Chapter 67: Encounter
The air inside the Forbidden Forest hung thick and unnaturally cold, clinging to the skin like damp iron. Towering ancient trees stretched upward, their massive canopies choking out the moonlight. Only a few scattered silver rays managed to pierce the dense web of branches, casting long, skeletal shadows across the forest floor. Beneath their boots, a winding, fluorescent trail of silver blood glowed faintly against the dark earth.
The group came to a halt where the overgrown path split in two.
"Alright, we're going to split up." Hagrid lowered his voice to a rough whisper, his beetle-black eyes fixed on the glowing puddles with a heavy, grave expression. "That thing is wounded and won't get far. Ron, Hermione, you're with me. Harry, Tamara, and Malfoy, you take Fang and go that way."
"I'm not going!" Draco's voice cracked, pitching upward into a shrill whine of absolute panic. He shrank back, his pale face gleaming with cold sweat. "That's the Forbidden Forest! There are werewolves in there! And you just said there's a blood-sucking monster!"
"If you are frightened, stay here and wait to be eaten by the monster," Tamara interrupted, her tone perfectly measured as she casually adjusted the collar of her dark cloak.
Outwardly, she was the picture of unwavering Gryffindor resolve. Inwardly, her mind sneered with absolute contempt. 'Whining little ferret. I should snap his legs and leave him as bait.'
Her dark eyes held not a single trace of fear. Instead, they gleamed with the quiet, thrumming excitement of a predator who had just caught the scent of fresh prey. "Or, keep up with me."
Draco swallowed hard. He looked at the pitch-black, gaping maw of the forest path, then back at the unnervingly calm girl standing before him. His jaw tightened. Gritting his teeth, he shuffled quickly to stand behind her.
"Fang is a coward too. He's a perfect match for you," Ron mocked from the side, a gloating smirk plastered across his freckled face.
"Shut up, Weasley!" Draco spat back, though his voice lacked its usual venom.
A few steps away, Hermione bit her lower lip, her brown eyes darting toward Tamara with heavy concern. Logically, she knew she had nothing to worry about. Tamara had single-handedly saved her from a fully grown mountain troll just months ago.
Still, she could not help herself. "You... stay safe."
Tamara shifted her gaze to the bushy-haired girl. She offered no verbal reassurance, simply giving a single, firm nod of her head.
'Unnecessary sentiment,'Tamara thought coldly, turning away.'As if anything in these pathetic woods could pose a threat to me.'
After a brief, tense exchange of final instructions, the group parted ways.
Tamara took the lead. She held a rusted kerosene lamp aloft, its flickering orange flame casting dancing shadows against the tree trunks. Her pace was entirely too steady, her footsteps light and even, as though she were taking a leisurely midnight stroll through the manicured gardens of a pureblood estate.
Harry walked a few paces behind her, his wand gripped so tightly his knuckles had turned stark white. His green eyes darted frantically toward every snapping twig and rustling leaf.
Bringing up the rear were Draco and Fang. Both boy and boarhound were practically vibrating with terror, flinching violently at every gust of wind.
"Tamara... are you sure we should keep going further in?" After ten agonizing minutes of walking, Draco finally broke the silence, his voice trembling so badly the words barely formed. "There's more and more blood here..."
He was right. The fluorescent silver liquid was no longer just a trail. It was splattered in thick, glowing smears across the gnarled tree roots and the broad leaves of the underbrush.
"This means we are very close to our target," Tamara murmured softly.
She paused, crouching gracefully beside a massive oak. Reaching out, she brushed her bare fingertips against a wet smear of silver blood clinging to the bark. She closed her eyes, letting her senses sink into the fluid.
'Pure, unadulterated magic,' she noted, feeling the raw, sacred power humming against her skin. But beneath that purity lay something else. A faint, cloying, utterly nauseating aura of darkness. It clung to the silver blood like a parasite.
It was the unmistakable stench of a rotting soul.
"Harry, do you feel it?" Tamara asked suddenly, rising to her feet.
Harry blinked, his free hand instinctively rising to clutch his forehead. His face was pale in the lamplight. "Feel... what?"
"Nothing." Tamara withdrew her hand, wiping the silver residue onto a nearby leaf.
It seemed the savior's infamous lightning-bolt scar had not yet registered the proximity of the main soul. That meant there was still some distance between them, though the gap was closing rapidly.
They pressed deeper into the gloom. The ancient trees grew so dense that their trunks seemed to merge into a solid wall of black wood. The air grew terrifyingly stagnant. Even the ambient chirping of forest insects had vanished entirely, leaving behind a suffocating, deathly silence.
Suddenly, a blinding patch of pure white broke through the darkness in a clearing just ahead.
"That's..." Harry gasped, the breath catching painfully in his throat.
In the dead center of the clearing lay a creature of impossible beauty. It possessed slender, elegant limbs and a mane that shimmered like spun pearls. But the stunning sight was violently shattered by reality. The creature's neck was twisted back at a grotesque, unnatural angle, and beneath its pristine body pooled a shocking, massive lake of glowing silver blood.
A Unicorn.
It was dead. Yet even in death, the sacred, striking beauty of the beast could not be extinguished. Against the backdrop of such pure radiance, the sheer cruelty of its slaughter felt infinitely more heinous.
"Who would do such a thing..." Harry whispered. His stomach churned violently, a wave of hot, sickening anger rising in his chest.
Draco was already too paralyzed by terror to form words. He squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed a fistful of Tamara's dark cloak, holding on as if it were his only tether to sanity.
Just then, a sound broke the silence.
It was a wet, hair-raising noise, like a massive, slimy mollusk dragging itself across wet stones. It emanated from the far side of the unicorn's glowing carcass.
Rustle... rustle...
The heavy bushes parted. A hooded figure, draped entirely in tattered black robes, slowly crawled out from the suffocating darkness. It looked less like a man and more like a massive, formless shadow beast. It did not stand. Instead, it dragged itself forward on all fours, moving with a jerky, animalistic gait as it approached the fallen creature.
The shadow lowered its hooded head, pressing its face directly against the jagged, torn wound on the unicorn's neck.
A wet, nauseating slurping sound echoed through the deathly silent clearing.
It was drinking the blood.
"Aah!!!!"
Draco's fragile composure finally shattered. He let out a shrill, ear-piercing scream, released Tamara's cloak, and spun around to flee.
The sudden noise acted like a physical blow. The dark shadow snapped its head up. Beneath the deep cowl of the hood lay a void of bottomless darkness, broken only by two pinpoints of flickering, crimson light.
Fang let out a pathetic, high-pitched wail. The massive dog tucked his tail firmly between his legs and bolted into the trees, abandoning them instantly.
And Harry—
"Aah!"
Harry suddenly dropped his wand. He slammed both hands against his forehead, his knees buckling as a cry of absolute agony ripped from his throat. Without the protection of a system to shield his mind, direct proximity to Voldemort's fractured soul hit him with full force. His scar burned with the intensity of a red-hot iron spike being driven directly into his skull. The blinding, white-hot pain instantly stripped him of all motor function. He collapsed into the dirt, writhing.
Only Tamara remained standing.
The dark shadow slowly rose to its feet. It remained heavily hunched over, its limbs twitching slightly, resembling a cursed, decaying specter rather than a living being.
The creature completely ignored the fleeing blonde boy. It did not even spare a glance for the savior writhing in agony on the ground.
Those glowing crimson eyes locked entirely onto Tamara.
A violent, invisible shockwave rippled through the clearing. A resonance, echoing from the absolute deepest depths of the soul, exploded between the two figures.
It was the aura of its own kind.
It was... its own aura.
"It's you..."
The dark shadow spoke. The voice that slithered from beneath the hood was not Quirrell's pathetic, stuttering stammer. It was a hoarse, shrill, and terrifyingly cold rasp that seemed to scrape against the inside of the skull.
"You... have my scent upon you..."
The shadow took a slow, dragging step toward Tamara. With every inch it moved, a suffocating, crushing pressure of pure Black Magic flooded the clearing, heavy enough to make the air itself feel toxic.
Tamara stood her ground. She did not take a single step back. Her dark eyes locked onto the hooded figure.
She looked at the "self" that had once been the most arrogant, invincible, and feared wizard of the age. She looked at the Dark Lord who had commanded armies, now reduced to a pathetic, broken parasite crawling through the mud to suck the blood of beasts just to survive another day.
A flash of deep, icy disgust crossed her features.
'Is this what I have become?'she thought, her internal voice dripping with absolute venom.'A wretched, starving beggar.'
"How unsightly," Tamara spoke, her voice dropping into a chillingly calm, imperious register that cut through the dark magic like a blade. "Look at you now... like a dog with its bones broken."
The dark shadow froze. For a fraction of a second, the clearing was dead silent.
Then, the air violently warped as the creature erupted into a state of absolute, murderous rage.
"Insolence... How dare you..."
The hoarse rasp vibrated with fury, but then, the creature seemed to realize something. The burning crimson eyes narrowed, and a sickening, ravenous greed began to flicker within the red light.
"A soul... a perfect soul..." the shadow hissed, the words dripping with hunger. "Join me... or become my nourishment..."
A withered, bone-white hand shot out from beneath the tattered black robes. Sickly green light began to coalesce rapidly at the tips of its long, spider-like fingers.
The main soul intended to devour her.
It could not tolerate the existence of a soul fragment that possessed an independent, defiant consciousness. More, it could not ignore a fragment that had somehow secured such a flawless, living physical vessel. If he could just shatter her mind and devour her soul, he could seize this body. He could bypass years of agonizing recovery and resurrect himself tonight.
Near the edge of the clearing, Draco's legs had finally given out completely. He had not made it far. Gasping for air, the pale boy looked back over his shoulder. He saw the towering monster raising its glowing hand toward Tamara. He saw Potter lying uselessly in the dirt.
"Tamara! Run!"
Draco did not know where the sudden burst of courage came from. Perhaps he simply could not stomach the thought of watching the only person he actually admired die in this filthy forest. His hands shook violently as he raised his hawthorn wand, desperately trying to cast a spell. But his throat was locked tight with terror. He could not force a single syllable past his lips.
"In the way."
The dark shadow did not even turn its head. It gave a casual, dismissive flick of its withered wrist. A vicious streak of crackling red light shot across the clearing, hurtling directly toward Draco's chest.
Draco squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the end.
But the agonizing impact never came.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Tamara's wand snapped upward. Her wrist flicked with a motion so sharp and precise it was nothing more than a blur in the darkness.
A massive, rotting tree trunk lying near the edge of the clearing instantly lost its gravity. It ripped itself from the forest floor, whistling violently through the air as it hurled itself directly into the path of the incoming spell, acting as a massive wooden shield between the monster and Draco.
Boom!
The dark jinx slammed into the levitated trunk with the force of a cannonball. A deafening explosion rocked the clearing. Massive splinters of rotting wood and chunks of bark shredded the air like shrapnel as the log was instantly blown to pieces.
It was a crude, unrefined method of defense, entirely lacking the elegance of a proper Shield Charm. Yet, the sheer density of the physical barrier absorbed the dark magic perfectly.
The concussive shockwave of the blast hit Draco hard, throwing his small body backward into the dirt, but the blunt force had just saved his life.
"Stay back, Draco," Tamara commanded.
She did not bother to look over her shoulder to see if the boy was unhurt. Her wand remained raised, pointed dead center at the hooded monster. Her voice was terrifyingly even, devoid of any panic or hesitation.
"This is no place for children."
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