diff --git a/src/wutil.cpp b/src/wutil.cpp
index b1941ae6f..f060a6dd9 100644
--- a/src/wutil.cpp
+++ b/src/wutil.cpp
@@ -281,10 +281,12 @@ wcstring normalize_path(const wcstring &path, bool allow_leading_double_slashes)
         }
     }
     wcstring result = join_strings(new_comps, sep);
-    // Prepend one or two leading slashes.
-    // Two slashes are preserved. Three+ slashes are collapsed to one. (!)
-    result.insert(0, allow_leading_double_slashes && leading_slashes > 2 ? 1 : leading_slashes,
-                  sep);
+    // If we don't allow leading double slashes, collapse them to 1 if there are any.
+    int numslashes = leading_slashes > 0 ? 1 : 0;
+    // If we do, prepend one or two leading slashes.
+    // Yes, three+ slashes are collapsed to one. (!)
+    if (allow_leading_double_slashes && leading_slashes == 2) numslashes = 2;
+    result.insert(0, numslashes, sep);
     // Ensure ./ normalizes to . and not empty.
     if (result.empty()) result.push_back(L'.');
     return result;
diff --git a/tests/checks/realpath.fish b/tests/checks/realpath.fish
index d0351e2d7..635e66c3f 100644
--- a/tests/checks/realpath.fish
+++ b/tests/checks/realpath.fish
@@ -95,6 +95,15 @@ else
     echo "failure nonexistent-file-relative-to-a-symlink: $real_path != $expected_real_path" >&2
 end
 
+# We remove leading slashes even with "-s".
+# This is how GNU realpath -s behaves, and also e.g.
+# how bash normalizes its $PWD.
+builtin realpath -s ///bin
+# CHECK: /bin
+
+builtin realpath -s //bin
+# CHECK: /bin
+
 # A path with two symlinks, first to a directory, second to a file, is correctly resolved.
 ln -fs fish $XDG_DATA_HOME/fish-symlink2
 touch $XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/real_file