Disclaimer: JKR owns all of this. Except for the plot, which was stolen mostly from my brain. I don't own Tonight Alive either, but they definitely gave me some inspiration.

So far: Lily lost a teddy bear that James found. Sirius is so bored on the train ride back home that he ends up staying in Lily's compartment for an hour until the other Marauders come and find him. James asks to have a conversation with Lily so he can give her the teddy, but realizes that he left it in the compartment so they walk back to his compartment. Everybody else stays in the other compartment. Before James manages to say anything someone interrupts them.

Chapter 3

Or

Of Bloodshed and the Three Times James Tries

(Early Afternoon)

"Potter and Evans, together," said an unfriendly voice. "Who would have ever thought?"

"Mulciber." James gritted his teeth. Mulciber was the worst sort of Slytherin, believing in everything he was taught and more.

"Potter," warned Lily, not wanting to get in a fight right now.

"What are you doing here, Mulciber?" said James, ignoring her.

Mulciber sneered and said, "Oh, I just fancied taking a stroll, really, when I saw you, Evans, waiting outside of a compartment. I was thinking of saying hi – just casually, really – when your best buddy here stuck his head out, and I was just incredibly curious as to the nature of this meeting." He was starting to show so many teeth, Lily doubted all of them were real.

"Go away, Mulciber," said another voice. Despite everything, Lily couldn't help but think, Sirius Black to the rescue!

It really was ironic that only an hour ago she hated him.

(A couple of minutes later)

"Thanks, Black," Lily said, "for getting the creep to go away with your mere wit."

He waved dismissively. "It's fine. I'd never give up the opportunity to mock Mulciber, the big goon. I mean, he really is nothing more than –"

"A taller, uglier version of a gorilla?" finished James angrily, looking very much like he wanted to punch something.

"Precisely."

"Well, I'm off," said Lily, getting up. "The world is waiting for me – or at least, Dorcas and Marlene are. Waiting for me, that is."

"Bye," said Sirius, looking at James. No more than a second had passed since the door closed before James opened his mouth, and Sirius interrupted. "I don't know what happened here, and frankly, I don't want to know, so seriously, just don't say a thing."

James just frowned. "I was just going to suggest that we don't tell Remus what happened here."

"Oh." Sirius thought it over, then nodded. "Yeah, let's not. He'll be angry at us if we even mention Mulciber in relation to us."

The door opened to reveal Remus and Peter.

"So," said Remus. "What the hell was Mulciber doing outside our compartment?"

(Late afternoon)

"Shit, I didn't give it to her!"

There were three of them.

A Black, firstly, who was a first or second cousin of Sirius's and James' third or fourth cousin by marriage, was standing there. Madigan Black was as pretty and bright and ambitious as they come. She was one of the top students in their year, which shows that being smart and being kind don't have go together after all.

Avery was not anything like her. He was big and goofy and incredibly dumb, and he really didn't have that many ambitions besides punching first years. That was a line even James hadn't crossed in a while. And he was the proof that he didn't need to have anything between those huge ears of his to be incredibly mean.

Mulciber was not a nice person in the least bit, but he was big and ambitious and smart (relatively, when put next to Avery, at least), and he had the added advantage of being a boy, so he was the leader of the lot. Believing what he was told, he sauntered around Hogwarts like he was better than everyone else simply because he was a pureblood and in Slytherin. Truth was? He was average at almost everything. The only thing that he had real talent at was being charismatic, but even that was limited to people who believed in what he said already. Never in his life had he been able to get one single person to change their mind, which was why he stuck to his group of so-called friends.

Really, they were an awful bunch. And they were standing right outside Lily's compartment.

James was so pissed at the fact that they would even get near Lily that he did what any sixteen-year-old teenager would do: he punched whatever was closest. It just so happened to be Avery.

It was a bold move, definitely.

It was also definitely a bad one.

Lily ran out when she heard something heavy fall outside of her compartment. So did many people, as it turned out: there was a crowd in front of whatever it was. She struggled to get through the crowd, get a glimpse of whatever it was –

But she should have known.

James Potter was getting beaten up by Avery and Mulciber, but he was putting up a fight. Soon, he had Avery unconscious, but he looked like he was getting tired quickly, as someone gave him a few good punches in strategic places, and Mulciber barely had a scratch on him. Two on one was probably not the easiest thing to do.

Suddenly the two were separated by an invisible wall. Lily looked around her to try and figure out who did it, but more than one person had their wands out.

Then a voice came out behind her, and she realized once again that she should have known.

"Get away from each other," shouted Madigan Black. "This is not the time to be fighting. We are going now," she added to Mulciber.

"Stay away, Potter," hissed Mulciber. He slapped Avery, who woke up, and helped him up. "Come on. We shouldn't spend any more time on this blood traitor."

"YOU IDIOT!" shouted Lily, Dorcas and Marlene.

James cringed. "I was just – reacting."

"To what, exactly?" asked Dorcas sarcastically. "Them standing outside our window? Because that's everything I've gotten out of you so far!"

"Yeah, well, I was just trying to protect – " he started, but didn't manage to say anything more before Lily interrupted him.

"We don't need your protection!" she cried. "We are the same age as you, we've taken the same classes, and we have the brains to actually use magic instead of fists! So get out – I'm tired of listening to you whine about how you think you're some hero 'cause you're not. You should have never come here in the first place!"

James, who had slowly, during the course of the day, forgotten what his relationship with Lily was really like, felt shock course through him. His mind blank, he got up and left the compartment.

James staggered into the compartment where the other marauders were sitting. They were playing a game of Gobblestones on the floor, and none of them looked up when the door open.

"Alright, Prongs?" asked Sirius, concentrated on his move.

"Not really," he groaned. The three sitting Marauders immediately looked up, and reacted quickly, getting up themselves and helping James sit down.

"What happened?"

"Are you okay?"

"Would you like some chocolate?"

James gladly accepted the last offer, and while Remus looked through his bag for some spare chocolate he could give him, Sirius tried to get the story out of James.

Finally, James said the following:

"Mulciber was standing outside of Lily's compartment – and Avery too."

"Why are you doing this?" asked Peter. "She doesn't even like it."

"I don't know," he admitted. "It's just that… at a certain point I realized that - she'll be the death of me."

"Yeah, she will," agreed Sirius. "But at least you'll go down fighting." He conjured some ice and gave it to James.

"If she ever lets me fight for her," he sighed, wincing as the ice the conjured touched his face. James realized Remus was handing him chocolate. Not just that – but he was also speaking!

"If you ever understand she's perfectly capable of fighting for herself," Remus was saying, "maybe then she'll speak to you again." James took a moment to remember that they were talking about something – him wanting to fight for Lily.

"She'll speak to me again," answered James. "By the end of the day. I haven't given it to her yet."

(Early Evening)

The thing about train rides it that they are generally boring. Nothing much happens on most trains. But every once in a while, call it fate or luck, two people sit next to each other, or bump into each other on the way to the loo, and their lives are turned around. One of them might inspire the other one to write a bestselling novel. They might end up being arch nemeses. Or they might end up marrying each other.

The Hogwarts Express train ride was fairly normal for most of the students of Hogwarts who were on it on June 20th, 1976. Besides one fight on the second car, nothing of particular interest happened. Lionel Marvin cheated on his girlfriend. Shelly Finicky sat with who would become her best friend, her girlfriend, and then her best friend again. Molly Hooper sat alone in the last compartment.

But strange things were happening in our merry little group. And eventually, when things heat up enough, they blow up.

Lily was, once again, sitting in her compartment with her friends, when its door opened. She hoped – wished – begged for it to be anyone but James Potter. She even found herself wishing it was Sirius. She had no such luck.

"Can I talk to you? And actually finish a sentence this time?" he asked. Though he looked composed, really James was on the verge of begging. There was less than an hour left to the train ride, and he planned to change into Muggle clothing the moment he could and spending the rest of his time on the train not thinking about a certain redhead with a bad temper.

Lily glared at him.

"It really is important," he said.

And, for the second time, Lily said yes.

Lily started speaking the moment they stepped out of the compartment.

"Before you say anything," Lily was saying, red in the face, "I don't forgive you for being an asshole; no, I will not write to you this summer, you prick; and no, I will not go on a date with you."

This was the wrong this to say. Lily, though usually good at reading people, managed to miss the fact that James was on the verge of bursting. He himself was rivaling her in the dark tint his face was taking; it turned red, and then almost purple, before he managed to calm down enough to reach into his pocket and throw a certain stuffed animal in her face. Lily yelped in surprise, and then looked down, only to see that it was, in fact, Melody.

"You're welcome, Evans," said James sarcastically. "And you're absolutely right, by the way. I should have never come near you in the first place."

Lily, who had nothing to say to that, stood there and stared.

James stared back, but the silence was getting to him. "Well? Aren't you going to say anything? Yell at me for doing something nice? For trying to get a girl I fancy to go out with me, or even write me?" he asked finally. When she still simply stood there, silent, he turned around and started walking away.

When he had walked past two compartments, a little voice, as if unrelated to Lily, came out and said: "Thank you."

Only God knows whether he heard her or not. He certainly didn't halt.

As train rides go, this one wasn't the worst. It certainly wasn't the best.

The next summer was going to be hard. Neither Lily nor James would truly enjoy it. But they would endure, and they would persevere, and they would survive.

And as they stepped off the train and walked through the barrier into the summer air in King's Cross, they were walking from one stage in their lives to another, more complicated one.

A/N: This is my third attempt at publishing this. If this doesn't work, I just might kill myself. Not really, I'll just try again tomorrow, when it's not 1:30 am and I'm not listening to Taylor Swift.

Calypso: I'm glad that you enjoyed Sirius' point of view. Why? Because of the next paragraph.

Next chapter is Sirius-centric! It's probably one of my favorite chapters I ever wrote, with all kinds off little tweaks and stuff I like. I want to do this with every character (even Tally, though she's an OC and I don't like OCs too much) and I'm already working on a chunk about Marlene which will probably be around chapter 15... As much as I love Lily and James, all my characters need some lovin'.

I'd like to thank my friend/aftermath editor for not reading last chapter yet, and therefore not finding any stupid and irrelevant "plotholes" such as James waiting too log for Sirius pr something like that.

Reviews, favorites and follows are all worth galleons, so if not for me, do it for the money :P