Chapter 115: Thinking Differently
Tamara's jaw locked so tightly her teeth threatened to crack. She forced the words through her lips, each syllable trembling with a volatile mixture of physical weakness and pure, unadulterated rage.
Gilderoy Lockhart froze. Caught in the crosshairs of her oppressive, murderous glare, the flamboyant professor actually shrank back. His polished boots squelched in the mud as he retreated from a second-year girl, completely abandoning his wand where it lay half-submerged in a dirty puddle.
A few feet away, Harry Potter lay sprawled in the muck, utterly dazed.
The agonizing throb of his shattered arm seemed to have been hit by a localized Memory Charm, vanishing into the background. His entire world narrowed down to a single focal point. There she stood. To protect him from Lockhart's incompetence, she had cast aside her umbrella. Now, she stood exposed to the biting, icy rain, her slender frame trembling as she held her wand steady in his defense.
And she was crying.
Harry stared up at her, his breath catching in his throat. A single, crystalline tear—forced out by the lingering agony of the System's electric punishment—slid down Tamara's pale cheek.
The sight shattered his reality. This was Tamara Riddle. The girl who constantly called him an idiot. The girl who looked down on everyone from an untouchable pedestal of arrogance and power.
She was actually... crying for him?
"Tamara..."
The name scraped past his lips, hoarse and thick with an emotion he had never known. For a boy who had spent his entire life locked in a cupboard under the stairs, starved of basic affection, this desperate display of protection was overwhelming. A rush of blinding warmth flooded his chest.
"I'm fine..." Harry murmured. He reached out with his uninjured, mud-caked hand, desperately wanting to comfort her, to touch her trembling sleeve. His bright green eyes swam with unspeakable gratitude and a heavy, suffocating attachment. "Don't cry. Please. I'm really fine..."
Tamara snatched her arm back, dodging his filthy fingers as if they were coated in bubotuber pus. "...Shut your mouth."
She stared down at his sickeningly affectionate expression. The boy looked ready to throw himself in front of a Killing Curse for her. Her stomach performed a violent, nauseating flip. If she wasn't currently paralyzed by the System's aftershocks, she would have reached into his mangled arm, ripped out the jagged shard of his broken bone, and driven it straight through his skull.
"Don't flatter yourself, Potter," she hissed, her voice dripping with venom. "I simply refused to watch this gilded buffoon vanish your bones by mistake. I have no desire to spend the next month watching you flop around the Great Hall seeking attention like a boneless slug."
Unfortunately, through the heavy, rose-tinted filter currently welded to Harry's brain, her vicious insult sounded exactly like the desperate cover-up of a shy, caring girl.
"I know, Tamara." Harry offered a foolish, lopsided smile. He was gasping through the pain of his shattered arm, yet his eyes shone with startling, blinding brightness. "I know you're just doing this for my own good."
Tamara closed her eyes. A deep, hollow despair settled over her soul.
There was truly no hope left for this miserable world.
"Draco!"
She refused to spend another second standing in this mud pit, drowning in the Gryffindor's nauseating delusions. She snapped her head toward the blonde Slytherin who had just skidded to a halt nearby. Her voice was weak, yet it carried the absolute authority of a tyrant.
"Don't just stand there gaping like an owl! Go get Hagrid! Drag this... this damn nuisance to Madam Pomfrey! Immediately!"
"Oh! Right! Right away!" Draco flinched, thoroughly intimidated by the sheer hostility rolling off her. He swallowed whatever mockery he had prepared for Potter and spun on his heel, sprinting off to fetch the gamekeeper without a single word of complaint.
Off to the side, Lockhart awkwardly retrieved his muddy wand, wiping it on his robes. "Actually, I really could have mended him in a jiffy," he muttered, offering a weak, gleaming smile to the crowd. "Young people these days... so terribly unreasonable..."
But faced with the hostile, contemptuous glares of the gathered students, the Defense professor wisely decided to slink back toward the castle.
Moments later, the ground trembled as Hagrid's massive frame barreled onto the pitch. The half-giant carefully maneuvered Harry onto a conjured stretcher. Yet, even as he was being hoisted away, Harry craned his neck backward. Those bright green eyes remained glued to Tamara, brimming with a suffocating gratitude and a desperate reluctance to leave her sight.
[Ding! Mission accomplished: Terminator of Medical Disputes!]
A barrage of cheerful, digital firework sound effects exploded inside Tamara's skull, aggravating her already pounding headache.
[Congratulations, Host! You have not only successfully prevented a horrific medical accident, but you have also completely shattered the Savior's emotional defenses with your fragile tears and desperate rescue!]
[Reward issued: Designated Skill Book x1 (Allows the Host to ignore Virtue Point restrictions and forcibly learn one standard second-to-third-year spell).]
[Reward issued: Basic Mana Potion x1 (Allows the Host to experience the mana capacity of a normal Wizard for ten minutes. Please use responsibly and do not harm anyone!).]
[Life +5!]
[Current Attribute Panel updated — Life: 26.]
[System Evaluation: This is the true power of bonds! Looking at his deeply affectionate gaze as he departed, don't you feel that the agonizing electric shock you endured was worth every single spark?]
Tamara stood perfectly still in the biting wind. The freezing rain plastered her dark hair to her cheeks and soaked heavily into her Slytherin cloak.
She ignored the glowing blue screens flashing across her vision. She ignored the soaring Life value, the rare items, and the hushed, admiring whispers of the students lingering on the pitch. She simply stared ahead, her dark eyes terrifyingly hollow.
She was a Dark Lord. She was a conqueror of generations. Yet, on this hellish afternoon, under the absolute coercion of a cheerful parasitic entity, she had personally taken her own cold-blooded dignity and smashed it into irreparable pieces.
"Tamara..."
The sudden shadow of a large black umbrella fell over her, cutting off the freezing downpour.
Draco stepped up beside her. He stared at her unnaturally pale profile, his gaze dropping to the heavy mud caking the hem of her skirt. His pale gray eyes swam with unconcealed heartache, but beneath the concern lay a bubbling, acidic well of grievance.
"Let's go back to the Dungeons. It's too cold out here." He lowered his voice, unable to mask the bitter resentment lacing his words. "To end up looking like this for that miserable Scarhead... it isn't worth it. Not at all."
Tamara did not speak. She merely turned her head with mechanical slowness, fixing him with the flat, dead-eyed stare of a corpse.
But Draco was entirely blind to the suffocating, low-pressure aura radiating from her. He was too busy replaying the nauseatingly devoted look Potter had given her from that stretcher. The jealousy festering in his chest finally boiled over.
"...I just don't understand, Tamara."
Draco bit his lower lip. He kicked a clump of muddy turf with the toe of his dragon-hide boot, his voice tight and awkward. "You clearly hate that Scarhead. You despise him. But the way you acted just now... it looked like you were genuinely terrified something bad was going to happen to him!"
The more he spoke, the more thoroughly aggrieved he became. He jerked his head up, his gray eyes locking onto her face as he forced out the pathetic, burning question at the very bottom of his heart.
"If today... I mean, hypothetically." He swallowed hard. "If the person being hunted by a rogue Bludger up there was me... If I was the one who fell off my broom and ended up with a mouthful of mud..."
His voice dropped to a quiet, testing murmur, heavy with desperate expectation. "Would you... would you throw everything aside and run over to save me? Just like you saved Potter?"
The rain drummed a steady, hollow rhythm against the taut fabric of the umbrella.
Tamara closed her eyes. The throbbing in her temples escalated to a blinding crescendo. Why had she stopped Lockhart? Could she possibly tell this spoiled heir that she only intervened because she was terrified a System penalty would fry her brain until she became a drooling invalid?
Slowly, her dark eyes fluttered open. The lingering redness from the electric shock remained, but the delicate, pitiful fragility was entirely gone. In its place was a vast, freezing expanse of pure mockery.
She turned to fully face him, staring dead into his expectant, hopeful features.
"If the person who fell was you?" Her voice was still hoarse, but the tone was laced with absolute, razor-sharp contempt. "Listen to me very carefully, Draco."
She leaned in. A chilling, suffocating pressure rolled off her shoulders, pressing down on him as she enunciated every single word.
"If you ever prove yourself stupid enough to fail at dodging a tampered Bludger... If you ever allow yourself to plummet from the sky like a useless sack of rags and shatter your arm in front of the entire school..."
She let out a low, breathy laugh. Her gaze was utterly devoid of human warmth.
"Then not only would I refuse to run over and save you... I would personally walk over to your pathetic, muddy body, raise my boot, and snap your other arm myself."
Draco's breath hitched. His eyes widened in sheer horror, and the hand gripping the umbrella handle trembled violently.
"Because Slytherin has absolutely no use for the kind of trash who cannot even protect himself," Tamara whispered, her voice a venomous hiss. "We do not need weaklings who require others to fish them out of the mud. If you ever dare to let yourself fall into a state as pathetic as Potter's..."
She flicked a stray droplet of water from her soaked cuff with deep disgust. "...then do not ever claim to know me. It would be entirely too embarrassing."
Without a single backward glance, she shoved past him. Stepping out from beneath the safety of his umbrella, Tamara walked away, letting the icy downpour swallow her retreating figure.
Draco stood frozen in the mud, thoroughly flayed alive by her barbed words.
For several long seconds, he just stared at the empty space she had occupied. Then, miraculously, the heavy grievance weighing down his features evaporated. Not only did it vanish, but a strange, manic light began to kindle in his gray eyes. The corners of his mouth twitched, slowly curving upward into a grin.
"Did you hear that..." he muttered to the empty air.
He stared at Tamara's cold, retreating back. The bitter jealousy that had been eating him alive vanished, instantly replaced by a rush of feverish, intoxicating pride.
"What she meant just now... she meant that Potter is a piece of trash who requires pity! But her requirements for me are higher! She expects me to be powerful! She expects me to never be as embarrassing as Potter!"
His grin widened into something bordering on euphoric. "I knew it! Sympathy and pity are only for the weak! And I am the Slytherin who is going to stand by her side!"
Nodding vigorously to himself, Draco tightened his grip on the umbrella. Fueled by a sudden, massive spike of adrenaline, he sprinted after her through the puddles like a fiercely loyal guard dog who had just been praised by its master.
"Wait for me, Tamara!" he shouted over the roaring rain. "I'll cast a Drying Charm on you right away!"
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