He left Hogwarts very early the next morning, before it was light, before anyone was awake to see him walking down to the gate with his trunk floating next to him. The trunk was heavy: he had packed a much wider selection of clothing than he was used to. The robes from Lucius, of course, and general day-wear, but also a couple of jumpers, and his blue jeans. This Muggle garb was apparently required for visiting Rome, where the wizarding community was much less comprehensively hidden than in London and one could not simply walk about in robes all day. Lucius had sent the instruction without comment, but Severus was intrigued to see how his lover, who prided himself on knowing so little of Muggles, would handle this exigency.

He passed through the gates, scanning the gloom for any hint of a Dementor, then stood still, preparing himself for Apparition. When he was sure, he took a slow breath, gripped the handle of his trunk firmly, and turned on the spot, arriving instantly in his flat in London, where he stood again for a few seconds, breathing deeply to quell the post-Apparition nausea. He wasn't due at Lucius's until a couple of hours before dinner – he had an inkling of what Lucius might want to use those hours for – so he had the whole morning free, and most of the afternoon. Certainly there were things he wanted to do. He was going to buy some decent boots to wear with his new robes, that was certain, and he also wanted to make a discreet enquiry at Slug & Jiggers about sleeping potions. Flitwick had agreed to teach him the Somnaclara charm when he returned to teaching, so he could cast it himself, but it seemed sensible to have a back-up option for short trips away like this – and it was just about possible that there were newer, safer potions now than had been available a decade ago.

His first actions, however, were simple ones. He opened a drawer in the kitchen and put his wand into it, . Then he got down on his knees, arranged some wood in the grate, and lit a fire. He filled the kettle with water and hung it over the flames. He took a jar of coffee beans from a cupboard, poured them into his grinder, and stood for a few minutes turning the handle. He spooned the powdery ground coffee into his coffee pot, waited until the kettle had reached the boil, then poured the water over the coffee. Then he went to change his clothes, putting on some blue jeans and his old grey wool jumper. When he came back into the kitchen he pushed down the plunger of the coffee pot carefully, and filled an earthenware mug with the black coffee. Then he sat in his chair and drank his coffee, enjoying the intense quiet, the true start of his holiday.


After he had washed up the coffee things, he put on a long, dark grey overcoat, retrieved his wand from the drawer, and went out. It was barely eight o'clock. He made his way to the Leaky Cauldron, slipped through the bar (almost unnoticed by the half-dozen sleepy guests eating breakfast), and stepped out into Muggle London.

He was met with a roar of early morning traffic on Charing Cross Road. He stood there, letting his senses adjust to the streams of people going to work, the buses hurtling up and down the road, orientating himself. Then he set off walking, hands in his pockets, his coat flaring around his ankles, heading south towards the the river. For the first few minutes he was on the alert, expecting to see someone he knew, worried that Muggles would sense something different about him. But no one gave him a second glance, and gradually he began to enjoy the movement.

When he got to the river, he bought a cup of strong coffee from a tiny stall, and drank it sitting on a bench on the Embankment, his collar up against the icy December breeze. He watched the grey water, and, eyes fixed on the eddying waves and swirls of the tide that washed slowly upstream, he recalled moments in London with Pyotr, their late-night walks after concerts, their favourite pubs – and, later, their terrified visits to the Middlesex Hospital. When those thoughts got too painful, he set his mind to remembering mistakes he'd made in his most recent chess game with Flitwick: the knight jump he should have made two moves earlier, the pawn exchange he shouldn't have made.

After a while he found himself thinking instead, he didn't know why, about the period twelve years ago, when the Potters had been murdered, Voldemort had fallen, Sirius Black had killed a dozen Muggles, and everything had turned upside down. Perhaps it was because Lupin had mentioned it in his office. The day Sirius was arrested. For the first time ever he began to imagine what it must have been like, receiving that news. His best friend a traitor. A massacre in the streets. Peter Pettigrew dead on top of the Potters. Black in prison to stand trial for mass murder. He pictured Lupin's shock, his face draining of colour, his legs buckling under him, the shivers that would take hold of him. Having to be helped to a chair. Of course they would have asked: had he had any suspicion of Black's treachery? and Lupin would have shaken his head mutely. Those Gryffindors – they were always astonished when their friends betrayed them, they never seemed to expect it. A Slytherin would have known better.

He remembered walking by the Black Lake with Dumbledore a few days later. Dumbledore had been at a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix, and then to see Lupin, who had been absent from the meeting. 'He looked shattered,' Dumbledore had reported sadly. 'He could hardly speak a single word, and I don't think he's eating much either.' Severus had been unable to muster much sympathy: he himself had been having a bad time of things, unable to sleep, plagued by nightmares when he did, expecting any day to be carted off to Azkaban despite Dumbledore's testimony. Already he had been relying on a variety of substances to calm his nerves and help him drop off. But even through the fog of anxiety and narcotics, he had registered Lupin's tremendous loss, and vaguely recognised that the two of them shared the privilege – dubious as it might be – of having survived.

He watched a tourist boat pushing upstream towards Lambeth, its passengers gathered in groups, laughing and taking photographs. These were the kinds of people Black had murdered, random, innocent Muggles. He himself had not attended the trial, which had been kept short: the evidence was conclusive, and Black had said nothing in his own defence, only laughed. At Hogwarts the students had crowded around copies of the Prophet at breakfast; the staff had been tight-lipped and avoided mentioning anything about it, but for a whole week everyone had thought of little else. Hagrid had been distraught, McGonagall had been pale with grief.

Where had Lupin been during the trial, he wondered – had he gone to watch, to witness his old friend, to try to understand what had happened, why Black had betrayed everyone? Had he been present at the sentencing? Had he left the courtroom quietly afterwards and ensconced himself in a corner of a cafe with a pot of strong tea? Or had he avoided the whole thing, sick with shock, unable to bear any more pain?

These thoughts were not dissimilar to scenarios he had constructed in his head in recent months – how could he not? – in which Lucius lost Fudge's protection, and was finally arrested, to be tried for the innumerable crimes he had committed all those years ago. He had imagined in vivid detail exactly how it would go. Lucius at home, the bang on the door, Lucius rising and bowing to the Aurors, before the moment came when he understood he was being arrested. He would laugh, perhaps, he wouldn't believe it, until they put him in chains and Apparated with him, until the gates of Azkaban loomed over his head. Then he would break.

And then the trial. There was no question in Severus's mind that he would go, if it happened. He imagined sitting in the gallery of the courtroom, watching Lucius being brought in, his pale hair all unkempt and dishevelled, his face white. Hearing the charges being read out – long, long list that it would be – and Lucius's shaky voice responding to each one. A moment where Lucius spotted him among the onlookers, perhaps, and the shock of eye contact. And his own helpless silence as he watched his lover's final fall from grace.

Occasionally, depending on his mood, these visions would end with Lucius's release, with Severus himself taking Lucius home, looking after him for a few days, helping him recover. But mostly they ended the way they would in reality: conviction on all charges, a lifetime sentence, Lucius being hauled away in chains. And that would be that. No one with the Dark Mark was permitted to visit prisoners in Azkaban. If all this ever happened, he would never see Lucius again.

He took a deep breath, got up from his bench, and began to walk, moving quickly. He took a long, ranging route through London, navigating (slightly haphazardly) by the river and the position of the sun. He walked east along the river to Wapping and then up through Whitechapel, Clerkenwell, Bloomsbury, and then back down into Soho, Mayfair, Belgravia and Chelsea, passing innumerable rows of white, expensive houses, before finally turning and heading back in the direction of the Leaky Cauldron.

As he walked up through Westminster, he passed a tall, grey-haired man in a dark suit, who held his gaze for a moment before giving him an arch of an eyebrow, and a faint smile. Severus walked on a few paces, then turned to glance back – to see that the man, too, had stopped, and was looking back at him. He stood there, suddenly seized by excitement and indecision. Somehow he knew that unless he moved, now, the man would come back and speak to him, and if he let that conversation go on for long enough he would soon find himself in a hotel room being pulled down onto a large, luxurious bed. He swallowed hard, his face warm, then turned away and kept walking. Just as well he was seeing Lucius tonight.

All afternoon – as he ate a bowl of steaming soup in the Leaky Cauldron, as he tried on pair after pair of boots at Bott and Borodin's Bootmakers, as he questioned Tertius Midgen about advances in sleeping potions in a back room of Slug and Jiggers – he could feel himself building, building, like a head of steam in a confined space. By the time he was ready to Apparate to Lucius's he was ready to burst with it. After a moment's hesitation, he put down his wand, dropped to his knees on his rug, and stayed there for a while, his eyes closed, breathing in a steady rhythm.