The Good Girl
Marietta immediately covered her mouth, which almost caused her to drop her schoolbag, which might have embarrassed her enough to commit suicide on the spot. Everyone was watching her now.
"Sorry, I misspoke."
"You misspoke?"
"Yes, I do that sometimes. I meant to ask about books on countercurses, but I appear to have misspoken."
"It appears you have," Madam Pince agreed. "That was about the worst instance of misspeaking I have ever heard, but I suppose it must happen from time to time. See that it does not happen again."
"Absolutely."
She wanted to leave, and she guessed she was expected to leave, but she could not, not without a skirt. As if taunting her, her pants restored themselves, but that simply would not cut it. She never felt quite clothed without her underthings, but between those and actual parts of her uniform, she would take the latter every time. Moving aside, but not out from in front of the desk as another student approached, she tried to think of why the curse was keeping her from research.
"Granger never mentioned anything about asking for help," she muttered to herself. "I would think that if she wanted to explain the rules to me so that I would understand it, she would explain all of them- unless she wanted to catch me off guard again. From now on, I'll have to assume she might be tricking me."
When her skirt finally reappeared after the librarian asked her if she needed anything further a few more times, she went to straight to the Restricted Section, but remembered she needed a pass. Getting one would be easy, since she could always make up something unrelated that she was studying, but even that carried a risk with it. Trying to undermine the curse might have been the very thing that embarrassed her when she went to Madam Pince, rather than the act of asking for help.
"Yes?" the older witch asked, turning back to her after the other witch left.
"I missed the title of that book," she said, thinking of it on the spot. The librarian shifted a record on a card across the desk, as if afraid of saying anything herself. There was another student to be helped, anyway.
"Well, everything I do carries a risk- I'm even out here when my clothes could disappear at any time," she said under her breath. "The only time I can be sure that I won't embarrass myself is when no one else is around." The best part about that was, if she intended to come to the library at night, there was hardly a point in asking for a pass. She knew her revenge would have to have a greater level of security than the one the Defense Association put on her- it was not as if they could help being less clever than she was, but it was a simple matter of breaking the rules when they expected her to behave differently. An Unbreakable Vow would seal the deal in case she ever put them in a situation from which they had no other escape.
Entertaining herself a moment, she imagined Granger divested of clothes in the middle of the courtyard, just before the students came down for breakfast. Marietta would not gloat, of course, that could come later. She would offer a way out in the form of a binding magical contract, which would domino to getting the rest of them, starting with Potter. He was the leader, after all, even if the deposed former Headmaster said otherwise.
She went to bed after doing her assignments, relieved that her clothes did not disappear whilst she was alone in the dormitory, though it would not have been surprising or terribly problematic. Keeping the same academic standard was going to be difficult if there were classes she was going to have to skip, especially if it was a protracted process of un-cursing herself, but she could at least study by herself. Ordinarily she went over material in the library, but with her mortal enemy smirking at her from behind some irrelevant tome, that was not going to be possible.
Fortunate now more than ever that she had a clean record and good academic standing, she was perfectly confident in her ability to dedicate a night to a personal project as soon as the other witches in the dormitory were asleep. As she walked out, she thought about how easy it all was, how she had stored up treasures for herself in the event that a need to misbehave arose. The Ravenclaw common area was secured from the outside, as were all the others, but a clever student who sneaked past the prefects could reasonably expect to get anywhere in the castle she wanted to go. She had to go to the stairs before she could get to the library, but without anyone else using them, they should cooperate with her wishes.
She spotted another student out of bed, but he was hardly of consequence. It seemed he had somewhere to be and paid no attention to her; he was tall enough to be a Prefect and have an excuse to be out of bed. Shrugging and turning away as she took the stairs, her shirt disappeared. Containing her panic, she moved quickly and noticed her brassiere was still missing from earlier, she hoped that would be it, but remembered there was no one around anyway. Walking at a normal pace to keep patrolling teachers from hearing her, she reached the library, finding it unlocked.
"I'm looking for Curses of Convolution and Complication by... Sinister Merlin Bollock?" She looked around. "What a strange name." She flipped through the pages, but found her hands were stuck to the cover immediately after she picked it up. "Must be some sort of sticking charm." Deciding it was a trap for the unwary, she knew she could get it off if she could get her wand to her hands, but with both of them stuck, she was quite helpless. Flipping through the pages by touching them with her tongue, she found it was not a book on curses at all, but a rather disgusting cautionary tale about treason in which some unreasonably lewd punishment was ascribed to a witch described by her tormentors as the queen of prudes.
With her wand normally stored in her coat, she found she had no access to it whilst her cloak was vanished, but she felt uncomfortable waiting around at night with her bare breasts in plain view. She could try to go back to Ravenclaw Tower and hope her cloak came back to her on the way, but she could imagine being discovered with the book in her hands. It was not even an academic resource she was reading half naked, it was smut; there was no other word for it. As she walked over to the gate to get out of the Restricted Section, she found she could not open it without the use of both hands.
"That horrid Granger!" she whispered, containing herself. She could hide until her clothes came back, but what then? Even with her wand, how would she get the book out of her hands? Concentrating deeply, she attempted to cast the cancel charm without a wand. Wandless magic could not be described as her specialty, but since she was casting it on a surface that she was touching, it should be a little easier, or at least that stood to reason. Making several attempts, she found it was not as easy as she would have hoped. There was no way to practice and see if she could get halfway there like with Transfiguration.
"Excuse me?" she turned to the sound of the echoing voice. "It appears you've found yourself in a spot of trouble." It belonged to a ghost. For a dead witch, she was rather beautiful, making the transparency work to her advantage.
"Oh, please don't tell anyone you found me here-"
"I have never told a soul about finding students after hours in this particular section of the library. I can't say I have ever caught one naked, though."
"Is there any way you can take this book off my hands? I can't let go of it."
"Oh, yes, I fear many books in here are cursed. It's one of the reasons you normally need a pass. You're not one to follow the rules, though, aren't you?"
"Well, I know it doesn't look like it... but, generally, I am. In fact, I'm only in this situation because I did follow the rules." She knew better than to explain fully. Embarrassing herself in front of a ghost was a special kind of pathetic. The dead were known to envy the living, but a few of the school's specters had a specific smirk for whenever they came across a student with whom they would not trade places.
"Ah. Perhaps you could let me see the book," the ghost suggested. Airily, she read a few words from the pages before passing her hands through the book. Frowning slightly, she put her hands inside Marietta's, causing her to wince as the book fell to the floor. "I'm afraid that I can no longer use my own magic."
"I understand. I think. Thank you." She turned back as she walked out. "Please don't tell anyone you found me here."
"I shall not tell a soul," the spirit repeated. "In the strictest of terms, I am not supposed to be here either, nor am I meant to momentarily possess students. If you promise not to mention that to anyone, I shall not tell anyone living either."
"I promise."
The dead witch's joke might have been funnier had she figured it out in time, but she was not in the mood for humor at the present. Opening the gate and getting out to the library proper, she caught sight of another ghost, whom she avoided. It occurred to her that she was going to have to carry her wand in her schoolbag and carry her schoolbag with her at all times, else she would be without it when she needed it most. Grabbing a few books she expected to need in the next few days or weeks, she made the trip back to Ravenclaw tower, where she could only hope no one was awake.
The door had a difficult riddle when she approached it, but she got it on the third or fourth try, peeking to see no one in the common room except Cho, which was a relief. She already knew why her breasts were bare, after all.
"There's no need to show them to me, Marietta. I've already seen them."
"I wasn't showing them to you. You know why I'm like this right now. Can you see if anyone is awake in the dormitory?"
"What are you going to do if everyone is?"
"Wait for my clothes to reappear. Why are you out of bed anyway?" she asked, hoping her friend would not ask her the same.
"I just wanted to check something. I guess I should be grateful I get to do things whenever, whilst you have to sneak out at night. We really have been atrocious to you."
"I know you regret it; you just can't override everyone else involved." She sighed, frustrated that Cho's disagreement with her punishment only meant she would put in a good word or something. If they were to be friends, after all, she would have to be understanding.
"I'll go check, but I am pretty sure everyone is asleep. It's like two now." The other witch disappeared up the stairs and she hid whilst she was waiting. As soon as she returned with good news, however, her clothes reappeared.
"Oh, well that's convenient," she muttered, getting her wand out of the cloak. From now on, unless she had it in her hands, it would have to be in her schoolbag, which had not disappeared thus far, which at least made sense, as the curse seemed to be confined to embarrassing her. If she knew one thing for certain, her revenge on Granger would be substantially worse than an embarrassment.