Hi!

I would really like your opinion: Do you think I should draw out the story longer, or should I try and wrap it up sooner? If I wrapped it up sooner, there'd still be at least another three chapters more. Please review and tell me what you think!

Hope you like this chapter!

Rachel

Chapter Three

The next day I woke up feeling rather grumpy. I'd had a horrible night sleep, not because the bed was uncomfortable, or the fact that Ellie talks in her sleep, but because for some reason what Potter said kept going through my mind. Had he changed? Was I the only person who didn't see it? What must Potter think of me either always getting in fights with him, or ignoring him? And why did I even care what Potter thought of me? I concluded that it must be the fact that Potter was actually serious for a change, rather than goofing off, that made me think of him so much. It still didn't change the fact that he was a git.

Ellie must have sensed my bad mood, for as we were brushing our teeth before breakfast, she suggested told me that this house had the best banisters for sliding on. Sliding down banisters always puts me in a good mood.

A few minutes later, I positioned myself on the top of the banister, grinned at Ellie, who grinned back, and then let myself slide down. The banister was wide, and smooth, and I slid down fast. I half screamed to Ellie (who was riding on the banister opposite me) "When does the banister end? At the landing? Or does it go all the way down?" She yelled back. "It goes all the way down!". As we reached the end of the stairway I let out a whoop, prepared to go vaulting off into space, trying to land on my feet, but ending up more on my butt. Instead, as I vaulted off into space, I landed in a pair of strong arms, and looked into a pair of surprised eyes. Potters eyes to be exact.

"I knew you couldn't resist me" he smirked. I glared at him.

"Let me down."

"Whatever you say. Let me just remind you though, that I wasn't the one who threw herself at me."

"Don't blame her" another familiar male voice cut in "Sooner or later, all girls end up in the arms of James Potter."

"Sod off Black." That was Ellie who had been watching the whole thing in amusement. What good was she when I needed her? All she could say was "Sod off Black"?

"Yep. It's true. I'm a chick magnet." James Potter and his best friend Sirius Black grinned at each other.

"You may be a chick magnet. But you're nothing compared to the great Padfoot." Another grin was exchanged between Potter and Black. What is with those guys?

"Excuse me for interrupting your male egos, but would you please let me down!" I said angrily. Potter gently set me down. I re-arranged my clothes, which had gotten kind of rumpled, and ran a hand through my hair.

"Thank you. Next time though, you had better set me down right away, or I'm going to hex you all the way to Africa, Potter."

"Thanks for the warning." Potter laughed. "I would like to ask though, do you have anything against my name?"

"Didn't I just say your name?"

"Well, you said my last name, but my actual name is James. And since we're sharing a house for the summer, don't you think it'd be easier to be on a first-name basis?"

"Fine. If you're always going to be making such a big deal about it, I'll call you James."

"I never thought I'd see the day, where Lily actually consented to acknowledge that James exists." Black –I mean, Sirius said in a stage whisper to Ellie. "What's next? Is James going to propose, and Lily says yes?" I rolled my eyes and walked into the kitchen.

"So I was thinking-"

"Uh-oh. Better call the doctor." James glared at Ellie.

"I said, before being so rudely interrupted, that I was thinking that we should have one of our dinners together tonight or tomorrow night."

"Do we have to?" I asked.

"Yes. And besides, we need to go into town and stock up on food anyway, so we can get some ingredients to make a nice dinner."

"And this way, we'll be free to do whatever we want on the weekend." Sirius winked at James.

"I don't even want to know, what you two do on the weekends." Ellie said disgustedly.

It was a couple weeks later and we were all sitting around the kitchen table eating cereal. We (Ellie and I) had managed to avoid James and Sirius during that time. We had swam, read crappy romance novels, met with friends, and had just generally had a relaxing few weeks, without having to associate with our housemates. Yes, I know. House Mates. Sirius had –rather rudely- invited himself to stay with us. On the bright side, it meant they were able to entertain themselves. We had of course, spent our obligatory time with them, but never more than necessary.

"Good idea. Let's have the dinner tonight. Why don't we go into town in about an hour."

"Aren't you a bossy little thing." Sirius said to Ellie.

"Yep, I am." In the small amounts of time during the week when we (Ellie and I) had been together with James and Sirius, Sirius and Ellie had been doing what was, shockingly close to flirting. They had a bunch of little mock tiffs at each other, always ending up with them both mock pouting. Getting quite annoying actually. I was going to have to double check to make sure Ellie didn't have a crush on Sirius. I had asked her if she did on the day he moved in with us, and she had said "no". But… If she did….. I'd be in trouble. For that matter, Ellie would be in trouble. Imagine having a crush on Sirius! Imagine dating Sirius! It'd be horrid. I shuddered just thinking of it.

"Are you okay?" James, seeing me shudder, asked me.

"Yeah. So it's a plan then. We'll meet in an hour, to take the bus into town." Yesterday Ellie and I had discovered there was a bus system going into town. We were set on trying it out.

"Why do we have to take the bus? There's this modern invention called the car. It's a lot faster, and doesn't involve walking to and from the bus stop. There's also this thing called apparating. It comes in handy on days like today." Sirius whined.

"Quit whining. You could use the exercise." Ellie told Sirius.

"Hey! I'll have you know, that I exercise all the time! I swim tons, and on occasion I lift weights!" Sirius protested.

"Yeah, yeah. We'll put you to the test on the way home. You can carry the shopping bags."

"No fair!"

"C'mon you two. Let's start getting ready." I cut in.

An hour later

We got on the bus, and it took us into town. Dellilia was actually more of a village than a town. But it did have a few good stores and restaurants. We had already staked out our favorite restaurant called Marty's. It was a southern cooking restaurant that had the best pancakes in the world. There was also a good Chinese/Japanese restaurant named Kerei, which means beautiful in Japanese. This town, while inhabiting some muggles, also had a large quantity of wizarding folk. When we got into town, we headed straight to the Blue Dolphin café. Just before leaving we had gotten a call from some friends, saying they were going to drop by. We had just sat down when a guy with blue eyes and sandy colored hair, a girl with dirty blond hair and blue eyes, appeared with a "CRACK". They looked around quickly and spotting us, started heading over to where we were sitting. Surprisingly no muggles noticed the loud sound.

"Whadya do? Put a un-noticing spell on yourselves?" I asked Maya as I hugged her.

"That's exactly what we did. Or actually Remus did. I've never quite gotten the hang of that spell." Remus and Maya were siblings. They had a rather good relationship; they almost never fought. Which was a pretty grand achievement if you asked me. It was more than I could achieve with my sister Petunia anyway…. Petunia and me were…. How should I say it? Less than friends.

While not wildly popular, I was friends with a bunch of people at Hogwarts. My closest friends however were Ellie, Maya, and Cassie.

"So. How's it going sharing a house?" Remus asked his blue eyes looking significantly at James and then at me.

"As well as can possibly be expected." Ellie answered. "But you have no idea what it's like sharing a house with those two."

"Hey!" James and I protested at the same time.

"We haven't been all that bad." I said.

"And we don't fight all that much." James added.

"Actually, about not knowing what it's like to share a house with them… We were actually wondering if…" Remus hesitated.

"We were wondering if we could spend a couple of days with you. Or maybe a couple of weeks." Maya cut in impatiently.

"See, our parents haven't exactly been getting along too well…. There's a lot of tension at home." Remus said this in a quiet voice.

"That'd be great! The more the merrier I always say!" Sirius clapped Remus on the back.

"Um. Shouldn't you be asking Ellie, the owner of the house?" Maya asked. Every looked at Ellie.

"Of course you can come! As long as you and Lily are here, why don't we invite Cassie?"

"Yeah! That's a great idea!" Maya exclaimed. "Oh wait. I just remembered. Her friend is visiting isn't he? Her particularly good looking friend." Maya added thoughtfully.

"Yes, I do believe her friend is staying with her. Her particularly good looking friend." I said with a small smile.

"Who's staying with Cassie?" asked Sirius's confused voice.

"Jon. Remember him? We met him over Christmas last year."

"Oh yeah. He was that bloke that ended up snogging Snape's sister for a bet…" Sirius said thoughtfully. "Personally, I wouldn't snog Snape's sister for a million galleons…."

"Hello! Would you like to order anything?" the cheerful voice of the waitress said cutting off any other conversation going in that direction (a fact which I was glad of).

"Yeah. Lily'd like a glass of peach lemonade, Maya'd like some sweetened ice tea, Ellie'd like a iced decaff coffee –believe me, that girl does not need anymore caffeine-"

"Hey!" Ellie protested.

"Sirius would like a beer, Remus would like a iced latte, and I would like a Carmel, chocolate, mint, fudge, sorbet, ice-cream. Got all of that?"

The waitress looked up from where she was writing super fast, and nodded. "I'll be with your orders in a minute!" and then rushed off to help another customer.

"Is Peter going to come?" I asked Remus. Remus was the only Marauder that I could stand. I actually found him quite nice, and enjoyed talking to him. Like me, Remus was a prefect.

"I don't know. I haven't heard from him in a while. I do know he was going on some sort of vacation with his mother. To Romania maybe? Sorta a strange place to go if you ask me. What'll probably happen is he'll drop in and be insulted that we didn't personally hound him down from wherever he was and plead that he come back with us."

I laughed. "That does sound like something Peter would do."

As we sipped our drinks –or in James' case, swallowed whole a carton of ice cream, we discussed sleeping and living arrangements.

"I think my bedroom has space enough for Maya and Cassie to sleep in." Ellie said.

"If it doesn't, or even if it does and we decide we want to, the walls connecting my bedroom to the bedroom next door can be opened up making it a bigger room."

"That's a great idea!" I exclaimed.

"And we can do the same to the room next to James and Sirius." At our amazed looks Ellie explained. "Every once in a while there'll be a family reunion and the house was designed to accommodate all our relatives. It also comes in handy for having parties, etc."

"Hey! That's a great idea! We should throw a party!" Sirius said in sudden inspiration. "I'll bet we could get everybody over second year in Griffindoor, tons of people from Hufflepuff, a few people from Ravenclaw, no people from Slytherin, my friends that go to Durmstrong, and all the teens from a hundred mile range! It'd be an awesome party!"

"You know what Sirius? As tempting as that sounds, I don't think that's a great idea. Sorry. I hate to disappoint you.." Ellie patted Sirius on the arm.

"Please? What if it was a smaller party? I promise to help clean up?"

"We'll see. But I'm not promising anything!" Ellie warned when Sirius made a triumphant face. Sirius hastily made a properly meek expression.

"That's better!" Ellie laughed.

I was seriously –no pun intended-, going to have to make sure she didn't have a crush on him.

Special thanks to all reviewers! It means a lot to me!

Also, how many of you have finished the Sixth Harry Potter book? I did, and it was soo sad! But in case you haven't read it yet, I won't tell any more. I really liked it though!