Sapphire Star

Chapter One: Pranksters Reunited

"Sirius Orion Black, you are in so... much... trouble." The sentence was drawn out to appropriately reinforce the fury of the speaker, who had rigidly marched up to the boy she addressed. She was a rather petite teenager, with an accent that betrayed her as having been born and bred in Surrey. Both of her vividly emerald eyes were narrowed and fixed onto Sirius. These eyes, at this particular moment in time, contrasted horribly with her hair, possibly due to the fact that it had just been charmed to an unflattering electric pink. "You know perfectly well that you can't use magic on the platform, and I am going to kill you!" She was going to elaborate on just how excruciatingly slow said death would be, when a second fifteen-year-old girl, this one sporting hair of neon green, raced up from behind her and skidded to an ungraceful halt.

Sirius Black gave one of the ever-charming smiles that had caused so many of the girls at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry to swoon over him over the years. Turning to the green-eyed girl, he began graciously, "Yes, Lily, my dear? What were you saying? I can't think what you must be referring to. By the way, Cassandra, darling, I love your hair; it's a real statement. Did the two of you get it done together over the summer holidays?" Cassie's eyes glowed dangerously; this was an alarming sight, as one was blue and the other brown, one of the odder traits of the Burbank family.

"You're hilarious," she said in a voice drenched in sarcasm, then continued in a harsh whisper, "look, I have one nerve left today, and you're getting on it."

He simply gave an over the top, mocking bow. "Honestly, I'm wounded! I'm simply doing my duty. After all, someone has to annoy you two lovely ladies."

This comment drove Cassie over the edge. She plunged her hand into her pocket, drew out her wand, and started to yell "Furnunculus!" when Lily put a restraining hand on her arm.

"Please, Cass, you know that I got appointed prefect over the summer. I'd really rather not have to give you a detention before we even get on the train. We'll get him later, and legally, all right?"

Grudgingly, and without ceasing to glower ferociously at Sirius, she shoved her wand back in her pocket. She mumbled something that sounded vaguely like, "You're going to pay for that one, Black..."

Lily Evans, Gryffindor prefect, turned back to the near-victim, and began once again expertly wielding her authority. "Okay, fix everything right now or else I'll sic Cassie on you." Sirius feigned terror and complied, muttering a counter-curse. Lily held up a strand of her own shoulder-length hair and was relieved to see it had returned to its original dark red. Double-checking cautiously, she noted that Cassie's had also reverted to a deep black complete with an angry crimson streak towards the front.

Just as Lily was about to launch into lecturing the offending trouble-maker yet again, the trio was joined by a taller boy with light brown hair and deep grey eyes. He held in a laugh and said, "Nice one, Padfoot! That's got to be the first prank this year!"

Sirius' glee was short lived, however, when a shorter boy with messy black hair, hazel eyes, and thick round spectacles casually strolled up behind them all. "That's where you're wrong, Remus, old boy; I happen to hold that title."

Both Lily and Cassie groaned. "What have you done, James? Wait, don't tell me. As much I'd love to be the prefect to punish you, it would be a terrible way to start off the year" Lily said, rolling her eyes.

"Err... perhaps we ought to get a compartment before the rest of the train realizes what I've done. And whatever you do, don't buy the pumpkin pasties."

Sirius laughed and high-fived his best friend over Lily's frustrated head. "Where's Peter?" Remus inquired.

As though summoned by the question, another short boy ran up, huffing as he pushed a cart with a huge wooden trunk and an owl in an ornate cage. He was rather on the round side, and had mousy brown hair.

As he reached them, his beady black eyes eyes lit up. "I just pulled the first prank!" he squealed eagerly, like a hamster that had just been given a cucumber.

"Nope, that would be the third," Sirius explained patiently. Peter's face instantly fell.

James eyed the scarlet engine nervously, "I hate to interrupt this party, but we really ought to get on the train..."

They helped each other drag their trunks up the steps and down the corridor to an empty compartment, where they all collapsed. When the whistle blew, only James and Remus bothered to wave goodbye to their respective families out the windows. Lily's parents, being muggles, and therefore a bit nervous about the prospect of walking through a wall, hadn't come on to the platform. Lily and Remus, the other Gryffindor prefect, had agreed they would wait a while before heading off to partake in the required patrol of the train. As tradition dictated, they were all settling down to become heavily involved in a game of exploding snap when suddenly, Cassie turned to Lily, her eyes wide. "Lils, I forgot all about Andy! Clara will be fine, but Andy is such a space-case sometimes..."

Sirius just grinned, leaning back in his seat. "Relax, Cassie. She's thirteen or something, isn't she? She can take care of herself."

"She's fourteen, but you don't know my sister. She just doesn't live in reality, and she can be so unpredictable." She sighed. "I guess I can't baby-sit her forever though. I just hope she hasn't gone and misplaced her trunk, or something equally daft."

"Honestly Cassie, I'll never get used to how big your family is. How many are there again?"

She began ticking them off on her fingers. "Gran, Grandpa, Aunt Morgan, Alyssa, Mya, Alice, Rebecca, me, Clara, Andy, and if you count the extended family- "

Sirius interrupted, "We don't! We get the picture!"

After the first round, Lily and Remus wandered down to the prefect's compartment. Alyssa Burbank, Cassie's cousin and foster-sister, gave them a standard briefing as head girl. There was a half-hearted lecture about responsibility and being representatives for their house, along with a sheet detailing what they would and would not be capable of. "I'll get word to you when it's time for the first meeting. You're supposed to be keeping an eye on everyone during the ride now... although really, the occasional lap should suffice. You'll probably want to get back, at any rate. See you at Hogwarts!" With that, Alyssa turned them out. As suggested, they walked the length of the train a few times, and then returned to their compartment. They found that as far as the exploding snap championship had gone, half of them had either been eliminated or gotten sick of having their eyebrows nearly-singed, and they had settled back in their chairs. The talk turned to how each of them had managed over the summer holidays.

"My summer? Same as always," Sirius was saying. He tried to stay nonchalant, but he couldn't suppress the angry glint in his eyes as he continued. "I put up with my mother screeching at me most of the time, and the rest of the time fussing over darling little Regulus, the perfect Black." He mimed a high pitched, biting voice. "Now that boy is a real asset to the ancient and most honorable house of Black; he does our family justice! Oh yes, he's about to start his second year now. He's a little angel, not full of half-baked ideas like his idiot of a brother, who I'm ashamed to have carried in my womb. I don't know what to do with that boy, he's betraying all of his ancestors! Why can't you follow your brother's example, you stupid boy?" Dropping back to his normal low growl, he continued. "And then, of course we got a visit from dear old Narcissa and Bellatrix, my favorite cousins. Apparently, Andromeda was spending the summer with Uncle Alphard, since he's ill and likes her best. The lucky devil. Which meant, of course, I also got to be the butt of every mudblood-lover, Gryffindor joke known to mankind, along with whatever species that lot happens to be. I thought it was pretty impressive that I lasted a whole month before I went to bunk with this maniac," he finished, nodding his head at James, who grinned awkwardly. No one ever knew what to say on the rare occasions when Sirius mentioned his rather dysfunctional family.

James sensed the oncoming awkward silence and picked the conversation back up with, "Yeah, well, you only came for Mum's cooking, anyway. The rest of the summer went more or less as it usually does. We generally brought anarchy to the Potter household, and played so much quidditch that no one will be able to catch up with us this year. That includes you, Burbank," he added, grinning at Cassie.

"We'll see whether or not you can out-fly the bludger I send your way, Potter," Cassie retorted, but still smiling good naturedly. "I doubt your practice prepared you for that. As for us, we just had the usual Burbank chaos. Too many people, not enough room, and total boredom." She looked expectantly at Lily, letting her take her turn.

"You all know what I did, since I'm the only one who actually wrote to you all this summer! Well, Remus, you were good about it as well," She acknowledged as an afterthought.

"It figures, the perfect little prefects are already banding together against us lower life forms," Sirius shook his head, mortified.

"Stop whining, Sirius," Remus replied. "My summer was the same as it always was; nothing to do but read, and write to you idiots, so it was deadly dull."

They turned to Peter, who sat up a little straighter and tried to remain casual. "Same here." Lily had never been quite as fond as Peter as she was of the others, who were like brothers to her. There was something about his beady eyes and the reverent manner with which he treated the boys that made her just a little wary. Even so, she'd gotten used to his presence over the years, accepting it if not always being overjoyed about it. He simply put her on her guard a little more than usual.

They were saved from having to think up another track of conversation when the compartment door slid open to reveal a rather plump witch pushing the trolley loaded with cakes and other junk food. Cassie, Sirius, and James instantly dropped the cards they'd been using for exploding snap, setting off a rather loud bang and a puff of smoke. When it they finally managed to wave it away, Sirius gave a snort of laughter at the sight of James' singed fringe, along with a cheerful, "Definitely an improvement! Not that that would take much..."

James just shot his partner-in-crime a warning look. He added under his breath to them all, "Don't forget about the Pumpkin Pasties."

Together, in typical hungry teenage style, they all loaded their compartment and emptied their pockets. They soon had a strange sort of picnic set up on the floor. "Have a jelly bean," Cassie said, offering the package to Sirius amiably. She smiled innocently, and he narrowed his eyes suspiciously, before selecting a large red one.

He sniffed it, muttered, "Strawberry," and took a bite. He chewed, swallowed, and then grinned. "For a minute there I thought you were trying to get your revenge with one of the more unusual flavors." He glanced around at the others, immediately recognized that they were all suppressing laughter, and then noted Cassie's overly angelic facial expression. The minute he glowered and then ducked out to run down the hall to the bathrooms, they all lost their self-control. Sirius had had the presence of mind and the experience to bring a hand up to cover his forehead where the word "Dork" flashed ostentatiously.

Sirius returned without his new and glamorous fashion statement. He worked admirably to keep a straight face as he rounded on Cassie and chided, "I suppose you think that really witty, don't you Burbank? What are you in, your first year?" When she finally managed to stop laughing, they returned to their miniature feast.

They managed to obtain a few moments of peace until a high pitched scream echoed down the train, and Remus and Lily immediately fulfilled their prefect duties by charging out to locate the source of the trouble. They didn't have to look too hard, however, as soon a door came bursting open and some terrified second year girls practically collapsed against them. Lily and a rather awkward Remus steadied them and then encouraged them to sit back down in their compartment. It took a full ten minutes before they had calmed down enough that Lily could decipher from their anxious babbling that when they had opened the package to their Pumpkin Pasties, they had found not food but live white mice, which were now loose somewhere on the train. Before long, shouts and cries erupted across the train, and all of the prefects had quite a time of tracking down and transfiguring back all of the mice.

When the pair finally stumbled back into their own compartment, thoroughly exhausted, James immediately judged his operation a success by the look of pure loathing both of them shot him. Around the time Lily guessed they had crossed the border into Scotland, it began to rain, and Lily curled up in her seat and began to plow her way through another of her textbooks for that school year. It was, after all, their OWL year, and she was determined to be well-prepared. Remus also buried himself in a book, and James withdrew a set of Gobstones from his bag, so yet another competitive tournament began. Lily and Remus continued to make their rounds every half hour or so, and eventually the boys left so that the girls could change into their school robes and vice-versa. The conversation ambled its way over a variety of topics, from more detailed summer exploits, to the coming school year, and most commonly, to heated Quidditch debates. The European cup had recently taken place, and although all of the British teams had been knocked out, that didn't stop them from comparing the various tactics and movements, and speculation over which ones the Gryffindor captain, Kristen Hooch, would force them all into in the following year. Her enthusiasm seemed to double over every summer, and regardless of the weather, Cassie, Sirius, and James would be dragged out to practice. As Lily continued to pick apart Miranda Goshawk's The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 5), it didn't seem like long at all before the train came to a screeching halt outside Hogsmeade stations.

The six of them once again hauled their trunks out and grabbed one of the carriages drawn by apparently invisible horses. Lily couldn't help but raise an eyebrow when she saw Cassie reach out to give thin air in front of the contraption a pat, but chose not to mention it. As she ignored her friends' usual squabbling and felt the carriage began to bounce along as it headed towards the Hogwarts gates, Lily felt, to some extent, as though she was finally returning home.

It wasn't as though she didn't have supportive, loving parents. Although they were muggles, and didn't always understand the way of life that she had come to take for granted, they were very enthusiastic and always eager to learn. They even encouraged her to keep in touch with the wizarding world over the summer, trying to ensure that she wouldn't be at a disadvantage because of her muggle parentage. Her sister Petunia, on the other hand, was a whole different story. Lily had always used to look up to her older sister, and marveled at the fact that they had once been close. When Lily's magic was discovered, Petunia had rejected Lily as a total freak, scarring her permanently and severing all of their bonds. She had barely spoken to Lily over the summer beyond when it was absolutely necessary, instead running off to spend time with her dull and porky boyfriend; Lily couldn't remember his name. On the other hand, the Gryffindors had been her honorary family since the moment she had first arrived five years ago, staring up in awe at the daunting castle. There was Sirius Black, a born trouble-maker, and who unabashedly flirted with anything in a skirt; given his charm and good looks, whoever it was usually flirted back. There was James, who was just as bad a prankster if not worse, could be unbearably arrogant, and was totally obsessed with Quidditch. Remus, who, if he didn't stop the others from going too far sometimes, at least was understanding enough to recognize when it was wrong. Peter, who, if a bit unnerving for Lily, was at least usually cheerful, and nearly always hungry. And then there was Cassie, who would always be more of a sister to her than Petunia ever would be again; Cassie was bad-tempered, a bit crazy, fiercely loyal, and the best friend that Lily could ever ask for.

Lily's musings were cut short by said friend's hand waving up and down in front of her face, alerting her that the carriage had stopped outside the large oak doors of Hogwarts. "Hello? This is Earth phoning Tiger-Lily... I repeat, this is Earth phoning Tiger-Lily!" Cassie then turned to James and, due to the puzzled look on his face, launched into an explanation of what a phone was and why muggles used them, which, of course, led to their usual arguments about electricity, batteries, phones, and other muggle devices.

Lily just laughed, ignoring the two of them. As they trudged through the light drizzle towards the castle, Remus asked, "So, looking forward to your first year as a prefect?"

"I don't know, really. Hanging out with you lot, I won't be able to do my job without ratting out on you all every other minute."

Remus chuckled. "I see your point. Still, if I can manage, no doubt you will.

Here James cut in, "Aww, come on, Remus, you'll be fine," and then turned back to his ever so eloquent argument with Cassie.

"Is not! They've been really inventive, considering they don't have magic!"

"Nah, it's just stupid!"

"It is not!"

"It is too!"

"It is not!"

"It is too!"

When Sirius finally shoved his way in between the two of them, Lily rolled her eyes. As always, it was going to be a very long year...