The Mirror Too Late (Reflections in a small mirror, part 2)

[iris_ft]

No: HPFGUIDX 68803

Sorry, this is not truly a reply to "the Mirror Too Late"; it's only 
a complement to a previous message I sent to the group few days ago.
But as it deals with the topic, here it is.

Concerning the little mirror, I should have said that it is more 
important to Sirius than to Harry, who doesn't use it before his 
godfather's death. That could mean two things:

1) Harry didn't realise yet how it is when you miss someone bitterly.
Ok, he's an orphan and he witnessed Cedric's death. But Cedric 
wasn't a close friend, loosing him was not the same thing than 
loosing Sirius.
Harry lost his parents when he was very small, and James and Lily's 
too early death gave them a special status in Harry's heart; he saw 
them as ideal tutelary figures, at least until his visit into 
Snape's memories.
That was very different with Sirius: he had learnt to love him, in 
spite of his defects, or maybe because of them, for they made him a 
more human, more accessible model than his "perfect-father-who-had-
died-fighting-Voldemort". 
He didn't use the mirror before because, well, he didn't even know 
what it was; he forgot it in his trunk. It's only after loosing 
Sirius that he remember it. And the scene in which Harry's trying to 
join Sirius through the mirror is maybe the more pathetic in the 
book. We realise what a waste Harry caused when he forgot the mirror.
If he only had known, he would have looked what was in the parcel 
his godfather had given him. But he didn't. In a future book, it 
might turn out to be part of Harry's guilt feeling.
Did you ever loose someone? There's always a feeling of waste and of 
guilt when it happens. "If I only had known at the time..." "I could 
have done..."
"I shouldn't have said..." That's the feeling JKR, IMO, wanted to 
introduce in her novel. The HP series is a meditation about death 
and its consequences amongst those who remain alive. That's why 
Harry's mirror is useless: it's the symbol of the emptiness that 
Sirius's death leaves in Harry's heart.

2) But it's also a symbol of the kindness Sirius and James had 
towards each other. Sirius was the only boy James treated as an 
equal, and vice versa. IMO, Sirius gave Harry the mirror not only in 
order to help him if he had a problem with Snape. It was also a 
pretext of trying to recover the flattering, comforting sensation he 
had when he saw James reflecting in it. In that case, the small 
mirror shows us how bitterly Sirius missed James friendship and 
consideration. So he tried naturally to find compensation with 
Harry. If he had had enough time, he probably would have tried to 
influence his godson, more or less consciously, in order to turn it 
into a new James. But Harry is not James.
 
The reflection game between Harry and Sirius is a part of JKR 
writing tactic: she creates a re-reading of her books in a 
conditional way. "If Harry had only opened the parcel..." "If Sirius 
had only told Harry what was in it..." But they didn't, and we 
readers remain with a feeling of waste. That's how tragedies always 
worked. 
 

 
Amicalement, 
 
Iris