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…