Chapter 191: Charms Club and the Shoes on the Ceiling
After the day's classes had ended...
Soft, warm golden light filled the Charms classroom on the fourth floor, spilling across towering stacks of ancient magical texts.
After being suspended for an entire year because of the Chamber of Secrets incident, Professor Flitwick's proudest creation, the Charms Club, had finally resumed at the beginning of Tamara's third year.
The students gathered here had all demonstrated exceptional talent in Charms and had been personally selected by Professor Flitwick.
Most were accomplished upper year students and particularly gifted Ravenclaws.
Tamara Riddle, as the only Slytherin who had been exceptionally admitted during her first year, naturally occupied one of the best seats in the classroom.
She held a cup of black tea in one hand while a borrowed copy of Deconstruction of Advanced Medieval Spell Structures lay open across her lap.
Whenever upper year students passed near her, several instinctively softened their footsteps. Some even stole glances at the Slytherin prodigy with unmistakable awe.
The quiet, disciplined atmosphere, reinforced by an unspoken sense of hierarchy, finally gave Tamara a rare trace of peace after all the nonsense that had plagued her since the beginning of term.
Quite a pleasant place...
Tamara sighed contentedly inwardly.
If that sixteen year old idiot from last year had not thrown the entire school into chaos and caused every extracurricular club to be suspended, she could have been enjoying this privilege long ago.
As she turned another page, Tamara coldly cursed her former self.
Not only did he disrupt my research plans, but he also cost me an entire year of this.
Being personally devoured by me was probably the greatest contribution he ever made.
Just as Tamara immersed herself once more in advanced magical theory, the classroom door quietly opened.
A girl in Ravenclaw robes wandered inside.
She had untidy blonde hair, pale grey eyes, and several peculiar little ornaments hanging from her clothes.
Most noticeably, she was barefoot.
Luna Lovegood.
The eccentric girl had only arrived at Hogwarts the previous year, yet her strange beliefs and dreamy manner had already earned her the nickname Loony Lovegood.
She clearly was not a member of the Charms Club.
Her eyes wandered around the classroom as though she were searching for someone.
"Is Professor Flitwick here?"
Luna asked in her usual airy, distant voice.
Professor Flitwick, who had been demonstrating subtle magical vibrations to several older students, had just stepped into the adjoining room to collect some teaching materials.
Only students remained.
Luna's arrival broke the previously quiet academic atmosphere.
Several third year Ravenclaws sitting near the front stopped writing.
They exchanged malicious glances before snickering openly.
"Oh, look who it is. Miss Lovegood herself."
A freckled boy deliberately raised his voice.
"What happened? Looking for those shoes of yours again? Did they grow wings and fly off, or did the Wrackspurts inside your head steal them to build a nest?"
Several Ravenclaws around him burst into laughter.
Their expressions carried the particular superiority of people who considered themselves clever while mocking someone they thought beneath them.
Tamara did not even raise her eyes from her book.
Bullying?
Mockery?
Such childish behaviour was hardly unusual, especially among Slytherins.
From the Dark Lord's perspective, if someone was too weak to resist being trampled upon, then being humiliated by others was simply the natural consequence.
She had no interest in defending some eccentric Ravenclaw girl.
As long as they did not disturb her reading, Tamara could pretend she had heard nothing.
Luna, however, neither blushed nor cried.
She merely tilted her head and regarded the boy with complete calm.
"Wrackspurts don't build nests."
Her dreamy voice remained utterly serious.
"They crawl into narrow minded, prejudiced brains through the ears and muddle everything inside until it resembles the bottom of a mouldy cauldron."
She paused, her gaze drifting over the group.
"Rather like all of you at the moment."
The reply contained no visible anger at all.
That only made the Ravenclaws feel even more insulted.
"What rubbish are you talking about, you lunatic?!"
The freckled boy shot to his feet, his face reddening.
Then, in his anger, he made a decision he would regret.
He raised his voice even further.
"No wonder there's something wrong with your head! After all, you were lucky enough to attend that secret little tutoring class run by a certain Slytherin 'genius' last year!"
"What?"
He deliberately dragged out the word.
"Did that genius everyone praises teach you how to make your own shoes disappear?"
"Or did she teach you to wander around the castle barefoot like an idiot?"
"If that's the sort of rubbish Slytherin tutoring teaches, then I'm glad Ravenclaw never joined that ridiculous brainwashing session!"
The classroom went silent.
Tamara's fingers stopped halfway through turning a page.
Her pale, exquisite face showed no visible change.
Yet the atmosphere in the room seemed to turn glacial.
Slowly, Tamara closed the heavy book on her lap.
The Ravenclaws who had been laughing only moments earlier suddenly felt as though an invisible hand had closed around their throats.
They stiffly turned toward the shadowed corner.
Tamara was watching them.
Her pitch black eyes held no warmth whatsoever.
She looked at them less like living students and more like corpses that had already begun to decay.
She did not stand.
Nor did she reach for the holly wand lying beside her.
In the suffocating silence, Luna spoke again.
She looked very seriously at the students whose faces had already begun to pale.
"Tamara taught very well."
Her tone remained slow and matter of fact.
"The magical principles she explained were even more thorough than some of the things my father taught me."
Luna then glanced toward the ceiling.
"As for my shoes, you took them while I wasn't paying attention and used the Levitation Charm to hide them on the ceiling beams."
She looked back at the Ravenclaws.
"Confusing someone else's excellent teaching with your own rather crude prank..."
Luna sighed softly.
"I think your brains must be full of Nargles. They're probably eating your common sense."
The freckled boy's face flushed crimson with humiliation and anger.
His hand moved instinctively toward his wand.
"You..."
He never finished.
Tamara barely lifted one hand.
The Cheering Charm struck before he could react.
His entire body stiffened.
Then the corners of his mouth twisted upward against his will.
"Ha... Hahaha...!"
Several of his companions were caught at the same time.
They doubled over helplessly.
"Hahahaha! Stop... please... hahahaha!"
There was nothing joyful about the sound.
The excessively strengthened Cheering Charm overwhelmed their emotions, forcing uncontrollable laughter from them until they could barely breathe.
The surrounding students stared in horror and hurriedly backed away.
No one attempted to interfere.
No one even dared draw a wand to remove the spell.
Amid the disturbing laughter echoing across the floor, Tamara remained seated in her high backed chair.
"It seems you're all enjoying yourselves tremendously."
Her tone did not change.
Yet the cold arrogance behind it made everyone in the room tense.
"I'm delighted."
Her gaze passed over the laughing Ravenclaws.
"But if I hear any of you speak nonsense about my tutoring again..."
Tamara's eyes narrowed.
"I will make certain you remember the consequences for the rest of your lives."
[Warning! Severe Warning!]
[The Host is currently inflicting excessive magical punishment upon fellow students, seriously violating the Friendly and Harmonious Campus Guidelines!]
The System's irritating voice erupted inside Tamara's mind, accompanied by the faint crackle of threatening electricity.
[However...]
Its tone abruptly changed.
[Although the Host's methods were extremely harsh, your actions objectively stopped an ongoing case of bullying and protected a vulnerable younger student!]
[Excellent work, Host! Please continue protecting others in the future, preferably with slightly more love and considerably less terror!]
Protecting the weak?
Tamara sneered inwardly.
She simply refused to tolerate a few insignificant insects openly questioning her authority.
At that moment, the familiar patter of Professor Flitwick's hurried footsteps sounded from farther down the corridor.
"Oh my! What is all that noise? Is someone practising a laughing charm?"
Annoyance flashed through Tamara's eyes.
She had no desire to explain herself to an overly talkative professor.
Tamara casually lifted her wand.
"Finite Incantatem."
The laughter stopped instantly.
The afflicted Ravenclaws collapsed forward, gasping desperately for breath as though they had just surfaced after nearly drowning.
Cold sweat covered their faces.
They hurriedly retrieved their fallen wands, cast terrified glances toward Tamara, then stumbled back to their seats.
Every one of them buried their head in a book.
Not another sound was made.
The disturbance was over.
Tamara reopened her ancient text and prepared to return to her study of advanced spell structures.
Luna, who had remained quietly nearby throughout the entire scene, suddenly turned toward her.
She did not appear frightened in the slightest.
Instead, a faint, dreamy smile rested upon her face.
"Thank you, Tamara."
Luna spoke softly, yet the newly silent classroom made every word perfectly clear.
"You seem... less irritable than you did last year."
She tilted her head.
"But there are more unsettling things hiding in your eyes now."
Luna raised one slender finger and traced a vague shape through the air, as though outlining an invisible creature.
"Are you frightened of something no one else can see?"
Her voice remained innocent and direct.
"Something that feels very warm and bright, but keeps trying to change you anyway, until you feel as though you can hardly breathe?"
Tamara's fingers froze against the page.
That damned intuition.
The sudden sensation of having someone peer dangerously close to her secret immediately triggered every instinct she possessed.
But Tamara was still a Slytherin who had spent years perfecting the concealment of emotion.
The shock lasted barely an instant before arrogance buried it completely.
"Heh."
Tamara gave a mocking laugh.
Slowly, she lifted her head and looked down at Luna.
"Keep your ridiculous fantasies to yourself, Lovegood."
She did not bother offering any further denial.
Instead, Tamara casually raised her wand and flicked it toward the ceiling beams.
A battered pair of canvas shoes dropped from above and landed neatly at Luna's feet.
"Look after your shoes."
Tamara's voice was colder than frost.
"My affairs have nothing to do with you."
With that, she lowered her gaze and returned to her book, deliberately ignoring the irritating girl whose intuition was far too sharp for Tamara's liking.
Luna showed no sign of being hurt by her coldness.
She calmly bent down and put on her shoes.
Then she looked once more toward the figure sitting alone in the shadows, seemingly at odds with the entire world.
"As I thought... there are still an awful lot of Wrackspurts."
Luna murmured quietly to herself.
Then she turned and wandered toward the classroom door with the weightless ease of a drifting cloud.
"Goodbye, Tamara."
She paused.
"We can look for Crumple Horned Snorkacks together someday, if you'd like."
Only after Luna's light footsteps had completely disappeared down the corridor did Tamara slowly turn another page.
Her eyes remained fixed upon the same obscure line of ancient Latin for the next ten minutes.
She did not absorb a single word.
"Damn Lovegood..."