Author's Note: Oh look. Another one. There's more coming. Like. A lot more. All go. All weekend. You'd better believe it.

Five Small Steps To Ruin Your Reputation

Step One

Set Yourself Up For A Fall

The girl was crying to herself, as quietly as she possibly could. She sat hunched over her desk, at which she sat alone, as if determined to be inconspicuous, fearful of attracting attention from her peers. Long, greasy, unwashed waves of golden blonde hair hung about her face, strategically placed to conceal her tear-stained cheeks and puffy red eyes, while yet another tear dripped from the end of her nose and landed on her parchment, forming miserable blots which spoiled her half-heartedly scrawled notes. She permitted herself the softest of sniffs only when the teacher was speaking, so as to go unheard, and so, to the majority of her classmates, and indeed, to her teacher, Marlene McKinnon remained a creature of no real interest, which was just as she wanted.

The majority, unfortunately, was not equal to all, and for the two young ladies who sat directly across from Marlene McKinnon that day, the petite and normally immaculately groomed Gryffindor was the hot topic of the day, as crying females in classrooms were often known to be.

"I actually feel really sorry for her," murmured one of the gossiping girls, an almost abnormally tall young lady named Beatrice Booth who, like Marlene, was also hiding her face behind her hair. Unlike Marlene, whose hair was blonde and wavy, Beatrice's mane was painfully pin-straight, uncommonly long, and a rather unusual shade of brown, akin to an eggshell. Also unlike Marlene, who was merely attempting to hide from the world, Beatrice was using her hair as a curtain, from behind which she could shamelessly gawk at her classmate. "I hope Flitwick doesn't notice and point it out in front of the whole class."

Beatrice's tone, pitying as it was, was more of an indication that she would rather have liked for Marlene's silent sobbing to be discovered by all, for drama, embarrassing as it something could be, was always more interesting than the monotony of class.

Sitting next to Beatrice at their table, Lily Evans was making no such attempt to hide her frequent glances in Marlene McKinnon's direction, being of the opinion that people who made a spectacle of themselves in public places could hardly expect to be allowed such luxuries as privacy. She turned her eyes, which were large and pretty and startlingly green, towards their Charms teacher. Professor Flitwick, minuscule as he was, could barely see over the top of the gargantuan old book he was consulting. The likelihood that he would take notice of the girl's weeping seemed rather slim, at best.

Marlene McKinnon gave another affected little sniff, and Lily, whose hair, inconsequentially, was a very dark red, rolled her eyes to the heavens.

"I don't feel sorry for her," she whispered, her tone flat, expression disapproving. "I'm embarrassed for her. It was bad enough when she cried in the common room last night, but to do it in class? When that prat is sitting two desks behind her? Marlene is making a tit out of herself, Bea. She needs to get her act together."

"Ever sympathetic to the plight of the broken-hearted, Lily Evans," said Beatrice, with a rather wry smile. She stroked her own hair, as if it were a dearly beloved pet. "Wait until some bloke breaks your delicate little heart, and you'll be wailing all over the school."

"That's about as likely as Professor Flitwick becoming an international basketball phenomenon," the redhead replied. "I was nice and sympathetic and pretended to agree with her on Tuesday, but it's been four days. It's time to move on."

Lily Evans, contrary to how she may have appeared, was as sweet and kind, and indeed, as sympathetic a person, as one could ever hope to meet, but she possessed precious little patience for girls who tore themselves up over men who, after all, were only men, and not particularly worth going to pieces over, especially prats like Davey Gudgeon. Davey had often been known to refer to himself as Merlin's gift to Ravenclaw. Lily personally believed that claims like Davey's were likely to make Merlin turn in his grave.

"Speaking of Flitwick, I hope he does notice her crying," she announced unsympathetically, as she hastily scribbled down some notes that Flitwick had flipped over the board with his wand to reveal. "It might knock some sense into Marlene if she knows everyone can see what she's doing, and at the very least he could send her off to the bathroom so she can whine about Gudgeon without looking like a fool in front of the rest of me. And don't tell me I'm being cruel, either," she added, as Beatrice opened her mouth to retort. "You know I'm right. The last thing she needs is to let Gudgeon know how upset she is."

"Well, no," Beatrice agreed. "I think it's a bit ridiculous that she's crying in class, but Marlene's generally not that much of a baby. I'm sure she wouldn't be crying if she had any control over it, but she did just get dumped."

"Dumped by an idiot," Lily pointed out.

"All men who aren't Remus Lupin are idiots," Beatrice countered, stating a belief that was shared by many of the women at Hogwarts. "That doesn't make it any less painful when you love one of them and he goes and chucks you for another girl, and two weeks before Christmas, too. Not that I'd know what it's like to be dumped, of course."

"As you so often like to point out," put in Lily, with a grin.

"But I imagine it hurts like shit, even if the person dumping you is a tosser like Davey Gudgeon," Beatrice finished in triumph, the triumph of a person who had always known that Davey Gudgeon was a tosser when all others doubted her, even though it was a generally accepted fact amongst the seventh years that Davey Gudgeon was a tosser and nobody had been able to understand why Marlene had fallen for him in the first place. "You can hardly blame her for having a bit of a weep over it now, it only just happened."

"I can blame her if I want to," said Lily quietly, but with no less triumph. "And I will. Marlene was a formidable force of nature before she started going out with that boy and he's reduced her to a whimpering pile of mush. Marlene is normally so glamourous. Would she have ever come to class without her hair perfectly styled, or without her make-up on, before Gudgeon came along and dumped her?"

"No, of course not."

"There you go, then. Men like Davey are reprehensible," Lily concluded. "But the women who cry over them are even more so."

"You cried over Severus Snape," Beatrice reminded her, with a soft snort of laughter. "You sobbed like a baby for days."

"And I did so in the privacy of my own dormitory, in my own bed, behind my own hangings," Lily countered, with flash of a glare. "Besides, I cried for the loss of a near decade-long friendship, not because we went out for three months and he chucked me for some tart."

"A lot can happen to a girl's heart in three months," said Beatrice. "Marlene is in love, Lily, earth-shattering love, and you just don't understand how that feels."

"Shut up, you stupid cow," said Lily, with a barely perceptible laugh, and dug Beatrice in the ribs with her elbow. "Stop pretending to be a romantic all of a sudden. You know Marlene is being daft just as much as I do. You'd never make such an arse out of yourself over some boy. You're sensible. If Karl dumped you, you'd shake him off and forget he existed, not sit around crying and making sure that he and everybody else knew he had you wrapped around his finger."

"Oh, you never know," said Beatrice, turning around in her seat for a moment to shoot a glance at Remus Lupin, who was scribbling diligently away on a sheet of parchment, and failed to notice that he was being ogled by the tall, skinny, perpetually tanned girl in the second row. "Depends on the bloke, doesn't it? I could start doodling names in my notebook and planning weddings and all of that nonsense, if I was with the right one. Stranger things have happened to far more sensible people."

"Well, you won't find me going gaga over some bloke," said Lily decidedly, having long since concluded, due to her terrible habit of forming feelings for boys - well, one boy - who did not fit her criteria for acceptable men to fall for, that staying single at Hogwarts was very much the way to go when one was an estimable young lady. "Not in this lifetime."

"Perish the thought," said Beatrice dryly.

"And one of us ought to do something to cheer Marlene up," Lily continued, a sudden thought occurring to her. "Davey broke up with her at the start of the week, it's time for her to get over it and integrate herself into the normal world again."

"Stop being a narky old hag, we can cheer her up tonight," said Beatrice, and the corners of her lips turned upwards. "At the party."

"At the party?" Lily repeated, with a frown. "What party?"

"Oh, you know," said Beatrice, eyes twinkling, for the knowledge of what was to come was more than a little amusing. "The party in the common room."

At Beatrice's words, Lily's entire demeanour changed to one of a very irritable young lady. Lily did not enjoy common room parties and long was the list of reasons why. The most prominent on the list was that she, Head Girl of the whole school, would be placed in a rather awkward position when her friends started drinking Firewhiskey in the common room at midnight. Her rightful duty was to run to McGonagall and report their crimes, but her affection for them was what prevented her from doing as much. Lily was not a big drinker, nay, she was not a drinker at all, as she was ill able to stomach alcohol and tended to feel merry after a small whiff of the foul stuff. She despised noise and mess and disruption, worried that the house elves would be offended, and was always anxious that somebody was going to have a terrible, drunken accident and end up spending a few nights in the hospital wing. She liked to complain, and loudly, too, that people shouldn't be drinking so very much when they were far too young, and too irresponsible to keep a check on their behaviour, but her protests generally fell on deaf and uninterested ears, unless she happened to be talking to Remus Lupin, who listened to her protests with good grace, thereby taking her off everybody else's hands, whenever he was feeling particularly generous.

Remus may have been kind, but that did not make him inclined to aid her in her quest. She had no ally in her rage against parties. The rest of Gryffindor house would merely accuse her of hating fun, and laugh it off as a charming little quirk of hers.

"A party again?" she hissed, her jaw set and rigid. "Why?"

"Why not?"

"Why not?" she repeated, as if she could hardly believe her ears. "Because that'll be the third one this year, and there's not even any Quidditch on this weekend, and Friday night is homework night."

"So?" Beatrice was the picture of innocence. "It's two weeks until Christmas, and it's Alice's birthday tomorrow, and it'll cheer Marlene right up. What's wrong with having a party?"

"They're loud," Lily protested, in an agitated whisper. "Loud and annoying and unnecessary, and everyone gets drunk and vomits all over the common room."

"You don't vomit all over the common room," said Beatrice.

"Things go missing," Lily's whispered tirade continued. "And somebody always ends up kissing someone they shouldn't have and then there's drama about it the next day, and Sirius Black always flashes disgusting parts of his anatomy at people when he's had too much to drink, and besides," she concluded, frowning deeply, as if this was the worst thing of all. "Potter promised me he wouldn't sneak out of the school to get alcohol anymore now he's Head Boy, and I believed him."

"Oh yes, of course," said Beatrice, with raised eyebrows. "James Potter, your faithful manservant."

"He's not my manservant."

"Your crush, then."

"He's not my crush, either!" Lily hissed again, the faintest tinges of pink creeping into her cheeks. This was, of course, a terrible lie, as Lily's crush on James Potter was so monstrously big that were it to take a physical form it probably could have wrestled Rubeus Hagrid into immediate submission. She stole a glance behind her back where, several rows behind them, James Potter and Sirius Black were sitting next to one another and, for what was probably the first time in recorded history, actually paying attention to Professor Flitwick's lesson. "And I actually can't believe he'd do something like this when I specifically asked him not to."

"Tie him down and spank him, then."

"Shut up, Beatrice," she responded, her cheeks now flaming red, glaring down at her textbook.

"You shut up," said Beatrice. "James isn't sneaking out with the other boys to buy booze, anyway. He's staying put and pretending he doesn't condone their lawless ways, out of deference to you."

"And since when do you and Potter have such cosy little chats?" said Lily grumpily, but her tone was slightly softer, and her eyes a little brighter, upon receiving the news that her co-head and, yes, secret crush, was refusing to flout rules in her honour. Unfortunately, she was interrupted by the bell which signalled the end of class, and Beatrice immediately began packing her things away, but Lily was not to be sidetracked. Lily and Beatrice were the very best of friends, and Beatrice would never have dreamed of having feelings for Potter that were anything less than platonic, but jealousy was an emotion that made little sense, especially when, like Lily, one was infatuated to the point of madness. "Are you making up lies?"

"Remember, no telling McGonagall about the party, grumpy goat," said Beatrice cheerfully, and shouldered her bag with great gusto. She poked Lily's nose and skipped away to talk to Karl, her boyfriend, leaving Lily alone at the table, to sigh and to sulk, and to reflect upon how utterly rotten the upcoming evening was entirely likely to be.

"I'll give you a grumpy goat," she muttered bitterly, shoving her Charms textbook into her bag with unnecessary venom. "I'll bloody turn you into one."