a/n just trying out something new. it's basically a re-incarnation fic throughout various eras.
the format is the same throughout the story (salazar first, then rowena), so yes, salazar and rowena do switch genders at one point. the bolded numbers refer to which life they're up to.
for the second person pov competition on the hpfc
dedicated to Beth for placing in the NGFs Forum Competition II - I hope you like it, lovely!
i. salazar slytherin, rowena ravenclaw - circa 1003 A.D.
"You have to leave," Godric says, strong and confident with Helga beside him, and suddenly you hate your friends for their solidarity and strength and willingness to cast you from their midst.
"It isn't fair to the children," Helga declares firmly, and you lock your eyes with hers, silently pleading with her to let you stay, because she was always the weakest and you aren't afraid to exploit that if it means you don't have to leave the castle that has become your home. The curious eyes of your students peer through the windows of the castle, and you fear for them; they will be the only House without a leader, and you hope they will stand strong even without you there to guide them.
"It is only logical, Salazar," Rowena says, and you flinch at her voice speaking your name, but you can't bring yourself to hate her at all, despite everything. "Your influence is teaching them to hate, not to learn. The students must be impartial in all things, that we decided long ago. You must understand. We are trying to help them - and you," she adds, and you wonder if you are the only one to hear the pain in her voice.
"May we always be so helpful to the students of this school," you reply bitterly, an echo of the promise the four of you had made many years before this moment. The wand in your hand sparks briefly, almost unnoticeably, but your eyes are fixed on Rowena's figure and you don't pay more than a moment's attention on anything else.
"We will," Godric says, and your gaze is fierce as you look at him, the first of these three to befriend you.
You storm away in a swirl of green robes, your eyes tinged red by hatred and pain glaring at the two people who you once called friends and the woman who was once your lover, staring for one last second before you rip your gaze away. You are almost to the end of the road before you call out that you love her, you love her, but it seems impossible for her to hear you.
It is days before you notice the new tattoo on your wrist.
xi. clarice asshton - 1413
You wake with a gargle of noise, keening your grief and pain into the world before you even know what it means. You are held up to the light, a stranger's hands gripping you and forcing you not to move, and your chubby, blood-stained legs kick weakly in the air.
"Her breathing is weak," the person holding you says with no trace of sadness in her voice, just fact. You try to force your eyes open, barely formed lashes parting to reveal bright blue eyes that see nothing but bright lights and walls painted green. "She may not live."
A cry sounds near your ear and your eyes close again for barely a moment before they open again. You like the feel of the movement, and do it again - it brings you comfort, somehow.
"Her eyes are open. They're so beautiful," a breathy new voice chimes in, and you feel a fragile hand stroke the birthmark on your wrist. Your eyes flutter closed again, and you can't make them open this time. Too soon, your mind whispers, but you don't understand what that means.
Your consciousness blurs, and as you fade, you call out a name in a sound that no one understands but you.
"Rowena!"
xlv. phyllis thomas, michael thomas - 1944
You've been waiting for this day since the moment you married him. You were young then, but not foolish - you knew the cost of betraying your people and your bloodline by marrying someone with only a dusting of magic in his veins. But you love him still, and married him anyway, and sometimes (only sometimes) it doesn't seem to matter that you spent your honeymoon hiding in corners and listening at doorways for gossip to help you move on before Grindelwald's army finds you sleeping with a Mudblood. You've pretended to your co-workers and family that he's a halfblood son of the Ravenclaw line, and that seems to have protected you both so far, but you fall asleep every night planning your next move should your lies be discovered.
You curl your hand around his, breathing in the strawberry-shampoo-and-nutmeg scent that is uniquely Michael's, and you press kisses to his sleeping face. You have a bad feeling about tonight, like a spider waiting for the chance to bite, and you want to die knowing that he knows you love him more than anything.
"Phyll?" he asks you sleepily, shifting in your shared bed so that the two of you are nose to nose, and you can see every detail on his face. You rub your tattoo absent-mindedly with the hand that isn't entwined with his, your fingertips curving around your other wrist as you remember a sunny afternoon when you felt like you were free.
"I love you," you say, and he whispers it back, your dark curls spilling over the pale pillow and merging with the redness of his hair, and the door slams open. Bright green lights flash before your eyes, and you begin to fade.
xlvii. dorcas meadowes, benjy fenwick - 1981
You make your way down the dusty alley, your shoes making imprints in the dirt that you don't want to be there, even if it's okay for you to be seen here - you're a pureblood and an ex-Slytherin, after all, and that gives you an immunity that the others don't have. You push through the nondescript wooden door to your left, a fellow Order member (who is also an incredible kisser) following behind you underneath a borrowed invisibility cloak, because the Order wouldn't let you go it alone.
You assess the other occupants of the bar as haughtily as any other woman in pureblood society, acting as if you've done this all before (you have) while trying to see if there are any Death Eater recruiters in the bar tonight (there are). They feel safe in this environment, as if they own it and no one can tell them what to do here, and you intend to use that to your advantage.
You don't have to wait long before one of them approaches you; you knew you wouldn't have to. You are a Meadowes, after all, and these should be your people.
"Meadowes?" he asks with a grunt, looking you up and down as you return the favour, steeling yourself to play the part you were raised to play: the simpering woman, looking out for your brother and trying to get him an in with the Death Eaters to preserve the honour of your family.
"Travers," you greet calmly, lowering your head in a deference you hate, because you are better than him, both in blood purity and in morals, because you wouldn't kill for the reasons he has.
"What brings you here to this fine establishment? It's not usually one for the ladies, y'see," he tells you, his alcohol laden breath washing over you. You begin to reply, but it's hard to concentrate with the smell wafting up your nose and making you feel light, and you try to figure out a way to move out of range without setting off his internal radar - which is still there, no matter how many layers of expensive liquor he has buried it under. You step back, forgetting that your invisible boyfriend is hovering at your shoulder, and your foot lands on a piece of the cloak trailing on the floor; but before you even begin to scold yourself you realise that the cloak has fallen off and you're both so screwed.
"Spies," Travers hisses at he sees Benjy standing there looking guilty, yanking up his shirt sleeve and pressing the mark carved into the skin there, and there's never been a moment that you've felt more desperate. You reach out a hand and feel Benjy entwine your fingers together, and it doesn't make you feel any better to know that he's there. In fact, you would very much rather that he was far away, because you're both going to die when Voldemort gets here, and you would prefer that he didn't.
"Run," you whisper, letting go of his hand and starting to shoot off spells as quickly as you can, intent on taking down as many Death Eaters as possible before you die. You may have been a Slytherin, a snake who hides in shadows and lies to your extremist parents about her involvement with her Order, but even shadow snakes bite when they have to, and this is your moment.
You don't see the door fly open or the cloaked man enter the room, but you hear the whispers and feel the renewed attacks on you as the Death Eaters recognise their master, and the last thing you see are eyes stained red that burn your skin as you die.
You don't have time to wonder whether Benjy made it.
xlviii. daphne greengrass, terry boot - 1998
Your world is chaos tonight, and you duck and run and hide as arcs of colour force their way across the inky black of the sky, and for a moment you wonder if the Muggles see fireworks instead of spells that cause death. You aren't supposed to be here, but it's hard to find a part of yourself that cares at all, because Terry's in here somewhere trying to play the hero, and you refuse to let him die tonight. He is yours, and you've never been any good at sharing.
Someone screams near you and you twist, your wand clutched firmly in your hand as you watch Terry fall to the ground with stunned eyes, shrieking as his skin turns a pale green and his bones begin to turn to mush inside his skin. Your feet move towards him before the thought of going to his aid even crosses your mind, because you have loved him so much and promised him so many things that you can't bear to stay away, even if you wanted to.
"Terry!" you say as you fall to the ground beside him hoping no one will kill you yet, your voice a hoarse whisper that tears at your throat, and he reaches out a frail hand to mesh your fingers together. You feel like the world is ending one moment at a time, because you came back to save him and you failed - you failed, and now all your promises to yourself mean nothing, tangled up in the strings of fate that refuse to let you get your happy ending.
"Daphne - I love you," he breathes, every word a struggle, and you wonder if it's possible for a person to die of heartbreak. You were never meant to be together, the two of you, with your opposing views and families on different sides of the war that consumes your lives, but you fell in love with him when he told you that he respected your choice to support your family, and you haven't fallen out of love with him yet. You never will.
You faintly recognise that someone is screaming, and you hate them for it, because this is your last moment with the boy you came to love over the last year, and you just want to sink to the ground and cry, because you've never been the brave one of the two of you.
"Terry," you sob, your hands entwined with his frozen ones that will never touch you again, never gesture madly while he explains his latest theory to you, never again write his name on a piece of paper that bound him to his cause and led to his death. Your eyes are fierce with desolation and love as you curl up beside him, ignoring the battle that rages around you as you swear to always protect him even though he's dead and you broke your first promise, because no one will touch his body if you can help it.
"I love-," you say, but a curse hits you in the back and soon you're too busy dying to be in love anymore.
xlix. lily luna potter, teddy remus lupin - 2026
"Higher, higher!" you call childishly as he pushes the swing you're sitting on, and you fly into the sky as free as a bird, your red hair dancing in the wind. You wait until the last possible moment before you jump off the swing to hang in the heavens, before fluttering to the ground in a whoosh of noise and crumpling in the dark dirt. You accept Teddy's hand as he comes over to you, and you stand up, your hand remaining tangled with his as your emerald earrings twirl in the breeze.
"You're so adorable," he tells you, kissing you swiftly before you can make a sound of protest, because you're nineteen after all and you don't like being called adorable.
"Remind me why I love you again?" you tease, reaching up to ruffle his ocean blue hair with a grin, and you kiss him again, long and slow and deep, until you both get a little too into it for a children's playground and you end up rolling around in the grass.
"Because you're going to marry me someday," he tells you as he pulls away, his lips barely an inch from yours, and you can feel his breath against your skin as he talks.
"Is that a proposal?" you ask, almost teasing but not quite, and you're slightly breathless now, though whether it's from the fairly heated kissing or the thought of marrying him, you don't know.
"Do you want it to be?" he counters, his fingers tracing the pattern your freckles make. It's one of the only times that you hate how he never answers any of your questions straight, because you're supposed to be the cunning, devious one, not him. His hand stops long enough to cup your face, and something passes between you, long forgotten memories of heartbreak and green skin and curses and hiding in corners and love, always love, love that tears you apart at the seams until you mend again.
"I love you," you say, and your voice echoes with a hundred other voices which are not yours, and yet they belong to you just the same. "And yes, I'll marry you," you add, but your voice is purely yours now, as if you've reached a milestone that you haven't before in any lifetime but this, and you wonder why you're thinking about other lives that may not have happened when in this life you're engaged. Kind of.
"How does tomorrow sound?" he jokes, kissing the tip of your nose and pushing upwards until you are seated uncomfortably in his lap. You shift, pulling his hand away from your face to entwine it with yours, the not quite matching tattoos on both your wrists pressing together until you wince; even if it's been a few days since you got them to cover up the weird blemish on your skin, and the one on his, they still hurt.
"Rushing into this, are we? That doesn't sound like your usual rational self, Teddy," you say, not incredibly concerned, because maybe he's spent too much time with your boisterous cousins and brother, and it's finally rubbing off on him.
"I just, love you lots," he replies, adjusting one of your legs to give you both a little more space and comfort. "And you know how I get those weird feelings sometimes? I just can't shake the thought that we don't have a lot of time."
"Stop, okay? We're going to get married, and have lots of pretty babies, and I'll still be young and beautiful when you first get your grey hair, but we'll die together," you tell him, trying not to let on that you feel the same, some days.
"You're right," he agrees, but you can see he's not quite convinced, and you really don't have the words to convince him right now. You kiss him, and the world melts away, just for a little while, and for a moment you think that you'd live a thousand lifetimes if it meant you could always love him.
The next day is your last in this life.
Please review! =]