114
Mirror mirror on the walls
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You and Daniel decide to investigate the nearest stone staircase. From the bottom all you can see is that it winds up to some shadowy and little visited part of the school.

At the top of the stone stairs, you encounter a passageway lined with suits of armour. The empty helmets are turned in your direction and twist to follow you and Daniel as you walk past. You wonder what curious magical enchantment is making them move: the whole effect is rather clever.

At the end of the corridor there is a single door which swings open on silent hinges at your touch.

The room inside is small, dark and bare - but not quite empty.

Next to one wall there is a mirror, with the words above it 'Look at me if you dare, you will see your soul laid bare'.

Opposite, against another wall there's another mirror. Above this one it says 'Stare at me and you will see, what you want to come to be.'

Daniel relaxes. "I know what these are! They're mirrors of desire. They show you what you most want in your whole life, maybe even something you didn't even realise. We've got one of those back home in the bathroom."

"That's remarkable!" you breathe, and step up in front of one of the mirrors nervously.

You look at your reflection in the mirror and see...

...a taller, grown up version of yourself. You are wearing a flowing white gown, sun glasses and in your hand you are holding some papers. Squinting more closely you can just make out the title written in the papers: 'A synthesis of science and magic, how to join the two most powerful forces in the universe and create limitless, free electricity without any pollution'. Behind Arthur in the mirror you can make out a huge crowd of admirers.

"Look at me in the mirror Daniel, I look like the cleverest man in the world!"

Then you catch the reflection of the mirror behind you in the mirror in front of you - the reflection of the reflection.

In that reflection you are quietly reading a comic, sitting on a comfortable sofa, while drinking a steaming cup of hot chocolate.

"That's funny," you say. "The reflection of my reflection in the mirror behind me doesn't look quite as smart and cool at all..."

Then it dawns on you.

That famous brain box version of yourself doesn't want all that fame and attention. It's all too much. It would be too much for me! What you are seeing is the famous boffin version of you's most earnest desire - which is for a quiet life, reading a Dogman comic.

You angle your head to catch more reflections of reflections and see the images of yourself curve away into infinity.

With each reflection's reflection the boffin version of yourself is just that little bit less boffinated and the quiet version of yourself becomes a little bit less quiet. Far into the depths of the mirrors you can just make out an Arthur just like yourself, waving back at you.

You shake your head, confused, and tell Daniel what you saw.

"That's it!" he says. "Don't you see? The person you really want to be, when you get right down to it, is yourself."