Author's Note: Wow! I didn't expect such fast replies to my posting of the story. 3 within a day, and that was just the beginning, not many readers read small stories but wait until they become longer. So I am hoping to get more readers as the story progresses, but thanks to the first people who read and posted, Aiki-Tenshi, plum jam and Wind Whisperer...If you have any questions don't hesitant to ask, just e-mail me through fanfiction.

Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING! Unless you don't recognize it, then it's mine, ALL MINE! Sorry, little self-possessive there.... won't happen again

THE NEXT WEEK

"James, we're going to be late! Get your butt down here and eat some breakfast!" Mrs. Potter shouted up to James's room.

James came running down the steps as quickly as he could, his robes half on and his hair messed up. James had long since tried to calm his hair down, it just took too much effort. James ate a couple pieces of toast, lugged his trunk down the stairs until his father stopped his progress and loaded the trunk himself before James could do too much damage to it. "Dad! Are you coming to the station?" James asked hopefully.

"Sorry son, there is just too much work to do at the ministry," James's face fell but his father, distracted by a letter he was reading, did not see it. "You have a good year, I will see you next year."

James was dropped off at the station, angrily he made his way to the barrier without a good bye to his mum. Knowing how angry James was, his mother didn't pursue him. She knew that eventually he would calm down and be his usual normal self, she just worried about whoever would draw James's anger.

"Oi James!" James turned around but was tackled down by a blur of black hair and tanned skin.

"Sirius, get off me! We are going to go to school with these people, we got to think of our reputations. Now we have to think of a way to gain popularity with the others," James was thinking hard about ways, Sirius was joking around.

"Blowing up a toilet?" Sirius said

"No"

"Kicking a teacher in the butt?"

"No"

"I heard Dumbledore is headmaster there now that Old man Dippet retired, how about we pull a prank on him?"

James was about to say no, but a flash of red hair walked by him.... "how about we pull a prank on a fellow student?"

"Cool! That would definitely gain popularity points, who should we prank?" Sirius asked

"I have someone in mind" James began to grin, although not a happy grin but one tainted with the thought of misbehaving on it. "Come with me Sirius, we have some planning to do."

Lily had just said a tearful goodbye to her parents, as Lily entered through the barrier as instructed by her paper that she received from Hogwarts the day before. She went directly to the luggage department and gave her trunk to the conductor, and then she went into an empty compartment. She sat down and buried herself into one of her charm books, she was fascinated by all the different charms you could place on someone. She was looking forward to Charm class the most.

"Mind if I sit here?" Lily was so absorbed in her book she hadn't noticed a young girl opening the door. Lily shrugged and motioned her to sit down across from her.

"Do you have a name or are you mute?" the girl asked

"Lily Evans," Lily decided that talking might be better than getting on someone's nerves even before term started. "What's yours?"

"Hestia Jones, but most people just call me Hes, I'm named after my dad's favourite quidditch player Hestia Locklear." She replied

"What's quidditch?" Lily asked

Hestia looked like she has just seen a ghost, her face blanched but as realization dawned on her she asked a simple question, "are you a muggle-born?"

"I guess so, that means non-magic parents right?"

"Yep, well, let me tell you about quidditch" and she did, for one seemingly long hour she went through the rules, basic playing strategies, the quidditch league and the positions.

"......... and that's all you need to know about quidditch. I wonder when the snack lady is coming by?" Hestia began to speak until their compartment door opened but no one was there. Lily and Hestia began to get up when a ball was rolled in and stopped them in their tracks. "Hey, I remember seeing those in the joke shop at Diagon Alley, those are dungbombs...." Hestia trailed off at the realization that there was a dungbomb in their room.

"RUN!" Lily yelled but too late as the bomb exploded, covering them in the stench of manure. They ran out trying to find a washroom to wash off the smell but crashed into two boys laughing their heads off. Lily recognized one of them, "YOU!" she said pointing at the boy she met in Diagon Alley that insulted her.

"Me," James replied with a smirk, "I do have a name you know"

"Hey James, you never told me you knew one of these girls," Sirius laughed

"Unfortunately we had a run in at Diagon Alley, and she got my mum all mad at me..." James said scowling.

"So it's MY fault that you insulted me and that I ran away because of it? And your mum got mad at you because of what? The fact that your insult hurt me caused your mum to be mad at you!?" Lily shouted angrily.

"Yes it is, and if you could look past your carrot coloured (I am Canadian, explaining the Canadian way of spelling) hair you might realize that!"

Lily blanched and ran away, Hestia unsure of what to do, decided to chase after her. "Why did she do that?" Sirius asked.

"You know mate, some girls are just touchy about their hair," James said

"I can see you aren't touchy about your hair," Sirius commented on James's messy hair sticking in different directions.

James ran a hand through his hair trying to settle it down, but he knew it was a lost cause. So James just decided to get some revenge, "I see you care too much about your hair Sirius, do you use shampoo or conditioner?" He asked with false sincerity, but behind his back James slowly drew his wand, without Sirius knowing.

"Shut up you git, if you must know I use both. It works, my hair is so smooth and soft." Sirius said. He gazed into the window to use it's reflection to see if any parts were out of place. But he only saw James behind him with a grin on his face. Whirling around he looked at James's face and then his hand, which was clutching his wand. "Umm.... James? What are you doing with that wand?" Sirius started to edge his hand to his wand, knowing that it was a futile effort but he had to try.

"Just wondering how you would like it if your hair turned an unnatural shade of yellow?" James said.

"You wouldn't," Sirius said, with a look of fear on his face, "would you?"

Sirius soon found out the answer to that question as James muttered a couple of words, did a weird flick of his wand and ran from the room. Sirius looked in the window and saw his hair was no longer a handsome raven black but a bright canary yellow. Screaming bloody murder, Sirius ran from the room after James who had a good head start on him.

James had ducked into a nearby compartment with, luckily, only one occupant who was as young as he. Deciding to make a better impression than someone who jumped into a compartment gasping for breath.

"Hi, my name is James Potter," James said once he caught his breath, "I am going into first year at Hogwarts hopefully Gryffindor, unless my friend Sirius Black catches me and kills me for what I did to his hair."

"Remus Lupin, first year, also would like to get into Gryffindor" the boy said quietly, although he raised his eyebrow at the other statement, "what did you do to his hair?"

"You can look for yourself," James said pointing at the compartment door which had just opened with Sirius standing there with a look of fury on his face. It was hard to take anyone seriously with hair that looked like an experiment gone wrong, Remus burst out laughing.

"JAMES! What did you do to my hair?" Sirius asked angrily

"Just a little charm I picked up in one of our books for school, I tried them out on my owl first before I could perfect it. It took a while to find the counter-charm to the jinx, mum wasn't pleased when she found out. Got grounded for a week, but I started to look through our school books. Transfiguration sounds cool, what class are you looking forward to Remus?" James asked

"What? I don't get asked the question?" Sirius looked indigent, which his hair made him look comical and Remus and James burst out laughing again. James did the counter-charm so they could look at Sirius without bursting out in laughter.

"Sorry Sirius, what class are you looking forward to?" James said, still wiping a few tears of laughter away.

"Well, I am looking forward to Astronomy," Sirius said, "where else can you think of where you get a great chance at a romantic moment with a girl?"

"Typical Sirius," James said while rolling his eyes, "mind in the gutter, what about you Remus?"

"I think Defence against the Dark Arts sounds like a good subject, I mean with all those people disappearing for no reason makes me think that I should try to learn how to defend myself. No point going out in the world with no way of protecting ourselves."

"Wow, that's deep Remus," James said seriously, before his face turned into a big grin, "too serious for us to think about, I mean we are 11 year olds. Who would want to hurt us?"

The boys started joking around, and were surprised to find out that they had a lot in common with Remus and they quickly began a strong friendship with him.

Unknown to James, there was someone who wanted to hurt James. Well, hurt would be a mild term, someone wanted to kill James. Her name was Lily Evans, twice she had been insulted by him and had to suffer the humiliation of running down the corridor of the train with everyone plugging their noses to protect the smell from tainting their noses. Once Lily and Hestia got cleaned up, they walked down the corridor trying to put as much distance between them and the boys. They happened to chance upon a compartment that also held just one occupant, a girl who was more content to be watching the scenery out the window than the two people who had just walked in.

"Do you mind if we sit here?" Lily asked the girl, who just shrugged and turned back to the window. Lily and Hestia decided that this meant yes and started to settle in, trying to break the awkward silence Lily tried to start a conversation. "I'm Lily Evans and this is Hestia Jones, we are going into our first year at the school. What's your name?"

"Emmeline Vance, most people just call me Emma though. I am entering first year as well," she said unenthusiastically.

"What house are you hoping to get into? I think from what I have heard that I would want to be in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor." Lily tried to keep the conversation going

"Don't really care, I suppose Gryffindor or Ravenclaw would be ok. My dad was in Ravenclaw and my mum was in Gryffindor, so I suppose I would be in one of those houses." Emma sounded unenthusiastically at first, but once she realized that these girls would like to know her. Emma started to tell the story of how she got her letter, her family's response, and what expectations her parents expected her to live up to. Her mother was Head Girl and her dad was the Captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, her parents had high expectations for her and she was nervous about what would happen if she didn't live up to them.

Each respective group spent the remaining time talking amongst each other and beginning to make new friends, as they were talking though, a Prefect had come by to tell them to change into their robes. They were approaching Hogwarts and they needed to get ready, Sirius and James had the newest robes available while Remus's looked a bit shabby. Sirius and James offered to lend Remus some of theirs but Remus wasn't happy about this display of pity and told them 'if I want robes, I would buy them! These are my dad's and I wouldn't wear anything else." Sirius and James soon shut up about the robes, which pleased Remus as he was lying. His parents weren't the richest people around and couldn't afford any new robes for Remus to attend Hogwarts in.

The girls all had their new robes on and just as they finished the train stopped, everyone got off and there was a huge man, at least 9 feet tall, maybe 10, he bellowed, "Firs' years! Firs' years over here!"

Once all the first years were gathered around, the man began to speak again. "A'right, I'm Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. Any problems with the forest, come see me at me house."

With that, he began the march up to the lake surrounding the castle. Assigned a boat for each group of four and started the quiet boat trip up to the entrance and the two huge front doors. With a giant fist, Hagrid pounded on the doors and waited. Soon after the knock, the doors opened and a middle-aged woman stood there eyeing the students in front of her.

"The firs' years Professor McGonagall," Hagrid said, bowing to her.

"Thank you Hagrid, children, follow me please." McGonagall said

She led them up three staircases and in front of two highly decorated doors, "wait here, I will be back for you shortly."

UP NEXT: THE SORTING!

(Authors Note: While re-reading Goblet of Fire, I noticed that Mrs. Weasley makes reference to a caretaker named Ogg and I was wondering if he would have been the Caretaker when Lily and James were at school. I did some calculations; in Harry's second year was the 50th anniversary of the Chamber of Secrets attacks. Hagrid was in his third year when it happened, meaning he was 13 at the time. So in the present, after Harry's fifth year, Hagrid must be around 65 years old. So when Harry was born, Hagrid was 50 years old, figuring that Lily and James had Harry around the age of 24-25, so when Lily and James were in their first year, Hagrid must have been 36 years old. So I effectively ruled out that the caretaker was Ogg during Lily and James's time at Hogwarts. However, this proves that Mrs Weasley must be at least 10 years older than Lily and James. This should come in effect in later chapters. Sorry if I bored everyone by writing this long note, next chapter should be shorter than these, will just contain the sorting. So next chapter should be up sooner, depending on University)

(Authors Note: Oh yeah, I can't write Hagrid's accent all the time, too complicated. So I will just improvise, please pardon any bad improvisation and just concentrate on the good ;) )