Chapter 64: Punishment
The three figures pressed their backs flat against the freezing stone walls, inching toward the Gryffindor Tower with the exaggerated caution of seasoned cat burglars. Though they had just managed to slip through Argus Filch's grasping fingers, the frantic hammering in their chests had yet to subside.
"Don't worry," Harry whispered, his breath ghosting in the chilly draft as he offered a comforting glance. "Ron is keeping watch in the corridor right by the Trophy Room. If a Professor comes anywhere near, he'll signal us."
Tamara rolled her eyes, a delicate scoff escaping her lips. 'Trusting a Weasley with anything more complex than breathing is a fatal error,' she thought darkly.
"I trust Malfoy far more than that red-headed idiot," she murmured aloud, her tone laced with casual disdain. "I sent him to the Trophy Room as well."
Harry and Hermione froze mid-step. Their heads snapped toward her in unison, eyes wide with absolute horror.
"You did what?!" Hermione hissed, the sound caught somewhere between a frantic whisper and a strangled scream. "You sent Malfoy to keep watch too? In the exact same place?!"
"What? Is there a problem?" Tamara arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, genuinely unbothered.
Before the Gryffindor girl could even formulate a response, a sudden, violent cacophony of shouting echoed down the distant corridor. It was immediately followed by the sharp, unmistakable crack of a spell backfiring.
"That is the problem!" Harry groaned, burying his face in his hands in utter despair.
Five minutes prior, in the dimly lit corridor just outside the Trophy Room.
Ron leaned heavily against a suit of armor, idly twirling his wand between his fingers, thoroughly bored out of his mind. The silence broke with the soft scuff of expensive leather shoes. Draco Malfoy stepped out from the shadows of an adjoining archway.
Their eyes met. The air instantly soured.
Draco's first instinct was to hurl a nasty hex and a string of insults. But just as his grip tightened on his wand, Tamara's recent teachings flashed through his mind—a true Slytherin, she had instructed, knows how to gracefully ignore the ants beneath their boots.
So, he took a slow, deep breath. He lifted his chin, smoothed his robes, and attempted to perfectly mimic Tamara's signature look of high-and-mighty indifference.
"Move aside, Weasley," Draco drawled coldly. The imitation was a bit stiff, lacking Tamara's effortless aristocratic grace, but the intent was clear. "I have no desire to waste my time on you."
Ron blinked, completely thrown off. He stared at the blonde boy as if looking at a certified lunatic. "Are you sick, Malfoy? Why are you acting all dark and brooding in the middle of the night?"
"I am on an important mission," Draco replied, lowering his voice to a dramatic register, a heavy hint of superiority dripping from his words. "Unlike you, simply loitering around like a stray dog."
"Mission?" Ron caught onto the phrasing immediately. An unshielded, mocking sneer broke across his freckled face. "Riddle sent you, didn't she? Stop pretending you're doing anything else."
"What is it to you?" Draco's forced composure cracked, a defensive frown pulling at his lips.
"Of course it's my business. It is absolutely hilarious to watch," Ron fired back, crossing his arms over his chest. His tone dripped with a toxic mixture of pity and contempt. "Just look at yourself now, Malfoy."
Ron let out a harsh, barking chuckle. "Right now, you are nothing but a lapdog trailing at Riddle's heels. You bite whoever she tells you to bite, and you stand guard out in the cold whenever she snaps her fingers."
He leaned in, twisting the knife. "You don't even look like a proper Slytherin anymore. You act like her personal House-elf."
House-elf.
The hyphenated word landed like a physical, stinging slap across Draco's pale cheeks.
For a fiercely proud heir of the Malfoy lineage, being compared to a lowly, groveling slave was a humiliation far more agonizing than the Cruciatus Curse itself. But the absolute worst part—the part that made his blood boil and his vision swim—was that deep down, Draco felt a sickening twist of truth in the accusation.
In front of Tamara, he truly was becoming increasingly, undeniably subservient.
Having the one truth he desperately wanted to avoid exposed by his greatest rival, Draco's fragile grip on rationality instantly shattered.
"Shut up! You pathetic, penniless loser!"
Draco's face flushed a violent, blotchy red all the way down to his collar. His carefully constructed facade of aristocratic indifference vanished completely. He roared, ripping his wand from his robes.
"How dare you call me a servant?! I'll rip your mouth apart!"
"Was I wrong? You lapdog!" Ron yelled back, drawing his own battered wand.
"Die! Locomotor Mortis!"
The spell missed wildly. A massive, deafening metallic crash echoed through the silent corridors of the castle, the sound of a heavy iron halberd and a breastplate clattering to the stone floor ringing out louder than a Dragon's roar.
Silence fell instantly.
The two boys stood frozen, staring blankly at the scattered fragments of ancient armor on the floor, their anger evaporating into pure, icy dread.
"We are doomed..." Ron whispered.
Before either could take a single step to flee, a harsh, emerald light flared to life, illuminating the entire corridor.
Professor McGonagall stood at the far end of the hall. She wore a tartan dressing gown and a tight hairnet, but her appearance was anything but comical. The fierce light from the tip of her wand cast long, sharp shadows across her face, highlighting the absolute, trembling fury etched into every line of her features.
"What are you doing?!" Her voice exploded through the corridor like a crack of thunder.
Draco and Ron nearly jumped out of their skin. Panic seized them, but just as they pivoted to sprint in opposite directions, a swift flick of Professor McGonagall's wand hit them both with a precise Body-Bind Curse, locking their limbs in place.
"In the middle of the night! Dueling in the corridors! And destroying school property!" Professor McGonagall marched forward, her thin lips trembling with unadulterated rage. "What do you think Hogwarts is? A gladiator's colosseum?!"
Right at that exact, miserable moment.
"Professor... actually..."
An incredibly ill-timed, hesitant voice drifted out from the nearby shadows.
Harry, Hermione, and Tamara had just rounded the corner. Before they could even attempt to duck behind a mix, they were caught completely flat-footed in the glaring wandlight.
Professor McGonagall whipped her head around. Her sharp eyes locked onto the three young Wizards emerging from the gloom, all of them looking suspiciously disheveled, covered in faint traces of dust and nervous sweat.
"Potter? Granger? And... Riddle?"
The Deputy Headmistress's eyes widened behind her square spectacles, staring at the assembled group in sheer disbelief.
Three Gryffindors. Two Slytherins.
This specific combination of students, gathered together in the dead of night, looking like they had just crawled out of a warzone—the entire scene was utterly, incomprehensibly bizarre.
"What on earth is going on here?!" Professor McGonagall demanded, her tone leaving absolutely no room for evasion. "Why are you all together? Why are you not in your beds at this hour?!"
The five first-years exchanged panicked, fleeting glances.
No one dared to breathe a single word about the Dragon. Norbert was a massive, illegal secret. If they confessed to smuggling a Norwegian Ridgeback out of the castle, Hagrid would be sent to Azkaban, and they would all be expelled before breakfast.
"Um..." Hermione stammered, her brilliant mind racing frantically, yet failing to conjure a single plausible excuse.
"Professor."
Tamara stepped forward. She tilted her chin up, her delicate face maintaining a mask of perfect, serene calm that still managed to carry a faint, aristocratic arrogance.
"We meant no harm. This was actually... a practical field observation for Astronomy."
She gestured gracefully toward the tall arched window, pointing at the glittering night sky, and smoothly began to spin absolute nonsense.
"Mars's trajectory is highly unusual tonight, and I simply wished to point it out to Potter and Granger. Unfortunately, upon our return, we encountered a sleepwalking Weasley, and Malfoy, who was merely attempting to wake him up..."
Harry and Ron nodded frantically in the background, bobbing their heads like broken toys, even though neither of them had the faintest clue what a planetary trajectory was.
The excuse was laughably terrible.
Even as Tamara subtly attempted to trigger her system skill, [Harmless], the passive magic failed to take hold. Professor McGonagall, currently operating at the absolute peak of her fury, easily shattered through the skill's meager ten percent success rate.
Professor McGonagall took a long, shuddering breath.
She clearly did not believe a single syllable of that elegant lie. To her experienced eyes, this looked exactly like what it was: a group of over-energetic, foolish first-years sneaking out for some idiotic midnight adventure, only to end up violently clashing due to bitter House rivalries.
"Enough." Professor McGonagall's voice sliced through Tamara's smooth sophistry like a frozen blade. "I do not care what absurd tales you wish to spin. Wandering the corridors at night, engaging in private duels, destroying school property, and... blatantly lying to a teacher."
Her stern gaze swept across the line of pale, guilty faces, finally settling heavily on Harry and Tamara.
"I am deeply disappointed in all of you."
"Fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor."
Harry and Ron both let out a sharp, horrified gasp.
"Each," Professor McGonagall added mercilessly.
"What?!" Harry felt his knees go weak. He nearly collapsed right there on the stone floor.
That was one hundred and fifty points!
"The exact same applies to Slytherin," Professor McGonagall said, pivoting her sharp glare toward Tamara and Draco. "Fifty points each."
All the remaining color drained from Draco's face, leaving him looking like a sickly ghost. He could vividly picture the terrifying, venomous expression Professor Snape would wear when he checked the hourglasses in the morning.
A grand total of two hundred and fifty points. Wiped out in a matter of seconds.
It was a catastrophic blow, more than enough to send both Gryffindor and Slytherin plummeting straight to the bottom of the House Cup rankings.
"Now, all of you, return to your dormitories immediately." Professor McGonagall commanded, her tone brooking no further argument. "As for your detentions... I will notify you of the arrangements later."
The five students trudged away, heads bowed, looking exactly like a pack of thoroughly beaten dogs.
They walked in suffocating silence. It wasn't until they had rounded two separate corners, ensuring Professor McGonagall was well out of earshot, that the heavily suppressed tension finally detonated.
"This is all your fault! You penniless, clumsy mole!" Draco hissed venomously, rounding on Ron. "One hundred points! Professor Snape is going to actually murder me!"
"You are the one who drew your wand first!" Ron shot back, his fists clenched at his sides. "If you weren't acting like such a rabid, stuck-up dog—"
Listening to the incessant, brainless bickering of these two absolute imbeciles, Tamara stopped dead in her tracks.
"Shut up."
She stood at the rear of the group. Her voice was barely above a whisper, yet it carried a chilling, unnatural resonance, as if the words were drifting straight out from the deepest pits of hell.
Tonight, she was truly, utterly exhausted. Her physical vessel ached from the manual labor of hauling a heavy crate up a tower, but her mental fatigue was infinitely worse.
She had dirtied her hands with manual labor. She had lost Potter's incredibly valuable Invisibility Cloak. She had suffered a massive point deduction, and now, the indignity of a looming detention hung over her head.
And the sole, infuriating cause of this entire disaster was simply because these two monumental idiots lacked the basic cognitive function to stand still and keep quiet.
Dark, violent memories of her past life surged into her mind like a freezing, suffocating tide.
When a subordinate ruined a carefully laid plan through sheer, unadulterated stupidity, the Dark Lord's instinctive reaction had only ever been one thing: swift, merciless, agonizing punishment.
That deeply ingrained tyranny, etched into the very core of her soul and practiced over decades of absolute rule, flared to life. A dangerous, bloody glint of scarlet flashed across her pitch-black eyes.
Tamara's slender hand slid smoothly into her sleeve, her fingers wrapping tightly around the polished wood of her holly wand.
Hidden beneath the heavy fabric of her robes, the tip of her wand leveled directly at the two backs in front of her, still shoving and cursing at one another. She didn't need to unleash any complex, destructive Black Magic. A simple, sustained Cruciatus Curse would be more than enough to permanently teach these whelps the true meaning of silence, and the absolute necessity of respecting their betters.
'Crucio...'
The vicious, unforgivable incantation rolled off her tongue in a silent, deadly breath.
However, arriving a fraction of a second faster than the magic itself was the piercing, deafening blare of an alarm inside her skull.
[Warning! Extremely malicious intent to attack classmates detected from the host!]
[Violation of the Amity Principle! Initiating Level 2 Punishment: High-Voltage Electroconvulsive Therapy!]
A brutal, numbing surge of electricity violently arched through her spine.
"Ugh..."
The Dark Lord tried to swallow the sound, but a short, pitiful whimper was forcefully ripped from her throat, quickly dissolving into a broken, ragged gasp.
Tamara's knees buckled instantly. The strength vanished from her limbs, and she slid downward, her robes pooling around her as she barely managed to prop her trembling body against the icy stone wall. The intense voltage sent her heart racing, flushing her pale cheeks with a deep, feverish, and entirely abnormal redness.
The harsh physiological stimulus forced hot tears to well up in the corners of her eyes. Her gaze, which merely a second ago had been brimming with cold, calculated killing intent, now looked wide, glassy, and as though she had just suffered an unimaginably cruel grievance.
"Tamara?!"
Hearing the soft thud and the choked gasp, the four boys and Hermione whipped around simultaneously. Panic immediately replaced their anger as they sprinted toward the fragile-looking girl who had suddenly collapsed against the wall.
Tamara stared fixedly up at the circle of concerned, looming faces leaning over her. She desperately wished she could raise her wand and tear every single one of them to bloody pieces.
But trapped in the paralyzing afterglow of the system's electrical current, she lacked the strength to even twitch a finger.
She wanted to roar. She wanted to bellow curses that would make their blood curdle. But as her lips parted, the only sound that managed to escape was a weak, breathless, and entirely non-threatening mutter.
"...Go away, all of you."
Despite Tamara's repeated, breathless claims that she was perfectly fine, the others absolutely refused to listen. They insisted she was suffering from shock and exhaustion, hovering over her like anxious mother hens.
She tried to shove them away, channeling every ounce of her remaining willpower into her arms. But under the lingering, muscle-melting aftereffects of the system's punishment, her physical resistance was genuinely weaker than a newborn kitten's.
In the end, she suffered the ultimate indignity.
Harry and Draco hooked their arms under her shoulders, supporting her weight entirely as they half-carried her down the corridors like a wounded soldier. Amidst Hermione's frantic whispers of "Hang in there" and Ron's panicked mutters of "Don't die on us," the Dark Lord was hauled all the way down into the dungeons, right to the hidden stone entrance of the Slytherin Common Room.
It wasn't until she was finally deposited onto the soft, emerald-green silk sheets of her four-poster bed in the girls' dormitory that the bone-deep, agonizing current finally began to fade.
She lay there, paralyzed, staring rigidly up at the canopy. She focused all her hatred upward, wishing she possessed the power to spontaneously combust the velvet bed curtains with her glare alone.
Naturally, that was the exact moment the true culprit residing inside her head let out another nauseatingly cheerful exclamation.
[Ah... what a truly touching scene, Host.]
There was an unmistakable, dramatic sniffle in the mechanical voice, as if the system were holding back tears of joy.
[This is the true bond of youth! Being supported when you fall, having someone to lean on when you are feeling weak—it seems your daily acts of kindness have finally borne beautiful fruit!]
[Even when you made a mistake and lost points, your precious friends still stayed right by your side to care for you. Tell me, Host, isn't this feeling so much warmer than those gloomy Death Eaters of yours, who only ever knew how to grovel and kowtow?]
Tamara closed her eyes. She took a slow, rattling breath, her hands clenching into fists so tight her fingernails bit into her palms. Through rigidly gritted teeth, she squeezed out a single, venomous vow to the empty room.
"...I am going to kill you."
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