Chapter 68: The Real Wizarding World
The first shop they entered had no sign — only a string of dried bats hanging from the door frame.
Their eye sockets had been replaced with some sort of luminous red gem that, in the dim light, looked like dripping, bloodshot eyeballs.
Inside was darker still. Most objects on the shelves were reduced to vague outlines — the shadows of bottles and jars barely discernible.
Behind the counter stood a wizard so thin he might have been a skeleton: deep-set sockets, pallid skin, fingers elongated like bird talons.
Seeing Orion, he split into a grin. Yellow-black teeth.
"Mister Black." His voice was sandpaper on raw wood. "This month's shipment is ready. The usual."
He dragged a black leather case from beneath the counter and cracked it open.
Regulus glimpsed dozens of glass jars packed inside in neat rows, each holding a preserved organ.
Eyes. Hearts. Fingers. One jar even contained an entire fetal embryo, curled in murky liquid, skin so white it was translucent, veins clearly visible.
Orion didn't touch the case. He handed over a coin-bag heavy with Galleons; the wizard took it, bounced it once, and nodded with satisfaction. "Let me know in advance if you need something special next time." He sealed the case. "Supply's tight these days — werewolves causing trouble, Ministry cracking down."
"Noted." Orion's reply was curt. He turned and left.
Regulus followed, taking everything in, expression unchanged.
The second shop sold Dark Arts artefacts. A few items gleamed in the display window.
A wand carved from human bone, its shaft engraved with dense curse-runes.
A mirror that reflected the viewer's deepest fears — its frame assembled from infant skulls.
A set of ritual daggers, blades crusted with dried blood, hilts inlaid with extracted memories of agony.
The shopkeeper was a witch in black robes, face hidden behind a blank white mask. Only two eye-holes — behind them, something glinted like twin wisps of ghost-fire.
She spotted Orion and extended a black-gloved hand, pointing at a pile of items in the corner draped in dark cloth.
Orion walked over, lifted a corner, inspected it, nodded, and handed over another bag of Galleons.
The third shop was more concealed still — tucked at the dead end of a cul-de-sac. Again no sign, only a twisted symbol painted on the wall in blood.
Orion stopped before the symbol and traced a reversed design in the air with his wand. The door slid open soundlessly.
Inside: a small room. Chains and shackles covered the walls.
Something half-human, half-beast was curled in the corner — possibly a hybrid of some creature and a person, or a failed Transfiguration experiment.
It saw the newcomers and let out a threatening growl, but the chains held it fast.
A hunchbacked old wizard shuffled from an inner room, a thick ledger in his hands.
"Mister Black, this month's accounts." His voice was rough gravel. "There's been a hitch on the smuggling line — Aurors intercepted two shipments. Losses have to be factored in."
Orion took the ledger, flipped through it, frowned. "Why was it intercepted?"
"Inside leak." The old wizard spat. "Already dealt with, but the cargo's gone."
"Don't let it happen again." Orion signed the book. "Next time, the losses come out of your end."
As they left, Regulus noticed the half-beast creature in the corner staring fixedly at him — eyes tangled with hatred, pain, and something close to despairing plea.
He looked away and followed his father out.
Shop after shop. Regulus saw many things he'd previously encountered only in the dangerous volumes of the Restricted Section.
Instruments for extracting souls. Candles rendered from infant fat. Pelts stripped from living magical creatures, still writhing.
Crystal balls storing the tortured memories of strangers. Stacks of experimental records and results that violated every basic ethical standard.
None of the Black family's Knockturn Alley contacts looked remotely respectable.
The skeletal wizard in the first shop exuded a dense aura of death; the joints of his fingers showed corrosion from long exposure to preservation fluids.
The masked witch in the second shop radiated chaotic, warped magical fluctuations — as though multiple strains of Dark Arts had been forcibly fused together.
The hunchbacked old wizard in the third had cloudy yellow eyes, slit-thin pupils like a serpent's, and a gaze that perpetually appraised everyone as merchandise.
Regulus understood: his father's purpose in bringing him to Knockturn Alley went far beyond inspecting family property.
Orion wanted him to encounter the real wizarding world — beyond Hogwarts classrooms and Diagon Alley shopfronts, there existed this: a brutal, dark, bloody, chaotic underbelly hidden behind the light.
He wanted Regulus to know that wizard society was not only Quidditch and banquets but also smuggling rings, Dark wizards, werewolves, illegal experiments, human trafficking, organ trades.
All of it lay completely outside mainstream discourse, yet all of it was real.
Some zones were gray — light and dark bleeding into each other, the line between legal and illegal blurred.
Diagon Alley shops might quietly stock goods of dubious provenance. Knockturn Alley's Dark wizards might operate under Ministry umbrellas.
But Regulus was no true child. He understood how societies worked.
The Muggle world had slums, black markets, underground trades. The wizarding world had Knockturn Alley. Fundamentally, no difference.
Both were the shadow beneath the light, the chaos beyond order.
Even without prior exposure to this side of the wizarding world, the logic was universal: demand breeds supply, prohibition breeds black markets, law breeds loopholes.
So he remained calm. No shock, no fear, and certainly no moral discomfort.
He simply watched — observed with care, as though studying an unfamiliar ecosystem.
Orion had been watching his son's reactions the whole time.
From the moment they entered Knockturn Alley, he'd been tracking every flicker on Regulus's face.
At the sight of organs floating in jars, the bone wand and the skull-frame mirror, the chained half-beast in the corner — Regulus's expression had not shifted once.
No discomfort. No revulsion. He simply looked.
Orion felt relief — and, alongside it, a complex swirl of emotions.
Of course he hoped his son's spirit was unyielding, unmoved by externals.
In a place like Knockturn Alley, the faintest hint of softness or hesitation could become a fatal crack.
Regulus's performance was flawless — calm, rational, focused. Exactly the bearing a Black heir should possess.
And yet, seeing his son face such darkness with such equanimity, Orion couldn't suppress a twinge of something deeper.
An eleven-year-old should still harbor innocent illusions about the world — should still believe in clear-cut good and evil, in the inevitability of justice.
But Regulus had never been that way, not even as a small child. He saw too clearly. He thought too deeply. Long ago he'd grasped the world's complexity and reality's cruelty.
It reminded Orion of yesterday's Patronus.
The Starry Sky Kite. A legendary creature symbolizing freedom, exploration, and the breaking of every barrier.
It represented the brightest, most hopeful, most positive desires in the depths of Regulus's heart.
Yet simultaneously, he could face Knockturn Alley's darkest, filthiest corners without a flicker — walking past jars of preserved organs, artefacts fashioned from human bone, as though strolling through a museum.
Light and dark seemed to coexist within this child.
Orion didn't know whether that was good or bad. But he was certain of one thing: Regulus would become a very, very exceptional wizard.
Exceptional enough, perhaps, to surpass every ancestor the House of Black had ever produced. Exceptional enough, perhaps, for greatness.
His estimation of his son rose yet again. 'Outstanding' no longer sufficed.
Emerging from the seventh shop, Regulus sensed something wrong.
The alley was the same alley — dim, filthy, sparsely trafficked.
But the air now carried several lines of sight, radiating undisguised malice.
Those gazes came from different directions, sweeping back and forth across him and Orion.
Regulus didn't immediately turn to look.
He maintained his normal pace and posture, half a step behind his father, and let his magical perception radiate outward. In moments he'd pinpointed several positions.
Ten meters ahead and to the left, behind a pile of abandoned crates: two magical signatures concealed there — faint and turbid.
They'd used Disillusionment Charms, but the casting was shoddy. Their body outlines were still visible in the low light, edges showing distortion ripples detectable by the naked eye; when they moved, their footprints showed in the dust.
Farther off, at the mouth of the alley, two more figures stood in the shadowed portico of a leaning building.
One of them broadcast erratic, unstable magical waves — feral, bestial. Almost certainly a werewolf, and likely close to transformation.
The other's magic ran colder.
Four people. Clearly a single team. Two tailing at close range, two holding the far exit. A classic ambush formation.