Disclaimer: Dude, if I owned Harry Potter, then where would J.K. Rowling be?

Anyway I know that it's been a while since I put up a story, or a chapter, and I'm getting to it now! Onward march!

A First Year

Chapter 1: Vampires are real?

A small girl with shoulder length brown hair, green eyes and quite a bit of freckles sat by herself in one of the many compartments on the Hogwarts Express. She was fiddling with the hem on the new black robes she had put on, perhaps a little too early as the train had only just left. She couldn't help it, she was so excited. She sighed, watching the fields tumble past the window; a knock on the door startled her.

"Come in," she said, rather nervously as she knew very little people going to Hogwarts. Her sister was a fourth year and did not want her hanging around with her friends.

The door opened and a girl with flaming red hair and rather light skin came in pulling her trunk.

"May I sit with you, I don't want to intrude but almost everywhere else is filling up quickly."

"Sure, my name is Michelle Tarins," she stood to shake the other girl's hand and to help her put her trunk on the rack overhead.

"I'm Lily Evans, its nice to meet you." She sat across from Michelle, looking much more nervous than her companion. "Should I have put on my robes? I knew I did something wrong. Should I get them out?" Lily said hurriedly.

"Hang on," Michelle stopped her from jumping to get her robes from her trunk. "I put mine on early, I was just excited," she laughed a little and sat down next to her new friend. "Don't be so nervous, do you have a brother or a sister at Hogwarts?"

But before she could answer, there was a soft knock on the compartment door. This time there was a small boy behind it, looking drawn, if not ill.

"Hello, do you think I could sit with you? I can't find any empty ones. But if you don't-"

"Of course you can come in. I'm Michelle Tarins, and this is Lily Evans, are you a first year too?" Michelle introduced them and helped with his trunk also, noticing that he seemed to have a hard time lifting it.

The boy looked surprised, almost as if he wasn't expecting people to be kind to him. He pushed his sandy colored bangs out of his eyes and muttered, "Thank you, um… I'm Remus Lupin." He retreated to the far corner of the compartment and pulled out a book to read. Lily and Michelle looked at Remus curiously, but silently agreed that it would be rode to ignore his shyness and ask too many questions.

"So… are your parents magic?" Lily asked, her own shyness returning.

"Yes, I don't really know what I'd call myself though. My mum's a muggleborn and my dad is half and half, so does that make me three quarters or something?" She pulled a deck of cards out of her robe pocket but decided that maybe Exploding Snap was a bit too rambunctious for these two. "You're a muggleborn, right?"

"Yeah, my parents were so happy when I got my letter. They think that it's great to have a witch in the family, but my sister, Petunia, thinks that I'm the freak of the world," Lily said sadly.

"That's alright, maybe she'll think you're cooler when you get back during vacation. How about you, Remus?"

"Huh? Oh, well… my mum is a muggleborn too, but my dad is a pureblood." Remus said barely taking his hazel eyes off of his book.

There was a rather tense silence where Lily shuffled her feet on the floor, Michelle shuffled her cards and Remus turned a page in his book sniffing a little. Upon further examination, Michelle noted that he sort of appeared to be getting over a bad bout of the flu. Or insomnia, there were dark circles under his eyes. Michelle remembered a few nights last summer where it had been so hot that she hadn't been able to sleep, and if that be the case she wished him luck that sleep reached him soon. After a few more awkward minutes, Michelle decided to liven things up.

"Hey, Lily. Do you know what an Animagus is?"

"An Animagus, no what's that?"

"It's a person who can turn into an animal! It's really cool. There are a few in my family, we were all born them, though I heard that you can become one too."

"Really?!" Lily gasped enthusiastically. Remus' hands tightened on his book as he peeked over the top of it.

"Yeah, I'm an Animagus too! Wanna see?" She was smiling and simply bursting to see that her friend was feeling less shy.

"What animal can you turn into? Don't say a bat though, please don't say a bat. I don't like bats. They're creepy." Lily shuddered.

"Only vampires can turn into bats. Though I guess you could be a bat and an Animagus…" Lily paled.

"V-Vampires are real? But I thought that they were just myths? What about those other magical animals, are they all real too?"

"Yeah, er… most of them. Vampires, ghosts, hippogriffs, werewolves, dragons, unicorns and some others that aren't so nice, like dementors. Muggles don't know that they're real, the Ministry sees to that. But I wouldn't really worry, I mean, vampires and werewolves are still people, ghosts are people, they're just dead, and the others are animals, just like cats and dogs. There's nothing-" But Michelle broke off as someone knocked on the door.

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Oohh I wonder who's at the door now? Sirius? James? Pettigrew? Or perhaps it's someone else? BwaHAHAHA Cliffy!

Momiji's