Disclaimer: Only the writing, Alan, and Sharry are mine, everything else belongs to the wonderful author J.K. Rowling.
A/N: Sorry this took so long to update! School kept me plenty busy over the last couple weeks, and I've got another huge project due in a couple weeks, so I don't know how long it'll be until I update after this weekend, you've just got to be patient with me, please!
Also, I don't have a Harry Potter book with me, so if I get any references wrong with this and you catch them, please tell me so I can fix it. I'll try to remember to check it on my own later when I'm back at my Mom's house, but I can't guarantee anything.
Chapter 2
The Hogwarts Express
I was excited as I stepped onto King's Cross railroad station. Hey, what can I say? I was finally going to Hogwarts, the thing I'd been excited for since April on my birthday. I rolled my trolley along and looked around at the numbers. Eight, nine, ten, but no nine and three-quarters. I looked at my letter again. No, it definitely said nine and three-quarters. There was nothing between 9 and 10. At all.
Shit.
I looked back to see if my parents were still there. Maybe the school would send me another letter when they realized there'd been a mix-up, like someone getting confused about which paper they were doing math on and which paper they were writing invitation letters on. They weren't there.
Shit, Shit, Shit.
I shook my head. Stupid Sirius, I'm now cussing because of him. I never used to cuss. Stupid Petunia, had to go visit her new boyfriend immediately, now I'm stuck here for only God knows how long. Literally.
Or maybe not, luck seems to have been on my side.
"Oh, come ON Sharon, you're going to make us late!"
"Shut up, Alan! I'm going as fast as I can with this heavy trolley!"
I looked at the bickering pair as they passed me, obviously brother and sister. Both had black hair, dark skin, and had that wiry build that made them look nearly anorexic. The boy was obviously older, and.. he had an owl! No way a muggle would have an owl as a pet, and I know I saw an owl shop in Diagon Alley, so I know it was hardly far-fetched for a wizard to have one. Yeah, they had to be magical.
So naturally, I followed them.
They stopped in front of a brick pillar, one of two between platforms nine and ten, and the one closest one to ten. The older boy, Alan I think his sister called him, ran through the pillar thing and disappeared. I frowned, this made no sense. And then it did. Of course! The pillar was a magical barrier between nine and ten. I watched the girl go through next, and built up my courage to run through almost directly after her, forcing myself to ignore the fact that I could very well be murdering myself. I made it though, grinned, and collided with the black haired girl in front of me.
"Oh my god!" I gasped and jumped to help her up, "I am SO sorry!"
She laughed as she stood up and ignored the hand that I had offered, "That's okay, I'm not really hurt. But the expression on your face was priceless." She laughed.
As it was right now, I'm sure. I swear I could feel myself blush.
She laughed again, "Hi, I'm Sharon Burnsley, though I'd prefer you call me Sharry. Who're you?"
I willed my cheeks to stop burning and pushed my bangs away from my eyes, "Lily Evans."
"Lily… Nice name, more original than my name. You new to Hogwarts?"
I remember thinking, wow, this girl is talkative… but I shrugged it off and nodded, "Yeah, I am."
"Cool! Me too! Let's go find a compartment on the train before they get filled up."
"Okay…" then I froze. I just saw the train, and had never seen such a brilliantly colored train before in my life. I gaped.
"Weird color, isn't it?" I nodded and looked back at her, she had moved closer for who-knows-what-reason, and I saw her eyes. They were a dark brown, not unusual, but she had no eyelids, or not visible ones anyway. One of her parents must be Orient or something. That was cool, I'd never seen eyelids like that. Wow, I notice weird things.
"Once again, we better go get a compartment before they're all taken."
I felt myself blush again, what the hell was wrong with me? "Oh, right."
Too late.
All the compartments were full.
"Choose one of these four right here. I'm not walking back to the front." Sharry said frankly.
I looked to see which was least empty, but didn't ever get to the second one, as when I looked in the first one, I saw something that nearly stopped my heart from beating.
I slammed the door open and screamed, "Sirius!"
He looked up at me and gaped, obviously surprised be the sudden outburst, as were the two other boys with him. My heart sunk, he didn't seem very excited to see me. Then he jumped up and screeched (making me think that one of parents HAD to be some kind of howler monkey), "LILYBIRD!" He then flung himself at me and had me spinning around, holding onto his hands for my own safety. He slowed down, let go of me, sat down, and patted the seat next to him, absolutely beaming.
I had to roll my eyes at him, but sat down anyway. "Come on, Sharry, we're sitting in here." She walked in hesitantly and sat as far away from Sirius as she could, next to a pale sandy haired boy who looked half asleep.
"Aren't you a… Black?" She asked accusingly of Sirius.
"Oh. Yeah, but don't look into it. My parents were stupid enough to send me to a muggle school and I made a muggle friend, who I now consider my sister," Here, he flung his hand out to gesture at me, but managed to hit my nose instead, "and I have no problem with muggles because of that and think my family are all idiots and I'm going to be in Gryffindor no matter what, never Slytherin, and actually I guess I didn't make a muggle friend because Lily is a witch if she's on this train, and I'm sorry for hitting you, Lily."
I just gaped at him as he finally took a breath from his rather long and fast explanation.
"Woooow…" Sharry just gaped at him, with a rather similar expression to the sandy haired boy next to her and the blonde across from her, and probably about the same as my expression too, for that matter.
"Yup." He said and nodded proudly. God, he's a dork. So I had to laugh, and everyone else joined me as he stared blankly at us all.
"What? I don't get it! What's so funny?" Which made us laugh harder.
The whistle blew about ten minutes later, after we had all introduced ourselves to each other, the sandy haired, sleepy, pale boy was Remus Lupin, who seemed rather nice, and the blonde one with watery blue eyes was Peter Pettigrew, who seemed to be easily excitable, but still pretty nice.
Right before the train started moving, another boy opened the door and mumbled something that apparently only Peter heard, as he answered, "Yeah, you can join us." And smiled. The boy looked like he might of smiled a thanks, but it was hard to tell since he had his head hung. He sat down next to Peter and I saw his face, kind of. He was also wiry, but he didn't just almost look anorexic, he looked like no one had ever bothered to feed him in his life. I could see a scratch below one of his eyes, accompanied by a black eye that had nearly healed. He had rectangular glasses covering his dark hazel eyes (at first I though they were just brown) and extremely messy hair. He might've been somewhat good looking if he weren't so damn thin.
"Hey, I know who you are!" Sirius exclaimed, "You're James Potter, right?"
The thin boy looked up at wearily at Sirius, "Yeah, and you're Sirius Black." He said, much like Sharry, in an accusing voice.
"Yeah, don't look into it though, because my parents were stupid enough-"
Sharry quickly cut him off, "He doesn't think like his parents because Lily," She gestured at me, "Is his best friend, and muggle born. I'd let him explain it, but he'll just confuse you."
He nodded, "Fair enough." Then leaned back.
"So what happened to you, Jamie? You're eye doesn't look like it would be very comfortable to live with." Sirius asked.
"It's James, not Jamie. And it's no big deal, I was just playing football and it hit me in the face."
"So then, what about the scratch?"
"Haven't you ever seen anyone get hit hard enough that it started bleeding?" James responded crossly.
"Oh." Sirius frowned at him and shrugged, "Exploding Snaps anyone?" We all stared at him blankly, I thought he had just made a game up, but it turns out that I was the only one that didn't know what it was; Sharry, Remus, and Peter just hated the game.
After a moment of silent staring, James shrugged and sat up straighter, "Why not?"
Sirius grinned, "Sweet!" And pulled out a deck of cards.
I watched them play, rather amused because they kept flinching every time they set a card down, and I didn't know why, until they exploded.
The four of us not playing just gaped, but Sirius and James exploded (much like the cards) into laughter, and that was the first time I saw James smile.
The rest of the trip went by rather uneventfully. The four of us had moved as far away from the exploding game that James and Sirius insisted on playing as possible and had our own droll conversations going as the other corner exploded into smoke and laughter every ten minutes, and as Sirius managed to lose most of one eyebrow.
At one point, some old lady came in and asked if we wanted any "Sweets from the trolley" and called us dears. Sirius and James managed to nearly deplete the cart of its contents. James apparently didn't only looked starved, he acted it too with how much he managed to eat. They both shared with us though as the trip turned boring once again.
Later, a prefect (whatever that is) came in and told us to change into our school robes since we'd be arriving at Hogwarts soon. Sharry and I left to find a compartment with girls, and when we came back, the boys had all changed and were watching the dark window with something akin to excitement. The train rolled to a stop and the doors in the wall opened of their accord letting us out.
We all walked out grinning and maybe overly excited, but not sure what to do, but some giant of a man was kind enough to answer our unasked question when he shouted, "Firs' years this way!"
And off to Hogwarts we were.
A/N: I don't know if this was written very well as it's midnight, but I'll edit it later, and it's longer this time! Review please (I really appreciate the few reviews I did get!)
