Disclaimer: Already mentioned in Chapter 1 :)

Sirius was already dressed and down at the Great Hall for breakfast when his fellow Marauders joined him. As was the norm, James took his seat beside Sirius' side and Remus sat across from them, with an empty space where Peter would normally be. As Sirius and Remus heaped their plates with bacon and eggs, James began to let out small snores, his head in a bowl of cornflakes - luckily for him they had no milk. As the Gryffindor girls approached Remus kicked him under the table and James snapped to attention, muttering "It wasn't me Sir, honest!"

Remus rolled his eyes. "Guilty conscience, Prongs?"

James merely looked at him through blood shot eyes, and shook cereal from his unruly dark hair.

Sirius turned to face him and jumped, amazed at the large purple bags underneath his eyes. "What the hell happened to you? When did you get in last night?"

James grumbled, "You sound like my mother," but he said it in an almost good natured way. "About 11...."

"Right." said Sirius, raising an eyebrow cooly. "So how come when I went to bed at midnight you still weren't back?"

James' pale cheeks flushed pink and Lupin looked up from his bacon, watching interestedly. "Ok, Ok....I came in at about 2."

Sirius frowned. "What were you doing?"

"Just flying....lost track of the time..."

Remus and Sirius exchanged glances but James was too misty-eyed to notice; his eyes were following the progress of Lily as she made her way to the Gryffindor table, laughing heartily at a joke Fiore had just told.

After breakfast the trio made their way up to Gryffindor Tower and James and Sirius became engaged in a game of wizard's chess, whilst Lupin continued with his book. They were all sitting comfortably for some time before a gaggle of fifth-year girls stumbled into the common room - a very pretty girl with thick blonde hair and bright blue eyes named Jennifer stopped and allowed her other friends to go up to their dormitories.

"Sirius?" Sirius looked up and paused, wondering why this girl would want to take to him. Sure, they had talked briefly before, but never anything more than over Quidditch Results - Jennifer was a fellow member of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. "I was wondering....are you going to the dance with anyone?"

Sirius felt a sinking feeling, for he would have very much liked to attend with Jen; he kind of wanted to get to know her. Trying to let her down gently he gave a brief nod, and he caught James staring at him out of the corner of his glasses.... "Yeah...sorry."

Jennifer picked herself up quickly. "Don't worry about it, its cool. See ya later!" With an over-exaggerated smile she followed her friends up to the girls dormitories, appearing slightly let-down.

Sirius returned to the chess board and was concentrating very hard when James cleared his throat and rapped the board. "So the most wanted boy in our year has a date? Do tell...."

He felt a large lump as big as a bludger forming in the back of his throat, and caught Remus' eye as he looked up from his book. "Well....Evans and me are going together."

James laughed heartily. "No seriously, Padfoot, who are you going with?"

"I already told you - Lily."

As it dawned on him that Sirius was telling the truth his face turned to thunder and bewilderment. Sirius and Lily? How could Sirius do that to him? Sirius, his best friend since he was eight; Sirius, the one who he shared his hopes and dreams with; Sirius, who he played Quidditch with and trusted with everything?

James felt a powerful rage welling up inside him. He threw the chess set to the side, (causing many angry shouts from the knights and rooks scattered on the floor,) and drew his wand. "How could you?"

Sirius cooly faced him and drew his own wand, more for self-defence than anything. "Well, my dear Prongs, although you like her you didn't seem about to ask her out, did you? Any girl is fair game until shes going out with someone, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask her out."

James stood before him, turning redder by the second; he couldn't think up a reply to that, and it seemed Sirius had him there. Placing his wand inside his robes he glared at Sirius and stomped off to his common room, and many loud bangs and thuds could be heard. Nibbling his lip, Sirius looked towards Remus apprehensively.

"Ah Moony, old friend, are you sure this was the right thing to do?"

Remus gave a sigh. "Don't worry Siri. Its working, at any rate."

James stayed out of Sirius' way all day; apparently he was too irritated to even face him. When Sirius went to bed he could tell James was lying awake due to the absence of his snuffling, and James lay staring at the ceiling for a long time before he went to sleep.

Notes: I kinda feel sorry for James now *sniffle* Please review me some more, I wanna know what everyone thinks!