Harry opened his eyes feeling disoriented on the day of his birthday. He could have sworn he had been somewhere else a moment ago, but now he was in some bed he didn't recognize. It definitely wasn't his cupboard, or the floor of that lighthouse in the middle of the water. So that left the question of where Harry was.

The room he was in was very clean, it wasn't clean in a disinfectant way, but in a tidy, organized sort of way. That was strange with the fact that Harry had always been a bit of a slob, and the fact that the room was clean, meant it wasn't his. Of course he could have told you that anyway, since he didn't recognize the room after all.

There were no decorations in the room. The walls were painted a very bland beige color, and the sheets of the bed he was in were a very inoffensive of-white color. There was another bed across the room Harry saw now, and it had someone in it still. All Harry could see was a bit of silky dark brown hair, which wasn't quite black.

Harry sat up curiously, looking around the room in earnest now. There was a third bed under the window on one side of the room, and this one also had a boy in it, but he was awake and looking around like Harry himself. This boy's hair was truly black, and looked shiny, like it was full of grease, or still damp out of a shower, and his hair was very long for a boy.

"Who are you?" The boy asked curiously looking at Harry.

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry replied calmly, "Who are you?"

"I'm Severus Snape," He told him sounding resentful at the sound of his last name. Harry was confused about it, but didn't say anything. He probably didn't want to talk about it.

"Do you know who the other boy is?" Harry inquired gesturing towards the third boy, who was sleeping in his bed. At least the other two boys assumed he was sleeping, because it looked like he was breathing evenly, like you would when you're asleep.

"My name is Tom Riddle," The boy said turning over. Turns out he hadn't been asleep, "It's my father's name, but I think he's dead. He never came to get me."

"Oh, both my parents are dead. They died in a car crash," Harry told the boy calmly.

"I wish my dad was dead," Severus muttered under his breath. Tom and Harry looked at him curiously, but Severus didn't say anything else.

"Do you know where we are?" Harry asked looking to Tom to change the subject from their parents.

"We're in my orphanage," Tom told them calmly as he got out of his bed, "I didn't have a roommate before, because they're all scared of me. I'm special you see. I can make things happen."

"Make things happen? You're a wizard aren't you?" Severus asked eagerly leaning forward so far Harry was afraid the long-haired boy was going to fall off.

"I don't know. I can make people do things, and I can make them hurt, and I can make things move," Tom told him shrugging his shoulders. He walked across the room to the wardrobe that was shoved between the door and Harry's bed.

"You are a wizard! Can you do things Harry?" Severus asked eagerly looking to the messy-haired boy.

"I guess. I was once running from my cousin, Dudley, and I jumped to hide behind the dumpster, but I ended up on the school roof," Harry told them with a shrug, "But it was just a stiff wind. I'm very light."

"No, that was apparition! That takes a lot of power! I bet you're a really powerful wizard. But Tom has all kinds of control, he must be really powerful too. I'm not, I know that," Severus sounded so excited at the beginning but he deflated by the end and sounded so dejected when he told them he wasn't a powerful wizard.

"You'll be fine, I'm sure. But how do you know about wizards?" Harry asked Severus gently. Harry would have never thought it was magic, and he wasn't sure he believed this new boy, but if Tom did strange things too there must be some kind of truth to it.

"My mom was a pureblood, and my dad was a muggle. My dad hated magic, he wouldn't stand for it in his house," Severus said sounding highly ashamed of his father.

"Oh, I guess that makes sense then. My parents died when I was a year old, they might have been a wizards," Harry theorized calmly, he didn't want to tell them that he was punished every time something strange happened in the Dursley household.

"A woman who can do magic is called a witch," Severus informed them calmly.

"They couldn't have been," Tom said suddenly from behind his wardrobe door.

"Why not?" Harry asked with a very confused look on his face.

"Because if they had been magical they wouldn't have died. That's why my mother couldn't have been a witch," Tom told then sounding very calm, but Harry could see his hand shaking on the doorknob.

"Witches and wizards die just like anyone else. I went to my grandmother's funeral, and everyone said she was a really good witch. I bet at least one of Harry's parents, and at least one of your parents, Tom , were a witch or a wizard. Or you guys are so strong it could have been both of your parents. I bet there's a way to find out your heritage with magic. We could go to Diagon Alley, I think I could find it," Severus offered sounding a little nervous.

"What's Diagon Alley?" Harry asked curiously. As a child he had been forbidden to ask questions so he was asking all the questions he could now.

"It's the shopping center of Great Britain. There are smaller towns and things with high magical population who have a shopping area, but most everything is in Diagon Alley,' Severus explained. Then he looked around briefly, and Harry knew why, both of them were in pajamas, but there were none of their clothes in sight. Harry was looking for the grossly oversized clothing that required belts and rolled sleeves to even be usable, and Severus was looking for his rather flowery t-shirts (which had once been his mother's) and thoroughly worn-out jeans. But neither set of horrible clothing was in sight.

"You two don't have any clothes do you?" Tom asked sounding exasperated as he stepped away from the wardrobe in a slightly worn collared shirt and well-pressed slacks.

"Well no, but I don't really want to wear my clothes anyway," Harry said sheepishly, "They're way too big for me; they were my cousin's."

"Mine aren't any good either, all my shirts used to be my mother's, and all my pants are far too worn to be worth much," Severus said looking at the floor.

"I'll give you some of mine for now, but they'll be to big on Harry, and too small on you Severus," Tom said pulling two more worn shirts, and pressed slacks from his wardrobe and tossing them to the two other boys.

"I'm used to things being too big," Harry said sheepishly as he changed his clothes.

"My clothes usually run a little small, the clothes my mum gives me are from when she was my age," Severus said following suit in putting Tom's clothes on.

"How do we get to Diagon Alley?' Harry asked rolling up the bottoms of his pants a little. They were just long enough to get in the way.

"Oh, well I'm not sure. I guess the Underground would work best," Severus said a little unsure, "Do you know how to ride the Underground?"

"Of course, I've lived with my mother's sister and her family my whole life. They live in Surrey," Harry told him, "Why do you ask?"

"I don't have any idea how to ride it," Severus admitted looking ashamed.

"We'll have to sneak out," Tom told them suddenly. Severus and Harry looked at the wavy-haired boy.

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Severus asked exasperated.

"Oh, that's not so bad," Harry said on top of Severus' statement. Severus looked at Harry incredulously.

"How do you propose to sneak out?" Severus asked in a rather sarcastic drawl that instantly pissed Harry off for no reason he could tell.

"Well there aren't any bars on the window, and it's right up against a really sturdy looking branch, and it looks like there's an equally sturdy branch going over that wall over there," Harry told them as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, he included a small glare for the greasy-haired boy.

"Well, I wouldn't have thought of that," Tom said looking very thoughtful, "Normally I go out to the kitchen garden and go through the gap in the wall, but there's a much bigger chance of us getting noticed before we can get away."

"So you're smart?" Severus asked Harry looking rather appraisingly at the smaller boy.

"I guess. I mean my grades don't indicate that I am, because I got in trouble if I did better than my fat pig of a cousin," Harry said with a shrug.

"What grades did you get then?" Tom asked sounding vaguely curious.

"The worst in the entire school," Harry said with a smile, "it was really hard to be worse than Dudley. I had to purposely get every question on every test wrong for years."

"Really? What would have happened had you gotten one right?" Severus asked tugging sleeve down; it still showed his wrist.

"I probably would have done better than Dudley. I had to study to make sure I knew all the answers so I could get them all wrong. Dudley only got one right when he guessed and got lucky,' Harry told them with a shake of his head, "Well let's get going. We have to get to Diagon Alley. Where is it exactly?"

"It's through the Leaky Cauldron on Charing Cross road," Severus told the other two boys as Harry worked at prying open the window. In same age long past the window had been painted shut, but most of the paint had been picked away by the various occupants of this room whenever they happened to get bored of staring at plain walls. It took the three boys all of fifteen minutes to pry the window all the way open.

They didn't have a real problem until after Severus (who came out of the room third) was halfway across the branch heading towards the trunk of the tree. Severus' foot slipped on the branch and he only barely kept himself from falling off the tree, but when he was saving himself he happened to look down. It turns out that Severus is deathly afraid of heights.

It took almost two hours to get Severus across the tree, over the wall, and down onto the street outside. It also took Harry almost slipping four times, and Tom twelve. Severus continued to cling to the tree all the way across, and the other two boys had a lot of trouble getting him to loosen his grip enough to actually move at all.

Once they were on the ground again Severus sat huddled against the wall shaking for a few minutes before he was composed enough to start moving again. Harry kept a hold on Severus' arm so that Harry would be able to catch the other boy if his knees gave way. Tom took charge in leading them to the nearest Underground, because Harry not only was occupied with Severus, but he didn't know the way anyways

The walk through one of the less impressive areas of London was long, and not all that interesting. Before too long Severus had recovered enough from his fright on the tree to walk without Harry's support, but Harry watched him carefully, just in case. Tom continued to lead, and none of the boys spoke so much as a word. The silence wasn't the comfortable kind that often develops between people who know each other well, but nor was it the awkward kind that usually reared its head during introductions. This silence was a sort of middle ground, none of the boys felt overly comfortable (they didn't know each other well), but they were comfortable enough that they felt no need to fill their silence with chatter (not that any of them were prone to chatter anyway).

~*~

I think a time-travel fic is a necessary addition to any fan fiction writer's repertoire, even though I hadn't really been thinking about writing one, but I kept thinking about a phrase Harry uses in his thoughts near the end of Deathly Hallows. That phrase being "The Lost Boys." I then ended up wondering what would have happened had they all had the same situations as cannon, but due to some weird instances they all end up at Hogwarts as first years together. This story is the result.

As I started it I wasn't sure exactly where I wanted to go with this story. But I decided after writing roughly 2,000 words in what general direction the story was heading. I've planned one relationship, but I won't do anything with it for a very long time. I wonder if anyone will be able to guess what the relationship is.

I'm also going to put one of my character Emma's incarnations in this story, and anyone who can figure out who it is gets major brownie points from me. I may even give you one of my virtual "Join the Club…We've got T-shirts" t-shirts. So yeah, watch for her.

There are a lot of original characters, and I think I'm writing the cannon characters a little OOC, especially Tom, but I try to make Tom a little introverted and self-serving, because he's a Slytherin, no matter what I'm doing with the other characters Tom Riddle Jr. has to be a Slytherin. Severus has ended up being hyperactive, or something, not sure where I pulled that card from, and Harry's a little too take charge for where he was at his eleven-year-old state, but I'm working on it.

~*~Elizabeth~*~