Parallel Timespaces 2

"Oh, my! What on earth happened here?!"

Hurried footsteps came from the end of the corridor. Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape, and Professor Quirrell, who had just regained consciousness and was deathly pale, rushed into the bathroom together.

Lily immediately pulled James into the nearest stall, gently closed the wooden door, and raised a hand to signal him to be quiet.

James obediently nodded and kept silent. In the cramped space, Lily gently wrote on his palm: I'll explain everything later.

Outside the stall, Professor McGonagall looked at the shattered Troll on the floor, then at the three disheveled first-years in their rumpled clothes. Shocked and furious, she said sternly, "Potter! Weasley! What on earth were you two doing here?"

Hermione immediately stepped forward and took all the blame before anyone else could speak. "Professor McGonagall, it was all my fault," she said firmly. "I came to the bathroom alone to take on the Troll by myself. Harry and Ron were worried about my safety and came to persuade me to go back. They didn't do anything wrong."

Professor McGonagall looked at the sensible, courageous Hermione, then at Harry and Ron, whose eyes were full of concern. Her tense expression gradually softened, and in the end she let the matter drop without giving any of them detention.

Quirrell was still pale. He said quietly that he needed to go to the Hospital Wing to rest and recover, then turned and left ahead of the others.

The three were still standing there when Snape's lips curled into a cold sneer, his gaze full of suspicion. "Oh? So, Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, were you frightened out of your wits?"

He simply didn't believe that a first-year could have used a spell to split a Troll with such powerful magical resistance in two. It made no sense.

Inside the stall, Lily was falling apart.

There was no way she and James could stay hidden; sooner or later, they would be discovered. How had a perfectly ordinary Halloween trick-or-treating trip turned into this absurd situation, traveling through time and space and facing their teacher and their child? What was all this?!

James saw the redness in her eyes and how close she was to tears. He was anxious, but unable to speak, he could only force himself to resist the urge to comfort her.

Lily wrote on James's palm that they needed to ask Professor McGonagall for help.

Only after he calmed down did James think about everything unusual that had happened and the boy with a face exactly like his own but green eyes. Belatedly, James suddenly realized what it was about the boy that had felt so chillingly familiar: Lily's eyes!

Lily took a deep breath, steadied her panicked thoughts, and gently pushed open the stall's wooden door.

She leaned halfway out and immediately met the eyes of Harry, who stood rooted to the spot, his face full of confusion.

The golden trio of their children's generation stood right before them, and she and James were the boy's biological parents, who should have died long ago.

Professor McGonagall froze on the spot, her pupils contracting.

Snape's mind went completely blank. He had to force himself to use Occlumency, desperately suppressing the storm raging in his heart and making himself calm down.

How could he be seeing Lily, who was clearly the same age as Harry Potter, at Hogwarts in 1991? And beside her stood James Potter, with that face identical to Harry Potter's, a face he would never forget as long as he lived.

How could this be possible? Not unless it rained Merlins and Voldemort changed his ways tomorrow.

Lily pulled James out of the stall and rushed straight into Professor McGonagall's arms. "Boo-hoo... Professor McGonagall, please help us!"

James clutched Lily's robes, staring grimly at Harry in the corner. He had a premonition, one he didn't even dare think about.

Harry stood motionless, staring at him, his eyes filled with a sense of unfamiliarity and overwhelming familiarity.

Professor McGonagall's voice trembled slightly as she hesitantly spoke the name that had lain buried for years. "Lily?"

Lily raised her reddened eyes. "I'd just finished trick-or-treating at the Headmaster's Office when I ran into James. I'd just stepped onto the spiral staircase when it suddenly went out of control and shifted. We fell together, and when we opened our eyes again, we were here."

She raised the little pumpkin bag in her hand. Its bright Halloween decorations stood out, enough to support her story.

In decades of teaching, Professor McGonagall had never encountered anything as bizarre as travel through time and space. With no other choice, she took everyone present to the Headmaster's Office.

All the way there, Snape's gaze remained fixed on Lily's red hair, never leaving it, just as in their school days his eyes had passed over all the long tables and noticed only Lily.

James keenly caught that dark, obsessive gaze. The gloomy little bat who had been shunned by others back then had now become an unsmiling, cold and aloof old bat of a professor. He hadn't changed all that much.

In the Headmaster's Office, Dumbledore looked at the young, vibrant Lily and James before him. His usually calm, composed face showed a rare expression of genuine astonishment, and for a moment he was at a loss for words.

James reacted quickly. He immediately raised and waved his wand to check the time, then drew a sharp breath. "Merlin above, it's 1991! Lily, we've actually traveled twenty years into the future!"

Lily looked bewildered and ventured helplessly, "Maybe... we can go back tomorrow when we wake up after a night's sleep?"

Hermione immediately pieced together all the clues from their words and guessed who they were. She was deeply shaken. Ron, however, was still utterly bewildered and had no idea what was going on.

Dumbledore slowly sat up straight, his gaze gentle and profound. "Perhaps you two young people could explain the whole sequence of events to an old man like me."

Lily collected herself. "I came to your office to trick-or-treat for Halloween, and my foot slipped as I was leaving. James happened to be coming up the stairs, and the moment he reached out and caught my robes, the spiral staircase suddenly changed direction, and we both fell. When I woke up, I saw Hermione, and then the Troll burst into the bathroom."

"My dear, do you mean you already knew Miss Granger?" Dumbledore asked gently.

Lily's heart tightened. She had given herself away. Before a white wizard who saw through everything, any attempt to hide the truth was futile, so she could only nod openly. James confirmed it as well.

James couldn't help asking the crucial question. "Mr. Dumbledore, how do we get back to our own timeline?"

Beside them, Harry now understood everything that had happened.

The boy and girl before him, who were about his own age, were the young, vibrant mother and father he had never met.

His heart suddenly ached and swelled, and he summoned all his courage, instinctively wanting to move closer to Lily.

Snape took in the scene, a dense wave of bitterness and pain surging through his chest. He looked away, wanting only to escape this suffocating place at once.

"Severus, wait."

Those simple words brought Snape's steps to an instant halt.

How long had it been since he had heard that name? Everyone called him Snape, Professor Snape, Severus. Only she, she called him Severus. Lily walked up to him, and he didn't dare look down at her red hair. Her emerald-green eyes reminded him of their falling-out, and of her lying motionless on the ground in Godric's Hollow.

Lily knew nothing of the turmoil in his heart. She took a handful of sweets from the pumpkin bag, gently pressed them into his palm, and said softly, "Happy Halloween, Severus."