Chapter 226: Cats, Dogs, and Mice
A slow, steady bead of crimson welled up from the row of fresh puncture wounds on her wrist. Tamara stared at the broken skin, a dark, violent heat coiling in her chest.
This damned beast actually dared to draw her blood. Hers! The great Dark Lord!
Her fingers twitched with the overwhelming urge to skin this crazy woman alive, to pull the tendons from her flesh one by one.
Yet, she did not immediately draw her wand to strike down the Death Eater currently kneeling and trembling on the floorboards before her.
For one thing, she was utterly exhausted. Forcibly analyzing the intricacies of the Deathly Hallows had drained her magical reserves to a dangerously low level. She simply lacked the spare energy required to carefully weave harmless white magic into a form that mimicked the agonizing effects of the Cruciatus Curse—the only way to bypass the Virtue System's infuriating shock-collar alarms.
For another... if she made too much noise, it would inevitably draw Snape's attention.
Just the thought of Severus Snape summoned a dull throb to her temples. Subjectively, Tamara had always carried the arrogant certainty that Severus was a perfectly loyal hound, thoroughly broken and yielding to her supreme power. But ever since that day in the Potions office, when he had so unashamedly laid bare that lingering trace of pathetic affection for that Gryffindor mudblood, a nagging wrongness had settled in her chest.
If... if what that idiot Potter had screamed about in her previous life was actually true...
Tamara lowered her eyelashes, her lips thinning in absolute disgust.
"Punish me... Master... I beg you..."
There was not a shred of fear in Bella's dark gold, vertically slit pupils. There was only a morbid, feverish expectation. In the twisted labyrinth of Bellatrix's logic, as long as her Master was willing to raise a wand and inflict pain upon her, it meant her Master still cared. It meant she was still a useful, functioning tool in the Dark Lord's hands.
Tamara slowly raised her holly wand and tapped the tip against her bleeding wrist.
"Episkey."
A faint, warm white light flared. The hideous ring of teeth marks knitted together instantly, smoothing over until the pale skin was flawless once more, not a single scar remaining.
Lowering her arm, Tamara looked down at the woman groveling at her feet. There was no rage visible on Tamara's delicate, twelve-year-old face. There was only a chilling, hollow indifference.
"Punishment?"
Her voice was barely a whisper, the syllables dropping like shards of ice.
"Do you think the current you is even worthy of my punishment?"
The moment those words hung in the air, Bella's entire body locked into rigid stillness.
If her Master had tortured her with Crucio until her mind shattered, she would have wept with ecstasy, secure in her usefulness. But this? Her Master was unwilling to even strike her. This soft, dismissive sentence was infinitely more terrifying than ten thousand Killing Curses aimed at her chest.
No punishment meant no value.
No value meant... she was going to be discarded. Abandoned completely by the great Dark Lord!
The blood drained from Bella's face as sheer panic seized her nerves. She subconsciously darted her tongue out, licking her dry lips, tasting the faint smear of Tamara's blood that still lingered there from the bite.
"No... Master! I'm still useful! I can still kill for you!"
Bella threw her head back, her wild, devastatingly beautiful face twisting with hysterical cruelty and desperate urgency. She roared, the words tumbling out in an incoherent rush.
"I'll go right now! I'll tear all those mudbloods and blood traitors outside to shreds! Anyone who annoys you! I will rip out their internal organs and string them up over the Slytherin entrance! I'll use their blood to paint my loyalty! Please, please don't drive me away!"
"Shut up."
A terrifying, blood-red light suddenly ignited in the pitch-black depths of Tamara's eyes.
The horrific, suffocating pressure of Lord Voldemort—an aura that demanded the subjugation of all living things—crashed down upon the room like a physical weight. It slammed Bella into the wooden floorboards, pinning her there, stripping away even the concept of resistance.
"Put away your meaningless madness." Tamara leaned forward slightly, her tone absolute, brooking no defiance. "Listen to me very clearly, Bellatrix. If you dare to act like a rabid beast incapable of controlling its own instincts again, or if you take so much as half a step out of this bedroom without my explicit permission..."
She let the silence stretch for a fraction of a second.
"I will have you removed from my sight. Forever."
Crushed beneath a magical pressure heavy enough to stop an ordinary person's heart, Bella did not find the sight of the young girl before her ridiculous in the slightest. On the contrary, feeling that familiar, icy aura and seeing those crimson-flashing eyes, Bella's frantic heart began to hammer with violent euphoria.
She did not care what flesh her Master wore. This scent, this crushing weight, this gaze that commanded her very soul to kneel—this was her supreme Master!
"I belong to you forever, Master..." Bella sobbed, actual tears of joy spilling down her cheeks.
Trembling with fear and reverence, she dragged herself forward across the floorboards. Reaching out, she cupped Tamara's calves with both hands and began to feverishly press kisses to the tips of Tamara's shoes.
"Bella is only loyal to you! As long as you don't drive me away, I am willing to be a dog at your feet until the end of time... no, a cat!"
Listening to this deranged, fanatical confession, Tamara felt her stomach turn. She raised her foot and shoved Bella's shoulder away with blatant disgust.
"Get back in your cage."
Tamara delivered her final ultimatum, her voice devoid of warmth. "Do not come out for even half a step without my word."
Watching the woman smoothly shift into a black cat and slink obediently into the iron cage in the corner, Tamara coldly calculated the logistics of finding an opportunity to hurl this furry time bomb directly into the Albanian forests.
Right on cue, the sickeningly cheerful voice in her skull chimed in.
[Ding! Warm reminder: Please do not harbor the wicked thought of abandoning your pet, Host!]
[As a cat who completed soul transfer through the System's special channel, if she stays too far from you or leaves your side for too long, the soul fragment belonging to Bellatrix will dissipate forever!]
[So, please use your boundless love and compassion to keep her by your side always!]
'Shut up,' Tamara snarled inwardly, rubbing her temples.
By the time she woke from her restorative sleep, evening had already fallen.
The sky beyond the dormitory window was a bruised, heavy black. A violent gale, thick with freezing rain, relentlessly battered the glass and whipped the surface of the Black Lake into a frenzy.
Tamara sat up, her movements precise. She reached for the Invisibility Cloak, the silvery fabric flowing over her shoulders like liquid water, instantly erasing her from the room.
To ensure that the other mad dog of the Black family didn't do anything ruinous, she needed to make a trip to the Shrieking Shack.
handling the castle corridors with practiced ease, she bypassed Filch's patrol routes entirely and slipped out into the storm, ducking into the dark, earthy secret passage hidden beneath the thrashing branches of the Whomping Willow.
When she finally pushed open the dilapidated wooden door of the Shrieking Shack, a cloud of moldy dust immediately assaulted her nose.
Sirius Black was pacing the center of the rotting room like a caged animal. At the sound of the creaking hinges, he spun around. Seeing Tamara pull the shimmering Cloak from her head, his gaunt shoulders dropped in a momentary sigh of relief, only to instantly tense up again. His brow furrowed deeply.
"Why did you come alone? Where is Harry?"
Sirius closed the distance between them in three long strides, his raspy voice thick with undisguised anxiety and suspicion.
Tamara unhurriedly folded the Invisibility Cloak, tucking it away into a hidden pocket inside her robes. Her expression was a mask of perfect, unreadable calm.
"Your dear godson was attacked by Dementors on the Quidditch Pitch two days ago."
"What?!"
Sirius's hollow grey eyes bulged. Without a second thought, he lunged toward the doorway. "Those damned Dementors! Those Ministry idiots actually let those foul things get near Harry!"
Tamara shifted her weight, perfectly positioning her small frame to block the exit.
"He won't die," she stated, her voice slicing through his panic like a blade. "But if you go out there, you will be surrounded immediately."
She stared up at the filthy, unhinged man, her dark eyes flashing with a sharp warning.
"The Dementors guarding the grounds are starving. If you dare to step even half a foot out of this door tonight, they will swarm you and suck you down into an empty shell before you even reach the grass."
"Am I supposed to just hide in this rotting, broken shack for the rest of my life?!" Sirius roared, his hands flying up to grip his matted hair. The sheer powerlessness of his confinement was driving him to the brink of madness. "I can smell him! I can smell the nauseating stench of that rat bastard Peter! I know he's close! If you just let me out, I could tear his throat out tonight!"
Fueled by his own explosive anger, Sirius took another heavy step toward Tamara, intent on forcing his way past her.
Then, abruptly, he froze.
As a veteran Animagus who had spent the better part of a decade trapped in the form of a dog, his olfactory senses had permanently altered, becoming as hyper-sensitive as a canine's.
Sirius's nostrils flared. His grime-caked face contorted into a mask of extreme, visceral disgust. He lowered his head, leaning a few inches closer to Tamara, sniffing the air around her robes with deep suspicion.
"You..." Sirius recoiled slightly, his gaze turning strange and deeply wary. "On your way here... did you roll in something foul?"
"What are you talking about?" Tamara asked, her voice dropping an octave.
"You have a... a deeply unpleasant stench on you." Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose, his voice thick with instinctive repulsion.
Tamara's jaw tightened.
She knew exactly what he was smelling. It was the lingering scent of that lunatic Bellatrix, left behind when the crazy woman had tackled her onto the bed earlier that afternoon.
One was a filthy, flea-bitten dog with an overactive nose, and the other was a deranged, masochistic cat. These two lunatics from the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black were truly competing to see who could be more nauseating!
It seemed she was going to have to cast Scourgify on herself at least three times a day from now on.
Tamara cursed viciously in the confines of her own mind, but her face remained a portrait of aristocratic disdain. She looked Sirius up and down, her lip curling in a sneer.
"That is likely an auditory and olfactory hallucination. A direct result of your brain and your nose rotting away together after twelve years in Azkaban."
She brushed past his accusation effortlessly, refusing to waste another breath on the subject.
"Listen to me clearly, Black. You will only leave this shack once the Dementors have been withdrawn from the grounds. If you are discovered before then, Potter will be directly implicated for harboring you."
A dangerous, freezing light flickered in the depths of Tamara's eyes.
"Do not cause trouble for me... or for Potter."
The moment his eyes locked onto hers, Sirius's breath hitched. His muscles locked up, and the furious argument burning on his tongue died instantly in his throat.
He, a Gryffindor who had laughed in the face of Azkaban's darkest shadows, suddenly felt a cold, inexplicable spike of genuine terror radiating from the gaze of this third-year girl.
Having delivered her absolute final warning, Tamara didn't linger for a second longer. She turned on her heel and descended into the pitch-black tunnel leading back to the castle.
The damp earth crunched softly beneath her shoes. She was just nearing the tunnel's exit, reaching out to press the hidden mechanism that would freeze the Whomping Willow above, when a sound echoed in the dark.
Squeak... squeak...
Accompanied by the faint, frantic scuffling of claws on dirt, a short, incredibly stout figure melted out of the shadows near the exit.
Peter Pettigrew.
He had clearly been lurking in the damp darkness, eavesdropping on the entire exchange. Now, he stood blocking her path, his watery, beady little eyes gleaming with a sickeningly cunning light. A fawning, desperate smile stretched across his rat-like face.
"Mas... Great Master!"
Peter rubbed his grubby hands together, hunching his shoulders as he scurried closer. His entire body trembled with a pathetic, eager energy, his voice dripping with the desperate desire to use her as his executioner.
"I just... I heard everything! It really is him! That lunatic Black! He's hiding right up there in the Shrieking Shack, just behind that door, isn't he?"
Peter swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. A flash of malicious cowardice lit up his face. He stared fixedly at the holly wand still gripped loosely in Tamara's hand, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial, trembling whisper.
"Master... he doesn't even have a wand right now. He's weak! He's practically defenseless! Why not... why don't you just turn around, catch him off guard, and finish him off!"
The more Peter spoke, the more feverish he became, as if he could already see Sirius's lifeless corpse rotting on the floorboards above.
"As long as he's dead, that stupid savior boy will never know the truth! No one will ever be able to hinder your grand, glorious plans again! You... you'll kill him to end all future trouble, right, Master?"
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