Later that evening back in the safety of his own kitchen, Harry sat considering the new information he'd received from Mr. Weasley. For the first time in months (he'd made feeble attempts to quit in the past) Harry didn't reach for the bottle of Firewhisky sitting inches to his left atop his small, circular dining table. Harry wanted a clear mind for the internal conversation he was about to have. Surely they would welcome him back into the folds of the ministry now? But it had been so long... would he still be able to do the job? How would he react if or when he came face to face with a group of Death Eaters? He knew he'd have to keep his cool this time. Any foolishness or knee-jerk reactions on his part could blow the whole investigation. But... the lure of being useful once more, of being able to bring justice to people responsible for torturing, maiming, or even killing people he knew or even any witch or wizard (or Muggle or magical creature, for that matter) was greater than his fear of proving to be inept.
Harry stood suddenly and made his way into his bedroom. Stooping down in front of his bed, Harry lifted the lid on an old wooden trunk that he had once used to transport his robes, books, and other school supplies with him to Hogwarts. Now it simply held mementos from his past and other miscellaneous items that he'd never seemed to have found a place for within his flat. Digging clear to the bottom past scraps of parchment, old robes, an ancient Sneakoscope and various items from Fred and George's joke shop, Harry's hand landed upon what he'd been searching for at last. Harry pulled to the surface a broken sliver of mirror. It had once belonged to an intact pocket mirror that his godfather Sirius had given him. A two way mirror that allowed Harry to communicate and see whoever possessed this mirror's twin. Ironically, it had only been in death that Harry tried to use it to reach Sirius. Thus the broken state it was in; Harry had smashed it in a fit of grief-fueled anger after he was unable to contact his deceased father figure. He had seen someone in it before however. The bright blue eye he had spotted in it years before belonged not to Albus Dumbledore as Harry had suspected, but Albus' brother Aberforth. Funny how people always seemed to be dead before Harry thought to try to communicate with them through this bit of metal and glass.
Kneeling on his bedroom floor at the foot of the bed, Harry brought the mirror up to eye level once again for the first time in a near decade. He wasn't sure why he'd had the urge to gaze into its depths tonight, or what he expected to see there. He just knew that Sirius would've been the first person whose advice he would've sought. Perhaps just holding something that had once belonged to him made Harry feel closer than he did at any other time. Sirius' eye was not to be found looking back at Harry however. Nor even was the bright blue eye of either Dumbledore. Instead, all Harry saw was his own emerald green orb staring right back at himself. Harry gently brushed a finger over the surface of the mirror and in spite of himself muttered a single name, "Sirius." Nothing happened nor had Harry really expected it to. Frustrated, he made to replace the mirror back into his ancient trunk. A glimpse of something reflected there made him stop cold. Harry found himself shaking his head yet again in an attempt to clear his mind. Surely not....
Bringing the mirror back up to his eyes again, this time barely an inch from the tip of his nose, Harry saw that indeed there was something reflected there. Something decidedly not green. No, there was a brown eye gazing back at him, unblinking. But definitely, solidly there. Harry dropped the piece of mirror in shock, it landed on the rug with a soft thud. Mastering himself, Harry scooped it back up in his hand at once and looked into its depths again, trying to find that brown eye and make some sense as to who on earth it could possibly belong to. The trouble was, the eye was no longer there. But it had been, he knew it! Would anyone believe him? Hermione would. Ron would. They had always believed in him. But that had been before. Would they still unwaveringly trust his word now that he had proven to be at least a fraction of the nutter that nearly everyone had once accused him of being? He didn't know for sure, but he knew that he had to find out. Harry stood and stuffed the piece of mirror into a questionable looking old sock at the foot of his unmade bed. Wrapping the mirror up inside the sock, he stuffed the whole lumpy package into a pocket in his jeans. Grabbing a jacket off a post of the bed, Harry slipped it on as he walked out of the bedroom and towards his front door. Harry was going to visit his friends and they were going to listen to him and tell him he wasn't crazy and find a perfectly logical explanation for him seeing a brown eyeball in that damn mirror. In the back of his mind though Harry thought he already had an explanation. He still didn't know who the eye had belonged to, but he did think he understood what it meant. Arthur Weasley was right. The Death Eaters were back. And Harry was going to do whatever it took to stop them.
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