Retribution Continued
Kidnapping Potter proved difficult. His friends never left his side, it seemed, unless he ventured out on his own. She had delayed her plans for revenge to see if there were any suspicion of her, and thus far there had not been. Fortunately, however, it seemed her next victim went off on his own to follow Draco Malfoy, whom he believed to be a Death Eater. The idea made Marietta roll her eyes, but it provided her with an opportunity nonetheless. She forged a letter from him to Pansy Parkinson, leaving it on his desk in Potions, and Potter just happened to see it after the wizard he seemed to hate so much left.
The trick required her to skip one of her own classes, but with her illusory double taking her place, it was not as if she would be found out. Following Potter out to the place where his mortal enemy was supposedly about to confess to being a Death Eater to his girlfriend, she reasoned that he had an invisibility cloak, which complicated things. She could not simply start casting stunning charms at every hint of movement, so she waited for him to give up waiting and go back. Based on the most likely path he would take to go around corners quickly, she could stand in it and hit him without fail.
"There you are," she said as he fell over, his cloak falling off him. A broom closet would be the obvious choice in terms of hiding places, and he would probably be found pretty quickly. She settled on leaving him in the Room of Requirement, reasoning that it would be impossible for anyone else to find him there. On her way back, she found Susan and Creevey, already under the Imperius.
"What is your wish?" the wizard asked.
"The two of you may not love each other, but I wish for you two each to try to please the other. Don't stop trying until you succeed." Deciding that she was effectively kidnapping them, she changed course. "Do it here in this corridor," she finalized.
Leaving them, she smirked to herself about her mortal enemy's chances of getting out of his prison. She expected he would eventually come round from the stunner, but when he woke he would be in a cage, with his wand a few feet away from him. Even if he managed to escape that, he would still be in the room, and she expected that it would be just as hard getting out when not in the proper frame of mind as it would be to get in. Without any further delays, she went back to Ravenclaw Tower.
As expected, it was quite the commotion the following morning as Creevey and Susan were both reported to have tried to return to their respective common rooms, probably around the time she removed the Imperius, without the benefit of their clothes. If the case could be said to be eerily similar to other cases, it seemed no one was making the connection. That was, of course, no cause for concern or particular surprise, since no one was quite as clever as she was. There was a clone of Potter moving about, though she expected there was only so long that trick could last unassisted. She ended up using the curse on an easily forgotten seventh-year, telling him he was Harry Potter, and that he had better stick to the script. If tying the illusion to him failed, then it failed; she was indifferent.
Going through classes, she decided Granger was her next target, though whenever Marietta stole a glance in her direction it seemed she was unsuccessfully trying to talk Potter's and Weasley's ears off, though that was to be expected. Neither of them were giving her particularly interesting responses.
She wanted to laugh, of course, but that could come later, when she was alone. Casting the curse on Cho, she decided to make her former friend play with herself in public, but make some effort not to get caught, which seemed an appropriate challenge. Not wanting to forget Daphne Greengrass, she walked disillusioned over to the Slytherin table, where she noticed Malfoy looked like he was in hot water indeed. It seemed a substantial portion of the students, including those from other tables, were glaring daggers at him.
Cursing the witch, she bid her go outside. It seemed like a wasted effort to try to use her to get Granger, who would be suspicious of anything at this point. Getting her as she skirted off by herself to the toilet, she commanded the witch to go outside. There was a look like she was fighting it for a moment, and at that point she remembered the Death Eater had exposed at least a few of the students to the Imperius two years earlier, and some of them likely cared more than others about being able to fight it.
"Silly girl, I know far more about how this curse works than you. Come with me."
Leading her mortal enemy out to the grounds with Daphne, she walked the pair of them into the Forbidden Forest. Surprised that centaurs had not already leapt out to assault them, ideally in a sexual manner, she marched the mind-controlled witches around a bit before they found some and used the Imperius on them. As they were creatures of near-human intelligence, it worked about as well as expected. The centaurs approached their perfectly helpless victims and their equine cocks protruded. She ordered both of her captives to remove their clothes and present their arses. Perhaps it was a less sacred place to violate, but there was the chance of turning their organs inside out. It seemed the filthy beasts were having some trouble getting their members in the hole, so she cast a few hastily researched charms to aid their descent down the tight caverns as tears rolled down the faces of the witches.
Marietta felt like laughing as they pounded away, the one railing Daphne picking her up with his arms, the other lowering himself onto his horse-haunches to more effectively plunder the prone Granger. The most disturbing part was easily the sound that was produced with every forceful thrust. If the centaurs had any intention to make the witches enjoy what was happening to them, they were perfectly unsuccessful.
Deciding it was better to go back, she found herself the target of a stunning spell. Sidestepping Weasley's obvious maneuver, she was tempted to laugh as she disillusioned herself, but all at once her hands clapped against her side and she went stiff as a board. Realizing too late she had heard a muffled incantation of the full-body bind, she found herself kicked in the face before two pairs of feet went past her to deal with the centaurs.
"What do we need to do to get 'em out of there?"
"Don't hurt the centaurs," a voice she recognized pleaded. "We just need to break her concentration."
"Oh, I reckon I can do that." She felt the rear of her skirt being lifted and a wand, most likely her own, jammed into her arse. Marietta wanted to scream, but no sound came out. All she heard was some rustling behind her and the sound of centaurs running off. "You alright, Hermione?"
"No..." a weak voice started. "I probably need to go... to the Hospital Wing... and then wherever people go when they want to die, but can't."
"That's still the Hospital Wing. Who are you?"
She would have rolled her eyes if she had any control over them. Was it possible to be any more callous? How exactly did a sixteen year old wizard not know exactly how to comfort a victim of a violent rape? Daphne Greengrass lied as she identified herself, but that ruse would be up soon.
"What are we going to do with her, Ron?" a wizard's voice asked. Marietta knew who 'her' was.
"Haven't even started with her yet. Leave her out here for now; don't think anyone's really going to care enough to come look."
The wizards escorted the two witches around her disillusioned body, and she could swear one of them was Neville Longbottom. She could curse herself for not going after him first, but without Weasley's help of being a distraction, he would have been unable to defeat her, so it was really a failure of effectively dealing with him before moving on to other targets for her revenge. Had she trapped him somewhere like she had Potter, or traumatized him more severely, he would have been quite incapable of going after her.
Fortunately, it seemed they really were intent on leaving her under the body binding charm, which might wear off eventually, but it was better not to take the chance. Her only hope was using her wand on herself... while it was embedded in her arse. Her embarrassment was deep enough to hide a submarine, but she clenched her anus around the firm wooden handle, hoping to at least get what could be called a good grip on it. In an alternate reality where such disgusting things were normal, she could imagine herself writing a report to Professor Flitwick about this experiment.
Concentrating, she eventually canceled the charm that kept her in place and almost immediately pulled her wand out, which probably felt worse than it would have had she gone slowly, in retrospect. Marietta knew she could begin to make pointless conjecture about how her plans had been found out, but there was no point to that. What she needed to do now was get inside and hide. She knew there was still an illusory copy of herself wandering around, and if her pursuers found it, they would know her trick, so she canceled the charm.
Reaching the castle, she disappeared off to her classes. With a little luck, they would think she was still out on the grounds, but luck had not been on her side so far. Creating one clone of herself in class and one clone at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, she expected that anyone who looked out a window would see it and assume she was still trapped, though no one would look out the window for no reason.
When she eventually ate lunch, disillusioned and in the company of no illusions of herself, she decided she needed a plan, but she also needed to continue her revenge. In the event she just needed to escape, she still had Potter up her sleeve, but she wanted everything else to be out of the way first. The problem was Longbottom. Constantly in the company of more talented friends, she would have a hard time getting him on his own. He was her last real target for revenge, but she was having a hard time thinking up anything specific to use. Eventually she concluded that it would have to be something similar to what she had done before.
At the end of lunch, however, their Headmaster had a surprise announcement that Harry Potter had gone missing, and students with any information as to his whereabouts would be rewarded. She doubted her plan to get everyone to focus on Malfoy would work, since she had already been seen, but it was only two students who would remember seeing her. Even Granger and Greengrass, whose Imperius curses had been canceled, only passed by her whilst she was disillusioned. Her plan would, in any case, have to wait for classes to be out.
Creeping up to the boys' dormitory in Gryffindor Tower by sneaking through the portrait hole as a younger student opened it, she decided there was nothing to fear about everyone looking for Potter. She had only created the illusory copy of him as a short-term measure, and really had no expectation that anyone would fall for it for any length of time, but she had not expected Longbottom and Weasley to unravel the mystery whilst she was in the middle of punishing the withces.
"Ah, well, that can't be helped at this point. Because of the good sense of Godric Gryffindor, they won't be expecting me."