Regulus wandered the shop while Orion spoke with the owner, and his attention snagged on a cauldron etched with temperature markings. He picked it up and turned it in his hands.
It was cleverly made. A heat-sensing charm had been carved into the inner wall, and the outer wall displayed the current temperature in a corresponding spot. No more guessing by instinct while brewing.
"If you like it, take one," the witch said, catching the movement. She winked at him. "Your father won't charge you."
Regulus set the cauldron back with an exaggerated sigh. "Hogwarts won't let us use them."
"So many rules at Hogwarts." She shook her head, annoyed. "My grandson goes there too. He writes home constantly just to complain."
The third shop was a general store, selling all sorts of everyday magical goods.
Self-sweeping brooms. Boxes that kept food fresh. Crystal balls that predicted the weather. Quills that wrote on their own.
It was the largest of the three, and it was packed. Five or six customers stood in a loose line at the counter.
The owner was a balding wizard, busy ringing up an elderly witch. When he spotted Orion and Regulus, he gave a brief nod in greeting without slowing his hands.
Orion didn't interrupt. He walked Regulus through the shop, checked the dates on a few shelves, then glanced over the ledger near the register.
Only after the owner cleared that wave of customers did Orion step up.
"John. Business looks good."
"Thanks to you." John wiped sweat from his forehead. "Christmas just ended. Everyone's been buying gifts."
"This is Regulus," Orion said, shifting slightly to make room. "My son."
John studied Regulus for a moment, then smiled. "He looks like you. A bit like Walburga too. When you take over the shops someday, look after us old folk."
Regulus nodded politely. "Hello."
When they left Diagon Alley, Orion led Regulus into an even narrower side passage.
He pulled two battered teapot lids from his pocket and handed one to Regulus. Both looked ancient.
"Portkey," Orion said. "Hold tight. It activates in five seconds."
Regulus gripped the cold, rusty lid.
Five seconds later, a brutal force yanked at him like a hook had caught his navel and jerked hard.
The world spun. Color and sound smeared together.
This wasn't like Apparition's crushing squeeze. It felt more like being flung into a laundry machine on spin cycle, and not a gentle one either.
When it stopped, they were standing on a bleak stretch of highland.
Wind screamed across the open ground, snapping at their robes. In the distance, gray-green hills rolled on and on. Nearby, several low stone buildings squatted against the cold, white smoke curling from their chimneys.
The air was thick with herbs, layered over wet earth and rain.
"Scottish Highlands. Potion workshop." Orion pocketed the Portkey and started toward the stone buildings.
The workshop's overseer was an elderly wizard with graying hair and a face carved with deep lines. He wore a leather apron stained with every imaginable residue, and he held a long-handled stirring rod like it was part of him. When he saw Orion, he nodded once, expression stern.
"Ingredients are up," the old wizard said as his opening greeting. "Acromantula venom from Africa is thirty percent higher than last year, and Mooncalf horn powder from South America is up twenty."
"Noted," Orion said shortly. "Let's go inside."
The interior was much larger than the outside suggested. A space-expansion charm had been used.
A dozen huge cauldrons bubbled over enchanted flames. Wizards in matching aprons stood at each station with stirring rods, adding ingredients at intervals.
The walls were covered in recipes and warnings. Shelves held hundreds of glass bottles filled with powders and liquids in every color imaginable.
The old wizard led them around, explaining what each cauldron was brewing, how far along it was, and when it was expected to ship.
Orion listened carefully, asking a question now and then.
Regulus followed behind, watching the workers handle ingredients, control the heat, and adjust recipes on the fly.
Their movements were quick and practiced. Their eyes never drifted. They were all seasoned.
One younger wizard was brewing Elixir to Induce Euphoria. The liquid threw up golden bubbles and smelled faintly sweet.
"This batch will yield thirty bottles," the overseer said. "We'll bottle it tomorrow, deliver to Diagon Alley the day after."
"Keep a close eye on quality," Orion warned. "Last time a customer complained the effects only lasted three hours."
"That was the ingredients." The old wizard's mouth tightened. "Billywig stingers aren't what they used to be. I'll see what I can do."
After the potion workshop, they used two more Portkeys and visited the alchemy workshop in Wales, then the herb gardens in Cornwall.
The Welsh alchemy workshop was built into a cave, and it was so hot inside it felt like a steam room.
Dozens of anvils sat in two neat rows. Goblins and wizards worked side by side, the clanging of metal ringing without pause.
Regulus looked around and realized this was less an alchemy workshop and more a smithy. The work didn't seem particularly sophisticated.
It didn't match his picture of a proper alchemy lab at all. Then he considered what the shop in Diagon Alley sold. Most of it was meant for ordinary customers, mass-produced rather than rare or cutting-edge. Low complexity made sense.
The Cornwall herb gardens sprawled across dozens of acres, hidden behind magical wards. Inside, rows upon rows of magical plants filled the land.
Venomous Tentacula twisted restlessly beneath glass domes. Mandrake grew in soundproof greenhouses with warning signs hung outside.
The head gardener was a short witch with sun-darkened skin and thick fingers. Dirt lived under her nails.
"Weather's been good this year." She spoke while loosening soil around a patch of dittany. "Yield's up twenty percent. Only problem is the gnomes, always causing trouble. I set traps and caught more than a dozen."
"Handle them the usual way," Orion said. "Sell the pelts in Knockturn Alley. Feed the meat to the animals in Ireland."
Their last stop was the magical creature breeding grounds in Ireland.
It was larger than everything that came before, so vast Regulus couldn't see the end.
Magical fences divided it into regions, each one holding different creatures.
Grindylow swam in one pond. Bowtruckles lived in a stretch of woodland. A cave housed several nogtails.
On a steep, rocky rise with sparse vegetation, a graphorn wandered at leisure. Near a tall wooden building, he caught glimpses of an occamy's feathers.
The breeding grounds' manager was a large man with a ruddy face and a booming voice.
"Everything's in order!" he promised, thumping his chest. "Only thing is feed prices keep rising. Dragon liver costs forty percent more than last year."
"Then pay it," Orion said easily. "Don't cut corners on the animals. If you raise them poorly, you won't sell them for a good price."
Regulus stood by the fence as a bowtruckle poked its head out of a tree hollow, watching him with bright curiosity.
It was only about the size of his palm, with glossy black eyes and delicate fingers.
It stared for a moment, then abruptly tossed an acorn at him. It landed near his shoe. The bowtruckle immediately vanished back into the hollow, making a soft rustling sound that somehow felt like laughter.
"It likes you," the manager said, laughing loudly. "Bowtruckles usually don't bother with people."
It took three days of following Orion around before Regulus finished seeing the Black family's main holdings.
Even then, it wasn't a deep dive. It was a quick sweep, the sort of tour you take to learn the outline of a place.
And it was only then that he truly understood.
The Black family's "assets" were not just the old house at 12 Grimmauld Place. Not just three shops in Diagon Alley.
From the Scottish Highlands to the Irish coast, from Welsh valleys to the Cornwall plains, there was Black land everywhere.
Workshops.
Plantations.
Breeding grounds.
And that was only on British soil.
"What about outside Britain?" Regulus asked one night, when they were staying at an inn in Ireland.
Orion sat by the fireplace with a ledger in his hands. "France has vineyards for enchanted wine. Germany has mines that produce certain rare metals. India has spice plantations. North Africa has a magical creature reserve."
He flipped a page. "But you're going back to school soon. We'll visit the rest later."
Regulus sat across from him on the bed, trying to process it all.
He'd always known the Blacks were rich. He'd never understood where the money actually came from.
Now he did.
Potions, Alchemy, Herbs, Magical creatures... The things the wizarding world always needed, the industries that never ran out of customers. The Black family didn't own all of it, but they had a hand in every part of it, and not in a small way.
And they'd been doing it for centuries. The whole chain was connected, from growing and breeding raw materials, to processing and production, to sales and retail. An entire system, and the Blacks sat at the center of it.
What surprised him even more were the people.
Every manager. Every craftsman in the workshops. Every gardener in the plantations. Every handler in the breeding grounds.
They didn't all carry the name Black, but they were tied to the family all the same, tangled together in thousands of quiet threads.
Some families had worked for the Blacks for generations. Some were distant branches. Some were small houses that survived by clinging to the Black family's protection.
It was an enormous, self-contained ecosystem.
The Black family at the top, and beneath them layer upon layer of businesses and dependents, like a great tree.
The trunk was the name Black.
The branches and leaves were the industries.
The roots were the countless people who made their living because the Blacks existed.
That was the real value of an ancient pure-blood noble house.