Chapter 24: Soul Collision
If Transfiguration had been an exercise in precision and art, the following Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson was, for Tamara Riddle, torture on two fronts: her senses and her soul.
By the time she reached the end of the third floor corridor, a stench rolled towards her like a physical force.
It was not an ordinary smell.
It was the reek of hundreds of heads of garlic crushed into paste, left to ferment, mixed with stale rot, then sealed in a confined space and forced to stew for an entire summer.
"Ugh."
Goyle, walking ahead, gagged and clamped a hand over his nose.
"What kind of hellhole is this?" Draco Malfoy yanked out a silk handkerchief and pressed it tightly over his nose and mouth, face twisted with disgust. "Is this a classroom or a kitchen? I feel like I've stepped into a giant pickle jar."
Tamara stopped at the door, her expression turning frighteningly dark.
In her former life, even at the most frenzied Death Eater gatherings, even while killing, she had maintained elegance. Her robes were spotless. The air around her had carried only blood and that cold, noble scent people associated with power.
And now.
She stared at the wooden door leaking toxic garlic fumes and felt as though her dignity were being ground into the floorboards.
The main soul inside Quirrell, the version of herself without a nose.
Had he truly fallen this far?
To cover his own decay, he had practically pickled himself.
Simply a disgrace to Slytherin.
Tamara stepped into the classroom like someone walking into an execution.
The room was dim, and garlic hung everywhere in thick strings. The smell pressed into the lungs, clung to hair, sank into cloth.
Behind the lectern stood the greatest joke in Hogwarts.
Quirinus Quirrell.
A ridiculous purple turban was wrapped around his head, making him look like an anxious stage performer dressed as a snake charmer. He rubbed his hands together, eyes darting, unable to meet the children's gaze for more than a heartbeat.
"G good morning, c class," Quirrell stammered, voice trembling, every syllable snagging as if caught in his throat. "W welcome to D defence Against the D dark Arts."
A low, suppressed laugh rolled through the room.
Slytherins respected teachers and tradition on the surface, but it was difficult to keep a straight face in front of such a clown.
Draco leaned back in his chair, head tilted, and murmured loudly enough for those nearby to hear, perfectly mimicking the miserable stutter.
"G good morning, I'm a s stutterer."
Pansy Parkinson covered her mouth, shoulders shaking as she laughed. Goyle and Crabbe snorted openly.
The laughter cut harshly through the classroom's stale quiet.
Quirrell's face reddened. He looked as if he wanted to scold them, but his mouth opened and closed uselessly. He could only tug at his turban, fear and helplessness flickering through his eyes.
Tamara sat in the front row, watching without expression.
She did not laugh.
If anything, shame and anger rose in her chest like fire.
That was her main soul.
That was the Dark Lord who had once made the wizarding world tremble, whose name people feared to speak.
Now he stood at the front like a frightened quail, being mocked by a group of eleven year olds.
Enough.
Tamara tapped her desk with her expensive holly wand.
The sound was not loud, but it carried a cold authority that sliced straight through the noise.
Draco froze mid mimic. Pansy stopped laughing as if someone had squeezed her throat shut.
All eyes turned to Tamara.
Slowly, she looked back over her shoulder. Her black eyes swept across the room with a chill that made even the air seem sharper.
"Is Slytherin etiquette to mock your Professor like a pack of ill bred baboons?"
"But he…" Draco began.
Tamara cut him off with quiet finality.
"Mocking someone like that only makes you look low class."
The class fell into confused silence. No one could tell whether she had defended Quirrell or insulted him with a subtler blade.
[ Ding! Detected host maintaining classroom discipline, demonstrating the beautiful virtue of respecting teachers. ]
[ Although you sounded sarcastic, the result is full of positive energy! ]
[ Reward: wisdom +1. ]
Tamara sneered inwardly.
Respecting teachers.
No. She simply refused to watch herself be turned into entertainment by fools. It was unbearable.
"Th thank you, Miss Riddle," Quirrell stammered, and something complex flickered in his eyes.
"T today's lesson, w we are going to talk about… v vampires."
Quirrell launched into his performance.
He babbled about vampires he had supposedly met in Romania and how he used garlic to keep them away.
The story was incoherent. The logic did not hold. He even mangled the pronunciation of several basic defensive spells.
Tamara's anger did not fade.
It sharpened.
In Transfiguration, she had been forced to waste a precious item just to avoid losing face. Now her frustration had nowhere to go.
And Quirrell, reeking of garlic and playing the fool at the front, was the perfect target.
When he reached the point about garlic being a vampire's bane, Tamara raised her hand.
Quirrell stopped at once. Seeing it was the student who had just silenced the class, he produced a fawning smile.
"M Miss Riddle? D do you have… a question?"
Tamara stood.
She looked at him with deliberate scrutiny, and a dangerous smile touched her lips.
"Professor, you said the garlic is to ward off the vampire you met in Romania, to stop it returning for revenge. Correct?"
"Y yes," Quirrell said, fingers twitching at his turban.
"That is truly a touching story," Tamara said softly.
Her tone was gentle, but each word carried poison.
"But I am curious, Professor."
She stepped forward, closing the distance to the lectern.
"Garlic can ward off lesser dark creatures such as vampires."
She paused, eyes narrowing, gaze fixing on the back of Quirrell's head beneath that thick purple wrap.
"However… what if what is possessing a person is not a vampire."
"What if it is something older. Weaker. A disembodied remnant soul that can only cling on like a parasite."
The words struck like silent thunder.
Quirrell's smile froze.
His body snapped rigid. The nervous hunch in his shoulders vanished as his spine straightened abruptly.
And in that instant, his gaze changed.
The cowardly, evasive stupidity disappeared.
For a heartbeat, a hair raising red light flashed in his eyes.
That was Voldemort.
That was the look of a venomous snake whose tail had been stepped on.
He stared at the eleven year old girl through Quirrell's eyes with terrifying focus.
The classroom air thickened, turning heavy and oppressive.
Draco and the others did not understand the meaning behind Tamara's words. They only felt the atmosphere shift, as if an unseen hand had pressed down on their chests, making breathing difficult.
Tamara met that gaze without blinking.
Two Voldemorts.
One in a young, healthy body, bound by a system.
One a powerful main soul forced to survive like a parasite inside a useless man soaked in garlic.
Their eyes met.
Buzz.
Pain stabbed deep into Tamara's skull.
It was not an ordinary headache.
It was soul resonance. Repulsion and attraction at once, born from two fragments of the same source drawn too close.
[ Warning! High risk malicious intent source intrusion detected! ]
[ Detected that the host has no defensive skills. ]
[ Triggering highest level security protocol: Soul Firewall activated. ]
Buzz.
This was not magic colliding.
This was something lower and more violent.
A clash at the level of the soul, the terrifying resonance of two fragments from the same origin wrapped in different laws, forced into contact.
Like two magnets with the same pole being shoved together.
Tamara's face blanched.
She felt as if her brain were being stirred by a red hot iron.
Across from her, Quirrell reacted even more violently.
"Ah!"
He let out a sharp cry, clapping both hands to the back of his head and stumbling backwards, nearly knocking the lectern over.
It looked as though he had plunged his hand into boiling lava.
The system had wrapped Tamara's soul in a layer of something Voldemort could not analyse, a barrier of garbled order that scorched his curiosity on contact.
Quirrell, or rather Voldemort, stared at her with rigid intensity.
He had not expected to sense an aura from a first year that even he found dangerous.
The aura of his own kind.
And worse than danger was humiliation.
"Sit down!" Quirrell snapped.
For once his voice was sharp and piercing, and in his agitation he forgot to stutter.
He turned abruptly, presenting his back to Tamara, hands gripping the lectern so hard his knuckles whitened.
"That is a meaningless hypothesis!"
He sucked in air, then forced the clumsy mask back on.
"G garlic is very effective. Very effective. Now… o open your textbooks to page ten."
Tamara stared at his turned back and gave a quiet, contemptuous snort.
Coward.
Provoked by a student and all he could do was turn away and flee.
It seemed splitting a soul did more than weaken a body. It stripped away judgment and breadth of mind.
Tamara returned to her seat with composed elegance.
The clash had not frightened her.
It had thrilled her in a twisted way, and the frustration from the previous lesson drained away, replaced by cold, satisfied clarity.
She opened her textbook to the illustration of a zombie, but her gaze drifted past the page.
Since you have fallen so far as to cling to an idiot's body…
Then I will take the Philosopher's Stone on your behalf.
After all.
Her fingers brushed the wand handle, feeling the warmth of the phoenix feather core.
Only a complete and powerful me is worthy of eternal life. Is that not right?
The remainder of the lesson dragged.
Quirrell seemed shaken. Perhaps he feared being stung again by Tamara's questions. He read entirely from the book and did not dare glance in her direction even once.
At last, the bell rang.
Quirrell barked, "Class dismissed," almost on the same breath as the bell, then snatched up his books and hurried into his office behind the lectern as if fleeing a predator.
"What's wrong with him?" Draco asked while packing his bag, puzzled. "It's like he's seen a ghost."
"Perhaps," Tamara said, standing and smoothing robes that remained perfectly unwrinkled.
"Perhaps he did see a ghost."
She glanced back at the closed office door, and a cruel smile lifted her lips.
"Or he saw something far more terrifying than a ghost."
"Come on, Draco."
Tamara left the garlic soaked classroom first, stepping into the corridor air that was cold but fresh. It felt like returning to life.
"Let's go to lunch," she said. "All of a sudden, even pumpkin juice does not sound so bad."
.....
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