Chapter 215: Collective Life
Hearing Tamara's words, Ginny snapped back to reality.
The young Gryffindor hurriedly averted her gaze. Her cheeks, already dusted with a heavy flush, now burned so fiercely they looked as if they might drip fresh blood. She wrung her hands together, stammering out a frantic explanation.
"No... it's not like that, Senior! I was just... I was just afraid you'd fall. I swear I didn't mean to hurt you..."
Tamara narrowed her eyes, her mind already sharpening a series of vicious, cutting remarks. She was fully prepared to verbally flay this foolish Gryffindor who had the sheer audacity to leave bruising marks on her pristine shell. But just as Ginny stood there entirely at a loss, the heavy wooden door of the breakroom shuddered.
Three sharp, impatient knocks shattered the dangerous atmosphere building in the room.
Before either girl could offer a response, the door was shoved open with unnecessary force.
Severus Snape loomed in the doorway.
His voluminous black robes swallowed the ambient light, making him resemble an unshakeable cloud of gloom. His deep, hollow black eyes swept over Tamara and Ginny's faces. Almost instantly, the corners of his sallow mouth curled into a slow, malicious sneer.
"I apologize for interrupting your... intimate conversation."
The biting sarcasm in the Potions Master's tone practically overflowed, dripping onto the stone floor.
"But if Miss Weasley has finished her exceptionally crude medical assistance, I need you both to vacate this room immediately." He paused, his dark eyes narrowing. "There is a new situation outside."
The forced, gentle smile on Tamara's face vanished in a heartbeat. It was instantly replaced by the sharp, calculating alertness typical of a top-tier Slytherin student.
"What happened, Professor?"
"Today, while the vast majority of the foolish heads in this school were crammed into the sweetshop down in Hogsmeade, a certain Azkaban fugitive apparently decided that Hogwarts' ancient defense system was a mere joke—one he could enter and leave at his leisure."
Snape kept his voice dangerously low, yet every single syllable carried a bone-chilling coldness.
"Black attempted to infiltrate the castle."
Ginny let out a strangled gasp, her hands flying to cover her mouth.
Snape ignored her entirely, keeping his gaze fixed on Tamara. "Although the mutt failed to cause any substantial damage, he left rather obvious scratch marks and tufts of hair at the corner of the third-floor staircase. His fleeing back was even glimpsed by one of the portraits."
Snape sneered again, his lip curling in disgust. "Now, for the absolute safety of you little trolls, Headmaster Dumbledore has ordered all students to gather in the Great Hall immediately. The entire school will spend the night there."
Hearing this terrifying news, Ginny trembled like a leaf in the wind.
Tamara, however, simply leaned her weight against the edge of the table and rolled her eyes inwardly.
'Stupid dog.'
She mercilessly mocked the grown man who, just a few hours prior, had been crying his eyes out on the filthy floorboards of the Shrieking Shack.
Sirius Black had clearly forgotten that he was still a high-profile fugitive, wanted by every Auror throughout Britain. Without even bothering to scout the internal situation of Hogwarts, the reckless Gryffindor idiot actually dared to swagger right into the castle to hunt down that rat. Wasn't that just exposing his whereabouts directly under Dumbledore's crooked nose?
"I understand, Professor."
Tamara gripped the wooden armrest of the chair. She gritted her teeth, enduring the dull, throbbing ache radiating from her waist as she slowly forced herself to stand.
Although the heat from the food Ginny had practically shoved down her throat had restored a fraction of her mobility, the grueling six-hour magic suppression period mandated by the system had only just begun. Her magical core was entirely sealed. Right now, the Great Dark Lord was as physically weak as a pathetic Muggle, feeling as though she might collapse into a heap at any given moment.
"Follow me." Snape dropped the three cold words and spun on his heel, his black robes billowing behind him as he strode out of the breakroom.
Ginny, obligated to return to the Gryffindor line to report to her prefects, looked back at Tamara several times. Her freckled face was twisted with deep worry before she finally turned and ran toward the moving staircases.
Tamara dragged her heavy, leaden steps, following in Snape's wake as they slowly handled the corridors toward the noisy Great Hall.
The Great Hall was currently in a state of absolute chaos.
The four massive house tables had been magically shoved against the stone walls, leaving the vast center of the hall entirely empty. In their place, hundreds of plump, purple-red sleeping bags lay neatly arranged across the flagstone floor.
Students clad in an array of mismatched pajamas gathered in tight little clusters. Their faces were painted with a chaotic mixture of excitement, sheer panic, and various bizarre, highly exaggerated speculations regarding Sirius Black's infiltration.
Just as Tamara dragged her exhausted shell into the designated Slytherin area...
"Tamara!"
A familiar, frantic figure suddenly shoved his way out from the dense crowd of students.
Draco Malfoy rushed to a halt right in front of her, chest heaving as he gasped for breath.
He was clearly out of his mind with panic, completely abandoning his usual young master's poise. His chin, normally held at a haughty, arrogant angle, was tucked down, and the pristine silver-lined collar of his silk pajamas was actually rumpled.
"Where on earth have you been?!" Draco demanded, his voice cracking slightly. "I didn't see you at the feast at all! Just now, an upperclassman said they saw you being supported by a filthy Weasley toward Snape's office, looking as pale as a rotting corpse!"
Draco spoke rapidly, his words tumbling over one another, his grey-blue eyes wide with agitation.
"I was just about to sneak down to the dungeons to find you, but then Dumbledore suddenly announced that Black had broken into the castle and forced everyone in here. I thought you'd run into that murderer—"
Draco's frantic rambling stopped dead the second he truly registered Tamara's bloodless, waxen face.
"You're really hurt?!"
His voice instantly spiked an octave. Almost subconsciously, he reached out, his pale fingers firmly gripping Tamara's arm to steady her swaying posture.
Normally, for such an offensive, overly familiar physical intrusion, Tamara would have instantly countered with a bone-shattering hex and coldly ordered him to crawl out of her sight.
But at this exact moment, as she met Draco's wide, trembling grey-blue eyes...
She saw shock. She saw raw anxiety. And beneath it all, she saw a pure, unadulterated worry—an emotion entirely devoid of any calculated Slytherin interests or Malfoy family political considerations.
This spoiled little peacock of the Malfoy family was genuinely, truly terrified that something horrific had happened to her.
But why?
The biting, venomous sarcasm that had already pooled on the tip of Tamara's tongue suddenly caught in her throat. For some inexplicable reason, the words simply refused to form.
The Dark Lord simply did not understand where this pure, unconditional worry came from. It defied all her logic.
"I'm fine."
Tamara's voice was cold, yet it noticeably lacked that razor-sharp, cutting edge she usually employed to keep the world at a safe distance.
"Where are the things I asked you to buy?"
"I bought everything! I swear!" Draco quickly guaranteed, his grip on her arm loosening slightly. "I've locked it all securely in your private cabinet back in the common room. Not even a single leaf of Moon-Grass is missing!"
Seeing that Tamara was standing under her own power and didn't seem to be bleeding out, his highly strung nerves finally began to relax. His shoulders dropped an inch.
"Fine. Go stay in your sleeping bag."
Tamara smoothly broke free from his lingering hold. She turned away, walking toward a quiet, shadowed corner at the very edge of the Slytherin area. With a suppressed grunt of effort, she awkwardly lowered her aching body and crawled into a plush, purple-red sleeping bag.
Slowly, the floating candles illuminating the Great Hall began to extinguish one by one.
The magically enchanted ceiling overhead shifted, shimmering with the serene, deep light of a star-filled night sky.
Tamara lay perfectly flat in her sleeping bag, her pale hands folded neatly over her chest like a corpse in a coffin.
In the encroaching darkness, the Great Hall did not immediately fall into a dead silence. Instead, the heavy air buzzed with a hundred hushed, frantic whispers.
Over in the nearby Hufflepuff area, Hannah Abbott was tearfully debating with her dorm mates about whether Sirius Black possessed the dark magic to transfigure himself into a flowering shrub to hide in the castle's courtyards.
Across the hall in the Gryffindor section, Ron Weasley seemed to possess absolutely zero mental capacity to care about a deranged serial killer. His hushed tone was thick with frustration, endlessly whining to anyone who would listen about whether his useless rat, Scabbers, might get stepped on by a wandering centaur out in the pitch-black forest.
And over in Ravenclaw, several younger students were shivering under their blankets, exchanging terrifying, highly inaccurate rumors about the soul-sucking Dementors of Azkaban.
Even a few of the younger, less disciplined Slytherin students had joined in this pathetic display of fear-mongering.
Normally, this kind of stupid, entirely illogical collective noise—this suffocating wave of weak, pathetic human emotion—would have instantly made Tamara violently irritable.
She would have been entirely unable to resist the urge to draw her yew wand, flick her wrist, and gift each and every one of these chattering fools a silent Throat-Locking Curse just to shut them up forever.
But tonight... things felt strangely different.
Tamara slowly raised her pale hands, quietly examining her slender fingers under the dim, artificial starlight of the ceiling.
Not a single trace of magic responded to her call.
This thirteen-year-old shell was currently so fragile, so utterly powerless, that even those newly enrolled, snot-nosed first-year wizards could easily knock her down with a basic tripping jinx.
During the early stages of this magic suppression, the Dark Lord, having been stripped of her absolute power, indeed felt as though she were lying on a bed of poisoned thorns. She felt deeply humiliated. She felt a burning, irritable rage at this forced helplessness, wishing she could simply slaughter everyone who dared to breathe near her just to regain a fleeting sense of control.
However, as the minutes ticked by, something incredibly strange occurred.
As Tamara lay hidden in the shadows of the Great Hall, she realized she didn't feel flustered at all.
She narrowed her dark eyes slightly, her brilliant mind rapidly performing a cold, rational analysis of her current psychological state.
She firmly told herself it was simply because everything remained perfectly under her control.
The terrifying Sirius Black, who was currently causing mass panic throughout the entire school, was the very same man she had scolded and kicked like a stray dog in the Shrieking Shack just a few short hours ago.
And that treacherous rat, Peter Pettigrew, absolutely could not stir up any trouble while cowering deep within the shadows of the Forbidden Forest.
Most, standing guard directly outside the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall was Albus Dumbledore, flanked by every single capable professor in the castle, all standing at the ready with wands drawn.
Evaluating the situation from a strictly utilitarian and objective perspective—this stone floor was currently the safest place in all of Britain.
But was that really the only reason?
Tamara slowly lowered her hands, pulling the thick fabric of the sleeping bag up to half-hide her chin.
The lingering heat from the rich pumpkin soup Ginny had forced upon her still radiated within her stomach, effectively dispelling the bone-deep chill brought on by the system's magic backlash.
And not too far away, Draco Malfoy, despite having obediently crawled into his own sleeping bag, still poked his blond head out every few minutes to cast a deeply worried, checking glance toward her isolated corner.
The surrounding, noisy whispers gradually began to fade as the night deepened, slowly transforming into the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of hundreds of sleeping breaths.
Hundreds of fragile lives, entirely devoid of any hostility toward her, lay scattered all around Tamara.
In this vast ocean formed by hundreds of identical sleeping bags, her small figure was completely, perfectly hidden.
Submerged within this massive group, she was no longer the Great Dark Lord who needed to maintain an exhausting facade of omniscience and omnipotence at all times. She didn't need to keep her mind razor-sharp, constantly on guard against hidden daggers and political plots.
At this very moment, if the sky itself decided to fall, Dumbledore would be the one forced to hold it up. If mortal danger truly arrived, these hundreds of sleeping fools would serve perfectly as fleshy meat shields.
The system had completely locked her magic. She could do absolutely nothing for the time being.
And since she could do nothing, any pointless vigilance or anxiety was clearly just foolish, inefficient internal friction.
Tamara gave a cold, dismissive snort in her heart, righteously piecing together a flawless, logical excuse for her current lack of mental defenses.
This was by no means some ridiculous, cowardly escape. It was certainly not a betrayal of the terrifying title of Voldemort.
No, this was merely the most rational, most opportunistic form of tactical dormancy.
Let that meddling old man Dumbledore go pace the freezing corridors to keep watch in the biting wind. Since the Order of the Phoenix loved playing the role of noble gatekeepers so much, what the Great Dark Lord needed to do right now was to comfortably commandeer this protective white magic. She would leech off the protective desires of these absolute fools to repair her depleted, aching shell.
Temporarily setting aside those endless calculations, the bloody battles, and her grand plans for eternal rule—plans that required immense mental effort—was simply the most optimal choice for maximizing her current interests.
Wrapped in a strange, yet entirely sickening sense of absolute security, Tamara's eyes, usually so deep, calculating, and cold, gradually grew heavy.
She did not lose a single second of sleep to panic.
On the contrary, she quickly slipped into the deepest, most stable, and most utterly defenseless dream of her entire life.
She slept better than she had on any previous night in her two lifetimes.
A few hours later.
The Great Hall, now deep in the middle of the night, was deathly silent.
Tamara snapped her eyes open in the pitch darkness!
Her crimson-tinged pupils contracted violently. Her breathing hitched, coming in rapid, shallow gasps, and a layer of fine, icy sweat instantly broke out across her pale forehead.
Looking exactly as if she had just violently awoken from a terrifying, flesh-rending nightmare, Tamara stared fixedly at the dim, enchanted starry sky above. A chaotic storm of horrific realization raged within her chest.
'What in the world was that just now?!'Tamara sent out a furious, irritable query into the depths of her own mind.'What was I doing just now?! I was actually... enjoying the ease of not having to fight or plan?!'Her hands clenched into tight fists beneath the blankets.'I actually felt that hiding like a coward under Dumbledore's protection, and passively accepting the sickening concern of a few mindless fools, was some kind of... enjoyment?!'
How is that even possible?!
The very concept made her feel infinitely more nauseous than being forced to kneel and kiss a Mudblood's filthy shoes!
Tamara violently rejected these pathetic thoughts. They belonged to the weak, the fragile, the prey!
She, the Great Lord Voldemort, was born to rule over everything! She was born to trample their pathetic rules into the dirt!
She absolutely, positively could not, under any circumstances, crave this disgusting, suffocating warmth and this weak, pathetic sense of security!
'This isn't me.'Tamara gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached, frantically resisting the sensation in her heart. She desperately tried to uproot those newly sprouted, terrifyingly soft thoughts before they could take hold.'The Great Voldemort would never harbor such absurd, pathetic desires!'She scrambled for an explanation, her mind racing.'It must be because my magic is locked! Yes, the suppression is causing my brilliant brain to become sluggish and slow!'She latched onto the theory like a drowning man to a raft.'Yes! Or... or it's this damn system! It's secretly interfering with my mind while my magical core is weak! It's trying to brainwash me into becoming one of them!'
Just as Tamara found the absolute perfect scapegoat for her momentary lapse into weakness, she prepared to curse the system to high heaven in the privacy of her mind.
But before she could unleash her mental tirade...
That overly cheerful electronic voice, which always possessed an uncanny knack for appearing at the absolute most inopportune times, rang out slowly in her mind. Its tone was so innocent, so perky, it was practically begging to be punched.
[Ding! A warm reminder for the host~]
[This system is currently in standard standby mode and has not performed any form of interference, suggestion, or brainwashing on your mental domain.]
[Everything you felt just now...]
The system actually paused, the silence stretching as if it were deliberately, sadistically enjoying the Dark Lord's total psychological breakdown.
[...are the very normal and healthy emotional responses brought about by the natural secretion of Dopamine and Endorphins when a human is tired and finally feels safe!]
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