seven

Knockturn was a touch less busy. Strange-looking witches and wizards milled around, looking cagily about them, usually frowning. (People who smiled in Knockturn Alley were regarded either as spies or the benignly mad.) Grimy signs dangled above, and everything was arranged in a grimmer interpretation of Diagon Alley: awnings were tattered and filthy, shop windows were cluttered and dark, mice and insects skittered to and fro. The words hygiene and marketing were seldom used here.

Alya had taken all the young Bertrands here, once, after her aunts had had to move their robe business (now defunct) to the space above Burgin and Burke's after rent skyrocketed in Diagon Alley. It had been Victor's sixth year, and he'd been appointed to be a Prefect, so Alya—because all Alya celebrations required a slight touch of patronizing showboating and a forceful shove of making everybody involved memorably uncomfortable—took all the Bertrand children, both hers and Osbert's, to get new dress robes for the resulting party. She was displeased with the fact that Melusina and Camilla had both gotten too tall for theirs, which made them, in her words, Unfit to be Seen. They had spent four hours in the dingy shop being measured, poked, and prodded, and had exited looking like some of the ocean's most spectacular ruffled sea slugs.

Eglantine could not say that the place held fond memories. Besides the time she'd gone with Alya, she'd only ever been one other time, with Bertie. He was in disguise, and she was pretending to be his niece. She wasn't even authorized—she couldn't have been, being only eleven—to help with whatever surveillance he was doing, but something made him include her anyway. They went into Borgin and Burke, and he told her to look out for anything that looked especially old or arcane. They had to abandon the plot when some elderly relation of Sirius's came in and recognized her.

She thought about this now, wondering if maybe the task that Bertie had been assigned might connect his death with Crevan's. Crevan had been a frequent customer at Borgin and Burke's, she knew: one of them, she thought Burke, had been a fixture of Crevan's candlelight dinner parties. He was an old, bony man with long straggles of gray hair. (She imagined that, if Severus made it to old age without somebody shoving him out of a tower first out of sheer aggravation, he would eventually look exactly like Burke.)

She didn't even know what, or who, she might be looking for as she headed into the one shop that had the potential to connect Bertie and Crevan—both dead, both killed by Death Eaters, both linked to Dolohov. A sudden flash of inspiration, perhaps. She felt that Dolohov was too obvious of a solution, but if not him, who?

The door to Burgin and Burke's was closed, as it always was, and had an air of forbidding misanthropy. There might as well have been a sign that said, Don't even think about entering. You're an annoying berk and not rich enough. The doorknob, made of heavily tarnished brass, was broken, and clattered as Eglantine turned it.

It was Knockturn's most famous shop for a reason. The place had a fairly rapid turnaround of distasteful, gory, or cursed objects, all placed crowdedly but neatly on antique furniture. Narcissa and Lucius were here, but they were disappearing into a back room with Burke; a corpulent, dark-haired man—possibly in his early twenties, possibly younger—was perched precariously upon a small stool behind the counter. He toppled off it to stand when he saw Eglantine.

"GoodafternoonRobertGoylehowcanIhelpyou," he droned rapidly. He didn't breathe. Evidently part of his sales training had consisted of lessons in pretending he'd just sprinted a long distance. Or, for that matter, a short distance.

She hadn't exactly planned ahead for this. "I—er—well, I was wondering. My uncle was a…a very faithful customer of Borgin and Burke's, and…well, I was wondering if he'd left any kind of…list, or purchases on credit when he died. See, my aunt misses him terribly, and, er, if I could bring her something he'd been planning to buy, something that might remind her of him…."

"'Angonjustonemoment," Goyle said, squeezing through a narrow gap between counters. He approached a small file cabinet. "Whatwas'isname?"

"Crevan Bertrand."

Goyle's knockwurst fingers paused just momentarily before grabbing the "B" drawer and opening it. He thumbed through a series of index cards and pulled one out. "CrevanBertrand'ereyouareMiss." He handed it to her.

This Goyle was almost certainly brand new to Borgin and Burke's. She couldn't imagine Burke handing over customer information so blithely: he'd pretend the file cabinet didn't even exist until you threatened his manhood, and even then, he'd lie to you about what was on the card. He'd been furtive about everything. Once, she'd heard someone, Rosier maybe, trying to make small talk with him at the punch bowl. Rosier asked him how the shop was, and he'd replied, "What shop? There's no shop. I don't know what you mean."

Her uncle had been making payments on a moonstone pendant from Hungary, said to have belonged to Erzsebet Báthory (worth 2520 Galleons), a snake bracelet that had belonged to some distant cousin of Salazar Slytherin's (2400 Galleons) and a book about early versions of the Unforgiveable Curses that had belonged to a man named Peverell (6200 Galleons).

"Had expensive tastes, my uncle, eh?" she remarked to Goyle.

"Definitelymiss." Goyle nodded fervently. He took a deep breath. "I do remember 'im. Came in quite a lot, 'e did. Too bad about what 'appened."

"Yes, indeed." She stared hard at the card. "Although some have said he deserved it."

"There's always somebody envious out there who'll say that, eh? Tragic thing, is envy."

"Indeed." She smiled brightly. It was the same smile that'd gotten her into packed discos and even a private party thrown by Roger Moore. (She hadn't actually seen Roger Moore, but still. It had been his party.) "Might I just keep this card?"

"I—I mean, we're not supposed—" Goyle peered stagily down the hallway that Lucius and Narcissa had gone with Burke. "I'll make a duplicate. Go on, take it."

"Thanks." She smiled again. "I know my uncle would appreciate it."

Goyle smiled back. "Say—er—you wouldn't be free around, er, eight, would you?"

"Not really. Sorry. I've got plans. See you!"

She didn't really think someone had murdered Crevan over an item, but everything was evidence, wasn't it? That's what Bertie would've thought. On her way out, she stopped to look at a shrunken head in a brass container and the door jingled merrily.

It was her cousin Mel—Cam's boss Mel. Her thin frame was clad in dark burgundy robes, and her dark hair was curled in corkscrews. Eglantine could tell from her surprised eyebrows that she hadn't expected to be met with any familiar faces.

Eglantine shoved the card into her pants, not having anywhere else to put it.

"Eglantine! I didn't know you—er—were in London."

"No? I thought Cam would've mentioned it. She's back in Diagon Alley looking for pens," said Eglantine.

Mel laughed nervously. "Cam and her pens! Um. So what brings you into Borgin and Burke? I didn't know you—er—had an interest."

"I don't normally. I was looking for something to give to your mum. Kind of a sympathy gift, you know? How's she getting on?"

"Er—as well as can be expected. We all miss Father terribly!"

I'm sure you do, thought Eglantine. "Do they know who did it?"

"Not a clue." Eglantine had never yet tried Legilimency, but she was almost certain that Mel was telling the truth. "Mum's been—er—investigating. But nobody really knows, or at least, no one's owned up to it."

"Weird. And tragic. Well—Cam will be waiting for me. She doesn't know I'm here. See you later, Mel."

The Bertrands were not huggers, and Eglantine deflected an attempt by Mel to embrace her. She felt like an ass, but she really didn't trust Mel. She was probably just trying to see if she'd hidden anything.

Cam was still picking out pens. She had a basket full of pens, and was still browsing for more. Everybody she knew would be receiving a fresh quill for their birthdays until they died.

Cam and Eglantine spent the night in a reasonably comfortable Muggle hotel near Diagon Alley. The arrangement suited both sisters: Cam thought that the Leaky Cauldron was unforgivably unsanitary, and that the beds were full of mites; and Eglantine wanted to watch television, which was available in the pub area. There was no good television. The hotel manager had put on the news, and crabbed at Eglantine when she suggested changing it. She sat in the pub bar sipping discontentedly at a martini she'd talked him into giving her, which she pretended to like because of James Bond. Pasty newscasters droned on about MPs and parliamentary decisions and some teenage prankster from York who was becoming mildly famous for blowing up skips.

After the weather, one story caught Eglantine's attention. A series of deaths in Wiltshire, mysterious deaths, in which the deceased person was found rigid and frightened-looking with no actual cause of death. There was no poison in the system, no evidence of a heart attack. Plenty of people were saying extraterrestrials were responsible; others were claiming mysterious government research. The only thing connecting the deaths was the presence of green fireworks.

When she returned to the hotel room, Cam was lying on her stomach, sipping a cup of tea and writing in a fuzzy purple notebook. She was using a large pink quill.

"Is that—is that a diary? When did you start keeping a diary?"

Cam turned as pink as the quill. "It's—it's for work. It's disguised. How was, er, how was the telly?"

"Oh, boring. Except for the Death Eaters."

"What? Oh, shit, I've blotted it."

"Yeah. Death Eaters. Even the Muggles are noticing. Green fireworks. Mysterious deaths. Didn't Narcissa say that Lucius Malfoy lived in Wiltshire?"

"What does that have to do with it?"

"That's where a lot of the deaths are."

Cam rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Tina. Not everyone is a Death Eater. And I really don't think Lucius Malfoy has it in him. He probably spends all his free time brushing his hair and singing love songs to himself."

"He is one. I can tell."

"Oh, suddenly you're the Death Eater expert, are you?"

There was a tapping at the window. A small brown screech owl was hovering outside, holding a letter. Eglantine took the letter and fed him one of the complimentary biscuits from the end table by the window, and off he went.

"It's for you," she said, genuinely surprised. She'd thought it must be from Sirius. (She'd hoped it might be from Remus.)

Cam's grin was almost frightening. She jumped off the bed, snatched the envelope from her sister's hands, and ran for the bathroom. She let out a small squeal as she opened the door.

Eglantine allowed herself to collapse onto the bed. It bounced her halfway up into the air again, and then she stayed immobile. This was tedious. Her sister was acting mental, Sirius had suddenly decided to be a boy, she hadn't even heard from Lily… It was pretty depressing that the only person in her year she'd really chatted to was Severus.

She wondered what Mel had been doing in Borgin and Burke's. She hoped that that idiotic Goyle hadn't told her that he'd given Eglantine the card.. As it was, there wasn't really anything she could change about the situation, so there was no use worrying over it.

She took the card from out of her pants. Six thousand Galleons on a book. What, exactly, was in that book?