A/N: Here we go! An epic tale of murder, revenge, love, and food! This was an ambitious project that made me slightly afraid of my own imagination. I feel kind of bad for stealing JKR's characters, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, and the urban legend and mixing them into a big bowl of… I don't even know. It's up to you to taste it and decide what it is. But there you go. I've never written anything like this. I just hope that I don't lose my credibility ;).

If you don't understand it, that's probably because you've never heard of, or seen the musical/urban legend

Anyways, I own nothing, except a few added or changed words here and there to make the lyrics fit with HP-verse. But even still, I don't claim to have invented the English language, so I don't think I even own those!

And though the title, says 'Fleet Street', it doesn't necessarily take place there. I just need a place to put in the title that didn't sound bad and gave readers the idea of what it was based off of.

The italicized words are "sung", or rather the lines of the songs themselves.

This story is dedicated to my best friend Noelle who listened, my sister who nurtured, artists worldwide who never give up, and my beautiful classmates who will never stop believin'.

Bill's tongue was stinging against the harsh salt of the ocean water. It was bitter, dirty and cold, but completely welcome as it rushed rapidly into his open mouth, relishing every sight and sound he could take in. He plunged deeper into the water, diving beneath the waves to avoid any eyes that might be scanning the shores on night shift. He plunged deeper and deeper into the water, the moonlight above a small coin of light above him as he swam further and further away from Azkaban and from an uncomfortable sanity.

He hadn't remembered falling, nor had he remember escaping, but how he did so didn't matter now. It was the why that kept him afloat as his lips met the surface and air returned to his lungs. The night air clung to his face, a welcoming embrace into the world. It was a rebirth into the world as a new man, a different man than he had left as; different in ways he didn't know yet.

The wind was whipping wildly that night… or was it morning? There was no telling. The only clear things at the moment were the water and wind and how it flowed over him. Each wave called him closer to a large moving object. Fleur the waves said, reminding him (though he hardly needed it) why he had escaped in the first place. The simple syllable kept him afloat. Fleur… Fleur… Fleur… The object grew nearer and nearer. Fleur… He wondered where she was now. Had she remarried? No, not Fleur. Was she still alive, even? Bill kept his head above water optimistically. And what of their daughter, Victorie, never knowing her father? She would be about sixteen now, wouldn't she? Fleur… Fleur… Sir! Sir! Bill found it hard to tread water now. The object was a ship. A ship! And they were calling out to him! Fleur had kept him floating long enough to be spotted. "Thank you, love," he said as the ship grew larger and larger. It was close enough to touch now. Just a little ways more and he would be free. Bountiful… What a name. Bill certainly hoped it was.

Somehow, lost in thoughts and at sea, he was on board.

"Good thing we found you, sir!" A young voice said. "These are treacherous waters, these are. Another hour out there and you might be dead."

Bill didn't respond. He stared out at the prison island, evanescent in the dark cloak of night. Yes. Freedom. There was no other word for it. He turned to the man who offered him a warm towel, which he took graciously.

"Teddy." He said.

"Excuse me?"

"Teddy's the name, sir!"

"Bill," he responded. "And thank you."

"What were you doing out there?"

Prisoner was not a word with good connotation, even if it was a false charge, so Bill turned away. "Don't ask questions, boy. The answers, I assure you, will never be the ones you want."

"Then I won't ask questions, sir."

The Bountiful sailed dutifully on through the darkness. Bill glanced eagerly over the edge. He didn't know where they were going. But he didn't care. Once he was far away from the prison, he'd fashion a new life, find his wife and daughter, and happily they would live, far away from everyone. By the sea, perhaps.

The presence of another stirred Bill from his thoughts. "Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?" Bill asked, expressionless against the wind.

"There's nothing like it, Mr. Bill. Nothing like London."

"No. There isn't."

London. That was where they were going? He was to return to his past, his haunting past, filled to the brim with ghostly faces that filled him with grief?

The blue-haired young man, Teddy, gave a large sigh, as if he had just fallen in love. "I have sailed the world beheld its wonders from the Dardanelles, to the mountains of Peru, but there's no place like London! I feel home again...I could hear the city bells ring...Whatever would I do?"

Bill had to cough to cover up a laugh. This young man thought he was learned. Geography was perhaps his strong point, but Geography was only the tip of the iceberg.

"No there's no place like London." The disgust in his voice couldn't be denied as the ship sailed to a stop into a port.

"Mr. Bill?"

He didn't expect Teddy to understand in his naivety and age. "You are young. Life has been kind to you. You will learn." Just as his disgust in this memorable city was evident, as was Teddy's confusion. "This is where we part, Teddy. I will never forget the Bountiful or the young man who saved my life. Thank you, Teddy."

The blue-haired boy laughed. "No need thank me, Mr. Bill. What kind of respectable man would I be if when I spotted you, didn't sound an alarm?"

"I can assure you, Teddy, there are several well respected men who wouldn't have done what you did."

Teddy opened his mouth to speak, but his words fell silent as another voice took over. It was a female voice, throaty and heavily laced in accent. "Alms, alms for a miserable woman, on a miserable chilly morning?" Teddy fished through his pockets and placed some-odd left over knuts into the begging woman's hand, dirtied with the day's tasks, and trembling in the cold of the fall wind.

Timidly, the woman thanked him, and then turned to Bill, repeating the same request. Bill turned his back. His pockets were vacant anyways. Bill had been poor before, but never destitute. Destitute was sad, poor was hopeful. Bill fell into neither category. He was now nameless. He might as well not of existed. "I have nothing," he insisted, expressionless, and she listened, turning back her source of income, Teddy.

"How would you like a little muff, dear a little jig-jig, a little bounce around the bush? Wouldn't you like to push my parsley? It looks to me, dear, that you've got plenty there to push!" As the woman's hand reached, Bill smacked it away from Teddy… smacked. Bill was shocked with himself. What had happened to him? Fifteen years sweating in a prison cell had changed him. He missed his old self, his old life, his wife, his daughter. He stared at his pale hand. How it had changed. How incomplete and naked it felt. No wedding ring… no wand.

Hurt, with glossy eyes the begging woman looked up at Bill, ready to exclaim her apologies, but instead, she touched his face. "Don't I know you, mister?"

Bill peeled her hand from his face like it were a band-aid that irritated his skin. "Must you glare at me woman?" He couldn't be seen here, couldn't be recognized. "Go away. Just leave us, please." The please tasted foreign on his tongue. Unlike the salty water, though, it tasted sour, but still there was a taste of familiarity on it. He had said it many times before, but that was years ago. There was no 'please' in prison, no mercy, no manners, no decency toward fellow man. Prison followed none of the rules he had once lived by, and adapting was the only way to survive.

He tried not to watch with pity as the woman walked away, chanting her plea for alms, charity, a scintilla of kindness.

He turned to find Teddy, mulling over what had just happened. "Sir, before we part…"

"Yes, what is it?"

"I know I promised never to question you, and I think I've followed through on that. For whatever reason you were out there in the ocean is your affair, and yet, over the past couple of weeks we've been sailing together on The Bountiful, I've began thinking of you as a friend. So if you ever need any help… or money…"

"No," was Bill's immediate answer. He wasn't a charity case. Bill allowed Teddy to help him immensely once before, and to do so again would be a disservice to them both. "But thank you." The word was buried beneath the filthy prison stone floor, covered in the slime and muck of abandonment and hate.

"Sorry to question you, but why, sir?"

"There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and the vermin of the world inhabit it, and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit, and it goes by the name of London. At the top of the hole sit the privileged few making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo, turning beauty to filth and greed... I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders, for the cruelty of men is as wondrous as Peru but there's no place like London!" Bill glanced around at his new surroundings. "There are ghosts and shadows everywhere, Teddy. I'd be careful not to upset them."

"Ghosts?"

Of course the boy would ask. He was a curious lad. Bill was no longer in the dank, dark shadows of modern-day London. The sun was shining brightly as the birds chirped happily around a market place. Memories sprang into colour and life, and painted the pictures of happy days long ago, but not forgotten. A curse breaker and his young family walked carelessly through London. "There was a breaker and his wife and she was beautiful... a foolish breaker and his wife. She was his reason for his life...and she was beautiful, and she was virtuous. And he was naive."

"Naïve, sir?"

"Not unlike yourself, Teddy. There was another man who saw that she was beautiful...A pious vulture of the law who, with a gesture of his claw removed that wizard from his plate! And there was nothing but to wait! And she would fall! So soft! So young! So lost and oh so beautiful!" Bill felt like crying, his face twisted into a pained grimace. His wife, his beautiful wife fell away from his loving, protective arms, his family defenseless as he saw them fade away. The stinging on his head from the auror's stunning hex had knocked him almost senseless. The innocent were always the first to fall. Why was it the innocent were always the first to fall?

"The lady, sir, the wife… what happened to her?"

"Oh that was many years ago. I doubt if anyone would know." The memories that swirled fantastically around him faded into the more modern, but gloomy structures that remained. "Now, Teddy, you must leave me. There's someplace I have to go. Something… Something I have find out."

"But won't I see you before I leave for Plymouth?"

"You may come find me if you'd like, Teddy. I won't wander."

Bill's dragon-hide boots clicked in time to the dripping water off the damp window sills around him as they hit the paved streets of London. "There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit and the vermin of the world inhabit it."