Normally, I don't like to add in notes, but I just want to apologise to anyone who has been reading for the delay in posting, no excuses, just been a bit blocked.

Hope you like it, let me know?

The next day bore the full story of the fiendfyre. Jac, insensible and not having a great head for directions at the best of times, had gotten it wrong. It was a village, but it was only one building that was consumed, and no one was hurt, miraculously. The impact was more mental than physical, as it was clear that it had been an attack, perhaps a practice for something bigger, and it had been done by supporters of Voldemort.

Thanks to Jac's parents being connected to the Ministry, the three girls, Jac, Karen and Lily, were escorted to Diagon Alley by an auror, and their return arranged by floo. Lily would floo with Karen and be apparated home from there but they were allowed a few hours to spend Jac's birthday money. Determined to sweeten the sourness on which the evening had ended, Jac started by demanding they let her pay for three large ice creams, which they ate while walking around. When Lily stopped outside the quidditch supply shop, she noticed Ted inside, but didn't have time to say hello before Jac dragged her off to get a second opinion on her newest dress robes.

Ted saw her and they waved awkwardly at one another, as Lily was forced away. Jac noticed, but said nothing until she was in the robes shop. Standing on a pedestal, having cloth pinned onto her, she broached the subject with her usual subtlety.

"So, d'you fancy Ted Moore?"

"What?" Lily laughed, feeling a little uncomfortable discussing it with an old woman flitting around them, her measuring tape twirling independently through the air. She had demanded on measuring Lily up for robes, declaring there was a new fabric that was made for Lily's colouring, and started measuring, despite Lily's protestations.

"I saw you, with your little wave."

"Oh, so that's how you know, but by that logic I'm also in love with Karen because we once held hands during apparition."

"Hey, I wouldn't judge you!" Lily smiled gently, ignoring her friend. Jac was not the sort to be ignored.

"I heard you were very 'cosy' at the party!"

"What?" Lily questioned. "Who told you that?"

"I have my sources!"

"The house-elf?"

"Yeah."

"Knew it!"

"You don't deny the 'cosiness' then?" Jac's eyes took on an almost Rita-ish glint.

"We talked about Quidditch, and drank some firewhiskey. We're not exactly setting a date!"

"But, there's something going on!"

Lily denied it, and continued to do so as the process of measuring them went on. Lily refused the robes, she didn't have the money and moreover, she didn't need dress robes, her friends weren't exactly the 'dinner party' age, and Hogwarts wasn't likely to throw a ball anytime soon.

She tried to pretend she didn't see Jac slip the woman money, but she began to work out exactly how much she could save up to pay Jac back for a set of robes she didn't want. The three girls stepped out into the stifling heat of Diagon Alley, the summer seemed to be asserting itself in its dying days, making its fading presence known before the leaves started to fall and the air grew colder. Only a few more days until King's Cross and the Hogwarts Express and a return to the place where Lily felt most at home.

Surprisingly, the days from when she left Jac's house to the first of September went in very fast. Between packing, sending off some more letters to people discussing the incidents of the party and sending out even more letters denying things that people had heard about the party, she barely had enough time to annoy Petunia before she was forcing her trunk into her dad's old, beaten up car. The journey was pleasant enough, Lily was always happy in her father's company and the journey was smooth, aside from one brief stop where he had laughed so hard that he had to pull the car over and have a coughing fit, choking on one of the toffees that were tradition on their car journey to the station. She managed to stagger with her trunk over to the trolley station and was soon walking through the familiar Muggle train station towards the magical barrier between platforms 9 and 10. She said a warm goodbye to her father, hugging him and feeling her eyes stinging slightly at the thought of him being all alone in the shop, Petunia was barely at home, though perhaps she would be more frequently with Lily gone. He wouldn't like to see her upset, so she hid it, blinking rapidly to disperse the tears before they were really formed. Taking the trolley from him, and with a final kiss on his cheek, she wheeled round and faced the barrier, the featureless stone wall that would disappear as she reached it... hopefully. She looked down to the cage that held Meredith, who was looking up questioningly at her owner.

"Right then, back we go! Are you ready?"

The bird didn't answer.

She pushed the trolley, gathering speed as she reached the wall, and passed right through, her eyes squeezing shut at the moment of impact and opening a second later to a whole different scene. There was a train, a great red one, a large brass plaque on its front declaring it the Hogwarts Express, but there was something indefinable about the scene that marked it as magical, as different. It might have been the great number of owls being pushed on trolleys, or the swishing robes and pointed hats in place of more mundane attire, but there was something special here. Lily took a moment to stare, the scene was worth admiring. Parents were hugging their children, trying to ensure that nothing was left behind or lost. Lily looked around for her friends, but couldn't see them in the crowd and so started to push her trolley to the train, and surrendered it among the large piles of similar trunks that were stacked up on the train. Carrying Meredith's cage in front of her she scanned past every face in each carriage and when she found her friends, she dropped the owl off and then, after a brief chat, headed towards the front of the train, to where the prefects would meet to receive their schedules and whatever over-eager, pompous students had been chosen as Head Boy and Girl would give a speech, which they would try to make sound different from the year before.

She must have been early because there were only three occupants in the prefect's carriage. The two new prefects from Hufflepuff were there, Ruby Jones, a fellow Slug Club member, though she was more enthusiastic, and a boy whose name escaped her, she knew it was either Jeffrey or Joseph, maybe.

The third was Arnold Casters, a seventh year who Lily could see was the new Head Boy. He was a good choice, very bright and rule-abiding, but perhaps a little dull. Lily supposed that was a good thing for a Head Boy, and as she looked at the two Hufflepuffs, who she was only sure were alive because they kept blinking, Lily wondered if that was the common factor in prefects, did Dumbledore pick dull people? She knew she stuck to the rules, as much as anyone else did, but she never really thought of herself as dull. Perhaps it was the contrast to Petunia who was positively proud of being boring, but Lily had always considered herself slightly dangerous, a bit exciting.

Now that she thought about it though, when was the last time she had done anything even remotely risky, or interesting?

She supposed that running off the night of the fire was risky, but that was a serious situation, she meant something fun, something that wasn't an instinctual reaction. She was clawing for something interesting about her when she heard her name.

"Psst, Lily! Oi!" Jac was tapping the window gently, waving for Lily to come over. "Are you going to want anything from the trolley?"

"No, I've brought-"

"toffees, I know." Damn, Lily thought. She was so predictable, so dull, that her friend even knew what sweets she brought on the train journey.

"Jac?" she asked, not sure whether asking if you were boring was a dull thing to do. "Am I dull?"

"What? No!" Jac said, but her voice had that slightly dreamy note that showed she wasn't paying attention.

"Oh my God! I am, aren't I? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

It wasn't Jac who answered. A voice behind her crowed.

"Hmm, why didn't anyone tell Evans that she was boring, I wonder, could it be that she's completely incapable of taking criticism?"

She might have expected James Potter to be present in her moment of self-doubt. He seemed to have a radar for it, a Lily Evans insecurity detector.

"Oh, leave it alone, Potter. I seem to remember you starting to yell at me when I called you a bully, so I'm not the only one who can't take criticism, you're just as bad as I am!"

Another voice, Sirius Black, snorted at that and chipped in quietly.

"As bad as one another? It's like you're a perfect match!"

Lily had the strange feeling that everyone around her found something highly amusing, except James Potter, who was staring her down with an intense dislike.

"No, that can't be right because he's so self-obsessed that if I was anything like Potter here, he'd be madly in love with me!"

"No fear on that front, Evans. If I was even half as smug as you, I'd throw myself off a bridge."

"Well, we'd better find a bridge, because you're ten times more smug than I am. Smug? Can't you hear yourself, you're a hypocrite."

"As least I'm not boring."

Lily stomped into the prefect's carriage and slammed the door in his face, the drama of the gesture somewhat ruined by the glass panel that she had to pull a blind down to block, and further destroyed by Remus Lupin knocking to come in about five seconds later. Lily sat down and refused to look either at Remus or towards the door, where she could hear Jac talking, though what she was saying was not clear. She prayed that the meeting would be quick and she could sneak unnoticed into her friends compartment. No one listened because the meeting dragged on for ages and it was growing dark before Lily was able to leave. She had sat next to Lupin, but hadn't even looked at him for more than a second at a time.

The new Head Girl was Amy Cheung, a good choice and Lily's preferred option. A Hufflepuff with a knack for divination but a surprisingly grounded personality for someone with an interest in the woolly subject. She was always very thoughtful, and though Lily didn't know her particularly well, the two had always had a good working relationship.

Still, it seemed that between them they were determined to ensure that all the prefects were well-versed in each and every Hogwarts school rule, which took an age. That, combined with a number of over-enthusiastic fifth years, meant that Lily spent the majority of the meeting pinching her leg to keep alert.

She would normally chat to Remus, or even pass a few notes to him, but she couldn't. it seemed that James Potter had stepped up from just doing things that might annoy her to actively trying to antagonise her. He had no reason to be so rude, he was the reason her best friend had... well, it wasn't a clear cut situation, but if it hadn't been for him... there was no point in over thinking it, he was horrible.

Remus seemed to accept that she wasn't really willing to talk to him, and they walked in silence until Remus found his friends. Lily refused to even glance inside, she just kept walking. She also passed a carriage of Slytherins and had to check herself when she noticed that she was looking for Severus. She couldn't see him, but she hadn't exactly hung around. It was a relief to get to her carriage, and she threw herself down next to Karen, wagging her fingers at Meredith, who had been settled onto a chair, still in her cage.

"So?" she asked Jac, a little surprised that her friend hadn't immediately started talking about what she had said to Potter after she had stormed away. Strangely, Jac seemed reluctant.

"What? How was the prefect meeting, who can we expect to be seeing have a breakdown mid-October?"

"Amy's Head Girl, and Arnold, as expected I suppose." She thought about three years ago, when Myra Sanderson had had a meltdown in the Great Hall over prefects not being thorough enough on their patrols. It had been quite a sight, and had ended with her taking three weeks in the Hospital Wing to recover. It had become tradition since then to take guesses on whether the Heads would last the year, and there was even a running bet, with quite a sum of money to the one who guessed closest to the day of the meltdown.

"Amy'll be fine, she'll be able to see all the disasters coming! Arnold might be a better bet for the breakdown."

Jac wasn't talented at avoiding talking about things, and Lily only needed to raise an eyebrow at her before she broke.

"Look, I know what you want to know, but I'm not going to tell you."

"What?"

"You want to know what I said to James. I'm not telling you."

"Why not? You're my friend, not James bloody Potter's!"

"Can't I be both?" She seemed so casual, genuinely unconcerned about the fact that she was fraternising with the enemy.

"No!" Lily nearly shouted. "He's so horrible to me, and he's so arrogant, why would you want to be his friend?"

Jac shrugged, and pulled a newspaper from her bag, unfolding it carefully and raising it in front of her face.

"Is it because I'm boring?"

A cackle came from behind the paper. "Lily, you are a lot of things, you're a pain, and you're a human guilt trip, you're impatient, and you're altogether too concerned with other people, but you're not boring. Why did you think you were? Is it because James said you were, because James also once said I was part-goblin, it doesn't make it true!"

"It has absolutely nothing to do with him. I was just thinking that Arnold's quite sedate, and the two Hufflepuff fifth years are almost comatose, and I wondered if Dumbledore picks boring people for prefect, and then I tried to remember the last time I had done something interesting, or fun, or immature, or reckless. And I couldn't." She nodded her head in resolution. "I'm going to be more fun."

"Right then!" Karen said, a laugh in her voice. This was not the kind of amusement Lily hoped to inspire in her future as a fun person, They were both clearly laughing at her, they didn't think she could change. She absolutely could, though, and she was going to.

"So, what's on Fun Lily's agenda for this term, can we expect some wonderful prank to rival your nemesises, nemisi? Sirius Black and, gasp, James Potter?"

"I said I was going to be fun, not idiotic. I just mean that I'm going to do things rather than complain. I'm not going to be as... dull as before."

"So? What are you going to do?"

"I... Maybe I'll... Dunno!" she slumped against the seat, being fun was exhausting. She looked at Jac. "You're fun, aren't you? I mean, people think you're fun, people like you!"

"People like you too, you're good."

"What d'you mean, 'good'?"

"Y'know, you're just...good. You stand up for people, you're so kind, unbelievably kind, you're selfless, and people just, they just like you."

"Yeah, but I'm not fun."

"I think you're fun!" Karen piped up, and Lily couldn't help but laugh. When she stopped, she knew what was at the root of the problem.

"It's just that things have been so serious for so long, with Petunia, and Severus, and now Potter, I feel like my life is just a series of me making people who used to care about me, hate me. I just want life, everything to be fun, I mean, for goodness sake, we go to magic school!"

Karen looked sympathetic, a little pity in her eyes, and she nodded along, a kindly smile on her face. Jac didn't say anything either, but from the look on her face, for the few seconds before she raised the paper back up, was understanding.

Nothing much happened for the next few hours, they read the paper in turns, and shared some sweets from the trolley (the toffees stayed uneaten in her bag).

They changed into their Hogwarts robes when they started to see the familiar countryside pass by the window. The journey took most of the day, and having only eaten sweets, Lily was already dreaming of the food that would soon fill the great hall. She climbed off the carriage and there was a rush of students towards the row of carriages that waited. She thought that she ought not to push through the crowd, it was a prefect's responsibility to keep the other students in order and safe, but it was also very dull.

She let a few people go but when she made it to the carriages, most were gone, or full and about to go. She groaned loudly as she noticed the choices in the remaining carriages. There was one seat in a carriage with a group of Ravenclaws that included Rita Skeeter, or two in a carriage of Slytherins, whether Severus was one of them or not, she couldn't have said, it was not an option. The third choice was when Lily realised that there might have been a God, but he certainly wasn't a big fan of Lily Evans. James Potter and his three friends were lounging in the last carriage. She whined for a moment, but her stomach grumbled and she knew that walking up to the castle wasn't an option. Jac and Karen seemed to be frozen, waiting for their orders, and with a final sigh, she put a hand on both their backs and forced them forward. More out of a lack of other choices than a positive decision in one direction, she sent her two friends ahead of her, into the carriage with the Gryffindors.

For a second, she thought that one of them might tell her to get off, that she wasn't welcome, but they simply looked in her direction for a moment, and then continued their conversation. She looked pleadingly at Jac, begging her wordlessly to start talking about something. She obliged, striking up a loud conversation about her most recent musical discovery. She was a Muggle music fan, and found it almost as amusing as Lily found wizard music, though Lily still had an affection for certain Muggle music. She noticed that the boys' eyes darted towards them more than a few times as the horseless carriage trundled up the path, but she refused to acknowledge them, she absolutely was not going to get dragged into another fight with Potter.