm (UTC)Creepy and convincing argument with that 'of course, it all fits' impact that your essays so often have.
Just wondering, what do you think DD tells himself about this action? Looking at the effects clearly, it seems an obviously terrible thing to do, which would be hard for Albus's self image to face. After all he wants the kid to be a suicide bomber in the first place because he can't face the guilt of killing him, right? So how could he square such use of the Mirror with himself? Compassionately giving Harry the happiness of seeing his lost family, a bit beyond DD's better judgement? Three times?
Could he have 'forgotten' that the Mirror would attract the wearer of the Cloak? Is it possible that he wasn't there the first night, or was 'unavoidably' slow to respond?
Re: Albus's perspective?
Date: 2015-05-17 10:01 pm (UTC)Scummywhore never dirties his own hands with violence if he can get somebody else to do his dirty work for him. The other example is his "suicide by Snape." DD could have killed himself and kept Snape from damaging his soul with a murder, but suicide would make DD look weak and cowardly. Much better to browbeat one of his slaves into killing him. In other words, Scummy considered his reputation after he was dead more important than the fate of Snape's immortal soul. More evidence of his evil and selfishness.
Re: Albus's perspective?
Date: 2015-05-18 02:17 am (UTC)Actually, as you know, you've pretty much got me convinced that Albus Dumbledore, as written, is a pathological narcissist. But the only reading of the assisted suicide that makes sense to me is that Snape was to kill Voldemort with the elder wand. If Dumbles died"naturally"from the effects of the blackened hand, Voldemort would have defeated him and become the wand's master. The same might be true if Dumbles actually killed himself.
Just a thought.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 08:23 pm (UTC)The question that remains is, how much of this did Rowling intend? She acknowledged that the mirror is dangerous, of course; but she seems to view the cloak as purely a protective device, if Dumbledore's commentary on it is to be believed.
This also makes the cloak's turning out to be something special seem a lot less of an ass pull, BTW--if it's playing with Harry's mind, it's obviously not simply a coat that just happens to be invisible.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-17 06:15 pm (UTC)I was wondering at first if Dippet might have exposed the young Albus to the mirror, as an attempt to get him to stop some sort of behavior. If the mirror makes a person ineffective (see speculation about Ron's exposure) then it could stop a Gellert / Riddle wannabe from rising up. Dumbledore was said to be so smart that he was corresponding with notable adult wizards while still at Hogwarts, including Flammel. Could Dippet have been trying to nip an immortal Dark Lord in the bud?
If that is so, or if Albus otherwise found the mirror at Hogwarts during his school days, maybe it was a tool for the head to use for just such an occasion as defusing a Dark Lord. Maybe he was briefly exposed to it as the next head of the school, so he would understand its potential. (Alternately, maybe a brief exposure to the mirror (briefer than Ron's) would energize a person to perform better, so part of the making of a headmaster.) Either way, we see that Dumbledore is ineffective in a lot of the series, especially when it comes to Grindlewald. He's fairly decent at sending people to their deaths, though.
Did he ever use it on Tom Riddle? Did he not expose him long enough to negate the ambition notable in Slytherins, or in normal humans? Is that why he allowed Harry to be exposed for a longer initial period? Is that why he may have exposed Snape and continually enslaved him - because he was testing whether only prolonged initial contact would have such a profound effect? Or did he do it (possibly) to Severus just to enslave him, without future plans for Harry?
Where did the school, or Albus, get the mirror? If the Peverell brothers, or Ignotus / another brother singly, created the mirror as a subsequent member of (or companion to) the Hallows, was it in Godrick's Hollow to be discovered by some enterprising wizard? (My guess would be in a mausoleum at the graveyard.) If we allow it to have some sentience, it's likely that it perceived Albus's genius and lured him. Or, could Albus have been descended from either Ignotus or one of the other Peverell brothers, and had a story in the family about the mirror? How much agency do we give the mirror itself, or do we?
no subject
Date: 2015-05-18 12:28 am (UTC)However, as thorough and insightful as this is, I think you missed one point that makes what he did even more heinous: By stranding Harry with a family that would abuse, neglect, and vilify him "just because he exists," the Terrible Old Man (yes, that's an H P Lovecraft reference) primed the pump, ensuring Harry would be so emotionally deprived, so desperate for any kind of familial love and affection, that he would even consider a friendly wave from an image of Mum and Dad in an inanimate object to be an improvement on the Dursleys' treatment of him.
Your description of the negative effect the mirror has on Harry is very vivid and evocative. It reminds me of Billy Joel's song, "All for Leyna." It's about a boy who spends a single night with a girl, who then dumps him. He becomes obsessed with her, giving over his entire life to dreaming about getting her back. The frantic, pounding piano and wailing vocals are the musical embodiment of addiction. Most of the lyrics are similar to what you've written about Harry, particularly this part:
I'm failing in school,
Losing my friends,
Making my family lose their minds.
I don't wanna eat.
I don't wanna sleep.
I only want Leyna one more time.
I cannot recommend listening to this song too highly in the context of your essay.
There's one final point in favor of your interpretation: As you point out, Harry was out that night because he wanted to do research in the library! Harry never wants to do that. Surely only a magical compulsion could make him want to leave his warm bed and go to the library late at night for research. :D
no subject
Date: 2015-05-18 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-22 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-22 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-18 07:06 pm (UTC)I wonder though if Tom might have gazed into the mirror during the struggle, when Quirrell was facing Harry. Maybe that explains why he became significantly less effective as a Dark Lord.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-24 09:22 pm (UTC)It's almost certain that Dumbledore placed the Mirror in that room for Harry to find. Almost, because we do not have evidence that the protections barring Fluffy were in place by this time. So it's possible that the Mirror being there was a coincidence. But it's unlikely.
I do not think that the Cloak is enchanted to make the person wearing it behave in a particular way. At least, not usually. Dumbledore may have enchanted it before giving it to Harry, and then removed the spell once Harry had started to become addicted to the Mirror. After all, after Dumbledore tells Harry not to return, Harry is not seriously inclined to go in search of the Mirror again. Not bad for an eleven year old with low impulse control who's just been shown the "deepest, most desperate desire of [his] heart". Harry also does not experience any particular urges upon wearing the Cloak for the rest of the series.
I don't think Ron's disinclination to study has anything to do with the Mirror. First, Ron suggests games or visiting Hagrid because he thinks they will cheer Harry up. Second, it may be that Ron feels that even all of that will not be enough for him to earn the respect of his family. I think at some point, Ron even says that becoming prefect is no big deal for his family (though it is clearly a big deal for him) because all his brothers except Fred and George (who have other achievements and are clever and popular besides) have been prefects. Or the enormity of the task overwhelms him. Ron is characterised through the entire series by his inferiority complex. He likes knowing more about flying and Quidditch than his classmates before their flying instruction, and he doesn't like anyone richer, smarter, or posher than he is. It was suggested by one author (albeit quite unkindly) that Ron begins to like bossy, overbearing Hermione only after the troll incident where he sees her at her most vulnerable (though Hermione also matures after that incident). While not being entirely blameless for his poor grades, Ron is to be pitied. He has lost the race before he even began by coming from a high achieving family where his father was often absent in spirit, his mother was a demanding and unforgiving woman, his oldest brothers were too old to help him through school, his middle older brother was exactly the sort of pompous fellow who Ron can't stand (Ron also doesn't get along well with Ernie Macmillan and Zacharias Smith), and his youngest older brothers actively discouraged conventional academic effort. Or Ron just isn't good at book-learning. He's really good at chess, and fair at Quidditch, his only real weakness being under-confidence (again, his family had Charlie, who might have had the potential to play for his country, and the twins, who were both good players, and on their House team). But no one seems to give him much encouragement there.
I also don't think the Mirror precluded Harry from forming an attachment to a parent figure. Harry also suffers from a complex born of years of living with the Dursleys. Harry doesn't expect to be welcomed into the Weasley family. Perhaps he does not even realise that he has been made an honorary Weasley. He is surprised when he receives the Weasley jumper, and to find Ron and the twins rescuing him, and by the Weasleys standing in for his guardians for the Triwizard Tournament. He would gladly turn over the contents of his bank vault to the Weasleys, but they refuse.
Finally, I disagree with your reasoning as to why Dumbledore sent Hagrid to fetch Harry. I believe he sent Hagrid because first, Hagrid is unwaveringly loyal to him and would do exactly as told. Second, Hagrid is devoted to Dumbledore, and will convey the right kind of ideology to Harry before Harry can question it. Third, and this was suggested by a fanfic, he is sure that Hagrid will draw attention to Harry in the Leaky Cauldron or in Diagon Alley, impressing upon Harry the admiration the wizarding world has for him, and the importance of Voldemort's demise. And last, because Hagrid was in any case being sent to Diagon Alley to pick up the Philosopher's Stone.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-25 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-25 06:31 am (UTC)I wouldn't call the change in Hermione following the troll incident 'maturation'. She learned to suck up and submit. Rather pathetic of her.
I agree that Ron and Harry think of Percy as 'pompous', but I disagree with their characterization of him.
Re: Hagrid - yes, he is loyal to Twinkles, which is why Twinkles can so easily use him for his purpose. But if you read Terri's essay 'Keeper of the Keys' you can see Terri's arguments why choosing Hagrid to introduce Harry to the wizarding world was an odd choice - Hagrid shows himself to be incompetent, and we know he is both forbidden and barely capable of doing magic - which could have put Harry at risk if anyone had decided to attack him that day (and we know Hagrid is terrible at keeping secrets - he was likely to announce his task to anyone within hearing range). It is clear that Hagrid never performed this duty before. He was chosen specifically to create certain impressions on Harry.
Some of those you mentioned make sense, but there were others. One was to frame Harry's first impression of magic as the stuff Hagrid does - wild, not well controlled, exciting. The kind of stuff that gets people to Gryffindor.
And for Terri's other reasons - think who would have been the more logical alternative - probably one of the Heads of Houses, most likely Minerva. Who did not like Harry's placement with the Dursleys in the first place. What would she have thought had she seen him with them? She might have lost some of her trust in Dumbles. She might have tried to protect Harry from further interference by Dumbles. And she would have behaved in a way that might have gained Harry's trust. Which is something Dumbles can't have - Harry fully trusting a competent adult acting independent of him. No way.
Or you can read Terri's stories 'Too Much There' and its sequel 'Unlikely Allies' (still WIP, alas) and see what happens in an AU in which Severus is the one to introduce Harry to the wizarding world.