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The Glass Weeps [Harry Potter]
Title: The Glass Weeps
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: From the point of view of a foe-glass.
Characters: None
Rating/Warnings: G
AN: Someone beta'd this for me, but now I can't for the life of me recall who! Please speak up and remind me, please! For hh_sugarquill Ficlet Challenge #31.
Word Count: 419
The Glass Weeps
To the flesh-and-blood creatures that gaze into its depths, the foe-glass has a simple purpose, even if a complexity of magic makes it so. A man or a woman peers in and sees their enemies, sometimes shadowy and distant, and sometimes near and as clear as reflections would be in a true mirror. Such simple creatures, humans, to think that they are seeing enemies, to believe that this mirror is not capable of showing a true reflection. That was, after all, why it has been given the curiously clever name 'foe-glass', a word-play on what the mirrors pretend to be but aren't. Mirrors show your reflection, and in this glass, people see something... else.
But they see something else only because they do not want to see their reflections. In those depths stalk reflections more real than the flesh-clothed entity a so-called 'true-mirror' can display.
The few true foe-glasses of this world, like the most carefully-crafted wands, learn not only from their makers, but also from their owners. Through history, they learn their owners: learn the ways, habits, and secret thoughts of their owners. Thoughts of hatred and fear that a man hides from his kin and household, from his kingdom, he easily releases to the foe-glass. He sees it as his only faithful ally. He cannot understand that it is his greatest enemy, though it will not betray him. Always, the foe-glass speaks truth.
As the mirrors disperse and travel from hand to hand, hall to hall through thousands of years of wizarding history, they are placed sometimes prominently, sometimes covertly. Always, they see much hatred, much strife. Always, they show shady images in their silvered depths
These are not images of its owner's enemies, however. It shows its owner his or her secret brethren; those flesh-and-blood creatures that the owner both despises most and is most like. The other side of their equation. The balancing act. The parts of themselves they refused to see.
And yet, because they refuse to see these parts of themselves, they can never see themselves in those muddied reflections, either. The First Maker's purpose -- that of bringing peace through the realization that we are all, in some sense, the same -- has been twisted. The foe-glass is taken as some trinket to aid in warfare. Its purpose is perverted.
And if, one day, the mirror's thick glass-over-silver begins to sag under its own weight, recall that it has seen many things and known the most unsavoury aspects of all people. The glass weeps, and with good cause.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: From the point of view of a foe-glass.
Characters: None
Rating/Warnings: G
AN: Someone beta'd this for me, but now I can't for the life of me recall who! Please speak up and remind me, please! For hh_sugarquill Ficlet Challenge #31.
Word Count: 419
The Glass Weeps
To the flesh-and-blood creatures that gaze into its depths, the foe-glass has a simple purpose, even if a complexity of magic makes it so. A man or a woman peers in and sees their enemies, sometimes shadowy and distant, and sometimes near and as clear as reflections would be in a true mirror. Such simple creatures, humans, to think that they are seeing enemies, to believe that this mirror is not capable of showing a true reflection. That was, after all, why it has been given the curiously clever name 'foe-glass', a word-play on what the mirrors pretend to be but aren't. Mirrors show your reflection, and in this glass, people see something... else.
But they see something else only because they do not want to see their reflections. In those depths stalk reflections more real than the flesh-clothed entity a so-called 'true-mirror' can display.
The few true foe-glasses of this world, like the most carefully-crafted wands, learn not only from their makers, but also from their owners. Through history, they learn their owners: learn the ways, habits, and secret thoughts of their owners. Thoughts of hatred and fear that a man hides from his kin and household, from his kingdom, he easily releases to the foe-glass. He sees it as his only faithful ally. He cannot understand that it is his greatest enemy, though it will not betray him. Always, the foe-glass speaks truth.
As the mirrors disperse and travel from hand to hand, hall to hall through thousands of years of wizarding history, they are placed sometimes prominently, sometimes covertly. Always, they see much hatred, much strife. Always, they show shady images in their silvered depths
These are not images of its owner's enemies, however. It shows its owner his or her secret brethren; those flesh-and-blood creatures that the owner both despises most and is most like. The other side of their equation. The balancing act. The parts of themselves they refused to see.
And yet, because they refuse to see these parts of themselves, they can never see themselves in those muddied reflections, either. The First Maker's purpose -- that of bringing peace through the realization that we are all, in some sense, the same -- has been twisted. The foe-glass is taken as some trinket to aid in warfare. Its purpose is perverted.
And if, one day, the mirror's thick glass-over-silver begins to sag under its own weight, recall that it has seen many things and known the most unsavoury aspects of all people. The glass weeps, and with good cause.