Chapter 138: Wizard's Chess
Ever since the afternoon she had shoved that amulet into Ginny Weasley's hands in the girls' lavatory, Hogwarts had settled into a stagnant, suffocating peace.
No fresh petrifications. No cryptic messages smeared in blood across the stone corridors. Not even a single rooster found with a snapped neck.
Though Ginny still looked frail, her robes hanging loosely from her narrow shoulders, the hollow, glassy-eyed stupor that made her look like a walking corpse had vanished. Now, whenever she crossed paths with Tamara, her small hand would immediately fly to the wooden plaque resting against her chest. Instead of shrinking away in terror, the youngest Weasley would stare back with a burning, stubborn intensity.
Tamara ignored her entirely.
'Let the little blood-traitor stare,' she sneered inwardly. As long as that pathetic, fragmented remnant of a soul trapped in the diary stayed out of her way, she couldn't care less about the girl's newfound courage.
By early March, a violent rainstorm swallowed the Scottish Highlands, raging without pause for three consecutive days. The skies bruised into a permanent, sickly gray. Gale-force winds whipped icy rain against the castle windows like handfuls of gravel. The sprawling grounds of Hogwarts dissolved into a treacherous, muddy swamp, forcing the immediate cancellation of all Quidditch practices.
The consequence of trapping hundreds of hyperactive, magically-empowered adolescents indoors was catastrophic. With nowhere else to burn off their excess energy, the Great Hall devolved into an oversized, chaotic playground.
Under normal circumstances, Tamara would rather swallow broken glass than spend an extra second in a room that sounded indistinguishable from a Troll breeding enclosure. She longed for the damp, quiet chill of the Slytherin dungeons, or the absolute isolation of the Room of Requirement.
Unfortunately, the faculty was on edge. Given the recent string of attacks and the terrifying reality that the culprit targeting Muggle-borns had not yet been caught, the Professors had issued a strict mandate. On days when the weather forced everyone inside, students were to remain in highly visible public areas under the watchful eyes of the staff.
'Huddling together for warmth like frightened sheep,' Tamara thought, her lip curling in disgust. Yet, bound by her carefully crafted persona as the flawless, rule-abiding top student, she endured the sensory assault, isolating herself in the furthest, darkest corner of the Slytherin table.
Across the room, the loudest commotion centered around a specific corner of the Gryffindor table.
"Checkmate."
Ron Weasley leaned back in his wooden chair, arms crossed over his chest. His voice carried the calm, detached authority of a veteran general surveying a conquered battlefield.
At his command, a battered stone knight on the checkered board hoisted its heavy sword and brought it down in a brutal, sweeping arc, shattering the opposing White King into a pile of chalky rubble.
"Merlin's beard! Ron, that's ten games in a row!" Seamus Finnigan groaned loudly, burying his face in his hands. "You even flattened Hermione! This defies all logic!"
"Wizard's Chess isn't about memorizing library books, Hermione," Ron said, a smug grin breaking across his freckled face. The usual awkward, insecure boy was entirely gone. Here, bathed in the glow of the floating candles, his blue eyes were sharp and alive with absolute confidence. On this sixty-four-square battlefield, he was an undisputed tyrant.
Sitting across from him, Hermione Granger slammed her heavy volume shut with a sharp crack. "It's nothing but blind luck! And this barbaric game lacks any proper structural logic!"
"Just admit it, Hermione, it's pure talent," Harry Potter offered with an easy laugh, trying to diffuse the tension. He had been mercilessly slaughtered by Ron's bishops just twenty minutes prior, but he looked genuinely thrilled for his best friend.
A cold, drawling voice sliced through the Gryffindor cheer.
"Talent? A Weasley possessing talent?"
Draco Malfoy swaggered over, his chin tilted high, flanked by the hulking, shadow-like figures of Crabbe and Goyle. He paused at the edge of the crowd, his pale eyes sweeping over Ron with undisguised revulsion.
"It's a crude, trashy pastime for paupers. Real Wizard's Chess requires elegance, refinement, and high-level strategy. Not hacking and slashing like a pack of uneducated savages."
"Oh?" Ron didn't flinch. He slowly turned his head, meeting Malfoy's glare with a provocative raise of his brow. "Care to back that up with a game, Malfoy?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Draco sneered, pulling out a chair and seating himself opposite the redhead. "I'll gladly demonstrate what true Slytherin intellect looks like."
Exactly ten minutes later.
"Checkmate."
Ron stifled a yawn, lazily waving a finger. His heavily chipped Queen dragged a miniature wooden chair across the board and viciously bludgeoned Draco's pristine King, knocking it entirely off the table. It hit the stone floor with a pathetic clatter.
A second of dead silence hung over the table.
Then, the Gryffindors erupted into howling laughter.
Draco's pale complexion flooded with a violent, blotchy red. He had lost. And it wasn't just a loss; it was an absolute massacre. His heavily rehearsed, textbook formations had crumbled like wet parchment against Ron's wild, fiercely intuitive, trap-laden assault.
"I suppose the prestigious Malfoy upbringing doesn't cover basic strategy?" Ron leaned forward, twisting the knife. "Maybe you should run home and cry to your father. I'm sure he can buy you a set of pieces that move themselves."
Draco's fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. He shook with a potent mix of humiliation and fury. This wasn't merely a personal defeat—it was a stain on the entire house of Slytherin! To be publicly dismantled by a Weasley, of all people? How could he ever show his face in the corridors again?
He shot up from his chair, his panicked gaze darting frantically around the Great Hall until it locked onto a solitary figure reading in the shadows.
"Tamara!"
Draco practically sprinted toward her corner. His face was still flushed with mortification, but he forced his spine straight, desperately trying to salvage the last scraps of his aristocratic dignity.
"You have to do something about this! We cannot allow these Gryffindor peasants to walk all over us!"
Tamara was deeply engrossed in a dense chapter of Advanced Transfiguration Theory. At the shrill sound of her name, a single eyebrow twitched.
"What is it now?" she asked, her voice a soft, chilling murmur. She slowly closed the heavy book, fixing her useless, sniveling lackey with a dead-eyed stare.
"That Weasley! He... he's humiliating us at Wizard's Chess! He announced to the whole hall that Slytherins are nothing but brainless idiots!" Draco lied, eagerly adding fuel to the fire. "Tamara, you have to teach him a lesson! Show that blood-traitor what real intellect is!"
Tamara shifted her gaze toward the Gryffindor table. Through the parting crowd, she could see Ron Weasley soaking in the cheers, puffing his chest out like a victorious rooster.
"Boring."
She reopened her book, her eyes dropping back to the text. "It is a children's board game. If you lost, find a way to win it back yourself. Do not bother me with your trivial failures."
'Me? The Dark Lord who brought the entire Wizarding World to its knees, playing a parlor game with a freckled brat?'she scoffed internally.'It is beneath my dignity.'
However.
[Ding!]
[Detected that the morale of the Slytherin faction is dropping significantly due to a public chess defeat!]
[As a future leader of the magical world, how can the host tolerate losing face to a Weasley?]
[This is not just a game; it is a battle for absolute dignity!]
[Mission Issued: Tyrant on the Chessboard.]
[Objective: Demonstrate overwhelming command ability in a Wizard's Chess duel and utterly defeat Ron Weasley.]
[Mission Reward: Wisdom +1.]
Tamara's finger, halfway through turning a parchment page, froze.
'A single point of Wisdom,' she mused coldly. To the great Lord Voldemort, such a meager reward was an insult.
Yet... she paused to consider the vile nature of the System's usual demands. It usually tried to force her to hug filthy Mudbloods, spout nauseating drivel about the power of love and friendship, or, worst of all, wipe the tears off a crying Hufflepuff.
Compared to those agonizing humiliations, simply crushing a red-haired imbecile on a chessboard for a free attribute point was a remarkably high return on investment.
She lifted her eyelashes, her dark eyes locking onto the laughing, cheering Weasley. That smug, slack-jawed expression was thoroughly grating. While she couldn't care less about the personal failures of a disappointment like Draco Malfoy, the idea of the Slytherin House being publicly trampled by a blood-traitor was unacceptable.
To the Heir of Slytherin, it was a direct insult to her lineage.
In the Dark Lord's personal dictionary, there was room for strategic retreats. There was room for temporary submission to gather strength. But being outmatched in pure skill? Never.
Especially not in a battle of the mind.
Losing to Albus Dumbledore was a matter of age and experience. Losing to Harry Potter was a fluke born of ancient sacrificial magic. But losing to Ronald Weasley?
Absolutely out of the question.
"...Move."
Tamara snapped the heavy book shut. She rose from the bench, the dark fabric of her robes billowing slightly as she glided straight toward the Gryffindor table.
"Since you are so desperate to taste defeat, Weasley."
As Tamara approached the chess table, the raucous noise in the Great Hall died instantly. The dense crowd of students automatically parted, stumbling over each other to clear a wide path for her.
She stopped at the edge of the table, looking down at Ron. Her gaze was completely devoid of warmth, as cold and clinical as a mortician inspecting a fresh corpse.
"I will grant your wish."
The triumphant grin on Ron's face froze. Despite her angelic reputation among the staff, their daily, subtle interactions had deeply ingrained a primal, instinctual fear in him. To Ron, Tamara Riddle felt no different from a lurking devil. The sheer, suffocating aura of oppression rolling off her made him swallow hard, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously.
"...Bring it on!" Ron forced the words out, gripping the edge of the table to steady his hands. "I don't believe you can be as terrifying at chess as you are with a wand!"
The board reset. Tamara took the black pieces; Ron took the white.
The surrounding crowd held their breath, universally expecting a swift, one-sided slaughter—though opinions were sharply divided on who would be doing the slaughtering.
The reality defied everyone's expectations.
It devolved into a grueling, blood-soaked war of attrition.
Tamara's playstyle was a reflection of her soul: cold, ruthlessly efficient, and terrifyingly methodical. Under her command, the black marble pieces were not loyal soldiers; they were expendable resources. To secure a minor strategic chokepoint, she would send her knights charging into certain death without a flicker of hesitation. She would sacrifice a bishop just to force Ron's pieces a single square out of alignment.
It was the strategy of a true dictator—bleeding her own forces dry to seize total control of the board's tempo.
Ron's approach was the exact opposite. He lacked Tamara's chilling, multi-layered calculations, but he possessed a feral, beast-like intuition for the flow of battle. Whenever Tamara laid down a perfectly concealed, fatal trap, Ron's pieces would suddenly pivot, dodging the snare through sheer, illogical instinct. He countered her suffocating control with reckless, highly aggressive, almost suicidal offensives.
'Interesting...'
Twenty minutes bled away.
Staring down at the gridlocked board, the casual indifference in Tamara's eyes finally vanished, replaced by a dark, razor-sharp focus.
She had to admit the truth. This Weasley, who spent his classes staring blankly at the blackboard, possessed a genuinely terrifying genius for warfare.
"But wars," Tamara murmured, her voice dropping to a dangerous, silken whisper as her pale fingers brushed the top of a black piece, "cannot be won by intuition alone."
With a decisive slide, she pushed her Queen—which had been lurking safely in the back ranks—straight into the dead center of the board.
"Take it."
Ron blinked, stunned.
Was this... a blunder? She had just moved her most powerful piece directly into the striking range of his white knight.
A collective gasp rippled through the ring of spectators.
"No... that's not right..." Ron muttered, leaning closer to the board. A bead of cold sweat broke out on his forehead, sliding down his freckled nose.
This was no mistake.
It was bait.
A massive, glittering piece of bait that was mathematically impossible to ignore.
If he commanded his knight to strike the Queen, his central defense would instantly collapse. Tamara's bishop and rook, lying in wait in the shadows, would immediately snap forward like coiled vipers, tearing through his backline and delivering a forced checkmate.
But if he refused to take the Queen... his remaining forces were already stretched to their absolute limit. He had no pieces left in position to block the Queen's imminent, frontal rampage.
A perfect, inescapable dilemma.
"That is the difference between us."
Tamara looked at the sweating, trembling boy across from her. A slow, supremely confident sneer curled the corner of her lips.
This was the very tactic she had perfected fifty years ago during her rise to power—dangling the ultimate prize in front of her enemies, letting them taste the illusion of victory, only to deliver the killing blow the exact second they reached for it.
With a shaking hand, Ron reached out and tipped over his own King. The white crown hit the board with a dull thud.
"I... I lost."
Ron stared blankly at the ruined board, his voice hollow with disbelief.
"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!"
"Merlin's beard, Riddle actually beat him!"
"But Ron was incredible too! Nobody lasts twenty minutes against her!"
Thunderous applause and cheers erupted, echoing off the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall.
[Ding! Mission complete!]
[Congratulations to the host for achieving total victory! Wisdom +1!]
[Current Wisdom: 39]
Tamara stood up slowly, looking down at the frustrated, exhausted redhead.
She didn't sneer at him the way Draco had. She didn't gloat or parade her victory. For the very first time since she had returned to this castle, she truly looked at Ronald Weasley as something more than a speck of dust.
"Not bad."
Tamara smoothed the front of her dark robes, her voice entirely flat.
Ron's head snapped up, his blue eyes wide with shock. He was entirely convinced his ears were malfunctioning.
"If your brain were even half as useful in your academic studies as it is on this board," she added coolly, turning on her heel, "you wouldn't be such a hopeless idiot."
With that, Tamara walked away, the crowd parting once more to let her pass, leaving behind nothing but the faint scent of old parchment and a deeply intimidating silhouette.
Ron sat frozen in his chair for several long seconds. Then, he suddenly reached out and grabbed Harry by the shoulder, shaking him.
"Harry! Did you hear that?!" Ron practically squeaked. "Did she just... praise me? Or was that some kind of advanced, high-level sarcasm?"
Harry looked at his best friend's utterly bewildered expression and couldn't help but smile, nodding slowly.
"I think so, Ron." Harry chuckled. "Even if it sounded like an insult... coming from her, that's definitely the highest praise she's ever given anyone."
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