Tver didn't know why he had cast Riddikulus. Just as Salazar had said, he let his imagination take over.
And at the moment, that spell was the most imaginative thing he could think of.
He put away his wand and looked down at his right wrist.
The Dark Mark there had once again been compressed by the returning surge of life force into a tiny black dot, its color noticeably lighter than before.
He could clearly feel how much lighter his wrist had become.
In the past, he would sometimes feel a slight delay when casting spells. His strength had been great enough to mask it, but if that hadn't been the case, he might have had to switch his dominant hand to his left.
Now, all of those obstacles were gone.
At this rate, even if the curse continued to grow stronger year by year, he could endure it for centuries.
And it wouldn't affect his own strength in the slightest.
So even if this journey hadn't earned him a direct gift from Salazar, the half a year he had spent studying Transfiguration had already been worth it.
But then came the problem.
What was he supposed to do with this little imp?
Tver looked at the small black creature in confusion.
It had been formed from a curse. More precisely, from Voldemort's curse, saturated with an evil aura so dense it felt almost tangible.
By all rights, this imp should have belonged to Voldemort. Yet Tver could clearly sense that it was completely under his control.
The question was how he was supposed to control it.
Surely he couldn't just let this thing follow him around all the time.
That would scare the students half to death.
"You can put it away," Salazar said, clearly catching on to Tver's concern. He sounded amused. "Just like when it existed on your wrist before."
By now, Salazar's right palm was completely empty, drained of magic.
"Don't worry," he added, noticing Tver's gaze and lifting his right forearm. "I've long since gotten used to not having a body. This is nothing."
"I was just asking how to put the imp away," Tver replied, giving him a mischievous wink. "I wasn't worrying about you."
"All right."
"It's still Transfiguration," Salazar said with a helpless shake of his head and a laugh, "but this time, you need to turn it into your own magic."
"So the tricky part is not only transforming the curse into magic, but also removing the part that belongs to Riddle—"
Tver casually pressed the little imp back into his right wrist, using it to cover the original black dot.
Only now, the dot had become the imprint of a tiny black imp.
"Voldemort's what?"
"Nothing…"
Salazar silently raised the badge in his left hand.
"The badge has been activated. This is all I can do for you. The rest will depend on you."
Tver took the badge with a touch of reluctance. It was indeed filled with magic, but that wasn't what he cared about.
What troubled him was the regret. Salazar could have truly returned, becoming his strongest ally.
Instead, he would watch him return to the castle, changing from a ruthless spear into an unyielding shield.
But since Salazar had made his choice, all Tver could do was respect it.
There was the same trace of reluctance in Salazar's eyes, yet he still resolutely let go of his form, his body dissolving little by little into starlight.
"We probably won't meet again," he said softly. "But I'm grateful. To have met a student as outstanding as you."
"If you'd been able to attend Hogwarts back then, you would have become a Slytherin even greater than I was."
His form was now completely wrapped in starlight, brilliant and radiant, much like his life had been.
"Go on, young man. Create your own future…"
With those final words, only dazzling motes of light remained where he had stood.
As Tver stood there, paying silent tribute to the great founder, the cluster of starlight suddenly moved.
All at once, it surged toward him, as if it meant to swallow him whole.
And it did.
Tver's vision filled with countless specks of green and red light. None of it was harsh or blinding.
On the contrary, it drew his gaze in, making his eyes widen without him even realizing it.
This wasn't just magic.
It was Salazar's knowledge.
The moment he realized that, Tver lowered his defenses completely and allowed the knowledge to merge into him.
This was about feline transformations in biological Transfiguration.
Then research on the soul. So soul fusion required careful attention to the clash between two wills.
And here were records concerning Death itself. Indeed, the three Hallows were nothing more than powerful magical artifacts created from humanity's understanding of Death, not true means of escaping it.
…
Tver spent the entire night barely managing to sort everything out. By the time he left the Chamber of Secrets and returned to his office, the sky was already beginning to lighten.
He let out a long breath and collapsed into his chair, no longer even in the mood for pumpkin juice.
He had honestly thought there wouldn't be any extra gains this time, yet the knowledge Salazar left him was both vast and astonishingly varied.
You could even say it exceeded what the other two founders had left behind.
It felt as though Tver had walked into a library that contained everything from profound theories to the most mundane practical tricks.
Salazar had been like a little hamster, hoarding every piece of knowledge that caught his interest inside his mind.
Just organizing it all had taken an enormous amount of mental effort.
Of course, that was probably because Salazar was the only founder who had preserved a complete soul, and what he left behind was likewise a complete and coherent system of knowledge.
After all, Tver's own research interests were already all over the place. He had even studied how to stop his legs from shaking while riding a broomstick.
Broadly speaking, the material could be divided into categories.
Most of it focused on Transfiguration, with the traits of each subcategory recorded in clear detail.
Tver was familiar with much of it already, but unlike Salazar, he had never documented it so thoroughly or woven it into a unified system for Transfiguration as a whole.
The rest dealt with research on the soul.
Since Tver's own work in that area was already solid, much of this part felt more novel and interesting than revolutionary.
That said, Salazar also seemed to have conducted some research related to Death itself.
To be honest, Tver remained skeptical about the idea of Death as an entity.
Or rather, he didn't believe such a god truly existed. What it represented was simply one of the world's fundamental laws governing birth, aging, illness, and death.
At the very least, neither he nor Salazar had managed to reach any definitive conclusions.
However, there was also some material related to Limbo, which turned out to be the most useful part for Tver.
He even had the distinct feeling that Salazar had deliberately emphasized that section, as if guiding him toward successfully reviving Marvolio.
It seemed that although the old ancestor claimed he didn't care, he was, in fact, quite concerned about his own bloodline after all.
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on P@treon.
[Upto 50 chapters ahead for now]
[email protected]/BlurryDream