ABSTRACT
In the first Harry Potter book (Rowling, 1998), the eponymous hero discovers a magical room containing the Mirror of Erised. Carved around the top of the mirror’s ornate frame are the words ‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi’. The mirror shows not your face but your heart’s desire. The pain of this mirror and its representations, as well as its seductive power, take some time to become clear, and in a distressing episode Harry and his friend Ron are overwhelmed with greed and disappointment when it becomes evident that each cannot see the other’s image (they cannot know the other’s dream). The headmaster, Dumbledore, explains to Harry:
[The mirror] shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.
