Title: Something he had to do
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Characters: Salazar Slytherin
Word Count: 879
Salazar Slytherin swept into the quarters he had built with his own magic and threw wards at the door, fuelling them with his frustration and ensuring that all those deluded souls were denied entry.
Were they blind, all of them? Godric could hardly be expected to choose any different, seeing as he had constructed a public image based on respect for free will and fairness for all humanity and other things that were about as frivolous as a flobberworm. But Did Rowena suddenly lose all forms of rational thought when it came to matters such as these? And Helga had apparently decided to be completely ignorant of how her students consistently lost out to those in the other houses.
Magic was power. It was transient, it tied them to something greater than they were and to that they would return when Death's inevitable call sounded; but while they were its custodians, while it flowed in one's blood, it separated and elevated them from the common human. They were temples for the magic, as it had always been, and thus more precious and sacred than the flimsy ideals of love and passion that led to some wizards and witches performing the sacrilegious act of mating with those not of their kind.
Of course, those ideals were of value. They were charmingly human, and as good a reason as any other. Some marry for power, some to satisfy their lust, some simply for the challenge of it all, but it was an indispensible truth that those were added strands to the larger web of keeping and protecting the purity of the magic, of their blood.
And now, looking around him, he could see students who were half Muggle. The catastrophe did not lie in the weakness of their magic, which did happen even in some purebloods, but in the utter lack of decorum in which they behaved. It spoke of years of unrefined upbringing and a gross lack of magical understanding that he could not accept. He could see Rowena's occasional frown at the lack of common courtesy from one of them, and the subsequent brushing it off, attributing it to their unique circumstances and making excuses for them—letting slipups slide when he knew she would never tolerate them should a student pure of blood commit those same mistakes.
It was harming the school's reputation, and none of them felt the need to admit it. He knew the next move he would have to make, the next step in a long dance that he had been observing for a long time now. Yet, despite all that he had been taught, he was hesitating.
As different as they all were, the Founders were at worst bitter rivals and at best close companions. Even he had managed to cultivate a sort of grudging respect for Godric, born out of constant competition and a keen understanding of the wonders he wrought with his magic. Building Hogwarts had left them all feeling like four gods who came together in magical symphony to fashion their dream and make it reality. Students were few in the beginning, but they came, and soon the name and prestige of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was spreading throughout Britain. This was their creation, and as much as he knew he had to, he did not want to leave it all behind.
He placed his hand on the wall, and could feel the school singing back with magic he had contributed. Godric was on the third floor, telling off some rulebreaking Gryffindors, Helga in her office privately tutoring some students who needed help—all not pure of blood, he noted, and Rowena, in her classroom, marking papers and frowning at the odd mistake that dared cross her eye. This school was their brainchild come true, all four of them, and now they would be one less. He could feel the magic acknowledging the change as he withdrew his presence from the school, leaving it to the other three custodians, the only people he would entrust it to, the people whom he knew would guard it by their own standards. Standards which he no longer agreed with.
It was not an easy thing to do, but one had to act upon one's ideals, so he turned and left Hogwarts without a single glance backwards.
That was not to say that he had not first made ample preparation. His chamber had long been built, and the egg lay within, ready to hatch and be obedient towards his heir. The other three Founders would not agree with his methods, but it was a necessary step that he had to take. It was brute force, and it meant Hogwarts would be dirtied with bloodshed, but the magic was sacred. When it came down to it, this was the one last contribution that he would make to Hogwarts, whether or not they thought it a gift or an abomination. He knew this rift would never be bridged, and he mourned that loss, but this was for a cause larger than he was. There were easier paths, but to take them would be tantamount to abandoning the laws he lived by, and this prickly one was the one he would walk. It was only right.