Fic: "Her Own Inadequacies" for lazaray
Happy witchwinter, lazaray!
Title: Her Own Inadequacies
Author: ?
Recipient: lazaray
Disclaimer: None of them are mine.
Characters/Pairing: Marietta, Cho, Angelina/Alicia/Katie
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,365
Warnings: A smidge of angst
Summary: No one ever tells Marietta anything these days.
Her Own Inadequacies
An hour into the game, Marietta Edgecombe is still embarassingly sober.
“Never had I ever puffed some ganja before Potions,” Eddie Carmichael says thoughtfully, swaying slightly where he stood between Terry Boot and Lisa Turpin, because he fancied Lisa and he'd be damned if he let her get tipsy around Terry. “What?”
“When aren't you on something during or after class?” Lisa asks with mock innocence as the rest of the others in the drinking circle erupt in raucous laughter. “I swear, you're going to go blind one of these days from all that crap.”
Eddie holds up a hand as he downs a finger of dragon whiskey, courtesy of a Gryffindor so desperate to pass Charms that he bartered the contraband rather than get help from Hermione Granger. At least one Gryffindor could distinguish a real tutoring session from showboating, Marietta silently seethes. Unconsciously, she pats the new row of fringe spiralling over her scarred forehead.
“You're so distracted,” Cho whispers, smiling tipsily. Her eyes are aglow with drink and the collective victory in which Ravenclaw House revels at the completion of the term's exams and the start of the winter holidays. “You haven't touched your drink.”
It's not that Marietta is slow to take to Anthony Goldstein's Muggle drinking game; it is easy to comprehend. But Marietta is distracted by sidelong looks she has been getting all night from her housemates, the same everyone but the Slytherins have given her since she outed Dumbledore's Army last year. Snitch.
“Never had I ever,” Boot interrupts, practically yelling and half-falling on Lisa, his grey-green eyes the shade of runespoor scales, “regretted being among friends.”
Oy, Cho, why'd you bring the snitch?
Rooted in her lucid, lonesome spot in the middle of the common room, Marietta burns, mortified.
**
There is an evengreater punishment than being exiled by your housemates.
Marietta takes to avoiding everyone except Cho and a small handful of younger years who share her opinions of Harry Potter's inflated ambition - an army of schoolgirls and schoolboys, how daft and delusional is he? She takes her meals when the Great Hall is almost empty, studies alone when Cho has Quidditch practice, watches the games with first years and takes her baths late.
She is surprised, even slightly annoyed, when she walks into the fifth-floor bathroom only to find herself enveloped by steam. From an underterminable distance, she could hear running water and low laughter. She is about to turn heel to leave and wait out the others, when she catches a familiar voice.
“Leave it,” Cho's voice floats from the shower stalls installed across the room, in the opposite direction of the giant, luxurious tubs over which portraits of mermaids and sea-queens presided with detached haughtiness. “That's okay, just leave it.”
**
Marietta nervously walks forward, following Cho's laughter, stepping over towels and Quidditch kits soaked sapphire and garnet from melted snow. It's intrusive, she knows, a new level of low, a new low of loneliness and unrequited affection that she will probably take back to her bed to rub herself off to, the newest addition to a secret library of images that make her a bigger freak than everyone else gives her credit for.
She stops behind a trolley of towels, ducking down to hide herself from view despite the thick fragrant mist provided by the rain of five showers. As if being called a snitch is not bad enough, being a perverted voyeur would be the icing on the cake of a crappy school year, and she supposed she might as well fling herself off Ravenclaw Tower to save her some angst.
But before it comes to that -
“Let me see, Cho,” Katie Bell says.
Cho obliges and Marietta watches.
**
Knowing more than is wise - and moreover, knowing what to do with the knowledge - is the source of Marietta's problems. It explains why she is never a favorite among teachers or her own siblings, why she is known as a gossiper as much as a bookworm, why she has a horrific row of acne scars that inarguably spell the reason.
Because it is such a temptation to tell the whole school that Angelina Johnson likes being in control and that Alicia Spinnet could not get Katie to tongue her because she snogged Cho for minutes on end and used up all the shampoo for her long black hair.
Back in her bed, the thick blue curtains shut around her bed to give her a false night, Marietta fumbles over the buttons of her blouse and the snaps of her skirt. Her school robes lay curled on her pillow, a shadow of a shadow. She is wet and she believes she might be heartbroken.
Her hands are cold against her breasts as she calls up the image of her best friend being eaten out by another girl, coltish legs spread in full view of her childhood friend, invisible but also in similar throes of pleasure.
**
Alicia Spinnet is ridiculously ticklish, and Angelina all but has to kiss her and brace her against the wall to continue soaping her.
In her hiding place, Marietta mimics the patterns the dark girl traces over Alicia's small breasts on her own - lazy squeezes, gentle swipes on their soft undersides and slippery attention to her rosy, erect nipples that feel wonderfully torturous - before gliding impatient and ink-stained finger (fingers?) between her legs.
No one ever tells Marietta anything these days. And Cho, for all her fickle and overly emotional attachment and stupid expectations of boys, in her best friend's mind, is no different. She could handle all the Cedric Diggorys and Harry Potters and countless other boys who wanted to grope her, and the girls who wanted to float within the orbit of her easy popularity because through it all, Marietta always knew of them. She knew who was a pants kisser, who wanted to be like Cho Chang so badly they tried out for Seeker last fall. She never had to ask, not since she and Cho were ten going on eleven, and curious, know-it-all Marietta Edgecombe realized her love was beyond sisterly.
It is a new low, this exclusion, to be outside this secret.
“Lower, a little bit faster,” Cho pants, her spread cunt pink and only occasionally visible behind Katie, whose own was in full display while she crouched on her knees, naked, arse in the air, knees slightly apart. They both moan, Katie's muffled against Cho's clit and Cho's unhindered by steam and water. “Please.”
**
“'Please' what?”
“Please don't tell anyone,” Cho clarifies, frowning. Today, her shining hair is immaculately combed, clipped to one side by a set of pearl barrettes. She looks almost prefect-like, stern, not a trace of athlete in her until her walk betrays the swagger of one. “We'd really like to keep it quiet until after term resumes next year.”
“God,” Marietta whines in front of a mirror, lifting the light layer of mousy brown hair off her forehead. She thinks the hairstyle makes her head look like a ball of ribbons or a slightly rumpled wad of decaying bowtruckles. “That's going to be there, like, forever.”
Cho's reflection crosses its arms. Marietta commends herself for not staring at the outline of breasts hidden under the pressed robes, nursing the knowledge that they are an exact handful in the cradle of Angelina's palms, or that the left one has a small, mouth-sized bruise just above the areola.
“Fine.” Marietta's eyes are hard, almost bitter. “I won't tell anyone about you and Davies, let alone that prat, Potter, like he'd spare me the time of day even if the Dark Lord's knocking at the castle doors. No one's bothered to talk to me in ages, you know.”
Oy, Cho, why'd you bring the snitch?
“How'd he taste?” she asks, hating herself a little.
Cho shrugs, a crooked smile tugging at the left corner of her mouth. “Oh. You know.”
Marietta doesn't. She picks up a brush and sighs disappointingly at her reflection. “I really don't.”
But explaining that is another story of her inadequacies.
Title: Her Own Inadequacies
Author: ?
Recipient: lazaray
Disclaimer: None of them are mine.
Characters/Pairing: Marietta, Cho, Angelina/Alicia/Katie
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,365
Warnings: A smidge of angst
Summary: No one ever tells Marietta anything these days.
Her Own Inadequacies
An hour into the game, Marietta Edgecombe is still embarassingly sober.
“Never had I ever puffed some ganja before Potions,” Eddie Carmichael says thoughtfully, swaying slightly where he stood between Terry Boot and Lisa Turpin, because he fancied Lisa and he'd be damned if he let her get tipsy around Terry. “What?”
“When aren't you on something during or after class?” Lisa asks with mock innocence as the rest of the others in the drinking circle erupt in raucous laughter. “I swear, you're going to go blind one of these days from all that crap.”
Eddie holds up a hand as he downs a finger of dragon whiskey, courtesy of a Gryffindor so desperate to pass Charms that he bartered the contraband rather than get help from Hermione Granger. At least one Gryffindor could distinguish a real tutoring session from showboating, Marietta silently seethes. Unconsciously, she pats the new row of fringe spiralling over her scarred forehead.
“You're so distracted,” Cho whispers, smiling tipsily. Her eyes are aglow with drink and the collective victory in which Ravenclaw House revels at the completion of the term's exams and the start of the winter holidays. “You haven't touched your drink.”
It's not that Marietta is slow to take to Anthony Goldstein's Muggle drinking game; it is easy to comprehend. But Marietta is distracted by sidelong looks she has been getting all night from her housemates, the same everyone but the Slytherins have given her since she outed Dumbledore's Army last year. Snitch.
“Never had I ever,” Boot interrupts, practically yelling and half-falling on Lisa, his grey-green eyes the shade of runespoor scales, “regretted being among friends.”
Oy, Cho, why'd you bring the snitch?
Rooted in her lucid, lonesome spot in the middle of the common room, Marietta burns, mortified.
**
There is an evengreater punishment than being exiled by your housemates.
Marietta takes to avoiding everyone except Cho and a small handful of younger years who share her opinions of Harry Potter's inflated ambition - an army of schoolgirls and schoolboys, how daft and delusional is he? She takes her meals when the Great Hall is almost empty, studies alone when Cho has Quidditch practice, watches the games with first years and takes her baths late.
She is surprised, even slightly annoyed, when she walks into the fifth-floor bathroom only to find herself enveloped by steam. From an underterminable distance, she could hear running water and low laughter. She is about to turn heel to leave and wait out the others, when she catches a familiar voice.
“Leave it,” Cho's voice floats from the shower stalls installed across the room, in the opposite direction of the giant, luxurious tubs over which portraits of mermaids and sea-queens presided with detached haughtiness. “That's okay, just leave it.”
**
Marietta nervously walks forward, following Cho's laughter, stepping over towels and Quidditch kits soaked sapphire and garnet from melted snow. It's intrusive, she knows, a new level of low, a new low of loneliness and unrequited affection that she will probably take back to her bed to rub herself off to, the newest addition to a secret library of images that make her a bigger freak than everyone else gives her credit for.
She stops behind a trolley of towels, ducking down to hide herself from view despite the thick fragrant mist provided by the rain of five showers. As if being called a snitch is not bad enough, being a perverted voyeur would be the icing on the cake of a crappy school year, and she supposed she might as well fling herself off Ravenclaw Tower to save her some angst.
But before it comes to that -
“Let me see, Cho,” Katie Bell says.
Cho obliges and Marietta watches.
**
Knowing more than is wise - and moreover, knowing what to do with the knowledge - is the source of Marietta's problems. It explains why she is never a favorite among teachers or her own siblings, why she is known as a gossiper as much as a bookworm, why she has a horrific row of acne scars that inarguably spell the reason.
Because it is such a temptation to tell the whole school that Angelina Johnson likes being in control and that Alicia Spinnet could not get Katie to tongue her because she snogged Cho for minutes on end and used up all the shampoo for her long black hair.
Back in her bed, the thick blue curtains shut around her bed to give her a false night, Marietta fumbles over the buttons of her blouse and the snaps of her skirt. Her school robes lay curled on her pillow, a shadow of a shadow. She is wet and she believes she might be heartbroken.
Her hands are cold against her breasts as she calls up the image of her best friend being eaten out by another girl, coltish legs spread in full view of her childhood friend, invisible but also in similar throes of pleasure.
**
Alicia Spinnet is ridiculously ticklish, and Angelina all but has to kiss her and brace her against the wall to continue soaping her.
In her hiding place, Marietta mimics the patterns the dark girl traces over Alicia's small breasts on her own - lazy squeezes, gentle swipes on their soft undersides and slippery attention to her rosy, erect nipples that feel wonderfully torturous - before gliding impatient and ink-stained finger (fingers?) between her legs.
No one ever tells Marietta anything these days. And Cho, for all her fickle and overly emotional attachment and stupid expectations of boys, in her best friend's mind, is no different. She could handle all the Cedric Diggorys and Harry Potters and countless other boys who wanted to grope her, and the girls who wanted to float within the orbit of her easy popularity because through it all, Marietta always knew of them. She knew who was a pants kisser, who wanted to be like Cho Chang so badly they tried out for Seeker last fall. She never had to ask, not since she and Cho were ten going on eleven, and curious, know-it-all Marietta Edgecombe realized her love was beyond sisterly.
It is a new low, this exclusion, to be outside this secret.
“Lower, a little bit faster,” Cho pants, her spread cunt pink and only occasionally visible behind Katie, whose own was in full display while she crouched on her knees, naked, arse in the air, knees slightly apart. They both moan, Katie's muffled against Cho's clit and Cho's unhindered by steam and water. “Please.”
**
“'Please' what?”
“Please don't tell anyone,” Cho clarifies, frowning. Today, her shining hair is immaculately combed, clipped to one side by a set of pearl barrettes. She looks almost prefect-like, stern, not a trace of athlete in her until her walk betrays the swagger of one. “We'd really like to keep it quiet until after term resumes next year.”
“God,” Marietta whines in front of a mirror, lifting the light layer of mousy brown hair off her forehead. She thinks the hairstyle makes her head look like a ball of ribbons or a slightly rumpled wad of decaying bowtruckles. “That's going to be there, like, forever.”
Cho's reflection crosses its arms. Marietta commends herself for not staring at the outline of breasts hidden under the pressed robes, nursing the knowledge that they are an exact handful in the cradle of Angelina's palms, or that the left one has a small, mouth-sized bruise just above the areola.
“Fine.” Marietta's eyes are hard, almost bitter. “I won't tell anyone about you and Davies, let alone that prat, Potter, like he'd spare me the time of day even if the Dark Lord's knocking at the castle doors. No one's bothered to talk to me in ages, you know.”
Oy, Cho, why'd you bring the snitch?
“How'd he taste?” she asks, hating herself a little.
Cho shrugs, a crooked smile tugging at the left corner of her mouth. “Oh. You know.”
Marietta doesn't. She picks up a brush and sighs disappointingly at her reflection. “I really don't.”
But explaining that is another story of her inadequacies.