Diclaimer: I do not own any of the Potters or Scorpius Malfoy. I own nothing else you recognize as belonging to the Harry Potter franchise and I am not making money off this story. However, any characters whose names you do not recognize as belonging to the Harry Potter universe were made up by me. So that kind of gives me rights to them, right? Sort of? Yeah, I guess not.

A/N: So I was planning on saving this chapter for later because several characters are mentioned who haven't been introduced yet, but I've worked so hard on it and it's 2:30 am and I really just want to post it. Just know that any confusion caused by any characters I mention will be cleared up in later chapters. Again, these don't go in chronological order. Last chapter was from Christmas break of Albus's third year, and this is just a few months before that at the start of term. Sorry if that's confusing, but I try to make it clear at the beginning of each chapter what year it is. These scenes come to me in no particular order; I just write them down as I think them up.

Archer

Lily was so excited she could barely contain herself. She'd bounced around the house all morning, knocking things off her brothers' beds as they tried to pack, spilling James's shoebox chocolate card collection, scaring Albus's owl half to death and generally making it difficult for anyone to walk through the sitting room without being accosted.

The date was September first, which for the past two years had been a date of dread for the youngest Potter child, as it meant the departure of both of her brothers, leaving her no one to play with or entertain her for nine and a half months.

But this September first was the day she, Lily Luna Potter was going to Hogwarts herself. She was so excited.

"Lily, knock it off!" Albus yelled angrily as she accidentally toppled a pile of his books, too busy thinking about all the friends she would make at Hogwarts.

"Sorry, Al!" she chirped, skipping away.

He glowered after her as he straightened his books.

-o-

"Bye, Mum, bye, Dad!" Lily exclaimed, hugging each of them exuberantly. Her parents chuckled as they hugged her in return.

"Have fun, sweetheart," Ginny said, kissing the top of her head.

"Don't forget to write," Harry added as she hugged him again.

"I won't! See you at Christmas!" Lily hopped up into the train eagerly, a huge grin on her face, no trace of uncertainty or nervousness present in her delighted expression.

Albus shook his head at her, half amused, half annoyed. He hugged each of his parents briefly, allowed his mother to kiss him and his father to squeeze his shoulder, then climbed aboard the train as well. Lily looked up at him adoringly.

"We're going to Hogwarts, Al!" she cried, grabbing his hand. He couldn't help but smile at her.

"We sure are," he agreed.

The two of them waved to their parents until the train rounded the bend and the platform disappeared from sight.

It was only as the corridor started emptying that Lily suddenly looked worried.

"Al?" she asked softly, still holding his hand. "Can I sit with you?"

"Only if you stop holding onto my hand," he said half-jokingly. She dropped his hand instantly, and he had to laugh.

"C'mon," he said, motioning for her to follow.

He led her down the train to a compartment where five people already sat. Lily recognized Scorpius Malfoy and Rice Parker, Albus's best mates who had visited for a week over the summer, but the other three were strangers to her. She shrank back a bit as Albus entered, suddenly intimidated.

"Hey, guys. This is my sister," Albus introduced, sitting down beside Scorpius.

"Lily, you know Scorpius and Rice. This is..." he broke off, suddenly noticing she was not beside him, but still standing uncertainly in the doorway.

"Well don't be a pansy, get over here," he scolded, and two of the boys Lily didn't recognize chuckled, causing her face to flush red. She slinked into the compartment and took a seat on the far side of Albus, in the corner.

"Anyway," he continued, clearly annoyed at her sudden shy behavior, "this is Breighton Amdahl." A boy with impeccably neat dark brown hair smiled at her politely before going back to reading his newspaper. He was sitting very straight and was already wearing his Hogwarts robes, which were perfectly clean and free of wrinkles or lint. Lily wondered if they were enchanted to look that way or if the boy was just a neat freak. She was just coming to the conclusion that it was probably both when she realized Albus was continuing his introductions.

"That's Darius Creighton." The boy directly opposite Lily gave her a soft smile. She smiled timidly back, comforted by his kind gray-green eyes. His hair was lighter than Breighton Amdahl's, and much less carefully combed.

"And I'm Charlier Grey," the fifth boy introduced himself, extending his hand and shaking Lily's, who could only stare. "also third year," he added, giving her a dashing smile. Albus rolled his eyes and Rice coughed to hide a snigger.

"Yes, yes, you're wonderful," Albus said scathingly. Charlier Grey seemed completely unperturbed by his fellow Slytherin's surliness, winking at Lily and causing her to blush deeply. Albus scowled.

"Lay off, will you? She's eleven," he said darkly. Charlier shrugged, an amused smile on his face. Lily was impressed at his nonchalance in the face of her brother. She had seen strangers wilt before Albus's temper.

Lily sat back and simply observed her brother and his friends as the train sped toward Hogwarts. At home, Albus talked very little of his acquaintances at Hogwarts - in fact, he talked very little about what he did at Hogwarts at all - and despite Lily's constant pestering, she knew next to nothing about his friends. Even Scorpius and Rice, who had stayed with them briefly over the holidays, were mysteries to her. She was never invited to hang out with them.

She was definitely going to take advantage of this rare opportunity to spend time with her brother's friends.

-o-

After an hour, Lily was bored out of her skull.

They were such typical boys, talking about Quidditch and playing Exploding Snap. She had stopped listening ten minutes ago and taken to looking out the window at the passing countryside.

"I don't know why he hates me," Albus said, causing Lily's attention to snap back to what was happening in the compartment. She continued to stare out the window, but she no longer saw the fields of cows and sheep as she was listening very intently to what her brother was saying.

"He's just a git," Rice answered with a shrug. "There's no other reason for it."

"There must be a reason," Scorpius said very, well, reasonably. "He hasn't spent the last two years torturing you because he doesn't fancy the color of your eyes."

Darius and Charlier chuckled at that and Rice snorted, and Lily thought she noticed Scorpius's mouth twitch upward slightly as though pleased his humor was appreciated. Albus however, continued to frown.

"He asked me once if James was my brother - as though he didn't already know the answer - but you would think if he had a problem with James, he'd bother James, not me. They're in the same year after all," he mused.

"Maybe he's scared of James," Charlier suggested. "Half the school is, you know."

Albus scowled as though he did not appreciate the reminder. Lily watched his face curiously. She knew Albus hated being compared to James, and she supposed he had good reason to, but she had never thought about how the two might interact at school, being in rival houses and all. They got along fine - well, as fine as brothers do, she guessed - at home.

"I wouldn't say they're afraid of him," Darius commented lightly. "They wouldn't cross him, but I don't know if they're afraid of him."

"Same thing," Charlier said dismissively.

"No, it's not," Darius argued. "I wouldn't throw a hex at Albus, but I'm not afraid of him. I respect him, and I know he could beat me in a duel without batting an eye, but I'm not afraid of him. It's the same way people feel about James."

"Yeah, but if there's anyone half the school is afraid of, it's Albus," Rice added with a wicked grin. Lily repressed a shudder. She didn't like all this talk of people being afraid of her brothers.

"No one's afraid of me," Albus said, rolling his eyes.

"Whatever you say, Potter," Breighton said from behind his newspaper, his lips forming a slight smile.

"The point is," Albus pressed on, clearly tiring of the matter, "things need to change this year. I'm sick of putting up with Leevy's crap."

"You did beat him out for Chaser last year," Rice reminded him.

"But he was bothering me before then. Making Chaser just gave him another reason to hate me. I want to know what I did in the first place to make him hate me," Albus explained.

"You could just ask him?" Charlier suggested. Albus's eyebrows drew together as though he hadn't thought of that. Lily thought it was outrageously obvious.

"You're a Potter in Slytherin," Scorpius suggested. "That could have a lot to do with it."

"Lily," Albus said suddenly, as though just realizing she was sitting there listening to their discussion, "Go find the sweets trolley."

"What?" Lily asked, confused and a little offended. "Why should I?"

"Because you're hungry," he said. Lily glared at him. Albus couldn't tell her when she was or wasn't hungry.

"I am not," she retorted. Just then, her stomach chose to betray her by grumbling loudly. Albus's friends all laughed and Lily's face burned in anger and embarrassment.

"Sure about that?" Albus asked with a smirk. Lily grabbed her bag and marched out of the compartment angrily, slamming the door behind her. The third years' laughter echoed in her ears halfway down the corridor. She hated being made a fool of.

Lily wandered the train hopelessly for awhile. She didn't actually care if she found the sweets trolley or not, but she was still too angry to return to her brother and his friends. Stupid Slytherins. At least now she understood why James disliked them all so much. They were mean.

She muttered under her breath angrily, calling them every dirty word she could think of - her mother would have washed her mouth out with soap if she'd heard her - and was very much caught up in abusing the third year Slytherin boys when she slammed right into something quite solid and fell to the ground. An 'oof!' from somewhere in front of her told her that what she'd run into was another person.

"Sorry!" Lily exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. She looked down at the person she'd run into; it was a boy, and he had also fallen to the floor. Lily offered the boy her hand.

"No problem," he said easily, taking her hand and hauling himself to his feet. He was quite a bit taller than she was, had sandy-colored hair and very dark brown eyes, and he held onto her hand a second too long once he'd regained his balance. She felt her face go red again.

"I'm Archer," he said, dropping her hand. She smiled uncertainly.

"Lily." They stood there in an awkward sort of silence for a moment, not knowing what else to say. "I-I have to go," she said quickly, turning and walking away. Her heart was pounding and her face was flaming and she had no idea why.

A/N: I know you're reading this, so please review! Also, I will have chapters out for each of the Slytherins mentioned at some point. Scorpius and Rice will be first because they're Albus's best friends. Rice is a character of my own invention and I seriously considered throwing him out while writing this, but in the end I decided he adds a nice balance to Scorpius and Albus's friendship, which you'll see in a later chapter, and I just like him too much. We will also find out more about this "Leevy" character later and why he is the bane of Albus's existence.

One last note: You may have noticed the similarities between 'Breighton' Amdahl and Darius 'Creighton'. While the spelling is similar, the pronunciations (in my head at least) are not. 'Breighton' is pronounced "brite-uhn" and 'Creighton' is pronounced "crate-uhn" - hopefully that's not too confusing.

That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed. Please review. :)
-Megan