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.