"You hired a mudblood?" Rigel asks his father, insulted.
He can see the new employee through the charmed window in their office that allows them to watch the shop without anyone able to look in.
He's very tall, dressed in a clean but simple second-hand robe, his hair parted neatly. Too neatly.
"Don't be absurd. He's not a mudblood. I made him touch the cursed candlestick. If he'd been a mudblood, he'd have dropped dead."
Tom Riddle. Rigel glances at the parchment again, containing the man's information. Very little of it.
One year older than Rigel.
"Never heard anything more muggle in my life. Even if he is a half-blood-"
"He's good. He recognised all the curses, and he helped me get rid of the one on that armour we just got from Tunisia. He's better than you, in any case."
His father's tone was coloured with disappointment.
Rigel grits his teeth and swallows his pride.
But he is half-Black, so he can't help himself.
"Maybe if you sent me to school, I'd be better," he says.
But no, he hadn't got to go to Hogwarts, even if his grandfather, Phineas Nigellus, had been the Headmaster some years before.
He hadn't been allowed to go because his parents refused to let him attend a place that received mudbloods.
And now his father hired a filthy half-blood -at best- and he's saying how he's better than Rigel.
"They don't teach you these curses at Hogwarts, son. Quit your moping. He's here to stay, and maybe you'll learn a thing or two. Besides, haven't you lamented how much the register bores you? I'll make him deal with it, and for such little pay, you wouldn't believe it."
His father is always proud when he can cheat people out of money. Indeed, Rigel sees the paying agreement, and it is deplorable. Even for a shop assistant.
(-)
He's more than a shop assistant. Tom Riddle is everywhere. In the backroom, deconstructing ancient curses or placing new curses on artefacts at Mr. Borgin demands.
He is in the office, dealing with the register, detailing in his elegant handwriting all the items that enter and leave the store, who bought them and for how much.
He even offers to sort through 20 years' worth of records from older purchases so that he can put them in order.
He's in the store, convincing customers to overpay for any object that he sells.
All Tom Riddle gets in return for his efforts is a monthly wage that Rigel could spend in one day for two good meals and one expensive firewhiskey.
Rigel finds it very, very odd.
(-)
"Close up on your own, later, will you? I have to deal with Smith, and that will take at least two hours. Never mind that she will never sell us the goblin-made mirror father wants."
Rigel has been trying for months. His father and Mr. Borgin tried.
Do they hope Rigel will just wear her down, visiting every Wednesday?
If anything, she wears him down.
"I could go, if you wish," Riddle says, looking up from an enchanted music box that holds some nasty surprises for an unsuspecting victim.
"I can close up now; we've made the quota for the day."
Riddle means he made the quota. Rigel only sold a cursed hair comb, and that's because when the customer walked through, Riddle was already busy with two others.
But it is tempting. He wants to go and have a pint. He certainly doesn't want that old whale shoving sweet cakes down his throat and pinching his cheeks.
It is all useless anyway. "If you're sure," he replies.
"I am."
"Guard your behind. She's prone to grabbing things she shouldn't," Rigel takes pity on him and gives him this piece of advice.
Smith will drool over him, handsome as he is.
And he is handsome. It annoys Rigel how good looking a lowly half-blood can be.
"Noted," Riddle offers him one of those dazzling smiles of his. "Thank you."
"Hmm," Rigel turns to hide his face because he suspects his cheeks have coloured. "Off I go! See you on Monday!"
(-)
Hepzibah Smith walks in Monday afternoon, her house-elf behind her, carrying a large box. "Hello, dearies!" She smiles, out of breath from having had to walk, flushed with the effort. Or maybe just being faced with both Riddle and Rigel.
They both put on their best smiles.
"Miss Smith," they say in unison and walk toward her. Tom reaches her first, long-legged bastard that he is. He bends and kisses her fat fingers. Rigel waits patiently to do the same.
"Hepzibah," his father rushes out of the office. "What a pleasure to have you here!"
"Oh, well," she pushes a strand of dyed hair behind her ear. "Tom here convinced me to part with this mirror."
Silence. Rigel turns to gawk at Riddle, mouth agape.
"That's wonderful news!" his father says when he recovers from the shock.
A year. An entire fucking year, they tried, and Riddle managed it in one evening.
Did he fuck her or what?
"You better give him a raise, you hear me?" Smith says, pointing a finger at his father and then promptly turning around to pinch Riddle's cheek.
(-)
"See, Rigel? This is what I want from you!" his father says.
It would have been bad enough to say it in private, but Riddle is right there.
"I don't deserve all the credit, sir," Riddle replies smoothly. "I am sure it was all the hard work Rigel put in during the year. I just happened to be the one there when she finally gave in."
His father snorts.
"You always know what to say, don't you, boy?"
Riddle smiles, but Rigel sees the flash of irritation in his eyes when his father looks away.
"From now on, I'll be sending you to our most special clients. To sell and to buy."
"As you say, sir."
"Aren't you going to ask for a raise?" His father enquires as Riddles turns to leave the office to deal with the mirror they just got from Smith.
"I trust your fairness, Mr. Burke. You'll add to my wages what you deem fit."
His father only offers a few extra sickles.
He's so pleased to get away with it that he doesn't question why Riddle doesn't ask for more.
Riddle could be making good money everywhere in their world.
He could go to Gringotts and become a curse-breaker.
They have hired curse-breakers before, and sometimes they failed with some of the most disreputable artefacts the shop had collected.
Tom Riddle fails at nothing.
The goblins, greedy as they are, would still pay him a fortune.
Yet there he is, unassumingly working on those old fucking records.
He's searching for something, Rigel thinks.
He must be.
Who spends extra hours offering to sort through all that tedious paperwork, for no money?
(-)
He always hates visiting the Blacks.
It doesn't matter to them that his father is also a member of the Sacred Families.
They treat Rigel's mother well, what with her being a Black, but Rigel is barely tolerated.
But Rigel goes along with his mother, hoping to see some of his cousins.
He is in luck. He finds three of them.
He endures Walburga's veiled and not-so-veiled insults for half an hour before he finally stops her.
"We hired this new help at the shop, some four months ago. I believe he went to school with you, judging by his age. Tom Riddle?"
Walburga laughs. "He's working in a shop? Oh, Merlin, this is priceless. See, Alphard, I told you he wouldn't amount to anything. He and that big brain of his were only of use in school. Outside of it, he will always be a no-one." She wipes tears of laughter out of her eyes. "I will be paying your shop a visit, cousin."
For a second, Rigel feels sorry for Riddle.
She's so pleased with this news, she forgets to antagonise him for the rest of the visit. When he leaves, Alphard comes after him, stopping him by the door.
"Be careful around Riddle."
His face is all serious; normally, he is always smiling and telling jokes.
He opens his mouth, seems to reconsider what he was saying and repeats himself instead. "Be very careful, Rigel. You are my cousin. I would hate to see you hurt."
(-)
Walburga does drop by the shop.
It's so bad, Rigel hides in the office, unable to stand it anymore. He doesn't want Walburga to make him an accomplice to this humiliation.
But he can't stop looking through the charmed window as it goes on and on.
She orders Riddle around, making him pack something, only for her to change her mind and send him to get her something else.
All the while, she keeps mocking him and his "fourteen N.E.W.Ts". Riddle bears it with a blank face, keeps silent until she gets bored.
She buys something, which surprises Rigel, who was sure she'd just leave with nothing, after an hour of making Riddle go around the store getting things for her.
"Here, for you. Good service, I must say. You certainly make a good assistant, Riddle."
And she drops an extra galleon on the counter, taking her purchase with her and throwing it in the bin outside the shop.
Riddle stands frozen at the counter, fingers tightly curled around the edge.
His face is transformed with rage; his eyes glint red.
Rigel is hypnotised.
All this time, he had believed Riddle has no place in Knockturn alley, at a dark shop, with his many smiles and his charming demeanour and his too-neat clothes.
But he belongs, oh how he belongs.
Riddle looks ready to kill someone.
It takes minutes for him to arrange his face back into something pleasant.
And then he takes the galleon, goes outside and drops it in the hand of one of the hags begging all along the alley.
(-)
When Rodolphus Lestrange comes the next week, Rigel feels faint.
He's convinced Walburga is now sending her friends to come to bother Riddle too.
And this time Rigel can't hide in the office because Mr. Borgin is there with a special client.
So he whispers hastily in Riddle's ear.
"I'll deal with him. You can take your break now."
And then he hurries to Lestrange, his smile in place.
"Good evening, sir; how may I help you?"
Lestrange barely gives him a once-over before ignoring Rigel entirely, heading straight for Riddle.
"Ready?" Lestrange asks him.
"Not yet," Riddle answers. "Can't close up until the quota is met."
The way in which he says it makes it clear this is a private joke between them.
Sometimes Rigel dreams of the cursed word; both his father and Mr. Borgin keep going on about it daily.
"What should I buy?" Lestrange asks.
Riddle comes around the counter and picks three items that are hard to get rid of, too dark even for Knockturn Alley.
He doesn't even show them to Lestrange, just bags them.
"Four hundred and nineteen galleons."
Lestrange doesn't flinch. He writes up a note from Gringotts and hands it over.
Riddle gets his coat.
"Rigel, I'm off. I'm not coming tomorrow either; please let Mr. Borgin know."
Of course he won't be coming. Lestrange's purchase met the quota for a whole blasted week. His father pays Riddle close to sixteen galleons a month.
Rigel stares after them, rooted to the spot.
Riddle is such a mystery.
(-)
"I can deal with them, you know?" Riddle says, amused when Rigel always hastens to deal with former classmates of Riddle when they come to the shop.
He just thinks it is distasteful, the way Walburga humiliated him. Rigel doesn't want a repeat. "What are you talking about? I'm only trying to make my quota," Rigel lies.
"Only Walburga will dare pull that shit, anyway," Riddle goes on.
"We don't swear in this shop," Rigel reminds him.
"It's just us."
The way he says it makes Rigel's blood hot.
He retreats to the office and watches Riddle charm customers when they come.
"We appreciate your business," he says, and how does he make that sound polite and yet mocking at the same time?
He always does that, speaks the right words, with the right smile, honest face and yet- yet Rigel can see the scorn behind all that.
(-)
"Merlin, I can't believe it's over." Rigel collapses on a chair, exhausted.
His father needed to get rid of some objects, fast, tipped off about an impending Auror visit, so he had the bright idea to have a sale day—everything 70% off.
Of course, he raised the prices by 50% just a day before the sale.
The sheer amount of customers, their fits when they realise the knock off price is not what they imagined, the haggling...
Even Riddle looks tired.
"It's not over yet," he reminds Rigel.
"Kill me," he says, head between his hands.
"Don't ask me twice," Riddles shoots back, irritated.
Rigel snorts.
They take all that remains off the shelves, carefully packing the artefacts, and then they walk to a secluded area, where they bury them.
The muggle way. They can't leave any magic trail behind.
Riddle does most of the work. It seems he is as good with a shovel as he is with anything else. A man of many talents.
Rigel mostly messes around with his shovel, casting dirt around uselessly.
Everyone knew he wouldn't be of any help, but his father wasn't comfortable with only Riddle knowing the location of the artefacts.
"I can't! Riddle, please, I have to rest, or I will faint," he says as they walk back toward the Leaky Cauldron.
But that's a long way ahead. Or so Rigel thinks. He's never been to muggle London. Ever.
The sheer number of people, the big steel things that travel with speed on the streets, the many lights and tall buildings- it scares him, and he is ashamed of it.
The muggles scare him too. He's never met a muggle.
And his father was persistent they don't Apparate.
"You weakling," Riddle mutters, pulling Rigel by the elbow, towards a muggle establishment.
Rigel is scared to enter it, but he is so tired, he just sits where Riddle indicates he should.
He watches the other man order them something, expertly handling those strange muggle papers that serve as their money.
The drink, whatever it is, tastes excellent. And it is cold.
The food is hot.
Even Riddle eats, and Rigel has never seen him eat; he'd never packed a lunch to work, and he spends his breaks reading.
He eats like a bird, with small, delicate bites. Rigel ends up eating his leftovers.
"Another one of these?" he dares to ask Riddle, once he's done, holding his empty tankard. "I'll pay you back, please, just let me drink one more before we go on our way."
Distantly he wonders why Riddle even had muggle money on him. And he's so poor, yet he bought Rigel food.
He flags the waitress down.
"Two more beers, please," he asks with his charming smile.
She smiles back and returns with the drinks.
Riddle pulls out his wallet.
"On the house," she says.
Rigel meets Riddle's eyes, and they both groan.
Those words are nightmare-inducing after having to say them so often for first-time customers.
He's surprised how little Riddle talks- he has that wicked mouth on him at the shop, always convincing people to buy or sell, a hundred words per minute, all so very eloquent.
Rigel is silent, too, because Riddle intimidates him.
It must be the exhaustion and the muggle drinks -for a wild second, he fancies he might have the courage to ask Riddle to come back to the flat he owns in Knockturn, above the shop.
He's a filthy half-blood, he tells himself, but if Rigel is really honest with himself, he thinks that he doesn't care about that anymore.
That maybe his parents were wrong, and there is nothing filthy about half-bloods. He doesn't say anything either way, because he knows Riddle would never accept.
(-)
Rigel can only stare in horror as the man chokes on his blood. His father is swaying on his feet, also injured.
It was bound to happen.
The fight had started over gold because his father insisted on paying far less than expected.
And in minutes, it escalates into this.
They deal with all these disreputable wizards- it was just bound to happen.
Still, Rigel stares in horror, frozen.
He can't think.
"Father," he says, weakly.
But his father ignores him, aiming his wand at the wizard on the floor, who is trying to breathe through the blood that pours out of his mouth.
Riddle walks in.
He calmly takes in the scene, and then he makes his way to the wizard on the floor.
"If you want him saved, sir, we'd have to hurry," he concludes, bent over the man. "He has a couple of minutes at best."
He uses the same tone he has when he deals with customers. "Help," the man begs, grabbing Riddle's robe. "Help-"
"I-" His father breathes hard, hesitating. "I don't know. He could talk- it was self-defence, and who will listen to him, he's wanted in France and Germany but- but still-"
Riddle looks at him, unimpressed. Just waiting for a decision. "It is your call, sir. But you have to make it now."
"Rigel, get out," his father says, and Rigel can finally move. He bolts out the door and vomits all over the shelf containing the cursed clocks.
He sits on the floor, trembling. His skin is clammy and cold. An hour later, his father comes out, his injury healed.
Riddle trails after him, holding a container.
Rigel swallows thickly and thinks he's about to vomit again. When he peeks inside the office, there is no body and no blood.
Tom Riddle gets a significant pay raise.
(-)
Rigel is afraid of him, after that.
The way he's been so calm, the way he can walk in that office as if nothing had happened there.
Rigel avoids it like the plague. Even his father tries not to spend too much time there.
His father is twitchy, irritated.
Riddle is just fine.
They allowed a man to die in front of them, and Riddle had been the one to get rid of the body, and they were all at the shop the next day, business as usual.
Rigel's hands shake for weeks.
Mr. Borgin is displeased with how much money they're paying Riddle.
"What were you thinking? You, who bought Salazar's locket for ten galleons-" Mr. Borgin doesn't know, of course.
"The boy deserves it, he works hard," Rigel's father insists, very out of character.
Mr. Borgin narrows his eyes at Tom every time he sees him.
(-)
Hepzibah Smith is poisoned by her house-elf, three days after Riddle's last visit with her. Rigel knows Hokey more than he'd like. There is no way, just no way-
Riddle disappears during the investigation, with not even a notice.
"Don't you find it suspicious?" Rigel asks his father.
"Shut up! We won't tell anyone he was seeing her. If they catch him, he has interesting stories to tell about me."
(-)
Rigel looks through the shop records, searches frantically in all their parchments, tracing every purchase Hepzibah Smith ever made.
All these papers that Riddle had painstakingly gone through, for seemingly no reason, just to help. Eventually, he finds it.
It is dated 21 January 1927.
Hepzibah Smith had bought Slytherin's locket for forty-eight thousand galleons.
Days after that, Rigel finds the locket in their records again.
23 November 1926. Bought from a beggar girl.
In a different ink, clearly revised on a later date, he recognises his father's writing "possibly Merope Gaunt?"
Rigel takes both of the parchments and burns them.
They never speak again about Tom Riddle, the half-blood in Slytherin, who had rich friends and seemingly no interest in money.
From all of Hepzibah great treasures, for all the artefacts worth a fortune in her house, the only things to have gone missing- a locket she had once bought from Borgin and Burkes, and her family cup.
(-)
Rigel thinks of Riddle often. He dreams of him, of his long, elegant fingers adorned with that strange ring for which he refused to explain the origins.
He searches for his smile in the faces of the men Rigel beds.
His father gets increasingly paranoid, so much that he becomes incapable of functioning properly.
Rigel takes his place at the shop, and only sees his father on the weekends.
"He'll come for me," he keeps muttering. "He was her son, he was her son!"
His mother brings healers after healers to tend to him, but it’s no use.
Through Arcturus Black's influence, they manage to get a more... dubious sort of healer, from Serbia, to see his father.
"He was cursed," he decides, after hours of examination. "A nasty, complicated Anguish Curse. It inspires everlasting terror in the victim, mounting more with every passing day."
"Can't you-" Rigel tries to speak.
"No. It is so competently tied to his blood that to get rid of the curse, we'd need to get rid of every single particle of blood, at once. It will kill him."
"He'll come for me," his father keeps saying. "Her son, her son, he'll want the locket back. Give it back, give it back! Give him all he wants!"
So many people had told his father his greediness would be the end of him.
And he'd been so proud of the best bargain he ever made, as he called it, boasting of it to everyone that would listen.
Ten galleons for Slytherin's locket!
"You had it coming," Rigel says softly, remembering Tom Riddle's second-hand robes, remembering Walburga Black humiliating him.
"You would have never met him, had you paid that girl what was due," Rigel guesses.
It still hurts him to see his father suffer. Greedy as he'd been, he was an adequate father.
His mother loved her husband so much she had rejected better, more handsome, wealthier suitors. His mother is a Black.
She takes out her wand, tears on her face and gives his father mercy.
They bury him the next day.
No one attends the funeral besides Mr. Borgin.
(-)
He hears the whispers about a dark lord rising.
At first, just in the darkest corners of Knockturn Alley, but they slowly trickle into elegant parties, attended exclusively by the Sacred Twenty-Eight.
Rigel will never manage to restore the reputation of the name Burke, not after his father had spoiled it with his cheapness.
He's still invited, of course, but he's always seated at the furthest end of the table.
The Blacks sit at the head, pretending they hadn't played with Rigel back when they were all children.
(-)
Lord Voldemort, the whispers keep coming.
It takes a year before the Daily Prophet publishes the name.
"Connected with gruesome attacks on muggle-borns and muggles, perpetrated by a group that call themselves Death Eaters."
In no time at all, the prophet stops writing his name down.
People stop saying it, soon after that, rumours that it has a taboo on it running wild.
Rigel can't go anywhere without hearing about Lord Voldemort, about Death Eaters, the cause, taboos or dark curses.
And then, one breezy August night, the doors to the shop opens, and Tom Riddle walks inside, some twenty-something years after he left it.
(-)
Rigel stiffens at the counter.
His eyes are blood red, as Lord Voldemort's eyes are described by the few that survived him.
His once-handsome face is ruined. Skeletal, with collapsed features and thinning hair.
He doesn't smile anymore.
But he's just as tall, and he commands even more attention than he used to.
"Good evening," he says, voice very soft.
"Good evening, sir," Rigel says, after a second, his mouth dry. "How may I be of service?"
Riddle watches him in silence for a few endless moments.
Rigel doesn't meet his gaze, fixes his eyes somewhere on his shoulder.
His robe is still black and simple, but it is of the finest quality, unlike in the past.
And then he moves those red eyes off Rigel and fixes them on some of the shelves.
"Still hadn't gotten rid of that old thing?" he asks, amusement colouring his tone.
"Oh, have you been here before, sir?" Rigel asks, forcing his eyes to leave Riddle and look at the horrid opal necklace, so cursed, the briefest of contact with skin would kill anyone instantly.
Riddle laughs. It sounds harsh and broken, nothing like the pleasant music Rigel remembers. "Once or twice," he drawls. "Many years ago."
"I must have been too young," Rigel says. "I don't remember you, sir."
"You were lazy and entitled, but you were never stupid."
Rigel does his best to display a confused expression.
"I hear your father died," he says.
Rigel nods.
"Sooner than I intended. I wanted him to suffer longer."
Rigel starts sweating profusely.
"Many men share your opinion, sir. Unfortunately, my mother didn't."
He feels terrible throwing his mother to the wolves like that, but she's a Black, living with her Black brother, and they are so strong that even Lord Voldemort cannot touch them.
If Walburga Black still draws breath, it means Lord Voldemort cannot touch them.
Rigel is the lowest of the low in the Sacred Twenty-Eight. No one cares about him.
He wants Riddle to know it was not him that spared his father of the punishment Riddle had wanted.
He walks towards the office, and Rigel thinks for a second to make a run for it. Just dash out of the shop and disappear.
But the saying goes that one cannot outrun Lord Voldemort.
So Rigel trails after him, falteringly.
Riddle goes straight to the shelves with the records.
He pulls out the box labelled still in his writing, from 1926 and 1927.
He goes through them, but of course, he doesn't find what he's looking for. "All mentions of the locket are gone."
"I don't know what locket you speak of, sir." Rigel doesn't let up.
A laugh.
It makes Rigel's skin crawl.
"As I said, you were never stupid."
He stops on his way out of the shop, grabbing an orb Rigel had just purchased from a witch that smuggled it out of China.
"How much?" he asks.
"First time is on the house," Rigel answers and for a second, Riddle's smile resembles the one Rigel remembers.
He leaves, satisfied Rigel won't be speaking his name. His real name.
Over the years, all sorts of people who knew it dropped dead.
Mr. Borgin escapes this purge; Riddle knows the old man is as discreet as Rigel.
(-)
He hears the name in his shop.
"Voldemort can go fuck himself," a voice says, almost giving Rigel a heart attack. He hurries out of the backroom to see a tall, strapping lad, sneering at what seems to be his twin, only a bit shorter and thinner.
Blacks. Of course they are Blacks. Who else would dare?
"The taboo!" Rigel says, startling the younger boy. "It is not wise-"
"Fuck the taboo," Sirius Black sneers.
He slams a book on the counter. Highly prohibited.
Full of illegal potions.
"And I'll take some nightshade," he orders. "Quick, old man, I don't have all day."
"I can't sell you this," he tries, because judging by the nightshade and the book- he has a sneaking suspicion the boy is trying to become an animagus as a teenager. He'll end up dead, and then his father will kill anyone that had anything to do with it.
The younger one scoffs, straightening his shoulders. "Do you know who we are?" he asks, full of self-importance.
Rigel thinks the boy can't be older than thirteen.
"If we complain to our father that you disrespected us-"
"Shut up, Reggie. Of course he knows who we are. You don't have to be so crass about it. You can threaten someone without outright saying it."
Sirius turns to Rigel with a bored face. "I don't see you packing my things. I'm losing my patience."
Rigel sighs. He is so over these young, arrogant fools.
"One hundred galleons," he says.
"That's ridiculous."
"That's the price," Rigel snaps at him.
"Isn't he our cousin or something like that, Sirius?" the younger one whispers. "He has our eyes."
"Everyone is our damned cousin. Our mother is our cousin, for fuck's sake."
Rigel snorts at that.
"He is," Sirius tells his brother. "But we don't speak of it. Really, a shopkeeper in our family. Distasteful," he finishes with a smirk directed at Rigel. "Here, I'll give you eighty galleons and be thankful for them."
"Appreciate your business," Rigel mumbles as they leave the store.
A part of him understands why a shopkeeper might become a murderous dark lord.
(-)
"I know you are closed, but you'll understand why I can't come during the day," Riddle says as he easily comes into the shop, even if Rigel cursed the door not to open anymore.
"No problem at all," he says.
He is drained. The business had been booming in the last week, but dealing with the pureblood elite for hours on end had not been easy.
And now this.
"How may I be of service?"
"I am looking for a gift," he says. Not you, too.
All week men and women pranced through. "I'm looking for a gift. Something expensive. I'm invited to Bellatrix's birthday. Bellatrix Black, you've heard of her, surely," they all said, bragging of being asked to attend such an event.
"We're a bit low on supplies, I'm afraid."
"I can see," Riddle looks around, displeased. "The back room?"
Rigel nods, heading towards it. He almost warns Riddle that artefacts stored in the back are still cursed and not safe for sale. Well, less safe than the usual things in the front room.
He manages to shut up at the last second.
Riddle goes through the boxes, wand in his hand. It's the same wand, only he'd done something to it. As pale as ever, but there's bone now at the bottom.
He sorts through the artefacts. It takes a long time. Rigel's heart calms as the hours pass, and he leans on the wall, not daring to sit without permission.
He'd heard the dark lord takes offence at the silliest of things.
Besides, he's doing Rigel a favour, sparing him thousands of galleons of expenses. Riddle takes the nastier curses off the items, so there will be no need to hire someone else to do it.
"Someone said my name in your shop a few months ago," he says after a long silence, startling Rigel.
"Black. Sirius Black."
Rigel warned the boy about the taboo.
He hopes the dark lord will pay him a visit.
But he won't.
The arrogant, obnoxious young fool will continue going through his life, stepping over people, protected by his ancient and noble blood.
Eventually, he picks a necklace full of sapphires.
Ridiculously expensive. Extremely cursed.
Unless he wants to kill whoever will get it, it will need a lot of work.
"On the house," Rigel says when Riddle enquires about price.
"Wasn't that for first-time customers?" Riddle asks, mocking.
"We changed the policy," Rigel insists. "First and second time."
Months later, he's at Gringotts, making a deposit, when he sees Bellatrix Black screaming at a goblin.
She's shining; she always is, beautiful creature that she is, but now she shines quite literally, the necklace Rigel paid a fortune for around her delicate throat.
(-)
Knockturn Alley flourishes year after year, with more and more dark items now openly sold on the street.
Diagon Alley doesn't fare as well, shops closing every other day. Rigel doesn't like it.
He enjoys his dark corner, but Diagon was always there with its colours and cheeriness when Rigel wanted a break from the gloom and doom.
Riddle used to enjoy it, too, in his youth. Doesn't he remember?
(-)
When the dark lord falls, defeated by a baby, Borgin and Burkes is assaulted by many Death Eaters, all trying to get rid of several objects.
Most of them they bought from Rigel.
He buys them back, for half of the price at which he sold them.
Fools, he thinks. He's coming back.
He'd seen Riddle deal with the likes of Walburga Black; he'd seen Riddle deal with nasty customers and with his father on top of everything else.
If he endured that, a little death is nothing in comparison.
Borgin agrees, storing the items away.
"They'll want them when the dark lord returns. We'll make a fortune. Again." Rigel nods, dutifully hiding the most dangerous items in the newly created cellar.
(-)
Dumbledore walks in, shocking Rigel.
In his colourful robes, he makes a very striking contrast with the surroundings.
"Good day," he says.
"Good for you maybe," Rigel mumbles, having had the Aurors pay him a visit.
Something about dark activity at Hogwarts, after a break-in at Gringotts and other suspicious events. All in the first year Harry Potter had returned to their world.
"Rigel Burke?"
"At your service."
He should retire. Rigel is getting too old for this.
Mr. Borgin is even older, but he seems to still enjoy licking customer's boots.
Dumbledore wants to talk about Tom Riddle.
"I have no idea who that is," Rigel insists.
"Shortly before he died, your father told me Tom Riddle worked here."
Rigel blinks, shocked to hear it.
"Before his death, my father was...not in his right mind. Who knows what hallucinations he experienced in those sad days."
Dumbledore keeps trying, saying dangerous words like "Hepzibath Smith", and "locket", and "ten galleons".
Rigel denies, denies, denies.
(-)
"You deal with him," Rigel hisses when he sees Malfoy and his son approaching the store.
"I don't-"
"I won't hear a thing. I suffered through Dumbledore last week!"
Rigel goes and hides in the office, looking through the charmed window.
Before Malfoy enters the shop, however, a child comes out of their blocked fireplace. Rigel blinks, surprised.
The boy looks bewildered to be there, full of grime.
An unsuccessful floo call, Rigel guesses.
He's about to go and lead him out of the shop when Malfoy enters.
The boy quickly hides in a broken cabinet.
And then Mr. Borgin greets Malfoy and Rigel gets to see how Malfoy tries to deceive the deceiver. Distracted by his whiny brat, Malfoy doesn't see Mr. Borgin steal some of the coins back.
They leave, Mr. Borgin turns his back, and the boy shoots out of the cabinet and flees to the street. Rigel hopes the hags don't eat him.
(-)
Rigel knows their reputation is that they will never, ever call the Aurors, whatever the circumstances.
He knows.
But still.
"Good evening, sir," Rigel says, wary when the most wanted man in Britain walks into his shop. "How may I help you?"
"I need a knife that will slash through anything, open any lock," Sirius Black says.
He looks terrible.
He would, after twelve years in Azkaban.
Some of his good looks have gone away, all his weight and muscle seems to have melted off him, the shine in his hair is gone.
But the arrogance is still there.
The pure daring to walk in the shop-
Rigel takes him to the backroom, where he gives Black a glass of water and some pumpkin pie he'd had for lunch while he searches for a knife to Black's specifications.
"Here," he says when he finally finds something that will suit his needs.
"That will do. I'll take some fire whiskey too."
Rigel blinks at him. "I am terribly sorry sir, but we do not sell liquor."
"You must have some," Black insists.
There is a bottle in the office.
Rigel charges him a fortune for it and the knife. As Black writes him a note for Gringotts, because the goblins are as indifferent to murder charges as Borgin and Burkes, Rigel adds:
"And another 20 galleons. You once left without paying the whole amount."
Black stares at him, confused, for seconds. But then he seems to remember, because he laughs. He sounds utterly and truly mad.
Black gives him the slip. He'd included a generous tip.
"Appreciate the business, come again," Rigel says, bored, as Black pulls a cloak tightly around him to hide his prison uniform.
(-)
Rigel was wrong. Tom Riddle truly died that night.
The...beast that stands in his store has nothing left of that charismatic young man.
No nose, no hair, no soul in his eyes. No shoes!
Lord Voldemort searches through the office, looking through ancient documents, trying to find who knows what.
He doesn't volunteer any information, and Rigel knows better than to ask.
(-)
"Aren't you done? Septimius, Abraxas, Lucius and now this little shit?" Rigel asks Borgin, after Draco Malfoy leaves the store. "For how much longer do we have to put up with their-"
"For as long as it makes us money."
There is a reason why Borgin had been Rigel's father's only friend. Greedy bastards.
(-)
When Dumbledore comes again, Rigel tells him everything he wants to know.
He wants to do his part, to get rid of Lord Voldemort, the impostor that now walks around instead of intelligent, charismatic Riddle.
(-)
"We're done," Rigel says when he realises Malfoy used the cabinet to take Death Eaters into a school full of children. "We're done with the shop."
"I'm not done," Borgin says.
Greedy, greedy bastard.
(-)
Rigel stays in his home, where it is safe. Nowhere else is.
The Blacks, the proud untouchable Blacks, are all dead, save some girl married to a Malfoy and the other one that ran away.
But rumours fly that the dark lord is beyond displeased with Lucius, and the other Black girl has an Auror for a child.
Their days are numbered.
Everyone Rigel knows is dead or in hiding. Borgin dies, murdered in his dear shop.
(-)
When the news is yelled out in the streets under his window that the resistance against Lord Voldemort has gathered at Hogwarts, Rigel dresses his old bones in his finest robes and heads to the school he always dreamed of attending.
It looks a right mess.
Crumbled and dusty.
He sees his own eyes in a dead girl's face, laid on a stretcher in the Great Hall. He thinks that's the Auror, the daughter of the Black that got away.
But no one gets away from Lord Voldemort.
(-)
Only, someone does.
Rigel is there when Harry Potter calmly stands against the red-eyed imposter. Rigel is there when the monster falls and dies like any man.
Tom Riddle would be very disappointed with himself.
(-)
"Are you all right, sir?" A girl with long, bushy hair asks.
Hermione Granger, he thinks.
Her face had been plastered everywhere, along with Ron Weasley and Harry Potter.
Undesirables. Galleon reward.
She hands him a glass of water.
"I am. Admiring the view."
She frowns. There is still blood on the floor, shards of glass everywhere.
There are still dead bodies in the great hall.
Not him; they took him away.
"I've never been to Hogwarts. My parents didn't want me to come, so I wouldn't mix with impure blood."
"Oh," she says, some colour flashing on her pale, tear-stained cheeks.
But she still holds the glass out. He takes it.
"I always wanted to see it. A pity it had to be this way."
He stands. He's tired, old and injured, but she grabs his elbow and steadies him when he stumbles.
"We'll fix it," she says, determined. "And you will see it then."
"I'm afraid they'll cart me off to Azkaban." She scowls. "You were with... them?"
"No, no. But- I did my part. My partner sold them the cabinet that led to Dumbelore's death. And I sold Malfoy the opal necklace that almost killed a student last year. I sold them many, many things. I did my part. I'm just so tired, girl."
"Then you rest now, sir," she says and helps him reach the infirmary.
(-)
At his trial, Hermione Granger speaks for him.
"He came and helped. I saw him protect a group of fourth years, I saw him use some... odd box that disoriented the Death Eaters."
"The box was a dark artefact," someone on the jury says.
"But he was there," the girl says. "He was there, when it counted the most. When he didn't have to be."
They let him go, amazingly.
On the condition he helps rebuild their world.
They assign him to Diagon Alley.
He takes over Fortescue's old ice-cream shop.
"Good evening, Ma'am, how may I be of service?" he asks when he has his first customer, a young woman with a young child trailing after her.
Because that's his penance. He's forever doomed to work with customers.
"He speaks funny," the child says, giggling.
He fills two cones somewhat messily, he has yet to get the hang of it.
"Thank you," they say, which is not something he'd ever heard from customers before. "How much?"
"First time is on the house," he says.
They smile and assure him they will return.
(-)
It is very different. He doesn't know if it's the ice cream or the people, these half-bloods and mudbloods he was taught to think of as savages.
But they all smile, they ask about his day as he fills the cones.
The children laugh at his old fashioned way of speaking, but they are only intrigued and amused. There is no malice in it.
He gets tips.
An eleven-year-old mudblood is so impressed with the ice cream arrangement (a flying dragon) that as he eats, he draws a crude picture and gifts it to Rigel.
He pins it on the wall behind the counter.
Somehow, through the years, many silly pictures find their way there.
Rigel loves his shop. Aurors stop by every day, but only to get a refreshing cold pumpkin juice. For the first few years, when he sees them, Rigel has the impulse to hide things in the cellar. Only there is nothing to hide. Nothing dangerous in the shop.
Well, if one doesn't count the alarming amount of sugar, as Hermione puts it.
(-)
He hands the cone carefully to the excited four-year-old.
"What do we say, Albus?" Harry asks.
"Thank you?"
"You're most welcome," Rigel assures him.
This one looks tamer than his older brother.
"How much?" Harry asks.
"First time is on the house," Rigel reminds him.
Harry rolls his eyes. "I've been coming here for a decade!"
Indeed, ever since the boy-hero learned that Rigel is distantly related to Sirius Black, he invites Rigel to Grimmauld at least once a month.
He wants to hear that Sirius was a good person. Rigel always lies through his teeth and says that yes, Sirius Black was the greatest.
"It's his first time," Rigel points to Albus, his little mouth already smeared with chocolate.
Harry laughs. "Thanks, Rigel."
He takes his son and leads him out on the terrace.
Rigel calls after them.
"I appreciate your business!"