Disclaimer: Nothing you recognise belongs to me and I'm not making any money with this.

This story is set somewhere after the 5th book. It's a little tribute to the tv show 'The Twilight Zone', so if you don't like that, you may just overlook the paragraphs in italics. The rest of you will please picture Rod Serling stepping into the picture to say these lines ;)

Down the Street

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the Twilight Zone.

#-#

It had been another difficult meeting of the Order. They'd constantly become more difficult over the last months; there were just too many people having too many different opinions about certain things, he himself being one of them. Until tonight, he'd listened patiently, but Moody accusing him of defending actions taken by his fellow Death Eaters had been too much for him to stomach. He hadn't said anything, though. He knew better than to risk getting into trouble with that man, so instead of arguing with him, he'd simply left.

As he strode across the entrance hall of the Black family mansion, he heard the door behind him opening and being slammed shut again. Obviously, Moody wouldn't allow him to shake him off so easily.

"What is it, Snape? Did I touch a sore spot?" Alastor Moody called after him. "You can't just walk out on me!"

Severus stopped walking.

"I can see through you," Moody said. "I know what you are."

"Do you?" Snape said in a low voice, slowly turning to face him.

"You're a loyal dog. Loyal to death, ready to kill and die for your master. You'd never bite the hand that feeds you, but you don't give a damn whose hand that might be."

"Yes, you know me so well," Snape hissed, turned away from him again and left the house. Moody didn't follow him.

Once outside, he took a deep breath. It had been a hot day and even though night had settled over the city by now it hadn't become noticeably colder. He didn't like summer.

#-#

Meet Severus Snape, an ordinary wizard – at first sight. But a closer look shows that he is an angry man leading a life filled with debts he is convinced he can never repay. A man searching for ways to redeem himself. And even though he has been granted a second chance, he's afraid that it won't be enough.

As he steps out onto the street in a warm summer night, he will learn that even when it seems too late for a second chance, you might still get a first one. At least if the street you're standing on leads straight into the Twilight Zone.

#-#

He shook his head, staring at the ground. There was just no way he could stand Moody any longer. Most people he worked with were people he didn't necessarily like very much, but he could get along with them. But not with him. Moody would never stop it, he'd just never leave him be.

Severus looked around the dark and quiet street to make sure there was no one around who might see him disapparating when he spotted a child standing on the other side of the street. It was a little boy, probably no older than six or seven. The kid didn't seem to have noticed him yet, but he was looking around as if searching for something.

Severus pulled out his pocket watch; it was past eleven already. A little late for a kid that age to be standing around alone in the street. But he was probably just waiting for his parents to pick him up or something. And anyway, it was just some little Muggle boy he'd never seen before – not his responsibility.

He turned away and started walking down the street but came to a halt again after only a few steps. At least he should ask the boy if he was lost.

He sighed at himself and walked back up the street towards where the little boy was still standing next to a streetlamp, looking around but not going anywhere.

The kid noticed him approaching but only quickly glanced up at him without really raising his head.

"Are you all right?" Severus asked.

The boy nodded. Even though Severus wanted to, he couldn't convince himself that that was a good enough answer.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "What are you doing here? Did you get lost?"

"Somewhat," the boy whispered, still not looking at him.

"Meaning?" he asked impatiently.

"I don't know where to go."

Slowly, it dawned on him that this boy hadn't lost his way but might actually be a little runaway; and that was surely more than what he wanted to get involved with at the moment.

He was contemplating simply turning away and leaving when the boy suddenly looked up at him, blinking tears from his eyes. The moment their eyes met, Severus felt a jolt going through his body, as if a curse had hit him. That boy looked oddly familiar to him. Too familiar.

"Don't you remember?" the boy asked.

"Remember what?" Severus muttered absent-mindedly, still staring at the kid.

"Remember what it was like. Remember just wanting to get away. Remember me," the boy said.

Severus swallowed hard. "Who are you?" he asked in a whisper.

"You know who I am."

"No." He shook his head and took a step backwards. "No, I don't."

"You know me," the boy said softly, staring at him. "You know that I am who you were and that you are who I might be."

"No. No, you're not." It just wasn't possible. But those eyes... his eyes. He was looking back into his own eyes.

The boy stood staring back at him for a while, then he slowly turned away and started walking down the street. "Come on," he said softly, as he beckoned him to follow. "There's something I want to show you."

Severus hesitated and although he didn't really want to, something made him start following the kid. Keeping his eyes fixed on the little boy all the time, he barely noticed that it kept getting darker around them as they walked until he suddenly found himself surrounded by total blackness.

"There," the boy said eventually and came to a halt.

Severus peered into the darkness ahead of them and as his eyes got used to it, he saw the outlines of a house. He recognised it immediately; it was his parents' house.

He knew it couldn't be. This place wasn't within walking distance of Grimmauld Place and ruins were all that was left of this house. But it was his father's house.

"Do you recognise it?" the boy asked.

"Of course I do," Severus replied. "But it burned down years ago."

"To you, it was years ago. It's all a matter of your point of view."

Severus stood there staring at the house, remembering the last time he'd walked out of it, and the time he'd come back here to see it in ruins. It made him feel sick to see it again; it seemed to sneer down at him out of its black windows, beckoning him inside once again.

"Why do you show me this?" Severus asked.

"I want you to tell me what to do," the boy said.

"Why?"

The boy turned away from the house to face him, but Severus found it hard to look back at him. That boy was his past, something he'd left behind long ago and didn't want to be confronted with again.

"How many times have you longed for a second chance?" the boy asked. "This is it. Just tell me what to do. Tell me what to change and I will make the decisions you wish you'd made."

"You can't. Nobody can change the past."

"You can't. Not with your logic, your beliefs. But I don't depend on your logic."

Severus shook his head at the boy. He was well aware that he was dealing with a very stubborn kid here; but if anything he'd become even more stubborn with the years, and what was even more important – he knew that he was right.

"I won't waste my time explaining this to you because you wouldn't understand it anyway," Severus said.

"You're the one who doesn't understand," the boy replied. "But you don't have to. Just imagine it was possible; you've got nothing to lose by giving it a try. Tell me what to do differently, I'll do it."

Dozens of things came to his mind at once. There were a lot of decisions he wished he hadn't made, too many to count. It made him wonder whether his father might have been right when he'd said that he could never do anything right.

Don't ever join the Dark Lord, that was the first thing he thought of. Don't ever even think about it. Keep your hands off the Dark Arts. Tell the Aurors the truth when they ask you what you saw in your father's house. Don't go back home in the first place; don't give your mother any reason to stay in this house.

If he never became a Death Eater, many lives would be spared. Lives he'd taken. He wouldn't torture and kill. He wouldn't be locked up in Azkaban. And he'd never have to lead the double life of a spy.

But if he never became a spy for Dumbledore, everything he'd done since that day would never be done. And he'd done some useful things. He'd saved lives.

So it was basically just a decision of trading lives he'd taken for lives he'd saved. And lives he still might save.

There was no way of telling which decision might be the right one, but he knew for sure that this decision was not his to make. Not anymore. He had no right to interfere and to change what had happened.

"No," he said. "I can't."

"But isn't that what you always wanted?" the boy asked.

"I thought it was, but it's not."

The boy looked at him out of his big black eyes, then he nodded and turned back towards the dark house. "I understand," he then said softly and started walking up the path leading to the entrance door. "Goodbye."

Severus looked after him even after the boy and the house had been swallowed by the ever-intensifying darkness.

When he turned around, he found himself standing in front of No. 12 Grimmauld Place again. There was the familiar street again, the streetlamps and the houses, but the boy was gone.

He turned back once more but there was nothing unusual to be seen. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes, deciding that trying to explain this to himself was probably completely pointless.

#-#

A man who wished for a chance and then made the decision not to take it. It might be just another decision he will come to regret, or it might be the one to make him stop regretting all those he has made before. What it shows is that perhaps you should take the time to stop and think about what you crave for. Because once you reach your goal and you get what you wished for, you may realise that you spent your life chasing something you never really wanted. Especially if you make your wish in the Twilight Zone.

-end-