AN: Wow, I can't believe it's taken me a month to update this!! I have had the worse case of writer's block. I've seriously rewritten this chapter like 10 times, and i'm still not happy with it. Argh, well hopefully the next chapter will be better. I've started it and it's pretty funny. Back to good old James and his taunting ways. Anyway, hope this isn't too bad and i promise i'll update sooner:

Platform nine and three quarters was packed with students and parents alike, teeming around the scarlet Hogwarts Express, which sat puffing noisily, a comfortingly familiar sight to Lily who had been waiting anxiously for this day ever since summer began. The holidays had been long and dull, despite her seventeenth birthday and coming of age in the wizarding world. If she was to be honest with herself, seventeen had felt absolutely no different to sixteen.

She almost wished there had been some sort of profound change to make her birthday halfway worthwhile. Petunia had blatantly refused to acknowledge her twin, her father had toasted the girls with a bottle of brandy at 9 o'clock that morning and Lily's mum had baked a fat-free all natural carrot and pumpkin cake, claiming that rolls of fat on a girl were anything but attractive. Now, that was of course completely unfair as Lily did not have rolls of fat. She didn't seem to even have a bum anymore after that crazy 800-calories-a-day diet her mother had put her on. She quite missed her bum too…maybe that was the only profound change all summer. At 16 she had a bum and at 17 she didn't.

All in all, her summer had been anything but exciting. She'd finished all her homework in the first week of school in order to put off the inevitable: writing a letter to James. She'd finally managed it, and after 23 and a half attempts, she'd sent the letter off with Hamilton, her faithful Sooty owl. In reply she'd received a postcard from France with two hastily scrawled lines from James. He'd also signed it 'James'. Now of course, to any normal person this would not be a big deal. But Lily had the tendency to thoroughly overanalyse everything and consequently came to the conclusion that James felt absolutely nothing for her. He wasn't angry, no, if he was angry he would have written "from, James", just to make a point of not including the l-word. He obviously hadn't forgiven her as he would have written "love, James", and his sense of humour had yet to return as he hadn't written "deeply liked (but not quite loved), James" either.

So after six weeks of desperate waiting, Lily was once again, and for the last time, standing on the grey train platform ready to embark on her seventh and final year at school…and ready to endure people gawking at her now bum-less frame. Seriously, who goes on a diet and loses just their backside?

"Lily!"

Turning, Lily noticed her two friends, Sarah and Eleanor, running along the platform towards her. Sarah was darker than ever, tanned from the long summer days spent on Italian beaches, and Eleanor looked as shiny and bright-eyed as normal, having innocently spent her summer with her family in Scotland.

"Look at you!" Eleanor cooed, gripping her friend in a tight hug. "Head girl badge nice and shiny, I see!"

"Good lord, girl, what did your mother do to you?" Sarah asked, eyeing Lily with a raised brow. "You need feeding."

"Tell me about it," Lily said, grinning at her two friends. "How were your summers?"

"Long and boring," Eleanor replied, helping Lily lift her trunk onto the train. "After twenty games of hide and seek, I was ready to hex my cousins into the next century."

"Sounds better than my cousins," said Sarah once they'd found an empty compartment and sat down. "All they wanted to do was have sex with me."

"You didn't let them?"

"Of course not! Well, not all of them, anyway."

"Sarah! That's disgusting!" Lily exclaimed, shooting her friend a revolted look.

"What? They're all like five times removed, and come on, they're Italian: they're hot!"

"What about Sirius?" Eleanor asked.

"What about Sirius?" Lily asked questioningly, not missing the threatening look Sarah had just shot her naïve friend.

"Sarah's been writing to him all summer," Eleanor explained, completely oblivious to her friend now kicking her hard in the shins.

Lily frowned. Why hadn't Sarah told her about this? Ok, so Lily didn't like Sirius that much, but he made a good couple with Sarah: they were both so hot-headed and domineering that they kept each other in check. Although she'd always denied it, Sarah had been having an on and off "thing" with Sirius for years, ever since third-year practically, and the flimsy façade that they hated each other didn't fool a single one of their friends.

And if Sarah had been writing to Sirius all summer…well Sirius had been with James all summer. Maybe that was why Sarah hadn't told Lily about her letter-writing. Maybe she knew something…or was she just being paranoid? James could do as he pleased anyway, it wasn't any of her business really.

"Haven't you got to go and talk with the prefects or something?" Sarah asked, breaking Lily out of her reverie.

"Say hi to Remus for me," Eleanor said, as Lily got to her feet.

"You reckon he got head boy?" Sarah asked, cleaning underneath her fingernails with an ornately feathered quill.

"Probably," Lily said, sliding open the compartment door. "I'll see you two later. Save some food for me."

Leaving her two friends behind, Lily picked her way through students down the train towards the prefect carriage. She hoped Remus had been made head-boy, except she wasn't sure he would be – with his wolf-like tendencies and once a month absences, head-boy duties would be hard to keep up with.

The compartment was filled with prefects when she arrived – most of whom she recognized, but a few she did not. Remus wasn't there yet and so she was left listening to a fifth year Hufflepuff boy give a long and boring description of his summer holiday in more detail than Lily thought was necessary. Just as he began to describe his discovery of a family of flobberworms in his back garden, the compartment door clicked open and Lily turned around in relief. Remus walked in, grinning broadly at her, and following closely behind was James, wearing a shiny silver head boy badge.

Lily almost passed out with shock. Remus was still wearing his Prefect badge, and James Potter, the James who in third year had charmed her Transfiguration book to show only the pages divisible by three the day before a test, who had carefully removed all the nails from the head table only an hour before the Halloween feast in fourth year, and who had, only the year before, almost killed himself fighting a werewolf, was now head boy. No one in their right mind would choose James as head boy. Yet here he was, embarrassedly gazing around the compartment and avoiding Lily's eyes.

"Lily! How was your summer?" Remus asked, kissing her cheek and gazing down at her. He'd grown a fair amount over the summer and days in the sun had lightened his already fair hair. Despite this, he looked tired and faintly ill, a sign that the full moon was approaching.

"I'm good, you look great. How was your holiday?" Lily determinedly looked into Remus' face, not allowing her eyes to drift onto James. She wasn't sure what would happen if their eyes met, but she knew it wouldn't be good.

"We'd better make this quick," Remus said. "We had to leave Peter alone with Sirius, and I'm a bit worried about what we'll find when we get back."

Lily grinned. James coughed and she finally turned to face him. He hadn't changed much over the summer: his hair was a tad longer and his chin was shadowed in short stubble.

"Hi," Lily said quietly, attempting to calm herself down. She was doing pretty well too, she thought. Except that her face was roughly the same color as her hair and annoyance began to fizz gently under her skin as she remembered the only communication he'd had with her all summer: the one pathetic postcard, signed just 'James'.

"Hey," he replied, rubbing his nose uncomfortably and staring at her chest. She was about to snap rudely at him, when she realised he was in fact looking at her new Head Girl badge, not her breasts.

"Well, this is nice and awkward," Remus said and sat primly down on one of the seats, grinning wolfishly from one friend to the other.

"Alright, hello everybody. Welcome back, I hope you all had nice summers." Noticing the fifth year Hufflepuff boy open his mouth to speak, Lily quickly hurried on. "Congratulations to all of you new prefects, and welcome back to all of you returning. For those who don't know me, my name's Lily Potter and this -" She froze. The loudest silence she had ever heard in her full seventeen years and three weeks of living filled the cramped compartment. Shit. Double shit. It was just a slip of the tongue, that's all, she reasoned with herself. No big deal. She was rushing and nervous and had accidentally combined their names. Calm down, she told herself.

She didn't calm down. In fact, she seemed to be doing anything but calming down.

"So you got hitched over the summer, huh?" sneered a small Slytherin boy, his eyes glinting maliciously at her before she could even open her mouth.

"Yeah, that's right," James said speaking for the first time. "After she got pregnant, we thought it was the right thing to do."

"James!" Lily yelled, turning to him and glaring, her face still brick red.

He grinned and slung an arm around her shoulders. "Oh don't deny it, love, they'll find out eventually."

"No, James," she began but she was too flustered to put together a coherent sentence.

"Alright, everyone," James said, ignoring Lily and keeping his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders. "You all know what your prefect duties are; instructions were sent to you in those letters over the summer. Today, I want everyone to occasionally patrol the train and keep an eye out for trouble. If you have any questions during the course of the year, me and my wife here," he gave Lily's shoulder a little squeeze and hurried on before she could retort, "we're always here to talk to."

After all the prefects left the carriage, Lily managed to find her voice. Ripping out of James' grip she turned and hit him hard on the chest. "What the hell is wrong with you, Potter?"

He just smiled winningly and ran a hand through his already-dishevelled hair. "Lighten up Lily-kins, it was just a joke."

"Well, it wasn't funny! You are such an arse, Potter! You don't even have the decency to write all summer, then as soon as we're back you act as though nothing's even happened between us, and -"

He cut her off sharply by pulling her towards him and covering her mouth with his own. But she was not to be distracted.

"Mmph, no! James, you can't just kiss me and make this all better," she said as she pushed him away. She wasn't yelling anymore but James blushed angrily all the same.

"I don't see why you're so angry. We were together, then you told me you didn't feel anything for me, and so I kept up my end of the deal," James began, cocking his head to one side and raising an eyebrow at her.

Lily just scowled. She'd finally remembered what his end of the deal had been during her dull and lonesome days spent pent up in her bedroom. At the beginning of the last school year, they'd made a deal: if Lily didn't love James come July, he would leave her alone. And true to his word, he'd kept up his end of the deal…until now. Glaring at him, Lily turned and slid open the compartment door. She left without so much as a backward glance.

"Lily, come on, wait!" James called after her, dodging his way down the crowded corridor, colliding with students and tripping over bags. She didn't wait for him though. Instead, she made her way back to her own compartment, only to find that some other seventh year students had arrived while she'd been gone. Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin now filled the empty seats, laughing and joking with the two girls.

Scowling and grunting in a most unladylike manner, Lily let herself in, making sure to close the door on James' now outstretched hand.

"Ooww! Lily wait, stop being so touchy. You're totally over-reacting!"

"Wow," Sirius drawled from his seat next to Sarah. "If she's like this now, Prongs, imagine what she'll be like when you tell her about that girl you hooked up with in Sydney."

Ok, well everyone always complains about my cliffies so i thought i'd keep with tradition and put in another one. hope you enjoyed. sorry if u didnt, i wasn't fussed on this chapter either. anyway, will update soon! thanks for reading and please review!! xxx