Chapter 151: The Truth
Harry's lungs burned. The metallic taste of blood and ash coated his tongue. He swung his wand in a desperate, sweeping arc, but the frantic gestures yielded absolutely nothing.
A black tide of hairy, clicking legs surged over the crushed bodies of their own kin, an endless wave of arachnid nightmares closing the circle.
"It's no use, Harry!" Ron's voice cracked into a hysterical sob. He waved his own wand—a pathetic, splintered twig held together by peeling Spellotape. "There are too many... we're dead!"
A deafening roar shattered the canopy's oppressive silence. The battered blue Ford Anglia burst through a thicket of thorns, its headlights blazing like furious eyes. Tires spinning, it crushed a dozen smaller spiders beneath its chassis, screeching to a violent halt inches from the boys' knees.
"Get in!" Harry screamed. He wrenched the passenger door open, grabbing the paralyzed, whimpering Fang by the scruff and hauling the heavy boarhound onto the seats.
Before Harry could dive in after him, the roof buckled. A massive Acromantula slammed onto the metal overhead. Giant, razor-sharp pincers clicked with a sickening snap, punching straight through the steel ceiling mere inches from Harry's scalp.
As if triggered by a silent command, the surrounding swarm lunged. A sea of black, hairy bodies crashed over the blue chassis, instantly burying the car in darkness.
It was over.
Harry squeezed his eyes shut. He braced his shoulders, waiting for the agonizing rip of fangs tearing into his flesh.
But the pain never came.
Instead, a voice cut through the chaos. It was crisp, cold, and dripping with chilling elegance.
"Diffindo."
It was a first-year spell. The most basic of severing charms.
Yet, what followed was a sharp, ear-splitting shriek of displaced air. There was no flash of light, only the terrifying pressure of an invisible guillotine sweeping outward.
Pshhh—!!!
The giant spider perched triumphantly on the car roof didn't even have time to twitch. It split perfectly down the middle. Thick, foul-smelling green hemolymph erupted like a geyser, painting the cracked windshield in a gruesome wash of slime.
That was merely the appetizer.
The voice echoed again, this time laced with raw, irrepressible violence and sadistic glee.
"Incendio!"
BOOM!!!
A towering pillar of flame erupted from the shadows. It didn't just burn; it roared, twisting into the massive, terrifying visage of a fire dragon. It was the embryonic form of Fiendfyre, violently wrestled into shape by sheer magical dominance.
The fiery beast unhinged its molten jaw and charged headlong into the swarm. Wherever the heat wave passed, chitinous carapaces vaporized into white ash. The spiders' agonizing screeches were instantly swallowed by the roaring inferno.
The impenetrable black tide was brutally torn open. Blistering heat rolled through the clearing, carrying the heavy, nauseating stench of roasting flesh and burnt hair.
Through the swirling vortex of firelight and drifting ash, a slender silhouette stepped out from the treeline.
She wore a tailored dragon-hide cloak over pristine casual clothes. In her hand, a pale holly wand rested casually, its tip still spitting dangerous, crackling sparks.
Her porcelain face was a mask of absolute indifference, yet her pitch-black eyes burned with a murderous ecstasy that eclipsed the surrounding flames.
Tamara Riddle.
She surveyed the writhing, burning mass of potion ingredients before her, a cruel, satisfied smirk curling her lips.
'What a... feast.'Through the smoke, she hadn't yet noticed the battered metal box buried beneath the carcasses, nor the two soot-stained boys trembling beside it. To the Dark Lord, this was nothing more than a giant, self-delivering nest of premium Acromantula venom.'All of you, die.'
Tamara raised her wand higher, the magical pressure around her dropping the ambient temperature. She prepared to unleash something truly devastating to wipe the entire colony off the map.
Then, a sudden gust of wind swept the smoke aside.
The dilapidated blue Ford Anglia sat in the clearing. Beside it, two filthy, wide-eyed Gryffindors stared at her in absolute, stunned silence.
Tamara's wand froze in mid-air.
The sadistic, murderous glee on her face instantly shattered, as if someone had just shoved a live Boggart down her throat.
Harry Potter?
Ron Weasley?
Why in Salazar's name are these two brainless trolls here?!
A loud buzzing echoed in Tamara's skull, followed immediately by a sickening churn in her stomach that felt worse than swallowing a bucket of live slugs.
She had come to this wretched forest to slaughter spiders and harvest their venom.
And she had just accidentally saved the Boy Who Lived?
Before she could curse her rotten luck, the system's interface flared to life in her vision.
[Oh dear, host, don't overthink it! As long as the outcome is good, it's fine!]
That saccharine, relentlessly perky electronic voice chimed in her head, dripping with infuriating cheerfulness.
[Even though you didn't let me finish my sentence earlier, this is what they call 'all roads lead to Rome'! Ah, the beautiful bond of fate~]
'Shut up!!' Tamara roared in her mind, her facial muscles twitching violently.
Harry, who had just taken a tentative step forward to express his deep gratitude, flinched violently at her murderous glare. He swallowed hard, his voice barely a squeak. "We... we didn't say anything?"
Tamara stared at the two gaping idiots, slowly closing her eyes in sheer, unadulterated despair.
Meanwhile, deep in the shadows of the hollow, Aragog—the fifty-year-old patriarch of the colony—was emitting a high-pitched, clicking shriek of absolute terror.
His milky, blind eyes couldn't see the girl standing in the clearing, but he didn't need to. As a magical creature with razor-sharp instincts, every biological alarm bell in his massive body was screaming at him to flee.
It wasn't that he recognized her face. It was a primal, bone-deep shudder originating from the very core of his soul. It was the absolute, paralyzing suppression of a creature facing its ultimate apex predator.
The aura bleeding off that tiny human was suffocating. It was darker, colder, and infinitely more malicious than the oldest, most twisted horrors lurking in the Forbidden Forest. It was even more terrifying than the ancient enemy—the Basilisk—that spiders dared not name.
"Run... children... run!"
Aragog scrambled backward, his eight massive, hairy legs trembling so violently they could barely support his weight. Abandoning his offspring without a second thought, the giant arachnid let out a final, pathetic squeal and dragged his bloated abdomen into the deepest, darkest crevices of the cavern.
With their patriarch fleeing in blind panic, the remaining swarm instantly broke.
The surviving spiders scattered like cockroaches under a boot, scrambling over each other to dive into the underbrush and rocky fissures. In the blink of an eye, the clearing was empty.
All that remained was a scorched earth littered with twitching carcasses, bubbling green blood, and burning webs.
And Tamara.
She stood perfectly still, her face darker than the soot-stained bottom of a potions cauldron.
[Ding! Congratulations to the host for completing the hidden achievement—'Guardian of the Forbidden Forest'!]
The system's celebratory fanfare exploded like fireworks in her aching head.
[Combat Rating: S-Rank! A perfect display of Slytherin elegance and power!]
[Behavioral Judgment: In a situation of extreme danger, disregarding personal safety to go deep into the Forbidden Forest to save classmates! What noble friendship! What great Courage!]
[Reward Settlement:]
[Health +4, Current: 30.]
[Courage +5, Current: 44.]
[Unlocked Spell—'Obliviate' (Memory Charm)!]
[Unlocked Spell—'Expecto Patronum' (Patronus Charm)!]
Tamara's eye twitched.
The Memory Charm was mildly useful. She could work with that.
But the Patronus Charm?
Unlocking a spell powered entirely by pure, unadulterated joy and positive emotions for a Dark Lord whose soul was a fractured void of hatred and ambition?
Was this system deliberately trying to humiliate her?!
What was the difference between handing her a Patronus Charm and handing a Squib a wand?!
"Tamara!!"
Before she could fully process the system's psychological critical hit, Harry was already scrambling over the scorched earth. He stopped a few feet away, his soot-streaked face radiating pure, unadulterated awe and gratitude.
"How did you know we were here? If it wasn't for you... we definitely would have died just now!"
Staring into those bright, hero-worshipping green eyes, Tamara felt a migraine pulsing sharply at her temples.
"Blimey!"
Ron finally poked his head out from behind the mangled door of the Ford Anglia. His freckled face was completely drained of color, resembling a sheet of old parchment. His lips quivered, his knees knocking together as the adrenaline crashed.
Yet, as he stared at the retreating shadows of the spiders, his terror slowly morphed into deep confusion and the bitter sting of betrayal.
"I don't understand..." Ron clutched his messy red hair, his voice cracking. "Hagrid told us to follow the spiders... he said if we followed them, we'd find a lead... but why did they want to eat us?"
He gestured wildly toward the dark cave. "That big spider... Aragog! It could clearly talk! It could even say Hagrid's name!"
Ron looked pleadingly at Harry, then turned his desperate gaze to Tamara, his tone heavy with the shattered innocence of a sheltered child.
"I thought... since they can speak human language, since they're intelligent, we could at least communicate with them... at least they should be reasonable! Aren't Hagrid and them friends?"
Those naive, pathetic words acted like a spark, instantly igniting the cold, mocking cruelty buried deep within Tamara's eyes.
Reasonable?
Friends?
"Shut up, Weasley."
Tamara snapped her head toward him. Her pitch-black eyes flashed with a predatory glint so chilling that Ron physically recoiled, shrinking his neck into his collar.
"Expecting reason from a pack of beasts?" she sneered, her tone dripping with aristocratic disdain and absolute superiority. "Have your brains been completely addled by the exhaust fumes of that junk car?"
With a casual, elegant flick of her boot, Tamara kicked a twitching, severed spider leg out of her path. She watched the thick green blood seep into the dirt, her gaze as detached and cold as if she were inspecting a pile of rotting garbage.
"Remember this, Weasley. Being able to mimic human speech does not mean a creature possesses human morality."
She paced slowly, her dragon-hide cloak billowing slightly in the heated wind. "In the minds of these monsters, there is only hunger, killing, and breeding. So-called language is nothing more than a convenient tool. They use it to deceive gullible prey, or to beg for mercy when a stronger predator has them by the throat."
She stopped, turning to look down her nose at the two hopelessly naive Gryffindors. Her voice dropped to a soft, cruel whisper.
"Non-human intelligent beings are inherently driven by cunning and greed. They do not deserve to be treated as equals. They only deserve to be enslaved, or slaughtered."
She let out a sharp, mocking scoff that cut through the eerie silence of the Forbidden Forest. "To actually lower your wands and try to negotiate just because a monster can string a few words together? Utter Gryffindor stupidity."
Harry opened his mouth to argue. His Gryffindor pride stung at the insult, but the words died in his throat. He had to admit, Tamara was absolutely right.
Aragog had spoken perfectly good English right before ordering his children to devour them alive.
But...
Harry's gaze drifted from the pale, dangerous face of the girl before him, down to the wand resting lightly in her fingers. He surveyed the hellish, scorched-earth carnage she had unleashed in seconds, and finally, his eyes locked onto the bulging crystal flask secured at her waist.
"But, Tamara..." Harry frowned, the gears in his head finally turning as reason pierced through the adrenaline. He asked the most critical question.
"It's the middle of the night. Why are you deep in the Forbidden Forest?"
He pointed a trembling finger at the smoldering, bisected spider corpses. "And... you seem very well-prepared for this. You didn't come looking for us, did you? You came specifically to kill them. Why?"
Facing the Savior's piercing green eyes—eyes that always seemed annoyingly adept at seeking out the truth—Tamara felt a surge of intense irritation.
She glanced down at herself. Her expensive dragon-hide cloak was splattered with dried green ichor, and the tip of her holly wand still curled with faint wisps of dark, acrid smoke. She looked like a seasoned executioner, not a model student out for a midnight stroll.
Normally, she would have spun a flawless, perfunctory lie, easily brushing off these two simpletons and keeping her true motives buried in the dark.
But right now, Harry's eyes were locked onto hers. And infuriatingly, there was no fear in them. Only an beyond understanding, stubborn concern and expectation.
Tamara's slender fingers tightened around her wand, the wood creaking slightly under her grip, before she slowly relaxed. She let out a soft, self-deprecating snort.
Whatever.
Technically, she had come here to save someone. Since that was the literal truth, why waste the mental energy concocting a fragile lie?
"For Ginny Weasley."
Tamara spoke, her voice slightly raspy, still carrying the faint, lingering edge of her earlier killing intent.
"What?" Harry blinked, completely derailed.
"I said, I came here to save that Weasley girl."
Tamara unhooked the crystal flask from her belt and held it up. The viscous, highly toxic green venom sloshed against the glass, shimmering with an eerie, sickly luminescence in the dying firelight.
"As her brother, and her friend, are you two truly so blind that you haven't noticed her condition lately? Her behavior has been entirely abnormal."
Her words carried her usual biting sarcasm, but this time, Harry heard something else beneath the ice. A sort of tight-jawed, gritted-teeth... concern.
"Ginny... she's just been a bit dazed lately..." Ron protested weakly, still leaning against the car.
"Dazed?"
Tamara sneered. A dark, dangerous shadow flickered in the depths of her eyes—a shadow only she understood the true meaning of.
"You call that frantic, obsessive state 'dazed'?" She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "That is a very rare, highly dangerous symptom of Dark Magic possession. If there is no intervention soon, she will quickly be hollowed out into an empty shell that only follows orders. Or, she will simply go completely mad."
She wasn't lying. She was just conveniently omitting the minor detail that she—or rather, her diary horcrux—was the one doing the possessing.
Tamara truly did want to save Ginny. Her primary motive, of course, was to stop the possessed girl from stalking her, forcing those wretched, greasy sandwiches upon her, and suffocating her with 'sincere' emotional devotion that triggered the system's nausea penalties.
Ron swallowed hard, his mind flashing back to Ginny's recent, terrifyingly intense behavior toward Tamara. It was hair-raising.
But his Gryffindor stubbornness flared. "Then... why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you go to Dumbledore?"
Tamara took a slow, deep breath, violently suppressing the overwhelming urge to point her wand and gift both of these idiots a point-blank Avada Kedavra.
"Ordinary potions are completely useless against the parasitic entity inside her," Tamara explained, her tone dripping with forced patience. "Only fresh Acromantula venom can be used as a catalyst to brew a potion potent enough to strip those... filthy things from her soul."
She scoffed, pocketing the flask. "Dumbledore can't even secure his own position at this school right now. And you lot? You're just a bunch of blundering trolls who can't even brew a basic Swelling Solution without melting your cauldrons."
She leveled a cold glare at Harry. "Relying on you... heh. I'm afraid Miss Weasley would have kicked the bucket long ago."
As Tamara looked at Harry, the phantom taste of those greasy, horrifying sandwiches assaulted her senses. The image of Ginny's infatuated, drooling face surfaced in her mind. A wave of genuine, visceral disgust and deep exhaustion bled unreservedly into her dark eyes.
She was truly, utterly fed up with this entire farce.
But to Harry, watching the beautiful, powerful Slytherin girl grit her teeth, this raw display of disgust was automatically—and heroically—interpreted as a deep, righteous loathing for Dark Magic.
"I couldn't just stand by and watch her continue to suffer like that," Tamara muttered, turning away to hide her twitching eye. "That's all."
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