One: Newhaven to Paris

They had set out in the early morning, taken a carriage to Hogsmeade, the Floo to London, another Floo to Manchester and then a train back south, hoping to confuse anyone who might wish to guess at their destination. Around lunchtime, they changed at King's Cross for a train to Brighton, then changed in Brighton for a bus to Newhaven, and finally snuck on board the first ferry out to France, concealed under Potter's Invisibility Cloak.

The plan had been conveyed to Severus at half six that morning over his eggs, and thus he'd had little time to point out to Dumbledore that bestowing a powerful magical artefact on an eleven-year-old was ill-informed at best. Also, it rendered Severus's numerous attempts to catch the brat out after curfew a complete bloody waste of time, and if the Headmaster thought that was funny, well then he had another thing—anyway, all that would have to wait. He'd been given a two-way mirror to report back, pulled straight out of the Dumbledores' family vault and ancient enough that its magical trace was largely unrecognizable to the modern Auror. If Severus used it exclusively to preach about appropriate Christmas presents for eleven-year-olds, perhaps that would teach Albus a lesson about gift-giving.

Despite the warm weather, the wind up on deck was vicious. Men and women took photographs of each other against the black waves, laughing as hair blew over their faces, as they lost scarves, chased hats, shouted after children who leaned too far out over the railing. Potter, mercifully, had mostly abstained from movement, perched like a chicken on the ugly green bench, his bare ankles textured with goosebumps where they touched the cold metal. His shoes were scuffed. Severus enjoyed that: it gave him something to look at when he didn't want to see the boy's face.

Newhaven to Dieppe, Severus recited in his mind. Dieppe to Paris. At the next gust of wind, his ears gave a dull throb, and his hands itched with the impulse to reach for his wand and cast an air-bubble spell. The last time he'd performed magic had been in Hogsmeade, when he Evanesco'd some of the Floo powder Potter had spilled on the floor. He had not gone without magic for more than a few hours at a time, not in years, and his hands felt odd with it, his fingers stiff, his spine tingly. He would have to get used to it: with the underage magic tracker on Potter, they could not risk performing spells around him, not in Britain and not in any nation signed to relay tracking data to allies under the International Confederation of Wizards' treaty of '77. And Severus should know: he had spent the whole morning pretending he had heard about it before.

'Officially, there is an investigation, but not yet an order to take Harry into Ministry custody,' Albus had told him, 'but we have to work under the assumption that this will change, and that they are already monitoring his movements off the record. You must get him to a country that was not part of the treaty and until you do, you will have to travel entirely through muggle means.'

'Which country, then?' Severus hadn't wanted to seem like he knew nothing, so he'd tried, 'Russia?'

'Finland haven't signed, either. I've an old friend there who can take you in for a little while as I work on rebalancing the situation at home. I would not ask this of you if I didn't think it was necessary, Severus—I hate to take your summer away from you, but there are few I can trust with this, and none others available who are as accustomed to the muggle world as you are.'

Right. You are accustomed to the muggle world sounded better, he supposed, than your life is empty anyway.

He wondered about that sometimes. Granted, some people on either side of the trenches fooled themselves with optimism and lived lives as if all threat had dissipated; but then there were those like the Weasleys, like the Malfoys, those who had chivvied their lives along even during the war, spewing offspring, climbing up Ministry ranks, marrying and buying houses and writing books—Severus couldn't imagine it. Were they able to devote true care, true attention to these insignificant schemes of daily life, knowing their duty lay elsewhere, knowing that all of it was temporary, flimsy, a distraction?

He thought maybe they were mentally limited. Perhaps they were unable to feel, daily, the weight, the scope of the war effort, of the many possible futures approaching, of their own tiny part in the labyrinthine interlocking of sacrifices. Like children or like drunks, they saw only the world immediately available to them, and acted upon their plot of land in blissful ignorance of the village standing in flames.

Lily had married and had a child during the war, too, but that was different. Her attentions were precisely where they needed to be, and it was only unlucky she had chosen a marriage to James Potter as the means to accomplish the rise in rank she'd required. And the child, well, the child Severus couldn't explain, but he imagined she'd been compelled toward it by some momentary lapse in higher-brain function. She hadn't wanted children when she was at Hogwarts; if she'd fallen prey to hormones or societal pressure, Severus was hardly going to condemn her for it.

Newhaven to Dieppe, Dieppe to Paris, Paris to Brussels. Brussels to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Berlin, Berlin to Stockholm, Stockholm to Helsinki. Avoiding borders where visas might be checked, avoiding magical communities where spells would be cast, no Apparition, no Floo network, no Glamours, just the two of them, a cloak and a mirror. The only time Severus had left the country had been for a Potions conference in the heart of the Slovakian mountainside, and he'd used a Portkey to get there. He'd stayed buried in laboratories capped with tonnes of rock, surrounded by fumes from experimental brews and the chatters of people with better social skills, and he had ventured outside only once, on a walk around the forest, during which he'd promptly lost his way. They'd had to send out a search party; he'd been twenty-four and had seen more death than he knew what to do with, and still, it had been one of the most horrifying experiences of his life.

Potter stood by the railing now, rocking back and forth on the heels of his feet as he pushed and pulled against the bars. Severus hadn't noticed when he'd moved. Wind batted the boy's shirt against his side, hiding and revealing the protrusions of his spine, stark against skin.

He had to act like he knew what he was doing. Otherwise, the brat would realise and likely use the opportunity to strike out on his own. He had been quietly compliant so far, probably mulling over his sorry circumstances, maybe sulking over having to spend the summer with a teacher or struck dumb with trauma—whichever it was, Severus was unlikely to find out, since the boy did not wish to speak with him, and he hardly wished to speak with the boy.

The relentless light of summer had dipped by the time they slunk under the cloak and followed the trail of cars onto solid land. The air in Dieppe was thin, soaked in salt and slow-drying sweat. South of the port, Severus saw a stretch of beaches, bracketed by dull social housing and a looming cliffside.

Most of the families on board would now go on south, to populate Mediterranean shores that held little wind, but some might stay in Normandy and risk the rains for the history or the views or the seashells. He tried to imagine these families and failed. He remembered enjoying the seaside as a child, but those memories had frayed into idealised stills that had little to do with reality: heat but no sunburn, jumping over waves but never falling, his mother's smile but not a single yelling match.

He'd gone with Lily, once. He remembered nothing except the time they'd been made to go buy ice lollies with Petunia. She'd made him cry. He didn't remember how.

He wondered sometimes what she'd told the boy about Lily. They'd made up in the end, he knew, when they got older; it would have been the idealised version of Lily then, Lily the Saint, Lily the Mother Theresa. The boy hadn't appeared to recognize him, those first days at Hogwarts, so Severus supposed Petunia hadn't mentioned him, and thank Merlin for that: he'd fretted over it for months, fearing she would have painted a horrid picture, fearing more that she would have told the truth. Dirty little Severus; people tended toward fair in their depictions of those alive and hagiographic when speaking of the dead.

It was precisely why he refused to let go of every last upset, every resentment he'd harboured for her. He needed to preserve the entire spectrum of his feelings about Lily if he wanted to keep her alive.

A minibus drove them to Gare de Dieppe, a station in whitewashed stone that could have been the last stop before the end of the world. Severus spent ten minutes trying to communicate his needs to the woman selling tickets. Fortunately, the boy had gone to the bathroom and missed him at his most inept.

The train to Paris smelled of cigarette smoke. From the magically enlarged pockets in his summer coat, sown in cheap muggle fabric and terribly uncomfortable, Severus pulled out the sandwiches provided by the Hogwarts elves. The boy had half of the peanut butter before pushing the rest away; Severus informed him in no uncertain terms he would be eating exactly what he was given, when he was given it.

'Fine,' the boy said sullenly, and had a ham sandwich, and that was the end of that conversation.

Gare de Lyon was lit up by dozens of lights, harsh in the breaking night, but further out, the river and the townhouses swam in darkness. A woman at the information point gave Severus instructions on how to get to the nearest hostel that would take them: it was a lot of turns and street names he couldn't have pronounced, and he retained none of it. Fortunately, she'd given him an out-of-scale tourist map, too, with the route drawn in soft pencil.

They crossed the bridge, turned too early and had to retrace their steps. Potter was unsteady on his feet, so unbalanced with exhaustion Severus doubted he could tell left from right, and thus unlikely to muster the awareness to judge him. Another turn by a large McDonald's blinking a blinding light. Severus wanted badly to sleep, and go back home, and summon Albus on his stupid two-way mirror so he could figure out the way. Was he holding the map upside down? No, the river was north now, they were south.

A street musician strung along a love song on the corner, coins glinting silver in the worn hat at his feet. They drew to a halt, compelled separately yet at once, and when Severus's brain caught up and he lifted his eyes, he saw the train station before him again and thought he was going to scream. How on Earth did they end up back here? A community of clochards had set up tents and shacks beneath the heavy railway arch; the two of them might well have to join them.

Potter twisted to reach into his knapsack, a rugged thing that should long ago have found its way to a bin. He pulled out a sack of coins. He felt around for a while until he fished out one smaller and lighter than the rest; Severus recognised it as a muggle twenty pence.

'If that was at all unclear, we're in France, Potter,' he said, amused. 'I don't suppose you've remembered to bring your francs along.'

Potter did not deign to look at him. 'But he can exchange it, can't he? Sir. You can go to a—to this place, and they exchange money from pounds to francs and stuff. Right?'

'And you think currency exchange are going to buy a twenty pence coin from him?'

The boy bit his lip. 'No?' he guessed.

'No.'

'Oh. I don't have any more.'

He didn't put the money away but lingered over it, thrown and embarrassed. It made Severus want to needle him more. He restrained himself: he was in no mood to deal with tears.

He pulled out his wallet, which Albus had equipped prior to their departure with bills Severus had never so much as seen before, and located the pocket labelled with a tiny French flag.

Potter startled when the ten francs were pushed into his hand, but he recovered quickly and balled his fingers around the coin. When he opened his palm again, it glistened with sweat in the low light from the station.

The light. It was different, Severus realised. The lights of Gare de Lyon had been a duller hue, and the arches had looked not at all like these here—

He consulted the map. There was indeed another train station within walking distance from Gare de Lyon; they were going roughly the right way and weren't far off now from the hostel; he was not completely hopeless and would not be spending the night sleeping under a bridge.

The boy had run off to put the money into the guitarist's hat. His cheeks were uncharacteristically red when he returned. Had he been pale before?

'I'll pay you back, sir,' he vowed solemnly. 'Do you know how much that was in wizard money?'

'Trust me, Potter, I would not offer you my own money to throw away on street-corner entertainers. All our expenses are being covered by the Headmaster's funds. Now, let's go, and pick up your pace, I'd really like to get to a bed before midnight.'

The boy obeyed, though Severus caught him throwing a longing glance over his shoulder, just as the last of the guitar notes were carried off into the evening breeze.


I was honestly astonished at how many of you enjoyed the first chapter! I hope you stick around till the end of this adventure :)

A note about warnings: When I posted the prologue, I completely forgot to add a Child Abuse warning. Nothing terribly graphic here or widely different from canon, but if this might be a trigger for you, please tread carefully.

A note about geography: I admit to not taking a whole lot of road trips across Europe in the early 90s, so as much as I strive for authenticity, I will inevitably get things wrong. If you have personal experience in the matter, I would love to hear about that in the comments!

Tune back in on Saturday for Harry's POV in Chapter Two: Paris to Brussels.

Finally, a thank you to guest reviewers James Birdsong and Guest (Nov 22)! I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.