Chapter 15: The Mirror and the Scholar's Desire
The Christmas holidays were over, but the castle was still filled with a different kind of silence. The bustle was gone, but the secrets remained.
Timothy had noticed the rumors almost instantly. It wasn't the usual gossip about Quidditch or who had been caught kissing in a broomstick closet.
These were whispers about Harry Potter, about his nightly walks, and about a mysterious magic mirror that was said to show you "things."
Most students dismissed it as a Potter fantasy. Timothy, however, recognized him instantly.
'The Mirror of the West', he thought, the memory of his readings of the books emerging with perfect clarity. 'So it really exists.'
His first reaction was not the desire to use it. It was an almost painful academic curiosity.
An artifact capable of reading the deepest desire of a person's soul and projecting it as a tangible image?
It was not a simple mirror. It was a piece of conceptual magic of a level that surpassed anything I'd read in the library so far. I had to understand.
While Harry and Ron were busy with their homework and their newfound chess fame, Timothy began his own hunt.
He knew, from his memories, that Dumbledore would move him after Harry found him. The original location was compromised.
He spent several days following the crumbs. He used his intuition, that silent connection to the castle's magic, to sense the currents of ancient power.
He avoided Filch and Mrs. Norris with an ease that had become second nature to him.
Finally, on the fourth floor, behind rusty armor that always sneezed, he found a classroom door he didn't remember seeing before.
It was closed, but not with a spell. It was simply closed. 'Alohomora,' he thought, and the bolt clicked.
The room was dark and full of old desks and chairs, stacked like skeletons of furniture.
And in the background, covered by a dusty sheet, was the unmistakable silhouette.
With his heart pounding a little faster than usual, Timothy reached over and tugged at the cloth.
The mirror was magnificent. Tall as the ceiling, with an intricately carved gold frame. The inscription on it read: Oesed len stra del ebéu eit un al ed ed avc al, eir ostel.
He read it backwards effortlessly: "I do not show your face, but desire from your heart."
"Smart," he muttered, admiring the simple elegance of the concept.
He stood there for a moment, just watching him. What would happen if I looked? What would he see?
Would he see the parents he never met in this life? Or would he see something else?
Curiosity, his great engine, overcame him. He stepped forward and looked at himself in the glass.
The silver surface didn't give him back the reflection of a fifteen-year-old student with messy hair in a dusty classroom.
The image took a moment to come into focus, like a memory forming.
He saw a man. A man in his thirties who looked like him, but with a calmness and confidence that Timothy didn't yet possess.
The man was not in a castle. He was standing in the center of a library. A library so vast that it made the Hogwarts library look like a simple shelf of books.
It was the Traveling Library. Your library. But it wasn't the chaotic warehouse he had in mind.
Was... Finished. Perfect. Infinite.
The shelves rose to a ceiling that was a swirling nebula. Millions, perhaps billions of books, each shining with its own conceptual light.
The Timothy in the mirror turned, as if sensing his gaze. He didn't seem stressed, nor obsessed. Seemed... quits.
He held a book in his hand, closed it reverently, and put it back in place on a shelf. Then, he looked directly at Timothy, his younger self, and smiled.
It was a smile of absolute and total satisfaction. The smile of an architect who had completed his magnum opus.
Timothy gasped. It wasn't gold. It was not power. It was not the love of a family.
His deepest desire, the one thing his soul longed for above all else, was total knowledge. The completion of your project.
"Ah," he whispered to the mirror. "So that's it. Good."
He took a step back, the image fading, replaced by his own youthful reflection. The vision had left him with a sense of renewed calm and purpose.
He didn't notice the soft whisper in the corner of the room.
Hidden under a cloak of invisibility that bent the light around him, Albus Dumbledore watched, his blue eyes no longer shining with mischief, but with a deep and almost fearful solemnity.
I had seen Harry look in the mirror and see his family, a desire for love and belonging. A wish that Dumbledore understood very well.
But now, I had seen this boy, this other anomaly, look at the same mirror and see not people, but an infinity of knowledge. A desire for completeness and solitude.
Dumbledore realized, with chilling clarity, that the power that resided in Timothy Hunter was of an entirely different nature. And, perhaps, much more dangerous.
…..
The sight in the mirror didn't frighten Timothy. He focused on it.
The abstract hunger for knowledge that had been consuming him since his arrival at Hogwarts crystallized. It was no longer a vague obsession; it was a tangible goal.
He saw his future: an infinite library, a state of peace and total understanding. And he saw his current self: a limited student, copying books one by one in the Room of Requirements.
The gap between the present and that future was immense, and Timothy hated inefficiency.
His work on Archival Magic intensified. It was no longer just a year-long project to copy the Hogwarts library. It became his life's work.
He spent every spare second in his seventh-floor workshop, but his focus had changed. He no longer just copied. Now, he was experimenting.
He realized that his "one book at a time" system was too slow. I needed to streamline the "copy" and "parse" process.
The blackboards in his workshop were filled with new diagrams. Equations that attempted to merge Legilimancy with Conceptual Transfiguration.
What if he didn't need to read the book? What if he could convert the information directly into magical energy and absorb it?
His experiments became more daring. He stopped copying textbooks and started copying... objects.
He would sit for hours, his hand on a simple crow feather, using his Archive to deconstruct its essence.
She felt the story of the feather: the bird from which it came, the tree in which it nested, the magic imbued in it by the castle.
He discovered that he could copy not only text, but concepts. He could archive the "lightness" of the pen, the "sharpness" of a needle, the "firmness" of the stone.
He was creating a new branch of magic, one that no one, not even Dumbledore, could begin to comprehend.
This obsession, however, came at a cost. His promise to Professor Flitwick to keep his grades "Extraordinary" became a tedious task.
His essays were still brilliant, but they became increasingly bizarre.
In an essay for McGonagall on the principles of Transfiguration, instead of quoting Emeric Switch, Timothy wrote, "Transfiguration is fundamentally flawed. It doesn't change the object, it just tells you a temporary story. The real magic lies in changing the narrative of the object."
He received an "Extraordinary" with a big red question mark next to it and a note that read, "See me after class, Mr. Hunter."
But Timothy didn't care. His mind was elsewhere. He was building his cathedral.
This new phase of concentration isolated him even more. He spent less time in the main library, which, ironically, disappointed Hermione.
She had begun to enjoy his debates, to have someone who could challenge her. Now, he was absent again, lost in a project he did not share.
The friendship that had begun to blossom stagnated, frozen by his renewed and lonely obsession.
…..
Spring has arrived at Hogwarts, and with it, a new layer of tension. Timothy, however, hardly noticed it.
He had entered the second stage of his great project. The copying of the Hogwarts library was almost complete.
Each night, he religiously spent his four hours in the room, his hand moving in a steady rhythm. File. File. File.
The rest of his time, waking hours, were devoted to the real work: analysis.
He sat in the Great Hall, eating toast, his gaze lost in nothingness. His body was there, but his mind was light years away, devouring a treatise on Sumerian incantations.
He sat in Ravenclaw's common room, the noise of his companions a distant hum as his consciousness processed the complexities of high-level transfiguration.
He had become the "Ghost of the Tower" more than ever. And his friends noticed.
"Tim, you need to listen to me!" hissed Hermione, dragging him into a corner of the library. "It's Snape! I'm sure it's him!"
Timothy blinked, forcibly coming out of an analysis of blood magic. "What? Snape what?"
"The Philosopher's Stone!" she said, exasperated. "He's been trying to get through the trapdoor on the third floor! And he continues to limp! Obviously, Fluffy bit him!"
Timothy looked at her. He had heard the rumors, of course. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were up to their necks in a mystery.
To him, frankly, it seemed like a childish drama. A magic stone hidden in the school? It was a plan of Dumbledore's so obvious that it almost hurt.
"Hermione," he said, his tone was that of an adult talking to a frightened girl. "It's a trap. Dumbledore is not stupid. The stone is safe."
"But Dumbledore is not here!" she replied. "You received an urgent letter from the Ministry! He's gone! Snape is going to perform tonight, I know!"
Timothy sighed. Her obsession with this was a distraction. "I'm sure you're wrong. Snape is... well, it's Snape. But he's not a thief."
"You don't believe me!" she said, hurt. "You're too busy in your... in your head, to see what's going on!"
She ran away, furious, probably to find Harry and Ron.
Timothy stayed there. The mention of the Philosopher's Stone did interest him. An alchemy artifact of that level... the knowledge behind its creation would be a treasure for its Archive.
The rest of the day, a part of his mind remained alert. He felt the echoes of the castle's magic. And that night, he felt it.
A pulse. A change in protections. Dumbledore was really gone.
A slow, predatory smile flashed across his face. 'Wow, wow. Maybe the girl was right after all.'
This was not his problem. But it was an opportunity he couldn't miss.
It wasn't an opportunity to be a hero. It was an opportunity to observe.
An opportunity to archive first-hand data about Voldemort, about Dumbledore's defenses, and about the Philosopher's Stone itself.
…..
Timothy moved through the dark corridors of the castle with the quiet efficiency of a ghost.
He didn't need to run. He knew exactly where he was going.
He reached the corridor on the third floor. The door guarding the trapdoor was ajar. Just as Hermione had predicted, someone had been there.
He cast a Disillusioning Charm on himself, an ANTASY-level spell he had perfected in the Hall of Requirements.
His body melted into the background, becoming an indistinguishable blur. Accompanied by a silencing spell, he was, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
He slipped into the room. He saw the trapdoor open and heard the faint sound of a floating harp. Fluffy, the Cerberus, was fast asleep.
Timothy didn't hesitate. He slipped through the opening and fell into the darkness below.
He landed softly on the Devil's Lasso, just in time to see the trio debating what to do.
He watched in amusement as Hermione panicked before remembering the sunlight spell. 'Elemental,' he thought, as the plant receded.
He followed the trio at a safe distance, his mind was a sponge, absorbing everything.
The flying keys room was fascinating. He was not impressed by Harry's flight, although he admitted that it was an impressive athletic ability.
He was impressed by the keys. Flight enchantments, herd magic... It was a complex and elegant system. He catalogued it mentally.
Then, the chess room. Timothy almost laughs with pleasure. It was ancient magic. Large-scale transfiguration imbued with a strategic awareness.
He watched as Ron, with a brilliance Timothy didn't expect from him, led the game.
When Ron sacrificed himself, Timothy simply raised an eyebrow. 'Dramatic. Brave. And completely unnecessary. There were three other ways to win. Typical of Gryffindor.'
He waited for Harry and Hermione to move on, then crossed the board, the remaining pieces of stone ignoring their ghostly presence.
He arrived at the potion room just as Hermione was solving the logic puzzle.
He himself had already solved it in his head by the time he read the first stanza. 'Smart, Hermione,' he thought with genuine approval.
He saw Hermione return and Harry move on, drinking the potion. Timothy waited for a moment, then walked over and examined the remaining potion.
He took a small sample with a conjured jar. He would file his composition later.
Finally, he broke through the purple flames and entered the final chamber.
He stood in the shadows of the entrance, watching. There was Quirrell. And there was the mirror.
And there, on the back of Quirrell's head, was Lord Voldemort's parasitic face.
Timothy felt a chill that had nothing to do with fear. It was emotion. I was witnessing the return of a legend.
But his attention wasn't on the Dark Lord. He was in the Philosopher's Stone.
When Harry pulled the stone out of his pocket, Timothy felt it. The power that emanated from her was indescribable.
It wasn't enchantment or transfiguration magic. It was Alchemy in its purest form. The magic of life, death and creation.
His mind was buzzing. 'I have to know how it works!'.
He watched the confrontation, Voldemort's feeble attempt to tempt Harry. And then, the fight.
When Quirrell touched Harry and his hand turned to ash, Timothy did not see an act of evil. He saw a miracle.
'Sacrificial magic', he analyzed, his mind running at a thousand per hour. 'Based on blood. A conceptual protection. Not a shield, but a retribution. Fascinating. And so... disorderly.'
He saw Quirrell crumble, Voldemort's spirit flee, and Harry fall unconscious, the stone beside him.
This was his moment. The opportunity of a lifetime.
He was about to take a step forward, to take the Stone just for a second to "file" its conceptual structure, when he felt a new presence.
It was Dumbledore.
The headmaster walked into the room, his face not that of the gentle old man, but that of an ancient warrior, his power filling the room.
Timothy stepped back deeper into the shadows. The opportunity had been lost.
It didn't matter. He had seen enough. He had filed away half a dozen powerful new forms of magic.
As Dumbledore knelt next to Harry, Timothy Hunter slipped out of the camera, passing by broken chess pieces and unconscious keys.
He returned to Ravenclaw Tower before dawn, his mind ablaze with a treasure trove of new knowledge.
The Boy Who Lived had saved the day.
And the Architect of Realities had taken the real prize.
- - - - - - - - -
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