If Transfiguration had been an exercise in elegance and precision, then Defense Against the Dark Arts was, for Tamara Riddle, an outright assault on both her senses and her soul.
She had barely reached the end of the third-floor corridor when the stench hit her.
It was not an ordinary smell.
It was as though hundreds of bulbs of garlic had been crushed, left to ferment in stale rot, then sealed inside a cramped cellar to stew for an entire summer.
"Ugh—"
Goyle, walking ahead of her, gagged and clapped a hand over his nose.
"What kind of hellhole is this?" Draco Malfoy drew out a silk handkerchief and pressed it tightly over his mouth and nose, his aristocratic features twisted in disgust. "Is this a classroom or a kitchen? I feel like I've stepped into a giant pickle jar."
Tamara stopped before the wooden door that seemed to be leaking poison into the corridor. Her expression darkened to a terrifying degree.
In her previous life, even at the height of a Death Eater rally—amid blood, chaos, and screams—she had maintained absolute elegance. Her robes had always been immaculate. The air around her had carried only the faint metallic scent of blood mingled with a cold, noble fragrance.
And now?
She stared at the door reeking of garlic and decay, feeling as if her dignity were being dragged across the floor.
That main soul possessing Quirrell—herself, but noseless and degraded.
Had he truly fallen so low?
To cover the odor of rot, he had drowned himself in pickled garlic?
"Simply… a disgrace to Slytherin."
Tamara stepped into the classroom as though walking toward an execution ground.
The room was dim, shadows pooling in the corners. Strings of garlic hung from the ceiling beams like grotesque decorations.
And behind the lectern stood the greatest joke in Hogwarts: Professor Quirinus Quirrell.
A ridiculous purple turban wrapped around his head, enormous and ostentatious, making him resemble some caricature of a wandering snake charmer. He wrung his hands nervously, eyes darting about, unable to meet the gazes of the first-year students seated before him.
"G-good… morning, c-class," he stuttered, every syllable trembling as though dragged from his throat by force. "W-welcome to D-defense… Against the D-dark… Arts."
A suppressed snicker rose from the Slytherin benches.
Though Slytherins prided themselves on propriety, it was difficult to remain serious in the face of such pitiful incompetence.
Draco leaned back in his chair and murmured just loudly enough for those nearby to hear, "G-g-good morning, I'm a s-stutterer."
Pansy Parkinson covered her mouth, shoulders shaking with laughter. Crabbe and Goyle snorted openly.
The laughter, though restrained, was sharp in the otherwise silent classroom.
Quirrell's face flushed crimson. He seemed to want to reprimand them, but his mouth opened and closed uselessly. In the end, he merely tugged at his turban, fear and helplessness flickering in his eyes.
Tamara sat in the front row, watching without expression.
She did not laugh.
Instead, a tide of humiliation and fury surged inside her.
That was her main soul.
That was the Dark Lord whose name had once paralyzed the wizarding world with terror.
And now he stood trembling before a group of eleven-year-olds.
"Enough."
Tamara tapped her holly wand lightly against the desk.
The sound was not loud, but it carried a razor-sharp chill that sliced cleanly through the mockery.
Draco froze mid-sneer. Pansy's laughter died abruptly.
All eyes turned toward Tamara.
She slowly turned her head, black eyes sweeping coldly over her classmates.
"Is this Slytherin etiquette? Mocking your professor like ill-bred baboons?"
"But he—" Draco began.
"Mocking such a person only lowers yourselves," she interrupted calmly, her tone decisive and final.
The room fell into stunned silence.
Was she defending him?
Or insulting him even further?
A faint mechanical chime echoed in her mind.
[Ding! Detected that the host maintained classroom discipline, demonstrating the admirable virtue of respecting teachers.]
[Although the tone was sarcastic, the result is full of positive energy!]
[Reward: Wisdom +1.]
Tamara sneered inwardly.
Respecting teachers?
No. She simply refused to watch herself become a circus act.
"Th-thank you, M-miss Riddle," Quirrell stammered, something unreadable flashing in his eyes.
"T-today we will discuss… v-vampires."
He launched into his lecture.
He described his supposed encounter with vampires in Romania and how garlic had saved his life. Yet his words were disjointed and riddled with inaccuracies. He even mispronounced basic defensive spells.
Listening to the fabricated nonsense, Tamara's anger only intensified.
She had already been forced to waste a valuable item in Transfiguration to preserve her reputation. Now she had nowhere to vent her frustration.
And this garlic-drenched parody of herself stood conveniently at the front of the room.
When Quirrell declared that garlic was the bane of vampires, Tamara raised her hand with elegant precision.
Quirrell paused at once. Seeing it was her, he offered a nervous, ingratiating smile.
"M-miss Riddle? D-do you have a question?"
Tamara stood.
Her eyes locked onto him, a dangerous smile curving her lips.
"Professor, you mentioned that the garlic is meant to deter the vampire you encountered in Romania. To prevent it from seeking revenge, correct?"
"Y-yes."
"How touching."
Her voice was soft—too soft. Each word felt like a poisoned blade.
"But I am curious."
She stepped forward, closing the distance between herself and the lectern.
"Garlic may repel low-level dark creatures such as vampires."
Her gaze shifted—subtly, deliberately—to the back of his turbaned head.
"But what if the entity possessing someone is not a vampire…"
She narrowed her eyes.
"…but a more ancient, weakened, disembodied remnant soul? One that survives only by parasitizing a host?"
Silence.
The smile on Quirrell's face froze.
His spine straightened abruptly.
The cowardice vanished.
For a fleeting instant, something else surfaced—something cold and crimson.
Lord Voldemort's gaze.
A serpent whose tail had been stepped on.
He stared at the eleven-year-old girl before him through Quirrell's eyes.
The air thickened, suffocating.
Draco and the others did not grasp the full meaning of her words, but they felt the shift. The pressure was suffocating.
Tamara did not look away.
Two Voldemorts.
One with a young, healthy body bound by a mysterious system.
One reduced to a parasitic fragment clinging to a useless professor.
Their gazes collided.
"Buzz—"
A searing pain erupted in Tamara's mind.
Not a simple headache.
It was resonance—repulsion and attraction between fragments of the same origin.
Like two identical magnetic poles forced together.
[Warning! High-risk malicious intent source intrusion detected!]
[Host lacks defensive skills.]
[Activating highest-level protocol: Soul Firewall.]
The clash was not magical in the conventional sense.
It was metaphysical.
The violent friction of two soul fragments governed by incompatible laws.
Tamara's vision blurred. It felt as if a red-hot poker were stirring her brain.
Across from her—
"Ah!"
Quirrell staggered back, clutching his head, nearly overturning the lectern.
To him, it must have felt like plunging his hand into molten lava.
The system wrapped Tamara's soul in an incomprehensible layer of distorted code, burning back Voldemort's invasive probing.
He stared at her in disbelief.
Recognition.
Rage.
Humiliation.
"Sit down!" Quirrell shouted suddenly, his voice sharp and stripped of its stutter.
Then he turned his back to her abruptly, gripping the lectern so tightly his knuckles whitened.
"That is a meaningless hypothesis!" he snapped, breath uneven.
A moment later, the stutter returned.
"G-garlic is v-very effective! Open your textbooks to page ten!"
Tamara watched his retreating back with contempt.
Coward.
Reduced to turning away from a child.
It seemed that tearing one's soul apart truly diminished one's intellect.
She sat down gracefully.
The confrontation had not frightened her.
On the contrary, it filled her with a twisted exhilaration.
The frustration from earlier evaporated.
She opened her textbook, eyes drifting over an illustration of a zombie without truly seeing it.
If you have fallen so far as to cling to such a pathetic host…
Then I shall claim the Philosopher's Stone in your stead.
Her fingers brushed the handle of her wand, feeling the warmth of the phoenix feather core within.
Only a complete and powerful self deserves immortality.
The rest of the lesson dragged on.
Quirrell did not look in her direction again. Whether from fear or caution, he adhered strictly to the textbook, abandoning embellishments.
When the bell rang, he barked "Class dismissed!" almost before the echo faded, then hurried into his office like a man fleeing a nightmare.
"What was that about?" Draco muttered, stuffing books into his bag. "It's like he saw a ghost."
"Perhaps," Tamara replied smoothly, rising and smoothing her immaculate robes.
"Perhaps he did."
She cast a final glance at the closed office door, a cruel smile touching her lips.
"Or perhaps he saw something far worse."
"Come, Draco."
She was the first to leave the garlic-saturated classroom. The cold corridor air felt pure by comparison.
She inhaled deeply.
Revived.
"Let's go to lunch," she said lightly. "I suspect even pumpkin juice won't taste so terrible today."
And behind the office door, a fragment of a Dark Lord trembled—haunted not by ghosts, but by the reflection of his own fractured soul.
For more chapters
patreon.com/Jackssparrow