Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter Three

Snogging and Embarrassments

Catherine Potter made her way back to the Gryffindor common room. She had just had a brilliant snog session with Rodolphus Lestrange, a sixth year Slytherin. It had ended with Professor McGonagall giving them each a detention. That had been the only bad part of the experience; she could barely suppress a shudder at the look on McGonagall's face. Not only did McGonagall give her the disapproving look reserved for snoggers, but she had genuinely looked shocked at Carrie's behaviour. Not that Carrie was in any way a "nice girl," it was just that snogging Slytherins wasn't something that most Gryffindor girls did, especially now with the tension between the two houses so high.

But that was part of the fun of it. She knew that it would make her brother mad. James hated Slytherins with a passion. If he found out that she had been in a broom closet with one for over a half an hour snogging, no telling what he'd do. Hell, if he found out she'd been with any boy in a closet he'd freak out. He was incredibly protective of her. So rebelling against him always filled her with extreme satisfaction. That and the fact that Bellatrix Black had her eye on Rodolphus forever and Carrie had snagged him away from her. Well, for the time being anyway.

Carrie had absolutely no plans to start dating him. He was by no means suitable boyfriend material. When it came to boyfriends, Carrie had very very high expectations. It was practically a little girl image of "the perfect guy": he would be handsome and romantic, totally sweeping her off her feet and treating her like a princess. Perhaps this explained why Carrie had never had many boyfriends (one to be exact). Either that, or James had scared them all away. Carrie's love life had comprised of secretive, meaningless snogs with boys whom she was simply attracted to, never actually liked. Rodolphus was one of these boys: he was hot, made even more attractive by the fact that he was her enemy's crush, but never the kind of boy she would consider dating.

Carrie sighed as she walked up to the Fat Lady's portrait. She attempted to straighten up her disheveled appearance a bit before she went in; she did not feel like a confrontation with James right now. Her long, black hair (which was similar to her brother's in color and texture, except for the fact that his stood up every which way, while her's lay flat and smooth) was all mussed up. She combed her fingers through it. She then began to adjust her robes and had only just noticed that her blouse was buttoned wrong, and was attempting to button it back up properly when the portrait door swung open. Sirius Black and Remus Lupin emerged from the common room, deep in conversation. They stopped at the sight of her. Carrie blushed when she realized that her shirt was halfway undone, and that they both seemed to be staring.

"Er... Hi boys!" She squeaked as she attempted to pull her robes over her shirt.

"Everything alright Carrie?" Remus finally managed after a long, awkward pause. Sirius said nothing, just looked at her with an odd expression on his face. Damn she thought now he's going to go blab to James. Sirius told James everything and he was sure to tell him about his sister's suspiciously disheveled appearance. Remus she could trust, but not Sirius.

This was made ten times more embarrassing by the fact that she had had a huge crush on Sirius since she was seven years old. And now he was staring at her as if she were some stupid slut. She almost burst into tears on the spot, but gathered her strength and responded to Remus.

"I...I'm fine. I just noticed my shirt was buttoned wrong. I was trying to fix it," she managed lamely. They both looked slightly skeptical at this and she noticed that Remus was eyeing her neck. Oh no. Did Rodolphus leave a mark there? she thought, her heart sinking. James would definitely get a report about this and now they both thought she was a liar on top of that. "Er, bye!" and she left as quickly as she could, still clutching her robe around her body.

As she rushed into the common room, she bumped right into Lily Evans. Once she realized who it was she snapped "Watch it, Bitch!" and scrambled upstairs to the girl's dormitory, leaving a red-faced Lily in the common room.

"Oh, Merlin! Char, you will not believe the afternoon I've had!" she exclaimed to her best friend Charlotte Lovegood, as she burst into the dormitory. Charlotte was lying lazily on her bed, flipping through an issue of Witch Weekly, but immediately straightened at Carrie's entrance.

"What?" She seemed to take note of her friend's appearance, then exclaimed "Carrie I told you Rodolphus was no good! What did he do?"

"No, no. That went fine. Except for when we were interrupted by McGonagall, of course." Charlotte gasped.

"Oh no, what'd she say? Detention?"

"Yeah. But that's not the worst part."

"There's more? What, did James find out?"

"Ugh, no! But he will!" Carrie went on to explain the situation with Sirius and Remus to Charlotte, who, like a good friend, gasped in all the right places and ended up consoling her.

"Don't worry Carrie, Remus'll probably tell Sirius to be quiet about it, you know how he hates for trouble to start. And Sirius was probably just ogling you anyway, he always does that to girls–"

"I wish! No, Char, he totally looked like he was going to be sick!"

"Well, no wonder! Your neck is covered in love bites, sweetie." Charlotte pointed, as Carrie groaned.

"Oh! I thought so. They were staring at it. I must look like a mess."

"Only a little."

"Sirius'll never like me now!"

"Well Carrie, he is known to go after slutty girls, so maybe you have a bigger chance with him now!"

"Charlotte!"

"Just kidding!"

Their conversation was interrupted as Lily Evans walked in, rolling her eyes. Apparently she had heard some of it. As usual she went off towards her bed ignoring them. Carrie, feeling the need to take out her anger on someone, started in with Lily.

"What, Evans? Our conversation is too shallow for the likes of you?" she said, challenging Lily. Not that Lily ever really took the bait, but it seemed that this time she was.

"What would make you think that?" she asked, pseudo-innocently, as she rummaged through her trunk.

"Oh, don't give me that! You think you're better than all of us!" she said, unreasonably.

"You just never stop bitching, Potter do you? Leave me alone, and go back to telling the tragic story of your life!" Appearing to have retrieved what she needed from her trunk, Lily left without any further comments.

Carrie only recovered after Lily slammed the door. "Can you believe her! Why didn't I throw something at her! She just knows how to make my day more difficult!" she complained loudly. Charlotte nodded sympathetically. Charlotte also was not particularly fond of Evans, but no where near as much as Catherine, who seemed to dislike Evans from Day 1. As far as Charlotte knew, Carrie had met Lily long before Hogwarts even started, which was puzzling, considering that Lily was a muggleborn and most muggleborns had never ventured into the world of magic until their Hogwarts letter arrived. Lily seemed to be an exception. Charlotte had never quite heard the details of how they met, but she did know it was a sensitive topic for Carrie since it related to her mother, whom she never discussed.

"Oh, wait till Camilla hears about this. Imagine the nerve of that mu–" Carrie stopped. Charlotte knew what she had been about to say, and was surprised because Carrie usually never used the word. Carrie came from a family that frowned upon racism and any form of discrimination, and therefore never used words like "mudblood."

Charlotte did not show her slight surprise and responded, "Yeah, Camilla's been pissed off at Evans since that silencing charm incident." If anyone disliked Evans more than Carrie it was Camilla. Evans was really the only person able to stand up to Camilla, so of course Camilla took issue with her.

"Merlin, Char! What am I going to do when James confronts me! You know what he did last time? He freaked out when he found out I'd been kissing Albert Davies and I told him to mind his own freaking business, and he wrote to DAD! I don't know what he has against me being with other boys, I mean I don't interrogate him about his girlfriends! And of course Dad is on his side. Oh I think I'll skip dinner and stay up here, I don't want to deal with him."

For once in her life, Charlotte was thankful that the only sibling she had was a much younger brother who would, thankfully, enter Hogwarts safely after she left. She comforted her friend a little bit more, then went back to her Witch Weekly.

A/N: Thank you for reading, if you've made it this far. I hope you like it and don't forget to review on your way out! Let me know what you think of it. Thanks, Cheeriogirl.