an: sorry this update is late. it's been a really rough and busy past two weeks, and I doubt that its going to get any better any time soon, so if my updating becomes rather erratic, please bear with me. thatnks to those who have reviewed, and to those readers who are just silently lurking in silence. there is no Memior at the end of this chopter, on account that this is still the same day...along with that is this little note: yes, i know, the story is moving rather slow as of right now...I'm just trying to get some expository things out of the way...you understand, right? After the first week, the pase should pick up, so please bear with me.

Enjoi

James and Sirius elbowed their way through the crowd, Peter following right behind them.

"C'mon," Sirius said. "We don't want to get split up like last time, do we?"

The previous year, they had been late making it to the carriages, and ended up in carriages with different people. James had ended up with some people he knew from the quiddicth team, Peter had ended up with several Hufflepuff second years, Remus sat with Lily and a few of her friends, but Sirius had somehow managed to wind up sharing a carriage with his younger brother and several of his cousins. It had taken all of willpower not to hex them into next week right then and there. He didn't exactly wish to relive the experience.

"I say we just blast our way through this bloody crowd," James grumbled. "It looks like its about to rain, and I would prefer not to get wet."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "And this comes from the kid who wanted to swim across the lake to get to Hogwarts in his first year, instead of taking the boat like a sane person."

Peter snickered, and James just heaved a sigh. "Times are changing, dear Sirius," he said, sagely. "I may have liked getting drenched then, but I don't now. Get with it, mate."

Sirius shook his head. James seemed to get weirder and weirder with each passing year. But he liked his friend that way. It sure beat having a normal James around. Sirius was very sure that having a normal best friend would make life very mundane. Finally the three friends arrived at an empty carriage and climbed in. Sirius glanced out the window. The dark clouds moved to reveal the moon. It looked to be full, but Sirius knew that it wouldn't be completely full til the next night.

"Hey, you guys," Peter said, looking at his two friends. "Is the moon full tonight?"

James stared at Peter as if he had just grown horns. "You just saw Remus," he said incredulously. "What do you think?"

"Oh," was the reply. "I didn't think about that."

"Obviously," Sirius remarked.

"Well, I suppose that explains why Remus was looking so si–" Peter began, but James elbowed him in the ribs to keep him from saying anything. Several girls had just pulled open the door to their horseless carriage, and James didn't want them to overhear.

"Hey," Emm said, "Do you guys mind if we sit with you?"

The three boys had exchanged a look. They wanted to have room for Remus, but that didn't look as though it were going to happen. "Sure," Sirius said smoothly. "Climb in."

Emm Vance and Dory Meadowes climbed in. Athena poked her head in to see who was there. "You know what," she said, "I think I'll go find Alice and Serena. It looks a wee bit crowded in here." Athena knew very well that Emm and Dory had the hots for James and Sirius, and she doubted that she would be able to withstand the ride with her two love struck friends.

"Nonsense," Dory said, grabbing Athena's arm and pulling her, much to Sirius's delight. "There's plenty of room."

Athena sighed and allowed herself to be pulled in. The carriage ride couldn't be too long, could it? Athena squeezed in next to Sirius and the wall. Dory sat on the other side of Sirius, and across from them sat Peter, James, and Emm. It was a very tight fit. "Six people in one carriage is hardly plenty of room," Athena told Dory.

Sirius laughed and draped his arms around the two girls sitting next to him. "I, myself," he said. "Think this is a wonderful arrangement."

"Sirius Black," Athena said cheerily. "Get your hand off of me, before I break it."

Sirius instantly removed his hand while James laughed at him. "Right, right," he said nonchalantly. "Someone likes her personal space. I'll keep that in mind."

Athena grinned and rolled her eyes. "You better."

"Ok, I get the picture," he said. He moved his arm from around Dory's shoulders, and instead linked arms with her. "I'll just sit over here with Dory." He moved over a little, putting a good half inch more distance between him and Athena. "I know where I'm appreciated."

"Obviously, you don't, mate," James said. "Because if you did, you would be somewhere far, far away from here."

"You're a riot, James," Sirius said sarcastically. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"I don't know what I'd do without me, either."

Sirius shook his head. He looked at Dory. "I'm not even going to say anything," he said. Dory giggled in response.

James turned to Emm, who was sitting next to him. "So," he said, charmingly. "How was your summer?"

Even in the dark, Athena had the impression that Emm had probably blushed, and was becoming very flustered. She decided that boys did weird things to her friends, because she could have sworn that she had just heard Dory giggle. Dory never giggled.

"It was okay," Emm said. "I went to the World Cup in Italy with my family."

His eyes went wide, causing Sirius to laugh. "Are you serious?" he asked. He had wanted to go, but his parents felt that it would be a good punishment for him not to. He thought it was cruel and unusual torture.

Athena grinned wryly. "No, Potter. You're getting confused again," she said, trying to amuse herself. "She's not serious. That's Sirius."

Peter and James both laughed as Sirius growled. Athena was always making fun of his name, and James had started to recently as well, thinking it was great fun. Athena thought it was a never-ending source of entertainment. When they first met, after Sirius had given her his name, her first response was: "Dude, that's a word. It's a sucky name."

"Ha. Ha. Ha," Sirius said lamely. "You're hysterical, Athena."

"Oh, I know," she said simply, still grinning. James was now drilling Emm for all the details of the Cup. He wanted to know everything.

Athena just shook her head. He was a quidditch maniac, what should she have expected? She looked out the window and saw the silhouette of the castle looming over them. The horseless carriages came to a halt and everyone filed out of them. In a very slow process, the students started to elbow and file their way into the castle. As James had predicted, it had started to rain, and people were trying to force there way into the castle and out of the rain. The crowd got a bit rough as older and bigger students started to push the smaller and younger ones out of the way. More than one student ended up on the ground in a giant puddle. James, Sirius, and Peter (as well as good portion of the rest of the student body) were a little more than pleased to see Snape slip and fall into one such puddle. Slowly, they all managed to get into the Great Hall; some students were only mildly wet from the rain, others were drenched.

Athena entered the great hall and found Lily already sitting at the table with Alice and Serena. She walked over and sat down. She was surprised to see that Lily looked thoroughly disgruntled. Looking down a little further down the table, she noticed that Remus looked much the same way. "What's up, Lily?" she asked.

"Remus and I got stuck in a carriage with a bunch of snot-faced Ravenclaw second years. I was this close," she said, holding her thumb and forefinger about a half-inch away from each other, "to strangling them all to death. I've never been around a more insufferable bunch in my life."

"I doubt that," Athena said, as James, Sirius, and Peter walked passed them to sit down next to Remus.

"You're right," Lily said after looking over her shoulder to see the three walk by. "But, for right now, I'm going to pretend that James doesn't exist and that I don't have to deal with the egotistical jerk. For right now, the only people in this school who bother me are those annoying second years." She sat at the table in silence, eyes closed, with a serene look on her face. She was taking deep breaths, obviously imagining a world without James Potter. She opened her eyes again and looked at Athena. "You'll never know how good this feels," she said peacefully. "All is right with the world." She took a deep breath, closed her eyes again, and smiled dazedly.

Lily was still sitting like that, when Emm and Dory made there way into the Great Hall. Sitting down next to Lily, the first thing Emm said was, "Oh. My. Gosh. James is such a hottie."

Lily's bright green eyes snapped open and she glared at Emm quite viciously. "Emmeline Vance! You just ruined it," she said sharply, shaking her head.

"Ruined what?" she asked.

"Her fantasy," Athena replied. "You know, the one where James was never born, and doesn't exist."

"Oh," Emm said, trying very hard not to laugh. "Sorry, Lils. I didn't know."

"You should be," she said, trying to sound angry and offended, but not succeeding.

The girls laughed, again, but quickly shut up as the Great Hall doors opened and a long line of scared looking first years filed in behind Professor McGonagall. The sorting was about to begin.

The sorting was basically the same every year. The first years would file in, looking frightened and nervous, and would be called up to the front of the Great Hall one at a time. They would then place the sorting hat upon their head, which would search their mind and decide which of the four houses they belonged in. Gryffindor was for the brave, courageous, chivalrous, and bold; it was also commonly said around the school that Gryffindors in Lily's year had big mouths and did not know when to keep them shut, which was true in most of the cases. Ravenclaw was for the wise, witty, cunning and unusually clever. Hufflepuffs tended to be very loyal and hard working, although most of the school thought that Hufflepuffs were a bunch of push-overs with no backbone. And last was Slytherin. Slytherin housed those ambitious, power-seeking, pure-blooded students. All together, they made up Hogwarts in its entirety.

Normally, Lily liked watching the Sorting Ceremony, but she kept getting distracted by random things, and eventually gave up on paying attention. She looked down the table and noticed that she wasn't the only one not paying attention. James and his gang were sitting towards the end of the table where the new first years would sit, talking amongst themselves in hushed voices. They seemed to be planning something, which wouldn't be anything new. The four were notorious for causing mayhem throughout the school; constantly playing harmless pranks on each other and pranks of a more violent sort on those they didn't like. They were constantly finding new ways to bend the rules. Their lack of ability to see the consequences of their actions led them to pull some of the most memorable pranks in Hogwarts history. It also made them quite popular, making James and Sirius, in particular, very cocky and arrogant.

Lily was jarred back to reality when she realized that the sorting was over and Dumbledore was giving his usual start-of-term greeting. He always greeted them, let them eat, and then gave his traditional speech. He knew well enough that they weren't going to pay attention when they were hungry. Helping herself to liberal amounts of mashed potatoes and chicken, she turned her attention back to her friends, who were, once again, talking about their summer. Up and down the table, she could hear people doing the same.

However, a loud, bark-like burst of laughter interrupted nearly all of the conversations at the Gryffindor table. Quite a few heads, including Lily's, turned to look at the source of the noise. At the opposite end of the table, Sirius was laughing his head off while James was earnestly trying to explain something to him.

"You what?" he said between bursts of laughter.

"It was an accident," James said, now laughing too. "I didn't know it was going to catch on fire!"

"How did you not know?" Remus asked. "It was a kitchen. Just about half the stuff in there is flammable."

"Okay, lemme rephrase that," he said, "How was I supposed to know that the flames on the stove could go that high?"

This comment made Sirius laugh harder, scaring several first-years sitting near him. "Sirius, mate, shut up," James said. "You're scaring the ickle firsties."

"Again," Remus and Peter said at the same time.

"Why were you doing this in the first place?" Sirius wanted to know, after he had stopped laughing.

"I was trying to figure out a way to break you out of your house, mate," James said. "I was trying to see what would happen if I lined the house with Filibuster's fireworks right before it rained." He started to laugh again. "I didn't know that the stove was still on, or that they could be so . . . flammable."

"They're fireworks! Of course they're flammable, you dolt!" Remus said, laughing along with James.

Taking a deep breath, he continued, "Luckily, my mum has the kitchen fireproofed, so only the drapes and the wall above the stove really got burned. I still got grounded for three weeks though."

The people who had listened to the brief exchange shook their heads and turned back to their conversations and dinner. They were all used to such behavior from James and his friends.The feast carried on without too many more interruptions of sudden laughter from the four boys. Finally, after dessert had been served and even the hungriest of students were full, Dumbledore stood up to give his traditional start-of-term speech.

"Well, now that we are all well-fed, I only ask a few moments for some start-of-term notices," Dumbldore said, looking around the Great Hall at the students over his half-moon glasses. "First of all, we are pleased to welcome Professor Thelen as our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher." The said teacher stood up. She was a tall, thin woman, with dark hair, and very high and protruding cheekbones. Her lips were pursed very tightly, and she seemed to have a very strict and disapproving air about her. Lily's first impression of the woman was that she looked like an older, dark-haired version of her sister. Meanwhile, the first thing that popped into Sirius's mind when the woman stood up was that she looked like a living replication of his mother. He secretly wondered how many of her could possibly exist on one planet, nonetheless in one country. There was a polite, scattered applause throughout the crowd of students.

"First years should know that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all students, although, some of our older students, who have been reminded more than enough times, should be reminded once again. The Forbidden Forest is forbidden." His eyes rested on James, Sirius,

Peter and Remus.

"He wouldn't be talking about us, would he?" Sirius asked in all innocence. His friends grinned at him, all knowing very well that he was.

Dumbledore smiled, almost as if he had heard Sirius's quiet comment, and continued: "Mr. Filch has requested that I inform you, for what he tells me is the seventy-sixth time in the past four years, that magic is not permitted in the corridors, and so are some other items of a mischievous manner. There is a list of these items posted on his office door, and I believe that it consists of two hundred and forty-seven items, just in case you would like to check.

"Tryouts for the House Quidditch teams will take place during the second week of term. Those of you who would like to try out should contact Madam Hooch. That is all for notices, and now it is bedtime. Off you go."

As Remus went off to meet Lily to herd the new first years to the common room, James went off to find Athena to, once again, discuss their essays. He was rather surprised when Sirius caught up to him as he was half way through the thronging crowd.

"Hey! Potter! Wait up, will you?" he called when he was only a few feet behind James.

James turned and waited for his friend to catch up. "You do know that I'm off to find Athena . . . to talk about learning, right?" he asked, raising an eyebrow in a very perplexed manner.

"Yeah, I know."

"Then why are you following me?" James asked, still perplexed by Sirius's odd behavior.

Sirius shrugged. "I dunno. Pete's off walking with his little sister, and I didn't fancy walking alone," he said nonchalantly.

James raised his eyebrow again. "You? Alone? Oh, come off it, I'm sure some lovely young Gryffindor would have found you and attached herself to you. Face it, Padfoot, you will never have to worry about walking alone."

"I suppose you're right," he said, shrugging again. Then he paused and added, "Wow, I just said you were right. The world must be coming to an end after all."

James laughed and playfully pushed Sirius into a group of tired-looking third years.

"Smooth move, slick," Athena's voice came from behind them. "Way to kill a bunch of third years, Sirius," she finished, smiling brightly as she caught up to James and Sirius.

"Geez, Athena, you just keep getting funnier every hour," Sirius said with a mischievous spark in his eyes.

"Oh, I know, Sirius. It just seems to be a natural gift," she said, her smile brightening. She turned to James. "So, do you think you could actually explain the point of a vanishing spell to me, Potter?"

"I can explain anything, Bryce. Did you ever doubt me?" James asked.

"Well, somewhere between you rolling on the floor of the train laughing so hard you were crying and talking about setting fire to your kitchen because you didn't know fireworks were flammable, I began to lose hope," she said wickedly, sparking a friendly argument between the two as they finished heading towards the Gryffindor Tower, leaving Sirius behind.

Sirius, however, wasn't walking alone for long, just as James had claimed. Not half a minute after James had left, Dorcas Meadowes caught up with him, smiling flirtatiously all the while.

"Hey, Sirius," she said sweetly.

Sirius smiled back. Dory had been chasing him for over a year now, not that he really minded. It wasn't as though Dory were horribly unattractive. Sirius had never gone out with her before, simply because he didn't really think that he liked her. Sirius had a way of managing to go out with a different girl each month, yet despite this, he had always liked the girls he went out with, even if it wasn't for very long. He wasn't going to go out with a girl whom he didn't like. He thought it was rude.

"Hey, Dory. What's up?" he asked.

"Oh, not much. I'm just glad to be back at school. My summer was rather low key. It wasn't that much fun. How 'bout you? What was your summer like?" she asked.

A frown passed briefly over his face. He had actually begun to forget about his summer, which was fine by him. But, of course, someone had to bring it up. He didn't feel like pouring out the details to his class mate, so he stuck with a noncommittal response. "My summer was nonexistent," he said lightly, keeping the hard emotion from his voice.

"What?"

"I had a really lousy summer," he said. "It isn't worth mentioning."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Naw, it's okay," he said. He couldn't stand it when people said sorry for things they had absolutely no hand in. He didn't want people's sympathy, nor would he accept it. They continued up the staircase in an awkward silence, both skipping over the trick stair, out of habit more than anything else. They entered the common room, and broke their silence with a polite "See ya later", before Dory went up the stair case to the girls' dormitories.

Sirius mingled in the common room for a few minutes, taking in the familiar sights and smells. He wasn't at all surprised to see that Athena and James were already sitting in front of the fire, their books spread out in front of them. James was leaning past Athena and pointing to something in her book, obviously trying to explain something to her. Sirius laughed and shook his head. It was fairly clear to him where the rumors that James and Athena were dating developed. Anyone who saw that would clearly make that assumption.

Sirius made his way up to his dormitory, finding Remus and Peter already there. Remus was already in his pajamas, and was laying on his back staring into space, clearly trying to ignore Peter, who was rambling on about something that, even after listening for a minute or two, Sirius couldn't make sense of.

"Hey Pete," he said after pulling on his pajamas.

"Huh?"

"Shut up."

"Oh."

Sirius heard Remus give a brief sigh of relief, as though Peter's rambling was giving him a headache, before saying, "Where's James?"

"Finishing his potions essay with Athena," he said. "Although, by morning, I'm sure we'll find out from some second year that they were snogging in front of the fire all night."

"Snogging?" Remus commented, sitting up with a raised eyebrow. "Well, he's certainly been demoted. Last year they stayed out all night having hot passionate sex on McGonagall's desk."

All three of them laughed, hard, clearly remembering the rumors that had started to circulate around the Gryffindor Tower last year. Only those in their year knew that, without a doubt, nothing of the sort had happened. But they still thought it was entertaining to make fun about it. James and Athena had thought the rumors to be absolutely hilarious, so, with time, they had eventually died down.

Sirius flung himself down on the four-poster bed. "Well, I don't know about you two, but I'm dead tired. I'm not waiting for James to come up and tell us about his snogging session with Athena," he said, after giving a huge yawn. His friends gave general murmurs of agreement and they let themselves be overtaken by sleep.

an: i haven't had time to proof read this as thoroughly as i proofed the other chapters...so i'm sorry for any porr grammar, etc. I'll try and update as soon as i can

yours in writing

Delano