Lily woke up to a single sunbeam dancing across her face. She rubbed her eyes gently and sat up. It took her a while to realise where she was, and what day it was but when she did she shot out of bed and finished packing her trunk. She ran around the house gathering her leftover stuff and got dressed in a hurry. She was leaving for Hogwarts, her seventh year, in a few minutes. The very last time she would travel from Kings Cross. She said goodbye to her parents, her sister barely muttering a goodbye, and took a taxi alone to the train station. She didn't mind ofcourse, she would be joining up with her friends soon enough.
She had been so surprised when the owl arrived from Hogwarts, bringing the letter that informed her she'd been chosen Head Girl by Dumbledore. She was, ofcourse, nearly top in her year, with the slight exception of that damn Potter boy, but she wasn't nearly social enough to handle such a job. How could she boss around kids that were her age already. It would be weird, but she liked a challenge. She smiled slightly when she assured herself that the head boy would propably not be Potter, being a marauder and all.
She found an empty compartment, and quickly occupied it while waiting for her friends. Pretty soon she could hear Anna's shy laughter and Catherine's loud voice. She was obviously telling Anna something that had happened over the summer holiday. It most definately had something to do with boys. Catherine, or Cat to her friends, was absolutely gorgeous, followed around by boys everywhere and had spent her summer holiday at a five star hotel in Italy. What with her striking blue eyes, and long blonde hair Lily assumed it hadn't taken her long to catch the eye of a few guys over the holidays. Anna, on the other hand, had spent her holidays at home, propably working. She was a lot more closed than Catherine, and didn't really catch peoples attention much. Lily was a mixture of the two really. She could be very bossy and a lot of people noticed her, what with that fiery red hair of hers, and those green eyes that could flash even darker when she got really mad. But she didnt really fish for attention. She didnt need it like Catherine. The three of them had stuck together since day one and weren't about to stop any time soon.
Lily snapped out of her thoughts just in time to wave her friends into the compartment she had saved. After a lot of hugging, and "Ohmygoshhowhaveyoubeen"s the food trolley swung past, and the girls settled down for a relaxing train ride of catching up. As Lily had assumed, Catherine launched into the whole story of how Italy had been, and all the guys that had wanted to marry her, and this one really handsome one she had spent most of her time with and got Lily laughing in no time. Anna stared out the window as she had obviously heard the story before.
"How was your holiday, Anna?" Lily asked her friend and Anna smiled and replied with a hurried 'fine thanks'. Lily knew that was the most she was going to get out of her for now, so she prepared herself to tell the girls about all the pranks she had pulled on Petunia, when she heard a polite knock on the glass. In peered the head of a small first year that informed Lily she must change and report to the prefect compartment. She left her friends for a moment, threw on her robes and followed the first year all the way to the front. There she entered a comfortably red and golden compartment and was surprised to see a tall, brown-haired boy already in there staring out the window.
"Hey Remus," she said and gave the boy a small smile as he turned around. She was glad to see it was someone she knew, let alone someone from Gryffindor, and since it had to be a Marauder, it was at least a decent one. "Hey Lily. Nice badge, where did you get it?" he replied with a small wink. "I found it lying around, you know" she replied, grinning at her friend. It was funny how the Marauders and Lily, Cat and Anna sort of stuck together. Because the girls all liked Remus, and Sirius' pranks and comments in class were often quite funny. And the other girls liked James just as much as Sirius. It was just Lily. She couldn't stand him. And it wasn't like how she couldn't stand Snape or Malfoy. That was just pure hatred. She didn't hate James at all. She thought he was funny at times, and he could be rather sweet. He was just so arrogant. It wasn't so much that she hated him, it was more...he got under her skin. Yeah, that was it. Real bad. She tried to avoid him as much as possibly, mainly for the sanity of their mutual friends, who had to listen to them bicker like an old couple everytime they spent more than ten minutes in the presence of each other.
Her and Remus sorted out some things, found the prefects and talked to them about their duties, and walked together in the general direction of most of the 7th year students. When they reached Cat and Anna they could see that James and Sirius had already made themselves comfortable and were currently cracking the girls up with some story. James was using big hand-gestures and ruffling his hair up more than usually.
"Hey guys." Lily stormed in, took off her robes that were starting to trip her (she knew she should've let Madam Malkin shorten them more) and squeezed in between her two best friends. "Geez Lily. I didn't really ask for the stripshow, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it," Sirius commented with obvious glee. "Remus, hit him," was all Lily bothered to reply with, which Remus did with pleasure, having sat down next to his now complaining friend. "Aaaw man, what did you do that for?" Sirius whined, rubbing his soar head. "Just keeping you out of trouble my friend," Remus replied and glanced over to Lily. She was very pleased and laughed at Sirius' attempts to get sympathy from Catherine.
Soon the friends had started swopping stories about the summer. Lily impressed the Marauders with the stuff she had done to Petunia, Catherine made Sirius incredibly jealous by telling him about Italy, and James and Sirius cracked them all up over some hilarious attempt to meet up in London midway through the holidays. Remus told them all about his very enjoyable, quiet summer in the country, and Anna hid behind her curly brown hair and revealed little about her summer. Noone was surprised when James said he had almost been kicked out of school for using magic outside school. He said he had been trying to hex a boy that was getting on his nerves. Lily in particular was furious.
"Potter, you don't realise how much danger you are to others and yourself, do you?" she commented quite irritably. Everybody muttered "here we go" and sunk lower in their chairs as James asked her politely what she meant. "Well...well...for ONE thing you're not a fully educated wizard. Something could go desperately wrong. Lets say you had been trying to get him to sprout rabbit-ears but instead had turned him into a rabbit. Who would be there to correct it. Then say he would escape. Then this poor muggle would be stuck forever as a rabbit. Just because he was pissing you off! And another thing, you would end your education as a wizard. You would have to quit school a..." she was interrupted mid-sentence by James. "...and why do you care if Im at school or not?"
Lily was speechless. Why DID she care if he was at school or not? She couldn't think of any reason, so she just told him to shut up instead. Lily sulked for a while while James looked slightly amused, but Catherine and Sirius soon lightened her up. By the time they arrived at Hogwarts they had all rushed around getting into their robes and grabbed their stuff. They travelled to the castle in groups of three and settled down at the table. All the first years were sorted in, and the feast began.
After the magnificent feast (and a few broken buttons later), everybody went up to the dormitory, except Remus and Lily who stayed behind to talk to Dumbledore. Dumbledore informed them what their duties would be, mostly the usual, taking points away from houses, checking the hallway's once every night for troublemakers, that sort of stuff. When he mentioned the hallroaming Remus bit his lip to keep from laughing, and Lily found herself wondering how he planned on disciplaning Potter and Sirius. She couldn't help but thinking this would be an interesting schoolyear.
