Chapter 63: The Transport Team
At midnight on Saturday, the highest spiral stair of the Astronomy Tower was battered by a howling wind.
"One, two, three... lift!"
With a dull groan, a huge wooden crate was heaved up another step.
"Whew... whew..."
Harry and Hermione collapsed onto the stairs, gasping for breath as though their lungs were about to burst.
Opposite them, Tamara Riddle was braced against the cold stone wall, bent over without the slightest regard for her image. Her usually pale, immaculate face was now slick with sweat, and several strands of hair clung damply to her forehead.
"Damn... fat lizard..."
Tamara cursed viciously in her heart, feeling as though her back were about to snap in two.
Who could have imagined that the great Dark Lord of old would one day be reduced to a glorified porter?
Her original plan had been flawless. A simple Levitation Charm would have floated the box all the way up with elegance and ease.
But the moment they had been ready to lift the crate out of Hagrid's hut, the system had spoken.
[Ding! Warning! The creature inside the box is currently in an extremely unstable state of stress.]
The voice, dripping with insufferable humanistic concern, had sounded at exactly the wrong moment.
[Direct magical contact with the exterior of the box will cause fluctuations that may send Norbert into a frenzy, resulting in an explosion or a loud roar. To ensure campus safety, please adopt the most primitive and reliable transportation method.]
[Triggered Task: Sharing Weal and Woe.]
[As the team leader, how can you stand by and watch your teammates suffer? Please set aside your status and sweat together with your friends! Use of any magic is prohibited.]
And so this was the result.
Harry and Hermione, those two pitiful first year Gryffindors, had almost no strength to speak of, which meant that most of the weight had ended up on Tamara's side.
At the turn below, Norbert had gone into one of his fits and lashed his tail through the wood of the crate, striking Tamara hard across the waist.
"I swear," Tamara thought through gritted teeth, "once he gets to Albania, I am having someone starve him for three days."
At that moment, the sound of broomsticks cutting through the night air swept down from above.
Four figures burst from the clouds astride flying brooms.
These were the people Peritus had sent.
Tamara immediately drew in a breath, straightened her rumpled robes, and stood upright, trying to recover some small shred of the dignity befitting a Dark Lord.
The brooms landed.
The wizards upon them looked rough, disreputable, and more than a little deranged.
The leader was a burly bald man whose face did not suggest exceptional intelligence.
"Oi! Is this the little fellow?"
He leapt from his broom and strode over carelessly, glancing at the three children who looked half dead from exhaustion.
"Been working hard, have you?"
Then his gaze landed on Tamara.
Seeing her clearly dishevelled despite her effort to look composed, he broke into a broad grin.
"Especially you, little miss. Look at you, worn out already. Tiny as you are, you've got some grit. Mr Peritus said this one was a real treasure."
Little miss?
The corner of Tamara's eye twitched.
She narrowed her eyes, preparing to put this insolent subordinate in his place with a single cold look, one that ought to have been enough to remind him who he was speaking to.
Unfortunately, it was too dark, and the man failed to notice altogether.
Instead, he dug into his filthy leather jacket, pulled out a handful of sticky sweets, and shoved them directly into Tamara's hand.
"Here, have some. Your reward from Uncle. Cockroach Clusters. Not bad, these."
"..."
Tamara looked down at the magical sweets wriggling faintly in her palm and felt her blood run cold.
Harry and Hermione were right there.
She could not lash out.
Could not use the Cruciatus Curse.
Could not sever this idiot's fingers from his hand.
She could only stand there holding the disgusting things, a smile forced stiffly onto her face.
"...Thank you."
"No need!"
The man laughed loudly, then turned to the others and barked out orders as they moved to fasten the crate to their ropes.
"Right, lads! Up we go! Best not let those Ministry bastards spot us!"
The four brooms lifted the enormous box, wobbling alarmingly as they rose into the dark.
Only when they had vanished fully into the clouds did Tamara hurl the entire handful of sweets over the edge of the tower as though they were infected.
"Finally... it's over."
She let out a long breath, rubbed her aching waist, and fixed her eyes on the sky.
Though the process had been humiliating, it had been necessary.
She had once considered hiding Norbert in the Room of Requirement.
The room would indeed have provided a perfect hiding place, but it could not violate Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. It could not create food.
A Norwegian Ridgeback in a stage of explosive growth required several buckets of brandy and a dozen skinned chickens every single day.
That meant smuggling supplies from the Hogwarts kitchens again and again.
They might fool the House elves once or twice, but not forever. Exposure would have been inevitable.
And once exposed, the dragon would no longer belong to her.
Dumbledore would never permit a first year student to keep such a dangerous creature.
Sending him away, for the time being, was the better choice.
Harry finally straightened, mopping the sweat from his brow as relief spread across his face.
"We were really lucky. Nobody actually saw us."
"Yes, really lucky," Hermione agreed, still breathing hard. "I was sure Professor McGonagall would catch us."
Tamara said nothing.
She stood at the edge of the tower, letting the wind whip her hair across her face. Her eyes followed the direction in which the transport team had disappeared, then slowly swept over the Castle below.
Lucky?
The chill in her eyes deepened instead of easing.
If Hogwarts could truly be entered and left by luck alone, then back when she had been Lord Voldemort, she would never have gone to such lengths seeking hidden ways in.
This was the most heavily defended place in Britain.
The Astronomy Tower might be high, but it still lay within the Castle's core defensive range.
And yet four outside wizards had sailed straight through the aerial boundary, landed, loaded cargo, and departed again without interference.
Where were the guardian statues?
Where were the anti intrusion wards?
Even Peeves, who was forever drifting about like a curse on legs, had failed to appear.
Everything had been too smooth.
So smooth that it felt as though someone had deliberately opened the door of the cage for them, just long enough to throw the hot potato outside.
A sheen of cold sweat spread across Tamara's back.
She could almost picture it with dreadful clarity: a pair of bright blue eyes behind half moon spectacles, watching this farce from the high window of the Headmaster's office with quiet amusement.
Dumbledore knew.
He had been watching the whole show.
"What's wrong, Tamara?" Harry asked, noticing the change in her expression. "Does where the dragon hit you still hurt?"
Tamara came back to herself at once and swiftly arranged her features.
When she turned, the fleeting darkness on her face had vanished, replaced by the appropriate look of weary confusion.
"Nothing. I just thought those people looked... rather strange."
She had to play this correctly.
"Mr Peritus is obviously a very rigorous old scholar, so I did not expect the transport team he found to be like that."
She was laying the groundwork for Harry and Hermione, and for Dumbledore too, if he really had been listening.
She was merely a first year student who happened to know an elderly scholar named Peritus.
If that scholar turned out to have Death Eater ties, or if the men he had sent were black market smugglers, she knew nothing about it.
She was innocent.
Merely deceived.
And if she held to that, then even if she were summoned to the Headmaster's office tomorrow, Dumbledore would have no grounds to expel her. What could he truly do to a little witch who had foolishly trusted a pen pal while trying to help a friend?
"Anyway, it is good that the dragon is gone," Tamara said, lowering her eyes to conceal the keen, hard gleam beneath.
The dragon was gone. Her asset had grown. Her leverage remained secure. And as for Dumbledore, so long as she played her role well enough, suspicion should not deepen.
Not when she had already forged more than enough letters between herself and this so called scholar.
"Let's go quickly," Harry said nervously. "Filch might be making his rounds."
The three of them hurried down the spiral stair.
Halfway down, Tamara stopped so abruptly that both Harry and Hermione nearly walked into her.
Wait.
Something was missing.
"Potter."
She turned sharply.
"Where is your invisibility cloak?"
Harry froze.
He patted himself once, then again.
The colour drained from his face all at once.
"Oh no. I left it at the top of the tower. I took it off when we lifted the crate."
At that moment, Tamara's heart began hammering in her chest.
The invisibility cloak.
One of the Deathly Hallows.
The legendary cloak even Death could not find.
And now it was lying alone atop the tower, ownerless and unguarded.
"You two go on ahead," Tamara said at once, her eyes flashing with fierce greed. "I will go and fetch it."
"But..."
"Go!" she snapped. "Stop talking. Do you want Filch to catch us?"
She shoved Harry forward, then turned and ran back the way they had come.
This was a once in a lifetime chance.
If she got her hands on it now, she could always claim she had not found it. Or say it had been lost. Or never mention it again.
She flew up the stairs.
And there it was.
The silver grey fabric lay in the shadows like a spill of moonlight, liquid and luminous in the darkness.
Tamara lunged and snatched it up.
The cool, silken texture made her whole body tremble.
"It's mine..."
[Ding! Detected that the host has picked up a valuable item lost by another.]
The system's voice hit her like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing her ecstasy at once.
[Triggered Moral Task: Integrity in Returning Lost Property.]
[Task Description: Keeping a friend's lost property for yourself is a greedy and contemptible act. An excellent leader should possess noble character. Furthermore, the owner is still waiting downstairs.]
[Task Requirement: Please return the invisibility cloak to Harry Potter within ten minutes.]
[Penalty for violation: Level Five Electric Shock until returned. Friendly reminder: possible idiocy for two days.]
"..."
Tamara's grip locked around the cloak until her knuckles turned white.
Level Five Electric Shock.
That would absolutely turn her into a halfwit.
And if she were discovered here on the tower twitching, foaming at the mouth, and babbling like a lunatic while Filch dragged her away like a sack of rotten vegetables, every scrap of dignity she had built in this life would collapse on the spot.
"He lost it himself. Why am I being punished?" she screamed inwardly.
[This is called returning property to its rightful owner, host. Please do not be blinded by greed. Be a good person.]
Tamara stared at the cloak in miserable silence.
She was afraid of death.
She was even more afraid of social death.
"Good. Very good."
The words came out through clenched teeth.
At that moment, she sincerely wished she could rip the system out of her own head and burn it to ash with Fiendfyre.
When Tamara finally came racing back down the stairs with a face as dark as the bottom of a cauldron, she found Harry and Hermione in the corridor just in time to run straight into Filch and his lantern.
"Who's there? Students? Stop!" Filch shrieked.
"Run!"
The three of them bolted through the corridor and flung themselves around a corner.
Only when they were certain they had lost him did Tamara thrust the bundle of silver cloth at Harry as roughly as if she were tossing him a used rag.
"Here."
Her voice dripped resentment.
"If you ever leave something like this lying around again, I will burn you together with it."
Harry grabbed the cloak and stared at her.
He did not know the war that had just raged inside her.
He knew only that Tamara had risked being caught by Filch to run back and recover his invisibility cloak.
"Tamara..."
His eyes reddened with emotion.
"For me... you took such a risk..."
"You really are... such a good person."
Tamara leaned back against the wall.
For one awful moment, she felt blood surge into her throat.
Tonight she had hauled crates, been struck by a dragon's tail, had Cockroach Clusters shoved into her hand by a complete imbecile, and then been forced to return the Deathly Hallow she had finally managed to touch.
And after all that, she had been handed a good person card.
"Shut up, Potter."
She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temple, feeling as though she needed a full bottle of sedative.
"I do not want to hear your voice right now."
"Not one word."
.....
[Check Out My Patreon For Advance Chapters On All My Fanfics!]
[[email protected]/Eldryx]