An: Second chapter edited. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I still do not own The Marauders. Now that that's over and done with, on with the story!

Chapter 2

Meeting the Potters and Shopping

When the door opened it revealed a kind looking lady with auburn hair, some grey streaks could be spotted here and there.

"James, why are you knocking on the door?" She asked, and I guessed that this was Mrs Potter.

"Well…I forgot the keys," James said looking down at his shoes like they were the most interesting thing in the world, and something, mainly Mrs. Potter's facial expression, told me that this happened pretty often. The woman looked at the other boys, shaking her head in obvious amusement, and stopped her gaze at me.

"And who might this be, a new friend of yours?" she questioned, while smiling kindly at me.

"Hello, Mrs Potter, my name is Charlotte Reese," I answered before any of the boys could open their big mouths.

"Yeah, mum we met her in the park, uum…could she stay here because she has nowhere else to go," James said really fast so I barely heard what he said. Mrs Potter raised an amused eyebrow at her son and asked;

"What do you mean nowhere else to go, you do have a family don't you?" Her eyes left her son and turned to me again.

"Well yes, but my step dad threw me out, because I turned seventeen a week ago, and he doesn't like me so he said it was time for me to start taking care of myself…I don't need a place to live, James you didn't have to ask that, I can find somewhere else to stay…I don't want to intrude," I spluttered a red tinge on my cheeks.

"Dear child! Of course you can stay here, come in come in and I'll tell the house elf to prepare a room for you." Okay so I lied a little bit I thought, but half of it was true, since I did have a stepfather who hated me and wanted me gone, but I wasn't supposed to be gone until next month. The marauders just looked at me astonished.

"I didn't know you could lie so well."

"I didn't lie, well I didn't lie about most of it, my step dad is going to kick me out next month," I said trailing of.

"Why didn't you tell me any of this, when I asked you about your life earlier," James asked with a worried expression.

"Well, I didn't want to dwell on my problems so I just skipped that part." They didn't ask any more since it was quite obvious that I really didn't want to talk about it.

When we went inside and I was astonished, the place was huge, and even more beautiful than on the outside. We were in the hall that had light blue walls and there were two staircases going up in front of us, one door to the right and two doors to the left.

"I'm so going to get lost here," I mumbled and the guys sniggered at me. When we entered the kitchen I couldn't hold back a gasp, it was huge! And very beautiful and tastefully decorated everything went in black, white and light yellow, and even if it was a lot of black and white it still looked very warm and homey.

"Your home is really beautiful Mrs Potter."

"Thank you Charlotte," she said, while she was taking out plates and glasses using her wand. Let's just say I was astonished, I mean I had never seen magic before in my life, well at least not magic like this. I mean sure a card appearing here and there always managed to amaze me but this was something else entirely. When Mrs. Potter left us to eat I asked the boys sitting next to me, throwing in food like they hadn't eaten in a year;

"Guys, what will we do if I'm still here when you have to go to Hogwarts, I mean I'm not magic…not that I know of anyway."

"Are you sure you're not a witch?" I rolled my eyes at Peter's stupid question.

"Yes Peter, I think I would have noticed if I were," I said sarcastically.

"Well we don't know that, I mean you're in a different…eeerr…world or something now, why don't you test my wand and see what happens?" Remus said, handing me his wand. I looked at it, and then shrugged and waved it causing James glass to crack.

"Shit! I'm so sorry James!" He just laughed and said;

"Seems like you are a witch after all, well that means that the Hogwarts problem is solved."

"Yeah I guess," my sentence was cut in half by a huge yawn.

"I think we should go to bed, it's late and were all tired," Remus said, and James, Sirius and I shared looks and then said together;

"Yes mum!" And then we all burst out laughing like maniacs. Remus just looked at us with a confused expression on his face and said;

"You three just met! How in Merlin's name did you manage that?"

"That's for you to wonder about and us to know," Sirius said, tapping his nose knowingly. Remus just looked at him weirdly and said;

"That's not the right saying Sirius."

"Who cares Moony," was Sirius reply. Then we went upstairs, and once again the thought; I am going to get lost here, entered my mind. When we got to a corridor, James explained that his room was diagonally across from mine, Sirius room was across from my room, Remus room next to mine, and Peter's was around the corner. I just nodded a little bit confused about his explanation, but at least I understood which room was mine. And then, right when I was about to open the door, it hit me.

"Eerm, guys…could one of you like, borrow me a t-shirt or something to sleep in?" I said and felt myself blushing.

"Yeah sure, you can take my old Quidditch team shirt, it's too small for me anyways," Sirius said going in to his room. We heard him cursing and ruffling around in there, and then he appeared with a red Gryffindor t-shirt.

"Thanks, good night guys."

"Night Char," they sniggered as they heard me cursing at them for the use of my new nickname; I honestly thought that they might have forgotten about it. The room that I was assigned was like the rest of the house; huge. It had light yellow walls, and well it was mainly decorated in yellow. I looked around and saw that I had a balcony with a beautiful view over the garden, a walk-in closet that was empty and my own bathroom totally decorated in red. I could get used to this I thought, giggling to myself. I then undressed and picked up the shirt that Sirius had given me. It went to the middle of my thighs and it was surprisingly comfortable, and I thought that it would do to sleep in. after that I went to the queen size bed and noticed how soft the sheets and cover were. The moment my head hit the big pillows I fell asleep.

~o~o~o~

The next morning I was sure that someone, or something, had woken me up but I couldn't see anyone. So I ignored it, but then it suddenly felt like something was crawling on me. So as a normal person would do, I looked at the bed covers. And then I screamed there was a huge rat sitting on my chest! So I screamed and threw the covers off me and the rat flew right in to the wall with a "thump" sound and then fell to the floor and just laid there. I jumped of the bed and headed for the door, the bloody door was locked, and I cursed and looked behind my back at the rat, still lying on the floor. Then I ran to the bathroom door, locked too.

"You have to be kidding me! I'm locked in a room with a bloody rat…it was in my bed…eew…oh my god the friggin rat can fly!" When I came to this conclusion I heard laughter behind me and there stood, who else but, James and Sirius, and at the same time that I saw them the rat moved a little making me scream and jump on James shouting;

"AAAAAH! It's a rat in here and it's trying to kill me!" James almost fell over but kept on his feet asking;

"So you came to the conclusion that a flying rat is trying to kill you?"

"YES! It was in my bed and it was trying to smother me in my sleep, I'm sure of it! Please take me out of here, I'm deathly afraid of rats just get me out, or at least kill the rat!" They just looked at me and started laughing even more.

"What's so bloody funny, get me out instead, I hate rats, please." About now I was hyperventilating and practically begging for James to get me out, since I am deathly afraid of rats. Don't ask why, because I don't know why, I just am. They finally saw that I really was scared and Sirius then went to the rat, still lying on the floor.

"What did you do to him?"

"It flew over there when I threw the covers off, why is it dead? Of please say its dead…"

"It's not dead…" I groaned.

"…and its Peter! So it's not bad that it's not dead."

"It's Peter? This was a prank!"

"Yeaaah…"

"I'm going to kill you, do you know how scared I was."

"Well we didn't know you were so afraid of rats," Sirius said and then turned Peter back, and well let's just say he had a rather huge lump on his face. When that was solved I realized I was still only wearing a t-shirt so I ushered the guys out and got dressed. When I finally found my way to the kitchen I apologised to Peter for sort of throwing him into the wall, but I really thought it was his own fault.

"Are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday? "James suddenly asked.

"Well that was random, and yeah I didn't really have any time to pack so I don't have any other clothes smartass." At this moment Mrs. Potter came into the kitchen and said;

"Well you must go shopping then."

"Yes, but that will take a couple of weeks, I have to find some sort of job first so that I can get some money."

"Nonsense you can borrow money from us."

"Oh, I couldn't…"

"Sure you can Char! You can pay us back later, come on lets go right now," James exclaimed with a huge grin on his face, then he dragged me outside while the others followed. We were at walking distance from muggle London Centrum. When we arrived I was immediately dragged into a clothing shop, which actually had really nice clothes in it. I started picking out different shirts, pants, skirts, tops and lots of other stuff. The guys ran around, or Sirius and James ran around, grabbing stuff and throwing them at me to try on. And well the things they picked, surprisingly was my size and they didn't look too bad. When we got out of there we had 4 bags with new clothes, and I was ushered into a toilet to change into some new clothes. I emerged a couple of minutes later wearing tight jeans, a pink tank top with a black shirt over that. I looked down at my worn out sneakers, and we decided to get shoes. Now I had 4 bags of clothes and 2 bags of shoes, soon I would ad a bag with accessories to that. Then the guys wanted to follow me into the underwear store, but I stopped them and showed them a muggle sports shop instead. When we were finished I had the total of 10 bags, filled with different stuff. Then Sirius exclaimed that he wanted ice cream so we went for ice cream.

"Could I have five chocolate ice creams, please," I said since I had been voted to get them. The guy behind the counter smiled at me and shouted for some other guy to start making them.

"My name is Josh," he said smiling

"Im Charlotte, or Char as those morons over there call me," I said smiling as well. We both looked at the marauders, who were having a wild conversation about something.

"You know the marauders?" He asked, a surprised tone coating his voice, and I whipped my head around to look at him, his eyes went big when he noticed what he had said.

"How do you know that they're called the marauders?"

"Eerm…they go to my school."

"Oh so you go to Hogwarts too! I might start there this autumn, not sure yet but I might…"

"Wicked! So you're a witch to then?"

"Well yeah, something like that…yeah," I said smiling and then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said;

"What's taking so long, oh hey I know you." It was Sirius and he was now squinting his eyes at Josh, trying to remember who he was. I couldn't help to giggle and Josh laughed with me and said;

"Hi Sirius, I'm Josh, I'm a Ravenclaw in your year."

"Oh yeah," Sirius said and I could hear that he still had no idea of who the bloke was.

"So what about the ice creams?" he continued with a hand gesture. Josh turned around and gave Sirius three ice creams and me two. Sirius thanked him and went away I just rolled my eyes at him.

"So ill see you at Hogwarts then? Or maybe you could come by some day?" Josh said, I smiled at him and said;

"Yeah, I'll come by some day, do you work here everyday?"

"Yeah pretty much, see you around."

"Okay, bye." And with that I turned and went to give Remus his ice cream. The guys asked me about Josh, I just laughed and told them that they should know more about him, since they went to school with him, than me. But they just shrugged and then forgot about it. When we arrived at the Potter mansion Mrs Potter told us to get ready for dinner, we did as we were told and was to meet again in the dining room in an hour.