Professor McGonagall handed out timetables to all the students who hadn't gotten theirs the previous day. Each student's timetable was slightly different, depending on their individual needs; some of them had counselling, some of them had fewer lessons, depending on what they could handle, some of them had regular meetings with Madam Pomfrey and some of them had therapy sessions (speech therapy, rehab etc.).

James looked down at his timetable, confused. He double checked he had the right one before nudging Sirius on the shoulder and pointing towards the sheet of paper.

Why do I have speech therapy? he signed, perplexed. Sirius peeked over his shoulder onto the paper and, sure enough, he had speech therapy scheduled three times a week. Sirius shrugged.

"They probably just made a mistake when they made the timetables," he said reasonably, "you can go talk to McGonagall about it later,"

You're right, replied James, can you imagine me trying to do speech therapy, though? He cracked a grin.

"I'm sure you'd be wonderful, Prongsie," Sirius grinned back.

Marlene snatched James' timetable out of his hands, looking through it for herself.

"You weren't lying," she said, impressed, "you do realise that, in order to speak you need to be able to produce sound from your mouth?"

James nodded, why do you think I've never done it before?

Lily, who was entirely lost in that conversation, started to talk to Remus and Peter about the teachers and classes. Apparently half the school was under the impression that the Maths position was cursed, because no teacher seemed to last more than a year, but Remus figured it was just because Math was easily the most hated subject and almost nobody made an effort in the class, which didn't encourage the teachers to continue.

She also learned that the houses had some lessons with the other houses and some without, depending on the amount of students each teacher could handle at one time, and that the school's sport was basketball, and that each house made a team. The teams would play each other and whichever team won would go on to play against other schools, although Hogwarts had a reputation for not being very good. James, Sirius and Marlene were all on Gryffindor's team last year, and James was the captain. Tryouts would be in the next couple of weeks.

"Well, I won't be trying out," said Lily, when Remus had finished explaining.

"Me neither, Sirius keeps trying to convince me to, though," said Remus, shaking his head.

"What about you Peter?" asked Lily, trying to drag the quiet boy into the conversation.

"I… I might try out. Usually -tic- do, but I never -tic- make the team,"

"Oh, well … at least you try." said Lily, in an attempt to be optimistic.

"What about the other teachers, then?" asked Lily, diverting the conversation back to lessons.

"Well, there's McGonagall -you've already met her- she teaches English. She's quite strict but she's very good at what she does. We've got Slughorn -he teaches Science- get on his good side and you'll have no problem acing the class. Flitwick teaches Music, not one of the best subjects, but he's fair. Binns teaches History, he's a bore but his classes are a good chance to catch up on missed sleep. Sprout teaches Home Economics and she's perhaps the nicest teacher at the school. Now – who've I missed?"

Lily looked down at her timetable for a second before saying, "art."

"Trelawney. She's crazy. Believes in using glass balls to tell the future and all of those ridiculous superstitions," Remus snorted, "she absolutely adores James though, for unknown reasons."

"Who adores James?" asked Sirius, butting into the conversation.

"Trelawney."

"Ah, yes, Trelawney! What was it she said last year?" he put on a breathy, high pitched voice, "'Oh, dear James, I shall miss you! You should write to me over the -'" He stopped when James hit him on the arm.

Everyone turned to look at him. James hid his flushed, pink face in his hands.

Lily glanced at the watch on Remus' wrist, "We should probably go if we want to make it to class on time. We've got History first,"

With Sirius helping too, the process of getting Remus up the stairs went much more smoothly. Lily would have lagged behind if it weren't for Marlene dragging her along.

History was incredibly boring. Binns turned out to be even more dull than Remus had said, something that wasn't aided by her general dislike of the subject.

The only reason Lily didn't fall asleep was because she was looking through the book James had given her while they were waiting for Professor Binns to arrive. The book was a slightly battered and very thick volume titled The Complete Guide To British Sign Language For Dummies although someone had crossed out the word 'Dummies' and written 'Beginners' underneath with a black marker.

The first half contained copious amounts of information on the history of sign language and how sign language changed depending on the person using it and other such topics, and the second half contained the signs. Someone had gone through the book, highlighting certain parts and writing little notes in the borders and anywhere else they could fit it, and Lily found that quite helpful, because it meant that she didn't have to go and look up the answers to any questions she had, as they were quite often answered in the scribbled notes.

Lily was still immersed in the book when the class ended forty-five minutes later.

They had English after followed by lunch. Lily practised some of the signs at lunch, with Sirius laughing and correcting her the whole time.

By the time they headed off to art she could form a couple of basic sentences, but understanding them was a lot harder, which was frustrating.

"Hello," said a misty voice, "I am Professor Trelawney, if you haven't met me yet. I teach art here at Hogwarts School for Special Needs Children."

Trelawney took the roll before continuing.

"This semester we will be looking at portraits and realistic art. Before we star the topic I would like to see where you are at currently. If you could pull out your Art Diaries I would like you to draw the person next to you as best as you can. You have until the end of the lesson."

Lily looked slowly at James, who was sitting next to her, before pulling out her art book and opening it to the first page. She got a pencil out of her pencil case and sharpened it quickly before attempting to draft out the shape of James' face, glancing back up at him every few seconds. James seemed to be entirely immersed in his drawing, only looking up occasionally to check something before going back to the drawing.

When the hour was up everyone showed each other their drawings. Remus and Peter's renderings of each other were alright and Sirius and Marlene had clearly had a war to see who could make the other look the stupidest. Lily felt horrible when she saw the drawing james had done of her, not because it was bad, because it was quite the opposite, but because of how horrible her picture looked. James' drawing was perfect. He'd drawn Lily in a style that was both realistic and his own, original style. The Lily pictured in it was laughing at something and she had a beautiful flower – a lily – tucked behind her ear.

Lily looked up at James, speechless. His face went pink and he buried his free hand in his hair. He had a smudge of pencil on his nose.

"Wow." said Lily breathlessly, "It's so perfect."

James flushed even darker, grinning crookedly at her. Lily looked back at her own drawing. Everything about it was wrong, it hardly even looked like a person.

"I am so sorry for my drawing," apologised Lily, "drawing isn't one of my strong points."

James shrugged. Sirius pulled his art book out of his hands, looking at it with a bemused expression before handing it back.

"And James Potter outshines everyone once again,"

Trelawney came around the room, commenting on everyone's art. She struggled to find something positive about Lily's drawing, but went on for about a full ten minutes about how perfect James' drawing was.

"Sometimes," said Sirius to James, when Trelawney was out of earshot, "you have to not be the best, you do know that, right? Besides, if you get any better I think Trelawney might actually explode."

A/N- Hi. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and sorry for the long wait between chapters. Please review and tell me if there is something I should change/add. By the way, I still need some side characters so if you wanted to create a character I could include that would be fantastic (I'll need name/age/gender/house/why they're at the school/personality/looks and their relationship with the Marauders & co) Thanks!