The Horseless carts had all completed their tasks, the students in years two up to seven were seated at their house tables, and the first years were still out on the lake, in the rain. The main point of gossip in the great hall was the atrocious stench that had plagued them that day. There was also an increasing popularity with referencing the prank as 'the train ride'.

Lily was seated with her friends, they were talking about the day's events.

"Lily, are you alright? We didn't see you on the train" Alice asked Lily tentatively

Lily smiled softly, "Yeah, I'm fine" She shook her head softly, "I had to patrol the train, you know, prefect business and all" Lily shrugged.

Alice nodded, "What about at the start" She persisted, knowing that Lily had a bit more to say

"Well I only had, what? Twenty minutes spare time before prefect meeting and all that" Lily paused for a moment, debating whether or not to tell her friends what had happened "I had to do a bit of other stuff too" Lily hesitated a moment longer "but, you know what? I'll tell you about that after dinner, it's simply too crowded in here. Anyway wha-". But Lily was cut off, the doors to the great hall had been flung open and the students had gone dead quiet. The terrified first years were ushered forwards, huddled in a pack for protection, presumably from the big scary wizards.

Eventually the first years had been persuaded to the front of the hall, they were now facing a three legged wooden stool with a tattered old hat perched atop of it. Slowly, one by one, the students were called up and sorted into their houses. Every time a student was sorted into Gryffindor, James Potter made it his business to jump up onto the bench and cheer loudly, earning much laughter along with a few disapproving glances from mainly teachers, but also namely Lily Evans; although she did find his actions rather amusing, she decided that it would be plain wrong to encourage his childish behaviour.

Soon Dumbledore had spoken and the food had appeared, a beautiful roast dinner, as per usual on the first day of September. It comprised of roast meats, various parts of the chicken's anatomy, vegetables, soups, bread, and of course, roast potatoes. The hungry students quickly dove into the magnificent feast. The hall was filled with a hum of contentment

"So what were you saying before Lily?" Alice asked, keen to get another conversation going.

Lily had a mouthful of roast beef and so was bobbing her head and making twirls with her left hand to indicate that she would answer the question as soon as she possibly could. Finally Lily managed to chew her food completely and turned to Alice "I was going to ask you guys what your trip was like"

Dorcas looked at the blank faces of her friends and decided to answer on their behalf, "nothing much happened, Marlene left a couple of times, Mary reckons she was getting it on with Black" Dorcas was managing to keep an extremely straight face, Lily giggled slightly, Mary was hiding behind a large bowl of carrots and laughing profusely, and Marlene was looking at Mary as if that was the most childish thing in the world. Dorcas took a glance at the two girls and a smirk crept across her face.

"In my defence, Black does have the hots for you, it's pretty obvious" Mary said, putting her hands up.

Marlene dismissed Mary's comment with an eye roll, "don't worry, you didn't miss out, the only action I got when I was with the boys was Pettigrew eating a vomit flavoured jelly bean" Marlene shrugged.

Dorcas looked at the two, before remembering that she was the one that was meant to be speaking "Anyway..." She said slowly "I'll let Alice speak for herself later, but the stink bomb epidemic was probably as interesting as the ride got" Dorcas finished with a shrug.

Lily laughed "That seems like the highlight of everyone's journey, you managed the bubble head charm alright?" It was in Lily's nature to worry about other people.

"Yeah, we managed it fine" Marlene said "Don't worry about us" Marlene knew Lily had a tendency to worry too much. Lily smiled at her friends

"But really, I can't believe they did actually did that" Lily said shaking her head

Marlene laughed, "Seriously Lil, you worry too much, it's starting to look like you care for them" Marlene knew that this would stir her up a bit.

In response Lily scrunched her face up and stuck her tongue out in disgust, she shook her whole body as if a shiver had run through her spine. "No thank you" she said, still reeling from the thought of Marlene actually suggesting that she liked Potter.

Before long the feast had disappeared, and was replaced shortly afterwards by a beautiful array of puddings, cakes, jellies, chocolates, mousses, and other delectable sweets. Desert had arrived, and it had cut short most people's conversations. The whole hall fell into a fresh bout of blissful silence, with the occasional murmur through a mouth filled with food about how delicious everything was.

Nobody really spoke during the time that dessert was on the table, and after it had vanished most people had begun to stand up and leave the hall, Lily and Remus however were tasked to round up all of the small eleven year old, newly sorted Gryffindor students to show them the way to what will be their common room for the next seven years. It was something all sixth year prefects had to do, apparently the seventh year prefects and the head boy and girl were above those duties and the fifth year prefects were too immature for them.

Lily and Remus pushed the opposite way through the current of students patiently trying to exit the great hall, they eventually arrived at their desired destination: The end of the table; where most of the Gryffindor first years were standing, utterly confused about what they should do next.

"Gryffindor first years over here!" Lily called with her arm in the air, she was having to raise her voice over the rest of the chaos occurring in the room. "I need the Gryffindor first years to stay in a group over here" she called again, she was beginning to sound like her mother when she couldn't find Petunia in a crowd.

Remus was soon able to join Lily and help her round up the wholly muddled first years. Finally Lily no longer had to strain her voice, and the students were all in one place, as far as everyone was concerned.

"Okay, so we'll just show you the way to the common room, and give you a couple of pointers here and there." Remus said in a slightly raised but otherwise relaxed voice, far more relaxed that Lily could ever manage given her current situation and resulting stress factor. "So follow us" Remus finished with a wave of his arm and the group was off. The Slytherin and Hufflepuff prefects had already begun to make their way towards their respective common rooms, the Ravenclaw prefects had decided that it would be a far better idea to explain their house's password system before they had to face it.

Remus led the front of the group while Lily took up the rear to make sure nobody strayed off in the wrong direction, occasionally Remus would point out a passageway that also served as a shortcut to a class, or a corridor that led to a spare bathroom. They inevitably ended up at the bottom of the moving staircases. "Now listen up," Remus addressed the group "These staircases will move even if you are standing on them, they really couldn't care less," He was talking as if the staircases were a small puppy nobody could train, which they essentially were. "So what I need you to do is keep tight in a group, if the staircase moves don't worry, there are a million different ways to get to our destination" Remus began walking up the first flight of stairs. A tall, scrawny dark figure who couldn't leave his hair alone came trotting down the stairs.

"Hey Moony?" James Potter called when he was a few steps away from the advancing group of first years.

"Yes James?" Remus sounded tired and almost bored, as if he knew exactly where this conversation was going, and had no intention of being a part of it.

"Are you free?" James asked rather thickly, her knew that his friend wasn't, but asked anyway. Remus had all but stopped walking and James was standing on the step above now.

Remus gestured to the huddle of students "Well, not quite now, but I'll be up in the common room if you need me later"

"Cool" James said, strutting down another three steps, he gave a small salute before walking a bit further. "Hey Evans" he winked as he approached Lily.

"Shove off Potter" Lily said to James, her arms were crossed over her chest. As soon as James hit the step she was standing on he made a point of turning around and walking down the stairs backwards, Lily followed him with her eyes and a glare.

It wasn't long before James Potter found himself crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, his cloak tangled around him and both his glasses and wand were approximately three metres away, he did not try to move, most likely because he was completely incapable of more than a flop of an arm and a harsh grunt. He much resembled a discarded ragdoll in the corner of a child's playroom. Lily stared at him in shock for a few moments, she didn't know what to do. James had been showing off and making a fool out of himself as he walked down the stair backwards, it was simply inevitable that something like this would happen.

"Remus, would you like me to get him over to Madam Pomfrey?" Lily asked, craning her head to see past the concerned looking students

"That would probably be best" Remus called, he didn't seem at all surprised at what had just happened, "besides, you're better at levitating bigger things" He called, he was talking about the charm that Severus Snape had invented, that enabled the user to levitate a person. Lily blushed slightly and walked back down the few steps so she could levitate the boy she absolutely detested over to the Hospital Wing.

Lily walked back out the doorway towards the hospital wing, scooping up James' glasses and his wand on the way, leaving behind Remus and approximately twelve chattering Gryffindors, all apparently worried about James Potter's wellbeing.

"Potter I honestly cannot believe you" Lily muttered, mostly to herself, "You are honest to god the biggest moron I have ever met," to Lily's utter surprise she was answered with a small groan from James, who was now dangling upside down, Lily didn't particularly mind though, she rounded the corner to the hospital wing. It was unbelievably awkward to get through the door of the hospital wing, so was forced to knock violently on the door until Madame Pomfrey bustled up and aided in the transportation of a very limp James Potter to a bed. Lily was promptly shooed out, nobody argued.

Lily quickly made her way back to the common room, she knew that Remus would be done by now and that he would probably be waiting on a couch near the fire, her friends would also be there, but probably in the corner on the large cushioned bench that sat next to a large window, enough room for all of them. She approached the Fat Lady, who insisted that Lily hear her talents, but could do nothing about the lack of audience once the password was mentioned, except for wail and cry. The current password of 'Pickled Gillyweed' had luckily been given to Lily and so she thankfully was not locked outside for the night. As Lily entered the common room she was once again greeted by that sweet warmth she was so used to, she couldn't help but smile. First she chose to look for Remus, it had all but slipped her mind to return James' belongings to him when she was at the hospital wing, and without much chance of getting back in to do so, she decided it was best to entrust Remus with them until further notice.

Lily found Remus quite easily, he was exactly where she expected him to be, lounging on one of the couches in front of the fire with his friends. "Potter dropped this" she said softly, dropping his broken glasses and luckily undamaged wand onto Remus' lap from behind. He was deep into a conversation, but he wasn't the one talking Sirius Black was and so Lily had no problem interjecting for a couple of seconds.

"Thanks Lily," Remus said, trying to bend his neck backwards to look at her, but finally deciding just to run his head around, "and thanks for bringing him over to the hospital" Remus said with a smile. It was obvious that Sirius both knew what had happened and was slightly annoyed at Lily for interrupting his conversation.

But Lily didn't care, Black annoyed her almost as much as Potter did. Almost. "No problem" Lily said sweetly, ignoring the annoyance Sirius was openly displaying. She then promptly left, not wanting to endanger her life too greatly. It was pretty easy to spot her friends. Just like Remus was, they were exactly where she knew they would be: On the large cushioned bench sidled up next to the large window overlooking the forbidden forest. Lily bounced over them, and was basically then enveloped by them, a round of questions were fired at her

"Where were you?"

"What took you so long?"

"Are you okay?"

"What happened?"

"Did you get in trouble?"

Lily waved her hands, trying to shush the montage of questions. "As you know, I was already going to be a bit late into the common room because of the first years," Lily said slowly, trying to calm the girls' frantic breathing and twitches, "On the way up the stairs, James Potter decided to make an appearance, he then proceeded to fall down the stairs as he was trying to walk backwards down them" Lily was purposefully talking slowly, and it took her friends all of three seconds to process what had happened to the stuck up snob that was James Potter.

Three seconds after Lily had momentarily stopped speaking their corner erupted into a burst of laughter, Marlene was almost crying with laughter and stuttering disconnected sentences, some of which included: 'Potter', 'idiot', 'stairs', 'knob', 'hilarious' and 'I'm so using that against him'.

Lily couldn't help but laugh as well at what James had done, but mainly at her friend's delayed reactions to what James Potter had done to himself. She let her friends laughter die out before continuing with her story, "Anyway, I was the one who had to get him to the hospital wing, I was wholly tempted to use Sev's spell to get him where he needed to go, but I ended up just using the plain old levitation charm, I didn't find it necessary to dangle him from his ankles while he was in that state."

"Aww" Marlene said with a sickly sweet face plastered on, "you care about James' wellbeing! You must be in love" she continued to say in an annoyingly high and whiny voice, clasping her hands together across her front.

"Mar, just because I care about the humane treatment of all animals, doesn't mean I am in love with one of them" Lily retorted. Marlene simply snorted at the response.

There was a moment of content silence as the snickers from Lily's response died out. Alice took the momentary silence as an opportunity to spring another question on Lily. "Lily, what happened on the train?" Alice asked tentatively, she was sitting just above the bench, on the window ledge, so she had to lean forward between Dorcas and Marlene so she could talk to Lily who was seated on the floor.

"Oh well" Alice said, shuffling on the floor slightly, "It was just Sev" Lily shrugged

"He's not still bugging you is he?" Dorcas groaned, "I swear he doesn't know when to stop."

Lily shrugged slightly before saying "I guess, I mean he was my best friend," she paused for a moment, "It's, it's just a bit difficult to explain." Lily didn't really fancy talking about this topic an awful lot and was keen to change the conversation subject "Alice, what were you going to explain to us?"

Alice looked confused for a moment before realisation hit, Lily was talking about the brief comment Dorcas had made at dinner, a furious blush spread across Alice's face, and with it a wide grin, she made herself comfortable on the floor and began to explain what had happened on the train. "Okay" Alice began "So it happened a bit after Marlene left," she sounded as if she were simply rounding of a well-rehearsed list of ingredients, "Frank came and knocked on the door, and asked if I wouldn't mind to go speak with him." Alice's face was now lit up with joy, just talking about what had happened, Lily suspected that she knew exactly where this story was going, and she too couldn't have been happier. "I agreed, and we walked outside" Alice was really beginning to slow down now, she was also fiddling by clenching and unclenching her hands. "And we were a bit out of sight from the others, and it was so sweet, he took my hand and said to me 'Alice I really like you, and will you go out with me?'" She was positively beaming now, and most of the girls were ahhhing.

"Oh that's fantastic Alice!" Lily squealed, pulling her friend into an embrace. Lily paused for a moment, realising she was missing a tiny detail from the story, "you are going out with Frank now, right?"

Alice laughed and nodded. At that moment Lily noticed that Frank had come and stood a few metres away, leaning awkwardly on a stone wall and obviously waiting for Alice. "I think you have a visitor" Lily whispered to Alice, who automatically turned around and went a deep shade of red. All the girls tried to subtly shoo Alice over to Frank and then attempt to pretend that they weren't constantly peeking at them. As it got later Alice quickly said goodnight to the girls and assured them that they would hear everything later on, before she and Frank went and sat together somewhere more out of earshot of people who would care.