Chapter 238: Eyes on Me
This sudden discovery left Ron deeply confused. He stood frozen in the middle of the Great Hall, his freckled face a portrait of utter bewilderment as he awkwardly clutched his squirming new rat against his chest.
Tamara, meanwhile, had reached the absolute limit of her patience. She had zero interest in being gawked at by two Weasleys while forcing down the last nauseating bites of her extra meal. Setting her silverware down with a sharp, dismissive clink, she rose gracefully from the table. Without so much as a parting glance at the dazed Gryffindor boy, she swept straight out of the Great Hall, her dark robes billowing softly behind her.
"Senior! Wait for me!"
The moment Tamara moved, Ginny jolted out of her trance. She practically vaulted off her wooden stool, abandoning her still-dazed brother to hurry after the Slytherin.
Out in the stone corridor, the rapid patter of Ginny's footsteps echoed as she broke into a light jog, finally catching up to fall into step beside Tamara.
"Senior, I actually never liked Scabbers," Ginny confessed, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as she matched Tamara's brisk pace. "I just never had the heart to tell Ron."
She wrinkled her nose, a faint shudder passing through her small frame. "Especially after last term. I always felt like that rat was... weird. Sometimes, the way it looked at people made my skin crawl. It made me feel incredibly uncomfortable."
Ginny tilted her head, her brow furrowing in genuine puzzlement. "But I really don't understand. Why did Ron have to march all the way over here just to aggressively emphasize that you shouldn't hurt his new rat?"
Tamara's brisk pace slowed by a fraction. She turned her head slightly, a mocking, razor-thin sneer curling at the corner of her lips.
"Did that foolish brother of yours not tell you all how his previous pet was actually lost?"
Ginny shook her head, her bright red hair swishing over her shoulders. "Ron only said he went down to Hogsmeade Village, and when he got back, Scabbers was just gone. Mom even wrote him a letter giving him a stern scolding for it. She said he's always been too forgetful and irresponsible."
Hearing that naive answer, Tamara narrowed her dark eyes.
Ron hadn't told anyone what had truly transpired in Hogsmeade? He hadn't breathed a word to his loud, overbearing family, nor had he gone crying to the Professors. Was it because the great, noble Harry Potter had forced him to keep his mouth shut? Or was it simply because she had played the part of the flawless, angelic model student so impeccably that Ron subconsciously realized no one would ever believe his wild accusations?
Whatever the reason, this little revelation was a rare and delicious piece of good news. At the very least, the bloody secret of that rat was currently locked tight within a very limited circle of idiots.
Just as Tamara began to stroke her chin, her brilliant, wicked mind already calculating her next moves on the chessboard, she felt it. An intense, burning gaze practically glued to the side of her face.
Tamara stopped dead in her tracks and turned.
Ginny was staring up at her. The younger girl's bright brown eyes were blown wide, swimming with an unreserved, suffocating mixture of focus and utter obsession.
"Why do you always keep your eyes fixated on me, Weasley?" Tamara snapped, her patience finally fraying. She frowned, her tone dropping to a temperature that could freeze the Black Lake. "Do you not have a life of your own? Is the Gryffindor coursework truly so pathetic that you have the endless free time to follow people around like a lovesick lapdog every single day?"
Being reprimanded so mercilessly would have sent most students running away in tears. Ginny, however, didn't flinch. Instead, she answered with a sickeningly pure sincerity.
"Because you are so dazzling, Senior."
Then, blinking her large eyes with a sudden, aggrieved vulnerability, she asked in a small, trembling voice, "Does Senior... not like me watching you?"
Facing that painfully infatuated gaze, Tamara felt absolutely nothing. No warmth, no pity, no guilt. Instead, a cold, calculating flicker of inspiration ignited in the dark abyss of her mind.
To the great Dark Lord, a pure, devoted follower who only trailed behind without any substantial magical ability was worse than useless—they were a pathetic, glaring liability. But since this foolish little girl had already so easily surrendered all her expectations and loyalty to her...
Why not make full use of her? Why not forge this soft, malleable clay into a truly valuable, blood-soaked blade?
To command absolute, fanatical devotion, the first step was never to issue blunt, tyrannical orders. No, true loyalty required a far more delicate touch. It required personally peeling away the victim's original mediocrity, tearing down their weak foundations, and using the laws of the Dark Lord to rebuild a cruel, yet irresistibly alluring set of values in their place.
"Ginny Weasley..."
Tamara took two slow, deliberate steps forward, completely erasing the safe distance between them.
Her originally cold, biting voice melted into something soft, slow, and dangerously intoxicating. It was a tone designed to seep past the girl's ribs and directly into her beating heart.
"To always be nothing more than a member of the audience... placing all your gaze, all your hopes, and all your expectations on someone else..." Tamara murmured, her dark eyes locking onto Ginny's brown ones. "Don't you feel very... unwilling?"
Slowly, Tamara reached out. Her pale fingers gently brushed against Ginny's cheek, carefully tucking a stray strand of fiery red hair behind the younger girl's ear.
The sudden, icy touch against her skin made Ginny tremble violently. A fierce, burning blush instantly exploded across her freckled face.
"Blindly begging for someone else's attention will only leave you living in the shadows forever," Tamara whispered, her pitch-black eyes swirling like bottomless, magnetic vortices. She was tenderly delivering words soaked in pure venom straight into the deepest, most vulnerable depths of the girl's soul. "You will forever remain just that—the insignificant, overlooked little sister of the Weasley family."
Ginny's breath hitched.
"You must understand," Tamara leaned down slightly, her breath ghosting over Ginny's ear, her tone carrying a dark, irresistible magic. "I never need a useless person who can only look up to me."
She pulled back just enough to hold Ginny's gaze captive. "Go and master power of your own. Only when you yourself become a dazzling, obvious existence—someone that everyone else is forced to look up to..."
Tamara let the silence stretch for a fraction of a second, letting the hook sink deep.
"...will you truly have the qualification to have me look at you."
Ginny's entire body went rigid.
In those wide brown eyes that had previously held only blind, passive worship, an unmatched, blazing light suddenly erupted. It was the terrifying spark of a fanatic who had just found her holy crusade.
"I understand, Senior!"
Ginny lunged forward and grabbed Tamara's hand in both of hers, her grip shockingly tight. She was so overwhelmed with excitement that her voice vibrated in the quiet corridor.
"I understand exactly what you mean! I will definitely work hard! I will become as dazzling as you, so that you will have no choice but to only have me in your eyes!"
Having delivered that fervent declaration, Ginny looked as though she had just been injected with a lethal dose of adrenaline. She spun around on her heel and sprinted down the corridor toward Gryffindor Tower, practically skipping with manic joy.
Tamara stood frozen in place. Slowly, she lowered her gaze to the back of her hand, which was currently throbbing and blooming with an angry red mark from Ginny's overly excited slap.
'What in Salazar's name did this idiot grow up eating to have such monstrous physical strength?'
Tamara cursed viciously in the dark confines of her mind, massaging her stinging knuckles. She shook her hand out, immediately tossing Ginny's ridiculous, dramatic vow to the very back of her mind.
For the Dark Lord, casually painting a grand, intoxicating vision to stimulate a follower's latent potential was nothing more than the most basic, entry-level method of management. It barely required a second thought.
Right now, she had far more pressing matters to attend to.
Since conventional magical detection methods had utterly failed to catch the filthy thief who had stolen her belongings, Tamara was forced to switch to a much more primitive, yet highly effective, approach.
Phase one was already in motion. She had explicitly instructed Draco to keep a vigilant eye on the student body, searching for anyone who had exhibited sudden, abnormal personality shifts after the holidays.
Phase two began now.
Tamara handled the winding, deserted corridors until she found herself standing alone in a damp, shadowed alcove. Embedded in the stone wall was an old, rusted plumbing pipe with a jagged crack running down its side.
After glancing over her shoulder to confirm the corridor was entirely empty, Tamara leaned close to the rusted iron.
A low, chilling hiss slipped past her lips, the ancient language of serpents echoing softly into the dark gap.
A faint, almost imperceptible vibration answered from deep within the bowels of the castle's plumbing.
Tamara didn't summon the Basilisk directly to her side. Instead, she used the massive serpent as a relay, issuing a sweeping, absolute command to every single snake hidden within the walls of Hogwarts Castle and lurking on the damp edges of the Forbidden Forest:
Keep your eyes open. Watch for any animals behaving strangely. Report anything tainted with the foul, unmistakable aura of Dark Magic.
Based on her intimate, flawless understanding of her own twisted nature, Tamara was absolutely certain of one thing. That arrogant, impulsive twenty-year-old remnant soul would absolutely not flee Hogwarts in disgrace.
He was far too proud for that. He had to be lurking in some dark, forgotten corner of the castle. Perhaps he was even hiding near her right now, watching her from the shadows like a coiled, venomous snake, patiently waiting for the perfect moment to ambush her, the main soul.
"As long as you dare to show a single flaw..." Tamara murmured to herself, a cruel, bloodthirsty sneer curling the corners of her mouth.
Just as she finished her dark musings and turned to leave the alcove, a hesitant, painfully familiar male voice suddenly broke the heavy silence behind her.
"...Tamara?"
Tamara froze.
Harry Potter stood at the edge of the corridor, his messy black hair falling over his scar. He was staring at the Slytherin girl who had just turned away from the damaged pipe, his green eyes swirling with a complex, deeply conflicted expression.
"Was that..." Harry swallowed hard, his voice tight. "...was that you speaking just now?"
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