The Heiress of Slytherin

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

It was a few days after Christmas, and Ivy could not sleep. She'd been tossing and turning non-stop hours, but she felt wide away. She couldn't put her finger on it what it meant, but she was acutely aware of a nauseous feeling in her gut. It felt like a corkscrew twisting in her gut, pulling infinitely tighter, and tighter, and Ivy eventually felt like she had to get out of bed and walk around, or she'd lose her mind.

Swinging her feet out of bed and into her slippers, she pulled on a thick wool sweater over her tank top and crept out of the dorm room, leaving a snoring Pansy, and a hissing Stheno asleep behind her. She walked down to the common room and sat down on the sofa but after just a minute the feeling returned, and she had to get up and move. Deciding that she would try her luck at a stroll around the castle, she stepped out of the common room and walked up from the dungeons.

As she walked around, Ivy felt herself get lost in thought. It was like this sometimes; she would get the same knawing, twisting feeling in her gut, and thoughts would swarm down upon her. Thoughts about being a siren, and hiding that fact. About what it meant that she could speak to and understand snakes. About what being chosen by an elder wand implied. As the thoughts swarmed through her head, the worst-case scenarios started to apply pressure, until Ivy felt like she couldn't breathe.

The next thing that would happen, was that she would start to see the faces of her friends line up in front of her one by one. Fearing her, hating her, being disgusted by her, being hurt by her. Blaise, Pansy, Theo, Selina, Hermione, Harry, Ron, would flood in one by one. The worst was Draco. He would always come last, and Ivy couldn't bear picturing the loathing on his face.

As she felt these images starting to flash faster and faster through her mind, she reached out her hand to steady herself on the wall but found that her palm touched cold panes of glass instead. This sudden coolness pulled her focus away from her thoughts for a moment, and she realized she had somehow walked to a corridor near the library.

Just as she tried to process how that might have happened - it felt like she'd only just left the common room - she was suddenly struck hard by something large, heavy, and... invisible?

"What in the name of Salzar Slytherin was that?" Muttered Ivy, groaning from the floor. Much to her surprise, Harry's head appeared above her, looking concerned.

"Blimey, I'm sorry Ivy, I didn't see you there. You'd best get under the cloak, Filch is out for blood. More specifically, mine, but I'd rather you not get caught in the crosshairs." Ivy was too tired and had fallen over too hard to argue, so she gently stood up and let Harry wrap an odd piece of fabric around her. It crossed her mind that she probably should have been shocked to see her body disappear when he did, but she just shrugged and accepted it. He would have an invisibility cloak, wouldn't he.

Harry lead Ivy through the corridor a little way, then they slipped inside a classroom. He signalled that she should remain silent, and she caressed her head, scowling quietly to herself until they heard Filch storm past and his steps fade into the distance.

Ivy rubbed the back of her head, which was quite sore from its sudden impact with the cobblestone. "Why is it that whenever I'm around a Gryffindor, the back of my head gets knocked around?" asked Ivy rhetorically, and Harry laughed softly. She eyed him curiously.

"More importantly, why are you up and about Harry? And where on earth did you get an invisibility cloak? I thought I was meeting a demiguise in the corridor for a moment there." Harry titled his head in confusion, and Ivy made a mental note to review magical animals with him at a later date.

"Honestly, I'm out of bed for this." Harry gestured to a very large mirror, which Ivy hadn't noticed yet. "Why are you up?"

Ivy just shrugged, her gaze not leaving the mysterious mirror. "Wanted to clear my head. Say, what's so special about this mirror that you played cat and mouse with Filch for it?"