Despite repeated attempts by the professors and students to make him stay, Tver still left Hogwarts after breakfast.
One reason was that there was still work to finish at the Joint Operations Office, and the other was...
The curse on him had suddenly reacted.
With the help of the four founders, the curse left by the ring had already turned into a little black imp he could command.
But the curse Voldemort had left on the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, though suppressed to a very faint degree, had continued clinging to him like a disease in the bone.
And today, after returning to Hogwarts and seemingly acknowledging his identity as a professor, the curse had suddenly strengthened and flared up a little.
Tver had expected before that the curse would grow stronger the longer he held the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.
What he had not expected was that by the fifth year, it would increase almost geometrically.
So even though it had been suppressed to a very weak level, it still caused Tver a bit of trouble.
Looking at the black mark on his wrist trying to spread, and feeling the slightest sluggishness in the circulation of magic within his body, Tver walked into the Joint Operations Office while thinking, then swept his eyes across the room.
Naturally, he was looking for Marvolio, the very culprit behind the curse, so that he could come deal with it himself.
But he did not find Marvolio. Crystal came up to him instead.
"Professor, the Prime Minister's assistant just called. He said that even though they're calling the disasters caused by the Giants hurricanes, there are still some rumors about Giants spreading among the public. He asked what we should do about it."
That was a little beyond Tver's expectations.
Although he had consistently refused to let Crystal erase memories, the number of people who had actually seen a Giant and survived was not that high.
He had simply not expected that after living in the wizarding world for so long, he had started underestimating the speed at which "rumors" spread in the 1990s.
After all, he was more familiar with the world ten years later...
"It's fine. Stories like that have always been around. Most people probably think it's promotion for some new film or toy."
After thinking it over for a moment, Tver still decided to handle it the original way.
The world needed some time to adjust, especially Britain. Although he still did not know exactly what Voldemort wanted to do, with conditions this good, it would be a waste not to make proper use of the groundwork Tver had laid over the previous four years.
After spending this stretch of time with him, Crystal had already grown used to Tver's indifference on this point, so she was not surprised by the answer.
"By the way, once Marvolio gets back..."
Tver absentmindedly pushed open the office door, only to see Marvolio already inside, sitting there with one leg crossed over the other and shaking it, clearly waiting to report something to him.
"What are you doing here?"
"Professor?" Crystal asked curiously.
"It's nothing." Tver casually shut the door.
Marvolio cleared his throat at just the right moment and said with exaggerated seriousness, "You're in trouble, Tver!"
Then he shut his mouth and looked at Tver with an expression that plainly said, If you don't ask, I'm not telling.
"If you keep dragging this out, I don't care whether I'm in trouble or not, but you definitely will be."
Tver was already in a foul mood because of the curse, and Marvolio had chosen exactly the wrong moment to act up, making him the perfect target to vent on.
Sensing that the atmosphere had gone bad, Marvolio immediately stopped fooling around and dropped his carefree attitude.
"Actually, it's Dumbledore..."
"No. I don't want to hear that right now. You listen to me first..." Tver cut him off directly.
"How exactly is the curse you left behind supposed to be dealt with? The connection to Hogwarts was already severed, so why does it still cling this strongly?"
Godric had severed the curse as early as half a year ago, and Tver could clearly tell that it had already become no different from an ordinary curse.
What he could not understand was that the curse seemed to have become entangled with his soul. It was only a trace, yet no matter what he did, he could not remove it.
"So that's what this is about." Marvolio immediately let out a sigh of relief.
He had thought something serious had happened, the kind that would drag him into it too, and get him scolded the way Peter Pettigrew's sacrifice had once done.
"This curse was mainly cast by relying on Hogwarts itself and my Slytherin bloodline. So even without the castle supplying it with magic anymore, it still has very strong interference with the soul."
He praised himself smugly, completely oblivious to Tver's face growing darker and darker.
"But as for solving it, it would be very hard for anyone else. For you, though, it's easy."
"Easy?" Tver raised his right hand and looked at the little black spot on it in confusion, unable to see how he was supposed to get rid of it so easily.
"Idiot." It was the first time Marvolio had seen the usually confident and composed Tver look this blank and baffled, so he seized the chance to sneer at him.
"Even your student Cedric knows to use imps to block the Killing Curse. Hasn't it ever occurred to you to store the curse in an imp?"
"The curse is attached to the soul, but because you've suppressed it so many times, now it can only affect a tiny piece of your soul."
"As long as you split off that small piece of soul in the form of an imp, you don't even need to remove the curse. As long as you don't merge it back, it can completely bear every curse tied to your entire life as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor."
In truth, Marvolio had only just thought of this method himself.
When he had cast the curse in the first place, he had poured almost all of the related knowledge and ability he had at the time into it, specifically to make sure Dumbledore could not remove it.
Even he himself had never thought of a solution.
What he had not expected was that Tver could split the soul in a way far safer than a Horcrux.
To be honest, the moment he saw that an imp could block the Killing Curse, he had already realized that imp magic was practically the natural enemy of any magic that damaged the soul.
He genuinely could not understand it. Even taking into account the advantage of a pure-blood family where one could study magic from birth, Tver was at most only twenty-three, yet he was already monstrous enough to have reached this level in soul research.
It was hard to imagine what Tver might be capable of in the future.
Marvolio found himself thinking with some emotion.
"So I can only split my own soul?" Tver asked with ill intent.
"Not necessarily," Marvolio said offhandedly. "Voldemort's soul would work too. After all, he cast the curse, so it can be transferred... Why are you looking at me like that?"
As Tver started walking toward him, Marvolio suddenly had a very bad feeling.
Wait. He had cast the curse. That meant his soul could also take the transferred curse.
"You can't do this, Tver!"
"I've rendered service to the cause! I've bled for you! I want to see Grindelwald! I want to see Dumbledore. Ahhh..."