II

They landed in an untidy dog-pile, with Snape on top of the two boys, in a large, elegant bedroom. The spider, whom Snape had forgotten about, had made the trip also, and scuttled hastily under the bed.

"Oww Snape, since when did you have such a bony behind?" Sirius gasped as he scrambled out from the older form of his childhood arch-nemesis. James followed suit, yanking the time turner off their combined necks. The chain snapped with the force.

"Shi…taki mushrooms!" James exclaimed angrily.

"That's just great. Now what'll we do with Mooney? He'll know we took it now!" Sirius voice was getting rather high pitched, like a teenage girl's. Apparently, he was still adjusting into puberty.

Snape sat up, painful and stiff, to look at his saviors/tormentors. His back hurt dreadfully. Ah well, that came with age, he supposed. With a slow movement, he picked up Sirius' wand that had fallen on the ground. "Reparo," Snape said lazily, flicking the wand at the chain. James was so startled that he almost dropped the time-turner altogether.

"Oh yeah, Padfoot, guess what?" James declared.

"What?" Sirius asked eagerly, his voice ended fluctuating weirdly.

"We're wizards."

Sirius looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned. "Oh yeah! I forgot. Haha."

Snape rolled his eyes. Even though these boys had saved his life mere seconds before, they still irked him to high heaven. With a suppressed groan, he hoisted himself uneasily from the floor, his knees cracking audibly.

Sirius laughed. "What's the matter, Snivellus?" he demanded as Snape winced at the pain in his back. "Getting a tad old, are ye?"

The display of extreme self-control shown by Snape as he merely looked sadly at Sirius with a snort of disgust was amazing to James. He knew had Snape been in his adolescent self, he would not have hesitated to retort. It was a sign of his maturity, James recognized, that Snape realized that Sirius' petty comments was merely a waste of his time, and there was nothing of much merit behind his threatening words. And at that, James became more than a little frightened. If time could do this to a man, what would he, James Marvin Potter, look like in twenty years? More importantly, would he even be ALIVE in twenty years?

For you see, James had some questions posed by a certain book he had found. Well, a series of books, actually. They were called the Harry Potter series. In these books, he had read about the future, or, rather, his son's future. In the books, he was dead right from the beginning. If that wasn't bad enough, what little time he did spend alive before he died, he spent married to Lily Evans! James, at the recollection, shook his head vigorously. How he did despise that girl! She was a workaholic, a know-it-all, a sass, but, nevertheless, really pretty…all right, so James did admit, Lily was very beautiful. And he actually didn't despise her…he really, really liked her. He only pretended not to like her because he had hated her for such a long time before he had liked her. But Remus knew; he and Remus had talked about her. But no one else knew about that; Remus was his sole confidant.

How did he attain these books that read the future, though? Well, earlier that day, he and Sirius had been roughhousing there in his room. Then, accidentally, they knocked over the bookshelf that James kept all his rarely-read books. (He wasn't much of an ardent reader.) As they put away the books haphazardly, before his parents could come up and be mad at him, James discovered one book, called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It was not one he remembered very well. He and Sirius, intrigued by the title, ceased in their task of cleaning up and, instead, went to reading the book. After they started reading it, they instantly realized that it completely took place in the future. They managed to get through quite a number of chapters. That is, until they got to the chapter in which Harry has his first potions' lesson. At this, James, who by that time was feeling as proud of his 'son', Harry, as though he were already alive, decided to give Snape the ultimate payback for being mean to Harry—knapping Snape from the future so that he wouldn't have the chance to display his cruelty. So they temporarily 'borrowed' Remus' time turner, and they set off to what years they thought Harry should be at Hogwarts. They didn't know how off they were on the date, how they had come when Harry was, in fact, dead. But now that all this is explained to you, back to the matter at hand.

James hurriedly tried to smooth over the situation. For some reason, he was a bit afraid now that he had captured Snape and brought him back here. He didn't exactly understand why; Snape was unarmed and, practically, falling apart physically. Probably, it was just because the man was older, and the fact that the man probably knew some stuff about the future that James couldn't imagine being possible.

"So…uh…"

James was unsure of how to proceed. Then he saw Snape avariciously eyeing a box of dark chocolate frogs.

"You hungry?"

Snape snorted. "No, not at all. You try getting locked up for years with just a bit of bread every--"

"Fine, fine, I'll go get some…" James stood up. "Come Sirius, I shall need some moral support while facing my lovely mother."

And so James dragged Sirius out of the room.

Snape looked about him. Sure enough, he found a doorway leading into a small tiled bathroom, with a large cupboard beneath the sink that ought to hold medical herbs and such. It didn't take Severus too long to find some salve for his more major cuts. He felt no shame at not asking for it.

Soon James and Sirius came back upstairs, holding a platter of sandwiches, fruit, and cookies.

"Room service!" called James in a cavalier fashion, depositing the tray on the bed.

Snape took no hesitation in partaking of what spread lay before him.

"So…um…"

James still wanted to ask Snape some questions, but it didn't look like that was about to happen any time soon.

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