The Beginning of Retribution
Marietta went back to school ready for her final year and for revenge. Bringing with her an arsenal of charms, curses, and unsurpassed knowledge, with a few moments of practice she would be quite unstoppable. She could hardly keep from grinning with glee over what would happen to everyone who had wronged her.
All the while, she had not forgotten the need for stealth. If the enemy figured out her designs too soon, they would all turn on her and it would be over. She suspected she could hide indefinitely if she turned herself incorporeal and disillusioned herself perfectly, but hiding indefinitely was not the goal. She still wanted a Ministry career after her efforts came to fruition, and she had every intention of getting one. For this, she needed a backup plan to kidnap Potter if worst came to worst.
Kidnapping him would allow her to keep his annoying little friends from taking revenge on her, because apparently he was important, as all the Daily Prophet articles kept saying over and over. Marietta had mostly skipped over the footnotes about how his godfather had turned out to be innocent of the crimes for which he had been imprisoned, since that was hardly important. He was dead, and if he had died in prison, there would have been no difference.
When she boarded the train, she made a point to sit next to Cho, acting like nothing at all was going on. The wizard had declined to join them for some reason, but that made it easier for her to pretend. They talked about inane subjects like classes and N.E. for the duration of the train ride, and went to school as normal. She had the misfortune of being stuck on a carriage with Justin Finch-Fletchley and his girlfriend, which reminded her she needed to take revenge on him as well. Fortunately, he was already on the list, but she threw his girlfriend on there for good measure. While the passing observer would say they were only kissing chastely, she could tell the intent was to annoy her.
At Hogwarts the feast kicked off and she wasted no time using the Imperius Curse on Luna Lovegood, who was across from her. It was easy enough to take advantage of the confusion, and the best part was, if anyone caught her, no one would care, since everyone believed Lovegood was mad. As soon as the feast was over, she followed the witch out, manipulating her to bat her eyelashes at Justin. Making him cheat on his girlfriend was hardly a punishment for him, since, being a wizard, he would feel no guilt over it, but there was more to come.
As she expected, Finch-Fletchley came when called, but he seemed to think the witch just wanted something from him. It would not do.
"Are you happy, Justin?" Lovegood asked. "Do you know how my family got its name?" Marietta gleamed with pride as she followed them down the mostly empty corridor. Her control was even better than she had imagined. Before long, she would have him dancing on her palm.
"I think I know what you're talking about- for once. I'm not interested. I like Fay Dunbar, we get along. I'd rather no one else complicate things." As he started to walk off, she hit him with another curse, forcing him to forget he was in a relationship. He was undeterred.
"That bastard," she muttered almost silently. Getting him to turn around by sending a spell past him, he looked to see the witch had opened her shirt for him in the middle of the corridor. Almost immediately, his mind was made up. "Oh, so all it took was for you to forget you had a girlfriend, and now you're betraying her?" She rolled her eyes. Wizards were the ultimate height of predictability.
Unfortunately for her plans, Lovegood was lacking in the department of assets, but that could change if needed. Fortunately, Finch-Fletchley was following her to a broom closet anyway. Marietta was beginning to think the closets existed for no other purpose. Going after them, she could almost pass through the door, but had not had any practice with temporary incorporeality over the summer holiday, and contented herself with passing under it. They were kissing quite passionately, and though the wizard seemed a little confused, he was hardly unwilling. It entered her mind that perhaps he was waiting for someone to come out and say it was all a joke.
Deciding she had seen enough, she proceeded out of the closet to practice the incorporeality charm elsewhere. It was not an immediate need, but had the potential to be a real snag in her plans, up to and including last-minute escape plans. Her memory of the unfortunate incident with Sir Nicholas detailed that his manhood did not feel entirely real, though at the time she assumed it was just softer than expected. In reality, the most likely explanation was that as much as she failed to turn herself incorporeal, she had failed to interact with the completely spectral.
"Not only do I need to master this as an eventuality, I need to master it if I have any hope of effective revenge against that ghost. Just because I told him I wanted his cock down my throat and I showed up naked in the library does not mean I wanted to do any of that!" She fumed as she practiced into the night.
The following morning, she had classes as always, though first day classes always went by quickly. She had removed the curses from Lovegood and Finch-Fletchley at some point in the night, so she expected them to be in a row, but thus far she had seen nothing to that effect. Keeping a low profile, she continued to act as if nothing were out of the ordinary, more like she did before she mistakenly involved herself with the Defense Association. It was not that difficult of an act to master, since at the time it had been an act as well.
After her classes were over, she was happy to not have detention, since that gave her more time for revenge. Finding the Weasley girl, she used the Imperius to lead her off to a lonely corridor to divulge her secrets. Apparently she carried a torch for Potter, and she had for years, though Marietta only shook her head at that notion, reminding herself that her mother generally saw love among witches as a lapse in judgement, and she would only see this one as a particularly substantial lapse. For some reason, Rita Skeeter had had nothing to saw on Potter recently, but it was not as if everything before that had been false. The Daily Prophet, after all, was heavily vetted and all articles were passed by some department in the Ministry before publication.
Marietta used the curse again to get the witch, making her forget that she was related to her brother. She supposed that a memory charm would do just as well, but she had not researched memory charms, and the Imperius worked well enough. Magic seemed to have a way of understanding what she wanted. At any rate, all she really needed to do was to get her brother off in another broom closet. Thus far, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with repeating the same process as before, especially since she could make the wizards visit each other after that.
Essential to her plan was that her victims would remember everything they had done afterword, meaning the witches would feel disgusted and the wizards would have extra perverted glee, but that was something that could be counteracted. To punish Weasley and Finch-Fletchley, she would have them perform all the same tricks on each other. Seeing the two redheads leave the Great Hall together, she sneaked after them, disillusioned with an illusory copy of herself sitting there reading. Thus far she had always managed to have an alibi, though if she were gone for too long, it would look suspicious anyway, especially if someone tried to talk to her.
"What is it, Ginny?" the wizard asked, looking a little frustrated. Marietta reasoned the explanation must have been curt, and she would do better next time to give her victims the answers to questions she could reasonably predict.
"I just need you to come with me for a moment. We need to discuss something in private." She used the charm on the wizard, making the need for further deception irrelevant. They both went into the nearest broom closet as ordered, though she needed to ensure that they found each other suitably attractive, once the complication of being related was removed. As she passed through the door, it seemed nothing in particular was happening, so she cursed the wizard again to get him to arouse the witch in some way and cursed the witch to do the same. Satisfied as she left them kissing and groping at each other, she made her way back to the Great Hall, where she once more resumed the position of her illusory double and faded the charm.
Closing the book her shadow clone had been reading, she got up and left the hall, resolving to practice spells she could not have practiced while on holiday. There were potions that might be useful for her purposes, but as long as a spell did basically the same thing, she saw no point in it. Potions were by nature temporary, so they would be suitable for her revenge in some aspects, but she preferred to control the effective time of revenge. Removing the curses from the Weasleys at some point in the night, she decided that she was grateful, not for the first time, that she had done her reading. According to the books on dark magic, the Imperius created a link between the caster and victim, meaning that link could be severed from either end.
Satisfied that there was no way she could be caught, she went to sleep and dreamed pleasant dreams, mostly about terrible things that happened to her enemies. She thought she saw Neville Longbottom have his wand shoved up his rectum while petrified naked in public, so she resolved to remember it. Deciding against writing it down the following morning, she thought more on Cho's punishment as she went to breakfast.
If to anyone's surprise, it was not to hers as she saw Finch-Fletchley casting sidelong glances at Lovegood, who had apparently not eaten. Granger was looking worried about her, but Marietta could not tell if she discussed the emotional state of an acquainted witch with Potter and Weasley, the latter of whom was handing his head, to her moderate surprise. As she predicted, however, her victims would suffer in silence, at least at first. The lion's share of the punishment was shame after all; it did no good to tell anyone.
"All the same, I think I should set up a target for their investigation." Looking around, she spotted Draco Malfoy. Sneaking after him while leaving an illusory clone behind, she cursed him in the back and made him smirk knowingly at each of her victims so far whenever he had the opportunity. The look could be misinterpreted, of course, but she could afford the risk. At any rate, she would have to make sure to keep updating his orders whenever she exacted vengeance on other targets, but she doubted she would have to cast the spell multiple times.
She settled on Colin and Susan as her next targets, deciding she could put Cho off until later as the two of them went over some N.E.W.T level material. It helped to have a study partner, and she supposed that the witch acting like they could be friends again constituted mitigating circumstances. The other students had of course made no such attempts at being forgiven, and consequently there would be no such mercy. Marietta was quite capable of putting aside her petty revenge, but she had her limits, of course. She supposed if anyone else tried to get back into her good graces she could transfer part of their punishment to Granger, who only seemed more and more guilty as she had yet to even acknowledge her leading hand in the calamity.
Shaking her head a little, she would have to go back to the drawing board for that one.