Chapter 229: Eavesdropping
The weekend morning brought a sudden, violent blizzard down upon Hogwarts. Thick white sheets of snow battered the ancient stone walls, yet the freezing winds did absolutely nothing to freeze the students' desperate enthusiasm for a Hogsmeade weekend.
On the snow-choked path leading down to the village, students wrapped in thick woolen scarves and heavy cloaks trudged along in shivering clusters of two or three.
Among the trudging masses, Draco Malfoy was undoubtedly the most conspicuous presence. He was dressed in a tailored, fur-lined winter cloak with heavy silver clasps, looking far more appropriate for the inauguration ceremony of the Minister for Magic than a casual weekend village trip.
Yet, what puffed the young Malfoy's chest out with the most pride was not his obscenely expensive outfit. It was the girl walking quietly beside him.
Tamara Riddle wore a simple, elegant dark cloak. The biting wind whipped her long black hair around her pale, exquisite face. She offered no expressions to the biting cold, exuding a chilling, ethereal distance that made the passing students instinctively step aside, too intimidated to even offer a greeting.
"Thanks to my father, of course. Otherwise, you'd be just like those pathetic underclassmen, left to molder in the freezing Dungeons on a weekend like this," Draco boasted triumphantly. He flourished his wand with practiced arrogance, casting a continuous Snow-Clearing Charm ahead of them to ensure not a single drop of dirty slush would dare touch Tamara's boots.
Tamara kept her hands buried deep in her cloak pockets. She listened to Draco's incessant, self-important chatter while a sharp flicker of murderous impatience danced behind her dark eyes.
'If this spoiled brat doesn't shut his mouth in the next ten seconds, I am going to hex his lips together,' she thought viciously.
The only reason she had agreed to endure this walking headache was to use the Malfoy family's obnoxious wealth and unquestioned influence. She needed a cover to discreetly purchase a few highly restricted dark magic materials from the black market dealers lurking in Hogsmeade's shadows—essential components for her ongoing analysis of the laws of death.
But to get the gold and the access, she first had to endure the young master's vacuous nonsense.
"I've booked out Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop for us." Draco turned his head, his pale gray eyes sparkling with eager anticipation. "The premium black tea there is just barely passable, I suppose. We can sit by the window and watch those Gryffindor idiots shivering in the snow."
Tamara didn't even bother to lift an eyelid, merely offering a soft, perfectly modulated, "Mhm."
Once they crossed into the village limits, Draco shifted tactics. To properly showcase the grand heritage of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy, he launched into a lengthy, unsolicited lecture on his family history.
"When my father handles those trivial, mundane matters at the Ministry of Magic, he is always extremely careful. It's all about maneuvering and self-preservation. That's clever, of course, but..."
The two of them stepped out of the howling wind and into a relatively quiet magic item shop. The air inside smelled of old brass, dust, and dried herbs.
Draco picked up an exquisitely crafted lunascope from a velvet display cushion, turned it over once, and then dropped it back down with a scoff of disdain.
"But I've heard from the portraits and the elders at the manor that my grandfather—Abraxas Malfoy—was much tougher. Far colder in his methods than my father is now."
At the sound of that name, Tamara's previously nonchalant footsteps came to a complete halt.
Abraxas.
A name dragged up from a very distant, blood-soaked era. Yet, it was a name that held a distinctly important place in Tom Riddle's memory.
"Oh?" Tamara turned her head slightly. For the first time all morning, a genuine ripple of interest broke through the dead calm of her pitch-black eyes. She asked in a soft tone that masterfully concealed the weight behind the question, "Why do you say that?"
Draco, thrilled to have finally struck a topic that captured her elusive attention, immediately puffed up with excitement.
"My father always tells me to balance family honor with the absolute necessity of learning self-preservation. He's... well, you could say he's indulgent toward me. I mean, he bought Nimbus 2001s for the entire team just because I mentioned I wanted to join the Slytherin squad."
Draco shrugged, his tone carrying that specific brand of teenage rebellion reserved for children who had never actually suffered a day in their lives. "But according to the elders in the family portraits, my grandfather Abraxas wasn't like that at all."
He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice as if sharing a dark secret. "He had an extremely fanatical pursuit of pure-blood status. You could even say he was... a cold-blooded ambitionist. Supposedly, he never pampered my father. He demanded absolute perfection in every single aspect. The slightest mistake would result in a severe reprimand. It's just a pity he passed away shortly after I was born."
Hearing this, Tamara let out a faint, imperceptible sigh in the dark theater of her mind.
Was Lucius's pathetic over-indulgence of Draco actually rooted in a desperate rebellion against Abraxas's strictness? What a foolish, hilariously pathetic cycle of mortal weakness.
But the boy was right about one thing.
Abraxas Malfoy was indeed a cold ambitionist, and above all, a brilliantly shrewd Slytherin.
In those distant, fragmented memories belonging to Lord Voldemort, that noble Malfoy heir had been one of the very first to recognize her terrifying potential. Abraxas had willingly used the vast power and endless resources of the House of Malfoy to pave the first bloody steps of her path to absolute rule.
She could still picture it. The Slytherin common room, bathed in the eerie green glow of the Black Lake during countless late nights. Abraxas would sit in the high-backed leather chair, slowly swirling a glass of expensive elf-made wine, watching Tom Riddle with a complex, burning gaze.
He made no attempt to hide his ambition. He had told Tom that the existing glory of the House of Malfoy was not enough. He wanted to witness the birth of a true monarch—a being who could trample the stagnant Wizarding world underfoot.
But Abraxas was too shrewd.
He was so calculating that no matter how much he admired, or even became infatuated with, Tom Riddle's overwhelming power... when Lord Voldemort truly rose from the shadows, the Malfoy patriarch never once offered his arm to bear the Dark Mark.
He supported the cause from the shadows with mountains of gold, but he always expertly maneuvered the House of Malfoy just outside the center of the most dangerous whirlpools. He was so slippery that when Voldemort finally fell and the Ministry purged the Death Eaters, the Malfoy family easily used their wealth and a dozen carefully crafted excuses to preserve their pure-blood dignity entirely unscathed.
'Truly a cunning old fox,' Tamara evaluated silently.
But she could not deny that among the mindless crowd of Death Eaters who only knew how to grovel and kill, Abraxas was one of the very few who could leave a faint, lingering ripple of respect in Voldemort's memory.
"What a pity..." Draco's voice suddenly dropped, pulling her back to the dusty shop. He stared at the brass lunascope, sighing with a teenager's shallow regret. "He contracted a very severe case of Dragon Pox. That damn plague took a lot of people, and even the top healers at St Mungo's were completely helpless. He passed away right before I was born."
Listening to Draco's lament, a heavy, suffocating darkness flickered deep within Tamara's eyes.
She, of course, knew exactly how Abraxas had died.
That brilliant man, whose eyes had always sparkled with such sharp shrewdness and grand ambition, ultimately did not die on a glorious battlefield. He did not perish in a high-stakes power struggle. Instead, he died of a filthy, undignified infectious disease.
Just like Potter's useless grandparents, Abraxas had breathed his last breath choking on his own fluids in the agony of illness, dying exactly like the most fragile, pathetic muggle.
No matter how shrewd, no matter how wealthy Abraxas had been, he remained entirely defenseless before the two most cruel and absolute magics in the universe: Time and Death.
Those who had once admired her, feared her, or even foolishly thought they could use her... they were all irreversibly marching toward their rotting graves.
This realization did not make the Dark Lord feel an ounce of sadness. Instead, it bred a towering, extreme arrogance in her chest, violently fueling her fanatical pursuit of eternal life. She would never rot. She would never fade.
Tamara pulled her mind back from the abyss. She looked at Draco, her lips curving into a perfectly timed, sickeningly sweet smile of gentle sympathy.
"Oh... Dragon Pox is indeed a terrible, tragic disease." Her tone was soft as silk, dripping with feigned sorrow. "What a terrible shame. I had really hoped to have the honor of personally visiting this admirable elder Mr. Malfoy."
Hearing Tamara take the initiative to mention visiting the manor, the slight gloom in Draco's eyes was instantly obliterated by immense, overwhelming surprise.
"It's alright! You can go see his portrait!" Draco practically vibrated, his voice rising several embarrassing notches in pitch. "I promise my father and mother will host you perfectly!"
Just as Tamara was preparing to feed this gullible pure-blood young master a few more hypocritical pleasantries to completely secure his loyalty—
Clang—!
From around the corner of the towering wooden shelves behind them, the heavy, dull sound of colliding metal shattered the quiet atmosphere. It sounded exactly as if someone had lost their balance upon hearing shocking news and crashed directly into a stack of heavy brass cauldrons.
"Who's there?!" Draco immediately drew his wand, his aristocratic posture shifting into high alert as he strode aggressively toward the corner.
However, there was absolutely nothing there.
Only three heavy brass cauldrons rolling lazily across the floorboards, their hollow ringing seemingly mocking his sudden nervousness.
"Probably some damn rat." Draco scowled, waving his wand dismissively to levitate the cauldrons back into a neat stack.
But Tamara, standing perfectly still in the center of the aisle, was not so easily fooled.
At the exact moment those cauldrons tumbled, her keen senses captured a very faint, highly specific scent drifting through the seemingly empty air. It was a slightly bitter, acrid smell, mixed with the strange, sweet fragrance of burnt potion residue.
Her eyes narrowed dangerously.
That was the exact scent of the Revealing Agent... the one she had brewed herself! And in this entire miserable school, besides her, only one specific item was tainted with that residual scent.
Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.
'Potter, you miserable, obsessive little voyeur...' Tamara gnashed her teeth, a wave of pure, unadulterated malice flooding her veins.
She could hardly believe it. The absolute idiot had not only ignored her humiliating, soul-crushing rejection this morning, but he had actually followed her all the way through a blizzard to Hogsmeade under his invisibility cloak like a deranged stalker!
'Simply insane. I am going to mount his head on the wall.' Tamara rolled her eyes, a wave of speechless irritation twisting her stomach into knots.
"Draco." Tamara turned her head, her voice dropping into a cool, authoritative register. "Go wait for me at Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop first. I just saw an interesting little artifact in the Defense Against the Dark Arts display over there, and I want to examine it alone."
"Do you want me to go with you?" Draco offered immediately, eager to please.
"No need. I'll be right back."
Tamara rejected him with merciless finality. Without waiting for his response, she turned on her heel and followed that faint, bitter fragrance, walking briskly out of the shop and into the biting cold of the alleyway.
She fully intended to drag that idiot out from under his little cloak, drag him into the snow-swept alley, and hit him with a Petrificus Totalus so perfect he would stand in Hogsmeade as a living snowman until the spring thaw!
However.
When Tamara rounded the icy corner, her wand sliding smoothly into her palm as she prepared to cast a silent Expelliarmus to rip the cloak away... her footsteps faltered.
The scene unfolding before her made her stop entirely. A cold, malicious laugh echoed through her mind.
There was absolutely no need for her to teach him a lesson.
Harry Potter, who had already yanked off his invisibility cloak, was currently being held firmly by the collar of his jacket.
And the one gripping him, shaking him with a face flushed purple with absolute fury, was none other than Ron Weasley!
"Harry Potter! What the bloody hell are you doing here?!"
Ron's angry roar cut through the howling wind and snow like a knife. He glared at his supposed best friend, his eyes wide with a mixture of betrayal and total incomprehension.
"You clearly told Hermione and me you were staying in the castle!" Ron shouted, his grip tightening on Harry's collar. "If you hadn't gotten distracted and bumped into me just now, you wouldn't have even planned to come find us, would you?!"
Hearing Ron's furious questioning, Harry's face instantly burned a brilliant, guilty red. He clutched the shimmering, silvery fabric of the invisibility cloak awkwardly against his chest, stammering desperately as he tried to form an excuse. "Ron, listen to me, please, I didn't mean to—"
But before the Boy Who Lived could finish his pathetic defense, Ron suddenly jerked his head to the side.
Through the falling snow, Ron locked eyes with Tamara, who had casually stepped out of the shadows, her arms crossed as she prepared to enjoy the free theatrical performance.
At that exact moment, Harry didn't need to explain anything more. The pieces clicked together in Ron's head with devastating clarity.
Ron's face turned from purple to a dangerously bright red. He released Harry's collar just to point a trembling finger directly at Tamara, his voice cracking and completely changing pitch under the sheer weight of his anger and disappointment.
"You snuck into Hogsmeade under your invisibility cloak... just to stalk this Slytherin?!"
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