Chapter 150: What a Coincidence
Deep in the Forbidden Forest, the mist was thick, pressing heavily against every twisted ancient tree.
There was not a sliver of light here. Even the stars in the sky were completely hidden by the dense canopy.
The air was thick with the scent of rotting leaves, damp moss, and a nauseating fishy stench.
For any normal Hogwarts student, this was an absolute forbidden zone, a breeding ground for nightmares.
But for Tamara Riddle, this was her hunting ground.
"Hiss..."
A spine chilling hiss suddenly rang out from the bushes to her right.
Immediately after, several black shadows pounced out like arrows loosed from a bow, bringing a foul wind with them.
They were three massive Acromantulas. They waved their bristly legs, their giant pincers clicking, their eyes gleaming with hungry, ferocious light.
Faced with an attack that would have paralysed an adult wizard with fear, Tamara did not even pause.
In fact, a contemptuous curve tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"Interesting."
She whispered softly, her holly wand tracing an elegant yet lethal arc through the air.
"Diffindo."
There was no shouted incantation, nor any brilliant flash of light.
Only an invisible blade of wind, almost impossible to catch with the naked eye, instantly sliced through the stagnant air.
Pfft.
The spider in the lead did not even have time to scream before its massive head, along with half its body, slid off neatly like a piece of cut butter.
Green blood erupted, splashing onto the surrounding tree trunks and making a sizzling, corrosive sound.
The remaining two spiders were clearly startled by this sudden death, their movements faltering.
But that did not save them.
"Incendio."
Tamara gave her wrist a light flick.
A ball of fire, hotter and more adhesive than ordinary flames, instantly ignited the second spider's abdomen.
"Hiss!"
The spider let out a shrill scream, rolling frantically across the ground in an attempt to extinguish the flames.
But the fire clung to it like a curse. In the blink of an eye, it burned the creature into a massive fireball, even turning the nearby bushes to ash.
The last spider finally realised what kind of monster this seemingly fragile human before it truly was.
It let out a frightened whimper and turned to flee back into its dark nest.
"Trying to run?"
Tamara sneered, a hint of playfulness flashing in her eyes.
"Since you've come, leave something behind."
"Incarcerous."
Several thick ropes, as if they had a life of their own, sprang out of thin air and tightly bound the spider's eight legs, hoisting it into the air.
Tamara walked forward unhurriedly.
Ignoring the spider's desperate struggles, she elegantly pulled a crystal vial and a small silver knife from her sleeve.
"Don't move."
She lightly patted the spider's large, hairy head, as if dealing with a disobedient student.
"It will be over soon."
The knife fell.
Precise.
Clean.
Without a single unnecessary movement.
The venom sac was removed whole, without wasting even a drop of venom.
The spider twitched twice and stopped moving.
Tamara stuffed the venom sac, still dripping with dark green liquid, into the crystal vial. Watching the viscous liquid swirl at the bottom, she nodded with satisfaction.
"The third one."
She stowed her spoils away, used Scourgify to remove the bloodstains from her gloves, and stepped over the severed limbs as she continued deeper into the forest.
This long lost feeling of being able to release magic recklessly, without any interference from the system, brought Tamara a pleasure that surged from the depths of her soul.
She even began to hum a little tune.
"A bunch of insects who don't know the meaning of death..."
"Did you think that with that fool Hagrid's protection, you could rule this forest?"
"Tonight, I'll teach you what it truly means to stand at the top of the food chain."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Forbidden Forest, inside a hollow covered by massive spiderwebs, the situation was entirely different.
Harry and Ron had trusted Hagrid's parting words to follow the spiders. In the middle of the night, draped in the Invisibility Cloak, they had stumbled into this forbidden area that even Dumbledore would not lightly enter.
They had thought they could find clues to prove Hagrid's innocence here.
They had even naively expected to encounter some friendly magical creature.
They had not expected to practically deliver themselves, washed clean by the rain, onto a monster's dinner plate.
"Get back! Ron! Get back!"
Harry shouted at the top of his lungs, his wand emitting a faint light as he tried to force back the encroaching shadows.
But it was useless.
Hundreds, thousands of Acromantulas, some as small as plates and others as large as carriages, were surging from all directions, crowding the entire hollow.
That dense clicking sound, the rustling of countless legs crawling over withered leaves, was enough to make one's scalp tingle.
And in the centre of these spiders lay a massive old spider.
Aragog.
Though its milky white eyes could no longer see, it could still sense the scent of fresh human meat.
"Friends of Hagrid..."
Aragog's voice was low and raspy, permeated with a desperate coldness.
"If Hagrid had come himself, I would naturally have kept my promise... but since you have intruded on your own..."
"My children are hungry."
"They are being slaughtered. I can feel it. A terrible thing is hunting them in the forest... They need to replenish their strength."
"So, I cannot stop them from enjoying the fresh meat that has delivered itself to our door."
"Kill them."
As the command fell, the surrounding sea of spiders instantly boiled over.
"Impedimenta!"
Ron screamed as he threw out a spell, but it only caused the lead spider to pause for a moment.
In the next second, more spiders pounced over their companions' bodies.
"Stupefy!"
Harry desperately fired Stunning Spells, red light flashing in the darkness and knocking back two small spiders trying to bite his ankles.
But it was like trying to empty the ocean with a teacup.
There were too many.
Far too many.
"Harry! We're finished!" Ron shouted with a sob in his voice.
Fang had already curled up at his feet and fainted from fear.
A spider the size of a hunting dog pounced from the side, its massive pincers about to snap around Ron's neck.
"Expelliarmus!"
Harry spun around, a red light hitting the spider and blasting it away.
But this also left his back exposed.
Two larger spiders immediately took the opportunity to flank him from behind.
"No..."
Harry stared desperately at those hideous mouthparts, his mind going blank.
They had been too naive.
They had thought they could find the truth simply by finding Hagrid's pet, forgetting that this was the Forbidden Forest, a place where even Dumbledore could not guarantee complete safety.
And on an ancient tree not far from the hollow, Tamara was standing on a thick branch, looking down at the commotion from above.
She had just finished clearing the patrols in this area and had been about to take a break when she was drawn over by the disturbance.
"Oh?"
She raised an eyebrow slightly, her pitch black eyes peering through the layers of leaves toward the centre engulfed by the sea of spiders.
Although it was a little far and she could not clearly see who was there, that dense number, that black tide almost filling the entire hollow, did indeed cause her a little surprise.
"How much venom must there be..."
Tamara licked her lips, a greedy light shining in her eyes.
She had originally thought it would take all night to gather enough for a cauldron of potion.
But now it seemed...
The scene ahead was practically a free buffet.
"It looks like that old spider called out the whole family to deal with something."
"Since they're all gathered together, it saves me the trouble of finding them one by one."
Tamara flicked her wand.
"Diffindo."
A spider in front of her was sliced open, and Tamara slowly prepared to collect the toxin.
Just then, that annoying electronic voice rang out in her mind at an extremely inopportune moment.
[Ding!]
[Emergency Alert! Detected spider swarm ahead...]
"Shut up!"
Tamara growled impatiently in her mind, directly cutting off the second half of the system's sentence.
What did it want?
Did it want to start that hypocritical preaching again to stop her from hunting these spiders?
Tamara sneered, the red light in her eyes intensifying instead.
"You were the one who so righteously judged this as ridding the people of an evil just now."
"What? Now that you see so many, you think it's too cruel? Or do you think these beasts deserve pity?"
[Uh... no...]
"You want me to stop now? Too late!"
Tamara held her wand high, giving the system no chance to speak again.
The feeling of being suppressed by the system for so long now transformed entirely into a desire for destruction. She did not even consider collecting the venom anymore.
"Since you're the one who issued the permit..."
Tamara's voice held a trace of frantic pleasure.
"Then don't even think about taking it back!"
"Incendio!"
As she swung her wand down violently, a violent dark red flame carrying the breath of destruction roared from the tip of her wand.
Like a bursting dam, it crashed fiercely into that dense sea of spiders.
Watching the raging fire carve a path of blood before her, Tamara curled her lips and said softly,
"Truly a blessing from Merlin."
.....
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