Mi'lord is No One's Pet

Mi’lord is No One’s Pet

Part Three

“The Safest Place He Could Be”

Harry tsked thumbing through the pages of Mr. Borgin’s ledger. As a part of his job, Harry had been tasked with reviewing and revising the shop inventory list which didn’t sound so difficult in theory. In practice, however, Harry soon realized that it was an insurmountable task solely for the fact that Mr. Borgin was horrible at keeping written documentation or receipts of incoming sales or outgoing purchases. And of what little records there were were hard to read due to the old wizard’s barely legible handwriting.

How this place was still open was beyond him.

Harry had been squinting at the current page for the last twenty minutes and still he couldn’t say whether the man had sold three cursed rings or three grouse wings… Given the items in the shop it honestly could’ve been either and without asking the man himself, Harry didn’t think he’d be able to figure out the answer.

But Mr. Borgin hated answering questions. Especially about the ledgers. He’d bark at Harry anytime he asked and while he may not have been a Ravenclaw, even Harry was quick to pick up that the dodgy behavior of his employer meant that this antique shop wasn’t all above board. And after Mr. Borgin made some comment about the flat upstairs needing renovations, Harry had decided to leave the subject alone for fear of losing his flat. 

There weren’t many places willing to house a minor with no questions asked and for so cheap. And Harry knew better than to poke his nose into where it didn’t belong. 

Still…

He half expected the British Auror Department to raid the place during one of his shifts. Breaking down the door with their wands drawn and demanding to see the books. 

But that never happened. No one came. 

And the shop was usually pretty empty. 

It allowed him a lot of time to read and work on his summer homework when he wasn’t dealing with customers or the ledgers. He had never had the opportunity to be this proactive when it came to his summer homework. Usually as soon as he arrived at the Dursleys, Uncle Vernon and  Aunt Petunia would seize his trunk and all his school books and lock them up in the cupboard under the stairs until Harry had to break or pick the lock come September First. They allowed him to go to that freakish school, but they wouldn’t allow Harry to do any of that freakish stuff in their home around their impressionable Dudders (Harry’s cousin) and that included summer homework. As such, the seven hour train ride aboard the Hogwarts Express, was spent with his friends, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley, rushing to finish assignments in a few hours that would’ve taken the other students weeks to accomplish. 

He was lucky Hermione was such a genius and that Ron had such an ability  for bullshiting homework answers or those assignments would have never gotten done. At first Hermione had been reluctant to help him copy answers, not because she didn’t want to help him, but because she thought the whole thing rather dishonest and too close to cheating. But when Ron had mentioned the bars on Harry’s windows he and his two elder twin brothers, Fred and George, had had to pry off to spring him for their second year and how Harry’s family didn’t like him doing magic, Hermione had better understood why this method was necessary and now had even gone out of her way to prewrite multiple essays rough drafts so Harry didn’t have to spend so much of the train ride drafting his own. 

He hadn’t told them he decided not to go back to the Dursley’s that summer. It had been an impulsive decision on his part. That as he stepped off the train at the end of his fourth year and saw his classmates rush to meet their families, and thought about how every year no one was ever there to meet him, how every year Harry was expected to find his own way from King’s Cross station in London all the way to Number Four Privet Drive in Surrey, only to be met with a belt and harsh words as soon as he stepped over the threshold for his troubles—Harry had stopped himself and wondered why he had to keep putting up with it. 

He had tried numerous times to ask his Head of House, Professor McGonagall, if he could stay at Hogwarts over the summer but every year she had told him that the Headmaster didn’t allow students to occupy the castle during the summer holidays. There are no exceptions to that rule. Harry had stopped asking after Headmaster Dumbledore himself had sat him down and soundly refused to listen to Harry’s reasons. 

That had stung. 

But Harry wished he could say he was more surprised about how that all turned out. He wasn’t. There had never been a point in his life where the adults around him listened to Harry. He was told to shut up or mind his business or given excuse after excuse for why things were the way they were. His wizard professors weren’t all that different from his muggle primary school teachers at the end of the day. 

So standing outside the hidden entrance at platform Nine ¾ , Harry decided that he would never step foot in the Dursleys’ house again. With some leftover money from the Hogwarts Orphan Fund jangling in his pockets, Harry marched his way to the Leaky Cauldron and rented a room for a night with every intention to scour Diagon Alley for a job so he could keep his room at the pub. However, the shopkeepers once they learned that Harry hadn’t completed any of his O.W.Ls and that he was a boy of only fourteen they refused his request for employment, some with less tact than others laughing him out the door, and Madame Malkin had gone so far as to threatened to notify the Aurors that Harry was a runaway minor living vagabond on Diagon Alley. Desperate and fearing the seamstress would follow through on that promise, Harry had veered down an alleyway trying to put as much distance between him and the robe shop as possible.

 That’s how found himself stepping into Knockturn Alley. 

Before that day, Harry had never been to Knockturn. It was commonly known as the place one should avoid. A dangerous place. A place filled with vampires and werewolves and hags. A place where the derelict and impoverished would congregate at street corners begging for a few knuts. Or squib children with soot-covered faces and gap-toothed smiles would pickpocket strangers'  if they didn’t keep a tight hold of their coin purse. And some of those squibs kids would wise up and learn that there was more coin to be made by selling than stealing. They would sell all manner of things, most of it some sort of scam, or gang up and rob a person and sell whatever they managed to take off the corpse. 

…At least those were the stories Ron told him.

As soon as he realized where he was, Harry had every intention of getting himself out of there but a flash of bright red robes had him ducking into the nearest shop instead. That shop, as luck would have it, was Borgin and Burke’s Antiques. Mr. Borgin had been standing behind the register reading over a copy of the Daily Prophet and he had barked at Harry that he didn’t allow loiterers in his shop and to take his begging elsewhere.

“I’m not a beggar, Sir.” Harry had told him, wincing as the old wizard looked up from the newspaper and eyed his too loose hand-me-downs and beat-up trainers distastefully.

“Yer dressed like one,” The wizard was blunt and to the point and Harry felt his face grow hot under the scrutiny. “Ye got any money?”

“Uh…” Harry hesitated, unsure of what to say. 

“If yer not here to buy somethin’, then get out. I don’t like looky-loos—“

“Actually,” Harry cut the wizard off, “I’m looking for a job. A summer job while I’m out of school for the holidays. Are you by any chance in need of an assistant, sir?”

Mr. Borgin paused, his mouth pressing together into a frown. “I don’t hire squibs, boy.”

“I’m not a squib,” Harry told him. 

The old wizard huffed. “I don’t hire mudbloods either,” he sneered. 

Harry jolted at the slur and felt the anger rise in his chest at it. How many times had Hermione been called that ugly little word by Draco Malfoy and his cronies? How many times had he and Ron threatened to pummel the blond git in retaliation? But this was the first time that word had ever been directed at him. This was the first time someone had assumed his blood status and been wrong. With a last name of Potter most people correctly guessed that he was a halfblood. 

“I’m not a—“ Harry struggled with what to say to the clearly blood purists wizard. “My name is Harry—“

“I don’t care what yer name is—“

“—Potter. My name is Harry Potter,” Harry introduced himself. “If you’re not hiring do you know anyone who is?”

Mr. Borgin looked surprised for a moment, then curious, setting the Daily Prophet aside as he eyed Harry more fully. “A Potter, eh? That’s old blood, one of the light-families… What’s a Potter doing out ‘ere looking for a job on Knockturn Alley dressed like a street urchin? Did you run away from mummy and daddy, boy?”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “…no.” 

“Then you should go back home,” Mr. Borgin waved him off dismissively. “This is no place for a light wizard.”

“I don’t—“ Again he stumbled over his speech, feeling a rush of shame and anger well up in his chest. “I don’t have a home.”

“They kick ye out?”

Harry shook his head. “No. I—My parents died. I was living with muggles—“

“Muggles?!” Mr. Borgin looked as if he had sucked a lemon; his face twisting up in disgust. “Did they dress ye like that?”

Harry looked at his beat up trainers, unable to meet the man’s eye. He nodded. “It was my cousin's clothes…he’s always been bigger than me…”

He was always fed more. 

“And they don’t like magic,” he said.

Mr. Borgin was silent for a moment. That silence hung heavy between them and made Harry uncomfortable. Eventually the shopkeepers asked, “How old are ye?”

Harry looked up to see some of the harshness had softened out of the old wizard’s brow. “Fo-Fifteen,” he lied.

“Ye passed yer O.W.Ls?” 

Harry nodded. 

The wizard stared at him a moment, contemplating. It was an intense moment where the old man’s beady, dark eyes felt as if they were trying to burrow a hole into Harry’s skull. Then the old man grumbled something unintelligible under his breath and waved him on to follow him behind the counter. “Well, c’mon boy, I don’t have all day.”

Harry followed the man to the back of the shop. He followed the old wizard through the storeroom and upstairs to a door that the wizard unlocked with a wave of his wand and pushed it open. Inside was wall to wall with stacks of boxes upon boxes, piled floor to ceiling with barely any space to step inside much less fully open the door. Harry looked at Mr. Borgin questioningly. 

“These are the shop’s records. Every sale, every transaction is kept in these boxes and stored in this room. There’s a wood stove and a toilet somewhere in this room too, maybe even a cot—I haven’t seen them in awhile—I need someone to go through all this and condense it. If ye clear it out, ye can stay ‘ere. I’ll pay ye two sickles every two weeks to open the shop downstairs at noon and keep up with the inventory ledgers and close up at midnight. I won’t charge ye for the room as long as ye keep yer mouth shut about staying there, I don’t have the housing permits and I don’t want Ministry officials poking their noses into my business, understand?”

Harry nodded, Y-Yes, sir.”

“And don’t ask too many questions, boy, to me or the people who come in ‘ere,” Mr. Borgin told him. “Questions drive away business, understand?”

Harry nodded. “I understand.” 

“Good.” Mr. Borgin nodded once, approving of Harry’s answer. Then the old man told him to get started on the room or he’d be sleeping out on the stairs that night, before he disappeared back downstairs leaving a somewhat stunned and confused Harry behind. 

That was not how he had seen himself getting a summer job. But it soon proved to be the best thing that could’ve happened. And Mr. Borgin, while prickly and bad tempered on the outside, was not so bad as an employer. He always made sure Harry took his breaks. He never complained about Harry doing his homework during shop hours. He had even suggested helpfully the location of a second-hand bookshop on the alley that Harry could go to find texts to complete his essays. 

Harry found that he actually sort of liked living on Knockturn Alley. The other residents were rough around the edges, hostile toward outsiders, but there was a community here. Neighbors looked out for each other. Pub owners would hand out half-eaten food to the vagabond squib children instead of throwing it into the rubbish. The hag at the apothecary was the place to go to for urgent medical care when you couldn’t afford the healers at Saint Mungo’s. And apparently shopkeepers, like Mr. Borgin, would let a homeless wizard boy sleep in his storeroom with no questions asked as long as no questions were asked of them in return. 

Knockturn was a place of secrets and favors. And Harry knew that eventually he would have to return the favor back to Mr. Borgin in the future. But for now, this place that most would consider dangerous was the safest place Harry had ever felt he could be. 

And it was nice. He wasn’t going to ruin it by asking questions about the books. He marked the sale down as grouse wings because it sounded less suspicious and left it at that.