Compounding Humiliation
The following morning was a Sunday, meaning it was their last chance to meet with Granger and some of her friends so they could ask Davies about whether or not she had been suitably punished. Cho would have already told them that she spent most of Saturday in the dormitory and skipped a class the day before that, so she was, in effect, shirking her punishment, though they had to realize they were no better, letting the former Headmaster taking the fall for them by disappearing, so no one ended up being punished.
They were meeting in an empty classroom. The door was shielded to ensure a private discussion, though Headmistress Umbridge had already warned them about that. She decided to hope it would be over quickly so they would not be caught.
It was the usual three, Potter, Granger, and Weasley, but it seemed his younger sister and a contemporary of hers from Ravenclaw had joined, along with Longbottom. Cho was standing next to Marietta, which she appreciated. She supposed it would be better to spare her the worst of her eventual revenge.
"I'm sure we all know why we're here," she said. "This punishment has gone entirely too far; it's basically bullying and I can't take it anymore. I have no intention of reporting it to anyone if you just do away with the curse," she offered. It was better not to promise not to get revenge, because they would be more likely to see it coming.
"You're not... sorry, though?" Longbottom asked. "Unless I'm mistaken, I was bullied by Malfoy and his friends for a while until Harry taught me to stand up to them. You're not being bulled, though, since you actually did something."
"That was not part of the discussion we had earlier," she deflected. "For the record, I revealed nothing specific about who was leading the Defense Association." In truth, she remembered being in something of a mental haze at the time, but she might as well take credit for it.
"Getting cold feet at the last possible moment doesn't count for anything," Potter said. It looked like he had to think about it before saying it. "This punishment wasn't my idea, but as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't even resemble bullying and it's totally justified." The Weasley girl agreed with him, reminding everyone they could have gone to Azkaban. Marietta rolled her eyes involuntarily.
"Well, our discussion, for those who were not present, pertained to whether or not I had been punished enough. Davies has already seen me naked."
"Well there's a lot more where that came-" Granger shushed her red-headed friend.
"Let him speak." Everyone looked at the Ravenclaw wizard, who had only just come in. "Did you see her breasts at all?"
"Yeah, they were pretty nice, I recall. I didn't wake up that morning and expect to see that." It seemed like everyone was considering his words carefully.
"Does she have any moles or anything?" Longbottom asked. "Anything that stood out?"
"What about Nargles?" Lovegood asked.
"I didn't see any moles or scars." Marietta still wanted nothing more than to be dead, but at least he had that right. "I don't know about Nargles."
"Well, what was her reaction like?" Cho asked. "She told us she was really embarrassed and covered herself immediately."
"I don't remember anything like that. She just sort of stood there so I could have a good look."
If she had been eating anything, she would have choked. Her eyes were darting around the room, her mind moving with even greater speed, wondering whether or not she should say anything- no, of course she had to say something, but what? He was remembering the wrong time!
"I'm sorry, did I hear you correctly?" Granger asked. "She stood there and let you see them?"
"Yeah, seemed to be the whole point of the venture," Davies explained. "We were in a broom closet and everything."
"You weren't meant to tell them that!" Marietta shrieked, losing what was left of her composure.
"Fucking slag," Weasley commented. It looked like his friends did not approve of his language, but none were disagreeing.
"You're not being punished at all!" his younger sister declared. Longbottom was nodding along. "This is exactly your sort of thing, isn't it? You know, I heard about that whole scene you made at the library- what was it? 'Where can I get my quim stuffed?' How else do you explain that?"
"That was the curse!" she cried, her skirt disappearing. Her hands went down immediately, and she wished for her wand, though she knew it was in her schoolbag.
"I mean, why bother with that?" Potter asked. "Does it make a difference if we're all here?" Granger was still hung up on her question to Madam Pince.
"Did she really say that? In a library?" The younger witch nodded.
"I have it on good authority. She was also naked from the waist down, and covering her arse with her schoolbag."
"What was I meant to do?" she cried. "I didn't know asking for help would cause the curse to go off-" Her shirt disappeared, exposing her breasts to everyone in the room.
"There you go, saying it was the curse again," the Weasley girl commented. "Say, Hermione, does it go off even when she's not telling the truth?"
"I'm afraid so. It is quite possible that she removed her skirt just to have that against us later. Was she wearing knickers, or could anyone tell?"
"Most people were looking away at that point, the way I heard it."
"That's a lie!" Marietta shrieked. "Everyone was staring at me, I could feel it!"
"There's no need to brag," Cho said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Were you checking to see if people were looking or not?"
"Of course I didn't want to look to see if anyone-"
"Well, then you couldn't have known," Granger decided. "You just decided everyone was staring at you because that was your objective in the first place."
"No!"
"That's really disgusting," Lovegood said. "You might be even worse than the Snarglepuss, before it calms itself down eating moon frogs."
"I didn't want this!" she shrieked, not knowing what else to say. It was the worst experience of her life so far, being stripped naked in front of all of them, and then to have them all conclude she was some kind of pervert? She wanted to die. At the same time, however, she could not die, because then she would never have her revenge.
"All right, I've made my decision," Potter said. "You'll stay like that for the rest of the year. Maybe you like it, but the teachers won't and you won't be able to explain it to them."
The rest of them left her there with Cho as she started to sink to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. She was simultaneously exposed and covered, smeared by horrible lies. She knew, of course, that it was all an elaborate misunderstanding, and that everything would have been fine if Davies had just told them about that time in Transfiguration, but now they all believed it, and she would not be surprised if they told the whole rest of the school.
"It's okay," her friend said, putting a hand on her bare shoulder. Her skirt came back, but she did not bother to stand up, only to move her hands up. "They just don't understand that some people are a little different."
"I'm not like that..." Marietta had thought the worst thing that could happen was being stripped in the Great Hall, but at least then she would be the victim. Now they would tell everyone she had been naked from the waist down in the middle of the library, and she would be unable to explain why, making her the perpetrator.
"No, really, you don't have to say anything to me. I understand, really." She looked up. "I know things are a little different, since he and I are supposed to be dating, but, well sometimes I imagine the look on Harry's face when I think about taking my shirt off for him. I would think most witches have thoughts of that nature."
"Well, I don't!" she objected, burying her face in her knees. "I'm just not like that. I don't have any desire at all to be naked, or to see anyone else naked."
Cho responded only by patting her on the shoulder again before deciding to leave her alone. Her shirt reappeared. It was at times like these she wondered if the only logic to the curse was that it would torment her as much as possible, but she supposed that even if it were proven to be random, she would be inclined to see it as having some kind of pattern. There would be no randomness involved with her revenge, however.
Formulating more plans, she suddenly realized that as depraved as her enemies were, they might think being stripped in front of each other was actually a tame punishment, so she would have to come up with additional components to account for that. Even if they called her nasty names for what they believed her to be, they were the ones who did this to her in the first place.
Delving back into her research the moment she returned to the dormitory, she realized she already had all her assignments done, while everyone else was still working. She had hoped to receive a pass from Professor Umbridge for the rest of the year, but apparently she still needed to do her essays for Defense, though that was always easy, since whatever the question was she needed only write down whatever the most likely response was according to her own common sense. It was the other teachers that handed out material requiring effort.
She practiced several spells for the rest of the day after she was done with her assignments and research, and was relatively satisfied with each of them. Ordinarily she would spend her Sundays with Cho, but that ship had more or less sailed. Her friend might deserve only a tiny fraction of the revenge that was due the rest of the group, but it would be unfair to let her escape justice entirely. As she was mulling it over, her underthings were rapidly switching between existing and not existing. It was a touch uncomfortable, as well as distracting, so she considered removing them entirely, but that could wait until she had a chance. Besides, the unusual behavior stopped at some point.
The following day, it started back up in class.
Marietta had taken a seat as far to the rear of the room as she could still hear the teacher, the better to prove she did not want to be seen by anyone, despite the whispers going around. She had her schoolbag on her desk again, but that hardly stopped her underthings from bothering her. It was enough to make her wonder if the curse was getting jittery or something. Granger claimed to have modified it to make it milder, but there might have been an issue with targeting individual articles of clothing, which caused it to be less than perfect in execution.
Between classes, when they had returned, she ducked into a broom closet and removed them, putting them in her bag. They would be within reach if her shirt or skirt disappeared, but concealed within her cloak until then. She felt strangely comfortable walking out, despite not having anything under her clothes, but she had heard of simple charms that made such a thing a more sanitary experience. For some pure bloods, the mere concept of wearing underthings was entirely too muggle-ish, thus the charms.
In her next class her skirt disappeared, but she was sitting in the back, so it was none too great of a problem. She found herself grateful that the desks and tables were covered in front, but that was a necessity with the unreasonably short skirts the witches were wearing, where it would have only been welcome if they had sub-knee skirts. Her own reappeared before the end of class, which might have been her most convenient disrobing to date, and if a lack of concern could have shown on her face, it would have.
She went to her next class without missing a beat, confident that her underthings were not appearing and disappearing in her bag, because they were not on her. She had watched her wardrobe a few times, and thus far nothing from there had ever made itself scarce. She got through her next class without any trouble, then stopped at another broom closet. It was at least worth trying to put fully dress herself again, if for no other reason than to see what would happen, but the door would not open. She cast the unlocking charm, and the door briefly cracked open, but then it closed again.
"Oh, so that's how it's going to be, isn't it?" she asked. "I'll bet you're hiding in there because you're breaking rules." Unlocking the door and yanking on it before anyone could react, she saw a witch and a wizard in unacceptably close proximity. "That's definitely against the rules," she said. "According to Professor Umbridge, you're supposed to be eight inches apart at all times."
"Bugger off, Edgecombe," the wizard said, trying to close the door again. "It's not like we were looking for a third." She waved her wand, keeping it from closing. It seemed some of the passers by were staring, but there was nothing to be done about that.
"You're making a scene," the witch said, getting out her own wand. Marietta made a tactical retreat. It was better to recruit a professor's help with that sort of thing, and she had class anyway. In her next class, she tried to raise her hand, but then Weasley pointed out she was lacking a shirt. Covering herself with her cloak quickly, she wondered why he had taken the seat next to her when she had placed herself as far to the back of the room as she could.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, whispering and looking around. "Were you just waiting for me to call attention to myself?"
"What? No, why would I warn you?" he asked. "I guess I could just rat you out now..."
"No-" she said, reaching a hand out as far as she dared. "Please, anything but that..."
"I don't see why you'd mind. You went and showed off to Davies, didn't you? Well, why is your shirt off now?"
"You know why."
"Yeah, I know. It's because you can't get enough attention with it on." She was trying to keep her eyes to the front of the room lest she miss something, or be noticed having a conversation with another student.
"No, it's the curse!" she said, finding herself naked. With the cloak on, though, she was fine for the moment.
"What was that, then? Was that the curse as well?"
"Please stop talking to me; someone will hear us..." she begged, cutting herself off. She could swear she saw one of his awful friends looking over.
When at last the class got out, she was forced to sit there waiting for her clothes to return, but they did not. She sighed, attempting a disillusionment charm. Feeling it working, she got up to leave just before the next class filed in, figuring she would be late for the next class, if she appeared in it at all. Walking slowly to allow the spell to update itself to her surroundings, she passed by a large mirror in a corridor, where she discovered the damnable charm had only made her an assortment of different colors, leaving her body mostly on full display, though she wore a cloak.
Marietta stared at the bizarre version of herself for a moment, unable to look away. Anyone could tell she was nude, but no one could tell who she was, even with the Ravenclaw patch on her cloak. Quickly ducking into the nearest closet, a laundry arrangement for house elves, she found she was not alone in her hiding place.
"Hello," she said. "Are you quite able to retrieve a uniform for me?"
"Oh, yes, yes, that's part of the job description!" The creature seemed overly cheerful for a slave. "What kind of uniform would you like?"
"A- well, I would like a witch's uniform in my size- if you could make the skirt a little longer, though, I would appreciate that." She thought about how her own uniform would likely reappear soon, but she had already confirmed that it would just be over or under her existing uniform, like her underthings. A thought came to her. If she could somehow key one uniform to reappear as the other disappeared, she could avert the punishment entirely. There was a complication, though, that her underthings were always at a different layer, meaning there was no reason for them to occupy the same space at the same time, whilst her uniform ran the risk of being indexed at the same layer.
"Here it is!" the house elf announced. "One uniform, stretched for length!"
"Oh, that wasn't what I- actually, thank you, this is perfect," she said, taking the thin uniform. She put it on and canceled her mostly failed Disillusionment Charm as she went back out into the corridor, going to the class late. The idea was that without anything under her normal uniform, the alternate would serve as a lower layer. As long as she kept her cloak on, no one would notice the upper layer appearing or disappearing.
Getting to her next class, the lower layer was flickering, but she paid it no mind. It was not worth removing, since it would actually look normal in the event the upper layer disappeared. She noticed that Lovegood was there, who waved when she looked at her. Marietta smirked. With the curse evaded, all that was left was her revenge.