The Troll, the Wizard and the Mirror

Lessons were fun but really easy, since magic seemed to rely on people's thoughts. Harry had plenty of experience isolating the thoughts that he needed to focus on. If he hadn't, he'd be catatonic. The Hat was just recovering and two of the teachers seemed ill all the time.

Turn this match into a needle, McGonagall had said. Not exact words, Harry couldn't remember them.

He got bored of trying to form the words properly, and wondered what possible reason there was that magic only listened to exact pronunciations of the words and exact wand movements. He could understand 'Wingurdium Leviosaa' to mean the levitating spell, so why couldn't magic?

Idly as he thought, Harry willed the match to turn into a needle. It did.

Huh.

As he stared at it, it turned back into a match. Then the head turned blue and square, before the entire thing turned into a block of cue chalk.

He was content to watch it as it fluctuated between several different forms, unwilling to settle on one. First a golden Galleon, then a tiny rugby ball, then it bounced around the table before scoring itself in a goal that grew out of the wood. Then they both melted into the desk, and the match popped out, good as new, turning into a needle the moment it rolled to a stop.

When he got bored of its shapeshifting, he started turning it into bigger forms and smaller ones, testing limits that he wasn't certain existed. First a lighter complete with fluid, a living ant, a mobile phone, a speck of dust, a pile of sand, a sandcastle, a stone castle the size of a sandcastle...

Professor McGonagall looked a little shocked, he realised when he observed her with pure magic, keeping his attention on the object in front of him.

Then suddenly the front of him wasn't and then he was all front.

Being a blob of goo could be interesting, he decided, but he liked McGonagall and didn't want to scare her too much so he turned back into a human, except glowing like a lightbulb.

Oddly enough, she didn't confront him.

Charms was fun too, he found when he stuck everyone to the ceiling (by accident, but he could get everyone down if he wanted so it was perfectly fine). An older student came in to see the professor, but he was also gravitated upwards, so he wasn't feeling lonely.

Harry ignored the shift in gravity and walked down the wall, sitting back in his chair like nothing was happening, and then everyone was back in their chairs as though they'd hallucinated it all.

Flitwick seemed to take it in stride and said that the display was the perfect example of some 'practical' applications of Charms. Actual air-quotes appeared over his head when he said that, but he didn't notice.

The Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs felt sick for the rest of the day.

"Harry Potter, our new celebrity. Tell me, what would you get if you added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

"Probably an explosion since I have no idea how quickly to add the ingredients," Harry replied as though he was commenting on something far less interesting than an explosion.

There was a small explosion on his desk which shattered his glasses, so he took them off his face and threw them behind him, where the gates of hell opened up and swallowed them. An angel handed him another pair.

"Thank God," he said.

"You're welcome," said the ceiling.

There was a pregnant pause as the Gryffindors and Slytherins looked between Harry and the professor. "Detention," Snape said shortly, and went back to the register.

Trolls weren't all that difficult to deal with. Harry was a bit of a troll himself, to use the term in a way that hadn't been conceived yet.

Having the ability to make a portal to a mirror world where people didn't exist was probably a large advantage. He felt a little sorry for the troll, wandering around with nobody to kill.

So he let it out of the mirror world. Then he took its hand and marched it straight to the headmaster's office. And if he didn't have a speck of dust or troll grease on him, nobody commented.

An invisibility cloak. It was really kind of useless. If you're invisible you're also blind by definition. And even if you could still see, that was cheating the idea of adventure.

In fact, just to prove that he didn't need such a cheaty device as an invisibility cloak, Harry went adventuring without it.

When he finally stopped thinking and paid attention to his surroundings, he found himself looking at a gigantic mirror.

He scratched at a sticker on the surface of the glass, but it only existed in the reflection, so he made his reflected self tear it off. As soon as the sticker came off, the mirror glitched horrifically, scattered images of brimstone and flowers and flours and the NEO CUBE and 42 and the living representation of an existential crisis and a million other things that only Harry could keep track of.

It was just reflecting his mind, which was weird. What was it supposed to do?

I show not your face but your heart's desire, the mirror showed. He looked above the glass and found that exact inscription in the frame, except backwards and spaced differently.

Did he cause a feedback loop?

Well, now he did. The mirror had frozen on the words, and seemed to have crashed.

Then it exploded.

Harry swore he heard someone squealing behind him.

Harry's essentially God. Mostly because it's funny, but I've always wondered, if magic is based around thoughts, why there aren't people with total control over reality.

Maybe there are. Maybe JK Rowling is one of them.

PLOT TWIST I'LL SEE MYSELF OUT