Chapter 44: You Can't Be Human, Right?
The Slytherin girls' dormitory was submerged in the dead silence of late night.
Outside the arched windows, the Black Lake shimmered with a faint, eerie luminescence, casting rippling emerald shadows across the stone floor. Through the thick, magically reinforced glass, the unsettling, massive tentacles of the Giant Squid occasionally glided past, momentarily blocking out the murky light.
Inside, the air was heavy with the deep, rhythmic breathing of exhausted students. Tamara's 'tutoring' sessions earlier that evening had been highly effective, yet so utterly oppressive that the girls hardly dared to let their minds wander for a single second. The sheer nervous tension of maintaining perfection under her watchful, smiling gaze had drained them completely, plunging the entire dormitory into a dead, dreamless sleep.
Only one bed remained awake. By the window, behind half-drawn velvet curtains, a faint, cold fluorescent light leaked out into the gloom.
Tamara Riddle was not asleep.
She leaned back against a plush silver-embroidered pillow, an ancient, crumbling tome spread across her knees. The heavy leather cover bore no library checkout stamp, nor would it ever. The faded gold lettering read: Powerful Potions and Curses.
using her flawless reputation as a model student over the past few days, she had effortlessly slipped into the Restricted Section the moment Madam Pince turned her back to scold a noisy Hufflepuff. To Tamara, the Restricted Section was as familiar as her own backyard. She had plucked the book from its hidden shelf without a second thought, slipping it away like a ghost.
While the text only contained rudimentary theories on Blood Curses and Soul Stabilizers—child's play compared to her past mastery—it covered a specific blind spot in her current knowledge that she urgently needed to rectify. She had to figure out exactly how this fragile new body and that damned, parasitic System managed to coexist without tearing her soul apart.
"...Soul rejection is usually accompanied by memory fragmentation and a severe decline in magical output..."
Illuminated by the faint, steady glow at the tip of her wand, Tamara's slender, pale fingers traced over the yellowed parchment. She murmured the obscure incantations and theories in a low, icy whisper, her dark eyes scanning the ancient runes.
Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. The distinct, heavy sensation of being watched made her voice trail off.
It was an instinct forged in blood, honed by decades of walking the razor's edge between life and death. Tamara did not look up immediately. Instead, her jaw locked. She quietly tightened her grip on her wand, the wood warming against her palm, while her dark eyes shifted, scanning the periphery of her vision.
The source was right beside her pillow.
The black cat she had named Nagini was awake.
It was not curled up in a lazy, sleeping ball as usual, nor was it foolishly chasing its own tail in circles. It sat perfectly upright. In the suffocating darkness of the bed curtains, its golden, vertical pupils shimmered with a faint, unnatural light. The feline was staring intently at the open pages resting on Tamara's knees.
To be exact, the cat's gaze was locked onto a specific, gruesome illustration detailing the Maledictus curse—a harrowing ink drawing of a woman screaming in agony as her flesh melted and reshaped into the form of a beast.
That look was entirely wrong.
It was not the vacant, hungry stare of a feline. A deep sense of sorrow and ancient weariness bled from those golden eyes, spanning across time and carrying a heavy, heart-wrenching weight of despair and nostalgia. It looked exactly like a human soul, violently imprisoned within the shell of a beast, gazing out at a world that once belonged to it through the iron bars of a cage.
Tamara's heart skipped a single, cold beat.
She slowly closed the heavy tome.
Snap.
The dry thud of the ancient pages slamming shut was exceptionally loud in the silent night.
The black cat's body visibly stiffened. It maintained its rigid sitting posture, refusing to look away immediately. Instead, it slowly, mechanically raised its head. Those glowing golden eyes met Tamara's pitch-black, bottomless gaze.
One human and one cat stared at each other in the suffocating quiet of the Slytherin dungeons. The air in the four-poster bed froze, dropping ten degrees in an instant.
"Can you understand this?" Tamara asked softly.
Her voice was entirely stripped of its usual sweet, angelic disguise. What remained was a shivering, venomous coldness—the quiet hiss of a predator cornering its prey.
The black cat offered no reaction. It merely continued to look at her, silent and unblinking.
Tamara narrowed her eyes, a dangerous glint flashing in the dark. She slowly leaned closer, her long black hair cascading down both sides of her pale cheeks like a silken shroud. Under the harsh, cold light of her wand, her exquisite face looked exceptionally eerie, almost demonic.
"Nagini..." she whispered, dragging the syllables out with deadly precision. "Answer me."
She stared fixedly into the golden depths of the cat's eyes, refusing to miss even the slightest twitch of a whisker.
"You can understand my words... can't you?"
In that fraction of a second, the black cat's pupils contracted violently, shrinking to the size of needlepoints. Its ears flattened against its skull, and the sleek fur along its spine bristled—the pure, instinctive terror of a lesser creature finding itself trapped in the jaws of an apex predator.
Tamara's lips curled into a cruel, triumphant smirk. She was just about to press her advantage, to rip the truth out of this creature, when a distraction arrived.
A luminous, pale moth, fluttering in from some damp corner of the dungeons, suddenly intruded into the tense space between them. It wobbled drunkenly through the air, circling the glowing tip of Tamara's wand with frantic, erratic beats of its wings.
The very next second, the heavy atmosphere shattered.
The black cat, which had just seemed burdened by a lifetime of tragic human secrets, reacted as if a physical switch had been flipped inside its brain. Its deep, sorrowful gaze scattered instantly. That deep human radiance vanished without a single trace, entirely swallowed by a purely hollow, feline hunting instinct.
"Hiss!"
It let out a short, ridiculous hiss and launched itself at the moth.
Nagini bounced clumsily across the mattress, paws waving wildly in the air, batting at nothing. In its frantic scramble, a heavy back paw slammed directly into Tamara's stomach, nearly knocking the breath out of her and dangerously tilting the teacup she had left resting on the bedside table.
'...'
Tamara's face instantly darkened to the color of a thundercloud. A vein pulsed faintly at her temple.
She stared at this idiotic furball rolling around on her expensive silk quilt, kicking its hind legs in a desperate attempt to catch a bug. The terrifying, suffocating tension from a mere moment ago had evaporated into a complete farce.
"Get off."
Tamara pinched the back of the black cat's neck with absolute disgust, lifting it like a piece of filthy trash, and tossed it toward the foot of the bed.
The cat flipped gracefully in the air, landed steadily on its paws, and immediately sat down. It began to foolishly lick its front paw and wash its face, looking completely oblivious. It was as if the tragic, soulful creature that had been staring deeply at the cursed illustration was nothing more than a trick of the light.
'Truly... a stupid creature,' Tamara thought, rubbing her temples. Her jaw clenched tight. She must be getting jittery, hallucinating from reading too much dark magic late into the night. How could a mere cat possibly comprehend the intricacies of Blood Curses?
[Ding! Detected that the host is engaging in deep communication with a pet.]
[System Tip: Pets are a human's best friend! Frequent interaction with furry companions can effectively relieve the Dark Lord's tense nerves and anti-social tendencies!]
[Daily Task Triggered: The Joy of Petting a Cat.]
[Task Requirement: Please gently stroke your cat for three minutes until it purrs.]
[Reward: Love +1.]
[Failure Penalty: The cat will wake up on your face tomorrow morning.]
Tamara stared at the glowing blue task panel hovering in her vision, then slowly shifted her gaze to the happily grooming black cat. Her upper lip twitched in a violent spasm of annoyance.
Although cold logic dictated that this was just a simple beast, the look in its eyes earlier had been too vivid. It was far too similar to an old, pathetic follower she once knew. That wretched woman who had been plagued by a blood curse, eventually losing her humanity to become a beast completely.
But this was just a cat. Not a snake.
"Come here," Tamara commanded, her voice dropping back to a freezing absolute.
The black cat paused its grooming. It hesitated for a brief second, ears twitching, before obediently trotting over and rubbing its soft head against her knuckles.
Tamara reached out, her pale fingers sinking into the black cat's smooth fur. She stroked it with stiff, half-hearted motions. Even though she was only doing this to satisfy the System's absurd demands and avoid a face full of fur the next morning, her gaze remained sharp. Her dark eyes carried a heavy scrutiny, never once leaving the cat's face.
"Whatever you are..." Tamara whispered, her voice dropping so low it was barely a breath. Her index finger slid down, gently but firmly brushing across the black cat's highly vulnerable throat. She felt the rapid pulse beneath the fur.
"You had better not let me find out you are deceiving me."
She leaned in, her breath ghosting over the cat's ear. "Otherwise, I will gladly show you exactly what it feels like to become a dead cat."
The black cat did not seem to understand the lethal threat hanging over its life. It merely narrowed its golden eyes in pure comfort. A deep, rumbling purr, sounding remarkably like a tiny tractor engine, began to vibrate from its throat.
"Meow~"
It flopped over onto its back, shamelessly exposing its soft white belly to the very hand that was just threatening to snap its neck. It looked exactly like a foolish, trusting pet without a single thought in its head.
Tamara stared down at the exposed belly for a long, silent moment. The tension slowly bled out of her shoulders. She finally withdrew her hand in disgust and picked up the heavy tome on dark magic once more.
"Perhaps I really did see it wrong," she muttered to herself, turning the yellowed page.
But as she lowered her head, her eyes scanning the ancient runes, she completely missed the subtle movement at the foot of the bed.
The black cat, which had its eyes closed in apparent feline bliss, quietly opened them a fraction of an inch.
Within that narrow golden slit, there was no foolishness. There was only a deep sense of relief and sheer luck, heavily mixed with a complex, painfully human gaze of lingering fear and deep, tragic attachment.
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