Chapter 186: Understanding
The heavy wooden doors of the Hospital Wing clicked shut behind them, sealing away the sterile scent of medicinal potions. The stone corridor stretched out, vast and entirely deserted. Far below, the muffled, joyous echoes of the Start-of-Term feast drifted up from the Great Hall, leaving the upper floors of the castle in a heavy, suffocating silence.
"Tamara, I..." Harry began, his voice echoing slightly against the damp walls. He took a hesitant step forward, desperate to explain that he hadn't meant to cause a scene. He had only acted on instinct, terrified by how lifeless she had looked, convinced she needed a healer immediately.
"Shut up."
The words didn't just leave Tamara's lips; they slashed through the air like a physical curse. She spun on her heel, her dark robes flaring. In three swift, predatory strides, she closed the distance between them. Her crimson-tinted eyes locked onto him, devoid of any human warmth. She looked at the Boy Who Lived not as a classmate, but as a rotting corpse obstructing her path.
"Do you feel a deep sense of accomplishment, Potter?" she whispered. Her voice was a silken hiss, dropping to a dangerous, barely audible register that scraped against the eardrums with a sinister edge. "Scurrying to Madam Pomfrey like a frightened little rat? Broadcasting my name for the entire castle to hear? Telling her I collapsed in the corridor like some fragile, pathetic mudblood? Was this your grand Gryffindor strategy to humiliate me?"
"I didn't!" Harry shot back, his hands balling into fists at his sides. Frustration and a deep, stinging grievance flared in his bright green eyes. "I was just worried about you! You looked terrible on the train, and in the corridor—you were shaking! Madam Pomfrey said you needed help!"
"I do not need help!" Tamara hissed, her upper lip curling into a vicious sneer. She advanced another step, forcing Harry to tilt his head slightly to maintain eye contact. Absolute, unadulterated contempt radiated from her gaze. "Put away that nauseating Savior act. Do you truly believe you are in a position to dole out charity? To offer me your pathetic sympathy? You think because you witnessed a momentary lapse, you have earned the right to stand there and lecture me?"
"I wasn't playing the hero!" Harry's temper finally snapped. He was utterly exhausted by this girl—by the way she twisted every decent human gesture into a poisoned dagger. Instead of shrinking back from her powerful aura, he planted his feet firmly on the flagstones, squaring his shoulders to meet her venomous glare head-on.
"Why do you always treat everyone's kindness like a weapon?" he demanded, his voice ringing with that trademark Gryffindor stubbornness. "I didn't humiliate you! I saw you crying, Tamara, but I wasn't mocking you! I would never mock you for that!"
He took a breath, his chest heaving. "Because I'm exactly the same! I heard those terrible voices in the compartment too. I felt that coldness, that absolute despair, and it nearly drove me mad! I understand what you felt!"
Harry stared intently at her beautiful face, now slightly twisted by a dark, ugly rage. Over the past two months, he had replayed their interactions in his mind countless times. Her icy demeanor, her suffocating arrogance, and that constant, venomous guard she kept raised whenever she looked at him.
Yet, the more she bared her teeth and lashed out with the most vicious insults imaginable, the more Harry felt a jarring sense of dissonance. A strange, inexplicable resonance vibrated deep within his soul—a connection he couldn't begin to articulate, but one that allowed him to pierce through her flawless armor and glimpse the truth beneath.
Looking into those cold, furious eyes, Harry didn't see a monster. He saw a reflection of a scrawny boy locked in a dark cupboard under the stairs at Privet Drive.
The only difference was that Harry had learned to embrace the light. Through clumsy but genuine acts of care—a shared pumpkin pasty on the Express, a hand-knitted Weasley sweater at Christmas—he had learned that sincere warmth existed in this world.
Tamara, however, seemed determined to violently extinguish every single spark of light that dared to approach her.
An absurd, crystal-clear realization struck Harry like a physical blow. She treated everyone as fools. She sneered at compassion. Not because she was an untouchable, invincible queen.
She was bluffing.
The hesitation vanished from Harry's posture. A sharp flicker of understanding illuminated his green eyes.
"You think I'm humiliating you? You think I'm just showing off?" Instead of backing away from the dangerous girl, Harry took a bold step forward, invading her personal space. "Tamara, you always act so high and mighty, violently shoving away anyone who even tries to care about you! But just now, in front of that Dementor? You were terrified to death!"
His voice wasn't a shout, but it echoed with devastating clarity off the stone walls. "What exactly are you so afraid of? Are you terrified to admit that you can be weak? Or are you just terrified that people will finally figure out you aren't actually as invincible as you pretend to be?!"
Tamara's pupils shrank to pinpricks.
He dared.
This pathetic, miserable half-blood had just violently stabbed at the Dark Lord's deepest, most fiercely guarded nerve. She—Lord Voldemort, the greatest sorcerer to ever live, the immortal conqueror who had transcended death itself—was being interrogated by a thirteen-year-old brat about what she was afraid of?!
A volcanic, world-ending rage instantly incinerated whatever remained of Tamara's rationality.
"You are asking for death..." she breathed, the words dripping with pure malice.
A terrifying, blood-red glow surged from the depths of her irises, completely swallowing the dark brown. Her right hand snapped into her sleeve like a striking viper, her pale fingers wrapping tightly around the smooth wood of her holly wand.
To hell with the System. Even if that accursed machine electrocuted her until her organs fried, she was going to flay this arrogant Scarhead alive and teach him a lesson his soul would never forget!
[Warning! Warning! Extremely strong killing intent and malicious attack behavior detected!]
[Serious violation of Virtue Code Rule 1: Do not harm innocent classmates!]
[Defense mechanism activated. Wand casting permissions are being forcibly locked... Violating operations will immediately trigger the highest level of punishment: Level Five Electric Shock!]
The perky, painfully sharp electronic alarm shrieked inside her skull, nearly rupturing her eardrums. Ordinarily, Tamara's calculating mind would have forced a compromise to avoid the agonizing physical torture.
But not today. Driven by the sheer indignity of having her deepest insecurities laid bare by a lowly, insignificant ant, the Dark Lord's obsessive, tyrannical soul erupted in a terrifying, unmatched counterattack.
'Get out of my way—!' Tamara roared in the confines of her mind, the sound akin to a starving ghoul.
A delicate blue vein throbbed violently at her temple. Fighting against the crushing, invisible pressure the System was dropping onto her nervous system, she gritted her teeth and physically forced her arm upward.
Despite the System's absolute confinement, the tip of her wand sparked. A cluster of sickly, ghostly green sparks hissed into the air, smelling of death and ozone. Even if the price was being rendered comatose by a Level Five Electric Shock in the very next second, she was going to blast this insolent boy through the stone wall!
"Avada—"
Tamara's pale lips parted. The most vicious Unforgivable Curse in existence rested heavily on the tip of her tongue, while the System's ultimate, lethal voltage coiled in her mind, poised to strike her down.
At that critical, breathless second—
Click.
The heavy oak door at the far end of the corridor was suddenly pushed open from the inside.
"Tamara! Harry!"
A crisp, bright voice, overflowing with joy, abruptly shattered the suffocating, deathly tension. Hermione Granger stepped out of Professor McGonagall's office, her footsteps light and energetic.
Her face beamed with an excited smile. Tucked just beneath her collar, the faint glint of a thin gold chain caught the torchlight. When she looked up and spotted the two of them standing in the middle of the corridor, her smile grew even more radiant.
"You're both here! Oh, that's wonderful!"
Hermione was completely, blissfully unaware of the terrifying, murderous bloodlust saturating the air between them—a tension so thick a single spark could have ignited the corridor. She jogged over quickly, her eyes sparkling as she looked from Harry to Tamara, who still had her hand half-raised.
"Madam Pomfrey said you're both fine? That's such a relief!" Hermione chattered excitedly. "The feast isn't over yet, let's hurry down to the Great Hall! Oh, Tamara, you'll never guess—Professor McGonagall approved my application for all subjects! I've officially signed up for every single class this semester!"
Tamara's hand, gripping her wand in a death hold, froze inside her sleeve.
The murderous red glow bleeding into her irises was forcibly, violently suppressed the moment her eyes landed on Hermione. She took a slow, jagged breath. One by one, she peeled her stiff fingers away from the wood of her wand. Her facial muscles twitched, rapidly shifting through a spectrum of suppressed rage before finally settling back into a mask of cold, dead silence.
"...Is that so?" Tamara forced the words out of her throat. Her voice was hollow, several degrees colder than a Dementor's breath. "Then... congratulations, Granger."
She smoothed her robes with a trembling hand. "I hope you can finish all those classes before you work yourself to death."
Without sparing a single glance at Harry, she turned on her heel and walked briskly toward the stairs leading down to the Slytherin dungeons.
"What's wrong with her?" Hermione blinked, looking at Tamara's rapidly retreating back in utter confusion before turning to Harry.
Harry stood frozen in place. His heart was still hammering violently against his ribs as he recalled the genuine, suffocating killing intent that had erupted from Tamara just a moment ago.
"It's nothing..." Harry murmured softly. His eyes remained fixed on the dark, receding figure, swirling with a complex mix of fear, pity, and stubborn resolve. "I probably... just said something stupid again and completely infuriated her."
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