"Of course it's not a bad time," he answered immediately. This wasn't exactly appropriate, what they were doing, but getting her here was the riskiest part of it all, he thought. They were hardly going to be observed in his flat, unless Bilton surprised him by coming home early, and when she flooed home no one would know where, exactly she was coming from. Now that she was here, he could hardly waste her presumably secretive floo trip by turning her around and sending her home. "I told you any time, didn't I? And, really, any time."

She'd taken off her jacket, and Alfred crossed the room to take it from her. Their flat may not have been lavishly furnished, but the did have a coat closet and he was at least aware of basic hosting etiquette. When he was within reach of her he had an urge to do something more than just take her coat — kiss her cheek, maybe, or touch her arm, or at least let his hand linger on hers for a moment when reached out — but stopped himself. He wasn't going to get through this conversation by acting on every silly impulse he had whenever she was nearby.

"So," he said as he turned and hung her coat in the closet. "Where to start, huh?" He tried to make his tone a joke, to lighten the mood a bit, but it was a question he still needed to pin down the answer to. Sometime, apparently, within the next few seconds, since she was here. As often as he'd rehearsed this conversation, or different ways that it might go, in his head, he still hadn't really figured out how to order all of his thoughts to make them flow coherently. Part of it was that he didn't have a central argument of any kind, nothing to focus a structure around. There was just a list of facts and a pile of feelings, and nothing much to do about them.

Alfred turned back towards the room. He awkwardly hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his pants, just to have something to do with his hands. "Do you want to sit down?" he offered.