Chapter Four
A Saccharine Reprisal
Katie's mum, Belinda, a pureblooded witch and co-owner of Diagon Alley's Rosa Lee Teabag shop, taught her only child that the ideal moral to apply to life is to monitor your altercations and make peace with those whom are unique in outwardly and bluntly cynical senses. Hoarding foes would posit Katie nowhere harmonious.
Bartholomew Bell, a middle-aged muggle insurance salesman, went by standing strong for his beliefs and upholding even ground with those who paraded their vanity, and if assaulted, retaliate just to the degree which assaulted. And yes, Belinda's tip was appropriate; having enemies was detrimental to the soul and pointless as long as the parties were resolved.
Feeling utterly assaulted and a wicked gap from even ground with Flint, she poured an ounce of her freshly fermented Alihotsy into the bottle of firewhiskey she'd smuggled from her common room's celebration cupboard. It had totaled a week and a half to assemble every ingredient for every potion she was to prepare. The measurements were not exact, but none of these fluids bore poison, just ailing side-effects. The sparse and unwelcome fluids added into the alcohol shouldn't have been potent enough for him to taste and luckily, if the troll chugged down just enough, (as he was sure to) the effects would execute entirely, rendering him a lachrymose, jaw-locked, ferociously puking, incoherently blathering, diarrhea-whamming mass of hysteria all in delicious unison.
Katie sat criss-cross in Moaning Myrtle's lavatory on the first floor as she concocted all six potions in her pewter cauldron. Tolerating the john's eternal haunter grew tiresome after seventy minutes of hearing erratic, pitching titters and interrogations of whom the virulent elixir was for.
"Why won't cranky Kathy tell me who she's meaning to get very, very sick?" the ghost cooed into the mortal's left ear, to be returned a swat, for her vapory translucency chilled Katie's flesh.
"I can't tell you because you'll rat on me, and you know it," the blonde responded casually, uncorking the firewhiskey to tap the ounce of Alihotsy in.
"But I could rat on your clandestine actions anyhow," the dead Ravenclaw quipped. "It's after midnight, you're not a prefect, and your intentions to sicken somebody are mountainously illegal within school grounds!"
"Who's going to believe you?"
"Mr. Filch and Mrs. Norris, and probably Professor Snape."
"If I tell you, you're not to tell anyone, alright?" Katie sighed.
"I might let slip a peep…" Myrtle squeaked giddily.
"No, nothing, Myrtle," Katie snapped. "Can't you keep a secret for me?"
"On one condition."
"Cripes." Katie rolled her eyes, chastising her choice in covert brewing location. "Spill it then."
"I've been incarcerated in this blasted castle for nearly fifty-one years, mind you. Olive Hornby bullied me senseless up till the day I died right by that stall over there, so I haunted the meanie with the same ruthlessness she'd haunted me with for three years! Tragically, my sweet amusement havocking her life came to an end when she turned seventeen and exercised herself of me at the Ministry," she huffed, "possibly 'cause I made a ruckus at her older brother's wedding. Now she must be around sixty-five and will be dying give another forty or so years unless she dies sooner in some accident…" The spirit simpered nastily. "I need you to owl the Ministry a complain of my imprisonment. Do slather the letter with the truth of how miserable I am. Show me when it's all inked up and spectacular then go on and ship it."
"Myrtle, I hardly take I'll be able to convince the Ministry to release you," Katie reasoned.
"The endeavor by itself will suffice for me. You're the first person to come down here in quite some time and I do miss terrorizing my old hector. With Peeves' constant picking on me I could just perish all over again, but floating about, pestering old Olive, her husband, her children and grandchildren is just the liberation I could use, Kathy B."
"Very well. I'll do it."
"You'll do it this week too! You're to report back to me on Monday for approval. If you do not come, I shall tattle you off to Mr.-"
"Yes, yes, blast, you can count on me."
"Oh, marvelous! Let's have that tale now." Myrtle sank down to the floor to lay on her stomach beside the cauldron, one hand supporting her chin while she gazed up at the Gryff intently.
Myrtle was awful childish, so Katie opted to sugarcoat the explicit story. "A very rude and selfish Slytherin bragged about the latest edition in Nimbus broomsticks last year while I was practicing with my Quidditch team, so I pointed out that they are likely just placebos. Disagreeing with my theory, he lured me out of my common room some time into the night to-"
"Whooooo? Who is the gentleman?" Myrtle chirped dreamily.
"Marcus Flint."
"Rings a bell…Forgive the pun..." the entity clicked her tongue in thought. "A handsome boy with ghastly teeth used to copulate with a chubby girl by the name of Agatha Crabbe in that stall over there. I'd hide and watch if I was bored enough, but when they got too gross, I'd-"
"Don't want to hear it!" the blonde hissed. "To shorten this up, I challenged him to a wager when I could have sworn on my mum's grave that we would trounce Slytherin in our match with them. I was foolishly dogged while he was, and still is, a great conceited bastard. We ended up losing because a tampered Bludger knocked Harry off his broom and that Malfoy jerk caught the Snitch, hence boosting their score by one hundred and fifty points—ultimately winning them the game."
"I remember how Quidditch works. I was a student here only five decades ago."
"I owed him...a favor, a dreaded one. One that I came to solemnly regret. I only followed through with it because I'd joined him in an Unbreakable Vow so, so densely. My life was put on the line." She blushed and went rigid, remnants of those several minutes tiding yet again. "I've never hated myself more for anything otherwise."
"What was it you had to do?"
"...Kiss him."
"Phooey!"
"I kid you not. It was a - a French kiss. He slobbered on my lips."
"I may have died young and naive, but I can gather your fee was something direr than a measly smooch."
"We'll let rest your assumptions there. No one else knows except for him and his friend, unless they gossiped our exchange out. I doubt they did. Surely at least one Slytherin would've bedeviled me had word unfurled."
"But why is Kathy B inducing maladies to the mean boy nooow? What's with the big delay?"
"He was set to graduate last summer, but as he's critically feeble-minded, he failed his NEWTs and is now repeating his seventh year. As of late, he's been hounding me through the halls, gawking at me, relentlessly goading..." She thought on his recent mocking, lewd and overstated back-and-forth hand signaled blowjob reenactments from afar, which he'd exhibited for her on multiple accounts, whether in the library or a courtyard. "He's intimidated me with how in love he is with what dominance he thinks he has over me." She shook her head, repulsed as per usual. "This ought to put him in his place."
"Ooh, conniving, we are!" Myrtle clapped her incorporeal hands together gleefully. "Are we sending it to him in person?"
"Goodness, no. It'll be 'gifted' to him by an 'anonymous devotee'."
"But what if he takes a hint?"
"Well, he is going to suspect either Wood or me, profoundly dumb as he is. Any rate, I've my wand handy." Katie grinned sinfully, mixing in an ounce of the finished Laxative elixir. "I'm just striving for his agony."
"As am I with Hornet," the bespectacled brunette sniggered.
"Cheers to us both," Katie said.
o0o0o0o
September's twentieth morning featured Adrian practically drooling over his toast, his eyeful of Spinnet toothsome with her cherry glossed lips and fat knockers. He forked at his eggs absentmindedly, his blinking at a minimum, while Marcus looked at him as he would any nutter.
"Wouldn't let her spot your eyes on her like that," the eighth year advised. "It'll be all the harder to lay her if she dubs ya a perverted wanker."
"You're one to speak. How are you to go about even glimpsing at your girl a mile off with a pair of omnioculars free of her vindictive charge?"
"Figure it out," Marcus mumbled. "...'Ventually."
"The clock's ticking, mate. Your stance with Bell is very below par, whereas Alicia and I are-"
"Not exactly acquaintances," Marcus finished for him.
Adrian huffed, casting his goggle away from the opposing Chaser. "Perhaps not given our past confrontations, but I'm opting to morph our rough terms damn soon here."
"You best hustle. I don't wanna see you treating Spinnet like she's one of our team come our match with the Gryffs."
"We don't play them till spring this season," Adrian complacently noted. "I've plenty of time to warm up to her off the pitch, so once we're on the pitch, our game play opposition shouldn't be personal."
"We'll see. I've just got to give a pretend sorry to Bell and she n' I'll be right as rain."
"You think she's that dull?"
"Prolly is. Women are just as mentally inferior to men as they are physically."
"That's a right hackneyed low blow, Mark. Not even I deem ladies as such."
Marcus tsked. "You sure do if ya believe Spinnet will ever fall for you. You must take her an idiot with the faith you have that she'll strip and sprawl out in bed for you."
"Well, I ought to befriend her firstly, that I reckoned from the tick our wager was established."
"Staring at her day in and day out isn't an ideal way to go 'bout that. I've at least tried to talk to Bell once so far this year, and although it was of no profit, I'm trying again. Hell, think I shall today, in fact."
Adrian shrugged. "You've a point. I best pick up the pace myself. I fancy Spinnet, but I'm not failing my NEWTs for her if she hasn't swooned for me by nine months."
Marcus contained his frustration. The longer he was trapped here the greater his craving was to jump back two months and pound the living daylights out of himself for 'meh'ing his exams. Now all he had to look forward to was reconstructing his naturally crude persona with a gentleman's touch to suit Bell's bias. Shelved were his professional Quidditch plans so he could relive his seventh year by the day, ruddy waste of his time that is was.
As everyone began pouring out into the hall, Katie leveled her eyes with his leering stony grays. Marcus smiled strangely wide for her, to be delivered a middle finger and scowl. Adrian's snicker was wiped away with a murderous backhand.
...
Katie deftly picked off a sixth year Slytherin girl's blonde strand of hair from her robe to treasure until that dusk when she could tiptoe down to Myrtle's bathroom and commence brewing a Polyjuice Potion. Wearing a snake's skin in a snake's quarters outshone a lion's in unwelcome territory by a long haul. A month forward, when the potion would be ready, she'd chug it, step into the common room with some ally Slyths with her additive'd firewhiskey addressed to the victim of well-overdue reprisal, ask where his dorm was, and drop it off at his door. She go about her extra fifty or so minutes as another hiding out in a bathroom stall, likely with Myrtle.
Woefully, she wouldn't get to first-handedly exhibit his agonizing fit, but just knowing of it was righteous. Quite motivated and feeling much better, her damaged ego finally healing, she set out for the Black Lake to harvest some leeches.
o0o0o0o
Mid-October
The last table to the far-back right of her classroom was the first to draw Professor Trelawney's insightful eye upon exiting her office. There, hooligans' Mr. Flint, Mr. Pucey and Mr. Bole were chatting amongst each other while missiling spitballs and blowing their shredded tea leaves at a nearby Hufflepuff boy. The Seer, wholeheartedly relying on her Sight, skittered over to the Slytherins and cleared her throat before rapping at the eighth year's shoulder.
"M-mr. Flint! I recommend that you very, very heedfully watch what you ingest inside the next fortnight."
He regarded her with normal-for-a-student-of-her's incredulity. "How come?"
Her round greens zipped back and forth, then rested on the ceiling scrutinizingly, as if she were perusing it. "There are puddles of bile—a variety of bodily fluids—at first dampening—then drenching!—Oh...what's this? Gibberish…and an unstoppable and unstinting state of craze...The bile...it lies in a laxative." She gazed at him. "Do you suffer from constipation, my dear?"
Spittle sprayed over the fine tablecloth, Adrian and Lucian's sniggering blunt. "No," Marcus muttered, his cheeks inadvertently flushing.
"I warn you to decline anyone's offering of the substance, whether in potion, pill or powder form," she said, wagging her index finger at him like a mother to a naughty child.
"Er...'Kay."
"Keep a sharp eye over your meals and snacks to ensure nobody's meddling with them, and sniff your every bite for precaution, just for the next fourteen days."
The Captain tsked, trying to take nil of this crap to heart. "You're saying I should limit and think charily about whatever I stuff in my mouth?"
"You take a single nibble or sip from the contaminated dish or drink, you are plagued the sourest stomach you've ever bore, an incoherent mind, acute melancholy and a locked jaw—all at once, taking course at the same time."
"Bollocks...Is that what you're seeing?"
Lucian and Adrian looked at him weirdly for seeming to suppose her cuckoo prophecy legit.
"They transpire in flashes, but are always guaranteeing…" Sybill twirled to search-out a newly with-child Ravenclaw girl. She excused herself to regale and congratulate the unknowing student on her unintended case of gestation.
"You realize she's bullshitting, yeah?" Lucian said.
"Her 'predictions' are bogus," Adrian scoffed. "Just think back to when she 'foretold' Cassius taking a Bludger to his left shoulder Luce and I's third year. He ended up taking it to the right."
Marcus blanched. "Ya guys really think she's just yanking my chain?"
Either gave a light nod. "Maybe eat careful, though," Lucian suggested. "Just to be safe, y'know?"
…
As a fortnight neared its death, Marcus felt assured that his Divination prof was only a certifiable loon. After five days of picking at his food and asking his buds to sniff his bacon once he thoroughly did first like some dwelling worry-wart, he cut the ridiculousness and carried on regularly with his face-stuffing.
Meanwhile, Katie had topped off her Polyjuice and selected the night of the twenty-seventh to begrudgingly gulp down three tablespoons in Myrtle's bathroom. She gripped a basin's porcelain sides while gaping into the mirror. She'd felt and viewed her hair shorten and thicken, her eyes shade hazel, her heart-shaped face realign squarely, her frame gain fifteen pounds and lose two inches in height, her bosoms swell two full cups more, her nose shrink and widen slightly, and her lips get plumper and tint a lighter pink. All that remained consistent was her pasty skin tone and blonde hair.
"Okay...okay, I can do this," she murmured to herself to boost the valor of the innermost Gryff that hadn't morphed. These changes were only skin-deep and temporary, she continuously reassured herself as she made a beeline for the dungeons.
The dungeons had a grim ambiance that never ceased to fluster the witch, not even now, as she sported an inhabitant's exterior and was all but shunned in the region. She walked behind a trio of snakes for several minutes, hoping they were headed for their common room, wherever that be. They gathered by a sizable stone wall and one uttered their password. Katie rushed in with them when the wall separated, tensing less, as her ruse was progressing smoothly thus far.
Descending the concrete-paved stairs, she parted her robe's hood over her head so as to go unnoticed, and she fleetingly observed the pit, praying her eyes wouldn't meet with who was currently her reflection. Frankly, she hadn't expected the lounge to be so elegant, with its sweeping hearth and its adjoining button-tufted leather furniture, the viridescent lamps decorating the ceiling amid a chandelier, the depths of the Black Lake outside the windows that basked the area in a murky glow and the candle-lit human skulls peppering a series of work tables. The atmosphere was prepossessing, albeit coldly so. The cozy circular boundaries of her own lounge were still a significant length up her alley.
Just passing the hearth, a girl who'd apparently known her costume obstructed her path. "Gemma..I thought I just saw you leave for your prefect duties a few minutes ago."
Improvisation was heftily in order. "Um, someone gave me this," she lifted the firewhiskey, "to deliver to Marcus. He's switched dorms, hasn't he?"
The other serpent nodded. "He's rooming with Adrian, Lucian, Miles and Cassius down there, second-to-last door on the left…Are you feeling alright? Your voice sounds...odd. Different. Have you a bug?"
"I'm fine, thanks." Katie dashed down to where she was directed and placed Flint's present at the door. She vanished in a span of several moments, marking no trace.
…
A tall, black, glass bottle toppled over upon being struck by the opening door. Cassius grabbed it, read its tag and turned to say, "Got some firewhiskey for you, Mark."
"From who?" Marcus grumbled, taking hold of it to study its tag dubiously. "Anonymous devotee?"
"I'll be damned! Guess Trelawney ain't that sick in the brain after all," Lucian said.
"Hell are ya yakking about, Bole?" Marcus muttered, popping his gifted cork off.
"Don't be crass, man," Adrian scoffed. "That firewhiskey's obviously what the lady was referring to. It's tainted."
Marcus took a slow and deliberate snort of his treat. "Smells normal to me. 'Lawn's off her rocker."
"Mate, this random donation is awful suspicious, wouldn't you agree?" Adrian rationalized, assuming he'd have to confiscate the booze from his overly inconsiderate friend. "I strongly recommend you trash that. We're of age. Let's just go out to the Hog's Head this weekend and-"
"You're too paranoid, brethren." Marcus bared many unsightly teeth as he beamed in awe. "Got myself a secret devotee, I do."
Adrian gulped. "Mark-"
"Bottoms up."
Alarm silently sheathed all four roommates at the visual of the eighth year's quaffing, a chunky portion of the liquid down his hatch in fewer than ten secs. The world in the guzzler's perspective then plunged for chaos almost instantaneously as he spat pure balderdash, his stomach rumbling growly trouble.
Miles and Lucian ducked for cover on the floor behind Cassius' four-poster while Adrian and Cassius straightened themselves against the wall beside Miles' wardrobe. Marcus' single, thunderous belch told him to scramble for the common room toilet outside their dorm roughly thirty feet away. He virtually made it.
Latching the stall up for privacy was too gigantic a task when one was on the verge of blasting feces in their pants, Marcus briskly reasoned, his bowels brutally destructive, and his gut as well, as barf spewed from his mouth at quite a momentum. Incoherent words and puke spurted ahead of him and the toilet bowl was muddied in a similar fashion. Amid the excessive nausea, despair shrouded him like a blanket that rubbed off suicide-encouraging spells.
Two torturous hours were counted by Adrian as he, like the solicitous pal he was, stood guard at the end of the lavatory to shoo away anyone who tried to come in to expel their own presumably non-violent piss or dump. Adrian listened to his mate of early childhood cry, something he'd never before heard him do. He wouldn't doubt this wasn't his first time doing such. Mark wasn't a sissy, not even now, because his tears were but treacherous effects of some potion that'd he'd been illicitly dosed.
Adrian knew when the elder Chaser's bodily eruption faltered. It had when Mark shouted at the top of his lungs a sobering line of how that cunt was gonna fucking get it.