Nighttime Wandering

First-year Harry Potter received a gift from Dumbledore that Christmas—the Invisibility Cloak his father had left him—and an impulse kept circling through his mind.

With the cloak on, Hogwarts Castle might as well have thrown open its gates to him. He could go anywhere he wanted. Filch wouldn't catch him, and no professor would see him.

He could even use the cloak to look up who Nicolas Flamel was in the library's Restricted Section and find out what that awful Snape was trying to find behind the trapdoor.

But there was one thought he hadn't told anyone: when he used the cloak for the first time, he wanted to be alone, because it was something his father had left him.

With that thought in mind, Harry acted when night fell.

Wrapped in the Invisibility Cloak, he passed through the common room's portrait hole, crossed the moving staircases and long corridors, then slipped through the library doors. Everything went astonishingly smoothly.

Until he encountered someone in the Restricted Section—Professor Greengrass.

Luckily, a bookshelf concealed him, so he didn't alert the other man. Professor Greengrass appeared to be reading intently. Harry quietly tucked his lamp beneath the cloak, then tiptoed past behind him.

He didn't look to see what Professor Greengrass was reading. The Restricted Section was huge, anyway. He only needed to secretly take a book back to the dormitory and return it the following night.

He moved through the shelves without alerting the professor at all. Harry was extremely pleased with his Invisibility Cloak, and it made him even more curious about his father.

What kind of person had he been? Why had he possessed such a magical Invisibility Cloak? When he studied at Hogwarts, had he also wandered the castle at night beneath it?

A string of questions flooded his mind. Harry drifted absentmindedly between the bookshelves, then seemed to hear something—a voice calling to him.

He stopped before a row of shelves and reached out to take down a thick book.

Book of Answers—that was what the cover read. The faint call grew stronger, as though it were telling him that if he opened this book, all his doubts would be answered here, just as its name promised.

Normally, Harry would've refused without hesitation. Ron had told him many times that books of unknown origin were dangerous.

But at that moment, he was utterly drawn to the book, so much so that he opened its title page without hesitation.

"Ah—"

A piercing scream suddenly came from the book.

On its cover, a hideous face seemed to be struggling to squeeze out from within the book, and the scream came from its mouth.

Harry jumped at the sudden change. He snapped the book shut and hastily put it back where it belonged.

The scream vanished. Everything that had just happened seemed like an illusion, yet reason reminded him that it had all been real.

Because he heard footsteps approaching, and there was more than one person...

Harry threw on the Invisibility Cloak and sprang to his feet, knocking over the lamp in his panic. But he couldn't worry about that now. The footsteps were drawing closer. If he got caught, how many points would Gryffindor lose?

Without looking back, he ran out of the Restricted Section. At the library entrance, he narrowly avoided Filch and his cat, slipped beneath the man's wide-eyed gaze, and dashed into the darkness.

After running blindly for a while, Harry felt he must've gone far enough, so he stopped to catch his breath.

"Professor, you said that if I found anyone wandering around the school or breaking into the Restricted Section, I should notify you."

Harry was startled by Filch's sudden voice and nearly cried out.

"Restricted Section? Who was it? Did you see them?" Snape's voice rang out, terrifying Harry even more.

"It was me!" Sagreles emerged from the darkness.

He held a book in his left hand, and faint cries still drifted from its title page.

"Sagreles, you again..." Snape squeezed out his name through clenched teeth. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Doing what I do every day," Sagreles replied expressionlessly. "Aren't you two doing the same? Still up to the same tricks you were years ago."

With that, he walked over to Filch and stuffed the book in the man's arms.

The gesture startled Filch so badly that he couldn't help taking a step back.

"Book of Answers—a standard Dark Arts book. It details the harm caused by all kinds of Dark Magic spells..." Sagreles glanced vaguely into the darkness, then pointed at the book in Filch's arms. His expression was icy and his tone stiff. "Am I not allowed to read it? Or do I need to report to you?"

"N-no, Professor..." Filch tilted his head back as far as he could, as if he wanted to get as far away from the book as possible.

"He was only trying to do his job," Snape said, reaching over to take the book from Filch's arms.

"Is insulting and physically punishing students part of his job too?" Sagreles looked at Snape with a faintly mocking smile. "No wonder he's your partner. After all, shielding Slytherin students is part of your job too."

After saying that, he ignored their ugly expressions, took the book directly from Snape's hand, and walked into the darkness without looking back.

He wasn't entirely picking a fight with the two of them. He had discovered something more interesting.

He had noticed it while reading in the Restricted Section: a young wizard had broken the rules by wandering around at night and entering the Restricted Section. And the boy had used a very rare item—an Invisibility Cloak.

Such things were hardly common among Hogwarts students, and he had seen ordinary Invisibility Cloaks before. This one was vastly different.

If the faint footsteps hadn't revealed the boy's location, he might not even have noticed someone walking right in front of him beneath an Invisibility Cloak.

That meant it was a magical item of considerable quality. If he'd had something like that when he was in school, Snape and Filch wouldn't have caught so much as a glimpse of his hair.

He had just noticed the boy hide in an abandoned classroom not far from where they had been talking, so he planned to go back and take a look once Snape and Filch had left. Still, Sagreles guessed the intruder was a young wizard, because professors could enter the Restricted Section freely and had no need to wear an Invisibility Cloak.

The light from Snape and Filch gradually disappeared, and Sagreles quietly returned to the door.

He cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, then entered the classroom.

It was Harry Potter. He was standing before a huge mirror, his expression complicated.

Sagreles looked at the inscription at the top of the mirror and discovered that it was the Mirror of Erised, also known as the Mirror of Desire.

Those who stood before it could see what they desired most in the mirror, and countless people had become obsessed because of that.

Sagreles pursed his lips. This has to be another one of Dumbledore's schemes. Otherwise, how could such a magical object be left here so casually? The door wasn't even locked. Could it be any more obvious?

Thinking this, he looked around, but found no one else present. Shaking his head, he concluded that Dumbledore probably wanted to give Harry a test and temper the boy.

So Sagreles stopped paying attention to the young wizard before the mirror and left the "trap" Dumbledore had so carefully woven.