Most of London's terrain had been shaped by rivers, which carved out deep valleys that could still be seen in the early nineteenth century.
The Tyburn River began at Hampstead River and Shepherd's Well, passed through Swiss Cottage and Regent's Park, joined a tributary that ran through Belsize Park, crossed the aqueduct over Regent's Canal, then reappeared in the boating lake south of the park. In summer, people swam in it; in winter, they skated on it. But sometimes the ice was not thick enough, or hidden currents made its thickness uneven, causing people to fall through. Even so, nothing could dampen people's enthusiasm for skating.
Pomona remembered Draco and Astoria's skating date. By then, they seemed to have already moved into an apartment in South Kensington.
It had been where Lucius Malfoy kept his mistress. She remembered how furious she had been when she moved in. She had never expected that she herself would one day end up in such a situation.
She lay on the sofa, basking in The Sun through the window glass. In that era, the hours from two to five in the afternoon were called "fashionable hours," when fashionable crowds appeared near Oxford Street. It was working time for most people, and wage earners could not afford to shop in the stores frequented by fashionable people; at most, they could only look through the display windows. Moorish-style glass buildings, galleries, gun shops, silk and velvet, and the most eye-catching of all, jewelry stores. "Window-shopping" was part of life then. Pawnshops sometimes looked very much like jewelry stores, with only the notices on their doors revealing their purpose. There were also shops selling bird specimens—birds of paradise, hummingbirds, parrots, and birds such as partridges. Most were probably the spoils of some nobleman's hunt. He had no