A/N: Gryffindor777 wishes this story were sponsored by www dot freerice dot com (adding the "dot" in between the words seems to trick fanfic dot net into thinking that it's not a website). Go, play, feed hungry folks! Please! Thanks to arwenjanelilylyra for being the first reviewer to promise to play freerice for this story.

Not to be personally combative with anybody, but it's canon that James was headboy. Check www dot hplex dot com. It's good. It's also canon that Lupin was a prefect. This is Rowling's fault/brilliance, not mine.

Disclaimer II: Minor typographical/grammatical errors may be ignored for the time being in interest of updating as fast as possible. They will be corrected in a later draft of the story... or... maybe by the time chapter 10's published or earlier if enough people are nitpicky enough. If you ever can't work out what something means, send me message. Also, I've just noticed Lupin is the only marauder who I refer to by his last name on a regular basis. I'll change that it upcoming chapters, and will later revise it for the old ones.

Chapter 2

Hogwarts Express

The rest of the month of August flew by like a Quidditch player on a cheering charm and a good broom. The next thing Lily, James, and the rest of the Marauders knew, they were on the Hogwarts Express.

"Nice to be here again, isn't it?" asked James.

"Maybe for you," said Peter.

"Cheer up, ya great git!" said Sirius.

"I... I can't" mumbled Peter, who looked like he might cry.

"Don't pick on him, Sirius," scolded Lupin.

"Oi! Prefect! I wasn't." said Sirius.

"Don't worry Wormtail, you'll feel better when we've pulled a couple pranks," said James.

Peter smiled slightly. "Yeah, I guess I will." He moved slightly closer to James. He didn't realize that he did, but James did. James was glad that the had made his friend feel a little better.

"Prefect meeting in ten minutes," remarked Lupin.

"I'm the headboy, I know when the prefect meeting is!" said James.

"I know you do," said Lupin calmly. "I wasn't telling you I was telling Peter and Sirius. They're not headboy."

"Nope, that's me," said James with a cocky smile.

"Oh, yeah Prongs," said Sirius with a vicious eye-roll. "Smile exactly like that when you see Lily. She'll marry you on the spot."

"You know, sarcasm can hurt," said James, who changed his expression to a comically wounded looking one.

"Only when Lily's involved," said Sirius with a sly smile.

James rolled his eyes. "You know that's what I meant."

Peter giggled out of no where. "D'you remember when you drunk-owled her last week."

"Of course he does," said Sirius. "We've been making fun of him for it for days."

"It wasn't a drunk owl," said James.

"I think they're pointing out that you were drunk when you sent the owl," said Lupin with a smirk. "We all know communication is too important for you for you to let your owl drink."

"I wasn't drunk, I was three pints in!" protested James.

"Yeah," said Peter, who was still giggling. "Three pints in 15 minutes. Three pints of butterbeer in 15 minutes could give a guy a buzz."

James sighed dramatically. "Fine. I was drunk. But the owl wasn't."

"Nobody's arguing that it was," said Sirius dismissively.

"Okay Head Boy," said Lupin with a tone of mock deference, "when do you fancy heading over to the prefects' car."

"Now!" shouted James, far too excitedly. Everyone in the room knew the excitement was over the prospect of seeing Lily for the first time since school had let out the previous year.

"Right," said Sirius. "Well, I'm gonna go snog Electra. You gonna be okay on your own here Petey?"

Peter hesitated. "Uhh... Uhh... of course," he stammered.

Sirius narrowed his eyes. "Would it make you feel better if I brought her back here?"

Peter nodded, embarrassed.

"Pervert," noted Sirius with a smile. "Fine, I'll bring her back here."

"Can I come with you?" asked Peter.

"You know, you're so loyal sometimes I think you should be the one who turns into a dog, Petey. I guess it's lucky for us about the whole rat thing, though. Must be a pain in the ass for you, though," said Sirius.

Peter smiled, blushing. "I'm ok with it so long as you lot are there to protect me."

"Fair enough," said Sirius, and the four boys exited the compartment together.

"Where the hell is he?" asked Lily, glancing at her watch. It was five minutes before the meeting was set to start.

"I've never heard you use such vulgar language when not connected with James," said Marcy Clapton, the seventh year prefect from Ravenclaw.

"I wouldn't use it if any of the younger prefects were here," said Lily, glaring at Marcy for implying that she had some kind of strong emotion about James. She did of course. But that was hardly the point.

"Well then I'm glad that it's just you and me in the compartment this early, then," said Marcy.

"I'm not! I wish that prat were here!" said Lily.

"You know, just because you call him a prat doesn't mean you don't secretly love him," said Marcy with a smirk.

"Sod off and stop giving me insight into James Potter's wet dreams!" yelled Lily in frustration.

"What?" asked Lupin, who had chosen the moment right before Lily said "James to open the door. He was followed by Potter, who was smirking in a way that made Lily's head want to explode.

"Fuck!" yelled Lily, who hadn't even noticed the door open in the first place. "Marcy, Lupin, wait outside and keep the other prefects in the corridor. I need to talk to James in private!"

"Yes ma'am" said all three of them in unison. Marcy and James were smirking openly. Lupin was trying like hell to stop himself from smirking. He was failing.

"So, what did you want to talk to me about, my dear?" asked James.

"Punctuality!" shouted Lily. "And I'm not your dear!"

"I would like to point out, Lily," said Potter, whose smirk was slowly fading, "that if you don't want people to hear what you're saying, you're going to have to stop yelling."

"I'm not-!" sputtered Lily. "Oh sod off," she said, regaining her control over her volume. "And I've told you 300 times to call me Evans."

"Well, to be fair, I've told you way more than 300 times to go out with me, and, er... well... you know how that's turned out. Evans," James enunciated the last word carefully. "Now what did you want to say about punctuality, Evans?"

"Be fifteen minutes early to every meeting that I'm forced to have with you," said Lily with a note of fury in her barely restrained voice. "We need to provide a united front as head-boy and head-girl."

"In my defense," said James. "You've never told me that before. And I asked you how early you wanted me to be in that letter I sent you the other night."

"Yes, but you were clearly drunk when you wrote it, you prat, plus, I don't have to have contact with you over summer break," retorted Lily.

"But you do if you want me to know when to come to meetings. I'm not a Legilimens," said James in what Lily felt to be an annoyingly patient tone.

"I know that. They don't even teach Legilimency at Hogwarts!" yelled Lily.

"So you think that just because they don't teach something at Hogwarts, I don't know how to do it?" asked James with a smirk.

"You're infuriating," said Lily.

"Yeah, well. People are probably just about ready to come start the meeting by now. You want to do all the talking, or is there something you want me to say?" asked James.

"Er..." hesitated Lily. She hadn't been expecting Potter to be cooperative at all. "Just say what they normally say at- oh, that's right, you're the one head boy in the past 20 years who hasn't been a prefect first. Er... Just... Here, take this list and tell the prefects what their first house passwords of the year are and then... Say something encouraging about how it's going to be a great year. But don't be a prat. And... you talk after me. Ok?" Lily asked.

"Yes, Evans. I'm smart enough to know that you know what you're doing here more than I do." He took the list. He smirked at the realization that he had just been handed the password to the Slytherin. That was going to come in handy.

"Why are you smirking?" asked Lily.

James sighed. "Sorry. Don't worry about it. The meeting will go great, you'll do great, and I'll be a good boy. Or a good head boy. Or... Well, you know what I mean. Can I open the door now?"

"Er," said Lily, who was irritated for a reason that she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Of course. I have to trust you you know."

"I've never given you a reason not to trust me, Evans," said James, sincerely. It surprised Lily to realize he was telling the truth.

James opened the door.

"'Bout time, mate," said Lupin, who was standing in front of a group of almost twenty prefects. "All but the stragglers are here."

"Okay, well, we'll give them another minute to show up," said Lily, glancing at her watch. "Actually, according to my watch there's still two minutes left, so maybe they're not stragglers after all."

"I stand corrected," Lupin said to Lily with a friendly smile.

Lily smiled back at Lupin in a way that James wished he would smile at him. Of course, smiling at him wasn't the only thing that James wanted Lily to do to him.

There was comfortable chatter among the students as the last few of the prefects made it in.

When it was time for the meeting to start, there were a total of a dozen prefects in the room, as well as the Head Boy and Girl.

"Greetings, everyone," said Lily, in a confident tone of voice that James admired so much. Lily picked another piece of parchment off the table with notes scribbled on it. James vaguely wondered where Lily had gotten all these notes from. "I'd like first to welcome the new prefects to the group. The fifth years, Glenn Thompson and Stacy Jennings from Slytherin, Mary Finnigan and Jason Prewett from Hufflepuff, James O'Henry and Jennifer Crouch from Ravenclaw, Sarah Jacobs and Anthony Podmore from Gryffindor, and last but not least, my friend Chloe Steven, who is taking my spot as Seventh Year Gryffindor Prefect. All of you are here have obviously obeyed your prefects in the past."

At this point in her speech Lily glanced at James with a look of slight distaste. She hardly realized it. "This means, of course, that you already know what prefects do. We take turns helping Mr. Filch patrol the halls at night, make sure all rules are obeyed," now she glanced almost subconsciously at Lupin, "and just generally help the teachers out with what they need to do. Now, I know I've always been annoyed in the past about how long these prefect meetings normally go, so Potter- I mean... James, and I are going to keep it short." James noticed that Lily was blushing a little bit. He expected that she had not intended to call him by his last name. She wanted to pretend the Head Boy and Head Girl were on friendlier than last-name only terms. James hoped if she pretended enough, she might stop having to pretend.

Lily mentally cursed at herself for blushing, then continued. "Basically, I think everything else you need to know about being a prefect, like when you must or need not take points from people in your own house, or when you can and cannot take points from people other houses, can be explained to the newer prefects by the older ones. That is, if you lot are willing to do that, in order to keep this meeting short so we can all get back to our own compartments."

The seven most experienced prefects nodded vigorously.

"Good," Lily continued. "The only new rule this year is that curfew has been moved from eleven pm to ten pm due to a pair of violent incidents carried out against younger students late at night last year." Lily involuntarily glanced to the part of the compartment where the Slytherin prefects were huddled together. She knew it had been Slytherins who had committed the acts, but she knew that the Slytherin prefects did and had done nothing to punish it. If they hadn't been the ones to carry out the acts themselves.

"Er..." Lily said for the first time in her speech. James had never noticed how good of a public speaker Lily was. And here, he had thought he had noticed everything about Lily. James rolled his eyes at himself. He didn't much care for being wrong.

Lily continued, "I think I'm ready to turn it over to James."

"Thank you, Lily," said James, following Lily's lead in calling each other by their first names in this context. He watched Lily's face to see if she showed any signs of displeasure. She didn't. James smiled before continuing.

"Okay, well, my first order of business is to let everyone know their house's first password of the year. Of course, since we're all prefects here, so we can all trust each other," James just managed not to smile as he glanced at the Slytherins, who glared back at him.

"So that means I can just read these off in front of everyone here," he glanced at Lily, who nodded, feeling slightly bad that she hadn't explicitly told him this before the meeting started. Oh well, thought Lily, with a mental shrug, he should have known to ask. But she still felt a little bad.

"Right-oh! The password for Slytherin is "Puritas". Hufflepuff, you've got "Dignitas". Ravenclaw, "Cerebrum," Gryffindor "Virtus". Well. Dumbledore is apparently fixated on Latin this year." James paused, thinking of what he would say next. He didn't want to disappoint Lily.

"Well, you, lot. I know just about all of you, and I'm confident I can get along with you," he glanced at the Slytherins, who were still glaring at him, because they were the people who made his last statement a lie.

"So we're all going to work together to make this a good, safe, fun, and exciting year. And we're going to make sure to all be fair to each house, since all of our houses have great and noble traditions. I think if we work together we can make this one of the best years Hogwarts has seen in awhile, and I mean that sincerely. The world outside is getting scary. But together we can keep Hogwarts a really cool place to be. And I can't think of anything else I could ask for for my last year at Hogwarts. Once again, welcome to the new prefects, and I'm sincerely looking forward to working with all of you. That's all I have to say, and I wouldn't want to keep you all from your friends any longer, so I think Lily are just about ready to let you go," James looked tentatively at Lily, who was frowning and seemed to be lost in thought.

She snapped out of it. "Er, yes. You guys can go. Like James said, we're going to have a great year. And, right, this meeting's over. Thank you all for your time."

James decided to stay in the compartment after the meeting was over, just to see if Lily wanted him to talk to him after meeting. She apparently wouldn't necessarily have told him if she did. He was excited to see that Lily stayed seated as well as the prefects filed out. Lupin said goodbye to James, and Chloe said goodbye to Lily.

"That wasn't so bad, now was it?" asked James, as the last prefect left the room.

"No, it really wasn't" said Lily, who looked almost surprised. "Thanks."

"For what?" asked James. "I did what I'm supposed to do as a Head Boy. Didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did," Lily. "But I'm allowed to thank you for that if I want, aren't I?"

"You can thank me for anything you want," said James in what Lily thought was an oddly sincere tone of voice under the circumstances.

"Well," said Lily, hesitating, "I will. You know... if you keep being a good Head Boy."

"Of course I will be, Lily. Come on, I wouldn't let Dumbledore down. Or you," said James.

"Does that mean no more pranks?" asked Lily with a mixture of hope and surprise in her voice.

James frowned. "It may mean less pranks. And come on, I've seen you laugh at at least a couple of the pranks we've pulled over the years."

"I have not," said Lily. But then she figured that if she wanted to be able to trust James, she ought to be able to trust him. "Okay, maybe a couple times. You're a prat, but... you're funny sometimes."

"I'm not always a prat," said James, still in that oddly sincere tone of voice.

Lily thought for a moment. "No, maybe you're not," she agreed. "Nice speech by the way."

Lily smiled at James.

A/N: Conditions for next chapter publication: at least 4 people must spend 5 playing on freerice dot com and tell me how much rice you win for the hungry people. Person who donates most rice, no matter what number you are, before next chapter is posted, will get a special thank you in the beginning author's note of next chapter. You have my word that the site is legit and will not cause your computer any problems. The UN world food program recognizes the site as "essential in the fight against hunger". I know I claimed I would only post this chapter if three people donated 200 grains. Although I realize this has not happened yet, I think the best thing I can do right now to get more rice donated is to publish more of the story. I will be more stern about this chapter's requirement though. So far only 200 grains that I'm aware of have been donated for this story. I apologize to my readers if this story has truly only been worth 200 grains of rice so far.