Cherry:

Typical Hufflepuff behavior. Some girls actually ask their boyfriends if they're cheating or assume they are and scream at them in the most crowded and humiliating place possible. Not spineless Hufflepuff girls. No, what do they do? They bloody hire someone to go undercover to see if their boyfriend's a lying, cheating sack of shit so as to not ruffle any feathers. Personally, if I even had an inkling that my boyfriend (not that I can be bothered to have one) was sleeping around I wouldn't bother with diplomacy. I'd castrate the bastard with a rusty set of pliers and then let a pack of wild dogs devour him while he bled to death. With that said it was probably a good idea that I wasn't dating Sirius Black for his and my sake. After all, that bastard wasn't worth going to Azkaban for.

Ali Marren. Hufflepuff prefect, friends with the Queen Bitch (also known as Lily Evans, the Head Girl who just happened to irk my chain more than any other student at Hogwarts), good grades, good social standing, good family, good everything. Well, except for a good sex life. When it came to that she was seriously lacking. Anyways, I could see why such a good girl might be a little wary of crossing my path, proclaimed bad girl and overall delinquent. I was surprised she even approached me considering that one of her best mates hated me. It wasn't until I heard her proposition that I even realized why she was bothering to risk her precious reputation being seen with me.

She looked completely out of her element when she came to me. I was standing outside the castle, feeling bored as usual. I was considering to stealing Professor McGonagall's knickers again for some entertainment. Last time I'd stolen then I'd let her panic over where they had disappeared to for three days. She immediately actually blamed the Marauders. She gave them three months detention without even a speck of evidence. Let's just say she was surprised when her knickers ended up hanging from the Great Hall when all four of the Marauders were in detention. It was about time McGonagall had another panic attack.

"Are – Are you busy?" Marren questioned, looking intimidated. Honestly, there should be a legal limit on how wholesome someone can appear. She was like a family Christmas special, one of those that are so damn cheery and naïve and "the world is made of cupcakes, rainbows and kittens". Merlin, those kinds of people give me a headache.

"Can't you see I'm curing cancer?" I retorted, looking at her boredly. What could she possibly want anyways?

"I – erm -" she stumbled over her words uncomfortably, fumbling nervously with her hands.

I rolled my eyes, "What is it, Marren? Evans send you to give me a hard time?"

She shook her eyes, her eyes widening innocently. "No – I need your help?"

I raised an eyebrow. I couldn't believe my ears. Ali Marren was asking me of all people for help? What could she possibly want from me? Cupcake recipes? "What?"

"I said I need your help," she repeated herself in a slightly louder and more confident voice.

"Did Evans set you up for this?" I questioned suspiciously, crossing my arms in front of me. I didn't trust the Queen Bitch any more than I could throw her. It would be just like her to try to entrap me and then give me detention for the rest of the year because of it. Honestly, I don't see why anyone made her Head Girl. She's like a power driven dictator who if they like you they might always like you but if they hate you it's bound to be permanent.

She shook her head, "No, I really need your help. Lily doesn't even know I'm here and I hope she never finds out. This is something I want to keep strictly between you and me."

"What about your little boyfriend?" I inquired. It was common knowledge that she was dating Sirius Black. When he asked her out half of his fan girls cried. Generally he only dated for fun. A snog here, a shag there, something to cure his boredom. Hm… maybe I could learn something from him. If I had a boy toy I wouldn't nearly be as bored.

"Especially not him," she shook her head again, her black curls whipping around and smacking her in her face. "He's kind of what I need help with."

I rolled my eyes. Every once in a while I had girls come up to me to ask me for my help with their boyfriends. "Sorry, Marren, but I'm not in the sex advice business. Go bark up another tree."

"What? No, no, definitely not. I don't need advice about… that. I need someone to help me find out if he's… faithful or not," she told me.

My mouth made a small "o" shape but no sound came out. Black's fidelity was generally always questioned when it came to his relationships. As I said before, his usual relationships were more for fun so there was less of an urgency to really know if he was fooling around. There were generally minimum emotions and attachments formed so most of the girls he dated tend to cast a blind eye to it. "How could I possibly help you find that out?"

"You're more the kind of girl he goes for," she pointed out with an uneasy shrug. "If he were going to cheat on me with anybody it'd be someone like you."

All of a sudden it all clicked. It was obvious what she wanted me to do even if she was too much of a Hufflepuff to say it out loud. "You want me to try to make him cheat on you."

She threw her hands up defensively, "No, not exactly. I just want to you to – you know – tempt him a bit. Let him make the first move but still… see if he'll take the bait."

Well, maybe for a Hufflepuff that was a bit less pansy than I'd expected. "And why should I help you?" I asked indifferently. "I personally don't see why I should bother. I can't care less about your relationship. It seems like a lot of work and not a big reward. Why don't you go ask one of his bloody fan girls? They'd jump at the chance to get to try to seduce Black."

She shook her head vehemently, "Can you imagine what would happen if the fan girls found out Sirius and I might be having relationship troubles? Besides, if one of those girls found out the entire school would know by breakfast tomorrow."

She was right about that. The fan girls were the worst. They were like balls of estrogen that happened to like to gossip like old ladies over anything that happened to do with Black. His name caused half of them to sigh and the other half to squeal. It honestly made me ashamed to even be the same specie as them. "Right, so that answers one of my questions but you still haven't given me a reason to help."

"Erm – I could try to get Lily off your back for a while," she suggested hopefully. "I know she and McGonagall have kind of been after you for your hair color and some other things for a while now."

I looked down at my cherry red hair. It was true. McGonagall had been after me for my "unnatural hair" because of the "blatant dress code violation" it presented. It'd been since Second Year that she'd been after me for it and two years since Queen Bitch joined the crusade so I doubted that they'd finally have a breakthrough and get Dumbledore to agree to force me to go back to having blond hair.

I tried to look at it from another aspect. Trying to tempt Black into cheating on Marren could be entertaining. This way it wasn't like when Black gave into his normal cheating antics that his girlfriend was going to slap me over it considering she was the one who orchestrated it. Black had always made me curious. There was something about the fact he was a fellow pureblooded reject and rebel that peeked my interest. I'd never been particularly friendly with him. After all, his best mate's fascination with the Queen Bitch made it nearly impossible for him to even have civil small talk when we passed each other in the corridor. And besides, the Queen Bitch was slowly working her way up to dating Potter. It was an inevitable thing that most of us had seen coming for years. If Potter's best mate was spending extra time with me it'd probably really brass her off. Well, I guess that's what we call a "win-win" situation. "Okay, I'll do it."

A/N: This is xyellowconverse's chapter, just for any of you who happened to forget that I, Evan, write all of Cherry's POV and Javalon14 writes all of Ali's. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and will leave us a review telling us what you think so far.

Evan