The mirror's surface still shimmered, waves of possibility distorting their reflections. Lydia's fingers tingled where they had touched the glass, an echo of something vast and unknowable brushing against her mind. She took a step back, exhaling shakily, trying to ground herself in the moment.
Marcus still stared at the mirror, his expression unreadable. "So, what now?"
Lydia turned toward him, her thoughts racing. "We figure out what this place is. What the mirror does. We need to understand how it works before we go jumping into alternate versions of Hogwarts."
Marcus grinned. "Says the girl who just opened a door to a multiverse without thinking twice."
She shot him a look. "That's different. The door was calling to me. This… this is something else entirely."
Marcus took another step toward the mirror, but this time, he hesitated. His instincts—usually the sort that got him into trouble—told him to dive in, to see where it led. But there was something in Lydia's voice that made him pause.
Lydia, always the careful one, always thinking ahead, wasn't just being cautious. She was afraid.
He glanced at her again. "You felt something when you touched it, didn't you?"
She hesitated before nodding. "It wasn't just a vision. It was… a presence. Like the mirror was looking back at me."
Marcus frowned, folding his arms. "Okay, that's unsettling."
They stood in silence for a moment, staring at their warped reflections. The mirror showed them more than just their current selves. There were flickers of other versions of them—Lydia with streaks of silver in her hair, Marcus in a strange uniform lined with gold thread. Versions of themselves that weren't just older, but different.
And then, just as suddenly, the images faded.
Lydia took a deep breath. "This place isn't Hogwarts. It's something in between. A crossroads."
Marcus nodded. "So the question is… who built it? And why?"
A soft hum filled the air. Lydia turned sharply toward the sound, her heart hammering. The symbols on the walls pulsed, and the mirror's glow intensified.
Then, just as quickly as it began, the humming stopped.
Marcus exhaled. "That's not creepy at all."
Lydia reached into her robes, pulling out a small notebook. She had always been a meticulous note-taker, and this was a discovery that needed documenting. She scribbled down a few observations before looking up again. "There has to be a way to control it. Maybe the symbols—"
Before she could finish, the mirror shimmered again. But this time, it didn't show them alternate versions of themselves.
It showed someone else.
A figure stood on the other side of the glass, watching them.
Tall. Hooded. Cloaked in shadows that writhed like living smoke.
Lydia's breath caught in her throat.
The figure raised a hand, palm flat against the mirror's surface.
Then, in a voice that was both distant and near, both whisper and roar, it spoke.
"You shouldn't be here."
A gust of wind rushed through the chamber, though there was no source for it. The torches lining the walls flickered violently, casting jagged shadows that danced like restless spirits. Lydia's grip tightened around her wand, her mind racing through every defensive spell she knew.
Marcus instinctively stepped in front of her. "Who are you?"
The figure didn't answer. Instead, it leaned forward, and for the first time, its hood slipped back just enough to reveal piercing silver eyes.
Eyes that looked unsettlingly familiar.
Lydia gasped. "It's…"
The figure pressed harder against the glass. The mirror trembled under the weight of its presence. Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface, glowing with eerie light. The energy in the room shifted, like the moment before a thunderclap.
Lydia grabbed Marcus's wrist. "We have to go."
"But—"
"Now."
Marcus hesitated, but something in her voice—some deep-rooted instinct—made him listen. Together, they turned and ran back toward the corridor.
The chamber groaned as if the very walls were alive. The mirror shattered with a deafening crack, the shards suspended in midair for a fraction of a second before dissolving into glowing embers. The humming returned, louder now, reverberating through their bones.
They barely made it through the threshold before the door behind them slammed shut, sealing the chamber off as if it had never existed. The moment they crossed back into the familiar halls of Hogwarts, the air was still again. Normal. As if nothing had happened.
Except for one thing.
Lydia looked down at her hand, where the tingle from the mirror still lingered.
And there, burned faintly into her palm, was a single glowing rune.
Marcus stared at it, then at her. "Okay," he breathed, voice laced with both fear and excitement. "Now what?"
Lydia swallowed hard, her mind spinning with the implications.
She had a feeling this was only the beginning.