Disclaimer: bored voice I don't own any of the characters in this story... I'm only using them to work with my plotline... They all belong to J.K. Rowling... yadda yadda yadda...

Summary: Breaking the Rules, Passing the Tests... normal things in the life of James Potter... but what happens when the rules change and the tests could break your friendship?

Chapter One:

It had been a long summer in James' mind. He was bored stiff at home and couldn't wait to get back to school. To make it worse, Peter hadn't replied to any of his letters, Remus had gotten sick after the full moon and couldn't reply and Sirius seemed unusually evasive in his letters.

But finally, September 1st was once again upon them.

Rushing around all morning and getting his last minute things packed, James was surprised he actually made it onto the train on time.

Putting his trunk in the 'marauders compartment' as they had dubbed it so long ago, he set about finding his friends. He needn't have looked far though as Sirius came charging through the barrier, surprisingly, closely followed by Lily Evans. They both seemed happy about something but James just put it to coming back to school.

As Lily rushed off to meet some of her friends or in James' opinion squeal aimlessly, Sirius and James gave each other a quick man-hug and grinned. Rushing off to their compartment Sirius seemed to double back and when he re-emerged he was looking slightly nervous. This was enough to set off alarm bells in James' head; Sirius was never nervous about anything! I mean, this was the guy who was running around the common room in his boxers eating nothing but excessive amounts of chocolate frogs the night before the O.W.L examinations!

"Sirius" began James slowly, "What's up?"

"Er… nothing really…well... actually… just wondering… can Lily sit with us today? I know you guys don't get along but it would really mean a lot to me if my s… I mean it would really mean a lot to me if she sat here today…" he finished hopefully.

"Yea, sure Siri but I can't guarantee I'll be nice to her is she's being a cow again." Replied James slowly, not quite believing his ears; since when did Sirius or any of the marauders (except Remus) call her anything but Evans?

"Yes! Promise you won't regret this!" he yelled grinning before sprinting off to call her. As loud shouts of 'LILY! OY! LILY! GET OVER HERE!' resounded in the train station, a very confused James sat back and waited for the rest of his friends. Not too long after, he heard loud voices approaching the compartment with lots of laughs. Barging through the door, more of those chocolate frogs in hand were not only Sirius and Lily but Peter and Remus too.

"Hey guys! How was your summer?" grinned James quickly encompassing his remaining friends in a hug.

A small cough sounded behind him and James turned around to a smiling Lily Evans.

"Potter. Nice to see you again." She said, shocking all four boys in the compartment.

Warily eyeing the girl, James deemed it safe to shake her hand but only replied with a short 'Evans' while his mind was thinking otherwise;

'Wow, she's grown over the summer. Filled out too… not too shabby Evans…"

Sitting down opposite her awkwardly, James only had one though in his head, not realising that the exact same thought was going through Sirius' head;

'This is going to be one long journey…'

A/N: Yay! I got around to doing some more writing finally… college has really been taking up heaps of my time lately… Yay for the holidays!

Anyway, this is just a story that popped into my head while drying out the clothes and I decided to write it. Once again, I still haven't forgotten about any of my other fics, just haven't had the inspirations to write them…

Please review and tell me whether you liked it…

I know it may seem a bit like any other normal seventh year fic for them but trust me its not… this is only the prologue…