*****

Bollocks, thought Snape savagely as he jabbed his wand at the cockerel he had bribed the night before to wake him up on time, forgetting that, in order to perform a non-verbal silencing charm, he should not have been thinking anything of the sort. The newly castrated cockerel squawked indignantly as Snape staggered over to the wardrobe, pulling on the first set of robes that came to hand �“ fortunately for him, they were all a suitably moody shade of black �“ and jamming his feet into his shoes.

Without socks.

Snape remembered his old headmaster’s devotion to these garments and allowed himself a vindictive leer.

Checking that his wand was stored safely in his…well, away, Snape raked his fingers through his hair, and, wiping the residue on the hitherto squeaky door hinge, was about to exit when �“

SNAP!

Looking down, Snape realised with a surge of annoyance that the elastic of his underpants had twanged painfully and rather musically loose, causing them to slide down around his ankles.

“Oh gods, why do you mock me with this plague of eunuch roosters and weak elastic?” he cried, looking distractedly at his watch. He was already running late. Did he have time to go back and find another pair of pants, or should he just go out like this and hope for the best?

The split-second in which he made his decision was possibly the most important moment in the history of the wizarding world. He could have turned back. He should have turned back. He should have let the plot of Harry Potter take its course. But he did not. He did not.

Overcome with a spirit of recklessness, Snape bent down decisively…and pulled up his pants.

“Time waits for no garment,” he muttered, and, with a rather twitchier gait than usual, walked out of the house.

*****

“Gnarrrungh,” moaned Snape, many hours later, collapsing into a chair at the bar of the Hog’s Head Inn.

He was tired. He was cold. He was wet. All day his shoes had been rubbing against his feet which, without the sheltering embrace of a pair of socks, were red raw and blistered. Snape could feel the pus from what he could tell was an absolute beast of a blister oozing down his heel. His robes, which had been purchased on the cheap, had gone a navy-blue colour in the rain, and his hands and face were streaked with dye.

The pants, however, had been the worst.

They had fallen down just as he had been protesting against the Dark Lord’s insistence that he, Severus Snape, become a teacher at Dumbledore’s school, ruining the effect of what had previously been a most persuasive speech. He had then had to endure a round of the Cruciatus curse because, as the Dark Lord had hissed vehemently at him, a Death Eater should behave with a little more dignity, retain an aura of Dark mystique.

“And besides,” Voldemort had added confidentially once Snape had picked himself up off the ground, “if you’re really hardcore, you don’t wear pants.”

Bloody cheek.

Trying hard not to think of the Dark Lord’s preferences regarding undergarments (Well it’s true! When Voldemort returns, does he say to Wormtail, “Quick! My Y-fronts!” or does he merely say, “Robe me”? Eh? Eh?), Snape ordered a drink from the barman.

“Yezzurr, what can oi do fer you, zzur?” said the barman, with an unconvincing West Country accent.

“One firewhisky, please,” said, Snape, a bite of irritation in his voice. He’d show the Dark Lord just how hardcore he was. It was a well known fact that Voldemort was a teetotaller.

“Yezzurr, roight away, zzur,” said the barman, shuffling away and returning again shortly, bringing the smell of goats with him.

“Keep the change,” said Snape impatiently. “And you can drop the accent. It’s just about the worst-kept secret in the world that you’re Dumbledore’s brother so you really needn’t bother.”

Sulking, Aberforth snatched the money from Snape’s hand and was heard to mutter a word that made the infant Hermione, many miles away, say “Ron!” in a reproving voice. It was the beginning of a lifelong habit.

Snape glared moodily at the ceiling. According to the arch-prat Wormtail, Dumbledore was interviewing for jobs tonight. He took a glug of firewhisky and pulled a face. Well, if he was going to apply for a teaching post, he might as well do his research.

Standing up suddenly and drawing his arm out in front of him as though holding an imaginary skull in the manner of Hamlet, he drew his other hand dramatically across his brow.

“Forsooth!” he declaimed, “My bladder hath o’er-brimmed! I must to the privy! What ho!”

And, mincing deftly out of the room, he made a dash for the stairs. Where would he have been all these years if he hadn’t learned to act? He almost smiled to himself. He’d had one season with the Royal Shakespeare Company and he’d never looked back.

As he moved up the rickety steps, Snape heard, though very faintly, voices coming from the room at the furthest end of the landing. For some reason, this excited him greatly. There was nothing like a bit of eavesdropping every now and then.

He was half-way up the stairs. He broke into a run. He was at the top of the stairs when �“

“NYYYAAAAAARRRGHH!”

Snape clawed wildly at the air, but to no avail. His ankles were entangled in the greying, dye-streaked material of his underpants which had chosen this moment to slide gracefully down. Mouthing obscenities at the air, fist raised, Snape sailed forwards, landing in a heap at the point where the stairs led onto the landing.

“Ungh,” he said, by way of affirming the dire nature of the situation.

*****

Meanwhile, Albus Dumbledore sat smiling politely at the clearly deluded Sibyl Trelawney. The commotion outside, however, roused him from his semi-stupor, and, glad of an excuse to terminate the interview, he murmured a word of apology and dashed out of the room in time to see a rather ugly, dishevelled young man scrabbling for a grip on the floor as his wet robes dragged him backwards. Dumbledore watched with a sort of detached interest as Snape’s black eyes widened in horror.

Babbling in desperation, Snape made a swipe at Dumbledore's robes, missed, and began to slide back down, his chin banging painfully on each step until, finally, he reached the bottom in what Dumbledore observed must have been considerable agony.

“Dear me,” Dumbledore murmured to himself as the man extricated himself from what seemed to be a pair of greying underpants and bolted, cursing, from the pub.

After a moment of consideration during which curiosity got the better of him, Dumbledore muttered, “Accio!”. Catching the undergarments on the end of his wand, he examined them closely as he moved slowly back towards the room.

“…month dies,” finished Trelawney impressively as Dumbledore opened the door, still deep in contemplation.

“But what have you got there, Professor Dumbledore?” inquired Trelawney after having finished her slumping and reawakening routine.

“It would appear,” said Dumbledore slowly, “that there is some kind of...”

"A mark!" breathed Trelawney, her eyes widening as she leaned forward to gaze into the folds of the soiled material.

“Yes indeed,” said Dumbledore gravely. “A dark mark.”

Dumbledore remained standing, apparently lost in thought. After a short pause, he spoke again to Trelawney, almost as an afterthought.

“Thank you for your time, my dear Madam…but I’m afraid that I have decided against the continuation of the subject of Divination. I wish you luck in finding employment elsewhere. Good day to you.”

He bowed himself out.

*****

Author's Note: Apologies for the toilet humour, but I couldn't resist! So now you know why Voldemort got to hear (part of) the prophecy. Because Snape had decided to wear a fresh pair of underpants that morning instead of just going out of the house wearing a pair with knackered elastic. Hmm...something tells me I need to get a life! Hope you enjoyed it!

Disclaimer: No cockerels were castrated during the writing of this story!

P.S. The title is obviously a reference to the film "Sliding Doors", in which the outcome of a woman's life is determined by her catching or missing the tube/train...but I fear I may be insulting your intelligence by pointing this out!

Some months later in what can only be described as a pokey little hole of a village, the Potters were attempting to ignore the screaming of their newborn son Harry. Without the threat of an attack from Lord Voldemort, they were less inclined to cherish the whining little brat than they would have been if his life had been in danger, and consequently Lily Potter was wishing for the umpteenth time that she had waited until the war was over to get sprogged up.

“Well it’s your own fault,” said James smugly as Lily opened her mouth to complain. “You told me you were on the Spell, remember?”

Gnashing her teeth furiously, Lily performed a swift, non-verbal silencing charm, which fortunately was a lot more successful than that which was performed by Severus Snape a few months previously. One did not acquire a Wand That Was Good For Charms without some personal gain.

Now that father and son were bonding in silence, Lily found she had time to think. The thing was that she had been feeling inexplicably cheesed off for some time now, as though something significant ought to have happened. Cheated, that was it. She felt cheated to still be living in the back of beyond with a man whose ego had been re-inflated to its former gargantuan size by the birth of a son who looked just like him �“ it had taken all her efforts to persuade her husband that perhaps James should be his middle name and not his first �“ and was also feeling the added pressure of having a homicidal nose-less maniac somewhere out there picking off her friends one by one. Nothing was changing, which, for a woman who had been experiencing the build up to an earth-shattering event, was infuriating to say the least.

“James,” she said finally, as her husband hastily stopped teaching Harry rude hand gestures, “I’m fed up.”

James said nothing. Unsurprisingly.

“I mean, here we are in Godric’s Hollow �“ presumably the hollow of his armpit if the perpetual stench is anything to go by �“ with no money thanks to Dumbledore’s latest bright idea that we can distinguish traitors from loyal Order members by imposing a membership fee so extortionate that no Death Eater would ever consent to pay, no jobs because the Order takes up all of our time, significantly fewer friends because of you - ”

Here James protested wordlessly yet uselessly.

“Oh come on James, the only person you will allow near the house apart from Dumbledore is Sirius. Not even Remus! You won’t tolerate him being within a ten mile radius of our home because of Sirius’s ridiculous theory that he’s some kind of spy.”

James could find nothing with which to counter this latest accusation and so said nothing, but amused himself with making wolf-like shadow puppets on the wall, and, just to make a point, making chomping motions towards the bulbous shadow cast by Harry’s head. Lily, however, was in full flow.

“And if that wasn’t enough, we’re no nearer to stopping Voldemort than…than…well I’m too far into my rant now to start thinking of witty comparisons so you’ll just have to use your imagination.”

She broke off, her breathing not dissimilar to a bull that has spotted a matador from a distance. This wasn’t working. It was no good shouting and railing against somebody who couldn’t even splutter in indignation. Reversing the spell with a flick of her wand, she glared at James in a manner that never failed to get a response, though that response normally involved momentary loss of bladder control.

James mastered his impulse to urinate and cleared his throat.

The reader is now to be spared any snivelling answer given by James Potter because it is at this point that Albus Dumbledore, with no thought for the already strained nerves of Lily Potter and the likelihood of her reaction to a sudden intrusion being both swift and brutal, apparates inside their godforsaken hovel. It is afterwards, when he is reattaching the last of his severed extremities, that he vows never to drop in unannounced ever again. In an alternative future, Harry is to notice the lasting effects of this encounter when Dumbledore is repeatedly seen to approach the dwellings of other wizards at a safe distance.

“So, what’s the news, Albs?” said James in a thoroughly over-familiar manner while demonstrating his irritating habit of abbreviating all names to one syllable or less to make them sound more like his own.

Dumbledore gave an inexplicable smile, and, almost simultaneously, an equally inexplicable tugging motion of the hand, as though he were having trouble with the waistline of one of his many garments.

“Ahhhhhhhh James, I have been trying to penetrate the mind of the enemy,” he said, and his eyes twinkled in a trademark sort of way.

“Oh, no, not through my �“ forgive me �“ extraordinary skills as a Legilimens,” Dumbledore continued with an almost undetectable air of smugness as Lily showed every sign of interrupting. “No, this is a magic that is much older, much more pungent…this is Pantomancy, the art of reliving the memories of a person through extensive wearing of their underpants.”

Lily and James exchanged a look of horror and both tried to back away as tactfully as possible, trying very hard not to think about the horrors concealed within Dumbledore’s voluminous robes.

“Yes, for many months now I have been sharing my life with one Severus Snape - ” Lily fought back a wave of bile as James attempted to look macho by making a show of clenching his fists “ �“ and much, much more. I have experienced his torture at the hands of Lord Voldemort, his frustration at having his undergarments continually falling down, his decision to eavesdrop, and, finally, the revelation; I believe I made a grave mistake in dismissing Sibyl Trelawney that night.”

The suspense was killing them. Really.

“Yes, in reliving that moment atop the stairs of the Hog’s Head Inn, I heard, through his ears, something which I myself missed and which I do not think he even knows he remembers. But to know whether I am right �“ which I generally am seeing as I am a godlike genius �“ I must go back and find out…or rather have someone else go back and find out.”

It was at this point that James, in the friendliest manner possible, got out his wand and pointed it at Dumbledore’s heart while backing away at a suitable pace. Lily, who was still slightly sluggish due to her feeling of purposelessness, was not quick enough.

Before she knew it had happened, Dumbledore had clubbed her around the back of the head with the terracotta base of a potted plant (which had been the first thing to hand), attached a time-turner to her neck using a lasso-like technique, twizzled it for a moment and hissed the word “Pants” in her ear. Then, with a feeling of mild resignation, Lily felt herself spiralling through time and space…

Will Lily be able to save the plot of Harry Potter?

Will she be able to do anything particularly useful seeing as Dumbledore’s explanation of events is pretty shoddy even by his standards?

What happened when Lily met Sevvy?

Only time will tell.

Bollocks, thought Lily savagely as she landed with what she considered to be unnecessary force on an unfamiliar hard wooden floor. She was spectacularly un-amused. She had a painful, throbbing lump on the back of her head, a tacky, chunky gold chain around her neck with a fist-sized hourglass attached to the end of it (well folks, this was the 80s, remember?) which, when tucked into her robes, gave her the semblance of having grown a third breast, and, to cap it all, she had just realised that in the bed on the other side of the room lay slumbering The Creature From The Pit himself �“ Severus Snape.

What was worse was that her less-than-subtle entrance had somewhat startled the scrawny-looking cockerel which, after a deafening shriek, was now lying on the floor with its legs in the air. And it had woken Snape.

Bollocks, thought Snape savagely as he jabbed his wand at where the cockerel had been standing previously. The spell hit the wardrobe, tried to find something to castrate, failed, found it had no purpose in life and had a minor nervous breakdown.

Lily looked desperately for somewhere to hide as the castrating spell began to wail loudly, but it was no use �“ Snape’s black eyes were narrowed and firmly fixed on the triple-breasted redhead in the corner, and he looked…well really rather menacing, actually.

“Who,” said Snape in what he hoped were threatening tones, “are you?”

Lily’s brain was going into overdrive. Somehow she had to accomplish the impossible, i.e. decode Dumbledore’s cryptic nonsense, find out how to get Snape to hear whatever it was Trelawney had said and how to get out of here alive, all at once. In short, she was a woman on the edge.

“Don’t you remember?” she purred. “Sexy,” she added, just for good measure.

Apparently, he did not. He proceeded to perform the fourth Unforgivable Curse, the Toe-Stubber, (which is so heinous it has now been classified as one of the “Dear Lord, No!” Curses along with the Papercutius Curse and other such atrocities) and threw her bodily out of the window.

Lily was not amused. She had landed in a dingy street which had all the charm and odour of a spider’s backside �“ something a local Muggle prankster had obviously noted, for the sign reading “Spinner’s Bend” had had the letter “B” blotted out with white gloss paint. She had sustained a second blow to the head and attendant bump, and her toes were in excruciating pain and were throbbing and swollen, so she found she had to hobble and limp her way down the street. In short, she was a triple-breasted, hornèd, swollen-footed, crippled, freakish mess as she muttered and cursed her way to the end of the road, finally Apparating into the air.

Severus Snape, meanwhile, was somewhat perplexed. He had awoken (mercifully on time) to find his cockerel had died of shock and that a vaguely familiar-looking woman who appeared to have three breasts and some kind of growth on her head was lying on his floor and calling him sexy, of all things.

Well, he thought reasonably, she does have a point.

A wicked idea formulated in his brain. Should he? Oh, why not…just this once. After all, he was in the mood, rather.

Shimmying over to his drawer, he flexed his fingers delicately and extracted from amidst the hotchpotch of greying underpants a lacy black thong �“ the only souvenir he possessed of his pre-Death Eater days when he had been a manufacturer of saucy lingerie - and slipped it on.

Oh, the memories!

Blissful days of designing, of creating, of attempting to bribe the local spider population into working as machinists, of inventing antidotes to the venom from the resultant spider bites.

”Saucy Snape �“ make ‘em gape!” he proclaimed nostalgically to the room at large. The castrating spell in the wardrobe began to howl with renewed vigour.

Pulling on the set of robes that was furthest away from the spell (in case it got any ideas), Snape braced himself for the day ahead. Performing the daily ritual of finger-combing his hair and oiling the door hinge in one fluid movement, Snape began to slink out of the room, then, as he had not had to endure the sensation of a permanent wedgie for many-a year, reverted to a somewhat twitchier gait.

*****

Lily was in the bar of the Hog’s Head Inn, feeling utterly wretched. Not only was she looking remarkably freakish, being crippled, horned and triple-breasted as she was, but she was also �“ to put it bluntly �“ drunk.

“Shame ‘gain,” she slurred, holding up her glass to be refilled. The 80s being what they were, inflation was so drastic that though she was only a few months ahead, she could now afford drinks without the feeling the pinch. The mysterious barman was ever-obliging.

“Oh-arrrrr, all roight Miss,” he said in his unconvincing West Country accent.

“Mrs,” corrected Lily with a hiccup. “I’m married to a complete tosher, you shee, and a brat, but he’sh my shon, not my husband.”

“Curses,” muttered Aberforth. “Just when I found a woman who looked like a goat. Lovely…”

The reader is now spared any further insight into the twisted mind of Aberforth Dumbledore by the dramatic entrance of one Severus Snape. Lily is far too inebriated to notice this, but is forced to acknowledge his presence when he comes to sit next to her at the bar. Snape himself has had rather a good day in comparison to the kind of day he would have had if he had not been inadvertently motivated by a strange redhead to ditch the Y-fronts for a day and go with the little black number. He is therefore in rather a good mood and is willing to make amends.

“Hi sexy,” said Snape, bending right over so as to give himself a VPL. “Mind if I join you?”

Lily grunted in approval without really registering that it was this man who had caused her such a great deal of pain that morning.

“I apologise for the Toe-Stubber,” he leered, “but I wasn’t prepared for the arrival of such a �“ well, I was going to say Sexy Beast, but I think Beast will do for now.”

He indicated her additional lumps and bumps with an eloquent wave.

Lily muttered inaudibly, her eyes swimming in and out of focus as she reeled precariously on the teetering bar stool.

“Mgnbesick,” she said in a rush, now sporting a greenish tinge which, Snape couldn’t help noticing, complimented her eyes rather fetchingly, not to mention the striking contrast it made with her red hair.

His appreciation was short-lived, however.

With a great walloping lurch, Lily Potter vomited spectacularly over the hapless Death Eater, regurgitating the entire contents of her stomach (which unfortunately for Snape included a partially digested portion of James’s notorious “Flobberworm Surprise”).

With a strange, elongated cry which oscillated considerably in its accurate summing-up of his distress, Snape shook out his vomit-coated limbs frantically, erratically. The result was something which so resembled the Agadoo song that soon half the pub was joining in, singing and dancing rowdily. Snape was not amused.

“If you’d told me you were going to spew �“ ” he began angrily. (Miles away, the infant Hermione was heard to say indignantly, “It’s S.P.E.W.” to the eternal puzzlement of her parents.) But he may as well have been talking to a glob of Flobberworm mucus, for Lily was now lolling, semi-conscious, over the bar, and now that the pub had moved onto the Macarena in a fit of high spirits, there was very little he could do to make himself heard.

“Gah!” he spat in his monosyllabic rage, and stormed up the rickety stairs in the direction of the toilets.

*****

Several minutes later, Severus Snape emerged from the communal cesspit of dubious hygiene known as the men’s toilet of the Hog’s Head Inn. Vomit-free and glowering, he made a mental note to give the drunken loon below a wide berth, and was just about to descend the stairs when a voice from a nearby room caught his attention.

It was, of course, emanating from the room in which Albus Dumbledore had been smiling politely at the clearly deluded Sibyl Trelawney. Smiling, that is, until the old bat had begun to speak in harsh, low, rasping tones, which had caused Dumbledore to think she had choked on the cockroach clusters Aberforth had left for his enjoyment in the middle of the table. However, mid-way through the Heimlich Manoeuvre, Dumbledore had realised that this was probably a prophecy of some kind, and had dropped the crazed clairvoyant unceremoniously back onto her chair to listen more intently.

Snape, too, was listening eagerly. Ear pressed against the door, to the extent that he fully expected to be pulling splinters out of his earlobe the following morning, he absorbed the words of the prophecy. Until, that is, his free earlobe was gripped between the cloven fingernails of Aberforth Dumbledore, who had taken advantage of the noise below to slip off and check on “the kids”, as he called them.

“Well, well, well,” he breathed into Snape’s maimed ear.

The plot of Harry Potter, it seemed, was back on track.

But what of Lily stranded in the past?

Will she ever get home?

Will she ever get over the inevitable hangover she will have the following morning?

Where is the plot of this story going???

Find out in the next scintillating instalment of what is already a tale of alarmingly farcical proportions! Adieu!

“Lily?”

Though spoken softly, the sound of her name was like a screwdriver being driven into her ear. She moaned accordingly.

“Lily Potter?”

A hand patted her gingerly on the shoulder. Lily felt like she had been dropped onto a merry-go-round.

She opened her eyes.

Standing over her, looking shabbier than ever (which always seemed to be the case, so either someone was wildly over exaggerating or he had in fact descended to the level of a tramp by the time Harry Potter first met him), was Remus Lupin.

“Are you all right?”

Obviously he had decided she was not. And he would not have been alone in making such a judgement. She was lying at an angle in the gutter outside the Hog’s Head Inn, filthy, dishevelled and probably concussed. The miracle was that she appeared to be vomit-free, as she had apparently projected every last drop onto Severus Snape earlier that evening. Remus made to help her up.

“Wait!” she rasped, suddenly clutching her chest. “It’s gone! My third breast is gone!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Gone. See?”

Lily thrust her bosom out towards Remus to make the point, and it was true that the lump normally created by the Time Turner was indeed absent.

Remus, who of course had no idea what she was talking about, tried to remain composed. In fact, he was so good at this that he decided to make a habit of it, and resolved only to lose his cool at moments of extreme tragedy, which would, apart from anything else, have a great dramatic effect.

“Come along, Lily, let’s get you home,” he said calmly, dragging her to her feet.

“NO!” Lily screamed with a sudden and uncharacteristic violence. “I can’t go back, not for months! Please, don’t make me go back!”

By this point she was clinging urgently to the front of his robes and shaking them, due to both the inability to stand and sheer desperation. Years later, when Remus found a mouse-haired metamorphmagus in a similar position, he was understandably quite unnerved and therefore failed to give a satisfactory response to her declaration of unconditional love.

“All right,” he said, slightly bewildered but nevertheless willing to help a damsel in distress. Had he not, after all, always had a soft spot for Lily? And besides, from the sound of it, she and James were having some kind of marital difficulties, which made him feel, if anything, rather hopeful. All in all, it was probably a combination of factors which led him not to immediately suspect her of being under some Death Eater’s Curse at the time.

Thus, with the hapless Lily clinging to his arm, Remus Disapparated into the night with a loud “CRACK”…and a loud groan from his somewhat delicate passenger.

*****

The following morning, Lily had been alarmed to find she was sleeping in someone else’s bed, and had begun to fear for her virtue before she had realised that the bed’s normal occupant was in fact asleep on the sofa. A few hours later, and she had explained the whole thing to a bemused Remus while sipping a cup of coffee so strong it probably should have come with a health warning.

“…and now I’ve lost my Time Turner, so I’m stranded here for the next few months!” she finished, gesticulating wildly to illustrate the calamitous nature of the situation.

Remus looked thoughtful for a while, as he was wont to do, and one of the sleeves of his robes began to unravel spontaneously as part of a seemingly continual process which increased his shabbiness hour by hour.

“So Dumbledore doesn’t know you’re here?” he asked, just to clarify a plot point.

“No,” said Lily, a look of annoyance flitting across her face at Dumbledore’s name. “He won’t come up with the idea until months later. Nobody knows there’s a future me running around the place, and I have no idea who has stolen my Time Turner. It’s a bloody, bloody mess!”

She slammed the coffee cup down on the table, spilling it slightly and increasing its shabby look, thus creating less work for whatever it was which contributed to the general shabbiness of Remus’s life.

“Well you’re more than welcome to lie low here for as long as it takes,” he said in what he hoped was a casual tone.

Lily would have been lying if she had said she wasn’t sorely tempted. After a few years of living with James, she quite fancied a change. But then she thought of living a life in hiding, and she did not cherish the thought (though had she known that she would in fact return to a life of hiding, she probably would have stuck around). Remus correctly interpreted her silence and rueful look as a “no”.

“Or,” he continued, “we could try and get you a new Time Turner…”

Lily choked into what was left of her coffee. Her high, cold, derisive laughter was so loud that it is said Lord Voldemort himself caught strains of it upon the air, and liked it so much that he adopted it as his own.

However, Lily need not have laughed, for it was not a bad plan. In fact, it was utterly ludicrous, which meant that it would probably work. Remus proceeded to tell her of the Department of Mysteries and of the Time Turners allegedly concealed within. The following Saturday, according to Moody, the Department was having its Hundred Year Clean, which meant that for the first time in a century, cleaning staff would be allowed to enter the dusty, filth-strewn bowels of the Ministry of Magic and make it fit to work in, though of course their memories would be modified afterwards. This provided them with the ideal opportunity to enter, take what they needed, and get out.

“So that’s settled, then,” said Remus, once Lily had consented to the plan. “Next Saturday night, we're sending you back to the future!”

Unbeknown to either of them, a Muggle director named Robert Zemeckis was passing the window at the time and was hit with a sudden brainwave, resolving to catch the next plane home and begin writing his latest screenplay.

*****

It was Saturday night. Lily and Remus were crouching in a corner under a borrowed invisibility cloak at the end of the corridor leading to the Department of Mysteries. It was deathly quiet, and the stench coming from under the great, black door was truly horrendous. Lily could see why its centennial cleaning was observed so religiously �“ hang security, it was a veritable biohazard.

“Here come the cleaning staff,” whispered Remus, as a group of witches clad in aprons, headscarves and gas masks traipsed up the corridor, accompanied by a handful of bored-looking Aurors.

As they reached the door, Lily and Remus fell into step behind the cleaners, taking care not to bump into the Aurors. One of the latter began to speak.

“Right…” he cleared his throat. “You are not to touch anything. You are not to write anything down about what you see. You are not allowed to read anything. You are not allowed to look at anything. You are not allowed to listen to anything. You are not allowed to breathe in excessively. You are not allowed to talk to each other. Do not make eye contact. Do not smile at one another. Do not linger once the mess has been cleared. No food and drink to be consumed in the Department of Mysteries. And remember this is to be kept a Non-Smoking Area at all times. Do I make myself clear?”

The terrified witches made muffled squeaks of assent.

“Oh, and if you see an archway on a raised stone dais, don’t walk through it, and for heaven’s sake don’t try and clean the curtain,” he added, absent-mindedly. The cleaning staff nodded.

“All right then,” said the Auror, getting out his wand. “You have one hour. Anyone not back inside the hour…”

He let his sentence hang ominously, though in truth he probably didn’t know how to finish it. He raised his wand. Making a strange, squiggly motion with it, he pointed it at the door, which creaked slowly open. Lily and Remus followed the witches through the door and into the Department of Mysteries as the door slammed behind them.

Unfortunately, as they could not be seen, the door shut rather too quickly, and the invisibility cloak got caught, so that no sooner were they inside than the cloak had slid off them both and they were in full view of the cleaning staff.

All hell broke loose.

The cleaning ladies let out blood-curdling screams of panic and began running around wildly, knocking things over and attempting to bang on the door to be let out. However, as the doors were soundproof, the Aurors outside were oblivious to the commotion within, and so the hysterical witches began firing curses willy-nilly, so that Lily and Remus had to make a dash for it, sprinting through the nearest door and banging it shut.

“Colloportus!” gasped Remus, and the door sealed itself mercifully behind them.

“Now what?” Lily demanded, unimpressed, catching her breath.

“Well,” said Remus, “if you’d care to look around you, it would seem that by a curious stroke of luck, we have come to the right room.”

And he was right. They were in a dusty, grimy, particularly smelly room with a bird-dropping-splattered hourglass in the centre, within which the offending bird performed its life cycle over and over again. Along one wall was a cabinet full of dull, chunky Time Turners, each one encrusted with muck, and it was towards this cabinet that Lily and Remus made their way.

“Well,” said Remus, “go on then.”

“I’m not touching that, it’s filthy,” protested Lily.

“So clean it.”

“You clean it.”

“Fine,” said Remus in exasperated tones, flicking his wand in the direction of the cabinet, which gleamed suddenly. Lily tried not to be impressed �“ James would have flatly refused to do anything he considered to be a woman’s work.

Finally, Lily had a grubby Time Turner badly concealed beneath her robes. Moving over to the door, she listened intently. The sounds of screaming had not abated. There was only one thing for it.

“On the count of three?” asked Remus, apparently coming to the same conclusion. Lily nodded.

“All right. One…two…THREE!”

The door flew magically open, and Lily and Remus fled through it, flinging hexes left, right and centre until they came to the invisibility cloak and yanked it out from the door, which, by a remarkable coincidence, triggered the unlocking mechanism. Throwing on the cloak, they ran through the open door, past the dazed Aurors, with a dozen gas-masked, wand-wielding cleaners hot on their heels.

Remus jabbed the lift button frantically as Lily duelled with one particularly hefty-looking witch with “Mum” tattooed on her arm. As the lift doors pinged open, Lily dashed after Remus, the tattooed cleaner in hot pursuit, and shoved the doors shut. There was a ripping noise as the lift began to climb upwards, and Lily realised with a twinge of revulsion that, for some strange reason, the cleaner’s bloomers were trapped in the lift. It seemed to be a recurring motif.

Once in the entrance hall, they ran for the exit, finally emerging from the telephone box and Disapparating, the strange and warlike cries of the cleaning staff still ringing in their ears.

*****

“So…” ventured Remus awkwardly. One of the patches on his robes fell off in an uncomfortable sort of way.

“So…” agreed Lily. She was holding the newly-polished Time Turner in her hands, ready for the off. She did so hate goodbyes.

“I’ll see you soon, then. I think.”

“Thanks for you help,” said Lily lamely.

Sexual tension, she thought. It complicates everything!

There was really nothing more for them to say to one another without things getting really uncomfortable, so Lily gestured towards the Time Turner. Remus nodded, and they began to make those odd, penguin-like movements one makes when attempting to initiate a hug, flapping their arms slightly until they reached a height suitable for wrapping round each other. Remus tried not to wince as the hand holding the Time Turner hit him in the back and temporarily winded him.

Then, with a smile, Lily twizzled the Time Turner and was gone, spiralling forwards until she landed with unnecessary force on her own bedroom floor. And suddenly found herself being bound with snakelike chords by none other than…herself? She looked up from the floor indignantly.

“Haven’t you gone yet?” she demanded.

“What?” the Other Lily demanded back.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Lily. “Look, I can’t be bothered to explain, but take this Time Turner, go back a few months and talk to Remus Lupin, he’ll fill you in. Our future is at stake, now go!”

To Lily’s immense surprise, The Other Lily, who was feeling incredibly reckless after having been in hiding for so long, took the Time Turner without a word and vanished.

Well, who could blame her? Though, upon reflection, thought Lily, as she struggled fruitlessly against her bonds on the floor, James started enquiring loudly about his dinner from the other end of the house and Harry began to screech loudly from his cot, it was still good to be back.

The End.