Chapter 205: Choosing or Not Choosing
Dust motes danced in the dim light of an empty third-floor classroom. Harry slumped heavily against the cold stone corner, his chest heaving with ragged, desperate gasps. Icy sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead and soaked through his robes, leaving him shivering.
He pressed a jagged chunk of chocolate against the roof of his mouth, letting it melt. The rich, bittersweet warmth slowly trickled down his throat, acting as a fragile dam against the shrill, agonizing screams still echoing in the hollows of his skull.
Ever since that suffocating encounter on the Hogwarts Express—and the subsequent revelation that his Boggart took the shape of a Dementor—a suffocating sense of helplessness had clawed at his insides. As much as Harry detested Tamara Riddle's icy, venomous demeanor, a dark, quiet corner of his mind could not help but concede to her twisted philosophy regarding power. He refused to be weak. He refused to be a useless, trembling victim waiting for death to claim him the next time the shadows grew cold. That fierce, burning denial was exactly why he had hounded Professor Lupin, begging relentlessly for the magic to fight back.
"You did very well, Harry. Truly. For a first attempt, it was already quite outstanding."
Professor Lupin's voice was a soothing balm in the quiet room. He offered a gentle, tired smile as he snapped the brass catches shut on the battered wooden packing case, sealing the Boggart away. The heavy locks clicked into place with a definitive thud.
"The Patronus Charm is an exceptionally advanced piece of magic," Lupin continued, his threadbare robes swishing as he turned. "It demands that you summon your purest, most powerful happy memories. For you, that is no simple task. The pain you have endured is far heavier than anything your peers could ever comprehend."
Harry offered a tight, bitter smile, his gaze dropping to the scuffed floorboards. He said nothing.
"Dementors are among the foulest creatures to walk this earth." Lupin let out a long, ragged sigh, hoisting himself up to sit on the edge of a nearby desk. "They drain peace, hope, and happiness from the very air. If you allow them to get too close, they will force you to relive your most terrible, agonizing experiences until there is nothing left but despair."
"I know..." Harry whispered. His fingers tightened around his holly wand. Unbidden, the memory of the freezing compartment on the Hogwarts Express flashed behind his eyes—the rattling glass, the decaying, scabbed hand, the creeping frost.
"Just like that day on the train... with you and Miss Riddle." Lupin's gaze grew distant, shadowed by a deep, unreadable emotion as he recalled the aftermath of that journey.
At the mere mention of the name Riddle, the muscles in Harry's back locked. He stiffened, his knuckles turning white around his wand. Beneath the calm surface of Lupin's voice, a thread of deep-seated worry pulled taut.
Ever since that fateful Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, the Boggarts manifested by the Slytherin students had left a lingering unease in the professor's mind. But it was Tamara's Boggart—her unfathomably dark and terrifying ultimate fear—that had planted a seed of deep doubt and intense wariness toward the girl.
"Harry," Lupin began, measuring each syllable with deliberate care. "Do you and Miss Riddle interact much outside of class? She... well, what I mean to ask is, what kind of person is she on a normal day?"
Harry fell into a heavy silence.
A chaotic storm of images flooded his mind. Tamara Riddle standing tall. Tamara sneering. Tamara bleeding. Good, bad, vicious, kind, utterly hypocritical, and yet, strangely sincere.
But beneath all those shifting masks, one thing remained absolute: whenever she looked at him—and only when she looked at him—the sheer, unadulterated disgust and hatred burning in the depths of her dark eyes was like a cursed brand etched into her very soul. It was forever sharp. Forever cold. Forever constant.
In a shifting, unpredictable world full of lies and forced pleasantries, it seemed that loathing Harry Potter was the single, absolute truth of her existence. It was the only thing she never bothered to disguise.
"I don't know..." Harry finally murmured. He lowered his head, his thumb unconsciously stroking the smooth wood of his wand. His voice cracked, heavy with a bitter, tangled confusion.
"Professor, if a person..." Harry paused, his brow furrowing as he struggled to organize the chaotic mess of his own thoughts. "If someone seems to despise you on the surface... if they constantly attack you with the most vicious, cruel words imaginable..."
He swallowed hard.
"But then, at the most critical moments, she steps forward to save you without a second of hesitation. Yet, the absolute second the danger passes, she flips right back to treating you like her worst enemy."
Harry lifted his chin. His bright emerald eyes, swirling with raw frustration, locked squarely onto Lupin's scarred face.
"Faced with someone like that, what am I actually supposed to do? Should I believe the horrible things she says, or should I believe the things she does?"
Lupin blinked, genuinely taken aback. He clearly had not anticipated such a deeply complex, painfully mature question from the thirteen-year-old boy. As the professor stared into Harry's eyes—eyes that were a perfect, heartbreaking mirror of Lily Evans's—his expression softened into something incredibly gentle, laced with a heavy, nostalgic sorrow.
"That is indeed a difficult question to answer, Harry," Lupin murmured, letting out a soft, melancholic sigh. He opened his mouth, preparing to elaborate, but the words never left his throat.
The heavy classroom door swung open with a harsh, impolite bang.
Severus Snape swept into the room, his black robes billowing like storm clouds behind him. His pale hands gripped a transparent crystal goblet, thick with a violently steaming liquid. Within seconds, a pungent, eye-watering bitterness saturated the air, choking out the faint smell of dust and chocolate.
"Sorry to interrupt your cozy little extracurricular tutoring session."
Snape's voice was a silky, venomous drawl. He swept a freezing glare over Harry, his dark eyes brimming with their usual, undisguised loathing. With a sharp, deliberate motion, he slammed the smoking goblet down onto the desk right beside Lupin's hip.
"Your potion, Lupin," Snape sneered, the words grinding through his teeth. "The Headmaster insisted that I remain to watch you drink it."
Harry stared warily at the bubbling, foul-smelling concoction. His stomach twisted. He had not forgotten the sheer depths of Snape's malice; what if the Potions Master had finally snapped and poisoned it?
But Lupin harbored no such fears. He offered Snape a mild, genuinely grateful smile. Without a single twitch of hesitation, he lifted the crystal goblet, tilted his head back, and drained the vile, sludgy Wolfsbane Potion in three large gulps.
Watching Lupin swallow the brew, Snape let out a derisive, cold snort. He spun on his heel without another word and swept out of the classroom, taking his suffocating, icy aura with him. The door clicked shut, leaving a heavy silence in his wake.
"Professor, what was that potion?" Harry asked, unable to keep the urgent concern from his voice. "Could he have..."
"Don't worry, Harry. It is merely a potion to help me keep my mind clear," Lupin said with a reassuring smile, smoothly cutting off Harry's dark speculations. "Professor Snape may possess a rather sharp temper, but his mastery over the art of Potions is entirely unquestionable. If it weren't for his efforts, I wouldn't have had the chance to stand at this lectern at all this term."
Harry scowled, finding that incredibly hard to swallow. The murderous glare Snape had leveled at Lupin just moments ago looked exactly like a man calculating the best angle to slide a knife between his ribs.
Catching the deeply conflicted twist of Harry's mouth, Lupin suddenly recalled the heavy conversation Snape had derailed.
"Harry, regarding the question you asked me earlier." The professor set the empty, stained goblet aside. His tone dropped, becoming solemn and resonant.
"Some individuals, whether due to traumatic past experiences or their own inherent nature, grow accustomed to weaving cold thorns and vicious language into an impenetrable fortress." Lupin looked out the window, his eyes tracing the distant grounds. "In their eyes, any genuine display of emotion is a fatal weakness. It becomes a bleeding vulnerability for others to exploit."
"Therefore, they would much rather wield meanness to mask their care, and project arrogance to violently reject sympathy. Because only behind those high, cruel walls can they feel any true sense of safety in this unforgiving world."
Harry listened in quiet absorption. Unbidden, Tamara's face surfaced in his mind's eye—that pale, flawless mask, always so perfectly expressionless, always designed to keep the entire world at arm's length.
"We cannot force a person to change how they choose to express themselves, Harry." Lupin reached out, his scarred hand resting lightly on the boy's shoulder. "But there is one absolute truth you must remember: words can be easily disguised, but actions do not lie."
Lupin leaned in, holding Harry's gaze, emphasizing every single syllable.
"Do not listen to the venom she spits at you. Look at what she does for you when you are in the gravest danger, when you are most desperate for help. If a person is willing to risk their own life to stand as a shield before you, then even if they spout the nastiest, most unforgivable curses... they are definitely not your enemy."
Harry's chest tightened. In truth, he had absolutely no idea why Tamara threw herself into harm's way to save him time and time again. Every time she did, her eyes screamed that she wished he would just drop dead on the spot.
Seeing the boy's features still twisted in agonizing conflict, Lupin gave his shoulder a final, comforting squeeze.
"Harry, do not force yourself to accept everything all at once. If you feel that this deeply contradictory relationship brings you nothing but pain, or if you simply cannot figure out how to handle her hurtful defenses... then choosing to let go, choosing to stay far away from her, is a perfectly valid solution. Protecting your own heart is vastly more important than unraveling a painful mystery. Walking away is never something to be ashamed of."
'Should I stay away from her?' Harry asked himself, a bitter taste rising in the back of his throat.
Pure logic dictated that Professor Lupin was entirely correct. Severing all ties with that venomous, prickly Slytherin would undoubtedly make his daily life at Hogwarts a hundred times easier.
Yet, deep in his subconscious, a stubborn, quiet voice knew the truth. He simply could not do it.
The entire Wizarding world stared at the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, demanding a performance from The Boy Who Lived. Others looked deep into his green eyes, only to see the tragic reflection of a dead woman.
Everyone... except Tamara Riddle.
From the very moment they met, she had openly sneered at the golden halos forced upon his head. In those bottomless dark eyes, perpetually steeped in malice, there was no searching gaze trying to find James or Lily. There were no blind, suffocating expectations of a savior. There was only pure, unadulterated, bone-deep hatred directed entirely at Harry Potter himself.
Harry could not begin to explain why that raw, undisguised malice actually gave him a bizarre sense of grounded reality. He only knew one thing for certain: as this terrifying, hateful girl continued to appear like a guardian angel right when he needed her most, his gaze was permanently locked onto her.
He could not look away. He could not turn a blind eye.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Harry nodded slowly. "I understand, Professor," he said, his voice ringing with quiet sincerity. "Thank you."
Stepping out of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Harry found that the heavy weight pressing down on his chest had not lightened in the slightest. He wandered down the corridor until he found a secluded, shadowed corner of the staircase and slumped down onto the cold stone steps.
Reaching into the inner pocket of his robes, his fingers brushed against the folded, yellowed parchment that Fred and George Weasley had shoved into his hands earlier that day.
Recalling the twins' hushed, conspiratorial instructions, he drew his wand with a spark of curiosity and tapped the blank parchment lightly.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
The moment the somewhat comical incantation left his lips, magic bloomed. Fine, spiderweb-thin lines of ink bled rapidly across the ancient parchment, branching out and connecting until they sketched a sprawling, incredibly detailed map of the entire Hogwarts castle and its grounds.
Harry's breath hitched in sheer amazement. Tiny, animated ink dots crawled across the mapped corridors, each accompanied by a minuscule, floating name.
"This is brilliant..." he breathed, his eyes wide.
Excitement briefly overriding his gloom, he eagerly scanned the sprawling parchment for familiar names. He spotted Argus Filch lingering suspiciously near the entrance of the Great Hall, and Albus Dumbledore pacing in slow, measured circles up in the Headmaster's office.
Suddenly, his wandering gaze snagged on the very edge of the map.
Two tiny ink dots were pressed close together, moving steadily along the rugged path leading directly toward the Forbidden Forest. Beside one of the dots, written in crisp, unmistakable lettering, was a name that made his heart skip a beat.
Tamara Riddle.
"What is she doing going out to the Forbidden Forest?" Harry muttered, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
Today was a Hogsmeade weekend. Aside from the third-years and older students who had gone down to the village, everyone else was strictly confined to the safety of the castle.
The perimeter of the Forbidden Forest was currently a designated patrol zone for the Dementors. It was practically a death trap. Harry highly doubted Tamara possessed the magic to fend off those foul creatures—if she did, she would not have collapsed into the same shivering, helpless state he had experienced on the Hogwarts Express.
A spike of protective panic flared in his chest. He instinctively shifted his gaze to the second, smaller black dot trailing closely behind Tamara Riddle, desperate to see who on earth was foolish enough to accompany her.
However.
The moment Harry's eyes focused on the tiny line of elegant cursive script floating beside that second dot, the confused frown on his face shattered. His blood ran cold.
It was a name he had never once heard within the walls of Hogwarts. Right there, practically overlapping with Tamara's ink dot on the edge of the dark woods, the name was written with absolute clarity:
Peter Pettigrew.
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