Chapter 169: Let's All Cross-dress
The moment the words left her lips, the ambient temperature on the platform seemed to plummet, freezing the very air in their lungs.
"No! Dobby didn't!" The creature let out a desperate, ear-piercing shriek, its tennis-ball eyes bulging with terror. "Dobby is a bad House-elf! Dobby must punish himself!"
It spun around with frantic, jerky movements and hurled itself toward a nearby wrought-iron pillar. Thud. Thud. Thud. The sickening sound of a bald skull repeatedly bashing against solid metal echoed across the platform.
Lucius Malfoy didn't spare a single glance for the self-harming creature at his feet. The pure-blood patriarch, a man who had built his entire reputation on an unshakable foundation of aristocratic elegance and icy decency, now wore a visage twisted into livid, terrifying fury. A dark, murderous gloom settled over his sharp features.
How could he possibly misunderstand the girl's implication? At the most critical juncture of his grand, carefully crafted plan, his own wretched servant had sneaked off to Hogwarts behind his back to grovel before that blasted Harry Potter?
This was the ultimate betrayal. A stain of humiliation upon the ancient House of Malfoy! If this seemingly innocent girl hadn't casually pointed it out, he would have been kept completely in the dark by this lowly, pathetic vermin!
"Is that so..." Lucius's chest heaved, his breathing growing ragged. The silver snake-head handle of his walking stick rattled slightly against his white-knuckled grip. He stared fixedly at Dobby, who was still eagerly attempting to concuss himself against the iron pillar. When Lucius spoke, his voice was absolute zero, squeezed out from between clenched teeth. "This is truly... an unexpected display of 'loyalty'."
Watching Lucius's murderous glare—a look that promised he wanted nothing more than to flay the elf alive right there on the platform—Tamara allowed a sliver of dark satisfaction to bloom in her chest. She thoroughly enjoyed the little farce she had just orchestrated.
The Dark Lord never showed mercy to traitors. It didn't matter if the traitor was a powerful wizard or a sniveling House-elf. Since the creature dared to defy its master's direct orders to tip off Potter, it had to pay a steep, agonizing price.
"Disloyal dogs are hardly worth keeping, Mr. Malfoy," Tamara murmured. She let her polite smile dissolve, her voice dropping to a soft, silken whisper that carried a suffocating, hair-raising pressure. "It hasn't completely betrayed you today, but tomorrow? For the sake of its ridiculous, misguided sense of 'justice', it won't hesitate to drive a knife directly into your back."
She tilted her head up, her abyssal black eyes locking onto Lucius's pale gray ones with heavy, crushing intent.
In that fleeting second, Lucius Malfoy felt his breath catch. It was as if he had just stepped into the den of an apex predator. His heart seized violently in his chest, gripped by an absurd, terrifying hallucination. The person standing before him was no longer a twelve-year-old Hogwarts student. It was the Dark Lord himself—the very monster who had once forced him to his knees, trembling so violently he hadn't even dared to lift his eyes from the dirt.
"What happens to traitors..." Tamara leaned in just a fraction of an inch, her voice pitching down to a frequency meant only for his ears. "I believe I don't need to... elaborate further to you, do I?"
The words were a poisoned needle, sliding effortlessly past his defenses and piercing the deepest, most primal fears buried in his psyche.
The fate of those who betrayed the Dark Lord. The memory of those endless, agonizing screams echoing through dark manors. The blinding flashes of sickly green light. The inventive, lingering tortures that made death look like a sweet mercy... Lucius's hand shook uncontrollably against his cane. He stared down at Tamara, his Adam's apple bobbing with immense difficulty as he swallowed dryly. His throat was entirely paralyzed; he couldn't muster a single syllable of rebuttal or question.
"Farewell, Mr. Malfoy. Have a pleasant summer break, Draco."
Before Lucius could even begin to claw his way out of that suffocating pit of dread, Tamara had already snapped back into her flawless, aristocratic persona. She picked up her black leather suitcase, her movements crisp and elegant. Without sparing them another glance, she turned on her heel and walked briskly toward the Muggle exit of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. She left the paralyzed Malfoy patriarch and the still-wailing, self-flagellating Dobby far behind in her wake.
She stepped smoothly through the solid magical barrier.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the romanticized steam and magic of the wizarding world vanished, violently replaced by the sensory assault of Muggle London. The acrid stench of vehicle exhaust filled her lungs, accompanied by the chaotic, grating cacophony of blaring car horns and shouting pedestrians. Above, the sky was a suffocating, dreary gray—a miserable canopy unique to this mundane world.
Tamara wrinkled her nose, her upper lip curling in deep disgust.
She didn't linger at King's Cross for even a second. Striding straight to the curb, she hailed a passing Muggle taxi, tossing her luggage into the back before sliding onto the worn leather seat. With a voice devoid of emotion, she rattled off an address—a place she had once sworn upon her very soul she would never, ever return to.
Half an hour later.
The taxi rattled to a halt in one of London's most dilapidated, forgotten districts. Through the smudged window, a towering, grim gray building loomed into Tamara's line of sight.
Wool's Orphanage.
Even after decades of passing time, the oppressive architecture hadn't changed, and the entire block still seemed to exude that same damp, nauseating smell of boiled cabbage and despair. Tamara paid the driver, grabbed her suitcase, and stepped out onto the cracked pavement, her face an unreadable mask of ice.
Just as she reached out to push open the rusted iron gates, her hand hovered in mid-air. Her gaze snagged on a figure lurking in the shadows of the orphanage's moss-covered perimeter wall.
It was a truly striking "woman."
"She" was draped in a well-tailored, albeit aggressively conservative, dark gray dress that swept the pavement. Atop her head sat a vintage, wide-brimmed hat, complete with a heavy black mourning veil that obscured the majority of her face. Despite the figure being absurdly tall and broad-shouldered for a woman, the ramrod-straight posture and careful stillness did, admittedly, give off the distinct aura of a stern, utterly humorless Muggle spinster aunt.
Tamara paused, her hand dropping from the gate. She arched a delicate eyebrow at the spectacle. Technically speaking, the disguise was flawless, yet the sheer absurdity of it made her internal alarms scream with discordant dissonance.
"It seems your aptitude for cross-dressing is quite a bit higher than your mastery of Defense Against the Dark Arts," Tamara noted dryly, stepping up to the towering "woman." Her tone was frigid, completely devoid of any warmth or amusement.
Hearing that chillingly familiar, commanding cadence, Quirinus Quirrell—or rather, the current "Aunt Quirina"—shuddered violently beneath his heavy wool dress.
Standing before the Dark Lord, he no longer had to feign that pathetic, ridiculous stutter that defined his Hogwarts persona. Yet, even in his intentionally thinned, falsetto voice, there was an unmistakable, pathetic tremor that originated from the very depths of his soul.
"Master..." Quirrell murmured. Through the dark mesh of the veil, he offered a stiff, respectful smile that looked infinitely worse than a weeping grimace, bowing deeply at the waist. "Your loyal servant... has come to fetch you."
Before Tamara could properly insult his hideous choice of millinery, a sharp, agonizing screech of metal against concrete interrupted them. The rusty gates of the orphanage were being dragged open from the inside.
"Tamara?" a voice called out, laced with genuine surprise.
Martha, the orphanage matron, stepped out onto the pavement. She blinked at Tamara standing by the gate, then immediately shifted her gaze, her eyes narrowing warily at the towering, rigid "lady in gray" looming beside the young girl.
"You're back for summer break so soon?" Martha asked, wiping her hands on her apron. She frowned, her eyes raking up and down Quirrell's imposing, veiled figure. "And who might this be...?"
Before Tamara could invent a lie, Quirrell beat her to the punch.
"Confundo."
A subtle, invisible ripple of magic shot forward, striking Martha squarely in the chest. Instantly, Quirrell straightened his spine, perfectly slipping into his fabricated Muggle persona. When he spoke, his voice was a stilted, affected falsetto that grated against the ears.
"Good afternoon, madam. I am Tamara's distant aunt—Quirina." He dabbed at his veiled face with a lace handkerchief. "This summer, I have traveled quite a distance from out of town to collect my poor, dear niece for a family visit. You know how it is... life has been so terribly hard since her uncle passed away. I am but a fragile woman, with no one to rely on. But now that my circumstances have improved, I simply had to come and take Little Tammy back home with me..."
'Little Tammy.'
Tamara's knuckles turned bone-white as her fingers clamped down on the handle of her suitcase with crushing force. A vein pulsed dangerously at her temple. If she didn't absolutely need this bumbling idiot to lead the way to their destination, she would have drawn her wand and blasted him into the pavement with a Cruciatus Curse right then and there.
Under the influence of the Confundus Charm, Martha's cloudy eyes glazed over for a brief second. When they refocused, a look of deep enlightenment washed over her weathered face, and her previously guarded demeanor melted into overwhelming warmth.
"Oh! So it's Ms. Quirina! Oh, this is simply wonderful news!" Martha clasped her hands together, turning to look at Tamara with an expression of genuine, teary-eyed affection. "Tamara finally has a relative willing to take her in... Go on, my good child. Go with your aunt. If it's at all possible... I hope you never have to return to this miserable place ever again."
Hearing the sheer, unadulterated emotion pouring from Martha's lips, a complex flash of utter revulsion flickered through Tamara's dark eyes. Still, bound by the necessity of her 'good girl' facade, she forced a polite, gentle smile and bid the matron a fond farewell.
As she turned away, she felt an immense wave of relief wash over her. It was a brilliant decision to leave Britain for the summer. If she stayed in this wretched place any longer, constantly subjected to these pathetic displays of genuine human affection, she might actually vomit.
She shot a venomous, sidelong glare at Quirrell, who was still dabbing his eyes in character, and pivoted sharply toward the street corner.
"Let's go, 'Auntie'."
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