Chapter 91: A Gathering of Familiar Faces
In early August, Knockturn Alley remained perpetually suffocated beneath a heavy layer of gray mist.
This was the rotting underbelly of the magical world, separated from the sunlit, bustling storefronts of Diagon Alley by merely a single brick wall. The stagnant air hung heavy here, choked with the acrid stench of decomposing potion ingredients, mildewed parchment, and the distinct, cloying metallic tang of Dark Magic.
For an ordinary Hogwarts student, taking a wrong turn into this wretched place would be an absolute, waking nightmare.
But for Tamara Riddle...
It felt remarkably like strolling through her own private garden.
She wore a deep, charcoal-gray hooded cloak, the heavy fabric pulled low over her brow, revealing nothing but the smooth, pale curve of her chin. Her black leather shoes stepped with practiced elegance, effortlessly handling past the shifty-eyed peddlers huddled in the gloom. She sidestepped a puddle of iridescent sludge and a pile of unidentifiable, glistening animal entrails without breaking her stride, heading straight into the suffocating depths of the alley.
That cold, oppressive, and utterly malicious atmosphere washing over her actually provided a long-lost sense of comfort.
Even the hideous, wart-covered hag squatting by the gutter, hoarsely hawking a tray of shriveled human hands, seemed infinitely more agreeable to her than those simpering, fake-smiling neighbors back in the Muggle community.
'Borgin and Burkes...'
Tamara's dark eyes locked onto a peeling black sign hanging askew just ahead.
She had come today with a specific purpose: acquiring several highly restricted Dark Magic materials.
It was true that the Virtue System's pathetic little task rewards consistently boosted her attributes. Yet, for the great Dark Lord, power that could only be obtained by playing the obedient, sweet little saint carried a sickening, suffocating sense of restraint. It was like being fed scraps from a master's table.
She would never allow herself to become entirely dependent on an entity of unknown origin.
Only Dark Magic.
That violent, captivating, and absolute forbidden power, dancing wildly on the razor's edge of life and death—that was the true, burning desire buried deep within her soul. It was the only thing that made the blood in her veins feel warm, the only thing that made her feel truly alive in this absurd second life.
Only the power held firmly in one's own hands truly belonged to them.
Just as she lifted her foot to step toward the shop entrance—
Ding-ling.
The tarnished brass bell above the door chimed sharply.
Two figures stepped out into the mist.
Tamara froze mid-motion. With the fluid grace of a shadow, she melted backward, pressing herself into the pitch-black recess between two leaning brick walls.
Leading the way out of the shop was a tall wizard with long, immaculately groomed platinum hair and a cold, pointed face. He wore tailored black velvet robes that practically screamed old money, his gloved hands resting upon the silver snake-head of a polished cane. His features bore that signature, insufferable arrogance and aristocratic disdain entirely characteristic of the House of Malfoy.
Lucius Malfoy.
And trailing just behind him, dragging his feet and looking thoroughly impatient, was that exact same platinum-haired young master.
Draco Malfoy.
"Do not touch anything, Draco," Lucius reprimanded, his voice a low, silken drawl that cut through the damp air. "Every item in this wretched alley could carry a fatal curse. I have no wish to waste my afternoon at St Mungo's getting you decontaminated."
"I know, Father."
Draco dragged out his syllables, his tone dripping with a bored, absent-minded whine. Yet, his pale grey-blue eyes darted frantically around the alley, betraying a mixture of deep-seated fear and morbid curiosity regarding this haven of contraband.
Tamara held her breath in the shadows, her mind already calculating her exit route.
She had absolutely no desire to cross paths with the Malfoy father and son right now. If Lucius spotted her lurking in Knockturn Alley of all places, that slippery old fox would instantly become suspicious of her pristine, innocent facade.
And if she got stuck dealing with Draco... her carefully planned shopping trip would be entirely ruined.
However.
As Draco trudged past the narrow gap where Tamara stood concealed, the boy seemed to sense a shift in the air. He snapped his head around, his gaze locking onto that specific patch of darkness.
Though he could only make out the vague silhouette of a small, cloaked figure, a sharp flicker of recognition flashed through his eyes.
'That posture...'
Draco stopped dead in his tracks. It was a silhouette he had watched walk away down the corridors of Hogwarts countless times.
"Tamara?"
He called out the name tentatively, his voice barely a whisper against the fog.
Ahead of him, Lucius had already turned back to push open the heavy door of Borgin and Burkes once more. The hunchbacked, greasy-haired Mr. Borgin immediately scrambled forward, bowing so low his nose nearly scraped the floorboards, obsequiously inviting the elder Malfoy into the VIP room at the back of the shop—a space heavily draped in thick velvet curtains.
Clearly, whatever illicit business Lucius was conducting was highly private, entirely unfit for the eyes of anyone, especially his own son.
As the heavy curtain swished shut, Draco's mind raced. He immediately realized his father would be occupied in that back room for at least ten minutes.
This presented a perfect, fleeting window of opportunity.
He watched his father's imposing figure vanish into the dim, dusty shop, then whipped his head back toward the alley. The familiar cloaked back was already slipping away, vanishing around a jagged corner.
Draco hesitated, his polished dragon-hide boots shifting uneasily on the cobblestones. But the overwhelming desire to see his absolute idol during the dreary summer holidays violently triumphed over his innate cowardice regarding Knockturn Alley.
Taking full advantage of his father's distraction, he quietly slipped away from the storefront, his footsteps echoing softly as he jogged toward the twisting shadows.
'Damn brat.'
Tamara cursed viciously in her mind, her jaw locking.
She spun on her heel and quickened her pace, ducking sharply into an even narrower, filthier side alley that smelled strongly of stale urine and rotting cabbage.
If she got saddled with babysitting this pampered idiot, she might as well march herself straight to Azkaban.
Draco chased blindly after the fading sound of her footsteps.
But the pampered heir had vastly overestimated his own sense of direction and severely underestimated the lethal, complex nature of Knockturn Alley.
After taking just two sharp turns, the familiar cloaked figure was entirely gone.
In her place stood a towering mountain of splintered crates and rotting trash at the end of a claustrophobic dead end. And from the deepest shadows of that filth, several ragged, uninvited guests began to slowly, deliberately close in.
"Well, well... look what the kneazle dragged in."
A Dark Wizard, missing his two front teeth and sporting a face covered in weeping pustules, stepped into the meager light. He let out a wet, rattling cackle, his filthy fingers casually twirling a wand that looked more like a splintered, withered twig.
"A lost little peacock... just look at the stitching on those robes. Mighty fine silk, that is."
"He's a Malfoy, too."
A second figure emerged—a witch with a severely hooked nose and matted hair. She licked her cracked lips, her greedy, bloodshot eyes entirely fixated on the gleaming silver serpent brooch pinned to Draco's chest.
"I hear the young Malfoy master is worth a mountain of Galleons... if we chop him up nice and quiet, sell the pieces to those black market flesh dealers down in the crypts..."
Draco's aristocratic face drained of all color, turning a sickly, deathly pale in an instant.
He gripped his wand. His knuckles turned stark white around the polished hawthorn wood, but his hand shook so violently he couldn't even level the tip at these desperate, dead-eyed outlaws. These were people who had actually killed. He could smell the dried blood on them.
"Get... get back!"
He tried desperately to summon the haughty dignity of the House of Malfoy, but his voice cracked, carrying a pathetic, distinct sob.
"My father is right nearby! If you take one more step, he'll have the Ministry send every last one of you to Azkaban!"
"Hahaha! By the time your precious daddy finds you, boy, you'll be nothing but a bloody smear and a single finger!"
The toothless wizard threw his head back and laughed wildly, his grip tightening on his twig-like wand as he prepared to strike.
High above them.
Perched silently atop a precarious pile of rusted cauldrons and discarded ironwork, Tamara looked down at the pathetic scene. Her pitch-black eyes reflected absolutely no emotion. They were pools of cold, abyssal indifference, watching the unfolding violence as if it were nothing more than a poorly acted stage play.
Save him?
Don't be ridiculous.
To the great Dark Lord, the weak possessed absolutely no right to draw breath. If the sole heir to the ancient House of Malfoy couldn't even handle a few piece-of-trash street thugs, dying in a filthy gutter in Knockturn Alley would be a perfectly fitting end. It would do Slytherin House a massive favor by purifying its increasingly diluted gene pool.
She actually pivoted on her heel, fully preparing to leap to the adjacent roof and leave him to his gruesome fate.
However.
Tamara's departing step faltered. Her leather shoe hovered an inch above the rusted iron.
Her dark gaze slid back down to the violently shivering Draco, and the cold indifference in her eyes slowly morphed into something deeply calculating.
Lucius Malfoy was a slippery, self-serving coward with highly questionable magical competence... but he was rich. Disgustingly, overwhelmingly rich.
Saving his precious, spoiled only son in a life-or-death situation would be the exact equivalent of wrapping her fingers directly around the throat of the Malfoy fortune.
Compared to a chopped-up, dead Draco, a living, breathing puppet who viewed her as his eternal savior was infinitely more valuable to her future plans.
'Consider yourself incredibly lucky, you useless brat.'
Tamara coldly finalized her mental arithmetic. With a mere twitch of her wrist, her polished holly wand slid instantly and silently into her waiting palm.
"Petrificus Totalus."
The cold, deadpan voice rang out from the sky above without a single shred of warning.
A blinding, grey-white beam of concentrated magic silently sliced through the murky, fog-choked air. It struck the laughing, toothless wizard squarely between the shoulder blades with pinpoint, ruthless accuracy.
Thud!
The wizard's jaw snapped shut. He didn't even have the breath to finish his own incantation before his entire body locked up, stiff as a petrified wooden board. He toppled straight backward like a felled tree, his skull cracking against the sewage-covered cobblestones with a sickening, dull thud.
The remaining two Dark Wizards flinched violently, their heads snapping upward in sheer terror.
There, perched gracefully on the edge of the alley atop a mountain of precarious, rotting wooden crates, stood a small, slender figure.
The wind whipped her deep gray cloak around her legs. The heavy hood had fallen back, revealing an exquisitely pale, doll-like face and eyes as black and consuming as an abyss.
Tamara looked down at the street scum. The holly wand—the very wand that originally belonged to the wizarding world's precious savior—spun nimbly and effortlessly between her pale fingers.
"Since you already know he is a Malfoy."
She spoke calmly. Her voice was not loud, yet it carried a heavy, suffocating composure that was terrifyingly unnatural for a girl her age.
"Just how utterly brainless must you be to dare make a move in broad daylight?"
The two Dark Wizards below exchanged a frantic glance. The initial shock in their eyes rapidly curdled into cornered, desperate ferocity.
The third wizard—a hulking, scarred brute who had remained silent in the back—suddenly roared. He raised a thick, clumsy wand, relying entirely on his raw, unrefined magical reserves. A highly malicious, crackling purple light began to aggressively condense at the tip of his wood.
Tamara didn't even bother to shift her footing. A fleeting shadow of deep impatience crossed her dark eyes.
With a microscopic, almost lazy flick of her wrist, the holly wand traced an incredibly sharp, vicious arc through the damp air.
"Flipendo."
It was merely the Knockback Jinx. A basic, foundational spell taught to sniveling second-years at Hogwarts.
But channeled through Tamara's immense, suppressed magical core, it exploded outward with completely unreasonable, devastating power.
It was as if an invisible, localized air cannon had detonated directly in the alleyway.
The two-hundred-plus-pound brute didn't just stumble. He was violently launched off his feet as if he had been rammed head-on by the Knight Bus.
He flew backward through the air, a garbled scream tearing from his throat, tracing a pathetic, flailing arc before crashing spectacularly into a mountain of solid trash a dozen meters away. The impact shattered wooden crates into toothpicks and kicked up a massive, choking cloud of dust and debris. He didn't twitch again.
The sole remaining attacker—the hooked-nose witch—trembled so violently her knees knocked together. She stared at the crater her companion had made, then slowly lifted her terrified gaze to the motionless, utterly bored-looking girl standing above them. The witch's hand, gripping her splintered wand, shook uncontrollably.
"Incendio."
Tamara afforded her absolutely no time to process the disparity in their strength. An intensely bright, orange-red flame erupted from the tip of the holly wand.
But this fire did not scatter into a wild burst. Instead, it condensed, stretching and twisting like a highly flexible, living viper. It let out a sharp, terrifying whistle as it lashed through the air.
The witch had only just begun to raise her arm, her mouth opening to scream the incantation for a Shield Charm.
Crack!
The whip of pure, concentrated flame struck accurately and ruthlessly, wrapping directly across the witch's exposed wrist.
"Aaaarrghh!!"
The sickening smell of instantly charred flesh filled the alley, accompanied by a blood-curdling shriek. The witch's skin blistered and blackened in a fraction of a second.
The agonizing pain forced her fingers to spasm open. Her twig-like wand dropped uselessly onto the filthy cobblestones.
She clutched her ruined wrist, stumbling backward in blind panic. She tried to use her uninjured hand to frantically beat out the magical sparks still clinging to her blackened skin, but the fire burned like maggots burrowing into her very bones.
Faced with such an absolute, overwhelming crushing of magical skill, the thought of casting a counter-spell didn't even cross her mind. Her spirit was entirely broken.
"Get out."
Tamara uttered only those two words, her tone flatter than a frozen lake.
The witch didn't dare look up at those abyssal eyes again. Letting out a continuous, high-pitched wail of agony, she completely abandoned her unconscious companions. She scrambled wildly over the slick cobblestones, clutching her ruined arm to her chest, and disappeared around the far corner of the alley as fast as her legs could carry her.
Dead silence returned to the claustrophobic space.
The only things remaining were the stiffly petrified wizard on the ground, the deeply unconscious brute buried in the trash, and... Draco.
The young Malfoy heir was slumped against the damp brick wall, his jaw slack, completely and utterly dumbstruck.
A cold breeze swept through the alley, ruffling the hem of Tamara's cloak.
She stepped off the towering pile of junk, dropping through the air and landing lightly on the cobblestones. Her movements were as fluid and silent as a hunting cat, the soles of her leather shoes making absolutely no sound.
From Draco's perspective, still trembling against the wall, as the pale girl walked slowly toward him through the mist, it looked as though massive, invisible black wings were unfurling majestically behind her back.
Powerful.
Mysterious.
Utterly unrivaled.
"Are you mentally deficient?"
Tamara stopped right in front of him. She looked down at the red-eyed, sniffling young master, her delicate brow furrowing in raw, unfiltered disdain.
"Running around blindly in the depths of Knockturn Alley? What exactly is sloshing around inside that skull of yours? Flobberworm mucus?"
Draco just stared up at her blankly. His heart was pounding so violently against his ribs it felt as though it might shatter them.
That scene just now... the casual, devastating Knockback Jinx. The terrifyingly precise, living whip of flame.
It was too incredible.
Compared to his father's pompous, overly theatrical style of spellcasting—which always involved grand gestures and putting on airs—this clean, brutally decisive, and violent display of magic instantly shattered every defense in the Slytherin boy's mind. He had been raised to worship strength since he was in the cradle, and he had just witnessed absolute perfection.
A potent mixture of blind, overwhelming adoration and the dizzying relief of surviving a near-death experience caused his pale face to flush a brilliant, burning red.
"Tamara..."
He spoke haltingly, his usual bratty arrogance entirely vaporized. He looked up at her, his grey eyes shining so brightly they looked like two lit Lumos charms.
"You... you just..."
[Ding! Detected that target character Draco Malfoy's favorability has violently broken through the maximum threshold!]
[Current Status: Blind Adoration.]
[Reward: Charisma +1.]
Tamara's upper lip twitched in deep irritation.
"Shut up."
She didn't wait for him to finish his stammering praise. She reached out, her small hand grabbing a fistful of the expensive silk collar of Draco's robes, and hauled him roughly to his feet like a stray, pathetic little chick.
"Walk. Unless you want to stay here and be eaten alive by the ghouls that nest in these gutters."
"Oh... right! Yes!"
Draco obediently let her drag him forward. He didn't complain about his wrinkled collar; in fact, he actively huddled closer to her shoulder, acting as if standing within her immediate shadow was the single safest place on the entire planet.
Tamara's expression darkened further. She dragged the useless, starstruck tagalong briskly toward the alley entrance.
She just wanted to dump this massive nuisance right back into Lucius's lap, wash her hands of the Malfoys, and finally go buy her Dark Magic materials in peace.
However.
Just as she hauled Draco out of the suffocating darkness of the side alley and stepped back into the misty street directly in front of Borgin and Burkes—
Cough! Cough! Hack!
The filthy, glass-paned door of the dark magic shop was suddenly thrown open with a violent bang.
A fit of aggressive, wet coughing spilled out into the street, accompanied by a massive, billowing cloud of black coal dust.
A figure stumbled blindly out of the shop, waving their arms to clear the air. They wore lopsided, tape-repaired glasses, their face and clothes so thoroughly coated in thick black soot they looked as if they had just been forcefully rolled down a chimney.
Harry Potter.
The Boy Who Lived adjusted his crooked glasses, blinking his bright green eyes and looking around dizzily, clearly entirely disoriented and trying to figure out where on earth the Floo Network had spat him out.
Then.
He stopped rubbing his eyes.
The gazes of the three children met in the misty street.
A dead, absolute silence descended upon Knockturn Alley.
Harry: "..."
Draco: "..."
Tamara: "..."
Tamara slowly turned her head to look at Draco, whose silk collar she was still firmly gripping in her fist.
The blonde boy's eyes were bulging out of his skull, staring fixedly at Harry Potter. His expression was so vividly horrified and disgusted it looked as though he had just swallowed a live, writhing slug.
Then, she slowly turned her head back to look at the soot-covered savior of the wizarding world, who was still blinking owlishly, clearly having not yet processed the sheer absurdity of the situation he had stumbled into.
The suffocating silence stretched on for another agonizing second.
'Wonderful.'Tamara took a slow, deep breath of the rotting air, physically feeling her blood pressure steadily rising toward dangerous levels.'It seems the two biggest, most insufferable, brainless idiots in all of magical Britain have finally decided to stage their grand reunion today. Right in front of me.'
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