Chapter 109: Misunderstanding
In the late-night corridors of Hogwarts, the only sounds were the whistling drafts rattling the ancient windowpanes and the occasional, mournful sigh of a translucent ghost drifting through the stone walls. Cloaked in a heavy mantle, Tamara moved through the castle's shifting stairwells like a phantom.
Now was the time to strike. She had to seize the diary while that little red-haired mouse was at her absolute most vulnerable.
Would her midnight excursion arouse Dumbledore's suspicion?
'Hardly,' Tamara thought, a dark smirk curving her lips beneath the hood. Who could possibly suspect a kind-hearted, angelic girl who merely broke a few trivial school rules out of deep concern for a distressed younger student?
She didn't even need to guess whether Ginny Weasley was asleep. As the main soul, Tamara possessed an instinctive, obvious link to her own fragmented horcruxes. Right now, that sixteen-year-old diary slice was in an extremely active state, greedily feasting on its host's life force and terror. When a soul was being drained dry and a mind teetered on the very edge of collapse, peaceful sleep was an absolute impossibility.
That red-haired brat was undoubtedly shivering in some dark corner right now.
Soon enough, Tamara arrived at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. Inside her ornate frame, the portrait of the Fat Lady was snoring loudly, her painted chins trembling with every heavy exhale.
Tamara stopped dead in front of the canvas. Naturally, she had no idea what absurd password this group of brainless lions used. But for a witch who had just mastered advanced spells, a mere painting was no obstacle. Magic portraits were essentially just mimetic inanimate objects—woven together from enchantments, oil paint, and a fragmented segment of memory. They possessed no true souls, and their mental defense mechanisms were even flimsier than a mountain troll's.
With a smooth, practiced motion, Tamara drew her holly wand from beneath her cloak. She leveled the tip directly at the sleeping woman's face.
"Confundo."
A hidden, insidious surge of magic seeped silently into the canvas. It spread like ink in water, domineeringly overwriting the portrait's underlying logic.
The Fat Lady woke with a violent start. She rubbed her eyes in utter confusion, blinking down at the petite figure shrouded in the hooded cloak.
"Password?" the Fat Lady asked out of sheer habit, though her painted eyes had already begun to glaze over, wandering aimlessly.
"I am a second-year Gryffindor student. I just went to the bathroom and forgot the password," Tamara stated in a perfectly level, monotonous tone.
"Oh... oh, of course, you poor child. It is so easy to forget things when you wander the halls in the middle of the night. Go on in, dear; it's freezing out there."
The Fat Lady smiled with vacant affection. Without a single shred of suspicion, the heavy portrait swung forward, revealing the circular passageway behind it.
A mocking sneer curled Tamara's lips. She stepped easily into the lions' den.
The Gryffindor Common Room was suffocating. The air was thick with a nauseatingly warm, cozy atmosphere that made Tamara's stomach churn. Scarlet armchairs were scattered haphazardly across the worn rugs, and a few charred logs in the hearth stubbornly radiated residual heat into the dim room.
Tamara's eyes, exceptionally sharp in the gloom, instantly locked onto a shadowy corner at the far end of the room.
There, a conspicuous head of fiery red hair was curled up tightly in an oversized sofa. The girl was shivering violently.
Ginny Weasley had her face buried deep in her knees, her shoulders twitching in suppressed, ragged gasps. Her pale knuckles were completely white as she clutched a worn, black-leather diary to her chest. She was clearly trapped in a state of extreme panic and mental exhaustion.
Her sixteen-year-old self—that despicable, arrogant slice residing within the pages—was currently gorging itself without restraint on this magnificent banquet of fear.
Like an experienced hunter stalking wounded prey, Tamara deliberately lightened her steps. She closed the distance to that dark corner slowly, letting a heavy sense of pressure build in the air.
She had already constructed the perfect interrogation script in her mind. She would use a cold, merciless voice to expose Ginny's darkest secret. She would completely shatter the girl's final, fragile mental defenses with sheer terror, and then forcibly rip that diary from her hands to refine it on the spot!
Stopping right beside the sofa, Tamara looked down at the trembling girl from her superior height.
"Ginny Weasley."
Tamara deliberately lowered her pitch, making the syllables sound dark, heavy, and full of absolute authority.
Ginny jolted violently. She whipped her head up like a startled rabbit caught in the jaws of a wolf. Her red, swollen eyes were wide with extreme fear and utter helplessness. The sixteen-year-old Tom's relentless bewitchment had already stripped away her ability to distinguish reality from hallucination; for a split second, she truly believed the monster from the chamber walls had finally come to drag her away.
However, when her blurry vision finally focused on the face standing in the shadows...
The sheer terror in Ginny's eyes froze.
It was Tamara Riddle.
In Ginny's rapidly collapsing world, this high-and-mighty, brilliant Slytherin had actually braved the dark corridors late at night just to check on her!
Due to prolonged, agonizing mental exhaustion, Ginny's brain had completely lost its basic capacity for logic. She didn't even pause to consider an extremely fatal, common-sense loophole: How did a Slytherin bypass the Fat Lady's portrait in the dead of night and stroll so openly into the heavily guarded Gryffindor Common Room?
"Tamara..."
Before Tamara could even begin her flawlessly calculated pressure tactic...
Ginny let out a pathetic whimper, a sound entirely composed of grievance and total emotional breakdown.
Immediately after, the red-haired Gryffindor girl moved. Like a lost toddler who had finally spotted a parent after being bullied in the streets, Ginny lunged from the sofa. She carelessly tossed the dark diary aside and threw herself forcefully into Tamara's arms!
The sheer kinetic force of the desperate tackle was so great that it sent the completely unprepared Tamara stumbling back half a step.
Tamara instantly froze. She turned into a pillar of cold, unyielding stone.
Her hands hung awkwardly in mid-air. Within those pitch-black eyes, a terrifying, apocalyptic storm of slaughter erupted.
'This stupid brat from a family of impoverished blood traitors... this pathetic puppet who couldn't even guard her own mind... she actually dares to rub her disgusting tears and snot all over my pristine robes?!'
Tamara's fingers twitched, trembling violently within her wide sleeves.
The Virtue System, ever vigilant, seemed to instantly sense her surging, volcanic killing intent. A faint, warning current of electricity had already begun to crackle and flow through Tamara's fingertips.
Just then...
Ginny began to wail helplessly against her chest. "Waaa... Tamara... why... why is everyone else so cold? Only you... only you would come to care about me in the middle of the night..."
She buried her wet face deeper into the Slytherin's robes. "I knew it... I knew you were the best person in the whole school..."
Tamara took a slow, agonizingly deep breath.
To avoid attracting the attention of the other sleeping Gryffindors upstairs... to keep that meddling old fool Dumbledore from getting any use on her... to maintain her flawless, angelic disguise... and, most, to keep herself from being electrocuted into a drooling idiot...
This Dark Lord, who had once struck paralyzing terror into the entirety of the British wizarding world, forcibly swallowed that heaven-shaking killing intent right back down into her stomach.
She lowered her hands in absolute humiliation. After a full, agonizing five-second pause in mid-air, she patted Ginny's back. The motion was so rigid and stiff it could have been performed by a reanimated corpse.
"...Don't be afraid."
Tamara gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached, forcing a sickeningly gentle voice up from her throat. "Tell me, what happened?"
Hearing this soft comfort, Ginny cried even harder, as if finally uncorking all the suppressed terror she had suffered from the diary's torment over the past weeks.
Tamara ruthlessly suppressed her physical nausea. Her cold gaze passed right over Ginny's shaking shoulder, locking sharply onto the black-leather diary discarded on the sofa cushions.
The little book lay there quietly.
But Tamara could clearly feel it. The sixteen-year-old soul slice inside was currently radiating a magical fluctuation thick with hostility and intense defensiveness.
Two generations of Dark Lords, separated only by a sobbing, hiccuping red-haired girl, engaged in a silent, deadly confrontation.
Tamara decided to settle this farce quickly.
While continuing to stiffly stroke Ginny's messy red hair, she began her psychological inducement, perfectly mimicking the tone of a deeply caring older sister.
"You look so tired, Ginny."
Tamara's voice was soft, laced with a subtle, hypnotic magic designed to penetrate the mind. "There is a heavy burden weighing on your heart. Something dangerous that is slowly corroding you."
Ginny's ragged crying gradually subsided. She sniffled, raising her red, swollen eyes to look at Tamara in absolute shock.
"You... you actually noticed?" Ginny's voice trembled with incredible emotion.
"Of course." Tamara looked down at her with manufactured tenderness, her gaze unobtrusively flicking toward the diary. "So, why not give it to me? Hand over the source of your pain for me to keep safe. I promise it will never hurt you again."
Tamara felt a surge of dark satisfaction. Perfect psychological suggestion. Precise, flawless inducement. For a brat with such pathetically weak willpower, this was a total checkmate.
However.
Ginny sniffled hard. A sudden, blinding light of firm realization flashed in her tear-filled eyes.
"Tamara, you're so good!"
Ginny gripped Tamara's hands with overwhelming emotion, fresh tears streaming down her freckled face. "You're right! I really was being crushed by those heavy burdens!"
She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "I've been reading those sad Muggle romance novels lately. Their plots are so hopeless and depressing that they make me feel like life is pointless every single night! I've even started having terrible hallucinations because of them!"
A tiny, dangerous crack appeared in Tamara's perfectly disguised, gentle expression.
"...What?"
"You really are such a perceptive and kind person!" Ginny was moved entirely beyond words. "You've enlightened me! I shouldn't read those sad Muggle novels and add to my own mental burden anymore!"
Ginny spun around. Huffing and puffing with sudden, manic energy, she dropped to her knees and dragged a massive stack of Muggle melodramatic paperbacks—nearly half a meter high—from a hidden corner underneath the sofa.
Then, she shoved the entire, heavy pile of books directly into Tamara's arms all at once.
"Thank you so much, Tamara! By giving them to you to keep, I can finally be completely free!"
Ginny wiped her remaining tears with a heavy sigh of relief. Then, showing what she clearly thought was great consideration, she reached over, picked up the black-leather diary from the sofa, and carefully stuffed it right back into her inner robe pocket.
Noticing Tamara's dead, lingering gaze fixed on the diary, Ginny scratched her head and explained with a sheepish little smile.
"This diary... it's the only place I can pour out all this pain. Tom has always been a very good listener... Of course, now I have you too!"
Ginny looked up at Tamara with pure, unadulterated adoration. "I'll tell you everything from now on! Tamara, thank you so much for coming to see me in the middle of the night!"
Tamara stood completely frozen. Her arms were loaded with a massive, heavy stack of Muggle romance novels that reeked of cheap ink and decaying paper. She stared blankly down into Ginny's crystal-clear, utterly stupid eyes.
A deep, heavy, apocalyptic silence fell over the entire Gryffindor Common Room.
Amidst this suffocating silence, that damned Virtue System exploded inside her mind without a single shred of warning, accompanied by the obnoxiously cheerful sound effects of bursting fireworks.
[Ding! Sincere gratitude from a lost lamb detected!]
[What a touching late-night redemption! With your gentle listening and selfless care, you have successfully soothed a soul on the verge of breaking! You have become the only lighthouse in the red-haired girl's long night!]
[Quest reward issued: Love +1 (Current Love: 24)]
[System Evaluation: This is the power of bonds! Love is the greatest magic in the world! Please continue to use your warm embrace to influence everyone around you!]
Deep within the darkest, coldest recesses of her heart, Tamara let out a desperate, chilling laugh of pure mockery.
'Tom... you actually chose such an idiot with a head full of slugs to be your vessel.''It really is... pathetic.'
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