Lily POV

I looked ahead of me at the wall between platforms 9 and 10. I was going to do this. Run at this wall for the last time. I would be brave. At the end of the year I would leave my home forever. But now I was going to concentrate on being the best head girl Hogwarts had ever seen.

I started slowly steering my trolley towards the wall gaining speed as I went before breaking into a run, just as I was about to hit the wall everything transformed. I was on platform 9¾.

The Hogwarts Express stood there smartly as I stared at the beauty of it, taking it all in for the last time.

Before I could move my trolley someone coming through the barrier to the magical platform barged into me sending me flying.

My trolley skidded down the platform, my owl, Genevieve’s cage crashed into a pillar. My trunk flew over me, hit me on the head, bounced in front of me and promptly landed at the feet of none other than James Potter.

“I am so sorry Lily. Let me help you with your trunk. Do you want me to carry it onto the train?” he asked, offering his hand to me.

I felt my Jaw drop. Was this seriously James Potter? He had definitely changed! I’m not sure which surprised me more, James being nice, James calling me Lily instead of ‘Evans’ or James saying a sentence to me that did not take the form of ‘Go out with me Evans?’ or some other kind of arrogant flirting. But it wasn’t just his personality that had changed over the summer. He had grown at least half a foot taller, his skin was tanned like he had just come back from a 2 week holiday to Hawaii and his eyes sparkled as they met mine. He ran his other hand through his hair. Normally I would snap at him and accuse him of being an arrogant toe-rag, but his hair looked so soft, silky and touchable. I imagined myself running my hand through his hair… Ugh, Stop this Lily. You can’t like James Potter. He was everything you hated, Rude, Arrogant, Troublemaking and Obnoxious and… Handsome, Funny and… No, stop this Lily. Snap out of it.

I took his hand and pulled myself up.

“Thanks” I replied

James picked up my trunk and I followed him to one of the carriages. He put my trunk on one of the luggage racks and looked at his watch.

“Sorry Evans, I said I would meet Padfoot.” And he sped off.

Oh so we were back to Evans now were we?

I left my trunk and went to find Alice, Marlene, Dorcas and Mary. They were the other Gryffindor girls in my year and they were my best friends. I went past all the compartments looking for them when I bumped straight into Marlene and Dorcas talking rapidly about their holidays.

“Lily! You’re head girl! Oh my Gosh, I knew it, this is going to be the best year ever” Dorcas screamed, smothered me with a huge hug after throwing all her possessions on the floor.

“Come on guys, let’s find a compartment. We can catch up then.” Marlene suggested

We all went down to the front of the train to look for an empty compartment. When we had all sat down and put all our stuff away the door slid open to reveal Alice and Mary.

“Just found this Lovebird with Frank. I’m not going to say what they were doing because you probably don’t want to know.” Mary said

We all sat down and chatted for about five minutes when I remembered something.

“Sorry guys, I need to go to the heads compartment to meet the head boy and prepare for the prefects meeting.”

“Bye Lils”

“Have fun”

“Tell us who the head boy is later.”

Yes… I was wondering myself. Who would be the head boy?

I went through all the boys in my class. I hoped it wouldn’t be anyone from Slytherin but I highly doubted it would be. Dumbledore was too clever to pair a Gryffindor and Slytherin together. It could be Amos Diggory, a clever but pompous Hufflepuff or any of the Ravenclaws, they were all good students. Or it could be Remus Lupin, her fellow Gryffindor. He had been a prefect with her last year and he was the only Marauder that she could bear to be in the same room as. They often studied together. Yes. That’s who it would be. Remus. He was kind and clever and people listened to him. He was generally a good student and didn’t walk around hexing people like James did. Those were the qualities that Professor Dumbledore looked for when choosing head boy.

Nothing prepared me for what I saw next. I slid open the door to the heads compartment and saw…

“James?” I said in shock “What are you doing here? You do realise that this compartment is for heads only!”

“Exactly.” He said “That’s why we’re both here”

“But… You… How? No.”

“Don’t look so surprised Evans, I think I would make a great head boy”

So he was back to being cocky and arrogant. Perfect. It was just what I needed, James Potter being his usual self.

I sat down in disbelief and pulled out my book. It was half an hour until the prefects meeting. I would have to hold out until then.

Twenty minutes of silence later I looked up to see James watching. When he saw that I knew he was watching me he looked away quickly.

“Okay, the prefects meeting starts soon. I will do the talking because I know what to say. You just introduce yourself and behave.” I instructed “No silly comments and no rudeness in general.”

“Aye Aye Captain” he said saluting me

I rolled my eyes.

Just under ten minutes later the prefects started to file in, including Remus.

“Hey Moony, What’s up?” James hollered

I glared at him and he shut up.

When all the prefects had got there I started the meeting.

“Hello, for those of you who don’t know I’m Lily Evans and I will be head girl this year. This is…” I was cut off by James who said

“I’m James Potter, your head boy this year, which by the way is the weirdest thing that ever happened to me.” He said, laughed, and then continued “I can’t even imagine what was going on in Dumbledore’s head when I thought that I could head boy”

At that moment I couldn’t even imagine what Dumbledore was thinking because I was so annoyed with James that I thought I could explode with madness.

After that the meeting went pretty smoothly and after I went to find my friends.

When I reached the compartment I heard someone say my name in their conversation. I put my ear to the door find out what they were saying about me.

“Lily mustn’t suspect that we are trying to get her and James to go out, then she won’t want to be friends with us.” Alice said

“Guys, I’m not sure about this, what if Lily finds out? It’s not very nice to try and set up your friend with a guy she hates” Mary protested

“Lily will be glad once she sees how much James has changes, he’s amazing, he was round at my house in the summer a couple of times with his parents and he was practically behaving like a gentleman. I helped him gain some manners. He begged me to help Lily realise that he isn’t so bad and I told him I would do as much as I could. He’s trying really hard this year. I think they would be really cute together” Marlene argued

“But won’t Lily-” Dorcas started and stopped when I opened the door

“Hi Lily… How did the meeting go? Whose head boy?” Dorcas asked

“The meeting was fine. But the head boy is… Uch, its James Potter.”

“Wow, he kept that quiet,” Marlene said, shocked

“More importantly, how the hell did he manage to become head boy in the first place?”

“I’m going to get a drink.” I said and stomped out of the compartment slamming the door behind me. I put my ear to the door.

“This is amazing,” Marlene said excitedly “Lily will have to spend loads of time with James now; I can’t believe James never told me. This makes everything so much easier.”

I walked down the train towards the heads compartment. The marauders were all in there laughing at something. I slid open the door and all the marauders turned to look at me. When James saw it was me he stood up.

“Lily” he said “Are you Okay?” Did he just call me Lily again?

“Can I join you?” I asked

“Sure” he said offering me his seat

“Thanks Potter” I said gratefully

The rest of the train journey went by extremely quickly as all the marauders were hilariously entertaining. They talked about school, pranking and Hogsmeade trips. I didn’t say a word the entire time but only James seemed to notice that.

When the train stopped at Hogsmeade station I stood up and walked out the compartment, just as I reached the door I turned around and said “Thank You” James eyes were full of concern. I whisked around and went to find my friends.

When I found my friends I went into their compartment where they were pulling their trunks off the luggage racks. I lifted mine off and put it on the floor. Suddenly I realised that Alice wasn’t there.

“Where’s Alice?” I asked

My question was answered as Alice and her boyfriend, Frank Longbottom want past our compartment holding hands. Alice was staring at Frank with a dewy eyed expression on her face.

“Ah! I see” I said, answering my own question.

We all followed them off the train leaving our trunks on the large pile on the platform. We all walked around the station to where the carriages were leaving.

There were only a few carriages left, I could see the marauders near the carriages, and as usual they were laughing about something.

We got to a carriage, Alice and Frank got in first, wrapped up in each other. Dorcas, Marlene, Mary and I followed.

“Oi miss, Only 5 to a carriage, you’ll have to hop out” one of the supervisors called to me.

I hopped out. “Don’t worry guys; I’ll see you up at school.”

I walked into the next carriage and as soon as I saw who was in the carriage I tried to get out.

“Lily, there are no other carriage left, if you get out of this one you will have to walk” James said

I would have rather walked normally but as head girl I didn’t want to be late for my duties. I sat in the last remaining space, next to James.

“So Lily, how are you?” James started

“Fine” I said icily and he flinched at my tone of voice.  I sort of felt bad. Why did I snap at him like that? He hadn’t done anything wrong… Yet

It was a long and awkward trip up to the castle. No one spoke.  It was as if they were all waiting for me or James to say something. Neither of us did. James kept stealing glances at me. One time I caught him staring at me and glared at him, we turned away immediately.

When we reached the castle I scrambled out of the carriage as soon as I could. James looked hurt. His hand ran through his untidy black hair. Arrogant Git.

We found Professor McGonagall organising first years and she instructed us to make sure everyone was quiet so the sorting could begin. We walked into the hall together.

“Okay, I will take the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables, you do Ravenclaw and Slytherin.”

James looked confused. “What exactly am I meant to be doing?”

“Control them, tell them off if they do anything wrong.”

James still looked confused.

“If anyone does anything that you would find funny or something that you would do then tell them off.”

His confusion cleared and he bounded off orchestrating the stray Ravenclaws and Slytherins. I chuckled to myself. Typical James. I headed over to the Gryffindor table to start to quieten them down.

2 minutes later, when James had shut up all the Slytherins up, he came over to help me, he came over to the Hufflepuff table and hushed them all. Within another minute or so we were all ready.

“I’ll go and notify McGonagall, you sit down.” James said

“Thanks Potter” He flinched when I called him by his surname but then turned and walked to the hallway where McGonagall was waiting with the first years. One minute later all the first years flooded in, many of them looked around nervously. Some were looking at every single detail of the Great Hall with excitement. One was looking at me nervously. I smiled at her and she smiled back. McGonagall got out the Sorting Hat and a short stool.

“Arren, Rose”

A small blonde girl stood up, sat on the stool and put the hat on her head.

“Hufflepuff”

She grinned and bounded off to the Hufflepuff table.

“Ebbing, Archie”

A black haired boy scampered up and as soon as the hat touched his head, it yelled

“Ravenclaw”

Heston, Mya was sorted into Gryffindor and Houdini, Fredrick was the first Slytherin.

Finally Weston, Annabel was sorted into Gryffindor and McGonagall moved the sorting hat and stool to the corner of the room.

Professor Dumbledore stood up. “Before we start the feast and you all busy yourselves with the delicious dishes and scrumptious servings I would like to say a few words. Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweak. Thank you.”

Within seconds the empty plates had filled themselves with an abundance of divine looking food. We all tucked in and the food all disappeared almost as fast as it had appeared. When everyone had finished we all turned to listen to Dumbledore.

“We are living in Dark Times, but there is one thing that keeps us together. It is love and friendship. He-who-must-not-be-named does not possess this incredible quality, it is a magic that, no matter how powerful he is, you will always be more able to love better than he ever will be able to. It is your friendships that keep you more powerful than him, no matter how hard he tries; he will never be as powerful as our love for our friends and family that we may even die for. He will never understand the beauty of this magic. Think about these words, as it is very wise to keep them in mind and close to the heart. Now, before it gets too late you should all go to bed. You don’t want to oversleep on the first day back. Off you pop”

While James and I round up all the first years to lead them to the dormitories. I thought about Dumbledore’s words. Could love really save us all? Would I, given the chance, be brave enough to die to save someone I loved?