Standard disclaimers apply. I still don't own anything, I'm still not married to Orlando Bloom, oh wait you didn't need to know that. I still need reviews, and I'm still open to ideas. If you have any, send them to "harryandthepottersrocksmysockshotmail.com" and no, I don't even own Harry and the Potters, which is a BRILLIANT band, that every person should check out at some point. They're so funny, they're good! Obviously, I also don't own hotmail.com. Not that anyone thought that I did. And if you did, you're kind of slow.

James Exited the Hogwarts express, and looking around, breathing in deeply, and out sharply. Peter trailed behind him, carrying his trunk and his new red backpack that his parents, primarily his mother, had insisted on purchasing for him, lest he forget about them, he assumed. He cradled his radio in his left arm, and took out a small black cloth dipped in surface cleaner, wiping the handle and sides of his radio a bit nervously. He approached the castle, taking a sharp intake of breath, and holding it in his lungs for as long as possible. Maybe, as long as he held his breath, nothing could happen to him, and everything would be perfect. Sirius, however, came from behind and slapped him on the back, knocking the air out of his lungs, and subsequently, out of his mouth. Suddenly, it started pouring down a inundation of rain, and peter whipped out a glen plaid umbrella, and put his radio in his back pack, which had a waterproof coating of plastic on the inside.

"You gon'ta stay outside looking at it all day, our are you going to come?" Sirius asked, turning around and running off somewhere. Peter looked around for what might be taking them the rest of the way up to the castle, and saw a carriage drawn by invisible horses. He started walking towards them, when he saw Remus, who, though not carrying an umbrella seemed completely dry, like the water was just sliding off of him. He ran over and pulled him in the other direction, to a set of boats on the edge of the lake.

"You don't use those 'till second year, mate. We're using the boats." He replied taking Peter by the arm. Peter could have sworn he heard Lupin say, "Honestly, doesn't anyone read Hogwarts, A History?" Peter followed him and joined the other two boys, being directed by a rather large man, who was about 2 times the height of James or Serius, nearly three times James's height, and four times the width. He directed them and a few other students to a small boat near the edge of a dock, about 6 meters (around 15 feet) out into the lake. One of the students was a girl with long brilliant crimson hair who was chatting it up with a large group of students, a girl with cornflower blonde hair and rosy complexion, and a girl with dark hair the color of polished mahogany. The blonde and brown haired girls were the first on the boat, while the pretty girl with red hair and green eyes got on slowly, looking almost as confused as Peter felt. Peter got an urge to help her on to the small vessel, or carry her trunk for her, or help her somehow, but James, always resilient, sprang to his feat to assist the resplendent red head. He walked up to the ship, grabbing the girl's trunk and tossing it on board. Unfortunately, the girl was standing right next to the edge of the boat, looking over the edge while trying to keep her balance, and the force of the trunk hitting the boat shook it violently, knocking the girl into the lake. Peter's eyes grew wide, and he rushed to the boat in a last-ditch attempt to help her up. She emerged from the icy depths a moment later soaked and stuttering in the freezing cold lake water, as a large sea creature shifted one of it's long appendages in her general direction.

"What was that for?!" She exclaimed, looking at James furiously.

"I didn't mean nothing by it, I was trying to help you with your trunks!" James responded, very defensive.

"Next time you help someone, try looking up help in the dictionary, and I'm sure you won't think knocking me in the lake was very helpful."

"I DIDN'T MEAN TO KNOCK YOU IN THE LAKE!"

"WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL!" The girl threw up her hands in the air, and sank back down a good 15 centimeters (6 inches.) "For God's sakes, just help her up!" Sirius exclaimed from the dock. Peter and James lifted her out of the water, just as a gigantic squid grabbed at the area where she had been only moments before. Sirius and Remus got on, and started the boat, which from then on seemed to be able to steer and move itself.

"I'm sorry I knocked you in, but it was an accident! Accidents happen!" James apologized, though nonchalantly.

"But we try to prevent them, don't we?" the girl snapped, whose name, as far as Peter could tell from the blonde girl's screaming, was Lily.

"Well of course we do, but we can't always!"

"You could have prevented that!"

"If I hadn't helped you?"

"Exactly."

"Fine, from this day forward I give my solemn word that, if I ever help you with anything, God may strike me dead."

"Fine, you were never very good at it anyway."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

"FINE!" James yelled, leaving the boat a few minutes later in a huff. They docked it on the other side of the lake, and ran up to the castle. It was a great, tall gray stone castle as tall as Big Ben, the Clocktower, and much wider. He approached the castle slowly, umbrella in one hand, trunk handle in the other, as other students ran behind him to escape the torrential rain. Remus grabbed him by the arm while Peter was busy examining the castle's elegant aged stone framework and the brilliant green lawns, and he rushed him off to meet up with James and Sirius. Sirius muttered something to James again that Peter couldn't quite hear. "I'm telling you James, mental that one. That kid is not right." He walked up to the door, where he and the other first years were greeted by a witch who looked a little older than his parents, but not nearly as old as his grandparents, which red hair in a tight up-do.

"Students, as soon as you walk through these doors, you will be sorted into your houses. Those houses are, "Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff."

"Then do we eat?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter, then you eat."

"What's for dinner?"

"Mr. Potter, I'm telling the students something important, and you will soon find out what you will be eating. Please keep your mouth firmly shut until then." She snapped.

"Fine with me, Mrs…"

"Professor McGonnagal," The woman responded firmly, "Now each of you will be sorted into houses, and you will be asked to sit at your house table. You will sit with your houses at every meal, and go to most of your classes with your own house. You will have time between classes and, in third year and after, in Hogsmede to fraternize with the other houses, but…" Peter allowed his mind to wander. He hadn't thought about that, he just kind of figured he could be with James, Sirius and Remus all he wanted. He felt afraid again for the first time since that morning. He had gotten terribly lucky that James, Sirius and Remus had needed a friend like him, someone who wasn't terribly cool who would just listen to them talk about themselves. He didn't think he could be so lucky again. Completely lost in thought, Peter didn't even notice that the students had started to leave until Remus yanked him by the arm into the great hall, saying, "You really must pay more attention, I can't drag you EVERYWHERE, you know."

Peter walked in a straight line as Professor McGonnagal explained the upcoming sorting, and how each was to come up and place the hat on their head, in alphabetical order. As soon as she was done explaining, the stitch in the hat opened up and began to sing.

"4 houses stand divided

brother against brother

two friends are undecided

as to be friends with one another

But houses aren't to separate

Houses are to sort

Add a little order here

And make for teams to sport

So Ravenclaw and Gryffindor

Put down your righteous swords

And Slytherin and Hufflepuff

Be free to fight no more

For strengths and weakness hath you all

And trials and struggles befall you

We must rejoice together,

Or in separation we will fall, too.

So contemplate my words, young lad,

As you slip me on your head

Don't think about the negatives

The positives instead

For a time will come for all of you

A time of endless night

And if you stand together

You can win a losing fight

Don't worry now about your fate

I didn't mean it to be scary

But befriend your housal rivals

Or of strife you must be wary."

All of the students in the great hall looked at each other with strange expressions on their faces, "What was he talking about?" Peter heard at least one boy mutter. But then an eruption of applause came from the students.

"Let the sorting commence, then!" A wise gray wizard shouted from the end of a long dining table Peter presumed to be where the staff sat.

"Aarden, John." McGonnagal called out. The hat shifted around, muttering to the student, who didn't seem to be saying anything. But after a moment of deciphering, the hat called out an answer.

"Ravenclaw!" the hat shouted, John ran blushing to the Ravenclaw table, which was full of clapping and shouting students.

"Abner, Julian."

"Hufflepuff!"

"Adder, Bill"

"Slytherin."

"Ashton, Gregory."

"Ravenclaw!" This went on for a short time longer, when Professor McGonnagal finally got past the A's.

"Black, Sirius." Peter looked wide-eyed at Sirius watching his every move. He put the hat on his head, when it promptly said something that seemed to make Sirius enraged. Something about "Runs in the blood." Sirius retorted with a loud and angry swear word that Peter was sure HE wouldn't have been allowed to say at home, followed by some mutterings about how "blood doesn't mean anything!" The hat chuckled merrily and shouted loudly, "Gryffindor!" Sirius looked smugly at the table of hooting and hollering Gryffindors, cheering the arrival of another new Gryffindor. Sirius ran his fingers through his hair and smiled at a pretty blonde girl, but sat at the end of the table leaving room for James, Remus, and maybe even Peter, just in case. After a little while, Peter became so bored of waiting, that he was almost not even nervous. That was, until she called her name.

"Evans, Lilly." Professor McGonnagal yelled over the crowd. The girl with the radiant burgundy hair slowly approached the hat, and Peter's heart was in his throat. He looked at James, and James seemed looked at her angrily, but Peter knew it was just a façade. James wasn't very good at lying about how he felt about someone, his eye brows went up a little too much in the center and dipped at the ends, and his mouth curled ever so slightly into an innocent smile. Though he tried to look angry and squinted his eyes and tried to force his lips to curl the other way, Peter could see that, unfortunately, James felt the same way about Lilly that he did.

Lily walked shyly but gracefully up to the stool, and put the hat on her head. She closed her eyes tightly and bit her lower lip as the hat shouted, "Gryffindor!" She bounced up and down happily glancing at the joyfully cheering Gyffindor table, and found a seat next to a group of Gryffindor girls who began to chat merrily with her. Peter suddenly felt compelled to follow her to the table, taking a step in her direction. He tried to take another step, but he felt his robes being pulled, and then they suddenly ripped. He fell backwards onto his behind, disrupting the sorting ceremony. He had hooked his robes on a low placed wall sconce, and the entire Great hall seemed to ring with laughter. Lilly looked at him with compassion, and Remus and James helped him up, James giggling under his breath.

"Quiet down!" Professor McGonnagal shouted, "Making fun of the first years who get stuck to the walls is hardly a valuable exertion of energy. Let us continue. Harding, Harold." Moments later, "Lupin, Remus" was called. The sorting hat deliberated for a long time over what to do with Remus. He seemed to be deciding between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Finally giving into Remus' longing looks at the Gryffindor table, the hat shouted, "Gryffindor!" and progressed with the service.

Just as Peter was getting comfortable, Professor McGonnagal shouted loudly, "Pettigrew, Peter." He gulped, his adam's apple bulging in his dry throat. Moving to sit on the stool, he pulled the huge black hat over his ears, and took a deep breath.

"Gryffindor, please Gryffindor…" Pete thought, throwing longing looks in their general direction.

"Gryffindor, eh? Why Gryffindor." The hat muttered back.

"Because," Peter said, alarmed that he was talking to a hat, "My friends are in Gryffindor."

"I don't know, you seem more like a HUFFLEPUFF to me."

"No, I'm not a Hufflepuff! I'm mean…umm…grrrr…and I'm brave….I'm like…a lion, see? Mean, and brave."

"HA! You are no lion, you're more like the mouse."

"But the mouse helped the Lion, remember? So the mouse must have been brave too."

"Maybe….I do see something else in you, back here in this corner of your mind."

"What is it?"

"I see cowardice, but there is an ounce of courage and selfish ambition in the very back of your mind."

"And?"

"And that's a Slytherin quality."

"And when you average Hufflepuff with Slytherin, you get… Gryffindor!"

"Well, Gryffindor might be good for you, and I can see some courage in you, deep down waiting to surface. You just have to tame the beast, Peter."

"Ok…" Peter looked a little confused, that sounded like such a weird thing to say. Tame the beast? What beast, courage and strength and desire and drive were all GOOD things! But if he was courageous, he was courageous, and courageous people belong in…

"Gryffindor!" Peter was beaming with pride as he joined the Gryffindor table next to a surprised and clapping Sirius and Remus. James Potter was also sorted, almost effortlessly, into Gryffindor right after Peter, and a few minutes later, the greasy haired boy who had visited their train car, "Snape, Severus," was sorted into Slytherin.

"How odd that he would be in Slytherin!" James snapped sardonically.

"Give it a rest, James, honestly!" Said Lupin, sleepily. A few minutes later, after "Zacherby, Anne," and "Ravenclaw!" The wise man with graying hair rose to address the crowd.

"Welcome to another year at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and wizardry. Mr. Girbings would like to remind you that Biting boomerangs are strictly banned at Hogwarts, and all of their variations. He would also like to inform you that the newly planted Whomping willow is strictly off limits to students who do not wish to be pummeled to death. As you know, unless you are a first year, the forbidden forest, as its name would imply, is just that, strictly forbidden with out adult accompaniment. Is that all, Professor McGonnagal?" she nodded. "Then let the feast begin!" the empty dishes filled with all kinds of delicious foods. Kidney pies, mashed potatoes, pumpkin juice, and many foods that Peter wasn't entirely familiar with were in mounds before him.

"So that's what's for dinner!" James yelled gleefully, "Everything!" Peter spooned liberal portions onto his plate and began eating fervently. There was nothing to worry about now, except Lilly, that is....TBC