Chapter 1

Hermione let out a growl of frustration as she picked up a roll of parchment and began thrashing it over the ginger head beside her.

"Oi! Oi! Wha! Wha'd I do?!" Ron exclaimed, ducking out of the way and bringing his hands up over his head defensively.

"Ronald Weasley, you – are – absolutely – hopeless!" she ground out as she continued to whack him with the parchment.

Harry looked up at them with carefully concealed mirth in his eyes. He wasn't even sure what had brought this on, but at least at this moment, Hermione's wrath was directed solely at Ron, and not at him, so he could simply enjoy the amusement.

"And you!" Hermione said, suddenly twisting and pointing the now mostly crumpled parchment at Harry, the same way she would be pointing her finger, were her hand not full, "you let his – his – laziness bleed off onto you! I know you could do better, Harry, I've seen you're work when you actually find yourself interested in a subject, and it's just so frustrating to see you wasting your talent away and slacking off in your studies just because Ronald is a lazy bludger who never puts any value in his work, and you don't want to make him feel stupid by showing up your friend!"

"Oi!" Ron groused again as he ran his hand through his ginger mop, after the assault on it from Hermione.

"You constantly underachieve just because you don't want Ron's inferiority complex from all of his brothers, acting up, and it's just infuriating!" Hermione continued on, ignoring Ron beside her, who was getting progressively redder in the face.

Harry just gaped at her openly, unsure how to escape from this situation without making it worse.

"How the heck did all this even start?" Harry squawked finally.

"Ronald here doesn't think that history is important at all," she ground out and Ron just gave her the stink eye before rolling his eyes more dramatically.

"How is that different from any other study session? Or any session during the previous five years?" Harry asked, still bewildered by the intensity of this particular argument over their academic performance.

"The difference is that now we know..." she lowered her voice and looked around the deserted common room, "we know about the prophecy, and what it is that people expect you to do. Just think of how much more prepared you would be now if you'd actually been putting forth your best effort all this time?"

Harry scowled and turned his head, looking into the fire and trying not to get too angry or bitter. He'd thought about this himself more times than he would like, and it only led him to getting more angry every time. "Believe me, Hermione, I have thought about that. If Dumbledore had actually told me earlier, I could be a lot more prepared now than I am and maybe Sirius wouldn't be dead – maybe even Cedric. Who knows, but I can't go back and change things can I?"

"It's not just if Dumbledore had told you – although, I have to admit that I definitely agree with you there and I still don't know what he was thinking... I mean I can see the value in him wanting you to enjoy your childhood without the prophecy hanging over your head, but the simple reality is that you didn't enjoy it, and you always had the threat of Voldemort hanging over your head anyway, so why keep it hidden for so long? But I'm getting off track – the point is, even without knowing about the prophecy, you still could have been doing so much better in your classes all these years if you weren't lazing about with Ronald here," she turned her sharp gaze on Ron and ground out his name, "and if he'd just put a bit more effort into his own work, instead of always wanting to bum about like a lazy loafer!"

"Hey, now! You can't pin this on me!" Ron shouted defensively.

"Yeah, Hermione, you can't blame Ron. I mean, it's my fault I didn't put a lot of effort into my studies – no one elses," Harry said, hoping desperately to stop the obviously escalating fight.

Hermione looked for a moment as if she were drawing herself up for further argument before she suddenly deflated and sat back in the squashy couch, heavily. "I'm sorry," she sighed miserably. "I know you're right, I'm just so frustrated. I feel helpless. Like there's so much that needs to be done, and I'm just so afraid for you, Harry..."

Harry nodded his head solemnly. "Yeah," he whispered. "I know... me too."

"But that's why we're doing this, right?" Ron put in, motioning to the pile of books and parchment and Hermione's mass of notes. "You wanted to do all this extra study to try and be more prepared, yeah?"

Hermione sighed and gave a slight shrug.

It was the night of September second, in their sixth year at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry – the night after their first day of classes, and Hermione had gathered up as much study material as she could I an attempt to figure out what materials to review in an attempt to help her friend in the only way she knew how. With knowledge.

"I still don't see why you went off on me like that, though," Ron grumbled under his breath with a pout. "All I said was that I don't get why we should even bother reviewing History stuff. It's not like any of that is going to help Harry defeat You-Know-Who."

"That's just the thing, Ron! We don't know that! If we don't study out history, we only doom ourselves to repeating the mistakes of the past. We can also take lessons from people of the past who dealt with difficult situations as options we can try for ourselves," Hermione argued fervently.

"I really don't think that –" Ron hesitated and pulled up an old well-worn history book from beside him, under a pile of parchment and rolled his eyes at the page, "that some old mirror that lets you see different versions of yourself, that's been lost for five hundred years, is going to help Harry survive You-Know-Who."

"But we don't know that, do we, Ronald?" Hermione shot back in obvious annoyance. "And there's a lot more to history than old lost artifacts!"

Harry cocked an eyebrow at his two friends as they began bickering again and finally he just gave a resigned sigh and looked back down at the pile of notes that he'd been reading before Hermione's outburst. The notes in question were suddenly obscured as the history book that Ron had been holding was tossed over and fell in his lap, still open. Harry spared his friends a glance, cringing slightly as they continued to argue rather heatedly. He looked back down and made to move the book when the illustration on the page caught his eye.

It was a drawing of a full-length standing mirror with ornate gilded framing around the edges and writing in fuþark runes that Harry only recognized vaguely because the class was one of Hermione's favorites and she was always talking about it. Standing in front of the mirror was what Harry assumed to be a Hogwarts student because he appeared to be wearing a much older fashion of school robes. On the chest of the robes and visible on both the boy as he stood in front of the mirror as well as his reflection, was his house crest. However they didn't match. On the student standing in front of the mirror, it was obviously a Gryffindor crest, while in the reflection, it was Slytherin.

It was due to this one such detail that Harry found himself looking over to the opposite page and reading the description.

The Mirror of Alternate Paths was the creation of Eoessa Sakndenberg who was Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1487 until shortly before her death in 1509. Headmistress Sakndenberg was the first headmistress or headmaster of Hogwarts to make any serious attempts at doing away with the Four House system at the school. While her efforts were very unpopular and she did eventually cease her attempts, she persisted until her death that the House system at the school caused more harm than good.

Before becoming Headmistress, Sakndenberg was Head of Ravenclaw House for twelve years, and the Ancient Runic Magic and Languages Professor. She wrote several impassioned missives on the bitter division between the houses, the rivalry, and how the stereotypes associated with each house created unrealistic expectations for the students, from their family, their fellow classmates, and the students themselves who try over-hard to fit into a pre-designated mold, rather than be themselves or fulfill their natural potential.

The Mirror is said to have had the power to show a student who they would have been, had they been sorted into a different house. In Sakndenberg's writings, she stated that in numerous instances of it's use, the person who looked into the mirror saw a drastically different person looking back at them. A person who had had a life, so entirely different to the one they had lived that their reflection was nearly unrecognizable in personality. All of this, because of the decision of an enchanted hat at the age of eleven.

She said it was too great a power and influence for the school to wield on a child.

A few historians who have researched what remains of her notes on the mirror's creation, suggest that it had other abilities besides simply showing the person what they could have been, if sorted differently. It is unclear exactly what these features are, however, or what they could have done. Researchers suggest that it was some sort of information sharing, that showed the viewer what sort of life their alternate self had lived and this is how they were able to tell that their other self had lived such a different life. Otherwise, it seems unlikely that people could have claimed to know that their other self was so drastically different, simply by looking at a reflection.

It is unknown what happened to the Mirror of Paths. The last recorded sighting and use of the mirror was in 1842 by Headmaster Emeril Everard. He claimed the Mirror was still in the school at that time, but did not say where it was hidden. He claimed that he had come across it because the protections that had been in place to keep it hidden had failed over the ages. He also stated that he considered the mirror vaguely dangerous because of what it could show a person about themselves. At the same time he also stated that it could be a powerful tool and was too important a historical artifact to simply destroy either.

He said that he hid the mirror behind a powerful array of charms that would prevent it from being found by the wrong person with the wrong intentions, and impossible to be found by someone who was not looking for it.

Since that time, many people have attempted to locate the Mirror, but none have succeeded, or at least, none of them had succeeded and written about it.

Harry blinked at the page, looked back at the illustration one last time, then shrugged and closed the book.

It was an interesting enough story, he supposed, but honestly, he thought that Ron was rather right in this case – he couldn't imagine any way in which knowing about this mirror would help him defeat Voldemort.

– –

Friday of that week, Harry got a note from Dumbledore asking him to come up to his office that evening. Dumbledore had told Harry about giving him special 'lessons' this year, and so he found himself going up to the Headmaster's office with a sense of excitement and nerves.

After giving the password and climbing up the moving spiral staircase to Dumbledore's office, Harry knocked and was called inside. Harry quickly learned that Dumbledore had no intention at all of using these 'lessons' to teach Harry advanced dueling, like he had hoped, but instead, they were going to be reviewing information about Voldemort.

Harry was slightly disgruntled by this, but tried to hide it and remain polite to his Headmaster. Just as Dumbledore was preparing the Pensieve for the viewing of the first memory, one of the little silver instruments on his desk began to spin rather quickly and emitting strange little puffs of red smoke.

Harry blinked at it in confusion and glanced over at Dumbledore in time to see him frowning rather deeply.

"I apologize, Harry, but I'm afriad this is something that requires my immediate attention. I shouldn't be gone long, can you wait for me?" Dumbledore asked as he began to stand and make his way over towards his large Floo.

"Er, sure, Sir," Harry said with a quick nod.

Dumbledore nodded in thanks as he tossed in a handful of floo powder into the hearth and called in an address Harry didn't quite hear, and quickly disappeared inside.

Harry heaved a sigh before sinking back into his seat, wondering how long exactly this would take. Five minutes later and Harry was exceedingly bored. He looked around the office aimlessly, wondering what all that various trinkets did before his eyes began to travel over the walls filled with portraits of former headmaster's.

Harry's eyes fell upon the portrait of 'Emeril Everard'. He remembered the portrait more specifically because of the incident last Christmas when Mr. Weasley had been attacked by Nagini in the Department of Mysteries. Dumbledore had asked this portrait to go check on Mr. Weasley, since he apparently had another portrait in the Ministry of Magic. But there was something else that was nagging at the back of his mind about that name.

"Oh! That's right! You're the one that hid the Mirror of Paths!" Harry exclaimed as it finally came to him.

The old man in the portrait opened his eyes instantly and blinked at Harry in surprise.

"What's what?" the man said, looking at Harry curiously.

"Sorry, sir, I was just trying to think of where I'd heard your name before. I read this bit earlier this week about a Mirror that could show a person what they would have been like if they'd been sorted into another house, and – it was you, that hid it – right?"

"Ah... yes, you are quite right," the man in the portrait said sagely, nodding his head. "You know... as I recall – and I do apologize for intruding upon what I know was a private conversation, but there really isn't much a portrait can do but listen – but I recall you once telling Professor Dumbledore that the sorting hat had once tried to put you in Slytherin house, isn't that right?"

Harry blanched, disoriented by the painting's knowledge and that it had actually remembered that detail.

"Er... yeah, that's right," Harry mumbled.

Everard hummed and nodded his head slowly. "It is a very powerful artifact – the Mirror, I mean."

"Did you use it, sir?"

"Oh yes, I did," Everard said with a chuckle followed a moment later by a sigh. "It's a temptation that no Ravenclaw could possibly have passed by. An opportunity for another you's lifetime of knowledge..." he said this last bit wistfully.

"Lifetime of knowledge?" Harry echoed in confusion. "What do you mean? I thought it just showed you what you'd be like if you'd been sorted into a different house."

"Oh, it does quite a bit more than that. We all walk a path in life, and the path we walk determines what we learn; the knowledge we accumulate along the way, and the lessons we learn from our experiences and our trials. The person you see on the other side of that mirror is a you that followed a different path, and yet that person is still you. The mirror can give you the opportunity to assimilate that other you's life-time of knowledge. The true question is whether or not it's worth the price."

"What price?" Harry asked in an almost breathless voice.

"That depends on you."

"Huh?"

The portrait chuckled and shook his head, leaving Harry to scowl at him before turning his gaze away and thinking over what the man had said.

If Harry found this mirror, he would be able to assimilate the knowledge of another version of himself. Hermione's rant earlier that week had touched a nerve – one that Harry himself had honestly brooded over quite a bit over the last summer. If he had taken his studies more seriously over the previous five years, what sort of difference could it make in the task he had to do now? He had decided it was stupid worrying about it now since there wasn't anything he could do to change the past, but with this mirror...

If he could assimilate the knowledge of a Ravenclaw Harry, he could very well suddenly know a tonne of magic that he currently didn't know mostly because he'd never cared to really bother with any extra curricular studies. Or really any studies at all. He'd always known that Hermione would be there for him when he needed her, and she knew so much... But that wouldn't necessarily be the same for Harry that had been sorted into another house.

"Sir?" Harry asked, turning his attention back to the portrait.

"Yes, Mr. Potter?" Everard asked.

"Uhm... I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me where to find the Mirror, would you?"

The old man in the portrait eyed him shrewdly for several long moments and Harry began to fidget under the penetrating gaze. Harry was just about to tell the man to forget it

after all, when Everard spoke again.

"Yes. Yes, I think I will. Considering what's on your shoulders... things about your life... I've overheard things in this office – many things. I'm bound to always aid the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and I cannot directly do anything against... but that does not mean that I can't do this. Yes, I think that this could very well be quite a good idea. Go to the forth floor, down the Serpentine Corridor to the statue of Marimore the Peasant across from that awful ugly pig gargoyle. Do you know the one?"

Harry frowned in thought for a moment, trying to picture where the man was describing. Finally, getting the picture in his mind, he nodded his head. "Yeah, I know where that is."

"The statue of Marimore the Peasant is holding a small hand mirror. Stand before the statue and say 'I am in search of Alternate Paths'. That should do it."

Harry blinked before nodding his head with a bit more enthusiasm. "Wow, thanks! I'll go check it out later."

The man in the portrait gave Harry a small smirk and another curt nod of his head before settling back in his chair and closing his eyes to reassume the illusion of sleep that all of the other paintings still maintained around them.

Harry rather doubted that any of them were actually asleep.

Several more minutes passed before the floo once again activated and Dumbledore reappeared in the office. He looked a bit unsettled, but quickly composed himself and resumed the meeting with Harry.

They ended up watching a memory from Bob Ogden as he made a trip to a village called Little Hangleton where he visited the Gaunts, a wizarding family that lived in a hovel, spoke parseltongue, and looked and acted barking mad. Dumbledore explained the circumstances of Tom Riddle's birth – namely, how Marope Gaunt had desperately wanted to escape from her Father and Brother, and had used a love potion to bewitch the handsome muggle man who lived up the road from her family shack.

Harry left Dumbledore's office not entirely sure how to feel about what he'd witnessed. He felt horrible for Merope Gaunt, and while he definitely didn't approve of her using a love potion against Tom Riddle Sr., the fact that she had given the man the antidote in hopes that he truly might love her, only to have her heart broken and find herself abandoned and penniless, was quite distressing.

He was so preoccupied with it, that he almost forgot all about the mirror that Headmaster Everard's portrait had told him how to find.

Almost.

At the last minute, he made his way down to the fourth floor and found the statue of Marimore and spoke the passphrase. The statue that had been motionless stone before bent her head up and looked at Harry with grey lifeless eyes. She inclined her head in his direction before twisting to look at the stone wall behind her. She waved her hand, still holding the small hand mirror, at the wall behind her and it suddenly shifted with a great heavy shuddering of stone several inches back, into the wall, before sliding to the side. A moment later and Harry was greeted with a door where there had been nothing but a flat wall before.

Hesitantly, he stepped forward, pushed the door open and entered what he discovered to be a small room, barely bigger than a large walk-in pantry. In the back of the room, against the wall, was the same mirror that he had seen in the illustration in the book.

Harry jumped as the door he'd just stepped through suddenly closed behind him. Several wall-mounted torches suddenly lit themselves and Harry had to wait a moment for his eyes to adjust to the slightly dimmer lighting.

He reached back and tried the door knob, relieved to find that it opened without any protest. He closed the door again and turned back to look at the mirror. He hesitated for a moment before solidifying his resolve and stepping forward to stand directly in front of the mirror.

At first he saw nothing reflected in it's surface but swirling mist, and frowned. He wondered if he had to do something special to activate it, or to chose which house it showed you having been sorted into. He looked at the runes carved into the gilded frame and grumbled to himself, knowing that Hermione would probably be able to read them.

Suddenly a shiver shot down his spine and he gasped in surprise. Nothing else seemed to happen for a moment, but then the mist in the mirror began to swirl faster and then clear. A figure began to appear in the distance, growing larger and clearer as it seemed to be walking towards the mirror. A moment later and Harry found himself standing face-to-face with himself, looking rather bewildered and wearing robes and a tie trimmed with silver and green.

The Slytherin Harry was frowning rather deeply and giving him an obviously suspicious look. "What is this?" he asked sharply. "Who are you?"

"W-who am I –?" Harry sputtered, thrown off by the question.

"Greetings boys, and welcome to the Mirror of Alternate Paths," a woman's voice suddenly echoed through the room, sounding more like a cavern than a small cupboard.

"Mirror of what!?" Slytherin-Harry asked indignantly. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"I am an impression of Eoessa Sakndenberg. A bit of her knowledge that she imbibed in this object when she created it."

"Sakndenberg? Do you mean the one that was a Headmistress of Hogwarts?" Slytherin-Harry asked, cocking a single eyebrow.

Harry blinked at his reflection, surprised that this other him could possibly recognize the name of one of many obscure Hogwarts Headmistresses or Headmasters.

"Yes. I, or rather, she, was once Headmistress of this school. I created this mirror for several purposes, although I will admit that I feel it's greatest value is in the exchange of knowledge."

"And what exactly does that mean?" Slytherin-Harry asked.

"You are two different versions of the same boy. A boy who's path diverged the day a tattered old hat was placed upon your head and called out which house was to become your new home and thus, drastically altering the path you would take for the rest of your life. One of you is a Harry Potter who was sorted into Slytherin House, and the other is a Harry Potter that was sorted into the House of Gryffindor."

"Gryffindor?!" the Slytherin-Harry guffawed.

"Why Slytherin? I was hoping I could do this with a Ravenclaw version of me," Harry complained.

"Did you do this?" Slytherin-Harry asked, accusingly at his Gryffindor-Reflection.

"Only one of you have to visit the Mirror to activate it and call the other. The Harry garbed in Gold and Red called you here," the voice of Sakndenberg spoke calmly.

"Why?" Slytherin-Harry asked, pinning Harry with a sharp gaze.

"I was told that you could use this mirror to gain the knowledge that you would have gained if you'd been sorted into another house. That's why... well, that's why I was hoping for Ravenclaw. I figured that maybe I would have been more... studious, or something, if there was a version of me in Ravenclaw, and if I gained all of his knowledge, it would help me the most."

The Slytherin-Harry cocked a single eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

"You do not get to chose who you meet in the mirror," Sakndenberg's voice said calmly, "merely, you will find the house that you were most likely to have been sorted into, had you not been sorted where you were. The hat wanted Slytherin for you. It was you who begged it to sort you anywhere else."

"You begged the hat not to sort you into Slytherin?" the Slytherin-Harry exclaimed incredulously.

"Of course!" Harry said back, indignantly. "Even when I was only eleven, I knew enough to know I didn't want to be anywhere near Draco Malfoy, or to end up sorted into the same house that Voldemort came from."

The Slytherin-Harry only cocked a single eyebrow, and the corner of his lips seemed to twitch with something – maybe amusement? Harry wasn't quite sure. Then he turned his gaze back to their surroundings, and, Harry supposed, the mirror itself. "So what's the deal with this sharing knowledge thing?" he asked.

"You have each lived drastically different lives, and thusly, learned drastically different lessons." Sakndenberg's voice replied. "The accumulated knowledge you have each gained since the age of eleven will be copied into each other's minds. You will each gain the knowledge of your counterpart, as well as impressions of his memories. That is – should you both agree to do it."

"Both agree?" Harry asked, in confusion. "Why do we both have to agree? He isn't even real!"

"I damn well am real!" Slytherin-Harry said indignantly. "From where I'm standing, you seem to be the imaginary one.

"What!?"

"You are both as real as the other,"Sakndenberg said. "You both exist, but in worlds parallel to each other. The two worlds in question are chosen from the divergence moment when your sorting occurred."

"You're referring to the Many-World interpretation in Quantum Physics," Slytherin Harry said, almost excitedly. "Before the theory was made, reality had always been viewed as a single unfolding history. Many-worlds, however, views reality as a many-branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realized. So from the moment when the sorting occurred, four different universes would have branched off, each one having a version of me sorted into one of the four houses."

"Whut?" Harry blanched.

"Oh Merlin, forget it," Slytherin-Harry said with a sneer and a disdainful look in Harry's direction. "I forget I'm talking with a Gryffindor."

"Hey!"

"Honestly, I don't see much benefit to me with sharing my knowledge with him," Slytherin-Harry said, with a jerk of his chin in Harry's direction. "I rather doubt he knows anything of value to me."

"Hey, I know things!" Harry snapped back indignantly.

"Oh really? Like what?"

"Well. I er..." Harry hesitated, searching desperately in his mind for something worthwhile. "I can cast a patronus! And most of last year, I ran a Defense club and taught a bunch of other students here how to duel."

His Slytherin counterpart hesitated for a moment and looked thoughtful. His expression took on a calculating sort of look after a while before he pinned Harry once again with those sharp eyes.

"Do you know about the prophecy?" he asked so suddenly that Harry almost blanched.

"The Prophecy?! Er – yeah, I know about it."

"The whole thing?" Slytherin-Harry asked, suddenly more interested.

"Yeah," Harry said, warily.

Slytherin-Harry's nodded slowly and looked suddenly more pensive before finally heaving a sigh and shrugging. "Yeah, I suppose I might be willing to do this. You might know something useful. I don't expect there to be much, mind you, but there might be something worth the exchange. That is... unless there's some sort of catch."

"Catch?" Harry asked before remembering what Headmaster Everard's portrait had said about a price. "Yeah, what is the price, anyway?" Harry asked, directing his attention to the voice, and the mirror, rather than his Slytherin counterpart.

"The price is only the knowledge, itself," Sakndenberg's voice said back.

Harry frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Sometimes accepting knowledge can be quite painful," the Slytherin-Harry said quietly. "Quite... costly. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes," Sakndenberg said calmly.

Harry wasn't quite sure if he really understood what that was all about, honestly.

"If I gain all of his knowledge, it isn't going to make me like him, is it?" Harry asked warily.

"I'd like to know the answer to that one, myself," the Slytherin Harry said, giving Harry an obviously disdainful look. Harry scowled back at him.

"Who we are is formed by our memories of our experiences. Your memories will still be your own, and you will still be the product of those memories. However, you will also have access to select necessary memories of your counterpart."

"Necessary memories?" the Slytherin-Harry asked.

"Some knowledge is not useful at all without context," she replied back simply.

Slytherin-Harry nodded. "I suppose that's true. But I won't mistake any of his memories for mine?"

"That should not be a problem."

Slytherin-Harry turned his gaze back on Harry, seeming to size him up. "Well, do you still want to do this?" he asked shortly, a moment later.

Harry flinched and then scowled at the other boy. "How do I know that anything you know would even be worthwhile to me?" Harry said back, feeling rather annoyed by this other version of himself.

The Slytherin scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I can guarantee that I know a great many things that you wouldn't know."

"Yeah, probably a bunch of Dark Arts," Harry muttered.

"You can't honestly expect to fight against, or defend yourself against something, that you don't know the first thing about, do you?" the Slytherin shot back.

Harry grudgingly admitted in his own mind that he just might have had that same thought once or twice, but wasn't about to admit it out loud right now.

"Besides I know a lot more than just some Dark Arts. What electives did you take starting in third year?"

"Oh, uhm, Care of Magical Creatures and Divination."

The Slytherin made a small scoffing noise again and rolled his eyes. "That's it? Just like a Gryffindor. Taking the soft choices for an easy O."

"Well, what'd you take, then?!" Harry snapped.

"Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy, and I took Magical Creatures for third and fourth years, although I dropped it in fifth since it was obviously a waste of time. I've also continued on with Astronomy, and I've been maintaining some muggle studies the last few years."

"You're taking Muggle Studies?!" Harry asked incredulously. This was shocking for two reasons – one, he was muggle raised, so it really seemed just silly to take a class to understand them – and two, because he was a Slytherin and they seemed to despise muggles as a general rule.

The Slytherin rolled his eyes. "Not the class 'Muggle Studies' – I mean, I've been studying a few muggle subjects. Namely science and maths."

"Oh," Harry said, blinking in surprise. This really did catch him a bit off guard. It had never even occurred to him to try keeping up with a muggle education on subjects like those. "What made you start doing that?"

The Slytherin Harry gave him a disdainful sneer. "A mentor of mine pointed out the value of knowledge, no matter the source, and that without progress there is only stagnation."

Harry had to blink at this as well. Okay, maybe getting a copy of this gits knowledge would be even more beneficial that he'd originally anticipated.

Finally, Harry gave a final decisive nod of his head. "Yeah, okay. Let's do this."

"Yay," Slytherin-Harry said in a sarcastic drawl.

"There is no going back from this point on," Sakndenberg's voice rang clearly into the surrounding space. "Do you accept this fact before going forward?"

"Yes."

"Yes," each of the two Harry's said.

"Then press the palms of your hands on each side of the frame and touch your foreheads against the mirror," she instructed.

Harry hesitated for a moment, suddenly feeling the nerves build up in his gut and wondering if he might be making a huge mistake. He quickly shoved the thought aside. This was exactly what he'd been talking about just earlier that week. Gaining five-years worth of knowledge that he missed out on because he'd been lazy and apathetic. This was exactly what he needed.

Harry reached out and put his hands on either side of the mirror frame before leaning forward in sync with his green-and-silver clad counterpart. The two pressed their foreheads against the mirror at the same time. At first Harry didn't feel anything except for the cold surface of the mirror. But then there was a sudden white flash in his mind, temporarily blinding and disorienting him and sending him falling back several feet until he hit the floor and blacked out.

Harry woke up some time later – how long, exactly, he really had no idea. His head felt heavy and muddled and he had a monster of a migraine. He was completely disoriented for several moments as he tried to make sense of his surroundings and what had happened. The room was even dimmer than it had been before, as the wall torches were only barely burning now. He looked over to where the mirror had sat before and blanched as he found that it was gone. Harry stood up on wobbly legs, looking around and wondering if he might have somehow imagined the whole thing. But then his eyes caught sight of something on the floor. A small hand-mirror was laying there innocuously.

Harry hesitated for a moment, torn between what to do. Leave? Examine it? He wasn't sure. But then, just as suddenly, he was overcome with the urge to pick up the mirror and take it with him.

Unsure where the urge came from, and rather wary that the urge existed at all, Harry bent over, picked up the mirror and examined it. At first, he was afraid that he'd see the Slytherin-Harry in the reflection, but only his own image stared back at him. Nothing seemed particularly curious about the mirror, and he considered putting it back down and just leaving, but something inside him insisted that he keep it.

Heaving a sigh and wondering if he were making a huge mistake, Harry slipped the mirror into his rucksack and left the room.

– –

The first moment that Harry found himself realizing that something had, in fact occurred for sure, happened the next day when he was sitting in the common room with Ron and Hermione working on homework. Harry began to work on a reading for Transfiguration in preparation for an essay that had been assigned, when he realized that he'd read it before. Or, at least, he already knew the material. He had no memory of having actually read it before, but he definitely knew the material discussed in the chapter.

And he knew it quite well too.

He sat back for a moment, letting his mind run over the topics discussed in the chapter in greater and greater detail, and the further he thought about it, the more he realized he knew. Harry pulled out the bit of parchment that laid out the requirements of the assignment and knew, in that moment, that he could start writing the essay right then and there, with only minimal reference to the book.

This was child's stuff. Maybe McGonagall had given them an easy assignment since it was only the first week of school?

Shrugging, Harry pulled out a clean sheet of parchment and began laying out an outline of the major points he needed to cover, and various details he wanted to put into each section of the essay. He did a quick mental tally, and knew that the essay would end up a good foot longer than necessary if he included all of the details he'd put into his bullet points and didn't see much value in the extra time and effort on such an obviously toss-away paper at the start of term. He read over the outline again and began to trim it down, making mental notes of a few paragraph starts and how he'd structure his closing paragraph.

He'd just started writing out his introductory paragraph on a new piece of parchment when Hermione looked over his shoulder and exclaimed, "Harry, that's fantastic!"

Harry jumped, having been rather focused on his work and not really realizing she'd been so close. "Huh?" he said, rather ungracefully.

"I knew you could do it if you put your mind to it!" she beamed at him. "This is a really well laid out outline!"

Harry blinked in confusion and looked down at work. That was the moment when it clicked in his mind, like he'd been in a dark room and someone had suddenly turned on the light.

He'd never done anything like this before. His essays were always unstructured messes. He'd never honestly gotten the hang of the whole 'outlining' thing. He would always indignantly insist that he didn't really see the point, and his work always de-evolved into a mess, even when he bothered to try and outline it ahead of time.

"But, are you really sure you're ready to jump right into the paper, Harry?" Hermione continued on a moment later. "I mean, it looks like you know the material from the outline... did you read ahead?" she asked with hopeful surprise in her voice.

"I..." Harry's voice trailed off and his mind swirled with confusion. He hadn't read ahead... he was sure of that. But at the same time, he felt like he'd read this stuff at least a year ago. He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to think of when he might have read up on this subject before. He even felt like he'd discussed the subject with others before. Like... like... he'd helped someone? Someone... someone had asked him about it once, and he'd sat down with the books in the common room and explained it to her... But that couldn't be right. First off, no one would ever come to Harry in hopes of an explanation for Transfiguration. Defense, maybe, but not Transfiguration.

Maybe it was someone in the D.A.? But no... it was definitely in the common room. It was in that pair of squashy black leather chairs in front of the –

Harry's thoughts came to a sudden halt as his mind seized. There were no black leather chairs in the Gryffindor common room. And the person his mind was supplying as the one who had asked for his help was gradually growing clearer, and that person was not wearing red and gold. She was vaguely familiar, but Harry couldn't quite place her face. He'd seen her in the halls...

"Harry? Are you alright?" Hermione's concerned voice broke him out of his stupor and he blinked at her dumbly before nodding slowly and swallowing past the lump in his throat.

These were... these were his other self's memories – weren't they?

It had really happened. He'd really done it.

This was what he'd wanted, right? So why was he freaking out?

Harry shook his head, trying to clear his muddled mind and refocus. This was perfect, really. The knowledge had just come to him. The whole essay outline thing had happened like muscle memory. It felt like something he'd done a thousand times – so many times that he didn't even think before starting; he'd just done it. He hadn't even remembered any of that extra stuff about tutoring the Slytherin girl in the dungeon common room until he'd really gone fishing for the memories, and even they they were so vague they certainly couldn't be dangerous.

So why did he have such a powerful sense of foreboding?

– –

Things seemed mostly normal over the next few days. The most disconcerting thing was that he often didn't actually realize when he was using knowledge gained from his other self, instead of his own original knowledge. It was like there was no difference at all in his mind to identify what was what. It was all just there. He had somehow expected that he'd just know somehow, when he was accessing the things he'd magically learned from his counterpart, but he couldn't.

It made for some awkward situations with Ron and Hermione when Harry was suddenly very well informed on subjects that he would normally never be informed on.

Like runes.

He knew a lot about runes. Before getting the knowledge from the Mirror of Paths, Harry had known basically nothing about ancient runes. He knew it was a phonetic alphabet, and that the various runes also could have meanings, and that you could carve them into things and permanently enchant something... and that was where his knowledge ended.

Now he realized that there was a lot more to it than that. For starters, it wasn't just one alphabet. Out of the specifically Runic Alphabets, there was Elder Fuþark and it's subsidiaries used in the various Germanic, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon languages, like Middle English, Medieval Scandinavian, Proto-Norse, etc. But 'Ancient Runes' as a subject also covered several other archaic writing systems and languages, such as Greek, Etruscan, Gothic, Comptic, and Latin.

And Harry knew a lot of them. He found that he seemed to know a lot about the Gothic writing system that was dominant in the Greco-Roman culture around the Black Sea. But he wasn't sure why. Hell, he found he was practically fluent in it, which was just extremely bewildering.

But after Harry had spent twenty minutes giving Hermione an in-depth explanation and introduction over the Old Italic script, or the Etruscan Alphabet, that was the origin of both the Latin Alphabet and the Runic Alphabets – a subject that Hermione's Ancient Runes class was apparently only just about to start covering – Hermione just gaped at him and then quite suddenly and forcefully dragged him out of Gryffindor tower and to the Room of Requirement with Ron trailing behind them.

Once inside, she demanded to know what was going on and Harry heaved a heavy resigned sigh before explaining the whole thing to both of his friends.

When he'd finished describing his discovery and encounter with the Mirror of Paths, Hermione looked torn between horror and intrigue. Harry wondered just what sort of information Hermione could get if she got a copy of her Ravenclaw self's knowledge. He rather suspected she was secretly wondering the same thing.

And in Hermione's case, Harry was entirely sure that it would be a Ravenclaw Hermione. Anyone with half a brain could tell that Hermione probably belonged in Ravenclaw a lot more than she did in Gryffindor. She'd even been one of the few 'hatstalls' in their year, and while she had never admitted as much, Harry suspected she had spent those four and a half minutes under the sorting hat convincing it to put her in Gryffindor, instead of Ravenclaw.

As he expected, Hermione ended up insisting that Harry show her to where he'd found the Mirror of Paths hidden. He insisted that when he left the room, the Mirror had vanished, only to be replaced with a small hand mirror.

She examined the hand mirror, cast a few diagnostic spells, and promptly insisted he take her to where he'd seen the bigger one, anyway.

When they got there, Harry spoke the same pass phrase he'd spoken to the statue before, but this time, nothing happened.

Hermione stood before the statue and tried it as well, but the result was the same. They asked him if he was sure it was the right place – he was; and if he were sure that was what he'd said – he was sure.

In the end Hermione seemed slightly put-out and obviously frustrated. She settled with testing Harry's new found knowledge by dragging him all the way back to the Room of Requirement and spending the next hour randomly quizzing him on a wide variety of subjects.

When Harry had little to no trouble with about 90% of the subjects she quizzed him on, his two friends were left rather stunned and dumbfounded.

"Did I really not know any of this stuff before?" Harry had finally asked, frowning deeply, and scrunching up his forehead in confusion and mild disbelief. It really and truly felt like he'd known most of this stuff for ages. And so much of it was just so obvious too. Or... it certainly seemed so now. Had he really been that stupid before? He certainly hadn't thought his slacking in his classes would have made that big of a difference, but then he supposed his Slytherin-counterpart might have been quite the industrious bookworm.

"Really, Harry. You definitely didn't know any of this stuff before," Hermione said, quite seriously.

Ron nodded his head rather seriously as well. He'd been quite wide-eyed and stunned through the whole quizzing session, and still looked entirely shell-shocked. Hermione, Harry was beginning to suspect, was a bit put out, but she was hiding it well. He rather suspected she felt like he'd cheated his way into the information, but at the same time, she also agreed with the valid need for the new stores of knowledge, all extenuating circumstances considered.

Harry ended up taking the small hand-mirror and wrapping it up in his invisibility cloak and stuffing it into the bottom of his trunk for safe-keeping.

As the second week of school progressed, it became obvious that his knew stores of knowledge would be useful in more ways than just essay writing. His class performance had improved by leaps and bounds. He had yet to encounter a topic or task in any class that he didn't feel already familiar with. The best he could assume was that his counterpart had been big on reading and practicing ahead.

The wand movements to 'new' spells came fluidly from his wrist with well practiced ease. He understood the way the magic was supposed to feel as it moved its way through his body and out from the tip of his wand. It was all just so simple and right. Harry had a hard time reminding himself that things hadn't always been this way. He hadn't always been a natural at magic. The only thing about magic that had ever really come 'naturally' to him before had been flying. But now, there were a lot of things that felt like that, and he had a difficult time believing that it hadn't been that way for ages.

Because it really felt like it had.

The first half of the week had been much the same as that first attempt at essay writing the previous Saturday; in that, it just sort of happened, and the knowledge seemed to have no origin that he could easily recall without considerable concentration. He had to really focus to come up with even the vaguest hint of where or when he might have learned the various bits of knowledge crammed in his head. However, as it drew closer to the one week mark of having encountered the Mirror of Paths, Harry's mind began to supply him with more and more supporting details whenever he found himself recalling a bit of information that didn't technically come from him.

But just like how he'd been unable to discern which bits of knowledge were new and which were legitimately his, he found himself constantly unaware that he was remembering things that he hadn't actually done.

After arguing with Hermione for five minutes about something he'd learned during a conversation he remembered having with Terry Boot in Charms the previous year, Harry was finally pulled up short by Hermione's frustrated exclamation, reminding Harry that he didn't have charms with Terry Boot! It was quite a jolt, because he'd been so sure that, that memory was his.

But it wasn't.

And that realization was horribly disconcerting.

The mirror had said that this wouldn't happen. Right? He distinctly remembered his Slytherin counterpart asking her if they'd be able to tell which memories were theirs and which technically came from the other. And she'd said... what had she said?

Harry frowned, trying to dredge up the memory more clearly. Knowing what he needed to do, Harry sat himself down on his bed in a comfortable position, closed his eyes and evened out his breathing. He felt himself enter into a mild trance and entered his mind palace. He came up short as he found a rather disorganized mess without any of the protections he remembered spending ages structuring and – oh... but wait, that wasn't him, was it?

Oh hey! He knew Occlumency! He knew Occlumency! Great Merlin, this was fantastic!

He had to put a halt to his excitement and hold himself back from the urge to start working his way through the frustratingly abysmal state of his mind palace. He had a goal in mind and he wanted to review that memory first. Then he could start the obviously arduous task of sorting through the mess that was his own mind. Perhaps if he cleaned this place up a bit, it would make it easier for him to instantly know when he was accessing one of his own memories, or one of the assimilated ones.

He quickly focused his thoughts on the memory of the night he found himself in front of the Mirror of Paths and called it to the forefront of his mind. The memory took 'physical' form in the shape of a sphere reminiscent of the prophecy spheres from the Department of Mysteries. He grabbed it from where it hovered, mid-air, and held it out in front of his face for a moment before 'closing' his eyes and pressing the orb to his forehead.

The next moment, he found himself inside his own memory in much the same way he would view someone else's memory with a pensieve.

He watched it play out, cataloging any important details. Finally it got to the point where the fateful question was asked.

"Necessary memories?" the Slytherin-Harry asked.

"Some knowledge is not useful at all without context," Sakndenberg replied back simply.

Slytherin-Harry nodded. "I suppose that's true. But I won't mistake any of his memories for mine?"

"That should not be a problem."

Harry literally hit himself in the face with his own palm. What a completely Slytherin way to dodge the question. She'd never actually answered the question at all. She hadn't said that they wouldn't mistake each other's memories, she had simply said it wouldn't be a problem if they did. Which was an entirely arbitrary observation.

He groaned out and let himself slip from the memory and back into the cluttered mess that was his utterly disorganized mind. Well, perhaps sorting through all of this junk and trying to separate out which memories were technically his would help him keep things straight. It was really the best he could hope for at this point.

– –