Chapter 151: The Truth
Harry felt certain he was going to die.
He and Ron brandished their wands desperately, but it was useless.
More spiders trampled over the bodies of their own kind, surging forward like a black tide.
"It's no use, Harry!" Ron yelled, despairingly waving his wand, which was still held together by Spellotape after being snapped. "There are too many... we're dead!"
At that critical moment, the battered Ford Anglia burst out of the thicket, its engine roaring as it rampaged over a patch of small spiders before screeching to a halt in front of the two boys.
"Get in!" Harry shouted, pulling the car door open and shoving the paralysed Fang inside.
But just as they were about to scramble into the car, a massive spider lunged onto the roof. Its giant pincers clicked and snapped, piercing through the metal only inches from Harry's head.
At the same time, the surrounding swarm of spiders seemed to receive a signal and lunged forward frantically, instantly submerging the blue car in a sea of black.
It was over.
Harry closed his eyes in despair, waiting for the fate of being torn apart.
However, the expected agony did not come.
Instead, he heard a crisp, cold, and chillingly elegant incantation.
"Diffindo."
It was a spell every first year student knew.
Then came a sharp, piercing sound of air being sliced apart.
There was no blinding light, only an invisible blade sweeping outward.
Pshhh!
The giant spider that had been perched triumphantly on the car roof was sliced in half before it could even scream.
Green blood erupted like a fountain, splattering across the windscreen.
But this was only the beginning.
The voice rang out again, carrying irrepressible violence and excitement.
"Incendio!"
Boom!
A massive fire dragon, an embryonic form of Fiendfyre forcibly controlled into shape, roared as it charged out from the depths of the dark forest.
It opened its giant fiery maw and rampaged through the spider swarm. Wherever it passed, hard carapaces instantly turned to ash, and even screams were swallowed by the flames.
The once impenetrable encirclement was forcibly torn open by the fire dragon, leaving an enormous gap.
Heat waves rolled outward, and the stench of burning filled the air.
Amidst firelight and drifting ash, a black figure slowly stepped out of the shadows.
She wore neat casual clothes beneath a dragon hide cloak, holding a holly wand in her hand. Dangerous sparks still danced at its tip.
There was no expression on her pale face. Only her pitch black eyes burned with killing intent more intense than the flames.
Tamara Riddle.
She looked at the dense swarm of materials before her, a cruel smile curling at the corners of her mouth.
"What a... feast."
She had not yet clearly seen the battered car buried beneath the spiders, nor the two unlucky souls shivering beside it.
In her eyes, this was merely a giant spider nest that had delivered itself to her door.
"All of you, die."
Tamara raised her wand again, preparing to cast an even more powerful spell and completely clear the area.
However, just then, a gust of wind blew away the smoke in front of her.
It revealed the familiar, dilapidated blue Ford, along with two soot covered Gryffindors staring at her in stunned silence.
Tamara's hand froze in midair.
In that instant, the killing intent on her face froze, as if someone had suddenly stuffed a Boggart into her mouth.
Harry Potter?
Ron Weasley?
Why were these two idiots here?
Tamara felt her brain buzz. Then came a sensation in her stomach more nauseating than swallowing a thousand slugs.
She had originally come here to kill spiders for their venom.
And she had ended up saving these two by accident?
Tamara suddenly remembered the system prompt from just now.
[Oh dear, Host, don't overthink it. As long as the outcome is good, it's fine.]
That annoying electronic voice rang out again, carrying an infuriatingly cheerful and teasing tone.
[Even though you didn't let me finish, this is what they call all roads lead to Rome! This is the bond of fate.]
"Shut up!"
Tamara growled in fury.
This gave Harry, who had just been about to come forward and thank her, quite a fright. It took him a long while before he dared to speak.
"We... we didn't say anything?"
Tamara looked at the two idiots before her and closed her eyes in despair.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Aragog, the fifty year old spider, was shrieking in terror.
Although its milky eyes could not see clearly, as a magical creature with keen intuition, its biological instincts were screaming a warning.
It was not that it recognised a specific identity.
Rather, this was a shudder rising from the depths of its soul, the absolute suppression felt when facing a natural predator.
The aura emanating from that human was darker than the oldest monsters in the Forbidden Forest, more suffocating than its natural enemy, the Basilisk that must not be spoken of.
"Run... children... run!"
Aragog recoiled, trembling, its eight legs going weak.
It did not even care for its own offspring. It let out a shriek and dragged its massive body as it fled headlong into the darker caves deep within the forest.
With their leader fleeing, the remaining spider swarm instantly collapsed.
As if they had encountered their natural enemy, they scrambled into crevices and thickets, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
Only a ground full of corpses and burning remains was left behind.
And Tamara remained frozen in place, her face darker than the bottom of a cauldron.
[Ding! Congratulations to the host for completing the hidden achievement: Guardian of the Forbidden Forest!]
The cheerful system voice exploded inappropriately in her mind.
[Combat Rating: S rank! A perfect display of Slytherin elegance and power!]
[Behavioural Judgment: In a situation of extreme danger, disregarding personal safety to go deep into the Forbidden Forest to save classmates! What noble friendship! What great Courage!]
[Reward Settlement:]
[Health +4. Current Health: 30.]
[Courage +5. Current Courage: 44.]
[Unlocked Spell: Obliviate, Memory Charm!]
[Unlocked Spell: Expecto Patronum, Patronus Charm!]
The Memory Charm was somewhat useful, but the Patronus Charm...
Unlocking the Patronus Charm for a Dark Lord who could not produce positive emotions?
Was this not intentionally disgusting her?
What was the difference between this and giving a Squib a wand?
"Tamara!"
Before she could recover from the system's critical blow, Harry had already rushed over from the car, his face full of gratitude.
"How did you know we were here? If it wasn't for you... we definitely would have died just now!"
Looking at those green eyes sparkling like stars, Tamara felt her head ache even more.
"Blimey!"
Just then, Ron poked his head out from behind the car. His face was as pale as paper, and his lips were still trembling, clearly not yet recovered from the terror.
But as he looked at the fleeing spiders, his eyes held more than fear. There was deep confusion, and the anger of being betrayed.
"I don't understand..."
Ron held his head, his voice shaking as he spoke.
"Hagrid told us to follow the spiders... he said if we followed them, we'd find a lead... but why did they want to eat us?"
"That big spider... Aragog, it could clearly talk! It could even say Hagrid's name!"
Ron looked at Harry, then at Tamara, his tone full of the helplessness of shattered innocence.
"I thought... since they can speak human language, since they're intelligent, we could at least communicate. At least they should be reasonable! Aren't Hagrid and them friends?"
These words were like a spark, instantly igniting the mockery in the depths of Tamara's eyes.
Reasonable?
Friends?
"Shut up, Weasley."
Tamara snapped her head around, her pitch black eyes flashing with a chilling light that made Ron shrink his neck back.
"Expecting reason from a pack of beasts?"
She sneered, her tone full of unmasked disdain and superiority.
"Have your brains been addled by the exhaust from that junk car?"
Tamara kicked aside a twitching spider leg by her foot. She watched the green blood seep into the soil, her gaze as cold as if she were looking at a pile of rubbish.
"Remember this. Being able to mimic human speech does not mean they possess human morality."
"In the minds of these creatures, there is only hunger, killing, and breeding. So called language is nothing more than a tool they use to deceive prey or beg for mercy from the strong."
She turned around, looking down at the two naive Gryffindors, her voice carrying a cruel undertone.
"Non human intelligent beings are forever full of cunning and greed. They do not deserve to be treated as equals. They only deserve to be enslaved or slaughtered."
"To actually lower your wands and try to communicate just because they can talk?"
Tamara let out a scoff, the sound particularly jarring in the silent Forbidden Forest.
"Utter Gryffindor stupidity."
Harry opened his mouth.
Although he had been insulted, he had to admit Tamara had a point.
Aragog had indeed ordered his offspring to eat them just now.
But...
Harry's gaze fell on the wand in Tamara's hand, then swept over the hellish carnage around them, finally landing on the bulging crystal bottle at Tamara's waist.
"But, Tamara..."
Harry frowned, reason returning to his brain as he asked the most critical question.
"It's the middle of the night. Why are you deep in the Forbidden Forest?"
"And... you seem very well prepared."
Harry pointed at the spiders that had died miserable deaths.
"You didn't come looking for us, did you? You came to kill them."
"Why?"
Facing the saviour's green eyes, which seemed able to see through lies, Tamara felt a wave of irritation.
At this moment, her dragon hide cloak was splattered with a few spots of dried green ichor, and the tip of her wand still emitted a faint smell of smoke.
She did not look like a good student out for a midnight stroll at all.
Normally, she might have used some perfunctory excuse to brush it off, keeping these fools from ever knowing what she was up to.
But now, Harry's eyes were fixed directly on her.
Those eyes were not filled with fear, but with incomprehensible concern and expectation.
Tamara's fingers gripped her wand, loosening and tightening.
Finally, she let out a self mocking snort.
Whatever.
She had indeed come here to save someone.
Since that was the fact, why waste effort concocting lies full of holes?
"For Ginny Weasley."
Tamara spoke, her voice somewhat raspy, still carrying a lingering trace of killing intent.
"What?" Harry was stunned.
"I said, I came here to save that Miss Weasley."
Tamara turned and waved the crystal bottle full of venom in front of Harry.
The viscous green liquid in the bottle shimmered with an eerie light under the firelight.
"As her brother, or her friend, are you really so blind that you haven't noticed that girl's state has been very abnormal lately?"
Tamara's words carried her usual biting sarcasm, but this time, Harry heard a kind of teeth gritted... concern within them.
"Ginny... she's just been a bit dazed..." Ron weakly protested from the side.
"Dazed?"
Tamara sneered, a flash of gloom appearing in her eyes that only she understood.
"You call that frantic state dazed?"
"That is an extremely rare phenomenon of Dark Arts possession. If there is no intervention soon, she will quickly become an empty shell that only follows orders, or simply go mad."
She was not lying. She only concealed the fact that the thing possessing Ginny came from herself.
Tamara did indeed want to save Ginny, though her motive was to stop herself from being tortured by those damned sandwiches and sincere emotions.
Ron thought back to Ginny's recent frantic behaviour toward Tamara. It was indeed hair raising.
But he still felt something did not add up.
"Then... why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you tell Dumbledore?"
Tamara took a deep breath, suppressing the urge to give each of these two idiots an Avada Kedavra as she continued to explain.
"Ordinary potions are useless against the thing inside her. Only fresh Acromantula venom can brew a potion capable of stripping those... filthy things from her body."
"Dumbledore can't even keep his own position, and you lot are just a bunch of idiots who can't even brew a Swelling Solution properly."
"Relying on you... heh. I'm afraid Miss Weasley would have kicked the bucket long ago."
Tamara looked at Harry. The image of that greasy sandwich and Ginny's infatuated, stupid face surfaced in her mind, and a trace of genuine disgust and exhaustion flowed unreservedly from the depths of her eyes.
She was truly fed up.
But in Harry's eyes, this teeth gritted disgust was automatically interpreted as a profound loathing for the Dark Arts.
"I couldn't just watch her continue like that, that's all."
.....
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