"If you keep playing coy, I'll take your portrait down and throw it into the frozen lake outside!"
Grindelwald looked calmly but firmly at Munter, who was deliberately acting mysterious. Munter was so frightened that he waved his hands repeatedly, only then realizing that he had no ability to resist Grindelwald at all.
"Don't! What I mean is, Tver isn't completely without the ability to oppose Death!"
He pointed to another sleeping portrait hanging one level above his. As students of this school, Grindelwald and Tver recognized it at once as Madam Nelida Vulchanova, the founder of Durmstrang.
"Although it's a little embarrassing to say, I must tell you that before Nelida's strange death, she once told me in private..."
Munter said with a complicated expression, "The founding of Durmstrang was actually influenced by the four founders of Hogwarts."
"Of course, Nelida was ambitious back then and wanted to establish a school completely different from Hogwarts. As for the result, well, it was what it was."
"But what I want to tell you is that the reason Nelida had such an idea was entirely because she stole... obtained all of the four founders' research materials on death!"
"Oh?"
Both Tver and Grindelwald looked surprised. Tver especially searched through the materials the four founders had left him, but there really was not much about death.
Seeing surprise on the faces of these two generations of Durmstrang genius students, one old and one young, Munter smiled rather smugly.
"What no one expected was that the contents of those materials showed that, in their research on death, those four founders remain unsurpassed to this day!"
"You're just a portrait hanging in Durmstrang. What makes you so sure there aren't more outstanding research results on this subject elsewhere in the world?" Tver asked curiously.
"Shut up!" Munter roared in irritation.
"In any case, those four founders reached an extraordinary level in the study of death!"
This time, Tver did not refute him.
The imprints the four founders had left at Hogwarts were enough to prove that their understanding of life and death truly was not something present-day wizards could casually judge.
"If the four founders were so impressive, then why did they still end up dead?" Grindelwald asked.
He had no particular reverence for the founders of Hogwarts. In fact, he even resented these four people, who were already dead, for still competing with him over his student.
"Little Gellert, you still don't understand the thinking of those four..."
As if to show how profound and unfathomable he was, Munter not only shook his head, but also wagged his finger in an especially aggravating way.
"The unknown is death's greatest power. Once you understand death, naturally, you no longer fear death."
"What about you, then? Since Durmstrang had those materials, why did you still end up dead?"
Grindelwald immediately shot back. If Tver had not been here, he would have let Munter see exactly what a brutal Dark Lord looked like.
"..."
Munter pressed his lips together and said nothing, either because he sensed the threat in Grindelwald's words or because he simply had no way to refute him.
"That knowledge is far too profound. Never mind me, even the student you're so proud of wouldn't be able to understand it!"
Tver, who had been searching through the founders' materials in his mind, suddenly found himself dragged into it.
"Wait, I haven't even seen those materials. How does that prove I can't understand them?"
"Heh." Munter gave a faint, ambiguous laugh. "Those materials have been with you all along, little Tver!"
"With me?"
Tver looked so confused that question marks might as well have covered his face.
If he had really seen materials about death in Durmstrang, he would absolutely have read them to pieces long ago.
But he had no memory of such materials at all, nor did he remember taking anything away from Durmstrang besides honor and knowledge.
Wait.
Tver hurriedly took out his small wallet and pulled out the badge buried among all kinds of little cakes.
"You mean this?"
Even though the moonlight was not bright, the Hogwarts badge in his hand still reflected a mysterious deep blue glow.
"That's right." Munter looked at the badge as if he had fallen into memory. "This badge is the precious material Nelida obtained from Hogwarts."
"Although I don't know why those four founders never took it back, in Durmstrang, only successive headmasters were allowed to come into contact with this badge."
"And every headmaster, except Karkaroff, was able to gain insight into death and life from it."
"That is why we all agree that those four had truly extraordinary research in this field!"
Tver glanced at the badge in his hand and somewhat understood why Karkaroff had been the only headmaster who gained nothing from it.
"Yes, this badge mysteriously disappeared eleven years ago. That unlucky bastard Karkaroff ran into this right after becoming headmaster, so naturally, he never got to enjoy this little privilege reserved only for headmasters."
Munter laughed in schadenfreude. He had disliked that coward Karkaroff for a long time.
"Of course, ever since the day I accidentally saw you take out this badge, I knew that either you were born extraordinary, or this badge was actually prepared for you." He sighed.
As the badge's former owner, even now as a portrait, he still retained the fantasy that he might one day uncover some earth-shattering magic or ability from it.
Until he saw Tver appear, holding the badge.
Munter let out a long breath of relief.
The reason those four had not taken the badge back was probably because they knew Durmstrang was only its caretaker. In the end, the badge would return to the hands of the person who could truly master it.
"But I..."
Tver frowned at the badge in his hand, so familiar and yet suddenly strange, as if he were looking at a wife who had betrayed him.
"I've already used the founders' power to lift the Curse and even gained an increase in strength."
"Little Tver." Munter grinned mysteriously. "In a person's life, the first and last person they need to understand is always themselves."
"How far you can make use of the badge does not depend on your teacher, nor on the four founders. It depends on you."
Tver froze. Slowly, he brought the badge back before his eyes and stared blankly at the delicate patterns on it.
"Hey, hey, what are you doing?!" Munter suddenly shouted in panic.
At some point, Grindelwald had rolled up his sleeves and was cracking his knuckles as he felt around the portrait frame.
"What else? I mean what I say. I'm throwing this portrait of yours into the frozen lake right now for spending all day acting mysterious!"