Music lilted along the temporary holding cell corridor from the end cell. The bald hitwizard sat outside the door was reading a book, and tapped his foot along with the beat, and ignored the protests of an inebriated prisoner further up the row. It was warm and balmy, and he’d much prefer to be outside or in a beer garden somewhere in the city, but it wasn’t hard work to sit here and read. He’d not had time to read books in years, and since the guard duties for the hitwizard team was now entering the fourth month, they all suspected it would be ending soon.

At the other end of the corridor came a familiar sound of gates unlocking and a set of footsteps. The hitwizard looked up from the pages of the Rascal Rosier novel to check who approached, his wand never far from his fingertips even when on such relaxed supervision.
“Ms Graves.” He set aside the novel and stood up to greet her. “Been good news[1], hasn’t it?” He lifted his eyebrows expectantly, but clarified “The dementors buggering off at last.” He extended his hand for her wand so he could let her enter.

Inside the cell, Lawrence’s attention diverted from keeping time with the music, performing sit ups on the cell floor, his unruly brown and grey curls knotted into a ponytail. He let out a half-held breath and scrambled deftly to his feet, snatching up the t-shirt like top of the cell garb he wore from day to day. He tugged it over his head to cover his scarred torso, anticipating an imminent visitor. The neck of it slipped over the tip of his nose as he recognised Harper’s figure in the doorway, and Lawrence tugged it down by the hem. As his attorney stepped inside, he stepped over to the wireless set. It was propped on the stool, so he turned it down and lifted it to the floor so she could sit without taking a pew on the low cell bed.

“Hello,” he greeted his favourite witch with a smile. He came to a standstill before her, ruddy cheeked and breathing a little harder than normal from the exertion. His keen gaze swept over her expression. “Everything alright?”

1.	1st August, Last Stretch of Summer

Everyone on level two, give or take the odd morbid soul, was feeling chipper about dementor levels going down. Harper wasn’t an exception - but even that couldn’t cheer her up, not entirely, as she made her way towards Lawrence Musgrave’s cell in her formal navy robes. She was used to being a bearer of bad news. It just felt worse with some clients. Especially the ones she liked.

The chatty Hitwizard let her though, earning a smile. And then the music stopped. Harper stood in the doorway, hesitating. He’d been exercising. That was good; sometimes wixes just wasted away in their cells. Skin and bones or lumps of flesh. There was still a lot of fight left in Lawrence. Merlin, she hoped enough to stand Azkaban.

            “Everything alright?”

Harper entered properly and the door finally slammed shut behind her. “I have some news. About… about your stay here,” she reached into her robes, retrieving a scroll of parchment. Another hesitant pause before she took a seat on her usual stool, legs crossed.

Deep breath. “We can rip it off like a band-aid, if you want.”

Lawrence reached for the dial and clicked the noise off entirely. It seemed jarring to have uptempo music when Harper was waving a scroll of parchment and pausing in her verbal delivery. This day was a long time coming.

“Plaster,” he replied quietly, “we call them sticking plasters.” Delaying the inevitable.

He backed away and perched on the edge of his low cell bed, legs bent and nodded to her.
“Go on, when am I off?”

Plasters. That made her think of… plastering walls. Oh, the British. Harper smiled softly, though even that light-hearted thought could not distract from the significant situation before them. She unrolled the parchment.

It was just a gesture, reading it.

“Monday.” Harper swallowed and raised her gaze to meet her client’s. “The eighth,” she rolled it back up before handing the statement to him.

“A week.” Lawrence acknowledged, as if it was as simple as a dentist appointment, but his eyes betrayed his worry as he put on a brave face and reached for the parchment. He pinned one end to the mattress with the end of his arm and rolled it open with his fingers, reading the directive.

“... pending trial date.” He let it roll up again and folded his legs up underneath him, the exuberance of the exercise before vanishing. “I knew it was soon. They’ve hardly had a decent question in days.” He shrugged it off, but avoided Harper’s eyes. Having it in writing made it real.

“Going to need a bigger spoon,” he told Harper, looking back at her properly. “Otherwise I’m not going to tunnel out of here in time.”

No! What malicious deity gave Lawrence Musgrave those puppy dog eyes?! Harper watched him - carefully, the attorney in her looking for signs of aggression but mostly expecting grief. Grief. That was the only reasonable reaction to Azkaban. If he had looked less concerned she would have doubted his humanity.

In spite of herself, Harper laughed, because you might as well in the face of certainty.

“Should have left George with you,” she tried to tease. “He’s always digging up my garden beds.” A quiet concern crept into her voice and she got up, going to Lawrence to place a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll bring him down for a visit before you leave?”

“Good dog,” Lawrence approved, imagining George head down in a flower bed, bulbs and soil flying out to either side of his paws and all over his droopy ears. It was a good image to try and focus on. Harper’s hand on his shoulder brought him out of his imagination and back to the present.

“I’d like that, yes… please,” he replied softly, and forced a smile. He lifted his remaining hand to place it over Harper’s. They’d nudged each other in moments of gallows humour over the past few months, but this was different. The genuine concern a friend would give. “I’ll be alright,” he assured them both. “Not like I haven’t been before.” He leaned his head to rest on their hands for the briefest of moments, and then released.

When they sat down their attorneys-in-training to learn this part of the job, it was easy to deliver a spiel. You inform the client, you play to their sympathies, at a convenient point you leave them alone with their misery - contrary to popular belief, misery didn’t always love company. Harper acknowledged this was her convenient point of departure.

She withdrew her hand, not before squeezing his shoulder, but she didn’t leave.

“I know we knew it was coming but…” the witch sighed the rest of her words out, non-existent. “Got used to having you around here. Is there anything I can do?”

That sounded too mechanical. Harper cleared her throat, “Besides a bigger spoon, I mean. Anyone you want to visit you maybe?”

Lawrence appreciated the gesture. For all the preparation and consideration, and despite the fact he knew this was the only way it could end from the moment he stepped into the telephone box in April, it still felt like a kick to the guts.

“If it’s possible,” he replied tentatively, “my father, and Hannah.”

They were perhaps the only two people who would visit him, and if not them, then nobody. George the dog didn’t have expectations or pity of him. He was the perfect visitor. “But I will understand if Pratt can only guarantee one as per the deal.”

He reached for the parchment and offered it back to Harper. “Won’t be forever. They have to bring me back to meet the Wizengamot one day. We’ll be sick of the sight of each other. You deserve a break from me, everyone does.” He gave another smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Was there anything else?”

Harper drafted those names into her mental checklist, for later. It felt awful leaving him like this right now but she did have work to do and she wanted him to have his privacy with this news. She wondered what was going on in his head…. always did, with clients she liked. They were the ones who made her curious.

“I’m a pretty good lawyer. I can try to get two visits,” she shot him a smile and carefully accepted the scroll. Lawrence’s self deprecation always made her a little sad - she never knew what to say.

Everything that came to mind seemed too personal, especially in this small cell. “No, nothing else. I’ll miss you Lawrence. Really.”

Harper wanted to tell him to come back in one piece, except she would see him at least a few times before next week. And it would be easier, saying these temporary farewells, if darling George was in the room.

He replied to her earlier comment as if she hadn’t mentioned she’d miss him. His responses insular as he grappled to decide what emotion he wanted to express. It was happening to someone else. They’d get through it, though they deserved it. Ah, Harper.

“Pretty good?” Lawrence teased, tilting his head back to look at her, “underselling yourself.” He blinked and nodded. “I’ll miss you too, Harper. I mean it. Thank you for everything. I’ll keep saying it until you take it.” He gave another slow blink. “Need a bit of time to dwell,” he admitted, “retreat into my shell. Thank you for coming to tell me.” It felt so mechanical, going through the motions of pleasantries. A disconnection between reality and what he could hear himself saying. Holding together until he was alone.

As Harper’s sensible flats took her back up the passageway, music resumed from the very end cell, louder this time.

End