Chapter 1: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Hogwarts Express, 1976

James Potter had just spent one of the best summers of his entire life.

Of course, this was due mostly to the fact that his best friend Sirius Black had finally run away from his rather twisted home in Grimmauld Place permanently and had been taken in by James and his family on their estate.

James had opened the door one rainy July night to find Sirius Black standing on the front steps soaking wet, his trunk and broomstick in tow. "I can't take it anymore," Sirius had said simply, his eyes not quite meeting James'. "Could I stay with you?"

"Of course," James answered nonchalantly, reaching to grab an end of Sirius' trunk. He kept his tone and actions deliberately casual; he knew how hard it was for Sirius to ask anyone for anything.

"Thanks," Sirius half mumbled, still looking down. James touched his friend's shoulder.

"I'm glad you're here, Padfoot," James said with complete sincerity. He hadn't wanted to think about Sirius living in that house with his demented mother, his spoiled, Dark Arts-obsessed younger brother, and the family's disturbed house elf, all of whom viewed Sirius as the greatest "blood traitor" and disappointment possible. James had been afraid that one day his best friend would crack under the pressure and either start acting the way they felt a pureblood should in order to please his family, which was doubtful, or, the more likely alternative, murder them in their beds.

James' parents had taken the news that Sirius was now living with them quite calmly. In fact, they were delighted, as they heartily disapproved of the Blacks and were quite fond of Sirius. They wisely stayed mostly out of the boys' way as James and Sirius practiced their Quidditch skills at all hours of the day and night, clambered around the house as loudly as any herd of elephants, ate meals large enough to feed a small army, sent owls to what seemed like half of the Hogwarts population, and bought jokes from Zonko's by the dozens.

Now back on the Hogwarts Express, James and Sirius were more than ready to see their fellow Marauders, as James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter called themselves, to make plans for the year ahead. Sirius especially was anxious to get down to the planning stages of their second to last year of mayhem. Reclining on the window seat and impatiently surveying passersby in the hall for any sign of Remus or Peter, Sirius occasionally waved to people he knew and liked and commented to James on those he didn't.

"There goes Snivellus," Sirius sneered. "Wonder if he's a Death Eater yet or is he too slimy even for Voldemort's taste?" But James didn't laugh at his best friend's joke and didn't watch Snape pass their carriage. He didn't want to look up at Snape and be reminded of what had happened last spring after O.W.L.s.

Last spring, in what the Marauders now referred to as The Lily Evans Incident, James had been engaging in his fairly routine torture of Snape, aka Snivellus, when Lily Evans had intervened on Snape's behalf. The whole humiliating episode had culminated in the great love of his life calling him a bullying toerag, telling him that he made her sick, and announcing that she would rather go out with the giant squid than with him. Much as James hated to admit it, her words had rankled, had haunted him all summer, as a matter of fact. But that wasn't going to be the case anymore, because now James had a plan: he was going to make Lily Evans love him.

James was going to find out what exactly about him bothered Lily so much, and he was going to stop doing it, no matter what it took. He couldn't stand the idea of Lily hating him anymore.

A feminine laugh attracted James' attention back to the train's hall. James knew that laugh, even though she rarely laughed when he was around. Jealous, James poked his head into the hall to see who had made Lily Evans laugh.

And there she was. A crowd of girls, still in their holiday Muggle clothing, was standing together outside of one of the compartments. A girl with gleaming crimson hair, on her way past the crowd, had glanced over her shoulder to say something to one of her friends. As she faced forward again and continued down the hall toward him, James could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears and his stomach did its familiar flip-flop, the same one it had been doing during moments like this for the past five years.

Lily Evans.

Lily Evans had just spent what had very possibly been the worst summers of her entire life.

She had returned to her home in London for the summer holidays, as usual. Her parents had been delighted to see her and full of questions about school, as usual, and her older sister Petunia had been dreadful to her, as usual.

It was in the second week of the holiday when the horribly unusual thing began.

Petunia had brought home a boyfriend, "a suitor," as she called him, for Mr. and Mrs. Evans' approval. She had invited Vernon Dursley to tea, which thankfully Lily had not been present for, then asked him to stay on to dinner. So when Lily came home from tea at her friend Alice Prewett's house, she had been blindsided.

Her family had been sitting in the parlor with a strange young man who was conversing with her father in strident tones (with a lot of fist-banging and hand-waving thrown in for emphasis) about his perspectives on current affairs while Petunia hung onto his every word.

"It's a load of rubbish, these people saying they're starving and can't work to feed their families," Vernon was saying as Lily came in, pounding his fist on the coffee table hard enough to make the teacups jump. "They're all just lazy, that's what it is. Don't want to work for their living like honest, normal people when they can sit back and complain about it. Ship them all off to the ends of the earth, I say, and then we'll see if they can work for their keep! And these so-called feminists…" But Vernon's views on the sexual revolution were fated to be saved for another day, because just then he noticed Lily standing frozen in the doorway, unsure whether or not this large pompous man was some kind of joke.

"You must be Petunia's sister," Vernon said in the same tone other people might use when saying, "You must be Satan." "Lily, isn't it?"

"Er…" said Lily, still not quite sure what to make of the whole situation.

"Petunia's told me all about you," Vernon continued with obviously forced politeness. Clearly he was attempting to make a good impression on the Evanses despite his noticeable disapproval of their younger daughter. "I'm sure you'll be rehabilitated eventually." Vernon added rather dubiously. Growing uncomfortable with the Evanses' blank stares, and deciding that he could perhaps be a bit more optimistic about the whole subject, he added with false cheer: "Yes indeed, I'm sure there's hope for you yet!"

"Excuse me?" Lily was thoroughly confused, especially when Petunia began hissing at Vernon to be quiet. Her parents appeared to be just as bewildered as she was. But Vernon refused to say any more, having finally gathered from Petunia that he had just put his foot in it.

A thoroughly uncomfortable dinner followed, Vernon continuing in his very obvious attempts to win Mr. and Mrs. Evans' approval. It wasn't until Vernon had gone, and only then under dire threat from her parents, that Petunia revealed that she had told Vernon that Lily, after a misspent youth devoted to a life of crime, had been shipped off to St Agnes' Center for Incurably Criminal Girls to be rehabilitated, and that was why she was so rarely home and Petunia never spoke of her.

"Oh Petunia, how could you?" Mrs. Evans exclaimed, covering her face with her hands in embarrassment.

"How could you tell such a horrible lie about your own sister?" demanded Mr. Evans angrily.

"And what should I have told him?" Petunia spat bitterly. "The truth? Ought I to have told him that my sister is…is…some sort of unnatural freak? That when she goes off to school every fall she goes to that wicked place where they teach her to turn people into toads and God knows what else and that she does it with your blessing? At least the story I told Vernon could happen to normal people." Petunia turned to Lily. "Why can't you just be normal?" she had hissed, then fled from the room.

The rows between Petunia and her parents had gone on for days, but in the end Petunia didn't tell Vernon the truth, which meant Lily had spent much of her summer in the same house with someone who believed her to be a hardened criminal. Vernon always eyed Lily suspiciously, as if she might suddenly tie them all up and graffiti filthy words on the sitting room wall before riding off on a motorcycle with her heavily tattooed boyfriend named Butch.

Then, two weeks before Lily was due to return to Hogwarts, Vernon proposed, which meant the last two weeks of Lily's holiday were spent listening to Petunia's shrill excited squeals and Vernon's blustering to her father about his financial prospects and honorable intentions, and watching her sister and Vernon make increasingly nauseating calf eyes at each other across the table as they planned an elaborate, showy wedding for the following summer.

Looking at her mother across an enormous pile of cotton candy-tinted tulle on the day before she was due to return to school, Lily worked up the nerve to ask the question that had been in her mind since the "happy announcement," as Vernon kept calling it.

"Mum…?" Lily began hesitantly, continuing to tie pieces of tulle into little bows for Petunia's invitations, "Do you and Dad really approve of Vernon for Petunia?"

Mrs. Evans sighed and paused for a moment before answering "Yes, I suppose we do."

"But why? How?" demanded Lily, attempting to comprehend the situation. "You can't actually like him."

"No, I can't say that we do," Mrs. Evans replied with a smile. "But he'll give her the kind of life she wants. Normalcy is very important to Petunia, and it seems it is to Vernon as well. They'll have a nice normal life together. Not everyone is as extraordinary as you are, my dear," Mrs. Evans smiled lovingly at her younger daughter. "Not everyone has abilities like yours. But as long as they're happy, it doesn't matter. Vernon makes your sister happy and she loves him, and that's what counts. They fit together, Lily."

Fit together indeed; Lily could picture their life together now: Vernon blustering about his day at the office and the eejits in Parliament and Petunia, happy to be away from her freakish younger sister, holding her breath over Vernon's every word while she got him his drink. Though it was completely beyond Lily how anyone could want that sort of life for themselves, it seemed that her sister did. It was with great relief that Lily crossed through the barriers between platforms nine and ten at King's Cross Station on September 1st to return to Hogwarts, where life made sense.