By evening, after sending the delighted Draco away, Tver appeared in the Great Hall at the exact moment dinner was served.
Naturally, this caused a few small gasps.
Hearing that the professor had returned was still different from seeing him appear in person.
Tver swept his gaze around the Great Hall, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Of course, it was not because of the students' startled expressions. He was not that shallow!
The main reason was that his second target had finally appeared.
His eyes locked straight onto the staff table. Under such a burning stare, Snape, for the first time, actually made an unconscious movement as if trying to dodge it.
Just as he was hesitating over whether to leave and return to his office for dinner as he had done over the past two days, Tver slapped a hand down and planted himself directly in front of him.
With a standard bully's grin on his face, he left the students who noticed the scene feeling strangely dazed.
The professor had barely returned to school these past two years, so why did it feel as if he and Snape had switched places?
Tver paid no attention to that.
Of course, he had no intention of letting their conversation spread either, so after holding down Professor Flitwick, who was trying to sneakily lean over, he asked in a voice only the two of them could hear, "Dumbledore returned the Resurrection Stone ages ago. Are you really not planning to follow his example and make peace with your past mistakes?"
When it came to dealing with Voldemort, the person Tver worried about most was not anyone else, but Snape.
To put it bluntly, the reason Snape had persisted in fighting Voldemort until today was to atone for the mistake he made by revealing the prophecy.
But the question was, once Voldemort fell, would that mistake truly be atoned for?
When Dumbledore brought up Harry's condition, was it not also to give Snape one more thing to hold on to? Otherwise, no one knew what he might do.
Only, Snape's will was buried even deeper than Tver had imagined.
"There is nothing to make peace with. The past cannot be changed. Reconciliation no longer has any meaning," Snape said calmly.
Tver studied him for a long while. Only after the food appeared on the tables did he reluctantly withdraw his gaze.
He could not tell whether Snape truly did not care and only wanted to complete his mission, or whether his disguise was simply too good for Tver to see through.
Difficult.
Tver sighed.
Snape might be cold by nature, venomous with his tongue, and obsessive as a person, but he was still one of the top three professors at Hogwarts in terms of strength.
And from Tver's own observations, ever since Snape fought him to a draw in second year, his stagnant power had even begun to break through.
Add his calm, seasoned methods to that, and he was simply the perfect candidate for Tver to monitor governments around the world.
Yes, Tver had never trusted those petty, scheming politicians. Or rather, he did not trust greedy human nature in the face of profit.
So the necessary surveillance methods had to exist.
And in the wizarding world, no one was more suitable than Snape.
"You don't need to be in such a hurry. Severus will lose patience one day."
Dumbledore had somehow come over at some point, watching Tver worry so much that he even seemed to have lost interest in eating cake.
His expression, however, looked as if he had Snape completely figured out.
"Lose patience with what?"
Tver glanced at him and could not help teasing, "Lose patience and sob his way through my entire box of tissues?"
"…"
Dumbledore choked on the words and sat back down in annoyance.
"Then you can just keep worrying over there!"
He understood Snape's abilities even better than Tver did. How could he not care about such a capable subordinate?
It was just that some things, no matter how eloquent Tver was, had to be understood by the person himself.
"No, I wasn't hinting at you. Can't we keep talking about Snape's current condition?"
Tver's guilty explanation naturally had no effect at all. Just then, Sirius arrived late with a bright smile on his face.
"I finally get to see you, Tver. I've got loads of things I want to tell you."
He clapped Tver heartily on the shoulder, completely different from the gloomy man who had once been forced to hide in Grimmauld Place.
It even made Tver curious.
Did Hogwarts have the power to transform people too?
"What exactly happened to you? Why do I feel like you're the one under the Imperius Curse?"
"What Imperius Curse?" Sirius froze for a moment, but quickly tossed that doubt aside.
"That's not important. What matters is that I finally understand how much fun it is to be a professor at Hogwarts!"
"Fun?"
Not only Tver, but the other professors at the staff table also pricked up their ears in confusion.
"That's right!" Sirius said excitedly.
"When I'm teaching, I get to watch those students fumble around with spells, then correct them bit by bit. It's brilliant!"
"…That's called a sense of fulfillment, not fun!" Tver said irritably.
"That's not important!" Sirius waved it off. "What's important is that once you become a professor, you can take the students along to play magical games whenever you like!"
"Your light-ball game is great, but it's a bit too boring for a professor, so I simply changed it into a light-ball battle!"
"So you've been holding it in for this long and are now using these students to let off steam…"
Of course, that did fit Sirius's personality.
He had never been the sort of person who liked suppressing himself. It was only because his past arrogance had led to his imprisonment in Azkaban that he had fallen into that self-destructive state.
In that sense, he was somewhat similar to Dumbledore. Fortunately, Pettigrew had completed his redemption.
Although Sirius still bore some responsibility for what happened back then, now that he had Harry, a godson who needed his care and protection, he could no longer allow himself to fail in his duty as a godfather.
In that state, returning to Hogwarts, a place that had once given him endless joy, naturally released the carefree nature he used to have.
At the same time, Regulus's death had made him far more mature. At the very least, he no longer held the same prejudice against Slytherin students as before.
"What are you talking about?" Sirius was rather displeased by Tver's wording, but he could not find a suitable way to refute it. "It's still much better than Snivellus's cold attitude!"
All right, except when it came to Snape.
Tver turned his head speechlessly and focused on his dinner.
Ever since he stopped spending Halloween at Hogwarts, he felt as if his mood had improved considerably.
But Sirius was not about to let him off so easily.
"Wait, I haven't even gotten to the important part yet!"
"Then hurry up and say it."
"Heh." Sirius showed a somewhat strange smile. "Here's the thing. After the students heard you were back, they said they wanted to compare our teaching."
"So I was thinking, could we teach them a lesson together?"
So that was his goal.
Tver looked at Sirius, who grew a little embarrassed under his stare.
"Fine. Since it's the students' wish, I certainly won't disappoint them, right?"
"Right, right!" Sirius echoed cheerfully. "That's exactly the students' wish!"