Chapter 209: The Shrieking Shack
The wind howling at the edge of the Forbidden Forest seemed to sharpen, biting through their robes like icy fangs.
Harry's mind was a chaotic mess. The hand gripping his wand trembled, knuckles white.
"Even if what Tamara said is true! What does Peter have to do with this?" Harry gritted his teeth, his voice cracking as he shouted, "The Daily Prophet made it crystal clear—you're the murderer!"
"It was a setup! I didn't betray James and Lily!" Sirius roared, his voice ragged and incoherent. "It was that bastard who sold them out—"
"Shut up! Don't you dare mention my parents' names!"
Just as the haggard man desperately tried to explain, Tamara, who had been watching this pathetic family reunion with absolute, cold detachment, keenly sensed a shift in the atmosphere.
'If these two idiots are going to continue this nauseating Gryffindor melodrama...'
Her holly wand slid smoothly into her palm.
"I suggest you take a look around first," Tamara interrupted, her voice a chillingly calm contrast to their screaming.
At some point, the withered leaves carpeting the forest floor had frosted over. A thick, unnatural rime crept up the trunks of the ancient trees.
Over a dozen towering figures, draped in tattered, rotting black cloaks, glided silently toward the clearing. The sheer despair and explosive anger radiating from Harry and Sirius had acted like a beacon, drawing every Dementor patrolling the perimeter straight to them.
"Damn it!"
Sirius instantly shrank, his bones snapping and shifting as he transformed back into the massive black dog. He lunged forward, his jaws clamping down hard on the hem of Harry's robes, violently yanking the boy backward.
At the same time, the grim-like dog snapped its head toward Tamara, letting out an urgent, panicked bark.
Traveling with a rabid mutt and the insufferable Savior was clearly a terrible life choice. But right now, options were nonexistent.
Tamara felt the suffocating aura of despair thickening the air. The temperature plummeted, and her face darkened until it looked ready to drip ink.
'Once upon a time, when would the great Dark Lord ever have needed to spare a single glance for these filthy, soul-sucking parasites?'
But reality was a bitter pill. Her current, restricted shell couldn't possibly withstand a siege by dozens of Dementors. Her magic reserves were too pitiful.
Without a second of hesitation, Tamara pivoted and sprinted after the black dog, tearing along the jagged edge of the Forbidden Forest.
The biting wind sliced across her pale cheeks like razor blades. Ahead, the Whomping Willow loomed in the darkness, its massive, thick branches thrashing wildly against the night sky. The large black dog dove headfirst into a narrow, hidden tunnel nestled deep beneath the violent roots. Tamara and Harry scrambled in right behind it.
The dark, earthy tunnel was damp and smelled of rot. It felt endless as they crawled through the suffocating pitch-black space.
After what felt like an eternity of scraped knees and bruised elbows, the earthen walls gave way to rotting wood.
Pushing up a heavy, splintered floorboard, the trio emerged into a dilapidated, dust-choked room—the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade.
The massive black dog collapsed in the center of the ruined parlor, its chest heaving violently before the flesh rippled, transforming back into the emaciated form of Sirius Black. He lay sprawled on the floorboards, gasping for air.
Having narrowly escaped the Dementors' kiss, the interrupted trial immediately resumed.
For the next ten minutes, the cramped, dusty shack transformed into a dumping ground for explosive Gryffindor emotional venting.
Through grimy tears, Sirius frantically confessed the truth of how he had cleverly switched Secret-Keepers at the last moment, only to be framed when Peter Pettigrew blew up the street and faked his own death.
Harry, his eyes red and wide with shock, interrogated him relentlessly.
Sadness, fury, regret... the two erupted into a heavy, agonizing back-and-forth in the center of the room, their voices echoing off the peeling wallpaper.
Tamara, however, stood half-hidden in the darkest corner of the room. She wasn't the least bit moved. In fact, her mood had plummeted to absolute rock bottom.
She watched the godfather and godson weeping and shouting together with dead, cold eyes. It felt as though someone had forcefully stuffed a thousand screaming Mandrakes directly into her ear canals.
'Merlin's rotting beard, just kill each other and get it over with.'
But even more distracting than the noise was the cheerful, patronizing blue panel that suddenly materialized in her mind, triggered by their recent brush with the Azkaban guards:
[Ding! Large-scale Dementor crisis detected! Mandatory Third Year Main Quest issued: Successfully cast the Patronus Charm before the end of the term!]
In the dark confines of her mind, Tamara ruthlessly cursed the System up, down, and sideways.
'Are you completely out of your artificial mind? You're asking Voldemort to cast a Patronus Charm?! Do you honestly think I can ignite that sickeningly pure white magic using the sheer ecstasy I feel from casting Avada Kedavra? Or do you expect me to squeeze out a few pathetic tears of love and peace while I'm butchering someone?'
Facing her venomous mockery, the System didn't bother explaining. Instead, it slyly dangled a holographic reward list right in front of her eyes:
[Reward: Designated Skill Book x 1 (Can ignore Virtue Value restrictions to forcibly learn a standard third or fourth-year spell)]
[Love +10]
[Spell Unlocked: Apparition]
[Intermediate Mana Recovery Potion x 1 (Allows you to experience the magic levels of a normal adult Wizard for one hour. Note: Please do not hurt anyone!)]
Tamara stared fixedly at the glowing text. Her heart gave an involuntary, violent thud.
For some god-forsaken reason, this broken piece of junk hadn't issued any daily tasks in weeks. No tasks meant no Virtue points. No points meant her spell arsenal remained infuriatingly locked.
Her dark eyes zeroed in on the Intermediate Mana Recovery Potion.
A full hour of peak magic. An hour of her prime.
Unlike the fleeting ten-minute bursts she had previously scraped together, this was sixty uninterrupted minutes of true power. For the currently shackled Dark Lord, this temptation was utterly lethal.
'Fine. You win.'Tamara compromised, grinding her teeth so hard her jaw ached.'Define "happy memory." If I recall the exquisite pleasure of torturing a Mudblood to the brink of insanity with the Cruciatus Curse...'[Warning! The memory must be rooted in pure happiness that is positive, constructive, and possesses the attribute of'Love and Protection'! Any Dark Magic emotions will result in immediate electrical backlash!]
'Disgusting.'
Tamara sneered with deep loathing. She urgently needed absolute silence to properly dissect this puzzle of the century—a puzzle clearly designed by the universe specifically to humiliate her.
Just then, a fresh, even more intense screaming match erupted across the room.
"If you really were innocent, then why didn't you fight back back then?!" Harry roared. He leveled his wand at Sirius's chest, his green eyes bloodshot, his voice trembling with a desperate, defensive disbelief. "Why did you stay in Azkaban for twelve whole years! How can you expect me to believe the word of a wanted criminal now?!"
"Because I thought I deserved to die!" Sirius's voice was a hoarse, ragged tear, steeped in absolute despair and self-loathing.
"I was the one who pushed them to trust that traitor! Even if I didn't cast the curse myself, I'm the one who caused their deaths... I lost everyone! I had no right to explain myself to anyone! I stayed in that hellhole just to punish myself!"
"Then why did you break out now?!" Harry shouted, refusing to lower his wand.
"Because I saw that rat in the newspaper!" Sirius's sunken eyes looked ready to burst from his skull. He pointed a trembling, filthy finger toward the boarded-up window. "Because that bastard is still alive, and he's sleeping right next to a Weasley! I have to kill him!"
This raw confession, thick with blood, tears, and decades of agony, bounced off the peeling walls of the ruined shack.
It also made Tamara's temples throb with a vicious migraine.
The Dark Lord, already thoroughly provoked by the System's ridiculous Patronus quest, had completely run out of patience.
She was half a second away from drawing her wand and blasting both of these wailing idiots with a Stupefy just to get some peace and quiet.
But then... Tamara's deep, dark eyes paused.
Her gaze lingered on Sirius's guilt-ravaged face, then slowly drifted to Harry, whose furious expression was beginning to crack with hesitation.
One was a mad dog who had just escaped a maximum-security prison, desperate to clear his name, harboring a pathological, self-sacrificial protectiveness toward Potter.
The other was an impulsive, irritable boy, starved of love and family, who also just happened to be her greatest fated enemy.
A vicious, beautifully artistic, multi-layered trap struck her mind like a bolt of lightning in the dead of night. It instantly burned away the irritable haze clouding her thoughts.
Her expression, which had been dark enough to swallow light, suddenly melted away like spring snow.
Tamara stepped out from the shadows.
On her exquisite, pale face, every trace of impatience had vanished. In its place bloomed a soft, terrifyingly pleasant smile.
"To be honest, the tearful performance from the two of you would make a rather excellent bedtime story for the ghosts of Hogwarts."
Her voice, carrying a hint of elegant, aristocratic mockery, instantly sliced through the sticky, tragic atmosphere suffocating the room.
Harry and Sirius both snapped their mouths shut, turning in sheer astonishment to stare at the twelve-year-old girl who had suddenly spoken up.
"What exactly are you trying to say, brat?" Sirius growled. His mind was racing with ways to prove his innocence, and he had absolutely zero patience for a child's sarcasm.
"What I'm trying to say is..."
Tamara didn't take offense. Instead, she slowly stroked the polished wood of her holly wand with her long, slender fingers. The curve of her lips grew deeper, and infinitely more dangerous.
"Since your poor Gryffindor brains are clearly incapable of making a rational judgment between lies and truth..."
"Then why not solve it the Slytherin way?"
She leaned forward slightly, her dark gaze pinning them in place—the look of a predator watching two oblivious lambs wander willingly into a slaughterhouse.
"Empty promises are worthless, but a contract can bind a life."
"If this Mr. Black truly has a clear conscience... and if student Potter still requires a guarantee of absolute safety so he can investigate the truth of that year without constantly worrying about a knife in the back..."
In the dim, dust-moted light of the room, Tamara slowly extended her pale hand toward the two of them. Her voice dropped to a soft, hypnotic purr, like a devil tempting a mortal to sign away their soul.
"Why not just... use life as collateral to form an Unbreakable Vow?"
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