Chapter 99

"You're mad, mate," Ron muttered, and pushed the door open.

"Misters Potter, Weasley, and Amastacia-Liadon," McGonagall said, rising from her chair. "What seems to be the mat— why are you holding your wand? And you, shouldn't you be in the hospital wing?"

"I think these two have been bewitched —"Harry started.

"Oh, come now," McGonagall said in a pacifying tone. "Why would —"

"— by a magic Mirror. And so have I."

"Mirror?" McGonagall asked sharply, suddenly alert. "Explain everything on the way. Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Ron asked as McGonagall stepped around her desk to the door.

"To see the Headmaster, of course. This nonsense about bewitchment aside, I need to talk to him about just leaving a certain powerful magical artifact where just anyone can bump into it."

Despite the fact that she had dismissed Harry's concerns about mental control off-hand, Harry noticed that McGonagall, who usually liked to stay at the front of any particular group, stayed a half-step behind Harry, Ron and Milo on the way up to Dumbledore's hidden office — a fact which made it somewhat awkward for him to recount the events surrounding the mirror.

McGonagall guided them down Hogwarts' ever-shifting halls, through false walls, up some stairs, down some stairs, up some more stairs, took what Harry swore were three left turns at one point and still ended up somewhere different, until they eventually stopped in front of an ominous-looking gargoyle statue. While Harry hadn't ever been to this particular statue, he was fairly sure McGonagall had taken a deliberately circuitous route.

Harry saw McGonagall's lips move, but a sudden ringing in his ears prevented him from hearing whatever it was she said. Just as abruptly as it started, the ringing stopped, and the gargoyle seemed to rotate upwards into a spiral staircase. Something about the way it moved seemed subtly wrong to Harry, but he'd seen enough magic to know not to analyze things too closely.

"Up you go," McGonagall said, and they trotted up the stone staircase to a heavy wooden door. McGonagall knocked politely on the door and waited.

"Shouldn't we just go in?" Harry asked, impatient. He didn't know how much longer Protection From Evil would last, or if it had already run out. "This is urgent."

"Neither the Minister for Magic, Nicolas Flamel, nor even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would dare enter the Headmaster's office without permission. So we wait."

Harry waited several uncomfortable seconds, tapping his foot impatiently against the ancient stone floor. Eventually, the door simply swung open to let them in.

Dumbledore sat behind a heavy oak desk, wearing a particularly eye-watering multi-hued robe and his trademark half-moon spectacles.

"Why, Minerva, what an unexpected surprise!" he said, looking genuinely pleased. "And I see you've brought guests! Is it tea time already?"

"No, it's not, it's —"

"My colleague Professor Sinistra assures me that, due to the rotation of the earth beneath our feet hurtling through space around the great, smiling face in the sky that we call the sun, it is always tea time. Somewhere, at least."

"Er, well, be that as it may, I have a matter of some importance to discuss with you," McGonagall said, desperately trying to regain the initiative. "It's about the Mirror, and ... something else as well."

"I see," Dumbledore said gravely, all appearances of a foolish old man suddenly gone. Harry had never seen the Headmaster look so serious before. "Go on."

"Perhaps it would be best if Mister Potter explained," the Deputy Headmistress said.

"Very well. What's happened, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

As Harry nervously told his story, he noticed that Milo appeared to be sweating nervously.

"So, in short, you think you're all being influenced by the Mirror of Erised?" Dumbledore asked.

"Is that what it's called?" Harry asked.

"It is, indeed," Dumbledore said. "And, it appears, I shall have to have it moved from its temporary home. If it will put your mind at rest, the Mirror, while extremely powerful, does not have the ability to directly control the actions of those who gaze upon it — not to say that having their heart's desires revealed to them isn't a form of influence in itself."

"Oh," Harry said, greatly relieved.

"Still," Dumbledore said, "you can't be too careful, I suppose. If you would be so good as to wait here a moment?" Without waiting for a reply, the Headmaster stood up from his desk to walk over to one of his shelves of ticking silver devices on the wall.

"Ah," he said after rummaging about for a moment or two, "here we are. I've always been meaning to try this one out." Blowing what seemed to be generations of accumulated dust off of a complicated-looking spindly silver thing that Harry could only, in all honesty, accurately describe as a 'gizmo,' Dumbledore returned to his desk and sat down heavily. He placed the gizmo on the polished wooden surface where it made an ominous thud that seemed much louder than an object of its apparent mass would make. It had spiky protrusions. It had bits that whirled around for no apparent reason. It had twists and turns and knobs and dials. It had what looked uncomfortably like a dentist's drill only more, well, eldritch.

"But, Headmaster —" McGonagall began, looking astonished.

"Not now, Minerva," Dumbledore said, brushing aside whatever her protest was. "This," he said to Harry, Ron, and Milo with a dramatic flourish, "is the, De ... bewitcher of, er, Destiny."

"I'm sorry, the —" McGonagall began.

"Yes, the Debewitcher of Destiny. It's for, near as I can figure, revealing the presence of any form of magic that allows mental control, up to and including a certain Unforgivable curse."

"But detecting the Imperius Curse is all but impossible," Milo protested.

"Indeed, without the Debewitcher of Doom, it is impossible," Dumbledore agreed.

"Wasn't it called the Debewitcher of Destiny?" Ron asked.

"It's very versatile," Dumledore shrugged. "Now, who shall I use it on first?" As he spoke, he adjusted several knobs and dials on the device, which made its drill extension whir in an ominous fashion.

"I'm not going near that thing," Ron said stubbornly. "What would it do if we were, you know, bewitched? Not that we are, of course."

"Well," Dumbledore said, scratching his beard as he thought. "To be honest, I'm not completely certain. To the best of my knowledge, this dial here controls the severity of the Debewitcher's effect," he said, gesturing at a particularly large, unmarked dial. "It goes anywhere from simply revealing the identity of the guilty party to having the earth itself rise up and swallow the culprit whole."

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