Chapter 10: Kitty
By the time Tamara left Ollivanders, the sky had begun to dim towards dusk.
Diagon Alley lay under a wash of orange red light, the shop signs glowing like embers while shadows pooled between the cobbles. Tamara tucked the holly wand, that damned, sanctimonious thing, deeper into her robes.
Her mood swung wildly between triumph and nausea.
Finally, a wand.
Also, Potter's wand.
"One last thing," she muttered.
She stopped and turned her gaze towards a shop a short walk away.
The Magical Menagerie.
A Dark Lord required a servant. In better days, she would have had followers kneeling at her feet, and corpses answering her call. Now, she had neither Death Eaters to recruit nor Inferi to command.
But she could at least reclaim what she had always possessed.
Loyalty.
"Nagini…"
The name warmed something in her chest that had no business being warm.
In the final hours of her previous life, when the world had turned on her and every promise had crumbled, only Nagini had remained. A beautiful, terrible creature who understood her without explanation, who stayed when staying was dangerous.
"Wait for me, old friend," Tamara whispered. "In this life, I will make you even stronger."
She pushed open the door.
A dense, animal smell rolled over her at once. The shop was crowded with cages, crates, perches, and tanks. Owls rustled and hooted. Toads blinked wetly from shallow basins. A pair of puffskeins rolled about like misplaced balls of fluff.
Tamara ignored all of it.
She walked straight to the back.
The reptile section.
A large glass display case sat there, and inside it lay a coiled African tree viper. It was not the magnificent, human swallowing titan she remembered, but the vertical pupils were cold and intelligent, and the emerald scales carried a quiet, dangerous grace.
Tamara leaned close to the glass.
"Hello," she murmured. "Beautiful little thing."
A hiss slid out of her mouth, sharp and ancient.
Parseltongue.
The tree viper stirred at once. It raised its head and glided towards her with reverence, pressing closer to the glass as if drawn by gravity.
"A Speaker…" it hissed, its voice forming inside Tamara's mind rather than her ears. "What do you desire… Master?"
"Perfect."
Tamara smiled, satisfied. Even in this smaller, weaker body, her authority over serpents remained unquestioned.
She straightened and called across the shop, voice crisp.
"Proprietor. I want this snake."
The woman behind the counter, thick spectacles perched on her nose, had barely opened her mouth when that familiar, irritating mechanical voice detonated inside Tamara's skull.
[Warning! Host detected attempting to purchase a high threat creature!]
[System Evaluation: You will make those timid classmates cry!]
"I do not care," Tamara snapped in her mind. "I am a Slytherin. Keeping a snake is perfectly natural."
[Not allowed, host. If the host insists on the purchase, the system will administer electric shock punishment regardless of the occasion the moment anyone nearby is frightened.]
Tamara's jaw tightened.
A public shock, at any time, the instant some fool squealed. The image of herself twitching like a broken puppet in the middle of Diagon Alley was enough to curdle even her pride.
She swallowed her fury.
"You win," she conceded through clenched teeth. "You vicious system."
She turned away from the display case.
The tree viper stared after her, motionless, as if it could not comprehend rejection.
"Sorry," Tamara whispered in Parseltongue, voice colder than she intended. "Forced by circumstances."
Then she left the reptile section without looking back.
The shopkeeper approached, puzzled but polite.
"So what would you like to buy, little girl? A toad? They are very popular lately, if you do not mind the warts."
Tamara forced a smile that felt like stretching paper over a blade.
"I do not like toads," she said. "They are too noisy."
"Oh. Then come look at this."
The shopkeeper guided her to a cage near the front.
Inside sat a black cat.
It was perfectly black, not a single stray hair of any other colour, as though darkness itself had decided to nap. Its golden eyes were half closed with lazy contempt while it licked a paw and pretended the world was beneath notice.
Tamara stared.
"Fine," she sighed. "At least it does not look stupid."
She paid.
Ten Galleons.
The number hit her like an insult. She had not expected a cat to be priced like a minor heirloom.
As the shopkeeper placed the cat into a carrier, she asked casually, "What will you name it?"
Tamara looked at the cat, and for a moment her gaze went distant.
It had no scales. It could not speak. It would never understand Parseltongue. It was nothing like the creature she had lost.
And yet, in this strange new life, it would be hers. Her only private possession, not borrowed, not supervised, not controlled by a headmaster's pity.
"Nagini," she said softly.
She stepped back into the street, lifting the carrier to eye level.
"Listen," Tamara whispered to the black cat, voice low and commanding as if she were addressing a subordinate in a war room. "Nagini Two."
She stared into those golden eyes with absolute seriousness.
"I am your master, the great Dark Lord. You will be my eyes, my claws. You will help me watch Hogwarts, and learn every weakness, every secret, every foolish little habit…"
The cat stared at her for a long second.
Then it opened its mouth and produced an utterly perfunctory, slightly out of tune sound.
"Meow?"
Immediately after, it flipped over inside the carrier, displayed its white belly with complete shamelessness, and began chasing its own tail.
It spun so quickly its head struck the bars with a dull thud.
The cat shook itself as if nothing had happened and continued the chase with renewed determination.
Tamara froze.
This thing has intellectual problems.
"Refund," she said flatly, already turning back towards the shop.
Then she saw the sign beside the door.
Once sold, no refunds.
Tamara stared at the cat, now hissing in frustration because it could not catch its own tail, and felt a deep, humiliating powerlessness settle into her bones.
In her previous life, her companion had been a serpent large enough to swallow a man whole.
In this life, her companion was a cat that could not outwit its own backside.
"Is this retribution?" Tamara murmured, looking up at the darkening sky.
She sighed, long and thin.
By the time she reached Wool's Orphanage, it was fully dark.
Tamara hauled her bags up to the second floor, shoulders aching. Nagini slept in its carrier as if it had worked a full shift, snoring softly with absurd confidence.
In the corridor, she nearly collided with Mrs Martha, who was making her rounds to turn out the lights.
"Good heavens," Mrs Martha gasped.
The gloomy girl who used to shuffle about in a faded grey dress was gone.
In her place stood a young lady who looked as though she had stepped out of a portrait, wrapped in dark green silk robes, curls falling neatly over her chest, a black cat in her arms. If the face had not still been Tamara's, Mrs Martha might have believed some foreign princess had wandered in by mistake.
"Where have you been?" Mrs Martha demanded, then faltered as her eyes dropped to the bags. "And these things…"
Tamara glanced at her, cold and dismissive. A Muggle owed no explanation.
Then the system chimed, as always, at precisely the wrong moment.
[Ding! Daily Quest Settlement: Return Home.]
[Please display your new image.]
[Quest Reward: Love +5]
Tamara drew a slow breath.
She tilted her head and arranged her expression into something flawlessly sweet.
"I went to buy my school supplies, Mrs Martha," she said.
She did a small twirl on the spot, letting the silk catch the light.
"Professor Dumbledore gave me a scholarship. Do these clothes look good?"
Mrs Martha stared for several seconds, as if her brain had to reboot.
"They look good," she said at last, voice unexpectedly soft. "Very good."
For once, her harsh face showed something almost maternal. She lifted a hand as if to pat Tamara's head, then paused when the cat peered at her with wary eyes.
"That is your cat?" she asked, surprised.
"Yes," Tamara replied. "Its name is Nagini."
Nagini looked at Mrs Martha, opened its mouth in a cavernous yawn, tongue curling dramatically, then rubbed itself against Tamara with enthusiastic devotion, shedding fur like it was being paid per hair.
Mrs Martha smiled, wrinkles bunching.
"So cute."
"Alright," she said briskly, the old tone returning like armour. "Hurry back to your room. Do not get your new clothes dirty. I will save an egg for you for breakfast tomorrow."
"Thank you."
Tamara nodded politely and walked on.
She shut her door behind her and locked it.
The moment the latch clicked, her expression collapsed into disgust. She set her bags down and tossed the cat onto the bed.
Nagini landed, blinked once, then immediately began kneading the blanket as if it were shaping the world to its liking.
Tamara brushed cat hair from her robe with irritation.
"Listen, Nagini," she said, pointing an accusing finger. "If you get hair on me again, I will turn you into a pair of gloves."
"Meow."
The cat did not understand. It rolled about as if the bed was the greatest discovery in wizarding history. Then it crawled to Tamara's leg and pressed its head against her with startling force, purring so loudly it sounded like a small engine.
Tamara went rigid.
She lifted her foot as if to kick it away.
At the last second, the movement softened into a gentle nudge instead.
Ten Galleons. She reminded herself. Ten.
She looked over the pile of supplies from Diagon Alley.
The beginning was ugly.
Her body was weak.
A mad system watched her every breath.
But still.
Tamara Riddle lifted her wand, flicked it lightly, and the books and materials rose into the air at once, floating obediently as if they had been waiting for her command.
"I am back," she said quietly.
.....
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