Chapter 122: Grand and Impressive
The air at the very edge of the Library's Restricted Section seemed to freeze solid.
Ernie Macmillan's normally animated, talkative face went completely rigid. The words died in his throat. He turned his head slowly, his gaze colliding with Tamara's deep, abyssal black eyes. A layer of cold sweat instantly broke out across his back, soaking into his collar.
"Riddle..." Hannah Abbott stumbled a step backward, her voice trembling like a leaf in a winter gale.
Even though Hannah had built a deep, genuine trust in Tamara over their many interactions, that trust evaporated in the face of the sheer terror radiating from the Slytherin girl. At this moment, Tamara did not look like the gentle, top-scoring student they knew. She looked like a demon dragging itself straight out from the deepest pits of hell. The sheer pressure made Hannah's knees knock together.
Despite the suffocating aura rolling off Tamara, Ernie's stubborn Hufflepuff pride flared. He refused to cower before a Slytherin, especially not with several of his housemates watching. His round face flushed a deep, angry crimson. Driven by a volatile mix of shame and indignation, he puffed out his chest and shouted back.
"Am I wrong?! You are a Slytherin! Yet you have repeatedly gone out of your way to show favoritism toward Harry Potter. That is just not normal!"
"Favoritism?"
Tamara let the syllables roll off her tongue slowly, tasting the absolute absurdity of the accusation. A chilling, razor-sharp sneer curled at the corners of her mouth. 'Favoritism? Toward that pathetic, scar-headed nuisance? I would rather bathe in a cauldron of bubotuber pus.'
Outwardly, her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "I am simply disgusted by your deep ignorance."
She closed the distance with a single, measured step. The oppressive, terrifying aura of the Dark Lord flared, pressing down on the aisle so heavily that Ernie gasped, his lungs struggling to pull in air.
"What exactly do you think the Dark Lord is?" Tamara demanded, her voice vibrating with suppressed, violent rage. "Some third-rate, street-corner hack? A bumbling fool who could be vanquished by a drooling infant who cannot even walk or speak, simply by waving a pudgy little hand?"
Her dark eyes locked onto Ernie, pinning him in place.
"That assumption is a grotesque insult to the ultimate, absolute power of magic itself. And it is an even greater insult to the very title of the Dark Lord."
"If a mindless baby could crush the greatest Dark Wizard of the age with sheer magical strength, then what exactly were those decades of terror? What was the point of the entire Wizarding World cowering in the shadows? Was it all just one giant, pathetic joke?!"
She lashed out with genuine, burning passion. Every sharp syllable was a desperate defense of her own dignity, her own legacy as Lord Voldemort. How dare these mud-brained badgers reduce her glorious reign of terror to a fairy tale where a toddler overpowered her!
But as the furious words left her lips, a sudden, sharp warning bell rang in Tamara's mind.
She paused, her eyes sweeping over the gathered Hufflepuffs. The sheer, trembling fear on their faces was beginning to curdle into something else. Brows were furrowing. Eyes were narrowing. Their expressions were slowly morphing into a highly suspicious, collective question: Why exactly are you defending the honor of You-Know-Who with such intense passion?
To preserve her carefully crafted angelic disguise and avoid a one-way ticket to Azkaban, Tamara snapped her mouth shut. Her chest heaved violently as she forced her breathing to steady. Her brilliant, calculating mind shifted gears, processing a million excuses in a fraction of a second.
The arrogant Dark Lord ground her back teeth together so hard her jaw ached. She reached deep into her acting reserves, forcibly twisting the raw, burning killing intent in her dark eyes into a mask of deep, agonizing sorrow.
"Your ignorant remarks just now..." she began, her voice cracking perfectly. "They were not merely insulting magic itself..."
Tamara curled her fingers into tight fists, her neatly trimmed nails digging into her palms. Her stomach churned with absolute revulsion at the words she was about to speak. She adopted a tone of deep, humiliated grief, forcing the sickeningly righteous words through her gritted teeth.
"...you were insulting those... those brave witches and wizards who died heroically in the war! The ones who gave their lives to resist the Dark Lord!"
"What?" Ernie blinked, completely thrown off balance by the sudden emotional pivot.
"If you claim that Potter is simply a more powerful Dark Wizard... if you truly believe the Dark Lord was that easily defeated by a mere child..." Tamara squeezed her eyes shut. A wave of genuine nausea washed over her. 'I have never said anything so utterly revolting in my entire life,' she thought, mentally gagging. She forced her eyes open, letting them shine with unshed, fake tears. "...then what exactly do you take those sacrificed Aurors for?"
"What do you take those innocent people for? The ones who stood in front of their families, who died under the flash of the Killing Curse just to buy their loved ones another second of breath?" Her voice rose, ringing with righteous indignation. "By reducing that war to a playground scuffle, you are completely negating the value of the peace they bought with their very lives!"
"I... I did not mean that..." Ernie stammered, all the color draining from his round face. The angry red flush vanished, replaced by a sickly, ashen pallor. Crushed beneath the absolute, suffocating weight of the massive moral high ground Tamara had just claimed, the Hufflepuff boy panicked entirely. He looked like he wanted the stone floor to swallow him whole.
"Save your ridiculous, baseless conspiracy theories, Macmillan," Tamara snapped, her tone dripping with icy disappointment. "That night was a... a miracle." The word tasted like ash in her mouth. "A miracle created by Lily Potter's ancient blood sacrifice magic. It was a mother's ultimate protection, not the work of some infant Dark Wizard!"
Suppressing a violent urge to vomit, Tamara delivered her final, cutting blow. She turned on her heel, her dark robes flaring sharply.
"Read more books and spread fewer rumors. The intelligence of House Hufflepuff should not be represented by someone like you."
Without sparing another glance at the stunned, guilt-ridden badgers, she strode out of the Library, her footsteps echoing sharply against the stone. She refused to remain in that suffocating aisle for a single second longer. Her fingers twitched dangerously near the pocket holding her wand. If she stayed, she knew her fragile self-control would snap. She would draw her wand and happily distribute a Cruciatus Curse to every single one of those gaping fools.
However, there was one crucial detail the Dark Lord had failed to notice.
Hidden in the deep shadows just two rows of bookshelves away, a boy with messy black hair and round glasses stood frozen. Harry Potter, who had hurried after her to speak in private, had heard every single word.
His green eyes widened behind his lenses. So that was it! That was the real reason Tamara had stepped up to clear his name at the Duelling Club! It had nothing to do with personal favoritism. It was because she possessed an incredibly noble, unwavering moral compass!
She simply could not tolerate the student body insulting the memories of those who had died in the war, just to spin malicious rumors about him! Harry felt a rush of deep warmth and guilt. She looked so cold and unapproachable on the outside. She had even been deliberately distancing herself from him these past few days. But beneath that icy exterior, her heart was more righteous, more fiercely gentle than anyone else in this entire castle!
"Tamara!"
Harry burst out from behind the heavy oak bookshelf, his footsteps echoing as he chased her out into the dimly lit corridor.
Tamara halted. She slowly turned her head, her dark eyes landing on the very culprit who had forced her to put on that nauseating, tear-jerking performance. Her already foul mood plummeted straight into the abyss. Her expression darkened, the shadows of the corridor seeming to cling to her features.
"Is there something the matter?" she asked, her voice cold enough to freeze the Black Lake.
But Harry, armed with his newfound understanding of her true nature, did not mind the frost in her tone at all. He stepped forward quickly, closing the distance between them. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, eager to share an exclusive secret to melt the ice between them.
"I ran into Hagrid just now."
He leaned in closer, glancing over his shoulder to ensure the corridor was empty. His tone turned grave. "He told me something incredibly strange is happening on the grounds. Several of the roosters he keeps near his hut were killed last night. Someone snapped their necks. They were strangled to death."
Harry looked up at Tamara with bright, expectant eyes. He was certain that this brilliant, perceptive Slytherin would immediately grasp the eerie significance of the clue. He imagined her eyes lighting up with curiosity, ready to engage in a hushed, intense discussion to piece the puzzle together, perhaps even agreeing to sneak out and investigate the grounds with him.
Instead, Tamara merely lowered her dark eyelashes, her expression utterly impassive.
Internally, her mind clicked the pieces into place with cold precision. As the true Heir of Slytherin, she knew the ancient lore better than anyone breathing. The crow of a rooster was absolutely, instantly fatal to a Basilisk.
The situation was glaringly obvious. That pathetic, sixteen-year-old memory of Tom Riddle trapped within the diary had already begun clearing the board. He was eliminating the only weakness of the great serpent, preparing to unleash Slytherin's little pet from the Chamber of Secrets.
'But what in Merlin's name does that have to do with me?' she thought dryly.
Naturally, she had no intention of letting that arrogant, teenage soul fragment gorge itself on life force. If it grew too strong, it might manifest as an uncontrollable variable, a nuisance that might dare to challenge her absolute authority as the primary soul.
But the idea of sneaking around in the freezing mud, playing hide-and-seek in a filthy, reeking chicken coop in the dead of night like some brainless Gryffindor? The very thought made her upper lip curl in disgust. Such a crude, inefficient, and utterly degrading method of intervention was beneath her. It was an insult to the refined elegance of the Dark Lord.
True power lay in efficiency. Solving a problem always meant severing it directly at the root. Since that arrogant little memory was entirely dependent on that foolish, red-haired Weasley girl as a physical vessel to enact its petty schemes... all Tamara had to do was wait. She just needed to find the perfect, quiet opportunity to corner Ginny Weasley, extract the diary from her trembling hands, and bind the Horcrux to her own will.
"I see," Tamara finally replied. She gave a single, perfunctory nod, her tone entirely devoid of interest or emotion.
"But do you not think this is highly unusual?" Harry pressed, his voice urgent. He refused to let the conversation die so easily. "Hagrid was really upset. Maybe... maybe it has something to do with the Chamber of Secrets..."
Tamara raised a slender hand, sharply cutting off his rambling theories.
"Hogwarts employs a Gamekeeper specifically tasked with managing the grounds and dealing with petty poultry thieves. The school also employs a spectacularly idiotic Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor who is paid an exorbitant salary to handle supposed dark threats."
She looked down her nose at him, her dark eyes flat and unimpressed. "Potter, if you are truly so bored that you have taken up investigating farmyard vandalism, I strongly suggest you spend your time practicing the Disarming Charm. It would serve you far better than standing in a corridor fretting over the lives of a few dirty birds."
Without waiting for a response, Tamara turned away. "I have actual matters to attend to. Excuse me."
Harry froze in place, the words dying on his lips. He stood alone in the dim corridor, watching the swish of Tamara's dark robes as she walked away. A familiar, bitter wave of frustration washed over him. She was pushing him away again.
But this time, he did not let the heavy disappointment drag him down. Instead, he stood perfectly still, staring at the empty archway where she had disappeared. His brow furrowed. His brain began to work with sharp, frantic energy.
It did not make sense. Her behavior was entirely contradictory.
If Tamara truly did not care about him—if she found him as annoying as she claimed—she never would have risked offending the entire student body to defend him against the snake at the Duelling Club. She certainly would not have just delivered a blistering, passionate lecture to Ernie Macmillan in the Library to protect his reputation.
But if she did care... why was she acting like a wall of solid ice? Why would she push him away so ruthlessly, refusing to even listen to a vital clue about the attacks?
Harry's mind raced, replaying the exact cadence of Tamara's merciless, mocking voice.
'I suggest you practice the Disarming Charm...'
Practice spells? Focus on combat magic? Become stronger?
A brilliant bolt of realization struck him, instantly burning away the fog of confusion in his mind. He gasped quietly. He understood!
The dead roosters were not just a random prank. They were absolutely connected to the legendary monster lurking within the Chamber of Secrets! And Tamara was brilliant. She was leagues ahead of everyone else. She must have already deduced the truth. She knew a terrifying, lethal danger was rapidly approaching the castle.
The reason she had cut him off so harshly, the reason she had insulted him and told him to practice his spells... it was not because she hated him. It was because she knew his current magical strength was pitifully weak!
If he tried to involve himself in a genuine crisis involving the Chamber of Secrets, he would not be able to help her. Worse, he would become a fatal liability—a burden she would have to protect. So, she was deliberately pushing him away. She was choosing to walk into the unknown darkness completely alone, using her icy exterior as a shield to lock him safely out of harm's way.
Harry clenched his fists, his green eyes burning with fierce, newfound determination. "I will not let you down," he whispered to the empty corridor. "I will definitely master Expelliarmus."
Having successfully discarded the endlessly annoying savior, Tamara adjusted her robes. She let out a quiet sigh, fully expecting to finally return to the cool, damp sanctuary of the Slytherin dungeons for some much-needed peace and quiet.
But fate, it seemed, was determined to test the limits of the Dark Lord's sanity today.
As she handled a deserted, torch-lit corridor on the second floor, a sudden clatter of metal echoed off the stone walls. A petite, trembling figure darted out from the deep shadows behind a towering suit of knight's armor, planting herself squarely in the center of the flagstones, precisely blocking Tamara's path.
"Tamara..." a frail voice called out.
Tamara halted. Her dark eyes swept over the interloper, and her perfectly sculpted brow instantly furrowed into a tight, irritated knot.
Ginny Weasley.
The youngest redhead of the Weasley brood looked absolutely dreadful. Her normally vibrant, freckled face was a sickly, translucent white. Heavy, bruised-looking dark circles dragged at the skin beneath her eyes. She swayed slightly on her feet, looking as though she were recovering from a severe, wasting illness. Her very soul seemed to exude a hollow, hollowed-out aura, as if her life force was being siphoned away drop by drop.
Tamara's sharp eyes analyzed the symptoms in a fraction of a second. The diagnosis was obvious. The parasitic drain of the diary had accelerated. The sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle was getting hungry.
"Is there something you need, Miss Weasley?" Tamara asked. She maintained a measured, restrained distance. It took every ounce of her willpower to keep her hands at her sides, suppressing the overwhelming urge to simply reach out, snatch the dark artifact from the girl's robes, and be done with this tedious game. Outwardly, her tone remained a flawless mask of polite inquiry.
Ginny's trembling fingers reached down, nervously twisting and wringing the frayed hem of her black wizarding robes. She tilted her head back, looking up at the slightly taller Slytherin girl. She hesitated for what felt like an eternity, her chest rising and falling erratically.
Then, she squeezed her eyes shut, took a massive, shuddering breath, and blurted out a question that very nearly caused the Dark Lord to suffer a spontaneous, fatal aneurysm on the spot.
"Tamara... do you... do you like Harry?"
Tamara stared. Her lungs simply ceased to function. The air in the corridor seemed to turn into solid lead.
A vein pulsed dangerously at her temple. If it were not for the absolute, iron-clad grip of her remaining rationality holding her right hand hostage, she would have drawn her wand and blasted this foolish, babbling red-haired child into the afterlife with a point-blank Avada Kedavra.
'Like?'The word echoed in her mind, dripping with venom.'Like that arrogant, self-important, spectacularly untalented Scarhead?!' The sheer, unadulterated insult of the question pushed Tamara beyond the boundaries of mere fury. She was practically vibrating with homicidal rage.
But the System's invisible chains bound her tight. She could not lash out. She could not scream. Instead, she had to force the corners of her mouth upward, stretching her lips into a painfully stiff, gentle smile.
"Why on earth would you harbor such a... bizarre delusion?" Tamara asked, her voice trembling with the sheer effort of not snapping the girl's neck.
"Because... because of a feeling," Ginny whispered. Her voice was small, fragile, yet laced with an inexplicable, desperate stubbornness. "You have been defending him. At the Quidditch match... at the Duelling Club... you are always stepping up to stand in front of him. I just thought... maybe..."
Tamara inhaled a slow, sharp breath through her nose. She needed to obliterate this narrative. She had to find a flawless, obvious reason right now, this very second, to scrub this utterly disgusting misunderstanding from the girl's mind.
"Ginny." Tamara's voice dropped an octave, shedding the forced gentleness. She lifted her chin, her spine straightening as she smoothly reclaimed the cold, aristocratic arrogance of her true nature. She looked down at the Gryffindor with a gaze of lofty, untouchable pity. "Your vision is tragically narrow. Do you honestly believe my repeated interventions were solely to defend Potter?"
She locked eyes with the trembling girl, her expression carved from marble.
"In my eyes, there is absolutely no difference between Potter's reckless impulsiveness, Professor Lockhart's staggering incompetence, and the sheer, unadulterated stupidity of the entire student body who blindly swallow every pathetic rumor they hear."
"I do not intervene out of some misplaced favoritism toward any single weakling," she continued, her words slicing through the air like a silver blade. "When a flock of sheep with absolutely zero capacity for self-protection insists on making a chaotic, humiliating mess right in front of me, that chaos deeply offends my sensibilities."
"This is not some ridiculous, schoolgirl affection. I simply loathe incompetence. I despise the unseemly, pathetic noise that weaklings insist on generating in my presence."
The words were delivered with absolute, crushing arrogance. A suffocating pressure bled into the corridor, heavy and dark. In that moment, she was not a second-year student; she was a sovereign looking down upon the entire staff and student body of Hogwarts as nothing more than her captive, bleating flock.
Tamara watched the girl's face. 'As a devoted, obsessive fan of the great Harry Potter,'Tamara calculated coldly,'hearing me speak so disparagingly of her precious idol will surely shatter her illusions. She will definitely burst into tears and run away in a fit of righteous anger.'
However, the Dark Lord had made a critical miscalculation. She had completely underestimated the insidious, mind-altering side effects of the diary, as well as the sheer, magnetic pull of her own dark charisma.
Ginny did not look angry. She did not cry.
On the contrary, the redhead simply stood there, staring blankly up at Tamara's cold, beautiful face. Over the past few weeks, while her mind was being slowly eroded and bewitched by the dark magic of the diary, Ginny's internal landscape had quietly, drastically shifted.
The legendary "Boy Who Lived" had been her childhood hero. But despite his dazzling halo, the real Harry Potter was awkward, oblivious, and ultimately too distant. He felt like a character from a storybook, completely removed from her current, suffocating reality.
But the Tamara Riddle standing before her right now? She was real. She was breathtakingly beautiful, undeniably powerful, and carried an aura of absolute authority. In Ginny's distorted perception, Tamara had always been there—patient, steady, and capable of providing an unshakable sense of protection whenever chaos erupted.
, deep within the fractured, vulnerable recesses of Ginny's subconscious, the dark, commanding aura radiating from Tamara felt strikingly, comfortingly familiar. It connected perfectly with the soothing, understanding presence of 'Tom' from her diary. They felt like two sides of the exact same coin.
The young, terrified girl did not understand the complexities of true love or dark magic. She only knew that in her current state of overwhelming fear and draining weakness, her soul instinctively gravitated toward the strongest light in the room. She desperately longed to anchor herself to this magnificent, powerful existence that promised absolute security.
The dull, lifeless glaze over Ginny's brown eyes suddenly shattered, replaced by a startling, feverish brightness. She looked steadily up at the towering Slytherin, her pale cheeks flushing with sudden color. She flashed a brilliant, entirely unhinged smile.
"Tamara... you are so amazing," Ginny breathed, her voice filled with raw awe. She took a deep, fortifying breath, her posture straightening as she made a solemn declaration. "Since you do not like Harry... then I do not care about him anymore either!"
Her eyes sparkled with absolute devotion.
"I have decided! I am going to like you from now on!"
Having delivered this devastating confession, the little girl looked as though a massive, suffocating weight had been lifted from her chest. Without waiting for a response, she spun on her heel and sprinted down the corridor, her red hair flying behind her as she vanished into the shadows like a nimble little mouse.
The dim corridor fell utterly silent. A cold draft swept through the stone archways, rustling the tapestries. The great, evil, and infinitely arrogant Dark Lord was left standing completely alone in the draft.
Tamara stood absolutely paralyzed, her polished shoes rooted to the flagstones. Her brilliant, unmatched intellect had encountered a fatal error. She had completely, entirely lost the ability to process thought.
A long, agonizing minute passed.
Finally, in the empty, echoing expanse of the second-floor corridor, a single, hollow voice broke the silence. The Dark Lord stared at the empty space where the Gryffindor girl had stood, her tone dripping with pure, unadulterated existential confusion.
"...What?"
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