The third compartment down, James was in luck. A woman and man sat in the window seats, but there were two empty seats next to the door. Sighing with relief, James slid the door open.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Of course," said the woman politely, turning to face James. Something about her caught James' attention. She was pretty, but not uncommonly so. Her red hair and green eyes were striking, he supposed, but it was more the way her mouth was turned up at the corners, as if she was permanently smiling at a secret. The man, on the other hand, was not only sallow and hook-nosed, he was surveying James with distinct distaste. He didn't make any vocal protest, however, so James chose to take his silence for assent and chose the seat facing the woman, where the view was better. He stowed his rucksack in the overhead compartment and stripped off his shoes so he could prop his long legs up on the seat opposite.

He was just settling in for some nice shut eye when a snide voice said, "I don't believe your feet belong there."

He cracked an eye open and saw the man scowling at him.

"Oh, leave him alone, Sev," said the woman. She too had taken off her shoes, James notices, and was sitting cross legged on her seat. James smiled and closed his eyes again; he had won that battle without even fighting.

There was silence for a few minutes, and James was just dropping off when the man's voice said, "Are you nervous?"

Startled back into consciousness, James cracked open his eyes blearily. The woman was gazing out of the window, her knees propped under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs. The man was gazing at her with a very different expression than he'd worn when looking at James; it was almost tender.

"A bit," the woman said, turning to look at him.

"You'll be fine," said the man. "You have me, and I know you'll take London by storm. Just wait until you see our flat. It's not much, but it's right by one of the canals. I thought you'd like that."

"That sounds great, Sev." The woman smiled at him, genuine and warm.

James shut his eyes. So they were together, these two. A very mismatched couple, he thought. It was not, strictly, any of his business, but James made a habit of intruding on others' business.

"And come on, Lily, you've gotten the Phoenix Fellowship! You've wanted this for years!"

Now James' interest was truly aroused. His father had been very involved in the creation of the fellowship and James' family had contributed large donations over the years. It was indeed a very prestigious award, and much coveted among those hoping to enter into immigration law and policy.

"I know, Sev," the woman called Lily responded. "I'm excited, don't worry. Just a little apprehensive, too. First time out of Scotland and all…But don't worry about me. I want to hear more about you. You were so cagey about work when you were talking with my mum. What do you do, exactly?"

"It's nothing much. Just a cog in the corporate wheel of a big biotech company. T.M. Riddle."

And now James just couldn't keep himself out of the conversation any longer.

"Isn't that the organization that was recently brought to court with allegations of making large, illegal donations to political candidates?" he asked casually, opening his eyes and turning to the man, who immediately looked enraged.

"I believe we were having a private conversation over here. If you're going to eavesdrop, you can just leave the compartment right now."

The woman, Lily, seemed more interested in what James had said.

"Is that true, Sev?" she asked, turning to her companion.

He seemed to struggle to master himself, but succeeded in smoothing the anger from his face and responded coolly.

"Allegations have been made. Nothing's been proven. Besides, all the large firms are donating to political campaigns these days, it's the only way to keep government out of places it doesn't belong."

The woman looked horrified. "Seriously, Sev? So, what, you support a government where money's the only thing that talks?"

James felt it was far too early for politics, and he was tempted to close his eyes again; however, he was deriving amusement from the way Severus kept glancing over at him, looking distinctly unsettled.

"I never said that, Lily," he said, lowering his voice to a mutter, as though hoping to cut James out of the conversation. "But if you work hard, you definitely have more of a say. Like us."

Lily was looking shocked, and, for reasons unknown, James decided to once more inject into the conversation. "And once you're at the top, are you going to join the other politicians and big business men in putting up as many barriers as possible to protect your position?"

Lily looked at James approvingly, which almost made up for the regret he felt; he was never going to get any sleep now. His hangover reappeared in the form of a sharp pain behind his eyes.

"I thought I made it clear we didn't approve of eaves-"

"No, I want to hear your opinion on the matter, Severus," Lily interjected. "You were always complaining how those rich kids at boarding school were doing everything they could to knock you down-"

"But that's what I'm saying, Lily!" he said, turning to her earnestly. "I worked harder than those assholes, and look where I am now! Nobody helped me get here -"

"That scholarship did," Lily interjected. "That government-funded scholar-"

"Ok," Snape hissed, throwing another glance at James. "I'm sorry. Can we talk about something else?"

He gave her a pleading look that made James snort loudly. Severus turned slowly to look at him, dislike etched into every line of his face. James raised an eyebrow at him cockily, and Severus' eyes suddenly narrowed.

"James Potter."

James gave a start. "How did you know my name?" but Severus was already turning back to Lily, looking triumphant.

"You remember that prat I told you about from school, the know-it-all politician's son? Well, now you've had the pleasure of his acquaintance." Severus's smirk was positively vindictive now. "So when you talked about the rich putting up barriers, were you speaking from personal experience, Potter?"

Lily had turned her suspicious gaze on him now too.

"My father got into politics to break down barriers, not construct them. And he's not a politician, he's a policy researcher. Much like Lily here," he nodded at the woman and she looked surprised.

Turning back to Severus, he added, "So, we know each other from school? I can't quite place…"

Severus gave a harsh laugh. "Of course you wouldn't remember all the peons you tormented. But your mate Sirius Black probably would."

And then it came to James. "Snivellus?"

Severus snorted, giving Lily a significant look.

So, James thought, Severus Snape. Never knew that was his first name.

The five years that had elapsed since James had last seen him had changed Snape. His hair was longer and his clothes were nicer, though they still couldn't hide the thin, slumping shoulders or mask the unpleasant sneer that seemed permanently affixed to his face.

"Snape," he said stiffly. "Didn't recognize you. Funny, I thought your first name was Snivellus."

Snape's lip curled at hearing the old nickname again.

"I see you haven't grown up at all, Potter. Not that I would have expected-"

"All right, enough," Lily interjected. James glanced at her; he'd almost forgotten she was there. "We have to share a compartment for three more hours, could we set aside the schoolboy feud?"

"With pleasure, m'lady," James replied. It was time he got to work on that nap, anyway.

Snape, however, was less willing to let the matter rest.

"Do you not remember everything I told you about him, Lily? He's a prick. His best mate almost got me killed. And his other mate, Lupin -"

"All right, Snape," said James, standing up suddenly. "What are you trying to achieve here? You want me to leave and stand out in the corridor for three hours? Or would you rather we both just stepped outside for a moment to settle this?"

Snape rose too. "There it is again, your intolerable arrogance. Nobody invited you into our compartment, Pott-"

"Oh for God's sake!" Lily had stood as well. "This is ridiculous! You are two grown ass men! Would you quit it and just Sit. Back. Down."

"I'm not sitting until he leaves," said Snape, addressing Lily with his back turned firmly on James.

"Severus," she hissed. "Would you please act your age?"

James' hangover headache was getting out of hand. "You know what, I'm going to get a cup of tea, or maybe a hair of the dog. Whatever. You two sort this out."

Seriously. If there was a single other empty seat on the train…He had to keep reminding himself that he was not 15 anymore, and getting into a fistfight on the train from Edinburgh to London could have real consequences.

When he reentered the compartment a half hour later, steaming mug of tea in hand, it was to find Lily alone.

"Where's Sniv-er, Snape?" he asked her.

She turned from staring out of the window.

"Oh he went off somewhere," she said, waving her hand vaguely.

James could tell she was trying to appear casual, but her miserable-looking face suggested she felt differently. James hadn't wanted for this to happen. For Pete's sake, all he'd wanted to do was sleep the whole train ride, and now he felt responsible for cheering up a stranger. He took his seat and cast around for a topic of conversation.

"So, the Phoenix Fellowship, eh? Congratulations."

Lily looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. "You were eavesdropping the whole time?"

"Not eavesdropping, exactly. I mean, I couldn't really help overhearing. I was trying to sleep. Besides, it caught my attention because, er, because I had a friend who got it. A few years ago."

James wasn't sure why he was lying, except that Snape's accusations of him being a "know-it-all politician's son" were still in the back of his mind. Somehow, he didn't think Lily would be too impressed with his pedigreed background.

"Oh," said Lily.

"It's pretty prestigious. I guess you want to go into immigration policy?"

"Yeah." Her one word answers weren't really giving James much to work with, and he was just coming to the conclusion that she wanted to be left alone, when she added, "Well, maybe. I was always on track for policy, but I've started to think that maybe I want to do something a little more hands-on. Do you know what I mean?"

James nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. He himself always needed to be in the thick of the action.

"Policy is important, but you're just so removed from the people you're affecting. And you can only work within the framework of what's currently considered 'politically feasible. I've got to know what's going on either way, though, so I think this fellowship will set me up really well."

"It definitely will," reassured James. "You get to meet with MPs and work with other NGOs and foundations all over Europe."

Lily gave a small smile. "Right now it all sounds rather intimidating, but I know when the time comes, it'll be exciting. But enough about me. Where do you work?"

"I work for the Quibbler-"

"Wait, the political satire magazine? I love the Quibbler!"

James smiled. It was a fairly normal reaction. He loved telling people where he worked.

"That one article about Nigel Farrage's satanic rituals-"

"Hey, I wrote that one!" James interjected.

"Really? Well, you made me fall off the couch laughing. It's funny I didn't recognize your name on the article, what with the number of times Sev complained about you growing up."

"Hey!"

"Well, it's true." She didn't look remotely abashed.

James sighed. "We probably deserved it. But you must know he wasn't exactly innocent."

"I believe it."

Lily's glance strayed towards the door. James leaned forward so that his elbows rested on his knees and wondered how best to pose his question. She seemed like a straightforward person, so he settled on a blunt approach.

"So, are you two, you know, together?" Smooth.

Lily looked surprised. "Sev and me? No. But if you're trying to ask me out, I swear I'll make you stand in the corridor for the rest of the way."

"I wasn't thinking that!" James said, throwing up his hands defensively. It was true…mostly. "I guess I was just wondering how you two became friends."

"Why shouldn't we be friends?"

Because he's the soul-sucking son of bad-tempered demons and you're this funny, pretty, vivacious –

"No reason, just wondering. I'll tell you how I met my best mate, if you'd like."

"The villainous Sirius Black?"

"Snape told you about him? Well, yes, I suppose he would."

"Not an easy name to forget."

"No. His parents wouldn't want you to. So there I was – on this very train, as a matter of fact, only going the other way. I was leaving my parents in London to venture into the unknown world of boarding school in Scotland, thinking I was just on top of the world. And I bumped into this boy outside one of the compartments. We were probably both a bit nervous, and maybe eleven-year-old tempers were running high because pretty soon a simple bump was escalating into a full on verbal battle, full of lots of creative threats. I believe I told him I would make a leather jacket out of his skin and wear it to his funeral."

"And the comedy writer was born."

"Indeed he was. Anyway, soon Sirius was yelling, 'Oh yeah? Well, my cousin Bellatrix has a knife, and she'll set you straight. Oi, Bella!'" James imitated eleven-year-old Sirius in a high-pitched voice that he was certain the present Sirius would not appreciate. "And this girl pokes her head out of the compartment. Now, she's five years older than us and easily the scariest person I've ever seen. She has all this black makeup and wild hair and these really intense eyes, like Rasputin's."

He leaned forward and made his voice raspy. "And she says, 'Sirius, you little shit, one more word out of you and I swear to God I'll skewer you and your little sidekick here,' and she pulls out a knife."

"She really had one?"

"She really did. And Sirius and I took one look at it and we ran. We sprinted down the corridor and I accidentally knocked down-"

"Severus," Lily said flatly. "And then you started a fight with him?"

"Well, yes. But you see, this time Sirius and I were on the same side."

"The beginning of a pestilential partnership."

"It was. It really was. Well then, deal's a deal. What about you and Snape?"

For a minute, James thought Lily was going to tell him to bugger off. Then she sighed, tucking her legs underneath her, and, looking down at her hands, said, "We were childhood friends, actually. We met at the playground when I was eight. I was there with my sister Petunia-"

"Hold up, Petunia and Lily? Really?"

Lily smiled. "My mother's name is Jasmina, which is Arabic for jasmine flower, and my paternal grandmother's name is Rose. My parents took it as a portent that they should stick their daughters with flower names."

James snorted. "I think you got the better end of that stick."

"Don't tell Petunia that," Lily said, with the ghost of a smile. "Anyway, we were at the playground and Petunia was in a pretty terrible mood, because she'd just been rejected from a boarding school in northern Scotland that she wanted to go to. She stomped off to sulk and I wandered over to a boy on the swing set, looking for a playmate. Turns out he already knew my name – I've actually never asked him how – and we began to play together. After a while Petunia came over and told me we had to go home. But after that, every time I went to the playground, Severus was there. I started to go without Petunia, and Sev and I would play the sorts of games Petunia would never try. We built forts and pretended to be sorcerers. We snuck into the neighbor's yard and stole apples from their tree. We tried to build a raft once, to go across this little river, but we sprung a leak halfway and we both ended up covered in tar because a nearby factory leaked the stuff into the water. When we were 10, Severus said he was going to boarding school. I told him I would come too, but it was only for boys, of course. I was heartbroken to lose my friend, but he convinced me to apply to the boarding school that Petunia had tried to get into. He was always so obsessed with getting out of Cokeworth – that's where we grew up. I did get in, and I got a scholarship too. Petunia was furious – she wouldn't speak to me for two weeks."

"Did you go?" James asked.

"I did. Sev and I wrote to each other all the time." Lily let out a laugh. "I remember when we both got AIM accounts – we were so excited! We talked about school, and the difficulties of being a scholarship student with the rich kids, and about our new friends. Well, I talked about my friends. He didn't mention his very much."

James thought he knew why. Snape had run with a rough crowd; most of them had come from old money and had passed most of their school careers spending that money on alcohol, rousing themselves occasionally to harass anyone who wasn't rich, white, and straight. Sirius' family was of the same ilk, so James was more familiar with the motley crew than he would have preferred.

"Anyway, we were pen pals for years, right up through uni."

"Where did you go?"

"University of Edinburgh. I'm a Scottish girl through and through."

"Have you been working in Edinburgh this past year?"

"Oh, I just graduated. I started uni a year after Sev and you," she added, in response to James' questioning look. "I went home to Cokeworth for a year because my dad died, and I wanted to be with my mum, and to work."

"I'm sorry," James said. She made to wave off his sympathy, but he said, "No, really. My mum died when I was 16. I know how hard it is to lose a parent too early."

"Oh," said Lily. "Well, now I would say I'm sorry, but…" They shared a small, sad smile.

"Yeah," said James. "Sympathy sucks."

There was a moment of silence, then James said, "Hey, want to see a card trick?"

Lily nodded eagerly, scooting over a seat so she was directly across from him. James was just rifling through his rucksack for his card deck when Snape reentered the compartment.

"Well, I see I'm interrupting something," he sneered, looking pointedly at Lily.

"Actually you're just in time," she responded smoothly. "James was about to show me a card trick."

"I'd rather not watch," Snape retorted, sitting in his window seat and looking pointedly out the window.

Lily stared at him disbelievingly for a moment. James wondered if she was asking herself how a grown man could behave so much like a pouty child; he certainly was. Then she shook it off and turned back to James.

The rest of the journey passed similarly. Lily was delighted with James' tricks, and, in return, showed him how her double-jointed elbow could bend unnaturally far in the wrong direction. Then they had a bad joke-off. (Lily won with "What room is a ghost afraid of? The living room!"). Then they swapped stories of pranks pulled at boarding school. (James won that round, for the time he and the boys had swapped the sugar out for salt for a foreign ambassador's tea time visit. They had hidden in the closet to watch the Board of Governors and their visitors choke down their tea, each too embarrassed to say anything. Snape had interjected at this point to say, "How childish.") James had then taken upon himself to give Lily a rundown of his favorite bars in London, because she said she needed a part-time night job to help pay the bills.

James was surprised to notice when the train was pulling into King's Cross Station. Snape was already swinging his rucksack down, obviously eager to be on his way. James caught Lily's arm.

"Hey, listen, do you want to grab a drink sometime? I'm not asking you out," he added, noting her hesitant glance at Snape, whose profile was rigid. "It's just, you're the first person I've met who can bend their elbow joint the wrong way. Can you blame a bloke for wanting to be friends with a person like that?"

She laughed. "Well, all right," but Snape then decided to take matters into his own hands. He grabbed Lily's rucksack and pushed roughly between them.

"Come on Lily, we have to get your luggage off the rack."

She made to turn, but James said, "Hey!" and, in a moment of inspired brilliance he would congratulate himself for afterwards, wrote his phone number onto the card she'd selected from his deck earlier in the journey. "London is a big place; you could use more than one friend."

Lily smiled broadly, and James could tell she understood what he was trying to tell her; he wasn't going to try and interfere in her friendship with Snape.

"Thanks James," she said, with genuine warmth, and she clasped his hand briefly before following Snape off down the corridors.

Author's note: Happy to have you reading! I have all 19 chapters of this story already written out by hand, and I'm aiming to type/edit/update one chapter per week. This first chapter's nice and light, but this story will deal with some heavy subject matter. When I feel it is necessary, I will put trigger warnings at the top of the chapter. They may give away some of the upcoming content, so if you feel comfortable skipping them, go right ahead. Please look out for yourselves and put your safety first. If you need to skip a chapter but still want to find out what happened, message me and I'll be more than happy to tell you. Take care! E