Summary: It's 1912 and there's a new ship sailing on the ocean: the R.M.S. Titanic. Lily Evans boards the ship as a first-class passenger, as does her betrothed James Potter and his best friend Sirius Black. Meanwhile, Remus Lupin and Severus Snape languish in third class. When the two groups meet and befriend each other, societal subcultures clash, internal battles are wrought, and numerous pranks are played on unsuspecting and unprepared first-class passengers. But no one is prepared for the iceberg that looms ahead... Currently, we're on when Lily, James, and Sirius first meet Remus.

...oo0oo...

Chapter 2:

The Rich Boy's Realization

Lily sighed quietly and poked at her food, none of which looked particularly appetizing at the moment. But that was probably just because Mrs. Rush, who was sitting directly across from Lily, was jabbering on about something-or-other, and James Potter and Sirius Black were only a couple of tables away and Potter had been eyeing Lily for the better part of an hour (he stopped when she made a subtle yet threatening gesture toward him with her salad fork), and the pale blue dress that she had put on for dinner felt far too constricting.

"Miss Lily, sit up straight. And do not poke your food so!" Mrs. Rush's voice snapped through Lily's self-pitying thoughts, and the red-headed teenager quickly but wordlessly complied with the instructions given her. I hate her. No, I take that back. I loathe her. Loathe her beyond loathing. Despise her with a capital D. When the woman looked away, Lily slouched again in her seat and continued poking her food.

Several hours later, after helping Mrs. Rush prepare for sleep, Lily pulled on a thin coat and asked for permission to go for a stroll on the Promenade. After convincing the woman that she could walk without the help of Josephine, Lily stepped out of the room and immediately pulled out the comb that held her hair up. The red waves fell, liberated, past her shoulders, and she stowed the comb in her coat pocket before proceeding to the second-uppermost deck.

The night sky was beautiful. The ship was already many miles from land, so there were no lights to obscure the sky and the stars were shining brighter than Lily had ever seen them. Well-dressed couples sidled past her, a few of them stopping to recline on chairs placed strategically nearby. Lily walked down the Promenade and toward the back of the ship, where the deck was devoid of people. She leaned over the railing and looked down at the water. It looked so calm and black, eerily so, and she shuddered and pulled back. A nearby door opened and shut quietly behind her and Lily whirled around to see who had invaded her private moment, and she was ready to give the intruder a piece of her mind.

She stopped short when she saw him. He had light brown hair that flopped carelessly over his face, his clothes were shabby yet worn in a dignified way. He was thin, she noticed, far too thin. His skin had a sickly pallor to it, and a scar ran vertically across his left cheek. But the thing that really surprised Lily was his eyes. They were a warm brown and they held a mischievous gleam that Lily had only ever seen in the eyes of James Potter and Sirius Black.

The boy (for he did look to young to really be considered a man) looked startled. Lily flushed, realizing that she had been staring at him. "Sorry," she muttered at the same time he did. His lips twitched a bit, and it took Lily a moment to realize that she too was smiling awkwardly. His eyes moved from her face and he looked at her dress and raised an eyebrow. Lily felt a sudden surge of anger. Was he checking her out? Did he find something about her dress amusing? As she opened her mouth to interrogate him, he started to speak. His voice had a soothing quality to it, although his accent was thicker and broader than hers.

"This is the steerage part of the Promenade."

Lily blushed again, embarrassed. "Oh. Sorry. I- I didn't know."

He smiled crookedly and shrugged as if he didn't really care whether she left or not. Just then, a horridly familiar voice rang through the still night air.

"Lily!"

Bloody hell. How on earth had Potter managed to find her? She groaned audibly as Potter and Black appeared, their faces pink from running, their black hair mussed, and their ties askew. The boy (who was obviously from steerage) looked affronted by this new development and ready to slip back inside to wherever he had come from. Before he could so much as take a step, however, Potter and Black had spotted him. Lily couldn't help but feel sorry for him as Potter seized the boy's hand and shook it, while enthusiastically saying, "Hi! I'm James Potter and this is Sirius Black and I see that you've already met the lovely Lily Evans. So, who are you?"

Lily felt a sudden guilt about not introducing herself properly earlier. The boy hesitated before muttering "Remus Lupin."

"Remus? Wicked name," Black nodded approvingly, and Remus visibly relaxed. Potter chose that moment to casually sling his arm around Lily's shoulders; she glared at him and shrugged his arm off. Remus saw this and looked curiously at them, but Black didn't notice as he was too busy questioning whether Remus knew where the kitchens or the boiler room were. Remus affirmed that he did know, much to James' and Sirius' delight. They immediately demanded that he show them where to go.

Lily glanced at James' watch and realized that she should probably be getting back to her room now. When she looked up she saw Remus looking pleadingly at her as Potter and Black started jostling him inside. Lily gave him a helpless sort of look as she turned to leave; she felt bad for leaving him to deal with the two other boys by himself, but she had to leave now, and besides, better him than her.

...oo0oo...

He had been hoping for a relaxing walk on the boat deck, that was all. Yet here he was, walking along with two first-class boys who had seemingly endless energy and didn't give a damn that they were with the kind of person who was usually considered dodgy at best by every other first-class person on the ship.

Why had he told them that he knew where the kitchens and the boiler room were, anyway? There had been nothing preventing him from saying "No." Still, they seemed friendly enough, if a bit rough.

Currently they were on their way to the boiler room, because that was where the two other boys had wanted to go first, probably because of the fact that there was fire down there. Remus wasn't sure whether or not it was wise to trust them in the presence of fire, but it was easier just to go along with them. They wove their way through the passages of G-Deck, dodging other steerage passengers, all of whom gave James and Sirius strange looks. Remus didn't blame them– the two boys' clothes were rumpled and their hair messy, but in an aristocratic sort of way. James kept running his hand through his hair, and Sirius stuck his hand and walked casually behind James, sending the occasional cheeky, suggestive grin to any pretty girl that squeezed past them in the narrow corridor.

They arrived at the Orlop Deck and marched into a boiler room. The room was sweltering, packed with sweaty, muscular, red-faced men heaving shovels full of coal into monstrous furnaces. Sirius stared. "Wow. I didn't know that they had actual people working down here." A few of the stokers nearby glared at Sirius, and Remus glanced apologetically at them before leading the two boys toward the exit door. As they went he explained that the stokers worked down here because it was a job that gave them a free trip to America.

"But isn't that a bit...desperate?" asked James, who was looking at a teenaged boy who was wiping his forehead with a sweat-sodden sleeve before picking up his coal shovel again. "I mean, surely they can find some way to pay for ship tickets. You did, and so did lots of other people."

They stepped out of the boiler room and into a corridor. "I didn't pay for my ticket," Remus blurted out. James and Sirius stared and Remus mentally cursed himself. "I won it in a card game," he quickly amended his earlier statement, and the two black-haired boys instantly looked awed. Remus decided that it would probably be best to change the subject now, and the first thing that popped into his mind was the red-headed girl.

"So, where did Lily go?"

James' face lit up, but Sirius groaned and turned to Remus. "Why did you do that? Now he'll never stop talking."

"I don't know where she went exactly, because I don't know her room number– Sirius, remind me to get that– but she probably went to bed for her beauty rest. Not that she needs it, she's always beautiful. Didn't she look great tonight? I really liked that blue dress she was in, it looked perfect on her. You know, she's really nice and smart and just generally a great person–"

"They're engaged," Sirius smirked. "And Lily doesn't really want to marry him."

"You're wrong, Sirius. She loves me, how could she not? She just doesn't know it yet."

"Sure, mate."

"What do you think, Remmy? You think she fancies me?"

James looked hopefully at Remus, who cringed at the nickname and wondered how he was supposed to know if Lily fancied James. After all, he'd only just met these people. He remembered Lily pushing James away earlier, but decided that the best route right now would be to lie.

"I think so."

James looked vindicated .

Somehow, the boys had ended up standing in front of the door to Remus' cabin. He groped for the door handle while saying "We can look for the kitchens tomorrow" then slipped into the room and shut the door quickly so that the other two wouldn't be able to see inside the cramped little cabin. The light was off but in the darkness Remus could make out the sleeping Italian family and a lump on the bottom bunk that could only be Severus. He quietly flung his jacket off and took off his shoes, then climbed up to his bed and lay awake, listening to the grinding of the engines.

...oo0oo...

James couldn't sleep. "Sirius. Hey, Siri! You awake?"

Sirius snorted and rolled over without waking up. James rolled his eyes and pulled his blankets tighter around him, trying to fall asleep.

He couldn't do it. He kept thinking about the men in the boiler room. They worked all night in a harsh and dangerous environment, while everyone else on the ship got to sleep. It wasn't fair. Just because they didn't have enough money to buy a ticket...He wondered if he could ever feel desperate enough to take such a job, and had a sudden vision of himself shoveling coal into a fifteen-foot tall furnace, his face illuminated by flame and his hair sticking to his sweat-slicked face. He shuddered. It that ever happened he'd probably freak out after a day and throw himself into the furnace.

He thought of Remus. Would Remus ever take such a job? He probably would, but then again, the guy was so thin that he probably wasn't strong enough to lift a single shovelful of coal.

He wondered what the third-class cabins looked like. Remus had shut the door too quickly for him to see, and it had been dark inside the room anyway. The corridors on the lower decks had seemed narrower and plainer than the ones where the staterooms and suites were, so the rooms probably were too. James pulled his pillow closer to him, thinking of the unfairness of it all, and shut his eyes.

Before he drifted off to sleep, he made a silent vow to get to know Remus better. When he finally did fall asleep, his dreams were of Lily, in a blue dress with her hair blowing behind her like fire.