James was woken forcefully by Marlene when she traipsed around the boys dormitory, blowing loud, out of tune notes into their ears from Peter's trumpet. The only person who didn't wake up was Sirius, who slept without his hearing aids in.

James felt around on his bedside for his glasses, shoving them on his face. Marlene stuck her head out of the dormitory's door.

"Honestly, Lily, how long does it take you to climb a set of stairs? Hurry up!"

A series of unintelligible grumbling from the stairs told James that Lily, too had been woken up.

James stood up and yanked the pillow out from under Sirius' head, effectively waking him up. He sat up groggily and grabbed his hearing aids from his bedside table and put them in his ears, fiddling with the dials for a moment.

"You stole my trumpet AGAIN? Seriously, Marlene?" Said Peter. Marlene grinned at him and tossed the trumpet in his direction.

"Actually, she stole your trumpet Marlenously, not Siriusly, Petey," said Sirius.

Peter rolled his eyes at the two of them.

"Exactly," said Marlene matter-of-factly, "I try not to do things Siriusly - that's Sirius' job!"

It was when Lily finally made it to the room that Remus decided to speak up.

"Well, If you want us to hurry up and get ready then you'll have to leave the room,"

"Seriously?!" Exclaimed Lily.

"What was that about me?"

"C'mon Lily, let the silly boys get dressed," she grabbed Lily's arm on her way out the door and dragged her down the stairs.

They sat down on a large couch to await the boys.

"Right, so, while we're waiting I may as well tell you a bit about the bunch of humanoid catastrophes upstairs, eh?" Said Marlene. Lily nodded absentmindedly.

"So there's Petey. He's got tourettes syndrome - you might have noticed how he scrunches up his face? That's his tic at the moment." Marlene thought for a moment, "his favourite thing to do is eat, specifically cheese. James and Sirius call him Wormtail because apparently if he were an animal he'd be a rat,"

Lily nodded.

"Next - Remus. He got the short stick of all short sticks when it came to the genetic pool. He's got a wide variety if joint, muscle and bone disorders that all seem to be bad on the same day. His doctors actually nicknamed his condition 'lycanthropy' because of that. Of course Sirius and James thought that was hilarious and so decided to call him Moony."

"So ... Moony and Wormtail, huh? Do James and Sirius have dumb nicknames too?"

"Sure do, but I'm getting there, you'll have to be patient. Let's see ... Sirius. He's something like three-quaurters deaf - you saw his hearing aids - and he's blind in his right eye. His dumb nickname is Padfoot, but the story as to why seems to change every time. My theory is that he and James just came up with the dumbest nicknames for each other that they could think of. Last is James. He's mute and his eyesight is so bad that if you take his glasses he may as well be blind. It's pretty funny, actually. His dumb nickname is Prongs. He thinks it's majestic, but it just reminds me of a fork."

"Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs ... Interesting." Mused Lily, "Have they given you a nickname?"

Marlene snorted, "they tried."

"What did who try?" Asked Sirius, climbing over the back of the couch and squeezing himself between the two girls.

"Nothing," said Marlene cheerily.

"Sureeeee," he replied. Lily felt the cushion sink on her other side.

"Hi, James." She said awkwardly, turning to look at his face.

James lifted his hands to reply before remembering that she couldn't understand it. Lily flushed when she noticed the gesture. He smiled to show her it was okay and pulled a small notebook and a pen from his pocket. He opened the book and placed it on his knee, scribbling Morning, Evans. Sleep well?

"I think you'll find my name is 'Lily' not 'Evans', Potter, but I slept okay, how about you?"

Fine. But if I have to call you Lily then you have to call me James, Evans.

"Why did you even decide to start calling me Evans anyway?"

James shrugged.

"Anyway," said Sirius, interrupting the conversation, "We'd better head down to breakfast. Accompany me, ladies?" He linked his arms into Marlene's and Lily's, standing up abruptly.

Using Sirius as an anchor, Lily pulled herself into a standing position. James stood up beside her.

I'm going to check on Remus and Pete. I'll be right back. He signed to Sirius, who nodded to show that he had seen. James took the stairs two at a time. When he got to the dormitory Peter had already packed all his things for the first few lessons and Remus was sitting on his bed, leaning on the wall. He flinched slightly when James sat down next to him.

You okay?

"Yeah. I'm fine."

No you're not. What's the matter?

"Nothing, James. I'm fine."

I don't believe you. Do you need me to help with anything?

"No. It's just … I don't want to be confined to my stupid wheelchair. Not on the first day of school."

You'd rather be in the wheelchair than in the hospital wing.

Remus shifted slightly, "Yeah. You're right, but I'd rather not be in either."

Unfortunately, that's not an option. Now, what do you need help with? If we don't hurry we'll miss breakfast.

Remus flushed, he hated it when people had to do things for him. James stood up. He fished a clean uniform out of Remus' trunk and laid it out on his bed.

I'll get your things, you get dressed. He walked over to the dormitory's bookshelf, which was so stacked with Remus' books there was hardly room for anyone else's. While collecting Remus' books he spotted a thick volume about sign language which had not been touched in years. He wedged the book out from between two even larger books on the over stacked shelf and put it into his own bag.

Once he had collected all of the books, James pulled the wheelchair our from underneath Remus' bed and unfolded it, setting it up with the air of someone who had done this many times before.

When Remus was dressed James rolled the chair up to his bed so that he could get on. Peter had left the room shortly after James had entered it and when they exited the dormitory it became clear that everyone else had left.

"I hate stairs." said Remus as James tried to work out how to get Remus down the stairs, as it was usually a two person job.

I'll have to do it in two trips. He signed. I'm going to pick you up. After hanging out with Sirius – who had issues with being touched – for so many years, James had quickly formed the habit of warning someone before touching them.

He picked up Remus as slowly and gently as he could, although he could see the pain clear as day on his friend's face. He descended the stairs a lot slower than he had gone up them earlier, carefully putting Remus down on a nearby armchair before going back for the wheelchair and helping Remus back into it.

Because Hogwarts had so many staircases, and the school had neglected to install wheelchair ramps, that meant that they had to repeat that little routine fourteen times before reaching the Great Hall, by which point both boys were utterly exhausted and breakfast was almost over.

Sirius jumped up and ran over to them as soon as they made it into the hall, apologizing profusely for abandoning them as both James and Remus tried to assure him that it was completely alright.

James practically collapsed into his seat when they reached the table.

A/N - Hi! I hope you enjoyed this chapter! If there was anything wrong with this chapter or any of the other chapters that you'd like fixed, any suggestions for something you would like to see at some point in the story, any additional characters you'd like to see (or if you want to create a side character that I could include, that would be awesome) feel free to tell me in a review (or a PM if you're not comfortable commenting publicly). I'd also like to thank all of you who have reviewed, favourited and followed already, you guys make me smile. Thanks for reading and reviewing! Bye!