A/N: Thanks for the review Arcadia Belle. Jack and Sirius are just too awesome, huh? yeeeah. Sorry about the huge vocabulary guys, I guess the thesaurous on my computer is was too fun for me to use. I'll tone it down a bit. :-D

1 month later... weird how it's exactly one month after my last chapter. I'm going to try to update more often. I have plans for this story, and it makes me happy to think about it. Songs are very influential, I find. hehe. well, please enjoy! and reviewing is awesome too! 3

"When did you go to bed last night?" Marlene asked MaryJo while they were getting ready to go to breakfast on their second day at Hogwarts.

"I don't know, late I guess." she responded while putting her hair up in a ponytail.

"What could you possibly be doing up late after the first day of lessons, not homework, I hope?"

MaryJo rolled her eyes, "Yeah, that's exactly what I was doing . . . hah."

Marlene threw her hair brush at her.

"You guys coming down to breakfast soon?" Lily stuck her head in the bathroom just as Mary dodged the brush; it came within inches of hitting her face. "Well, if you didn't want me to come in you could've just said so."

Marlene giggled, "Sorry Lily, I was aiming for MaryJo."

MaryJo smirked at Marlene.

"Well, are you coming?" Lily repeated.

"Yeah, we're ready." MaryJo turned around and Lily opened the door all the way.

"Did the other girls go down already?" Marlene asked.

"They left a while ago."

"I think Kim has her own bathroom in that trunk of hers – it's huge!" Marlene said as the girls walked down the stairway and into the common room. Daisy was sitting on a chair in the corner with a stack of toast and orange juice, a book covering her face. "We know where she'll be all year." Marlene whispered to MaryJo, who smiled and nodded in response.

In the Great Hall most of the students were talking joyously to each other, it only being the second day of school none of them tied down with homework, and it being decent outside the mood was overall elated.

When they sat down to eat, Marlene started talking about nothing in particular. Mary wasn't that vigilant to her anyway, though, because she was thinking about the boy who had been consuming her mind since the second they met, and until she found out his name she hadn't realized that she had developed feelings toward him; whether they were just friendly or more, it was still overwhelmingly obvious that she wanted this boy in her life.

So as she nibbled at some eggs she roved her eyes down the table until she spotted him. Marlene seemed to take no notice to where Mary was really concentrating, and when Lily declared they should be heading to their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Mary and Marlene both made eye contact then got up and followed Lily and their fellow Gryffindor first years to their class.

-$#!&()-

Not until 20 minutes before lunch did MaryJo start to feel the lack of sleep catch up to her. It didn't help that the present class just happened to be History of Magic, and the teacher, Professor Binns, was one of the most drab people on earth, droning on and on. Even Marlene started to doze.

Only when a girl named Eva Rosier got into an argumentwith her friend Alethea over some boy or make-up or something, did anybody realize that class was over in five minutes and that Professor Binns had just assigned them a half-foot essay on pre-goblin wartimes.

Everyone moaned and left warily for lunch, needing the energy from the food they were about to indulge themselves.

"What's after lunch?" MaryJo asked Lily.

"Double Potions." she responded, and everyone around them who was a first year groaned. "It isn't so bad, guys, really." she reassured them, but everyone looked skeptical.

When they all sat down at a desk after finding their way to the dungeons, their Professor came in.

"Hello, I'm Professor Jankins, and I'll be your potions instructor, and today we will first be taking some notes, then after we'll be trying our hand at our first-ever potion!" He smiled at the class, who just stared back blankly at him.

James whispered something to Sirius, who then had to bite his fist to suppress a laugh. In doing so he made a really weird sound in which everyone noticed except Professor Jankins who had fortunately turned to the board and started writing their notes.

After almost an hour of notes and lecture he told them they were to be partnered randomly and given a potion to stew.

So he started naming off people; Marlene got paired up with a cute Ravenclaw boy named Samson, Lily with the Gryffindor Keane Alcott, Kimberly with a known-to-be wealthy black Ravenclaw, Darius, James and Remus were together, and Sirius got partnered with MaryJo, who wasn't looking forward to it because she noticed Sirius' tendency to not do much of the work and distract everyone around him. The one thing that was going for them, though, was the fact that this was their first potion, and it was bound to be wrong anyway.

Everyone got together then and started preparing the ingredients as the directions on the board instructed. To Mary's surprise Sirius commenced before she even got a chance to begin; she looked at him bemused.

"What?" he smiled at her, then went back to chopping the weird-looking vegetation called Zalin.

Now, MaryJo was one of those people who could see past gestures and see the real meanings that they held, or in this case the meanings they mask. She didn't perceive it then, but she got a sense of whom Sirius really was: a self-conscious outcast who, contrarily, was out to prove to everyone something that he didn't even quite know yet. Everything he did was a counter reaction to his feelings, provoked supposedly by his demanding and unmerciful family and upbringing. Who knew what was really behind those cloudy, gray eyes, what his toothy grin was struggling not to spill to the world?

"Are you going to help me or what?" Sirius said as he put the Zalin into their cauldron. It hadn't been a minute that she had been ruminating, though it must've seemed longer. She looked at the board and took out her wand, "Aquafy." she mumbled, and to her and Sirius' surprise greenish water had filled their cauldron.

"Welcome to the wizarding world, M-J," Marlene smiled from next to them, apparently she saw Mary's magical competence too, "That's supposed to be very difficult if not, impossible, for first years, especially if you haven't had any practice." she winked, then took her wand out and did the same thing, except her water was undeniably more clear. Marlene glanced into the cauldron then grinned at MaryJo.

They went about the rest of their potion for the rest of the class period, and it went quite well. Remus kept James in check and Sirius seemed preoccupied in his own thoughts, smiling at James whenever he made a joke, but otherwise was employed on their potion.

Something about his behavior both captivated MaryJo and bothered her. It seemed Sirius was acting unlike himself and she didn't like people who couldn't be their true selves. She knew she'd only known him two days, but his whole attitude just didn't fit him: his smile, his behavior, and especially who his seemed-to-be new best friend. MaryJo didn't even want to discern what was going on with Sirius; what she speculated in his face was almost mirror-like to the pain her and Jack had gone through, except there was more hatred than even she could understand. There would be no way she could be in this boy's life – not now, not when she finally got the chance to escape the hell that was her life.

When the bell rang for class to be over everyone grabbed their things and headed out the door, MaryJo quietly promising herself that she'd never get tangled with Sirius and his problems or anyone else that had mild family problems, as a matter of fact.

Though to everyone MaryJo appeared to be an intelligent girl, no one could possibly be aware of the fact that one of the most important things she relied on to stay sane was missing: reality.