Chapter 12: A Chance Encounter
Escaping death was a rare and extraordinary feat. For Lord Voldemort, however, it was nothing short of an absolute, degrading humiliation.
Tamara barely spared a single glance toward the bustling platform before sharply averting her eyes. She was in no condition to make a move against the so-called savior just yet.
The rear carriages of the Hogwarts Express offered a merciful reprieve from the deafening noise. Dodging the swarm of buzzing, tearful first-years and their equally insufferable parents, Tamara located an empty compartment at the very end of the train. She shoved the sliding door open and stepped inside, immediately wrestling with her heavy leather trunk. It was a frustrating struggle for her current, frail stature, but she finally managed to kick the luggage beneath the seat. Nagini, who was strictly supposed to be checked into the luggage van, had already slithered inside and coiled comfortably in the shadows.
Outside the window, the platform was a chaotic theater of tearful partings and suffocating embraces—a display of sentimentality that sickened her. She watched the pathetic scene with cold indifference.
A sudden clatter shattered her quiet solitude. The sliding door jerked open.
"Sorry, I was wondering..."
A slightly breathless, hesitant voice drifted into the compartment. Tamara snapped her head around, her brow furrowing. A sharp flicker of annoyance danced in her cold, obsidian eyes at the intrusion.
Standing in the doorway was a scrawny, thoroughly unimpressive boy.
He was drowning in oversized, faded clothes that clearly belonged to someone twice his width, making him look less like a wizard and more like a discarded cloth bag draped over a coat rack. His jet-black hair stuck up in stubborn, untamable tufts, and a pair of battered, round-framed glasses sat precariously on the bridge of his nose, held together by what looked like a desperate strip of tape.
He looked even more pathetic than Silly Billy back at the orphanage. Yet, Tamara could never, ever mistake this face.
Even if he were incinerated into ash and scattered to the winds, she would recognize him. Here stood the culprit. The wretched little creature who, ten years ago, had stripped her of her physical body, her immense power, and every last shred of her dignity.
The Boy Who Lived.
Harry Potter.
At this very moment, the bane of her existence stood awkwardly in the doorway, looking at her with wide, uncertain eyes.
"Um... everywhere else is full," Harry stammered, pointing a thumb nervously over his shoulder. "Can I sit here?"
The air inside the compartment froze instantly.
Tamara's hands, resting elegantly on her knees, clamped down into tight fists. Her manicured nails bit viciously into the soft flesh of her palms. Cold logic screamed at her that she could not strike down the savior right here, right now. But the primal, instinctive urge to obliterate her mortal enemy seized her throat, making her breath hitch and quicken.
'Kill him.'
The thought echoed in her skull, sweet and intoxicating. If she just snapped his scrawny neck right now, the prophecy hanging over her head would finally rot in the grave!
She stared fixedly at the boy. Her gaze was that of a venomous viper coiling for a lethal strike, slowly tracking upward from his taped glasses until it locked onto the messy fringe of hair plastered to his forehead.
Uncomfortable under her intense stare, Harry nervously raised a hand to wipe away a bead of sweat. The motion brushed his bangs aside.
The lightning-shaped scar was exposed to the air.
In a split second, the agonizing memories of her previous death crashed over her like a tidal wave of acid. The blinding flash of emerald green light. The excruciating, tearing agony of her soul being ripped to pieces. The suffocating resentment and absolute humiliation of her downfall.
A bottomless well of killing intent erupted within Tamara's chest, plunging the temperature of the compartment into a freezing chill. If she simply downed that Basic Magic Potion stored in her inventory, she could easily force out the incantation and snuff out the miserable life standing right in front of her!
'Avada...'
She silently formed the syllables of her most cherished, familiar curse. Volatile magic surged wildly, prickling at her fingertips.
However, arriving a fraction of a second faster than her dark magic was the outrageously perky, sickeningly cheerful chime of the system.
[Ding! Warning! High-level Red Alert!]
[Detected that the host has generated intense, lethal killing intent toward the Child of Destiny, Harry Potter!]
[This behavior seriously violates the Virtue System Core Rule 1: Love and Peace!]
[Initiating Special Intervention Procedure: Level 3 Electric Shock—]
Bzzzt—!!!
This time, the punishment was no mere warning tingle. A violent, agonizing current surged straight up her spine, frying her nerves.
"Ugh!"
A soft, muffled gasp escaped Tamara's lips. The lethal magic gathering at her fingertips shattered into nothingness. She felt as though every bone in her body had been liquefied and siphoned out. The intoxicating surge of dark power that yearned to destroy the world vanished without a trace, violently replaced by a shameful, aching weakness that turned her muscles to jelly.
Her complexion drained to a deathly pallor, only for an unnatural, feverish flush to rapidly climb up her neck, painting her cheeks and the tips of her ears in a delicate, pathetic pink. Her chest heaved. Her breathing turned rapid and erratic, making her look as though she were suffering from a sudden, severe heart condition.
Tamara slumped heavily against the cushioned seat. One trembling hand clutched desperately at the fabric over her chest as she gasped for air. Her eyes, which just seconds ago held the cold fury of a Dark Lord, now shimmered with a thick, humiliating layer of physiological tears.
"Are... are you okay?!"
Harry yelped from the doorway, utterly terrified by the sudden display. Just a moment ago, he had thought the girl sitting by the window was as beautiful and untouchable as an expensive porcelain doll. Now, she was collapsing in on herself, clutching her chest, looking as if she were about to draw her last breath.
"Are you feeling unwell somewhere?" Harry panicked, throwing all social etiquette out the window. He shoved his luggage cart aside and rushed into the compartment, hands hovering awkwardly in the air. He wanted to support her but didn't dare touch her, standing there in a state of helpless panic.
"Don't... don't touch me..."
Tamara wanted to scream at this filthy savior to get his grubby hands away from her. She wanted to blast him through the train wall. But what actually left her lips was a thin, fragile, and pitifully weak whisper.
'Damn it! Damn this cursed system to hell!'
Tamara felt as if her lungs might literally burst from sheer, unadulterated rage. Yet, the more furious she became, the stronger the paralyzing current flowed, melting her resistance into a puddle of soft compliance.
[System Tip: Please control your emotions, Host. The stronger the killing intent, the softer and more delicate your body will become. Have a nice day!]
"I need... water..."
Forced to compromise with her own failing biology, Tamara struggled to shove her murderous impulses into a locked box in her mind, desperately trying to distract herself.
"Water? Oh, right! Water!" Harry spun in a frantic circle. "But I don't have any water!" He patted his oversized pockets uselessly before a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head. He whirled around and bolted for the sliding door. "I'll go get someone! Just hang in there!"
Watching the boy's panicked, retreating back, Tamara finally let out a ragged breath. As her killing intent receded, the suffocating grip of the electric current slowly began to fade. She slumped bonelessly against the windowpane, pulling a silk handkerchief from her pocket to dab at the cold sweat beading on her forehead. She felt as though she had just survived a brutal session of the Cruciatus Curse.
The great, terrifying Dark Lord, reduced to a weeping, gasping mess in front of her destined mortal enemy? The humiliation burned hotter than the electricity.
A moment later, the chaotic thud of disorganized footsteps echoed down the corridor.
"She's right inside! It looks like she's having some kind of attack!" Harry's voice pitched high with anxiety.
Following closely on his heels, a gangly boy with flaming red hair—Ron Weasley—skidded into the doorway.
By the time they arrived, Tamara had managed to force herself upright. Though her face remained starkly pale and her breathing was still a fraction too shallow, she at least no longer looked like she was actively dying.
She swept a chilling, measured glance over the two boys.
"I am fine," she stated. She injected as much frost into her tone as her weakened vocal cords would allow, desperate to claw back a scrap of dignity. "Just a sudden drop in... blood sugar."
"You scared me to death." Harry let out a massive sigh of relief, sagging against the doorframe as he wiped a fresh layer of sweat from his own forehead. "You looked really bad just now."
With her episode over, Tamara had absolutely no valid excuse to deny the boy a seat. She consciously shifted closer to the window, putting as much distance between them as the small space allowed. "Sit down."
Taking the seat opposite her, Harry finally had a moment to actually look at the girl.
She was wearing an exquisitely tailored dark green robe, the cuffs and collar embroidered with subtle, complex silver patterns. Even to his untrained eye, the fabric screamed wealth. Though her pale little face still carried a sickly fragility, her features were so striking and delicate they almost seemed unreal. But it was her eyes that caught him off guard—pools of endless, abyssal black that were so intense, he found himself instinctively looking away.
"Um... I'm Harry Potter," he offered awkwardly, extending a hand across the gap in an attempt to ease the lingering tension.
Tamara stared at the offered hand.
This was the hand that, in just a few short years, would grip a wand and blast her into oblivion.
Suppressing a full-body shudder of revulsion, Tamara reached out and tapped his fingers with extreme, dismissive brevity.
"Tamara Riddle," she replied, her voice clipped.
The very moment her name hung in the air, something squirmed inside the pocket of Ron's battered jacket. A fat, balding rat squeezed its way out, its nose twitching as it sniffed suspiciously around Ron's knee.
"This is Scabbers," Ron introduced quickly, noticing her gaze. "He's incredibly old. Doesn't do anything but sleep and eat. He's really useless, honestly."
Tamara's dark eyes locked onto the missing toe on the rat's front paw.
"Interesting," she murmured softly.
For the first time since boarding the train, a genuine, chilling smile curved the corners of Tamara's mouth.
How could she possibly fail to recognize her own loyal, treacherous servant?
'Peter Pettigrew.'
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