Lego 10217 Diagon Alley - Borgin and Burkes

Prologue

So this is the second building in the Diagon Alley set which is know as
Borgin and Burkes and boy am I taking my own sweet time on it. So it is supposedly a dark spooky shop that sells dark magic stuff and all. Lego has a usual policy again violence and I guess by extension will not have gross objects like Hand of Glory in there. Here is the instruction manual cover art and is the same as the Ollivander's Wand Shop one except it is labelled 2.

 

The Build - Borgin and Burkes

Okay I have done some Google research on the set and this second build is the
Borgin and Burkes. This build features 4 minifigures, 1 skeleton and 1 brown frog. The brown. The skeleton is the same as those found in all the other Lego sets but I have put ths spare hood on it so that I would not loose this part. The 4 minifigures are Lucius Malfoy, Fred Weasley, George Weasley and Fenrir Greyback. As for the animals, this is a brown frog which is normally found in green or dark grey, so this is considered an uncommon part to me.

The build unlike Ollivander's Wand Shop has no accessories to build. At 25% we can see this build is going to consists of mostly dark colours and the glow in the dark 1 x 2 tiles which are rare but can be found aplenty in this build.

The top view shows nothing much at this point in time as well.

At 50% build, it looks pretty complete at the first floor. The front of the shop has a pretty nice typical shop design.

On one side, is some board with a whole bunch of posters which are printed on stickers. This reminds me of those boards which SBS made to let people put their adverts on found at some bus stops.

From the back, we can see the Vanishing Cabinet and it takes up so much space that the 1/3 left side of the shop and the display window has practically no space left for any decoration or even space to place any minifigures.

At this stage, the right side seems to be a play feature in the works.

At the 75% level,we start on the 2nd floor which uses 2 very nice brick pieces which have nice arches framing some window pieces behind it.

Here is a close up of the brick which has the nice arch and is uncommon.

At 75% completion, the back does not differ much from the 50% level.

At this stage we can see the play feature is actually some chimney that allows a placement of a minifigure. When rotated simulates some scene in the movie where Harry reaches by Floo Network this shop through the fireplace. Do not ask me more I have no idea as I did not watch the show. The chimney looks good though.

This picture show the rat which I did not mention earlier during the introduction of the minifigures. Overlooked it as it is not that high on my favourites list. Some trough at the side with a glow in the dark brick probably having something toxic in it. TMNT anyone?

The completed build look dark and spooky somewhat.

 

Side looks great as well with those vines and purple pieces making it more Halloween like.

Once again, one of the sides is more plain looking just like Ollivander's Wand Shop.

So now we can see the play feature from the outside which allows us to "transport" a minifigure into the shop.

We have the Vanishing Cupboard which is quite ordinary actually but takes up quite some space in the build.

What I do like about the Borgin and Burkes shop must definitely be the roof with some glass skylight or something with the vines creeping up along the sides. Very unique build I feel. The second floor room actually is not a room at all sadly, just looks like it from the outside.

Finally we have the glow in the dark pieces that add just some fun value to the build. It looks nice but does not really make a compelling factor to get this set just for such a thing. It is not a main feature in anyway at all. Guess it helps to give Lego dreams to any kid when turning off the room lights and watching this build glow in the dark.

Final Thoughts - Borgin and Burkes

This build has less decorative pieces on the inside and I suspect it is due to the 2 play features which are just "meh" to me.

I like the second floor of this build more with reasons stated above about the skylight thing, vines and the 2 brick pieces used to create the second floor. Overall a fun build nevertheless and is definitely better than the average Lego City buildings but the Ollivander's Wand Shop is slightly better than this.