Chapter 46: Don't Look Around
After Tamara Riddle had ruthlessly stuffed the Weasley twins headfirst into a snowdrift, a rather unique method of snowball fighting took Hogwarts by storm. Naturally, this highly aggressive winter warfare resulted in half the student body catching a severe cold.
"Harry, can you believe it? George and Fred, under the guise of a friendly snowball fight, actually grabbed me by the ankles and shoved me face-first into a snowbank!"
Trudging down the drafty stone corridor toward Potions class, Ron Weasley complained to Harry with righteous indignation. His nose was still a violent shade of red.
Harry offered a somewhat awkward, sympathetic laugh. He had certainly seen this brutal new game sweeping the courtyards, but given his distinct lack of close, roughhousing friends before coming to Hogwarts, no one had ever attempted to bury him in the snow.
The two boys slipped into the dungeon classroom one after the other. The Potions dungeon was a place forever steeped in the heavy, lingering stench of sulfur and the bitter, earthy bite of wormwood.
Today's curriculum demanded the brewing of the Forgetfulness Potion.
Professor Severus Snape prowled through the narrow aisles between the bubbling cauldrons like an overgrown bat. He picked apart every student's slightest movement with his usual cold, hyper-critical gaze.
"Longbottom. If you allow one more drop of your pathetic sweat to contaminate that cauldron, I will force you to drink the entire batch."
Snape's voice was low, silky, and dripping with malice. The sheer venom in his tone scared Neville Longbottom into a full-body tremor, nearly causing the boy to knock his heavy brass mortar straight off the desk.
"Potter. Your Valerian sprigs have been boiled to an unrecognizable mush." Snape glided to a halt beside Harry, using the tip of his wand to stir the pot of murky, foul-smelling liquid with deep disgust. "Five points from Gryffindor for your complete and utter lack of temporal awareness."
Harry glared up at the Potions Master, his jaw locked in anger, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.
Snape offered a cold, dismissive snort. He whirled around, his black robes billowing behind him, and directed his attention toward the other side of the dungeon—the designated territory of the Slytherins.
When he finally stopped before Tamara Riddle's workstation, the faint trace of dark amusement he had derived from tormenting Potter vanished, replaced by a heavy, suffocating weight.
Tamara remained entirely focused on processing the ingredients laid out before her. Her movements were precise, elegant, and utterly flawless.
Because her technique was so unnervingly perfect, Snape stood there watching for a long, silent minute, entirely unable to find a single fault to criticize.
"...Passable."
Snape squeezed the word out dryly. Yet, unlike his usual routine, he did not immediately turn on his heel and walk away.
He remained rooted to the spot. His deep, hollow black eyes fixed intently on Tamara's lowered eyelids.
Ever since this girl had expressed that bizarre, unprompted concern regarding the injury on his leg, the seeds of suspicion in Snape's mind had sprouted into wild, uncontrollable weeds. An irrepressible, gnawing desire to uncover her true nature drove him forward.
He stared deeply into Tamara's obsidian eyes, silently gathering his magic, attempting to slip past her mental defenses and read her memories. Legilimency.
However—
At the precise microsecond his probing magic brushed against the edges of Tamara's consciousness...
[Ding! High-level mental intrusion detected!]
[System firewall automatically activated.]
[Defense Strategy: Reverse Mental Pollution.]
Snape flinched. It felt as though a blinding, holy light had just exploded directly behind his retinas.
When his vision cleared, he did not find the dark, twisted conspiracies he had anticipated. He did not see the terrifying shadow of the Dark Lord lurking within her soul.
Instead, his mental field of vision was violently hijacked by a relentless montage of aggressively pink, sickeningly sweet memories.
Tamara stepping bravely forward to shield Harry Potter from Draco Malfoy's bullying... Tamara offering a radiant, angelic smile as she carefully wrapped a warm scarf around Hannah Abbott's neck... Tamara gently, lovingly stroking the slobbering head of Fang outside Hagrid's hut... Tamara heroically throwing herself into danger to save Hermione Granger... Tamara laughing with pure, unadulterated joy as she played in the snow with the Weasley twins...
And finally, a vision of Tamara wearing an expression of supreme, gentle innocence. She was clapping her hands to a cheerful rhythm, singing a bizarre, upbeat children's tune.
"Little swallow, wearing colorful clothes, coming here every spring... I ask the swallow why you come..."
Suddenly, the saccharine illusion fractured. The girl's angelic expression twisted into a mask of pure, icy contempt. She let out a chilling, mocking laugh.
"The swallow said... none of your damn business."
Snape violently jerked backward, his face draining of all color. He staggered, his hip slamming hard against a nearby wooden table to keep himself from collapsing.
His chest heaved. It was entirely impossible for him to articulate what he had just witnessed. Human language simply lacked the vocabulary to describe that level of psychological whiplash. The most fatal aspect of the encounter was that, as he desperately tried to analyze the intrusion, the memories were already blurring into a chaotic, cotton-candy-colored fog in his mind.
"Professor?"
Tamara looked up, her expression a picture of innocent surprise. Her wide, obsidian eyes swam with deep, genuine-looking concern.
In truth, she really was completely oblivious. Tamara only knew that her Virtue System had triggered its firewall. She had absolutely no idea what sort of psychological horror show the person attempting to breach her mind had actually been forced to watch.
Seeing Snape looking as though he had just been struck by lightning, Tamara muttered inwardly.
'What in the world did you show him?'
[Nothing at all! Just some very ordinary, wholesome things.]
The System's perky voice sounded entirely innocent. Yet, when Tamara demanded to see the playback for herself, the System stubbornly refused to utter another word.
[Overall, Professor Snape didn't see anything particularly special. Please rest assured, Host!]
Tamara could not rest assured in the slightest. Left with no other option, she blinked her large eyes and leaned heavily into her harmless persona.
"Are you quite alright, Professor? Is it... is your old injury acting up again?"
Snape stared fixedly at the girl. Fine beads of cold sweat broke out across his sallow forehead.
At this very moment, under the lingering effects of the System's mental pollution, he found himself entirely incapable of mustering even a single sliver of malice toward her.
"...I am fine."
Snape ground his teeth together, forcibly shoving those chaotic, pink-tinted hallucinations into the deepest, darkest corners of his Occlumency shields. When he spoke again, his voice was even more raspy and hollow than before.
"Focus on your potion, Riddle."
"Yes, Professor."
Snape's dark gaze remained locked onto Tamara, staring so intensely it felt as though he were trying to bore a physical hole through her skull.
Naturally, the Dark Lord currently residing within the body of an eleven-year-old girl interpreted this intense scrutiny in an entirely different light.
'It seems... no matter the time or place, my sheer excellence will always attract loyal followers.'Tamara nodded to herself, a wave of deep satisfaction washing over her dark soul.'Just look at that gaze. How fervent. How utterly devoted... He is so overwhelmed by my presence he can barely even stand straight.'
Deciding to throw her supposedly awestruck servant a bone, Tamara turned back to her workstation and picked up her slender silver knife.
"Professor, regarding this cauldron of Forgetfulness Potion..."
As she spoke, she casually scooped up a handful of Mistletoe Berries, holding them right under Snape's nose.
Instead of adding four whole berries to the cauldron as the standard first-year textbook explicitly instructed, she placed two berries on her cutting board. With a swift, brutal press of the flat of her silver blade, she crushed them completely. She carefully tipped the board, allowing only the pure, extracted juice to drip into the bubbling liquid, before casually flicking the remaining fibrous residue straight into the waste bin.
It was a highly advanced, incredibly subtle modification. A little trick that belonged exclusively to Lord Voldemort. The pulp of the mistletoe berry only served to make the medicinal effects sluggish and muddy; the extracted juice was the true essence.
The moment the clear juice hit the mixture, the cauldron, which had previously been emitting thick gray smoke, instantly settled. The liquid shifted into a state of perfect, crystalline transparency, releasing a faint, remarkably soothing fragrance into the dungeon air.
Snape's pupils contracted violently.
That exact same technique. Again.
"What do you think, Professor?"
Tamara tilted her head, offering him a slow, incredibly meaningful smile.
Snape stared at the flawlessly brewed potion, and then slowly raised his eyes to the smiling girl.
His cold, logical reasoning screamed at him—there was without a doubt a massive problem here. This girl was dangerous. She was a walking anomaly.
But simultaneously, his mind—still heavily scrambled by the System's bizarre intervention—whispered a conflicting theory. Perhaps she truly was just a generational genius. A prodigy pursuing absolute perfection, who simply happened to share the exact same level of terrifying excellence as the Dark Lord.
This violent, contradictory tearing sensation within his psyche gave Snape a blinding headache.
"...Well done."
Snape finally managed to force the words past his tight throat. His brain, thoroughly polluted by the System's firewall, made it physically impossible for him to form an accurate, unbiased judgment.
"Ten points to Slytherin."
Having delivered the points, Snape spun on his heel. Moving with the frantic energy of a man fleeing a terrifying beast, he strode rapidly toward the opposite end of the dungeon, zeroing in on Neville Longbottom's violently bubbling, dangerously unstable cauldron.
"Longbottom! You absolute idiot! Are you trying to blow us all to pieces?!"
Listening to Snape's furious, echoing roars, Tamara calmly extinguished the magical flame beneath her cauldron. Her mood was exceptionally pleasant.
'It seems he still needs a little time to adapt to his new reality.'She watched Snape's slightly disheveled, retreating back. Her cold heart swelled with an absolute, intoxicating sense of control over the future.'Do not be in such a hurry, Severus. When the time is finally ripe, I will have you kneeling at my feet once more, begging to kiss the hem of my robes.'
Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Snape—who was currently in the middle of spraying verbal venom all over a weeping Neville—suddenly felt a violent chill sweep down his back. It felt as though a massive, suffocating shadow had just draped itself over his shoulders.
Beneath the heavy fabric of his sleeve, his right hand subconsciously drifted to grip his left forearm. He pressed his fingers against the hidden Dark Mark.
It remained dead silent. Cold and entirely unresponsive.
'...Perhaps,'Snape thought grimly, his black eyes narrowing in the dungeon gloom.'I should find an opportunity to have a very long talk with Dumbledore.'
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