Chapter 240: Helping Others
To prevent that cursed favorability metric from creeping up even a single decimal point, Tamara spent the next few days unilaterally severing all contact with Harry Potter.
If she spotted the messy-haired savior at the far end of a corridor, she pivoted on her heel and marched straight down another staircase. During meals in the Great Hall, she refused to spare so much as a peripheral glance toward the raucous Gryffindor table.
With this level of blatant, icy treatment, any normal, self-respecting wizard would have taken the hint and backed off long ago.
But Harry Potter was apparently immune to social cues. What did a little cold shoulder matter to the battle-hardened Boy Who Lived? He had survived the Killing Curse; surviving her glares was child's play. Consequently, no matter how fiercely Tamara projected her disdain, that wretched favorability score refused to drop a single point.
What truly grated on Tamara's nerves was the unfortunate scheduling of this term's Potions class. They were paired with the Gryffindors.
Down in the cold, drafty dungeons, the heavy air hung thick with the pungent, clashing odors of pickled roots and stewed animal parts.
"Longbottom! If you have no functional use for your eyes, I suggest you donate them to the specimen ward at St Mungo's! These are porcupine quills, not the tusks of a Tebo warthog!"
Severus Snape prowled the narrow aisles, his black robes billowing as he mercilessly dismantled the Gryffindors' pathetic attempts at brewing. His venomous critiques frightened several young lions so badly that their hands trembled violently while peeling their shrivelfigs. More than one nearly drove a silver knife straight through their own thumb.
Today's curriculum called for the Shrinking Solution. When brewed correctly, the liquid was supposed to settle into a vibrant, acidic light green.
Inside Tamara's pewter cauldron, perfect, jewel-toned green bubbles were already rising to the surface in a gentle, rhythmic boil. Utterly bored by the simplicity of the task, she propped her chin on her palm, idly tapping her silver stirring rod against the desk as she waited out the final few minutes of simmering.
Across the classroom, Neville Longbottom was busy proving his disastrous lack of aptitude yet again.
Gurgle... hiss...
From the depths of Neville's cauldron, there was not a single trace of the required green. Instead, a violently churning, eye-searingly bright orange foam was rapidly expanding over the iron rim. Acrid, thick black smoke billowed upward, and the heavy metal base of the cauldron began to emit a series of high-pitched, strained cracking noises.
The horrific sludge was mere seconds away from a catastrophic explosion.
A flicker of absolute disgust flashed across Snape's dark eyes. He pivoted sharply, his boots clicking against the stone floor as he stalked toward the trembling boy, his mouth already parting to deliver a devastating insult and a massive deduction of house points.
Right at that moment, a sickeningly cheerful chime echoed through Tamara's skull.
[Ding! System task triggered!]
[Task Description: Saving a classmate from dire straits is a fine virtue of an outstanding Hogwarts student! Please immediately help Neville Longbottom resolve the crisis of the exploding cauldron!]
[Task Reward: Wisdom +2.]
[Punishment: If the task fails, the system will forcibly take over the host's body and loudly praise him in public: "Don't be afraid, Longbottom, you're a little Potions genius!"]
Tamara stared blankly at the bubbling vat of toxic orange slime threatening to melt the desk, then reviewed the proposed punishment. The mere thought of her mouth forming those words—of the Dark Lord praising that blubbering idiot—made her want to cast a lethal curse on herself right there in the dungeon.
I will flay you alive and feed your code to a Dementor, Tamara promised the system, viciously cursing it in the darkest corners of her mind.
But since the system had bound a mandatory physical takeover to the failure condition, she had no choice. She took a slow, steadying breath.
Under the terrified gazes of the surrounding students, Tamara shot up from her stool. Snatching a small glass vial of prepared leech juice from her workstation, she crossed the aisle in three swift strides, materializing directly behind the panicked Gryffindor.
"Move, Longbottom," she ordered. Her voice was a low, icy whisper as she roughly shoved aside the boy, who looked half a second away from bursting into tears.
From there, Tamara's movements blurred into a display of absolute, fluid mastery. She unstoppered the vial with her thumb, precisely shaking exactly five drops of thick leech juice into the volatile orange mass. Dropping the vial, she snatched up Neville's discarded wooden stirring rod. Three and a half steady, measured rotations counter-clockwise. Then, a sharp, violent flick clockwise.
A shrill hiss of rushing air erupted from the mixture.
The terrifying neon orange hue instantly bled out of the liquid, the aggressive foaming collapsed in on itself, and the sludge rapidly smoothed out into a murky, dark green. It was far from a perfect Shrinking Solution, but it was stable. It wouldn't melt anyone's face off.
The entire sequence, from her leaving her seat to neutralizing the explosive reaction, took less than five seconds.
The sheer, miraculous efficiency of the rescue left every Gryffindor and Slytherin in the immediate vicinity staring in stunned silence.
[Ding! Crisis averted! Task complete!]
[Reward issued: Wisdom +2. Current host Wisdom attribute: 48.]
Ignoring the perky voice echoing in her skull, Tamara casually tossed the stirring rod onto the wooden desk. She smoothed the front of her robes and turned to head back to her own perfectly brewed potion.
She didn't make it far. Looking up, her dark eyes locked directly with Severus Snape's.
The Potions Master had frozen mid-stride. He stared fixedly at the stabilized cauldron, then shifted his heavy, unblinking gaze to Tamara. A sharp, scrutinizing light flickered in his obsidian eyes, calculating the sheer level of expertise required for such a rapid, flawless intervention.
"It seems..." Snape began, his voice dropping into a soft, dangerous drawl as a cold sneer twisted his lips. "...our Miss Riddle has been feeling exceptionally charitable as of late."
He took a slow, deliberate step closer.
"Not only tirelessly guiding the insufferable Gryffindor know-it-all through the library stacks, but now... rushing to salvage Mr. Longbottom's hopeless, catastrophic messes."
Snape leaned forward slightly. An invisible, suffocating pressure seemed to radiate from him, pressing down on Tamara.
"Since you possess such an overwhelming desire to help others..." His eyes narrowed into dark slits. "Stay behind after class, Riddle. I happen to have a problem here that requires the assistance of a Potions genius such as yourself."
The bell finally tolled, echoing dully through the stone walls.
The students scrambled to pack their bags, fleeing the damp dungeon as if they had just been granted a mass pardon. Even Hermione Granger, who usually lingered to ask a few extra academic questions, sensed the suffocating, low-pressure atmosphere radiating from the professor. She clutched her heavy textbooks to her chest and hurried out the door.
Soon, the heavy oak door clicked shut, leaving only two figures in the cavernous, dimly lit classroom.
With the audience gone, Snape stripped away all pretense. He glided slowly to the front of the podium, turned, and fixed his gaze upon Tamara. Like a massive bat observing a cornered prey in the dead of night, he studied her pale, delicate features.
"Madam Pomfrey might be foolish enough to swallow your pathetic excuse of 'over-studying'."
Snape's voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried a piercing, metallic edge that seemed to scrape against the stone walls. He was testing her, probing the defenses of her mind with veiled, dangerous words.
"But I find myself intensely curious... exactly what kind of deep, demanding schoolwork could completely drain an underage witch's magical reserves? And more concerningly... her very life force?"
Snape's eyes narrowed to absolute slivers. A flicker of deep, ingrained wariness flashed within his dark irises.
As a former Death Eater, a man who had waded through the darkest depths of magic, he was intimately familiar with the symptoms of a depleted life force. That hollow pallor, that lingering chill—it was never the result of reading too many library books. It was the agonizing, unmistakable backlash left behind by frequent exposure to high-level Dark Arts. Or worse, the physical toll of conducting malevolent, forbidden rituals.
From the very beginning, Snape had harbored intense suspicions regarding Tamara's true identity. He was not Albus Dumbledore; he did not possess the old man's infuriating patience to sit back and observe a threat as it grew. To prevent a catastrophe within his own house, Snape intended to seize this hidden danger by the throat before it could strike.
Faced with this aggressive, suffocating interrogation, Tamara did not show a single trace of panic. Instead, the corners of her lips curled upward into a faint, utterly hypocritical smile.
She did not retreat. She stepped forward.
Ever since Snape had made that cryptic remark about a 'Gryffindor exception', a minor but deeply irritating thorn had lodged itself in Tamara's mind. Cold rationality dictated that she shouldn't believe Severus Snape—one of her most useful, brilliant Death Eaters—would ever truly betray the great Dark Lord for the sake of a dead Mudblood.
Yet, looking at the hostile, overstepping subordinate standing before her, a dark, venomous cocktail of betrayal, humiliation, and possessive rage surged irrepressibly in her chest. She decided it was time to give this former loyal servant a sharp reminder of his place.
"Professor, rather than overstepping your bounds with such intense concern for my extracurricular studies..."
Tamara's smile widened slightly, though her dark eyes glittered with unmasked, chilling mockery. She slowly brought up the infuriating arrangement from the Hospital Wing.
"You would do far better to examine your own flawed judgment."
She took another deliberate step forward, her gaze dropping to the cooled cauldron on the desk between them as she enunciated every word with razor-sharp precision.
"I truly did not expect that the esteemed Head of Slytherin House would personally instruct Madam Pomfrey to assign a Gryffindor girl to monitor my physical condition."
Tamara paused, letting the silence stretch. When she spoke again, her tone carried a dark, mocking playfulness that felt entirely too old for her young face.
"You seem to harbor an unexpected... deep level of trust in that reckless, foolish house of lions." She tilted her head, her eyes locking onto his with a piercing intensity. "Or should I say, you harbor some kind of deeply rooted... special preference?"
[Akarin's Note:
Enjoying the story? Dropping a quick review, comment, or Power Stone means the world to me and keeps these daily updates flowing!
Want to read 50 chapters ahead or just want to help keep a shameless translator alive? (My livelihood actually depends on this, haha 😭). You can support me directly here:
(P.S. Just remove the brackets and replace the [.] with a regular dot . to use the links!)
✨ Patreon (50 Advanced Chapters): patreon[.]com/AkarinTL
☕ Ko-fi (Support / Sponsor): ko-fi[.]com/AkarinTL
🔗 All My Links: linktr[.]ee/AkarinTL
Thank you so much for reading and keeping this project alive!]