Desire

Author's Note: This is a companion piece to My Immortal, which is Snape before the Mirror of Erised.

I show not your face but your heart's desire.

Whilst Severus Snape and Harry Potter seek the Mirror of Erised with eager greed, Albus Dumbledore cringes from it. He is not a fearful man, but the Mirror is that most terrifying of things – a reflection of the deepest, darkest desires of your heart.

He told Harry that the Mirror did not show the truth. This was not a lie exactly – the Mirror does not show what can be or will be. But it does show the truth of a man's heart, lays it bare in all its shivering naked glory.

Albus learnt long ago to cringe from that which lived in the centre of his heart. He has spent his life pretending that it does not exist, that he has successfully cast it out. This is a lie.

When Harry leaves the classroom, casting a look of innocent longing over his shoulder at the Mirror, Albus stands slowly. He knows what he wants to see in the Mirror. He wants to see his family. His mother and father together and smiling as in his early youth. Himself as the proud eldest brother, nose unbroken, arms about his younger brother and sister, both in Hogwarts robes.

He shies away from the fact that he wants to see this because he knows this is what he ought to want. A desire that he could no more be ashamed of than Harry could be ashamed of wishing to see his family ranged about him.

But what he sees when he finally nerves up the courage to look in the Mirror stills his heart. The arrogant curve of plump, pale red lips. The sweep of impossibly high cheekbones, the knowing gleam in dark blue eyes. The long sweep of bright golden curls.

Gellert Grindelwald.