Chapter 234: The Dark Lord's First Two Options
It was a temptation deep enough to drive any ordinary witch or wizard to the brink of madness.
Tamara had fully expected the insufferable Miss Know-It-All—a girl who hoarded knowledge like a dragon hoarded gold—to recover from her initial shock, reveal a desperate, greedy longing, and naturally accept the gift. After all, this was an offer of personal tutelage from the Dark Lord himself. It was a supreme honor, a masterclass that brushed against the very essence of death.
However.
Hermione Granger offered neither joy nor the slightest spark of interest. She stood absolutely rooted to the stone floor. Within those wide, clear brown eyes, a rapid succession of emotions flickered: hesitation, deep disbelief, and finally, a deep, agonizing... sorrow.
That look.
The bewitching, magnetic allure in Tamara's pitch-black eyes vanished, her pupils constricting into sharp, dangerous pinpricks. She knew that exact expression far too well. It was not the gaze one directed at a friend. It was not the look shared between equals, nor the reverent stare given to a benevolent savior standing upon a pedestal.
No. It was the look reserved for a completely alien monster.
That single, sorrowful glance acted as a rusted key, violently prying open the iron-clad vaults of Tom Riddle's long-buried memories.
The damp, suffocating chill of Wool's Orphanage rushed over her skin. She remembered standing before Mrs. Cole, proudly demonstrating exactly how she had punished the filthy little orphans who dared to cross her. The Muggle matron's face had twisted into this exact same expression—a mask of unfathomable dread and revulsion, staring at her as though she were a freak born of pure, irredeemable evil.
The scene shifted to the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts. She remembered weaponizing her perfect etiquette, her flawless smiles, and her impeccable grades to win over Albus Dumbledore. But that damned, meddlesome old fox had merely peered over his half-moon spectacles, scrutinizing her with the very same gaze. He looked at her as if he had effortlessly peeled back her beautiful, gentle skin to reveal the maggot-ridden, rotting corpse hiding beneath.
Even just weeks ago. When that pathetic Weasley boy had backed into the corner of the corridor, pointing a trembling finger at her and screaming, "Monster without a heart!"—it was the exact same look.
Everyone in this miserable, pathetic world constantly tried to measure her against their own laughable, fragile moral standards. And the moment they realized her mind operated on a higher, utterly ruthless plane of logic? They branded her a monster. They judged her.
[Ding! The System has detected an abnormal fluctuation in the Host's emotional state! Warning! Warning! Please maintain a calm state of mind and process your emotions correctly!]
The System's perky, patronizing alarms blared frantically against her skull, but Tamara deafened herself to the noise. A dark, violent tide of indescribable emotion clawed at her ribs. Just seconds ago, in a moment of utter, inexplicable madness brought on by this Mudblood's worthless, pure concern, she had actually attempted to peel back the curtain and share a fraction of her true world.
'How utterly pathetic,' Tamara sneered inwardly, the self-deprecation dripping like acid over her thoughts.
She took that rare, fleeting impulse of compromise and mercilessly strangled it to death within her own chest.
Then, the tension broke. Tamara let out a soft, airy chuckle.
The cold, dead expression on her face melted away, flawlessly reassembling into a perfect, angelic smile tinged with just the right amount of vulnerability and helpless amusement.
"I'm joking, Granger."
She tilted her head, letting a lock of dark hair fall loose. Her tone shifted, becoming light, breezy, and laced with the mischievous triumph of a schoolgirl pulling off a brilliant prank.
"Oh, look at your face! You look absolutely terrified. I just saw how furious you were earlier and couldn't resist teasing you. Honestly, who would actually be interested in boring old Dark Magic?" She let out another gentle laugh, her eyes crinkling. "Don't worry, Hermione. I promise I will never, ever touch such dangerous things again."
Hermione blinked, the sheer whiplash of the statement leaving her stunned.
Deep within the cognitive layers of her mind, the passive System skill [Harmless] flared to life, forcibly smoothing over the Gryffindor's spiking vigilance. Hermione stared at Tamara's pale, slightly weary, yet convincingly sincere face. A quiet, nagging voice in the back of her head whispered that something about this entire conversation was horribly wrong, but under the System's magical influence, her rigid shoulders slumped. Her tense nerves involuntarily uncoiled.
"You... you were really just joking?" Hermione asked, her voice trembling slightly. The fierce anger in her brown eyes ebbed away, giving way to a long, exhausted sigh. "Tamara, that wasn't funny. Not at all. You genuinely terrified me. For a second there, I thought you were actually planning to dabble in some unforgivable taboo."
"I swear to you, there won't be a next time," Tamara murmured. Her smile deepened, her dark eyes swimming with a warm, gentle radiance that could have deceived a saint. "Now, since you've thoroughly confirmed that I haven't bled to death, shouldn't you get back to your revisions? If you keep hovering over me, your spot as the top student of our year might actually be in jeopardy."
Hermione shot her a half-hearted glare. Though she tried to keep her tone strict, the defensive walls in her eyes had completely crumbled.
"Of course I'm going to review. And I'm warning you, Tamara, I'll be keeping a very close eye on you from now on."
Muttering under her breath, Hermione turned her back, walking toward the nearby armchair to gather the heavy stack of History of Magic textbooks she had dropped in her earlier panic.
However.
The very second Hermione turned her back and bent down, the illusion shattered.
The fabricated warmth, the gentle weariness, the innocent schoolgirl charm—it all evaporated from Tamara's features like mist over a frozen lake. What remained was a mask of absolute, chilling indifference, entirely devoid of human empathy.
The Dark Lord did not tolerate mistakes. Even the most microscopic lapse in control was a flaw that could not be permitted to exist in this world. Her fleeting moment of weakness, this Mudblood witnessing her bleed, the sheer audacity of rejecting her offer—these were uncontrollable variables.
And variables had to be surgically excised.
Tamara raised her right hand with lethal grace. The tip of her holly wand leveled perfectly with the back of Hermione's bushy head. She did not utter a single sound. Instead, she channeled her magic through the sheer, cruel force of her will, issuing the silent command.
'Obliviate.'
A faint, nearly invisible ripple of silver light slipped silently from the holly wood. It crossed the distance in a fraction of a second, sinking directly into the base of Hermione's skull.
The Gryffindor's body locked up instantly. Her spine snapped rigid. Those bright, intelligent brown eyes glazed over, the focus bleeding out until they were empty and vacant—as if an overbearing force had reached in and temporarily unplugged her soul.
The blood-soaked handkerchief. Tamara's ragged, pathetic gasps. The heated argument. The terrifying, absurd offer of Dark Magic.
Every single frame of the past ten minutes was violently torn from the girl's mind, hurled down into the darkest, most unreachable abyss of her subconscious. In the void left behind, Tamara ruthlessly stitched in a fabricated, aggressively mundane sequence of events.
Pushing open the door. Seeing her pale Slytherin classmate studying quietly at the desk. Asking if she was alright. Receiving a polite, lukewarm dismissal.
The surgical strike was flawless. Success.
Hermione swayed on her feet, a soft gasp escaping her lips as clarity rushed back into her pupils. She blinked rapidly, her brow furrowing in brief, dizzying confusion as she realized she was bent halfway over a pile of dropped books.
But before the cognitive dissonance could take root, the false memory data slotted perfectly into her neural pathways, taking total control of her brain. Hermione straightened up, gathering the heavy tomes into her arms, and turned to look at Tamara behind the massive oak desk.
In the span of that lost second, Tamara had already flicked her wand, casting a silent Scourgify to strip every drop of crimson blood from the parchment, the desk, and her own face. She now sat casually, resting her cheek against her knuckles, watching Hermione with an aloof, faintly arrogant gaze.
"Tamara..." Hermione frowned, her expression settling into a mask of pure, unadulterated concern. "Are you absolutely sure you're okay? You looked so dreadfully pale back in the dining hall, so I thought..."
"I am perfectly fine, Hermione," Tamara replied. She didn't snap or drive the girl away with her usual freezing sarcasm. Instead, her exquisite features softened into a polite, shallow smile. "I simply expended a bit too much magical energy deducing some ancient runic scripts earlier. I'm just tired. You really should get back to your own studying."
Faced with such a watertight, reasonable explanation, Hermione nodded slowly. Yet, her brow pinched together involuntarily.
She couldn't explain why, but a phantom itch crawled beneath her skin—a heavy, suffocating sense of wrongness swirling in the back of her mind. Driven by an instinct she didn't understand, Hermione's gaze drifted down to the scattered parchment covering the desk.
The very second her eyes locked onto the blank surface of the paper—
Hiss...
A vicious, needle-like spike of agony drove itself straight through Hermione's brain!
She flinched, her vision swimming as the world before her violently overlapped and twisted. For a fractured, dizzying microsecond, a hallucination bled into reality. She saw a pool of glaring, wet crimson soaking into the parchment. She saw thick drops of blood sliding continuously down Tamara's deathly pale chin...
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head vigorously to clear the vertigo. When she snapped them open again, the desk was immaculate. The parchment held nothing but complex, dry black ink strokes. There wasn't a single drop of blood in sight.
Had she imagined it? Was the stress of her relentless revision schedule finally causing her to hallucinate?
Smack.
A pale, slender hand slapped flat against the parchment without warning, completely severing Hermione's line of sight.
Hermione jerked her head up. Tamara hadn't moved from her relaxed posture, her chin still resting on her other hand. The polite smile remained perfectly pinned to her lips, but her dark eyes radiated a sudden, glacial chill that made the hairs on the back of Hermione's neck stand on end.
"That's enough, Hermione," Tamara said. Her voice was as soft as silk, but the underlying tone carried the crushing, irresistible weight of an absolute command. "Go back."
Staring at the pale fingers pressing firmly against the desk, and feeling the sheer, unquestionable finality in the Slytherin's voice, Hermione opened her mouth to argue. But the words died in her throat. She swallowed hard, forcibly burying the bizarre, terrifying doubts clawing at her mind.
"Alright..." Hermione whispered, hugging her heavy books tighter against her chest. She cast one last, deeply conflicted look at the girl. "If you feel unwell in any way... you must tell me."
With that, Hermione turned and walked toward the exit, glancing back over her shoulder every few steps.
As the heavy solid wood door clicked shut, sealing the empty Room of Requirement from the outside world once more, the chamber plunged into a deathly silence.
Stripped of the Gryffindor's incessant noise and her sickening concern, everything finally returned to its proper, isolated state.
Tamara sat utterly alone in the oversized chair, her dark eyes locked onto the tightly closed door. Slowly, she let her eyelids flutter shut, bringing her fingers up to wearily massage her temples, which still throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache.
However.
Just as she exhaled, preparing to drag her focus back to the complex runic translations, the hairs on her arms prickled. A cold, distinctly sinister gaze crawled slowly up her back, slithering out from the deep shadows of the room.
Someone was spying on her.
Tamara's eyes snapped open. Her muscles coiled like a striking viper, and with a flick of her wrist, the holly wand slid perfectly into her palm.
Simultaneously, a searing heat flared against her ribs. The dark silver pocket watch tucked into the inner lining of her robes—the warning mirror Sirius had given her—was suddenly burning like a hot coal!
She whipped her head around, her predatory gaze slicing through the gloom toward the source of the malicious stare.
Her eyes locked onto the deepest, most neglected alcove of the Room of Requirement—a dark corner overflowing with the discarded, rotting debris of centuries past.
At this very moment.
In that suffocating gloom, an ancient diadem, forgotten for who knows how many years, was pulsing with a faint, ghostly blue luminescence.
It felt as though a pair of ancient, malicious eyes were hiding deep within the facets of its central sapphire, joyfully and greedily drinking in every pathetic moment of weakness that had just transpired.
A cold, mocking thought slithered directly into her mind.
'Truly weak to the point of feeling... sorrowful.'
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