The following morning, Lily told Marlene everything about the patrolling last night (concerning the Slytherins, that is. Lily neglected to mention any of James' more…close-to-home comments). Marlene was shocked that they were actually attacked, but a more than a little relieved that she was right about Travers.

"And he really did do all that? So I was right, he's a complete nutter…"

"Yes, Marlene, he is and you'd do well enough to stay away from him. Good thing Sirius and his mates are taking you to Hogsmeade." Marlene seemed embarrassed as they entered the Dining Hall.

"And there they are," pointed Lily, looking shrewdly at Marlene to catch her reaction. Marlene cleared her throat.

"Remus seems ill today, doesn't he?" It was true. Remus was sitting across from James and he didn't seem to be eating much. His face was pale as porridge and looking a little gaunt.

"I—" Dorcas immediately shoved a newspaper under Lily's nose as she reached the table.

"Look at the front page!" she hissed. Lily heard Marlene comment "So Vance, you're sitting with us this morning?" Then she looked at the headline story, and Lily missed every word of Emmeline's answer.

ATTACKS ON AURORS-IN-TRAINING: MINISTRY INVESTIGATES INFILTRATION OF ACADEMY.

"Frank and Alice Longbottom?" cried Lily. "I remember Alice, Alice was Head Girl! We knew her before she was Alice Longbottom…"

"Let me see that," demanded Marlene. A white pallor spread up her face.

"But…but they were only two years up! They're not even out of training yet, this says they're in St. Mungo's now…"

Lily felt sick. She bit her lip. Frank and Alice had been a premier couple at Hogwarts a few years before, and Alice was Head Girl the first year that Lily was made a prefect. The article said that a mysterious package had been delivered to the care of the newlyweds; it had been a hexed music box and nearly killed them both before Frank managed to blast it. The article didn't say where they had been found but only that it was a very sensitive area of the facility.

Lily took a good look at her friends this morning. Emmeline sat straight as a poker, mechanically eating her sausages with a faraway look in her eyes. Dorcas looked extremely worn and she was fastening a fat, sealed letter to tawny owl's leg. Lily noticed that a new "To Dorcas Meadows" package was sitting in her lap.

"Wow…I never thought…" Marlene trailed off and fiddled with her eggs. The hall was not as quiet as it had been a few days before, on the first attack of the year, but the noise was different than usual; furtive, speculative, and shocked. The teachers were talking very closely amongst themselves. Lily saw that Joey Jenkins had not returned to the Ravenclaw table yet.

A warm touch was laid on the small of Lily's back and she looked up to see James and his friends, taking seats around the girls.

"Hey," said James kindly. He was smiling but his hair was messier than usual and his face was tired. Lily looked up at him with large eyes.

"Did you hear…?" James nodded.

"Yeah. Frank was on Quidditch, good man and a good Keeper…"

"So what have you ladies been up to?" said Sirius lightly. "Aside from eagerly awaiting my arrival…"

"Black, if personality came as food you'd be a starved man," retorted Emmeline dryly. Everyone laughed a little, trying to allay the stiffness of the latest attack.

"I see you and Lily going out will be quite a trip, Prongs, if we have to contend with wit like this every breakfast."

"Or you could sit elsewhere?" suggested Emmeline, but it was not meant seriously and everyone knew it.

"So you are going out then?" interjected Marlene quickly.

"'Course we are, Hogsmeade and beyond," said James bracingly. Marlene raised her eyes to Lily, who merely gave a shrug.

"Then everything's official, which means I was right," added Emmeline smugly. "Like that was ever in question."

"I think your boyfriend's coming this way, better not let him see us flirting…" Emmeline rolled her eyes at Sirius as Caradoc Dearborn put his arms around her.

""Potter, Black, Lupin." He nodded in greeting. "Pettigrew." They nodded back.

"Can't boys ever just say hello, or are you all so manly all the time?" inquired Dorcas.

"Some of us are," replied Caradoc easily, ignoring Emmeline's elbowing him in the stomach. "C'mon Emmy, I've got to find Hooch before we go to Charms…"

"Fixing the Quidditch match early, Dearborn?" smiled James. Caradoc laughed off James' insinuation. Lily got the impression they bantered like this quite often.

"Don't need to, Potter, not if your team is as pathetic as last year."

"Last year I recall winning the Cup."

"Last year I recall that only reason you did that was because you played Slytherin in the finals and they were mostly riding school brooms. And I also recall that the only reason you weren't playing, or losing, to us was because Fenwick and I were in the Hospital Wing during the deciding match—"

"—due to an unsightly accident involving yourselves, your wands, and a group of same Slytherins that we destroyed in the finals." Caradoc smiled reluctantly.

"You know how it is. We couldn't resist, though Flitwick was really displeased about the game. They're disgusting, just a bunch of dodgy—"

"How come everyone hates Slytherins so much?" asked Lily, even though she had a pretty good idea of the answer. Almost everyone except Peter Pettigrew turned to stare at her. Dorcas finally answered,

"Lily, the entire house should be chucked into Azkaban! Remember last June, when we found out that Avery's father had been passing off cursed artifacts as Muggle football cards? And last May, when—"

"Yes, I know I know, but they're not all Death Eaters or…or Death Eater affiliates, are they? There are some okay ones!"

"Like who?" snorted Sirius derisively.

"Agatha Timms, for one," replied Lily, referring to a short black girl with a beaky nose and green fingernails. "She always seemed decent to me—"

"Then she's the only one," interrupted Caradoc. "I've never met a Slytherin that I didn't think would stab me as soon as look at me, though I don't make a habit of mixing with scum."

"Don't you think everyone's just prejudiced because of the attacks? Not every Slytherin sold cursed cards or cultivates Devil's Snare or—"

"—murdered five Muggles in Bristol?" suggested James in a clipped voice. Lily felt small.

"I just don't see why you hex them all the time," she pleaded desperately. "They don't start—"

"What? Don't start? Don't start trouble?" barked Remus, who seemed roused for the first time all morning. "Lily, I can see where you wouldn't want to judge all of them, but come on. What about Tuesday, when Aubrey was nearly thrown through a wall because Rosier and his pals thought he was moving too slow?"

"Though that'd be no great loss," muttered Caradoc under his breath. James and Sirius smiled; they didn't much care for the ostentatious Hufflepuff boy either.

"And when Snape set James' book on fire? And when they hexed the first years? And—"

"Well, you and James always pick on him," said Lily heatedly. "And I still don't know why. You've done him worse plenty of times—"

"Lily, he's evil," said James exasperatedly. "He probably could recite the Killing Curse before he was out of nappies, and he certainly knew a lot about the Unforgivables first year. Tried to give us some nice pointers too, though that effort went unappreciated…"

Sirius barked a laugh and even Remus snorted. There's definitely a story there, Lily thought

"He tried to use an Unforgivable Curse on you first year?" asked Marlene in a hushed voice of shock. Sirius sniffed.

"Stupid git wouldn't've managed it even if it did occur to him. He was too spineless, see, and anyway too inept. No, Snivelly was just trying to impress upon us his vast and dangerous knowledge of magic, which at the time was limited to the effects of a few hexes and a cleaning spell. From his current hygiene, we see he still hasn't mastered the latter, 'specially the bit with shampoo…" Everyone snorted this time, even Lily.

"And," continued Sirius, "about hexing the rest of the Slytherins, my family makes up most of them, which is as good a reason as any to eradicate the lot."

"You're related to Bellatrix, right Black?" asked Caradoc curiously.

"Cousin," he said shortly, and Caradoc knew not to mention anything more. After a few moments of discomfort, he finally said,

"Emmeline, really, I need the pitch…"

"Coming, coming," she replied, tossing her napkin aside and standing up. "Anyone want to come? Dorcas?"

"Sure," she shrugged. "Lily? Marlene?" They both shook their heads.

"Not done with my turnover," Marlene said.

"We'll entertain them, don't worry," said Sirius haughtily. H slid his arm around Lily, who giggled as James threw a muffin at his head.

"Funny Padfoot, really amusing…you could run the blimey circus with your sense of humor…" Caradoc and Emmeline laughed before departing with Dorcas. Sirius only smirked as James pulled Lily closer to himself, enveloping her against his chest with a smug smile. She settled down and rested her head against his shoulder, completely aware that several conversations around the Dining Hall had changed courses rather quickly.

"Feeling okay, Moony? Thinking of anything interesting?" asked Sirius loudly. Remus glared at Sirius and looked down into his plate. Lily looked quizzically up at James, who only laughed and kissed her lightly on the lips. Peter's eyes were bright and he looked like he was bursting to say something, but instead he simply buttered another roll and devoured it.

"They're having a little spat, Lily, don't mind them…"

"You know how moody our friend here can get," said Sirius while clapping a disgruntled Remus on the back. "Moody Moony, that's what we call him sometimes…"

"It's that furry little problem, you know," answered James with another chuckle. "Acts up something terrible."

"Yeah, about once a—" Lily, James, Marlene, and Peter all broke out in gales of laughter as Remus slammed an entire plate of eggs into Sirius' face.

Woohoo, I was nearly stumped with this chapter…didn't know what to put but then it came. I decided to explain why most of the decent people in the school hate the Slytherins. This isn't to say that all of the Slytherins are evil and (as Lily pointed out) not all of them are connected to Death Eaters. Lily, btw, was playing devil's advocate mostly because she is around Dorcas and the Marauders a lot, and so she wants to find out why they dislike the Slytherins so much. As for their opinions, they are mostly generalizations from the few that they know, but they are fairly accurate…the Marauders, in this case, marked Snape out for what he was early on, like Sirius mentioned in the books.

I just said all that so no one thought I was making Lily sympathetic with Slytherin. She just wants to find out her friends' personal reasons for hating them. And this chapter also marks the first of the three prophesied attacks on the Longbottoms, which I wanted to mention. And sorry for the slow updates over the past few days, I got my wisdom teeth out and have been kind of hokey from the anesthesia. And…er, that's it.

As for Lily's friends, I think I've said this before, but I really, really get peeved when there are just these random cardboard cut-outs pasted into the story solely to fornicate with Sirius Black and cuddle with Remus Lupin and ignore Peter Pettigrew so that Lily and James can be pushed together. I took pains to make sure that Lily's friend didn't just pair off with the Marauders and that they had personalities of their own. I appreciate it when people notice.

In the case of the Marauders, hey are basically a brilliant bunch (well, er, three of them) and James was described by Sirius as "hating the Dark Arts" so naturally they're suspicious of the Slytherins and are sometimes overzealous in stopping them. Sirius wants to get away from his family stigma and Remus isn't exactly empathetic after being a werewolf/decent person. They also don't seem like they'd sit by and let the Dark Lord screw up their fun. I think they'll try to keep people laughing. And finally, I think Lily will eventually find out about the Map and the cloak and everything. Just not so soon, because I realize that so far this is all taking place in early September, which I sometimes forget ;)

(Mirax Myra Terrik)

Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and keep on reading!