Shopping in Knockturn Alley

After three months at Hogwarts, Will found it a little strange to be back. At home, he had to do everything for himself.

The upside was that he could do as he pleased. He went to bed early that night without even reading, since he had things to do the next day.

Early the next morning, Will put on a loose, tattered black robe and slipped his custom-made insoles into his shoes. He donn an old mask and pulled up his hood. Beneath the robe, he wore a strange coat with a pillow sewn onto the back.

Will stood before the mirror. His reflection looked like a peculiar, sinister, shriveled dwarf.

The hands protruding from his sleeves were dry and rough, with dirt caked beneath long, twisted nails.

"It's been a long time since I wore this." Will's voice came out hoarse. It was just a small application of Potions.

He was going to Knockturn Alley today. This was the outfit he had worn there two years ago. Without it, he would never have gotten his hands on those Dark Magic books.

And, of course, there was the battered wand he had picked up back then.

One entrance to Knockturn Alley lay hidden in a dark passage off Diagon Alley.

Surprisingly, the Ministry of Magic allowed Knockturn Alley to exist. Dark Magic was, after all, an inseparable branch of magic. A few centuries ago, it had not even been a separate category: most Wizards studied it. Only in recent centuries, as the Wizarding World became more regulated, had Dark Magic been classified on its own.

Even now, most powerful Wizards knew a great deal about Dark Magic. The greatest Wizard of the age, Dumbledore, was no exception.

Knockturn Alley was a dark, filthy lane lined with shops selling Dark Magic goods.

The Cursed House, Toad House, and Poison Candle Workshop were ordinary sights. Some shops even specialized in corpses and materials taken from human bodies.

A short, limping hunchback entered Knockturn Alley, leaning on a filthy cane with one withered hand. His appearance drew no attention. He fit right into the gloomy lane.

Compared with the misshapen Wizards by the roadside, wrapped in reeking strips of cloth, he could even be considered neatly dressed.

He made his way through the alley with practiced ease, past shops selling poisons and voodoo dolls, past a ramshackle stall full of croaking toads and a foul stench, and past Borgin and Burkes, the largest, grandest, cleanest shop in Knockturn Alley. At last, he stopped before a dim bookshop crammed with books of every kind.

Crunch. Will stepped on a fist-sized, sticky creature that looked like a spider. When he lifted his foot, slimy fragments of the insect clung to his sole.

A dark figure rushed out of the shop, dropped to the ground, and began wailing.

"Dillma! What happened to you, Dillma? You can't die! We've depended on each other for years! You owe me! Dillma was an African Himalayan crab spider—"

"Shut up, Lodals." The hoarse voice cut off her sobbing. She had been running the same scam for years.

Besides, the Himalayas were not in Africa.

The woman named Lodals finally looked up. She immediately wiped away her tears. "Oh, it's you, Weiznan. Here to buy books again?"

"What else? Your bugs?"

Lodals spread her hands and led Will into the shop. "Find what you want yourself. Don't steal anything. I'm watching you."

Will had nearly fallen for Lodals's trick the first time he came to buy books three years ago. Fortunately, his sharp eye had soon identified the creature as an African Stone Spider: cheap and remarkably hardy.

They cost just five Knuts apiece.

Scams like this were common in Knockturn Alley. Being cheated out of money was the better outcome; some swindlers were vicious enough to kill. Back then, Will had spent a full two months preparing before setting foot in the alley.

Lodals's bookshop was dim, and books sat in crooked heaps on the shelves. Will had to cast Lumos just to see what they were.

The owner clearly did not care for books. If Madam Pince saw a young Wizard treating them this way, she would fly into a rage.

The books were neither sorted nor catalogued. Some had been piled on the floor and coated in mud and dust. Will could only search through them bit by bit for what he needed. Lodals sold these books by weight: one Galleon a pound.

The exceptions were Lodals's "private collection." Those were priced by the book.

Will rummaged for quite a while. Lodals even tried her scam on him again in the meantime.

At last, Will tossed several books onto Lodals's filthy scale.

"Seven and three-quarter pounds. Let's call it eight Galleons." Lodals held out her hand with a grin.

"Don't try to fool me, Lodals. You've tampered with your scale again." Will spoke in his rasping voice as he took out five Galleons, then fished a pile of small coins from his pocket: thirty-three Silver Sickles.

"That's all you're getting."

Lodals gathered up the coins, which were smeared with strange slime and grime, her face full of distaste. "You have no idea what I spent collecting these. They're advanced Dark Magic books. But since you're a regular, I'll take the loss."

The delight she could not hide hardly suggested she was losing anything.

"Don't think I don't know how much you're making. These shabby books aren't worth that much." Will reached into the battered crate of stone spiders, grabbed two, and stuffed them into his pocket. Still grumbling, he tucked the books into his robe and shuffled out of Lodals's shop with his back hunched.

"You old cockroach! Stealing again on your way out!" Lodals cursed after him but made no move to stop him. She had made plenty of money, and the stone spiders were cheap. She let him go.

"Super Wand! Lets your Squib friends and family cast spells!"

"Werewolf Potion! Cures Werewolf Venom completely!"

"Philosopher's Stone! Fragments of the real Philosopher's Stone! Only eighty pieces—first come, first served!"

Plenty of swindlers hawked their wares in Knockturn Alley, each scam clumsier than the last. But fools still fell for them now and then, so the swindlers stayed year after year.

That was Knockturn Alley: a constant traffic of Dark Wizards, sinister and strange, filthy and foul, violent and chaotic.