"And you'll write to us every day?"

"Yes."

"And you promise to get the school to contact us if something goes terribly wrong during a moon?"

"Yes."

"And you'll stay out of trouble?"

"Yes. I'm a bloody prefect, I have to stay out of trouble now."

"You mean, you weren't staying out of trouble before this year?"

"Alright, the train's about to leave. I love you both. I'll see you at Christmas!"

"Put your badge on!" Mum said, wrapping her arms around me.

"Alright, bye!" I said once they'd finally let go of me, and I ran onto the train as it let out its final warning toot to get on.

I started walking down the carriages toward the compartment my friends were always in, but I was interrupted by Lily when I was halfway down the train.

"Remus!" she cried. "We're prefects, can you believe it!? I mean, I'm the only option for the female prefect... but it's still such an honour! Do you know where the Prefect carriage is? We need to be there at twelve. It's the front carriage. Don't be late!"

"I – OK, I'll see you then," I said. She walked off, then I continued going to my friends' compartment. As soon as I saw Sirius, it was so hard to not run over to him, throw my arms around him, and kiss him forever.

I locked eyes with him for a full five seconds and we both shared the same 'trying not to uncontrollably smile' look.

"So, Remus," said James, interrupting Sirius and I's intense staring and covering up of that staring session. "I suppose you're the prefect?"

"Oh... uh, yeah," I said, finally taking my eyes off Sirius.

"God, you bloody nerd," Dorcas said, giggling.

"Shut up," I said, laughing back.

"I suppose Evans is the girl prefect?" James asked.

"Well, yeah, she's the only one..." I said, causing silence to stir. But the silence was quickly broken when the train suddenly jolted into movement, and I let out a cry and fell over. "Oh, god... don't stand up on a train as it starts to move..."

At twelve o'clock, I made my way to the front carriage nervously, pinning on the Prefect badge as I walked. I walked into the carriage, feeling squeamish. When I opened the door, I noticed that it looked very different from how a normal carriage looked.

Instead of having different compartments on the sides of a hall in the middle, the entire carriage was like one big compartment. The seats (which all looked ridiculously soft) were in a circle, surrounding a small table in the middle which had a bowl of biscuits sitting on it.

Lily was sitting in one of the seats and waved me over as soon as I entered the carriage. I walked in slowly, then sat next to her, feeling awkward. For every house, there was one boy and one girl in fifth year, and one boy and one girl in sixth year.

"So," said Emmeline Vance, with a level of superiority to her voice. I noticed she was eyeing me. "Now that we're all here, let's begin. Welcome, fifth-years. Are you all excited to be prefects? Great! Let's get straight to it. As we all know, there are seven days a week, and eight groups of us. So, over the summer, I created a roster for our nights to patrol. You'll do one night a week most weeks, however once every eight weeks, you and your prefect partner get the week off for nightly patrols."

She handed out a piece of parchment to all of us. Lily and I were on Thursday night this week.

"So obviously, we'll all give our own house's first-years the tour around the school," Emmeline continued. She then went on talking about how we needed to be responsible and all that, and I found myself zoning out and looking around at the other Prefects. I physically cringed when I saw Snape. Had he seriously been selected as a Prefect?

I caught his eye, and his facial expression told me he was thinking the same about me. I looked away from him and back at Emmeline, who was now talking about how to check if a permission slip to Hogsmeade was a fake or real signature.

After two long hours of being stuck in the Prefect compartment, we were told we could go if we wanted to, so I stood up right away and left to go back to my friends. Lily and Snape stayed in the Prefect compartment, socialising with the other Prefects, but I didn't care, it was too boring, and I wanted to see my friends.

When the train arrived at Hogsmeade station, I had to stand and hold the doors open for everyone, which I thought was pretty ridiculous, because once the doors of the train were open, they stayed open unless someone closed them, so I thought there was zero point of me just standing there.

Once all the students were off the train, I went to walk toward the carriages, but Lily stopped me.

"Remus, wait!" she cried. "Remember what Emmeline said? We have to check the train to make sure there are no students still on there."

"Really?" I said, looking at my friends who'd stopped when I'd stopped. "We'll miss the carriages."

"No we won't, there's a carriage just for us which leaves when we're ready," said Lily.

"Oh, OK..." I said. My friends laughed between themselves, then walked towards the carriages. I just groaned and followed Lily back onto the train.

"Could you two check the back of the train?" Emmeline said to Lily and I.

We nodded, then walked to the back carriage of the train. As we got closer, I could smell something awful getting stronger and stronger. Lily stepped into the carriage first, then let out a cry.

"What!?" I cried. The smell was so strong it hurt my nose. "What is it, Lily!?"

"Oh my god..." said Lily, stepping aside, and I had a look. There was something brown spread all over one of the seats. And the smell...

"Someone has pooped all over this compartment, haven't they?" I said.

"Oh my god... who would do that and not clean it up!?" Lily cried. "It has to have been one of the first years... oh my god, that's disgusting!"

She pulled up her sleeves and drew her wand. "I suppose we're allowed to do magic now we're at school... scourgify!"

Soap spurted from her wand onto the seat, cleaning off all the poo. I exchanged a disgusted look with her, then we walked back up the train together.

"God, if only we knew which students were in there..." said Lily. "I'd make them clean out the school bathrooms for detention."

"Yeah..." I said, as we met the other prefects outside the train and walked to the carriage area, where just a single carriage was sitting there waiting for us.

We all climbed on, and once we got to the castle, we slipped into the Great Hall and joined our separate tables, just as the sorting ceremony was beginning.

After the feast, Lily, Emmeline, the male sixth-year prefect Benjy Fenwick, and I all had to give a tour to all the first-years who'd been sorted into Gryffindor. Emmeline took charge, of course, and Lily tried to stay up the front as well, adding to what Emmeline was saying by stating random facts about the school. Benjy and I stayed behind the group to make sure none of the kids ran off from the back.

"This is boring," muttered one of the kids at the back, around halfway through the tour.

"Well, you'll thank us later when you don't get lost on your way to class," said Benjy. "That's if you've been paying attention."

The kid gasped, then looked back up at Emmeline and Lily.

Our first class the next day was Transfiguration, and as soon as she'd finished taking the role, Professor McGonagall stood up and began to give us a lecture.

"So, as you all know, you are beginning your fifth year," she said, looking out at us all seriously. "This means that instead of your usual end-of-year exams, you will all sit your O.W.L.s in the first week of June. In April, you will all have careers advice meeting with your head of house, and there I will discuss with you want to do after school, and I will talk you through what classes you will need to excel in during your N.E.W.T.s. Each class for the N.E.W.T level requires a certain achievement during your O.W.L.s, so this year is very important. Does anyone have any questions?"

"What if I want to be a professional Quidditch player?" James asked. "What classes do I need to take for N.E.W.T.s?"

"Well... nothing, really," said McGonagall. "You'll have to continue doing well on the school Quidditch team."

"So, I can drop all my classes!?" James cried.

"No," said Professor McGonagall shortly. "We will discuss this at your careers advice meeting, Mr. Potter. Does anyone else have a question?"

The O.W.L lectures didn't end after Professor McGonagall's lesson. Every single teacher started their first lesson of the term with a talk on the importance of the O.W.L.s. The worst was Professor Binns, who constantly forgot what O.W.L.s were and had to restart his entire speech and took up multiple lessons during the first week to slowly explain it.

We had History of Magic last on Thursday, and during the lesson, I was almost looking forward to the patrol that night.

When I told my friends about the patrol after class, James was incredibly jealous that I got to spend an entire night with Lily.

"Well, I'll happily swap with you," I said. "I don't want to be up all night, walking around the school and telling off kids who sneak around."

"God, doing that with Evans would be a dream come true," said James dreamily.

"So, what do you reckon we do if we catch students out of bed?" Lily asked that evening as we were walking out of the common room together.

"I dunno, tell them to go to bed?" I said, shrugging.

"They're not going to learn to stay in their dormitories after curfew if we don't give them some sort of punishment," said Lily.

"Like what, a detention?" I asked.

"Yeah," said Lily. "We should make them write lines. Or clean something without magic..."

"When you're an adult and if you have kids, would you make them do that?" I asked.

"My kid would never wander around the school at night," said Lily.

"Alright..." I said.

"Would you want to have kids when you're older, Remus?" she asked.

"Er... no," I said. Kids were too expensive, and even if I was to have a kid, I didn't know if I would pass on my lycanthropy to them. Plus, I didn't think it was possible without a woman to give birth to a kid. Meaning I'd have to marry a woman, which I couldn't imagine myself doing because if I had my way, I'd be with Sirius for the rest of my life. "Would you want kids?"

"Yeah, maybe," said Lily. "I dunno... if I found a nice enough guy to want to raise them with."

There was a moment of silence, before Lily said, "Have you seen the bathroom yet?"

"Which bathroom?" I asked.

"The prefect bathroom," she said.

"Prefect bathroom?" I repeated. There was a special bathroom for the prefects?

"Yeah, didn't you hear Emmeline telling us about it on the train?" Lily asked.

"No, where is it?"

"Fifth floor," said Lily. "God, Remus, come on, I'll show you. It's incredible."

I followed her downstairs to the fifth floor. We passed the statue of Boris the Bewildered, and Lily began counting the doors.

"Three... four! It's this one!" she stopped in front of one of the doors, then said, "Sushi rolls."

"Sushi rolls?" I repeated as she opened the door.

"It's the password," said Lily, stepping into the bathroom.

I stepped in after her and what I saw wasn't what I'd expected at all. It was a massive bathroom, at least double the size of my entire dormitory. There was a long row of toilet cubicles along one wall of the bathroom, and huge sinks along another wall, with a portrait of a mermaid above the sinks.

But the most impressive part was the massive bathtub. It was practically the size of a small swimming pool, and there were about a hundred different golden taps above it, all embedded with different jewels. It seemed like half the school's fortune was spent on one bathtub.

"D'you think the taps are cool?" Lily asked. I nodded, unable to speak. "Well, look what happens when you turn them on."

She drew her wand and made every single tap turn on, and I was amazed even further. All the taps produced a different colour of water, and some even produced soapy water.

"Oh my god," I said, as the bath finished filling up within a minute, then all the taps turned themselves off. "I'm never waiting for Sirius to finish in the shower again!"

Lily laughed. "It's incredible, isn't it?"

"Incredible is an understatement."