A/N:
Written for The Houses Competition, Year Two, Round Two.
Title: Mr. Borgin and the Twenty-Five Knuts
House: Hufflepuff
Year: 5th
Category: Short
Prompt: [Setting] Knockturn Alley and [First Line] He looked down at what was left of their money - fifteen galleons and twenty-five knuts.
Wordcount: 1998 (Google Docs)
Beta: Aya, esmeraude, and Angel. Thank you for your eyes!
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He looked down at what was left of their money - fifteen galleons and twenty-five knuts. It sat neatly in the cash register, all five short rows which covered less than a quarter of the drawer. The last galleon had tipped out of its stack and sat, tail side down, with the image of a dragon staring up at him. The rest of the slots sat empty, except for a small bit of fluff from his business partner's sleeve - the man liked to wear the wool-lined coats in the winter - and since business had been slow, they were stingy with the heat allotment. Utilities in the Alley were expensive - even if you supplied your own heat with spells, there was a read-o-meter that measured the temperature and taxed it.
Five weeks he'd been gone, hanging on the assurance of 'something big coming down the pipe'. A strange contract signed and delivered by owl post during his travels had given him hope. Maybe they'd finally stumbled on something worthwhile.
He gazed over at his partner, Caractacus Burke, who blew hot air into his palms by the unlit fireplace.
"That's it? That's all you got?"
It wasn't as if he'd done better. His month-long trip to the Wizard's Commerce Convention that promised to 'revive the post-war economy' had been a complete waste. He couldn't wait another long month for the proffered emergency funds, which moved slower than molasses. In the aftermath of rounding up the last of the Death Eaters, storefronts suffering from hex damage and shattered storefronts had closed down. Even when the streets were declared 'safe', nobody could afford to buy anything.
Borgin was desperate. So he merely flinched when he saw the gaudy teen band posters, half-peeling from cheap Sticking Charms in the window. He grunted under his breath when he found his beautiful display of crystal skulls behind the Vanishing Cabinet, replaced by an ugly display of Wizard Punk Band posters and a large, empty space marked off with a square of brass stands and velvet rope. A small, hand painted sign read, "fifteen knuts a piece".
The cash drawer showed just how badly things had gone.
What exactly were they selling for a mere pittance? Cold air? Mr. Borgin stomped back to count his high-end skulls. One sale would keep them afloat for another month.
"No one comes in for the skulls anymore," Burke said, rubbing his hands together for warmth.
"Rent is due in three days. What were you thinking?"
Borgin said it in his business-like, calm voice. But underneath, he was fuming. The heat building up inside of him could have warmed the shop for a good hour on its own. He checked the read-o-meter to make sure it wasn't actually registering outside of his own boiling blood.
"It seemed like a sure thing at the time," Burke confessed, his confidence deflating. "We haven't sold anything for ages. They said we'd get more visibility in the market. They said it had a lot of hype behind it. They said we'd… get rich…"
He trailed off as Borgin became hotter and hotter under the collar. Steam may have been rising from his ears.
"Look," Burke said, shaking off the melancholy presence in the air, "you agreed to this, too. I sent you the contract by owl post while you were away at the Convention, which I was fully behind you for, if you recall… This had the potential to save our store… the whole row… The Apothecary next door put in a good amount of Galleons for this order too. They're in it as deep as we are. It was going to bring in the crowds."
Borgin wasn't going to admit that he hadn't read the contract. In any case, the cash drawer spoke for itself. He gestured to the empty shop.
"And where are they now?"
Borgin and Burkes was empty most of the time to begin with, but since the Death Eaters had been rounded up, his high-paying, infrequent clients had disappeared as well. The Ministry had done their inconvenient and expensive searches,declaring the shop's licenses current. His stash of rare and valuable cursed items was secured under "historic regulations" but no one even wanted to see them for a Sickle. People were simply afraid to enter a shop that had dealt with criminals.
What was he going to do?
Then the bell at the front door tinkled. His head whipped around so fast that he felt the blood rushing to his left ear. But then he deflated. It was probably the tax collector, coming in to collect a half knut for the sudden rise in temperature due to his high blood pressure.
Or a debtor coming to see if they'd finished counting the inventory he was going to take in lieu of payment. He looked back at the skulls and felt the pit of his stomach clench. They'd trade in goods until the goods were gone. And then what?
Sighing, he went around the shelf to see which of the two it was, and stopped dead in his tracks. It was worse than he'd imagined.
It was a little girl.
Not even a witch. She was barely old enough to be a first year at Hogwarts, and her ruddy face showed the effects of the whipping wind outside. Window shoppers he could deal with, but a grubby fingered kid with not even two knuts to rub together was a total waste of his…
"Is it here yet?" she asked eagerly. Her voice was high pitched and excitable. Whatever did she mean by that?
"Not yet," Burke said.
"But everyone says that the new release drops at sundown," she said, a petulant tone creeping into her voice.
Mr. Borgin had never had children, and the sound of her voice, all at once hopeful and whiny and high pitched… something only a mother would love… grated on his nerves.
"Sundown isn't for another two hours," he said brusquely, expecting her to go away so he could brood about his near-bankrupt shop without a pimply preteen gawking at him.
She didn't leave. Instead, she hummed a little tune, nothing he recognized, and then quite horrifically, began to browse the shelves where his most expensive collections sat. He couldn't afford a kid breaking up his tradable inventory. It was all he had left.
To make matters worse, three more gangly kids had gathered outside the window by the ugly poster. Soon, there were about ten of them, all noisily chatting and pointing. Borgin was truly perplexed.
"What's going on? Should we call the Aurors to disperse them?" he asked.
And then they came inside, gathering around the curious roped off empty space, and the once quiet shop now teemed with a crowd of young people who looked very out of place around the shrunken heads and the shark's teeth. They made such a ruckus that Borgin suddenly felt sorry for poor Florean Fortescue, who had to deal with this sort of customer at his ice cream shop every weekend. No wonder the poor wizard was going deaf.
The shop windows were fogging up from the inside, and the read-o-meter rose dangerously to new heights from sheer body heat.
"Burke, deal with this!" he half-shouted above the rising din.
He couldn't fathom what these children wanted with an empty space of air, but they kept coming in, and more gathered outside, smudging the windows. Borgin started to feel claustrophobic and a tiny bit nauseated. He had to put a stop to this.
"Why aren't you doing anything?" he said, finally fighting through the crowd to get to his partner's side. "They'll damage the inventories!"
No one touched anything, but that didn't mean that the crowd, now turned teenaged mob, wasn't going to suddenly rise up and…
The flash of light took him completely by surprise. It was exactly sundown, and the roped off area had filled with a large ball of light. It became white-hot, the air thickened,and then a loud crack rang through the shop. Borgin thought his windows had shattered from the pressure, but then the ball of light disappeared.
The empty space was now filled with stacks of shimmering, metallic disks, and an loud "ooh" rang from the crowd. There seemed to be an ugly picture painted on the face of the disks that matched the ugly posters in the windows. It reminded Borgin of a Hippogriff's buttocks.
"They're here!" squealed the first girl, grabbing a disk from the stack. "They're really here!"
More squealing ensued. One by one, the teens each grabbed a disk and practically ran to the register where Burke stood at the ready. Knuts and Sickles flew across the counter faster than he could count. Borgin's head spun as the cacophony of young people's voices punctuated the ringing door and the cha-ching of the register.
An hour of solid commerce went by, and then the disks were gone.. Borgin's nerves were raw when he finally dared to look out into the street. It was finally, blessedly empty. He quickly shuffled to the peaking read-o-meter and fanned at it. Borgin was actually sweating underneath his coat. The collector would be in heaven when he came to collect… and they didn't have the money for this kind of heat...
"What… was that?" he asked.
"The new album by the Beastie Brothers. I spent our last installment on the exclusive rights to have the album delivered to us at sunset. The album won't get released until tomorrow morning everywhere else. It was in the contract." Burke grunted.
Amazed, Borgin sat. He didn't even have a stool… it had been pushed somewhere behind the skulls, so his legs took him all the way down until he hit the floor. There he stayed watching his partner busily counting loads of coins.
"Next time we fortify the walls, maybe play some of this music as soon as it appears… we could even serve ice cream…"
His partner's words were sheer nonsense. Borgin didn't think he could survive another ordeal like that one. The read-o-meter fell steadily as the residual heat finally dissipated from the shop.
Coins continued to stack up on the counter, while his mind pondered what had happened.
"How much?"
"More than two months' rent," Burke told him all professional and smug. He used his wollen sleeve to sweep the counted coins into a Gringotts depository sack. Then, to Borgin's surprise, Burke dumped another set of uncounted coins onto the counter and began again.
Borgin's eyes bugged out. "There's… more?"
Burke looked up, peering over his spectacles. "Not bad for an hour's work, eh?"
Borgin shut his mouth and just sat there on the floor. All the commotion had stirred up long-forgotten dust bunnies from under the neglected collections. He sneezed, and then gazed up at the register.
Burke had already counted a stack high enough for a third month's rent and filled another sack. And then, to Borgin's greater surprise, he dumped another set of coins on the counter and started yet again.
Well. Well, well, well.
"What did you say this… event was… called?" he asked thoughtfully.
"They call it an early album release party. Usually, there's music playing and more hype, but since we signed on at the last minute, and since we didn't have the funds for anything grander than word of mouth advertising and a few posters, it was a small affair."
A small affair…one that had saved his shop from going bankrupt in less than an hour.
Borgin took a deep breath. He went to the cold fireplace and threw in a heating spell. They could afford to avoid numb fingers and toes for at least a week, perhaps even through the rest of the winter. And if they could do this again…
"What kind of contraption do we need to play their music?" he asked.
Maybe he could strike a deal with Florean Fortescue… sell trinkets to go with the music… the possibilities were endless.