Erised thoughts (long)

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 105670

I was thinking a bit more about the Mirror of Erised and how it 
might work, in particular how it could have been used to provide the 
stone to Harry, but not to Quirrell (or Voldemort).  I had something 
of a brainwave overnight, so here it is.

My thought was essentially that the Mirror has the power to give you 
your heart's desire *provided you are 'truthful' about what that 
is*.  

What do I mean by this?  Well, Dumbledore says something about how 
people are very bad at wanting things that are good for them.  So, 
imagine Quirrell actually got hie desire, and was able to hand the 
Stone over to Voldemort.  My guess is he'd very rapidly regret doing 
so, and not only because Voldemort would betray him.  The basic idea 
is that having obtained your heart's desire, it then turns out to be 
not what you wanted after all.  What seemed fulfilling when you 
didn't have it, turns out not to be when you do.

How about if the Mirror's ability is to discern not only what your 
heart's desire is, but also if you would in fact be satisfied with 
it if you got it?  That you would, in effect, agree that you had 
received the thing you wanted, and you still want it.  And, that 
being the case, it can grant your desire.

Before going on to consider how this worked to protect the Stone, 
it's worth reconsidering some of Dumbledore's remarks about the 
mirror in the light of this.

"Neither knowledge nor truth".  It isn't clear to me what the 
difference in this context is between knowledge and truth, but I 
have understood Dumbledore roughly to mean that the mirror doesn't 
predict the future (knowledge) or give insight (truth).  This has 
always puzzled me, because surely a Mirror of Erised would be a 
wonderful psychiatric tool.  However, if we consider that a common 
state of the human heart is to be self-deceived, this makes sense.  
If you *don't* know your heart, the mirror merely plays along with 
your false ideas about what would make you fulfilled and plays them 
back at you, so you gain nothing; if you *do* know your heart, then 
it tells you what you already know.  What Dumbledore didn't say at 
that time was anything about the *power* of the mirror - just it's 
use in conveying information.  Misdirection by omission - a common 
Dumbledore trait.

"A truly happy person would see themselves as they are".  The 
meaning of this would be unchanged.  If you have your heart's 
desire, the mirror need do nothing for you, and shows you the 
situation as it is.

"Only someone who wanted the Stone, not to use it".  Here we do need 
some assumptions to make this work, but IMO they are reasonable.  In 
effect, Dumbledore is relying on the idea that selfish or evil 
desires are never truly satisfying and do not reflect your true 
self.  There is considerable evidence (which would take too long to 
go into here, I have posted on it in the past) that Voldemort is not 
portrayed as 'pure' evil, and that, despite his own claims, he is 
still human.  IOW, even Voldemort's heart would only be satisfied by 
returning to good.  More generally, anyone who just wants to be rich 
or immortal is not in fact pursuing a path that would be satisfying 
for them.  This fits in with the comment I referred to earlier, 
about people wanting things that aren't good for them.

OK, so how was the Stone protected?

We have to consider some of the constraints that Dumbledore is under.

- the Stone is not his, he has to protect it in a way that allows 
him, or Flamel, to get it back.  Destroying it, or placing it beyond 
reach, are not options at this time (shades of Sauron's Ring?).

- he has to protect it against very powerful magic: Gringotts was 
not good enough.

- he can assume that Voldemort would work out that the stone is in 
his keeping, since few wizards would have the foresight to remove it 
from Gringotts, and he is known to be Flamel's partner.

- he has to assume that he may have a traitor on his own staff.  
Voldemort will naturally try to infiltrate Hogwarts.  His later 
remark to Ginny about 'wiser wizards being hoodwinked' shows that 
their good will is no guarantee of their reliability.

So, he sets up a series of barriers whose function is:

- to give some protection to the Mirror.

- act as a kind of burglar alarm, because anyone trying for the 
stome is likely to give themself away, one way or another.

- distract attention from the central importance of the Mirror itelf 
to protecting the Stone.

The question is, what did Dumbledore add to the mix, to make the 
Mirror a protective device?  We only see it operate in its function 
of making the Stone available to the right person.  After all, the 
Mirror normally has no role in *preventing* people from getting 
their heart's desires if these are not pure in the sense I have 
described above.  It merely doesn't help.

The best I can think of is that he somehow connected the Mirror to 
the Stone, so that its power to grant desires was harnessed in a 
negative way to prevent them being fulfilled, provided those desires 
were something to do with the stone.  That would make the Mirror act 
a little like the Fidelius charm.  The Stone, regardless of its 
actual physical location, would only be accessible via the Mirror - 
hence the need for ancillary protection of the Mirror.

There are plenty of weaknesses with this theory.  The Mirror was not 
brought into play, apparently, until some time after Dumbledore took 
charge of the Stone.  Thematically, it doesn't bring in the issue of 
reversal raised by Iris.  It does, however, suggest how the Mirror 
could more or less do Dumbledore's wishes without him micro-managing 
what it shows to each person.  And it does preserve the idea of 
Harry having to face up to his true self - though he didn't do badly 
at the end of PS.

David