Chapter 112: Absurdity
Draco immediately dropped his quill and leapt to his feet, rushing toward her like a knight eager to claim credit. He brandished a piece of parchment densely covered in names.
"I wrote three urgent letters to my father overnight!" Draco said with absolute conviction, gnashing his teeth as he pointed at the names of the Weasleys and several Gryffindors on the list. "The bastard who dared to harm your pet is definitely some mudblood or blood traitor jealous of Slytherin's glory. I've listed every suspicious inferior student in the entire school!"
He raised his chin and clenched his fists.
"My father is a member of the Board of Governors! I have strongly demanded that he intervene in the investigation immediately. Don't worry, Tamara. Even if I have to use the full power of the House of Malfoy to force Dumbledore to turn the entire Castle upside down, I will find that coward hiding in the shadows for you!"
Tamara's footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
Under the dim firelight, her deep black eyes slowly narrowed.
"Bastard?"
In that brief second, dozens of cruel Dark Arts flashed through Tamara's mind.
She looked at the young master before her, whose face was filled with righteous indignation as he pledged his loyalty, and let out a cold laugh in her heart, one so frozen it carried no warmth at all.
The biological father of the great Dark Lord had been a pure Muggle who could not even perform magic.
Very good, Malfoy.
Lucius probably never dreamed that his precious son, the pride of his house, was currently cursing her disgraceful bloodline as a bastard directly to the Dark Lord's face.
If this had been fifty years ago, or during her prime, this ignorant young master would already be writhing on the floor under a silent Cruciatus Curse, unable even to scream.
A red light flashed in Tamara's eyes.
[Strong killing intent detected from the host. Preparing electric shock countdown...]
The System's voice rang abruptly in her head. Only then did Tamara realise that her hand was already gripping her wand.
She closed her eyes and took a difficult, deep breath.
She could not kill him.
If she killed this idiot, Lucius would surely snap back like a mad dog, and her perfect disguise plan would be completely ruined.
She thought of those Gryffindors in the Restricted Section who had stolen books for her.
Then she looked at the young master in front of her, who had stayed up all night making a list to avenge her, even dragged his own father into it, and had somehow managed to insult her with perfect accuracy in the process.
The Dark Lord, who had once held the entire wizarding world in the palm of her hand, suddenly felt an unprecedented sense of absurd powerlessness.
All of Hogwarts was doing its utmost, using every possible method to help her catch herself.
Tamara closed her eyes and slowly sighed.
When she opened them again, that intense killing intent had been replaced by a solemn, almost sacred expression.
"Draco."
Tamara's voice was soft, yet it carried unquestionable authority.
"Never let narrow blood purism blind your eyes."
Draco froze, his hand stiffening in midair around the quill.
"But... Tamara, they're bast..."
"True strength comes from the depth of the soul and reverence for magic, not from so called pure bloodlines."
Tamara interrupted him grandly, her gaze so deep it seemed to pierce through the entire universe.
"Before the mysteries of magic, all living beings are equal. Arrogance built on ancestral glory only makes a person foolish and weak."
Draco was completely stunned.
However, the pure blood ideology rooted in his mind since childhood obviously could not collapse in an instant because of a single sentence.
He stared blankly at Tamara, who stood bathed in the dim firelight.
The words she had just spoken clearly sounded like the theories of greater love that only Dumbledore would preach.
But for some reason, when those words came from Tamara's mouth, the hidden, icy pressure radiating from her dark eyes made the hair on the back of Draco's neck stand up.
He developed a terrifying intuition.
If he dared to shake his head, or utter another syllable about bastards at this moment, he would be erased from the world in the cruelest possible way in the very next second.
It was the instinctive tremor of prey under the gaze of an apex predator.
Draco swallowed hard.
Faced with absolute pressure, the survival instinct of a small animal instantly overwhelmed the meagre pure blood pride of the Malfoy family.
He did not actually understand what "depth of the soul" meant at all, but he still subconsciously lowered his noble head.
"I... I understand, Tamara."
Draco stammered, his voice carrying irrepressible awe and primal fear.
"Your... your way of thinking is too noble. You're right. I shouldn't have called them that."
Just then, the System's damn voice rang out in her mind right on cue.
[Ding! Detected that the host is spreading equal love that transcends class and bloodline!]
[What a broad mind! The brilliance of your thoughts illuminates the prejudiced and decaying corners of Slytherin! Love +1. Current Love: 25.]
Feeling the cheerful firework effects in her head, and looking at the thoroughly terrified Draco before her, Tamara let out a gnashing cold laugh in her heart.
"...Go to sleep, Draco."
Tamara walked toward her dormitory with heavy steps, not looking back.
As she passed the dark stained glass window in the common room corridor, she paused.
The water of the Black Lake had already grown bone chillingly cold.
Through the deep green ripples, she could faintly see a layer of ice forming on the surface.
Above the ice, beneath the faint moonlight, fine snowflakes were silently falling upon this sleeping magical world.
Without her noticing, the first snow of the year had already fallen over the Scottish Highlands.
Tamara gazed at the dead, cold silence beyond the window, and a flash of complexity crossed her eyes.
If she had still been the former Dark Lord, her eyes would only have held a feverish obsession with power and immortality.
To her, time had once been nothing more than a slave that would eventually be conquered.
She had never, like those mediocre mortals, sentimentally noticed the changing of seasons or the arrival of the first snow.
But now, this vibrant young body seemed to be subtly influencing her soul.
It allowed her not only to feel the piercing chill at the bottom of the Black Lake, but even caused an inexplicable trace of melancholy, something that did not belong to Voldemort at all, to rise in her heart during certain unguarded moments.
She had actually stopped because of a silent snowfall.
This feeling made her instinctively feel estranged from herself. It even produced a trace of panic, a humiliation she could not tolerate.
Once, the great Dark Lord had torn her soul into pieces without hesitation in order to rid herself of human weakness.
She had firmly believed she had long since stripped away all useless impurities known as humanity.
But now, this body was like a silent cage of warm water.
Its abundant vitality, its fresh, beating pulse, and the emotional fluctuations belonging to a normal human were corroding her.
It filled Tamara with physical nausea and rejection.
She stared fixedly at her own exquisite, pale, and even somewhat pitiable reflection in the stained glass window. Her eyes were full of cold vigilance.
"Winter has arrived."
She did not think of the holiday filled with the revelry of fools. She only quietly watched the gradually freezing lake and felt the warm pulse beating within this body.
For more than half a century, she had wandered on the edge of life and death, and time had never left any real mark on her.
But now, she had to truly live through every spring, summer, autumn, and winter in this noisy Castle.
"Another new year."
"I only hope that this year, that group of idiots with no self awareness won't try to express their ridiculous kindness with another pile of cheap rubbish."
.....
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