At a bookshop in Belfast yesterday - one of a handful of outlets still open at 5 p.m. - assistants dealt with their few remaining customers and were grateful for small mercies. As if by magic, sales of the new Harry Potter book did not seem to have been hit despite the protests which have seen the city's commercial life grind eerily to a halt.
Ms Paula Fleming, the assistant manager of Waterstones in Royal Avenue, Belfast's main shopping thoroughfare, said people had been rushing from their offices at lunchtime to buy the latest tale of adolescent wizardry for their children.
"It has provided a bit of light relief, to be honest," said Ms Fleming. "It's been terrible the last couple of days. We planned to stay open until 6 p.m. today, but in the last half-hour the whole town has just gone dead. There is no point in continuing."
The same story has been echoed across the North, where businesses have been shut by 3 p.m. to allow staff to make their way home.
In many places it turned out that traders who shut up shop had made a wise decision.
As thousands of pounds worth of business was reported to have been lost in Belfast, the deputy leader of the Alliance Party, Mr Seamus Close, threatened the Orange Order with legal action because it had "so closely associated itself with the violence."
The pub sector has been badly hit, with most city-centre hostelries closing by 9 p.m. to the disappointment of unsuspecting tourists. At Lavery's near Shaftesbury Square the assistant manager, Mr Sean McIlroy, said his overseas customers were "confused. . . They don't understand when they come into a pub and can only have half a pint before the barman says they are closing. They don't seem to comprehend that the pub could be threatened and that management don't want to take that risk."
Takings at the usually packed pub have been down considerably in the past week. "Normally we would lift around £8,000 on the 11th night but today we would be lucky to get £1,000," he said, just a few minutes before he closed at 6 p.m. The rest of Shaftesbury Square, buzzing with young revellers most nights of the week, soon followed suit.
Mr Michael Johnston, operations manager of Croft Inns, which runs 21 pubs and restaurants in and around the city, said revenue was down by about 75 per cent in such pubs as Cutters Wharf at Stranmillis. Like other pubs, they were operating a skeleton staff.
"It's back to the way it was in the early 1970s. There is a mass exodus out of the city and, if they go out at all, those who are still here stay local," he said.
At the newly-opened and impossibly trendy Ta Tu bar and restaurant on the Lisburn Road, it was a similar story. "Custom has dropped but we are still flying the flag here," said the restaurant manager, Mr Ronan Sweeney.
"The general mood among customers is tentative. They are concerned about going out. But at around 10 p.m. cabin fever tends to set in and we do see an influx at that time."
The restaurant at Ta Tu has been worse hit than the bar, and in the rest of the city most eating places had closed in the face of a slew of cancellations.
Ticketmaster in Northern Ireland had been reporting low sales for the forthcoming performance by Michael Flatley at Stormont. City Bus Tours had cancelled all of its tours yesterday.
But seaside resorts such as Portstewart and Portrush on the north coast were packed. American visitors at the Royal Portrush golf course where the Northern Ireland championships were being played had been unaware of the potential for trouble. "They were mystified at the TV reports but feel safe up here where it is quite mellow," said a spokesman.
The Northern Ireland Tourist Board said it had received calls from concerned visitors about how to negotiate roadblocks in the area.
Despite the disruption, organisers of one annual attraction, the Ulster Harp Derby at the Royal Down racecourse in Lisburn, remained upbeat.
"We have had this for the last five years, been there, done that, bought the T-shirt," said Mr Mike Todd, racecourse manager who, protest or no protest, expects 5,000 people to turn up for tomorrow's one-day meeting.