Author's Note: So I'm still writing the Path He Chose and all that... but this idea came into my head - and I haven't read anything like it yet, so I thought I'd try my hand at the old "character-gets-another-chance-at-his-life-in-the-past-to-change-the-future-of-the-plot" thing... but with my own twist.

I hope you like it.

... he greeted Death like an old friend ...
... and got a swift kick in the arse ...

"Potter."

"Snape," Harry blinked, looking around at the endless whiteness that surrounded them. "I'm dead then?"

"And no chance to go back again," Snape drawled. "Pity."

"It is," Harry sat back, dropping into a plush armchair that appeared even as the whiteness around them faded into a likeness of his office in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, a small but warm fire flickering into life in front of him. He gestured towards the other chair beside the fire, and Snape hesitated for a moment before sitting. "Have you seen what's been happening?"

"Not exactly," Snape replied. "But all the dead that pass by… they're more than happy to unload their woes," he sneered, "on those of us already 'at peace'."

Harry snorted.

"Some peace. What was it that we were fighting for, do you think? When all our efforts went to waste and we raised almost a whole generation of bitter Dark Lords in training? Bet Tom was pretty happy to hear that he wreaked havoc even from beyond the grave."

"Havoc was never His plan," Snape summoned a bottle of Firewhisky and poured himself a glass, glad that in the In-Between plane any and all things were possible, only limited by imagination. "He only ever wanted power, and to avoid death. He has not succeeded in either, and is… deeply unhappy."

"I just wish I could do it over again," Harry admitted. "Not just for the dead… I mean – death is just a thing that happens. It happens to all of us. It's the suffering – so many people hurting, and hating… so many orphans…"

"Spare me your whining, Potter," Snape scowled. "There is nothing that you can do about it. Your life is over. Gone. What happened, anyway? Get a big head?"

"Sort of," Harry admitted, smiling sheepishly when Snape shot him a sharp glare. "Ron was out of action, and I was going after Dennis… I never expected him… but he blames me for Colin's death… I was never really any good to Colin, to anyone, except maybe my own friends…."

"You were better than I," Snape said, voice quiet. Harry didn't deny it.

"Hermione told me not to go – to wait for back up – but I didn't listen, I've always been lucky, but that's all it's been. Luck. I guess I ran out."

"You guess?" Snape sneered, gesturing to his own deceased self.

"It was an informed estimation," Harry returned, smile wry. Then he sighed. "I hope Ginny's okay. And the kids. Lily was supposed to start school in September…"

"You named your daughter Lily?" Snape's sneer grew darker, and there was an element of pain to his expression.

"You haven't made up with her?" Harry asked. "I mean… you've been dead for a while, I would have thought… I named my son after you."

"Severus Potter?" Snape arched an eyebrow.

"Albus Severus," Harry corrected. Snape sniffed.

"Lily is… she has… on occasion, she seems to forgive me," Snape admitted. "Other times, however, she looks at those who died, and those who suffer and… and she blames me. I do not entirely fault her for that, either."

"You think you could have done better," Harry murmured. "Been better."

"I do," Snape drank his Firewhisky, the liquid burning his throat in a way that it hadn't, really, since he'd died. "I will be the first to admit that I am not a perfect man, Potter," he said. "I have made many mistakes. I have many regrets."

"Me too," Harry poured himself a glass of Firewhisky as well, and together they drank in silence, thinking of all the horrors they had witnessed, of all the pain and suffering that – had they been better, stronger, smarter, more forward-thinking – they might have prevented.

"Hindsight is twenty-twenty," Harry murmured, and Snape grunted in agreement. "If we had the chance to do it again – what would we have done differently? Who could we have saved?"

"Stop whining!" Both men jumped at the sound of a third voice entering their little mope-fest, and turned around to find themselves faced with a relatively attractive young woman, hair black as shadows, skin white as bone, holding a glittering silver scythe in her tiny hand. She was also glaring at them so fiercely that they felt oddly reminded of Professor McGonagall scolding them for schoolboy dallying and tardiness.

"You're supposed to be dead! Go on! Shoo! Move on! You can mope when you're dead, too, you know," she waved a hand and their glasses of Firewhisky disappeared, leaving Harry holding two folders in his hands instead. "I have paperwork to fill out, and you're holding up the queue. Make a choice, Mr. Potter – move on to the next great adventure, or go back and hang around as a ghost for a few more centuries. I'm busy enough chasing stupid, annoying, half-immortal Dark Lords around without having to put boy-heroes in their places, too! Damn it, Snape! This was supposed to be your job!"

"Death?" Harry blinked. The woman huffed, throwing up her hood and waving her scythe in the air.

"Oooh, I'm a big scary skeleton, fear me and send yourself to the Place Beyond the Sun," she murmured dramatically. "Honestly, Harry Potter, first you try getting here off schedule – twice, officially! Not to mention that thing with the Basilisk – and now you're complaining about what you've done with your life."

"Er, sorry?" Harry blinked.

"I'm having the worst day!" Death continued, while Harry and Snape exchanged confused and helpless glances. "First there was that other moron who went around making Horcruxes, and then someone found that damned book and kept switching between immortality and mortality again, and now you! Sitting around and discussing your lives as if you could do it better! Everyone thinks that! But do they ever stop and think that maybe they'll just screw things up more? No! Last time I sent someone to do their lives over – they turned into Hitler!"

"Er," Harry blinked. Snape blanched. Yeah, that had been a bad thing.

"I don't even know how that happened! Working with Grindelwald – what a nightmare! You know what? Maybe you will do better – I still haven't done all the paperwork for the last three decades, people keep dying left and right, and I've no interns! Nobody wants to intern with Death – dunno why I'm so scary. Desire's worse, screwing with people's hearts and making them miserable. And Destiny! Making those damned prophecies!"

"What," Snape interrupted, "exactly are you trying to say?"

Death turned around and glared at him.

"You're going back, and if you screw this up you will wake in your next life as Peter Pettigrew, I swear."

Before Snape or Harry could say anything – ask what was going on, or even try to help the anthropomorphic personification of Death to calm down – she ripped the folders out of Harry's hands.

"You won't be needing those if you're going back to the living," she said, dropping them into her pocket and pulling out two tickets, even as the office around them faded into King's Cross Station. "Here, take these. Harry James Potter, date of return, the twenty-fourth of July 1991. Severus Alexander Snape, date of return, the twenty-fourth of July 1991. Okay? Okay. Now bugger off."

She shoved them onto the train that suddenly appeared behind them, and they cursed as their robes tangled together, and they collided with each other as the train sped off into the great unknown…

Harry blinked; finding himself suddenly thrust back into – well – Life. He looked around, feeling a little dizzy, and wondering where he was.

The twenty-fourth of July… he was reasonably sure that that had been the day that his first Hogwarts letter had arrived, the one that he'd never been allowed to open… the one that was addressed to the cupboard under the stairs.

Well. That would explain the dark, and the odd imbalance of his body. He was used to his own, long and wiry thirty-eight-year-old body, but now…

Actually, he thought, this body feels kind of long and wiry, too. Odd.

He floundered around for his glasses but, instead, discovered a wand. Also, there were no walls, no sharp edges of the undersides of stairs to dig into his fingers. So he wasn't in the cupboard under the stairs… so maybe Death had sent him back in his fully-grown body? But why would she – and he never thought that Death might be a she – why would she do that?

"Lumos," he whispered, lighting up the space around him – which was definitely not his cupboard, or any place that he recognized at all. He groaned, now utterly confused by the dark drapes of the bed he found himself in, and the bare, stone walls – kind of reminded him of Hogwarts actually – and he ran a hand across his face in exasperation.

But wait. There, in the middle of his face – and it was frighteningly familiar – was a long, beaky nose. No way. No way, no way, no way.

He stood up, his body much lankier and less muscled than he remembered, and long, greasy hair swayed in front of his face. He knew exactly where to find the bathroom – to find a mirror.

Starting back at him, mouth agape in horror, was the face of one Severus Snape. I can't believe this. I can't bloody believe this.

In his pocket there was a crumpled up wad of paper, desperately Harry pulled it out and shone the light of his – Snape's – wand over it and grimaced.

Severus Alexander Snape – date of return, 24th of July 1991.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

Snape woke up and immediately realized that something was wrong.

For one, he was deeply uncomfortable – and he did not remember his mattress ever being that thin, not since he was child living with… well, not since he was a child had he slept on something so lumpy.

For another, he could feel – to his disgust – the tickling legs of a handful of spiders crawling over his toes. He scowled and flicked them off, wondering how in the hell spiders had gotten into his dungeons – he'd put up a lot of very complex pest-control wards so that insignificant little bugs wouldn't mess with his potion brewing.

So, obviously, he wasn't in his chambers in the dungeons of Hogwarts castle. Perhaps Death had messed up and he had, in fact, been sent back to his own childhood. That would explain why his body felt so small and frail…

Lily, suddenly the whole world was brighter. He'd been given a second chance, an opportunity to do everything all over again, and he could save Lily. He didn't even care if she loved him back or not this time – he'd learned his lesson – well, if he could keep her away from Potter, all would be well, but he could save her. He wouldn't make the same mistakes again. Not in this life.

"Wake up, boy!" someone shouted, rapping on the door of his… room?

Snape sat up quickly, swearing when he knocked his head on the too-low ceiling of the cramped space.

"Mind your language, boy!" The door was yanked open, and Snape was presented with not with the face of his darkly scowling father, but with a purpled-faced and exceedingly fat man with an alarmingly thick moustache.

Snape stared. What. The. Bloody. Hell?

"Get up, freak! It's time for breakfast already!" The man reached in through the door and pulls Snape bodily out of the small space he'd been in, not gentle in the least and carelessly knocking his elbows against the frame of the door as he pulled. He reached in again and filched out a pair of crooked glasses, with disgustingly familiar round frames, and thrust them at Snape.

Snape gaped at the glasses – he recognized the tape on the bridge… it couldn't be… he dashed off to the bathroom, ignoring the fat man's shouts and exclamations, ignoring the fact that he knew where the bloody bathroom was – and slammed the door behind them.

He had to stand on his tip-toes to see properly into the mirror, and what he saw gave rise to some very creative swearing that he'd picked up from a fellow potions apprentice in Ireland.

In the mirror he had seen the face of one small, scrawny, disgusted Harry Potter.

A/N: A very quick little prologue. I don't really know how long this will be or anything, or how many years I'll follow through with, but I think it'll be fun to throw Harry and Snape into each other's shoes, introducing them to the other's life and emotions and having to deal with the situations as they come...

Feel free to review with your opinion! It's not hard!