disclaimer: I don't own anything. Well, they do say that all is fair in love and war, and I'm totally in love with these characters, so can't I say I own them? I'll look it up some time, but for now: I DO NOT OWN ! Everything belongs to our lovely mastermind JKR


A/N: this is my first real story (not one-shot) I hope I'll find the courage to continue. But I really hope you like it first!


Chapter one: Proposition

James POV:

"Soooo" Sirius Black began in a nagging voice.

"What 'soooo' "responded Alice Chalmers.

It was a beautiful day, and after finishing their last exam, all of the sixth year Gryffindors were sitting by the lake together. Lily Evans and Marlene McKinnon, both wearing a short skirt and a tank top, were lying down in the shadow of the big tree, Lily using Marlene's stomach as a pillow, both oblivious to the number of boys who were ogling them. Trust me, there were quite a lot, I gave up glaring at all of them about half an hour ago. A few foot away sat Mary McDonald, who was humming quietly to herself while braiding her long curly blonde hair. Then there was Remus Lupin, who was trying to read a book but obviously kept getting distracted by Peter Pettigrew, who kept on squealing during my –that's James Potter – stories. Hey, I can't help it that my life is so damn interesting! Hm, maybe this is what Lily means when she says I'm arrogant… Anyway, I think I'd better stop, Remus looks as if he's just a few more squeals away from hitting Peter (or me, you never know, it would work either way) on the head with his book. Alice had been sleeping until just a few seconds ago, when Sirius woke her. No more reasons to say that right now, Alice was absolutely pissed off.

"Oh come on guys!" continued Sirius "The exams are over, the holidays are about to start…"

"And…?" Mary broke in, absolutely not getting his point.

"Well, aren't we going to plan something to do these holidays? We wouldn't want to miss each other for a whole two months, would we?" Sirius looked at all of us with huge puppy-eyes. Sirius can make like, the best puppy-eyes ever. Well, he is kind of a dog; eats like a dog, snorts like a dog, plays like a dog… And, he is a dog, but not everybody knows that yet.

I nod. I already knew what Sirius meant, but I really didn't know how the others would react to this proposition. And by others, I mostly mean Lily Evans. I secretly threw a look at her. We started becoming friends earlier this year, when Padfoot had gotten tired of our constant bickering and nearly forced us to behave civil to each other. I had to make the promise not to ask her out ever again, and in exchange, she agreed to avoid yelling at me for about everything I did. Lily had became friends with Sirius in third year, I don't know exactly how and Sirius won't tell me either. He just says it was really embarrassing. Then in fifth year, when both Remus and she became prefects, she befriended him as well. Which left… me.

"James?" Lily's voice snapped me back to reality. Damn, what were they talking about?

"Huh, what?" Smooth James, really smooth...

"Sirius said you both had planned a way to spend our summers together." She explained.

"Oh, right" I glared at Sirius. HE was supposed to do the explaining!

"And the plan is?" Lily asked patiently, as if talking to a four year old.

"Well, we kind of… er… thought us maybe… we could…er…?" I threw everything out at once, feeling my head turn a vibrant red, almost the same colour of her hair. Damn if I had just prepared myself for this. I'm a pretty good talker, usually, but Lily has a habit of catching me off guard.

"What my dear Prongsie-boy is trying to explain here, fair maidens, is that we could go on surprise holidays with each other!" Sirius cheered, his face stretching in a huge maniac-like grin.

"Surprise holidays?" Marlene asked quite suspicious.

"Well yes! Wouldn't that be great?" Sirius kept hopping up and down on his seat.

"Remus, would you please explain what they're talking about?" Mary sighed in exasperation, turning to Remus, who was the most rational of… well, basically, of all of us, hoping he could come up with a clarification of our gibberish.

Remus put down his book "I believe they propose to spend our holidays all together. By 'surprise holidays', they mean that one of the two months of the holidays, we get to choose what we're all going to do; and the other month, you, girls can plan our vacation." I beamed, that's exactly what we were trying to explain. Hip, hip hooray, for Moony!

"Er…" Alice shifted her weight uncomfortably "It sounds like a really good idea, but I already have plans for this summer"

"Oh, well, er…" I answered, disappointed. If Alice didn't go, it only doubled the chances that the other girls wouldn't go either.

"But you guys can still go!" came Alice's retard after seeing my clearly disappointed face "I…er… just have plans…"

"And do these plans by any chance –hey, that rhymed, I'm good – involve a certain handsome Frank Lubbermans?" Marlene asked taunting. Frank was a seventh year Gryffindor last year, who was in auror training now. Alice and he had started to date two years ago, when he was in sixth and she was in fourth year.

"OY!" Sirius cried out, "I'm handsomer, aren't I?" And they say I'm bigheaded…

Marlene threw him an annoyed glare. He receives quite a lot of them from her lately, but frankly, I think he deserves them.

"PRONGSIE! Tell her that I'm handsomer; I'm mister Handsome! And I'm way sexier than he is too! I'm mister Sexy Handsomeness! "Sirius rambled on.

I shrugged. "Sorry mate, never argue with that one." I threw a semi-scared look at Marlene, who smiled back sweetly. "But anyway, weren't we trying to get more information on the handsome ("but obvioulsy not quite as handsome and sexy as the great Sirius Black" Sirius interrupted, for which he received even more foul looks) Frank Longbottom?"

Alice grew a vibrant red. "We're going to do a 'meet the parents' holiday" she stuttered.

"OOww," Lily and Marlene cooed. "That's adorable!"

If possible, Alice's face became even redder.

"He must really like you, Alice" Remus poined out.

"Or not," Peter squealed, "I heard his mother is terrible! Maybe he wants her to scare you away?"

Everyone glared at Peter simultaneously. "It was a joke!"he whined. "I didn't mean it!"

I saw Padfoot roll his eyes at him. Really, when Padfoot knows a comment is not wanted, it really is not wanted. Usually, Pads is the first person to make a rude or inappropriate comment, but he has this kind of sensitive side, that he prefers not to show anyone; either way, he knows when an inappropriate comment is 'appreciated' (or must I say tolerated ) and when NOT.

Alice still had this kind of insecure look on her face, so Wormtail, determined to fix his mistake, quickly changed the subject. "Anyway, I can't come with you guys either. For the holidays I mean. My father is ill and I have to help my mother run the shop…"

"So it's just going to be Lily, Mary, Marlene, Moony, Padfoot and I." I listed, "If you still want to go through with it, that is…" I threw a nervous look at Lily. There was no chance in heaven she would willingly spend her whole summer with me. So what if we didn't fight so often anymore, she still hated me with passion. Again, there is no way in heaven that she would willingly sp…

"Ok, sounds fine by me" Lily interrupted my thoughts. What, wait, did she just say YES?

"I'm in too" Marlene…

"Me too"Mary…

"Yeah, I told you guys I would be in." Moony…

"Thing thing, we have a winning idea!" Sirius hollered quite enthusiastically. "YES!" They all said yes? We're all going to spend our summer together? I would spend a whole summer with Lily?

"Yipee!" I shouted, before joining Sirius in his little tap dance show.

"You found my idea good! Yeey! I love you! Lilypads! Marlybee! Marykins!" Sirius smothered the girls in a bone-crushing hug.

I cleared my throat noisily. "Pads…"

"Oh right," Sirius realized his mistake and released the girls again to stand in the exact same position he had been in before he started strangling them.

"You found OUR idea good! Yeey! I love you! Lilypads! Marlybee! Marykins!" and there was the smothering again.

Marlene threw me a rather annoyed look, as if to say 'And just because you wanted more credit, you would let him suffocate us all over again?" I smirked at her. Glaring at me once more, she finally started screaming at Sirius "And what did I tell you about the nicknames? I don't want to be called Marlybee, Sirii! It's not because you enjoy having ridiculous nicknames such as 'Pads' that I want to be named after a stupid animal you know well enough I'm scared off!"

Sirius backed away slowly as Marlene started chasing after him. Breaking into a backwards run, he stumbled over a tree root and plunged but first into the water of the lake. Lily and Marlene were laughing from the side.

Moony threw me a devious look. Grasping his idea, I slowly walked towards the laughing girls. 'One, two, three' he mouthed 'And…' suddenly, we were pushed into the water ourselves. Looking upwards, we saw that Mary and Alice had joined the other girls and pushed us in. Those little demons! From the corner of my eye, I saw Wormtail make a quick escape from the scene. That boy had always had a hunch for dangerous situations. His ability to disappear quickly had actually proven to be quite useful sometimes. Of course I couldn't let him escape this time…

"OI! Wormy is leaving, he's getting away!" I shouted. The girls now focused their attention to Peter, who made a futile attempt to run. That shift of their attention (away from us) was all Pads, Moony and I needed to quietly desert the water, sneak up behind the girls back and… SPLASH, ha! Now the girls were in the water themselves. Pads and Moony looked at me, "Cannonball!"We shouted in unison. SPLASH! And now everyone was in the lake. We horsed around for a while, and then we abandoned the lake to dry in the late-evening sun.

"Soooo" And Sirius' nagging was back.

"What 'sooo'?" Marlene's time to answer now. Alice was actually looking rather annoyed again, most likely due to the reminder of her waking up from her after-exam beauty sleep.

"Well, are we doing it or not?"

"Are we doing what?" Mary asked, sounding confused.

I rolled my eyes, did they still didn't know what he was talking about? He wouldn't shut up about it for five minutes for Merlin's sake!

"My…er…Our plan of course!" Sirius replied while glaring at me for, I assume 'my passivity' in all of this.

I sighed "The whole thing about the summer holidays, remember? That plan we've been talking about all afternoon?" I decided to clear it out, before someone got mad, or crazy, both.

"Well, I think it's a good idea," Lily voiced her opinion. I threw her a thankful look. At least somebody was willing to help me out of my misery. "Who's going to start?" she continued, clarifying herself when everyone was looking rather confused at her comment, "I mean, who gets to choose the type of vacation first?"

"Well of course we get that honor, fair maiden, it did was our idea…" Sirius said smugly.

"OK," Mary broke in before either Lily our Marlene could start the discussion. "You three get to choose what we're doing on the first month of the summer holidays, and we get to choose on the second."

"Of course," Remus interrupted, "Our moth starts one week after the official start of the holidays, and your moth ends one week before the start of the new school year. That way we can see our family's for a brief period of time, and have time to buy our school supplies in diagon alley for next year. Everybody OK with this?" We all nodded.

"What are you going to do?" Lily asked curiously.

"We're not telling!" I said, pretending to be scandalized by only the thought of telling anyone our fantastic ideas. Truth is; we have no ideas yet… But hey, they don't know that; they probably think we've got a hundreds of genius plans for our vacation moth.

"I wasn't asking for specifics!" she huffed, "I only wanted to know if you guys tend more to a wizardly holiday or not. We need to know that, since we are by no means doing the same!"

"Er…" we hadn't thought of that yet. I sneaked a look in the direction of Padfoot, who was looking at Moony. So, I sneaked another look, now in the direction of Moony. 'Wizard?" he mouthed. I shrugged, I guess it makes sense. Both Pads and I were purebloods, and Moony was a half blood. Neither of actually lived the muggle way. The girls on the other hand, were pureblood (Marlene), halfblood (Mary) and muggleborn (Lily). So I guess they would know just a tad more about normal muggle life.

"We're doing a wizardly holiday." I stated after a long pause, hoping they wouldn't notice we'd only just decided this.

The girls merely nodded in response.

"OK, do we have a deal?" Padfoot asked in a mysterious tone, as if we were some secret order who just made up their most important rule or something like that.

"We have a deal"


A/N: review please?