Chapter 56: Push and Pull
Ever since that ridiculous skirmish in the snow, Tamara had acquired a permanent shadow. Neville Longbottom.
He did not orbit her with the obnoxious, peacocking grandiosity of Draco Malfoy, nor did he chatter with the mindless, incessant buzzing of Pansy Parkinson. He merely existed in her periphery. A silent, lumbering presence keeping a highly respectful, entirely modest distance.
If Tamara glided into the library, he would miraculously find a secluded corner to bury his nose in a Herbology text. When she took her seat in the Great Hall for meals, she could feel the weight of his frequent, nervous glances darting across the room toward the Slytherin table.
'Pathetic, clumsy tracking methods.'
Sitting by a frost-laced window in the library, Tamara allowed her gaze to slide toward the Restricted Section. Neville was currently attempting to hide behind a towering oak bookshelf. Only half of his round, flushed face was visible. She critiqued his espionage skills with cold, clinical disdain.
Yet, she made no move to drive him away.
A fiercely loyal, entirely dim-witted follower was occasionally far more useful than a clever one who asked too many questions.
Compared to Neville's quiet clumsiness, Harry Potter was practically vibrating with restless impatience. Ever since she had dragged him away from the intoxicating illusions of the Mirror of Erised, the so-called Savior had devolved into a mess of anxiety and glaring insecurity.
He constantly hovered, desperately seeking any meager excuse to strike up a conversation. Tamara, naturally, had locked herself behind a wall of pristine ice. She reverted entirely to her untouchable Slytherin persona, treating his every approach with a chilling, polite indifference.
The sudden drop in temperature wounded the Boy Who Lived deeply. He spent his days moping through the corridors, dragging his feet like a thoroughly drenched, pitiful puppy left out in the rain.
[Host, Harry's favorability toward you has reached a critical point of deep concern!]
The System's sickeningly perky, gossip-hungry voice chimed directly against her skull.
[Aren't you going to strike while the iron is hot? Even just a tiny little smile would probably make this poor boy fly with joy!]
Tamara smoothly turned a heavy parchment page of her book. A cruel, razor-thin arc curled at the corners of her mouth.
'A smile? That is far too cheap.'Her dark eyes scanned the ancient runes without truly reading them.'For a love-starved, desperate brat like him, calculated neglect is a weapon. A push-and-pull dynamic is the absolute best catalyst. Only by starving him, by making him realize exactly how rare and precious my attention is, will he truly learn to wag his tail and beg to please me.'
[How wonderfully wicked, Host!]
Tamara allowed a cold, internal sneer to wash over her mind. 'Naturally.'
...
Friday morning arrived, bringing with it double Potions.
This particular session felt like a cruel, twisted joke orchestrated personally by Merlin himself. Thanks to a vicious strain of magical flu—a direct consequence of that idiotic snowball fight—half the students from both Slytherin and Gryffindor were confined to the hospital wing. The drastically thinned ranks forced Professor Snape to temporarily adjust the cauldron pairings.
"Riddle. You will pair with Potter."
Snape drawled the words slowly. He scanned the damp, dungeon classroom with his hollow, dead-fish eyes, delivering a verdict that sent a ripple of shock through the remaining students. Perhaps the Potions Master simply wanted a front-row seat to a disaster. Or, more likely, he fully expected Tamara, his undisputed genius, to utterly humiliate Potter, the bumbling fool.
The corner of Tamara's mouth twitched. It was a microscopic fracture in her flawless mask.
She watched Harry eagerly shuffle across the stone floor, dragging his heavy brass cauldron. His green eyes were practically glowing with pleasant surprise. Tamara felt her fragile grip on her sanity teetering dangerously close to the edge of an abyss.
"Hello, Tamara."
Harry set his cauldron down onto the iron stand with excessive care. He rubbed his hands together, his shoulders hunched in an awkward, nervous posture. "I will... I'll try my absolute best not to hold you back today."
Tamara inhaled a slow, measured breath of the damp dungeon air. She stretched her lips into a painfully perfect, professional smile.
"I should certainly hope so, Potter."
She gracefully picked up her silver paring knife, her pale fingers expertly gripping the hilt as she began to process the dried roots of Deadly Nightshade. "If the cauldron unfortunately decides to explode today, please be absolutely sure to place that not-so-clever head of yours directly in front of the blast radius."
Rather than taking offense, Harry simply grinned. It was a foolish, blindingly bright expression, as though she had just showered him with the highest praise.
"I'll be careful. Promise."
Tamara suppressed the urge to roll her eyes into the back of her skull. She ignored his sickening optimism, dropping her gaze to the wooden board and concentrating entirely on achieving perfectly uniform slices of her ingredients.
However, the moment Harry pulled out his wand to cast a basic Scouring Charm on his brass cauldron, Tamara's precise movements froze completely.
The silver knife halted mere millimeters above the cutting board. Her dark gaze locked onto the length of wood in Harry's hand.
It was not the light, warm hue of holly wood. It was a wand of deep, rich color, boasting a dense, almost bone-like grain.
Yew.
Tamara's pupils constricted into tiny, dangerous pinpricks.
She knew that wand. She remembered the exact weight of it in her palm. Back in the dusty, cramped aisles of Ollivander's shop before the start of the term, she had held that very piece of wood.
Yew. Thirteen inches. Dragon heartstring core.
Aside from the twin to her original core, this was the singular wand that connected most perfectly with her dark, fractured soul. It was a weapon of immense power. Sinister. Unyielding. A wand that actively craved a ruthless, dominant master.
But back in that shop, this damned System had violently intervened. It had forcibly rejected the match under the sickening guise of 'soul purification,' sending a shock so severe it had nearly splintered the beautiful wood in half.
And now...
Now, this masterpiece, the absolute most suitable conduit for the Dark Lord's magic, was resting casually in the clumsy, unworthy grip of the Savior?!
"...Your wand."
Tamara's voice emerged dry, scraping against her throat. It carried a microscopic, almost imperceptible tremor of pure, unadulterated rage.
"What's wrong with it?" Harry asked. He raised the dark wood, blinking at it in mild confusion. "Mr. Ollivander said this wand is incredibly powerful. I mean, it looks a little old and creepy, but it's actually quite handy to use."
Handy?
Tamara felt a phantom blade twist directly into her chest.
Did this pathetic excuse for a wizard even comprehend the sheer, devastating potential of yew?! Calling it 'handy' was a blasphemy! What an absolute, sickening waste of a divine artifact!
The ultimate, agonizing irony crashed over her. She had manipulated the system to steal his holly wand, and in return, the universe had blindly handed Harry the yew wand that rightfully belonged to her. Was Fate playing some twisted, disgusting game of musical chairs with their destinies?
"Tamara? Are you okay?"
Harry noticed the sudden, sickly pallor draining the color from her cheeks. He caught the flash of raw, naked emotion burning in her dark eyes. Was that... jealousy? He leaned in a fraction closer, his brow furrowing with genuine concern.
"You look... really unwell."
He rarely saw her slip like this. Usually, she was so impossibly poised, so perfectly detached, functioning like an exquisite, untouchable porcelain doll. But right now, her mask had cracked. The storm of emotion—a volatile mixture of fierce anger, bitter resentment, and a strange, vulnerable grievance—actually made her look... real. Human.
'This looks so much better than when she forces that fake, polite smile,' Harry thought silently, his heart giving a strange little flutter.
Tamara ground her teeth together so hard her jaw ached. She squeezed a single word through her tight lips.
"Nothing."
She whipped her head away, violently breaking eye contact with the dark wood. If she stared at it for one second longer, she would undoubtedly lose her mind, snatch it from his pathetic grip, and curse him into oblivion.
"Focus entirely on the potion, Potter," she snapped, her tone dripping with venom. "Unless your actual goal today is to brew a lethal poison."
Harry shrank back, his neck pulling into his shoulders as he quickly redirected his attention to the bubbling brass pot.
Today's assigned task was the Boil-Cure Potion. Although Harry had managed to master a few basic preparation techniques—thanks entirely to the secret guidance of Tamara's anonymous library notes—he still devolved into a flustered, uncoordinated mess when faced with the strict timing of a complex recipe.
"Add the dried nettles... right, then crush the snake fangs..." Harry muttered under his breath, clumsily tossing the measured ingredients into the simmering liquid. "Alright. Now for the porcupine quills."
He scooped up a handful of the sharp, black-and-white quills, fully preparing to dump them straight into the mixture.
He forgot the single most critical step.
He had been too distracted, his eyes constantly drifting sideways to watch the captivating, fluid grace of Tamara's hands as she worked her silver knife. In his daze, he completely forgot to remove the cauldron from the open flame.
Consequently, the sharp porcupine quills plummeted directly into the boiling concoction while the magical fire still roared furiously beneath the brass base.
Glug. Glug. HISS!
The originally calm, sky-blue liquid reacted instantly. It violently churned, snapping into a toxic, radioactive green. It began to boil with terrifying ferocity, spitting and frothing over the brass rim. A thick, noxious cloud of highly acidic smoke erupted from the surface, carrying the sharp stench of melting metal.
Tamara slowly turned her head. She stared at the violently shaking cauldron, fully aware it was seconds away from a catastrophic structural failure.
"You forgot to take it off the fire," she stated, her voice entirely devoid of panic.
"So what do we do now?!" Harry yelped, stumbling backward.
"Prepare to die," Tamara replied calmly. She turned back to her cutting board, slicing a root with surgical precision. "Or, alternatively, pray to whatever deity you believe in that Professor Snape vanishes the mess before your entire body is covered in agonizing, pus-filled boils."
[Host, while I totally appreciate your dark sense of humor, if that potion explodes, you are going to get splashed as well!]
The System's cheerful voice chimed in with impeccable, infuriating timing.
[Besides, this is a fantastic opportunity to show some warm classmate camaraderie!]
[Mission: Save the potion from detonating.]
[Reward: Unlock Spell — Mending Charm (Reparo).]
The silver knife halted in Tamara's grip.
'Not doing it. Get lost.'She rejected the prompt with flat, icy finality.'Let the damn thing explode. It will teach the idiot a valuable lesson in basic reading comprehension.'[Don't be so utterly heartless, Host! I am literally handing you extra spells on a silver platter, and you are still being picky?]'I already know how to cast a basic Mending Charm,' Tamara shot back dismissively.
[Yes, your soul knows it! But your current body doesn't have the magical pathways unlocked yet!] The System countered smoothly. [And... come on, this one is a total freebie! You don't even need to grind out ten Virtue Points for it!]
"..."
Tamara inhaled sharply through her nose. She looked at the violently bubbling, hissing green sludge that was preparing to erupt like a miniature volcano. Then, she looked down at her pristine, custom-tailored Slytherin robes.
'Fine. You win.'
She slammed the silver knife onto the wooden board. Her hand shot out, violently snatching the glass stirring rod right out of Harry's trembling grip.
"Out of the way, you absolute idiot!" she barked.
She shoved him aside with her hip, plunging the glass rod deep into the toxic green sludge. Her wrist flicked with practiced, blinding speed—three sharp rotations counter-clockwise, followed instantly by a precise half-turn clockwise.
Without pausing for breath, Tamara grabbed the heavy iron handle of the brass cauldron. Ignoring the searing heat biting into her palm, she yanked the heavy pot entirely off the iron stand, slamming it down hard onto the freezing dungeon floor.
In the exact same fluid motion, her left hand scooped up a heavy handful of crushed dried nettles. She tossed them directly into the center of the frothing liquid. The dried nettles acted as an immediate neutralizing agent, aggressively absorbing the volatile excess heat and neutralizing the rampant acidity.
Sizzle—!
The brass cauldron let out one final, agonizing shriek of escaping pressure. A thick, suffocating puff of white smoke blasted upward, hitting the damp ceiling before the violent churning finally began to subside.
The liquid slowly settled. It had mutated into a thick, disgusting, cement-gray sludge, but at the very least, it hadn't detonated and melted the flesh off their bones.
"Wow..." Harry breathed out. His green eyes were blown wide behind his taped glasses. He stared at Tamara's chest heaving slightly from the exertion, his expression practically overflowing with pure, unfiltered admiration. "How did you do that? That counter-stir... it's not anywhere in the textbook!"
"The textbook also does not explicitly instruct you to leave your brain rotting in your dormitory bed."
Tamara tossed the sticky glass stirring rod hard against his chest. She pulled out a pristine handkerchief and wiped her hands with deep disgust. "The next time you dare throw ingredients into a live potion with such haphazard idiocy, I will personally chop you into pieces, toss you into the cauldron, and boil you down for spare parts."
Despite the absolute venom dripping from her words, Harry looked down at the salvaged, smoking sludge and felt a strange, obvious warmth bloom in his chest.
"Thank you, Tamara," he whispered. A soft, incredibly goofy smile spread across his face. "You really are a good person."
Tamara rolled her eyes, turning her back on him.
"Shut up and clean your cauldron."
[Ding! Mission complete.]
[Unlock Spell: Mending Charm (Reparo).]
Tamara felt the sudden, warm rush of magical knowledge carving a new spell circuit into her mind. Her foul mood improved by a microscopic fraction.
But the moment her dark gaze swept over the workbench and landed on the yew wand resting casually near Harry's hand, that fleeting satisfaction vanished into the abyss.
'Just you wait, Potter,'she swore grimly in the dark, silent confines of her mind.'One day, I will take that wand back.'Her eyes narrowed into cold, murderous slits.'Right after I take your life.'
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