Disclaimer: Harry Potter and the wonderful Founders aren't mine.
Note: Hello! Yet another Founders Era oneshot… this one is adapted from a drabble I wrote for the Founders blog I co-run (details are on my profile) so some lines are taken directly from that. Enjoy and please review – I always appreciate them!
The Seer and the Serpent
They said she was a Seer – that she had visions in her sleep and strange, fitful episodes. Perhaps, thought Salazar, that was why she was often so distant. Rowena's mind wasn't just occupied with the past and present, but the future too.
It made him a little uneasy, if he was honest – though he would certainly never admit it out loud.
It was Helga who told him all about Rowena's episodes. Sweet Helga. She was too trusting. They were sat in the dungeon, crushing black beetle eyes for their next potions class. "Rowena's not well," she said, as if they were discussing something distant and far removed.
He paused. Helga carried on pounding at the black beetle eyes, humming a soft tune beneath her breath. "Oh, really?" he asked. He'd never been overly fond of Rowena. It was a feeling he couldn't adequately put into words.
"Yes, she – she sees things." Suddenly Helga faltered, frowning into the middle distance. "I don't know what exactly, but I know they sometimes upset her."
A tremor shook Salazar's arm; he dropped his bowl heavily onto the desk.
"Clumsy," Helga laughed, cleaning the spillage with a playful flick of her wand.
"Are you saying she's a Seer?"
"Well I don't know, Salazar. That's quite a claim for anybody. Now come on, get crushing – we've got a lesson to teach this afternoon."
Reluctantly, he obeyed.
Running water. Cold, ice water, trickling over ragged stone.
But where was she? She'd never heard anything like it. The water ran shrill; her finger-tips tingled.
Years of ancient darkness pressed against her eyelids. She fought to open them. Wide eyes blinked back at her – a mirror image, but they were not her own.
Her scream echoed. Yellow eyes glowed in the dark.
Rowena rolled onto her side, waking with a muffled sob. She threw out her arm and groped for her wand which lay on the table beside her bed. She lit it wordlessly and sat up. With equal ease, she set the fireplace ablaze. Gradually, her chamber warmed up and the shadows faded from the walls – with them the last remnants of her dream-vision disappeared.
They were becoming more frequent.
They didn't happen every night, but she feared it was heading that way. She struggled to decipher them – blood smeared on walls and broken glass and flashes of light. Her mind was full to the point of bursting. Helena, too, worried her. She and her daughter didn't speak very much anymore. Nothing but pleasantries. Meaningless words.
Pulling on her cloak, she wandered out of her bed chamber and took a seat at her desk. A half-completed moon chart lay in front her; she pushed it aside and reached for her journal. In it she wrote just three words: Water. Darkness. Eyes. Somehow she felt calmer once the visions were committed to the page. They made no more sense to her once they written on the parchment, but it was preferable to letting them whirl through her head.
Sometimes he would pass her in the hall, his own thoughts on the Chamber and his brilliant schemes. He could feel her eyes, pale and distrustful, searing the back of his neck. When he turned to meet her stare, she looked away. It made him wonder: could she truly See?
If she could, what could she See of his future? And did he want to know?
Helga and Rowena were passing notes. Godric noticed it one day as he and Salazar walked into the Great Hall side by side. He nudged Salazar's arm. "Look at them," Godric muttered, as Rowena furtively handed Helga scrap of parchment. The women were sat at the Top Table, their heads bent. "What do you think they're doing?"
Salazar shrugged.
As the men approached the table, Helga and Rowena stopped whispering. Salazar thought he saw Helga tuck a slip of paper into her robe. He sat at the table, bid his friends a good morning and vowed to find out what was written on that paper.
He found her knelt on the grass outside the castle. Her hands were full of weeds and her robes covered in grass stains. Salazar's approach across the lawn was swift and silent. Helga jumped as his shadow fell across her, but when she looked up, she was smiling. A keen wind blew ripples across the Black Lake; Helga's fair hair had escaped from its bun.
"Morning, Salazar. What brings you from your dungeon?"
His smile was smooth, measured. "Your company, my dear."
Helga laughed. "Oh, really? Flatterer!" Though she mocked him, her eyes shone with an entirely different emotion. "What do you honestly want, Salazar?"
Honestly? Salazar didn't do honest, and yet he felt oddly uncomfortable manipulating Helga. He crouched beside her on the grass much to her obvious surprise. "I've seen you talking to Rowena," he said in a low voice. "And I wondered – well, us four friends shouldn't have secrets, should we Helga?"
The silence between them quickly grew heavy and Helga's eyes flickered unsurely. He hadn't meant it to sound like a threat.
"I know that, Salazar," she said hurriedly, "but you know how private Rowena can be."
"You quite willingly told me you thought she was a Seer," he pointed out.
Helga bent her head and her cheeks flushed pink. "I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have," she admitted. She started to stand up and Salazar reached out to grasp her wrist, but hesitated. His hand hung in the air as Helga ducked aside and hurried back to the castle.
Salazar snatched a fistful of weeds, absent-mindedly tearing them apart. Helga's faithfulness to her friend was particularly annoying because he had a deep respect for loyalty and so he could completely understand her attitude. And yet… he desired – no, needed – to know what Rowena had Seen.
He could open Helga's mind of course – sift around and see for himself. The idea had crossed his mind during potions lessons. It was the time when they were closest, sat beneath the low ceilings and amongst the cauldron fumes. Something always stopped him. He couldn't. This was Helga and she was different. There were some things he'd rather not know.
As for Rowena, he could not read her. He had tried, once before, and found himself blocked. It seemed Rowena was as adept at Occlumency, as he was at Legilimency. He would have to find another way.
Water. Darkness. Eyes.
And a voice.
The voice was new. It crawled across Rowena's skin – serpentine and shuddering. She lay slumped in a chair beside the roaring fire in her quarters, shivering in spite of the thick robe slung across her shoulders. Helena watched her from a seat opposite. "You're ill," she remarked, her pale grey eyes trained on her mother.
Rowena shook her head. "No. No, it's not that. It's – a matter of the mind."
Helena frowned and mumbled something about the mind and body not being exclusive. "You're not lying to me?"
Rowena's eyes twitched in her daughter's direction. She didn't want to burden her. "Of course not," she murmured.
"Then I'm going to Professor Hufflepuff for a Dreamless Sleep potion. If nothing else, you could clearly use the rest." The chamber door slammed closed as Helena left. Rowena knew she was right: she did look ill. For weeks her sleep had been broken, plagued with strange dreams. In the day, she felt little better. Hovering over her was a sense of indescribable panic – for Hogwarts and for her friends.
Salazar quietly closed his office door and sat down heavily at his desk. He had come from a potions lesson, but he felt instead as if he'd fought a duel and barely won. His heart clenched beneath his ribcage; his chest was tightened. He held in his right hand the same scrap of parchment he'd seen Rowena pass to Helga in the Great Hall having stolen it from a stack of papers left in the dungeon.
Poor, sweet Helga.
She had no idea. She always believed the best of him. And after all, she'd left him alone with her documents without a second thought.
"Come along, Salazar! They'll be serving dinner shortly."
"I'll only be a moment. I want to finish some reading."
"Don't be late! You know I never like to boast, but it's one of my best recipes this evening."
He could still see her smiling as he unfolded the slip of parchment. Three short words glared back at him through the gloom of his dungeon office. All of this for three words.
Water. Darkness. Eyes.
He stared at them until his own eyes watered and his vision blurred at the edges. Very slowly, the words grew new meaning. He blinked, suddenly uncomfortable.
Was it mere paranoia?
Water reminded him of the Chamber, hidden below the weight of the Black Lake. Darkness, too, recalled to him the shadowy tunnels tucked away beneath the school. But eyes? Whose eyes had Rowena Seen through the blackness of the empty Chamber? Nothing lived down there.
"Who," he muttered to himself, his mind working frantically, "or what."
He was very late for dinner.
Standing to leave, he cast the crumpled parchment into the fire, where it vanished in a roar of flames. Those three words meant nothing, really. Even if Rowena had Seen the secret Chamber, there was nothing to link it back to him and nothing he should feel ashamed off. He only used it to privately tutor his students – where was the crime it that?
And yet, as he crossed the Entrance Hall on the way to dinner, all Salazar could think of was those mysterious eyes, glowing in the dark.
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