Tales from the attic (Quibbler article)

Tales from the Attic: If looks could kill

In today's edition of Tales From the Attic, we bring you a tale of an unsolved murder.

In the late nineteenth century, all the best-trained owls came from the House of Gulbadox. Their methods were so superior, they could even train street pigeons. Their business was booming like a coughing dragon until a scandal came to light. Their best trainer, talented witch Doxy Gulbadox, went missing. She was known for her excessive sweating and ambition for becoming a Veela.

There were a lot of rumors surrounding her disappearance: a family squabble, assassination ordered by their competition, or another case of a rabid-centaur kidnapping. Their competition insisted that her disappearance was a cheap publicity stunt and she was never missing.

The family claimed that Doxy was deranged like a sneezing Kneazle, that she made up stories of having a twin sister who was a Veela and most likely ran away to find her. If she had not disappeared, they would have committed her to an asylum anyway.

Years passed, the family stopped searching, and eventually, everyone forgot about Doxy and her excessive sweating. The new head of the family, a promising young wizard by the name of Wampus Boot Gulbadox, wanted to branch out into the experimental art of training noctule bats and set out to renovate the attic for that purpose. While cleaning it, they made a discovery as frightening as being caught in the web of a cantankerous Acromantula.

In a drafty corner of the attic, which happened to be above the bedroom of none other but Wampus, covered by spiderwebs and years of dust, sat the shriveled corpse of Doxy Gulbadox. She was in their attic for all of those years and they had no idea!

An enigmatic Inspector, Zachary Bogtrotter, who others thought to be as pleasant as eating your own toes, took on the cold case. There was no apparent cause of death which prompted a murder mystery. The family swore that Doxy was killed by nothing else but a cursed mirror. When asked to provide evidence, they revealed that they gave it away to not fall for its trap. They claimed that it was the one and only Mirror of Erised said to reflect a heart's desire and ensnare anyone who dared to look at it. Its victims supposedly went into a trance, mesmerized by a vision of what they wanted most in the world.

Inspector Bogtrotter did not buy their story but had no evidence to the contrary. And even if it was true and Doxy did in fact waste away in front of a mirror, there was still the question of who planted the cursed mirror in the attic for her to find. Our enigmatic Inspector began interviewing all involved and suspected everyone in town.

Was it a family squabble? Were Doxy's siblings tired of her excessive sweating enough to lure her to a cursed object? Or was it their competition who, in a fit of jealous rage, decided to eliminate the threat without getting their wands dirty? The herd of rabid centaurs was unavailable for an interview and many still suspect their involvement.

But the final question was, why the family got rid of the mirror this quickly. Was the infamous Mirror of Erised ever in the drafty corner of the Gulbadox attic? What else were they hiding?

For lack of evidence, no arrests were made and the case of the death of Doxy Gulbadox remains forever unsolved.

What say you, dear readers? Do you believe that Doxy was killed by an enchanted mirror or was this a cover-up?

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The above is an excerpt from The Gathering: The New Order of Merlin Book 1.