The author dutifully looks up from the keyboard before resuming her typing frenzy...

Hey, thanks so much for the reviews, guys, you made me SOOOOO happy.

Gaby-Black: my first ever reviewer. I read "Here With Me" and I thought it was awesome. Read it everybody! (you know what my penname is, but then again, you live in France so...)

Pinky The Snowman: yeah, I like Lily and James fics because you can mess around with the characters without being untrue to the book. Plus I'm such a romanticist. (Hint from me, my penname is FRENCH, I hope you can figure it out.)

Gilly bear: it's intrigued (oops, my spell check had to help me spell it right)...(again, see if you can dig up a French dictionary and figure out my penname)

A Cute But Psycho Bunny: of course it was a compliment...tell the bunny men hi from me. (yes! Someone who knows what my penname means.)

JK Rowling is the wondrous entity who own all of this, and I am but doodling to keep from going mad while the sixth book is written

Chapter 3, James and All that Entrails:

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Potter. Please, you must needs wake up, get up. Mr. Potter, today is being the first day of school and you must not be late, you must needs be on time and you is not getting up. Please, Mr. Potter, you is not even packed yet."

James Potter lay in bed, attempting to ignore the high-pitched voice that had been speaking nonstop for the past 3.52 minutes. There was a brief pause, and James was immediately completely dead to the world once again.

The house-elf took a breath. He liked his owners, really, he did, but James could be a right pain in the anything at any time before noon. The house-elf resigned himself and picked up the state-of-the-art broomstick lying on James's trunk, and gently poked his young master.

"Urgh. Ugmsmuffinslabboo." James spoke for the first time that morning.

"Finally, Mr. Potter, I was thinking I was going to have to set fire to you again, like last year." The house-elf was immensely relieved. That had been awkward, even though James's parents had been completely on the house-elf's side.

"Buggawuffoo. Dookkawub. Bugnaaflup." James peeked open his right eye. Oh, it was just Spink. He let himself drift off again.

"Come on now, Spink, don't be an idiot." This voice came from the other bed in the room. "You know he won't wake up unless you do something unique."

Spink winced. That boy's definition of unique was a frightening once.

Sirius Black swung his legs over the side of the bed and regarded his best friend pensively. He was running out of funny hexes to wake James up in the morning. That's sad, he thought to himself, one should always have a good hex ready.

Finally, though, "Tarantallegra!"

James was suddenly very awake as his legs started to dance completely beyond his own control.

"What's the matter Prongsie?" Sirius teased. "You're still not getting up, are you still sleeping?" Sirius flung a tickling hex at James, who doubled over with laughter, even as he tried to form angry words. "Jamie-boy, you should really get up now, I'm serious." Sirius fought his grin back and attempted to look serious. James was still unable to get up or speak, so Sirius conjured a bucket of water and sent it splashing down on his friend's head.

That did it. James used a supreme effort of will to push back the effects of the hexes.

"SIRIUS, YOU—hahaha—STOP IT I CAN'T BELIEVE—hahahahahaha—CAN'T YOU STOP BEING A JERK FOR JUST ONE—" James couldn't do it anymore, he resumed his mad cackling and fell back onto the bed, his legs doing a skillful Irish step dance on the sheets.

"See," Sirius observed conversationally to Spink. "I told you he'd wake up if you did it right."

Spink refrained from speech. Sirius was right; James was infinitely more awake than any morning he could remember in the past two months, but still. This was worse than the fire incident from last year.

"Yes, Mr. Black, you is right. He is most definitely awake now."

"Well, Spink, m'dear, I think I'm due for a shower, hmm?" Sirius left the room without a backwards glance.

Spink hovered for a moment, wondering if he ought to help his young master, but then shook his head. James was a smart boy, however idiotic he looked at the moment. He could figure it out himself.

Eventually, James did arrive downstairs, where he was immediately greeted by the sound of applause.

"Congrats, James, real skillful, beautiful work there, so glad you could make it," Sirius greeted his friend with a barrage of mocking statements.

"Oh, do shut up," was the only reply.

James sat down at the kitchen table and helped himself to breakfast. Bacon, eggs, pancakes, and a steaming mug of hot cocoa (A/N: I refuse to believe that wizards can get along without hot chocolate, and that's that.) all vanished speedily down his hungry gullet.

"Come on now, Sirius," James addressed his friend, pausing in his eating to take a breath, "Why'd you wake me? You're usually begging for a reason to be late to school."

"Yeah, well." Sirius stopped talking and tried to think of a reason he would want to be on time. Several occurred to him. Okay, Sirius thought, so now let's try and think of a reason James will actually believe. "Well, er, it's the first day of school...er, and plus, Remus is a prefect and we'll get in trouble if we're late."

James couldn't help it; he burst into gales of laughter, spraying the tablecloth with half-digested bits of bacon. "Okay, and the real reason would be...?"

Sirius sighed, "Fine, be all smart like that." He paused. "It's that girl."

"Which one?"

"Um, blue eyes, long hair."

"Blonde?"

"Brunette."

"With the yellow teeth?"

"James, I don't date girls with yellow teeth."

"Oh, I musta been thinking of someone else then."

"No kidding, dumbass. No, she was the one with the really little nose, and the earrings."

"And the freckles?"

"No, no freckles."

"Then I don't know her."

"Yeah, you do, you dated her first."

"Oh, but I don't know any girls like that."

"Oh, well, I could be wrong, maybe she's blonde."

James rolled his eyes all the way around. Sirius still looked perplexed so James rolled his eyes again, just for effect. "Do you know her name?" James spoke slowly to make sure Sirius would understand.

"Don't believe so," Sirius appeared totally unconcerned with the conversation and completely concerned with the maple syrup he was mercilessly drowning his pancakes in. "But then again, you don't appear to know that little tidbit either."

James was forced to concede that point. "Anyway, what about that girl?"

"I wanna ask her out before somebody else does. She's hot."

"Right..." James lost interest in the conversation and decided to concentrate whole-heartedly on his breakfast. What with all the conversation, he was only on his third helping.

For once, Sirius did not immediately dive back into his own food. Instead, he spared a moment to pat himself on the back for a successful lie. Honestly, he thought, James always assumes the first excuse is a lie, but he'll always fall for the second excuse, especially if it's about a girl. Sirius was known for his fickleness concerning the female gender, but he was better known for his aptitude at pranks. And pranks meant lying. And pulling off a good lie meant pulling off a good prank, more often than not. People tended to assume that the marauders only pranked outside parties, but that was a falsehood; they pranked each other for practice just as often, if not more. An evil smile suffused itself onto Sirius's face; he was gonna pull a good one over on James.

A few bare moments after the last pancake disappeared, James's mother apparated in the doorway to the kitchen. "Hello, darling, and Sirius of course. Have a good breakfast?"

"Mmm, very good," James replied intelligently.

"Never had a better one, Mrs. Potter, I don't know how you do it every morning, especially what with working at the Ministry and all." Sirius smiled sweetly at James's mother as he did at no one else.

Mrs. Potter smiled back at Sirius, he was always such a pleasure to have as a guest, but James had something else to add.

"Wait, Sirius, come here. You seem to have a little something brown on your nose there." James leaned over and pinched Sirius's nose, hard.

"Ha ha ha, very funny," Sirius replied, massaging his nose. "And besides, I am not a brown-noser and I am so not sucking up to your mother. I don't need to; she loves me just the way I am." He fluttered his eyelashes infuriatingly at his friend.

James was about to reply when his mother cut in. "Speaking of your nose, Mr. Black, you ought to keep it out of trouble while you're at my house. You're underage, and consequently you should NOT be performing hexes at seven o'clock in the morning. Or at any other time. You're just lucky I work at the Ministry of Magic."

Sirius actually felt a touch of remorse. He really did like Mrs. Potter, and he didn't want her to get in trouble at work. "Sorry, Mrs. Potter, won't happen again."

"Of course it won't," the witch answered good-naturedly, "You're off to school to wreak havoc there."

"So right you are. And speaking of school, we ought to be off," Sirius glanced pointedly at his watch.

Within moments, Sirius, James, and all of their school equipment were piled into the fireplace, and spinning off towards Kings Cross Station, and Platform 9 ¾.

Mrs. Potter sat down in the kitchen and helped herself a heap of pancakes, 3 eggs, and a few pieces of bacon. There was nobody in the world like her son and his best friend. Nobody at all.

Author looks at the time, and jumps several feet into the air. Dang, it got late while she was writing...

So, how d'you like Sirius and James? Notice, I book-ended a lot of the stuff from chapter 2. Ah, but can you figure out what? Muahahaha. Anyway, in a lot of the fics I was looking at, Sirius is depicted as this brainless idiot, which I DO NOT SUPPORT. So I thought I could make him goofy without surgically removing all common sense.

Next chapter, you meet the rest of the friends and all that good stuff on the Hogwarts Express. And you get to see what Sirius is planning for James. And, let's see, it's probably going to be from James's POV and Lily's POV depending on what's going on.

Look for chapter 4, A Test of Endurance, coming soon to computers near you.

So read, romp, and review!

le Manchot du Destin