Mirror of Erised

The Mirror of Erised is a tall magical mirror that shows nothing of the viewer's face and everything of what that viewer wants most. It stands at Hogwarts, though nobody knows who made it or when. The name is desire spelled backwards, as if held up to glass, and the inscription around the frame runs the same way: read properly, it says that it shows not your face but your heart's desire. Albus Dumbledore describes the image as the deepest and most desperate longing of the heart. A person with nothing left to want sees only themselves, exactly as they are, which almost never happens. The mirror has done more harm than good. People have wasted their lives in front of it, mistaking a picture for a life, and some have been driven mad by a desire they could see and never reach.