Chapter 87: Back to the Orphanage
Stepping through the invisible, shimmering barrier of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters felt like plunging headfirst into a swamp.
The crisp, crackling energy of ambient magic vanished in a heartbeat, instantly replaced by the suffocating, smog-choked air of London's King's Cross Station.
The Muggle world.
Tamara Riddle wrinkled her nose, her upper lip curling into a sneer of absolute disgust.
She dragged her heavy leather suitcase behind her, a carrier containing her cat clutched in her other hand. All around her, throngs of oblivious Muggles hurried past, swathed in their utterly ridiculous, drab clothing. They bumped shoulders and rushed blindly, ignorant of the apex predator walking among them as she exited the station.
There was no Floo powder network available to her here. No Knight Bus to hail.
She was forced to endure the ultimate indignity: boarding a dilapidated, rust-bucket of a public bus, rattling and wheezing its way toward the darkest, grimiest corners of London like a true Muggle.
An hour later.
By the time Tamara finally stood before the towering, rust-flaked iron gates, dusk had bled across the sky, painting the clouds a bruised purple.
Wool's Orphanage.
The gray, blocky structure loomed in the heart of the slums like a massive, forgotten tombstone. It looked exactly as it did in Tom Riddle's memories from decades past.
It was just as dilapidated, just as bleak, and just as thoroughly permeated with the suffocating scent of desperate mildew and boiled cabbage.
"Well, well. If it isn't our little privileged princess returning to the roost."
The heavy iron gate groaned open. A corpulent middle-aged woman waddled out, wiping her hands on a grease-stained gray apron.
This was the new administrator, Mrs. Cole's successor—a Muggle woman who somehow managed to be even more spiteful, petty, and snobbish than the gin-soaked hag who preceded her.
"I heard you went off to one of those fancy aristocratic boarding schools?"
The woman scrutinized the fine, tailored fabric of the Hogwarts robes Tamara still wore, a naked flicker of jealousy and greed flashing across her pudgy face.
"Now that you're back under my roof, don't go putting on airs like some high-society young lady. You know the rules here, girl."
The woman jabbed a thick finger in Tamara's direction. "Change out of those freakish clothes and get yourself down to the kitchen to help peel potatoes. Dinner is cabbage soup tonight, and if you don't work, you won't even get a drop of soup."
Tamara stared at the woman. Her expression remained perfectly blank, but beneath the fabric of her sleeve, her slender fingers gently caressed the smooth wood of her wand.
'Stupefy?' she mused inwardly.
No. A simple Stunning Spell would be far too merciful for this swine.
"Alright, madam," Tamara said, her voice soft and compliant. She lowered her head, letting her dark bangs fall forward to conceal the murderous, crimson glint flashing in her eyes.
Although reason dictated that she should keep a low profile and endure the indignity, it did not mean the Dark Lord would simply allow a squawking, filthy Muggle to trample all over her without consequence.
The plump woman, practically vibrating with smug authority, turned her broad back to head inside and supervise the misery.
Hanging loosely by her side, Tamara's fingers twitched in a precise, subtle motion. Her pale lips parted slightly, silently shaping the syllables of a vicious, flesh-rending hex.
It was a localized Cutting Charm. Not fatal, of course. Just enough to slice a deep, agonizing gash across the back of the fat woman's calves.
However, the very microsecond the magic began to condense at her fingertips...
[Warning: Detected host's attempt at malicious harm to another!]
[Punishment: Level One Electric Current.]
Zzzzt—!
A sharp, biting surge of electricity shot directly through Tamara's fingertips. It raced up her arm, hijacking her nerve endings and flooding her entire nervous system in a fraction of a second.
It wasn't exactly agonizing pain, but the intense, overwhelming tingling sensation hijacked her motor controls. Her frail body jerked, trembling violently and uncontrollably in the cold evening air. The sheer physiological shock of the current forced hot, humiliating tears to instantly well up in her dark eyes.
'You absolute, damned system...' she cursed venomously in her mind. She bit down on her lower lip so hard she tasted copper, desperately swallowing the muffled, pathetic groan that threatened to escape her throat.
But even so. Even with her muscles spasming, even with her fingers numb and her eyes brimming with unshed tears.
The Dark Lord absolutely refused to suffer a loss.
If a malicious, blood-drawing curse was off the table... fine. Tamara, using the momentum of her own trembling body, defiantly flicked her still-numb index finger upward, aiming squarely at the back of the woman's heel.
'Reckless, fat fool.'
At the exact same time.
"Ouch—!"
A shrill scream pierced the gloomy courtyard. The administrator, who had been strutting along with such arrogant pride, suddenly felt her ankle hook violently against thin air. It was as if a massive, invisible hand had swept her legs out from under her, causing her to lose her balance entirely.
Her corpulent body traced a majestic, flailing arc through the air before crashing heavily into a deep, stagnant puddle of rainwater and grime.
Foul, muddy water splashed high into the air, raining down over the cobblestones. A fitting welcome gift from the Dark Lord.
"Damn it! Who did that?! Why is this blasted ground so slippery!"
The administrator scrambled onto her hands and knees, her face and apron plastered in thick, foul-smelling mud. She whipped her head around, her furious gaze instantly locking onto the only other person in the courtyard.
"Was it you?! You little monster! What freakish trick did you just use—"
She lunged forward, raising a meaty, mud-caked hand, fully intending to slap the girl across the face.
But the vicious curses died in her throat. Her raised hand froze in mid-air.
Because the sight before her was not the cold, gloomy-eyed little monster she remembered.
Tamara stood entirely alone in the biting autumn wind. Her frail, slender body was shivering pitifully from the lingering aftereffects of the electric current. Her small hands were tightly clutching the hem of her robes, her knuckles white.
She was biting her pale lower lip, and her large, obsidian eyes were brimming with tears from the physiological stimulation, shimmering as if they might spill over her cheeks at any given second.
In that fleeting moment, she didn't look like a dangerous freak or a mischievous troublemaker at all. She looked terrified and helpless.
"That's quite enough! Don't you dare take it out on the child!"
A loud, crude, yet fiercely protective voice suddenly interjected across the courtyard. A rough, calloused hand reached out, grabbing Tamara by the shoulder and pulling her safely behind a broad back.
It was Martha.
The veteran caregiver was just as heavily built as the administrator, wearing an equally dirty apron. She was infamous for her booming voice and notoriously short temper, but right now, she stood firmly planted in front of Tamara, bristling like an old hen protecting her chick.
"Can't you see how slick the ground is with the damp?" Martha barked, glaring down the administrator. "You're clumsy and can't watch where you're going, so why is your first instinct to blame the little girl?"
Martha gestured broadly behind her. "Besides, look at the state of her! She's so thin a stiff gust of wind would blow her straight over. What in heaven's name could she possibly do to a grown woman like you?"
The administrator choked on her own outrage. She aggressively wiped a glob of mud from her face, her eyes narrowing with lingering suspicion, but she had absolutely no evidence.
"Hmph! It better be!"
She grumbled and turned on her heel to stomp back toward the main building, not forgetting to throw a vicious glare over her shoulder at Martha. "And don't even think about slacking off tonight! Go fix the latch on that rotting window in the east wing!"
Martha stood her ground until the administrator's waddling figure disappeared through the heavy doors. Only then did she turn around to look at the girl huddled behind her.
The fierce, combative scowl melted off her deeply wrinkled face, replaced by a rare, almost imperceptible look of genuine pity.
"Are you alright, little dear?"
Martha extended a rough, weathered hand, wanting to brush a speck of dust from the hem of Tamara's robe.
Every instinct in Tamara's body screamed at her to dodge. She absolutely loathed the touch of Muggles.
But as she looked up into Martha's cloudy, tired eyes, she saw no malice. Tamara's spine went rigid. She forced her feet to stay planted, ultimately not moving, allowing the heavy hand smelling strongly of cheap lye soap and stale cooking oil to rest on her shoulder.
"You're still so terribly thin. Didn't they feed you properly at that school of yours?"
Martha sighed heavily. She dug into the deep pocket of her apron and pulled out a small, hard piece of bread. It was stale, but still carried a faint trace of warmth from the kitchen ovens.
"Here. Take this, and hurry straight up to your room," Martha whispered, pressing the bread into Tamara's palm. "Don't you worry about helping down in the kitchen tonight. I'll peel your share of the potatoes for you."
She gave Tamara a firm nod. "If anyone stops you and tells you to do chores, you just tell them Martha ordered you upstairs to go make the beds."
With that, she slipped the bread completely into Tamara's hand, roughly but affectionately ruffled Tamara's soft black hair, and then turned her bulky frame, hurrying off toward the kitchen entrance.
Tamara stood completely motionless in the courtyard.
The hard, crusty bread resting in her hand still held the residual body heat of the Muggle woman. It was a deeply unfamiliar sensation.
Back at Hogwarts, the Slytherins revered her out of fear and ambition. Dumbledore watched her with deep, calculating wariness. Harry Potter looked at her with blind, foolish gratitude.
But no one had ever... simply because they felt a pang of pity for her, handed her a piece of bread without expecting a single thing in return.
Even if the other party was nothing more than a lowly Muggle.
[Ding! Detected the brilliant radiance of humanity!]
That damned, overly-cheerful system would never miss a prime opportunity to moralize.
[Host, do you see? Even in the darkest, most desolate corners, genuine warmth exists.] the system's voice chirped in her mind. [Although this Madam Martha is a mere Muggle, wasn't the way she shielded you just now exactly like a guardian angel? How about it? Do you feel a long-lost touch of emotion? Do you feel that this world isn't so bad after all?]
'Emotion?'
Tamara stared at the doorway where Martha's corpulent, busy figure had vanished. The microscopic, involuntary ripple of surprise in her dark eyes was instantly swallowed by a glacier of ice.
She casually tossed the stale bread into her robe pocket.
'Meddling,'she replied coldly to the system in her mind.'She is merely satisfying her own overflowing, utterly worthless sympathy.''However...'Tamara's fingers brushed against the rough crust of the bread hidden in her pocket.'For the sake of this minor convenience... when I inevitably cleanse this filthy establishment later...'A cruel smirk ghosted across her lips.'I suppose I can consider sparing her miserable life, letting her continue to peel potatoes.'
[Ding!...Alright, I suppose that's progress.]
She dragged her heavy suitcase through the dark, suffocatingly narrow corridors of the orphanage.
Sharp, grating cries and the chaotic sounds of children playing emanated from behind the peeling doors on either side. The air in the hallway was thick, heavy with the nauseating smell of boiled cabbage and stale earth.
This was a universe apart from Hogwarts' warm and brilliantly illuminated Great Hall, the fragrant long tables piled with food, and the soft, velvet-draped beds.
The immense, jarring sense of disparity violently dragged up the most unpleasant, buried childhood memories for Tamara.
She remembered it with crystal clarity. It had been the dead of winter.
The orphanage's meager coal quota had run dry, and the basement boiler had completely shut down. That particular night had been so blisteringly cold that the condensation on the inside of the windowpanes had frozen solid, blooming into jagged ice flowers.
The other children, looking for all the world like a nest of dying rats, had huddled together on a single mattress. They shivered violently, desperately trying to warm themselves with each other's meager body heat to survive the frost.
And Tom had sat entirely alone on the hard, unforgiving springs of the corner cot, draped in nothing but a gray blanket so threadbare it felt like paper.
She had simply kept her eyes wide open, watching the white plumes of her own breath dissipate into the freezing darkness. She remembered clearly feeling her hands and feet gradually lose all sensation.
That agonizing, bone-deep cold, paired with the hollow, acidic burning in her stomach from days of prolonged hunger, were the only unvarnished backdrop of her childhood.
"Heh..."
A dark, barely audible scoff slipped past Tamara's lips, dispelling those pathetic images.
She shoved open the warped wooden door to her small room.
There was only a hard, sagging cot, a rotting wooden wardrobe missing a leg, a heavily cracked mirror hanging by a rusted nail, and a single window caked in years of thick dust. In the corner, a massive patch of plaster had peeled away from the wall entirely, exposing the damp, blackened bricks underneath.
Tamara threw her suitcase and the cat carrier onto the scuffed floorboards with a heavy thud and walked straight to the window.
Beyond the grimy glass lay London's oppressive, gray sky. In the distance, thick plumes of black, toxic smoke billowed from Muggle factories, rising up to obscure the pale light of the moon completely.
This was truly a... disgusting world.
'This feeling again.'
Tamara reached out, pressing her pale palm flat against the freezing glass. She stared at her own reflection superimposed over the smoggy city.
The little girl staring back at her possessed a delicate, pale face and a frail, slender figure. But her eyes were infinitely darker and more dangerous than the sprawling abyss outside the window.
This impoverished, dirty life. Being barked at and ordered around by insignificant ants.
Every agonizing minute, every suffocating second spent in this place served as a brutal reminder of one absolute truth: the supreme importance of power and strength.
If you were not strong enough to crush those beneath you, you would be tossed into this garbage heap, left to fight with the rats for scraps of food.
She would never allow herself to rot here. Never again.
"Just wait..." Tamara whispered to the suffocating dark night beyond the glass, her voice as soft and venomous as a curse.
"One day, I will flatten all these miserable gray houses and turn this entire place into... a tomb."
"But before that..."
She reached into her pocket, her fingers brushing against the heavy, reassuring weight of the thirty Galleons remaining there.
This was the leftover capital she had ruthlessly extorted from that sniveling second-hand shop owner before the school term began. Aside from purchasing her absolute necessities, her luxurious life at Hogwarts barely cost her anything.
"I need to figure out a way to set up my rudimentary alchemy laboratory first."
Tamara's sharp gaze swept over the dilapidated, broken furniture cluttering the tiny room.
She did not draw her wand.
In the narrow, bureaucratic eyes of those foolish Ministry of Magic officials, underage wizards were utterly helpless and could do nothing without a wand. The Trace monitoring mechanism was also primarily calibrated to detect the intense, focused magical signatures emitted around wands.
As long as she relied on wandless manipulation and refrained from casting large-scale, volatile magic, she would not be discovered by the Ministry of Magic.
Tamara slowly raised her pale index finger, aiming it deliberately at the splintered stump of the wardrobe's missing leg.
The fractured, rotting wood splinters scattered on the floor suddenly seemed to come alive. They slithered upward, interweaving and flawlessly fusing together. In a matter of seconds, the broken leg was entirely restored to its original state, the wood fibers magically reinforced to be even sturdier than new.
Immediately after, she lightly flicked her finger toward the floor.
The heavy brass latches on the suitcase she had thrown on the ground automatically snapped open. Like a perfectly choreographed dance, her heavy pewter cauldrons, delicate glass bottles, and thick rolls of parchment silently flew out of the trunk. They glided through the air and arranged themselves in careful, precise order across the surface of the dusty table.
Tamara lowered her hand, a cold smile touching the corners of her mouth.
"Perfect."
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