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"Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi"
"I show not your face but your heart's desire"
Ten minutes a day.
It's the time that Luffy and Usopp spend in front of the Mirror of Erised hidden in the Room of Requirement, a momentary escape during which they peek into happiness without experiencing it. But that hidden desire, that mirage of hope, helps them remember why they fight, why every day they wake up and take up their wands.
They find themselves in that reflection. They recognize themselves, in those silhouettes, in the Gryffindor scarves, in the tiredness and pain - so much pain.
It's a warning that says: you exist, you long, therefore you are. So grit your teeth and resist.
One day Luffy asks Usopp what he sees on the other side.
''The end of the war,'' he replies, without hesitation. ''And you?''
''Same,'' Luffy replies with the same immediacy, the same bitter smile, the same firm voice, a lie that escapes from his lips.
It's a useless lie though. Luffy lies, Usopp knows it. They both lie, actually. And Luffy knows that Usopp is aware of it, they've known each other since they were eleven, they bought their wands together, they don't even remember what it means to have secrets anymore. But what does it matter anyway? They will have to fight the war in any case, whether they lie or not. Therefore Luffy lies because Usopp will always understand the truth, even if Luffy stops talking.
"Don't stay here too long,'' Usopp tells him.
Luffy nods. He knows it, of course he knows it, otherwise madness would come, it would fall upon him like an avalanche. And after all, those are only ten minutes, ten minutes even when three, four, five hours pass, or the whole night. Ten minutes that Luffy takes away from the dark reality, ten minutes a day that taste like honey on his lips, honey that's also a little poisonous, the distillate that even he doesn't have the courage to drink, ten minutes a day of serene glimpses that are however impalpable.
Luffy looks at the Mirror, and on the other side he doesn't see the end of the war.
He sees the orange sunset.
He sees Nami.
*
Nami liked gold. She had always said that she preferred the red and golden colours of his House, the Gryffindor, to the green and silver ones of hers, the Slytherin. Luffy laughed then and lent her his scarf, wrapping it around her slender neck and Nami's lips curved into a grateful smile. Then she pulled it up to her nose, closed her eyes happily and murmured thank you.
That thank you remained suspended in the warm and delicate folds of the wool, curled up like a cat between the pillows.
Then they went to class, to the Quidditch pitch, to have a Butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks with Usopp and Zoro, they slipped away at night among enchanted stairs and corridors, reaching the Astronomy tower where they could admire a sky dotted with stars which promised them that freedom in which Nami didn't believe, and a love that Luffy felt blooming on his side.
Nami liked red and gold, but Luffy found her gorgeous in cool colors too. Luffy actually found her gorgeous all the time, wearing anything.
Not with the black mark, though. That didn't suit her at all. That was wrong. Yet it was there. A snake writhing hungrily and menacingly on her delicate forearm, indelible, dark, excruciating ink that hissed and coiled towards her slender wrist. It seemed as if they had stuck it on her, sewn it on forcefully, because it was unnatural, it was impossible, it was...
''It's a joke,'' Luffy had told her, laughing. "Are you joking? It's an Illusion spell, you put something in my pumpkin juice. Or maybe I'm dreaming."
Nami had shaken her head in denial. And Luffy maybe knew deep inside that Nami wasn't joking. Not because she didn't have a sense of humor, it was just that there was no point in telling lies. Why waste your breath? Silence is better at that point.
''No,'' she indeed replied. ''It's all true, I'm a Death Eater. And you won't tell anyone."
She wasn't asking him. Nor was it a plea, she wasn't begging him to keep it a secret. Hers was an order. No, not even that, more than an order it was a simple observation, a matter of fact.
And so it was. Luffy hadn't said a word.
''You were under the Imperio curse,'' Zoro will explain to him later, trying to justify him - to reassure him. ''That witch shut your mouth like that. With magic. You are not to blame."
Luffy had to nod, he couldn't possibly admit that no, he had never been under the influence of the Imperio Curse, he had been silent because he trusted Nami, because she was his nakama with the uniform embellished with green and silver stitching hems, because Luffy had never believed it, not fully, as if it had been a waking nightmare.
And now, Luffy looks at the Mirror. On the other side there is Nami who hints at a smile, Nami whose forearm is immaculate, Nami who's still a child, she's eleven years old and has just arrived with her eyes sparkling in a school that will become her second home, and the Sorting Hat on her head is so big that it covers her nose.
Luffy wonders when it started. When, exactly, Nami began to change, to turn her head towards a different future, towards the darkness. When, exactly, the light thread of which her soul was made began to corrode, to fray, a rope that is stretched too tight and is about to break. When did Nami - Nami who was ethereal and true light - begin to turn into shadow.
*
When Usopp is injured on a mission for the Order, Luffy can't believe it. Just as he doesn't believe that it was her who hurt him. Two lies that add to the long list he keeps telling himself, just as he still doesn't believe that she really has that mark imprinted in her arm - in her heart.
Now he goes alone in front of the Mirror. Luffy has stopped counting the minutes and hours, oblivious to the madness that intensifies, progresses and unravels like a spider's web.
He begins to wonder if the true reality is actually the one on the other side of the reflecting surface. He wonders if he himself is trapped inside a lie.
While he looks at the Mirror, there is always her on the other side. Nami who was green and silver but wanted to be red and gold. Nami being Nami, arms and skin covered in delicate, warm light that Luffy would like to touch.
Luffy, in his reflection, sees her and sees himself walking next to her, two bodies close to each other and two shadows together, a summer that seems eternal under the soles of his shoes.
Luffy places his hand on the glass and wonders if there's a way to get through it. He wonders if, by continuing to push, to push hard, the glass will allow him to pass, incorporating him into that memory, into that bright dream that it keeps inside reflecting it mercifully and at the same time ruthlessly. He would be willing to pay any price.
Luffy wants that glass to soften, to become liquid, let me in, let me in, let me in, please, please.
But the glass, like every inexorable truth, remains cold, indifferent and silent while showing him intangible flashes of the past.
*
The battle arrives and Luffy can't see anything anymore. He doesn't see the school collapse, his schoolmates and teachers cast counterspells under flashes of green light. He doesn't hear the Unforgivable Curses in rapid fire, the windows breaking, the paintings and books burning.
Luffy doesn't hear or see any of this. Luffy only sees her on the other side. Nami who walks in the snow, who leaves tiny and light footprints behind her, the green and silver scarf that shines even in the fog, the red and golden one folded in her pocket.
She who is now a winter storm, yet reminds him of the most radiant sunny day, an irrepressible joy that Luffy clings to, like the jars that Sanji prepared, holding small hot flames inside and they used to hide them under their loose robe, to better tolerate the chill that echoed off the stone walls and high ceilings during Transfiguration lessons - if only they had known that the chill of winter is nowhere near the real cold.
Nami walks in the muffled snow, among flakes that fluctuate and twirl on the notes of silence, and Luffy only hears the sound of her footsteps, his eyes resting on her slender neck, on those cheeks he wants to caress, on her regal, fairy-like bearing.
Finally Luffy really sees her. She advances silently, her eyes restless, without mercy. Her cloak is now neither red and gold nor green and silver, but dark like her mark.
Nami looks at him, comes closer.
''Leave,'' she orders him, ''Leave, Luffy.''
Luffy stops. He hears her voice and starts breathing again.
Nami draws her wand. She points it at his chest.
''Leave,'' she repeats for the third time. And here a faint crack of supplication emerges, a repressed pain, a flash of weakness that twists her lips, that tenses her eyebrows, her iron, straight and implacable expression all of a sudden collapse, exactly as her heart breaks.
And Luffy doesn't leave, he has no intention to go away, because he now sees exclusively on the other side of the Mirror. Except this time there is no glass, this time it's the real Nami and it's exactly the Nami he wished to see again. Her nakama, he was right, her feelings were still there and have always been there.
He's free to advance, a crazy tightrope walker who proceeds suspended over the void; under his feet a rope made of hope and love that falls apart, crumbles because love and hope are the two most riskful concepts to base happiness on.
Luffy wants to take her hand, erase her mark, take her away from there. Nami has tears in her eyes, he can see them, she's pleading.