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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The approach of the Christmas holidays saw a great exodus from Hogwarts. The corridors, usually teeming with students, grew quiet and cavernous. Draco Malfoy made a great show of his departure, bragging loudly about the lavish festivities planned at the Malfoy estate, a final, desperate attempt to reassert his relevance. Kaelen watched him go from a common room window, his expression unreadable.
"Good riddance," Theodore Nott murmured, settling into a chair opposite Kaelen. "His particular brand of incompetence is exhausting."
"He serves a purpose," Kaelen replied, his eyes still fixed on the departing carriages. "He is a useful distraction. People are so busy watching the loud, preening peacock that they fail to notice the snake in the grass."
A newcomer joined them, sinking gracefully onto a nearby sofa. It was Daphne Greengrass. She, like them, was staying for the holiday. "An empty castle presents certain opportunities," she said, her cool blue eyes flicking between the two boys. It was a statement of shared intent.
"Indeed," Nott agreed. "Fewer variables. More freedom of movement."
Their quiet council was a stark contrast to the boisterous goodbyes echoing around them. They were not friends sharing a holiday; they were three strategists recognizing the tactical advantage of an undefended board.
Christmas morning arrived with a blanket of fresh snow over the castle grounds. Kaelen woke to find the dormitory empty save for himself and Nott. At the foot of his bed lay a single, neatly wrapped parcel. It was long and thin, wrapped in plain black paper with no card. Kaelen regarded it with suspicion, not excitement. He ran his wand over it, checking for curses, before carefully unwrapping it.
Inside lay a slim, elegant box. He opened it to find a set of Potioneer's tools—not the standard pewter ones from the school list, but ones of polished silver, with obsidian handles etched with runes of measurement and stability. They were master-grade, worth a small fortune. There was no note, no indication of the sender.
"An admirer?" Nott asked from his own bed, where a similar, though smaller, pile of gifts sat.
"A potential investor," Kaelen corrected him, examining the precise craftsmanship of a silver scalpel. "A gift is a transaction. This is a statement of perceived value, an attempt to curry future favour." He carefully packed the tools away. He would accept the investment, but he would not be indebted to the anonymous source.
Later that day, in the nearly empty Great Hall, he saw Hermione Granger sitting alone at the vast Gryffindor table, a stack of books her only company. She looked up and their eyes met. He saw a flicker of loneliness in her gaze before she quickly buried her face back in a book. Another stray, he noted. Another variable remaining on the board.
The holidays provided the perfect cover. With the castle quiet and the professors occupied with their own festivities, Kaelen began his true work: reconnaissance. The third-floor corridor was a puzzle box, and he intended to pick the locks one by one.
He didn't need an invisibility cloak. He had something better: meticulous planning and the ability to go utterly unnoticed. He moved through the shadows of the castle at night, a ghost in Slytherin-green.
The first obstacle, the three-headed dog, was a problem of biology, not magic. Armed with a pound of raw steak he'd procured from the kitchens and laced with a potent sleeping draught brewed during a late-night session in an abandoned classroom, he approached the door. He didn't use music. He used logic. A beast that large required a massive caloric intake. He levitated the drugged meat into the room. The sounds of ravenous tearing were followed, a few minutes later, by three deep, sonorous snores. He slipped past the slumbering beast, his footsteps silent on the cold stone.
He navigated the Devil's Snare with a simple Lumos and bypassed the room of flying keys by ignoring them entirely and picking the lock on the far door with the same application of focused will he had used in the library. He was not trying to get to the end. He was gathering data, mapping the defenses, assessing their strengths and weaknesses.
It was on his third night of exploration that he found it. Tucked away in an unused classroom, far from the main path of the obstacle course, was an object that radiated a magic far more ancient and complex than any simple curse or charm.
It was a mirror, tall and ornate, with a gilded frame and clawed feet. An inscription was carved into the arch: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
Kaelen felt its power immediately, a gentle, seductive hum that pulled at the deepest corners of his mind. He approached it with extreme caution. This was no ordinary enchanted object. It was a psychological weapon of immense power.
He stood before it. The reflection that looked back was his own: a small, dark-haired boy in plain black robes, his face a mask of cold neutrality. For a moment, nothing else happened.
Then, the reflection wavered, like heat rising from pavement. The boy in the mirror was still him, but he was smiling. It was not the cold, humorless smile he sometimes used as a weapon, but a genuine, carefree smile of pure joy. And he was not alone.
Standing next to him, her hand tucked into his, was Elara. She was alive. She was whole. Her face was alight with the same innocent, magical wonder he remembered so clearly, her twine bracelet a colourful slash on her wrist. She laughed, a sound he had not heard in over a year, a sound that hit him with the force of a physical blow.
For the first time since her death, a crack appeared in the icy fortress of his mind. An emotion, raw and agonizing, surged through him. Grief. Loss. A desperate, impossible longing. He felt a phantom ache in his chest, a sensation so alien he almost staggered.
Then, the training slammed down. The Occlumency walls, forged in a year of relentless, sleepless nights, descended like a portcullis of solid ice. The emotion was captured, contained, and ruthlessly suppressed. He stood there, his breathing perfectly even, his face once again an impassive mask, but a war was raging within him.
He looked at the smiling figures in the mirror, not as a grieving friend, but as a general studying an enemy's weapon. This mirror did not show the future. It did not show the past. It showed a lie. A beautiful, perfect, and utterly deadly lie. It was a trap designed to ensnare the emotionally vulnerable, to chain them to a fantasy until they wasted away.
"A weapon of terrible efficiency," he whispered to the silent room.
He was so focused on his internal battle, on analyzing the mirror's function, that he almost missed it: a faint scuff of a footstep in the corridor outside.
He melted back into the shadows beside the door just as it creaked open. A faint, shimmering distortion in the air moved into the room—an invisibility cloak. He watched, perfectly still, as the disembodied footsteps padded across the floor and stopped in front of the mirror.
A moment later, a sharp, ragged gasp cut through the silence. The shimmering air wavered, and the cloak was pulled back to reveal Harry Potter, his face a mess of shock, awe, and heartbreaking joy, tears streaming down his cheeks. He was staring, transfixed, at the mirror. At his parents.
Kaelen watched the pathetic display for a full minute, his initial caution turning to a cold, intellectual contempt. Potter was completely ensnared, a fly caught in a web of his own grief.
He decided to act. He stepped out of the shadows, his soft-soled shoes making no sound on the flagstones.
"It shows you nothing real, Potter," Kaelen's voice was not loud, but it cut through Potter's reverie like a shard of ice.
Potter spun around, his hand flying to his wand, his face a mixture of terror and anger at being discovered. He stared at Kaelen, his tear-streaked face illuminated by the moonlight slanting through the high windows.
"What are you doing here?" Potter stammered.
"The same thing you are," Kaelen replied, his voice a low, analytical monotone. "Studying a fascinating piece of magic." He gestured towards the mirror. "It does not show the future. It does not show knowledge. It shows only the deepest, most desperate desire of your heart. A phantom to console a grieving child. A dangerous, addictive poison."
He took a step closer, his grey eyes devoid of any sympathy. "You see the parents you never knew. A comforting fantasy. I see a friend I failed to protect. A reminder of a tactical failure. We both see a weakness. The only difference is, I recognize it as such."
Potter's face hardened, his grief turning to defensive rage. "You don't know anything about it! About them!"
"I know that they are dead," Kaelen said, his voice as cold and final as a tombstone. "And clinging to their ghosts will only make you as weak and useless as they were. The dead cannot help you. Only power can."
Before Potter could retort, before the simmering confrontation could erupt into shouted words or drawn wands, a new voice, gentle yet filled with an unmistakable authority, echoed from the doorway.
"Wise words," the voice said. "Though perhaps a little harsh for a boy of your years."
They both turned. Standing in the doorway, his long silver beard gleaming in the moonlight, was Albus Dumbledore. His half-moon spectacles were perched on his nose, but the usual twinkle in his blue eyes was gone. They were filled with a profound, weary sadness as he looked from the tear-stained face of the Boy-Who-Lived to the chillingly composed face of the boy who had just called his dead parents useless.
"It seems," Dumbledore said softly, stepping into the room, "that the two of you have found my little hiding place."