Chapter 232: The Price
The Christmas luncheon cast a hollow, echoing chill across the Great Hall of Hogwarts.
With the vast majority of the student body and several professors having fled the castle for the holidays, the four massive house tables had been banished. In their place sat a single, solitary round table marooned in the very center of the vast stone room. The hearth fires crackled and spat, casting warm orange glows over a sumptuous spread of roasted turkey, glistening meats, and towering Christmas puddings.
Ronald Weasley, nursing a bruised ego after a rather unpleasant spat with his friends, had opted to retreat to the Burrow rather than endure the holiday at school. Hermione Granger, on the other hand, had eagerly remained behind. The empty castle offered her the pristine, uninterrupted silence of the library, and more, it kept her within arm's reach of Tamara. As for Harry Potter, the choice was no choice at all; lingering in the drafty corridors of Hogwarts would always be infinitely preferable to suffering another miserable week at Privet Drive.
Including Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, and the handful of other faculty members who had stayed behind, exactly twelve people occupied the chairs around the circular table.
Yet, despite the crackling fires and the festive feast, the atmosphere hung heavy and muted.
Sitting at the very edge of the table, Tamara Riddle listlessly pushed a mutilated slice of turkey around her porcelain plate with the tines of her silver fork. Her skin, usually a flawless porcelain, had taken on a sickly, translucent pallor. A dark, simmering irritability lurked just beneath the surface of her obsidian eyes, masked only by sheer exhaustion.
She had spent the entire morning barricaded inside the Room of Requirement, obsessively tearing apart the ancient runic matrices woven into that blasted Invisibility Cloak. The results had been entirely infuriating. Brushing against the absolute laws of death carried a heavy, suffocating taboo, and the pressure was actively crushing her fragile mortal shell. The magical backlash was already clawing at her. A vicious, rhythmic throbbing hammered against her temples, and a thick fog of lethargy threatened to drag her under.
Seated diagonally across from her, Severus Snape's dark, calculating gaze locked onto her deteriorating state.
Waiting for the exact moment Albus Dumbledore became thoroughly distracted by a lively debate with Professor Flitwick over the merits of a new plum pudding flavor, the Potions Master leaned in.
"If you have no immediate plans to transform yourself into an Inferius for the holidays..." Snape murmured, his voice a silken, dangerous drawl. "I suggest you march yourself up to the Hospital Wing for a Pepperup Potion, rather than continuing your cruel and unusual torture of that dead bird."
Tamara did not even bother to lift her heavy eyelids.
'Nosy bat,' she sneered inwardly.
Outwardly, her voice slipped out in a flat, indifferent monotone. "Thank you for your boundless generosity, Professor. I merely find the foolish, forced merriment of this room to be excessively grating. It gives me a headache."
She had fully intended to force down two bites of dry meat to keep up appearances before fleeing back to her sanctuary. But before she could lift her fork, the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall groaned open.
Divination Professor Sybill Trelawney drifted into the room, her shawls and bangles fluttering around her like a displaced specter.
"Sybill! What a delightful surprise!" Dumbledore beamed, rising to his feet and gesturing warmly toward a vacant chair to his right. "Do come and join us. The turkey is still exceptionally warm."
Trelawney took two wavering steps forward before her magnified eyes swept over the assembled diners. Her lips moved silently as she counted the heads. Suddenly, a shrill, glass-shattering shriek tore from her throat.
"No! No! Albus, I absolutely cannot sit down!"
Trelawney scrambled backward, clutching her shawls to her chest in absolute, wide-eyed terror, as if a basilisk had just slithered onto the table.
"Twelve! There are already twelve of you! If I take a seat, we shall be thirteen! The most cursed of numbers!" She gasped for air, her voice trembling with theatrical doom. "Never forget! When thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die!"
A heavy, awkward silence crashed down upon the Great Hall.
Professor McGonagall's lips thinned into a severe line as she let out a sharp, impatient scoff. Snape merely curled his lip, shooting the Divination professor a look of unadulterated disgust.
At the edge of the table, Tamara remained entirely motionless.
'What a pathetic, boring parlor trick,' the Dark Lord mocked in the confines of her mind.
She felt nothing but absolute contempt for this cheap, melodramatic prophecy. It reeked of a filthy street swindler begging for copper coins. Meanwhile, the agonizing spikes of pain driving into her skull were multiplying by the second. Her patience for these insufferable fools had officially evaporated.
Moving with deliberate, practiced elegance, Tamara set her silver fork down against the porcelain. She lifted a linen napkin, dabbed the corners of her mouth with aristocratic grace, and pushed her heavy wooden chair back. Without a single ounce of hesitation, she stood up.
"I am full," she announced.
Her voice was a flat, icy sheet of glass, devoid of a single human emotion. Turning on her heel, she strode directly toward the exit.
"Good heavens!" Trelawney gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in a gesture of deep sorrow. She pointed a trembling, ring-laden finger at Tamara's retreating back. "She rose... the first of the thirteen! The cold shadow of death has already descended upon that poor, doomed girl's head!"
"That is quite enough, Sybill," Professor McGonagall snapped, her voice cracking like a whip to cut off the rising panic. "Miss Riddle is merely returning to her studies."
Down the table, Harry Potter's knuckles turned white as his grip tightened around his knife and fork.
His bright green eyes were glued to the heavy oak doors, a chaotic storm of conflicting emotions churning in his chest. He did not buy into Trelawney's theatrical doom-saying for a second, but he had seen Tamara's face. He had seen that sickly, paper-white pallor. Was she falling ill? Was she in some kind of danger?
His muscles coiled. His body leaned forward instinctively, his hands pressing against the edge of the table as he prepared to shove his chair back and run after her.
But the moment his palms hit the wood, a brutal memory flashed behind his eyes. The freezing snow of Hogsmeade. Tamara standing there, looking down at him with a gaze so cold, so utterly contemptuous, it had shredded his pride into ribbons.
Harry's muscles locked.
Why in the world should he care about a Slytherin who looked at him like he was a pathetic clown? If she preferred the company of that slimy ferret Malfoy, and if she found his genuine concern so entirely repulsive... why should he run after her just to humiliate himself all over again?
Gritting his teeth, Harry violently swallowed the desperate urge in his throat. He slumped back into his chair, dropping his gaze to the rapidly cooling mashed potatoes on his plate, a dark, brooding shadow falling over his face.
Beside him, Hermione Granger suffered from no such bruised ego.
As the sharpest witch of her age, she had cataloged every single micro-expression on Tamara's face since the feast began. She knew something was dreadfully wrong. Hermione could not care less about the ridiculous rumors painting the Slytherin girl as some sort of dark monster, nor did she care about Tamara's notoriously frosty demeanor. All Hermione knew was that the brilliant girl who had patiently guided her through complex magical theory, the one who had quietly shielded her time and time again, was currently suffering.
"Excuse me, Professors," Hermione said, her voice tight with poorly concealed anxiety as she dropped her cutlery with a clatter. "I am quite full as well. I really must be getting to the library."
Throwing a hasty, disjointed bow toward the head of the table, Hermione spun around and sprinted out of the Great Hall, her bushy hair flying behind her.
High up on the eighth floor, the heavy, solid wood door of the Room of Requirement slammed shut with a definitive thud.
The magical barrier sealed perfectly, instantly severing Tamara from the infuriating noise of the castle. In the center of the cavernous room sat a massive oak desk, entirely buried beneath mountains of densely scribbled parchment.
Tamara staggered forward. Her boots dragged heavily against the stone floor until she crashed into the desk, her trembling hands gripping the wooden edges just to keep herself upright. The sheer effort of walking up the stairs had drained the very last dregs of her stamina.
'Just from parsing a fraction of the underlying matrix... the backlash is this violent?'
Tamara gasped for air, her chest heaving as a layer of icy sweat broke out across her forehead.
Magic always demanded an equivalent exchange. Anyone arrogant enough to forcibly pry open the secrets of Death had to pay a devastating toll. If she had not previously forged a twisted, parasitic contract with the concept of Death itself, the act of deciphering these runes would have instantly incinerated her soul. Death was actively bleeding her dry as punishment for trespassing.
Grinding her teeth together, Tamara forced her heavy, unfocused eyes back down to the ancient, maddening symbols carved into the parchment.
But the very second she attempted to channel her magical core—
A single, glaring drop of scarlet splattered onto the parchment.
The crimson stain rapidly bloomed across the yellowed paper. Tamara froze. A second later, a thick, hot stream of blood gushed uncontrollably from her nose. It slid down her pale chin, dripping in a steady, rhythmic patter directly onto the ancient magical runes.
A catastrophic wave of weakness crashed through her nervous system. Her knees buckled entirely, sending her collapsing heavily into the high-backed leather chair. The edges of her vision blackened and blurred. A chorus of freezing, hollow whispers began to echo in her ears, as if Death itself was standing in the shadows of the room, sneering at her pathetic mortal frailty.
Yet, upon the face of the Dark Lord, there was not a single trace of fear.
"The price?" Tamara rasped.
She slumped against the leather, lifting a trembling, blood-stained hand to her line of sight. A dark, utterly unhinged smile slowly stretched across her face, twisting her beautiful features into a mask of pure arrogance.
"Let us see if Death has the teeth to actually take me."
Fighting through the crushing gravity pulling at her limbs, she reached into the inner pocket of her robes and retrieved an exquisite, heavy crystal phial.
Inside sloshed a half-measure of a deeply unnatural liquid. It was a captivating, terrifying hue—a dull, coagulated blood-red violently threaded with veins of brilliant, liquid gold.
It was a miracle of her own design. By weaponizing her unique golden bloodline, she had managed to transmute ordinary water into an elixir capable of extending a human life by exactly one year. Because the ritual could only be performed once every six months, she had painstakingly hoarded four phials since the destruction of the Philosopher's Stone in her first year. Before she could completely subjugate the Deathly Hallows, this stolen time was her only currency to pay the toll for deciphering their laws.
Her fingers slick with her own blood, Tamara popped the cork. She threw her head back and downed the bizarre liquid in a single, desperate swallow.
The moment the potion hit her stomach, a vast, scorching wave of pure vitality exploded outward, flooding her hollowed-out veins and forcefully replacing the life force Death had just stolen.
But while the ledger of her lifespan had been balanced, the physical trauma remained. Tamara felt like a drowning victim who had just breached the surface after holding her breath past the point of agony. Her muscles felt like lead. She lacked the strength to twitch a single finger.
Defeated by gravity, Tamara let her head loll forward, her pale cheek pressing flat against the freezing surface of the wooden desk. The hot blood continued to smear across her skin. Her obsidian eyes fluttered, half-lidded and glassy, as she blankly watched the crimson pool expanding across her notes. Her breathing slowed, settling into a shallow, ragged rhythm.
'Just... close your eyes for a moment...' the Dark Lord bargained with herself in the dark recesses of her mind.
The sticky, cloying warmth on her face and the sharp, metallic stench of copper filling her nose were infuriating. They were a glaring, visceral reminder that she was still chained to this pathetic, breakable mortal shell. To the Dark Lord, bleeding was not just an injury; it was an unforgivable humiliation. If she possessed even a fraction of her usual power, she would have ruthlessly cast a hundred consecutive Scourgify charms to scour away every last drop of this disgusting evidence of her weakness.
But right now, she truly could not even lift a finger.
She lay there, utterly defenseless in the silence.
Then, without warning, the heavy oak door of the Room of Requirement burst open.
"Tamara! You really are here! I saw your face in the Great Hall, you looked absolutely—"
Hermione Granger's frantic voice echoed through the cavernous space. But the moment the Gryffindor's eyes landed on the desk, the words died in her throat.
The scene was horrifying. Tamara's deathly pale face pressed against the wood, her dark hair splayed wildly, and a thick, winding river of fresh blood soaking into the parchment beneath her.
At the sound of the intrusion, Tamara's half-lidded eyes snapped open. The exhaustion vanished, instantly replaced by a glacial, murderous fury.
Grinding her teeth together, she violently shoved the crushing dizziness to the back of her mind and forced her head off the desk. Blood dripped from her chin, staining her collar. Yet, on that ruined, crimson-smeared face, there was not a single flicker of panic at being caught in such a pathetic state.
Tamara simply stared down the Gryffindor intruder, her obsidian eyes bottomless and dead.
"Who gave you permission to enter?" Tamara demanded, her voice a soft, venomous hiss that cut through the room before Hermione could even draw a breath. "Get out."
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