‘This was a wonderful afternoon,’ Bob said, leaning in to kiss me. I stepped back, however, and turned my head off to the side.

‘No.’ It was one thing to spend an afternoon with him, against my family’s beliefs, but getting kissed? I was not ready for that, not yet. Or at least not with him.

For some moments, there was absolute silence. I knew that I had hurt Bob with turning him down so bluntly. But I had told him that I needed time and that I wanted this relationship to progress slowly. After all, my family did not need to find out about us.

When no one of us spoke for quite some time, I looked back at him; his expression was one of surprise and – as I had known it would – hurt. He tried to hide it, but failed. I had sixteen years of experience in reading other people’s mimics; Bob had never learned to hide behind a mask.

‘What is it?’ he asked quietly.

I simply shook my head. ‘It is nothing –’

‘Isla, please, do not lie,’ Bob interrupted; his tone was irritated. I had always wondered when he would get annoyed at me; I guessed that time had come. ‘I cannot stand being lied to. You should know that –’

‘I do –’ I retorted, slightly annoyed myself, but he pressed on.

‘Then why do you lie? Do you not like me? Do you hate that we are dating?’

‘No –’

‘Isla –’

‘Look, Hitchens, I am sorry. Please. Can you leave me alone?’ I did not care that I went from using his first name to calling him by his last name. And I did not care that we did take a huge step backwards in our relationship. But he needed to understand that it was not easy for me to act against what I had believed in for sixteen years. My family had provided for me, had given me everything I had asked for and more. I was safe; the name Black meant a security Bob could not yet provide. Was I ready to give it all up, only to be with Bob? Only because of the truth?

I had tried explaining him my reasons, but I could not even understand it myself for the most part. So how was I supposed to expect him to fully understand it? Even my thoughts were often confusing, too confusing for me, and I had to stop thinking or I would get a major headache.

I simply turned around and entered my family’s house, without saying goodbye.

The sound of the closing door did not stop me from hearing Hitchens call my name one last time though. His pleading call echoed in my ears in the silence of the entrance floor.

Sighing, I sank to the floor, my back leaning against the cold wood of the door behind me. I hugged my knees close and felt the hotness of tears spring to my eyes. I sniffed like I had a very bad cold, and laid my head on top of my knees.

I did not know how long I sat there. The ticking of the ancient grandfather clock from the first floor was still audible in the entrance floor, but neither did I care to listen nor did I want to count the seconds passing by. Silence surrounded me completely, and I felt embraced by a soft dark veil, only that it was not a warm embrace but a cold one. The coldness helped me get my senses back though, and I was able to hear someone carefully padding closer, towards me.

I looked up and met the eyes of our female house-elf, my nurse, which were widened in true worry. She carefully asked if I was all right.

A sad smile crept into my face, but it was drowned by fresh tears. ‘Yes. No.’ I sobbed and sniffed. ‘I do not know.’

The bat-like ears moved into a hanging position – always a sign that she was sad herself. She urged me to no longer be sad and moved to grab my hands. She tried to pull me to my feet, saying that I needed to smile.

Her worry and true caring let me finally smile, a happy smile this time, a warm one. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered and hugged her.

Her voice in my ear quietly questioned if I felt better now.

I nodded and let go of her again. ‘Yes, thank you.’ I stood up and dusted off my skirt. My energetic reaction let her jump up as well and she quickly told me, in her typical enthusiastic, strong-willed businesslike voice, that my brother was waiting in the drawing room. Apparently, he wanted to speak with me.

The happiness I felt disappeared in an instant. I gulped, feeling a little uneasy; I had the distinct feeling I knew what about he wanted to talk with me. ‘Thank you,’ I replied in a quiet voice, sounding composed and unfathomed. I only briefly wondered where that rather cool attitude suddenly came from. But I did not feel like thinking about this in detail at the moment. ‘I will go up to him then.’

The way up to the first floor felt like me being on my last march to the guillotine. If I was right about the topic my brother wanted to speak to me about, then I might as well walk to my own execution. There was no way I would be let off if my family found out that I had met and spent time with Bob. Surprisingly, though, I was back to call him by his first name. And I already regretted not having said goodbye to him earlier that night. After all, who knew if I would ever see him again?

My shadow fell onto the first landing, and I took a deep breath. I also just realised that the house looked gloomy and was ghastly silent except the old grandfather clock’s regular ticking; this discovery did not help me in the slightest to relax. Contrariwise, it increased my inner turmoil. My courage had vanished completely, but I knew I had to face my family one day, no matter what my final decision would be. So I thought it was better to do it now than later. Although I very much doubted that my parents would approve of their youngest child not marrying a pure-blood.

Hesitating for a moment longer, I finally knocked on the door and entered.

I was met by darkness and even more silence. The room was icy cold which was unusual since both house-elves were reliable when it came to making fires and looking after the rooms’ warmth. But there was not even the slightest glow of the sparkle of a fire which left me wondering.

I walked further into the room and stepped onto something that crunched horribly beneath my feet. I halted immediately and bent down to inspect the origin of the crunching. Surprised, I felt shards of broken glass when carefully running along the carpet with my fingertips. ‘Strange…’ I said, more to myself than anyone else – and seeing that the room seemed to be empty, there really was no chance anyone else than me would hear my words.

Standing up, I opened my mouth, fully intending to call the elves and asking them to make a fire. But no word left my throat. I had suddenly noticed why it was so cold in the room: the window stood open wide. The curtains moved softly in the mid December evening breeze, and the feeble moonlight illuminated the windowsill and a small part of the deep red carpet.

I huffed angrily; what did the elves think about leaving the window open in the middle of winter? Gathering my skirt, crumpling the cloth in my fists rather badly, I trudged to the window, not caring that I fell back into an unladylike behaviour. Father would not be proud of me stomping around…

The next I noticed, however, was me stumbling forwards. I quickly let go of my skirt and flailed my arms wildly to keep my balance.

I failed.

With a surprised scream, I fell forwards. Luckily, though, I did not hit any furniture or walls thus staying uninjured. The only thing hurting was my pride. And coming to think of it, my left foot throbbed rather painfully, too. I had walked into something lying on the floor – probably left there without thinking that anyone could stumble over it and maybe even break a foot or leg when walking around in the darkness which let me realise that there was no light on as well.

I sat up and felt around for the hard object. When I then felt it beneath my fingertips though, I tore my hand back immediately. My heart sank, and a bitter taste laid itself into my mouth. I felt bereft and completely empty. I tried banning the horrifying image my mind projected before my inner eye, but I was not succeeding. Shaking heavily, cold shivers running down my spine over and over again, I put forth my hand once more, and slowly touched the contours of a body. A male one.

My left hand wandered to the pocket in the cloak I still wore and unearthed my wand. I threw all the threats my professors had ever given about doing magic outside of school in the holidays as far away as possible, and cast the Lumos Charm. The tip of my slender wooden wand started glowing brightly, showing me in every fine detail who I had stumbled over.

The carpet swallowed the sound of the wand hitting the ground after falling out of my rigidly shaking fingers. But it could not drone out the sound of me screaming in a high-pitched voice. My ears throbbed painfully at the sound I made, and blood rushed through them. The rushing sound grew louder and my vision obscured. Then everything grew dark around me.

I fainted, joining my dead brother lying on the soft, dark red drawing room carpet.

When I woke up again, I found myself lying in my bed. I blinked against the brightness of the light, and moved my hand to shield my eyes. Nonetheless, I closed them again, and I groaned when I moved my feet; my toes hurt and throbbed. Also, my left foot was rather numb and I could not feel it properly.

‘I see you are awake.’

Turning my head to the side, I opened my eyes and saw my sister standing next to my bed. She looked quite pale, and her grey eyes missed the usual sparkle of pride and superior feeling.

‘Elle? What is it?’ I questioned, my voice worried something bad had happened, and sat up, throwing off the blanket. My sister usually did not get upset; she stood above such mundane things. But once and again when the rarity of her being upset did happen, we had to be careful because in this case something really bad had occurred.

‘What it is?’ She snickered listlessly, sounding lifeless. ‘You remember finding Phineas dead in the drawing room?’ Upon my hesitant nod, she added, ‘He must have been cold already when you stumbled over him.’

‘Stumble is the right word,’ I whispered under my breath, quietly enough for my sister to not hear me though. Then I closed my eyes, tears threatening to roll out of the corners of my eyes upon this memory. I felt empty and cold on the inside. Elle and Phin had been quite close; I did not dare to think of how she must have felt when hearing of his death.

She went on. ‘We assume the person who murdered him entered through the window.’

I was speechless for a moment, all thoughts of tears and Elle’s emotions forgotten, but once I had caught myself, I asked, ‘How did you work this one out?’ I was now more curious than shocked to grief.

She snorted arrogantly. ‘Apparently you have not taken the time to look closely at the window or you would not have needed to ask.’

I stood up; it was one thing to grief upon the lost brother, and another one to play things down. Elle needed to mourn or bad wounds would remain for the rest of her life. I did not want that for my sister, and I had to tell her. So standing up seemed like a good way to emphasise what I was about to say. But when my foot protested with a fresh wave of pain, I sank back onto my bed, hissing. My tirade would have to wait. ‘And how exactly should I have seen anything?’ I instead asked through clenched teeth once the pain had subsided a bit. ‘Apparently you have not considered that it was dark in the room when I entered there.’

‘Your wand tip was alight when we found you.’

‘Only because I cast the Lumos Charm.’

My statement was met with sudden silence. I already regretted not having kept my mouth shut. But I used the chance to observe my sister; her expression morphed from surprised to snickering, her usual smirking visible in her eyes again. Maybe I should not have waited with my tirade…

‘Yes, Isla Black, the proper daughter, uses magic outside the school. Who would have thought you would go against the rules.’ She laughed – it was more of a maniac cackle though. I shuddered upon the sound of it.

‘Seeing that you will not tell me anything interesting, you are free to leave me alone now,’ I said coolly, surprised at myself that I really had the courage to speak against my sister.

Elle stopped laughing immediately. ‘Leave you? Who do you think you are that you think you can order me around?’ she questioned, folding her arms across her chest.

‘This is my room –’

‘But Father’s house.’

Again, silence reigned between us until Elle threw her head back and turned, marching out of my room. She was insulted; I knew her long enough already to read her attitude. She might have taken a step back, but she was not yet admitting defeat. No, Elladora Black knew how to stand her ground against her younger sister. So for now, I was spared the trouble of telling her that she should mourn properly. It would be a complete waste of time anyway, coming to think of it. Never before my sister had ever listened to anything I had said. She would not start doing so now.

Once the door was closed behind her, I sank back onto my mattress, completely exhausted, and lifted my hurting leg onto the bed for it to rest. I fell asleep only a few seconds later.

Our female house-elf looked after me when I woke up again and took care of my hurt foot. Father had not allowed her to use elf magic to heal my sprained ankle, and she had to listen since he was her master. But her care had me standing again soon although I could only move very slowly at first. Nonetheless, I decided to take a walk and left the house.

What I had forgotten though, and realised too late, was that it was winter – and cold.

Shivering but too proud to retreat back home to fetch my cloak that probably hang in either the entrance floor or my room, I walked along Grimmauld Place, deep in thought. I tried to bring an order back into my head to completely understand what had happened. The first problem I had to solve was my relation to Bob. I liked him, I really truly did, but was liking him enough to risk the safety being a Black meant? Did I want to get thrown out when they learned about me meeting and talking to a Muggle-born?

It was all so confusing, and I felt the first signs of a headache coming. I believed that the cold had a part in this, too, though.

But the biggest concern was not Bob but my brother. He was dead. And no one so far had the slightest idea who would have had a motive to kill him. On my request, Father had told me about the broken window pane, probably the way how the murderer had made his entrance. But even he with his powerful connections and magic had not yet been able to solve the riddle of who the murderer of my brother was. Or what reasons one would have to murder the heir of the Black Family, beside money.

Sighing deeply, I turned the corner, intending to go back home and into the warmth. My fingers were already feeling frozen and I had difficulties moving them. I also guessed that my lips must be blue from the cold; they prickled like I was stabbed with thousands of small needles. But when my footsteps started sounding hollow, their echo waving around me, I looked up and discovered I had turned the wrong corner. I had left Grimmauld Place and was now in a little alleyway I had never seen before, despite having grown up in Father’s house, and despite knowing Grimmauld Place and its surroundings very well. But this alleyway was entirely foreign to me.

I turned around once more, intending to go back the way I had come, but strangely, I could not remember clearly what way I had taken. It looked like I stood in the middle of the alleyway where I had walked only a few steps after turning the corner. Mist wafted slowly through the street, and there was no visible sideway that led off back to Grimmauld Place. Swearing under my breath and cursing my own bad luck, I closed my eyes and rubbed them with the palms of my hands. Coloured light sparkles started to erupt, but when I stopped that action and opened my eyes again, I still was in the alleyway. Sadly, I had not dreamed having lost my way. It was reality.

Getting annoyed, I decided to walk on until I saw something strange. On the paving lay shards of glass. Curiously, I walked over and knelt down, first fingering and eventually picking up a shard. I held it close to better be able to inspect it, but it was too dark. The mist did not help to illuminate the dark alleyway, so I stood up with the intention of inspecting the shard in the light of my room. But then I remembered that I was lost and I gave up all hopes of ever finding a way back home or at least some other source of light to help me inspect the shard of glass.

Strangely, though, when I turned around once again to completely make sure there was no way back, I noticed a lamp at the end of the house I currently stood next to.

The wall of the house the lamp was attached to was all dark, and the plaster was already coming off. The lamp itself was dark, and no light came from it. Also, it looked like the glass body was broken in a small corner.

I looked around, checking for unwanted witnesses, but I was completely alone. I put my hand into the pocket of my cloak to retrieve my wand to make some light – and remembered all of a sudden that I had forgotten to put my cloak on. My bad luck seemed to be an entire streak of bad luck. Wonderful…

Sighing, I carefully hid the shard of glass in my hand and continued walking. I wondered why I would need the shard, but somehow it was impossible for me to throw it away again. It seemed important that I keep it.

After only a few moments, I had lost all orientation. The alleyway had got thinner, and the house walls were higher, obscuring even more the already dark alleyway. Usually, nothing could frighten me easily, but the cold darkness surrounding me did a fantastic job. And the wafting mist let every shadow look and move like a creature of hell and death. I grew nervous, and quickened my steps.

I turned another corner, and suddenly stood on a market. It was swarming with people. They looked strange though, not really alive, but… dead. It was hard to describe. Nonetheless, I could not get rid of the feeling that something was completely wrong. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was not supposed to be here.

But it could as well be that these people were what was wrong.

I gulped and slowly made one, then two steps towards the centre of the market, not knowing why I did not just turn back and made my way out of there as quickly as possible. But something kept me going on. No one took notice of me, but I noticed that no one of the people ever came closer than five inches. It felt as if I was surrounded by an invisible shield that kept the people away from me.

It was very strange.

What was even stranger was that the people all wore the same, dark clothes, looking as if they had been burnt. And their skin was dark as well.

Suddenly, the force that had led my steps onwards was gone. Swirling around to look back from where I had come, intending to run away from this strange place, I touched one of the dark clad people –

And it hurt. Where I had touched the person, a hole gaped in the arm of my dress, and the skin beneath was reddened, as if having been burnt by fire. It had at least felt that way.

A cold shudder ran down my back, and I gathered my skirts and ran. I did not care any longer if I touched anyone. I had to get out of the market. Fast.

Leaning against the old, plaster loosing wall of before, beneath the lamp, I tried to catch my breath. Everywhere on my dress were holes, and I felt like I had been thrown into a fire, burning like the people had done centuries ago, on stakes. Tears ran down my cheeks, leaving light paths on my grimy skin. I had no idea where I had become this grimy, and it did not matter. The solution to this riddle would not help me get back home either.

Pushing me off the wall, I this time took the way I had come up in the first place. Maybe there was a way back to Grimmauld Place. Maybe I had erred when thinking that only a few steps could never have taken me into the middle of an unknown alleyway.

Maybe I would finally have some luck this day.

If I could count it as luck, I was not sure, but an old shop, with a huge display window, caught my gaze all of a sudden. The display window was empty – except for a book. It was opened in its middle, and on top of the completely blank, white pages lay a single, black quill.

I stepped closer to the window, curious as to why an empty book would be on display. I had also never before seen a black quill. My own ones were all white. Furthermore, it looked as if the feather came from a crow rather than the usual birds quill makers used. A crow did not have any magical abilities – as far as I knew. I could be mistaken though.

My steps echoed hollowly, ominous; I felt that something would happen. Something magical. Being a member of the Black Family, one of the oldest and most respected families in the wizarding community, inherited me with the ability to feel magic in advance. The more defined it was, the stronger I could feel it.

But the first I felt when stepping closer towards the window was that the shard of glass got hotter with every step I took. I had completely forgotten that I still had it in my hand.

Opening my palm, the shard was revealed. The edges gleamed in a white light, whereas the middle of the glass shard was coloured into a soft green. The hotter the shard got, the brighter the light it emitted was. And rather soon the heat in my palm grew unbearable. I tried lessening the pain with taking some steps backwards, but the heat did not lessen. The feeling of the magical something around got less, but not the heat.

Narrowing my eyes and setting my mind on solving this riddle, I stepped towards the window with the book and quill again. But the sudden burst of heat, not dissimilar to how fire felt, urged me to let the shard fall to the ground where it burst into a million of smaller shards.

At the same moment, there was an explosion behind me. I swirled around and located the origin of the sound. The glass body of the lamp had burst into thousands of blinking lights. I looked at it, completely fascinated, and forgot everything else around me. Had there not been a tinkling sound to alarm me for what was soon to be happening behind my back, I would have been pierced with shards when the display window exploded as well. But I could get out of the way just in time and stayed unhurt. Nonetheless, I quickly lifted my arms to cover my head and face. When nothing bad happened, I let my arms sink down again and looked at the display window again.

The rain of shards was just as beautiful as when the lamp had exploded, but it was different. Instead of just falling to the ground and staying there, the shards dissolved into green-white fume that rose into the air. I looked back at the burst lamp, and caught the last shard dissolving into fume as well. So there actually was no difference between both explosions.

It could not have been a coincidence. No, the two explosions were connected to each other. I lifted my hand where I had hid the glass shard earlier, and saw that fume curled upwards from my skin as well.

Through the vanishing smoke I saw that the book and the quill were still there though. But something had happened to the quill. Its bottom tip had turned red, and although it did not move, words started to appear on the white page:

I stepped closer, and with a finger I went along the writings. Surprised at the burning feeling, I snatched my finger back again. But being my usual curious self, I had to find out what the substance was. I therefore put the finger into my mouth to taste the substance. It was warm, and even after having removed my finger from my mouth, the typical salty, coppery taste still lingered on my tongue.

The words had been written with human blood.

‘Isla?’

A familiar voice spoke into my ear. A hand was on my shoulder, shaking me softly first, then harder.

‘Isla.’

I turned my head and slowly opened my eyes. Sunlight brightened the sky I saw, only partly obscured by the person who bent over me. It was my sister.

‘Isla!’ She sounded impatient now, and her shaking became more rough and painful.

‘What do you want? Can you not just leave me alone?’ I mumbled quietly and closed my eyes again. I took a deep breath and drifted off to sleep again.

‘Do you want to freeze to death? Where is your cloak?’ She sounded irritated with a small hint of surprise in her voice. But it changed to annoyance when I did not react. ‘And have you had a look into a mirror? You are dirty and stink. Where have you been anyway? We have been looking for you for hours.’

Elle’s voice, continuing the tirade, drifted in and out, sometimes louder, sometimes muted. Her words did not sink into my mind fast enough so that I would have been able to understand what she was saying. It did not matter that I could not follow her. All that mattered was that I needed to be left in peace to go on with sleeping.

‘Help me, will you?’

It was my sister again, talking with someone. A male voice responded; I knew it, too, had known it for years. But I was too exhausted to open my eyes and see who it was, let alone to try to understand the words. I could not assign him his name, but I was sure that he and I were connected in a way that meant a lot – not necessarily to me, but to my family.

The only thing I knew for certain was that he was not Bob.

I was lifted up by two strong arms and hastily wrapped into a cloak, and while my mind shut down completely, letting everything around me drown in complete darkness, my nose still caught the smell of my fiancé, and my mind registered the feeling of the sharp edge of a glass shard in my left hand.

‘You know, that was the most stupid thing you could have done.’

I sighed with resignation. Elle would never let it go. It was typical for her to rub my nose in things I have done that were not the cleverest ones. She enjoyed getting me annoyed until I would scream and hex her. Of course, Father was not happy with me when I lost my composure and hurt any of my siblings.

‘And you know that I am sorry. I already told you all so,’ I said, tired of the constant discussion.

‘That does not change the fact that you went out without a cloak, Isla, in the middle of winter!’

She continued with her tirade, but I quickly droned out her voice. I knew Elle would not let the subject drop and go on for days if needs be. But since she would only repeat what she had said so far, it was not worth listening any longer.

I slightly turned my head to look out of the window; snow had started falling, and the flakes were softly trickling to the ground. It was a peaceful silence which calmed me and let me forget what happened in the last hours. The strangeness of my experiences did not lessen, although the darkness I had felt within my heart loosened a bit.

I sighed.

‘You are not even listening!’ I was accused, and Elle’s angry voice brought me back to the present. ‘You will never learn anything if you are not listening, Isla!’

‘I would listen if you would not repeat a million times what you already have said, Elle,’ I retorted, not caring what consequences my cheeky response would have.

When I met the eyes of my sister, I saw a dangerous sparkle glimmer in the misty grey; I had never before seen my sister this close to exploding at me. Maybe I should be a bit more careful with what I say.

When Elle had gone – after having given me a piece of her mind – I got out of my bed and went over to my dresser. I wanted to have another look at the shard my fiancé had put there on my request when bringing me up into my room and laying me onto my bed. He had looked at me in his typical questioning gaze, his brown eyes carrying a warning, but he did as I requested. But the shard was no longer there. The dresser was bereft of anything bigger than the tiniest particle of dust. Closing my eyes to think, I paced my room; five steps up, and five steps down again. Then it came to my mind where the shard had gone.

Quickly but silently walking down the stairs – I was still slightly hobbling due to my sometimes still hurting leg – I went down into the basement where the kitchen was, and found that it was empty, except for our two house-elves. They looked surprised to see me, but bowed accordingly, asking what I needed.

‘I need the shard, the dark one that lay on my dresser, where did you put it?’ I addressed the female elf since she had been my nurse from the moment on I was born. Only she came up to look after my room. If anyone had taken the shard off my dresser, it could have been only her.

She gulped, but dutifully answered. She was bound to, seeing that I was her Miss. But apparently Father had ordered her to take the shard and not tell me. She said with much difficulties – she had to serve two completely contradictory orders – that Father had been worried about me when Elle and my fiancé brought me home, halfway frozen to death and dirty from head to toe. And to top it all I had been desperately clutching at a shard that was – upon inspection – completely worthless.

But it was not worthless for me. I could not explain it, but I needed to have that shard back. ‘Give it to me,’ I said to the elf. ‘Now.’ My voice sounded dangerous, and trembling guiltily, the elf went and retrieved the shard. It cost her a lot of will-power to act against Father’s order. But as soon as I held the shard in my hand again, she ran, grabbed the fire tongs and started hitting herself with it, calling herself a bad elf. Usually, the sight of our elves punishing themselves made me take pity on them and rush to help them to stop it, but right then I did not care. I had what I wanted and left the kitchen.

Having been about to put my foot onto the first step, I halted when hearing the whispered words. It was a voice I had heard before but could not remember where. I carefully listened for some moments, but the whisper did not appear again. So I continued my way up to the first floor.

When arriving on the landing, I turned towards the drawing room.

Surprised to hear the whispered voice again, I stopped, my hand closed around the door handle of the drawing room. I turned my head in every direction, looking who else was there, but I was alone, and the house was completely quiet. ‘Hello?’ I carefully asked nonetheless. ‘Who is there?’ A slow echo of my voice wafted back to me.

I did not receive an answer, but the voice and the words – of both times – did not let go of my mind anymore. Over and over my inner voice repeated the whispered words, letting them sound more and more frightening. I paled and hastily stepped into the drawing room, closing the door behind me. I leaned against it, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples, willing my inner demons to stop the chant. But the only result I got was an evil laughter that echoed around the void.

I got horrified and sank onto the floor. Tears started rolling down my cheeks, and I begged it to stop. ‘Please!’

When hearing the softly spoken words, not a whisper but a voice with tone, soft but still strong, I looked up and looked into the grey eyes of a small boy.

‘What did you say?’ I asked.

He only smiled, but did not answer. Instead, he reached out and waited for me to take his offered hand. Hesitating, I looked at him closely, wondering who he was and what he was going to do with me – or worse, to me. He was a small boy only, yet size did not matter for I knew that even small people could be dangerous. But the calmness he emitted soon swapped over me as well. I took his hand.

The moment our hands touched, a magic sparkling bolt shot through me, heightening my senses to a level I had never before experienced.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, curious and scared at the same time of what could happen.

I only received another mysterious smile before he led me out onto the landing once more.

The boy led me up into the study of Father. I knew he had lots of books in there that were not in the library because Father and Mother thought we were still too young to know about their content. What I realised though when stepping into Father’s study was that I had never before been in this room.

I looked around curiously, inspecting the long rows of books Father kept up here rather than in our library. But while walking around, I never let go of the boy’s hand.

Turning my attention away from the book shelves, I found a cabinet which one door stood slightly open. The key was in the lock, but not turned. Carefully, I opened the already open door and peeked inside.

It seemed that Father kept a collection of various potions. The vials came in all sizes and forms; some bottles were long and thin, other small with a round convexity. The potions’ colours ranged from pale and clear over bloody red to poisonous green. I quickly tore my eyes away from the latter bottle.

What caught my special interest, however, was a bottle with a light blue-silver liquid that shimmered in the otherwise dark cabinet. I slowly took the bottle into my hand and examined it closer, careful as to not let it fall. What made me wonder was that the stopper of the bottle was missing.

An impatient tug at the hand that still held the boy’s tore my attention away, and I looked down at him. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ I asked. My fear of him had vanished completely, and I felt something for the boy. It was similar as to what I felt for my siblings; it was my love for them I felt flooding through my heart and being directed at the boy. It was so strong I was overwhelmed.

He tugged again and pointed at my robes’ pockets. I looked at it, then put the potion bottle back to its place in Father’s cabinet. Afterwards, I slid my hand into my pocket and unearthed the shard. I looked at it for some time, then turned towards the boy and showed him the shard. ‘Do you mean this shard?’

He smiled and let go of my hand.

The sudden loss and emptiness I felt tore something apart in me. I felt like falling, endlessly.

As suddenly as this feeling had come, it vanished again; not completely, but enough to have me realise the boy had walked back to the door. He only shortly looked back at me, over his shoulder, as if telling me to follow him. I complied.

Like a ghost, as silent and as swift, the boy walked down the stairs. My own steps on the stairs left small noises here and there, when I stepped on an especially creaky stair for example. But his steps were deathly silent.

Was he real? Was he really there with me? Or was my imagination playing with my mind, letting me see things and persons that did not exist?

We reached the first landing, and the boy, who appeared to be more familiar now, turned to the drawing room. He moved to open its door, but his hand went through the handle. I stopped mid-step upon seeing this. So he was a ghost…

I went calm. I was wrapped in a warm blanket that silenced all worries. My eye sight grew weak for a moment, but when it was clear once more, the boy winked me to open the door in his stead. I did as requested.

The drawing room was dark and cold, similar to what it was like when I found Phineas’ body. But this time, the light went on after I had taken two steps in. And the window was closed. Yet, wintery coldness swept in, cooling down the room enormously. The small fire that comfortably crackled in the grate lost the fight against the icy grasps of winter.

The boy went past me, walking to the window. And then something else that was strange happened. The window suddenly vanished, and beneath what must have been a charm I saw the original glass panes appear out of nothing.

With a broken edge in the lower left.

I opened my palm and looked at the shard of glass I held in it; its form fit perfectly. I went over, and tried putting the shard back into its place, and sure enough, the shard – once in place – melted into the glass pane until the window was whole again. I recognised the charm Father must have put on the window, and the soft smell in the air was the same I had tasted when I had held the one potion vile in my hand, up in Father’s study.

Turning around, I looked at the boy. Suddenly, before my inner eye, he grew older, gained in height and age. And like being struck by a bolt of lightning, I was struck with recognition:

The boy was my brother who had died before I was born.

‘Sirius? How –’ I started but he silenced me with an impatient wave of his hand.

‘What do you want to tell me?’ I said, my voice growing louder, panic rising within me. I could literally feel the time racing by.

‘Sirius –’ I tried again, but with the blink of an eye, he was gone.

– and look into the eyes of utter darkness.

I fainted.

When I woke up, I found myself in a dark place. Everything around me was damp, and from afar I heard the constant sound of water dropping to the stony ground. Its echo wafted around the dark place I was in, its rhythm was irregular; sometimes the drops would fall fast one after the other, but there were moments when there was no sound at all and a deadly silence settled itself over me.

It was terribly cold as well, and I shivered. I grabbed at my robes to wrap me into them, but just then I realised that they were all wet. Apparently, I sat in a puddle of water.

Hastening to stand up, I swore, unladylike words coming from my mouth. I guess even my fiancé would have paled had he heard me in that moment. Under different circumstances, that thought would have made me chuckle or smile, but right then I did not feel like being amused at all. I wanted to get out of there fast – wherever it was that I was in at the moment.

Turning around myself once, I took the chance to memorise my surroundings. I was in a wide but low place; however, it was still high enough for me to stand upright without any problems. The stoned walls described an arch, and there were deepenings that looked like the windows you typically found in medieval castles. This place looked entirely familiar to me, but I could not quite remember where and when I had seen this dungeon before.

Taking a deep breath and bracing myself, I made my way towards where the light came from at the end of the dungeon hallway.

I turned several corners until I finally stood at the opening of the dungeons. Light filtered into the darkness through a barred opening in the ceiling, and from the brightness I could see that it probably was around noon. This meant I had at least been away an entire night.

Taking a deep breath, feeling free again with being so close of getting out of the dungeon, I looked around, searching for a ladder or any other way out of the damp darkness. But I did not find one. I found a door though, one that was halfway open. Light came from the room or chamber behind the door, and someone made noises that echoed through the dungeon.

Apparently, I was not alone.

Gulping down my fear and gathering all my courage, then nearing the door as silently as possible, I hoped that whoever was in there did not decide to come out that instant or this person would see me right away. There was no way that I would have been able to run and hide should I be discovered.

But, luckily, nothing happened, and I reached the door undiscovered and unharmed. I hid behind the wooden door, and peeked around the corner. A man with black hair stood with his back turned towards me at a table. His robes looked noble, but it was hard to notice this because in many places they were ripped and very dirty. My gaze wandered to his arms, and I saw that in his hands he held some glasses of weird sizes and forms; he seemed to be experimenting with something. When turning slightly to the side to better see what he was doing in the room’s light, I saw that he was pouring liquid of a dark yellow shade from a glass into a strangely formed tube, carefully measuring the correct amount he seemed to need.

I looked around the room more closely; the walls were papered with cardinal velvet curtains. Some edges were already coming down, and much of the once bright colour was hid under a thick layer of dust, but the cardinal still emitted a warmth and cosiness that made me feel welcome and at home, besides the fact that this room lay in a dungeon, beneath a house that was uninhabited for years already.

A movement in the centre of the room tore my attention back to the man. He had now completely turned to the side; surprised and utterly shocked, I let out a scream.

It was Phin.

‘I knew you would find me here. But it took you longer than I thought it would,’ he said without turning around.

His voice was the exact tone and accent I remembered. He also looked exactly like when I last saw him – alive. Even the robes I vaguely recognised to be his, although they looked older and more worn than last time I saw them on my brother. I was definitely him, but I did not understand the meaning of it all.

After all, Phineas Nigellus Black was supposed to be dead.

‘Why?’ I asked in a whisper.

He laughed quietly. ‘I needed to have you comprehend.’

The echo of Sirius’ whisper still rang in my ears, and the knowledge of both my brothers saying the same phrase let a cold shiver run down my spine. I gulped and asked, ‘What do I need to comprehend?’

Phin finally turned around, and when he looked at me, his eyes bore a hard but sad expression. ‘You meet with a Mudblood.’

‘I –’

‘No need to deny it, Isla Black. I have seen you a few days ago. If he was from a respected family, half-blood at least, I would recognise him. But I did not. He is not worthy of you.’

I trembled with slowly rising anger. They were all so short-sighted it hurt, deep within. ‘Bob is a fantastic young man, wiser than some pure-bloods of older age I have met.’

He smiled mysteriously, holding a maliciousness in his smile that let my anger boil. ‘Your Bob is nothing else than scum,’ he spat and swiftly turned back around, rummaging through the tubes and glasses that lay scattered on the table. The clinging noise sounded oddly out of place in this dungeon chamber.

‘What are you doing?’ I questioned when he had not spoken to me in the last five minutes. ‘Phin?’

Eventually picking up something small, something dark that nonetheless glittered brightly in the gas lamp’s light, his back became rigid, and he slowly turned back towards me. The fanatic gleam in his eyes let me step out of the room, back into the dungeon hallway.

‘You want to comprehend, Isla? You shall get your wish.’ With a mighty swing, he threw the small glass shard at me, aiming at my face.

I had only enough time to recognise the shard for being the one I had picked up in a small, dark alleyway, lost in an explosion only to have it back in my hand when being found by my sister and fiancé. It was exactly the same shard of glass I had asked my house-elf for to give it back, the same shard of glass that had been missing in both the drawing room window and the glass pane in the wardrobe in the house above our heads.

A clinking sounded through the dungeon, and I was suddenly engulfed in a bright light.

‘Isla.’ Someone spoke to me, softly shaking my shoulders. ‘Isla, come on. Wake up.’

I slightly lifted my head and sleepily opened my eyes, blinking against the light. Bob’s contours appeared in my vision’s field. I yawned but sat up, taking my head and arms off the table where I had rested them, rubbing my eyes. I pouted; surely, I looked like a small child that was annoyed at being taken away its favourite plays. ‘Can you not let me sleep?’ I groggily asked.

He laughed near my ear when leaning forwards, his warm breath on my neck tickling me. ‘It is almost ten o’clock. The librarian wants to close her sanctuary for the night.’ I looked up at him when he stood straight once more. ‘Also, I believe Or— your fiancé’ – he emphasised the last word in a rather depreciative way – ‘will come looking for you if you are not in your common room soon.’

I pulled a face. ‘He and I might be engaged, but he has no right to tell me what and what not to do.’ Bob smiled; it was a mixture of satisfaction and sadness. ‘But I guess you are right.’ I stood up. ‘Let us go to our common rooms.’

The way down into the Entrance Hall was accompanied by silence. Bob and I merely held hands. He gave me a quick goodnight kiss, then turned left whereas I went right, down into the dungeons. The dark hallways were sporadically lightened by torches at the walls that sprang to life whenever I went by, but as soon as I reached the next torch, the former one went out once more, wrapping the hallway behind me into blackness. The cavernous built let my steps on the stony floor echo around and it sounded as if I was followed by someone where there was nobody except me.

After having spent nearly six years at Hogwarts, I no longer feared that circumstance. But what let shivers run down my spine was a whisper in the small breeze that quickly swept through the dungeon hallway…

The whisper of a familiar voice…