Chapter 70: I Don't Like Riddlers
The suffocating, oily pressure that had choked the Forbidden Forest finally began to recede, trailing after the mass of black mist as it slithered away into the deeper shadows. Yet, the clearing remained heavy with a chilling dread. Frost still clung to the edges of the crushed leaves.
A sudden, rhythmic thudding shattered the dead silence. Hooves. Heavy and fast.
A towering figure broke through the veil of ancient, twisted trees. From the waist up, he was a man with striking, melancholy blue eyes and pale blonde hair that practically glowed in the gloom. From the waist down, he possessed the powerful, muscular body of a silver-white horse, its coat shimmering with a pearly luster under the fractured moonlight.
Firenze.
The centaur did not spare a single glance for Hagrid, whose massive shoulders were still shaking with muffled sobs, nor did he acknowledge Draco, who was trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. Instead, Firenze approached the fallen unicorn. He bent his front legs with solemn grace, lowering his head over the pristine, blood-stained coat in a moment of silent, deep mourning.
When he finally rose, his gaze swept over the ruined clearing. His eyes, deep enough to drown in, cataloged the devastation: the scorched craters in the earth, the splintered trunks of ancient oaks, the violent, crackling residue of dark magic still tasting of ozone in the air. Finally, those starry blue eyes locked onto Tamara.
It was a deeply unsettling stare. He did not look at her with the wariness of a beast, nor the fear of prey. It was pure, unadulterated bewilderment. He stared at her as though she were a celestial paradox, a glitch in the very heavens that defied every star chart he had ever studied.
"Mars is bright tonight." Firenze's voice was ethereal and low, carrying the hollow resonance of wind sweeping through an ancient canyon. "This usually signifies war. The spilling of innocent blood."
Harry swallowed hard, eyeing the half-man, half-horse creature with blatant nervousness. Driven by some absurd, Gryffindor-brand hero complex, the boy actually took a half-step forward, subconsciously trying to shield Tamara.
'Idiot,'Tamara sneered inwardly.'I just saved your pathetic life, and you think you can protect me from a horse?'
"Who are you?" Draco squeaked. The Malfoy heir shrank entirely behind Tamara's robes, his voice laced with the instinctive, aristocratic repulsion his family held for any non-human intelligence.
Firenze ignored the trembling blonde boy completely. His hooves clicked softly against the roots as he closed the distance to Tamara.
Hagrid scrubbed a massive, dirt-stained hand across his tear-streaked face and lumbered forward. "This here is Firenze. He's a centaur from the forest. Firenze, these are Hogwarts students."
The centaur halted a mere two steps away. He towered over the small, dark-haired girl, his gaze piercing. To his mystical senses, the human child standing before him was a walking, breathing impossibility.
Beneath her skin, a terrifying darkness pulsed from the very abyss of her soul—a suffocating aura that made even a proud centaur's instincts scream in warning. It reeked of death. It was a malice far purer, far more ancient and concentrated than the wretched black shadow that had just fled. It dragged Firenze's memories violently back to the blood-soaked, dark years of a decade past.
Yet, layered directly over that abyssal rot... her physical form was bathed in a strange, almost blindingly divine radiance.
[Ding! Detected a high-perception magical creature attempting to spy on the host's true nature.]
[To maintain the host's glorious, immaculate image, the system has automatically activated the passive skill: Holy Aura (Primary). In the eyes of magical creatures, you now appear as pure, flawless, and benevolent as a goddess descending beneath the moonlight! Keep up the good work, Host!]
Tamara suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at the perky, patronizing chime echoing in her skull. It was exactly this sickeningly sweet, artificial glow that had thrown Firenze into a massive logical tailspin. Absolute darkness and blinding light. Rotting death and pristine divinity. How could both exist in perfect harmony within the same fragile shell?
"The stars..." Firenze murmured to himself, tilting his head to stare up through the jagged canopy of leaves. "They are in disarray." He blinked slowly. "Originally, Mars dominated the heavens tonight. It foretold a dark return. An upheaval of blood."
His gaze dropped from the heavens, pinning Tamara with an unfathomable glimmer in his melancholy blue eyes. "But... an unknown star is rising." He took a slow breath. "It does not follow its original trajectory. It is cold. Aloof. And it is entirely eclipsing the bloody light of Mars."
Hagrid scratched his tangled beard, completely bewildered. "Er... Firenze? Which star are yeh talkin' about exactly?"
Tamara, however, understood perfectly. Mars represented the main soul—the original Voldemort, destined to return and plunge the world into a second reign of terror. And that unknown star tearing through the established heavens, deviating from all known fate? That was her. The anomaly. The variable armed with a ridiculous system and a fiercely independent consciousness.
The centaur's use of the word 'eclipsing' was delightfully obvious. She, possessing a complete, unfragmented mind, would inevitably devour and transcend the pathetic main soul. She would rip the crown from that senile, half-dead wraith and take her rightful place as the true sovereign of the dark.
Tamara narrowed her dark eyes. She met the centaur's intense gaze without flinching, the corners of her lips curling into a perfectly polite, yet utterly chilling, half-smile.
"The trajectories of stars can be changed, can't they?" she asked, her voice smooth as glass.
"The forest hides many secrets, Miss Riddle," Firenze replied softly. "Destiny is not carved in stone. But sometimes, those who attempt to alter the course of fate only ensure they become the very instrument of it." He paused, his tone dropping to a whisper. "You must be careful."
"Careful of what?" Harry blurted out, unable to contain his curiosity.
Firenze shifted his melancholy gaze to the boy who lived. His tone softened, carrying a tragic sort of pity. "Careful of those around you, Harry Potter... and of everything."
The weight of his words hung heavily in the damp air. Harry frowned, his mind undoubtedly racing toward Snape or whatever imaginary villain he believed was lurking in the castle dungeons. But Tamara knew exactly what the beast was doing.
'Clever horse,' she mused dryly. He was practically screaming at Potter to watch his back around her.
"Thank you for the warning," Tamara interrupted smoothly, slicing through the mystical tension. She was exhausted, her magical reserves drained, and she had absolutely zero patience left for a herd of stargazing ponies speaking in riddles. "Hagrid, we really should be heading back. I believe Professor McGonagall is still waiting for us in the Entrance Hall."
Firenze said nothing more. He simply bent his front legs, gesturing for Harry to climb onto his broad, silver back. "Get on. The forest is not safe tonight." He glanced back at Tamara, a silent invitation lingering in his eyes.
"No need," Tamara refused, her tone polite but laced with an icy finality. "I much prefer to keep my own feet on the ground."
The trek back to the castle was suffocatingly silent. Hagrid sniffled loudly every few paces, still mourning the slaughtered unicorn. Harry rode atop the centaur in a daze, his brow furrowed as he undoubtedly tried to piece together the identity of the cloaked shadow. Draco, meanwhile, clung to Tamara's side like a frightened limpet, his pale eyes wide as he replayed the explosive, devastating clash of magic in his head.
By the time they pushed through the heavy oak doors and stepped into the warm, torch-lit Entrance Hall, it felt as though an entire lifetime had passed. Professor McGonagall was pacing furiously near the marble staircase.
"Merlin preserve us, you're all alive." McGonagall halted, her sharp eyes sweeping over the dirt-smudged, grass-stained students. Though her mouth remained set in a stern, thin line, the frantic worry that had tightened her features finally melted away. "Your detention is over. Go to your dormitories and go to sleep at once." She glared at them, her voice cracking like a whip. "If I catch a single one of you wandering the corridors again tonight, I shall turn you into pocket watches!"
The threat felt like a grand pardon. The exhausted students didn't need to be told twice, scattering instantly toward their respective common rooms.
Down in the dungeons, the Slytherin common room was bathed in the eerie, green-tinted light of the Black Lake.
Draco, having finally found his voice, was babbling with manic excitement. "Tamara, that look in your eyes back there... it was brilliant! And that centaur! Did you see how he looked at you? He was terrified! I knew it, you're the strongest in our year. Maybe the whole school!"
"Of course, Draco," Tamara interrupted, cutting off his endless stream of sycophantic drivel. She pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing the throbbing ache building between her eyebrows. "Go to sleep," she commanded softly, injecting just enough gentle authority into her voice to brook no argument.
"Right! Goodnight! See you tomorrow!" Draco agreed instantly, as obedient as a well-trained house-elf. He practically jogged toward the boys' dormitories, glancing back over his shoulder every few steps like a starstruck fool.
Finally, Tamara was alone.
The grand fireplace was nearly dead, leaving only a bed of dying, glowing red embers that cast long, skeletal shadows across the stone floor. She sank into a high-backed green velvet armchair. The instant the dormitory door clicked shut, her composed, gentle, and powerful public persona vanished. A deep, venomous gloom washed over her features.
She stared into the dying embers, her mind dragging her back to the suffocating depths of the Forbidden Forest. That pathetic black shadow. The great Lord Voldemort, reduced to crawling through the mud and slurping cursed unicorn blood just to sustain his miserable half-life.
"What a farce," Tamara whispered to the empty room, a cold, mocking sneer twisting her lips.
She had won tonight. She had thoroughly humiliated the main soul and sent him fleeing like a beaten dog. But it didn't solve the fundamental problem. If the main soul had stooped to drinking unicorn blood, it meant his physical deterioration had reached a critical limit. And a dying animal was the most dangerous kind. His madness would be peaking. To survive, to claw his way back to true resurrection, he would stop at absolutely nothing to seize the Philosopher's Stone.
Tamara's pale fingers began to tap a slow, rhythmic beat against the velvet armrest. Tap. Tap. Tap.
During their clash, the main soul had recognized her magic. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the girl who had blasted him away possessed a soul of the exact same origin as his own. And worse—he likely realized her soul was whole, uncorrupted, and infinitely more perfect than his fractured remains.
To a parasite like Voldemort, that was an infinitely greater temptation than any magical stone. The Philosopher's Stone could only grant him a crude resurrection. But her body? Her complete, untainted soul? Devouring her could return him to the absolute peak of his power. Perhaps even push him beyond it.
"He won't let me go," she murmured.
Tamara knew 'her own' nature intimately. Voldemort was greedy, obsessive, and utterly ruthless. Since she was already marked as his ultimate prize, sitting around and waiting for the axe to fall was out of the question. Rather than letting that desperate madman plot a sneak attack from the shadows, she needed to seize the initiative. She needed to strike first.
Her thoughts drifted to Quirinus Quirrell. That pathetic, stuttering fool currently serving as the Dark Lord's fleshy carriage. During their brief confrontation, Tamara had sensed the violent instability of Quirrell's magical core. The man's body was on the absolute verge of total collapse. His mortal vessel simply couldn't withstand the sheer, corrosive mass of the main soul's dark magic, let alone the rotting curse brought on by ingesting unicorn blood. Quirrell was the weak link in their twisted symbiotic chain.
"Instead of trying to reason with a soul that has gone completely mad..." A sharp, predatory glint flashed in Tamara's dark eyes. "...it is far more efficient to make a deal with a man standing on the edge of the abyss."
She stood, her robes whispering against the stone as she walked over to the tall, arched windows. She stared out into the murky, pitch-black depths of the Black Lake. In her world, there were no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. If she could manipulate Quirrell into resisting—or at least subverting—the main soul's control, she could force a temporary, highly advantageous ceasefire. It would buy her the precious time she needed to figure out how to permanently eradicate the main soul without destroying herself in the process.
"It seems a private chat with our esteemed Defense Against the Dark Arts professor is long overdue," Tamara decided.
She turned on her heel, her dark cloak cutting a sharp, elegant arc through the dim air as she strode toward the girls' dormitories.
"I do hope he hasn't been scared entirely witless yet." A wicked, deeply amused smile touched her lips. "After all, being sandwiched between two Voldemorts... the psychological pressure on the poor man must be quite immense, wouldn't you say?"
In the quiet darkness of the dungeon, a faint, chillingly melodic laugh echoed against the stone walls.
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