Chapter 95: Living Under Someone Else's Roof
Lucius's unpleasant voice echoed through the crowded bookshop.
He looked at Arthur Weasley, whose fists were already clenched, with a superior sneer hanging from the corner of his mouth.
"Look at this family..."
Lucius's gaze swept over the red haired children before finally landing on Ginny's battered textbook.
"I feel sorry for you, Arthur, throwing away your entire family's dignity for that pittance of a salary."
He paused, his voice turning even more venomous.
"If you do not even have the money to buy your children decent textbooks, then what is the point of being a pure blood? You are an absolute disgrace to the wizarding world."
"How dare you insult my family!"
Arthur, father of seven and pillar of the Weasley family, finally lost his patience. He lunged forward and slammed Lucius into a bookshelf.
Screams broke out at once.
Heavy copies of The Collected Works of Gilderoy Lockhart came clattering down from the shelves.
Normally, Tamara might have watched with interest as these two pure bloods engaged in a comical Muggle brawl.
But now, she could only lean weakly in Molly's arms, her body still twitching uncontrollably from that vicious electric shock earlier.
She could only watch helplessly as everything unfolded before her.
Amid the chaos, Lucius shoved Arthur away in a fury, one of his eyes already beginning to bruise.
He adjusted his robes viciously and picked up Ginny's worn copy of A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration from among the scattered books.
"Here, girl. Take your book."
Lucius spoke sinisterly, a flicker of subtle malice flashing through his eyes.
He stuffed the worn book back into Ginny's cauldron.
But Tamara saw it.
Her nerves, made painfully sensitive by the lingering shock, caught the movement.
At the instant Lucius returned the textbook, his fingers very discreetly gripped a black, frayed old diary and slid it deep into Ginny's cauldron.
That was...
Tamara's pupils contracted sharply.
That was the first Horcrux she had personally made at the age of sixteen, when she tore her soul apart through murder and the Dark Arts.
"Stop it..."
Tamara roared in her mind.
That wasteful fool!
He had actually taken the great Dark Lord's Horcrux and used it as a tool to frame a political rival, casually handing it to a first year red haired brat.
She desperately tried to lift her hand, wanting to use a silent spell to Summon the diary.
Even if her body was paralysed, if she could just use a little magic...
[Warning! Host detected attempting to illegally misappropriate another person's property!]
The system's heartless voice rang in Tamara's head.
[The diary in question has currently been legally gifted by Lucius Malfoy to Ginny Weasley. Snatching a little girl's schoolbag is an extremely despicable act of bullying! Please be a law abiding wizard!]
"That was mine to begin with!" Tamara roared through gritted teeth in her mind.
[Regrettable as it may be, robbery is wrong, dear.]
"Go to hell..."
Tamara was so furious her vision went dark. Her already pale complexion turned utterly ghastly.
She could only watch as Hagrid's massive frame squeezed through the crowd to pull the two brawlers apart.
She watched as that foolish girl, Ginny Weasley, clutched the cauldron containing her precious Horcrux and shrank behind Arthur like a frightened quail.
This was an utter disgrace.
The great Lord Voldemort was being held hostage by so called virtue, watching helplessly as her own Horcrux drifted into common hands.
"Let's go, Draco."
Lucius clearly had no desire to deal with this rabble any longer. Clutching his bruised eye socket, he dragged his son toward the exit.
Draco clearly had not recovered from the shock yet.
As his father pulled him along, his eyes remained fixed on Tamara, who was being held by Molly.
Why?
He did not understand.
Tamara was clearly the pride of Slytherin. Why would she rather go to the Weasleys' dilapidated house, which was said to be unfit even for Gnomes, than come to Malfoy Manor?
Could it be that she really preferred staying with Potter's lot?
Draco's eyes were filled with the hurt and confusion of someone who felt betrayed.
Just as the Malfoys passed by Tamara, she endured her physical discomfort and struggled to stand from Molly's embrace.
Looking at Draco's expression, which made him resemble an abandoned puppy, she could not help sneering inwardly.
In the past, no one would have dared question her decisions.
She would not have wasted breath explaining anything.
But things were different now. She needed to craft an image, one convincing enough for everyone.
"...Listen."
Tamara's voice was very soft, audible only to Draco.
Draco blinked and subconsciously slowed his steps.
Tamara looked at him with a profound gaze, her lips barely moving.
"If you want to understand the enemy, you must infiltrate them from within."
At that moment, the hurt in Draco's eyes vanished.
It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck his brain.
Undercover!
So that was it!
Tamara was doing this to gather intelligence and dismantle Gryffindor's influence from the inside. She was sacrificing her own comfort and enduring humiliation to go deep into the Weasley family.
What kind of spirit was this?
What noble Slytherin character!
The way Draco looked at Tamara instantly changed from resentment to reverence.
He nodded vigorously, straightened his back, and followed his father out of the bookshop with a determined expression that said he would keep the secret.
Done.
Tamara closed her eyes wearily.
Tricking children was truly exhausting.
Half an hour later.
When Tamara stood before the fireplace of the Weasley home and looked at the place called The Burrow, it took immense willpower not to show her disgust.
This place was the literal embodiment of chaos.
Several teapots wearing knitted covers were flying haphazardly through the air. Water splashed everywhere in the kitchen. From upstairs came the sound of some Ghoul banging on the pipes, and explosions kept going off in some unknown corner of the house.
Cramped, noisy, and reeking of poverty.
"Welcome! Welcome to The Burrow!"
Arthur Weasley greeted her warmly, though his mouth still bore bruises from the earlier fight.
"I'm terribly sorry, the house is a bit of a mess... Oh, Fred! Throw that Gnome biting the sofa outside!"
Tamara wrapped her cloak tightly around herself, as if letting it loosen even slightly would allow the common dust to stain her noble soul.
"It's quite all right, Mr. Weasley."
Tamara gave a weak but polite smile, her voice still carrying a faint tremor from the shock.
"It's... very lively here."
Molly Weasley's heart practically broke for her.
Looking at this little girl who maintained elegant manners even in such a crude environment, Molly found her so sensible it almost made her want to cry.
"Oh, dear, you must be exhausted."
Without allowing any argument, Molly pressed Tamara into a somewhat worn but cushioned armchair and brought over a large tray of steaming biscuits.
"Have something to eat first. Dinner will take a little while. Harry! Take Tamara for a walk in the garden so she can get some fresh air. The Gnomes were just cleared out, so it should be safe enough."
And so, five minutes later, Tamara stood in the Weasleys' overgrown garden, watching Harry expertly grab a potato like Gnome and swing it in a wide arc over the hedge.
"Is it a bit mad?"
Harry brushed the dirt off his hands and gave Tamara a somewhat bashful smile.
"I mean... this must be very different from where you live."
Tamara leaned against the fence, doing her best not to let the messy plants touch her robes.
"It is indeed different," she said flatly. "The orphanage was cold and lonely, but at least it was not this noisy."
Harry fell silent for a moment.
The afterglow of the setting sun fell across his face, illuminating his green eyes, which held a complicated trace of melancholy.
"Actually... I really like it here."
Harry spoke softly, as though talking to himself, yet also as though confiding in the only companion who might understand him.
"Mrs. Weasley is very good to me, and so is Ron. Here, I feel something I've never felt before. The feeling of a home."
"But, Tamara..."
Harry looked up, his gaze dimming slightly.
"Sometimes, when I watch them being so happy and so close... I feel like an intruder. My name isn't Weasley, and I don't have red hair. This happiness doesn't really belong to me."
"No matter how good it is here, I always feel a bit... out of place."
Harry sighed and kicked a pebble at his feet.
Tamara watched him silently.
This was the fated enemy destined by prophecy to kill her?
Tamara let out an extremely contemptuous, even slightly cruel sneer in her heart.
To the true Dark Lord, family and love were nothing more than chains used to bind one's hands and feet, an anaesthetic used to hide one's own incompetence.
Only the weak would act like a stray dog, grateful for a bone tossed by others, then live in fear that the bone might be taken away.
If this stray dog truly found living under someone else's roof so painful, what he should do was tear out the master's throat without hesitation, seize this territory, and crush all those donors who made him feel humiliated.
Not stand in this heap of a garden, wallowing in self pity over a few Gnomes.
But that was just as well.
The saviour was exposing his vulnerability to his future enemy. This could become a blade to pierce Harry with.
In fact, she could even use it to pull this lost saviour completely into the darkness.
Dumbledore was trying to weave a warm cage of love and kindness to keep this boy.
Then she would personally feed him a deadlier poison: power and absolute control.
She would amplify the unease and inferiority in his heart bit by bit, making him doubt that hypocritical sympathy, until he gradually became addicted to the validation and truth that only she could provide.
"The reason you feel out of place..."
Tamara spoke coldly.
She did not offer the gentle comfort Harry expected. Instead, she tore open his facade with almost cruel logic.
"...is because your subconscious understands that living by relying on the kindness of others is, in essence, a form of begging."
Harry looked up sharply, staring at her in shock.
"A true sense of belonging is never something obtained through another person's charity."
Tamara leaned in slightly, like a demon imparting the laws of survival.
"When you are powerful enough, so powerful that no one dares to ignore your existence, then home is simply wherever you stand."
"By then, it will not be a question of whether you need to fit into the Weasley family, but whether they will feel honoured to host you."
Harry was stunned.
Those words sounded so cold, so impersonal.
But that rhetoric, full of power, was like a shot of adrenaline. It instantly dispelled the weak haze in his heart.
"Only... by becoming stronger?"
Harry looked into Tamara's black eyes, which flickered with ambition in the sunset, and for some reason, his heart began to beat faster.
He suddenly felt that the girl before him was far more real and reliable than those adults who only ever said poor Harry.
"...Thank you, Tamara."
Harry took a deep breath, and the confusion in his eyes gradually faded.
"I think... I understand."
Tamara turned away, no longer looking at this gullible saviour.
She looked toward The Burrow nearby, full of noise and chaos, and at the plump witch busily working by the kitchen window, the same witch who had just given her a fierce hug.
"Stupid love."
.....
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