Hi everybody! I want to share with you this idea that ocurred to me. English is not my first language so sorry if I make mistakes. I hope you like it :)

Disclaimer: Severus Snape and Rugrats are not my property but they belong to a J.K. Rowling and Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo respectively, I just borrow them for fun XD

Severus

My mom brought me to the park to spend the afternoon. She didn't want to stay at home because she argued with dad again, and I'm very afraid to be alone, without my parents, because they have already threatened each other several times that one day they are going to break the door and leave the house without looking back.

The park is very quiet. There are some older kids playing in the other part of the park, but where my mom and I are, it's just us.

Then, my mom takes out a bottle full of milk and tells me:

'Severus, it's snack time'. She puts it me in my mouth, I hold it with my hands and I start sucking. How delicious!

Once I've finished drinking it, I give it back to mom, who takes it without paying much attention to me, because she's engrossed in reading a book, and I look around, looking for something to play with.

Suddenly, something catches my attention. It's a thing that is hidden behind the bushes. It's big, blue, and has a lot of buttons and a lever. I wonder what it will be.

I approach slowly, carefully, lest that thing want to hurt me. But as I get closer I see that it's not doing anything wrong. I also notice that it's like a kind of portal that leads to I don't know where.

I try to get a little closer to see better what the device is, but I accidentally stumble and fall in, and suddenly it starts making a very strange noise, and I notice that I disappear from the park and suddenly everything goes dark, although it only lasts a few seconds. Even so, I tremble, scared, because I don't know what is happening to me or what is going to happen now.

Suddenly, the machine stops and the light from the park comes back in - wait a minute, it's a park, yes, but it's not my park. Where I am? I get out of the device a little dizzy and quite scared, stumbling slightly, and quickly discover that I'm in a park that is nothing like the one in Cokeworth. It's a much larger park and it's a much sunnier and hotter place than my homeland, that's for sure.

There are many children playing, and they all seem happy and seem to be having a great time. I'm envious of those children because, in all the time I have been going to the park at home, I have not managed to make any friends, and instead here there are several groups of children playing together.

I watch them hidden behind the bushes, but suddenly, a blue and green ball with an orange star flies towards where I am, and although I try to hide so they don't see me, I don't have time and a boy with a blue t-shirt and a diaper tells me:

'Hey, hello'.

'Hello,' I say to him, hanging my head, blushing, embarrassed that he caught me hiding behind the bushes. I hope this kid doesn't think I was spying him and his friends because it's not true! I was just trying to see what it's about them that makes them fit into a group, nothing more.

'Can you give me the ball?,' the boy asks me, and that's when I realize that his ball is closer to me than it is to him.

'Of course,' I tell him, giving it back to him.

He picks it up and smiles at me.

'Thank you,' he says to me, and suddenly he adds-: 'Are you alone? And your mom?'

'Over there -,' I say, responding vaguely, because I still don't know what happened to me or where I am.

'You can play with us if you want,' he says to me, as he walks back with his friends.

I don't know what to do. Never has a child addressed me with such kindness and politeness, and I feel strange. But on the other hand I would be very excited to have friends.

Finally, I decide to go with them. I approach the boy in the blue t-shirt, who introduces me:

'Look, guys, this is - What's your name?,' he asks me, realizing that he doesn't know my name.

'Severus,' I respond with some shyness.

'Hi Severus, nice to meet you,' the boy in the blue t-shirt and the diaper tells me.

'I'm Tommy, and these are my friends Chuckie, Phil, Lil -Phil and Lil are twins!, that's so cool!-, Kimi, Helena and Leonor –these two girls are also twins!-, and this is my brother Dil.

'Also, nice to meet your all,' I respond slightly nervous. I'm not used to so many people, to having so many people looking at me with - appreciation, respect and curiosity as well. The children in my neighborhood look at me with disgust, contempt and fear, so this reception is new for me and once again I feel a little strange, but I think I will get used to it. It's easier to get used to the good than the bad, of course.

I sit down to play ball with them, and I keep feeling strange. They treat me as if I were a norma human being, and that never ceases to amaze me, and it's very sad that it has to be like that, but well -

We spent the afternoon playing ball, eating food (we pretend that the mud is food), and playing with dinosaurs, and I have a great time with them. These children are big fans of a certain Reptar, a green dinosaur that looks like a Tyrannosaurus rex. I had never been so happy.

Afterwards, we play hide and seek, and Phil keeps it, and the rest of us run off to hide. I hide behind the bushes where I met Tommy earlier, and Kimi and Chuckie follow me and hide with me.

'But what is the time machine doing here!,' exclaims Chuckie softly.

'The time machine?,' I ask. 'Is this thing a time machine?'

'Yes,' Chuckie answers in a whisper. 'It had no appeared in a long time and I was glad because when the time machine appears that means trouble'.

'Oh really?,' I inquire, doubting that it means problems. Because if it's a time machine, I don't believe it means problems, at least not all the time. If it's a time machine, it will be used to travel through time, as its name suggests. If it was to create problems, it will be called the trouble machine or the chaos machine, or something like that.

Phil find us, and we run to try to get to the tree where we are left to count.

'For me!,' Kimi shouts, very happy to have arrived before Phil.

'For me!,' I exclaim, also very happy for the same.

But Chuckie, left behind with the time machine and very scared, doesn't arrive in time, and Phil exclaims:

'For Chuckie! Chuckie, you keep it'.

'Guys, now is not the time to play hide and seek,' Chuckie says, approaching us very scared. 'You don't know what Kimi, Severus and I just found,' he tells Tommy, Phil, Lil, Dil, Helena and Leonor.

'What?,' asks the girl named Leonor.

'The time machine,' Chuckie responds in a dramatic tone, and more scared than before if possible.

'The time machine?,' Lil says. 'The same time machine that it's in the Toy Palace?'

'The same'.

'Awesome! Because I have never traveled in time, and I would really like to,' Kimi says excitedly.

'I don't know if it's a good idea, Kimi - Do you have any idea what terrifying places it sent us to last time? It sent me to and old and abandoned mine.

'And it sent me to Ancient Egypt, to the wild and far West, and to the bottom of the sea' Tommy says.

'Wow, how cool!,' Kimi exclaims, with her eyes shining and her hands together.

'And it sent me to the Prehistory and to the Middle Ages,' Phil says. 'And where did it sent you, Lil? To a fairytale and to a pirate island, didn't it?'

Lil nods her head.

'And it sent Dil to the Moon,' Tommy adds, answering for little Dil, since he's only three months old and still doesn't know how to speak much, according to what he told me.

'Amazing!,' Kimi is overwhelmed with emotion.

'And it sent me here,' I decide to add.

'Ah, so you come from the time machine, like us,' Helena tells me, pointing to herself and Leonor. By the way, what a beautiful girl Helena is. All the other children look at them perplexed, as if they didn't know that they have come from the time machine too.

'Yes,' Wow! So Helena and Leonor also come from the time machine. Interesting!

'Of course, that's why you were alone,' Tommy guesses, although not completely, because I was alone with and without a time machine. Thank goodness I met these kids because if not, I was more alone than ever.

But suddenly a doubt assails me, a doubt that scares me a lot.

'Will I be able to return to my house?'.

'Yes, of course,' Lil tells me in a loving and even maternal tone. 'With that time machine you can go wherever you want. Just log back in and it will send you back home. It happened to us like this, when we managed to find one of our friends, the time machine portal opened and we could return, so if we could, you can too'.

'Yes, you can. We come and go as and when we want,' Helena adds with a smile, and the other children except Leonor look at her perplexed.

I hope so, because although I really like these children, my home is my home.

'You can check it out right now if you want,' Tommy tells me.

Well yes, I think it's time to go home. My mom will be worried thinking that I've disappeared.

I approach the time machine again and look at it with respect and admiration. Who would have been able to invent such a marvel? Whoever he or she is deserves an award.

I say goodbye to the children and I enter the machine, in which there is actually another open portal again, and immediately everything begins to disappear and it becomes dark again for a few seconds, as before, but immediately the clarity returns, which enters through the door of the time machine. Immediately I look back at my park, Cokeworth Park, and I get out of the time machine this time less scared and more confident and happy than before. I have discovered a gold mine. What I don't know is if I will be able to return to those children. I hope so because I really like them and they are the only friends I have, so even if I have to use the time machine to go visit them, it's worth it. Helena told me that it's possible, that she and her sister come and go as if nothing had happened. I wonder where they come from.

I quickly return to my mother, who I imagine must be worried about me, but I quickly realize that she's not. She's still engrossed in her book, and it's then that I realize that no time has passed since I Left. I thought so, because there in the park with the children who have become my friends, you could notice how it was getting dark, but when you came back here you couldn't notice anything. I'm still in the same moment I was before I fell through the time machine.

What a fascinating discovery I made today.