Before I was the Grey Lady, I was Helena.
Before he was the Bloody Baron, he was Waldo.
And before we were forced to spend our eternity together in Hogwarts, we had planned to spend our lives together in Albania.
I know that the story that was circulated was that I never loved him and that he killed me in a fit of rage, that I broke my mother's heart by stealing her diadem. After all, that is the story that I recounted to Harry Potter. It was, in its barest outline, strictly true. However, it is in what is outside the outline, what is in the margins, if you will, that is where the true story can be found.
When my mother and her friends founded Hogwarts, they said it was to nurture magical children, to bring them into their fullest understanding of and control over their magic. Of course, their prior beliefs and commitments meant that each interpreted that nurturing in very different ways. That part of the story is true. Godric valued bravery, Salazar wanted purity, and Helga focused on kindness and hard work. My mother, of course, valued wisdom. Always wisdom.
My mother embodied the traits she valued in others. The idea to create a school for witchcraft and wizardry originated with her, as did the location. She was never comfortable very far from the Scottish glens of her childhood. She had a vision of a wart hog by a lake leading her to where the school should be founded. Of course, I do not question my mother's veracity in this, but I will say it is the only prophecy she ever made. It could be that she had the vision. But it could also be that she knew where to find the best whisky and didn't like the thought of being too far from it.
There is no denying her intelligence; she designed Hogwarts down to its very foundations. The ways the castle I have spent so much time in can change, can develop, it almost seems to be a sentient creature. And that is due to my mother. As was the idea to imbue Godric's hat with sentience to sort children after the four of them had passed. The notion that such an idea could have originated with Godric is farcical. No one could deny Rowena's intelligence, and its reputation seems to have increased with time.
The difficulty was that sometimes even she confused wisdom for something weaker; cleverness is all well and good, but it is ultimately weaker. For all her intelligence, my mother did not always see the difference.
I was a student at Hogwarts before the came up with the sorting hat, when the Founders (I have always hated that name. It made my mother a different sort of person than the rest of the witches and wizards) would simply talk with first year students and decide to which house they belonged. I say 'talked,' but of course I do not rule out a little Legilimens. After all, why should a little thing like respect for persons stand in the way of knowing what ten-year-old children think about after they have made a long trek to a remote school? Why should there be any barrier to invading someone's mind as long as you are sure they will end up in the right house where they will be surrounded by the same people as themselves, never learning a new way to think? Does that seem like wisdom?
Helga never used such means on principle, but as she was content to take Salazar's and Mother's cast-offs, it hardly mattered. And Godric, well, he lacked the subtlety needed for such an approach, so he filled his house with those most obviously similar to himself. But Mother and Salazar were so focused on dividing up the students who they liked best, they created a competition to see who could most quickly legilimens new students to determine where they belonged. Wisdom was guiding my mother, people say? More pride. It was pride, I think, that made her place me in Ravenclaw. After all, how could a daughter of hers be anything but witty and intelligent? Never mind that I always felt more comfortable working diligently and tasks other people thought beneath them. Ignore the part of me that that would plan and work for my advantage. Forget the fact that when pressed, I would find courage to do beyond what I dared. No, the only piece of me that mattered to my mother was my intellect and the embarrassment she would suffer if I did not follow in her footsteps.
I have had a thousand years to think on these things, after all. I believe I have gained the perspective necessary to see where my life fell apart. I've seen prophets and pretenders, heroes and companions, dark lords and the broken people who became something worse. As I think on it now, I realize that I have been painted as a little of all of these things, sometimes even by my own words. Of course, I am the Grey Lady of Ravenclaw. But this is the story of Helena of the Margins.