~Written for the QLFC, Season 5, Finals Round 1~

Position: Seeker

Position Prompt: Incorporate Borgin and Burkes into your story

Title: Misers of Pretty Things

Word Count:~1400

Beta(s): CUtopia, DinoDina, VanillaAshes

Chapter 14: Misers of Pretty Things

There is a place. A single place, in a single alley, that is passed with sidelong glances that as often rolled as they did dart away nervously. Derision or wariness: there were only two ways to consider Borgin and Burkes.

And that was exactly how the keepers of the dusty old antique store liked it.

Mr Borgin was the financier. The officiate. The brains behind the establishment. He kept his claws upon his purse in an iron grasp and glared back at those passers-by with a narrowing of his own eyes. Wariness could go two ways, and it wasn't through trusting his dubious clientele that he'd maintained the gloomy little store for as long as he had.

It was Mr Burke who was the marketeer, however. Mr Burke who spoke to those clients. It was Burke who smiled a gap-toothed grin of questionable greeting, that coaxed his upstanding and low-lying customers through his shadowed door, and plucked the coins from their desperate fingers. It was Burke who was so practiced at drawing the treasured goods from desperate souls into his grasp and leaving those scavenging fools with a pittance as they fled from the ominous depths of his store.

It was Burke who greeted Merope Gaunt as she stepped through the doorway into his clutches.

She was a thin woman. Never was a name more appropriate than Gaunt for the woman who was little more than a girl. Her face was thin, wan, cheeks hollow and eyes sunken into pits of shadows. The hood of her cloak didn't quite manage to hide the lank tendrils of her hair, haphazard and hanging around her face. She clutched at the lapels of her robes, pinning them to herself as she slipped from the street of Knockturn Alley and into Burke's all-seeing eyes.

Burke was a bloodhound when it came to a deal. He could smell wealth, could taste the gold of a galleon like a flavour on the air. Regardless of how the purebloods and old families masked themselves in their drab wear and hid their faces, he could sense it. He knew how far he could push to strike a deal.

Merope Gaunt was not one of those people.

Rain hissed in a pattering downpour outside of Borgin and Burke's, nearly overwhelming the fragile tinkle of the bell that sounded when the girl entered. She started as the door slammed closed behind her, spinning like a startled deer towards the exit and clutching pale hands to her robes all the tighter. Droplets cascaded down her hood to dribble onto the floor, sliding sleekly off her narrow shoulders.

Burke glanced up from his counter. The marvel of a gadget, a reworked necklace with something of a nasty surprise for the unwitting wearer, was an ugly piece, but that hardly mattered. Burke didn't deal in 'pretty' things. Such pretties were reserved for the brighter streets of Diagon Alley.

He squinted across the room towards the girl as she trembled slightly – from the cold or wariness, he didn't know – and slowly lowered his tweezers from where he'd been picking at the necklace. He regarded the girl with a shrewd eye as she turned slowly back towards the store, hood-shaded gaze drawing over the glass cabinets and ornate tables. Her knuckles were bone white as she grasped her robes.

Burke folded his arms. She wasn't one of them. She wasn't a desperate fish with silver scales caught on his tantalising bait. The patches in her robes weren't feigned, the tear on the edge of her cuff a sign of wear rather than deception. She wasn't worth Burke's time –

But he would wring her for all he could nonetheless.

"Can I help you?" he grumbled.

The girl flinched. A flighty thing, then; first the door, and now the very expected shopkeeper. She wouldn't be difficult to intimidate. Burke simply had to withhold himself from pushing her into instant, terrified flight.

"You got the right place, little lady?" he asked.

The girl shifted in place. Her hands visibly quivered in her fierce grasp, discernible even through the darkness of the room. She was scared, likely terrified, but she wasn't running. That, at least, was promising.

"I…" She cut herself off as her voice quavered. Burke could almost hear her swallow, fortifying herself. "I have something."

Burke tapped a nail on his counter. Was it worth the effort? "Something?"

"Something of… something of value." The girl took another tentative step into the store. A scuttle from within the drawer of the nightstand at her side drew another flinch from her, but she didn't back away. Her gaze snapped back to Burke in an instant.

Interesting.

"A family heirloom," she said.

"An heirloom?"

"An expensive one."

"Is that so?"

"Definitely." The girl nodded vigorously, almost eagerly. Her voice still quavered, but she continued with a little more force. "It warrants a marked price."

Burke cocked his head. Certainly an interesting one, he would give her that. She clearly had nothing, was as desperate as so many others, but there was surety to her words. She knew she had something of value. Just what it was and whether Burke would need to truly pay its worth remained to be seen.

"And just what family would you be from, little lady?" he said, dropping his voice just short of threatening.

The girl, edging across the room, paused in step. She was barely two strides from the front counter, and Burke could see her a little better now. A plain girl. Plainly pretty, perhaps, if she only wasn't so thin. Worry had drawn lines across her face before her time, but yes… If she was so desperate for money, he could certainly point her in a profitable direction.

"The family doesn't matter," she said. For a moment, she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Then, in a burst of motion that bespoke a desperate decision, she shoved a hand into her pocket and dragged out a clinking, tinkling chain.

Burke almost reached for his wand. He almost reached for the drawer at his right, too, inside which was a curse of darkness that would unleash pure rage upon any potential assailant that thought to threaten him or steal from his store. Burke had rarely felt the need to employ the tangible curse, but he wasn't beyond some measures.

But it wasn't needed. Not in the least. The girl slapped a chain and locket onto the counter between them, and her trembling fingers curled in the thick links with clutching need. "This," she said. "It's worth a lot – isn't it?"

The locket was old. Very old, to Burke's trained eye. An antique, and certainly worth a pretty penny. The worn pits of miniscule gemstones – emeralds, Burke, thought – painted an ornate S upon the locket's front.

Plain. Simple. Yet it breathed expense in every cut of its form and every whisper of magic that seemed to pulse from it. Burke knew. And he wanted.

"Twenty galleons," he said nonchalantly, turning his blandest poker face upon the wide-eyed, desperate girl. "That's all it's worth and nothing more."

It wasn't, of course. It would have been worth ten times that at a minimum to one who had not the faintest idea of what it was. But Merope Gaunt was in need, and those in need settled for less than they deserved.

She left Borgin and Burkes with a thin pouch of galleons, smiling just slightly at the success of haggling Burke up to five times his initial offer. And within that gloomy little store, dust thick upon the sills of windows that were too grimy to see through, Burke smiled just as much.

Had he known he'd dealt with the to-be Lord Voldemort's mother, he might have acted differently, but probably not. Had he known that he held what would once become a Horcrux of the most powerful Dark wizard of his time, he might have thrown it away from himself, but likely not either.

Mr Burke of Borgin and Burkes was a shrewd man, a businessman, but he wasn't a good man. Regardless of the destruction his pretty little locket would rain upon the world, he was definitely not that.