Chapter 130: Not the Right Time
Tamara's boots clicked sharply against the damp, algae-slicked tiles of the girls' bathroom, her pace swift and utterly silent.
Just as Harry's fingertips brushed the edge of the worn leather cover, preparing to pry it open, a hand shot out from the shadows behind him. Pale, slender fingers slammed down heavily against the diary's binding.
A sharp, wet smack echoed off the porcelain sinks.
Harry flinched, his breath hitching in his throat. His movement was violently arrested. He whipped his head around so fast he nearly cracked his skull against the chin of the person looming over his shoulder.
Tamara stood there, looking down at him with an expression carved from ice.
Because she was leaning over him, the distance between them was practically nonexistent. Harry caught a sudden drift of her scent—something clean, floral, and entirely out of place in this rotting bathroom. In the dim, flickering light, her skin looked exceptionally pale, almost translucent. Her pitch-black eyes were locked onto the small black book in his hands. The sheer weight of her gaze made Harry's pulse hammer against his ribs. It was a suffocating intensity, far more terrifying than facing Snape and Filch in a dark corridor combined.
"Ta... Tamara?" Harry stammered. His heart pounded wildly against his ribs, thoroughly rattled by the sudden, overwhelming proximity.
Tamara did not answer immediately.
She kept her hand clamped firmly over the diary, pressing it down into Harry's palm so hard her knuckles bleached white. She could feel it. Beneath the thin barrier of her skin, familiar, intoxicating soul fluctuations pulsed from the pages. Deep inside the worn leather casing, the fragment of Tom Riddle seemed to sense the arrival of its true master. The dark magic within shrank back, trembling, hastily withdrawing its malicious aura to masquerade as nothing more than an ordinary, inanimate muggle notebook.
"Do not touch it," Tamara finally spoke.
Her voice was a low, dangerous murmur. It carried an unquestionable severity, bouncing off the cracked mirrors and producing a strange, hollow echo in the empty bathroom.
"Items of unknown origin, especially those reeking of dark magic, are frequently bound with the most vicious curses." Tamara pressed down harder, her nails digging slightly into the back of Harry's hand, forcing his fingers to peel away from the cover's edge. "Unless, of course, you wish to have your brain fried from the inside out, or find yourself possessed by some nameless evil spirit."
Harry froze entirely.
He blinked at Tamara's frost-hewn features, then down at her pale hand pinning the diary against his own.
In Tamara's mind, she was merely stopping this foolish, reckless savior from ruining her grand design and tampering with her Horcrux. But through Harry's emerald-green eyes, the scene took on a drastically different filter.
'She's worried about me.'The Gryffindor's brain automatically completed this absurd logical leap.'She ignored how filthy this place is. She didn't even care about the potential danger of the cursed book. She just rushed forward the second she saw me to stop me from getting hurt... she's afraid I'll get injured.'
A rush of warmth flooded Harry's chest, instantly melting away the lingering fear from her sudden ambush.
"I... I just saw it thrown in the water and thought it was strange," Harry explained, his voice dropping to a sheepish mumble. He obediently relaxed his grip, letting go of the pages he had been about to turn, allowing Tamara to maintain her absolute control over the book. "And it doesn't seem wet at all, despite the puddle. I thought it might be a clue..."
"Clues are invariably accompanied by traps, Potter," Tamara cut him off, her tone dripping with frigid reprimand.
She shifted her weight, preparing to seize the opportunity to rip the diary straight from his grasp and claim it for herself.
Just then, the temperature in the room plummeted further.
Moaning Myrtle drifted up from a nearby toilet stall, floating right into Tamara's personal space. She drifted so close that Tamara had to lean back slightly in disgust to avoid the phantom chill.
The last time Tamara had been in this wretched bathroom to help Hermione, it had been the dead of night. The shadows had been thick, and Tamara had deliberately kept her face obscured, leaving the weeping ghost completely unaware of her identity.
But today was different.
It was daytime. Even with the heavy clouds outside casting a gloomy pallor over the castle, the ambient light filtering through the grime-caked windows was more than enough for a ghost to make out a face.
"You look... awfully familiar," Myrtle whispered, tilting her translucent head. A look of deep, agonizing concentration twisted her pearlescent features as she drifted closer, scrutinizing Tamara. "Those eyes... that dreadful, cold expression..."
Myrtle gasped, her ghostly hands flying to her cheeks. "I remember now! Fifty years ago... there was a student who looked exactly like you."
Tamara's breath hitched. Her heart missed a crucial beat.
'Damn this weeping wretch. Has she actually recognized me?'If Myrtle dared to utter the phrase'you look like the boy who killed me fifty years ago' right in front of the Boy Who Lived, even someone with Potter's abysmal deductive skills would instantly become suspicious.
Right on cue, Harry looked up, his curiosity piqued. "Who? Which student, Myrtle?"
"Shut your mouth." Tamara snapped her head toward the ghost.
In that singular, terrifying fraction of a second, Tamara violently ripped away the gentle, perfect-student mask she wore so flawlessly. From the depths of her pitch-black eyes, an unabashed, suffocating surge of pure killing intent erupted. It was a brutality so raw it seemed to suck the air from the room. Deep within those bottomless pupils, a heart-stopping glint of crimson flared to life.
That was not the gaze of a polite second-year Slytherin.
That was the true, unvarnished visage of the Dark Lord—a monster who had slaughtered countless lives, the very architect who had personally orchestrated the tragedy of this bathroom half a century ago.
"Get. Lost." Tamara squeezed the two words out from between her clenched teeth, her voice dropping to a demonic hiss.
The sheer, crushing pressure radiating from her was enough to make the very fabric of a soul violently shudder.
"Ahhh—!" Myrtle shrieked, her translucent form violently rippling. Even though her ghostly brain couldn't process exactly who this girl was, the primal terror etched into the deepest, most fractured remnants of her soul recognized a natural predator. "You're a bad person too!! Waaaah!"
The ghost wailed, diving headfirst into the U-bend of a toilet with a massive splash, vanishing instantly.
"What... what just happened to her?" Harry blinked, watching the ghost flee in an absolute frenzy. He looked utterly bewildered, completely oblivious to the lethal aura that had just spiked inches from his face.
"She is likely suffering from a sudden fit of madness. Ghosts are prone to such instability," Tamara replied smoothly. She withdrew her murderous glare, her expression instantly smoothing back into a mask of calm indifference as she looked down at the diary still resting in Harry's hand.
"Give it to me, Potter." She held out her free hand, her tone brooking absolutely no refusal. "This is not something a student should be handling."
Harry hesitated. His fingers twitched against the leather binding. Even though he usually listened to Tamara, the reckless Gryffindor spirit of adventure burning deep within his chest screamed that this little black book was incredibly important.
While the two remained locked in a tense stalemate over the sink puddle, the heavy wooden door of the bathroom suddenly burst open with a loud crash.
"Harry! What are you doing in here? I thought I heard Myrtle screaming..." Ron Weasley burst into the room, panting heavily, his wand clutched in his hand.
Then, his worn sneakers skidded against the wet tiles. He slammed on the brakes, his freckled face going slack. His eyes bulged out of his head as he took in the bizarre tableau before him.
In the dim, water-logged ruins of the girls' bathroom, Harry was squatting on the floor.
And that Slytherin girl—the one who was always aloof, untouchable, and frankly a bit terrifying—was standing directly behind him, leaning over his back. Her pale hand was tightly covering Harry's over a small book. They were pressed so close together that, in the shadows, their posture looked... eerily intimate.
Tamara's slender figure almost completely enveloped Harry in the gloom, her posture exuding a suffocating, almost predatory sense of dominance. To Ron's horrified eyes, it looked as though at the slightest twitch of resistance from Harry, those delicate fingers resting on his hand would instantly snap up and crush his throat.
The sheer coldness and danger permeating the damp air made Ron's stomach drop. It didn't look like a friendly chat. It looked like a dark, sacrificial ritual was currently in progress, with his best friend as the offering.
Ron's jaw hung open. His expression rapidly shifted from frantic worry, to absolute horror, and finally settled into a deeply uncomfortable awkwardness—as if he had just swallowed an entire bucket of live slugs.
"Am I..." Ron squeaked, his voice cracking slightly as he slowly began to back away toward the door. "...interrupting something?"
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