Chapter 48: Finally, Something Useful
As Christmas drew nearer, Hogwarts Castle looked less like a school and more like something trapped inside a glass ornament.
Beyond the windows, snow fell in thick, relentless curtains. The drifts outside had risen so high that in some places they reached halfway up the lower panes. The mountains in the distance had vanished beneath a white haze, and even the Black Lake seemed to have withdrawn into a frozen, silent gloom.
Deep beneath it all, in the Slytherin dungeons, winter still found ways to creep in.
The walls were draped with thick tapestries. The great fireplace in the common room had been kept roaring for days. Even so, a chill lingered stubbornly in the air, sliding over the stone floor and settling into the edges of sleeves and the tips of fingers.
Tamara Riddle sat in her exclusive high backed chair near the fire, a quill in one hand and a look of deep displeasure on her face.
On her lap lay Gregory Goyle's History of Magic essay.
Or rather, the remains of it.
At this point, she was no longer correcting the thing. She was rebuilding it from the ruins.
"...The Goblin Rebellions occurred because they wanted more holidays?"
Tamara lowered the parchment a fraction and stared at Goyle as if she were seriously considering whether blunt force trauma could improve intelligence.
"Goyle, is your head packed with slug slime?"
Goyle, who had been standing nearby in the posture of a gorilla caught stealing, shrank back at once.
"But Professor Binns said something like that in class," he mumbled, then hesitated. "Or... maybe I dreamed it while I was asleep."
"Do not speak."
Tamara's reply was cold enough to make the fire seem warmer by contrast.
She bent over the essay again, her quill moving in swift, merciless strokes. Whole paragraphs vanished beneath dark slashes of ink. Idiotic conclusions were strangled before they could continue breeding. In their place, she inserted corrected arguments, historical context, and an analysis that was entirely accurate, if a touch too approving of violent repression.
She had no desire whatsoever to become anyone's governess.
But if Goyle handed in this monstrosity and received a T for Troll, Tamara would have to live with the fact that one of her people had produced it.
That was unacceptable.
A Slytherin might be cruel, manipulative, even vicious.
But stupid?
That was unforgivable.
Ten minutes later, Tamara flicked the essay off her lap and back toward Goyle.
It landed against his chest like a sentence passed down by a judge.
"Take it. Rewrite it exactly."
Goyle clutched the parchment with both hands, blinking at the storm of corrections that had nearly buried his original work.
"If you copy even one line incorrectly," Tamara added without looking at him, "I will personally feed your head to the Giant Squid."
Rather than be frightened, Goyle looked close to tears.
"Thank you, Tamara!"
He hugged the essay like a holy relic and nearly bowed before hurrying off, deeply moved.
In his view, although she frequently threatened his life, Tamara was helping him with his homework.
That was practically affection.
The moment he disappeared into the staircase leading to the dormitories, the long awaited mechanical chime rang through Tamara's mind.
[Ding! Detected that the host did not abandon an underperforming student, but instead provided patient one on one tutoring.]
[What a magnificent educational spirit. No one left behind. No one forgotten.]
[Triggered daily settlement reward: Wisdom +1.]
Tamara ignored the nauseating commentary completely.
Her attention fixed on the attribute panel as it opened before her.
With this final point, the number shifted.
At last.
[Current Attribute Panel Updated:]
[Love: 14]
[Life: 14]
[Courage: 12]
[Wisdom: 30]
Tamara exhaled slowly.
"Finally."
The past months had been a humiliating procession of forced virtue. She had endured idiotic questions, corrected worthless essays, soothed fragile emotions, and even guided Hermione Granger, which still felt like a personal insult. All of it, every absurd little indignity, had been for this.
For power.
[Ding! Congratulations, host!]
[Detected that the Wisdom attribute has exceeded the 30 point threshold and reached the first major stage.]
[Matching reward in progress...]
[Match successful.]
[Unlocked high tier elemental spell: Incendio Max.]
[Skill Description: Ordinary fire spells can only light wood. A true master of flame can grant fire shape, force, and purpose. Although it has not yet reached the forbidden level of Fiendfyre, at your current stage it is more than enough to keep you warm.]
[Safety Note: Playing with fire may lead to bed wetting. Please exercise caution, host.]
A rush of knowledge flooded through her.
Not just an incantation. Not just the motion of a wand.
It was a structured understanding of fire itself.
Heat. Pressure. Shape. Direction. Combustion. Expansion. Restraint.
Tamara's eyes widened slightly.
For one fleeting moment, deep in her obsidian pupils, a dark red blaze seemed to flicker to life.
This was different.
Levitation, cleaning charms, basic healing, even transfiguration, all of those had felt like useful tools.
This felt like home.
This was destruction.
This was force.
This was something worthy of her attention.
She rose from her chair.
Across the common room, the students who had been pretending to work while secretly watching her all went still. Draco Malfoy, seated near the hearth with Crabbe on the rug while a Gobstones match languished between them, scrambled up at once when he saw her approach.
"Tamara?"
He made room instinctively.
"Do you want the best spot by the fire? It's warmest here."
"No, Draco."
Tamara stopped directly in front of the fireplace.
The flames within were healthy enough, but ordinary. Orange red. Domestic. Tame.
Pathetic, really.
She looked at them, and the corner of her mouth curved into something elegant and cruel.
Then she drew her holly wand.
That was enough to pull every eye in the room toward her.
Pansy froze mid sentence. Daphne lowered her parchment. Even the youngest students at the far end of the common room straightened in tense curiosity.
Tamara lifted the wand and spoke softly.
"Incendio."
The result was immediate.
Not a flare. Not a flash.
A roar.
The fire in the grate exploded upward with a sound like a beast awakening from centuries of sleep. Gold red light burst through the room. The shadows on the walls fled. The entire common room blazed as bright as noon.
But the flames did not spill wildly from the hearth.
Under the pressure of Tamara's will, they changed.
The orange red deepened into molten gold. At the centre, threads of dangerous blue burned like a hidden core. The mass twisted, lengthened, and coiled in on itself, every movement controlled, deliberate, impossible.
Then a giant serpent made of living fire drew itself out of the grate.
It was the thickness of a barrel, its body composed of rolling scales of flame, its eyes two clusters of blinding white light. Fire hissed along the length of it as it lifted its head and unfurled through the common room air, radiant and terrifying.
Pansy gave a shriek and scattered her Gobstones everywhere.
Crabbe actually fell over backward. Goyle, who had only just returned to the edge of the room, made a noise of primal alarm and grabbed whoever was nearest. Several younger students went as pale as if death itself had just slithered out of the fireplace.
Only Tamara remained calm.
"Do not panic," she said.
Her voice cut through the crackle and hiss with effortless authority.
She stood before the blazing serpent without the slightest trace of fear, as though it were nothing more than an obedient familiar.
With the smallest motion of her wand, the fire snake lowered its head toward her.
It coiled in the air, vast and beautiful, circling once above the common room. Heat rolled off it in waves, and the bitter dungeon chill vanished at once beneath the press of radiant warmth.
"This," Tamara said with cool satisfaction, "is merely to improve the temperature."
She extended one hand.
Though she stood several feet away, it looked almost as though she were stroking the thing beneath the chin.
The serpent hissed in what sounded absurdly like pleasure.
Then, perhaps because Tamara was enjoying herself, it darted suddenly toward the group of first years huddled near the far wall.
The children screamed.
The snake lunged with jaws spread wide, all white heat and molten scales, and for one exquisite instant they truly believed they were about to die.
Then, a breath from their faces, the serpent collapsed into harmless light.
The great flaming head broke apart into a scatter of glowing embers that drifted around them like fireflies. Warmth brushed over their cheeks. Not one thread of hair was singed.
Only the chill had been burned away.
Silence followed.
Not the ordinary silence of a study room.
The kind born when a crowd has just seen something it cannot explain.
At last Draco rose shakily to his feet.
He stared at Tamara with parted lips, the fear in his pale eyes transformed into something far stronger.
Reverence.
Up to now, Tamara had ruled them with intelligence, calculation, and an effortless superiority that made resistance feel pointless.
But this was something else.
This was raw power.
The one language every Slytherin understood before all others.
"Was... was that really Incendio?" Pansy asked, and her voice shook embarrassingly on the final word.
Tamara lowered her wand and turned back to them with supreme indifference.
"A small variation."
As if she had merely rearranged the logs.
As if shaping a giant serpent from fire and making it dance through the common room required nothing worth mentioning.
She took in the faces around her, the awe, the fear, the desperate admiration, and felt something inside her settle into place.
Yes.
This.
This was proper.
"It is warmer now, is it not?"
She returned to her chair and sat with smooth grace. Her tea had gone cold on the small table beside her. Tamara touched the cup lightly with one finger. Steam rose at once from the surface.
She took a composed sip.
Then she looked over the room once more.
"Carry on with your work."
The students straightened instinctively.
Her tone sharpened by only a fraction.
"If tomorrow's homework is still garbage, I do not wish to hear that the cold made thinking difficult."
"Yes, Tamara!"
The answer came back all at once, louder and more disciplined than ever before.
Tamara lowered her eyes to her tea, hiding the faintly smug curve at the corner of her mouth.
Fear and awe.
Those were the foundations of order.
As for the so called virtue system...
Tamara gave a quiet snort inside her own mind.
So long as it was used correctly, even a chain called kindness could be sharpened into a blade.
[Yes indeed, host. Beautifully said ^v^]
.....
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