A/N: This took a little longer to get online than I had hoped. I blame it on vacation and internet problems. But it's here now! YAY! I guess I'll change my update schedule to the middle of the week instead of weekends now.

It was Saturday and Lily had a luxurious, lazy morning- or at least she wanted to. All four Marauders were taking turns screaming "Lily flower!" up the staircase to the girls' dormitories for at least two hours. You'd think they'd have grown bored of it by then. Alas, there was no such luck. Lily thought if she ignored them long enough, they would go away, but the other girls remaining in the dorm were beginning to get flustered. Really, it had been cute an hour ago when they made up little ditties to coax Lily down; it had been cute half an hour ago when each did jigs at the bottom of the stairs; it had even been cute fifteen minutes ago when they gathered blankets and pillows, made a 'fort' and proclaimed that they would camp out until Lily came down, but this was ridiculous!

There was a mutiny in which Lily was grabbed, dressed, and shoved out of the dorm into the common room. A round of applause came from the fort; Lily glared malevolently. James smiled cheerily and extended his arm.

"So, I was thinking we'd go to Hogsmeade today."

"Who's we?" Lily glowered.

"The five of us," James pointed at each of them, and in turn, the other three Marauders bowed goofily. Lily rolled her eyes.

"There's no way I'm putting up with all of you for an entire day, especially not this particular one!" She panicked. "Not by myself. If you insist on taking me," she paused and the boys inserted excited nods, "then I won't go without..." Lily looked around the common room, but didn't find any friendly faces. "Uh... Cathy! Let's get Cathy to come."

"Smashing!" Sirius cheered. He then cleared his throat. "Right, then! On we go." They all skipped to the Great Hall, well, Lily didn't skip. She shuffled moodily behind them, but she did find it highly amusing that the boys were confident enough in their masculinity to go prancing about the school like a bunch of pansies.

Once in the Great Hall, Lily approached the Ravenclaw table and found Cathy immediately. She proposed the Hogsmeade trip; Cathy looked very excited and thanked her for the invitation.

"You know," Cathy said uncomfortably, "I've never actually had a friend."

"Lily looked skeptical. "Really? Well, I haven't either, not really." She glanced at the Marauders. "Then consider me your first."

"Done!" Cathy replied.

Lily sat down at the Ravenclaw table; both she and Cathy were overcome by a stunned silence.

"So," Cathy said.

"So," Lily repeated, trying to fill the awkward silence. "What exactly do friends talk about?"

"Oh I don't know, anything, I suppose." Cathy shrugged.

"Ok... well, I don't know too much about you. Let's start there." Lily said.

"Alright, what do you want to know?" Cathy grabbed a pear from the fruit bowl near her and then offered the bowl to Lily. Lily plucked an orange off the top thankfully.

"Oh, I don't know," Lily said while struggling with the peel of her orange, "Why don't you start with your family," –tug-, "and what you like," –tug-, "and what you don't like. Oh for goodness sake!" She grabbed her wand out of her pocket and expertly peeled the orange. She smiled in triumph over the poor, defenseless fruit.

"Brilliant!" Cathy commented on Lily's performance. "Well, my parents are both magic, muggle born they were, though. My older brother's a squib- ruddy angry about it, as well- but I have a younger sister who's a first year now. Her name's Nicole and she's in Slytherin."

"No!" Lily gasped.

"Aye. It's a bloody mystery. My mum and dad were in Ravenclaw like me, and I hear houses tend to run in the family. That was has always been a bit strange. You've any siblings?"

"One," Lily winced, "Petunia. No one in my family has had magic. Petunia and I used to pretend we did, though. It was great fun until we found out it was real, for me, at least. When she found out I had something she didn't... she got jealous, even though she'll never admit it. She became a different person then. I..." Lily became a little choked up and paused. Even as those words- those terrible, hurtful words- were tumbling out of her mouth, she couldn't understand why they were, after all, she barely knew this girl. She just couldn't stop herself.

Cathy noticed Lily's pained expression and jumped in to save her. "Maybe that's enough sharing in one day," she said in a soothing manner. Lily nodded. Cathy wanted desperately to change the subject, for Lily and herself. "Porridge?"

"Mhm, thanks."

They settled into silence again, this time eating, and this time, it wasn't awkward. They smiled jovially and when it suited them, they slipped back into conversation about the trip to Hogsmead. Cathy couldn't wait because, as she informed Lily, she already needed new quills and ink.

"That sounded awfully dorky." Cathy laughed.

"No," Lily said, trying to be polite. Cathy raised an eyebrow at her.

"Oh, come one, friend make fun of each other."

"Well that doesn't make much sense." Lily looked confused.

"I guess it's because it shows you're comfortable enough to not be on your best behavior." Cathy mused.

"Ok... in that case, dorky. It was definitely dorky."

Cathy stuck her tongue out but smiled. Before they were able to chat anymore, they were joined by four boys, each grinning widely.

"You gals ready to go?" Sirius asked and smacked his hand on the table. Lily jumped.

"Erm, yeah."

"We're ready."

"Splendiferous." James shouted, his arms raised to the enchanted ceiling in an overdramatic motion. This granted stares from all over the Great Hall and snickering from the Slytherin table. Instead of blushing and making himself inconspicuous, he jumped on the table and did a little spin move, all the while chanting, "Let's go!". Lily made up for his lack of blushing and pulled him down. She would have chided him, but he tore out of the hall faster than... well, whatever it was, it was fast. Lily and Cathy got a scary ride as they had been grabbed by James and Sirius respectively when all the boys ran from the room. The girls were both surprised when they stopped in a hallway near a statue of a witch with a hump on her back.

"I thought we were going to Hogsmeade..." Cathy said. The boys laughed knowingly.

"Close your eyes." Remus clapped his hands together, a huge, child- like smile plastered across his face; Lily didn't see it. She was too busy glaring at James.

"I don't trust you." Lily pointed in the general direction of the boys, but specifically looked at James, through squinted eyes.

"We're not going to do anything to you," Pete whined. "Except take you to Hogsmeade," he added as an afterthought.

"We have a secret way to get there," James answered the girls' quizzical looks.

"And Miss Goody-Two-Shoes Prefect over here can't know all of our secrets." Sirius said jokingly.

"James is a prefect too you know." Lily pointed out. The boys didn't look at all daunted by this.

"It's not the same."

"He's... a special prefect."

"Corrupted, you mean?" Lily asked.

"Not so harsh a word, but yes..." Pete said, looking uneasily at James to gauge a reaction.

"You called me James!" he exclaimed, however quietly.

Lily heard and sneered. "You make a big deal about it and I won't."

"Of course, Miss Evans. I wouldn't dream of it." James said formally, but his face was still screwed up in a love struck fashion.

"Alright, enough warm and fuzzy, mushy gushy stuff. Close your eyes so we can get on with it." Sirius said anxiously.

Lily shot James one last withering stare and closed her eyes, reluctantly, when Cathy jabbed her lightly with an elbow. She stood with her eyes shut, feeling very vulnerable, getting more nervous with every passing moment.

'What could they possibly be doing?' Lily shuddered to think what the four boys could do within that short time unsupervised. She hugged her arms around herself in hopes that it might protect her from whatever they had planned. She was caught completely off guard when two strong arms grabbed her about the waist and hoisted her into a tight hold. She squirmed, but didn't struggle. She rationalized by thinking that she wouldn't have gotten far, but part of her brain felt comfortable with the warmth of the embrace and the spicy citrus aroma of her 'captor'.

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A/N: Ok, the conversation between Cathy and Lily was kind of weird, but I wanted it to be that way. Too many fics have Lily meet someone and then automatically they're best friends. Almost nobody is like that, so I tried to make it a bit more realistic. Either that, or I really like to put my characters in awkward situations. Anyway, this chapter was kind of short, the next is REALLY long, so get ready for that.

And as for this chapter... who's the 'captor'? Nobody knows except me! Is it James, Remus, Sirius, Pete, or... Cathy? Hey, you never know, Cathy may have strong arms...

You know what to do, review! Please? I really want to get the counter to at least 60 reviews by this chapter. 50th reviewer will get something special (maybe).

Trumpet-Geek: Thank you!! Will I be able to top it? I really don't know, and frankly, I'm scared.

Nexiumchick: Well, they WERE getting along nicely... they DO seem to bounce around, huh? Thank you, and there will be more stuff on the prophecy later.

Thor god of thunder: um, okay. I tried. I was hindered by vacation.

MorphManiac: Wow... you need sleep. Either that or some kind of strong caffeine. Either that or some kind of strong sedative. Either that or... ok I'm done. I hope you did well on that audition! Oh and btw, I tried to review the epilogue of your story. I don't know if it came out because the computer was acting up, but I always can do it again if it didn't come up.

TeenTypist: Thanks, and that's quite ok. Did you have vacation? Was it nice? I had vacation too... as you can tell by the delay of this update.

Lily Lupin89: Uh, thanks I think. YAY!

Swt Chry 2oo5: Thank you so much. I've already got the next chapter written too, and it's double the length! Yay for double length chapters! Yay for me having no life! Yay for me shutting up!