Chapter 128: Transformation into a Cat
The second-floor girls' bathroom.
The damp, stagnant air hung heavy, choked by the pungent, overcooked-cabbage stench of Polyjuice Potion. When Tamara stepped through the doorway, she did not encounter the chaotic, every-man-for-himself disaster she might have expected. Instead, she walked straight into a melodramatic tragedy that she found utterly, deeply irritating.
Harry and Ron, having already shed their stolen Slytherin appearances and reverted to their usual scruffy forms, crowded anxiously around the door of the very last stall. Their faces were twisted into masks of utter helplessness.
"Hermione! Please, come out!" Ron pleaded. He stomped his worn sneaker against the wet floor tiles in frustration, his fist pounding a frantic rhythm against the peeling wood of the door. "Whatever you've turned into, Madam Pomfrey can fix it!"
"Go away! Just leave!"
Hermione's voice echoed from the other side of the partition, thick and choked with heavy sobs. The sheer shame and despair bleeding through the wood were almost suffocating. "Don't mind me! If anyone finds you here..."
"We're not leaving you!" Harry declared. His jaw set firmly, his tone dripping with that trademark, idiotic Gryffindor stubbornness that immediately triggered a pulsing ache behind Tamara's temples.
Above them, floating lazily in the damp air, the translucent form of Moaning Myrtle drifted back and forth. The ghost let out a series of gleeful, ear-piercing shrieks.
"Oh my! How touching! How dreadful! You should break the door down and see! Ahahahaha!"
The cacophony scraped against Tamara's eardrums like rusted iron. She preferred silence. She preferred order. Watching this pathetic farce unfold, she could not even muster the energy to mock them.
'A bunch of brainless Gryffindors who only know how to generate noise and manufacture trouble,' she sneered inwardly.
Her dark eyes swept over the scene with absolute, freezing indifference. Without a second thought, she pivoted on her heel, fully intending to abandon this troublesome mess. Let Argus Filch or some random, unfortunate Professor deal with these scurrying rats.
However, the very instant the sole of her shoe lifted from the floor tiles.
[Ding! Detected key character Hermione Granger on the brink of social death!]
[Emergency side quest triggered: The Big Sister's Rescue.]
[Quest Objective: Disperse unrelated males, soothe the injured girl's heart, help Hermione resolve her problem.]
[Reward: Love +2.]
[Failure Penalty: The system will forcibly take over the host's body and execute the 'Warm Embrace' protocol, hugging these three helpless Gryffindors for five minutes of consolation.]
Tamara's foot, suspended mid-step, froze completely stiff.
A cold sweat broke out across her porcelain skin. Hugging those three filthy, sniveling idiots? For five minutes? She would rather swallow a live horned toad.
'...Damn it all to hell.'
Tamara cursed, her mental voice dripping with venom as she ground her teeth together.
She slowly lowered her foot back to the floor. Drawing in a long, measured breath, she forcibly shoved down the boiling, murderous intent rising in her chest. Her fingers twitched with the suppressed urge to cast an Unforgivable Curse. Arranging her features into a mask of serene, aristocratic disdain, she turned back to face the noisy bunch.
"It seems the so-called savior not only enjoys playing the role of a bumbling follower..."
Tamara's icy, perfectly modulated voice sliced through the clamor like a silver blade. The chaotic noise in the bathroom died instantly.
"...but also harbors a rather peculiar fondness for trespassing in the girls' bathroom?"
Harry and Ron spun around, their bodies jerking as though struck by a full-body bind curse. When their wide eyes found the Slytherin girl standing half-concealed in the shadows near the sinks, her arms crossed and her beautiful face entirely impassive, all color violently drained from their cheeks.
"Ta... Tamara?!" Ron choked out, his voice trembling so hard it cracked.
It was over.
They were completely, utterly doomed. They had only just barely escaped the Slytherin common room with their lives, and now they were caught red-handed by the most terrifying student in their year.
Harry instinctively threw himself in front of the wooden stall door, acting as a human shield. Though his fingers twitched with lingering adrenaline, his bright green eyes locked onto Tamara. They were swimming with a mixture of intense wariness and a desperate, pleading light.
"This has nothing to do with Hermione... it was just us..."
"Shut up, Potter."
Tamara cut off his impending, nauseatingly long-winded speech of Gryffindor self-sacrifice with a sharp click of her tongue.
She could not even be bothered to expose the fact that the unusually provocative 'Goyle' from the common room earlier was clearly this bumbling fool standing before her. She merely swept her dark eyes over the two boys, analyzing them with the same detached disgust one might reserve for flobberworms squirming in the mud. Uncrossing her arms, she pointed a single, slender finger toward the exit.
"Now. Immediately. Get out."
"But Hermione, she..." Harry tried to argue, his feet planted firmly on the wet tiles.
"This is the girls' bathroom."
Tamara raised a single, elegant eyebrow. Her tone dripped with slow, deliberate sarcasm. "Do you two brainless Trolls plan to stand guard here until your shouting attracts Filch, or perhaps Professor Snape? Do you wish to personally oversee her public humiliation?"
The words landed like a physical slap across the face. Harry and Ron jolted, the harsh reality finally piercing through their panic. Indeed, if Argus Filch caught Hermione in whatever state she was currently in, or worse, if the entire school found out, it would be the ultimate disaster for the fiercely proud, rule-abiding witch.
"But..." Ron hesitated, casting a miserable glance back at the closed wooden door.
"I will handle it."
Tamara stated. The absolute, freezing authority in her voice brooked zero argument. "This is... a matter between girls."
She lowered her hand, her dark eyes narrowing. "You have exactly three seconds to disappear."
Harry ground his teeth together. He looked at Tamara, and for a fleeting second, his green eyes held a glimmer of that disgusting, naive trust that always made her skin crawl.
"...Please."
Harry muttered softly. Before Ron could open his mouth to protest further, Harry grabbed his friend by the robes. Heads bowed like fleeing thieves, the two boys scurried out of the bathroom, their footsteps echoing rapidly down the stone corridor.
Watching those two deeply annoying figures finally vanish from sight, Tamara let out a slow, silent breath. She turned her gaze back to the battered wooden stall.
"Alright."
She adjusted her posture, her tone instantly shedding its sharp hostility, replaced by her usual, careless aristocratic arrogance.
"The irrelevant audience has been cleared."
"Now, come out."
Her low heels clicked against the wet tiles as she closed the distance. Her slender fingers reached out, lightly tapping a rhythmic beat against the damp wood.
"Miss Granger, I believe you recall that you paid me tuition just this morning. As a dedicated tutor who has already collected her payment, I have a certain professional obligation to see exactly what kind of disastrous mess my student has gotten herself into."
The muffled crying from inside the stall hitched, then paused entirely.
"No! Tamara! Please... do not look!" Hermione's voice cracked, heavy with absolute despair. "It is... it is horrible!"
"My tolerance for horrible things is exceptionally high."
Tamara smoothly drew her wand from her robes. With a flick of her wrist, she gave the brass lock a light, precise tap.
"Alohomora."
The rusty mechanism clicked sharply, and the door swung inward with a slow creak.
Hermione Granger sat huddled on the closed toilet seat. She had pulled her heavy black robes up over her head, covering her face completely as she let out a pathetic, trembling whimper.
Slowly, hesitantly, the Gryffindor girl lowered her hands.
When her face was finally revealed, even the ancient, well-traveled soul of the Dark Lord residing within Tamara could not help but pause in sheer disbelief.
Hermione's normally pale face was entirely covered in a dense layer of short, sleek black fur. Her warm brown eyes had morphed into large, glowing yellow orbs with sharp vertical slits. Protruding from the top of her bushy, tangled hair were two furry, pointed feline ears that twitched nervously.
Most absurdly of all, a long, black cat tail poked out from beneath her uniform skirt, swishing back and forth in a state of extreme agitation.
"Polyjuice Potion?"
Tamara tilted her head, a flicker of genuine, dark amusement dancing in her eyes as she studied this bizarre, half-human, half-cat creature. "It seems our resident top student made a rather fatal error in her material selection. The Potion is strictly designed for human consumption. It is entirely ineffective—and highly volatile—when used for animal transformations."
"I... I thought it was Millicent Bulstrode's hair!" Hermione sobbed, fresh tears welling up in her strange, yellow cat eyes and matting the fur on her cheeks. "It was stuck to my robes from the Duelling Club... sniffle..."
"Clearly, it was a cat hair."
Tamara took a slow step into the cramped stall. Reaching out, she used the very tip of her wand to lift a stray tuft of fur from the side of Hermione's cheek, her upper lip curling in faint distaste.
She stared closely at the curly, jet-black fur, then shifted her gaze to Hermione's wild, glowing yellow eyes.
A very strange, highly specific sense of familiarity suddenly washed over Tamara's mind.
This specific shade of black...
It looked remarkably similar to her own pet. And this overall feline appearance... it felt inexplicably, annoyingly familiar to her.
'...Strange.'
Tamara frowned slightly, her dark eyes narrowing in thought.
She did keep a black cat named Nagini in her dormitory, and that useless creature had been shedding an atrocious amount of fur lately. Could it be that the stray hair Hermione had plucked from Millicent's robes actually belonged to that damned cat?
But why would a human transformed by her cat's DNA give her such a bizarre, creeping sense of déjà vu? It was as if she had stared at this exact face somewhere before, perhaps in a reflection.
"Tamara? Am I stuck like this forever?" Hermione asked, her voice trembling tearfully. Those massive, yellow cat eyes stared up at her with a pitiful, begging expression.
Tamara snapped out of her internal musings. She looked down at the crying girl and replied with flat, clinical coldness.
"You will not die."
Lowering her wand, Tamara continued to study the furry Gryffindor. Her dark eyes held absolutely zero sympathy; instead, they gleamed with the sharp, calculating inquiry of a researcher examining a peculiar specimen.
To test the sudden hypothesis forming in her mind, she reached out. Her pale, slender fingers pinched the trembling, black pointed ear protruding from the top of Hermione's head.
It was not a gentle, comforting caress. It was a cold, highly clinical kneading motion, exactly how an experienced Potions Master might test the elasticity of a dried root or the texture of a rare ingredient.
"This stiffness..."
Tamara murmured softly. She rubbed the fur between her thumb and forefinger, her brow furrowing deeper.
There was no mistake.
The coarse, slightly wiry texture of this fur was an exact match to the black cat named Nagini currently residing in her Slytherin dormitory.
While Tamara was deeply lost in her own analytical thoughts, Hermione was experiencing something entirely different.
The moment those pale fingers pinched her sensitive new ear, the Gryffindor girl stiffened completely. Tamara's skin was naturally cool, almost icy, but the sudden contact against Hermione's burning, highly sensitive feline ear sent a violent, electric shiver racing down her spine.
She had absolutely no idea that the Slytherin was merely studying her like a biological specimen. In that cramped, silent stall, Hermione felt as though her brain had been tossed into a dry, overheated cauldron. Her entire body temperature spiked rapidly. She genuinely believed that if someone were to pour a ladle of ice water over her head right at this second, it would produce a loud, violent hiss and release a massive plume of white steam.
The intense heat burned all the way up from her collarbone, scalding her neck and settling deep into the roots of her new ears. The overwhelming sensation caused the pair of furry appendages on her head to flutter and twitch uncontrollably against Tamara's fingers, as if desperately trying to fan away the heat.
The bizarre, overwhelming sensory overload made Hermione's breath hitch sharply in her throat. Behind her, the long black tail snapped rigidly straight, the fur puffing out in shock.
"The texture is entirely too coarse."
Just as Hermione felt she was on the verge of actually fainting from the sheer embarrassment and sensory overload, Tamara abruptly released her grip. The Slytherin delivered her disdainful verdict without a second thought.
Reaching into her sleeve, Tamara withdrew a pristine white handkerchief. She carefully wiped the pads of the fingers that had just handled Hermione's ear, her expression one of mild disgust, as though she had just touched something deeply unsanitary.
"Just like your usual, messy hair. Utterly lacking in any sort of smoothness or refinement."
With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the crumpled handkerchief straight into a nearby waste bin. She turned on her heel, preparing to leave without so much as a backward glance.
"Stay exactly where you are and do not move a muscle. I will have Madam Pomfrey bring you a restorative Potion."
Tamara paused at the bathroom door. She glanced sideways over her shoulder, a dangerous, icy flash of warning gleaming in her dark eyes.
"And, Granger? Keep your mouth shut."
"If you dare breathe a word to anyone that the colossal idiot who cannot distinguish feline fur from human hair was personally tutored by me..."
The corner of her mouth twitched upward into a cruel, beautiful smirk.
"I will turn you into a real cat."
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