Chapter 127: Christmas and Polyjuice Potion
Thick, heavy snowflakes drifted past the frosted glass of the Slytherin dormitory window, burying the Hogwarts grounds in a suffocating blanket of white.
Tamara awoke. The very second her dark eyes snapped open, her fingers slid beneath her pillow, curling instinctively around the smooth wood of her wand.
Even before the holidays officially commenced, she had made a very public declaration in the common room. Or rather, a death threat. Anyone who dared pollute her bedside with those idiotic, cloyingly sweet Christmas gifts this year would be spending their New Year choking on potions in the Hospital Wing.
Tamara sat up, her gaze sweeping warily toward the foot of her four-poster bed.
Nothing. No towering, obnoxious piles of packages. No garish, brightly colored wrapping paper. And mercifully, absolutely none of those pathetic anonymous chocolates laced with adolescent desperation.
The air in the dormitory remained crisp, cold, and wonderfully pleasant.
A slow, deeply satisfied smirk curled Tamara's lips as she slid out from beneath her emerald-green covers. It seemed her reign of terror over Hogwarts remained absolute. These children might be sniveling little fools, but at least they possessed the basic survival instinct to fear the Dark Lord.
Her bare feet padded softly against the stone floor, but as she approached her desk, her steps faltered.
Sitting dead center on the otherwise immaculate mahogany surface rested a solitary parcel. It was wrapped tightly in coarse, unremarkable brown paper. No velvet bows. No glittering ribbons. None of that sickeningly sweet perfume that usually accompanied the drivel sent by her admirers.
A single, neatly trimmed square of parchment rested on top.
Tamara arched a delicate eyebrow. Her fingers twitched. If some foolhardy soul had actually dared to test her patience with a holiday trinket, she would happily drag them up to the Astronomy Tower by their ankles and hang them over the edge to enjoy the fresh winter breeze.
She picked up the note. The handwriting was sharp, precise, and entirely devoid of festive cheer:
[In-kind repayment for the Moonstone Powder consumed that day, plus overdue payment for Potions Class tutoring hours. —Hermione Granger]
Tamara's eyes narrowed slightly before she tore away the brown paper.
Resting inside was a heavy, somewhat battered copy of 'The Evolution of Defense Against the Dark Arts in the 15th Century'. The leather binding was worn at the corners, and the pages carried the faint, dry scent of old dust. While it was hardly a priceless, world-shattering artifact, it was certainly not the sort of text one could simply pluck from the shelves of an ordinary bookstore.
There were no warm wishes. No cheap, sentimental 'Merry Christmas' scrawled on the inside cover.
This was purely a settlement of debts.
"...Heh."
A soft, dry chuckle escaped Tamara's throat. Her pale fingers traced the rough, cracked spine of the ancient tome.
That Gryffindor Miss Know-It-All was a fraction smarter than she had originally calculated. The mudblood clearly understood that Tamara despised owing favors and utterly loathed the sticky, pathetic entanglements of human emotion. So, Granger had deliberately framed the exchange as a cold, hard transaction.
"We are even."
Tamara tossed the book onto the desk with casual indifference, her morning mood entirely unspoiled by the intrusion. On the contrary, she found this sterile, transactional dynamic infinitely more comfortable than the suffocating illusion of friendship.
The fire in the Slytherin common room hearth roared fiercely, casting dancing shadows against the dark stone and dispelling the perpetual, damp chill of the dungeons.
Tamara sat enthroned in the high-backed leather armchair closest to the flames, lazily turning the yellowed pages of the old book Granger had sent.
Directly across from her, Draco Malfoy was practically vibrating with indignation, waving a crumpled newspaper clipping in the air.
"Just look at this! If I were them, I would be too humiliated to ever show my face in public again!"
Draco jabbed a pale finger at a moving photograph plastered across the pages of The Daily Prophet. Inside the frame, a flustered Arthur Weasley was being hounded by reporters, currently under investigation for violating the Muggle Artifacts Act.
"Using magic on filthy Muggle rubbish? The entire Weasley family is a walking disgrace to our pure-blood heritage!"
Tamara did not bother to look up. She merely turned another page of her book, the dry rustle of parchment the only answer she offered his rant.
At that moment, the heavy stone wall of the common room ground open.
Two towering, exceptionally dull-looking Slytherin boys lumbered into the firelight. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle.
"Where in Salazar's name have you two been?" Draco snapped, his brow furrowing in sharp displeasure. "Stuffing your fat faces in the Great Hall this entire time? I explicitly told you to bring the pastries from the upper tables. Why are your hands empty?"
The two hulking brutes, who usually responded to Draco's barking with submissive grunts, looked peculiarly... stiff today. Their broad shoulders were rigid. They exchanged a fleeting, panicked glance before shuffling awkwardly toward the nearest sofa, collapsing onto the cushions like sacks of lead.
"Useless gluttons," Draco spat, shooting them a look of utter disdain.
A split second later, his sneer vanished, instantly replaced by a sickeningly ingratiating smile as he turned back to Tamara.
"Ignore those oafs, Tamara."
Draco leaned forward, his movements careful and practiced. He lifted an exquisite, polished silver tray from the low table between them. Resting upon it were several delicate pieces of crystallized violet chocolate, shimmering like amethysts in the firelight.
"Try these. My mother had them specially ordered from Madam Puddifoot's."
His tone dripped with a showy, aristocratic superiority, yet his posture was entirely fawning. He held the tray out like a servant presenting an offering to a queen.
"I noticed you barely touched your plate at dinner... Did the sight of those mudbloods ruin your appetite?"
Tamara's gaze remained locked on the text of her book. Without a word, she extended a slender, pale finger, plucked a piece of the crystallized violet from the silver tray, and placed it upon her tongue. The sharp, floral sweetness bloomed against her palate.
"Acceptable."
She delivered the bland, one-word assessment without an ounce of gratitude, yet she did not refuse the offering.
Watching Draco's pointed face light up with eager, desperate pride, a strange, creeping sense of déjà vu washed over Tamara.
It was almost as if this pathetic subservience was a biological instinct, carved deep into the very genes of the Malfoy bloodline.
Starting from Abraxas Malfoy decades ago, filtering down to that slick, slippery Lucius, and finally resting in this preening little peacock sitting before her, whose only real talent was showing off his father's gold.
Three full generations of cowards.
They were perpetually accustomed to clinging to the coattails of the strong, using heavy purses, exquisite sweets, and a fragile veneer of respectable loyalty to purchase protection and a fleeting sense of superiority.
This silent, unspoken contract of offering and acceptance had been established half a century ago. For Tamara, absorbing Malfoy's groveling was as natural and effortless as breathing.
Seeing Tamara accept his gift, a smug, triumphant smile spread across Draco's face.
It was precisely this sickening display that felt like a physical blow to the "Goyle" sitting rigidly on the opposite sofa.
Harry Potter watched the scene unfold from behind Goyle's heavy, brutish features, his stomach churning with violent revulsion.
In his eyes, this was nothing short of psychological torture. That hypocritical, slimy little git Malfoy was taking full advantage of Tamara's quiet, lonely nature, buzzing around her like a parasitic fly trying to curry favor!
And Tamara... that poor, brilliant girl, forced to carry a dark, terrible secret all on her own, could only endure this relentless harassment in absolute silence.
'She must be suffering so much,'Harry thought, his chest tightening.'But to keep her cover intact, to avoid exposing her true plans, she has to pretend to tolerate Malfoy's presence...'
A sudden, overwhelming impulse to leap across the table and shove Malfoy into the roaring fireplace made Harry entirely forget his disguise.
His body moved on its own. He leaned forward, shifting his massive, borrowed frame significantly closer to Tamara's armchair.
The subtle shift in the air did not go unnoticed. Tamara's fingers paused mid-air, hovering just above the corner of a page.
She slowly lifted her eyelids. Her dark, calculating gaze swept over Draco's two lackeys.
Under normal circumstances, Crabbe and Goyle possessed the survival instincts of frightened livestock. They would never dare sit this close to her while she was reading; they usually huddled in the darkest corner of the room, mindlessly shoveling cake into their cavernous mouths.
But today...
Tamara keenly felt the weight of a stare.
It was coming from "Goyle."
That hulking idiot, who usually possessed the vacant, glassy-eyed stare of a concussed mountain troll, was currently staring at her with intense, burning focus.
And the look in those eyes was entirely wrong.
Those small, piggish eyes, which should have been swimming with empty-headed dullness, were now swirling with a baffling, complex emotion. It was a suffocating mixture of nervousness, deep scrutiny, and something else—something that sent a wave of physical revulsion crawling up Tamara's spine.
It was a strange, sickening familiarity.
This was absolutely not the gaze of Gregory Goyle.
Tamara's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. She met that stare head-on, her expression freezing over.
"Goyle."
Her voice was a quiet, icy blade slicing through the crackle of the fireplace.
"If you continue to look at me with those troll-in-heat eyes, I will personally pluck them from your skull and pickle them in a jar of cheap wine."
Hearing the lethal promise in her tone, "Goyle" jolted violently, as if a localized lightning hex had struck his spine. He ducked his head instantly, but his thick, meaty hands remained clamped over his knees, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the fabric of his robes.
Tamara's suspicion instantly sharpened into a razor edge.
That look... it was far too familiar.
It was the exact same, insufferable way Harry Potter—the wizarding world's precious, pathetic little savior—always looked at her.
It was the very expression Tamara despised above all things in this miserable world.
In that gaze, she read absolutely zero reverence for her overwhelming power. Instead, it was dripping with a nauseating, bleeding-heart self-righteousness. As if she, the greatest Dark Lord to ever walk the earth, was just some fragile, tragic little girl who desperately needed his protection.
'What in the name of Salazar's rotting corpse is going on?' Tamara sneered inwardly.
Had that wretched savior's saintly, martyr-complex aura grown so incredibly potent that it was now an airborne disease infecting people across different Houses? Had even a certified imbecile like Goyle caught the contagion?
"What is it, Tamara?" Draco asked, his brow furrowing in confusion as he followed her lethal glare toward the sofa. "Did this oaf eat too much garlic and disgust you?"
"Thoroughly disgusting," Tamara replied, withdrawing her gaze with a look of pure, unadulterated revulsion.
She no longer possessed the patience to endure this physical discomfort. That lingering, pathetic gaze felt like a wad of chewed gum stuck to the sole of her dragon-hide boots, souring even the lingering taste of the exquisite chocolate in her mouth.
Tamara's pale index finger tapped the leather cover of her book twice. A sharp, rhythmic sound. It was the universal signal that her notoriously thin patience had officially evaporated.
Her brilliant mind rapidly cycled through the most efficient methods of expulsion:
Should she simply order Draco to kick these two blundering idiots out into the freezing dungeon corridors?
Or would it be more entertaining to hit them both with a silent Locomotor Mortis and watch them roll out of the common room like a pair of overstuffed barrels?
Either way, she was not about to let these air-polluting trolls breathe the same oxygen as her for a single second longer.
Just as Tamara's face settled into a mask of cold cruelty, her lips parting to issue a deeply humiliating order of expulsion—
"Goyle" and "Crabbe" suddenly shot up from the leather sofa as if a localized fire spell had been cast directly beneath their backsides.
Their faces were visibly warping. The thick, doughy skin of their cheeks began to bubble and writhe like boiling mud, their heavy features contorting and shrinking in real-time.
"We have to go!" "Crabbe" roared, his voice cracking into a strangely high-pitched, indistinct squeak. He grabbed "Goyle" by the sleeve and violently yanked him toward the exit.
"Hey? Wait! What is wrong with you two tonight?" Draco called after them, jumping to his feet in bewilderment.
But the two imposters paid him absolutely no mind. They stumbled frantically over their own feet, practically throwing themselves through the sliding stone wall and vanishing into the corridor.
Watching the empty space where the two fleeing figures had just been, Tamara slowly closed her book. The heavy thud of the leather cover echoed in the quiet room.
Something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Those two bumbling fools were absolutely not Crabbe and Goyle.
Tamara's mind raced, the gears of her intellect spinning at terrifying speed. She recalled the events of the past few weeks. That insufferable little Gryffindor bookworm had been spending an awful lot of time buried in the library, researching...
Polyjuice Potion.
Complete understanding dawned on Tamara in a flash of cold clarity.
"I have something to attend to."
Tamara stood up smoothly, completely ignoring Draco's confused protests and outstretched hand. Without a backward glance, she swept out of the common room, her dark robes billowing behind her as she followed the trail of the two imposters into the shadows of the dungeon.
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