Chapter 207: The Innocent
This was no genuine plea. It was a pathetic, sniveling probe wrapped in layers of cowardice.
The underlying threat was obvious: If my safety isn't guaranteed, my panicked little rat brain might just spill every dark secret I know to save my own skin.
Yet, instead of the fiery wrath one might expect from being threatened by a rodent, Tamara simply laughed. A low, soft chuckle slipped past her lips. The sound drifted through the freezing mist at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, laced with a slow, cruel amusement.
"Expose my secrets?" she repeated, the syllables rolling off her tongue like sweet poison.
Tamara crouched down with agonizing slowness. She pressed the tip of her holly wand under Peter's chin, forcing his mud-smeared, tear-streaked face upward inch by trembling inch. Her pitch-black eyes stared down at him, brimming with absolute, chilling mockery.
"Wormtail," she whispered, her voice a soft caress of pure malice. "It seems your tiny rat brain hasn't quite grasped the reality of our situation. Right now, you are not the one keeping a secret for me. I am the one maintaining a fragile layer of lies for you."
Peter's watery pupils contracted into pinpricks. His breath hitched, catching painfully in his throat.
"Go on," Tamara encouraged. Her tone was gentle, almost sweet, but her gaze was fixed upon him as though she were already inspecting a rotting corpse. "Go. Walk right up to Dumbledore's office of your own free will. Let the dear old Headmaster see how the martyred recipient of the Order of Merlin—the brave hero blown to pieces twelve years ago, leaving nothing but a tragic little finger—has survived all this time. Let him see how you've scurried through the shadows like a filthy pest that burns in the light."
She tilted her head, a dark smile playing on her lips. "Let them launch a full investigation into who the real Secret-Keeper was on that fateful night."
With the calm, measured cadence of a judge delivering a death sentence, Tamara leaned closer.
"You actually believe you hold use over me? The very second you dare to show your living face beneath the sunlight of Hogwarts... guess who will be the most eager to tear the flesh from your bones? Will it be Black, freshly escaped from Azkaban? The loyal Death Eaters rotting in their cells? Or perhaps the Ministry of Magic, once they realize they have been played for absolute fools for over a decade?"
A suffocating, dead silence fell over the damp earth.
Peter Pettigrew broke. The last pathetic illusion of his use shattered. The crushing reality finally sank into his cowardly mind: ever since that Halloween night twelve years ago, his existence was doomed to rot in endless darkness and fabricated lies.
"No... no..."
Peter collapsed completely, his knees sinking deep into the freezing mud. He sobbed, a wretched, despairing sound that grated against the ears. "Master... I will be obedient... I swear it! I'll hide in the Forbidden Forest! I won't go anywhere, I won't speak to anyone... Please, I beg you, don't abandon me..."
Tamara stared down at the deathly pale, groveling coward. A visceral wave of disgust curled her upper lip. She snapped her wand back, wiping the tip against her robes as if the mere proximity to his skin had soiled the wood.
"Transform back into that disgusting little rodent," she commanded from on high, her voice dripping with disdain. "And get out of my sight."
Peter gasped as if he had just been granted a royal pardon.
A sickening, wet crunch echoed through the trees as his bones violently contracted and shifted. In the blink of an eye, the balding, stout man vanished, replaced by a mangy, ginger-grey rat missing a single front toe.
The creature didn't dare cast a single glance back at the dark-haired girl. It scrambled frantically over the frost-covered roots and dead leaves, its tiny claws scraping against the bark as it fled desperately toward the absolute darkest depths of the Forbidden Forest.
Tamara watched the pathetic retreating figure, her dark eyes narrowing with utter contempt.
Traitors are never to be trusted. She knew this better than anyone. Snapping his neck right here and now would undoubtedly be the safest, most logical choice. The loyalty of the weak was the cheapest lie in existence; their submission was born solely from a lack of better options. For vermin like Wormtail, pure, unadulterated fear was the only chain that could hold them.
Unfortunately, she was currently trapped within the frustrating limitations of a twelve-year-old girl's body. She had no army. She had no loyal Death Eaters waiting at her beck and call.
An Animagus who could freely and invisibly traverse the darkest, most intimate corners of Hogwarts Castle was a perfectly tailored spy. Until she had ruthlessly squeezed every last drop of value from that miserable rat, turning him into a useless, rotting corpse was simply bad business.
Tamara stood alone among the towering, ancient trees and tilted her head toward the distant silhouette of the castle.
That freckled little fool from the Weasley family was likely stuffing his face with cheap candy right now, blissfully unaware that his beloved, decrepit pet was never coming back to his dormitory.
How to handle the Weasley boy's inevitable whining upon his return... That was the new, irritating puzzle to solve.
Snap.
The dead silence of the Forbidden Forest shattered. A heavy, rapid crashing of underbrush echoed through the mist. The violent noise originated from the direction of the castle grounds, hurtling toward her position with a reckless, desperate momentum.
Tamara's gaze instantly frosted over. Her fingers tightened around her holly wand.
As a Dark Lord who carefully calculated every breath and shadow, she absolutely loathed sudden variables. Deep within her pitch-black pupils, a sharp spike of paranoia flared—had someone seen?—followed immediately by a cold, merciless killing intent.
She didn't raise her wand to strike just yet. Instead, she stood perfectly still, blending into the gloom like a venomous snake coiled in the shadows, waiting for the prey to reveal itself.
The wet, thorny bushes at the forest's edge burst apart in a shower of snapped twigs and shredded leaves.
A massive black dog erupted from the undergrowth. It moved like a bolt of dark lightning, carrying the suffocating aura of a graveyard. Its thick fur was heavily matted with dried mud, burrs, and frost. Its gleaming, sunken eyes burned with an unhinged mixture of hatred and rabid rage.
Sirius didn't spare Tamara a single glance. His hyper-keen animal senses had already locked onto the lingering, foul stench of the traitor who had just vacated the area.
The giant hound stared obsessively at the dark gap between the gnarled tree roots where Peter had vanished. A low, vibrating growl tore from its throat—a terrifying sound of absolute determination, a promise to chase that rat straight down into the fires of hell and swallow him alive.
But the hollow beneath the roots was far too narrow. Even as a dog, his broad shoulders couldn't possibly squeeze through the gap.
Another bone-chilling display of twisting cartilage and shifting anatomy echoed in the clearing. The massive black dog rapidly elongated, rising onto two legs right in front of Tamara.
In the blink of an eye, the beast was gone. In its place stood a gaunt, towering man draped in filthy, tattered Azkaban prison robes. His dark, matted hair hung over his sunken face like a shroud. Looking every bit like a malevolent ghost that had just clawed its way out of the underworld, he suddenly whirled around and lunged.
His filthy, skeletal hands clamped down violently onto Tamara's shoulders.
"Where is that rat?!" he roared, shaking her. "Where did that rat missing a toe go?!"
Sirius Black's eyes were completely bloodshot, wild and unfocused. His voice was a hoarse, grating rasp, carrying a near-manic urgency that bordered on true insanity.
A lethal, venomous fury ignited deep within Tamara's soul.
Filth. If this were twelve years ago, any miserable wretch who dared to soil her robes with their unwashed hands would already be a vivisected corpse scattered across the grass.
Her wrist twitched. She prepared to drive her wand directly into this reckless mad dog's ribs and unleash a curse vile enough to snap his mind in half.
But just as the incantation formed on her tongue...
That utterly disgusting, perky electronic voice chimed in her mind, right on schedule.
[Ding! Warning! Lethal killing intent detected from the host!]
[The target, Sirius Black, has been determined to be an innocent. Any lethal strike against him is strictly prohibited unless the host's life is in immediate jeopardy!]
Tamara let out a vicious, mocking sneer in the confines of her mind.
Oh? Is that so? she retorted coldly to the system. When I was just burning through that rat's Dark Mark, melting his skin and flesh off his arm, why didn't I see you jump out to uphold your precious justice, you hypocritical piece of garbage?
A brief burst of static buzzed in her head before the system replied in an unhurried, almost patronizing tone:
[Ding! As determined by the system, Peter Pettigrew belongs to the Death Eater faction. The host's reasonable internal discipline of her subordinate qualifies as a standard management method and does not violate the Core Virtue Code.]
[However, if the host feels her conscience is troubled by her actions, this system is more than happy to provide an appropriate electric punishment!]
Keep it to yourself, Tamara spat silently.
She refocused her attention on the deranged man gripping her shoulders. Sirius Black was practically vibrating with blind rage.
Kill him?
No. Of course she wouldn't kill him now.
As a Dark Lord who had spent a lifetime mastering the art of manipulating human hearts, she knew the true value of the crazed fugitive standing before her. This broken man was the savior's godfather—his only remaining pseudo-relative in this miserable world.
In other words, he was Harry Potter's most fatal future weakness.
Keeping this mad dog alive and leashed, ready to be unleashed against Potter when the time was right, would provide her with an exceptionally sharp blade.
At that brilliant realization, the freezing, murderous aura surrounding Tamara vanished without a trace.
The passive skill [Harmless] quietly activated, washing over her features like a soft, golden glow.
When Sirius's crazed, bloodshot eyes finally focused on the person he was manhandling, he didn't see a dark lord. All he saw was a fragile, twelve-year-old Slytherin girl, utterly terrified by the sudden, violent assault.
Tamara's shoulders shrank back, trembling like a frightened bird. A flawless sheen of innocent tears and wide-eyed panic surfaced in her beautiful, deep black eyes.
She bit her lower lip, answering in a small, violently trembling voice that carried just the right amount of pained grievance from his bruising grip.
"Are... are you looking for Scabbers?" she whimpered, shrinking away from him. "A classmate named Weasley asked me to look after him... but he suddenly went crazy just now! He bit me and ran all the way out here, disappearing right into that tree hole..."
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