Its eyes were yellow, with vertical pupils, like two lit gas lamps—kerosene lamps with glass shades. That gaze reflected off the mirror and struck Hermione's eyes.
The gaze was too fast. Before her mind could even process I've been hit, her fingers had already stopped obeying her. In that instant, her body felt as though it had been gripped by an invisible, enormous, icy hand.
It was not pain, nor numbness, but something more fundamental, as if something inside her body had pressed a "pause" button. The mirror slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor, face up, flashing once in the torchlight.
She felt her heartbeat stop in that instant. It had not slowed—it had stopped. As though someone had pressed pause, her heart no longer beat, her blood no longer flowed, and her lungs no longer breathed.
Her fingers released the mirror, and it slipped from between them, falling face up onto the floor and reflecting the torchlight on the ceiling. The light flickered once across the mirror, then went out.
Her skin began to harden from her fingertips, as though something were pushing outward from within, stretching it taut until it lost all elasticity, until it became as hard as stone. The stiffness traveled upward from her fingertips to her palm, wrist, arm, shoulder, and chest. She could no longer feel her heartbeat.
Hermione drew in a breath with all her strength, but it did nothing. She could no longer feel her lungs. Her mouth hung open as she tried to scream, but no sound came out. Her eyes were open, and she wanted to close them, but could not. Her skin hardened from her fingers, hard as stone, as cement, as concrete poured into a mold—not yet dry, but already set.
Her hand slipped from