He arrived, unseen, in a dark alleyway off Charing Cross Road. He walked to the mouth of the alley and peered out but did not emerge. Muggles hustled and bustled all around him, doing their weekend shopping or playing tourist. A man walked by and shook a cup of change in his direction, but shrugged and moved away from the look on his face. The wind was throwing his long hair around his face, irritating his already raw nerves. He conjured an elastic and pulled it back. As he did, he noticed a bright yellow tag on the wall near him, shining and clearly magical. It read Sons of Merlin and then as he watched, it shimmered and changed to read No Muggle Brothers. Nothing changes, he thought for the thousandth time. But this was his world.

He looked beyond the passersby to the opposite side of the road, where a dark little door was set into the wall, under a sign that he knew no one around him could see. He would go. He saw how it would be in his mind. He would walk through the Leaky Cauldron quickly but not too quickly, ignoring the looks and whispers of the people drinking there. Perhaps he would spare one cool nod for the bartender to demonstrate his absolute serenity. Yes. Just to show that he was totally uncaring. That he had somewhere to be. And then through to Diagon Alley, he would go down the street and step ever so casually into the apothecary as he was did so often in years before. He needed things anyhow, and if he had chosen to order solely through owl delivery for the last few years well that was only because he had been so comfortable and so pleased with his solitude at home. He wasn't afraid to be seen. He was fine.

He scowled. He had always had a more difficult time lying to himself.

The oppressive prospect of being seen, being known and noticed and hated was dreadful to him. He had always been hated, he knew. But somehow this was different. Before, being despised had been part of his job. There had been a point to it. If he went back into the world now and found that people still thought he was a traitor and a murderer...or, he thought with a squirm about the "big eyed" witches Minerva had described, they only loved him because he was some kind of oddity...well, he wasn't sure which would be worse.

But he couldn't stop now. The thought of apparating home without going through was repellent to him. He would have to live with himself afterwards. He squared his shoulders unconsciously and stepped forward into Charing Cross Road. He had barely taken that first step when something slammed into him at a rather high speed. He saw a flurry of brown hair, and a strange cold sensation seemed to bloom on the left side of his chest.

"Ouch! Oh fuck! I'm so sorry!"

The muggle woman who had barreled into him was gazing bemusedly at him, wiping gobs of strawberry ice cream from his jacket with her fingers.

"I didn't see you at all! Where did you come from! Oh, your jacket. God, and I don't have a single napkin."

"It's fine." He said, too surprised and off balance to sound stiff. A few muggles were glanced at him as they passed. He felt his face warm unaccountably.

"Please let me have it cleaned for you," she said, looking pained as she gathered up a handbag that she had clearly dropped upon impact.

"That won't be necessary," he said, stepping back and regaining something of his composure.

"Oh, I insist! It looks like suede. There's an hour dry cleaner's a block and a half from here. If you aren't in a hurry."

He wasn't in a hurry, but to be waylaid by something this insignificant when a simple cleansing charm would suffice! He must, of course, remove all traces of ice cream before he walked into the Leaky Cauldron. And he couldn't do so until she had left.

"Please, let's at least get out of the way," and she stepped into the alleyway from which he had emerged and collided with her.

He followed her, not entirely reluctantly. The fierce resolve with which he had armed himself just moments before to enter the wizarding world seemed to have been punctured by the waffle cone.

"I'm Maggie," she said as she resumed her assault on his jacket.

"I'm S-Simon." He hoped she was too distracted to catch his hesitation.

"Nice to meet you, Simon." She grimaced apologetically again. Her eyes seemed to slide over the ugly yellow graffiti, but of course, he thought, she couldn't see it. Muggles failed to see the evidence of their worst enemies.

"My hands are all sticky." She interrupted his train of thought. "I don't think I'm doing any good. I really would love to take care of this for you. Like I said, the place isn't far at all."

She looked earnestly at him and he took in her face. She was pretty, he thought stupidly. When was the last time he had met a pretty woman out on the street? Had he ever? His eyes darted across the road to his intended destination and she seemed to read his expression there.

"If you are in a hurry, which-why wouldn't you be-I can see about paying up front and then you can take the ticket. Or we could exchange phone numbers if-"

"I'm in no hurry." He interrupted her.

"Oh great!" She smiled. "Well then let's get to it! It's just this way. She took him up the road, away from the Leaky Cauldron and what it concealed. They wove through people going the other way. She took a right turn, turning her head slightly to see that he was still following and the pedestrian traffic thinned some.

"So what brings you out to this part of town today? It's always such a madhouse."

"Shopping," he said shortly, and, wishing to get off the subject of himself, he continued courteously "and yourself?"

"Nothing important. I start a new job soon that's a bit of a distance and I thought I'd just...have a look around the place before I left, you know? Blend in with the tourists."

How unfortunate to be a muggle, he thought. To lack the convenience of apparition or Floo. To let something as mundane as geography impede you.

They took a left turn together. He was walking beside her now, thinking briefly how they must look-like two muggles strolling beneath the trees. She was wearing a yellow blouse and jeans. Bright and ordinary. And he knew he looked like a crow, but a non magical one at least. He grimaced inwardly as he thought of the fake name he had given her, not wanting to sound wizardly, not wanting to leave evidence of himself anywhere.

"And here we are!" She declared as they approached a storefront window displaying mannequins dressed in faded gowns. A sign in the bottom corner proclaimed in huge, brightly colored letters: ANY JOB IN ONE HOUR. They stepped into the cool, dimly lit interior and he thought, preposterously, of the first time he had been inside Ollivander's wand shop.

The woman, Maggie, leaned over the counter with her sticky hands slightly raised and surprised him as she shouted towards the back "Hellooo? Uncle Wally?"

There were some muffled bumping sounds and a male voice called back with sounds of recognition.

After a few moments, an elderly man came shuffling into view, out of a back room and past the garment conveyor, with clothes hanging in plastic. His face was deeply wrinkled but warm and even warmer as he looked at the two of them at the counter.

"Maggie, dear! What a nice surprise! I was just thinking about dropping in on you and here you got to me first. And with a friend? Have you brought a beau to meet me?" He grinned at Severus, who stiffened, letting his face fall into familiar impassive lines.

"Actually, Uncle Wally, I practically assaulted this poor man on Charing Cross and got the ice cream cone I had just bought all over his jacket."

The old man laughed. "You're a menace, my girl. Well, let's see the damage."

Severus shrugged out of his jacket and handed it over. The old man looked at it appraisingly. "This looks vintage."

"It was my father's. It's been in a closet for some time."

"A family heirloom!" groaned Maggie. "You have to make it good as new, Uncle Wally, or I'll never forgive myself."

Severus started to say that he didn't even care for the jacket, that it didn't matter at all. But the old muggle said immediately that he had no doubt at all that it would be flawless in no time.

"No charge, of course." He smiled at his niece. "You had better just look where you're going, Maggie."

"You bet. Thanks so much, Unc." He leaned over the counter and accepted a kiss on the cheek.

"Do you think I could slip back and wash my hands?" She asked. And with her Uncle's nod of approval, she ducked under the counter and hustled to the back room.

I just need your name for the slip, Mr..." the old man turned expectantly to Severus with a pen raised.

"Prince," he supplied, hating that he could think of nothing else. "Simon Prince."

"Well, how do you do, sir?" He asked amiably as he scribbled. "I'm Mr. Collymore of Collymore's Quick Clean!" He gestured around with a kind of laughing expansiveness. "And you've already met Maggie, it seems." His smile was friendly and unguarded as he tore off the carbon paper receipt and handed it to Severus. "It shouldn't take long at all. One hour. That's our guarantee! And we have a expediting service for anyone injured by my niece."

"Thank you," said Severus, thinking he could and should just leave now. This was ridiculous, standing in a muggle dry cleaner's, getting a good-natured ribbing! He could leave and he never even need come back for the jacket. It was a relic. He didn't want it. But the woman Maggie came back out and smiled at him before ducking under the counter once more.

"Well, I hope this makes it up to you, Simon-"

"Let me buy you an ice cream. To replace the one you lost."

He heard himself say it and didn't know where the words had come from. But her face lit up again and she seemed genuinely pleased when she said "that's very sweet of you, thank you."

So he had to turn around and get the door, which she walked through before turning and bidding her uncle a cheerful farewell. The old man looked amused.

"Have fun then! See you shortly, Mr. Prince. Maggie, try to stay out of trouble."

She laughed. The door closed. They were together on the sidewalk.

This is ridiculous, he thought again as they headed back the way they had come. But, he considered, in a way, it didn't matter. This day, he could spend it in the muggle world as Simon Prince and then it could end. And no one would be any the wiser. Surely, he could do whatever he liked. Surely, if he was pretending to be Simon Prince, he didn't have to behave like Severus Snape. Perhaps this was freedom.

"No wonder you knew where to find a good dry cleaners." He said, feeling brave and unbelievably lame as he did.

"Yes. Wally has been there for ages and ages. And he really is the best. No frozen dairy product has bested him yet."

Standing in line in the brightly lit and crowded ice cream parlor, Maggie ordered another strawberry cone.

"What will you have, sir?" Asked the teenager behind the counter.

He had not been prepared. The number of flavors had overwhelmed him. He hadn't even heard of many of them and hadn't eaten ice cream in years.

"Vanilla," he replied as smoothly.

"And will that be in a cup or a cone?"

He had an image of himself licking an ice cream cone and said "a cup."

Moments later, he had been handed his order and they both approached the register where he suddenly realized he had no muggle money.

"It's crowded in here. Would you like to wait outside while I pay?" He sounded solicitous to his own ears, gentle and foreign. But she smiled at him yet again and retreated into the sunshine.

He felt a little regretful about quietly confunding the other, surly-looking youth behind the register. It felt too much like leaving a trace of himself. But it was quickly done. He met her outside and they moved on together. He thought that any moment now, she would excuse herself and say goodbye, but she did not. They were near the hidden door of the Leaky Cauldron once more. He could feel it pulling at his attention like a magnet, but he looked down into his cup of ice cream and scooped out another bite. They moved past it going the other way now, down to Trafalgar Square where they sat and ate and watched people go by.

When she asked what he did for a living, he told her he was a chemist, which seemed enough like potioneer in the moment. She asked many polite questions about it, which forced him to drive the subject back towards her.

"And what do you do?"

"Nothing much at the moment. I was in France until a couple years ago when I came home and looked after the counter at Wally's sometimes. But I'll have to leave again soon for a different job that I am quite excited about actually."

He had meant to ask her about this new job, in France, he assumed. But at that moment, he thought he spotted old Sturgis Podmore crossing the square and he froze, his eyes following the passerby until it became clear that in fact it was only a different man, with the same thatched-looking head. He had lost the thread of the conversation entirely but to cover the pause, he said "I've always meant to travel more."

"Where would you most like to go?"

Again, the follow up question left him wrong-footed, and he only said "anywhere but here."

She laughed sympathetically and said "I've always wanted to go to Greece. I don't know what's stopping me. Just the routines of life, I guess."

"You seem more like someone who disrupts routines."

This was a blatant flirt and he knew it. He felt something like embarrassment in his stomach but it might have been exhilaration. To feel exhilarated by such a small, mundane thing. But she eyed him sideways rather speculatively and the feeling grew.

"I am definitely often disruptive without meaning to be. But the result isn't usually as pleasant as this."

They finished their ice creams and decided to walk again, once around the square and then out onto the street. When they stepped into a cramped used bookseller's she had asked him about his favorite authors. He described with more detail than perhaps he had ever done, his thoughts on that pleasure reading he never seemed to be able to do before the war ended.

"I like Ishiguro." He said. "I like the way he writes about the past, about memory. And he is so essentially British but he knows what it's like to be an outsider too. He has the capacity to see things two ways. I don't think there's anyone like him."

"Mmm" she murmured appreciatively and slipped down one aisle, her finger moving along the spines until she found what she was looking for. It was a battered copy of The Remains of the Day.

"Well I've got to read this now." She folded it into her arms and walked on. He felt an inexplicable pleasure.

She talked about how much she liked history, how difficult she found poetry. "I'm just too literal." And how lately she had been coveting every art book she saw but they're so expensive.

No one had spoken to him like this since...since...he pushed that thought away. Not now. Now he was adventurous. He was fun. He was gentlemanly. And he wasn't haunted. Just for today.

They ate on their feet. Slightly damp turkey sandwiches from a muggle grocery store and bottles of some kind of fruit juice that he found too sweet. He made observations about passersby and she told him stories about unreasonable customers they'd gotten at the dry cleaner's.

Even later, they were passing quite a posh perfume boutique and he had a sudden inspiration.

"Do you want to see something?" He asked.

Inside he asked her to choose any scent from the catalogue and offer it to him without letting him read the label.

She made a show of choosing and of hiding the bottle in her hand. He sniffed briefly and rolled his eyes as he said at once, "Sandalwood. Too easy."

Grinning, she went back for a second bottle. He successfully guessed pear, lavender, bergamot, lime, chocolate, fig, myrrh, cedar, almond, and amber in quick succession. She exclaimed each time he guessed named the scent and went back claiming to be even more determined to stump him.

"I don't even know what vetiver is!" She said, feigning exasperation.

"It's a kind of grass." He could feel himself smiling.

The shop clerks, he knew, had been looking toward them rather dyspeptically, clearly wondering if they were actually going to buy anything. But Maggie declared it all too rich for her blood and she walked out remorselessly though she continued to praise his wonderful sense of smell.

"This godawful nose has to be good for something," he said rather grimly.

"I think it looks distinguished." She said. "And it does marvelous work."

It felt like a day in someone else's life.

It had been an hour many times over by the time they wandered back to Wally's dry cleaners and found him gone, the storefront dark.

"I've got a key," said Maggie, and she let herself in with a touch of aplomb. It was far darker inside now than it had been that morning, and she clicked on a small lamp on the counter, creating a puddle of warm illumination. She stepped behind the counter, turned to him with her fingers tented and said "your ticket, please sir?"

He removed the carbon paper receipt from his pants pocket and handed it over. She made a show of squinting at the name. "Ah yes, Mr. Prince. It was a tricky one. Pink ice cream, you know, is the very devil on suede, but we got it out for you, sir. One moment."

She turned on the conveyer. He watched people's clothes cycle by, quiet. It would all be ending soon, and he was already folding into himself, coming to terms with it.

"Got it!" She pulled down one of the plastic bundles and, taking a pen, she unfolded his receipt and began to scribble something down.

"I am leaving soon and I won't be all that available once I start work but...this is the telephone number for my flat here in town." He could see, in spite of her casual tone, she was blushing slightly up her neck in the light of the lamp. "I don't start for another few weeks. Call me if you want to. If not, I had a really lovely day seeing the city with you." She handed him the receipt, and then, as though she just suddenly remembered, the newly cleaned jacket.

Outside, the sun was getting low. She locked up quickly and then turned. He felt like a child, unsure of what to do.

"Well, goodbye, Simon."

"Goodbye."

She stepped boldly forward, kissed him lightly on the cheek. And then she was gone.

He didn't go to the Leaky Cauldron. He went home. He hung his father's jacket, still in its plastic, back in the hall closet and sat down in his chair, feeling a little dazed. He thought about the day, how unusual it had been and how extraordinarily pleasant. He looked around his small, dim house and imagined spending another five years here inside these walls, reading the paper. He took the receipt from his pocket, looked at the words "Maggie Collymore" above ten little blue digits. It had been so much easier than he would have thought, to become this other person, to flirt without an ulterior motive, to smile. But then, he thought, he was a spy. Of course it had been easy to to lie, to act differently. And yet, he countered himself again. It hadn't felt like that. It hadn't felt like spying at all. He refolded the slip of paper and placed it in a box on the mantle where he resolved to leave it forever. It had been a nice day, but it couldn't be his life. He wasn't Simon Prince and he never would be. He was Severus Snape.

From another box on the mantelpiece, he took a pinch of shimmering powder and threw it into the fireplace. Bright green flames burst forth and he shouted into them "Headmistress's office, Hogwarts! Minerva, are you there?"

A pause and then her voice "Severus, is that you? Are you all right?"

"I've decided to accept your offer. And I believe you mentioned something about a pay rise."