The next day I got up very late. When I came down to the bar, Dáiríne was already up and preparing breakfast behind the counter. The day before I had left the inn before the old innkeeper was awake, partly for the sake of avoiding her. This day, she greeted me with a smile and a loud "Good morning, lad". I said good morning back and sat down at the table, "I assume you're staying for breakfast. Well I guess I will prepare for three people then", she said happily, while enchanted knifes were cutting a loaf of bread into slices. "Three people?", I asked astounded. "Oh you don't even know yet. My nephew is living here as well. He has an apartment right below your room. You've already gotten to know him by the way. You ushered him out of the bar yesterday", she explained and laughed. "Was he one of the three young men who talked to the black-haired woman?"; I asked her, feeling a bit embarrassed. I would have nearly dueled myself with Dáirínes nephew. "Yes, the one with short, brown hair. Shane", Dáiríne said happily. "The short, ugly one with the crooked nose", I added in my mind. In hindsight I could see the resemblance.

"You must know, his parents disappeared about five years ago. Ever since I've taken care of him like a mother. The poor boy, doesn't know what to do with his life. And has hardly a trace of magic in him. But I love him nonetheless", she told me dreamily. I still felt a bit unwell about the whole affair, so I just nodded quietly and buried my head in a big jar of Irish tea with milk. "Anyway, he should be awake by now. He's probably still K.O. from yesterday. I'll go and wake him before he misses breakfast", she went on, as she placed a tray with food on my table. She came back when I was just biting into a nice tasty piece of bacon, a very worried look on her face. "He isn't in his bed. That's very odd, where can he be?", she muttered as she let herself fall on the seat opposite me. "Maybe he's just out for a walk. Or maybe he hasn't even slept at home, who knows", I answered (of course only after I had swallowed my piece of bacon). Dáiríne didn't look any less worried, so I decided to skip breakfast and visit her nephew's friends, for maybe they'd know more about his whereabouts.

The first door I knocked at belonged to a small house made of grey bricks. One of the windows was broken and a few cracks were already showing on the walls. It took a few minutes until an elderly woman answered the door, still in her pink morning gown. "Yes, what is it?", she asked me, surprisingly friendly. "Hello. I am staying at Dáiríne's inn and I'd like to know if you have seen her nephew, Shane, since yesterday", I replied with a small bow. She seemed to think about it, then answered, "No I haven't. You better ask Flinn though, he might know. FLINN". She shouted his name up the stairs. The young fat lad who had a definite resemblance with a troll came trotting down the stairs, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "What is it? What are YOU doing here?", he asked angrily. Very calmly I explained to him that his friend was missing, to which he replied, "I really don't know. Haven't seen him since yesterday. He definitely went to bed though after you scared us out of Daisy's. I saw him go into his apartment. And hey, if you see him", he said angrily, "Tell him he owes me 2 galleons, alright?", he said grumpily and shut the door before my nose.

The other young man, Neil, seemed to be from a good family. He couldn't give me more information either; however he seemed to be a lot more concerned about his friend. "Really odd behavior. Shane usually has a fix routine. Why he wouldn't be there in the morning, I really can't imagine", he said before I left. I asked at the local magic supply store, the tobacco shop, the grocery store and even asked strangers on the street, but nobody had seen the young man that morning yet. I was starting to get worried. When I returned to the inn, Dáiríne was already sitting there in tears, surrounded by three other women, one of whom I recognized as Flinn's mother, who patted her on the shoulders and gave her hugs, reassuring her that everything would be okay. As she saw me she jumped up and ran to me, wailing in tears, "You found him, haven't you? Nobody knows where he is" and then she buried her head in my chest. I lay my arms around her and said, "No, I haven't. But I'm sure he won't be gone for long. Who knows, maybe he's stayed with a girl over night" to calm her. Of course I knew that this was impossible. I brought the old woman back to the table and made her sit down again, placing a big cup of hot chocolate in her shaking hand. "He's never done this before. Why..why would he just disappear? Where is he?"

In the evening, Shane was still missing and by now, the whole town was excited and worried. I took over the bar, since Dáiríne did not feel capable this night. Instead she took a seat in the very corner of the tavern, emptying one glass after the other with a flock of women comforting her and drinking with her. Of course everybody was storming in and asking questions. I was hardly able to ward off all the guests, as suddenly a very drunk Flinn crashed through the door into the bar, shouting, "It was YOU! Who else? You wanted to get REVENGE for yesterday! You were under the same roof! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?", as he staggered towards the counter, pointing his whole hand at me. "WHERE IS HE?", he shouted right at my face, spraying spit all over me. Nobody made a move. Then he reached over the counter, grabbed my neck and pulled me towards him. I wasn't able to breathe, however I did not want to hurt a drunk person.

"You know about Dáirínes secret, don't you? I bet you want to torture it out of him", he whispered so quiet that only I could hear. Then suddenly two invisible hands slapped the ugly fat face in the cheeks and Flinn, looking absolutely flabbergasted, let go of me. "How DARE you accuse HIM?", a shrill voice screamed from the other end of the room. Dáiríne had stood up, wand in hand, looking furiously at Flinn. "He is a STRANGER. What do you know of him, HA? And all he had to do was walk down the stairs and do I-DON'T-KNOW-WHAT to him", he roared back at her. "It can't have been him", she said quietly. She didn't have to scream though. The whole tavern was drenched in silence. "WHY? HOW DO YOU KNOW", Flinn shouted back, the rage still written in his face. "Because he was with me all night. We were in here, talking.", she said very quietly, looking at the floor and turning dark red. I stared at her, absolutely in shock. Nobody said a word.

The next day I went to the postoffice to send a letter by owl (for which I had to pay) to my family. They hadn't heard from me for several days now and they might have gotten worried.

Dear Mum, Dad, Joanna and Erwin,

I arrived safely in Ireland and have found a room at an inn in Chulainne. The innkeeper is a nice woman and the people in town are mostly very friendly to me. On the day of my arrival, I managed to catch a horde of pixies which had made the town unsafe. However strange things have started to happen since I came here. A strange high pitched howling near the inn is keeping me awake at night, but I could not lay eyes on the creature that makes this sound yet. Moreover yesterday a young man has disappeared who lived in the same inn as I do. We do not know what has happened to him, but I am inclined to find out very soon. I will not visit until Christmas.

Joanna and Erwin, how are you doing at school? I still find it funny to imagine all the strange courses you have there. It is still hard for me to wrap my head around subjects like "Physics" and "French". How do you not constantly fall asleep in class? Joanna, maybe you can lend me a hand with my howling-problem. I know how interested you are in magical creatures.

Even though I know that it is a long way for an owl and that storms are frequent at this time of year, I hope to hear from you very soon.

With love,

Gilderoy

Shane did not appear again, and as the days flew by, I also became worried about Áine. Ever since the first night I had met her, she hadn't shown up at the inn again and nobody had seen her since. It soon became clear to me that many people in Chulainne were of a mind with Flinn and seemed to think that I had had a part in the young man's disappearance. Suddenly I wasn't a local hero anymore, people eyed me strangely when I walked by and the only place where I didn't have to pay now was Daisy's. On one or two occasions, small children even threw stones at me from a distance. The little remark that Flinn had whispered to me while he had tried to choke me, I kept at the back of my mind. There was no use worrying about another little detail. To add to all my worries, the howling still continued to wake me up once a night and I started to suspect that it was connected to the disappearance. To my shame I was never able to either catch or even see the creature that produced it, no matter how many clever and sophisticated magical traps I laid out. It seemed as if the howler was both invisible and bodiless, or could at least turn into both at will. There were also no traces visible in the soft ground below the window.

I spent most of my time, when I didn't take walks to explore the area, reading through books about magical creatures. However there were just too many possibilities, reaching from sirens over werewolves and other kinds of wolves and cats to poltergeists. Since it was the week of fullmoon, my number one candidate was a werewolf, but howling in front of the same house every night seemed like strange behavior. When I asked Dáiríne whether she had heard anything, she claimed that she had a very deep sleep and that her window was at the other side of the house. However I heard some guests in the inn complain about a wolf keeping them up at night, and ravens were sighted in town even though they usually didn't leave the forest. A bit more than a week after the disappearance of young Shane, I woke up with the first sunlight, feeling fresher than ever before. It was just at breakfast, which I made myself because Dáiríne was dozing in a corner with a bottle of Whiskey in her hand, that I realized that the howling had not woken me up that night. It had stopped. It was that day that Dáiríne officially declared her nephew as dead and the town started to make funeral arrangements.