Chapter 5: Mirror of Temptation
The fire in the Room of Requirement’s grate crackled, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to twist with the unease in the air. It was Friday night, and the room had provided a parody of a study space: low amber light, deep armchairs, a table littered with untouched books. The only thing being studied was the large, oval mirror propped against a wall of vanishing cabinets.
It wasn’t a normal mirror.
“You’re mental,” Ron breathed, his face pale in the flickering light. He hadn’t moved from the doorway.
“I’m pragmatic,” Harry said, his voice low. He was slouched in an armchair, a bottle of firewhisky dangling from his fingers. His eyes weren’t on Ron. They were fixed on the mirror. “Come and look. Really look.”
In the glass, there was no reflection of the room. Instead, it showed yesterday’s library alcove in perfect, silent detail. There they were, frozen figures: Ron with his head in his hands, Harry leaning forward, Hermione poised with her quill. Then, the scene began to move on a seamless, whispering loop.
It played. Hermione’s cool challenge. The deliberate click of the robe clasp. The slow, torturous ascent of her fingers. One button. Two. Three.
The mirror showed it all in high definition, a relentless archive. The way the pale blue cotton of her blouse gaped. The exact shape of the lace beneath, how it cupped the firm, compact curves of her breasts, pushing them upward, defining a shadowed cleavage that was both modest and devastatingly explicit. The hitch in her breathing was visible. The defiant set of her jaw.
Over. And over. And over.
“You really gonna sit there tomorrow with Lavender,” Harry said, not turning his head, “letting her paw at you with those big, obvious tits she’s always shoving in your face, when you could have had that?”
Ron flinched as if struck. His feet carried him forward, dragging him toward the mirror. He watched, mesmerized, as the spectral Hermione in the glass re-fastened her robes, the promised glimpse vanishing, only to be relentlessly offered again seconds later.
“She didn’t… it wasn’t for me,” Ron muttered, his voice thick.
“Who was it for, then? Me?” Harry took a swig from the bottle, his laugh harsh. “I got a view. She got your complete, undivided, fucking agony. Look at your face.” Harry jabbed a finger at the mirror’s image, at the frozen, torment-stricken version of Ron staring at Hermione’s revealed skin. “You’re gutted. She knew you would be. That was the whole point.”
On loop, the silent Hermione looked up, her eyes in the memory meeting Harry’s, but in this room, her gaze seemed to bore into the present Ron’s soul.
“Lavender’s are just… there,” Harry pressed, his words deliberate, crude, and designed to sear. “All volume. No mystery. Hermione’s… fuck. They’re a argument. They’re perfect because they’re hers. They’re tight, Ron. High. That lace wasn’t hiding them, it was framing them. Telling you exactly where to put your hands. You think Lavender’s ever made you feel like that? Like you’ve been kneed in the bollocks just from seeing a bit of her blouse open?”
“Stop it,” Ron whispered. But he didn’t look away from the mirror. His own reflected anguish, playing opposite Hermione’s calculated revelation, was a brutal education.
“You think that’s all there is?” Harry leaned forward now, his green eyes intense in the firelight. “That was the teaser. That’s her being ‘pedagogical’. Imagine what she’d do if she was actually trying to keep you. If she let you touch them. Those perfect, infuriating little tits would fit right in your palms. You could feel her heart hammering against them. And she’d be looking you right in the eye, the whole time, knowing she’d won.”
The loop reached its peak again. The blouse gaped. The lace beckoned.
Ron made a raw, animal sound in his throat. He slammed his fist down on the table, making the bottle jump. “SHE’S NOT A PRIZE! You’re talking about her like… like…”
“Like what you’re thinking?” Harry finished quietly. He stood up and walked to the mirror, standing beside Ron so their reflections were superimposed over the memory. “You’re thinking about them right now. You’re comparing. And you know you’re losing.”
Ron finally tore his eyes from the glass, looking at Harry with a shattered expression. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because someone has to make you see,” Harry said, his voice dropping, all the earlier vulgarity replaced by a bleak honesty. “Before you make the worst mistake of your life. And I have to watch it happen. I watched her unbutton that blouse for you. I watched her use her own body as a bloody classroom demonstration to get through your thick skull. The least you can do is see it.”
He turned and grabbed the bottle. “The mirror vanishes at dawn. Stay or go. But if you walk out of here and go through with Lavender tomorrow, you don’t get to be confused anymore. You made a choice. You chose the easy, shiny thing over the real one.”
Harry left, the door clicking shut behind him with a note of finality.
Ron was alone with the whispering loop.
He sank into the armchair Harry had vacated, its warmth still lingering. The fire popped. In the mirror, Hermione’s fingers worked the third button. The fabric fell open. The compact, graceful swell of her breast, barely contained by intricate lace, filled the frame.
He didn’t see manipulation. He saw courage. A terrifying, glorious courage he couldn’t match. Lavender’s offers were loud and needy. This… this was a quiet, devastating gift he’d been too blind and too scared to accept.
He watched the loop a hundred more times. Each time, the moment of revelation hammered a truth deeper into him. The war outside was about hatred and survival. This, in this room, was a different kind of war. For a heart, for a future, fought with looks and unbuttoned blouses and the exquisite, perky promise of what was offered, and what he was about to throw away.
As the first grey light of Saturday began to threaten the windows the Room of Requirement provided, Ron Weasley was still there, his eyes red-rimmed, fixed on the mirror. The ghost of a choice, playing on an endless loop, until it wore a groove in his soul. The image of Hermione’s breasts, proud and defined under lace and cotton, was no longer just a memory.
It was a destination. And he was finally, painfully, mapping the route.