Growling with the absurd notion that sleeping on Snape's bedroom floor made more sense than sleeping standing up, Harry looked around, curious to see if he could find anyone he recognized.

The street was busy with afternoon shoppers, mainly parents taking their children from shop to shop for schoolbooks and robes. Odd, Harry thought. Had it been near the end of the summer when he'd stayed over with Snape? Must have been, he thought, heading off down the street.

He peered into shop windows as he mused about trying to get into the Potter Vault when he hadn't even been born yet. He supposedly looked a lot like James though, but did he have a vault of his own at this age? Harry nixed the idea, thinking that perhaps this was one thing in the past he should just let be.

"Excuse me." A red head brushed past him in a hurry, and if he hadn't known any better he would have said it was Ron rushing past to catch up with that girl down the street with curly hair. Harry watched closely as the boy, probably about 17, maybe older, caught up to her and a fight ensued. He was amused to hear her shouting "Well what did you expect Arthur? You can't buy a car and charm it with Galleons!" It was Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, although he wasn't sure if they were old enough to be married yet, although they did appear to be together.

"Pst."

Harry turned to find the source of the annoying noise, and spotted Snape in a small gap between the apothecary and the ice cream parlor, next to the rubbish bins. He hurried over and took note of the extra two inches of hair the boy seemed to have grown since last night.

"What are you doing here? I thought you'd gone back home."

Harry frowned. "What do you mean?"

"One day you're sleeping on my bedroom floor, and the next you had vanished. That was last summer!"

"Last - last summer? How old are you?"

"16. School starts in two days."

"Well that's new. As far as I knew I had gone to sleep on the floor and woken up standing in the middle of the street here."

Unsure if he's telling the truth or not, Severus looked up to the bruise on Harry's mouth that he had given him a year ago, along with the scrape on Harry's forehead from where James pushed him down to the ground.

"You're not 16?"

Harry shook his head.

"You really are from the future, aren't you? I thought I'd been dreaming."

"Well, as far as I know this could all be a dream," Harry said, deep in thought about the tricks the mirror in the attic could be playing on him.

"Tell me what's happened then, in the last year I mean. I'm here to find out about my parents and I haven't even gotten to talk to Lily yet."

Severus started to fill him in on the goings on of the past year, although he wasn't sure why. Perhaps just knowing that the boy before him was some part Lily, or maybe that he'd stuck up for Severus in the same way Lily often did made him feel obligated to help the time traveler.

"Potter... I mean James, has been on and on after Lily to dump me and start dating him instead. Says she should be with someone with Seeker skills who can make something of himself. Git thinks he's going to make it big and join the British National team. No matter that he lost the last game to Slytherin," Severus sneered.

Harry listened attentively as they walked down the street, peering into shops and occasionally stopping to let other people pass on the crowded cobbled street.

"Not to mention how Sirius, James and Peter have been hounding me to give up. They set my pants on fire at the end of the year in front of the entire school."

Harry swallowed hard. Hadn't that been what Snape had told him in his own time? The thing that had sent Harry up to the attic in the first place to vent his frustrations about all the lies and deceit?

"I'm sorry he did that to you," Harry said suddenly, feeling the need to blurt it out. "And what he did in the park too." He felt the need to blurt out that he wasn't the same too, as the elder Severus Snape always seemed to assume, but didn't, feeling too awkward as they entered the apothecary together.

"Do you think maybe you could set something up so that I can talk to Lily?" Harry asked quietly as Snape turned to gather ingredients for his school potions kit.

He turned and raised a brow. "Why? Are you going to tell her to marry James?"

Harry shook his head. "Not my place to. That already happens anyhow. I just want to know more about her when she was young."

"Hm." He turned to gather more gabberworm, and was about to respond that he would think about it, but when he turned again, Harry was gone.

He eyed the shop closely, thinking perhaps that the Gryffindor had gone to the other side to examine something, but there was no site of him, and he wasn't visible through the window on the street either. Where had he gone?

* * *

Whoa. Trying to catch his breath as he nearly stumbled forward and took a tumble down the grassy hill he'd just appeared on, Harry steadied himself and looked around. Twenty feet away, a pale boy with long black hair sat with his back to him, looking down at something intently enough to miss the traveler who had just appeared behind him.

Harry approached cautiously, breeze blowing gently through his hair, and noted that they were just outside of Hogsmead, not far from the shrieking shack. Quiet as a cat, he stood over the boy's shoulder and saw that Severus was drawing an intricate, lifelike picture of Lily, hair flowing freely in the breeze.

"I'm assuming some time has passed?" Harry asked, still feeling disoriented.

Severus startled, looking up quickly, and then let out a sigh of relief. "I was wondering if you'd show up again. It's been nearly six months."

Harry wanted to be surprised, but now knowing it was possible to jump here and there in the past, he wasn't. Down to business then, because who knew when he would jump next and to where. "And?"

"Lily and I had a fight yesterday." Harry noted the sadness in his voice.

"Oh. Was it bad?"

Snape's shoulders tensed visibly, and he ground out, "James was dangling me upside down and when Lily tried to stop him, I called her a name."

"Oh." Harry sat beside the boy on the grass, and leaned back. He didn't know what to say. Perhaps this was when she and James got together.

Severus bit his lip, and after a moment, asked, "Did she ever forgive me?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't know her."

Frowning, Severus looked over at Harry. "What do you mean you didn't know her?"

"She died. When I was a baby. So did James." He couldn't help but feeling empty thinking about it. That was why he was here, wasn't it? To feel less empty, to know the truth?

"Lily... dead? No, I'm sure you're mistaken. She's too talented for that."

With a sigh, Harry said, "I'm sorry. It happened when I was one."

Looking down at the picture he'd just drawn of his love, Severus shook his head, angry and sad, confused and lost. There had to be a way to stop it. He turned to ask how it had happened, but cursed loudly when Potter was gone, vanished to the future somewhere in time. He hated not knowing if he'd see him again before it was too late.

There had to be a way to save her, to make her safe. Somehow James and Lily getting together meant that Lily would die, no doubt by some foolish stunt James would pull in the future. He could just see the fool setting the house on fire or getting them into a wreck on that ridiculous motorcycle the dog boy drove around during the summer.

It was getting dark when Severus finally stood, determined to change the future in his favor, in Lily's favor. Lily Evans couldn't die... not if she became Lily Snape first.