Chapter 211: Tolerance
Tamara stared at the mad dog in front of her. Sirius Black had completely lost his sanity, his sunken chest heaving with manic, feral excitement.
Her dark eyes, having shed their forced, gentle warmth, regained a chilling emptiness. She looked at him not as a man, but as an irredeemable corpse. She absolutely could not allow this unstable fugitive to run wild and introduce unknowable variables into her carefully laid plans.
"Do you honestly believe you can walk out of this shack alive right now?"
Tamara unceremoniously dumped a bucket of metaphorical ice water over his feverish delusions, her voice dripping with calculated mockery.
"What is your grand plan? Turn into a dog and sprint to your death in the Forbidden Forest? Those bloodthirsty magical creatures lurking in the shadows won't offer a polite greeting to a stray mutt wandering without a wand."
Sirius's erratic movements froze abruptly. His hollow eyes darted downward, subconsciously staring at his empty, trembling hands.
"And the moment you transform back into a human to cast a spell—" Tamara leaned forward slightly, a deadly, predatory cruelty surfacing in the pitch-black depths of her gaze. "The Dementors patrolling the perimeter will swarm. They will suck your soul through your teeth before you can even utter the first syllable of an incantation."
A deathly silence crashed down over the decaying Shrieking Shack. The dust motes dancing in the dim light seemed to freeze. The ecstasy that had just ignited in Sirius's chest shattered into jagged pieces against the cold, hard floor of reality.
"Let us pretend you are lucky. Let us pretend you actually catch that rat." Tamara crossed her arms over her chest, mercilessly tearing away the Ministry of Magic's hypocritical, gilded facade. "Do you truly think that if you throw a struggling rat at Cornelius Fudge's feet, he will burst into tears of remorse and announce your immediate acquittal?"
She let out a low, breathy laugh. "Do not be naive, Mr. Black."
"Why didn't the Ministry of Magic use Legilimency on you back then? Why didn't they administer Veritaserum? They did not even grant you the basic dignity of a formal hearing before tossing you straight into the darkest cell of Azkaban."
Tamara watched the blood drain from both Sirius and Harry's faces. The cold sneer pulling at the corner of her mouth deepened, sharp enough to cut glass.
"Because those bloated, stupid bureaucrats do not care about the truth. They never have! They only care about their public image and their performance records!" Her voice echoed off the peeling wallpaper. "They needed a notorious, terrifying scapegoat to calm the public's hysteria after the war. You were convenient."
"If you run out there now, Fudge will do whatever it takes to cover up his ridiculous, career-ending negligence. To protect his teetering position as Minister..." Tamara took a slow step back, delivering her final, crushing declaration word by heavy word. "You will not even get to see Albus Dumbledore's face before the Aurors authorize the Dementor's Kiss. They will execute you right then and there."
Inside the Shrieking Shack, not even the sound of breathing could be heard.
Tamara's half-true, half-false venom ruthlessly dissolved Sirius's last, pathetic illusion regarding the wizarding justice system. His knees gave out. He slumped heavily onto the rotting floorboards, his filthy hands coming up to clutch his matted hair in sheer agony.
He knew she was right.
"...Then what should I do?" His voice was a broken rasp.
"Stay here. Obediently." Tamara looked down at the man she had completely mentally subjugated, a deep, dark satisfaction curling in her chest. "We will find a way to deal with the rat later. For now, your only task is to avoid losing your miserable life to those brainless Dementors."
The immediate crisis subsided. Under Tamara's unquestionable, authoritative command, Sirius offered no further resistance, resigning himself to the shadows of the shack.
Leaving the fugitive behind, Harry and Tamara handled the cramped, dirt-packed secret passage, making their way back to the tangled roots of the Whomping Willow.
They draped the Invisibility Cloak over their shoulders, moving in synchronized silence to avoid the gliding shadows of the Dementor patrols. As they blended into the fringes of the large, noisy crowd of students returning from Hogsmeade, the setting sun bled across the horizon, dyeing the towering spires of Hogwarts Castle a deep, bruised red.
Harry, now well into his third year, had hit a sudden growth spurt. Walking shoulder-to-shoulder under the restrictive fabric of the cloak, he belatedly realized something surprising.
Tamara was actually a bit shorter than him.
Normally, when Tamara spoke, argued, or issued her commanding directives, she projected an innate, suffocating aura. It was a presence so heavy and demanding that it made people instinctively overlook her physical stature, entirely forgetting that she was, in fact, just a thirteen-year-old girl.
But now, wrapped in the quiet intimacy of the cloak, Harry only had to lower his chin slightly to see the crown of her dark hair. A faint, remarkably pleasant scent of cedar drifted up from her.
The memory of Madam Pomfrey standing in the hospital wing, hands on her hips, loudly complaining about Tamara's severe, chronic malnutrition suddenly surfaced in Harry's mind. He couldn't help but think that if Tamara possessed even half of Ron's ravenous appetite at the Gryffindor table, she wouldn't look so fragile and thin.
Under normal circumstances, if Harry dared to lean this close—or if she caught even a glimpse of him judging her physical weakness—Tamara would have viciously told him to get lost.
But not today.
Harry keenly noticed that Tamara's posture lacked its usual defensive rigidity. Her footsteps brushing against the grass were exceptionally light, almost rhythmic.
"Tamara..."
Harry hesitated for a long time, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Finally, driven by a swelling, intense surge of gratitude, he broke the silence with a soft whisper.
"Thank you. If it weren't for you... I might never have been able to recognize the only family I have left in the world."
The moment the words left his mouth, Harry winced. He knew Tamara despised this kind of mushy, emotional vulnerability. She usually reacted to gratitude like it was a foul-smelling potion.
However, to his utter shock, she didn't sneer. She didn't shove him away in prickly disgust.
Instead, Tamara tilted her head slightly, looking up at him through the dim, silvery light filtering through the cloak. Her lips parted, and she offered him a smile.
It wasn't her usual mocking smirk. It wasn't the stiff, painfully forced angelic smile she wore around professors. It was a real, unguarded smile.
At that exact moment, Tamara was drowning in a secret, wicked euphoria.
This intoxicating sense of absolute control was identical to the high she had experienced fifty years ago. Back then, she had effortlessly pinned the opening of the Chamber of Secrets on that oafish half-giant, Hagrid. She had ruined a life, yet still walked away bathing in the tearful gratitude of the entire school, clutching a Special Award for Merit.
Wrapped in this familiar, delicious malice, Tamara felt a deep sense of reality. The true essence of Tom Riddle was finally breathing freely within this weak, restrictive body.
It was glorious.
Ever since waking up in this godforsaken era, bound by a tyrannical System, she had been plagued by inexplicable, weak surges of warmth and empathy. Those alien emotions terrified her, making her feel like a stranger in her own skin.
Only when she was weaving webs of lies, playing with human hearts like chess pieces, did the supreme, godlike sense of control return to her fingertips.
As for whether Potter was standing too close, or whispering nauseating, heart-wrenching nonsense into her ear? The Dark Lord was in such a spectacular mood that she could tolerate a little Gryffindor stupidity.
"Don't be silly, Potter," Tamara replied airily. Her voice was uncharacteristically soft, smoothed out by her internal, psychopathic joy. "I only do what I believe is right."
But that genuine smile, viewed through Harry's naive eyes, was like a drop of volatile potion splashing into a boiling cauldron. It instantly ignited a violent, chaotic reaction in his already unsettled chest.
He thought about the ruthless oath Tamara had forced Sirius to make in the shack, a vow specifically designed to keep Harry safe from any potential betrayal.
An absurd, yet deeply guilt-inducing theory suddenly took root in Harry's mind, blossoming into absolute certainty.
When the two finally slipped through the heavy oak doors of the Entrance Hall, they ducked into a quiet corner of the corridor near the Great Hall and pulled off the Invisibility Cloak.
Harry stopped dead in his tracks. His ears burned with a sudden, fierce heat. He took a deep, steadying breath and looked directly into Tamara's pitch-black eyes, which narrowed slightly in confusion at his sudden halt.
With a tone dripping with utmost sincerity, heavy guilt, and a trace of genuine pain, Harry spoke.
"Tamara..."
"Actually, you've been avoiding me. You treat me so coldly, and you even went out of your way to force Sirius into that oath just now..."
Harry bit his lower lip, his green eyes shining as if he had finally cracked a complex code that had baffled him for years.
"Is it because... you're actually afraid that I might hurt you? For some reason, you're scared of me, right?"
The air in the corridor froze into a bizarre, suffocating stagnation.
Tamara's brow twitched. Her expression went completely blank.
What kind of deranged, brainless daydream was this idiot babbling about?
Fear? How could such a pathetic, weak, and utterly disgusting emotion ever be associated with the greatest Dark Lord in history?
Lord Voldemort... afraid of a thirteen-year-old, bespectacled half-blood brat?!
But the moment that wretched word—fear—hung in the air, a tidal wave of suppressed memories violently breached the walls of her Occlumency. The suffocating weight of destiny clawed at her throat.
The indisputable, humiliating fact remained: she had died at this boy's hands. Twice.
Once, reduced to a wandering spirit in front of a splintered crib in Godric's Hollow. And once, in a future timeline, amidst the crumbling ruins of Hogwarts, in a final battle defined by sheer absurdity and ultimate humiliation.
That damn prophecy hung over her head like the Sword of Damocles, a suffocating shadow she could not shake off across two entirely different lifetimes.
But it was not fear.
Tamara's jaw locked so tightly her teeth ground together. She denied it with a furious, roaring scream inside her own mind.
She was merely guarding against the unpredictable variable of 'love'! She was wary of Dumbledore's disgusting, manipulative schemes! She was calculating the ownership of the Elder Wand!
How could she possibly feel even a fraction of a second of fear toward this clueless lamb? A lamb who had only survived this long by stumbling through sheer dumb luck and hiding behind the corpses of dead people!
The sensation of being looked at with pity—by a prey she viewed as less than dirt—caused a terrifying flash of crimson killing intent to bleed into her dark eyes. Harry's pained, understanding, sympathetic gaze made her fingers twitch with the overwhelming urge to draw her wand and cast the Killing Curse right between his eyes.
Just as Tamara drew a breath, preparing to verbally flay the savior alive and shatter his delusions with the most vicious, soul-crushing words imaginable—
"Harry? And... Riddle?"
A voice thick with shock echoed from the other end of the corridor, violently puncturing the bizarre, lethal atmosphere.
Ron Weasley stood at the top of the marble staircase, clutching a massive, overflowing bag of sweets from Honeydukes. His fiery red hair was a windblown mess, and he stared at the two of them standing alone in the shadowed corner as if a troll had just tap-danced past him.
He hurried over, his blue eyes darting frantically between Harry's flushed, unnatural expression and the terrifying, icy aura Tamara was desperately trying to rein back in.
"What are you two doing here? And hanging out together? Alone?" Ron scratched the back of his neck, his voice pitching up in genuine, beyond understanding confusion.
If this had been last year, Ron would have immediately assumed Harry was under some dark, Slytherin mind-control curse.
But this term, the dynamic had shifted. Whenever Harry and Tamara occupied the same space, the explosive, crackling tension between them was usually enough to blast anyone within a ten-meter radius straight into the hospital wing.
Ron studied Harry's hesitant, guilty face, and then glanced at the suffocating, low-pressure storm cloud still radiating from Tamara.
Ron's brain reached a conclusion with practiced ease: they must have had another massive argument. And judging by the look on Harry's face, Harry had definitely lost.
But before Harry could even open his mouth to stutter out an explanation for this monumentally complex misunderstanding, Ron's attention completely shifted gears.
To Ron, there was a much more pressing issue at hand.
He turned his freckled face toward Tamara, his eyes lighting up with bright, eager anticipation.
"By the way, Tamara! You said you'd help me take care of Scabbers. How is he doing now?"
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