Chapter 217: Remedial Mind Arts
Harry Potter.
The name tasted like ash on her tongue. That absolute, irredeemable idiot of a savior. A boy who knew absolutely nothing about the subtle art of Occlumency and wore every fleeting, pathetic emotion right on his stupidly expressive face!
If Dumbledore or Snape pulled the boy aside for a little chat regarding Sirius Black's break-in last night... Tamara's nails dug into her palms. Any master proficient in Legilimency wouldn't even need to cast a formal spell. They would only need to stare into those vacuous, startlingly green eyes for a single, solitary second.
Everything that transpired in the dust-choked ruins of the Shrieking Shack. Black's true innocence. The rat. And worst of all, the obvious fact that she, Tamara Riddle, a supposedly sweet and innocent third-year Slytherin, had ruthlessly forced an adult wizard into an Unbreakable Vow.
It would all be laid bare. Exposed in a blinding flash of memory.
She could already picture it. Dumbledore's piercing blue eyes peering through Potter's unguarded mind, watching with crystal clarity as a thirteen-year-old girl bound a grown man to a lethal, high-level magical contract without so much as a blink. The cozy, protective walls of Hogwarts would vanish, replaced by the cold stone of an interrogation cell. Ministry Aurors. Dementors. Drops of clear, tasteless Veritaserum forced past her lips.
Unacceptable. She would never allow her flawless, painstakingly crafted facade to be shattered by a Gryffindor imbecile who treated his own brain like an unused decorative ornament.
"That damned walking time bomb," she hissed under her breath, her grip tightening on her wand until the polished wood groaned in protest. "More of a hindrance than a help."
Pivoting sharply on her heel, her robes billowing behind her like a storm cloud, Tamara marched briskly toward Gryffindor Tower.
At that exact moment, within the strict, tartan-draped confines of Professor McGonagall's office, Harry Potter stood before a heavy oak desk. His head hung low, his usually messy black hair casting shadows over a distinctly pale, exhausted face.
"Potter, I must warn you in the most serious terms possible." Professor McGonagall pushed her square spectacles higher up the bridge of her nose. The lines around her mouth were drawn tight, her expression more severe than he had ever seen it. "Black infiltrated the castle last night. I have already made it abundantly clear who his target is. Therefore, I strongly suggest you withdraw from the upcoming Quidditch match."
"No, Professor! I can't withdraw!"
Harry's head snapped up. Though dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes, a lingering shadow of the chaos from the previous night, his jaw set with exceptional stubbornness.
Withdraw? How could he possibly explain that he had absolutely nothing to fear? He knew better than anyone breathing in this castle that Sirius Black wasn't here to murder him. The man was his godfather. His only real family.
"This is for the honor of Gryffindor," Harry insisted, grasping for a believable excuse. "Wood said we have a brilliant chance of winning the Cup this year. I can't let the team down." He swallowed hard, forcing a reassuring tone. "Besides, when I'm up there flying, with the whole school watching from the stands... I feel very safe."
McGonagall studied the boy's defiant posture. A long, helpless sigh escaped her lips. When he dug his heels in like this, he was the absolute mirror image of James.
"Very well. If you insist." She picked up her long eagle-feather quill, the nib scratching sharply against a roll of parchment as she made a reluctant note.
Harry nodded gratefully and turned toward the heavy wooden door.
"Potter," McGonagall called out suddenly.
He paused, looking back over his shoulder. The Transfiguration professor had raised her head, her sharp eyes softening with a rare, maternal concern. "Have you and Mr. Weasley... had a falling out?"
Harry's shoulders instantly stiffened.
"I could not help but notice at breakfast that the two of you were sitting at entirely different ends of the Gryffindor table," she continued, her voice gentle. "Is this tension because of... that lost rat? Scabbers, was it?"
The question felt like a physical blow, violently dragging Harry back into a swamp of painful memories. The bone-chilling cold of the Dementors. The devastating revelation of Sirius's innocence. The suffocating, gnawing guilt of lying straight to Ron's face to protect a secret he didn't even fully understand yet.
The resulting cold war between them had left Harry feeling entirely adrift. An unmatched weight of loneliness pressed down on his chest. He was carrying a secret that could change everything, yet his lips were magically bound. He couldn't breathe a single word of it.
"I... we're fine, Professor," Harry mumbled, his gaze dropping to the worn stone floor to avoid her perceptive stare. "It's just a small misunderstanding. It'll blow over soon."
Without waiting for her to dissect his flimsy lie, he pushed the heavy door open and practically fled into the corridor.
The heavy oak door clicked shut behind him, but the oppressive weight on his chest remained. Harry kept his head bowed, his shoes scuffing against the flagstones. His legs felt as though they had been hollowed out and filled with liquid lead. He wandered aimlessly through the empty, drafty corridors, the silence amplifying the chaotic shouting in his own mind. How was he supposed to look Ron in the eye? How long could he possibly keep the truth about Peter Pettigrew buried?
"Potter."
The voice sliced through the quiet corridor like a physical blade. It was so frigid, so utterly devoid of warmth, that frost might as well have been creeping across the stone walls.
Harry jolted, his head snapping up.
Emerging from the shadows of a towering stone pillar stood Tamara Riddle. She was leaning casually against the masonry, her arms crossed over her chest. Her deep, dark eyes were locked onto him. There was no trace of the polite, gentle girl who smiled at the professors. Right now, she was staring at him with the detached, clinical coldness of a mortician examining a particularly uninteresting corpse.
"Tamara?" Harry blinked, momentarily stunned. His brain, still mired in its swamp of misery and isolation, failed to register the sheer danger radiating from her. Seeking any sort of friendly connection, he subconsciously took a step toward her. "What are you doing here?"
He received no gentle greeting in return.
Tamara Riddle could not care less about his pathetic little cold war with the Weasley boy, nor did she give a single damn about his fragile emotional state. She simply let her aura bleed into the air, a heavy, suffocating pressure that screamed of dark magic and absolute authority. The sheer weight of it hit Harry like a physical wall, forcing him to freeze mid-step.
"Put away that pitiful, nauseating expression," Tamara sneered, her upper lip curling in disgust. "You look like a kicked crup who thinks the entire world has abandoned it." She pushed off the pillar, closing the distance between them with slow, predatory grace. "Do you know what your absolute biggest flaw is right now, Potter?"
Harry blinked rapidly, his bright green eyes wide behind his round glasses, completely bewildered by the sudden hostility. "...What?"
Tamara didn't bother to answer with words.
She merely narrowed her dark eyes, locking onto his gaze with a terrifying, penetrating intensity.
Without a single warning, without a wand drawn or an incantation spoken, Harry felt an invisible spike drive straight through his forehead. It wasn't physical pain, but a sharp, intrusive pressure. An irresistible force bypassed his defenses entirely, ripping into his mind with the casual ease of a thief yanking open an unlocked desk drawer.
A chaotic torrent of disorganized, mundane, and outrageously stupid thoughts immediately flooded into Tamara's consciousness, spilling over her pristine mental landscape like a knocked-over inkwell.
'I need to figure out how to sneak down to the kitchens later. I can grab some roast beef and secretly bring it to Sirius...''Ron completely ignored me again this morning. How on earth am I supposed to make him stop being so angry? Maybe if I bought him some sweets...''Wait, what does Tamara actually want with me? She looks a bit pale, like she didn't sleep well last night. She's still really pretty, though. Why is she standing so close? That herbal shampoo she uses smells brilliant...'
The arrogant sneer plastered across Tamara's face instantly shattered.
She severed the Legilimency connection so violently it felt like a physical snap in the air. A flash of deep, undisguised revulsion twisted her features. For the first time in her two lives, the great Dark Lord felt genuinely, physically nauseated by the sheer banality of a teenager's mind. Peering into that pathetic, hormone-addled wasteland of Gryffindor sentimentality felt like a direct insult to her noble soul.
"...That brain of yours," Tamara hissed, her voice trembling slightly with suppressed rage and disgust, "is a chaotic junkyard of meaningless, hormonal drivel. It is a broken, rotting cupboard with its doors swinging wide open for the entire world to see."
Harry stood paralyzed. His green eyes remained clouded with confusion for a fraction of a second before the horrific realization finally clicked into place. The intrusive pressure. The way she had perfectly summarized his internal state. She had heard him. She had heard everything. Even the embarrassing, fleeting thoughts about her appearance that he wouldn't dare admit to his own reflection.
In a heartbeat, Harry's face ignited. A furious, scalding red flush exploded across his cheeks, surging rapidly down his neck and burning the tips of his ears.
"How... how do you know what I was thinking?!" He scrambled backward, his shoulder blades slamming painfully against the rough stone wall of the corridor. His voice cracked violently, pitching up an octave in a lethal cocktail of shock and utter mortification.
"What did you just do to me?! Did you... did you just eavesdrop on my brain?!" Harry growled. His hands balled into tight fists at his sides. The humiliation was so absolute he genuinely wished the flagstones would crack open and swallow him whole.
Watching the Chosen One cower against a wall, red-faced, helpless, and thoroughly foolish, Tamara felt a sharp throb of pain pulsing at her temples. A migraine was definitely brewing.
"Allow me to correct your atrocious vocabulary, Potter. I did not eavesdrop," she stated, enunciating every syllable with dripping condescension. "You practically shoved that worthless, sentimental trash directly into my eyes. What you just experienced is called Legilimency."
She took another slow, deliberate step forward, trapping him against the masonry. When she spoke again, her tone was an arrogant, unquestionable absolute.
"Any wizard truly proficient in the mind arts, such as Albus Dumbledore, or your beloved Professor Snape, only needs to hold your gaze for a single, fleeting second." She leaned in slightly, her dark eyes flashing. "If they do, the magical contract we went through so much trouble to establish last night will be exposed. And your precious godfather, who only just managed to clear his name in the shadows, will be completely and utterly finished. Back to Azkaban. Or worse."
The fiery blush drained from Harry's face in an instant, leaving him sickly and pale. The horrifying reality crashed down on him. He thought back to Professor McGonagall's office just minutes ago. He had looked her right in the eyes. He had been completely, terrifyingly defenseless. If she had known Legilimency...
Observing the sheer panic setting into the boy's features, Tamara raised her chin. A suffocating, dark desire for absolute control flickered in the depths of her gaze.
"So, listen to me very carefully, Potter."
"Regardless of how much you adore that idiotic sport of chasing a leather ball through the sky on a piece of wood, and regardless of whether you are still busy mourning your pathetic rat of a friend..." She pointed a slender, pale finger at his chest. "Starting today, you will avoid direct eye contact with everyone. From now on, you will carve out exactly half an hour after your classes end every single day, and you will meet me on the seventh floor, inside the Room of Requirement."
Her lips curved into a smile that held absolutely zero warmth.
"I am going to personally teach you the art of Occlumency. And you are going to learn, or I will tear your mind apart trying."
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