"I want to apologise again," Cecilia claims as she pulls the door open to enter. "I shouldn't have said those things, I … I'm ashamed, Tom. I'm not always like this, but you need to understand, your mother has shaped our lives very … much. I'm not sure what you know about it –"

"I know enough," I assure her, then she nods and leans herself against the dresser by the door.

"Well," she sighs, "basically you've been punished the worst of all of us, haven't you? And I stupidly blame you and –"

"I'm not sentimental, ma'am," I wanly tell her. "No need for you to be it."

"You don't hold it against me?"

"Under different circumstances I wouldn't have been that calm," I honestly admit, "but given the complexity of our situation it's quite legit."

She almost breathes a sigh of relief. "That's good … He cares a lot about you being comfortable here, you know? Thomas, he … he's been talking about losing something for seventeen years."

"I don't know what he's hoping for," I hear me say, "but we're strangers."

"I'm afraid you are," she confirms, glancing at the window before taking heart. "But heaven knows – it wasn't what he wanted. I need to show you something, Tom. Your girlfriend can come along if you like."

The estate's earth cellar is packed with barrels, crates and all sorts of tools. We're lucky that the first torch was invented by David Misell in 1899 – now that we can't use our wands.

"We'll be right there," Cecilia promises over her shoulder as we follow her further into the darkness.

"Ma'am, should you be planning to murder us down here –"

"Oh Tom!" she growls. "I'm a mother myself! And maybe I came at you like a fury earlier, but I'm certainly not going to kill Romeo and Juliet down here …"

"Not a good example," I inform her. "Romeo and Juliet wouldn't have to be killed."

"What?" Cecilia asks in irritation.

"They leave this life behind themselves because of a misunderstanding, ma'am," Harper explains.

"Oh, you know what I mean," the mistress of the house mumbles, finally turning around as we come to a halt in front of a green aluminium chest.

"Looks like war," I say as she shines her light on it.

"In the old days, yes. But in his training period, it used to hold medical instruments. Your father is –"

"A doctor," I repeat. "He mentioned that, yes."

"In the meantime, however, something else was kept here. And that's just the so-called archive. There's a lot more upstairs in the study." She hands Harper the torch. "Will you hold this?"

"Sure …"

Harper shines the light at Cecilia as she opens the box with its squeaky hinges. And out come unmistakably handwritten documents. Telegrams and countless letters with the same writing over and over.

"He tried to find you," Cecilia tells me. "He's also been in London every year since 1926. Every winter, because he knew you had to be born somewhere around that time. He was always in town to try his luck, but there was never a Christmas miracle. I guess we had to wait for this Easter for that …"

Stunned indeed, I bend down to the box and grab random letters to skim through. Requests for information, probably sent to former neighbours, research for information to various state authorities – all returned, receipt stamps and notes everywhere, but no answers.

"And it never occurred to him to write to an orphanage," I soon say, looking up at Cecilia.

"Oh it did, Tom," she corrects, "rejections everywhere."

"Everywhere?"

"Yes, just … there was this one orphanage," Cecilia thinks aloud, bending down to me as well, "Wool's, if I'm not mistaken." She rummages and pulls out letter after letter. "Here, see? All these attempts. It drove him crazy. No matter how many times he adjusted the address or wrote it more clearly, the letters kept coming back unread. Just like that, as if by magic." She takes a deep breath. "It was uncanny. No matter how he tried – whether at the post office, via telephone – even the line was always dead. And every year he'd go back there in person, but one year he said he could swear the building had disappeared." She gives me a pained look and shrugs. "I thought he was going mad. Then the next year I believe there was a sign on the fence saying that the orphanage was closed. The next year he couldn't find the whole street! Of course, if he had told anyone, he would have been sent straight to a padded cell. And one winter – I remember it well – he met a lady in front of the gate. She was smoking a cigarette, her hands all shaky, as if she were in the midst of … well, he thought, from a medical point of view probably alcohol withdrawal – but she ignored him. Completely. She didn't look blind or deaf or indifferent, but …" She nervously laughs. "He said he felt like a ghost. Can you imagine?" We shake our heads in trepidation, quite mechanically. "Anyway, he wanted to follow her, but he couldn't enter the property. Literally not. As if the invisible forces of the worlds were stopping him. Each year I was curious to see what new trick his imagination played on him." She briefly closes her eyes, as if she'd actually rather not remember it. "You know, he wanted to … it sounds so ridiculous, but he wanted to … well – study magic. He said he was missing a piece of the puzzle and that things weren't right. And that he felt like he could only do something about it with magic. It was … hard on the family. Gwen has been obsessed with monsters like Nessie ever since he talked about it. Merope changed him … He was a realist through and through. But I suspect that crack in his psyche, and the loss of his firstborn child, he never quite got over it. He was always looking for his son." She smiles at me. "He was quite sure you'd be a boy, not a daughter."

"So he gave up with Wool's?" Harper asks.

"No." Cecilia smiles, it looks quite sad. "Even the other day he said he'd try there again this year. Even though you were gradually not going back anyway because of your age. But he had several places he thought likely, and since Wool's was so peculiar, he never focused on that alone."

I let the earthy air of the cellar fill my lungs. "I suppose – assuming it's true – one can't blame him for talking about magic after all."

"Yes, very strange indeed," Harper agrees.

"I'm sure you'd prefer to look at this in peace, Tom," Cecilia says. "I can also let you look into the study, he keeps more recent documents and attempts there."

"This will do just fine," I assure her.

She nods, forcing her lips to curve into a smile. "I'll leave you to it, just take your time. But don't forget about dinner, yes?"

"Never," Harper is quick to reply.

Until it's finally just the two of us again.

"Mighty protection spells," she soon breaks the silence.

"And deceptions," I say, nodding. "Yeah, looks like it. Because of Marvolo and Morfin?"

"I'm sure," Harper says, her eyes wide.

"But these two were incompetent morons."

"Still extreme and brutal," she adds. "Well, what … did the Gaunts' family tree look like?"

I raise a brow and give her a bitter smile. "The same names appeared in several roles, especially in the last two centuries."

"Cousins as spouses?" she asks.

"In harmless cases, Harper …"

"Oh no …" Her mimic says it all. "Tom, why didn't you tell me about it? You don't have to carry all of this on your own!"

"I'd never have mentioned it, I tried to avoid what already happened. That you'd come across the Chamber of Secrets because of Slytherin."

"Don't worry, I surely won't be approaching a giant serpent anytime soon," she says, chills all over her arms again. "You know, even earlier, when you … when you were talking Parsel to Morfin – something in me is scared of it now."

I nod. "Then you're finally feeling like everyone else does."

"But I don't want that," she immediately says, her eyes welling up. "I want to be there for you – and not have you feel like it's a bad thing."

"Well, it is," I claim, brushing a strand of hair out of her face with my hand. "How'd you feel about it if you didn't know me?"

She holds her breath for a moment, then she looks down, away from me. "I'd think it was … terrifying."

"See?" I smirk. "Listen to your instincts. And stay the hell away from the girls' lavatory. I'm not sure about her character yet."

"Her character?"

"No feather crown," I reply. "She's female."

"Unbelievable," Harper murmurs, "now you have another one in your life."

"Echidna," I say. "What do you think of the name?"

She immediately grins in awe. "You mean like in the crossword puzzle at Christmas? Greek monster of the underworld, the mother of monsters?"

I nod.

"What did Edwin say? According to mythology, one half is a woman with beautiful eyes, the other half a gruesome serpent, huge and ravenous …"

I take in a deep breath. "Fitting, isn't it?"

"Quite fitting, Tom." She takes my hand, yet indecisively. "But since when have you had a thing for fantastic beasts? So much so, in fact, that you start giving them names right away?"

"She's … different," I hear myself say. "We speak the same language."

"And how has she survived this long? She's hardly still gnawing on those two missing eighteenth-century builders, is she?"

"Rats," I bleakly say. "Not quite what she's entitled to."

"What is she entitled to? Mudblood?"

I immediately roll my eyes and groan.

"Just kidding, I'm sorry," she chuckles, clasping my face with her hands.

I see her crooked smile and everything is a little bit better.
Her closeness is so healing.
Her touch makes me see bright light and the sun instead of blood and decay.
But at what cost?

Almost amused, she says, "I'm sure you'll soon be blackmailing the Keeper of the Keys for suitable food …"

"Not quite the Keeper of the Keys," I admit. "Almost, though."

"Don't say it," she pleads, "I'll feel vicariously guilty."

"Harper, please," I then urge her, giving her a stern glance, "stay away from the catacombs … Don't follow me, don't ask questions. Yes?"

"Yeah, alright. For now at least … Shall we look at your father's letters now? Time flies, after all, and dinner is about to be ready soon."

"This box is so bizarre … And so is the fact that you have an appetite."

She shrugs, ever so fatalistically. "For the last few days, somehow, pretty much everything has been bizarre, Tom."

"Sure," I sigh, "indeed …"