Chapter 47: The Little Note
The corridor outside the Potions classroom felt impossibly heavier than the damp, drafty dungeons they had just escaped. Harry Potter dragged his feet across the stone floor, his shoulders slumped so low he resembled a Muggle who had just been robbed of his life savings. His satchel, weighed down by Magical Drafts and Potions, felt like it was packed with solid lead. It carried not just the physical mass of the textbook, but the sheer, crushing weight of Professor Snape's targeted malice.
"I don't understand. I really don't." Harry's voice cracked with raw frustration as he complained to Ron and Hermione. "He said I have no concept of time just because my valerian boiled to a pulp! But the book clearly says to boil it for ten minutes. I didn't go over by a single second!"
"Snape is just an overgrown bat. Does he even need a reason to pick a fight?" Ron kicked at an imaginary pebble, his face flushed with shared indignation. "He just wants an excuse to dock points from Gryffindor. Even if your potion was as perfect as that Riddle girl's, he'd probably say you were breathing too loudly and vanish it anyway."
Hermione walked beside them, clutching her stack of books tightly to her chest. Her brow furrowed in deep concentration as she mentally flipped through the pages they had just studied.
"Actually... Harry, the book says to simmer it over a low flame for ten minutes," she corrected in a hushed, careful voice. "While Professor Snape's... well, while his attitude is completely terrible, the issue he pointed out might actually be the heat. If you keep a high flame roaring under the cauldron, valerian roots will start to disintegrate around the seven-minute mark. They lose all their medicinal properties."
Walking just a few paces behind them, Tamara Riddle caught every single word of their pathetic whining.
'Stupid.'Her dark eyes flashed with cold disdain.'The fibrous structure of valerian root is exceptionally fragile. Boiling it on high for ten minutes? You are making a vegetable stew, Potter, not brewing a potion.'
She glided past the trio, her posture perfectly straight, not even deigning to spare them a mocking glance. Watching the supposed savior of the wizarding world wallow in his own incompetence was usually the highlight of her miserable days.
However, just as she prepared to turn the corner toward the library and rid herself of these noisy, thick-headed Gryffindors—
[Ding! Detected that the Savior is currently experiencing a period of severe academic confusion.]
That overly cheerful, heart-stopping chime echoed in the center of her skull.
[Triggered Daily Quest: The Invisible Tutor.]
[Quest Description: Harry Potter is the future hope of the Wizarding world (though he admittedly does not look the part right now). As an erudite, talented, and kind-hearted Slytherin, it is your absolute responsibility to correct his academic misconceptions!]
[Quest Requirement: Help Harry Potter understand the true reason for his potion failure.]
[Reward: Wisdom +3.]
[Failure Penalty: Publicly call Harry... Sister Potter.]
Tamara's elegant stride came to a violent, jarring halt. Her dragon-hide shoes skidded against the stone, nearly sending her pitching forward. She stood frozen, utterly paralyzed by the sheer, sickening creativity of this damned system.
"I am not doing it."
She ground her teeth together so hard her jaw ached, whispering her refusal to the empty air. 'You want me to tutor the boy who killed me? And I have to hold his hand and teach him how to brew potions step-by-step? I would rather drink liquid death!'[Host, please remain calm. The system did not explicitly require'step-by-step' teaching.]
The mechanical voice dripped with a patronizing, persuasive sweetness.
[As long as he understands the core reason, any method is perfectly acceptable. Even writing a little note and throwing it at his head counts as completing the task, provided it makes him see the light!]
[Besides, you wouldn't want to see Potter remaining so hopelessly stupid that Professor Snape keeps the entire class late just to scold him, wasting your precious study time, right?]
Tamara fell dead silent. A muscle feathered at her jawline.
That final point had, unfortunately, struck a chord. The sheer amount of time Snape wasted berating Potter was dragging down the pacing of the entire class, directly interfering with her own learning efficiency.
'A single note.'Her dark eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as she watched the backs of the golden trio disappear through the heavy wooden doors of the library ahead.'Fine. Just one note. But that scar-headed fool will never know who wrote it.'
Inside the hushed expanse of the Hogwarts library, Harry and his friends claimed an empty table near the back. Harry dropped his heavy Magical Drafts and Potions onto the wood with a dull thud, spreading it open to the page on the Forgetfulness Potion. He stared at the faded text with a face twisted in bitter defeat.
"I still think Snape is just targeting me," Harry muttered, resting his chin on his crossed arms. "It doesn't say a single thing about the heat in these instructions."
Hermione had already vanished into the towering stacks to hunt for supplementary texts. Ron, having completely given up on academic thought, had pulled out a battered set of Wizard's Chess and was currently playing a match against himself.
Three rows of bookshelves away, hidden in the deep shadows of a secluded corner, Tamara sat in pristine silence.
She elegantly tore a small, neat square from the corner of her parchment. Drawing a perfectly ordinary quill, she dipped it in ink and slashed a quick, sharp line of text across the paper:
"Valerian roots contain heat-sensitive fibers and must be turned to a simmer the exact second the water is about to boil. High heat causes the fibers to collapse entirely, releasing bitter inhibitors that make the potion cloudy and utterly ineffective. This is basic common sense, you absolute idiot."
Tamara lifted the quill, inspecting her handiwork with a cold smirk. Even though she had slipped an insult in, the core academic knowledge was flawless. The system could not fault her.
'Next is the delivery.'
Walking over and handing it to him like some helpful little study buddy was entirely out of the question. It was beneath her dignity, and the risk of being caught in an act of kindness made her skin crawl.
She peered through the narrow gap between two dusty tomes on the shelf. Harry remained slumped over his desk, his textbook wide open right next to his hand. Hermione was still gone. Ron was deeply engrossed in sacrificing his own Queen to a plastic knight.
The timing was perfect.
She dared not draw her wand. Casting spells freely within the library was strictly prohibited, and the slightest magical fluctuation would bring Madam Pince swooping down like a starved vulture. Instead, Tamara opted for the most primitive, yet untraceable, method available.
She rose from her chair, picking up a heavy volume on magical theory to maintain her cover. Moving with the silent, fluid grace of a hunting serpent, she drifted down the aisle, passing naturally behind the row of shelves directly at Harry's back.
Right as she aligned with the gap in the books behind the Gryffindor table, she paused for a fraction of a second. Using the blind spot to her absolute advantage, she pinched the folded square of parchment between her thumb and forefinger.
With a sharp, practiced flick of her wrist, she launched it.
The tiny paper dart flew with lethal precision. It slipped silently through the narrow gap in the shelves, tracing a nearly invisible arc through the dusty air.
Plip.
A sound so soft it barely registered over the scratching of distant quills. The note landed dead center on Harry's open textbook, resting perfectly over the entry for valerian root.
Harry jerked upright, startled by the sudden appearance of the paper. "What was that?"
He whipped his head left and right, scanning the immediate area. No one was there. Hermione was still buried in the distant charms section, and Ron had not even blinked away from his chessboard.
"Did it fall from the ceiling?" Harry muttered under his breath, reaching out to pick up the neatly folded square.
He opened it, his eyes scanning the sharp, elegant handwriting. At first, his brow furrowed in confusion, but as he absorbed the words, his green eyes slowly widened in realization.
"Fibers... simmer..." Harry whispered to himself, a sudden wave of clarity washing over him. "So that's it? No wonder my potion always turns into a cloudy mess. Snape didn't mention this at all!"
Then, the reality of the situation hit him. "Wait, who gave this to me?"
He pushed his chair back and stood up abruptly, his gaze sweeping across the quiet library. The massive room was mostly empty, save for a few Ravenclaw upperclassmen buried behind towers of books in the far corner. There was no one suspicious lurking nearby.
Except for a single, slender figure rapidly disappearing around the edge of a distant bookshelf.
The girl wore the dark green trimmed robes of Slytherin. Her hair cascaded down her back like a sheet of liquid black satin. Though he only caught a fleeting glimpse, that perfectly straight posture, that elegant, slightly arrogant glide... a specific name instantly slammed into Harry's mind.
"Riddle?" he whispered, entirely subconsciously.
"What Riddle?" Ron snapped his head up from the chessboard, his eyes wide. "You saw that she-devil?"
"Shh!" Harry hissed, dropping back into his chair and quickly closing his hand over the note.
He opened his palm slightly, studying the handwriting once more. Though the letters were deliberately stiffened to look like standard print, the ink gave it away. It was a rich, incredibly deep dark green that caught the candlelight with a faint, metallic silvery sheen.
Harry remembered it vividly. During their very first Charms class, he had noticed the ink Tamara used for her careful notes. It was a rare, expensive blend. Ron had even leaned over and whispered that the ink looked like bottled poison.
, as Harry held the parchment closer, a very faint scent drifted up to his nose. It was not the dry, musty odor of the library, nor the standard smell of cured sheepskin. It was a cold, crisp, incredibly clean fragrance. Like fresh winter cedar snapping in the frost.
It was the exact scent that always seemed to linger in the air whenever Tamara Riddle walked past.
Harry's heart gave a strange, inexplicable little jolt.
'It's her...'
Harry stared down at the final sentence: This is basic common sense, you absolute idiot.
Slowly, involuntarily, the corners of his mouth twitched upward into a tiny, genuine smile.
'She called me an idiot,' Harry thought to himself.
It sounded harsh on paper, but for some strange reason, this specific insult felt entirely different from Draco Malfoy's vicious, sneering attacks. It didn't feel malicious. It felt more like... the exasperated guidance of someone who was genuinely frustrated by his lack of progress.
She could have easily just walked away. She could have left him to drown in his own confusion and laughed as Snape tore him apart in the next class.
But she didn't.
She had secretly taken the time to write this note, handing him the exact key to fixing his potion, and even went out of her way to remain anonymous so he wouldn't feel embarrassed about accepting help from a Slytherin.
"What are you smirking at?" Ron asked, giving Harry a deeply weirded-out look. "Did you swallow a Cheering Charm by mistake?"
"No... it's nothing." Harry quickly flattened the note and tucked it safely between the pages of his textbook, hiding it away like a precious, guarded secret. "I just... I suddenly figured out how to brew that potion properly."
He cast one last glance toward the shadowy corner where Tamara had vanished. A bright, unmatched light flickered in his brilliant green eyes.
'What a... complicatedly kind person.'
[Ding! Quest Completed: The Invisible Tutor.]
[Reward: Wisdom +3. Current Wisdom: 27.]
[Alert! Detected a significant increase in Harry Potter's favorability toward you.]
[Current impression label from Harry Potter updated to: Cold-Faced Guardian Angel.]
Tamara, who had just managed to handle her way back down into the damp chill of the Slytherin dungeons, physically stumbled as the notification blasted in her ears. Her shoulder slammed hard against the rough stone wall.
'...Guardian Angel?'
She leaned heavily against the freezing stone, a wave of genuine, physical nausea churning violently in her stomach.
Fine. Even if Potter had somehow managed to rub his two remaining brain cells together and deduce that she was the one who threw the note... to actually have his favorability increase after reading a direct, written insult?
Tamara closed her eyes, taking a slow, ragged breath. If this masochistic, completely delusional boy was truly the prophesied savior of the wizarding world, then her defeat and death in her previous life was the greatest cosmic joke ever told.
Her lips curled back into a vicious snarl, her dark eyes flashing with pure, unadulterated murderous intent.
"When I finally get my hands on the Philosopher's Stone and recover my true power..." she hissed to the empty corridor, her voice dripping with venom. "I am absolutely going to slice his skull open just to see if his brain is stuffed full of Fluxweed!"
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