31 July 1990, 4:21 a.m.
I stood before the mirror.
I didn’t remember getting out of bed.
A moment ago, I’d been trying to sleep, turning my pillow over and resisting the urge to rub my eyes.
Now the familiar floorboards were gone from beneath my feet, and before me stood the mirror I’d seen so many times in my dreams.
This time, everything was clearer.
I could feel the cold on my skin.
Hear my own breathing.
When I moved my hand, my reflection did exactly the same.
A tall figure stood behind me.
For a moment, I didn’t dare turn around.
Then something inside me gave way.
I heard no crack, although that was what the sensation reminded me of.
The resistance I’d been encountering for the past two years vanished so suddenly that I swayed and reached towards the mirror.
Something moved from deep inside my body.
No tug.
No obstruction.
I drew a sharp breath.
“Finally…”
I raised my head and saw my eyes.
They were no longer blue.
My irises had turned so white that they seemed to glow.
Against them, a black symbol slowly rotated: a circle bisected by a vertical line, enclosed in a triangle.
I leaned closer to the glass.
The Deathly Hallows.
I knew the symbol from books, films, and countless fanfiction covers.
Seeing it in an illustration, however, was one thing.
Discovering it rotating inside my own eye was quite another.
“All right…”
I didn’t know how to finish.
My reflection’s lips moved with mine.
The figure behind me moved too.
I froze.
Until now, it had only stood there.
Every dream had ended before I could see anything more.
Now it inclined its head, and the darkness around it settled into the folds of a tattered robe.
It was tall and thin.
Folded wings protruded from its back, enormous even on that frame.
Their surface resembled scorched skin.
I couldn’t make out a face beneath the hood.
I looked straight at the place where it should have been and could see nothing at all.
Death.
The thought came so clearly that I didn’t even try to find another explanation.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding, heir to a cursed bloodline…”
I felt the voice somewhere deeper than my ears.
It vibrated in my teeth, travelled through my chest, and left a chill behind.
I wanted to ask what that meant.
I didn’t get the chance.
The wings spread behind me, filling the reflection, and then the figure dissolved like smoke.
The mirror vanished with it.
I sat bolt upright in bed.
The metal frame struck the wall.
For several seconds, I stared into the corner of the room, certain I was about to see a hood or a folded wing.
Nothing.
Wardrobe, desk, chair.
Everything was where it should be.
I pressed my hands into the mattress, and only then noticed what had changed.
Magic.
I didn’t have to close my eyes or spend half an hour concentrating on my breathing.
I felt it immediately, beneath my skin, in my arms, all the way to my fingertips.
I moved my hand.
The sensation followed so naturally that it felt as though it should always have been there.
I tried directing it towards my fingers.
No resistance.
I did it again.
A smile spread across my face.
“It works.”
I whispered it, but it still sounded loud in the empty room.
Two years.
For two years, I’d sat on this bed repeating the same spell, trying to reach something that stubbornly remained beyond my grasp.
Now all I had to do was concentrate.
I wanted to get up, laugh, and try everything at once.
Then I noticed the silver glow around the desk.
I blinked.
It didn’t disappear.
Light traced the edge of the desktop, trembled around the chair legs, and blurred above the floor.
When I looked at the wall, I saw more strands.
Thin, almost transparent.
The more closely I looked, the more there were.
They crossed the air, vanished into wood, passed through walls.
Some I could barely follow.
Others were clearer, thicker, moving slowly as though responding to something I couldn’t feel.
I reached out.
One strand passed through my hand.
I instinctively closed my fingers.
I caught nothing.
“Right. That would have been too easy.”
I studied my skin.
Several silver threads were disappearing into it.
Others ended somewhere near my shoulder or chest.
I didn’t know whether I was seeing magic, something produced by my eyes, or both at once.
I knew too little about how any of this worked to decide.
But I could see something that hadn’t been there yesterday.
The thickest strand suddenly tightened.
I felt a brief prick in my chest and caught my breath.
A wave of warmth immediately passed through my body.
It didn’t hurt.
Instead, everything around me became unbearably distinct.
I heard water dripping somewhere on a lower floor.
A fly buzzing by the window.
Fabric rustling when I moved my knee beneath the blanket.
My own heart pounded in my ears.
I looked at the wall and saw tiny cracks in the paint I’d never noticed before.
A metallic smell filled the air, a little like the smell after a storm.
I swallowed.
“Easy.”
I didn’t know whom I was talking to.
The magic?
My eyes?
Myself?
All three seemed reasonable possibilities.
I closed my eyes and waited.
The bed was hard, the blanket rough, and the same miserable spring still pressed against my shoulder blade.
I focused on it.
After a while, the sounds stopped crowding into one another.
My heart was still beating fast, but I could distinguish its rhythm from the rest.
When I opened my eyes again, the silver strands were fainter.
They hadn’t disappeared entirely.
I had to look more closely to see them, though.
That was a relief.
I wanted to see magic.
Not necessarily all of it at once.
I swung my legs off the bed and stood.
My knees trembled a little, although I didn’t feel the usual exhaustion.
There was still so much new sensation inside me that it was difficult to sit still.
A small mirror stood in the corner.
An ordinary one.
Cracked at the edge.
I approached carefully.
First, I looked behind me.
No figure.
Only then did I examine my face.
The white was gone.
My eyes were now black, so deeply black that for a moment I couldn’t distinguish any detail.
A tiny white point sat in the centre of each.
I tilted my head.
My reflection did the same.
There was no rotating symbol, none of the glow I’d seen in the other mirror.
Only blackness and two points of light.
I remembered the words about a gift that consumed life.
My smile faded a little.
Yes.
That was part of the package too.
For a moment, I stared at myself without moving.
I still didn’t know how these eyes worked, what they could do, or what using them would cost.
The vision of Death certainly wasn’t an invitation to be careless.
But the block had broken.
I could feel magic.
I could really feel it.
Raising a hand beside my face, I followed that new warmth all the way to my fingers.
I smiled again.
“Happy birthday, Oliver.”
Parchment rustled in the Hogwarts Headmaster’s office.
Albus Dumbledore looked up from the document he was reading.
At this hour, most of the portraits were asleep.
Quiet snoring came from one; in another, a former headmaster dozed with an open book on his lap.
Fawkes moved his head on his perch.
An old book opened by itself.
Dumbledore set his document aside.
Before he could reach for the book, its pages began turning, faster and faster, until they stopped at the records of children born in the summer of 1980.
A quill rose above the inkwell.
The Headmaster watched it move in silence.
New names appeared in the book regularly.
Usually, they required no attention from him until it was time to prepare the next year’s letters.
Now, however, the quill had returned to a page from ten years earlier.
Letters began to appear between the existing entries.
Oliver Peverell Orphanage in London Born: 31 July 1980
Dumbledore adjusted his glasses.
The quill finished the last digit, hovered above the parchment for a moment, and returned to its place.
“Peverell?”
Fawkes made a soft sound.
The Headmaster read the entry again.
The surname had not changed.
Neither had the date.
The boy turned ten today.
And the school had only just learned of his existence.
Dumbledore turned back a few pages, then returned to the same one.
He checked the neighbouring entries.
Everything looked ordinary except for the name that had not been there a moment earlier.
At last, he stood.
In a cabinet against the wall, he kept old photographs, a few letters, and documents he rarely consulted.
It took him a moment to find the right photograph.
Members of the Order of the Phoenix stirred within the frame.
Someone waved.
Someone turned towards the person beside them.
Dumbledore’s gaze moved across the faces and stopped on two people.
Elias Peverell and Aria Selwyn-Peverell.
Ten years had passed since their disappearance.
He remembered conversations in which Elias became increasingly sparing with his words when he considered the questions too personal.
Aria was easier to talk to, although she could close off an uncomfortable subject just as effectively as her husband.
Both had belonged to the Order.
Then they had stopped coming.
The searches had brought no answers.
Over time, people spoke less of finding them and more of the war having claimed two more lives.
Dumbledore placed the photograph beside the open book.
“I didn’t know you had a son,” he said quietly.
In the photograph, Aria looked at Elias.
The Headmaster waited a moment, then examined the date of birth again.
A connection seemed likely.
The surname alone, however, was not enough to make it certain.
Still less did it explain the past ten years.
McGonagall entered the office a few minutes after receiving the message.
She wore a dark robe thrown on in haste, and her hair was pinned up less neatly than usual.
“What has happened, Albus?”
“Look.”
He pushed the book towards her.
She read the entry and frowned.
“Peverell?”
Dumbledore nodded.
Her gaze settled on the date.
“This boy is ten years old.”
“His name appeared a few minutes ago.”
McGonagall bent closer, as though she expected to find an explanation somewhere on the page.
“Are you certain it wasn’t there before?”
“I watched the quill write it.”
She slowly straightened.
Only then did she notice the photograph.
“Elias and Aria…”
“They came to mind immediately.”
She picked up the photograph.
For a moment, she said nothing.
“They never mentioned a child.”
“Not to me either.”
“If he’s their son, he must have been born shortly before they disappeared.”
“Yes.”
McGonagall put the frame down.
She drew up a chair and sat opposite the Headmaster.
“Where has he been all this time?”
Dumbledore indicated the second line.
“Possibly there.”
“For ten years?”
“We don’t know yet.”
She read the entry again.
“The orphanage should have records. An admission date, information about who brought him in. Something.”
“We’ll begin there.”
Dumbledore reached for a clean sheet of parchment and copied the details from the book.
McGonagall watched the moving tip of his quill.
“A late manifestation of magic?” she asked.
His hand paused.
“Possibly.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“I have no reason to rule it out yet. Nor do I intend to accept it simply because it is the easiest explanation.”
McGonagall glanced at the photograph again.
“The Peverells disappear. Ten years later, a boy with their surname turns up.”
“I know.”
“I’d like to know whether he’s safe there.”
“So would I.”
For a moment, the only sound in the office was the quiet tapping of one of the silver instruments.
Dumbledore finished his note.
“We’ll establish when he arrived at the orphanage and what they know about his family. Then we’ll contact him.”
“We shouldn’t delay. If his magic really has only just manifested, he may not understand what’s happening to him.”
“We’ll look into it as soon as possible.”
McGonagall nodded and stood, taking the parchment.
She paused at the door.
“Albus?”
He looked up.
“If they really did have a son…”
She left the thought unfinished.
Dumbledore looked at the photograph.
“Let us find the boy first, Minerva.”
When the door closed, he sat motionless for a moment.
Then he pulled the book closer and read the new name once more.
Oliver Peverell.
Beside it, in the old photograph, his former companions still moved among people, many of whom were long dead.
Dumbledore left the photograph on his desk.
jest już późno, hmm zmęczyłem się tym