An Alternate Punishment

Harry had greater concerns, like his suspicions about Malfoy, but he was glad that at least he could break up with Cho on good terms. It felt good that with all that was going on, the two of them could at least acknowledge that most of what held their relationship together in the first place was convenience and mutual attraction, neither of which were explicitly bad things, but they lacked the kind of compatibility to endure the hardships he had good reason to expect up ahead. He joined Ron and Hermione for breakfast as always.

"I still don't get why we just let her go. I reckon it could all be an act."

"Well, yes, it could, but if it is, then it's a punishment worse than anything the dementors could have done."

He figured his friends were talking about Marietta Edgecombe, a former thorn in their side and a current slut for the entire school. Teachers had to remind her to wipe the come off her face before coming into class, or at least swallow it before speaking. For him at least it was inconceivable that she would go so far, even to avoid Azkaban, before which she would have at least had a trial. He also figured that the reason the teachers were being so lenient on her was because they thought she was the victim of an unknown dark curse. Little did she realize it, but most of them cared about the students and would have magically detected it if she were suffering from some active curse effect. Unfortunately for her, that had never been the case in the past.

"We couldn't have put her in prison if we wanted," he said at length. "I've been in court before and I don't think they would take 'well, she deserved it' as an acceptable reason for anything we did to her after she betrayed us. We'd be going to prison, some of us for the rest of our lives."

"I don't approve of the way Dean and Seamus handled the situation," Hermione said, taking a sip of breakfast tea. "That said, she still deserved it."

It had been a wonder that for all her purported cleverness, she had been completely unable to figure out that she was not in any real danger of going to prison. Initially, they had hoped that if she went to the authorities on them, her explanation of their acts of punishment would sound like some crazy conspiracy theory, and it probably would have, but as things escalated, she could have 'gone nuclear' and they still would not be able to turn to the law for help. Though he had escaped going to Azkaban in the past, it had only been because Dumbledore had proven he was innocent, which would not be possible a second time.

Around that point, they decided to give her a way out, once getting everything out in the open and trying to talk sense into her failed. They left her on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where she was unlikely to be seen by any centaurs, and gave her a final test for her cleverness, if not her remorse. Faced with the impossible task of retrieving her uniform and wand without being seen, the old, self-righteously proud Marietta would assume she could accomplish it anyway, but if she had learned anything, she would simply walk away.

She was not fighting a noble cause, she was not fighting a winnable cause, and she was not able to prove any kind of point. The smart, humble thing to do would have been to walk to a residence in Hogsmeade and suffer the brief embarrassment of being seen naked before being allowed inside to warm up by the magical fire. She could air her grievances to a sympathetic ear if she liked, but the shrewder course of action was to keep it to herself and be gone in the morning with some spare clothes. As long as she had a wand and could use it, she would never go hungry, and if she did not assume they would drop the issue, she had the ability to flee.

There was the possibility that even if she did walk away, she would still desire revenge against them, but as a missing person who did not want to be found, it made more sense to get away for a few years at least. At the very worst, she would be no worse than the other people already trying to kill him, and she possessed substantially less resources, skills, and connections than most of the Death Eaters.

If her revenge had to wait for decades before coming to fruition, most likely it would wither away and die, as happened with the vast majority of grudges anyone had against anyone. Rage left in a matter of seconds. Things like hatred died down over a greater range of time periods, but it was safe to say it would be gone after a few years. The thing that was almost certain to happen, under any circumstance, was that she would never bother him or his friends again, and he was willing to take the risk.

"Do you figure anyone could ever get us for what we did?" Ron asked, as if bringing him to his next point.

"One of us would have to admit to it. I could see Neville slipping up at some point, but it's still not very likely." If anything was certain, it was that they all knew Marietta deserved everything that had happened to her and then some.

"What if Skeeter says we cursed her with whatever she has now?"

"I hadn't thought about that. Hermione?"

"I don't think she'll take a risk like that again. Come to think of it, she got a rather light punishment, all things considered."

"Well, yeah, but I don't think we could have followed her around disappearing her knickers," Ron said, the witch next to him glaring back. "I was thinking about that, though. How is it we come up with punishments?"

"I'm glad you asked. It's mostly quite barbaric, like I admit what I did to our personal enemies, in the sense that we come up with a punishment based on the emotions we were feeling at the time."

"When you say it like that, it doesn't really seem fair."

"Well, strictly speaking, it's not, because it can't be," Hermione confessed. "The fact of the matter is I'm going to be more forgiving to my friends than strangers, and more likely to punish personal enemies more severely. Even on different days, my mood is going to be different, so people who did the same thing would still be treated differently."

Harry would have liked to pretend he was different. He knew he had made a big mistake in his judgement call with going to rescue Sirius, though, and that was probably not the last bad decision he would make. Even Dumbledore, generally the wisest person he knew, made mistakes sometimes, as it was becoming increasingly clear to him.

"That's why we have laws, then, so the punishments should be about the same." The obvious problem with that was that there was no law that Marietta broke. If anything, the law was on her side. "Should we have tried to do things differently? Like just have a regular non-disclosure contract with a written, legal punishment for anyone who violated it?"

"Wouldn't worry about it too much, mate," Ron said. "We screw up once, that's expected. I don't reckon we screwed it up here, though."

"You're right. I've got more important things to worry about."

"Like following Draco Malfoy because you thought he had something to do with Justin and Luna acting strangely?" Hermione asked.

"I only said it was a possibility-" he protested, cutting himself off a little. He really had thought Marietta had basically given up; there was no indication she was still out for revenge.

As they went to their first few classes, he heard people speculating that the time they saw her sucking cocks in the Great Hall might have been real after all, and not an illusion as the teachers had claimed. Apparently Susan felt a bit bad about learning the illusion spell just for that purpose, especially in light of the circumstances, but he had to echo Ron on not worrying about it. He did not think of their former enemy until she was next to him in Charms.

"Hey Harry, would you like your knob polished?" she asked. He had a momentary fear that this had all been an act for the purpose of biting his manhood off, but that seemed unlikely. Apparently she had sucked off some of her other former enemies, and they had no complaints whatsoever. If anything, she was supposed to be pretty good.

Seeing that there was no one else near him, his only condition was that she take care of it under the desk, and she had no problem with that. With Cho this sort of thing had been a rare treat, and to his moderate shame it was one of the first things he started to miss after they broke up. Marietta's mouth was soft and warm, and it almost felt as though she had no teeth, though he suspected there were charms for that sort of thing. It made it a little more difficult to focus in class, though he was still able to copy down what Professor Flitwick was saying. Fortunately it was only when class was over and the school slut had decoupled herself from his cock that he was called to the front of the room.

"Mr. Potter, do you know that young witch who was sitting next to you... briefly?" He shifted uncomfortably.

"Er, I thought I did, sir. She seems completely different now."

"Some have intimated to me that you and she were once enemies, in the way of accusing you of being responsible for her current character."

"I'm innocent, Professor, you can check my wand to see I haven't casted anything like an Imperius or a memory charm- I don't even know how to cast that sort of-" He had a thought that it could have been Malfoy who cursed her, since he was already suspicious of him, or it could have been Malfoy who was raising suspicion on him. "Did Malfoy tell you that she and I- didn't always get on?"

"Please, there is no need to hide anything, no need whatsoever," the teacher squeaked. "I can assure you, I was very much in support of your efforts to teach the students how to duel whilst Professor Umbridge was disallowing it. Some of us suspected what was going on, but we all assured her that you were all just sulking somewhere, which seemed to please her."

"Sir... I honestly don't know how to ask you this, but why didn't we expel Marietta once Dumbledore came back? I understand there were more important things to do and there still are, but..."

"I trust the Headmaster did not want to appear to be playing favorites. What you were doing was in the best interest of both the school and its students, but it would have been preferable to commend you rather than punish those who hindered you."

"I don't think I was in any mood to be commended. I suppose it was... nice winning the House Cup that year, but..." he shut himself up again. He was not generally the type to let his mouth run too long. The ability to be silent helped him as much with Umbridge as it had with the Dursleys. "If I learn anything about how she turned out this way, I'll make sure and pass it along."

"I may be of some help in that regard. I happen to know that she was discovered out of bed by Professor Snape, who told us she had no idea where she was, or why she was naked at the time."

"Interesting. Could he have removed her memory himself?"

"It is quite possible, Mr. Potter, but even if he did not, we would still expect someone to find her wandering around in such a state, and he is not the least likely person to have found her." He started to think about how there was a chance Snape was helping Malfoy with whatever it was he was trying to accomplish.

"She could have seen something she wasn't meant to see..." he whispered to himself.

"What was that? I dare say I may require an ear trumpet soon..."

"Nothing, sir, I just remembered something."

He decided to follow her once classes were over. In the past he had skipped if he had something more important to do, but he knew Marietta would just be in class all day, whether or not she would be paying attention. According to Hermione, if anything, her attendance had gone up.

As soon as classes were over, he followed her to the Astronomy Tower. Cho had told him back when they were tormenting her about her schedule, so it had been easy enough to find her. He wore his invisibility cloak out of habit more than anything else.

When he arrived, he found her in a probably conjured bed, servicing multiple cocks at once. It was more of the male students than he had ever wanted to see, but he was grateful that he at least was invisible. Looking between them, there was no apparent pattern or similarity. She had a Ravenclaw Beater in her mouth, a bookish younger girl from Slytherin was sitting on one of her hands, and a Hufflepuff seventh-year was trying to get the other to go up his arse. Harry's nose wrinkled at that, but it was nothing compared to the shock of what was going on downstairs. Dean Thomas and a partially corporeal ghost were making use of her lower holes at the same time. It was difficult to tell with a cock in her mouth, but Marietta wore an expression of the greatest delight he had ever seen her wear. He did not know if she had mastered the Patronus under his tutelage, but he had no doubt she could produce one strong enough to drive off every dementor in Azkaban.

"She's not being punished," he whispered.

As the crowd dispersed, no doubt taking oaths never to speak of what had happened, the spent witch stirred for some reason.

"Is someone there?" Harry got his wand out. In the worst case, he guessed he could just stun her and figure out what to do from there.

"How did you know?"

"I thought I heard something."

"I guess they weren't fucking your ears," he muttered. She cocked her head, a gob of come dripping off. "I just don't get it. How are you so happy?"

"It's pretty simple, really. People tell me I don't remember anything, but I think I've got enough in there. I've got one memory I'll hold onto 'till I die."

Her voice sounded alien. He tightened his grip on his wand, thinking of his old concerns about her coming back for revenge. How she answered his next question would determine quite a bit.

"And what would that be?" Marietta smiled.

"The best night of my life."