Chapter 53: True Thoughts
After slipping out of the storage room, the two of them hurried through a maze of dark corridors. The castle was quiet, the stone floors echoing slightly beneath their shoes. To avoid Filch, who had a nasty habit of doubling back on his patrols, Tamara grabbed Harry by the collar and hauled him into an adjacent classroom. The heavy wooden door clicked shut behind them.
The air inside was thick with dust, smelling of old parchment and neglect. It was clearly abandoned. A graveyard of broken desks and splintered chairs lay piled in the far corner. But dominating the center of the room was a massive, imposing object.
A mirror.
It was magnificent, its peak reaching all the way to the shadowed ceiling. An ornate, heavy gold frame encased the glass, resting upon two claw-shaped feet that dug into the stone floor. Carved across the top arch was a string of strange text: Erised stra behru sun tuitbe cafru tuit yan wohsi.
Harry seemed entirely captivated. His green eyes locked onto the glass, and he drifted forward, his footsteps slow and heavy, as if pulled by an invisible string.
"What is it?" Tamara stood by the door, her arms crossed. Her patience was already wearing dangerously thin. She had absolutely no desire to continue playing these childish midnight exploration games.
"Tamara... come quickly, look!" Harry's voice trembled, cracking with an overwhelming, unbelievable joy. "My parents... they're right here!"
'Parents?'
Tamara raised a delicate eyebrow.
Potter's parents had been dead for a decade. She knew this for an absolute fact, considering she was the one who personally sent them to the grave.
She sighed, walking over to stand beside the boy, and cast a lazy glance into the mirror.
The glass reflected Harry's flushed, excited face perfectly. But behind him? Nothing. Just the dusty, empty classroom.
"Are you dreaming, Potter?" Tamara said, her voice dropping to a cold, flat register. "There is only you in the mirror."
"No! Can't you see them?" Harry pointed frantically at the empty space over his reflected shoulder. "They're right behind me! That's my mother, and my father... they're smiling at me!"
Tamara stared at Harry's obsessed, desperate expression. A memory clicked into place within her vast, dark intellect.
The Mirror of Erised.
An ancient artifact capable of reflecting the deepest, most desperate desires hidden within a person's heart.
'I see.'
A cruel, playful arc curved at the corner of Tamara's mouth. For a pathetic orphan who had never known his family, desiring the warmth of parents was perfectly ordinary. How terribly mundane.
"Move aside."
Tamara shoved Harry out of the way without a second thought, stepping directly into the center of the mirror's view.
'Let me see... what it shows.'
She was genuinely curious. As the greatest Dark Lord in history, what did she desire most in the deepest recesses of her soul? Was it true immortality? Absolute, supreme power? Or perhaps the glorious moment she finally crushed Albus Dumbledore's throat beneath her heel?
She stared intently at the smooth surface.
The glass, which initially only held her current, frustratingly delicate reflection, began to ripple like water disturbed by a stone. Her pale, girlish face gradually blurred into gray mist. Then, a brand-new image materialized.
Tamara held her breath. Her dark eyes shimmered with intense anticipation.
She saw it.
It was her future.
She was no longer this weak, pathetic little girl. The mirror showed the restored, towering, handsome, and terrifyingly powerful figure of Tom Riddle.
He stood upon the highest parapet of the Astronomy Tower, the wind whipping his dark robes. In his long, pale fingers rested the Elder Wand. At his feet groveled a sea of submissive Death Eaters, their masks pressed to the stone. In the far distance, the Ministry of Magic was engulfed in roaring, glorious flames.
And right by his boots lay a corpse.
Harry Potter.
The so-called Savior of the wizarding world was sprawled out lifelessly like a dead dog. That irritating lightning-bolt scar was dull, drained of all its annoying magic.
"Perfect..."
Tamara murmured aloud, the sheer thrill of imminent, absolute control sending a delicious tremor through her entire body.
This was the future she deserved. No Savior, no ridiculous prophecies. Only her—the eternal, undisputed Dark Lord!
However.
Just as she allowed herself to sink into this magnificent, blood-soaked illusion, a sharp noise pierced her skull.
[Ding! Detected that the host is being subjected to high-risk mental induction.]
[The induced content contains a large amount of violence, gore, and anti-social elements, which seriously violates the core values of the Virtue System.]
[Initiating emergency purification procedure: Positive Energy Filter overlay.]
'What?!'
Before Tamara could even process the warning, the majestic image in the mirror violently warped.
The invincible Dark Lord standing atop the conquered tower vanished in a puff of pink smoke.
In his place stood... Tamara. Wearing a nun's habit.
Yes. A literal nun's habit.
Worse, it was the kind trimmed with frilly white lace, making her look outrageously, sickeningly holy.
The weapon in her hands was no longer the legendary Elder Wand. It was a thick, brightly colored textbook titled 'Morality and the Rule of Law'.
Behind her, the burning ruins and the glorious piles of corpses were gone.
Instead, there was a massive group of... happy little wizards holding hands in a circle. There were Gryffindors, Slytherins, and even a few Muggle children mixed in. They surrounded Nun Tamara, their faces beaming with pure, unadulterated joy as they sang cheerful hymns.
And Harry Potter, who was supposed to be a glorious corpse at her feet, stood at the very front of the crowd. He was completely alive, glowing with health, holding a massive bouquet of daisies, and staring up at her with a face full of sickening admiration.
The background had shifted to a sun-drenched, rolling green meadow. Fluffy white clouds drifted across the bright blue sky, literally spelling out the words 'Love and Peace'.
"..."
The satisfied smile on Tamara's face froze solid.
A second later, her features twisted into an expression of extreme, demonic distortion.
'What... what the hell is this?!'
She felt like her eyes were actually bleeding.
A nun?!
Teaching and educating?!
Love and Peace?!
'System! Get out here!'Tamara roared frantically in the confines of her mind, her mental voice echoing with pure venom.'This is your so-called purification?! You turned my grand ambition into a pathetic children's cartoon?!'
[Host, please calm your anger.]
The system's perky, cheerful voice was as infinitely punchable as ever.
[This is the true desire deep in your heart—to be surrounded by love, to become everyone's spiritual mentor, and to lead the wizarding world toward a bright, harmonious future. Look, the mirror does not lie!]
'Bullshit!'
Tamara was physically shaking with rage. Her knuckles turned white as she suddenly whipped out her wand, jabbing the tip directly at the center of the damned glass.
She was going to blast this broken, insolent artifact into a million pieces for daring to subject her to such a disgusting, humiliating sight!
"Tamara! Don't!"
Harry, who had been standing nearby, jumped in terror. He had absolutely no idea why Tamara had suddenly gone mad, but his instincts took over. He lunged forward, grabbing Tamara's wand arm with both hands.
"Don't destroy it! Please!" Harry pleaded, his green eyes wide with panic. "It's the only place where I can see my parents!"
"Let go of me!"
Tamara violently shook off Harry's grip, her dark eyes burning with a very real, very tangible fury.
"What is the use of keeping something that only creates false illusions to deceive people's hearts?!" she snapped, her voice dripping with venom.
"It's not false..." Harry stood stubbornly between her and the glass, shielding it with his body. "At least... at least not to me."
Tamara stared at Harry's pathetic, ready-to-die expression. Then, her gaze flicked past his shoulder, catching another glimpse of the nun version of herself still smiling foolishly in the mirror, clutching those daisies.
A deep, suffocating sense of powerlessness welled up in her chest.
She couldn't blast the mirror into dust right in front of Harry. If she did, the gentle, caring older sister persona she had so painstakingly cultivated over the past few months would be completely shattered.
also... if she didn't find a way to permanently delete that damned system from her soul, even if she smashed a hundred Mirrors of Erised, all she would ever see was this kind of sickening, pastel-colored hell.
"...Fine."
Tamara took a long, deep breath, her chest heaving as she forcibly shoved the boiling killing intent back down into the depths of her mind.
She lowered her wand, sliding it back into her robes, and shot the saint in the mirror one last, vicious glare.
"You've seen enough, Potter," she said, her tone returning to a cold, detached calm as she turned toward the heavy wooden door.
"Indulging in dreams and forgetting to live will only make you stupid."
She paused at the threshold, glancing back over her shoulder. "If you don't want to turn into an idiot who just drools at a piece of glass, you had better come with me right now."
Harry hesitated. He stood frozen for a long moment, giving the smiling figures of his parents one last, lingering look of absolute longing. Finally, he lowered his head and followed Tamara's retreating figure.
"Wait for me, Tamara..."
As the two children slipped out of the classroom, the heavy door clicking shut behind them, Tamara failed to notice a slight shift in the shadows.
Deep in the darkest corner of the room, a pair of bright blue eyes, peering sharply through half-moon spectacles, had watched the entire exchange in total silence.
Albus Dumbledore stepped slowly out of the gloom, his long silver beard catching the faint moonlight from the high windows. He stood thoughtfully, his gaze fixed on the spot where the two young students had just vanished.
"How interesting..." Dumbledore whispered softly into the empty room.
He had seen Tamara's reaction clearly. The extreme anger, the violent rejection, the wand raised against the glass.
Normally, dangerous, dark-leaning wizards saw immense power and domination in the Mirror of Erised. They would become hopelessly obsessed, completely unable to extricate themselves from the intoxicating visions.
But this girl... she seemed utterly disgusted by the desire she saw.
"Could it be..." Dumbledore stroked his beard slowly, a warm flicker of deep gratification shining in his aged eyes.
He rarely saw anyone react so quickly to the falsehood within the mirror, let alone resist it with such fiery determination. Even the most steadfast, noble person would be beguiled by the false illusions created by this artifact for at least a split second.
Yet Tamara's will had triumphed over the illusion almost instantly.
"She rejected the temptation of the illusory, and was even angered by this unearned satisfaction," Dumbledore murmured to himself, looking around the dusty, empty classroom. A faint, imperceptible smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. "Whatever she saw in the mirror, she chose to turn and walk away."
His eyes twinkled as he thought of his Potions Master.
"Severus, perhaps your hypothesis was a bit off."
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