Night.
Several hours had passed, and Quéops, anxious and uneasy, was still waiting restlessly in his living room.
After leaving the meeting place, he had first put on an act and taken the Aurors back to the Ministry of Magic, pretending to be calm as he arranged for them to prepare for the next day's autopsy.
But in reality, he had not even eaten dinner before going straight home.
He had no idea why Tver had suddenly let him off, not only shifting the topic to the autopsy, but also giving him an entire night to prepare.
But no matter what, he would never believe that Tver was truly letting him go.
So the moment he returned home, he began thinking about packing up and fleeing Greece. He had not even considered going to Britain to seek out the Dark Lord. He only wanted to get as far away from this mess as possible.
Truthfully, Quéops had never intended to continue following the Dark Lord.
News that the Death Eaters in Britain were being hunted in return had long since spread through the Ministries of Magic in every country. Even now, some Dark Wizards, afraid of being caught in the crossfire, had no choice but to leave Britain and hide elsewhere.
Under such circumstances, how could Quéops possibly give up his bright future in Greece and go back to being a Death Eater hated by everyone?
Even if he had indeed once been a Death Eater. Even if his current position had only been possible thanks to the Dark Lord's help back then. Even if...
Thinking of this, he looked at the pitch-black living room and could not help kicking the thick sofa in irritation.
"Ow!"
The pain from his foot finally helped him calm down a little.
He had to calm down.
The Dark Lord was just like that sofa. It looked soft, but when he tried to kick it...
The Dark Lord had actually come back to life?
He had thought the Dark Lord would still be as weak as he had been during their old transaction. In the end, his appearance had remained the same, but the weak one had become Quéops himself.
It was bad enough that the few loyal subordinates he had brought with him were killed cleanly and decisively. After being firmly controlled by the Dark Lord, he had no choice but to follow his orders and cause this whole mess.
What Quéops had not expected, however, was that a representative casually sent by the Confederation of Wizards would not only detect his identity, but also see through his "meticulously arranged" plan in less than half a day.
Damn it. Was this the strength of a British representative who had gone through war and chaos one after another?
The more he thought, and the deeper the night became, the heavier Quéops felt.
He stood uneasily and paced back and forth through the living room, glancing outside from time to time, as if something might spring out of the darkness.
Yes, he was waiting for someone. Someone who had made him abandon his plan to run away and forced him to remain here in dread.
"Calm down. Stop pacing back and forth."
The sudden voice badly startled Quéops. He looked toward the sound and discovered that a cloaked figure had appeared at some point in the seat he had just been sitting in.
By the faint moonlight, he could barely make out the visitor's appearance.
A bald head, skin as pale as a corpse, eyes as deep as darkness yet madly blood-red, and nostrils like power sockets.
"Master!"
Quéops knelt at the Dark Lord's feet, looking so aggrieved that he seemed ready to pour out all the humiliation he had suffered today.
"Get lost!"
Marvolio kicked him away in irritation.
Having to dress up like this already displeased him greatly. If they were talking about grievances, he wanted to complain about Tver far more than Quéops did.
Originally, Marvolio had thought, or rather, Tver had planned for him, that if Quéops had some mechanism for contacting Voldemort, he would play the role of the Dark Lord rushing over to save his subordinate.
But he had not expected that Quéops, out of caution, truly had not prepared any tool or magic to contact Voldemort.
That made things much easier.
Marvolio narrowed his eyes slightly, unaware that with his current appearance, the expression made him look as if he was about to kill someone to silence them.
Seeing this, Quéops no longer dared to play the victim. He crawled on his hands and knees back in front of Marvolio.
"Ma...ster... Master!" he cried. "I risked my life to do so much for you. You can't abandon me just because of some insignificant Tver Fawley. How am I supposed to live without you?"
"You're making me sick." Goosebumps rose all over Marvolio, and he kicked him away again.
This time, however, joy flashed across Quéops's face.
It was not because some strange new tendency had awakened in him, but because he had not sensed any killing intent in the Dark Lord's actions or words.
If the Dark Lord had truly wanted to kill him, he would have used his wand, not his foot.
Once he realized this, he immediately put away the expression that even he found disgusting, stood up neatly, and said in a solemn yet respectful tone, "Master, how should we deal with that Tver?"
"What's this? You only know how to humble yourself once you run into trouble?" Marvolio was in no hurry to ask the question Tver cared about. Instead, he studied Quéops with interest.
According to the earlier information from Peter Pettigrew, Quéops was not nearly so respectful toward Voldemort. Scaring him a little more now would make Marvolio's disguise less likely to be seen through.
Sure enough, Quéops trembled all over and bowed even lower.
"I... I have always held you in the greatest respect. What happened before was only a moment of ignorance on my part, which was why I brought several Aurors over with me," he hurriedly explained in a trembling voice.
"Please rest assured. Not only are those Aurors basically all dead, but I also used them along the way to stir up relations between wizards and Muggles!"
"There is only one left..." He gritted his teeth. "I'll take care of him tonight!"
Marvolio's eyes widened involuntarily. Fortunately, his eyes were not large right now, so it looked more like approval.
"So, the two Aurors from the Joint Operations Office..."
"They were two of the three people I sent over!"
"And the last one..."
"He's the one I sent to threaten the Muggle Prime Minister!"
Quéops spoke ruthlessly, but his heart was bleeding.
There were not many people in the magical world to begin with, and even fewer were talented enough to become Aurors.
It had taken him so many years to finally win over three utterly loyal subordinates, only for them to be completely exhausted in this one incident.
Of course, since they knew about his relationship with the Dark Lord, even if the Memory Charm erased their memories, he could not possibly allow them to remain alive.
Thinking this, a cruel smile curled at the corner of Quéops's mouth.
"What's wrong? Thought of how to deal with your subordinate?" Marvolio said at just the right moment, as if seeing through his thoughts.
Of course, he had no way to use Legilimency to retrieve the memories in Quéops's mind. But for a master of Legilimency, judging from a person's outward movements and expressions was already a kind of Legilimency technique.
"That's right, Master."
Quéops bent respectfully, but the smug and ruthless smile on his face made even Marvolio feel uncomfortable in the dead of night.
"Since you wish to see wizards and Muggles start a war and destroy the relationship between the two sides that the Confederation worked so hard to maintain..."
"Then why not have that Auror... destroy the Greek government?"