Originally Posted: Aug. 19th, 2006
Length/Rating: 161 words, PG, Gen
Pairing/Warnings: none
Summary: Written for Last Drabble Writer Standing (ldws), Round 1, Challenge #1: Mirror of Erised. Voting placed it in a tie for third and was a Mod’s Choice to boot! 🙂

“HARRY POTTER” and other related entities are trademark and copyright JK Rowling, her publisher Bloomsbury, and, to some extent, Warner Bros. All rights reserved. No copyright infringement is intended nor implied.

He’d never seen socks, not even that first time; stumbling upon the mirror in a room that hadn’t existed an hour before. Hogwarts did that on occasion, and the mirror was good at finding the people who needed to face letting go. McGonagall, Filch, Sirius, and countless others from a hundred walks of life had looked in the mirror and learned to walk away… but not Dumbledore.

Night after night, year after year, the same image drew him back. A boy, laughing and playing with friends, surrounded by a loving family and a world at peace. A should-have-been that wiped away all the horrors that had followed. If only he could turn back time, unwind the world and make things right. If he had just tried a little harder to undo what fate and chance had woven, he could have saved so many lives.

And when Harry asked what he saw, he said ‘socks’ because saying ‘Tom’ was still too hard…