A/N: This is going up much sooner than I had originally planned for it to. Sirius is introduced and wacky hijinks ensues! This part is a little more fun, which is probably why I got it out so fast. Let me know what you think!

While Lily's sister Petunia would much rather pretend that Lily did not exist during the summer vacation months that found them both at home, every once in a while they managed a civil conversation. Lily recalled her sister telling her about a bizarre project that Muggle high schools created wherein a male and a female student had to take home a bag of flour and pretend it was their child. Partners were assigned randomly and you were monitored on your progress by reports and the physical state of the sack of flour. By the end of the week, if you came to class with an empty burlap sack, then it was safe to say that you failed the assignment.

Lily's bag of flour had just been assigned to her in the guise of a mysterious child with a strange lightning-bolt scar on his forehead and with looks astonishingly similar to those of the boy that had fancied her for ages and who she was determined never to give the time of day. And much like her sister, Lily had been assigned a partner whom she wasn't too sure would be able to return the bag of flour intact.

There weren't too many people walking the halls, most of them having already gotten to breakfast, but the ones that did were casting nosy looks towards the three Gryffindors, and Lily imagined they were wondering two things: why did Lily Evans look not at all bothered by James Potter's presence, and who was the youngest member of their bizarre trio?

"Do you think we've missed breakfast?" James asked her as they plodded along the corridor together. He wasn't wearing a watch, having left his in the Gryffindor locker room with his traditional school robes. He didn't seem at all bothered by the extra attention they were garnering.

Lily glanced at her own wrist and saw that they still had an hour to make it to the Great Hall before they would start clearing away the morning meal. Then she took in James' appearance. His hopeless hair, Quidditch robes limp with half-dried sweat, and broom most likely lying forgotten in the field where they found Harry. She frowned disapprovingly when she got a whiff of him, wondering how she hadn't noticed before this. "James, you have to shower. You smell like a mutt and you're still in your Quidditch uniform. I'll take Harry to the Great Hall and eat and…try to explain this to people…" Lily's voice dropped lower and lower as she began to consider how the hell she was going to be able to weave this falsehood convincingly. She had a maddening habit of blushing every time she told a lie, which would be such a great help when it came to this, she thought sarcastically. Dumbledore really was completely mad.

"Wot, Evans? You don't like my manly musk of exertion?" He puffed out his chest comically and before she had a chance to realize what he was doing and escape his reach, he threw a long arm around Lily's shoulders, drawing her into his sweaty embrace and causing Harry to turn and grin at the spectacle.

Lily elbowed James roughly but with a hint of playfulness. "You are such twat sometimes…get off, Potter! I'm surprised McGonagall didn't faint at the stench of you!"

"Minnie lives for the sweet scent of the Quidditch pitch, Evans. Why'd you think she lets me off tutoring Transfiguration when I'm top of the class? That woman loves having the Cup on display in her office."

"Ugh, James, off! You're gonna get your stink on me!"

"Shhh…Lilykins," Taking the chance of getting his head whacked off by her flailing arm, he rubbed his nose against her cheek, prompting a squeal and more frantic attempts to squirm away, "not in front of the little bloke, ya hear?"

The "little bloke" in question had stopped and turned to watch them, amusement plastered all over his face.

"You are such a child!" she responded, sighing in exasperation and briefly giving up the physical fight for a more effective tactic. "You let go or I'm going to hex all of your stupid hair off, Potter!"

That did it, and James released her, clutching at his rat's nest in dismay. "You leave these gorgeous locks alone, Evans," his tone was dead serious. "I spend a lot of time keeping this look up."

"Of course you do. And I'm sure that you think that's okay just because your best mate Black spends more time in front of a mirror than you do. But at least he doesn't spend that time arranging his hair so it looks like somebody hacked it up with a weed-whacker."

James stopped walking and tilted his head toward her. "What's a weed-whacker? Some kind of Muggle device?"

Harry laughed aloud at the question, causing Lily and James to remember that he was there. The boy had been so quiet this whole time that they were constantly forgetting. And Lily inwardly cringed at their behavior. James had this irritating way of making her seem much more irresponsible than she would prefer to appear. But their little charge gave no sign that he minded, and in fact, found it enjoyable.

"Who's Black?" Harry asked, curiosity overwhelming him. Dumbledore mentioned a "Mr. Black" before and now Lily had as well… He wanted to know more about what his parents were like, and he decided not to worry about the mirror and getting back to his time until tomorrow. There was no reason to worry over things that couldn't be helped.

"Sirius Black is Potter's imbecile friend," Lily jumped in before James could answer himself, and James growled at her description. Lily smiled prettily at the boy. "You'll probably like him. He's a great prat, but he acts like a dog and thinks everything is some big joke."

"He's funny and brilliant and he pulls the best pranks," James told Harry.

"Oh Prongs, stop, I'm blushing!"

"Speak of the devil…" Lily muttered.

Sirius Black was sauntering their way, smiling so you could see every last one of his white, perfect teeth. He was big and incredibly good-looking and Harry could see why his mother had described Sirius as a "dog". Even after only a few seconds, there was some vibe, an air of boundless energy and wildness that gave Harry the impression of a great, lumbering animal. Man's best friend.

"And he doth appear, love." Sirius waggled his eyebrows at Lily, then smirked. "Don't tell me that you finally took the hint and decided to shag my poor, pathetic mate after all of this time."

"Hey!" James objected while Lily hissed, "Sirius. Don't say that in front of Harry!"

"Harry? What are you on about, you crazy bird?" Sirius looked behind him, as if expecting to see someone approaching, before he finally had the brains to look down. "Oh, hey! Who's the ickle firstie?"

"Terribly observant person, you are," James said dryly. "This is Harry. And before you ask, no; he isn't related to me in any way."

"Well of course not," Sirius winked at his best mate. "Otherwise, I would have met him at the smashing family reunion picnic your parental units had last summer." He held out a hand to the Harry. "I'm Sirius Black. And if you're really not a member of the Potter clan, you look like a magical cloning experiment gone wrong, if we're being honest. That's some rotten luck, mate."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"Ignore him," Lily instructed. She gave Black a look of disdain, but it didn't have much bite to it. "Shouldn't you already be in the Great Hall? Shoveling food down your throat at such a disgusting rate that the rest of us are nauseated at the mere sight of you?"

Unruffled by her shot at his behavior, Sirius patted his lean stomach contentedly. "I'm a growing boy, Evans. And I was looking for my missing mate before running into the lot of you." He frowned slightly at James. "So why are you lovebirds babysitting?"

Lily let James do the talking, assuming he would be a better liar than she, also as a good way to ignore Sirius' goading 'lovebirds' remark. But James shrugged, not offering much by way of information. "It was sudden…just a thing, you know? Look, I'll explain later, Padfoot. I've gotta take a shower before Charms."

Before anybody could say another word, James took off at a jog toward the Quidditch pitch, waving back at them. "I'll see you at first period!" Then, thinking Lily couldn't see, James sent Sirius a signal behind his back.

"Oh, that coward… And don't even bother, Black." Lily snapped as James footsteps echoed smaller and smaller.

"What?" Sirius asked, his eyes widening innocently.

"I saw what he just did. If I catch you following me around, I'll Leg-Lock you so good that you'll be hopping to class for the rest of the day."

All that threat earned her was a wolfish grin and a wink. "Got to keep those nasty ol' Slytherins at bay, love. I won't be far!" He did leave then, but Lily knew that he would make good on his promise. She rubbed a hand over her eyes, groaning.

"Why would he follow you around?" Harry asked.

"No good reason, really…" Lily said. She motioned for Harry to follow her as she started off again. "It's just…things have been pretty rough around here lately."

"Slytherins?"

Lily raised her eyebrows at the boy. "What do you know about the Slytherins?"

"That most of them are terrible prats," Harry said truthfully. Lily laughed, shaking her head.

"They really are, aren't they?" Harry seemed like a good kid, if just a bit quiet. So she decided that it probably wouldn't hurt to treat him more like an adult. "It's all this blood purity nonsense. It's getting worse and worse."

"Blood purity?"

"Well…I'm a Muggle-born, Harry. In other words, my parents aren't magical at all and I didn't know about any of this until I got my letter to the school."

Harry looked up at her, incomprehension written all over his face. "I was raised by Muggles too. What's the matter with that?"

"Nothing is…" She casually took note of the wording of his explanation, and as they entered the Great Hall, her eyes flickered over to the green and silver of the Slytherin table, the hateful stares and mutters. "But not everybody sees it that way."

"So, er…James?" The name almost got stuck on his tongue, and she thought it sounded indescribably strange. "He's trying to protect you?"

Lily flushed, though she wasn't sure why. "Yeah, I guess. But I can handle myself just fine, I'll have you know."

Harry smiled, and weirdly enough, Lily's heart lifted at the sight of it, as if his smile was the one thing she had been waiting for. "I bet you can," was all he said.

Harry really was a very sweet boy.

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"What do you have there, Lil?" A dark-haired girl set her eyes on Harry and then leaned into Lily with a teasing smirk as the red-headed girl took her seat. "Blimey. So this is your illegitimate lovechild with James Potter!"

Harry had been examining the room around him when the girl's words had his eyes snapping back to the Gryffindor table. People kept saying stuff like that. What was the deal with his parents?

"Oh, yeah, when I was eight years old I gave birth to him. Stop about Potter, Mary. Like I haven't heard it all before." Lily brushed off the comment and the giggles as if it were nothing, giving Harry the distinct impression that this was not a first-time occurrence. His embarrassment at the girls' examination of him removed any hidden enjoyment he could feel at the irony of the Mary girl's teasing.

"This is Harry," Lily put a hand on his shoulder as he slid in next to her. "He's um…possibly moving here and he's shadowing James and me to see what Hogwarts would be like. Aren't you, Harry?"

"Yeah…yes, I am." Harry stumbled over his words. He hadn't realized before how weird it would be to walk around telling people this. And considering Lily's plastic delivery of the same lie, it didn't come very naturally to her either.

Another girl, with honey-brown hair and blue eyes crinkled her nose at him. "I've actually never seen someone transfer to Hogwarts. That's odd. Why is he shadowing you and Potter?"

Lily began to feel her cheeks get warm. "Wrong place at the wrong time, I guess. We ran into Dumbledore and he asked if we could, you know, help him out."

"You and James?" Mary deadpanned. "Wrong place at the wrong time, huh?"

"He looks like Potter's twin."

"Really? I hadn't noticed…" Lily murmured. "Harry, do you want some toast?"

"Sure," Harry said. He watched as she buttered it for him, and he bit back the urge to tell her that he could do it himself. Some of this…it was just weird. Like, she was his mother, and she didn't even know it. She had an antagonistic relationship with his father rather than a romantic one. She wasn't married, she was still in school. And yet, she was buttering his toast for him and being really nice to him. And her friends were watching her, glancing every so often at each other.

"Lilykins!" A familiar voice bellowed. "There you are, sweetheart! I brought some friends to come see your and James' new little friend!"

There was no way that he hadn't been yelling deliberately loud enough to draw attention from half of the breakfasting students. A flicker of annoyance flowed through Harry. He really hated any extra attention being drawn to him, and definitely not now.

"Brilliant," Lily grumbled. "I thought I had gotten rid of him for at least fifteen minutes more…"

Sirius insinuated his muscular frame in beside Harry and nearly pushed him off the bench when he reached over to jostle Lily's shoulder. "Hey, love! It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Not nearly long enough. Hey, Remus," Lily smiled at the tall, slender boy with longish hair standing over Sirius.

"Hey, Lily. Sorry to bother you all, but Sirius said we had to see something. And now of course, he's gone off track and…"

"No, I haven't! If you lot would shut up, you'd see what I was about to point out."

"You're obviously about to show them Potter's mini-me," one of the girls said, smirking. "The mysterious boy that Lily and James are 'watching'."

"Right you are, Katie!" And with a flourish, Sirius gestured to his left, down to Harry, who was looking between Remus and Peter and trying his best to ignore his father's best mate. "Will you look at this, boys?"

"Oh, Sirius, knock it off!" Lily glared at the handsome Gryffindor and pushed away from the bench, sure to nudge him as hard as she could manage. "He's not some animal at the zoo."

Peter grinned down at Harry. "Sorry about Sirius, mate. He's incorrigible. But it is weird how much you look like our pal, James. Where are you from?"

"France," Lily said quickly, fearful that Harry wouldn't remember.

"Ooooh, say something in French!" the girl with honey hair said.

"You play Quidditch?" Sirius asked Harry, and Lily got fed up.

"Shove off, Black," she demanded, pulling Harry off of the bench by his hand. The attention was unnerving now. She didn't know why, but she hadn't imagined that this would get so crazy so fast. She briefly wished that Dumbledore had thought to change Harry's appearance so his similarity to James would go unnoticed. It, at the very least, would have deterred Sirius. "You're going to scare him off. And stop ogling at him because he looks like your best mate. It's not even that much of a resemblance!" That was a ridiculous lie.

"I play Quidditch," Harry's words stumbled over themselves as Lily yanked him up. It was the first time he had spoken since he sat down, and of course it was for the subject of Quidditch.

Men, Lily thought in irritation.

"Do you really?" Sirius sounded excited and stood up with them. "What position, kid?"

"Seeker. I just started…at, at my school."

Sirius nodded to himself, smirking. "Yeah, you're built for it. I always thought Jamesie should have been a Seeker too. But no, the tosser decided to be a Chaser. Even though he's always been right skinny git."

"Ugh, come on, Harry," Lily said, and Harry followed without complaint. He was drawing a lot of eyes and interest from the other tables now. But Sirius still ambled after them, to a chorus of giggles and high-pitched whispers from Lily's friends.

"Hey, Evans, you forgot your toast!"

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James' hair was still damp when Lily Evans burst into the seventh year boys' dormitories without knocking, looking furious. And Harry, who was apparently a very bright boy for his age, followed her without saying a word.

"Potter!"

The shouting was a tad unnecessary, since James was easily in Lily's line of vision. Still, he lifted his head from packing his school bag and grinned at her. "All right, Evans?"

"Actually, not at all. Your attention-seeking slob of a friend wouldn't leave me alone at breakfast and then followed me here! And he was shouting in his big, stupid voice about Harry and was drawing attention to him. Can you please tell the idiot to back off?" Lily's green eyes were glittering in her angry face, and Harry actually looked afraid of her. James shoved his fist in his mouth for a minute to keep from laughing, before he was brave enough to speak.

"Where's Pad right now? You said he followed you…"

"He's downstairs," Lily replied in a voice calmer than she had thus far. "I wanted to make sure that I could talk to you alone."

James was quite sure that she said that like that just to make him crave a cold shower just after getting out of the shower. He tried not to think about it too much. "You hexed him, didn't you." It wasn't a question, and Lily didn't bother to offer excuses, Sirius seemed to have really gotten her going.

"James," there wasn't so much as a flicker in her tone. "You need to talk to him. Dumbledore specifically said not to draw attention to Harry. And the first thing Black decides to do when he sees an eleven year old that somewhat looks like you? He throws a parade in the Great Hall!"

"Oy." James finished tying his shoes and stood up. "I'll talk to him, all right?"

Lily glared at him and crossed her arms, probably upset that he had agreed so quickly and she couldn't continue to yell at him. "Fine, then. Go downstairs and set him straight. I don't care what you tell him, but make him shut it."

"Right…"

He moved to the stairs, and Harry looked between them, wondering who he should stay with. James took pity on him. "C'mon, Harry. Let's go see if Sirius is still alive." He raised his eyebrows at Lily when she didn't move to leave. "And make yourself at home, Evans."

The redhead scoffed at the challenge and sat on top of James' bed. "Don't keep me waiting."

As Harry and James trooped down the stairs together, James shook his head and smirked conspiratorially at Harry. "She is so fit."

Harry made sure his father was looking away before he allowed the expression of disgust to emerge on his face.

A/N: Next, find out what Lily did to Sirius. I promise, he IS still alive. Reviews make me happy :)