The young salesman diary. part I
— CHAPTER ELEVEN —
The young salesman diary part I
As the cold of February gave way to the dampness of March, even the narrow, shady streets of the Knocturn Alley showed signs of the coming thaw. Dirty puddles had formed in the uneven, previously frozen cobblestones. During the day they reflected the grey, cloudy sky, and in the evening the faint light of the few streetlamps that lit the dark alleys of this notorious street. Shop windows, not so long ago veiled by snow, now boldly flaunted their sinister wares, sending chills through the spines of the occasional passerby. Those who ventured here more deliberately moved with stealth across the slick cobblestone, now gleaming like wet dragon scales, their faces obscured by deep hoods. The air was tinged with the pungent smell of damp earth and mould, mixed with the lingering, apothecary like scent of dubious potions and the acrid smoke rising from nearby chimneys. The tickling of the nose caused by the almost tangible presence of forbidden magic added to the unease. Harry got goosebumps every time he walked with Riddle from their flat to the Borgin and Burke's and doubted that he would ever be able to get used to the atmosphere of the street and the unpleasant sensation it made on him.
Fortunately, working in the black magic artefacts shop proved to be more boring and mundane than Harry had expected. There were simple rules that Harry had to follow, especially during his first week at work: no touching anything, no talking to customers, no smiling, just stand to the side and try to look professional. He didn't mind.
Less fortunately, when he and Riddle were left alone (and this happened far too often), Riddle used these moments to force Harry to study. That bloody transmutation textbook hadn't been forgotten by the future Dark Lord. On the contrary, Riddle, with a stubbornness worthy of another cause, continued to make Harry learn the information contained in the next chapters. The same was true of mastering the Engorgement and Shrinking spells – but in this case, constant practice produced the desired results, and Harry was surprised one day to find that achieving an accuracy of a quarter of an inch was no longer as much of a problem as it had once been. Sure, it wasn't a tenth of an inch, but such accuracy no longer seemed like some unattainable Riddle's whim, invented just so he could torment Harry under the guise of teaching.
And, of course, there was black magic.
Surprisingly, it wasn't Riddle who brought up the subject but Mr Burke. The old wizard cornered Harry on his very second day of working. Riddle was advising an extremely fussy customer on a gift for his business partner, who supposedly collected cursed artefacts, Borgin was out somewhere and Harry, as instructed, was standing behind the counter trying not to show how bored he was.
"Psst, boy, come here," Mr Burke's stage whisper reached Harry from behind the curtain. Harry instinctively turned his head and the old wizard nodded at him. Riddle was so busy telling a customer about the properties of a necklace of blood-red coral that he didn't even notice Harry disappearing into the back room.
"Have you ever cursed anyone?" asked Mr Burke very straightforwardly.
Harry stood stunned for a moment. He thought of the Crucio he'd hit Bellatrix Lestrange with during the battle at the Ministry of Magic, but decided almost immediately that it was something he didn't want to share.
"Errr..." he replied very eloquently, putting his hand behind his neck. "Once..."
Mr Burke gave him a dubious look, then waved his hand as if it didn't matter anyway and turned towards the bookcase on which various books were stacked tightly.
"I hope you don't expect to sit here all day and do nothing because we aren't paying you," he said, turning back to Harry. In his hand he held a not very thick and ordinary looking book in a hard cover. "This isn't a storeroom. This is a shop. We work here."
Having no choice, Harry took the book he was offered. He glanced at the title.
Cursed items - the difference between the authentic and the forgeries.
Okay, it didn't sound so bad. Could have been worse.
"I expect you to be familiar with it by the end of the week, boy. If there's anything you don't understand, ask your brother. I am sure he will be more than happy to help you expand your knowledge," Mr Burke added, and Harry began to suspect that there were more ulterior motives in getting him a job here than he had first thought. "There are also some useful spells in there that you should know, but you can start learning them next week. I'll tell Tom which ones so he can keep an eye on you while you study. Don't let him think we're letting you sit here unproductively because you don't know anything."
Yes, it was definitely more than just being able to watch him most of the day.
And so began Harry's adventure into learning black magic, whether he liked it or not. Without fierce debates, passionate and brilliant arguments about the superiority of white magic and the moral objections to using its black counterpart. Just like that. Because his employer told him to, and Harry, to keep his job and a semblance of freedom, had to pretend to be committed. At least until he found an effective way to escape.
The book proved to be unexpectedly interesting, especially the first part which described all sorts of magical artefacts and how to check if they had been cursed. As long as the author didn't go into detail, it was quite enjoyable reading, but when Harry got to the detailed descriptions of the spells and how to cast them, he hoped that Mr Burke didn't have them in mind when he told him about the spells he should learn. Some required drawing runic circles, some complicated numerological calculations, and others memorising incantations that took two pages to describe. And they still seemed easier than the ones described in the section on how to apply simple curses to various objects. Conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns were the only things Harry understood from that part. However, he had no intention of taking Mr Burke's advice and turning to Riddle for help. The older boy seemed oblivious to the fact that Harry had been reading the book of curses in the evenings, and Harry preferred to keep it that way. Even if it meant embarrassing himself again in front of Boring and Burke.
However, it soon became apparent that Riddle was acutely aware of everything Harry was up to. During a Thursday evening chess game, when he was only a few moves away from a mate on Harry's king, Riddle enquired casually:
"How is your reading of the book recommended by Burke going?"
Annoyed that Riddle was interrupting his intense combinations of how to save his king, Harry reluctantly tore his eyes away from the board.
"Good," he replied briefly. If he moved his knight, Riddle would surely capture his pawn a moment later, but Harry would gain the opportunity to move his king, only to... have Riddle hit Harry's knight with his bishop.
No sense.
Riddle narrowed his eyes.
"So if I ask you about the classification of runic circles in relation to their usefulness in identifying curses, will you be able to give me a comprehensive answer?" he asked, leaning back in his chair.
Harry swallowed. He knew that tone only too well. In the best of cases, it foreshadowed a painful hex.
"You know perfectly well I don't know anything about runic circles," Harry said, trying to sound normal despite the sting of fear he felt.
He had only been punished once in the last week (by the stinging hex, actually, so basically it didn’t count), his new record. He didn't mind this situation continuing.
"Why didn't you come to me to explain you what you didn't understand?"
Harry blinked. Had he misheard?
"That I should do this of my own free will?" he asked.
Riddle gave him a stern look.
"Did Burke tell you to read this book or to become acquainted with it?"
"And those are two different things?" Harry decided to play dumb.
"I don't think he lent it to you to keep you entertained before sleep."
"If he wants me to learn something, he should help me," Harry said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Riddle looked at him like an idiot.
"Potter, in his case, the very fact that he lets you work in his place is a phenomenon. Don't count on him sharing his knowledge with you on this occasion."
"Why not? I'm working for him. And for free."
"Are you serious?"
"You teach me, even when I don't want to. Why shouldn't I expect the same from Burke?"
Riddle sighed and shook his head slightly.
"I teach you because that's what you negotiated for in exchange for your help. I don't do it altruistically; I get something out of it. That's the way it works in the world outside Hogwarts. Rarely does anyone share their knowledge for free."
With that, he moved his rook. Harry grimaced; he hadn't anticipated this move. The second of his knights was knocked off the board.
"I expect you to tell me at breakfast tomorrow about ways to find out if an object has been cursed or not and how to determine whether the curse is benign or malignant," Riddle added after a moment, as Harry made his move. Slender, pale fingers grasped the pawn in an elegant manner. "And by the way, check."
o.O.o
From the very first moment Harry found himself behind the counter, his eyes constantly flickered back to the cursed wardrobe through which he had been transported to the young Voldemort’s era. He didn't fool himself into thinking he would just walk through it and return to his own time; he wasn't that naive. But he hoped that its dark recesses still hid his Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder's Map. Unfortunately, to find out, he had to escape Riddle's scrutiny or the watchful eyes of his new employers. That wasn't so easy, especially during the first week. Riddle's suspicion was understandable – with Mr Burke's consent, Harry had got his wand back, at least for the time he was in the shop. Of course, when they returned home, he always had to give it back to Riddle, which was not easy for him. The older boy would ostentatiously cast Prior Incantato on it to see what spells Harry had cast with it during the day, which only added to his grim mood. Borgin and Burke, on the other hand, acted as if they actually expected Harry to be killed by a curse he would accidentally activated by the end of the week. It wasn't very reassuring, especially when the two older wizards seemed genuinely surprised that he had survived.
The opportunity to search the wardrobe came at the beginning of the second week. Borgin and Burke had left to visit a client who wanted to shed a collection of magical heirlooms inherited from a distant relative, and Riddle was in the back room, preoccupied with an old standing clock - a piece of furniture recently delivered by a shady character who may well have been an ancestor of Mundungus Fletcher. Riddle's orders were for Harry to sit at the counter, touch nothing, learn curse-detecting spells from a book lent to him by Mr Burke (the newest red welt mark on his left hand, hidden under the glamour so his employers wouldn't notice, was a tangible reminder of Riddle's high standards when it came to learning), while appearing to be busy working. Harry, of course, obeyed Riddle's command in his own way - as soon as he was sure that the older boy was completely absorbed in whatever he was doing, he silently leap from his chair and, glancing stealthily over his shoulder at the curtain separating the shop from the back room, tiptoed towards the wardrobe. Feeling a mixture of fear and excitement (and, against all logic, hope), Harry touched the wooden knob with his hand.
“Step away from the wardrobe. Now," a cold, merciless voice cut through the air.
Harry froze, then slowly turned around to face Tom Riddle, who was leaning casually against the doorframe of the back room. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes, sharp and penetrating, betrayed a flicker of annoyance—or was it amusement?
"I thought I made myself clear about your boundaries in this shop," Riddle continued, his voice smooth and dangerously soft.
Harry's heartbeat faster. Riddle had been very clear about what Harry was allowed to do and not do. Approaching the cursed wardrobe fell into the second category.
"I was just—"
"Trying to get back to your time?" Riddle pulled his back away from the doorframe. "Or were you looking for something different in it? Something more... tangible?"
Harry watched as if mesmerised as Riddle walked gracefully over to the counter, pulled a leather bag from underneath it and placed it on the counter. An uncomfortable feeling of knowing what might be inside clenched Harry's stomach.
His hunch was not wrong. Riddle first took a piece of parchment out of his bag, which Harry immediately recognised as the Marauder's Map, and then something that made the parchment disappear. Shit, the Invisibility Cloak.
Riddle beckoned to Harry, who took a few tentative steps forward. The older boy's features still were unreadable, and Harry didn't know if he was approaching to receive punishment or for something else.
"Does it look familiar?" Riddle slid the parchment across the counter towards Harry.
Feeling Riddle's intense gaze on him, almost burning a hole in his head, he replied, trying to keep his tone normal:
"Parchment like parchment. Is it cursed?"
"You tell me."
Harry dared a fleeting glance at Riddle. Grey eyes stared at him with hungry intensity.
"Shall I cast a spell?"
Riddle shook his head in denial.
"I think you can answer that question without using magic."
Harry swallowed. Riddle couldn't find out what these objects were. And Harry had to get them back at any cost.
"I don't know what you mean."
Riddle's expression hardened. "Should I dig into the answers in your head myself?" he threatened, his voice low and menacing.
"But you promised that—"
"I promised not to use Legilimency unless I catch you in a lie," the future Dark Lord interrupted sharply, a sly smile playing on his lips. "And now, you're lying."
The air between them thickened, heavy with Harry's fear and Riddle's looming threat. Harry knew he couldn't outmanoeuvre Riddle, not yet. Despite himself, the memories of Crucio still haunted him, leaving a residue of fear that gripped him whenever he got too close, whenever the older wizard's mood darkened. The thought of Riddle attacking his mind again tipped the scales. The previous invasions had left him feeling raw and exposed and Harry was determined never to repeat those feelings. Thus, with a heavy sigh, he relented, "They aren't cursed."
Riddle leaned more comfortably on his forearms against the counter. The hunger in his eyes became more visible.
"Go on."
"If I tell you what these items are, will you promise to give them back to me?" Harry tried against common sense and the little voice screaming in his head to shut up.
"No. But if you stop lying to me and these items prove worthy of my attention, I'll consider forgiving you for today's disobedience," came the cold reply.
With a deep, steadying breath, Harry reached for the Invisible Cloak. Riddle watched carefully his every move, but he didn't stop him. Harry's fingers trembled slightly as he touched the soft, flowing fabric.
"It was my father's," he began quietly. He concentrated on his hand, which disappeared beneath the material. "Dumbledore borrowed it just before my parents were killed and gave it back to me when I was in my first year. He told me he wanted to check it."
"So? Is it authentic?" The question was asked in a tone he had not yet heard from Riddle. So normal, yet at the same time full of reverence.
"I think so. Dumbledore told me it was a real Invisibility Cloak."
Riddle carefully took it from Harry's hands. The teenager's palm materialised again. Harry reflexively clenched it into a fist.
"If it is indeed authentic, it is truly unique," Riddle said, stroking the invisible material with his pale, slender fingers. There was still admiration in his voice, but there was also a hint of greed.
Harry felt a pang of longing. It was his.
It used to be his, he corrected himself bitterly in his head.
One day it will be his again. He would just have to remember to steal it back before escaping.
"And this? What's that?" Riddle asked after putting the cloak back into the leather bag. He tapped the parchment with his finger.
Harry didn't really want to do it, but what choice did he have?
"It’s a map of Hogwarts," he confessed reluctantly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Made by my father and his friends."
Riddle's eyes lit up with a mix of intrigue and malice. "Show me."
‘I'll have to use my wand,’ he said, reaching into his robe pocket for it.
The older boy nodded.
Harry took the map and tapped it with his wand, murmuring, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." The words felt ironic on his lips under Riddle's watchful gaze.
Ink began to spider across the surface, lines forming corridors, rooms and staircases, dots appearing and labeling themselves with names. Riddle leaned further forward, his gaze intense as he watched the magical display unfold. When everything finally appeared, he drew the map towards him, not hiding his fascination.
"Brilliant," he breathed, tracing the paths of Hogwarts with his finger. "The level of detail is extraordinary."
Harry followed the trail of his finger, which stopped at the headmaster's office, where there was a dot signed Armando Dippet. The moment Riddle's finger hovered over it, the dot moved. It seemed that despite the time travel, the map was still working.
"And you say it was created by your father along with his friends?" queried the future Dark Lord.
"Yes, back in their days as Hogwarts students."
Harry felt a surge of pride despite himself; he had spent enough time with Riddle to know that it was hard to impress him. And the older boy's current behaviour clearly indicated that he was impressed by the creativity of the map makers.
Harry fondly straightened one corner of the map.
"You got it from Dumbledore too?"
"From Fred and George, Ron's older brothers. When I was in third year, Uncle Vernon didn't sign mine permission to Hogsmeade," he said. "So, the twins thought I could use it so I could sneak out of the castle."
"And how did they come into possession of it?" Riddle's finger made its way from the headmaster's office to the dungeons that housed the Slytherins' common room.
"They told me they stole it from Filch, the caretaker, during the detention when they were in first year. He had confiscated it from my dad many years earlier."
"And the first years were able to steal from the caretaker? This school has really gone downhill."
Harry smiled under his breath. For a moment, he forgot his fear and who was on the other side of the counter.
"It wasn't that difficult with Filch. He's a squib."
Riddle shook his head in disgust. Harry chuckled.
"Who was your father? Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot or Prongs?", Riddle asked, changing the subject.
Harry was not surprised that Riddle knew these nicknames. He was probably trying to discover the secrets of the parchment on his own and had been gifted with a dose of cutting retorts from its creators.
"Prongs. Moony is Remus Lupin, the same one who taught me the Patronus spell. Wormtail is Petter Pettigrew, the traitor who betrayed my parents to Voldemort, and Padfood—" Harry's voice trailed off.
He lifted his gaze to meet the knowing grey eyes. He didn't have to finish.
"Looks like you've earned my forgiveness" Riddle stated lightly, leaving Harry even more stunned. "How to deactivate it?"
"You should tap it again and recite, "Mischief managed"."
Riddle followed Harry's instructions and the parchment returned to an ordinary piece of paper.
Harry watched as the older boy rolled it up. Just as he was about to tuck it into his bag, Harry's hand shot forward. At the same time he realised what he was about to do and froze, horrified at his own boldness.
Riddle's gaze turned icy again.
"This isn't Hogwarts, you don't need it here," Harry said quietly, as if to defend himself.
"I'll decide for myself what I need and what I don't. Don't you dare do that again."
Harry nodded, fear tightening in his throat. He did not like what he saw in Riddle's eyes. Hunger, possessiveness, deadly threat. He withdrew his hand.
Dumbledore's words echoed in his mind: "Young Tom Riddle liked to collect trophies.
Apparently, so did the older one.
o.O.o
Harry quickly realised that all the important things happened in the back room or in the customers' houses. The front of the shop was just a facade for mundane transactions. The customers who walked into the shop, who came straight up to the counter to make their needs known, were not the sort of clients from whom Borgin and Burke made their real money. Sure, they drove traffic and bought all sorts of magical items, but they tended to be small items that didn't pose any real danger.
Or so Harry hoped.
Some of these people have stuck in Harry's mind. Last week an old witch came into the shop with nails so long and moldy that made Harry sick just looking at them. She asked with her squeaky voice if they had anything to help her deal with a neighbour who was trying to poison her beloved cats. Riddle nodded with a serious look on his face, expressing full understanding of the elderly witch's request, and then (after a suitably long search) handed her a bag of fish scales. According to his instructions, she was to scatter them outside her hated neighbour's house, which would bring bad luck to the wizard until the scales were removed. The old witch smiled nastily, paid a not inconsiderable sum, then passionately stowed away her purchases, muttering under her breath: "I won't let you torment my furry children." Harry hoped the scales were not as effective as Riddle had assured her.
On another occasion, a wizard with dark, slicked-back hair and sharp features entered the shop, casting a sinister and foreboding aura around himself. To Harry's surprise, however, he was not invited into the back room, which meant he was not as important as he thought he was. He must have been a regular customer, though, because no sooner had he crossed the threshold than Mr Burke knew what to offer him. He used a spell to summon a box from one of the higher shelves. By the time the customer approached the counter, Mr Burke was ready. With a theatrical gesture, he lifted the lid of the box revelling two rows of amulets from all over the world. Among them were Egyptian stone beetles, glazed clay tiles from Greece with painted blue eyes, and a tiny intricately carved ivory animal from the heart of Africa. After a rather lengthy and detailed discussion of each one (which Harry reluctantly listened to with growing trepidation, especially as Mr Burke moved on to praise an Indian amulet as ideal for necromantic practices), the client decided on a crocodile tooth found in one of the Egyptian tombs, which was said to provide an increase in power when casting runic spells. Mr Burke complimented the choice, carefully wrapped the amulet and, after collecting his galleons, invited the customer to return next month for another delivery.
As soon as the bell over the door fell silent, Mr Burke called out to the back room:
"Tom, we're going to need more next month. Think of something from the Middle East or India this time."
Harry's jaw dropped.
But not all customers were welcome. There were often people who wandered into the shop quite by accident. Like those two young witches who wandered from the shelves to the display cases and back again without any particular reason, occasionally giggling, until Borgin finally got annoyed and threw them out. The next customer, who also seemed to have come just to look, had already been asked out by Harry. Borgin apparently thought this was something Harry would be perfect for, and since then it became one of his regular duties. On another occasion, an Auror disguised as a customer must have been sent by his superiors to catch Borgin and Burke selling something illegal. Borgin immediately saw through his plan, and although the man offered a very large sum of galleons for a very rare set of books on dark magic (as it later turned out, two of the books mentioned by the wizard had been spotted by Harry on a shelf in a bookcase in the back room), Borgin insisted that they didn't have anything to his liking, and the wizard left the shop with nothing. As the door closed behind the Auror, Borgin spat over his left shoulder. "Bloody scoundrel," he muttered, pacing back and forth in agitation. Harry wisely decided that this was a sign to get on with polishing the display cases that bore the fingerprints of the boy who had come in here some time earlier with his mother, looking for something on her cheating husband.
But it wasn't the variety of customers passing through the shop that really amazed Harry on a daily basis, but watching Riddle in his role as an unassuming salesman, a subordinate of Borgin and Burke. Knowing Riddle's true nature and the enormity of his ambition, Harry would never have expected such a thing from him.
Harry Potter knew that Tom Riddle was a master manipulator, he had experienced it first-hand more than once. But experiencing it and seeing Riddle in action were two different things. Harry had gotten a taste of how effective Riddle could be through the Slughorn memoirs he had watched with Dumbledore. But it was only as he watched day after day the ease with which Riddle wrapped more and more clients around his finger, that Harry realised just how dangerous and efficient the older boy could be. He used his natural charm and magical abilities without remorse. Harry had also no doubt that Riddle not once nor twice used Legilimency on customers to determine what they really need. Time and again, he impressed them with his vast knowledge and excellent manners, giving them a sense of importance and good service. No wonder so many people were fooled by his charm.
Harry hoped he would never find himself in their midst.