Lily watched the doorway close behind Amanda, smiling. Amanda wasn't
exactly her best friend, but it was neat to have her at Hogwarts, too. She
pulled her list out again.
"Potions stuff. All right then." She headed straight for the dim and dusky store on her right. Inside, she found her mother scooping out some black beetle eyes into a bag.
"Mom? I thought you were with Petunia."
Her mom smiled. "I was, but then I decided, that since I'm majoring in chemistry this year, I'd do some extra experiments. Look, they have potion recipes up here!" And she waved a whole stack of parchment in Lily's face. "I copied your list, so your Potions stuff is right here. I got you some extra stuff that I'm going to take back as soon as we get home." Lily shook her head. Her mom couldn't even cook decently, not to mention do experiments. Usually, the cookies turned out burnt and the experiments blew up,sending smoke up her nose and causing her to have a sneeze attack.
"Mom, I'm gonna look at the other stores. See you in...how long?"
"A half hour. And stay in Diagon Alley."
"I will. Thanks." She practically dashed out of the murky shop with its awful smell, thankful for fresh air.
She looked around for anyone else she might know, though the only familiar face was James', and his wasn't actually a face, it was more the back of his head. He and some others were clustered about the Quality Quidditch Supplies store, oohing over a broom that, Lily read on its handle, was the new 'Millenium'.
James seemed to be the most interested. "Look at that thing! I bet you wouldn't even feel that you're on a broom at all."
"I know." one of his friends added, with black hair and a sort of doglike expression. "I wish Dad'd trade in that old one I have--it's starting to splinter."
A girl with short blond hair smirked. "Sirius, I've told you before that if you insist on chasing Serverus with that thing, he's going to hex you. And that's gonna do some damage to the broom."
"All right, all right! I've heard this before!" he retorted, clearly knowing her statements by heart.
James was still staring at the broom. "I've already asked Mom to sell my old one and give me this, but since she got me that model of the Milky Way, she thought I didn't need this. It's just what we need to beat Slytherin, though!"
The blonde rolled her eyes. She took James' arm and pulled him away from the window. "You promised me you'd get me some ice cream, c'mon, that broom isn't that important, is it?" He gave in, and Lily stared after them, wondering. "Is that his girlfriend?" She wrinkled her nose. "Darn."
A few weeks later, September first, to be exact, Lily and her family were walking towards King's Cross to drop her off in front of the magical barrier, the one separating the platform from the other Muggle ones. Her family couldn't get inside, so she had to say goodbye here.
"Mom, I promise I'll come home for Christmas. Thanks again for my trunk."
She hugged her father. "Dad, 'bye. Send me lots of owls, OK? Oh, wait, you'd have to wait for me to send Alisande. I'd forgotten." One of the things she'd gottin in Diagon Alley was a raven-black owl with firey black eyes; she had named her Alisande.
Petunia had been forced to come along, as Lily wasn't going to be home till Christmas holidays.
"'Tunia, stay out of my room. If you don't I'll hex you. Bye, now," she added in a sickly sweet tone.
"And good riddence, I'd say." Petunia muttered, out of her parents' hearing, though not out of Lily's.
"Right back to ya, Muggle." Lily had answered. "When I come back, I'll make sure to teach you a spell that'll make you look less like a horse." She nimbly evaded a slap and, without waiting for a hug from her parents, dashed towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten.
"I'll send you millions of owls, Mom! Bye!" She had just seen James and his friends approaching and speeded up, managing to get through the barrier. She had heard a story of how, last year, the barrier had been locked and no one could get in and everyone missed the train. No one was quite sure who had done it, though.
Lily was standing on platform nine and three-quarters before she knew it. The long, scarlet engine was letting off so much noise she had to cover her ears. Finally deciding to let them go, she half carried, half dragged her trunk onto the train. It was heavy, as her mother had insisted on buying a black trunk with gold fastenings. She got it through the door and into one of the few empty compartments. Gasping for breath, she sank down onto a plushy velvet seat. "Ouf. Mom, next time get me a paper bag. Ouch, my back." She remained sitting until she heard some noises outside and went to investigate.
She knew some of these people. Sirius, James, and two others were setting off a couple of squeaky mice in the corridors, which went into quite a few compartments. Squeals and screams and the occasional curses came from behind every half-open door the mice went into.
Sirius pointed down the part of hte corridor near Lily. "We haven't let them off in any of those yet."
One of the other boys, with brownish-mousy hair and the look of a rat, shivered. "But what if there's a teacher in one of them?"
James frowned. "Peter, you're entirely too spineless. C'mon. We'd better get rid of these before Snape sees us."
They only had two mice left, and, carefully, they guided them to Lily's compartment and another. She drew back inside quickly, not allowing them to see her, though leaving the door partly open.
She saw the small brown mouse enter with a squeak, as if someone had just pinched its tail. Swooping down on it, and making sure not to make a sound, she picked the mouse up. It was really quite a cuddly thing as it started to nip at her ear. She reclined in a seat, stroking the mouse.
Outside, the boys had realized that the other compartment was empty. Disappointed, they waited for a shriek from the inhabitant of the other compartment. They didn't hear a sound. Puzzled, James stuck his head in the small gap in the doorway. His mouth dropped open. Lily was stroking the mouse. "Let's see, now what should I call you? Oh, James, did you send him in here?" she asked, only now apparently noticing him. "Can I keep him? I've already named him Clyde. If it's a her, though, I'll go with Bonnie. What do you think?"
By now Sirius had come to investigate.
"She didn't scream? What kind of a girl are you, anyway?"
Lily flashed a sweet smile, the one she used to use for her teachers.
"One of a kind."
Lily watched the stunned expressions on the boys' faces. Unable to keep a straight face anymore, she burst out laughing, which set them off, too. By the time a tallish, greasy-haired kid about Sirius' and James' ages stepped into the doorway, Lily had been introduced all around and learned that the three boys she hadn't reall met were Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin. They were all in second year and had known each other since they were about three, and James was just telling everyone how he and Lily had met the other day.
"So, anyway, you know how that Lucius Malfoy was trying to get me with a permanent vomit-breath hex yesterday? Well, anyway, he aimed pretty good for once, so I had to run, and I smashed into Lily." He smiled at her. "And I'm pretty glad I did." Sirius and Remus started to sn igger.
"Yo, James, don't let Sheila know that you said that! She'd probably start jinxing you with all the spells she could get out of Snape; you know he likes her!"
"Indeed?" A hard, cold voice behind them made them all jump.
James rolled his eyes. "Snape, it's not exactly a secret."
Snape shook his long, very greasy hair. "What isn't a secret?"
Sirius raised thick, dark eyebrows. "That you sent Sheila a large bouquet full of roses last Saturday,--"
"Which you bought at 'The Rosette Shop', three shops away from that large fountain in the middle of Fraeden Square." Remus finished.
Snape's waxy cheeks went a bit rosy. He immediately turned and swished out of the compartment as all four boys collapsed on the floor, laughing.
James recovered himself first. "Tracking Hex and Sheila's big mouth. Works every time." He started to laugh again and had to swallow several Anti- Laugh chocolate worms--at least, that's what he thought they were, but he grabbed several Ice Mice instead and started to shiver and shake, teeth chattering. "Pink roses with a red rim! Paid sixteen Sickles for them!" he gasped out. Lily joined in, trying to imagine Snape and Sheila as a couple. She started to giggle uncontrollably. By this time, the train had already started on its way to Hogwarts. Lily was the first one who noticed the landscape moving. "Guys, did any of you notice the train leave?"
Remus looked puzzled. "Why? It didn't, did it--OH, S--"
"Petrifocus Totalus!" James shouted, pulling out his wand before Remus had a chance to finish his sentence. Remus' arms snapped to his sides until he resembled a piece of wood, besides being cut off in mid-sentence. "Remus, that was uncalled for. Sulatot Sucofirtep." Remus returned to normal, glaring at James. "What happened?" Sirius asked. "It sounded like something important."
Remus scowled. "It was. I left my trunk at the station." There was stunned silence--they were a bit apprehensive of what Remus would say if they started to laugh as loudly as they wanted to.
"You genius." Peter remarked. "How are you planning to get it back?"
"You're not even worried? I had a whole crate of Dungbombs in there! What if it's stolen?"
Lily raised an eyebrow. "Who in their right mind would steal a pack of Dungbombs?"
Sirius snorted with a bit of unrepressable laughter. "Especially from his trunk. Everyone knows the story of how Malfoy tried to steal all of his extra robes and got his eyebrows inflamed by the Burglar Hex James invented. They wouldn't go out for about three minutes. Madam Pomfrey kept him in the hospital wing for a week!"
James sighed, with a dreamy expression on his face. "He still had the scars at the end of last year. Maybe his eyebrows are actually growing again!"
Lily turned to James. "You invented a hex?"
He looked a bit embarrrassed. "Yeah, only a few. They're not that good, really." He stopped as Sirius snorted again.
"James, you invented fifty-two jinxes by the time you left Hogwarts last year." He turned to Lily, explaining. "One of them, a sort of Nail-Loss one, he put on Professor McGonagall's wand, and the next time she picked it up--she'd just done her nails and was wearing sandals, since it was near the end of the school year and was really hot--anyway--we had twenty scarlet nails falling onto her desk and onto the floor. We were in the class next door when she started to scream like a banshee and ran to the hospital room--after picking up all of her nails."
Lily started to hyperventilate, she was laughing so hard.
After Remus and Peter had gone up to the one compartment that held about two teachers to tell them about Remus not having a trunk, a thin, blond witch stopped by the compartment with a cart.
"Anything to eat, kids?" she asked in a mournful sort of tone. James and Sirius handed over two Galleons and the order:
"The usual, please." They were immediately handed a plastic bag from the bottom shelf with a tag attached to it, saying: "Potter, Black, Pettigrew, and Lupin." Seeing Lily's puzzled face, the witch explained.
"They've bought the same thing six times since they first got on this train, so I just get their things ready ahead of time." With that, she handed Sirius two pitchers of pumpking juice and two Knuts. "You know where I am when you get hungry again. When." She turned to Lily. "No need to buy anything, dear. These four have enough to last seven giants for three weeks. I don't know how they manage to eat three bags of this stuff." Shaking her head, she trundled along to the next compartment, leaving Lily to stare at the contents of the bag, which had been emptied all over three seats, James, Sirius, and the floor.
The bag had held about five dozen Chocolate Frogs, twelve bags of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, two dozen Acid Pops, four blood-flavored packs of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, along with some that was pumpkin flavored. There were also about seventy Limited Edition Hysteria Gumdrops and a good eight hundred things called Toothflossing Stringmints, which had a label on them saying "New! Do Not Miss!"
James glanced at the label scornfully. "Yeah, right. We've been getting them delivered to Hogwarts and to our homes for about three years now. 'New!' But the reason we get so much is because this has to last us the whole year, and we hate brushing teeth between every single load of candy." he added at seeing Lily's amazed face when she saw the amount of Stringmints."
By the time Remus and Peter got back, Lily, James, Sirius, and some passers- by had finished all of the Chocolate Frogs and half of the rest, (except for the stringmints) along with one of the two pitchers of pumpkin juice.
"Hey! Where's all the food?" Peter asked, indignant.
Lily stared. "All the food? There's still half the bag left!"
James looked at her incredulously. "For them, half a bag of candy? I think last year I bet on nine minutes, seventeen seconds, though I might have to shorten it to nine ten. They keep going faster every time. Now, where...Oh, yeah, right, here." Pulling out a stopwatch, he leaned back over his shoulder to Remus and Lupin. "Ready, set, go!"
Lily watched in amazement. Pulling herself together, she managed to lean over to James and look at the stopwatch.
"Nine minutes, nine seconds. What, why, when, where, and how did you guys even get all this unwrapped so fast?"
The compartment was littered with wrappers. Not one piece of candy remained besides the Toothflossing Stringmints.
Lily was free to read for the next part of the trip, as all of the boys were fast asleep. Outside, it grew darker and darker, until finally Lily had to turn on the extra lights in the compartment and draw the scarlet velvet curtains in front of the window. She wrote a letter to her family, which she placed in a small, golden compartment under Alisande's cage, which, at the beginning of the trip, she had placed overhead so the owl wouldn't go nuts at the sight of the mice, which were still running around.
Around seven, she went up to the front to ask when they would be arriving. The witch with the cart told her about an hour, then went back to sleep.
When she got back to the compartment, she found Snape and a pale blond boy inside, with drawn wands. James was already covered in syrup and feathers, while Sirius was snoring with what looked like mud in his mouth. Peter and Remus were untouched, so far. Lily felt her eyes grow hot again. She dashed inside.
"And what do you think you're doing?" she demanded, indignantly.
Snape and the blond boy whirled around, defensive. The blond boy raised his wand. "And who are you, may I ask?"
"Lily Evans. How are you. Nice to meet you. All right, I'm done with politeness for the day." She pulled out her wand, even though she hadn't even learned any spells yet. Her mind went back to the one James had performed to shut Remus up. "Petrifocus Totalus!" she shouted, and immediately the pressure behind her eyes melted away. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, Malfoy was lying on the floor, limbs frozen in distorted positions, while Snape was frozen in the very attitude of running his finger up his nose.
"Oops. Guess I'd better work on that one." Together with Remus and Peter, who had awakened when she had shouted, she pushed the two statues out into the hallway. "And stay out." She slammed the door.
Inside, Remus had freed James and Sirius of their syrup, feathers, and mud. All of them were staring at Lily.
Sirius was the first to speak.
"How many times did you try that spell at home?"
Lily shrugged. "I didn't. This was my first bit of magic--I remembered what James did to Remus, that's all."
James gulped. "Do you know how many times we practiced that spell just to get as far as you did, just now?"
Remus answered for him. "Five weeks of endless practicing, just so we could use it on Malfoy."
Lily frowned. "Malfoy?"
"Yeah, Lucius Malfoy, that blond guy who was in here just a minute ago."
"Oh. Well...is that good?"
"Y'know, James," Sirius overlooked her question, "I think you might have some competition."
James looked puzzled. "Competition?"
Sirius nodded, and Remus looked from one to the other, trying ot figure out what on earth they meant. A few seconds later, his eye had a gleam in it, he wore a knowing grin, and looked over to Lily out of the corner of his eye. "You two couldn't keep even your own secret if your life depended on it." By the end of the trip, when a bodiless voice echoed through the corridors, Lily had heard all about James', Sirius', and Remus' opinions on everyone in the school. She also was told which houses to avoid getting into, if possible.
"Slytherin is somewhere I don't think you'd like, since you attacked Snape and Malfoy. Gryffindor is the best--" here James had his narrative interrupted by hoots and high-fives from the rest--"which is because we're in it." (More hoots.) "Ravenclaw has a whole bunch of snobs, but Sheila and her group are in there, so you might like that. Hufflepuff--well, enough said."
"So, you'd recommend Gryffindor?"
Sirius nodded. "Absolutely. Listen, I don't really think, when they test you to see what house you'll be in, that you should scream all that much. If you do, they'll put you in Hufflepuff."
Lily looked up. "Scream? Why?"
Remus leaned forward. "It's the Sorting Ceremony. I think Malfoy still has the scars."
Peter sn iggered at Lily's worried face.
"Hogwarts isn't exactly what you expected, is it?"
"No--not really--Why would I scream and what scars?" She caught sight of James' face, which had gone all red. "James!"
He looked up. "What?"
"Tell me."
He glanced at his friends, bit his lip, then shook his head. "Guys, this is getting really mean."
Remus looked shocked. "But, James, we took an oath to do this to every first year! You can't mean you're backing out!"
Lily crossed her arms in front of her chest. "To do what to every first year?"
James gave in. "Listen, the only thing you'll have to do is put on a hat. I'm sorry, really." He stood up and walked towards the door. "I'm going up front."
"Yeah, right." Sirius leaned out of the doorway. "Chicken!"
At that moment, the voice echoed through the corridors again, telling all students to put their things into their trunks and to get dressed in theri robes if they had not already done so. The boys left the compartment, while Lily made sure the door was locked and the curtain that covered the door's pane of glass was secured tightly. She reached into her trunk and pulled out her robes. She changed quickly, which was good, for the train stopped just thirty seconds after she had finished.
The announcer echoed through the corridor again. "Please leave your trunks on the train. They will be taken up to the castle separately."
Stepping off of the train, Lily found herself surrounded by a clear, starry night. There were no clouds, just a crescent moon hiding behind a tree.
She heard a thick, throaty voice calling over the crowd of students. "First years over here! First years, this way!" The speaker wasn't exactly hard to miss; in fact, just the opposite, as he ws twice as tall as an ordinary human and three times as broad. "First years this way!"
About two hundred kids just Lily's age had surrounded him, a good half of them scared and anxious. Lily scanned the crowd, hoping for someone she knew. That someone found her first.
"Lily!"
Someone had tapped her on the back.
"Amanda!"
"Lily, aren't you scared? I heard something about the Sorting ceremony hurting a bit."
Lily couldn't help it. She pulled a Sirius and snorted with laughter. "Don't worry. They love doing that to first years. All you have to do is try on a hat."
Amanda breathed. "Good. That's a relief. Eeek! I can't wait!"
Lily rolled her eyes. The first thing she'd try to learn was how to make Amanda never say "Eeek!" again. After three years, she was getting sick and tired of that word.
"Potions stuff. All right then." She headed straight for the dim and dusky store on her right. Inside, she found her mother scooping out some black beetle eyes into a bag.
"Mom? I thought you were with Petunia."
Her mom smiled. "I was, but then I decided, that since I'm majoring in chemistry this year, I'd do some extra experiments. Look, they have potion recipes up here!" And she waved a whole stack of parchment in Lily's face. "I copied your list, so your Potions stuff is right here. I got you some extra stuff that I'm going to take back as soon as we get home." Lily shook her head. Her mom couldn't even cook decently, not to mention do experiments. Usually, the cookies turned out burnt and the experiments blew up,sending smoke up her nose and causing her to have a sneeze attack.
"Mom, I'm gonna look at the other stores. See you in...how long?"
"A half hour. And stay in Diagon Alley."
"I will. Thanks." She practically dashed out of the murky shop with its awful smell, thankful for fresh air.
She looked around for anyone else she might know, though the only familiar face was James', and his wasn't actually a face, it was more the back of his head. He and some others were clustered about the Quality Quidditch Supplies store, oohing over a broom that, Lily read on its handle, was the new 'Millenium'.
James seemed to be the most interested. "Look at that thing! I bet you wouldn't even feel that you're on a broom at all."
"I know." one of his friends added, with black hair and a sort of doglike expression. "I wish Dad'd trade in that old one I have--it's starting to splinter."
A girl with short blond hair smirked. "Sirius, I've told you before that if you insist on chasing Serverus with that thing, he's going to hex you. And that's gonna do some damage to the broom."
"All right, all right! I've heard this before!" he retorted, clearly knowing her statements by heart.
James was still staring at the broom. "I've already asked Mom to sell my old one and give me this, but since she got me that model of the Milky Way, she thought I didn't need this. It's just what we need to beat Slytherin, though!"
The blonde rolled her eyes. She took James' arm and pulled him away from the window. "You promised me you'd get me some ice cream, c'mon, that broom isn't that important, is it?" He gave in, and Lily stared after them, wondering. "Is that his girlfriend?" She wrinkled her nose. "Darn."
A few weeks later, September first, to be exact, Lily and her family were walking towards King's Cross to drop her off in front of the magical barrier, the one separating the platform from the other Muggle ones. Her family couldn't get inside, so she had to say goodbye here.
"Mom, I promise I'll come home for Christmas. Thanks again for my trunk."
She hugged her father. "Dad, 'bye. Send me lots of owls, OK? Oh, wait, you'd have to wait for me to send Alisande. I'd forgotten." One of the things she'd gottin in Diagon Alley was a raven-black owl with firey black eyes; she had named her Alisande.
Petunia had been forced to come along, as Lily wasn't going to be home till Christmas holidays.
"'Tunia, stay out of my room. If you don't I'll hex you. Bye, now," she added in a sickly sweet tone.
"And good riddence, I'd say." Petunia muttered, out of her parents' hearing, though not out of Lily's.
"Right back to ya, Muggle." Lily had answered. "When I come back, I'll make sure to teach you a spell that'll make you look less like a horse." She nimbly evaded a slap and, without waiting for a hug from her parents, dashed towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten.
"I'll send you millions of owls, Mom! Bye!" She had just seen James and his friends approaching and speeded up, managing to get through the barrier. She had heard a story of how, last year, the barrier had been locked and no one could get in and everyone missed the train. No one was quite sure who had done it, though.
Lily was standing on platform nine and three-quarters before she knew it. The long, scarlet engine was letting off so much noise she had to cover her ears. Finally deciding to let them go, she half carried, half dragged her trunk onto the train. It was heavy, as her mother had insisted on buying a black trunk with gold fastenings. She got it through the door and into one of the few empty compartments. Gasping for breath, she sank down onto a plushy velvet seat. "Ouf. Mom, next time get me a paper bag. Ouch, my back." She remained sitting until she heard some noises outside and went to investigate.
She knew some of these people. Sirius, James, and two others were setting off a couple of squeaky mice in the corridors, which went into quite a few compartments. Squeals and screams and the occasional curses came from behind every half-open door the mice went into.
Sirius pointed down the part of hte corridor near Lily. "We haven't let them off in any of those yet."
One of the other boys, with brownish-mousy hair and the look of a rat, shivered. "But what if there's a teacher in one of them?"
James frowned. "Peter, you're entirely too spineless. C'mon. We'd better get rid of these before Snape sees us."
They only had two mice left, and, carefully, they guided them to Lily's compartment and another. She drew back inside quickly, not allowing them to see her, though leaving the door partly open.
She saw the small brown mouse enter with a squeak, as if someone had just pinched its tail. Swooping down on it, and making sure not to make a sound, she picked the mouse up. It was really quite a cuddly thing as it started to nip at her ear. She reclined in a seat, stroking the mouse.
Outside, the boys had realized that the other compartment was empty. Disappointed, they waited for a shriek from the inhabitant of the other compartment. They didn't hear a sound. Puzzled, James stuck his head in the small gap in the doorway. His mouth dropped open. Lily was stroking the mouse. "Let's see, now what should I call you? Oh, James, did you send him in here?" she asked, only now apparently noticing him. "Can I keep him? I've already named him Clyde. If it's a her, though, I'll go with Bonnie. What do you think?"
By now Sirius had come to investigate.
"She didn't scream? What kind of a girl are you, anyway?"
Lily flashed a sweet smile, the one she used to use for her teachers.
"One of a kind."
Lily watched the stunned expressions on the boys' faces. Unable to keep a straight face anymore, she burst out laughing, which set them off, too. By the time a tallish, greasy-haired kid about Sirius' and James' ages stepped into the doorway, Lily had been introduced all around and learned that the three boys she hadn't reall met were Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin. They were all in second year and had known each other since they were about three, and James was just telling everyone how he and Lily had met the other day.
"So, anyway, you know how that Lucius Malfoy was trying to get me with a permanent vomit-breath hex yesterday? Well, anyway, he aimed pretty good for once, so I had to run, and I smashed into Lily." He smiled at her. "And I'm pretty glad I did." Sirius and Remus started to sn igger.
"Yo, James, don't let Sheila know that you said that! She'd probably start jinxing you with all the spells she could get out of Snape; you know he likes her!"
"Indeed?" A hard, cold voice behind them made them all jump.
James rolled his eyes. "Snape, it's not exactly a secret."
Snape shook his long, very greasy hair. "What isn't a secret?"
Sirius raised thick, dark eyebrows. "That you sent Sheila a large bouquet full of roses last Saturday,--"
"Which you bought at 'The Rosette Shop', three shops away from that large fountain in the middle of Fraeden Square." Remus finished.
Snape's waxy cheeks went a bit rosy. He immediately turned and swished out of the compartment as all four boys collapsed on the floor, laughing.
James recovered himself first. "Tracking Hex and Sheila's big mouth. Works every time." He started to laugh again and had to swallow several Anti- Laugh chocolate worms--at least, that's what he thought they were, but he grabbed several Ice Mice instead and started to shiver and shake, teeth chattering. "Pink roses with a red rim! Paid sixteen Sickles for them!" he gasped out. Lily joined in, trying to imagine Snape and Sheila as a couple. She started to giggle uncontrollably. By this time, the train had already started on its way to Hogwarts. Lily was the first one who noticed the landscape moving. "Guys, did any of you notice the train leave?"
Remus looked puzzled. "Why? It didn't, did it--OH, S--"
"Petrifocus Totalus!" James shouted, pulling out his wand before Remus had a chance to finish his sentence. Remus' arms snapped to his sides until he resembled a piece of wood, besides being cut off in mid-sentence. "Remus, that was uncalled for. Sulatot Sucofirtep." Remus returned to normal, glaring at James. "What happened?" Sirius asked. "It sounded like something important."
Remus scowled. "It was. I left my trunk at the station." There was stunned silence--they were a bit apprehensive of what Remus would say if they started to laugh as loudly as they wanted to.
"You genius." Peter remarked. "How are you planning to get it back?"
"You're not even worried? I had a whole crate of Dungbombs in there! What if it's stolen?"
Lily raised an eyebrow. "Who in their right mind would steal a pack of Dungbombs?"
Sirius snorted with a bit of unrepressable laughter. "Especially from his trunk. Everyone knows the story of how Malfoy tried to steal all of his extra robes and got his eyebrows inflamed by the Burglar Hex James invented. They wouldn't go out for about three minutes. Madam Pomfrey kept him in the hospital wing for a week!"
James sighed, with a dreamy expression on his face. "He still had the scars at the end of last year. Maybe his eyebrows are actually growing again!"
Lily turned to James. "You invented a hex?"
He looked a bit embarrrassed. "Yeah, only a few. They're not that good, really." He stopped as Sirius snorted again.
"James, you invented fifty-two jinxes by the time you left Hogwarts last year." He turned to Lily, explaining. "One of them, a sort of Nail-Loss one, he put on Professor McGonagall's wand, and the next time she picked it up--she'd just done her nails and was wearing sandals, since it was near the end of the school year and was really hot--anyway--we had twenty scarlet nails falling onto her desk and onto the floor. We were in the class next door when she started to scream like a banshee and ran to the hospital room--after picking up all of her nails."
Lily started to hyperventilate, she was laughing so hard.
After Remus and Peter had gone up to the one compartment that held about two teachers to tell them about Remus not having a trunk, a thin, blond witch stopped by the compartment with a cart.
"Anything to eat, kids?" she asked in a mournful sort of tone. James and Sirius handed over two Galleons and the order:
"The usual, please." They were immediately handed a plastic bag from the bottom shelf with a tag attached to it, saying: "Potter, Black, Pettigrew, and Lupin." Seeing Lily's puzzled face, the witch explained.
"They've bought the same thing six times since they first got on this train, so I just get their things ready ahead of time." With that, she handed Sirius two pitchers of pumpking juice and two Knuts. "You know where I am when you get hungry again. When." She turned to Lily. "No need to buy anything, dear. These four have enough to last seven giants for three weeks. I don't know how they manage to eat three bags of this stuff." Shaking her head, she trundled along to the next compartment, leaving Lily to stare at the contents of the bag, which had been emptied all over three seats, James, Sirius, and the floor.
The bag had held about five dozen Chocolate Frogs, twelve bags of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, two dozen Acid Pops, four blood-flavored packs of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, along with some that was pumpkin flavored. There were also about seventy Limited Edition Hysteria Gumdrops and a good eight hundred things called Toothflossing Stringmints, which had a label on them saying "New! Do Not Miss!"
James glanced at the label scornfully. "Yeah, right. We've been getting them delivered to Hogwarts and to our homes for about three years now. 'New!' But the reason we get so much is because this has to last us the whole year, and we hate brushing teeth between every single load of candy." he added at seeing Lily's amazed face when she saw the amount of Stringmints."
By the time Remus and Peter got back, Lily, James, Sirius, and some passers- by had finished all of the Chocolate Frogs and half of the rest, (except for the stringmints) along with one of the two pitchers of pumpkin juice.
"Hey! Where's all the food?" Peter asked, indignant.
Lily stared. "All the food? There's still half the bag left!"
James looked at her incredulously. "For them, half a bag of candy? I think last year I bet on nine minutes, seventeen seconds, though I might have to shorten it to nine ten. They keep going faster every time. Now, where...Oh, yeah, right, here." Pulling out a stopwatch, he leaned back over his shoulder to Remus and Lupin. "Ready, set, go!"
Lily watched in amazement. Pulling herself together, she managed to lean over to James and look at the stopwatch.
"Nine minutes, nine seconds. What, why, when, where, and how did you guys even get all this unwrapped so fast?"
The compartment was littered with wrappers. Not one piece of candy remained besides the Toothflossing Stringmints.
Lily was free to read for the next part of the trip, as all of the boys were fast asleep. Outside, it grew darker and darker, until finally Lily had to turn on the extra lights in the compartment and draw the scarlet velvet curtains in front of the window. She wrote a letter to her family, which she placed in a small, golden compartment under Alisande's cage, which, at the beginning of the trip, she had placed overhead so the owl wouldn't go nuts at the sight of the mice, which were still running around.
Around seven, she went up to the front to ask when they would be arriving. The witch with the cart told her about an hour, then went back to sleep.
When she got back to the compartment, she found Snape and a pale blond boy inside, with drawn wands. James was already covered in syrup and feathers, while Sirius was snoring with what looked like mud in his mouth. Peter and Remus were untouched, so far. Lily felt her eyes grow hot again. She dashed inside.
"And what do you think you're doing?" she demanded, indignantly.
Snape and the blond boy whirled around, defensive. The blond boy raised his wand. "And who are you, may I ask?"
"Lily Evans. How are you. Nice to meet you. All right, I'm done with politeness for the day." She pulled out her wand, even though she hadn't even learned any spells yet. Her mind went back to the one James had performed to shut Remus up. "Petrifocus Totalus!" she shouted, and immediately the pressure behind her eyes melted away. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, Malfoy was lying on the floor, limbs frozen in distorted positions, while Snape was frozen in the very attitude of running his finger up his nose.
"Oops. Guess I'd better work on that one." Together with Remus and Peter, who had awakened when she had shouted, she pushed the two statues out into the hallway. "And stay out." She slammed the door.
Inside, Remus had freed James and Sirius of their syrup, feathers, and mud. All of them were staring at Lily.
Sirius was the first to speak.
"How many times did you try that spell at home?"
Lily shrugged. "I didn't. This was my first bit of magic--I remembered what James did to Remus, that's all."
James gulped. "Do you know how many times we practiced that spell just to get as far as you did, just now?"
Remus answered for him. "Five weeks of endless practicing, just so we could use it on Malfoy."
Lily frowned. "Malfoy?"
"Yeah, Lucius Malfoy, that blond guy who was in here just a minute ago."
"Oh. Well...is that good?"
"Y'know, James," Sirius overlooked her question, "I think you might have some competition."
James looked puzzled. "Competition?"
Sirius nodded, and Remus looked from one to the other, trying ot figure out what on earth they meant. A few seconds later, his eye had a gleam in it, he wore a knowing grin, and looked over to Lily out of the corner of his eye. "You two couldn't keep even your own secret if your life depended on it." By the end of the trip, when a bodiless voice echoed through the corridors, Lily had heard all about James', Sirius', and Remus' opinions on everyone in the school. She also was told which houses to avoid getting into, if possible.
"Slytherin is somewhere I don't think you'd like, since you attacked Snape and Malfoy. Gryffindor is the best--" here James had his narrative interrupted by hoots and high-fives from the rest--"which is because we're in it." (More hoots.) "Ravenclaw has a whole bunch of snobs, but Sheila and her group are in there, so you might like that. Hufflepuff--well, enough said."
"So, you'd recommend Gryffindor?"
Sirius nodded. "Absolutely. Listen, I don't really think, when they test you to see what house you'll be in, that you should scream all that much. If you do, they'll put you in Hufflepuff."
Lily looked up. "Scream? Why?"
Remus leaned forward. "It's the Sorting Ceremony. I think Malfoy still has the scars."
Peter sn iggered at Lily's worried face.
"Hogwarts isn't exactly what you expected, is it?"
"No--not really--Why would I scream and what scars?" She caught sight of James' face, which had gone all red. "James!"
He looked up. "What?"
"Tell me."
He glanced at his friends, bit his lip, then shook his head. "Guys, this is getting really mean."
Remus looked shocked. "But, James, we took an oath to do this to every first year! You can't mean you're backing out!"
Lily crossed her arms in front of her chest. "To do what to every first year?"
James gave in. "Listen, the only thing you'll have to do is put on a hat. I'm sorry, really." He stood up and walked towards the door. "I'm going up front."
"Yeah, right." Sirius leaned out of the doorway. "Chicken!"
At that moment, the voice echoed through the corridors again, telling all students to put their things into their trunks and to get dressed in theri robes if they had not already done so. The boys left the compartment, while Lily made sure the door was locked and the curtain that covered the door's pane of glass was secured tightly. She reached into her trunk and pulled out her robes. She changed quickly, which was good, for the train stopped just thirty seconds after she had finished.
The announcer echoed through the corridor again. "Please leave your trunks on the train. They will be taken up to the castle separately."
Stepping off of the train, Lily found herself surrounded by a clear, starry night. There were no clouds, just a crescent moon hiding behind a tree.
She heard a thick, throaty voice calling over the crowd of students. "First years over here! First years, this way!" The speaker wasn't exactly hard to miss; in fact, just the opposite, as he ws twice as tall as an ordinary human and three times as broad. "First years this way!"
About two hundred kids just Lily's age had surrounded him, a good half of them scared and anxious. Lily scanned the crowd, hoping for someone she knew. That someone found her first.
"Lily!"
Someone had tapped her on the back.
"Amanda!"
"Lily, aren't you scared? I heard something about the Sorting ceremony hurting a bit."
Lily couldn't help it. She pulled a Sirius and snorted with laughter. "Don't worry. They love doing that to first years. All you have to do is try on a hat."
Amanda breathed. "Good. That's a relief. Eeek! I can't wait!"
Lily rolled her eyes. The first thing she'd try to learn was how to make Amanda never say "Eeek!" again. After three years, she was getting sick and tired of that word.