Cars drove by on the city street, and Harry wondered where he was. It was warm and he imagined it was summer still, his suspicions confirmed when two boys ran past him in shorts.

When his eyes adjusted more, he scanned the area for his father. No sight of James anywhere. "Some truth," he muttered to himself as he set off down the street, unsure of where he was supposed to go. If he really was in the past, and not in a dream or memory, then he could easily go the wrong direction and miss out on his ‘truth' altogether.

The street wasn't terribly busy, so it was easier for him to keep his eyes peeled. There were a few small businesses on the other side, and tall apartments on the side he was on. From the looks of it, they were pretty upscale, and some even had room for a tree between the building and the sidewalk.

Harry was admiring the architecture on one of the buildings when somebody bumped into him, and muttered a lame apology as he looked down at the ground and walked on.

"Excuse me," Harry said, turning to watch the stranger. Maybe he could find out some information. The person turned to reveal a boy about Harry's age, with black hair that fell into his face. Unlike the other people Harry had passed thus far, this boy was wearing blue jeans, a faded gray t-shirt, and a black coat, with a dingy backpack over one shoulder.

"Yeah?" he asked, shaking his head to get some of the hair out of his eyes.

Harry had the feeling he knew this boy, but wasn't sure how. He definitely wasn't James Potter because he didn't have glasses and his nose was a little longer. "Do you know where I can find the Potter residence?"

Suddenly the boy's blank, pale face began to turn a shade of red, and he took three long strides forward so that he was in Harry's face. "Who are you? What do you think I am, a bloody map? Did somebody put you up to this?"

Harry took a step back, not wanting to get into a fight in the middle of a Muggle street, and held up his hands. "No I- I just, I was trying to find James Potter was all and I'm not from around here."

"Obviously not," the boy spat out, as if even the thought was disgusting. "He doesn't even live in London."

"Oh." Harry bit his lip. Perhaps he was here to see his mother then.

"Well, what about Lily Evans? I think she lives in London, do you know her?"

The boy with inky black hair stepped back now, and seemed to be sizing Harry up. Finally he made up his mind and said hurriedly, "How should I know? She's a Gryffindor. I don't speak to Gryffindors." With this he turned on his heel and hurried on down the street, looking back once to see if Harry was following, and then disappearing around a corner.

"Slytherin," Harry breathed. Something didn't seem right. The boy definitely seemed to know Lily, or at least knew of her, and he had made such a quick escape.

Having nowhere else to go, Harry ran down the sidewalk and turned the corner, happy to see he hadn't lost his query, although the boy was walking fast now, and Harry had to keep a stiff pace to keep up.

As they walked, Harry in the distance and the boy not looking over his shoulder again, they crossed into dingier and dingier neighborhoods, until Harry was sure they were in an entirely different part of town altogether. They crossed a bridge over a smelly river, and ended up on a dead end, narrow street. Harry stopped walking when he realized the boy had nowhere else to go, and waited to see what house he would go into. He went into the one right on the end.

Curious to see where he was, Harry looked around and found a street sign, almost too dirty to make out the words, which read: Spinners End.

Great, Harry thought to himself. This was the last place he wanted to be, in a run down neighborhood where he could get mugged or beaten, although he had nothing on him except his wand.

He waited for a few minutes, hoping the boy would come back out again. Perhaps he could pry the information out of him if he annoyed him enough, or maybe he'd just wait until he came back out and tell him the truth. He snorted at the idea then, wondering what exactly he'd say.

"Hi, my name's Harry Potter and I've come back to the past to find my mum and dad. Can you help me?"

Just as Harry was getting ready to scold himself again for being ridiculous, he spied a girl his age with long, vibrant red hair walking calmly down the other side of the street. She glanced at him and smiled briefly, before continuing on to the house at the end.

Harry observed her closely, and tried to decipher every feature. This was his mother. To confirm his belief, the door to the Slytherin boy's house opened before she could knock, and the boy came back out, hands in his jacket pockets as he threw his head to the side again, trying to keep the ever-present hair out of his face. "Lily." Harry barely heard the gentle name come from the boy's lips, but it was there he was sure.

Even more surprising was the fact that she took the boy's hands out of his pockets and held tight to them as she gazed into his eyes.

Harry frowned. That was not James Potter, and his mother was staring at him as if he were the love of her life.

He leaned on the side of a dingy brick building to watch as they sat down together on the stoop of the boy's house, and talked, still holding hands. He noticed the boy glance up at him again, but didn't care. Good, he thought. You just keep your hands off my mum, because she doesn't belong to you. She belongs to my dad. Harry had half a mind to march straight over there and say that to his face, but didn't in the interest of seeing how it played out. His mom couldn't be more than sixteen, and he wasn't exactly sure when his parents had officially gotten together. He had just never thought of her being involved with somebody before James though, and he didn't like the thought of it either.

By the time Lily rose from the stoop and gave the strange boy a kiss on the cheek, it was getting dark out, and Harry wondered that she was walking home by herself through this kind of neighborhood. She does have a wand I suppose, he thought, but in any case, he would follow her home to see her safely inside at least. He turned and gave a smug look to the boy, who watched him trail after Lily at a distance, and then turned to his task.

As it turned out, Lily only lived two streets over, still in the dingy neighborhood, but on a slightly nicer street where the brick houses seemed just a little cleaner and in better repair. Once she was safely inside, Harry turned and stopped abruptly to find the boy in his face again.

"Who are you?" the boy asked angrily, somehow managing to keep his tone low and deadly. That too was familiar, but Harry still couldn't place it. Had he seen some Slytherin's parent at the train station? He couldn't remember.

"Harry," he said.

"And why are you following my girlfriend?"

"Oh, is she your girlfriend?" Harry asked innocently.

The boy glared, obviously upset. "Yes," was all that came out through gritted teeth.

"Thought you said you didn't talk to Gryffindors. Aren't you a Slytherin then with that kind of attitude?"

Harry knew he was pushing it, because he could visibly see the boy growing angrier.

"How old are you?" Harry asked, suddenly aware that perhaps this boy was of age and could use his wand.

"15," he said. "You?"

"15."

He squinted, trying to recognize Harry, as Harry had been doing to him all afternoon.

"You're not from Hogwarts."

"I am," Harry said, enjoying being so smug for some reason. He was still unsettled to see his mother, albeit a 15-year-old version of her, with someone other than his father.

"I've never seen you before."

Harry sighed. This was going to take forever, and his stomach was grumbling loudly. Deciding that if he was going to face the truth, he might as well tell it he said, "Lily's my mum. I came back in time from when I'm in school."

Unexpectedly the boy snorted loudly and shook his head. "And you're an alien from outer space too, is that it?"

"No, just me," Harry said.

"Oh, and you've come back to have a chat have you?"

Hands in his pockets now, not feeling threatened enough to keep them out to defend himself, Harry leaned on the metal fence in front of Lily's house and said, "I don't know what I'm here to do. The mirror said I was to learn the truth."

"What mirror?"

"The mirror of Erised. It's in the attic on the East side. It only shows us what we want to see, and I wanted to see the truth." He paused then and asked, "Who are you anyway?"

"You're Lily's son and you don't know?" the boy asked skeptically. Harry could tell he was trying to puzzle out if this was a joke or not.

"Well, you're not my dad," Harry said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and crossing them now.

Eyes narrowed and angry again the boy threw his hand down and turned around, taking a few steps down the path.

"I don't know who you are, but you're full of crap. Just get the hell out of here and leave my girlfriend alone."

"Yeah, all right then, I will if you stop kissing my mum. Stop holding her hand, stop sitting close to her, stop-" he would have continued, but he was on the ground, wondering what had happened. He looked up to find the boy over him, looking livid.

"No one tells me what to do!" he said angrily, throwing his hand down in front of him.

Harry reached up to feel a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth as the side of his face throbbed. He was a little shocked, and he could tell that the boy was too.

"Just... what do you want?" the boy asked, deflating a little and seeming more defeated than anything.

"Answers," Harry said, not getting up off the pavement as night finally settled over the street and the yellow streetlights came on. "Who are you and where does James Potter live?"

Stricken with the realization that Harry was implying that James was his father and had gotten Lily in the end, the boy shook his head silently. "Somewhere North... near the border of Scotland." He turned to go back home, or perhaps to roam the dark streets in thought, but Harry called out to him.

"What's your name?"

He turned, and with a sad look, said, "Severus Snape," and then he was gone, off into the night.

Reeling with a blow more powerful than the punch he had been delivered, Harry continued to sit on the pavement in awe. My mum and Severus Snape used to date each other. They were sweethearts.