Lily dragged her trunk down the corridor of the Hogwarts Express. She had been walking the perimeter of the train for five minutes, not knowing where to go or where to sit. She hadn't been able to find an empty compartment, and she wasn't very good at making new friends. As she passed, she couldn't help but stare at the other kids in awe. Some, like her, were shy and obviously new at Hogwarts. Others had greeted old friends like siblings and were already doing magic with their wands. Lily wasn't even sure of how to hold hers yet. She was just wondering if she would be the first student to ever not know how to hold her wand when---
WHAM.
She hit something hard and fell over, barely hanging on to her little kitten, her trunk flying away from her. When she regained her composure, she looked over at a girl on the floor across from her. She had small blue eyes and dirty-blonde hair. Her face was very round and plump, although she wasn't fat, and it was turning beet red in embarrassment.
"I'm... I'm so sorry," Lily apologized nervously, trying to help the girl up.
"No, no, it was my fault, I wasn't watching where I was walking," the girl replied.
Lily smiled timidly. "It's okay. I'm Lily, by the way, Lily Evans." She extended her small, graceful hand.
The girl grinned back and shook it. "I'm Alice Nichols." Alice's expression was very warm and friendly. There was something about her that Lily liked. She seemed just as nervous as Lily was, which made Lily a little more comfortable.
"I haven't been able to find a free compartment,” Lily told her.
"Oh, you can come in mine, I was just on my way back from the loo," Alice offered in a friendly voice.
"Great." Lily was beginning to like Hogwarts, and she hadn’t even arrived yet.
"It's this way," Alice said as she lead Lily towards her compartment, helping her carry her trunk.
"I like your cat, he's really cute," she told her as they began to walk.
"Oh, do you? He was a gift from my mum and dad. I've named him Sam." Lily offered Sam for Alice to pet, but he began to wriggle out of her hands.
"Oh- Sam, no!"
Sam squirmed his way onto the floor and began to run down the corridor in the opposite direction; Lily and Alice followed him. He ducked into an open door, and Lily hurried in after him.
She was embarrassed to see that the compartment wasn't empty, and four boys were sitting down staring up at her. She brushed her hair out of her eyes nervously.
"Oh... I, I'm really sorry... my cat ran into here," she explained, pointing at Sam.
Sam was curled up in the lap of the boy sitting by the window. He had hazel eyes and very untidy black hair.
"It's all right," the boy said, handing Sam over to Lily with a cute smile. "I'm James Potter, by the way."
He was obviously very friendly and not shy at all, which made Lily a little nervous. “I’m Lily Evans,” she stammered out.
He turned around. "This is Peter, Remus, and Sirius," he said motioning over to the boys he was sitting with. Sirius was quite cute with dark hair that fell into his eyes, Remus was thin and tall with mousy hair, and Peter was very short with a squat appearance. She smiled awkwardly at them.
“This is Alice,” Lily told them, nodding towards her new friend standing behind her.
“Do you guys know any magic yet?” Sirius asked them hopefully.
Alice shrugged. “Not really. My mum never let me play with her wand.”
“What about you, Evans?” James asked Lily. She wondered why he called her by her last name.
“Well, I’m muggle-born,” Lily explained shyly.
Sirius eye twitched a bit. “Muggle born? So you don’t know about anything?” he was staring at her intently, making her very uncomfortable.
“Not... not really.” Lily wanted to leave, but Alice seemed to be relaxed and enjoying the conversation.
“I don’t really know any magic either,” Remus spoke up suddenly, looking at Sirius. “I don’t know how to do any spells. I don’t think many of the first years do.”
Lily was grateful to Remus. It seemed to her like he did know a little bit of magic, but he was pretending not to for her sake- and she fully appreciated it.
“Well, I know a spell,” James said loudly, rumpling his hair and looking at Lily. “My dad taught me.”
“Oh, let’s see it!” Peter said eagerly.
James whipped out his wand like a pro and polished it on his T-shirt. He walked over to the compartment door, opened it, and peered around the corner. A nervous- looking boy with blonde hair who was considerably smaller in size than James walked past. He was wearing a brown hat.
James puffed out his chest and said firmly, “Accio hat!”
The hat flew right off the boy’s head and into James’ outstretched hand. The boy turned around uneasily and grabbed at his empty head, looking over at James with wide eyes.
James beamed and tossed the hat back to him. “Just a little trick!” he sniggered, and he closed the compartment door.
“Whoa, James, that was great!” Peter squealed. James swelled with pride.
"Excellent," Sirius commented.
Lily put her hands on her hips. “That wasn’t very nice, you know,” she told him, her shyness melting away a little bit.
James’ smile faded a little. “It was only a little prank!”
Lily frowned. “You wouldn’t like it if you didn’t know how to do that, and someone else did it to you.”
James shrugged, looking a little down.
“Well, I think it was brilliant,” Sirius told James, and he smiled again.
Lily pursed her lips and looked at Alice. "Well, we should be going," she said. “Nice meeting you all." She walked out and Alice gave a cheery wave and followed her.
“Can you believe that James Potter?” Lily asked Alice in disbelief as they walked towards Alice’s compartment. “He doesn’t seem very nice.”
“He was friendly enough,” Alice shrugged. “But I don’t think we’re supposed to do magic before we get to school.”
Lily liked Alice’s last sentence- her new friend seemed to be a rule-follower, just like she was.
“Here it is,” Alice said, motioning towards the last compartment in the hall. When they got there, however, there was someone already sitting in it.
It was a very pretty girl with wavy, shiny brown hair and big brown eyes. Lily and Alice stared at her uncomfortably. “This is our compartment,” Alice said, sounding a little bit unfriendly, even if not on purpose.
The girl shot up. She was very statuesque, and a lot taller than either Lily and Alice. “I’m sorry, there’s none left and I... I thought this one was empty,” she explained quickly, grabbing her things.
Lily stopped her. “It’s okay. You can sit here, if you want, I mean. It’s just the two of us.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude.”
“No, stay,” Alice said. “It will be fun.”
The girl smiled and sat back down. “Thanks a lot. My name is Ophelia Owens, what's yours?”
By the end of the train ride, Lily had bonded with both Alice and Ophelia. They were really nice girls, and they made Lily feel less worried about entering the magical world. They told her all they knew about Hogwarts and Lily told them all she knew about the Muggle world. Ophelia seemed a lot more interested in how a television worked than Lily was in goblins and hags. When the girls changed into their Hogwarts robes, Lily looked down at herself. She couldn’t believe that she was about to enter the place that she had seen only in her imagination. It was a new beginning. She neatly folded her jeans and sweater and placed them at the bottom of her trunk. She wouldn’t be needing them for a long while.
******************************
"Potter, James!" Professor McGonagall called out from her long list of names.
James, unlike the rest of the trembling first years that had gone before him, marched up to the sorting hat with confidence. He elegantly placed the tattered old hat on his untidy black head. Suddenly, from within his own head, the hat began to speak to him:
James Potter... you come from a long line of Gryffindors, you do... but have you the same qualities as your ancestors? Hmm... let’s see... you have an unwavering sense of courage and confidence... you’re quite stubborn... as well as intelligent and self- assured... I’m afraid that there’s only one house for you. GRYFFINDOR!
James was surprised at how well the hat knew his personality and character traits, but not surprised at its choice. Both his parents had been in Gryffindor. He walked over to the long house table to applause from all the students, including his fellow recent Gryffindors Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and the girls he met on the train, Lily Evans and Alice Nichols. There was another, rather pretty girl with them as well. He sat down in between Sirius and Remus.
“I thought for sure I’d be in Slytherin, my whole family comes from a long line,” Sirius explained to James as he sat down. “Did you see my cousin Bellatrix get sorted into Slytherin? And last year, my other cousin Andromeda graduated. she was in Slytherin as well. But now I’m glad we’re all in the same house!”
James smiled. He really liked Sirius. He reminded him a lot of himself.
Professor McGonagall called out the last few names, and, a few minutes later, the feast began.
Sirius immediately began eating like a wild dog. Remus and Peter seemed famished too; James remembered having been hungry about an hour ago, but now wasn't. He was watching Lily Evans, who was sitting across the table and about three seats away from him. She was talking to Alice Nichols and Ophelia Owens, also new Gryffindors, about what the hat had told her.
"Well," Lily began, delicately cutting her pork chop with her fork and knife, "The hat told me that I was very intelligent and that I would have fit in at Ravenclaw, but also that I was ambitious so it chose Gryffindor in the end."
"It considered me for Hufflepuff," said Alice. "Don't think I would have liked that much. My second cousin Ursula was in Hufflepuff, and I always thought she was a bit of a flake.”
“My parents were in Hufflepuff!” Ophelia said defensively, her big brown eyes looking hurt.
Alice dropped her fork in horror. “Oh! I’m sorry, Ophelia!“ she said quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that! Sometimes I just don’t know when to shut up--”
Ophelia grinned. “My parents weren’t really in Hufflepuff."
"What!?" Alice shrieked, her mouth still hanging open.
"Just teasing, Alice!" she chuckled heartily. She had a large smile that revealed a lot of white teeth.
Alice playfully smacked Ophelia on the shoulder and Lily giggled, her auburn hair falling into her plate.
“James?” Peter asked, staring at James’ blank face.
“What? Oh... yeah,” he said quickly, covering his tracks.
Sirius laughed. “So, you’ve got a crush, eh, Potter?”
James blushed. “What? What do you mean?”
Remus smiled. “You haven’t been able to take your eyes off that girl we met on the train, Lily Evans.”
He suddenly became very interested in his carrots. “Nah, I was just.... you know," he said awkwardly.
“Yeah, we know,” Sirius and Peter said in unison.
They all laughed. As the feast finished, James and his new friends got up to the Gryffindor Common Room and saw for the first time the place they would call home for the next seven years. It was perfect. The room was full of cozy chairs and couches and was lighted by the warm glow of a massive crackling fire. James saw Lily, Alice and Ophelia walking excitedly up towards their dormitory.
James wanted to talk to Lily, but he didn’t know what to say. “All right, Evans?” he called out to her with a smile. It was the first thing that popped into his mind.
Lily looked back at him with an odd expression on her face- like he had just told her an extremely dirty joke or something. She continued to walk upstairs.
“Come on, lover boy,” Sirius sniggered at him. “Let’s go see our room!”
James entered his dormitory and saw a big, comfortable looking bed with his belongings on it. It on the far end of the room, towards the big window overlooking the grounds. He noticed that Sirius' bed was right next to his, and he shot him a large smile. The day had been so excited that sleep was the last thing on his mind. He decided to unpack his things.
He opened his trunk and began pulling out all his clothes, books, and other belongings from home. But as he dug deeper towards the bottom, he spotted something unfamiliar that caught his eye. Wrapped in a heap of smooth, silvery fabric lay a small note scribbled with a tiny scrawl.
James,
Your mother would kill me if she knew that I was giving you this, that's why I hid it within your other things. It's an invisibility cloak, and it's been in the Potter family for ages. My father gave it to me, and now as part of family tradition I'm handing it down to you. Let's just say that it made my Hogwarts days a bit more enjoyable. See you at Christmas.
Love, Dad
James excitedly unfolded the cloak and let the silky, metallic fabric fall to the floor. He wrapped it around his shoulders and watched his body disappear. He couldn't help but walk straight up to his new friends on the other side of the room and laugh at their reactions.
"Whoa!" Sirius exclaimed as Remus gasped and Peter nearly fell off his chair. "Where'd you get that?"
"My dad," James smirked. "Anyone feel like giving it a go?"
*******************************
"What was that?" Peter asked nervously, pausing in front of the charms classroom, a good fifteen minutes later.
"Nothing," Sirius groaned from beside him. "And keep that mouth of your shut, otherwise you'll be sure to get us expelled!"
"Ouch, that was my foot!" James exclaimed. It was hard to fit four boys underneath one cloak, but somehow they had managed to fit.
"Sorry," Remus grumbled. "Where are we going, anyway?"
"Anywhere we feel like," Sirius replied coolly. "The school is ours."
"This is like an adventure," Peter whispered as they made their way through the cool, dark corridors with no idea of where they were going.
"We're four avengers of the night!" Sirius nearly shouted, causing Remus to shush him.
"Or marauders of the school," James said.
Sirius stopped dead in his tracks, causing the other three to knock into him. He didn't seem to notice. "That's it!" he whispered excitedly. "That's our name! We're 'the Marauders'!"
"The Marauders," Remus repeated.
"I like it!" James said. "It's settled then. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful- and, well, rule breaking- friendship!"
That night, the newly- coined Marauders not only discovered Filch's office, the fourth floor corridor and the kitchens, but a friendship that would last for years and live in infamy.
(A/N- This chapter and the chapter before it are really just setting the scene, introducing new characters, etc. There's plenty of excitement to come later. This is my first fic, so I would appreciate any feedback you can give me- please review! thanks!)