Disclaimer: The following is disclaimed.
I said a quick goodbye to my parents that fourth year, hugging Mum and Dad perfunctorily, only wanting to find my fellow Marauders. I hastily lugged my trunk onto the Hogwarts express and began dragging it down the train, searching for the compartment that Remus, being forever early, was sure to have reserved for us. I had found a new book on becoming Animagi, and had wanted to show Sirius all summer, hoping that this might be the year we could finally figure it out. I certainly wasn't prepared for the… distraction that awaited me in the twelfth compartment down, but in retrospect, it's always those little moments when you have your guard down that really surprise you.
So I happily and obliviously traversed my way down, looking in each compartment for the Marauders, when I reached number twelve, heard a very musical sound, and abruptly came to a stop. And stared in the slightly open door like it showed me the way to defeating Voldemort. What was it, you might ask? Was it a very large troll, or a dragon or a sphinx? No, it was something even more deadly. It was a girl.
In actuality, it was the group of Gryffindor girls in my year: Marlene McKinnon, Alice Fawcett, Dorcas Meadowes, Lily Evans, and Emmeline Vance. They had always seemed to be a close-knit group, although they did have their fights occasionally; they were currently laughing over some spell that Fawcett had found that could make a person's hair turn into a certain type of vegetable, depending on the hair's color and style. But this conversation didn't really interest me. I had heard a laugh- a lilting, musical laugh that had attracted me to the compartment in the first place, and what I saw when I looked in was enough to keep me frozen to the spot. It was Lily Evans, but not Lily Evans as I remembered her from third year, a shy, hesitant girl with bright green eyes too big for her head, short, dark red hair and freckles that made Sirius, who didn't remember any girl's name ever, call her Little Orphan Annie. This new Lily Evans had grown into her body some, and was now long-legged and willowy, had long hair in natural, loose curls, and her eyes, while still big, no longer made her look uncannily like a house-elf. And she had a fascinating laugh. I had never heard her laugh before, and as I stood just outside of the compartment and stared at her, I felt a strong tingling sensation down my spine and the urge to touch her.
"Ugh, I don't know if that's a good idea, then you'd have to hug people like Rosier and Wilkes, and Snape. That's pretty gross," Dorcas Meadowes was saying. Lily cleared her throat as if to say something. "Oh, sorry, Lily." Meadows continued, "I always forget you're friends with him, although I don't really understand how-"
Fawcett, perhaps sensing the need for a change in subject, started to say something, but Emmeline Vance, who was notably taciturn and whom I had never heard speak before, interrupted quietly, "Why's Potter looking in here?" Five heads turned my way, and yet I was still frozen, caught by Lily's bright green stare. We stared at each other for five full seconds, and Lily, perhaps trying to diffuse the awkwardness of my staring or perhaps just out of the kindness I found out later that she possessed in spades, said, "Hello, Potter." I promptly turned a crimson red, and became even more tongue-tied than a second earlier. McKinnon, who had always been the blunt, studious one, asked me flatly, "What do you want, Potter?" With a heroic effort, I found my voice.
"I-I just w-wanted to s-s-see if S-sirius w-was in h-here." I forced out, stupidly really, because there was no reason on Earth that Sirius would be in there, and then, tearing my eyes away from Lily (and certain of an accompanying audible ripping noise), fled down the hall to find my compartment.
Remus was there as I had suspected, quietly staring out the window. He looked pale and haggard, and a brief thought of that new Animagi book I had flashed through my mind as I realized that we were just a day or two past the full moon. However, I was in no mood to try and solve the animagus problem; I collapsed on the nearest seat and contemplated the fiasco I had just left. Why had I not been able to tear myself away from looking at Evans? Why had I started trembling when I heard her laugh? Why had I stuttered, something my extremely confident fourth-year self had never, ever done before? Why, in the name of everything holy, had I wanted to kiss her? That was what scared me the most. I had kissed girls before, of course. I could vaguely recall dares in first and second year, and third year after I scored eight goals in the match against Slytherin, a fifth year Gryffindor had walked up and given me my first snog. All these experiences I had remembered to be, well… pleasurable, but I had never really wanted to kiss someone before. The thought was terrifying and… my thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of two people.
"Sirius!" I exclaimed, jumping up to greet him. Sirius had been my blood brother and partner in crime ever since our first Transfiguration class, when McGonagall sat us next to each other and we ended up saying random words at our needles until they turned into bats and went clawing at a majority of the class. Peter, the boy who had tagged along with us for the first year until we had finally realized he was there to stay and gotten used to his presence, was behind him and shaking slightly.
Sirius shook his head. "He was getting attacked by Snape, mate." I cast a sympathetic glance at Peter. Despite tagging along with three boys who were extremely interested in dueling for three years, he had never gotten the skills to duel- or the courage, for that matter. Peter, meanwhile, was extolling Sirius's dueling skills.
"Wow, really, you just swished, and then Snape was blown backwards, you were amazing Sirius, and when he fell he just had that stupid look on his face-" and Peter let out a shrill snigger.
"Easy, Pete, it's over," Sirius casually dismissed him and Peter quieted at once. "Well, lads," Sirius continued, "Any new business? Prank ideas? Ways to make those smarmy, slimy gits wish they had never been born?" I noted the newly bitter tone of voice.
"Sirius!" Remus hissed at once. "We have to wait for the next meeting of the Marauders- we could easily be overheard-" Remus was always the one with the conscience, aware of the risk the staff was letting him take in coming to the school with his furry little problem and fearful of being caught betraying their trust. He suddenly broke off his rant. "What happened to you? Sweet Merlin! Did Snape give you that?" I took a good look at Sirius and did a double take- he was bruised, his face was cut rather badly, and his eye was nearly swollen shut. To put it mildly, he looked bad.
"No, I petrified them before they could hit me today," he explained. His face took on one of the grimmest looks I had ever seen on Sirius, the mate who could brush off everything- anger, hate, desperation, and sadness. "I got into a small disagreement with my parents over the holidays," he finished dully. Poor Sirius had grown up the oddball in his dark arts family. While his family expected him to be learning the dark arts training this year in Slytherin, preparing to espouse the same ideals of prejudiced pureblooded wankers that they did, Sirius would be in Gryffindor becoming an animagus to befriend a werewolf, taking a muggle studies O.W.L., and generally rejected everything the rest of his family represented. The reason he loved my parents and family so much is because they were the opposite of everything he'd grown up with, and treated him more like a son than his own family did. Sirius's obsessive, dark arts parents and their treatment of him were well known to us, and I felt most disturbed by the way they had treated Sirius. It was a wonder to me how he could have come from the same family, and yet I could sometimes see the hardness, the anger in his eyes. He didn't have any easy time of it, that's for sure, and no one could blame him if he was a little more cruel or rebellious than some. It was his way of dealing independently with his home and childhood.
"Sirius, I-" I began. He silenced me with a look. "There's nothing you can do, James," he said it with finality. I was silenced, but gave him a look that said I wasn't going to give up the subject. He changed the subject quickly, asking, "Marauder's meeting tonight?" We agreed, began to discuss the chances of England in next year's world cup, ("Shocking performance, dropping to Luxembourg in the semifinals like that"), and sped on towards our fourth year at Hogwarts.
I'd like to say I knew I was in love with Lily Evans that day, that I was sure and confident of our future together at that moment. But come on, I was fourteen years old. It took two weeks of sending quick glances at her in meals, staring at her in class, and spending nearly every other waking moment and then some wondering how a girl could change so much over a summer, and why I was so interested in her to realize I fancied her, and then another month to admit it to my mates, fearing the fact that when the subject of Lily Evans came up, I turned a color roughly the same shade as the Gryffindor banner.
Of course, I was absorbed with the other Marauder's troubles— Peter was getting bullied worse than ever by Snape and company, Sirius, freshly angered by his parent's prejudices and Peter's troubles, was getting into daily or hourly duels with them, and dragging me into it too when I got angry, and Remus's- Remus's problems, to which the book I had found was helping, but not quite enough for us to successfully transform. So I'm ashamed to admit that that feeling which had turned me into a speechless, stuttering idiot for the first time in my overconfident life as a quidditch genius took three more years to be identified as love- a love so powerful it would alter my future forever.
