*In canon, Percy is Head Boy for the '93-94 school year. Here, Oliver is. Just a heads-up.
Big thanks to those who've reviewed, followed/faved, and to those who are sticking by.
Chapter Three
A Witch's Contrite
"You're off your head, Katie!" Alicia exclaimed.
"You can't quit Quidditch!" Angelina scolded.
"I can and plan to."
"Is this why you've been so aloof the last four months? Our lose depressed you so much it's maimed your desire to play anymore?" Angelina asked sternly.
"...It's not that."
"And you waited till the day of our second game to make your statement?" Alicia scoffed.
"I've given it a lot of thought."
"We're playing Hufflepuff," Alicia reasoned. "Godric knows we'll win to them. And there's no way Hooch is going to set loose any jinxed Bludgers again after the last game's repercussions."
"It shouldn't matter who we're playing, Ali. She didn't call quits when we lost our final match last year," Angelina noted, turning a concerned eye to the retiring Chaser. "What's up, Katie?"
'More like what was up,' the blonde mulled darkly. "I've just lost interest for the sport s'all. I'm sure Wood'll have no trouble finding a new Outside Chaser."
"Within three hours?! You are loony, Bell!" Alicia snapped.
"Just play today's game with us," Angelina coaxed. "Then we can talk. Whatever's elicited this sudden change of heart will likely pass."
"My heart's not in it anymore, Ange. It was fun for a while, but I'm better off engrossing my extra time with...different activities."
"Such as?" both girls inquired.
"Like...like the Gobstones Club," Katie offered pathetically. "Or - or-"
"Accommodating the elves in the kitchens?" Alicia snorted, shaking her head in disbelief.
"Did someone threaten you?" Angelina asked. "Scrutinized your lithe technique and considered their potential benefit to playing us if you were not a part of the team any long-"
"No, no, really, you guys. I'm just a bit spent. I might get into it again this fall. In fact, I probably will."
"You've been acting strange, you know," Alicia sighed. "Your face is always beetroot during our meals, and you're quieter than you used to be."
"Did someone insult you?" Angelina tried.
"Alright, I'll play this game," Katie yielded, "but I can't promise either of you that I'll play the final."
"We'll see about that," Alicia put boldly.
...
Uniformed alongside her mates and team, Katie tepidly made for the pitch, obsessively worried that Flint and his cronies would poke their twisted, deviant fun at her from the stands whilst she skittered about in the air dodging 'Puffs. She wouldn't hear any of their obscene mutterings, but the certification by itself ruffled her feathers sufficiently.
'It's long over, you overly sensitive harlot.'
"We play by our remodeled strategy, Hufflepuff doesn't stand a chance," Wood declared, leading his crew. "We're stronger, quicker and smarter."
"And not to mention they're dead-scared that Harry'll petrify them if they fly anywhere near 'im," Fred piped in.
"That too," Wood concurred humbly as Professor McGonagall approached them abruptly.
"This match has been cancelled," the elderly witch informed.
One could already see smoke emit out of the Captain's ears. "You can't cancel Quidditch," he argued.
"Silence, Wood. You and your teammates will go to Gryffindor Tower now," she instructed, abandoning the sixth year boy to address Harry. He steamingly obeyed and guided himself and the others off.
Merlin must have answered Katie's prayers.
o0o0o0o
Rather, Merlin must have reflected on the students' well-being because the House Cup was not distributed this year. All of March, April and May's inter-House matches were scrapped for caution regarding the Chamber of Secrets and the 'Heir of Slytherin'. Katie was okay to resume playing in the fall because Flint was due to graduate this year.
Lockhart's divulged chicanery and newfound insanity hopped around the Gryffindor table like the hot news it was during the end of the year's Great Hall feast. Katie valiantly sat facing the Slytherin table just so she could pay an atrociously molared toerag an abominable farewell grimace. Thus far, his charcoal eyes hadn't averted from the parchment he was gripping. Oddly, his expression was one of hurt.
'The Falcons un-acceptance letter?' Katie assumed evilly. 'The only future he's got will be on the streets of Knockturn Alley as a disoriented, part-time black market-employed derelict.'
"Hagrid's made it back!" Alicia chanted gleefully, getting everyone to crane their necks towards the hall's entrance where the colossal gamekeeper glowingly tromped forth. Three Houses applauded with zeal that cracked Snape's monotonous ego and had him flinching. Katie, contaminated and spineless as she still felt, pressured her spirits up and clapped supportingly.
Over at the Slytherin table, Marcus goggled at his NEWT results, brooding ponderously. He'd T'd each course? He figured he'd done poorly on Transfiguration and Charms, but he was stunned to review Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts stamped with the worst grade in the system. Oh, the laughing stock he'd be retaking his seventh year!
"At least you can try to reinforce our lousy stratagem while you're Captain again," Adrian teased.
"Shove it, Pussy," the non-graduate barked. He swallowed the bile that oozed up his chest and sighed through his nostrils. "Ya think Horton would let on a drop-out?"
"Wouldn't count on it. That's illicit for one thing, and you're going to be compared to others who do have their degrees, and therefore, will be adjudged as more assimilated in the field of Quidditch among else."
Marcus snorted. "I've known all there's to know about blasted Quidditch since I was seven!"
"Mm, I'm sure Horton would consider that," Adrian scoffed.
"Damn! Fuck, fuck, fuck my fucking life!" Marcus roared, his pounding fist nearly splattering straight into his meatloaf. His act was definitely reminiscent of an actual troll's in some neighboring snakes' eyes.
"Look at the bright side, man," Adrian interjected. "You can torment that little blonde cocksucker for another long year."
"No use, she's shattered," Marcus grumbled dismally. "Became a pessimistic mope from harmless foreplay. Just looks dead most of the time nowadays."
"Not now," Adrian noted, pointing ahead. "She's grinning and rosy-cheeked like she just watched that giant Keeper of the Keys punt Flit-dick across the hall."
Marcus languidly lifted his head to gaze upon the apparently happy Gryff. A scheming, lecherous grin slathered over his face. "Don't suppose I might score her cherry sometime next year?"
"Not without some Imperious," his mate tsked.
"Wanna bet that I'll have Bell before you have Spinnet?" Marcus suggested.
"Please, I'll be all over the mocha tart before you even wreak the tiniest of notions in Bell that she's been burdened with a part-troll stalker."
"For the umpteenth time, there's no troll in my ancestry, you wanker, and I don't and will not stalk the bint."
"You don't classify staring at her back while she eats or following her through the corridors stalking?"
"You're one to speak. Gotta be monitoring me too much if you can thoroughly label me the girl's shadow."
"You down for the wager or not?"
Marcus shrugged. "Sure."
"Now we can't race with this. Gryffindor girls are notorious for their hardheaded and recalcitrant values. Neither of us are right pretending either witch will spread their legs too early in the game."
"Right, this could take years, and I'm here for just one more. I'm seeing to that," Marcus bit.
"Likewise."
"On second thought," Marcus began, examining the newly enlivened witch. "I'm thinking I'll need over a year to...ensnare her heart. Managing to get her knickers at her ankles should take even longer. Alas, she learned her lesson in our closeted tryst."
"Backing out already?"
Marcus disliked his mate's chaffing tone. He disliked it so immensely his second thought was reversed. "To hell with it. You're on."
"Name your price."
o0o0o0o
September the first, 1993
"W-why is he here?! Wasn't he supposed to graduate in July?!"
The fifth year girl sputtered and jabbed at Angelina's left arm for twenty seconds before her astonishment simmered down to a level where coherence dominated once more. Upon spotting Flint at the Slytherin table, her equilibrium burst up into a hardly figurative inferno. She surely felt as if she were burning.
"I suspect he bombed his exams," Ange said calmly, presenting her saucer blue-eyed pal with a funny look. "Why's he got your knickers knotted?"
"Oh, er, I - I am just a hint befuddled to see him. It figures. Bloke's too stupid to master anything besides Quidditch tactics."
"I wouldn't say expertise is with him there either, Katie," Ali chipped in. "It doesn't take a lot of brains to whip about the pitch exploiting every foul in the book. Remember when he Blatched himself a match's suspension our second year?"
"The browbeat bruised up Oliver's ribs so bad Hooch contemplated expelling him from the sport," Ange interposed.
"Shame it is we've the troll to elude again this year," Ali sighed.
Hilariously outstretching mere shame it was for Katie according to her history with the man. She dared not pin her sights across the hall. But a single more vulgar sneer from him would land him hexed into oblivion on her liability. His persisting presence flung this school year's ambitions to the gutters. She had to sit on her wand and have naught more than the feast's food in front of her occupy her vision just to refrain from zapping the snaggle-toothed snake a dose of Cruciatus.
Quidditch wouldn't be on her agenda that year.
…
"Your eyes are feasting on more than your gut."
"Cram it. Her tits have grown a bit over the summer, not that I can see them too well with those damned conservative robes draping over 'em."
"Her heart's gonna be all the more challenging to possess if she catches you drooling over her breasts," Adrian lectured, he himself hankering to blindfold his own eyes so as to not leer at Spinnet's full rack.
"Pfft, breasts. Ya sound like my grandmother, Pucey. Might as well call 'em mammaries."
"Bear in mind our deal, Mark. Fifty galleons are to be deposited to my Gringotts by the third of July next year."
"Right," he scoffed. "Why don't you bear in mind that once Katie catches a whiff of my pheromones she'll fall on my dick, hell, and probably be down for sucking me again at my command. Merlin knows she needs the practice."
Adrian noticed how he'd used the girl's first name rather than final, but put off mentioning it. "You never did relate much of her performance. Was she sloppy?"
Marcus chuckled, hardening a notch at the reminiscence. "She was fair enough. That gag reflex got annoying, but it didn't impede the job from finishing to my liking."
"A real nefarious bastard, you are. Didn't harbor the slightest sliver of guilt, did you?"
Marcus was far too man to admit to such weakness. "Nah."
Adrian snickered, no saint himself. "May the best wizard prevail."
"Aye."
He eyed his golden-haired objective as she huddled with her little friends towards the Great Hall's exit. He was adamant on resting a wooed impression in her as soon as possible. Delaying this would only make garnering her disposed attention and genitalia increasingly nonviable. Befriending her opportunely was crucial and similarly beneficial, but just how he'd accomplish that had him remarkably stupefied. On his stalking patrols earlier that year he'd examined her sad transformation in character. From that night in October when he'd tainted her to late June he'd read the shame and self-repulsion he's shrouded her with. She'd made like an outcast bookworm, shunning her friends and keeping her eyes on the floor as if looking at anything otherwise would petrify her. Well, that risk was putted against everyone at the time.
Even he, the arrogant, prejudiced, alleged troll laid awake in his bed deep into the nightfall obsessively wondering if he'd encumbered Bell with insomnia, as her daytime disquietude was distinct. She'd seemed to finally chipper up, but that was bound to tumble downhill the minute he encountered her, though he had to nevertheless.
o0o0o0o
In spite of her creeping out of her boohoo shell, the library remained a regular habitat of Katie's. Her nose was frequently dipped into a book that differed vastly from sex positions, Marcus knew, and she always did this standing alone or occasionally with one of her girlfriends behind some bookshelf like she sensed her admirer was loitering her midst to peel his glints onto her the tick she plopped into an armchair or at a table. Although he couldn't very well see her, he sat around spying regardless, slowly massing the courage to face her like some dithering third year Hufflepuss.
After two hours of skulking, his head propped by his hand while he did really nothing at all, Madam Pince would take note and gauge him with suspicion, and once he was suspicious she was suspicious, a line was drawn.
'To fucking hell with forfeiting forty galleons.'
His tingling, sleeping feet were in motion before his brain was, just about landing him flat on his face, but he stayed afoot, treading for the bookshelf ahead numbly. Improvisation would do, and his old shenanigans and ejaculation could be alleviated with a little smooth talking, he hoped, however, Bell abstracted from the tehe-ing bimbos he was aware of. Bell was a school girl, not a schoolgirl.
Rounding the shelf to stand several feet from her, he cleared his throat to illuminate his arrival. Burgundy cheeks, a shrill gasp and a ready wand were promptly flaunted for him, yet he sought it obligatory to smile big and raise his hands in mocking defense.
"You do this for every bloke who confronts you?"
"You stay the hell away from me," she snapped, making eye contact with him for the first time in roughly eleven months. She was captivating from afar, but up-close he could enjoy the three buttons on her school blouse that were undone and showing the paltriest of cleavage.
"Just want a word, Bell."
"Piss off."
'"You should be grateful I didn't piss down your throat,"' he almost blurted, but recalled prodding slurs were no efficient method to instigating a friendship nor a sexual relationship. Respecting her plea could vouchsafe him her trust in the latter.
"I'll see you our respective Houses' game day," he toodle-ooed with a semi genuine smile.
She trained her wand on him until he was out of the library, no longer visible but surely lurking in the hall outside. Paranoid, she journeyed up to the seventh floor brandishing her wand in her right hand, extremely chary, until she was sheltered in her common room. She'd ascended five steps when Oliver hollered for her approach.
Ange nor Ali had transferred Katie's vocalized contemplation to retire from their devoted sport to Wood because the claim had to be rubbish. Katie soared as a deft bird! All her third year she'd yakked about one day playing for the Holyhead Harpies. If that dream was unscathed to date then Katie would reap advantages playing a complete six years for Gryffindor. And sudden cold feet were simply nonsensical.
"Evening, Kat," the seventh year Scot greeted. "I'd just like to brief you on our annual Quidditch conference's relocation. Same day, the thirteenth at seven o'clock p.m., but in my Head dormitory on the fifth floor." He grinned prettily, an honored Head Boy. "The password is bubble-mint sphinx."
"Thanks, Oliver. I'll be there," Katie said, feigning a small smile.
"I've got a kick-arse hunch for this season," he enthused. "I'd lay humongous odds we're having at that Cup this year."
'Careful there,' she thought automatically, grimly trancing on her lamented six-minute-long excursion of the hostile netherworld, also known as her fellating the execrable devil. She would have made a joke pertaining Flint, but the guy's lone name ingrained debilitating unease.
Quidditch the topic, now would have been a superbly convenient instance to brief Oliver on her unresolved contemplations. Seeing as Katie inherited a phobia for trolls succeeding November fourteenth of the year before, competing against one on the pitch intimidated her to measures mighty enough to stoop her to a quite un-Gryff-like cower. The cowardice in itself annoyed her to tears, but it was there and too real to ignore.
But he looked so thrilled. Should she cough her means instantaneously so he can hunt for a fresh replacement in advance? Should she withhold and tell him at the last minute? Maybe she could play the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff matches and simulate a migraine or concoct and guzzle a fever-triggering brew on the day of Slytherin's? Steering distant of him shamed her plucky core, but with the damage's severity came aftermaths of the like.
The Captain was on his merry egress too soon, rendering her trap sealed.
…
"Why should we swap tips on how we're to reap the fancies of our respective quarries when we're gambling against one another?" Adrian scoffed. It appeared no wonder his best mate was back to repeat his seventh year.
"Because...because face it, man. Both bints are equally pigheaded," Marcus reasoned. "You really think you can sweep Spinnet off her feet with your 'suave verbal flow' and 'debonair'?"
"She sweeps herself into the air just exceptionally on her own as I've observed meticulously from third year onwards," the lankier snake replied smoothly, reflecting on just one of a number of his bountiful speculations towards the girl.
"You've got that right," the elder snickered. "I remember that day in your fourth year when you tried to sneak into Wood's Chasers' locker room after their game with us." Prodigious, ragged, grayish teeth exposed themselves, as did wheezy giggles. "Couch about booted you from the team like you were a hunk of shite!"
"You tagged along…" Adrian reminded, a bemused light brunet brow rising. "She about debarred either of us, you forgetful goon."
Marcus cleared his throat awkwardly, muttering a silent, "Oh, yeah," for him to tsk at. "Anyhow, Bell and Spinnet see us as great arseholes so getting them to submit willingly should prove laborious. Trading tricks and pointers every so often oughta better empower me and you."
"Then where would lie our bargain's purpose? You're insecure, aren't you? I'm sure Bell detests you more than anybody or anything else after what you coerced her into doing. Contrariwise, my link with Alicia is near immaculate because our antagonized friction is based upon our game dueling and isn't exactly personal. The slimmest likelihood where Bell would've relented herself as your property drained when she defiled herself by blowing you."
"She asked for it!" Marcus objected, straining the feeble, trollish fuses in his brain to jog to memory her instigated proposal. "Bitch outright suggested the bet, you know that. I owed her twenty galleons in the scenario we lost, and since we didn't, she-"
"Yes, yes, don't waste your breath; I was right there Bonding you two."
Marcus plopped onto his mattress as Miles intruded the dorm briefly to pick up his book bag. "You gonna attempt a similar wager with your witch?" he queried.
"Hell no."
"Why?"
"I'm too large a gent to flirt so churlishly with a lady."
"You saying I was dishonorable to condone what Bell swore on her life to do?"
"To an extent…"
Marcus tsked. "You were chortling with me that day. You didn't appear too criticizing to me."
"How old was she?"
He shrugged. "Dunno precisely. Probably fifteen or sixteen. It matters not diddly. She was in it committedly."
"Have you thought of the trauma you've likely induced in her? Not that I've paid loads of attention to the girl, but I can perceive from what ganders I've had she's downright morose."
"Aren't we the bona fide analyst here," the other scoffed. "Yeah, I've taken some notice."
Adrian returned a scoff. "She's completely isolated herself, Mark, in her acute disgust, I take. I'm shocked she hasn't confided in her friends what you'd inveigled her into carrying out."
"How'dya know she hasn't?"
"You'd be long obliterated from the blistering wrath of her fellow Chasers."
"They couldn't take me."
"Not physically, but you'd be ashes by the end of their wands in all sincerity."
"You concluding that built on Spinnet's hexing your arse silly after you smacked hers your fifth year?"
"Rightly so," Adrian conceded pridefully. "She's quite the hellcat in her vengeful casting."
"You aspiring for such in bed with her too?"
He nodded and smirked with poise. "As eventual as such will be."
"Indeed," Marcus sighed.
o0o0o0o
Explicit reveries of Flint blocked out the hub of Wood's Head dorm-held oration, robbing her clean of her attentiveness. How was Katie's mind to house anything that her prospective ex-Captain swanked when Flint was now all she could associate with the sport? Her obscene muse piqued its overdrive when the Keeper reflected on that 'blow to the head' he suffered a handful of years ago. Beyond her control, she gasped loudly, flushing crimson as a certain Slytherin's thick, swollen groin obscured her vision as it had that night on her knees.
"Everything well, Katie?" Oliver paused to ask.
"Er—please pardon me," she huffed, fleeing the posh dorm.
Inhaling and exhaling shakily behind a recess the floor below, Katie roughly wiped at her leaking waterworks and cursed at the revolting images currently and unremittingly flooding her mind. Minutes after Flint had left her be in that closet, she'd plucked the courage to vomit in the sixth floor girls' lavatory and then swish and swill three fourths of her bottle of mouthwash. She'd cried softly into her pillow to go unheard by her roommates and slept that night none.
Upon undergoing a helping of introspection, she sniffled boisterously and straightened her posture. Aged as her regretted kinky maneuver was, the disintegrating remnants of her self-respect and nausea refused to fade. Her sole account of reprisal was displayed through her bashing him in the closet, then she'd sidestepped him—and her friends—over an extensive period, mainly owing to her anguish and horror that Ali and Ange would somehow discover her grimy affair, and thereby, disown her like she'd disowned herself.
He was due for comeuppance, absolutely. She'd inject a bottle of firewhiskey with samples of the Drink of Despair, Alihotsy Draught, Babbling Beverage, Essence of Insanity, Jawbind and Laxative elixirs and have it delivered to his dorm...somehow. Perhaps she'd ask to borrow Harry's invisibility cloak and risk the common room invasion herself. Whatever the method, she'd see to it.