33. Chapter 33

Much to Rey’s disgruntlement, she can’t go to Hogsmeade that Saturday because Jannah insists that her team practice on the weekends right up until the match with Ravenclaw. But it turns out to have been a blessing in disguise, because Finn and Rose get into some kind of argument while they’re there. They return to campus in separate carriages and they spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the next day hanging out with Rey while completely ignoring each other.

Rey has her hands full with her two best friends. She can’t even fathom how a Hogsmeade excursion could have gone so wrong and she’s far too awkward to ask, but it all becomes clear after Sunday lunch. She and Finn and Rose are sitting on a bench in the courtyard when a sense of approaching evil suddenly chills the air—and Mr. Pancakes comes waddling out from a bush. All twelve or so pounds of him, fluffy tail held high. He glares at the trio with malevolent yellow eyes, throwing in a hiss for good measure as he walks past them.

“Cats are so elegant, aren’t they, Rey?” Rose huffs. “They’re tidy, too, and they’re not in your face all the time.”

“Er,” Rey says.

“Rey, don’t you think that dogs are just terrific?” Finn sniffs. “Man’s best friend and all that. They’re loyal and uncomplicated, they just want to love you. Doesn’t that make ‘em heaps better than cats?”

Rey fidgets. “I don’t, um, really know—”

“Rey,” Rose interrupts, “kindly tell Finn that dogs are bloody stupid and you’ll need to clean up after them and walk them every day.”

“Rey,” Finn says before the person he’s addressing can even speak, “please tell Rose that she’s certainly not going to be the one to do the walking, in any case, I would never leave our dog alone with such a hater—”

It’s the age-old Evans-Tico quarrel over what kind of pet they should have once they’re living together. It’s been cropping up more and more frequently this school year now that they’re all so close to graduating.

Bollocks, Rey thinks, letting out the world’s loudest sigh.

A sigh that goes ignored by the two people on either side of her.

“Rey—” Rose lifts a haughty nose in the air like she’d been born to do it, and Rey is abruptly reminded that the other girl is a pureblood—“tell Finn that all I’m asking for is a clean household.”

“Oh, yeah?” Finn glowers. “Well, Rey, why don’t you just tell Rose that—”

Rey gets to her feet, exasperated. “I’m not an owl!” she snaps at Finn and Rose.

Then she storms off, leaving them to it, ignoring how they sputter at her to come back. They’ll make up soon, anyway, and she does not want to catch an eyeful of the inevitable reconciliatory snogging.

Although Rey is relieved that Finn and Rose’s argument hadn’t been anything serious, there is a part of her that is—well, sad about it. It is sort of the same feeling that she gets when she thinks about Seff and Tallie, who’d apparently gone to Hogsmeade together yesterday. Everyone around Rey has someone that they can conceivably build some kind of future with, while she is… letting her Defense Against the Dark Arts professor grope her in abandoned classrooms.

As a result, she’s in a somewhat unsettled mood when she sneaks out of Gryffindor Tower later that night.

The castle is cold, likely because it’s barely spring yet and after Quidditch practice Rey had showered and changed into a thin cotton shirt and her skimpiest pair of denim cutoffs. The bulk of her meager, ragtag assortment of clothes is in the wash, delayed this week because some house-elves under Artoo had apparently instigated a coup against Threepio, who’d been the school elves’ de facto leader.

Rey’s so eager to see Ben that she doesn’t pause to cast a warming charm on herself, but she is glad for the one making his office all nice and toasty when he opens the door in response to her knock. She slips off her invisibility cloak and hangs it up on the coat rack to the sound of the heavy wooden door creaking shut and the locks clicking into place.

She whirls around to face him, and he is just… staring at her.

Or, to be more precise, at her legs.

To be even more precise, at the considerable amount of leg that is revealed by the denim cutoffs that end halfway down her thighs.

Well, that’s fine. She’s staring, too. She rarely sees him in casual clothes and today he’s wearing a black sweater and dark jeans, as well as pristine white trainers that look expensive. Given how big his feet are, they look more like little boats than actual shoes, and there’s a mischievous whisper from one corner of her mind—You know what they say about men with big feet…

Well, Rey can attest to that being true, can’t she?

She makes an effort to wipe what she’s sure is an utterly horny expression off of her face. Then she gets a good look at Ben’s face and realizes that she needn’t have bothered, because his gaze is still roving up and down her legs. Studying her from the tips of her toes to the exposed halves of her thighs. She can’t help but preen a little at this kind of undivided attention—honestly, it’s not like he’s never seen her gams before, and she’s so flattered that she kind of wants to giggle from the headrush.

Eventually, Ben clears his throat. “The artifact is called the Mirror of Erised. It’s over there.” He gestures to the far end of his office without even looking at it.

“And my eyes are up here,” Rey says cheerfully.

He blinks. She turns away from him and over to where he’d gestured, a soft smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Shoved up against the wall in the very back of the room is the Mirror of Erised. It’s tall, with an ornate gold frame and clawed feet. The glass is somewhat dusty and it gleams in the torchlight like a pool of still black water.

From where Rey’s standing, it doesn’t seem to bear any reflection. “Is that its magical power? Not working?” she jokes as she walks over to it.

There is total silence from Ben behind her. She glances over her shoulder and he’s…

Hmm.

It’s definitely not the back of her head that he’s gawking at. That is for certain.

His gaze is trained much lower.

His eyes flicker up to meet hers only once he realizes that she’d stopped walking.

He’s tense at first. He looks like he’s going to open his mouth to start apologizing at any second. But then it must dawn on him that she’s not at all perturbed, and the taut set to his broad shoulders is gone. And that mouth of his curves into a vaguely self-deprecating smirk.

“Keep walking, Miss Niima.” Ben all but croons it. It’s sweeter than any love song.

Rey complies. And if perhaps her steps are a little bit more measured and there’s a bit more wiggling involved than usual, she doesn’t really think that she can be blamed. It is so very flattering, after all, and she’s had a long week, what with schoolwork and Quidditch practice. She can do whatever she likes, and so she lets her professor check out her bum to his heart’s content.

Her hips sway and there is a sharp intake of breath from somewhere behind her. It’s so quiet that it would have been inaudible if there had been any other sound in the office aside from the gentle crackling of the torches.

“Jesus.” Ben’s tone is soft and admiring. And really fond. “You should only wear shorts from now on, baby.”

Rey grins, unseen by him but she’s pretty sure that he can feel it. That he can feel how the air is suffused with gold from all the light that her heart is radiating.

Upon nearing the mirror, she notices that there are words engraved into the gilded arch atop the dark glass. Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. She has no idea what it means. It’s not Runic and it’s not in Latin. She points her wand at it from a careful distance—Ben might not have finished decursing yet—and she casts a nonverbal decryption spell. The letters rearrange themselves, glowing white-hot for a few brief moments before returning, lightless, to their original positions.

Rey turns the unscrambled message over in her mind.

I show not your face but your heart’s desire.

“What makes you think that it’s dangerous?” she asks Ben.

“Checking for curses is standard procedure when we don’t know the source or the nature of a magical object. The Mirror of Erised has only ever been described in wizarding lore, we don’t know how it came to be at Hogwarts. That’s why I waited until today to show you. I wanted to be as certain as possible that it’s safe for you to poke around.” He pauses for a beat. “Then again, while this mirror seems to have been created for fun, like a wide variety of other wizarding artifacts, there’s sometimes no telling whether the fun was ill-intentioned or not.”

“Say ‘fun’ again,” Rey teases, and he scoffs. She feels warm all over. He cares. He watches out for her. She doesn’t think that she’ll ever get used to it.

Still, it’s with some caution that she approaches the mirror and stands in front of it. There is no reflection of her surroundings in the glass, it’s just her, and—

Her eyes widen. Her breath catches in her throat.

But the Rey in the mirror doesn’t do the same.

Rey watches, hardly daring to believe it, as her mirror-self keeps on smiling, two figures gradually appearing on either side of her as if they are being spun out of air and shadow. A lanky man with curly auburn hair, a woman with hazel eyes.

Rey’s first instinct is look over her shoulder, to check for herself with all these stray pieces of tattered hope, but she successfully fights against it. There’s no way that her parents are here, in Hogwarts, in Ben’s office, right at this very moment.

And there’s no way that they look like this now, or have ever looked like this in her memory. Clean, healthy, undefeated by life. Her father’s in a nice coat instead of a threadbare shirt stained with sweat and old liquor. Her mother doesn’t have a hair out of place or a red flush to a sallow complexion. As Rey continues to stare into the glass, her father throws an arm over her other self’s shoulders and her mother ruffles her hair affectionately.

The Rey in the mirror talks to her parents in an animated conversation that the Rey in the real world cannot hear. The Rey in the mirror wrinkles her nose at something her father says. The Rey in the mirror hugs her mother. No one ever stops smiling. No one ever stops being happy.

I show your heart’s desire.

Unlike her counterpart in the glass, tears are streaming down Rey’s cheeks. She feels the warm liquid on her skin. She hears herself sniffling.

“Rey.” She doesn’t see Ben in the mirror but his hand drops onto her shoulder. She would know the weight of it anywhere in the world. “Why are you crying—what do you see—”

“My—my mum,” Rey whispers. “My dad. And they—they love me—we’re a family—” The words break off into a strangled sort of sob. In the mirror, both her parents kiss the top of her other self’s head.

“This was a bad idea.” Rey can hardly hear a word that Ben is saying. “I’m so sorry. It’s an intricate and unique enchantment and I just wanted to show it to you—I didn’t realize—”

He tries to turn her around to face him. Tries to get her to look away from the mirror. Tries to take her mum and dad away from her.

“No!” Rey screams, rooting her feet to the spot, struggling against the strong arms that hold her in a viselike grip. She furiously blinks away her tears because they impede her vision, she needs to drink in everything that the mirror is showing her, she’ll stay here forever, she will never stop looking at the life that she might have known—

“Rey,” Ben says again. “Sweetheart.” He crushes her to him, his anxious heartbeat pounding against her spine. He covers her temple and her wet cheek with kisses. He murmurs apologies and entreaties into her hair. “Come back to me,” he rasps as his lips graze the slope of her neck. “I’m sorry. Come back to me.”

To Rey’s shock, the image in the mirror shifts. Her parents vanish, leaving her other self alone in the darkness, and the Rey in the torchlit office almost cries out at the loss, but then—

—Ben is there.

With her.

In the glass as well as in the real world.

Her back is pressed against Ben’s chest and he has his arms around her waist and they are standing completely still, but their reflections are moving. The mirror Rey flings herself into the mirror Ben’s embrace and he scoops her up, lifting her off of her feet with how tightly he’s holding her to him.

“It changed,” Rey muses out loud.

“Mine did as well,” Ben confirms. He sounds just as surprised as she is. “It would appear that the enchantment is situational. It responds to the present circumstances of the person activating it.” His fingers drum absentmindedly against her hip while she watches his other self nuzzle at her other self’s cheek.

“And what do you see right now,” she asks him in as dazed a tone as though she’s been placed under a spell, “in the mirror of heart’s desire?”

“I see myself with you.” His voice is hoarse and soft and deep in her ear, and woven through with firelight. “I see myself comforting you, and making you smile, and taking all of your pain away. Because that’s what I want the most right now in this world. For you to smile again.”

The next wave of tears that threaten to spill from the corners of Rey’s eyes are not sadness. Far from it. She sniffs and leans back against Ben’s broad chest, her hands settling over the circle of his arms, her fingers burying into the thick wool of his sweater, tracing the defined muscles beneath.

Time passes. He cuddles her as their mirror selves cuddle each other, and bit by bit the weight of the past is lifted, its ache erased by the warmth and haze of the present. As Rey calms down, it dawns on her with a startling clarity that she doesn’t need her parents to care for her the way other people’s parents do. She might want for them to love her, but she doesn’t need them to. As long as she can love Ben, and Finn and Rose, and magic, she will probably be all right.

She is so much more than her past and the people who failed her. Everyone is so much more than what they start out as.

No sooner have these vague thoughts flickered through her mind like silvery raindrops when a whole host of various images illuminate the black glass. She and Ben are still embracing in the mirror, but now they’re surrounded by different scenes that appear and fade and rustle through the enchantment in wisps of smoke. She sees herself and Jannah lifting the Quidditch Cup in triumph while the stands blaze scarlet and gold for Gryffindor and Professor Dameron glowers in the background with the red mark of a broomstick handle across his face. Rey sees herself and Finn and Rose and the rest of their batchmates dressed in graduation robes, and everyone is smiling and crying and hugging. She sees herself older, and more assured in her movements, and taking down one dark wizard after another. She sees—not the life she longs for, but the life that she will have. She’s sure of it. She will make it happen.

It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, but your hopes—now those are worth working toward.

Then the other images all dissipate, and it’s just her and Ben’s reflections again. But what doesn’t vanish is the sheer exhilaration, the feeling of possibility. And as the mirror Rey pulls the mirror Ben in for a kiss, the real Rey is tempted—so, so tempted—to follow suit.

For some reason, though, she stays where she is. And watches.

And—

—no bloody way—

“This really is such a fascinating artifact,” Ben hums. He sounds genuinely enthused. And also a little bit like a Ravenclaw. “Unless I miss my guess, the spellwork is one of a kind, which means that there was a minimal foundation to build upon. Inventing a spell that can respond to the environment is complicated enough as it is—”

“Ben—”

“—but one that can respond to people’s thoughts? No, not even thoughts—”

“Ben—”

“—people’s desires, including the unconscious. Including the things that you might not even realize about yourself—”

“Yes, it’s brilliant,” Rey patiently tries to interrupt, “but—”

“Then, once you’ve figured out the mechanics, you have to get the magic to stick to the object. This mirror must be centuries old, though, I can’t think of a single spell pattern that will allow for an enchantment to persist within glass for that long. I wonder if they could have possibly used—”

“Oi, professor,” Rey says loudly, “unless I miss my guess, our mirror selves are about to shag.”

Ben falls silent. There is a long pause that would probably have been unbearable if Rey hadn’t been preoccupied by other matters.

Namely, by the vision of herself helping Ben pull his sweater over his head, breaking the kiss only for as long as it’s necessary to make him all topless. Mirror Rey’s shirt is already off, her partner had practically ripped it off of her while his real-world counterpart waxed poetic about magical theory.

Oh, Rey thinks, watching the mirror Ben’s eyes burn as he covers her other self’s bare skin with kisses while his large hands fiddle with the clasps of her bra. So this is what we look like.

“In what I’m seeing, we already started doing that a while ago,” Ben admits. “I wasn’t sure if it would be welcome, so I just kept talking to distract myself.”

Rey cranes her neck to peer at him. The tips of his ears are pink.

“It’s welcome,” she says quietly, her gaze darting back to the mirror.

Ben holds her tighter. He rests his chin on the top of her head. Her wandering fingers find his hands, idly tracing the curves of his knuckles.

“What do you see now?” he huskily inquires.

“You’re—you’re kissing my neck,” she murmurs. “And—” She blushes, echoing the pink stain on her mirror self’s cheeks. “And you’re playing with my nipples.”

Rey’s pulse spikes as Ben lowers his head, nuzzling into the crook where her neck meets her shoulder and then pressing a kiss to that spot. At the same time, his hands rise up to palm her breasts through her shirt.

“You like it when I do this, baby?” Each mumbled syllable sends the gentlest of shockwaves through her core.

“Yes,” she breathes, and that’s all that she can manage, overwhelmed as she is by the sensation of Ben’s lips and hands on her skin, by the yearning that she can see on her own face in the black glass.

“I like doing it, too,” Ben tells her. His right hand drifts lower, popping open the button of her cutoffs, tugging down the zipper. “You flush so prettily when I kiss your neck. When I pinch your little nipples.” His left hand does the latter and her legs feel like they’re going to give out. “You’re so responsive, Rey. So mine.”

She thinks that she can live on the dreams of the hoarseness of his voice.

In the mirror, he’s dotting her left breast with kisses, taking the peaked nipple into his lush mouth every once in a while as she clutches at the back of his head, eyes screwed shut. In the real world, his right hand is slipping into her undone cutoffs, into her knickers, fingers gliding along her entrance before he pushes one inside as her knees buckle and she arches against him.

Ben smirks against her neck to find her already wet and pliant. He’s always pleased whenever she remembers their agreement, and earlier tonight Rey had gotten off in the shower before coming to meet him. Now he is tracing the path that her own fingers had forged, quickly and expertly turning her into a panting mess. “Do you want to know what I’m seeing right now?” he asks her.

“Tell me,” she gasps out as he adds another finger, pumping two inside her, going so deep with his hand wedged into her cutoffs.

“You’re on your knees, wearing nothing. You’re sucking me off.” He languidly circles one finger on her clit, while the others that are in her cunt match their thrusting rhythm to the cadence of his words. “No surprises there. I’m always thinking about you sucking me off. You look so beautiful when you’re choking on my cock.”

Rey attempts to turn around, to do just that. To be perfect for him, to make all of his dreams come true. But Ben’s hand that had been at her chest suddenly drifts up to her shoulder, keeping her in place. He chuckles lightly.

“No, darling,” he whispers in her ear. “It’s your turn tonight.” Her heart thumps within her ribcage. “Bend over. Brace yourself against the mirror.”

There is still some small part of Rey that worries about damaging a unique centuries-old magical artifact. But then Ben tips her chin up and coaxes it gently in his direction, his lips capturing hers in a slow, heated kiss, all while he continues to fuck her with his fingers. By the time he pulls away and gives her shoulder a gentle nudge forward, she yearns so much that she complies without a word. Her palms press against the glass, which is cool to the touch and hard against her flesh. Her bum sticks up in the air and Ben wastes no time in tugging her cutoffs and her soaking wet knickers down her thighs, until they’re rolled up just slightly above her knees.

Although Rey has the tip of her nose almost pressed to the mirror, the image shifts to accommodate her perspective. Now it’s like she’s looking down at Ben and herself from above. The other Rey is flat on her back, clawing at the other Ben’s biceps as he ruts into her, his hips rocking between her thighs. Everything is torchlight, and starlight, and reflections that are not reflections, and skin veiled by smoke and glass.

Amidst the wood and stone of the dim office, Ben runs his big hands over her bare ass, squeezing and caressing. “Fucking perfect,” he mutters almost to himself, and then he drops to his knees and positions himself between her and the mirror, flashing a crooked half-grin up at her that melts her heart before he buries his head between her legs. He licks a hot stripe along her entrance, and it’s as though Rey’s being torn apart by the shudders of delight that ripple through her frame. Inside Erised, she’s taking his cock, soundless cries falling from her parted lips, and in the real world she is crying out, her whimpers nonsensical and breathless and raw as he laps at her cunt, as he kisses it like he kisses her mouth, as his tongue writes its own clever spells.

“What are we doing now, Miss Niima?” Ben pulls away from her wet heat long enough to ask. His warm breath puffs against her and she is so overly sensitized that she shivers from it, more droplets of arousal trickling down her bare thighs. “What are we doing in the mirror?”

“You’re—” Rey grasps wildly for her ability to speak, she’s sure it’s there somewhere—“you’re fucking me, sir, we’re—ooh—” He’s angled his head so that he can seal his plush lips over her clit, and she moans as she rides his face. “You’re giving it to me so hard—” she manages to scrape out, “splitting me open—on your cock—oh, God—”

She closes her eyes and grinds down into his mouth, that lovely, filthy mouth, she chases the feeling, her heart’s desire. Rolling over that first wave of all-encompassing pleasure that will eventually deliver her to her peak. When her eyes flutter open again, it’s to find that their mirror selves switch position, with her straddling his hips. Rey stares at herself bouncing on Ben’s cock as he reaches up his palms to cover her breasts, and in the real world Ben’s hands slide over her ass, holding her in place above him as he sucks and licks and—

And yet, when Rey comes, what finally pushes her over the edge is unexpected, to say the least. As she squirms against the cage of Ben’s hands, his ring finger accidentally slips into the cleft of her buttocks, and it grazes inside—

Not completely. Just the slightest of touches, and he’s quick to draw his hand back and regain his grip on her cheeks, but the unexpected sensation there is enough. It’s like lightning. She jolts and then she’s coming, gushing all over his face with a high-pitched squeal.

Ben’s gone as still as a statue, even as he lets her ride out her orgasm, even as she rubs herself all over him. She has barely recovered her senses when he moves to position himself behind her again and gets to his feet, allowing her only a fleeting glimpse of his features that have suddenly gone pale in a stark contrast to the burning dark of his eyes.

Through the haze of her aftershocks, Rey blinks at what she’s seeing in the mirror. Her other self is still straddling the other Ben, but his hand has snaked behind her and he has a finger toying with her ass while her head is thrown back in ecstasy. Is this what I want? she wonders silently as she listens to the real Ben unbuckling his belt and zipping down the fly of his jeans behind her, his breathing ragged. My heart’s desire…

She wants so many things. She wants to give him everything. She wants him to be the only one who can get to touch her like this.

And then he’s pulling up her shirt, and popping her breasts out of the cups of her bra, and then his strong hands are clutching at her hips—and he plunges all the way inside her cunt in one fierce stroke that has her toes curling and her spine arching.

He’s so big. She doesn’t think that she’ll ever get tired of that fact. She doesn’t think that she’ll ever get tired of how he knocks the breath out of her lungs, of how it always feels like she’s wrapped so tightly around him. Ben fucks her with a desperation that is echoed in the stirring of her soul and in the frenzied movements of their other selves. Her fingers scrabble at the mirror’s gilded frame and her breasts press against the cold glass with each hard thrust from him, and it’s too much, she has no choice but to close her eyes, to savor each moment as it unfolds through her.

It's not long before he picks up his pace the way that he always does when he’s close. He talks to her through gritted teeth, in a wild tone that makes her realize that he doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore. “Fucking coming when I put my finger in your ass, damn it, you dirty girl, I feel like you were ripped out of my dreams—” Ben angles his hips so that the tip of his cock hits a spot inside her that makes her groan as she holds on to the mirror for dear life—“or maybe my nightmares, because you sure as fucking hell will ruin me—”

He hunches over her, sucking a bruise into the round of her shoulder as his fingers dig more bruises into her hips. “Shall I tell you what I’m seeing right now? In Erised?” he growls, and she nods weakly, pressing her forehead and her palms into the glass, hoping to cool the fever blossoming on her skin.

But it’s no use. He is a wicked man. He makes her wicked, too. They will burn each other up if they’re not careful.

And when she’s with him she doesn’t want to be careful.

“You’re on all fours,” Ben continues in what is barely above a whisper, and hypnotic all the more for that, “and then you’re reaching back with one hand, spreading that deliciously freckled bottom for me—teasing me, naughty girl, and you’re wearing—nothing, you’re wearing nothing—” He says this last part hastily, in a way that somehow gives her the impression that he’d corrected himself at the last possible moment, but before she can dwell on it the rhythm of his hips stutters and she knows that he’s almost there and there is suddenly nothing in the world that’s more important than that. “And now you’re—you’re letting me fuck your ass—”

At this, Rey’s eyes widen and a jolt runs through her. To hear him actually say it—it’s different. It’s another match to the flame. Just like that, she’s starting to unravel as well. To unravel again.

“Jesus, Rey, I want to. So much. You have no idea.” Ben sounds utterly broken now. “And in the mirror you’re letting me do that—you’re letting me come in you there, you’re letting me be the first—the only—”

The mental images painted by his gravelly voice drag her headlong into another orgasm, as does the way his next thrust drags her hardened nipples along the glass. “I want that, too, Ben,” she chokes out as she falls apart around him, pinned to the mirror of heart’s desire. “Be my only one, come anywhere you want—”

He seizes like she is the one who’s knocked the breath out of his lungs, for a change. She feels him spill inside her almost violently, with a rough jerk of his hips. She moans softly as his come trickles down her thighs.

In the ringing silence that ensues, Ben leans forward and down to mouth at the spot between her shoulder-blades. Still bent over, Rey turns her head to peer lazily at him as he straightens back up.

He’s staring at the dark glass of Erised with a contemplative expression while he fixes his clothes. Sweat plasters strands of his hair to his forehead.

“This,” he gravely pronounces, zipping his fly, “is a very dangerous mirror, Miss Niima.”

Rey snorts.

✨✨✨

It’s when Ben’s fixing her messed-up, thoroughly shagged appearance for her—and stealing warm, lingering kisses all the while—that Rey looks at the artifact once more. The scene has changed. The Rey and Ben of Erised are walking hand in hand—and fully clothed, thank Merlin—through a kennel of some sort. They stop in front of two enclosures; one houses a cat, the other a dog. They start arguing animatedly.

Rey can’t hear what her mirror self is saying—or what Ben’s mirror self is saying, for that matter—but she doesn’t have to. She knows that they’re bickering over which kind of pet to get for their flat, or maybe they have a house. Rey’s subconscious had internalized Finn and Rose’s quarrel earlier, and Erised had translated it into the context of a future that Rey longs for so badly that her heart aches.

“All done,” Ben says, smoothing out the last of the wrinkles of her shirt. Rey looks up at him and he leans in for another kiss.

Right before their lips meet, she steals one last glance at the mirror. At days that haven’t happened yet, and probably never will. At a future and a home and a life after Hogwarts, and at Ben, and how they all mean the same thing within the glass.

It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams, but—this one, oh, this one.