After their initial contact and the resolution of the skeleton dog matter, Morris felt that Ezra Frick was actually a fairly decent businessman at least by Knockturn Alley standards though his personal quirks were admittedly rather peculiar and somewhat concerning from a mental health perspective.
In fact, this general assessment was exactly what Morris had expected before arriving at the shop.
Before coming to visit this store, Morris had already suspected through that Frick probably wouldn't turn out to be too bad a person, despite operating in the morally questionable environment of Knockturn Alley.
His reasoning was based on a simple principle: family connections often revealed character.
After all, Frick's mother ran a secondhand robe shop in Diagon Alley. She was a kind and genuinely pleasant old lady with warm eyes and a gentle manner.
When Morris had bought his secondhand robes from her shop months ago during his initial school shopping trip, she had even given him a complimentary pair of gloves, claiming they'd been sitting unsold for too long and she wanted them to go to: "a nice young man who'd appreciate them."
If Frick were a crook or someone truly malicious and untrustworthy, the old woman most likely wouldn't have given Morris this address in the first place.
Finally, there was one more detail that significantly increased Morris's favorable impression of the shop owner—just before Morris prepared to leave the store, Frick had proactively offered to personally escort him back through Knockturn Alley to Diagon Alley to avoid any potential dangers along the way.
But Morris had politely declined the offer.
He did, after all, have multiple defensive and offensive spells at his disposal.
Just before pushing open the shop door to leave, Morris suddenly remembered something important and turned back to address Frick one final time.
"Ah, right, Mr. Frick. Your mother specifically asked me to remind you to remember to eat your meals on time. She seemed quite concerned about your health and mentioned you have a tendency to skip meals when you're busy with work."
He had been keeping the old lady's instructions in mind all along, waiting for an appropriate moment to deliver them.
"Got it," Frick nodded with a helpless, resigned expression.
Morris smiled faintly and finally turned to leave. He reached for the door handle and was just about to push the door open and step out into Knockturn Alley when—
SLAM!
The door in front of him was violently shoved open from the outside with tremendous force.
The edge of the door struck him, and the momentum pushed him roughly against the wall behind him. His back hit the solid surface hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs with a gasp.
Morris steadied himself against the wall, his hand was instinctively moving toward his wand, and looked up sharply to see who had burst in so aggressively.
The person entering was an extremely tall man easily six and a half feet in height, with shoulders as broad as a doorframe and arms thick with muscle. His face was brutish and vicious-looking, with a broken nose, and a thick scar running from his left eyebrow to his cheek life. He was clearly not someone to be trifled with.
This was the sort of man mothers warned their children about.
Behind this imposing brute followed two more accomplices, equally large though slightly less intimidating than their apparent leader. Both had similarly unfriendly expressions.
They came into the shop one after another, and the already limited space in Frick's store immediately felt oppressively crowded.
Morris paused in his position against the wall and observed the newcomers curiously.
These men were clearly spoiling for a fight. They were obviously not here to make a purchase or conduct normal business.
Sure enough, when Frick's eyes fell upon the three intruders, his face immediately showed an expression of disgust.
"Krenk," Frick began in a cold, hostile tone. "I've told you repeatedly not to barge into my shop like some kind of barbarian. You'll scare away my customers!"
The massive brute called Krenk grinned at these words, revealing a mouthful of uneven, yellowed teeth that looked like they hadn't seen proper dental care in decades. His breath probably could have killed plants.
"Don't be so unfriendly, Frick. We're practically business partners at this point. I was just passing by your lovely store and thought I'd drop in for a friendly visit to remind you that it's time to pay back the money you owe."
"I've paid back all the money! Every single Knut!" Frick's voice suddenly rose sharply, his face flushed red with anger and indignation. "Get out! You're not welcome in my shop!"
Frick's eyes blazed with fury as he added viciously, "Get out now, or I swear I'll stuff all three of you into a slug's digestive cavity and leave you to dissolve slowly over the course of several days."
At these unexpectedly graphic and creative words, the fake smile on Krenk's face instantly vanished. His eyes narrowed to slits, and his hands clenched into fists the size of small hams.
"Oh, looks like you want to welch on your debt after all," Krenk said slowly, his voice dropping to a menacing growl.
As he spoke these threatening words, he stomped forward two heavy steps toward Frick. Each step landed with tremendous force, and the old wooden floorboards groaned and creaked under the strain of his weight.
The two accomplices immediately moved in coordination, their hands went to their wands.
The air in the shop seemed to freeze.
A fight was clearly about to break out.
Morris remained leaning casually against the wall near the door, making no sound and drawing no attention to himself. He merely adjusted his stance slightly, shifting his weight to a more balanced position and ensuring his own wand was easily accessible in his robe pocket, while he watched this entertaining scene unfold with interest.
These brutes who had arrived so aggressively appeared to be debt collectors of the most disgusting variety.
Things... seemed to be getting quite interesting indeed.
Was this everyday life in Knockturn Alley?
However, despite the aggressive posturing and rising tension, two full minutes passed and the four men were still at a standoff. No one had actually launched the first physical attack or cast the first spell—only the steady stream of crude language and creative threats from their mouths hadn't stopped for a moment.
Insults flew back and forth: questions about parentage, suggestions about anatomically impossible acts, comparisons to various unpleasant creatures and substances.
The vocabulary was impressively vulgar.
So, Morris realized with growing disappointment, it was just a war of words after all. All bark and no bite, as the saying went.
His initial keen interest in observing potential combat magic gradually faded and turned to mild boredom.
Wasn't this just like the street arguments he commonly saw in the Muggle world? Except the participants were all wizards holding wands instead of regular people waving fists, and the threats involved magic rather than conventional violence.
Just then, Krenk's small, mean eyes happened to glance around the shop and noticed Morris standing off to the side, partially in shadow, trying to suppress a yawn of boredom.
A new thought occurred to him, and his expression changed with malice.
As a professional debt collector who'd spent years extracting money from unwilling clients, Krenk understood one thing very well: for certain types of people, threatening their family members especially children was often the single most effective approach to getting results.
This young child who had suddenly appeared here in Frick's shop, in Knockturn Alley of all places, was most likely related to Frick in some way.
A malicious smile suddenly spread across Krenk's face, revealing those horrible teeth again. He turned away from Frick and walked toward Morris.
He spoke loudly to Frick in an exaggeratedly threatening manner.
"Well, well, well, Frick," he said slowly, drawing out the words. "Is this your son? He really does look a lot like you now that I examine him closely."
Morris's mouth twitched with irritation at this absurd statement.
This was truly an unexpected and unwelcome development in an already unpleasant situation.
How had this brute possibly reached such a ridiculous conclusion?
Morris spoke with complete exasperation. "Sir, are your eyes blind or just exceptionally poor at processing visual information? How do I look anything like him?
I'm just a customer passing through this store on business. Please continue your pointless argument—don't mind me."
Hearing these blunt, dismissive words from a child he'd intended to intimidate, the flesh on Krenk's brutal face twitched with rage. His jaw clenched, his nostrils flared, and the fierce, dangerous light in his eyes grew even more intense.
"Boy," he growled in a low voice, "are you tired of living? Do you have a death wish? Because I can arrange that for you very easily."
He moved right up close to Morris and his face was now mere inches away, and Morris could smell his foul breath. Specks of spittle sprayed from Krenk's mouth as he spoke, some of it almost landed on Morris.
"Krenk!" Frick stepped forward, the tip of his wand already glowing with a dangerous light. "This is my customer and has nothing to do with our grievances."
Krenk sneered at Frick's intervention.
Customer? A customer this young in a place like Knockturn Alley? In a shop that sold bones and dealt in the grey areas of magic?
Where would such a young customer come from in this dark corner of the wizarding world? This wasn't Diagon Alley with its family-friendly shops and legitimate business. This was Knockturn Alley, where children didn't venture unless in the company of dark wizards.
Now Krenk was certain that the child in front of him was Frick's son or at minimum a close relative.
Well, that made things considerably easier.
Krenk reached out his large, intending to grab Morris's thin arm.
The moment Krenk's hand moved toward Morris, Frick's pupils contracted sharply with alarm and fury.
"Stop!" he shouted.
A spell instantly shot from the tip of his wand with a bright flash of red light, flying straight toward Krenk's chest at high speed.
But Krenk was clearly prepared for exactly this sort of response.
Or rather, thugs and criminals like him who had spent years scraping by at the bottom of Knockturn Alley, surviving through violence and quick reactions, had developed an almost instinctive, animal-like response to ambushes and being ambushed.
The very instant Frick had raised his wand, Krenk's body had already begun to react.
"Protego!" he barked.
A magical shield appeared before him instantly, shimmering like heated air. The Shield Charm was strong and well-cast, this was clearly a spell Krenk had used many times before in actual combat.
The Stunning Spell struck the shield at an angle and ricocheted away. The red light grazed Krenk's shoulder harmlessly and continued traveling past him to strike a large glass jar on a shelf behind him.
The jar contained some kind of unknown in green liquid that bubbled slightly.
"CRASH!"
The glass jar shattered, and viscous green liquid splashed out, spilling all over the floor.
Morris felt several drops of the sticky green liquid land on his shoe. He looked down and shook his foot with disgust.
At this moment, Krenk's triumphant, mocking voice rang out through the shop.
"You attacked first, Frick!" he said loudly. "Don't you understand the rules of Knockturn Alley?"
His tone was gleeful, almost singing with vindictive pleasure.
Frick fell silent.
Although Knockturn Alley was indeed a chaotic, lawless place where terrible things happened regularly and conventional morality seemed almost optional, there were nevertheless some unwritten rules.
One of the most important of these rules was that no one was allowed to attack shopkeepers in their own stores within Knockturn Alley's boundaries. Shop owners were considered somewhat neutral ground, and violence against them was discouraged to maintain some minimal level of commercial stability.
Once a shop owner here was harmed or their property significantly damaged in their own store, certain "management personnel" would come to investigate the incident.
At that point, the person who had struck first, who had initiated the violence, would face endless troubles: fines, confiscation of inventory, potential banishment from Knockturn Alley's protection, or worse.
But there was one exception to this rule.
If the shopkeeper was judged by the management personnel to have "actively instigated the conflict", then all consequences arising from the subsequent violence would be borne by the shopkeeper alone. The management personnel would assume no responsibility for what happened to them, and the attacker would face no punishment.
The loophole in this rule was glaringly, obviously designed to be abused.
How exactly to characterize a conflict as "instigation" versus "self-defense" was entirely up to the 'management personnel's' own subjective judgment.
And unfortunately for Frick, the current "management personnel" responsible for this section of Knockturn Alley had a rather mediocre relationship with Frick.
"Um..." Morris's calm, slightly amused voice suddenly cut through the tense aftermath of the spell exchange. "Mr. Krenk, what exactly were you about to do to me just now?"
Krenk's head whipped around, and he glared viciously at Morris with undisguised hatred. This child was becoming extremely irritating.
"Boy, you don't have a say here," Krenk growled. "This is adult business. Keep your mouth shut before you get hurt."
Morris seemed completely oblivious to Krenk's obvious malice and the implied threat. He continued speaking to himself as if Krenk hadn't responded at all.
"Please answer my question, sir," Morris repeated.
Krenk stared at the boy as if he'd lost his mind, then suddenly acted as if he'd heard the biggest joke in the world. He made a strange, barking noise in his throat like something between a laugh and a cough.
"Are you trying to fight me, boy?" he asked with exaggerated incredulity.
Morris nodded with complete seriousness. "Let's just say I am. You make me feel disgusted."
"Osseus Evocatio!"
The incantation for Bone Summoning.