Chapter 87: Back to the Orphanage
Crossing the magical barrier, Tamara felt the air change at once.
The clean, magic filled freshness vanished, replaced by the murky atmosphere of King's Cross Station.
The Muggle world.
Tamara wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Dragging her suitcase and carrying her cat, she moved through the rushing crowd of strangely dressed Muggles and left the station.
There was no Floo Powder. No Knight Bus.
So she could only do what a real Muggle would do, board a battered public bus and let it rattle its way toward the darkest corner of London.
An hour later, dusk had already fallen by the time Tamara stopped in front of a rusty black iron gate.
Wools Orphanage.
This grey block of a building stood in the slums like a row of tombstones. It looked almost exactly the same as it had in Tom Riddle's memories from decades ago.
Just as run down. Just as eerie. Just as soaked in the smell of mildew and despair.
"Well, well. If it isn't our little privileged one."
The gate creaked open, and a plump middle aged woman in a grey apron stepped out.
She was the current administrator, Mrs. Cole's successor, and in some ways even more spiteful and snobbish than Mrs. Cole had ever been.
"I heard you went off to one of those aristocratic boarding schools."
Her eyes swept over Tamara's robes, and a flicker of jealousy and greed passed through them.
"Now that you're back, don't start acting like some young lady. You know the rules here."
She folded her arms.
"Change out of those strange clothes and get to the kitchen to peel potatoes. Dinner is cabbage soup, and if you don't work, you don't eat."
Tamara looked at her coldly.
Inside her sleeve, her fingers brushed lightly over her wand.
Stupefy?
No. That would be far too merciful.
"Alright, madam."
Tamara lowered her head, hiding the brief red gleam in her eyes.
Reason told her to endure.
That did not mean the Dark Lord would allow some shrieking Muggle to order her about without consequence.
The moment the woman turned away smugly to supervise someone else, Tamara's fingers twitched faintly at her side. Her lips moved, silently shaping half of a vicious incantation.
A Cutting Charm.
Not enough to kill, but enough to open a neat little wound across that fat body.
But just as the magic began to gather,
[Warning: Detected host's attempt at malicious harm to another!]
[Punishment: Level One Electric Current.]
Zzz.
A fine but undeniable current shot through Tamara's fingertips, racing through her nerves and spreading through her body.
It was not truly painful, but the sudden numb tingling made her whole frame shudder violently. Tears instantly sprang to her eyes from pure physiological reflex.
"Damn system..."
She cursed inwardly, biting down hard on her lip to stop the muffled sound that almost escaped.
But even with trembling fingers, even with tears in her eyes, the Dark Lord was not about to suffer a loss.
If the malicious curse was forbidden, then she would settle for something smaller.
Her still numb finger flicked upward with quiet malice toward the woman's heel.
"Reckless fool."
At the same moment,
"Ouch!"
A sharp scream rang out.
The administrator, who had been strutting away just fine a second ago, suddenly lurched as though an invisible hand had tripped her. Her entire bulk flew forward and came crashing down into a puddle.
Mud splashed everywhere.
That was Tamara's welcome gift.
"Damn it! Who did that? Why is the ground so slippery?"
The woman scrambled up, dripping mud, and whirled around.
Her suspicious glare landed at once on Tamara.
"Was it you? You little monster! What trick did you use..."
She raised her hand, ready to slap her.
Then the words died in her throat.
Because what she saw was not the usual strange, unsettling child.
Tamara stood alone in the cold evening wind, her frail body still trembling slightly from the lingering current. Her hands clutched the hem of her robes. Her pale lips were bitten red, and her black eyes shimmered with tears that looked ready to spill at any moment.
She did not look like a troublemaker.
She looked fragile. Wronged. Harmless.
"Enough! Don't take it out on the child!"
A rough but protective voice cut in.
A thick hand reached out and pulled Tamara behind its owner.
It was Martha, another corpulent woman in a stained apron.
Usually, Martha was loud, gruff, and not much gentler than the rest, but at that moment she stood like an old hen shielding a chick.
"Can't you see the ground's slippery? You went down because you're clumsy, not because of her."
She planted herself in front of Tamara.
"And look at the girl. She's so thin a gust of wind could blow her away. What exactly do you think she did to you?"
The administrator spluttered, wiping mud from her face. She was still suspicious, but she had nothing she could prove.
"Hmph. It had better be that."
She shot one last glare in their direction, then stomped off, not forgetting to snap back over her shoulder.
"And don't think you can slack off tonight, Martha! Go fix that rotten window!"
Once she was gone, Martha turned to Tamara.
The harshness on her wrinkled face softened just a little, enough to show something like pity.
"You alright, little dear?"
She lifted a rough hand, brushing a bit of dust from the hem of Tamara's robe.
Tamara instinctively wanted to pull away.
She hated being touched by Muggles.
But looking into Martha's cloudy, unkindly eyes, she stiffened and, in the end, did not move.
She allowed the hand that smelled of soap and kitchen grease to rest on her.
"You're skin and bone. Didn't they feed you at that school?"
Martha sighed, then dug into her apron pocket and pulled out a hard piece of bread that still held a trace of warmth.
"Here. Take this and go back to your room. Don't bother with the kitchen. I'll peel the potatoes for you."
She pressed the bread into Tamara's hand.
"If anyone asks, say Martha told you to go make the beds."
Then, before Tamara could reply, Martha ruffled her black hair with that same rough hand and hurried off toward the kitchen.
Tamara stood there without moving.
The bread in her hand was still warm from Martha's body heat.
It was an unfamiliar feeling.
At Hogwarts, the Slytherins revered her. Dumbledore watched her. Harry Potter was grateful to her.
But no one had ever simply handed her a piece of bread out of pity, with no expectation of anything in return.
Even if the person doing it was only a lowly Muggle.
[Ding! Detected the brilliance of humanity!]
The system, predictably, could not let the moment pass without preaching.
[Host, you see? Even in the darkest corner, warmth still exists.]
[Although Madam Martha is a Muggle, was the way she protected you just now not rather like a guardian angel?]
[How about it? Do you feel a long lost touch of emotion? Do you feel this world might not be so bad after all?]
"Emotion?"
Tamara stared at Martha's broad, hurried back. The faint ripple in her eyes froze over again almost instantly.
She slipped the hard bread into her pocket.
"Meddling."
Her reply was ice cold.
"She is simply indulging her own overflowing, worthless sympathy."
Her fingers brushed the bread again through the fabric of her pocket.
"However..."
Tamara's expression did not change.
"For the sake of this, when I cleanse this place later, I may consider sparing her life."
[...Alright. That still counts as progress.]
Tamara dragged her suitcase down the narrow corridor.
Shrill cries and the sounds of children playing came from the rooms on either side, while the smell of boiled cabbage and damp earth filled the air.
This was an entirely different world from Hogwarts, from its warm Great Hall, its glittering candles, its long tables heavy with food, and its soft beds.
The sheer contrast dragged old, unpleasant memories back to the surface.
It had been winter.
The orphanage had run out of coal, and the boiler had stopped completely.
That night had been so cold that frost bloomed across the inside of the windows.
The other children had huddled together like a nest of dying rats, packed onto the same bed and shivering, trying to steal warmth from one another's starved bodies.
Tom had sat alone on the hard cot in the corner with nothing but a thin grey blanket that felt like paper.
She had kept her eyes open in the dark and watched her own breath fade into nothing.
She had felt her fingers and feet go numb, little by little.
That kind of cold, along with the gnawing burn of hunger in her stomach, had been the background of her childhood.
"Heh..."
Tamara gave a faint, humourless scoff and brushed the memory away.
She pushed open the door to her tiny room.
There was only a hard cot, a wardrobe with one broken leg, a cracked mirror, and a window filmed with grime.
A patch of plaster had fallen away from the corner of the wall, exposing blackened brick beneath.
Tamara dropped both her suitcase and the cat onto the floor and walked to the window.
Outside lay the grey London sky. In the distance, black smoke from Muggle factories smothered the moon entirely.
What a foul world.
"This feeling again."
Tamara pressed one hand against the cold glass and looked at her own reflection.
The girl in the pane had a pale face and a thin frame, but her eyes were darker than the abyss beyond the window.
A life like this. Poor, filthy, ordered about by ants.
Every minute of it reminded her of one thing.
Power mattered.
Strength mattered.
Without either, one was thrown into a rubbish heap like this and left to fight rats for scraps.
She would never rot here.
Never.
"Just wait..."
Tamara whispered to the darkness outside, her voice as soft as a curse.
"One day, I will flatten every one of these grey houses and turn this place into a graveyard."
"And before that..."
Her fingers touched the thirty Galleons still in her pocket.
It was the remainder of the money she had extorted from the second hand shop owner before term began. Aside from school supplies, life at Hogwarts had cost her almost nothing.
"I need to find a way to set up a rudimentary alchemy laboratory first."
Her gaze passed over the pathetic furniture in the room.
She did not reach for her wand.
In the eyes of the foolish Ministry officials, underage witches and wizards could do nothing without one.
The Trace was also tied mainly to more obvious magical activity through wands.
As long as she did not cast anything too large, the Ministry would notice nothing.
Tamara slowly raised one pale finger and pointed it at the broken leg of the wardrobe.
The cracked splinters of wood began to shift.
They twisted together, merged, and smoothed themselves out. Within seconds, the broken leg had restored itself completely, stronger than before.
Then Tamara flicked her finger lightly.
The suitcase on the floor sprang open. Cauldrons, glass vials, and stacks of parchment floated silently out of it and arranged themselves in perfect order on the dusty table.
"Perfect."
.....
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