The first shop they entered didn't have a sign. The only thing hanging from the doorframe was a string of dried bats.
Where the bats' eyes should've been, someone had set glowing red gemstones. In the dim light, they looked like bloodshot eyeballs.
It was darker inside than it was outside. Most of the items on the shelves were nothing but vague shapes, shadows of bottles and jars.
Behind the counter stood a wizard so thin he looked like a skeleton. His eyes were sunken, his skin chalk-white, and his fingers were long and sharp, like a bird's talons.
When he saw Orion, he pulled his mouth into a grin, showing teeth stained yellow and black.
"Mr. Black," the man rasped, his voice like sandpaper on wood. "This month's goods are ready. Same arrangement as always."
He dragged a black leather case up from beneath the counter and cracked it open.
Regulus caught a glimpse inside.
Dozens of glass jars were stacked neatly, each one holding something pickled in cloudy liquid.
Eyes, Hearts, Fingers....
And in one jar, an entire fetal body, curled in on itself. Its skin was so pale it was almost transparent, veins visible beneath it like thin blue threads.
Orion didn't touch the case. He simply handed over a cloth pouch heavy with galleons. The wizard took it, weighed it in his hand, then nodded in satisfaction.
"Tell me ahead of time if you need anything next time," the man said as he shut the case again. "Supply's tight lately. The werewolves are causing trouble, and the Ministry of Magic is cracking down."
"Noted," Orion replied, curt and flat, then turned and left.
Regulus followed, watching everything without a change in expression.
The second shop sold Dark artifacts. A few items were displayed in the window like trophies.
A wand carved from human bone, the shaft covered in dense curse runes.
A mirror that reflected the deepest fear in a person's heart, its frame pieced together from baby skulls.
And a set of ritual daggers, dried blood still clinging to the blades, the handles set with pain-filled memories that had been torn out of someone and preserved.
The owner was a witch in black robes. A pure white mask covered her face, with only two holes for eyes. Inside those openings, something seemed to burn, like pale ghostfire.
When she spotted Orion, she lifted a gloved hand and pointed toward a pile in the corner draped in black cloth.
Orion walked over, lifted one edge, glanced beneath it, then nodded. He handed her another pouch of galleons.
The third shop was even more hidden, tucked at the end of a dead-end alley. There was no sign here either. Only a twisted symbol painted on the wall in blood.
Orion stopped in front of it and traced an inverted pattern through the air with his wand.
Only then did the door slide open without a sound.
Inside was a cramped room. Chains and manacles hung across the walls.
A creature that was half human and half beast was curled in the corner. It might have been some kind of human hybrid. It might have been the result of a failed transfiguration. Either way, it felt wrong to look at.
When it saw them enter, it let out a low, threatening growl, but the chains kept it from moving far.
A hunched old wizard came out from the back, carrying a thick ledger.
"Mr. Black. This month's accounts." His voice was hoarse and rough. "There was a problem with the smuggling route. Two shipments got seized by Aurors. The loss has to be included."
Orion took the ledger and flipped through it, a frown tightening his brow. "Why were they seized?"
"Someone inside talked," the old wizard spat. "We handled it. But the goods aren't coming back."
"Don't let it happen again." Orion signed the page and handed the ledger back. "If it does, you cover the losses yourselves."
As they left, Regulus noticed the half-beast creature staring at him.
There was hatred in its eyes. Pain too. And beneath it all, something that looked uncomfortably like desperate pleading.
Regulus looked away and followed his father out.
Shop after shop, Regulus saw things he'd only ever read about in the Restricted Section.
Instruments designed to extract souls.
Candles rendered from infant fat.
Skin and fur flayed from living magical creatures, still twitching as if it hadn't accepted it was no longer attached to anything.
Crystal orbs that held other people's pain like captured smoke.
Records of experiments and "results" that broke every basic boundary of ethics without even pretending to care.
And the people running the Black family's interests in Knockturn Alley didn't look like respectable businessmen in any version of reality.
The skeletal wizard from the first shop reeked of death. His knuckles carried corrosive scars, the kind you got from years of handling embalming potions.
The masked witch in the second shop had magic that felt chaotic and warped, like multiple types of Dark magic had been forced together until they stopped fitting properly.
The hunched old wizard in the third shop had cloudy yellow eyes, pupils thin like a snake's. When he looked at someone, it felt like he was pricing them.
Regulus understood it easily.
His father hadn't brought him here just to inspect family holdings.
Orion wanted him to see the real wizarding world.
Beyond Hogwarts classrooms and the tidy storefronts of Diagon Alley, there was this. Everything hidden behind the light. Cruel, dark, bloody, chaotic.
He wanted Regulus to know that wizarding society wasn't only Quidditch and banquets.
It was smuggling routes.
Dark wizards.
Werewolves.
Illegal experiments.
Human trafficking.
Organ trading.
All of it existed outside polite society's official story, but it was still real.
Some areas were even harder to define, where light and dark bled together, where legal and illegal blurred until the line stopped making sense.
A shop in Diagon Alley might sell goods with a questionable origin. A Dark wizard in Knockturn Alley might have protection inside the Ministry of Magic.
Regulus wasn't a real child anymore, not in the way it mattered. He understood how societies functioned.
The Muggle world had slums, black markets, and underground deals. The wizarding world had Knockturn Alley. It was the same thing in different robes.
Even if he'd never personally seen this side of wizarding Britain before, the logic was familiar. Demand created supply. Prohibitions created black markets. Laws created loopholes.
So he stayed calm.
He wasn't shocked. He wasn't afraid. He didn't feel moral nausea.
He simply watched, carefully, like he was studying an unfamiliar ecosystem.
Orion watched him right back.
From the moment they'd stepped into Knockturn Alley, Orion had been tracking every shift in Regulus's expression.
The organs floating in jars. The human bone wand and the baby-skull mirror. The chained creature in the corner.
Regulus hadn't reacted to any of it.
He showed no discomfort, no disgust. He only looked.
Orion felt a quiet sense of relief, followed immediately by something more complicated.
Of course he wanted his son to be resilient, unshaken by the outside world.
In a place like Knockturn Alley, even a moment of weakness or hesitation could turn into a fatal opening.
Regulus's performance was flawless, calm, rational and focused. Exactly what the heir to the House of Black was supposed to be.
And yet… watching an eleven-year-old face this level of darkness without flinching still made something twist in Orion's chest.
An eleven-year-old should still have naïve fantasies about the world. They should still believe good and evil were cleanly separated, that justice always won in the end.
But Regulus had never been that child.
Not even when he was very small.
He saw too clearly.
He thought too deeply.
He'd understood early that the world was complicated, and reality was cruel.
It made Orion think of yesterday's Patronus.
A legendary creature, a symbol of freedom, exploration, breaking through every boundary.
It represented the brightest, most hopeful desires buried in Regulus's heart.
And at the same time, he could walk through Knockturn Alley's filth and horror without changing expression, passing jars of organs and artifacts carved from human bone as if they were just objects on a shelf.
Light and darkness, living in the same child.
Orion didn't know if that was good or bad.
But he was certain of one thing.
Regulus would become a very, very special wizard.
Special enough to surpass every Black ancestor before him.
Special enough to become great.
Orion's evaluation of his son climbed again. "Excellent" no longer felt like a strong enough word.
By the time they stepped out of the seventh shop, Regulus sensed something was wrong.
The alley was still the same alley.
But there were extra eyes in the air now, fixed on them with open malice.
Those gazes came from different directions, sweeping over him and Orion again and again.
Regulus didn't turn his head right away.
He kept his pace normal, his posture composed, staying half a step behind his father. He let his magic-sense spread outward, and it didn't take long before he pinned down several positions.
Ten meters ahead on the left, in a corner piled with abandoned wooden crates, two sources of magic were hiding there. Weak, murky.
They'd used a Disillusionment Charm, but the casting was sloppy. In the low light, their outlines were still visible, with distortions along the edges that the naked eye could catch. When they moved, dust shifted under their feet, and faint footprints remained.
Farther away, near the mouth of the alley, two more figures stood under the shadow of a crooked building's awning.
One of them had magic that was wild and unstable, carrying a bestial feral edge.
Most likely a werewolf, and very possibly one close to transforming.
The other felt colder, sharper and meaner.
Four people total, clearly working together.
Two tracking close, two waiting to support from a distance.
A standard ambush setup.