"Are you satisfied with your purchase, Madam?" Frick asked with exaggerated enthusiasm, rubbing his hands together in an obsequious gesture.
He practically fawned over Lady Caroline, his body language was servile and extremely eager to please. "If you're not entirely satisfied with this particular specimen, I can exchange it for you free of charge, with no questions asked, until you find the one that suits you best."
"Really?" Lady Caroline's tone carried doubt and surprise, her skull was tilting slightly as she processed this unexpected offer. "These skeleton dogs... don't they actually belong to this young gentleman here?"
She gestured with one hand toward Morris as she spoke.
"Ah, not anymore! Not at all!" Frick patted his chest with one hand in a gesture of sincerity and confidence, then smoothly continued. "Madam, I went to great lengths to convince this talented young man to allow me to sell his remarkable skeleton dogs in my humble shop. It was all for you, truly."
He paused, then added with even more enthusiasm, "Given our special relationship and my deep regard for you, I can completely take the liberty of giving you another skeleton dog as a gift!"
"Really?" Lady Caroline's hand rose to cover her empty mouth in a gesture of shocked surprise. "I'm so touched by your generosity, Mr. Frick."
She paused, and her tone shifted slightly. "But I'm very sorry to say that I cannot accept such an extravagant gift from you."
Frick looked somewhat disappointed, but immediately put on an even more enthusiastic smile. "Madam, you're being too formal!"
"Madam, you're being far too formal with me!"
He bowed slightly from the waist in an old-fashioned gesture of respect and said with what appeared to be complete sincerity,
"I completely understand your feelings about propriety and not wishing to be indebted. Please don't treat this gesture as a burden or an obligation—it's simply my personal sentiment. What's wrong with friends giving each other gifts from time to time? It's perfectly natural!"
Lady Caroline's response was brief and polite.
"Thank you for your kind offer, Mr. Frick, but it's really not necessary."
Morris watched this entire embarrassing scene from his position off to the side. Finally, unable to maintain his blank expression any longer, he turned his face away from the spectacle and silently said to himself in the privacy of his own thoughts:
"Pathetic! Absolutely pathetic!"
So, this was what a simp looked like in real life?
In real life, this was the first time he had personally witnessed such a creature. What was even more absurd was that the object of Frick's intense affection was actually a literal skeleton.
The whole situation was surreal.
This world was too fantastical, too strange, even by magical standards.
Morris couldn't decide whether to laugh or feel deeply disturbed by what he was witnessing.
After successfully purchasing her desired pet and concluding her business transaction, Lady Caroline departed immediately.
Morris turned to look at the thoroughly dejected Frick standing behind his counter, and decided to address the elephant in the room directly.
"Mr. Frick," Morris asked with curiosity and perhaps a touch of concern, "are you pursuing Lady Caroline?"
"Yes," Frick sighed wistfully. "What a noble lady she is... So elegant, so cultured, so refined in every gesture and word. Even her rejection is graceful and considerate, unwilling to accept even the slightest gift that might bring gossip or create uncomfortable obligations. Such propriety! Such class!"
His eyes grew distant, focusing on something only he could see.
"I still remember so vividly when we first met, like it was yesterday instead of..."
Morris's mouth twitched with irritation and alarm. He could sense where this was heading—toward a long, tedious, undoubtedly embarrassing romantic story he had absolutely no interest in hearing.
"No need to continue, Frick," Morris interrupted quickly. "I'm really not interested in your personal story."
However, Frick had already mentally departed from the present moment and begun talking to himself.
"It was an evening without sun," he began dramatically, staring into the middle distance. "With wind and rain pelting the streets, thunder and lightning splitting the dark sky like cracks in the world itself...."
Seeing that Frick was completely lost in his reminiscence and would likely continue for quite some time regardless of whether anyone was listening, Morris made an immediate decision.
He quickly swept all the gold Galleons still sitting on the counter into his backpack and turned to leave the shop.
Whoever wanted to hear this romantic story could stay and listen. Morris certainly wasn't volunteering for that particular torture.
Regarding the money and the division of profits, Frick hadn't asked for any split of Lady Caroline's payment. He had only charged Morris thirty Galleons total to cover the base cost of the five skeletal specimens, essentially wholesale pricing with no markup at all.
His reasoning had been actually quite fair: since this particular skeleton dog had been sold directly by Morris to a customer Morris had acquired independently, and since Frick had contributed nothing to that specific sale except providing the raw materials, it seemed only right that Morris should keep the full profit.
It was a reasonable arrangement that Morris had readily accepted.
Afterward, Morris carrying a backpack now satisfyingly bulging with heavy gold Galleons that clinked with every step made a trip back to Diagon Alley's well-lit, respectable streets.
He visited several potion ingredient shops in succession, comparing prices and quality, seeking the best deals for the materials he needed. He went to Slug & Jiggers Apothecary first, then to a smaller competitor across the street, then to a third stoire that specialized in rare and unusual ingredients.
By the time he finally returned to the Leaky Cauldron as evening was falling and darkness was settling over London, the weight in his backpack had shifted. Most of the heavy gold Galleons had been converted into packages of precious potion ingredients: asphodel root bundles, dried valerian root, sopophorous beans, powdered moonstone, essence of dittany, and countless other components.
These ingredients alone had cost him nearly two hundred Galleons. It had to be said: potions were incredibly, outrageously expensive. Selling one skeleton dog for two hundred fifty Galleons had seemed like a fortune, but it wouldn't sustain his potion-brewing for very long at all.
Besides the necessary components for the Draught of Living Death, Morris was also increasingly interested in many other complex potion recipes.
Coincidentally and unfortunately, nearly all the potions that genuinely interested him were rather high-end.
Basic potion ingredients like standard herbs and common minerals weren't necessarily cheap by Muggle standards, but they were at least affordable. Advanced potion ingredients, however were definitely, horrifically expensive.
Thinking about the financial side of his situation as he climbed the stairs to his rented room, Morris felt a headache beginning to form behind his temples. When all was said and done, despite his recent windfall, he was still short on money.
The next day, Morris visited Frick's shop again in the late morning and received unexpectedly good news that lifted his spirits.
"Excellent development!" Frick said with pleasure as Morris entered. "One of my regular customers has already reserved one of your remaining skeleton dogs."
This was undoubtedly a very good omen, Morris thought with satisfaction. The skeleton dog business was proving viable beyond just Lady Caroline's unusual interests.
"That customer has rather unique tastes and purposes in mind," Frick continued conversationally. "He specifically mentioned that he wants to use the skeleton dog to make soup."
Morris was genuinely startled by this, his eyes widened with surprise and confusion.
"Is this person mentally ill?" he asked bluntly, unable to conceive of any logical reason why someone would want to boil an expensive living skeleton.
Frick shrugged with the air of someone long accustomed to the strange requests of Knockturn Alley's customers.
"I think he might be at least somewhat unhinged, yes," he agreed casually.
"But his money is perfectly sane and spends just fine. Oh, you absolutely mustn't say anything about mental illness in front of the customer when he comes to collect his purchase," he added quickly.
Morris said nothing in response.
Well, in his eyes, Frick himself also fell into the "mentally ill" category given his romantic obsession with a literal skeleton. So perhaps he wasn't the best judge of what constituted unusual behavior.
However, from a purely practical standpoint, customers using skeleton dogs to make soup didn't particularly matter or concern Morris. He had already tested this scenario out of curiosity—boiling water, even continuous boiling for long period of time, couldn't cause any actual damage to the skeleton dogs.
In the time that followed, Morris and Frick chatted casually about various topics, mainly subjects related to Knockturn Alley's culture, history, and operations.
Morris was genuinely curious about how this shadow economy functioned.
Frick's detailed introduction to Knockturn Alley's reality was broadly about what Morris had already imagined based on observation and inference, though with additional specifics that showed a more complete picture.
First and most fundamentally, Knockturn Alley was a chaotic mix of all sorts of people and businesses—very disorderly, loosely organized at best, with minimal external oversight or regulation.
The area attracted everyone from legitimate merchants selling unusual but legal goods to outright criminals operating openly because the Ministry couldn't or wouldn't stop them.
There were relatively honest businessmen like Frick who operated in legal grey areas but maintained some personal ethics and standards. Then there were those who lived entirely by cheating, swindling, selling cursed objects to unsuspecting customers, dealing in stolen goods, and engaging in every form of fraud imaginable.
According to Frick's assessment, only about half the shops in Knockturn Alley could be considered truly trustworthy for conducting actual business. Maybe even less than half, honestly.
"As for the rest..." Frick gestured vaguely toward the street outside with an expression of disgust, "even the locals who've lived here for years won't venture into certain stores lightly. There are shops where people go in and don't come out unchanged—or don't come out at all."
He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice despite them being alone in the shop.
Beyond the lawless merchants, Frick explained, Knockturn Alley also had a group of self-appointed "managers" who exercised a form of crude governance over the area.
This was a relatively small group composed mainly of dark wizards, ex-convicts, and others with violent reputations and powerful magical abilities. They had collectively established themselves as the unofficial authority that barely maintained a semblance of order in the district.
They had established some simple, brutally enforced rules: no killing customers in broad daylight, no destroying other merchants' shops without cause, protection money paid on time, disputes brought to them for arbitration. Basic organizational structure to prevent total chaos.
"But as long as you have a good enough relationship with these 'managers,'" Frick said with cynicism, "as long as you pay them enough money or do them enough favors, you can walk sideways through Knockturn Alley."
"Doesn't the Ministry of Magic care about this situation?" Morris asked with curiosity.
Frick snorted mockingly.
"Of course they care—officially, publicly, they care very much," he said, his tone was dripping with sarcasm. "But they can't manage everything, can they? They don't have the resources, the personnel, the political will to actually clean up Knockturn Alley properly. It would require a continuous, expensive effort with significant political costs."
He paused then continued.
"The 'managers' of Knockturn Alley and the officials at the Ministry of Magic have..." he searched for the right phrase, "a delicate relationship. You see, some transactions aren't good to conduct openly in the light where everyone can see them, but there are always people—important people, wealthy people, powerful people who need access to certain goods and services that aren't strictly legal."
His meaning was clear even through the careful language.
Morris nodded slowly, understanding the cynical political calculation involved.
As expected, the magical world genuinely needed such a place—a designated shadow zone where laws could be bent or broken with unofficial authorization, where the respectable and criminal could interact through layers of plausible deniability.
He continued his questioning. "Who exactly are these 'managers'?"
Frick placed the polished skull on a shelf with other specimens, arranging it carefully, his tone was full of contempt.
"Just a bunch of scum and thugs, honestly," he said bluntly. "Dark wizards who couldn't make it in respectable society, ex-convicts released from prisons with nowhere else to go, some even fugitives currently on the run from Ministry warrants. They rely on their ruthlessness or on having some unclear backing from powerful figures who find them useful."
He gestured dismissively.
"They band together in loose alliances to occupy this territory, collect protection fees from merchants like me, mediate disputes between businesses or customers—of course, mediation always based primarily on money and personal connections rather than actual justice or fairness. If you pay more, you win the dispute. Simple as that."
"Sounds like you really dislike them," Morris observed, noting the venom in Frick's voice.
"Yes, I absolutely do," Frick nodded straightforwardly, not bothering to hide his feelings. "They've taken plenty of Galleons from me over the years."
Suddenly, his expression shifted and became more serious.
"Mr. Black, I strongly advise you not to think about getting involved in these murky waters," he said firmly.
"Don't let the money or the power tempt you. Being a 'manager' might seem lucrative or exciting, but it's an extremely high-risk profession with a very short average lifespan. Every so often, the 'managers' get replaced with a new batch because the old ones end up dead or in Azkaban or fleeing the country."
Morris couldn't help but laugh at this warning.
"What kind of person do you think I am?" he asked with a smile. "I'm just an eleven-year-old young wizard trying to get through my first year at Hogwarts. How would I possibly think about becoming involved in crime?"
He shook his head.
"I just want to quietly do a little business on the side, fund my education and research. I'm not trying to become a crime lord."
"Best if that's truly the case," Frick said, though his tone showed he wasn't entirely convinced.
He still vividly remembered the scene when Morris had dealt with Krenk and his two intimidating companions.
An ordinary eleven-year-old wizard wouldn't be so clean and efficient in combat. An ordinary first-year student would have been terrified, probably would have wet himself in fear when confronted by three adult thugs with drawn wands.
But Morris had been calm, controlled, almost bored by the threat.
"Ding-a-ling!"
At that moment, the brass bell mounted above the shop entrance rang out.
A tall figure in concealing black robes appeared at the entrance, silhouetted against the dim light from Knockturn Alley's gloomy street. The newcomer's face was hidden deep within their hood, and their hands were tucked into sleeves.
Morris quickly conjured a bone mask on his face to conceal his identity.
Frick, meanwhile, straightened from his casual slouch against the counter and stretched lazily, working a crick out of his neck with a pop.
A customer had arrived—time to serve them and hopefully make another sale.
Business, after all, never stopped in Knockturn Alley.