Chapter 2

'Oh shit!' James thought to himself, looking at the huge clock staring menacingly down at him from the station wall. 'It's almost eleven!'

After quickly hugging his parents' goodbye, and trying to kick Alan, James scrambled through the barrier and onto the platform. James had little time to notice his surroundings before yelping in astonishment as train's engine began to rumble and it began to move. James quickly sprinted after it trying to catch up.

James was almost on when he noticed another boy around his age running, as he was, a couple of paces behind him. Both of them continued to sprint towards the train, which was slowly progressing down the tracks, until they finally caught up with it. They rushed onto the train, climbed into the first compartment they saw, sat down on the seat, and burst out laughing.

"That was bloody bad!" The boy following James exclaimed between laughs. "I was freaked that I would miss the train and would have to spend another year with my mum—that would've been bad!"

"Yeah that was bad. But I wasn't afraid of having to spend another year with my family, they're alright, except my freaking brother. He's so damn annoying, you know?" James claimed after they had finished laughing. "Do you know how to send a howler?"

"No, but I'm sure someone in this bloody school does. I'm Sirius Black."

"Hi! I'm James Potter. And you are?" James asked, finally turning around to look at the other kids in their compartment.

"Remus Lupin." Said a blond, pale, and sweet-looking boy.

"Severus Snape." Said a boy with greasy black hair and a hook-nose.

"Lily Evans." Said a girl with emerald-green eyes and flame-red hair. Even though James wasn't into girls, he couldn't help but noticing she was pretty.

"That's cool." Said James in a monotone as he turned back to Sirius. "So, why were you late?" He asked.

"Oh...my mum didn't wake me up. So I slept in until ten thirty. Then she wouldn't drive me out to the station so I had to hitch hike. What about you?"

"Well it was my brother's fault really. He stole my wand last night and claimed he didn't have it, even though I knew he did. My mom and I spent like hours questioning him and he kept saying he didn't know where it was. My mom was on the verge of believing him when my dad walked in with my wand, saying he'd found it in my brother's room. My wand's, 11 inches, mahogany and has two phoenix feathers, Mr. Ollivander says it's really powerful." James bragged,"What's yours?"

"13 inches, willow, and a dragon heartstring. Wanna see?"

"Sure."

"Hold on it's in my trunk." Sirius looked in a couple places for his trunk before saying. "HOLY SHIT!"

"What?" said everyone in the compartment in unison.

"We left our trunks at the station!" Sirius moaned.

"Damn it, we did." said James looking horrified.

"What do we do?" Sirius asked.

"Well, one things for sure. We've got to get back to that station. We only left ten minutes ago. What's it if we're twenty minutes back to the feast?"

"Ermm, A LOT." Said Severus with raised eyebrows.

"Shut up, Snivillus." James said before walking out the door.

"It's Severus." Severus said with clenched teeth.

"Sorry Snivilly." Sirius said as he followed James.

With that, James and Sirius ran out of the compartment and to the nearest train official they saw—the food cart lady.

"Excuse me? M'am?" James asked timidly.

"Yes dears. What can I do for you? I have a two for one sale on chocolate frogs going today. Could I interest you in any?" The lady asked.

"Sure. We'll take…"

"…shut up Sirius. We left our trunks at the station and we need to go back there." James said.

"Ermm… I don't know what we can do about that. We've never been able to go back to the station before." The lady said.

"You're expecting us to last an entire year without our clothes, wand, books and, most importantly, broomsticks?" Sirius asked indignantly.

"You brought a broomstick? First years aren't aloud." James asked.

"You didn't listen to that silly rule did you?"

"No, but I thought that everyone else would. Anyways…" James said looking up at the pudgy lady.

"Why may I ask did you leave your bags at the station? Not exactly an easy thing to forget, are they?"

"Not easy to forget unless you're too preoccupied trying to catch up with the damn train." James said in a raised voice.

"You didn't bring them with you?" The Lady asked.

"Have you ever tried running as fast as you could with a whole shit load of stuff?" Sirius asked. "Now are you going to help us or not?"

"I'll go talk to the conductor." The pig-like lady said as she disappeared through a swinging door to their right.

"She was bloody annoying!" James exclaimed.

"Yea." Sirius agreed. "Let's go back to our compartment"

"With that Snape guy in it? No way!" James said.

"Oh, I believe that we can have old Snivillus running and screaming by the end of the train ride." Sirius said. "Anyways, I want to talk to that Lupin bloke more, he seemed interesting. I think he's got eyes for that girl though, he kept staring at her."

"I like the way your mind works. Once we get our wands back, we can give Snivillus' head a good washing." James chimed. "I wonder when well go back to the station."

At that precise moment, the train stopped for a second before heading backwards, towards the station.

Lily sat in her compartment staring out of the window. So far, her Hogwarts experience had fallen somewhat less than expectation. The three boys named Sirius, Remus and James were talking animatedly in the corner of the compartment. They hadn't necessarily excluded Lily from their conversation, but they were talking about things that she wasn't familiar with. The other boy, Snape, however, was just sitting there, glaring at her. She didn't think she could take it any longer. She got up and left the compartment, saying a quick "bye" over her shoulder, although she thought any of the boys would notice or care.

She turned in the hallway and walked into a compartment full of giggling girls around her age. By the way they looked at her she could tell that they didn't want her in there. But she decided to stay anyways, she needed to make some friends.

"Can I sit down?" she asked timidly.

"Sure!" Said a pretty girl with a round face, big eyes and brown hair perkily. "I'm Alice Carlton. I'm a third year Gryffindor hear."

"Sorry, but what do you mean by Gryffindor?"

"Oh are you muggle-born?" Lilly nodded. "Well that makes perfect sense then. There are four houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. While you're at Hogwarts, your house is sort of like your family. Each house has a common room, and bedrooms. You share a room with the girls in your year and house. You also get points for your house: good things you do get you points and bad things you do loose them. At the end of the year the house with the most points wins the house-cup thingy. Last year it was Slytherin, and the year before that…"

"How do you find out what house you're in?" Lily asked, intrigued.

"I don't think I'm supposed to tell you that." Alice said mysteriously.

"My brother told me that it was some sort of test. Said something about trolls and goblins—before my mom hit him." Piped up a tan, short girl with a high-pitched voice, brown hair and a pretty face. "But I think he was lying. I'm Marlene McKinnon. You are?" She asked me.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I'm Lily Evans. What are your guys' names?" I asked looking at the two other girls in the compartment.

"I'm Kaitlyn Holmes." said a skinny and pretty girl with long blonde hair. "I'll be a first year too."

"I'm Theresa Winterson." Said a pale girl with dark brown hair and blue-green eyes. "I'm a third year Gryffindor with Alice. So what houses do you all want to be in?" Theresa asked.

"Gryffindor." Said Marlene flatly. "All my family's been in Gryffindor, and I'd feel horrible if I didn't get in."

"I don't know." Kaitlyn said, considering her options. "Gryffindor sounds nice, but Ravenclaw doesn't sound that bad either. I'd feel like a loser if I got into Hufflepuff though, or worse Slytherin."

Everyone then turned to Lily. She didn't know what to say, she knew nothing about any of the houses except for their names. She figured since both Marlene and Kaitlyn wanted to be in Gryffindor, that it wouldn't be too bad. She felt safe as she said "Gryffindor."

Kaitlyn and Marlene then decided to find the food-cart lady and buy some treats. When they left Theresa turned to Alice and said "So, what happened? Are you going to tell me or I'm I going to have to hex the answer out of you?" she asked, pointing her wand at Alice.

With a quick, but meaningful glance at Lily, Alice said, "I'll tell you later, okay?"

Lily took this as her cue to leave. She said "No, that's okay I'll leave." She then walked out of the compartment to find Kaitlyn and Marlene before anyone could stop her.

James, Remus and Sirius were in the middle of talking about Quidditch when the red haired girl got up and left. He didn't really care though, she didn't add much to their conversation. She was pretty though, nice to look at. He supposed that she got fed up with Snivillus glaring at her. They had planned out how they were going to embarrass Snape—it was perfect. As Snape was getting off the train they'd wash his hair and then push him into the lake that Remus' brother, Connor, had told Remus about.

James' thoughts broke of when Sirius hit him hard on the back. Both he and Remus were staring at him. "Sorry, what was the question?" he asked.

"What…house…do…you…want…to…be…in?" Sirius asked pausing in between each word and saying them loudly and clearly.

"Oh sorry, Gryffindor. I don't think my family's ever been in any other house…" James thought "…no actually I'm pretty sure they haven't. What about you guys."

"Well, as I just finished saying," Sirius started "My whole family's always been in Slytherin—they're obsessed with the whole 'pure-blood' thing. But I want to be in Gryffindor."

"GRYFFINDOR?" Snape asked, outraged for some reason. "YOU'RE A DISGRACE TO YOUR FAMILY'S NAME BLACK!" With that he left the compartment.

"What was that about?" James asked.

"Friend of the family." Sirius said casually.

"Friend?" Remus asked with raised eyebrows.

"You think he's bad, try having a damn conversation with my mum. She's hella bad." Sirius said. "What about you Remus? What house do you want to be in?"

"I don't know yet. Probably either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw." Remus reasoned.

After a couple more minutes of conversing, Severus came in again. "Where have you been Remus? Why didn't you follow me?"

"Why would I have Snivillus?" Remus asked.

"You're telling me you'd rather hang out with these bastards than me?" Snape asked.

"No, I'd rather hang out with Sirius and James than you, Snivilly. Now leave and get out of my face. Unless you want me to make you get out of here." Remus yelled taking out his wand.

"Wow Remus what was that?" James asked.

"He shouldn't think that he could get away with calling you guys 'bastards.'" Remus said, still outraged.

When Lily got to the food-cart, she saw Marlene and Kaitlyn talking. She about to say "hi" to them when she heard her name. She darted into an empty compartment and left the door open a little so she could hear what they were saying.

"So Katie, what did you think of that new girl? Lily, I think."

"She's okay, I guess. Seemed sort of weird though."

"Are you kidding? I didn't like her at all. She doesn't know a thing about our world and she doesn't belong in it. I don't know about them letting all these muggle-borns into our world."

"I thought you were above all that pure-blood crap, Marlene. But I agree, I don't like her much. Her red hair is so bright that I'm getting a headache just looking at it. I hope she's not in my house, she seemed really annoying and rather clingy—I hate people like that."

"Yeah, you're right…" Lily had heard enough she shut the compartment door, sat down on the seat and started crying. She was alone, in and unfamiliar place and without any family and friends. Oh well, in situations like this, all you can go is up, Lily decided.

A/N: Ok so there's the train ride for you, and the first bad thing that happens to Lily. Don't worry though, her year will get better. She will make some friends, and her life will improve. Although, in the next chapter, James plays a trick on Lily that will make her hate him forever…

…I've said too much already!

Please read and review! I'd really appreciate it! Thanks! 