27 December 1992.

Just after Christmas, Oxford Street in London's West End was bustling with muggles wearing brand new clothes. The children laughed and played, and the young people who met each other sent sincere New Year's greetings to each other, and everyone had a yearning for a better life in their hearts, and even the heavy snow could not extinguish the smiles on their faces.

For wizards, Christmas is also the most important holiday of the year, but wizarding families celebrate Christmas in a very different way than Muggles.

They prefer to stay indoors, listening to the crackling sound of the fire burning in the fireplace, sitting under a parasitic Christmas tree covered in silver frost and decorated with silvery and discussing Quidditch or the latest news.

Therefore, Diagon Alley, as the center of wizarding commerce, is always very lonely during the New Year's days, not to mention the sparsely populated Tumbledown Alley on weekdays.

Bang, bang, click!

Hidden under a wide black cloak, Amosta stepped down from the same small cart at Gringotts, even if his stomach was overturned, but in order to maintain his indifferent personality, he could only show a calm demeanor.

The air was filled with the stench of fermented slug mucus soaking in rotting frog entrails, the bumpy ground was wet, rows of inverted torches were neatly suspended in mid-air, and the glowing green light of the huge fan-shaped underground cavern was eerie.

Amosta's eyes wandered, and in the 'pet' market two hundred feet to his left, the fifteen-foot-tall troll, whose limbs were firmly bound by the thick iron chains of the bowl, sat limp on the ground, almost merging with the swarthy rock wall.

Its owner, an old toothless witch from Moldova, brought it here in the hope of selling the trolls for a good price, so that she could use the money to treat her dragon pox.

But it's a pity that it's been sold for two years, and no one cares about it.

At this moment, the old witch was leaning on the slave's toes, swearing at the large group of house-elves next to her, cursing that they had polluted the environment.

It was a group of house-elves who had lost their owners and had a free body.

Of course, using the word 'free' to describe elves is tantamount to using 'brutes' to describe centaurs, and what you get is certainly not gratitude.

Most of these poor little creatures once belonged to some small wizarding family or mystic school, and their owners disappeared into the river of time for various reasons, which led to the elves being forced to be free.

Not having a master is a terrible thing for house-elves, and it almost deprives them of the value of their existence, so the little ones spontaneously gather here, hoping to find themselves a new master.

But let's be honest, except for some dark wizards who need living materials to experiment with spells and potions, they don't usually bother with them.

Trolls are friendly to elves, and Amosta has seen the hungry troll slap several to death, squeak and eat them deliciously.

In addition to trolls and pixies, you'll find a lot of fun stuff in the 'pet' market, which smells like toilets, like centaurs who have lost their protection, who have accidentally caught a baby (a sought-after item), a vampire locked in a cage, or an Irish leprechaun.

Basically, with the exception of magical beasts like dragons and unicorns, you can find most of the magical beasts that exist in the wizarding world in the pet market in the underworld.

The market under the rock wall on the right-hand side still retains the humble style of the European Middle Ages, but the things sold on the random stalls on the ground are not so simple.

It records the dark magic books from ancient Greece, the magic potion that greatly increases people's magic power but the side effects are difficult to understand, and the alchemical items that can instantly destroy life on a large scale---, in short, compared to those things, the goods sold in the Bojin store can only be regarded as prank products that young wizards love, and the devil's net is only worthy of being used as a decorative bonsai here.

Amosta had even seen the curse of the Black Death that had slaughtered all of Europe at an Italian wizard, and according to the wizard who sold it, the curse in his hand had been weakened, but if it spread, it wouldn't be too much of a problem to take out a Muggle in a city.

Of course, spells have an incredible price to match their effects, otherwise, Amosta would really want to buy them and study them.

And this is the dark side of the wizarding world, a real land of lawlessness.

In the middle of the night, Amosta, who felt better, took a step towards the center of the cave, gradually merging into the sparse crowd.

Most of the people who move here are dressed in black robes and don't want to be seen.

Only a handful of unscrupulous lunatics and wizards who only happened to pass through England would dare to show their heads in front of the surveillance agents infiltrated by the Ministry of Magic.

Yes, you heard it right.

The underground world of Tumbledown Alley is secretly garrisoned by the Aurors, but they exist only to ensure that nothing 'out of line' happens here, not to exterminate them, unless the Ministry of Magic wants to go to war with all the remaining wizards of the ancient school in England and the dark wizards.

A square area in the center of the cavern, enclosed by a low granite wall, is the Underground Consignment Market, and at one end of the courtyard wall stands a tall sign, on which hundreds of letters of entrustment are posted with the brilliance of red magic contracts, waiting for someone to remove them.

Amosta stood under the sign and glanced around, but found no valuable commissions, turned around and found a stone bench to sit down, waiting for the arrival of the trade partner.

Probably because of the arrival of the New Year, there were no people here either, and only two people were talking to each other ten feet away on the right back ten feet in the huge area.

One of them, dressed in brown linen robes, with a bare head covered in pus and scabies, looked like an eighty-year-old wizard who had looked up at Amosta when he heard the movement.

As if disdainful of Amosta's practice of hiding his true face under a swirl of twisted magic, he bared his mouth with only three or two yellow teeth, and sneered out with a fishy wind, half of which was charred black like the bark of an old charcoal tree, and the other half was covered with pink, tentacles, frantic wriggling little granulations.

But when the old wizard noticed the golden serpent embroidered on Amosta's neckline, he hastened to retract his disgusting smile, nodded politely, and withdrew his gaze.

Amosta was a little interested in the old wizard's funny face.

If he guessed correctly, it should have been the damage caused by the failure to cast a soul-cutting spell during the Horcrux crafting, resulting in a severe magical backlash.

As far as Amosta knew, there was only one thing that could slow down the spread of the spell's damage, and the conversation between the two men that followed confirmed his suspicions.

"It's very difficult to get and it's very dangerous, you know where you can find unicorns in all of Britain!"

The wizard across from the old wizard took out a glass from under his black robe, and the glittering silver liquid in the cup was very conspicuous in the gloomy underworld, and he said cautiously.

The old wizard understood what this meant, and he let out a sharp sneer, and likewise took out a fist-sized piece of mythril from his bosom and threw it on the table,

"Of course, of course, even here, not many people are willing to touch Dumbledore's mold, I've been waiting for this for a while, you have the guts, I admire ---"

Transactions in the underworld have always been straightforward, rarely bargaining, and if you really can't negotiate, just kill the other party.

Amosta watched the old wizard with interest, and after seeing him take the glass, sniff it carefully, and pour it into his mouth, his face blurred with a bit of amusement.

Here, one thing has to be mentioned,

Because of the drawbacks of traditional magic education, wizards of the genre can often be extremely proficient in some aspects, but on the other hand, they may be as ignorant and terrible as apprentices who are new to magic, and modern magic education with schools as a carrier will most likely not teach any shocking talents, but at least balanced.

Knowledge balance is very important.

At least for the time being, no one at Hogwarts O.W.L.S. would be fooled with a Transfiguration and two unicorn feathers.

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