Chapter 8: Encounter at the Robe Shop
Stepping out of the second-hand shop, Tamara wrinkled her nose. The lingering stench of damp mildew and rotting rat carcasses clung to the air, an offensive assault on her refined senses. She was in no hurry to procure a wand just yet. Her absolute, uncompromising priority was to incinerate the wretched garments currently draped over her body.
As a wizard who had once commanded the very pinnacle of magical Britain, she absolutely refused to parade through Diagon Alley wearing a poorly fitted, tattered burlap sack. She looked like a miserable House-elf. It was an insult to her very soul.
Her gaze locked onto the elegant, gilded lettering across the cobblestone street: Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.
Pushing open the heavy wooden door, a soft, melodic chime announced her arrival. The interior was a stark contrast to the dreary alleyway. It was spacious and brilliantly illuminated, the air thick with the soothing scent of crushed lavender and the crisp, clean smell of expensive textiles.
A squat, plump witch draped in mauve robes bustled forward, her face splitting into a welcoming smile.
"Buying your Hogwarts school uniform, dear?" Madam Malkin asked warmly. To her credit, the shopkeeper's eyes did not linger on the atrocious, frayed dress Tamara wore. There was not a single trace of disdain in her polite demeanor.
"Yes, Madam."
Tamara offered a slight, measured nod. Her movements were impeccably elegant, carrying the practiced grace of royalty. She reached into her newly acquired, pleasantly heavy coin purse, counted out ten gleaming Galleons, and placed them onto the polished wooden counter with a soft clinking sound.
"In addition to the standard school uniform, I require your absolute finest daily dress. Silk. In dark green."
She paused, letting the gold catch the light, before adding in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument. "Additionally, please dispose of this... regrettable attire. I wish to change into the new garments immediately."
"Not a problem at all, dear! Please head right through to the back. There is a young man currently being fitted there. You can stand on the footstool right next to him."
Tamara swept past the racks of floating fabrics toward the rear of the shop.
There, standing upon a wooden footstool, was a pale boy with slicked-back, pale blond hair. A magical tape measure was currently flitting around him like a frantic silver moth, measuring the distance from his shoulder to his wrist.
Draco Malfoy.
Tamara's dark eyes narrowed slightly. Looking at that familiar, pointed face—which bore a striking, seventy-percent resemblance to his father, Lucius Malfoy—a wave of complex, deeply buried emotions stirred within her.
'Lucius,'she mused internally, a cold, mocking sneer ghosting across her thoughts.'Back in the day, the man possessed the magical talent of a damp sponge, but he was, at the very least, a useful, groveling sort of loyal.'
She wondered briefly how the Malfoy family had fared in the years following her glorious, temporary demise.
Maintaining her icy composure, Tamara stepped onto the adjacent footstool. Madam Malkin materialized beside her, swiftly slipping a long length of fabric over her head to begin the pinning process.
Draco Malfoy turned his head, looking her up and down. When he spoke, his voice carried a drawling, inherently arrogant tone. "Are you going to Hogwarts too?"
"Mhm," Tamara replied. She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead on the mirror, her voice steady, flat, and entirely devoid of warmth.
"My father's next door buying my books and cauldron. He'll be here in a moment." Draco, completely oblivious to the freezing dismissal in her single-syllable response, refused to shut his mouth. Instead, he launched right into his signature, insufferable boasting.
"Then I'm going to drag him to look at racing brooms. I really don't see why first-years can't have their own brooms." He puffed out his narrow chest. "Still, I can easily get my father to buy me one and then find a way to smuggle it in."
He prattled on and on, a ceaseless stream of self-importance, clearly desperate to capture the attention of the quiet girl standing beside him.
"Have you ever played Quidditch?" Draco asked, tilting his chin up. "My father says I'm a natural-born seeker."
Tamara finally turned her head. Her dark eyes slid sideways to look at him.
There was no envy in her gaze. No jealousy. There was barely any emotion at all. She looked at him with the deep, detached calmness of a scholar observing a particularly noisy, brightly colored parrot.
"Quidditch?" she repeated. A soft, silken chuckle escaped her lips.
"That is indeed... a pleasant little pastime for those burdened with excess physical energy and absolutely nowhere else to put it."
Draco blinked, his pale eyelashes fluttering in confusion. He had fully expected the girl to be impressed, or at the very least, to show a shred of eager interest.
"What do you mean?" His brow furrowed into a petulant scowl. "You don't like Quidditch? Then what do you like? Don't tell me it's those boring Gobstones."
"I am far more inclined toward exploring the deep mysteries of magic itself."
Tamara tilted her chin up slightly. Even as the magical pins darted around her shoulders, her posture remained as rigidly upright and unyielding as an ancient pine. "No matter how high one flies, it is merely crude acrobatics on a wooden stick. Mastering the depths of magic is the true, absolute proof of a wizard's noble blood."
Draco opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked as though he had just swallowed a lemon whole.
He studied Tamara more closely. He realized suddenly that, although she had walked in wearing the most pathetic rags he had ever seen, her every minute gesture, the very tilt of her head, radiated an aura far more aristocratic than any pure-blood society lady his mother had ever hosted at the Manor.
"Which House do you think you'll be in?" Draco quickly changed the subject, scrambling to regain his lost footing.
"As for me, I know I'll be in Slytherin. I don't even need the Sorting Hat to tell me. My entire family has been in Slytherin for generations." A smug, superior smirk plastered itself back onto his face. "What about you? I imagine it certainly won't be Hufflepuff."
"Slytherin."
Tamara stated the word flatly.
It did not sound like a childish aspiration or a desperate hope. Coming from her lips, it sounded like a decree. A settled, unchangeable law of the universe.
"Oh? You want to be in Slytherin too?" Draco perked up instantly, his eyes brightening as if he had just stumbled upon a rare, kindred spirit. "Then you must be a pure-blood. What's your surname?"
Ah. That was a crucial, dangerous question.
There was a time, long ago, when the Dark Lord had felt a burning, corrosive shame regarding her own impure, half-blood status. It had been a festering wound in her pride.
'But then again,'Tamara thought, a dark, vicious amusement curling in the back of her mind,'I tracked down my filthy Muggle father and murdered him in cold blood. My mindset has vastly improved since then.'
[Ding! System Notification: Side Quest Triggered — Noble Upbringing.]
[Task Description: The brat before you is far too impolite. As a Slytherin senior, you have an obligation to teach him what true noble style is.]
[Quest Reward: Charm +2, Malfoy Family favorability unlocked.]
'Very well.'
The corners of Tamara's mouth curled upward into a chillingly beautiful smile. She decided it was time to teach this arrogant, prattling boy a harsh lesson in hierarchy.
"You are entirely too noisy, Mr. Malfoy," Tamara's crisp, melodic voice cut through the air, stating the fact with absolute authority.
"Only desperate parvenus feel the need to loudly flaunt their wealth and constantly emphasize the importance of their bloodlines."
"Par... Parvenu?!" Draco's pale face flooded with a furious, mottled red. "My family is one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight!"
Tamara did not raise her voice. She didn't need to. Yet, every single syllable she spoke drilled with agonizing clarity directly into Draco's ears.
"An illustrious family history is the glory of your ancestors, Mr. Malfoy. It is not your personal shield."
She turned her head fully toward him, her dark eyes locking onto his gray ones, pinning him in place. "The very moment you keep 'my father' constantly on your lips, you have already admitted your own pathetic weakness."
"A true Slytherin never deigns to bark safely from within the shadows of their parents."
The entire fitting room plunged into a deathly, suffocating silence.
The magical tape measure in Madam Malkin's hand dropped, going completely limp as the plump witch stared at the two eleven-year-old children in absolute shock.
Draco Malfoy was rendered completely, utterly speechless.
No one—absolutely no one—had ever dared to speak to him in such a commanding, lecturing tone. She was scolding him as if he were an ignorant, misbehaving servant.
Worse yet, standing under the crushing weight of this girl's gaze, he actually felt a bizarre, overwhelming impulse to bow his head, drop his shoulders, and admit his faults.
That high-and-mighty, piercing stare seemed to strip away his flesh and see straight through to his soul. It made him feel infinitely more pressured and terrified than when he watched his father lose his temper behind closed doors at the Manor.
Just then, the heavy silence was shattered by a nervous cough.
"Alright, dear, your fitting is quite done." Madam Malkin clapped her hands twice, her voice slightly higher pitched than before as she looked at her masterpiece with forced cheerfulness.
"I will go and fetch your school uniform. Just wait for me here for a moment." With that, Madam Malkin practically fled the fitting room, leaving the two children alone in the heavy, charged quiet.
Tamara stepped gracefully down from the wooden footstool. She turned to face the full-length mirror, taking in the sight of her new, dark green silk robe. It draped perfectly over her frame, elegant and sharp. She nodded slowly.
'Yes. This is exactly how a Dark Lord should present herself.'
She turned slowly on her heel, her gaze sweeping back to Draco, who was still frozen stiff on his chair. She took a deliberate step forward, her presence dominating the small space.
"Look at me," Tamara commanded. Her voice was a soft, dangerous whisper.
As if his body were no longer his own, Draco's head snapped up. He did exactly as he was told.
Tamara reached out a slender, pale hand. She extended a single finger and pressed it gently, almost tenderly, against the underside of Draco's chin.
It was a gesture that looked somewhat intimate, yet the sheer, suffocating magical pressure behind it sent a violent chill racing straight down Draco's spine.
"Hide your desires, your foolish pride, and your pathetic impatience deep inside," she murmured, her face inches from his.
"When you prattle on, boasting loudly about things you have not even earned yet, you are nothing but an open book. Even a brainless Troll could see right through your hand."
As she spoke, Draco unconsciously held his breath. His chest tightened painfully, a raw, primal hint of fear swimming in his wide gray eyes.
That feeling... it was exactly like facing his father's wrath. No. It was worse. It inspired a deep, bone-chilling awe that his father could never hope to command.
Looking at his terrified, silent face, Tamara decided the current Draco was finally no longer as stupidly headache-inducing as he had been three minutes ago.
She nodded with faint satisfaction and slowly withdrew her hand.
"Remember this feeling, Draco. Only when you finally learn how to be silent will others actually hear what you truly have to say."
With a sharp turn of her heel, Tamara collected her newly wrapped parcels from the counter and swept out of the shop.
Draco remained standing on the footstool, completely dazed. His face was now burning as red as a ripe tomato.
His trembling fingers slowly reached up to touch his chin, right where her cool skin had made contact. His heart was pounding frantically against his ribs, hammering with the wild, terrified rhythm of a gazelle that had just been batted around by a lion.
Outside, the cool breeze of Diagon Alley brushed against Tamara's face.
She carried her shopping bags with a light, effortless grace, listening to the cheerful, chiming voice echoing in her mind. A genuinely playful, wicked smile graced her lips.
[Ding! Quest Complete: Noble Upbringing.]
[Congratulations to the host for successfully guiding Draco Malfoy.]
[Reward Obtained: Charm +2. Effect gained: Your appearance is peerless among your peers.]
[Malfoy Family hidden favorability unlocked. Current favorability: 10/100.]
'Children,'Tamara thought, letting out a soft, dark hum of amusement,'are just so incredibly easy to fool.'
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