Wrong Turn

Dean Thomas silently congradulated himself for getting lost again. Ginny had told how to get to the kitchens, but he was currently somewhere on the sixth floor, he though. He saw plenty of rusted suits of armour, some recent wreckage courtesy of Peeves, but defintely no giant picture with fruit.

His feet were freezing, and he decided to turn back. Before he moved a metre, he heard a sound that had struck fear into the hearts of students for generations.

That bloody cat!

Dean ran into the nearest room and sealed the door shut. He praised whatever God was currently running the world that Filch was a Squib, and would probably not even realise that the door had ever been open.

"Lumos," he muttered. He blinked when a harsh light rebounded from a corner of the room. He lowered his wand and made his way over.

It was a large mirror, gilded and shining brightly. He guessed that by the state of the room, the mirror had been moved there in the last few years; everything else was covered in a layer of dust that would send his mum into shrieks of pain.

His mum...

His dad...

Lately, his thoughts had drifted onto his father. Besides his name and a few older photos, Dean knew nothing baout his father, except that he had left when he was still in swaddling clothes. The rational part of his brain hated his father, for leaving his mum and him alone so soon after he was born. But another part wanted to know why. His mum harboured no grudge against the man; she told him that before he disappered, he had warned her to be careful, that things were getting dangerous.

More than anything, he wanted to see this man, to understand why. He wanted answers, ones that his mother couldn't give him. He wanted to know where he came from, his lineage.

He looked into the mirror. For a moment, all he saw was himself. Than a tall, broad man stepped behind him.

Dean screamed and turned around.

No one was there.

He turned around, and the man was still in the mirror. Comprehension crashed over him; he had heard Hermione talk about this mirror once. It showed the heart's deepest, darkest desires.

"Dad?" he said quietly. The man nodded slowly. Dean saw his own eyes in the man's face, and the oversized hands and bony knuckles. And the smile...

Dean smiled, then his face fell. This wasn't real. This was an illusion.

The man - his father - pressed his hands on the glass. Dean hesitated, then put his hands atop. Almost the same size, they were. Dean looked the mirage in the eye, and was overwhelmed.

Dean had never wanted to know whether his father loved him. But he saw that he did.

"Why did you leave us?" he whispered. The man did not speak, but pointed to an insignia on his breast pocket. A giant red and gold dragon.

"I don't understand," choked out Dean, starting to cry. The man pointed at the insignia again, and then shifted it aside with his finger and pointed at his chest. At his heart.

Dean understood. Something about the dragon was important, something to do with his father. But his father left him and his mother because he loved them.

Dean heard Filch and Mrs. Norris pass. "I have to go now," he whispered. His father beckoned for him to stand closer to the mirror, to lean against it. Dean put his forehead on it, not wanting to leave. His father, on the other side, leaned down and kissed his forehand gently, and was gone.

Dean left, with a new determination - to find the red and gold dragon.

And to write his mother.

He would never see the mirror again, but on the field of battle, as he screamed another cry, he could feel his father press his lips to his forehead behind the cold glass.

It was enough.