"Am I dead?"
Snape opened his eyes in a daze, his mind still foggy.
In the dim world around him, only a single beam of golden light shone through a crack. It stung his eyes, making him squint.
The only thing he could see clearly was the man bathed in that beam of light, as if he were giving off a golden glow.
"Click."
The man was holding some sort of device, aiming it at him and making one clicking sound after another. He seemed to be muttering odd things like, "The lighting is terrible," "That's another roll of film wasted," and "Should I adjust the pose a little?"
His voice was like a lullaby, yet it also seemed to be drawing Snape's will back little by little.
Only then did Snape realize that every muscle in his body was radiating exhaustion, as if every last bit of energy inside him had been drained dry.
The more his mind recovered, the clearer that exhaustion became, until he unconsciously ignored the filth of the floor and simply lay there quietly.
Wait.
Snape's mind suddenly cleared.
That familiar movement, that familiar voice, that infuriatingly familiar tone...
Ignoring the glare of the sunlight, he suddenly widened his eyes and forced his head up.
Sure enough.
"You're actually not dead?"
Seeing that Snape had woken, Tver put away the camera and looked at him teasingly.
"What's this? From your tone, I almost hear a hint of regret."
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Snape's mouth before he could stop it. The string that had been pulled tight inside him since last night finally loosened, and he lay back on the ground.
"What a pity indeed."
Though he did not want to admit it, during the one night Tver had been missing, Snape had personally watched Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic fall into an inexplicable panic.
Clearly, their advantage was still enormous. Clearly, everything had been within this man's expectations, and he had prepared more than enough countermeasures. Clearly, the work everyone else actually did was far greater than that of this man, who spent all day thinking about how to slack off.
Clearly, Snape hated this man's mouth so much.
But the moment he saw Tver standing before him completely unharmed, Snape knew.
This war was over.
If even death could not stop this man, then victory would belong to them. There would be no more accidents.
"Hey, are you planning to lie there forever?"
Tver walked over with a strange look on his face and kicked Snape's foot in annoyance.
He had seen plenty of people give up, but never Snape in such a lazy, worn-out state.
Snape was like a machine with a full supply of power. No matter what difficulties lay ahead, no matter how dangerous the task he had to carry out, he would always move tirelessly toward his goal.
But now, had that machine rusted?
Snape waved a hand. For some reason, he found himself strangely enjoying his current state.
"I've already done what I needed to do. Whatever comes next has nothing to do with me."
"But I saved you." Tver widened his eyes, staring at the utterly self-righteous Snape.
For some reason, his body had entered Limbo along with his soul, which had made it rather difficult to leave for a while.
More importantly, the Founders' claim that he was the controller of this world had also been a trap.
Just as there was no Death, there was no such figure as a controller of this world.
It was only that Tver's strength had reached the upper limit of this world, and after seeing through death, he had entered a certain transcendent state.
In a sense, he had now reached the same level of strength as the four Founders. They simply had different focuses, and therefore displayed different abilities.
The problem was that compared with the Founders, Dumbledore, and Grindelwald, Tver had put all of his strength into combat.
If it came down to raw fighting power, even if they all tied themselves together and came at him, he would not back down.
Well, there was no need to be quite that arrogant.
The real problem was that Limbo was essentially a new domain at that level, and compared with the Founders, Tver's experience there was no better than a child just starting school.
So he had been forced to struggle for quite some time, staying there and studying it for ages. In the end, he had even escaped Limbo in a slightly sorry state before finally returning to the real world.
Of course, arriving early was not as useful as arriving at the right moment. The instant he appeared, he ran into Snape on the brink of death.
For Tver, who had already seen through death, let alone Snape being near death, even if he had truly died...
No. Best not to set that sort of flag.
In any case, he really had to thank Voldemort for still having some doubts and therefore not using the Killing Curse. That allowed Tver to save Snape with a casual motion.
Of course, taking a few casual photographs of a "world-famous masterpiece" was perfectly normal too.
"Well, thank you very much," Snape said perfunctorily, clumsily climbing up from the floor.
"Though why do I feel there's something malicious in your smile?"
He certainly was not going to keep lying on the ground. In front of Tver, he still had an image to maintain.
It was only that his injuries had just healed, his body was still terribly exhausted, and with his mind relaxing, he had wanted to rest for a moment.
After all these years, it was only at the moment he came close to death that he truly felt he had been freed from the past.
Come to think of it, if Tver had not handed him the Resurrection Stone and allowed him to understand his own wish, he might not have been able to hold on this long.
In a sense, he really had been "resurrected."
Although on the surface, Snape only seemed a little more open in his movements and expression, Tver still faintly sensed the shift in his state of mind.
His strange gaze swept over Snape's face. But considering that people were still fighting outside, the two stared at each other for a while before Tver finally looked away.
"By the way, since you appeared here, doesn't that mean you've made up your mind to meet Lily?"
Tver casually pushed open the door, pretending to speak offhandedly, while his face, turned away from Snape, was practically written with the words "I want the gossip."
Snape's face darkened instantly, and the tiny bit of emotion he had finally built up vanished without a trace.
"There is no necessary connection between the two. If you delay any longer, Hogwarts Castle will be taken by Voldemort."
"Don't be in such a hurry."
After walking out the door, Tver was instead no longer anxious.
By now, the sun's radiance had begun spreading from the far horizon, casting a hazy layer of light across the entire sky.
By that light, he looked thoughtfully toward the castle. Sensing the aura coming from that direction, a mysterious smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"For something this important, how could there be no audience?"
"An audience?"