Chapter 101: Harassing Horseflies
The next morning arrived with brilliant sunlight pouring through the massive stained-glass windows of the Great Hall, spilling across the four long house tables. For Harry Potter, however, the golden rays offered no warmth.
The adrenaline-fueled high of last night's flying car escapade had curdled. It sat in his stomach like a cup of tea left out overnight—bitter, cold, and entirely nauseating.
Every step he took felt heavy. Eyes tracked him from every direction, pinning him down like sweeping searchlights. Whispers hissed through the air, sharp and stinging.
"Look, that's Potter! I heard he nearly snapped the Whomping Willow in half!"
"Wicked... actually flying a Ford Anglia to school!"
The reality of his reckless stupidity crashed over him. He hadn't been brave. He had nearly gotten himself and Ron killed, and worse, he might have cost Mr. Weasley his job at the Ministry. He wasn't some daring hero breaking the rules for a noble cause; he was just a foolish boy who had created a massive disaster.
Harry slumped onto the bench at the Gryffindor table, hunching his shoulders as if trying to physically shrink into his bowl of cold porridge. Across from him, Ron looked even worse, his freckled face completely drained of color, resembling a terrified ghost.
A sudden rush of displaced air and the frantic flapping of wings broke the oppressive murmurs.
Hundreds of owls descended from the high rafters, a chaotic storm of feathers delivering the morning post. A large, disheveled grey owl plummeted like a stone, diving headfirst into Ron's milk jug with a loud splash that splattered them both with white drops.
Ron didn't even blink at the mess. His wide, horrified eyes were locked onto the damp red envelope clamped in the owl's beak. Thin wisps of smoke were already curling from the corners of the parchment.
"Oh, no..." Ron let out a strangled, desperate groan. "It's a Howler."
"Open it quickly!" Neville Longbottom shouted from down the table, immediately clapping his hands over his ears. "If you don't open it, it'll explode!"
It was already too late.
The four corners of the red envelope burst into spontaneous flames. The parchment folded itself upward, tearing open to form a jagged, gaping mouth.
"RONALD WEASLEY!!!!"
Mrs. Weasley's voice, magically amplified to a deafening roar, blasted through the Great Hall. Dust rained down from the enchanted ceiling. Goblets rattled against wooden tables. Silver cutlery vibrated violently. Every single conversation died instantly, leaving the vast hall in a state of deathly silence, save for the furious, shrieking letter.
"HOW DARE YOU! STEALING THAT CAR! I AM ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDED! IF YOU DARE STEP OUT OF LINE AGAIN, WE'RE BRINGING YOU STRAIGHT HOME!!"
Heat rushed to Harry's face, burning his cheeks. Though the magical voice was tearing into Ron, every single word felt like a physical slap across Harry's own face. The Weasley family had taken him in, fed him, treated him with nothing but absolute warmth, and he had repaid them by endangering their son and their livelihood. He kept his head bowed, staring hard at the wooden grain of the table, desperately trying to swallow the suffocating guilt.
Then, a memory pierced through his shame. Tamara's cold, dismissive warning from earlier flashed across his mind like a strike of lightning.
Harry's neck stiffened. His head, which had been sinking lower by the second, froze mid-air.
He couldn't hide. He absolutely refused to let her see him as a pathetic joke.
Gritting his teeth so hard his jaw ached, Harry swallowed the overwhelming urge to run away. He forced his chin up. Even with his face burning red and his eyes trembling with raw humiliation, he straightened his spine and refused to shrink back.
Across the vast expanse of the hall, at the Slytherin table, Tamara Riddle sat in perfect posture, elegantly slicing a grilled sausage.
Even amidst the ear-splitting shrieks of the Howler, her precise movements did not falter for a fraction of a second. She merely allowed a slight, delicate frown to grace her features, the picture of a refined pureblood displeased by such a vulgar, high-decibel racket.
Beneath that flawless mask, her dark eyes cut through the crowd, landing squarely on the stiff, trembling posture of the wizarding world's so-called savior.
A microscopic sneer tugged at the corner of her lips.
She took in the sight of his flushed skin, the rigid set of his shoulders, and his white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table. To the mind of the Dark Lord, this pathetic display of forced bravery was nothing more than incompetent endurance.
'Look at him, practically holding back tears,'Tamara thought, her internal voice dripping with icy mockery.'Faced with such public humiliation, he lacks the spine to fight back and the cunning to deflect it. He just sits there, absorbing the blows like a mindless punching bag.''This meaningless stubbornness carries zero deterrent power. It only makes him look exactly like what he is—a clown holding his breath.'
The Howler finally spat out its last furious threat, bursting into flames and reducing itself to a pile of smoldering ash.
The Great Hall remained trapped in a suffocating silence for several long seconds before a smattering of cruel laughter erupted from the Slytherin table.
Harry took a slow, deep breath, forcing his cramped fingers to release their death grip on the table edge. He turned his head slightly, meeting Tamara's mocking, obsidian gaze straight on.
This time, he did not flinch away in embarrassment. He stared back across the distance, his face wiped completely blank.
Tamara raised a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow. Finding no entertainment left in the boy's hollow defiance, she calmly withdrew her gaze, returning her attention to her breakfast without sparing her supposed arch-nemesis another thought.
'Boring.'
...
Later that morning, the heavy doors of Greenhouse Three sealed shut, trapping the second-year students in a humid, muggy atmosphere thick with the pungent stench of damp soil and dragon dung fertilizer.
At the front podium, Professor Sprout enthusiastically demonstrated the proper handling of the newly unearthed Mandrakes. While the wailing of the infant roots wasn't yet mature enough to be fatal, the piercing shrieks were more than enough to induce severe nausea and a splitting headache.
Tamara stood near the back row, her face an absolute mask of polite boredom beneath a pair of fluffy pink earmuffs. She harbored zero interest in these ugly, screaming tubers that looked less like flora and more like the botched results of a flesh-rotting curse.
Instead of focusing on repotting the writhing roots, her dark eyes subtly tracked toward a somewhat withered Fanged Geranium sitting neglected in the shadowy corner of the greenhouse. The venomous leaves of that particular plant were a crucial stabilizing agent for several highly advanced Black Magic potions.
'Hogwarts clearly hasn't secured the budget to install proper anti-theft charms in every secondary greenhouse,' Tamara noted internally, calculating the exact angle needed to sever a cutting unnoticed.
The bell finally chimed, cutting through the muffled shrieks.
Students practically stampeded toward the exit as if fleeing a prison sentence, hastily tossing their mud-caked dragon-hide gloves into the wooden collection buckets.
Tamara deliberately slowed her movements. She carefully wiped down her tools, waiting patiently until the last Hufflepuff had scurried out the door, and even Professor Sprout had bustled away toward her office with a heavy pot of Mandrakes in her arms.
Once the heavy glass door clicked shut, Tamara dropped her polite facade. She did not head for the exit. Instead, she pivoted smoothly, her robes swishing as she glided toward the deepest, darkest section of the greenhouse—the restricted cultivation zone for lethal flora.
The air here grew oppressively hot, clinging to the skin like a wet towel, and the sunlight struggled to penetrate the thick canopy of overgrown vines.
Just as Tamara raised her wand to cleanly slice a few choice leaves from the Fanged Geranium, she froze.
A shift in the humid air. The faint rustle of fabric.
Someone else was here.
From behind a massive row of dark, pulsating plants that strongly resembled thick octopus tentacles, a faint, airy voice drifted through the foliage.
"...Could you give me my shoe back, please? My mother gave it to me..."
Tamara narrowed her eyes, her wand instantly dropping to a lethal dueling angle. She stepped silently through the damp shadows, parting the broad leaves. The scene that greeted her made her left eyebrow twitch violently.
A first-year girl with a mess of dirty-blonde hair and a pair of ridiculous, bright orange radish earrings was standing entirely barefoot in the wet, acidic mud.
Luna Lovegood.
That deranged Ravenclaw girl.
Though the term had only been underway for two days, that name was already a frequent punchline among the pureblood circles at the Slytherin table. In Tamara's carefully organized memory bank, Luna Lovegood was classified as a defective outlier, a walking joke who existed solely to lower the prestige of Hogwarts.
Currently, Luna had her back turned to Tamara, and her situation was critically fatal.
A thick, dark green vine was coiled tightly around one of her pale ankles, the thorny grip already leaving deep, angry red welts on her skin.
It was a Venomous Tentacula. One of the most aggressive and lethal carnivorous plants documented in the wizarding world.
Any normal first-year student would be screaming their lungs out, thrashing wildly in a blind panic.
But not Luna.
She didn't even glance down at the deadly restraint crushing her leg. Instead, her head was tilted back, her pale, silvery-grey eyes locked onto the empty space just behind her own shoulder.
Hovering right there, the Venomous Tentacula's primary stalk—thick as a python and bristling with razor-sharp, venom-dripping spikes—was reared high into the air. It swayed back and forth like a cobra preparing to strike, its lethal thorns aimed directly at the exposed flesh of the girl's neck.
She saw it. She was making direct, unblinking eye contact with the apex predator about to rip her throat out.
"...You really shouldn't be so angry," Luna murmured softly, her tone as placid and conversational as if she were trying to reason with a slightly grumpy kneazle. "There are no Nargles hiding in that shoe... so just spit it out, alright?"
Standing concealed in the shadows, Tamara watched this absurd display, her upper lip curling into a sneer of pure disbelief.
This girl was a certified lunatic. It wasn't that she lacked the situational awareness to perceive the danger; she clearly saw the lethal threat looming over her, processed it, and then actively decided to negotiate with a mindless, bloodthirsty weed.
'Beyond help,' Tamara delivered her final, cold judgment.
Idiots who attempted to reason with predators did not deserve to survive. They were simply a waste of the oxygen circulating within Hogwarts' walls.
Without a shred of hesitation, the Dark Lord turned on her heel, her dark robes flaring as she prepared to walk away and let natural selection take its course.
However.
The very second the heel of her dragon-hide boot lifted from the stone path.
[Warning! Ravenclaw freshman detected in life-threatening danger!]
That sickeningly cheerful, mechanical voice chimed directly into the center of her skull.
[As the benevolent future master of Hogwarts, you have a sacred duty to correct your subjects' incorrect survival methods! Please provide immediate, loving assistance!]
[Reward: Courage +3]
'Impossible,' Tamara replied with freezing finality in her mind. Not only did she refuse to stop, but she actively lengthened her stride, eager to put distance between herself and the impending bloodbath.
[Ding! Host detected exhibiting passive-aggressive cruelty and failing to save a precious life!]
[Punishment program pre-loading: If the student is injured or perishes, the Host will be forced to give Harry Potter a 5-second passionate embrace the next time they meet, and loudly recite in public: "Oh, Harry, you are my radiant light, it fills my heart with joy to see you!"]
Tamara's forward momentum violently aborted.
Her boots skidded hard against the damp moss, carving a deep, jagged furrow into the dirt as she physically wrenched herself to a halt.
'...What did you just say?'[Eh, was the audio not clear? Let me repeat the punishment parameters...]'...Shut your mouth.'
Tamara ground her teeth together so hard her jaw popped, violently cutting off the System's chipper explanation. A suffocating, pitch-black wave of pure killing intent exploded from her core, dropping the temperature in the greenhouse by several degrees.
She would rather engage Albus Dumbledore in a duel to the death using only a rusty spoon than willingly touch that filthy, scar-headed brat!
'Damn you, you parasitic piece of garbage...!'
"Diffindo!"
The incantation hissed from her lips like a viper's strike. A precise, highly compressed blade of magical wind slashed out from the shadows. Driven by Tamara's absolute fury, the invisible scythe tore through the humid air and slammed directly into the Venomous Tentacula.
Squelch!
Thick, dark green sap erupted outward like a geyser. The massive primary vine, hovering mere inches from Luna's nose, was cleanly decapitated.
The tremendous kinetic force of the spell sent the carnivorous plant into a blind frenzy of agony. The remaining vines thrashed wildly, instantly releasing their crushing grip on Luna's ankle before the entire monstrous root system violently retreated deep beneath the muddy soil.
Luna blinked slowly, her silvery eyes widening in mild surprise as the lethal spikes vanished from her field of vision.
Before she could even process the sudden amputation, a pale, slender hand shot out from the foliage. Tamara's fingers clamped ruthlessly onto the back of the Ravenclaw's collar, hauling the smaller girl out of the pile of twitching, severed plant limbs with the rough efficiency of someone lifting a stray kitten by the scruff.
"Has your brain been repeatedly trampled by a Mountain Troll?"
Tamara stared down at the blonde girl. Her voice was not loud, yet it carried a glacial chill that would make a grown wizard's scalp tingle with dread.
"That is a fully matured Venomous Tentacula. Did your defective eyes mistake it for a house pet? Were you planning to offer it a polite handshake?"
She narrowed her eyes, her gaze sweeping over Luna with biting, surgical disdain.
"Is this what Ravenclaw's vaunted Wisdom teaches its students? How to maintain a pleasant smile while actively feeding yourself to a carnivorous weed?"
Faced with this suffocating aura and barrage of venomous sarcasm, Luna Lovegood exhibited absolutely zero fear or shame.
Instead, she looked down at the violently twitching, severed vine bleeding sap into the mud, a distinct expression of regret crossing her pale features. She let out a soft, airy sigh.
"You scared it away. We were just on the verge of reaching a mutual agreement."
Tamara, who had just pulled out a silk handkerchief to wipe the imaginary grime from her fingers, froze.
She stared at the lunatic standing before her, genuine disbelief fracturing her cold facade for a fraction of a second.
"An agreement?" Tamara sneered, the word tasting like ash on her tongue. It was the most absurd thing she had heard in two lifetimes. "Its only 'agreement' was deciding which of your arteries to sever first to turn your corpse into fertilizer."
"Perhaps."
Luna shrugged her thin shoulders, utterly noncommittal.
She turned her back on the furious Slytherin, calmly bending down to retrieve a worn-out, mud-caked sneaker from the dirt. She patted the worst of the grime off the canvas and slipped it back onto her bruised foot.
Having completed this mundane task, she straightened up, tilted her head to the side, and fixed Tamara with an incredibly calm, deeply inquisitive stare.
"Anyway, thank you for the help. Even though you seem very, very angry inside."
Tamara stared at the dirty shoe, feeling her own pristine sanity being actively dragged through the mud by this deranged child.
"If you insist on getting yourself killed, do me a favor and walk far away from my vicinity next time."
With a sharp flick of her robes, Tamara turned to leave this circus behind.
"Right on top of your head..."
Luna's ethereal, drifting voice suddenly floated through the humid air, striking Tamara's back.
"...there are so many black Wrackspurts."
Tamara's boots halted against the stone.
"They are all clustered tightly together, swarming frantically around your head." Luna frowned slightly, her hands waving vaguely in the empty space between them, as if she were trying to brush away invisible insects. "They make your thoughts incredibly noisy... it's completely full of screaming, and a very cold, sharp static."
Luna slowly raised her chin. For the absolute first time, the perpetual, dreamy haze vanished from her silvery-grey eyes. They snapped into terrifying, piercing focus, staring straight through Tamara's physical form and directly into the darkest depths of her soul.
"Don't you ever get tired of listening to those voices all the time?"
Tamara spun around with lethal speed.
Her dark pupils constricted into microscopic pinpricks.
In this entire fortress of a school, even Albus Dumbledore's piercing blue gaze only carried heavy suspicion and calculated scrutiny. He searched for evidence. He looked for logic.
But this... this was the first time.
This barefoot, deranged first-year had just used utter nonsense to casually, dismissively define the Dark Lord's careful calculations of absolute power, endless slaughter, and tyrannical rule as mere 'noise.'
For one terrifying heartbeat, a genuine, suffocating wave of killing intent flooded Tamara's veins. Her fingers twitched toward her wand. A person who could bypass all Occlumency shields and see straight through a flawless disguise using pure, unexplainable intuition was infinitely more dangerous than a hundred Dumbledores relying on logical deduction.
But as she stared into Luna's wide, clear eyes, she found absolutely zero malice. There was no threat, no judgment—only a pure, unadulterated curiosity reflecting back at her.
The dangerous, blood-red glint that had briefly flared in the depths of Tamara's irises flickered violently, warring with her pride, before finally fading back into obsidian black.
Assassinating a harmless lunatic in a greenhouse was beneath the dignity of Lord Voldemort.
"...Mind your own business," Tamara ordered, her voice dropping to a deadly, vibrating whisper. "And I highly suggest you stop trying to listen to voices that do not belong to you."
Without waiting for a response, she spun on her heel and strode out of the suffocating greenhouse, her dark robes billowing behind her, refusing to look back even once.
Luna remained standing alone in the damp shadows, her small fingers still absently clutching a piece of the severed, oozing Venomous Tentacula vine.
She watched the rigid, retreating back of the Slytherin girl until the heavy glass door swung shut. Tilting her head to the other side, she let out another soft, airy sigh.
"There really are a tremendous amount of Wrackspurts," she murmured quietly to the empty greenhouse.
Her silvery eyes softened with a strange, deep pity.
"And... she seems so terribly lonely."
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