Dark Bloodlines

Lorcan enjoyed spending time in the shops he owned. It wasn't about the money. It was about the fact that he truly liked to work.  He liked business. He liked tending the shops and making them profitable. Since taking Borgin and Burkes again, he was busy about putting it to rights once more. 

He'd given the shop up for awhile and then had fairly recently taken it back because the former owner had let the place go to pot.  There was something necessary about the tradition of Borgin and Burkes.  It had been there over 160 years, and Lorcan believed in tradition, believed it needed to continue. So he'd bought the place back.

He'd had the clerks working double time, just cleaning.  Old didn't need to mean filth. The place was clean now and filled with all sorts of antiques and mystical things.  He had a new shipment of artifacts from Romania that promised to have all sorts of intriguing stories behind them.  

He was intrigued by the particular crate he was opening.  Antique jewelry, antique jeweled daggers and blades.  Small things, but sometimes the most unusual and promising things came in small packages.

Sebby was looking real classy today. He needed to go buy some new decoration pieces for his house, he had in mind Knockturn Alley since some rare and beautiful pieces showed up sometimes, robbed of course, but that didn't mean he didn't have to dress properly to do so. He put on a black suit he had, with a green tie and his brown oxford shoes and went off his way into Knockturn Alley, apparating there from his home.

He was glad it wasn't as sunny as it had been the past days, since he'd be burning up in heat if it were, but thank god it wasn't. Sebber was looking everywhere, looking for smugglers wanting to make a galleon or two, or even for the stores that set themselves apart with their magnificent products, until he came upon Borgin and Burkes. This store had such a great past, imense, probably the most known store in Knockturn Alley and the one everyone knew and mentioned when talking about artifacts from the past of great importance. He hadn't placed a foot inside the store in some time now, in large part due to being in Hogwarts but also because the ownership had switched and the soul of the old store just wasn't in there. Rumors on the streets were that the last owner had comeback and that the store was gon'na be up and running better then ever pretty soon.

Sebber opened the door and walked inside, looking around to see the clerks just cleaning and organizing objects but it was one crate that the guy ,Sebber recognized to be the old store owner, was opening that caught his attention. Several old jewelry and daggers, quite a great decoration piece Sebby thought so he decided to approach the man.

"Good morning. I'm looking for the best decoration pieces you have here. Preferably with background to it, and fame. "

Lorcan looked up at the sound of the shop's bell and saw a young man entering.  There was something in his face that he thought looked vaguely familiar but he couldn't place it.  Surely it had to be a family resemblance to someone he knew, and if that were the case, then the young man almost surely had to be from a pureblood family.


"Good morning," he smiled, laying down an antique dagger set with snowflake obsidian in the hilt and the pommel.  He listened as the young man said he was interested in the best decorative items in the store. That meant money. Most likely not entirely his. Most likely old money.  And anyone who looked for decorative pieces here surely was not a white lighter.  


"Certainly," Lorcan said.  "Wall art or artifacts? We have a fine selection of both."  The truth was, he kept the better pieces upstairs on the second floor in a newly refurbished gallery.  That space was reserved for the best he had, for those that could afford them. He left just a very few pieces--those that he personally liked best--downstairs as samples for shoppers. He would know from how shoppers approached them if they were serious buyers. If so, that garnered them passage upstairs.


"I've got afew of my favorite pieces over here, for starters, that you might be interested in," he said, coming around the counter.  He walked over to one of the antique display cases and unlocked the glass door. Opening the case, he drew out a large dragon claw challice in silver and handblown glass.  It was something Zada had procured for him in Hungary and, Lorcan believed, was around 200 years old.  

"It depicts a Balaur," Lorcan said. "It came from the estate of a private collector on the continent. It's not easy to find one in this sort of pristine condition. And, the other piece that I like, and it's brand new to us, is this palantir." 


He laid the chalice on the table near the young man, and picked up the large black palantir.  The palantir had not been used in the last 75 years, according to the Romanian antiquities agent that Lorcan had bought the piece from.  The agent was a seer, and he refused to handle the piece without gloves on.  Lorcan had noticed the man refused to make any direct contact with whatever dark visions he saw within it.


"This piece is not for everyone," he warned the young man. "Its unusual for a palantir because its made of a type of obsidian called, by some, an Apache Tear. The stone looks black but if it finds light at the right angle,..." He lit the tip of his wand and shone the light through the stone from behind it. "one can see the stone is actually clear. I'm not a seer myself, but the legends and rumors about this piece do intrigue me, I must admit."

Apparently, the only thing that had struck the old owner during the time he quit owning Borgin & Burkes was age. Age marks around his eyes, thin lines were starting to appear whenever he sketched a little smile yet they were barely noticeable and it felt good having an experienced and known men back in the store taking care of every client in a different special way, that's what made the way he ran his store the best. Sebby took a chance to greet the man with a firm handshake just after walking in and both greeting each other with polite and simpathetic words.

"It's artifacts I'm after, ancient ones with a big background, most of it unknown and unconfirmed, those are the great pieces. The ones that are passed down and people lose track of them for lots of time. I have enough wall art already put up around the house, long lineage you see, hard to find a space to put anything between all the portraits of my grandfather and my great great what not." - he laughed a bit, in a way that seemed like if he was bragging about his long family. He was quite proud of his family indeed.

He admired the chalice depicting a Balaur, made from silver and handblown glass. Sebber admired the piece a bit. Sad it was made from silver, perhaps if it had been an more expensive type of material, something to brag about when having visitors around, that would have been a great addition to his collection. He couldn't help but stare at the Palantir he showed him. It was .. so unique. He was almost sure that when he lit his wand behind it, he could see visions of him rising over someone's corpse and his father's soul congratulating him, but perhaps it was just mere visions and imaginations of his brain.

"This .. this piece. I, haven't seen anything like it. I've heard rumors of this material, that Apache Tear obsidian, I would have never expected to come across one, let alone here, in London, so close to me. I'm quite fond of this piece if you ask me. I'm willing to buy it, just state the price."

Ah.  Money. Old money.  It had a language all its own.  That was fine with him. Not that he discriminated against new money. It all spent the same. Old money commanded respect, though, a tradition earned by centuries of dedication. That was what Lorcan looked for.  He noticed the young man's discriminating eye as he checked both pieces and chose the far superior piece.


"You've got a good eye," Lorcan said. "A piece of this sort of obsidian is is close to the largest known pieces in muggle records--inefficient as those things are.  Native American shamans have used the stone most commonly for protection, for grounding themselves from powerful magical spells, and, supposedly for resolution of emotional issues. I don't know how much stock I put into that.


"That's not been my experience in the stones I've dealt with over the year, not once a stone is trained in the way its creator determines it should go. And, from what I know, quartz energy in particular can be trained to respond to white light or the dark arts from the outset because of the nature of the stone itself. But there's nothing useful to a white lighter in this particular stone. It doesn't take a seer to know that.


"Honestly, I'm not as concerned about making a profit on this piece as much as I'm concerned about making sure whoever ends up with it is wizard enough to handle it safely. Convince me you're up to the task, and we'll be able to make a deal."