The next day happened to be the weekend, giving students plenty of time to submit their names to the Goblet of Fire.
Of course, this was limited to students who had already reached the age of seventeen.
As usual, Tver was up early. When he arrived at the Great Hall, he found it unusually crowded with students leaning forward curiously and peering outside. The antechamber housing the Goblet of Fire lay just beyond the wide-open doors of the hall.
Viktor, meanwhile, was yawning nonstop, wearing a thoroughly helpless expression as he was surrounded by a group of young witches and wizards.
This time, Tver did not even need to remind him. Viktor obediently signed autographs for his little fans.
The previous night, he had been jolted awake again and again by bizarre, unsettling nightmares. Every time he finally fell back asleep, soaked in cold sweat, the same thing happened all over again.
He was so exhausted that he briefly considered knocking himself out with a Stunning Spell, but even that would not have spared him from the nightmares' relentless grip.
It was at that point, with his head heavy and foggy, that he immediately realized the truth. This was Tver's retaliation for the moment of recklessness the day before.
So early that morning, after submitting the slip with his name into the Goblet of Fire together with the other Durmstrang students, Viktor stayed put in the Great Hall and resigned himself to signing autographs for everyone.
But the moment he saw Tver walk in, his face lit up and he jumped to his feet.
"Sorry, I haven't signed yours yet. I'll make it up to you next time…"
He rattled off a hurried explanation before striding over, stopping across the staff table from Tver.
"I was wrong."
Viktor admitted it without hesitation.
"Oh? Then tell me, what exactly were you wrong about?" Tver asked casually, tearing a piece of bread apart without even looking up.
"I shouldn't have shouted 'Panda' at Hogwarts…"
"Hm?"
"No, I mean… I shouldn't have shouted your title."
Tver nodded mildly.
"Did you sleep well last night?"
"Very well!" Viktor replied with a pained expression but an unmistakably firm tone.
"That's good. I was worried you might not be used to things after traveling so far. Tonight should be much better."
Viktor immediately broke into a broad grin.
"More than that, I'm really looking forward to your class. Back then, no matter how much we begged, you refused to teach us."
Tver chuckled softly and finally lifted his head.
Back then, he had been far too busy trying to survive and grow stronger to bother teaching this group of juniors.
"What, you're that confident you'll be chosen as Durmstrang's Champion?" Tver asked. "I remember there were quite a few people who could beat you in duels."
He glanced toward the Durmstrang students seated on the Slytherin side. Several of them were genuinely strong, especially when it came to combat.
That said, he had been away from the school for years, so it was hard to say how things stood now.
Viktor raised his head, a confidence shining in his smile that Tver had never seen before.
"That was back then. Since you left the school, I may not be able to dominate like you or Cynthia, but compared to the others, I can beat them all, consistently."
"I've won the Panda Cup two years in a row already. If it weren't for coming to Hogwarts this year, maybe I would've—"
"Wait." Tver raised a hand abruptly, cutting Viktor off.
He had just realized that something was very, very wrong.
"What do you mean, the Panda Cup?!"
Realizing he had let something slip, Viktor's eyes darted around in panic, as if desperately searching for someone to save him.
"Well… that is… um… maybe you misheard…"
He stammered so badly that not only Tver, but even Professor Flitwick, who had been quietly enjoying the spectacle nearby, craned his neck in curiosity to see what was going on.
"All right…" Viktor clearly realized his lying skills were hopeless. He closed his eyes, lifted his chin, and looked as though he were ready to accept his fate.
"In the first year after you graduated, the entire school launched a petition to change the decoration on top of the Championship Cup to a golden panda, in honor of you as the four-time defending champion."
"Headmaster Karkaroff happily agreed and officially renamed it the Panda Cup…"
Feeling a chill creep up his spine, Viktor cautiously opened one eye, completely ignoring the stunned expressions of students whose image of their idol was visibly crumbling.
Tver sliced into his fried fish with a blank expression. Judging purely by how he handled the knife, Viktor had the eerie feeling that Tver was ready to march back to Durmstrang and cut everyone who knew about the panda clean in half, just like that fish.
Thankfully, a burst of laughter from outside the hall came to Viktor's rescue.
Tver looked up, his sharp gaze passing through the open doors to find the source of the laughter.
The Weasley twins were trying to cross Dumbledore's Age Line. The result was exactly what one would expect. Their faces were now covered in thick, oversized white beards as punishment.
Neither of them looked the least bit upset. They pointed at each other and laughed uncontrollably.
Dumbledore merely reminded them to head to the hospital wing as soon as possible. Clearly, this was far from the first time something like this had happened.
After reiterating the age restrictions once more, Dumbledore walked into the Great Hall and took his seat at the staff table, joining everyone for breakfast.
The perfect conclusion to the feast the night before seemed to have put him in an excellent mood.
After glaring Viktor into retreat, Tver pulled his chair a little closer to Dumbledore.
"Professor Dumbledore, aren't you worried that the Age Line could be bypassed by other means?"
"Oh?" Dumbledore looked at him with interest. "Why do you ask? Has someone managed to slip past it?"
A few underage students seated near the staff table, clearly unwilling to give up, quietly perked up their ears to listen in.
"Not exactly," Tver said after a moment's thought. "I just feel the Age Line is somewhat limited. There seem to be ways around it."
"For example?"
"For example, I could transfigure the slip of paper with my name on it into a bird and have it fly into the Goblet of Fire on its own."
Tver took out a blank piece of paper. With a casual toss, it transformed into a small white bird that fluttered its wings and flew out of the Great Hall.
The students immediately fell into thoughtful silence. Dumbledore, however, only smiled lightly.
"That's your method, not the students'," he said. "How many underage students could actually pull something like that off?"
"And even if an underage student did manage to enter, they wouldn't be able to compete with those who are already seventeen."
That reasoning held up. After all, the older students were hardly weak. Under normal circumstances, there were very few students at Hogwarts who could rival Cedric.
Let alone underage wizards.
That was precisely why Dumbledore had only set a single Age Line. It wasn't that he lacked other, more elaborate restrictions. There simply hadn't been any need for them.
Of course, Dumbledore clearly hadn't accounted for an unexpected variable like young Barty.
"In that case, could you tell me more about the Goblet of Fire…"
Tver smoothly shifted the topic toward Gubraithian Fire. Dumbledore, unsurprised, eagerly followed along, clearly happy to discuss it.
The students, meanwhile, could only watch the two professors, one old and one young, with deep frustration.
If underage students weren't being strictly barred, the least he could do was suggest one or two methods they might actually be able to use.