James Potter and Sirius Black are both 19 and have left Hogwarts 2 years ago. They are living together in a flat they are renting (Sirius imperiused the landlord so they don't actually pay). James is single, and has been trying to get a girlfriend since he left Hogwarts. He has tried and failed in many relationships. James was working in the Auror office. Sirius was working in Flourish and Blotts. As they didn't pay rent they spent about 1/8 of their income on food, and the rest of it on chocolate frogs, and Quidditch supplies. Once they had enough money they were thinking of buying a shop in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade. They were going to sell anything they could, maybe a bit like a non-dark version of Borgin and Burke's. James was also deeply in love with Lily Evans. Unfortunately it became obvious that Lily was not interested in him. He was certain that Lily had forgiven Severus Snape for calling her a 'Mudblood' and was probably already married to him. Little did he know a few days before this story begins Lily and Severus had had a big argument. She said that Severus had been spending too much time at the Leaky Cauldron at night. At least that's what she'd thought he'd been doing. He had accidently pulled his left sleeve up during the argument to scratch his arm – that's when Lily glimpsed it. At first she just saw a dark shape. Then she grabbed hold of his arm and pulled his sleeve down further. What she saw almost made her faint. It was a tattoo of a snake entwined around a skull – the dark mark. She was furious! She said that he hadn't been going to the Leaky Cauldron at all; he had been rampaging through villages killing helpless muggles. She then said that if he enjoyed killing muggles so much, why didn't he just kill her. She had spread her arms out as if she would suddenly lift off and start to fly. Snape said no. Lily had hurriedly packed all of her things into a bag and stormed out. But as I said – James didn't know about all of this and was desperately trying to pull himself together. He missed Hogwarts. He missed seeing Lily's face every day. He missed his friends. He even missed Snape – but only because he had no one to humiliate anymore. Sirius didn't mind not having a girlfriend, in fact for some time James thought he was gay, but he noticed that Sirius wasn't interested in boys either. To be quite honest the most important things to Sirius were his friends and motorbikes. Although James didn't know, the reason Sirius wasn't interested in anyone was that he didn't want to have to start a family. He hated family. When you hear the word 'family' you probably instantly think of a nice group of happy people who share and have the same interests. Not Sirius' family. He was the only Gryffindor in his whole family – the rest of his family were in Slytherin. His family also hated him because of his love of motorbikes. The Black family were a pure-blood family – they wanted nothing to do with 'dirty mudbloods'. Motorbikes were muggle technology, and so were hated by the rest of the Black Family. Sirius now has his flying bike and often flies up and down the country - with James flying at his side on his broom.