! This chapter contains a lemon towards the end that may be viewed as dub-con.
Chapter Two
Payment of Defeat
"Crescent Bezoar."
Katie was shuddering keenly as she entered the fourth floor's luxurious bath which was restricted to prefects and Quidditch Captains. Four shifty eyes ogled upon her while she shut the door behind her, it auto-locking and subtly warning the back of her mind that there was no backing out of this now. This situation felt so final. It was nearly taking a toll on her.
'What in Godric's name am I really doing?'
Her Gryffish valor and stubbornness be damned.
"Excellent to see you didn't chicken out, Bell," Marcus said, sporting a smirk that urged her powerfully to smack him silly. "Hate to have you kneel a little prematurely," he began sadistically, his fellow Chaser and designated Bonder, Adrian Pucey, snorting at the innuendo, "but the Vow requires both parties on their knees for some reason."
"Whatever," she sighed, her heart hissing at her to vacate and avoid such dire ramifications as death and doing sexual favors for gross enemies, but her mind, her intransigent, obstinate mind…
She stepped before the taller and older student and they knelt simultaneously, one to clasp the other's right hand. The tip of Pucey's wand laid over their linked hands, two thin ruby glows to issue from it and slither around their wrists. Suddenly, Katie's often suppressed inner cowardice surfaced and she would have bolted had Flint's grip on her wrist not been so sturdy.
"Er, will you, Kathleen Be-"
"Katherine," Katie corrected crisply, glaring at both boys.
"...Will you, Katherine Bell, perform fellatio on Marcus Flint prior to midnight on the fourteenth of November if the Slytherin Quidditch team outscores Gryffindor and wins the match?" Pucey stated, keeping formal.
Her chest sank, as if someone had stuffed a bag of rocks inside her esophagus. "...Yes."
Marcus was beaming ostentatiously, his expression nauseating the girl to about puking.
"And do you, Marcus Flint, swear you'll pay Katherine Bell precisely twenty galleons prior to midnight on the fourteenth of November if the Gryffindor Quidditch team outscores Slytherin and wins the match?"
"Yeah, certainly," Marcus said smugly.
"That all, man?" Pucey asked.
"We're done. Thanks," Marcus replied.
Pucey wordlessly ended the incantation and withdrew his wand once the glowing strips faded.
o0o0o0o
The days following up to November fourteenth had Katie drastically paranoid. She'd come to slightly regret hastily participating in a controversial Unbreakable Vow with Marcus. Frequent practice with her team provided some aplomb, and Potter was quite adroit and nimble for his age and experience, but the fear lingered that the Gryffs just could lose, however improbable the possibility.
Katie had kissed but one boy, Ravenclaw Prefect Robert Hilliard, the year antecedent, but their brief bond had died months ago, now officially unrequited. Alicia had been eager to set her up with this bloke or that one, but Katie rather desired going about her personal affairs solo. There was no rush. She'd just turned fifteen that August. She was quite chaste compared to Ali or even Ange. She liked to read, soar the skies and concentrate on her schoolwork. Boyfriends and fornicating rendezvouses could wait a while.
Or so she'd strive for it to. Well, the taxing preparations with Wood and the others were fated to suffice by the day of the year's first game. She'd be pocketing a simple twenty galleons proceeding the match. Any anxiety would psychosomatically hinder her own technique on the pitch, she reminded herself steely. That bet, however reckless, was fruitful in instilling her mountainous assurance. She'd come to give a lighthearted smile at the thought that he was anticipating her lewd gesticulations, but the niggling concern that she should've modified the gamble with a snog instead galled her conscious here and there too.
'Calm down...Harry'll have the Snitch...He will.'
There was naught to fret.
o0o0o0o
"You alright, Katie? You're white as one of my grandmum's handkerchiefs," Angelina observed, dressing into her uniform with Katie and Alicia in their locker room.
"...Just feeling a tad uneasy this morning. I'm okay," Katie answered weakly, fixing her hair into a tight ponytail.
"Well, it is our first game of the season. My stomach's always a little jumpy pre-game," Ange confessed.
"It shouldn't be. We're gonna win, you oughta know!" Ali exclaimed buoyantly.
"She's right," Katie said with an edgy undertone. "Potter's with us, fit and spry. Surely ready to snatch that Snitch," she added with a nervous laugh.
"Spry? Isn't that word more fitting to describe a vigorous old person?" Ange chortled.
"Could be," Katie murmured, closing her locker and peering at the exit, agitation gnawing ruthlessly within.
"Wood's awaiting us," Ange sighed, prepping herself for his annual 'play this game for the victory like your life depends on it' speech. He'd rant all the ten minutes they had to spare before Hooch whistled for them to retreat. "We best hustle."
Ali and Ange jogged for the door, but Katie paced out gradually. Hustling was the last thing she wanted to do.
…
Marcus was practically glowing in his locker room, his shaft stiffening as it did preliminary to every game, but fiercer this one than usual. Intermittent and somewhat eidetic flashes of the cute Gryffindor blonde knelt in front of him and sucking him off enthusiastically screened over in his cunning mind while he strapped his left kneepad on. The visual was probably slightly exaggeratory, for he'd wager his father's whole bank that Bell was still virginal in all aspects, much unlike himself, who was prepossessing enough to get into the hideous knickers' of Helga Bulstrode and Agatha Crabbe. It wasn't exaggeratory in the sense that he would be having her mouth later on that very day. He'd see to himself and his boys competing out there like Salazar-forsaken mercenaries.
"Now we're gonna make out there like we're trying-out for the bloody Falcons, gentlemen," the Captain announced, standing before his seated audience of six players. "We used to own this sport before that little scar-headed blood-traitor came along to aid Wood with his deficient presentations." He eyed his comrade Chasers, Pucey and Graham. "I expect to see many points earned from your goaling. Fucking Cob those Quaffles outta the bitches arms if you must." He took in their curt nods and stared at his new Seeker austerely enough to make the kid quiver. "Bear in mind our chat of last night, Draco. Hound Potter all game. Don't dare to slow up. If he's within a petty inch's distance of your Snitch, you make sure Hooch isn't watching and you Blurt or Blatch the shit till the winged ball is snug in your grip."
Draco nodded fastidiously with wide intimidated eyes. The junior repeated his Captain's earlier intimidations in his head. Marcus had warned the blond that his pubescent, un-dropped testicles would be kicked up inside him if he let Potty get their Snitch and ultimately win Gryffindor the game. Draco was a sure-fire and assertive boy with just the humongous ego his fellow Slyths possessed, but Flint's malicious threats had spooked a trickle of piss from him and made him sort of rue begging Father to get him a spot on the team.
Adrian recognized his mate's fervid aggression and took it with an inward chuckle once Marcus dismissed them out to the field. He reckoned he was either broke or fancied Bell's mouth more than what was normal when there were older, prettier and looser girls amid them.
"Really want that blowjob, don't you?" Adrian mumbled to Marcus as they walked onto the pitch to bathe in the spectators' greeting cheers.
"Not only that," Marcus grumbled, leering suggestively across the field at Bell who approached with her companion Chasers behind Wood, the Weasel twins and Potter. "I need it."
o0o0o0o
Katie evaded the Slytherin Chasers and frantically goaled as many Quaffles as she feasibly could. Such was onerous when the rim of your billowing robe's were clutched and jerked at consistently. Ali and Ange were facing the same problem. Further complications involved a rogue Bludger that pursued Harry for the match's duration. At some points it almost whacked Draco as he flew straight alongside Wood's Seeker, both Seekers itching terribly to capture the Snitch. Her attention was glued to her role's objective, but hearing Commentator Lee Jordan's vocalizations of Harry's apprehensive progress dizzied her with the painful possibility that Gryffindor might not succeed.
Thus, they were eleven points ahead of Slytherin, but that would all alter significantly contingent on whichever Seeker caught the restive Snitch. Most of the enemies were committing a foul of some variety, Katie noticed, as surely directed by their perverted Captain, speaking of whom was trying arduously to Blag her right off her broom mid-air, it seemed.
'Not like I could even give him head if I were paralyzed or dead,' she bitterly mused, spiraling and dashing blurrily while Flint tailed her not far behind. She was surprised Hooch hadn't at least suspended any of the technical-fouling snakes yet.
Perhaps fifteen minutes into the game, the corrupt Bludger had finally whammed into the speeding Gryffindor Seeker's back, effectively hurling him off course to strike the ground from seventeen feet above. Purportedly Draco had pushed Harry towards the incoming iron ball, granting him a stellar chance at seizing the tiny gold one.
At Jordan's forlorn announcement, bile upsurged in Katie's gullet and she'd sworn she'd faint upon landing. Fortuitously, she did not, and she galloped off the pitch alone.
o0o0o0o
"Bloody Merlin!"
Tearing through the fifth book on dark curses in the library's Restricted Section, this one inconveniently without an index, her heart raced, generating her acute bout of hyperventilation as she sought the page entailing the Unbreakable Vow.
She'd hid in here straightaway following the game's bewildering outcome. You didn't have to know Flint well to assume the library was not a hangout of his. Katie doubted heavily he'd meander in here. As the clock ticked on, she also began to formidably doubt there was a counter-curse or some method—any method—that would reverse her thoughtless vow. Her life was now literally on the line, and there was no way in Hades she could abide what she—jokingly—promised to perform if Slytherin beat the Gryffs. That if, according to her, had been taken none too seriously.
From what she'd perused so far, the Unbreakable Vow was a very permanent and final incantation. Each tome the library discussed on it summed the curse as 'fatal if broken.' She temporarily considered asking Madam Pince if she acknowledged anything her selection didn't cover, but declined from actually doing so in case that raised suspicion.
She thought to get her hands on a time-turner, for she knew a handful of studious students who owned the device, but she dejectedly recalled they only safely reversed time by five hours maximum. She'd undergone the Vow roughly a month ago.
'Blast!'
Tears coated. While Harry was suffering in the infirmary she was cooped up in the library futilely hunting for something that would cancel the UV. She'd only ten hours until her heart froze in her chest so she could topple over cold and quite deceased, but in that space of time, if she lived up to her end of the bargain and defiled her modest spirits, the spell would stall naturally. Nevertheless, Katie respected herself and she was virtually more inclined to accepting an untimely demise over doing anything intimate with a Slytherin, especially with a neanderthal like Flint. Concurrently she couldn't just chuck her life away because her hesitance to orally please the bloke was gigantic.
Immensely defeated, frustrated and nauseated, she restocked every book she'd skated through to retake her seat at a vacant table. With nobody around, she contemplated on the situation, vividly so as to ready herself for the legitimate. Neither of her best mates had admitted to tackling the act, though among the trio, Katie had presumed the extroverted Ali to test such first with her Hufflepuff beau, but perhaps not for a year or two. They were fifteen for crying out loud. The only penises they should have been seeing were the ones in anatomy textbooks. For kicks the girls had sought the page in a muggle biology edition over a summer in Katie's hometown public library. The diagram had them giggling like the immature twelve-year-olds they then were.
The visual she had running lasted for maybe fifteen seconds before her heart was palpitating and her airways were constricting. She inhaled deeply and richly, pondering furiously how she was to free herself from this muck. Could she stage another UV with Flint, somehow undoing and taking back their prior spoken oaths? She scrapped that idea about as soon as she'd concocted it. For starters, the boy wouldn't yield to nixing his kinky appointment that he'd so obviously hankered for, and a second Vow likely wouldn't have topped or vetoed any spoken terms in their first one.
Ultimately, she was confined to this.
"What the hell is wrong with me?!" she muttered silently, cupping her palms over her watery eyes. Her boldness had paraded its mammoth consequences for the utter worst now. She may have been uber certain that Gryffindor would have their triumph once again, but agreeing and Vowing to what she did was greatly superfluous!
'What happened?' she thought, replaying that day's match in her head. Of course Slytherin was particularly harsh, as wonted, but something was off...that Bludger. It mauled after Harry like it'd been tampered with.
"That treacherous troll!"
So Flint hexed the Bludger, had he? Held hopes so low that his team would not succeed that he stooped to fraudulence? Hooch would be enlightened to this!...had it not been a mere speculation, Katie despondently reminded herself. She hadn't any firm evidence that he'd done it, her high conviction irrelevant, tragically.
The clock not slowing nor ceasing, she swept at her fallen tears and rose to her feet. Formerly declared words reiterated in her mind as she exited the library, onward for her dorm, then eventually to the corridors to confront the unsightly bastard, capitulate her tongue and throat and mar pieces of her being. She had to "just get it over with" after all.
o0o0o0o
The dungeons were bustling with delight (and minor shock) that Slytherin had won their first game against Gryffindor in over a year. Celebration wafted about their snake hole (common room) and gossip wildfired around that even morose Prof Snape donned a short-lived smile once it'd become apparent that his House had outscored and hence won.
Snickery chuckles of the pellucidly rogued Bludger was of popular topic as was Potter's present condition in the hospital wing where his sprained, Bludger-thwacked spine was hopefully giving him enough hell to make him consider quitting Quidditch. Such wasn't probable, but a snake could dream.
An overjoyed—and enormously relieved—Draco sat with the cool older kids on the verdant settee with his Captain, Pucey, and a Beater whose name he hadn't a clue of. When the discussion spotlit the turned-out talented Seeker, a big hand patted his upper back partnered with a congratulatory, "Well done, kid."
"Don't mention it, Captain," Draco beamed, his cheeks pinkening in flattery. "Catching the little bugger was elementary with that Bludger so interested in Potter."
"Ah, but I'm sure you would have caught it anyway even if rigged luck hadn't been ours today," Flint noted sternly, causing the youngster to blanch.
"Indeed," Draco meekly croaked, submerging into his cushion cowardly.
Marcus struggled to contain his mirth. He shifted his gaze onto his other two exemplary Chasers. "You lot would've made the Falcon's Captain Horton one proud bastard. I bet he would've written down your names for later contact."
Adrian and Graham grinned, also flattered.
"Say, Marcus," Adrian mumbled beside him. "It's pushing nine. Don't tell me you've forgotten about your...wager regarding a specific Gryffindor."
"No way I would," Marcus smiled. "The bitch has a few hours to surrender still. Doubt she's salivating to get in my trousers, much as I wish she was."
"You sound infatuated with the girl," Adrian observed teasingly.
"There a problem if I am?" the troll descendant nearly snapped.
"Not with me," Adrian defended. "Not like you're swooning in-love with the bint."
"Course not," he affirmed smoothly. "Just like how you're not with Spinnet." He blinked in his mate's scowl, biting back a mocking laugh. He rolled his head leisurely against the back of the couch, his concentration wandering to Bell's disputatious lips and how they would soon be swathed around his turgid cock. A moment's fantasizing had the organ twitching wickedly within the confines of his undergarments. He'd waited sufficiently, he decided, as he took his stand. "Well, guess I better go find her," he said casually, his feet then swift for the exit.
o0o0o0o
Wood's dissatisfied roars circulated the Gryffindor common room as Katie descended the stairway from the girls' dormitories. His Beaters, Fred and George, were showered with their Captain's scoldings apropos to their "sloppy and lazy-arsed club swings", causing them a sizable deficit in points. Chasers' Alicia and Angelina were doused in criticism on their "middling dodges and graceless goal-post aim".
Katie ducked to perch on the last step to go unnoticed by her ongoingly rampaging boss. He hollered on to excuse Potter, for he was playing fairly well until the meddled Bludger walloped the pitiable kid promptly off his broom too suddenly for him to elude it. Wood voiced his conjecture that one of the snakes hexed the iron sphere, concurring nods to return, Katie's discreetly included.
The Scot boasted on for what Katie discerned to be forty minutes. Her caution furthered as the clock did, the time she had left slimming down by the sec. Where would the vindictive hector even lurk? There must have been at least fifty closets in the castle as a whole.
When Wood dismissed himself with a conclusive sigh of exasperation, his absent Chaser veered for the exit, her desperation to figure a way out of this flourishing with each stride.
…
'You got yourself into this, you daft cretin!' her brain barked, as the reality of the situation dawned vengefully. Feverish symptoms settled in whenever she heard a distant, heavy footfall up ahead or beyond the corner's connected corridor. Her lungs pumped ruggedly and her lighthead heated like a stove top hall after hall. She'd never been this nerve-wracked in her life. Her distress eventually incapacitated her to having to stop in her walking to lean against the stone wall. At this hour she belonged tucked into her bed socializing with Ali and Ange, not wandering the corridors to pay her dues trollop-style.
The dim sight of the hallway morphed to blackness splotched with squiggly phosphenes once she curtained her lids over her stinging, teary eyes. She'd yet to get over with what she literally had to, but the truth was so emotionally sickening her ducts switched on indiscriminately, shaming her usual chivalrous Gryff facet.
'I'll curse him right when it's done,' she thought, clutching her wand resistantly. 'And I'll let him find me.' She slid down to meet her bum with the cold floor. A huge part of her would rather kiss death than the privates of such a loathsome tyrant who owned teeth so misshapen and crooked someone who didn't know of his dishonorable behavioral background or troll ancestry would pity him.
She sat curled up against the fifth floor's righthand wall for perhaps half an hour, subconsciously choosing to kiss death another day. She flinched not when familiar treads neared to subsequently halt in her vicinity.
"There you fucking are."
He was flustered she could tell. He'd probably been searching for her all the rest of the day after the game, the greedy git. She kept her face buried in her thighs. She'd no intention of even looking at him.
"Well, come on, Bell. We haven't a lot of time, and it can take me a while to cum."
Her stomach twinged at his shameless words. She regarded so much revolt for him it confused her somewhat as to how it was possible. This man here was a royal son of a supreme bitch.
"Bell," he muttered warningly, barely skimming her silky tresses before she shrieked and swatted his paw away.
"Don't you dare touch me!" she howled, madly scooting along the wall to lengthen their distance. "I won't do it."
"You will," he corrected. "Unless you've tired of living."
"You're vile!" she snapped, clambering further out. "Had I the tiniest inkling Slytherin would actually win-"
"Doesn't matter now, luv," he interrupted contently. "Your dogged House valor drowned out your wiseness, didn't it? You were so stubborn and sure of yourself that you easily agreed to go south on me."
"You cheated!" she said bitterly. "You bewitched that Bludger so it would injure Harry and access your Seeker to the Snitch!"
"Wasn't me, Bell," he grumbled, his eyes glinting with earnest. "Dunno who made it like that, but I'm bloody thankful for it."
"You're getting nothing from me!"
"You'll die if you don't, you naive wench."
"I'll accept that."
Bulky fingers delved through her locks to collect a handful and yank upwards—hurling her to her feet and dragging her towards the closet nearest. Her feet too clumsy and numb to venture an escape, she crashed into the end wall of a very cramped room, or rather, space with a door.
The capacity's temperature escalated by what felt like thirty degrees as she was colloportus'ed in with five feet and ten inches of brawny body heat-radiating flesh. His arms locked themselves around the small of her back, enveloping her scrawnier frame with such hunger and force the wind was knocked from her. Protectively, she latched onto his jaw and repelled him with her spasming arms. His strength was overwhelming, however, and hot pants were moistening her neck instantly.
"I refuse to let you kick the bucket over something so trivial," he muttered against the shell of her left ear.
"Oh, you care for me or getting your willie sucked?" His response laid in his irregular breaths stroking over her sensitive neck. She shifted uncomfortably as his thick fingers combed her hair tenderly. This was so immoral; founded on a mere accusation of artificially enhanced broomsticks and their inducing placebo effects on the user. "Had it been Alicia or Angelina to mention-"
"But it wasn't, Bell. You couldn't refrain from blurting out your vapid opinions and neither could that Mudblood-"
"Don't use that awful word, you derogatory arse!"
"S'pose protesting is another Gryffish feature. Just can't help yourself, can you?"
"Can you help your beastly teeth?" she quipped. "There's a corrective charm but seeing as yours have grown in so severely crooked, I wouldn't count on a simple spell to fix them."
"Do try to talk when you're on your knees, pet. I love a good hum."
"You're disgusting, Flint."
"I may be, but in the next ten minutes, you'll be too."
She clawed him across the cheek; he'd forgotten to secure her wrists. So, she wasn't going down without a fight…
Her infliction had stung remotely, though not nearly enough for him to recoil. Well, he'd yet to face what did make him flinch. Losing patience, he enclosed her so they weren't separated a centimeter. Feeling the girl fish for her wand, he deftly ripped out his own, jabbing it against her neck, dead-set on cursing her with something nastier than he himself.
"Look, angel, the fact remains that you either die by breaking your committed Vow, you die by me before twelve o'clock tonight or you be a good girl and swallow my cock. There's nothing you or I can do to change the spell, not that I would if I could. I'll be nice and let you take your time. It won't take long, alright?"
Unable to stifle a whimper, she resigned a nod, her back sliding down the wall and her paranoid mind flickering on to trepidation mode. She knelt at his waist, emotionally numb, as her focus blanked. She made no movements, but only sat still, a neurotic mess.
"What're ya waiting for? Unzip it."
Muzzy stars dancing in her gaze, she pinched and tugged at his zipper until a bulged crevice stared at her. She made out little in here as they'd no light source. Marcus could have put on a lumos, but he was probably too caught up in this arousing moment to think such tasking thoughts or execute such rudimentary magic.
She so generously undid the clasping button as well, shakily beginning to peel his trousers down until he murmured for her to keep them at his hips, unless she wished to fondle and taste his nuts too, he side-noted wryly. Exhaling, her composure surely ruined from this moment onwards, she she dug her fingers into the slit of his underpants—her eyes clenched shut—and she managed to acquaint his junk outside where it stood quite erect in the air. Her modest reflexes glued her back to the wall once his individual scent taunted her nostrils.
"Grab me, pet," he grumbled huskily, massaging his hands into her scalp. "Jerk me off."
"Shut up!" she hissed, over and over again repeating in her head the fact that she had to do this lest she truly would die that night. She considered the damage that would wreak upon her family if she were to pass away right then and there at her healthy fifteen years with no siblings to fill the void she'd leave. Quietus the ultimatum, she screwed her eyes shut strainingly and inched forward utilizing all the will and bravery she could muster. A deep, guttural groan was secondary to wounding her chastity, the first and foremost the foreign acrid taste and texture lying on her tongue. She had him past her lips for three seconds before she tried brusquely to retreat, but he wouldn't have that. His tenacious hold bound her head in place, the assault unsettling the daylights out of her.
"Don't waste any time now," he ordered hoarsely.
'I'm in fucking hell.'
Her expeditious heartbeats were scarcely indicative of the revolving minutes, a hysterical beat equating a millisecond. A guessed four passed with her torturous bobbing, choking and listening to only the dirtiest of swears, and just when she believed she'd faint from heat stroke or suffer lockjaw, the back of her head was clutched forcibly by large fingers as a viscous liquid poured down her throat as he'd directed her to drink every last trickle.
"Such a good girl, Katie," Marcus complemented, rubbing her pads of his fingers into her roots affectionately, releasing her altogether when he was gratified. She scrambled against a corner just a foot back beside squib Filch's mop-occupied pail, breathing manically. He lumos'd their space to study her lusciously plump and reddened lips, unkempt long hair and disturbed, broadened blue eyes. Merlin, the sight was devastatingly alluring. He licked his lips, wondering whether her naughty deed had soddened her panties any. "Get up. I want to return the favor," he muttered.
She returned a glare that augmented her bedraggled beauty. "I did it," she whispered, shaken. "Get out."
"Wasn't as bad as you're making it out to be," he noted coolly, his right hand slapped when touching her hair for but a tick. "How 'bout I even this out and lick your-"
A fiery knuckle thrust at his still bare crotch to erupt a maddening agony. He shielded his hands over his jewels protectively, spitting barbs her way and moving to block the exit when she crawled for it.
"YOU FOUL SPAWN!" she screamed, jumping to her feet and beating on him ferally. "I hated you from the day I first saw you! Cunning, ugly, imbecilic pervert!"
"That's it. Let it all out, sweetheart," he patronized, his arms flaccid at his sides while she pushed and beat her fists at his chest.
"Demented…" Her cowl broke into a snivel, tears gushing down her ample cheeks.
"You referring to yourself there, luv?" he persisted monstrously, stuffing his junk back inside his pants. His ridicule faltered when she knelt to curl up how he'd found her just minutes ago outside the closet, only now she was bawling passionately. Oh. Maybe she was referring to herself. Her rash proposal that they engage in a deal, subsequently binding her to their Vow.
In spite of the savagely throbbing pang in his genitals, her state of hysteria was enrapturing him to weird albeit satisfying proportions. Self-control beyond him, he ripped the inconsolable Gryff to up to treat her to a ravenous snog. He rammed his mouth against hers, almost savoring the salty aftertaste he'd marked her with. Her wrists pinned above her, she writhed, but he'd the ability to restrain her like this for hours. Luckily, he sympathized her enough in this moment to not do so.
She was free and surrounded in stuffy solitude one shove and door-slam-gust later. The space was a humid emblem of reluctant promiscuity fused with her idea of hell, and his heaven; a bargain's end lived up, but she found she couldn't decamp it.