Chapter 14: Fond of Teaching
The atmosphere in the compartment shifted after the blonde nuisance finally dragged his lackeys away. The rhythmic clatter of the Hogwarts Express filled the silence.
To pass the time during the long journey, Tamara had already retreated into her corner, a thick textbook resting on her lap. Harry and Ron were still surrounded by a mountain of sweets, but their attention kept drifting. Between bites of snacks, they cast covert, awestruck glances at the quiet girl reading by the window.
She wasn't just some fragile, pretty porcelain doll to them anymore. The effortless way she had verbally eviscerated Draco Malfoy was, in their eyes, entirely brilliant.
The quiet stretched a bit too long. Ron wiped a crumb from his mouth, grabbed his battered wand from the seat, and leaned toward Harry. "Hey, I learned a spell from my brother. Supposed to turn this rat yellow!"
"Really?" Harry sat up straighter. This would be his first time seeing actual magic—Hagrid giving Dudley a pig's tail didn't quite count as a standard incantation.
"Of course!" Ron puffed out his chest, brimming with unearned confidence. He cleared his throat, brandished the chipped wood, and chanted with excessive force, "Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!"
He jabbed the wand at the sleeping gray lump in his lap. Nothing happened. Scabbers merely twitched a whisker and continued snoring.
In the corner, Tamara pinched the bridge of her nose. Her dark eyes closed for a brief, agonizing second. 'If this pathetic display is what passes for a Wizard these days, I sincerely hope the boy snaps his wand and spares magic the insult.'
Harry opened his mouth to offer a comforting word, but the compartment door slid open with a sharp clatter. Third time's the charm.
This time, there was no polite knock. There was no arrogant drawl. Instead, a bustling, frantic blur of a girl burst straight into their space.
"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one."
She stood in the doorway, already dressed in her pristine Hogwarts robes. She had a thick mane of bushy brown hair and rather prominent front teeth. Her tone was clipped, breathless, and carried the distinct, bossy air of a prefect inspecting a dirty carriage.
Tamara's brow twitched. 'Another one.''Is this train a specially designed torture chamber? Must my peace be shattered every ten minutes by these screeching infants?'
"Haven't seen it," Ron muttered, his ears burning red. He was already in a foul mood from his failed spell, and this bossy intruder wasn't helping.
But the bushy-haired girl didn't leave. Her sharp eyes locked onto the battered piece of wood in Ron's hand.
"Oh, are you doing magic?"
Without waiting for an invitation, she marched inside and dropped onto the empty seat right next to Harry, making herself entirely at home. "Let's see it, then."
Ron swallowed hard. He looked at Harry, then at the expectant girl, and finally cleared his throat again. He raised the unicorn-hair wand—which looked dangerously close to snapping—and bellowed:
"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!"
He gave a desperate flick. Scabbers let out a startled, pathetic squeak, but his fur remained a dull, dusty gray. He curled back into a ball and went right back to sleep.
"Are you sure that's a real spell?" The girl didn't bother hiding her skepticism, pointing out the failure with blunt precision. "Well, it's not very good, is it?"
Ron's face flushed the color of his hair. He mumbled something under his breath about George giving him a fake incantation.
"I've tried a few simple spells just for practice, and it's all worked for me." The girl tilted her chin up, her words spilling out in a rapid-fire staccato, exactly like someone reciting a textbook from memory. "Nobody in my family is magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course. I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard."
She didn't even pause for breath. "I've learned all our course books by heart, of course. I just hope it will be enough..."
'A mudblood.'Tamara's dark eyes chilled as she mentally stamped the label onto the girl's forehead. There was nothing the Dark Lord despised more than Muggles, save perhaps for the mudbloods who dared to infect the magical world with their mediocrity.'Impure filth.' Of course, Tamara herself technically possessed impure blood. But considering Lord Voldemort had personally slaughtered his pathetic Muggle father, there was no one left alive who could prove she was a half-blood. In her mind, the slate was wiped clean.
, magic was an instinct. It was a raw, pulsing power that flowed through ancient veins—not a series of dry clauses memorized by a buck-toothed parrot.
"I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?" Hermione finally inhaled, staring expectantly at the boys.
Harry and Ron awkwardly supplied their names.
The moment the word 'Potter'left Harry's lips, Hermione launched into another relentless bombardment. She rattled off exact page numbers and paragraphs detailing Harry's survival in'Modern Magical History'and'The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts'.
When she finally ran out of trivia, her brown eyes darted to the corner, landing squarely on Tamara.
"And you?" Hermione scrutinized the quiet girl. Even sitting perfectly still, Tamara exuded an aura that felt entirely out of place in a carriage full of candy wrappers and nervous eleven-year-olds. "You look... very special. I mean, your robes fit perfectly. Were they custom-made?"
"Tamara Riddle," she replied. Her voice was smooth, carrying the chill of a frozen lake.
"Riddle?" Hermione scrunched her nose, her eyes darting back and forth as she frantically searched her mental library. "I don't think I've seen that name in 'Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century'."
"That is because I haven't started writing my history yet," Tamara stated flatly. The absolute, unshakeable arrogance in her tone left no room for argument.
Hermione blinked, completely derailed by the sheer weight of that answer.
Before she could process it, Hermione's gaze snagged on the heavy tome resting on Tamara's lap.
"You like reading too? Is that 'Intermediate Transfiguration'? But that's a third-year textbook!" Hermione gasped, her competitive streak flaring up instantly.
"I was just practicing the Levitation Charm," Hermione continued hurriedly, eager to prove she wasn't falling behind. "The book says the wand movement is a 'swish and flick', but I always find it hard to control the exact force."
She dug into her pocket and pulled out her own wand. "Look, I'll show you."
She aimed her wand at a discarded Chocolate Frog wrapper resting on the seat beside Ron.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Hermione gave her wand a rigid, forceful flick. The blue-and-gold wrapper shuddered violently, as if caught in a draft. It wobbled up a few pathetic centimeters into the air, hovered for a second, and then fluttered back down to the upholstery.
"See! It's not perfect yet, but I can already make things move!" Hermione lifted her chin, her chest puffing out slightly as she waited for the inevitable praise.
Harry and Ron stared in genuine surprise. They hadn't even managed to make a spark come out of their wands yet.
But at that moment, a soft, melodic chuckle drifted from the window seat.
It was a beautiful sound, yet it dripped with such concentrated, aristocratic contempt that the temperature in the compartment seemed to drop.
"You call that 'floating'?"
Tamara slowly closed her textbook. Her dark eyes locked onto Hermione with the condescending scrutiny of a predator observing a particularly clumsy insect.
[Ding! Teaching opportunity detected.]
[Triggered Daily Task: Fond of Teaching.]
[Task Description: Since you cannot stand this clumsy novice, why not show her what real magic looks like?]
[Task Reward: Wisdom +5.]
Tamara's jaw tightened. A vein throbbed faintly at her temple. 'I am not running a charity. I have no intention of guiding a mudblood.'
[Host, you don't really plan on relying on just two spells to conquer the world, do you?] The system's perky, synthesized voice echoed in her skull, dripping with patronizing cheer.
Tamara's polite smile stiffened into a mask of pure ice. 'One day,'she vowed silently,'I will drag this parasite out of my soul and cast the Cruciatus Curse on it until the end of time.'
Hermione's face flushed a brilliant, defensive scarlet at Tamara's mocking laugh. "This is already very difficult! The book says—"
"The book says, the book says," Tamara interrupted, her voice dropping to a dangerous, silken whisper. She took a slow, measured breath. "If you only know how to parrot words from a page, you will never become a true Witch, Miss Granger."
Hermione froze, her mouth snapping shut.
"Your pronunciation is far too heavy. Why did you drag out the 'gar' syllable like a dying kneazle? And your wrist..."
Tamara stood up. Her movements were fluid, graceful, and entirely predatory. She crossed the small space and stopped right beside Hermione.
Slowly, she reached out. A long, pale finger pressed lightly against the underside of Hermione's wrist, right where she gripped the wand.
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