"How hateful. You still ended up showing me that disgusting look of pity."
Life was slipping away, but Voldemort wore a relieved smile, as if the end of his life brought him more joy than sorrow.
"This is a good thing, Tver." His eyes filled with reminiscence. Rather than speaking to Tver, it sounded more like he was leaving behind his final words.
"Living has always been pain for me. Rather than bringing sin upon others, dying alone should be the best end for me."
"Tell me, if The Statute of Secrecy hadn't existed, would my father have hated my mother?"
His head tilted slightly, only to see Tver's silence.
"Ah. So I was overthinking it after all. What my father hated wasn't magic. It was me..."
As if he wanted to say every last thing that still tied him to this world before he faded, Voldemort began to ramble.
But in the end, no matter how many words there were, there would come a moment when they ran out.
"M-Master..."
At some point, Bella, who had seemed to vanish earlier, staggered over and knelt beside Voldemort, looking utterly lost.
Behind her stood many Death Eaters, silently watching the once-feared Dark Lord.
Seeing the grief on his former followers' faces, Voldemort finally showed a faint, comforted smile.
"Looking back now, it seems I made many mistakes in my life. But the one thing I do not regret is taking you all in as my followers..."
The sun finally arrived late, spilling the first rays of morning light over them. And in that light, Voldemort completely faded away.
Tver watched the scene with a hollow sense of loss.
Although his own goal was the far more difficult task of overturning The Statute of Secrecy, he had to admit that as an opponent, Voldemort had caused them no small amount of trouble.
Most importantly, Tver had relied on his knowledge of the plot to strike Voldemort from a higher dimension.
But even under such hopeless disadvantages, Voldemort had still used his limited strength to create the greatest possible advantages for himself.
In a sense, Voldemort had fulfilled his role well, and had lived up to the title of Dark Lord.
"Professor, is Voldemort really... dead?"
Harry came over at that moment.
Seeing Voldemort disappear completely, he realized he was not as happy as he had imagined.
"If you mean Voldemort, then yes, he is truly dead. He will never have another chance to return," Tver said calmly.
Harry's expression was complicated as he stretched out a hand, as if trying to catch the ashes left by Voldemort's disappearance.
"When I was hit by Voldemort's Killing Curse earlier, I think I appeared... inside a soul?" Harry thought for a moment, feeling that the professor should be able to answer his question.
"It was a white, empty world. But the important thing was, I seemed to see many people... no, many souls."
"That's called Limbo, a place on the boundary between life and death. What you saw were probably the souls Voldemort had absorbed or killed," Tver explained casually.
Generally speaking, even souls could not enter Limbo so easily. Otherwise, Tver would have gone there for a stroll long ago.
But as for Voldemort's soul, after absorbing so many souls, even he probably had no idea what state he was truly in.
Limbo was already a mysterious place. When one abnormality met another, the situation Harry described naturally became understandable.
Harry nodded, but there was something else he cared about more.
"There, besides a lot of confused ordinary people, I also saw my parents. And even... Peter Pettigrew..."
"Oh?" Tver was a little surprised.
But after thinking that this might have been a Limbo belonging to both Harry and Voldemort, the appearance of those people was understandable.
"Then what was Voldemort doing? If both of you entered Limbo, he must have been there too, right?"
"He was." Harry hesitated for a moment, as if Voldemort's state was difficult to describe.
"He... was like a skeleton? Or maybe like a bloody infant?"
"Peter Pettigrew said Voldemort's remaining soul was already very fragile, and after his Curse was added to it, he was so weak he could barely withstand a single blow."
"So he was being bullied in Limbo?" Tver asked the obvious question.
"He was crying. Crying terribly."
Facing the sunlight, Harry narrowed his eyes slightly, but even from that small glimpse, the struggle in his heart was clear.
Tver pondered for a moment and finally understood what Harry was feeling.
"Sympathizing with the weak is a good thing, Harry. But Voldemort doesn't need your sympathy, and he wouldn't understand it either."
"This was the life he chose. Whether it was good or bad, he would never regret it."
Harry did not seem to react much to Tver's words, but Bella and the others beside them trembled, their expressions becoming even more complicated.
Tver ignored them. With Voldemort gone and their hearts scattered, the Death Eaters were no longer worth his attention.
"Let's go. There are still many people waiting for us over there."
"Many people?"
Harry froze for a moment, then turned his head and realized that while the professor and Voldemort had been fighting, even more people had come to watch.
The Werewolves led by Lupin were greeting everyone awkwardly, but they had clearly not expected the students to be so excited about Professor Lupin's return. They surrounded him so tightly that he could barely move.
The earliest defecting Death Eaters and members of pure-blood families had slipped in under Lucius's lead. Although they looked rather awkward, they still carefully squeezed into the crowd, anxiously grabbing their children and asking question after question.
There were also people like Ian Russell, dressed in expensive suits and accompanied by his business partners from countries around the world, chatting with the students with excitement and envy.
Meanwhile, the hardworking house-elves, under Professor McGonagall's direction, had begun cleaning up the aftermath and looking after the guests, drawing murmurs of amazement from some of the "spectators."
"Please, you must consider it, Mr. Elf. As long as you're willing to work for me, I'm willing to pay you twice your original salary. No, five times!"
Ian Russell enthusiastically held Dobby's small hand, looking as if he would never let go unless Dobby agreed, making Dobby spin around in distress.
Fortunately, Professor McGonagall rescued him and the other house-elves with a cold expression.
"I think I finally understand why the professor has always insisted on paying house-elves," Harry said helplessly. "Judging by how things are going, wizards probably won't have the chance to own house-elves as servants anymore."
Tver shook his head.
"You're being too one-sided, Harry. In reality, wizards are the greatest beneficiaries after The Statute of Secrecy is overturned."
In the short term, magical resources were destined to be unable to benefit all of humanity. But on the other hand, the technological resources wizards could enjoy were very real.
If clever wizards seized the opportunities in the coming wave, it would be easy for several world-class... magical giants to emerge.
Of course, whether wizards chose to actively integrate or muddle along passively had nothing to do with Tver.
He had already created the opportunity. Whether they could seize it would ultimately depend on the wizards themselves.