Young Snape was waiting for Potter just beyond the large fireplace inside the wizard hospital.

“Let’s go,” the other Harry said. He led the way to the stairs, and Potter followed him down, down, and down.

“How far do we have to go?”

“Dad works on the bottom floor so he can control the light. Some potions and spells and things are light-sensitive, he says. Sometimes I think he just doesn’t like the sun.” Young Snape laughed.

Potter grinned. It didn’t surprise him that Snape liked the dark – it seemed to fit his gloomy personality.

Finally, young Snape stopped at a door and knocked.

“What?” Severus Snape’s voice bit through the air.

“It’s me, Dad! I’ve got a friend here who could use your help.”

“Can’t the hospital wing take care of it?”

Harry Snape was unphased by his father’s mood. “It’s not that kind of problem. Can we come in?”

“Let me put some things away – don’t want anything to happen to them.”

Young Snape rolled his eyes. “As if I’d mess with anything after I burned my eyebrows off when I was five.”

Potter raised his brows and grinned. “You burned your eyebrows off?”

The other Harry grinned back ruefully. “Yeah. I think he let me so he wouldn’t have to worry about me messing with his stuff. He’s always had strong charms on everything so no one can touch anything and hurt themselves or whatever it is he’s working on.”

“Come in,” came the dry voice of the elder Snape as the familiar figure pulled the door open. “What’s the problem?”

“This is my friend, Dad. His name is Harry, too! Isn’t that funny?”

“I see no humor in you having the same name.” The father’s actions belied his rough tone, as he ruffled his son’s hair. “The problem?” He looked at Potter quizzically. “Do I know you?”

“Yes, sir. Um, no sir. Um, I don’t know. Probably not.”

Snape’s eyebrows raised fractionally. “Yes, no, and probably not? Do I know you or not?”

“See, that’s the thing, Dad,” Harry Snape broke in. “He knows everyone at school, too, but no one knows him. He’s in Gryffindor, but no one there knew him, either – not even Professor McGonagall. But Harry thought they would, see? He knew them all, and they should have known him, judging by his reactions. He knew you, too, but he thought you were a professor!”

Snape snorted. “Me? The very idea is ludicrous. Where did you come from with all these crazy ideas?”

“He came from the fireplace – he Flooed in from Gryffindor Tower, he said, and he landed at my feet in Slytherin’s common room. But no one from Gryffindor recognized him.”

“You already said that,” the elder Snape commented dryly. He turned his attention to Potter. “What is your full name?”

“Harry James Potter.”

Snape snapped his fingers. “James Potter! That’s who you remind me of!”

Potter looked up. “You knew my dad?”

“All too well. Lily was infatuated with him for a time, until he said something about my appearance, I think it was, and she transfigured him into a toad. Got in trouble for it, of course, but that’s when I knew I didn’t have to worry about Potter anymore.” He smiled fondly. It wasn’t a large smile, or even all that happy, but it was far more than Harry had ever seen on Snape’s face. “Anyway, I haven’t seen Potter in years, except in the newspaper. Only yesterday it said he got promoted to some status or another in Gringotts.”

Potter stared at the man. “You… you mean… he’s alive?” he finally said.

“Why shouldn’t he be?”

“Voldemort killed him and my mother when he tried to kill me fifteen years ago.”

“Voldemort? Go after Potter and a baby? Pah! Besides, fifteen years ago he was already dead.”

Potter shook his head.

“No?” Snape demanded.

“Not in my world,” Potter replied in a small voice. “Somehow, we’re not in my world at all.”

“What’s your world like?” the younger Snape asked quickly.

“My parents are dead, you don’t exist; you, sir, are a professor at Hogwarts, and I’m still not sure whose side you’re on.”

“Sides? What are the sides?” the elder Snape asked.

“Voldemort’s trying to kill me. Though the Ministry doesn’t believe he’s really back.”

“Hmmm. Voldemort has been dead for years – since before Harry here was born.”

“Who killed him?”

“Lily and I had a hand in it, but the whole Order of the Phoenix was involved.”

“Wait – you were in the Order of the Phoenix?” Potter gasped.

The elder Snape nodded.

“Do you… do you happen to have a picture?” Potter asked weakly.

“Yes.” Snape pulled a photo from his drawer. “This was taken at a reunion two years after the death of Voldemort. We were all wearing our Hogwarts House Colors as a laugh.”

Potter looked at the photo, searching the faces from left to right. He saw Mad-Eye Moody, and Dumbledore; Kingsley, James Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin all together; the Longbottoms, and some people he didn’t know. Was that Lucius Malfoy? And there in the bottom right corner, Snape and…

“Wait!” Potter demanded, looking up. “What are you doing with your arm around my mom?”

“Excuse me?” Snape retorted.

“What?” Harry Snape said at the same time.

Potter pointed. “There – it’s you, with your arm around my mom, and she’s holding a kid.”

“That would be me,” the younger Snape put in. “That’s my mom.”

Both Snapes looked at Potter.

“So, in your world,” the elder finally said, “Lily married Potter?”

Harry Potter nodded. “And in this one she married you?”

Father and son nodded.

Potter took a deep breath and looked at the other Harry. “So you’re me, or I’m you, or both. That’s why you look kinda familiar – you look like him, and like me.”

“Well, this is a mess,” the elder Snape said finally. “Why would Lily want to marry Potter? Granted, she was infatuated with him, but that was before he started calling me names. She didn’t know him all that well, anyway. We barely had any classes with him.”

“What do you mean? They had classes together all the time,” Potter said. “They were in the same house, after all.”

Snape’s face cleared. “Oh. I see. In your world, Lily was sorted into Gryffindor, is that it?”

Potter nodded.

“Here, she was sorted into Slytherin.” Snape pointed to the picture, where Lily was clearly wearing green. “And I don’t know what my life would have been without it. Though, I suspect you do, and I suspect it ends with me working at Hogwarts. As if I’d ever live under the thumb of that pretentious meddling schemer Dumbledore. Besides, there are days I can barely bear my own children.”

“Wait!” Potter said again, turning to the other Harry. “You have siblings?”

The younger Snape nodded.

“I could have had siblings,” Potter breathed, then demanded, “What are their names?”

“There’s Harry, of course,” the elder Snape answered. “Then Eileen and Evan, the twins. Lily wanted to name the youngest after me.” He snorted. “As if Severus isn’t enough, she wanted to add Junior to it. I put my foot down on that one.

“What’s his name?”

“Lucius, after a dear friend of ours. Would you care to tell us about your world?”

Potter nodded. “You were a Death Eater, sir, but you turned your back on it when my mother was killed by Voldemort. She died protecting me, and her love kinda destroyed him, but he came back somehow, and now I have to fight him. But you’re helping, I think.”

“A boy fight the Dark Lord? Whose idea was this?”

“It’s part of a prophecy, sir. That’s why he went after me as a baby.”

“And I became a Death Eater because Lily wasn’t there to stop me, hmm? How many others?”

“I’m not sure, sir. The Malfoys for sure. Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle, too, I think, and more Slytherins from their class and others around that time.”

“Hmmm… All because Lily was sorted into Gryffindor. On this world, she realized that Voldemort was a problem before the rest of us, and she made sure that we all stayed away from him and the Death Eaters and joined the Order of the Phoenix.”

“No wonder he was taken down so quickly – instead of having you work for him, Voldemort had you all working against him!”

Snape nodded. “I can only guess the havoc I’d have helped to wreak if I was a Death Eater.” He shivered.

“Is there anything you want to know about our world, Harry?” the younger Snape asked.

Potter thought for a moment. “The Longbottoms – in my world, they’re here at St. Mungo’s because Voldemort drove them crazy – literally – with the cruciatus curse. What about here?”

“They were here, yes. But we discovered a cure that returned them to their rightful clarity of mind and purpose. They’ve been living happily with their children for some time now.”

“Children? You mean Neville has siblings, too?”

Snape nodded. “A whole handful of younger ones.”

Potter smiled. “Good for them. What about Remus? What’s his life like here?”

“He was a hero in the fight against Voldemort, and no one holds it against him that he’s a werewolf. He teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts now, and is married to Nymphadora Tonks. They have a young son. Teddy, I think his name is.”

“Tonks?” Potter exclaimed. “He married Tonks?” He nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay, I can see them together, I think. What about the house elves?”

“What about the house elves?” Snape asked, confused.

“Dobby and Winky and Kreature and all of them?”

“Who?”

“Dobby’s the name of the Malfoy’s house elf,” young Snape put in. “Is that who you mean?”

Potter nodded.

“Well, I don’t know anything about him,” the other Harry said. “As far as I know, he’s still there. And I don’t know the others you mentioned.”

“Winky was the house elf of Barty Crouch.”

Both Snapes shrugged.

“And Kreature is Sirius Black’s house elf. I don’t like him.”

“Well, I know nothing about them,” the elder Snape said. “Now, let’s try to figure out how you got here. I want to hear your side of the tale.”

“There was someone in the Floo who called for help, and there was extra powder on the floor so I threw some and went in.”

“What did you say for your destination?”

“Um, I said ‘redial’,” Potter said, feeling rather foolish.

“Redial?”

“It’s a button on a Muggle phone that lets you call back the last person you called,” Potter explained.

“And you just hoped it would land you wherever the person you saw ended up?”

Potter nodded sheepishly.

“A foolhardy hope; exactly what I’d expect from a Gryffindor. What else?”

“Nothing else. Wait – I was holding a time turner, and it slipped out of my hand in the Floo. I don’t know what happened to it. And the Floo journey took much longer than normal.”

The elder Snape nodded. “I see. It would seem that the magic of the Floo Network when combined with a time turner – possibly one broken mid-transport – causes the bearer to jump between worlds. I have heard the Muggle theory of parallel universes, but I never suspected they were actually right. Hmm, I wonder what we could learn from other worlds….”

“Sir, I need to get back to my world,” Potter interrupted his musings. “I have to stop Voldemort, and get back to my friends and the people who know who I am.”

Snape nodded. “Yes… Let me think on this. It’s far too late to use a time turner in the traditional manner to return you, though that might have been an option last night… I wouldn’t like to endanger your life by sending you back the way you came, with just a hope that you’ll end up where you belong. For all I know, it could send you anywhere. Besides, I need to get ahold of a time turner and learn the full extent of its powers and properties, and study the Floo Network….”

“What do you want me to do, sir?” Potter asked, feeling small.

“You? You can return to Hogwarts with Harry. Say you’re his cousin Dudley or something.” The way Snape pronounced the boy’s name left no doubt in Potter’s mind that Dudley was despised on this world, as well.

“I don’t suppose the Dursleys are any nicer in this world,” Potter said.

Harry Snape shook his head. “Nope. They’re particularly mean to me.”

Potter snorted. “Try living as their slave for nine years, and more summers after that.”

The elder Snape looked up. “They put you with the Dursleys when your parents died? Who would be that cruel?”

“Dumbledore,” Potter muttered. “I don’t think he understood what they’d do.”

“And he didn’t look in on you ever?”

Potter shook his head.

“That meddling crook. Surely you had a godparent who could have taken you in?”

“Sirius Black was falsely imprisoned for betraying my parents to Voldemort. It was actually Peter Pettigrew, who became a rat who was the pet of my best friend, Ron.”

“What?” young Snape yelped. “That’s so weird!”

Potter nodded. “Yeah, it kinda was.”

“Poor Ron,” the other boy said feelingly.

“Yeah. Hey – do you happen to have a pet? And how’s Hagrid here?”

“I have an owl named Hedwig,” young Snape said.

“No way – me too! And Hagrid?”

“Hagrid’s just grand.”

“Did they ever admit he was framed?”

“He was framed? When? By whom?” the younger Snape asked excitedly.

Potter smiled. “Ask him. And talk to Moaning Myrtle in the girl’s washroom. I’m sure Hermione and Luna know the one. They’re actually not all that crazy, when you get to know them. And Hermione has helped me out of every mess I’ve ever been in at Hogwarts.”

Young Snape nodded. “I’ll try to be more friendly to them.”

His father cleared his throat. “I need to get to work on this problem, and you two need to go back to school.”

“Yes, sir,” Potter said meekly.

“Okay, Dad,” the other Harry said cheerfully. “Say ‘hi’ to Mom and the kids for me!”

“Of course.”

Harry Snape hugged his father and, to the surprise of Potter, the elder Snape hugged his son in return. Then the boy said, “Let’s go, Harry,” and led Potter back to the fireplace.

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