Chapter 117: Strategy Conversion
The rhythmic drumming of rain against the high, arched windows of the Hogwarts Hospital Wing was the only sound daring to break the heavy midnight silence.
Harry Potter lay flat on his back, staring blankly up at the shadowed stone ceiling. Sleep was an impossible luxury. The dull, hollow ache in his boneless right arm was miserable enough, but it was nothing compared to the agonizing sound drifting from the adjacent bed.
Tamara was burning up.
Even after Madam Pomfrey had forcibly tipped another foul-smelling fever-reducing potion down her throat, the girl's usually pristine, pale cheeks remained stained with an unnatural, sickly flush. Her dark brows were knitted tightly together, her breathing shallow and raspy, as if she were battling some unseen agony deep within her dreams.
Harry turned his head on the pillow, a suffocating wave of guilt crashing over him.
If it were not for him, Tamara would never be lying there.
"Am I only capable of bringing disaster to everyone around me..." Harry muttered to himself, the bitter self-reproach burning in his throat.
A sudden, sharp crack shattered the quiet ward like a breaking twig.
Harry snapped his head around, his breath catching in his throat. He nearly shouted in shock. Standing right in the narrow aisle between their two beds was a creature with massive, bat-like ears and bulging, tennis-ball-sized eyes. It was wearing the same filthy, grease-stained pillowcase as before, staring at Harry with a disturbing mixture of tragic sorrow and unhinged fanaticism.
"Dobby!" Harry hissed, his voice dropping into a furious, guttural whisper as he gritted his teeth. "What are you doing here?!"
"Harry Potter has returned to school," Dobby whimpered mournfully. His grating, high-pitched voice scraped against the silence as fat, heavy tears rolled down his long snout. "Dobby clearly warned Harry Potter. Dobby even sealed the magical passage to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, but Harry Potter still came back..."
Harry's green eyes widened in sudden, horrifying realization.
"It was you?!" His voice trembled, vibrating with a white-hot anger he could barely contain. "You did that? Ron and I were almost expelled because we had to fly that car!"
"Dobby only wanted to protect Harry Potter!" the House-elf sobbed, twisting the filthy pillowcase into knots with his long, spindly fingers. "Today too! Dobby thought that if Harry Potter was seriously injured, he might be sent home..."
"That rogue Bludger was your doing too?!"
Harry could scarcely believe his own ears. He sat up violently, jarring his limp, boneless right arm. A sharp hiss of pain escaped his lips, but he ignored the sickening flop of his limb. An unmatched, blazing fire ignited in his eyes.
"You call this protection?! You almost killed me!"
Harry kept his voice strictly suppressed, terrified of waking the feverish girl in the next bed, but his left hand pointed at Dobby, shaking with absolute fury.
"And look at what you have done! Because of your damn Bludger, I fell from the sky, and that idiot Lockhart tried to remove my bones! And Tamara—"
Harry jabbed his finger sharply toward the neighboring bed, his eyes turning red with unshed emotion.
"Tamara is lying there with a severe fever because she stepped in to stop Lockhart! She cannot even hold her wand right now! If anything happens to her, I will never forgive you!"
Dobby slowly followed Harry's trembling finger. His massive eyes landed on the black-haired girl tossing fitfully under the white sheets, her delicate face marred by sickness.
Instantly, the House-elf's expression twisted into a mask of extreme, unadulterated terror and self-loathing.
"Bad Dobby! Dobby hurt Harry Potter's friend! Dobby almost killed an innocent witch! Dobby must be severely punished!"
With a sudden, piercing wail, Dobby spun around like a deranged top. He threw himself forward, slamming his head violently against the heavy iron bedside table.
Clatter—CRASH!
The heavy iron water pitcher resting on the tray was knocked off the edge, hitting the stone floor with a deafening, metallic shriek that echoed through the cavernous ward.
"Shut up! Dobby! You will wake her!" Harry lunged forward in a panic, trying to grab the frantic, self-harming elf with his good hand.
But it was too late.
Amidst a racket loud enough to wake the dead, the agonizingly labored breathing from the next bed abruptly ceased.
The very next second, in the dim, shadow-drenched ward, Tamara Riddle slowly opened her eyes.
A severe wave of morning grumpiness collided violently with a splitting, fever-induced headache and a deep, marrow-scraping ache in her bones. At this exact moment, the former Dark Lord—who had once commanded the very winds of terror and bathed the magical world in blood—felt the killing intent in her chest boil over into something thick, black, and entirely tangible.
She threw back the heavy woolen covers. Her pale fingers slid beneath her pillow, curling around the smooth wood of her holly wand.
"Flipendo."
Tamara stepped barefoot onto the freezing marble floor. Her wand arm snapped forward in a casual yet utterly ruthless arc, carrying a suffocating, tyrannical weight.
A blindingly sharp flash of blue light, dripping with pure, concentrated malice, suddenly erupted in the gloom of the Hospital Wing.
BANG—!!
Harry did not even register what had happened. He only felt a violent, freezing gale of displaced air sweep inches past his scalp.
Dobby, who had just been wailing and punishing himself on the floor, was struck head-on as if by an invisible, speeding locomotive. The House-elf was instantly launched into the air!
He became a blur of motion, flying backward across the room before slamming brutally against the thick oak doors of the Hospital Wing ten meters away. A bone-chilling thud echoed through the room as Dobby slid down the polished wood to the floor in a crumpled heap.
For a House-elf—a creature fundamentally attuned to the subtle currents of magical fluctuations—the sheer force of that spell was paralyzing. The moment the magic made contact, Dobby's frantic wails were violently choked off in his throat.
He curled into a tight, trembling ball on the floor, clutching his bruised chest. His enormous eyes dilated, reflecting a primal, instinctual fear that clawed its way up from the very depths of his soul.
In this seemingly fragile, sick twelve-year-old girl, Dobby had not just witnessed a terrifying display of swift, near-silent casting; he had felt a crushing, suffocating pressure of pure darkness and death. It was a suffocating aura ten thousand times more malevolent than that of his cruel master, Lucius Malfoy!
Tamara stood by her bed, her pale face flushed with fever, cold sweat plastering her dark bangs to her forehead. She lowered her wand with a slow, mechanical coldness, staring down at the trembling creature across the room.
"...Get out."
Her voice was hoarse, ravaged by illness, yet it carried a death-like, absolute chill.
"Disappear from my sight immediately."
She leaned forward slightly. In the dim moonlight, a faint, terrifying glint of crimson seemed to swirl in the abyssal depths of her pitch-black eyes. "Otherwise... with the next spell, I will skin you alive, drain your blood, and sew your miserable hide together with a Bludger."
"Aah—!!!"
Dobby let out a short, shrill, strangled scream.
He did not dare utter a single syllable of apology or plea. Crushed beneath that terrifying, violent magical pressure, he tremblingly raised two spindly fingers and snapped them loudly.
With a sharp crack, the House-elf vanished without a trace, fleeing as if a flesh-eating demon were hiding in the shadows of the ward, waiting to chew him up and swallow him whole.
The Hospital Wing plunged back into a deathly silence. Only the cold, indifferent sound of the rain lashing against the glass remained.
Tamara stood frozen in place. The high fever made the room spin violently around her. She had to reach out, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the iron frame of Harry's bed to steady herself. Her chest heaved as she took shallow, ragged breaths.
Harry sat on his mattress, completely dazed, his brain short-circuiting from the sheer shock of the brutal scene he had just witnessed. But as reality crashed back into him, a suffocating tide of guilt surged from the very bottom of his heart.
"Tamara..."
"I am really sorry."
He lowered his head, his voice thick with misery, and blurted out every single thing Dobby had just confessed. He laid bare the ugly truth that he was the sole source of all this disaster.
"Whether it is at the Muggles' house or here at Hogwarts, trouble always sticks to me like a shadow." He stared at his lap, refusing to meet her eyes. "That House-elf was right. The danger is aimed entirely at me. You did not need to end up lying here, suffering like this, just to block that idiot professor for me."
Harry clenched his jaw, desperately trying to swallow the bitter, acidic lump churning in his chest. He forced himself to say the most heartless, isolating words he could muster.
"So, if because of this you think I am a jinx and never want anything to do with me again... I completely accept it." His voice cracked slightly. "Because even I feel that staying away from me is the safest thing anyone could do."
Tamara leaned heavily against the cold bed frame, listening to this pathetic, unreserved self-confession.
Inside her mind, the primal, bloodthirsty tyranny belonging to Lord Voldemort was screaming frantically against the confines of her skull.
'Of course you are a disaster! You filthy, Mudblood-loving half-breed! If it were not for the fear of being turned into a drooling idiot by that damn system's electric shocks, I would have personally stuffed that rogue Bludger down your throat long ago!'
But just as this vicious, venomous mockery was about to slip past her lips, Tamara's gaze locked onto Harry.
She looked into those bright green eyes. They were filled with an unreserved, foolish trust, a sickening amount of guilt, and a blatant willingness to walk through fire and water for her. It was a sincerely genuine, raw emotion that was so hot it made her physically nauseous.
Voldemort detested such things. Love, loyalty, guilt—they were weak, blind, and full of uncontrollable, messy variables.
But in that fleeting instant, the cold, sociopathic cunning etched into the Dark Lord's very bones suddenly split through her fever-addled brain like a bolt of jagged lightning.
Since this blasted Virtue System was going to force her to protect this wretched savior anyway, threatening her with those humiliating, agonizing punishments if she slipped up...
Since she could not escape the ridiculous, mandated setting of becoming his 'friend'...
Then why shouldn't she simply weaponize this nauseating emotion? Why not forge it into the most indestructible collar imaginable?
Guilt. Gratitude. Blind adoration.
This was, quite simply, the most perfect means of psychological control in the world. It was even better than the Imperius Curse! The Imperius Curse could be fought off by a wizard with strong enough willpower. But this? This fanatical loyalty, generated entirely by the boy's own self-rationalization, would make her fated nemesis willingly forge himself into the sharpest blade in Tamara Riddle's arsenal. He would become her most perfect, impenetrable shield.
'How wonderfully ironic...'
Tamara let out a hair-raising, soundless laugh in the dark theater of her mind.
Outwardly, she perfectly concealed the churning, malicious calculation and tyranny in her eyes. She ruthlessly suppressed the physiological disgust churning in her stomach at the sight of Harry's fervent affection.
She took a slow, deep breath and let go of the iron bed frame.
And then, she reached out.
With a slightly trembling hand—playing the part of the exhausted, forgiving friend to perfection—she gently placed her palm on Harry's uninjured left shoulder.
Harry shuddered violently at the contact. He snapped his head up, looking at her through wide, disbelieving eyes.
"Stop saying such stupid things, Harry."
Tamara's voice was still weak and raspy, but her tone carried a resolute, gentle helplessness that seemed to embrace all of his flaws. She gazed quietly at him with those deep, pitch-black eyes, looking at him as if he were merely an immature, foolish younger brother who needed guidance.
"What that House-elf did was not your fault." Tamara patted his shoulder with feather-light gentleness, her voice softening further. "As for stopping Lockhart... that was my own choice."
She slowly withdrew her hand and forced herself to stand slightly straighter. Even though she was visibly ravaged by illness, she still managed to exude a compelling, quiet nobility.
"Even if I had to choose all over again, I would never stand by and watch that incompetent fool ruin you."
She looked down at Harry's completely dazed, awestruck face and delivered the final, masterful blow.
"So, put away your ridiculous sense of guilt. When I, Tamara Riddle, choose to do something, it is not for others to bear the consequences on my behalf."
The statement was delivered with absolute, quiet authority, leaving Harry absolutely no room for rebuttal.
Harry stared at her blankly.
His miserable years growing up locked in a cupboard at the Dursleys' had long since trained him to swallow his tears and suppress any display of extreme weakness. Yet, his intact left hand reached down, his fingers digging fiercely into the white bedsheet at his side.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, forcibly pushing down the overwhelming, surging heat burning in his chest.
When he finally met Tamara's gaze again, the panic, the isolation, and the crushing self-reproach from before had completely vanished from his brilliant green eyes. In their place was an indestructible, blazing stubbornness.
"I understand."
Harry's voice was remarkably steady. He looked at Tamara with absolute seriousness, delivering his promise word by heavy word.
"I swear, Tamara. No matter what happens in the future, no matter what you do..." He gritted his teeth, his expression hardening as if he were carving a sacred, unbreakable vow into his very soul. "I will always be on your side. And if there is danger again, I will stand in front of you."
Listening to this disgustingly sincere, bleeding-heart speech from a Gryffindor brute, Tamara felt an uncontrollable, violent surge of physiological nausea twist her stomach into knots.
But she forced her face to remain perfectly serene.
"Put away your ridiculous heroism and worry about your own arm first," she said softly.
She withdrew her gaze, turned around, and walked slowly, step by exhausted step, back toward her own bed.
"Get some rest."
The very second she turned her back on Harry, the shadows of the dim moonlight fell across her face. The feigned gentleness, the saintly tolerance, and the warm exhaustion vanished from her delicate, pale features as if they had never existed.
In their place bloomed a chilling, utterly triumphant smirk.
"How simple."
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