Chapter 111: Three Fools
Midnight.
Tamara and Hermione moved like two silent ghosts through the darkened corridors, evading the prefect patrols before pressing their backs against the heavy oak doors of the Library.
She had not yet unlocked the Disillusionment Charm from the system, but lacking a specific spell hardly meant she was helpless against the crude alarm wards set by Madam Pince. For a Dark Lord who had once stripped the very essence of magic down to its raw, bleeding core, even the most basic incantations could produce terrifying results when backed by absolute micro-manipulation and theoretical superiority.
She drew her holly wand. Her dark eyes narrowed, adjusting to the gloom, and instantly pierced through the illusion of empty space. To her gaze, the magical tripwires interwoven across the doorway glowed faintly, strung through the air like a venomous spiderweb.
Standing half a step behind her, Hermione gripped the edges of her robes, her knuckles turning white. Miss Know-It-All had read in Hogwarts: A History that the anti-theft net woven by the librarian was notoriously complex. Even upper-year students, armed with advanced counter-curses, found it nearly impossible to breach without triggering a screeching alarm.
Yet, as Tamara stood before the imposing doors, a flicker of cold mockery and faint nostalgia danced in the depths of her dark eyes.
These wards might have looked like an impossible chasm to Hermione, but to Tamara, they were as primitive as a rotting wooden fence in a backyard. After all, over fifty years ago, a Slytherin prefect named Tom Riddle had stood in this exact spot. Countless times, bathed in the midnight moonlight, he had effortlessly bypassed these very permissions, slipping into the Restricted Section to gorge himself on ancient tomes detailing soul-splitting and the darkest of magics.
Hogwarts librarians came and went, but the foundational defensive arrays of the Library remained stagnant. She knew every blind spot in the runic sequences etched into the wood. She knew the weaving logic of every single tripwire by heart.
She did not need high-level counter-spells. Going head-to-head with the array was a tactic reserved for brutes and fools.
Tamara simply raised her holly wand. Relying on the muscle memory burned deep into her very bones, she calmly located the weakest, most fragile node in the magical net. With a flick of her wrist, she traced two basic runes into the cold air.
"Confundo."
"Alohomora."
Two dim, almost imperceptible rays of light shot forward, sinking flawlessly into the heavy brass lock and the surrounding web of tripwires.
The Confundo charm did not attempt to shatter the array. Instead, it slid into the underlying judgment logic of the alarm magic, twisting its perception. In an instant, the defensive wards were tricked into believing that the person standing outside the door was none other than Madam Pince herself.
A split second later, the Alohomora struck. Acting like an invisible, razor-sharp steel needle, it bypassed the rebounding hexes layered over the wood and silently mangled the internal mechanical tumblers of the brass keyhole.
With a soft, metallic click, the heavy oak door slid open, revealing a sliver of the pitch-black abyss inside.
Behind her, Hermione drew in a sharp, ragged gasp, so thoroughly shocked she forgot to exhale.
A Confundo and an Alohomora?!
Tamara had actually dismantled the Library's high-level, multi-layered protections using nothing but two first-year spells! The terrifying precision in her magical control, the deep, surgical understanding of the underlying arrays required to pull off such a feat—it was beyond comprehension. The way Hermione stared at Tamara's back shifted entirely, melting from mere admiration into a fervent, burning reverence.
"Follow me closely," Tamara commanded, her voice dropping to a barely audible whisper. She did not bother to glance back at Hermione's naive, wide-eyed expression as she pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold. "Don't step into the moonlight."
Hermione clamped a hand over her own mouth, terrified of breathing too loudly, and shadowed Tamara's every step. Together, they slipped smoothly into the suffocating darkness of the Restricted Section.
Under the faint, controlled glow of a Lumos charm, Hermione practically vibrated with excitement. She lunged toward the rows of chained, peeling ancient books, her eyes scanning the cracked spines with desperate earnestness.
Tamara, meanwhile, leaned her shoulder against a dusty bookshelf, her expression flat. She watched the foolish Gryffindor perform a completely futile task, digging through a vast sea of useless literature.
Then, a sound.
Tamara's keen hearing picked up the faint, almost nonexistent whisper of fabric rubbing against fabric. It was approaching slowly from the far end of the narrow aisle.
Someone was here.
Tamara's gaze sharpened into daggers. She instantly extinguished the Lumos on her wand tip, plunging them into total darkness, and yanked Hermione hard behind her back. Her muscles coiled tight, her holly wand leveled straight ahead into the black void.
The faint, muffled footsteps drew closer. Yet, the aisle remained completely empty.
When the unseen intruder was less than a meter away, Tamara moved. With lethal, decisive speed, her left hand shot out, grabbing violently at the empty air.
"Bloody hell!"
Two suppressed, panicked yelps echoed in the quiet space. Tamara's fingers closed around a strange, silken material, pulling down a heavy sheet of fabric that flowed like liquid water over her knuckles.
The next second, two disembodied heads, sporting messy hair and utterly terrified expressions, hung suspended in mid-air without warning.
Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.
The four of them froze, staring at each other in the pitch-black Restricted Section. The air instantly thickened with a bizarre, suffocatingly awkward silence.
"Harry?! Ron?!" Hermione nearly shrieked, slapping both hands over her mouth to muffle the sound.
"Hermione?!" Ron's eyes bulged so far out of his skull they looked ready to drop onto the floorboards. Then, his gaze shifted to the stony, murderous face beside her. "Tamara? What are you two doing here?"
"We're here to look up information on the Chamber of Secrets," Hermione whispered urgently, her eyes darting in shock toward the shimmering Invisibility Cloak clutched in Harry's hand. "What about you? Why are you here?!"
Harry scratched the back of his messy head, a flush creeping up his neck. His green eyes flickered nervously over Tamara's freezing glare as he mumbled his explanation.
"We... we're also here to look up information. Something happened to Tamara's cat last night, and we wanted to help her find the heir hiding in the shadows..."
Hearing those words, Tamara slowly closed her eyes.
In the darkness, her chest rose and fell with a deep, significant breath.
These Gryffindors. Instead of sleeping in their beds like normal, brainless children, they had risked expulsion. They had sneaked into the Restricted Section in the dead of night, all for the noble purpose of helping her—the contemporary Dark Lord, the true opener of the Chamber of Secrets, the sole, undisputed Heir of Slytherin—catch the 'evil heir'.
Was there anything more utterly, hilariously absurd in this entire miserable world?
"Since our purpose is the same, shut up and start searching quickly."
Tamara squeezed the words out through tightly gritted teeth. She knew, with absolute certainty, that if she had to listen to one more syllable of their touching, idiotic declarations of friendship, she would lose all control and cast Avada Kedavra to send these three morons to an early grave.
Spurred by Tamara's icy tone, the three little lions fell into a highly efficient, self-motivated rhythm. After scouring the shelves, they finally managed to extract a few fragmented snippets of information regarding the Chamber of Secrets from a crumbling, dust-covered history of the school.
When it was time to retreat, the logistics became a nightmare.
The four of them were forced to squeeze together under the single Invisibility Cloak. To avoid exposing their ankles, Harry and Ron hunched their shoulders, shuffling awkwardly, while Hermione pressed her side tightly against Tamara to make room.
Tamara endured the suffocating confinement. Three distinct waves of vigorous, sweaty adolescent body heat radiated from the Gryffindors, pressing in on her from all sides. Her face darkened so thoroughly it looked as though it might drip black ink onto the floorboards.
This farcical midnight adventure finally reached its conclusion outside the portrait hole of Gryffindor Tower.
Tamara shook off the three lingering idiots without a second glance, turning on her heel. She descended the shifting staircases alone, letting the damp, familiar chill of the dungeons wash away the stench of Gryffindor nobility.
When she finally reached the Slytherin Dungeons, she tiredly pushed open the concealed stone door leading into the common room.
The space was quiet, the dying embers in the grand fireplace casting a dim, greenish glow across the leather furniture.
Sitting on the widest sofa, dressed in his silk pajamas, was the platinum-haired Draco Malfoy.
He was entirely surrounded by towering piles of crumpled, discarded parchment. Several school owls lay sprawled across the low table, looking completely exhausted. Draco himself gripped a long quill, vigorously and aggressively crossing out names with heavy red ink on a massive scroll.
Hearing the heavy stone door grind shut, Draco's head snapped up.
The moment he saw who had entered, his pale grey eyes instantly lit up.
"Tamara! You're back!"
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