Chapter 72: Help
Dumbledore's suspicion level hovered at a glaring, obnoxious fifty-five percent. To chip away at that precarious number, Tamara Riddle was forced to execute the next agonizing phase of her model-student whitewashing campaign.
The first step? Accepting a headache-inducing request from Professor McGonagall to tutor Ronald Weasley in Transfiguration.
For the Dark Lord, this was nothing short of a slow, agonizing torture.
Saturday afternoon. The dusty, quiet corner of the Hogwarts library. Sunlight slanted through the tall mullioned windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. Ron groaned, his forehead resting against the cool wood of the table. He stared at the fat, glossy black beetle crawling aimlessly in front of him with a look of utter, soul-crushing despair.
Their objective for the afternoon was elementary: turn the insect into a simple button.
"I still don't understand, why does it have to be you?" Ron muttered, his tone thick with reluctance. "Hermione could have taught me."
"Because Miss Granger has already been driven to tears three times by your thick skull, Weasley."
Tamara sat across from him, her posture perfectly straight. She slowly turned a parchment page of Intermediate Transfiguration, not even bothering to look up. "And Professor McGonagall operates under the delusion that since I managed to force Gregory Goyle to write a barely passing History of Magic essay, guiding you shouldn't be entirely impossible."
Idiots. Surrounded by absolute, staggering idiots.
"Hurry up," Tamara urged, her voice dropping a degree in temperature. "Unless you harbor a secret desire to repeat first year alongside your little sister next term."
Ron's jaw tightened. He raised his battered wand—a hand-me-down from his brother Charlie, with a frayed white unicorn hair literally poking out of the chipped tip.
"Vera Verto!" he shouted, slashing the wood through the air with far too much force.
Poof!
A pathetic puff of gray smoke erupted. The beetle did not become a button. Instead, the poor creature swelled to twice its size, morphing into a dusty, violently twitching monstrosity. Half of it was smooth brass; the other half consisted of wildly kicking, hairy insect legs.
"Uh..." Ron scratched the back of his neck, his ears burning a fierce crimson. "At least it's round?"
Tamara shut her book. The heavy thud echoed in the quiet corner. She stared at the squirming, clicking abomination, her upper lip curling in deep disgust.
"It's not my fault!" Before Tamara could even open her mouth, Ron threw his hands up, his face flushing darker. "It's this wand! It's too old, and... and it doesn't listen!"
"The wand is merely a conduit. The wizard is the core."
Tamara stood up, her dark robes brushing against the chair, and moved slowly behind him.
"Your problem isn't the chipped wood in your hand, Weasley. It is your mind."
"My mind?" Ron blinked, thoroughly lost.
"You are terrified." Tamara's voice drifted right beside his ear, smooth, quiet, and laced with a piercing insight that felt as though it were slicing straight through his ribs. "You are terrified of failure. Terrified of never measuring up to the ghosts of your brothers' achievements. Bill is a prefect. Charlie is the Quidditch captain. Percy is an insufferable honor student. Even the twins, despite being absolute menaces, possess a raw, obvious talent..."
She paused, letting the silence stretch.
"And then there is you. Ronald Weasley. The youngest son. You sit here, convinced that no matter how much you bleed and sweat, you are merely walking in footprints far too large for your feet."
Ron froze. His shoulders locked. He whipped his head around, his blue eyes wide with a mixture of raw shock and defensive anger at being so thoroughly dissected.
"Don't analyze me like a Dementor!"
"Then prove me wrong." Tamara didn't flinch. She simply drew her own wand, flicked it lazily, and reverted the thrashing half-button back into a normal beetle. "Forget your brothers. Right now, in this moment, there is only you, me, and this pathetic bug."
She leaned in slightly. "Focus. See the button in your mind's eye. Do not cast the spell for a grade. Do not cast it to avoid McGonagall's lectures. Cast it to master reality. That is the very essence of magic—the absolute manifestation of your will upon the world."
Ron stared at her. For a fleeting second, the boy realized that this notoriously aloof, sharp-tongued Slytherin actually sounded like a true mentor. She hadn't mocked his frayed robes. She hadn't sneered at his broken wand. She had simply laid bare the truth.
He took a slow, deep breath. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the worn ash wood. He closed his eyes, shoving away the thoughts of Percy's badges and Charlie's broomsticks, until nothing remained but the spell.
"Vera Verto!"
This time, his wrist movement was sharp, precise, and entirely firm.
Ding.
A crisp, clean sound chimed over the table. The glossy beetle vanished. In its place sat a perfectly round, black horn button. The edges were perhaps a fraction uneven, but it was entirely static. No legs. No twitching.
"I... I did it!" Ron's jaw dropped. He stared at the little object as if it were made of solid gold, then leaped out of his chair, nearly knocking it over. "Tamara! Look! I actually did it!"
"Barely acceptable," Tamara drawled, her tone flat. Yet, despite the coldness of her voice, she allowed a microscopic, perfectly calculated glimmer of approval to show in her dark eyes. "At least it won't crawl off the table."
Ron didn't care about the icy delivery. He was practically vibrating with the high of his first truly independent, flawless Transfiguration.
"Thank you, Tamara," he rubbed the back of his neck, his face flushing again, this time with genuine gratitude. "That... what you said a minute ago. It was harsh, but... it really worked."
"Don't mention it." Tamara settled back into her chair, crossing her arms. "I simply refused to let Professor McGonagall assume I am an incompetent instructor."
A rustling sound interrupted the moment.
A plump, gray shape squeezed its way out from beneath a crumpled pile of parchment on the table. It was a rat. It twitched its nose, sniffing blindly around the newly minted button in search of biscuit crumbs.
"Scabbers!" Ron lunged across the table to grab his pet. "Don't run off! We're in the library!"
But a pale, slender hand shot out, moving with the striking speed of a viper. Tamara pinched the loose skin at the back of the rat's neck with two fingers, lifting the heavy creature dangling into the air.
"This is your pet?" Tamara narrowed her dark eyes.
The fat rat thrashed wildly, kicking its little legs and letting out a series of frantic, high-pitched squeaks.
Then, their eyes met.
A violent, icy shudder ripped through the very depths of the rat's soul. Its squirming body went entirely rigid.
It was the Master.
Scabbers' tiny, beady eyes bulged with pure, unadulterated terror. The angle of her chin, the chilling emptiness in those dark irises, the subtle, aristocratic sneer—it all triggered a primal, screaming panic inside Peter Pettigrew. He had seen her once before, briefly, in the train compartment, but back then, he had only harbored a creeping suspicion. Now, staring directly into the abyss of her gaze, he knew.
Scabbers began to tremble so violently his teeth chattered. He curled his limbs inward, playing dead, too terrified to even draw a breath lest he provoke her wrath.
Tamara stared at the paralyzed rodent. The faint smile playing at the corners of her mouth deepened into something infinitely darker. She knew exactly who this was. She recognized the missing toe on the front paw. She recognized the pathetic, groveling aura.
Wormtail.
Her most cowardly, useless servant. Yet, ironically, the very rat who had ultimately aided her main soul's resurrection.
"What an... interesting creature," Tamara murmured softly. She raised her free hand, extending a single, pale finger to lightly stroke the rat's greasy, exposed belly.
Scabbers nearly emptied his bladder right then and there. He could feel the suffocating aura of death radiating from that single fingertip. If she applied even a fraction of pressure, she could snap his fragile spine like a dry twig.
"Look, it's shaking." Tamara shifted her gaze to Ron, her expression melting instantly into a mask of innocent curiosity. "It seems he's quite frightened of me."
"Uh... Scabbers has always been a massive coward," Ron explained, eyeing his pet with mild concern. "Usually, he just sleeps and eats."
"Is that so?"
Tamara brought the rat closer to her face. She stared directly into Scabbers' hyperventilating eyes and whispered, her voice dropping to a silken, venomous pitch that only Peter Pettigrew could decipher.
"Living quite comfortably, aren't you..." she breathed, the words barely a vibration in the air. "Hiding away in this castle. Gorging yourself on the scraps of your little friend's family. Sleeping soundly in a warm, cozy pocket..." Her finger traced a slow line down his sternum. "What a... clever waste of space."
Scabbers shook his head in frantic, jerky motions. Tiny, pathetic tears actually welled up in his beady eyes. He let out a rapid series of desperate, pleading squeaks.
Tamara ignored the noise. She didn't care about his excuses.
"Tamara?" Ron shifted uncomfortably. He couldn't hear the whisper, but the intense, unblinking way she was staring at his rat was deeply unsettling.
"It's nothing." The dark aura vanished instantly. Tamara tossed Scabbers through the air with a casual flick of her wrist. The rat landed heavily, but accurately, straight into Ron's waiting hands.
"Take good care of him, Weasley," she said, her tone dripping with a double meaning Ron couldn't possibly catch.
Now was not the time to expose Wormtail. The rat still held utility. At the very least, he was a marked servant. Keeping him breathing in the shadows was far more advantageous than crushing him in a library.
"Alright, that concludes today's lesson." Tamara gathered her parchment and slid Intermediate Transfiguration into her leather satchel. She stood up, smoothing out the front of her Slytherin robes. "Go back to your common room and practice. If you still cannot transform a button by our next session, I will turn you into a button."
With that parting threat, she turned on her heel and strode away.
Ron sat at the table, clutching the violently shivering Scabbers to his chest. He watched the Slytherin girl's retreating back. For some inexplicable reason, the heavy knot of dislike he usually felt for her had loosened. Yes, she possessed a razor-sharp tongue. Yes, she was arrogant. Yes, she had a weird habit of terrifying his rat.
But she had actually taught him. She had pushed him past his own mental block. That whole speech about the manifestation of will... it was actually brilliant.
"Maybe Harry and Hermione were right," Ron muttered to himself, gently patting Scabbers on the head. "She's actually... a really good person."
Hearing the words good person applied to the Dark Lord, Scabbers' eyes rolled entirely back into his skull. The sheer absurdity, combined with the lingering terror, was too much. The rat went limp, fainting dead away in Ron's arms.
Out in the stone corridor, a familiar, perky chime echoed in Tamara's mind.
[Ding! Side quest completed: Turning an Enemy into a Friend (Novice).]
[You have successfully changed Ron Weasley's stereotype of you.]
[Reward: Dumbledore's suspicion level reduced by 1%.]
[Current suspicion level: 54%.]
Tamara paused mid-step. She stared blankly at the floating blue text.
"Only one percent?"
Her upper lip curled in deep, aristocratic disdain.
"Useless."
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