Arabella Figg is dead. Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world and recently badged Auror, fears dark wizard unknown are to blame. Is her allegiance to the Order of the Phoenix a motive for murder, or are there other nefarious forces at work? Follo...
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Icy rooftops, cars, and park benches shone with hues of silver, as a February frost settled over London. Steam dissipated in wafts from the balding ginger head of Artemis Prewitt as he trudged towards town as briskly as he could, being heavyset, forty and late. He had intended to drive to work that morning, but upon leaving his flat, found the road closed for a half marathon. Everyone in London was running these days, he thought. The parks, that just a few years ago, were the exclusive hangout of dog walkers, hoodlums and drunks were now packed full of outdoor fitness fanatics, leaping here, and lunging there. 'A new millennium', he supposed: A perfect time to make some changes, if you were so inclined. Last week, when he had quietly complained about his corduroy trousers being too tight, Derek: a colleague at Cooper & Co Accountants, had asked if he wanted to join a 'club' for running. He had declined.
"You don't know what you're missing, Artie!" Derek had said. Artie was more than happy to keep it that way.
Grass crunched underfoot as he took a shortcut across a small green area opposite Grimmauld Place, wiping sweat from his brow and pushing his glasses back up his nose. Maybe he should think about some sort of exercise? Not running, but something. He had a young family after all and would do well to take his health more seriously. He adjusted the bag digging into his shoulder and heard a pronounced 'pop' from within its bowels. He tutted loudly, as he was sure his bag of salt & vinegar crisps had just exploded.
Cooper & Co sat on a pedestrianised corner near Islington high street, in the husk of an old bank that had closed in the eighties. When Cooper had been in charge, it had been a perfectly pleasant place to work. There had been four large offices, each with four desks, for four accountants. The four most senior accountants, of which he was one, each had their own smaller office.
Unfortunately, Cooper had retired last year, selling the majority share of the company to a hedge fund called Futur Capitalis, who for reasons unknown to him, felt walls and structure were counterproductive. Over the winter break, the offices of Cooper & Co were 'modernised', and Artie had returned to work to find a large open plan room with white walls, strip lights, flat screen monitors, 'hot desks' and a coffee machine with 26 settings, none of which were normal coffee. To one side of this open space was a conference room, split off from the main area by a giant piece of soundproof glass with the words Carpe Diem scrawled across it in an obnoxiously hard-to-read font.
Artie missed the old office. He missed coffee from a jar, and his chair with a hole in the headrest. Mostly, he missed the order of the place. Order and logic were qualities he cherished, having grown up in a family that often seemed to disregard both... Artie was a squib: A person born to magical parents, with no magical ability. As such, he had spent the first ten years of his life in the company of people who spoke gibberish into the universe while waving sticks about and getting everything they wanted to appear from thin air.
When he was very young his pure-blood, highly regarded family seemed to think he was just 'slow to show' his magical abilities: A witch or wizard could usually expect to display signs of magic by seven or eight years old, but this wasn't always the case.
