Disclaimer: Anything you recognise from any of the books belongs to J. K. Rowling, not me. Pity.

Thoughts, Letters and emphasised words

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Prologue

The five most powerful witches and wizards of the age stood outside of a large castle, set in extensive grounds in the Scottish mountains.

They painted a happy picture, each of them in a different coloured robe- purple, red, blue, green and yellow- and each with excited and happy expressions on their faces. They stood on the shore of a lake, a forest behind them, looking at the recently built Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

They had worked constantly on the castle for the last five years and their hearts filled with pride at seeing it finished. Soon, children with magical ability would be housed in the castle and taught everything they needed to know about magic.

"Shall we?" the man in red, Godric Gryffindor, asked. The other four nodded and he led the way, the woman in purple, Mildred Merriway, next to him.

He pushed open the great oak doors into the castle. They then walked into the Great Hall and sat down. The man in green, Salazar Slytherin, clapped his hands and food appeared on their table. The woman in yellow, Helga Hufflepuff, just smiled at him whilst the woman in blue, Rowena Ravenclaw, said, "I told you that charm would work."

Helga just stuck her tongue out in reply, which caused the table to erupt in laughter.

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The students had arrived for another year of magical education. Godric sighed. He missed the peace and quiet. He paced his hand into the hand print in the stone on the wall. It glowed slightly before opening up to reveal a stone corridor.

Godric walked up this and emerged in his private study. He finally relaxed. It was blessedly silent. He sunk into the chair in front of his desk. Suddenly he sat up straight, and pulled a piece of parchment from his desk draw. Inking his quill, he wrote the following words:

I, Godric Gryffindor, do hereby state that my descendants will, upon uttering the phrase 'I'm the heir of Gryffindor', gain the skills and abilities I possess as well as an increased affinity for my chosen subjects- Defence against the Dark Arts and Charms.

Godric Gryffindor

Pulling the pin out of his cloak, Gryffindor pricked his finger and sealed the letter with blood. At the same time, in four similar rooms, four similar letters were sealed with a drop of the writer's blood. Magic decided that because of the joint oath only someone special could access these oaths- only someone with the blood of all five founders of Hogwarts.

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"I can see that you no longer respect my blood," Mildred stormed. "I have worked tirelessly alongside you for the last five years teaching these students and even longer in setting up the school, but I see it counts for nothing." She drew herself up dramatically and finished, "I will go now. You will never see me again." With that she swung around and stormed from the castle.

"Well, that was an over reaction," Salazar muttered once they had all recovered from the shock.

"Why?" Godric asked, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"Well, I only asked her whether she really thought Divination was worth teaching." At the glances of the others he said, "It's not like it's a very reliable branch of magic- if it is at all."

"You know Mildred's mother was the first ever seer? And that she believes that the gift was passed onto her?" Rowena inquired. "And how important her mother was to her?"

At this, Salazar had the grace to look embarrassed. "It wasn't just me, it was you and Helga too," he retorted. "I've overheard both of you at different times."

They too looked embarrassed. Helga spoke first.

"I only wondered why she stayed in her tower most of the time, as though she didn't like the school," she muttered.

"And I only wanted to know why she always talks in that profoundly stupid voice," Rowena said.

"You all questioned things that linked her with her mother, and as we've already established, her mother was important to her," Godric summed up the situation for them.

"Shut up, Godric," Salazar said. "You just didn't want to hurt her feelings because you were sleeping with her."

"I was not just protecting her feelings. I really like her. And what I do in my own time is none of your business," he growled, turning red. He too stormed out of the meeting room in which they had been discussing the running of the school.

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In the meanwhile, Mildred had apparated to France where she had friends she could stay with for a while. They had begun to plan the building of a new magical school to be located near Paris. It would be bigger, better and more beautiful than Hogwarts.

A few years later, as she stood outside the new school, named Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, she couldn't have felt more proud. That was until she looked down at the baby in her arms with its very messy black hair, like someone else she had once known.

She looked back up at the school. It was a palace, not a castle. It had none of the draughty corridors and windows that were so frequent in Hogwarts, but instead was comfortable and warm. This was reflected by the surrounding grounds, where many flowerbeds lined the edges. Each of these was full to the brim with brightly coloured flowers of all types.

Turning back to the witches and wizards stood around her she asked, in perfect French, "Shall we go in? Only the students will be arriving soon." When everyone present had shown their approval for this idea, she led the way into the school.

A couple of hours later, a single owl could be seen flying from the school, wending its way north towards England, and then Scotland.

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"Something has got to be done!" Rowena exclaimed as she threw herself into her chair. "I mean, there has got to be a better way of sorting the students to prevent these problems. I mean, this is the third year running where we've had problems with rooming."

"What do you suggest?" Helga asked.

"I don't know. That is why I called this meeting. I wanted to see if you could come up with any ideas," Rowena replied.

"Well, we can't separate them by year and sex," Godric muttered. "It won't help them in the long run if they don't mix with others of different ages ."

"And we can't separate them by results," Helga said. "The new students won't have any results and it is unfair in the rest, because it could lead to ridicule."

"How about we each have a house and select those with characteristics we admire," Salazar suggested.

"Not a bad idea," Godric conceded. "But how would we know who possesses these characteristics?"

The four sat in contemplative silence for a while before Rowena suddenly jumped up and went into her office. She returned a moment later with a book in her arms.

"We could merge a couple of spells to create exactly what we need. There's this spell I know that is used to search books for certain phrases, and marks them for you, and then there's a legilimency spell that reads the personality of those it is cast upon instead of their memories, and there's a spell to verbalise results," Rowena rambled, flipping through the book to find the spells she was going on about. "But we'd each have to perform the spell on each student to look for our specific characteristics, and that would take a long time. Unless... we charmed an object to scan each person and decide which characteristics were the more dominant. And the spell activated every time this object was placed onto a person."

The other three stared at Rowena in shock. They didn't realise the woman could speak so quickly, let alone about so many different things at once. They watched as the other witch conjured up parchment and a quill and began scribbling things down, all the while muttering to herself. After about five minutes of this, she looked up.

"The best object to charm would be a hat. The closer to the head the better. It would mean that less power would be needed, and less time. It will take at least a week for me to work out the spell work, so I'll call a meeting when I am nearly finished. Until then, I need someone to get a hat, and all of you to decide what characteristics you believe to be most important." Rowena got to her feet. "I'll see you in the morning."

And with that she swept off to her private chambers, book and notes in hand.

"That woman is scary when she gets an idea in her head," Salazar muttered. The others nodded. "I mean, how did she know to link all those spells? And how does she talk so fast?" The others shrugged.

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"Where is he?" Rowena fumed. "I mean to say, he should have been here ten minutes ago. He doesn't accept lateness in his students, so you would expect him to be on time."

"He forgot the hat," Salazar explained with a smirk. "He had to return to his rooms to fetch it. I did warn him earlier."

"Bloody men," she grumbled, causing Helga to hide a laugh in her hand and Salazar to smirk even harder. Just at that moment the door opened, admitting Godric. "About bloody time. Now, sit down Godric and I'll explain what we are going to do." Godric did just that, placing the hat in the middle of the table. "Now, the spell I have created will enable the hat to have almost a mind of its own. It will look into the heads of any who try it on and search out any specified characteristics. Now, here is the incantation." Rowena gave each of them a sheet of parchment. "Throughout the spells you must concentrate with all your energy on the characteristics you believe are most important. Let me show you." She pulled the hat so it sat in front of her and closed her eyes. Letting out a deep breath, she placed her wand to the hat and muttered, "Explorare proprium nuntiare Ravenclaw." The hat glowed blue for a second before returning to its original black.

"That is all there is to it," she explained, opening her eyes. "Now, who wants to go next?" Salazar nodded and pulled the hat towards himself. He copied Rowena, substituting his own name into the the spell and the hat glowed green. Both Helga and Godric followed him, the hat glowing yellow then red. "It is done. Starting from next year, all the students will be sorted. Where would you like the dormitories to be?"

"Dungeons," Salazar said at exactly the same time as Godric said, "Tower."

"I would like somewhere on the ground floor," Helga replied.

"And I would like a tower," Rowena finished. "Work on your own dormitories throughout the year and the summer."

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Godric paced around the meeting room, fuming, and waiting for the others to arrive. He had just overheard something in the corridors between two of Salazar's prized students and it had worried him. Rowena was the first to enter the room.

"What's bothering you, Godric?" she asked, sitting in her usual seat and watching him pace. He just shook his head and continued pacing. Salazar and Helga arrived together five minutes later, talking quietly together about something. When they saw Godric's pacing form, they quickly took their seats.

"Why did you call this blasted meeting, Godric?" Salazar asked.

"Because it seems there is a problem in the school. Some of your students have been expressing less than happy opinions of the intake of the school. They feel that the school should be for purebloods only."

"Now that is not right," Rowena remarked. "When we started this school, we decided to educate any person that showed signs of magic, not just those of long lines. Everyone deserves the chance to train their magic."

"Yes, but all of these half bloods and muggleborns are slowing down the learning process for everyone else. We need to find a way to get them up to speed quicker so that we can move on to more suitable subjects at a younger age. This may help improve the schools grades greatly," Salazar argued.

"That wasn't what these students were saying. They were saying that half bloods and muggleborn wizards were inferior and that they shouldn't be admitted into the school," Godric muttered, clearly annoyed by this fact.

"I don't see what that has got to do with us," Salazar said.

"We have a responsibility to teach these students, and we must also teach them to respect others as well," Godric answered. "Speak to the students, tell them that everyone can get along, and that everyone is equal."

"Why should I do that?"

"Because they are students in your house," Rowena supplied. "You chose them, and they are all pureblooded. They need to learn that they are not superior to everyone else just because they have old blood."

"Who were these students?" Helga asked, speaking for the first time.

"Young Mr Malfoy and young Mr Nott." Godric sighed. "I believe they were talking about setting up a group to get rid of the muggleborns. Young Mr Potter heard them and went to hex them before I stopped him. His line is as old as theirs, if not older, yet he doesn't have the prejudices they do."

"I don't need to speak to them," Salazar muttered. "They have the right idea about getting the muggleborn wizards out of the school. They only stop everyone from learning. Maybe another school should be set up for those who do not understand or know our ways."

"That's discrimination!" Rowena said, outraged. "You may as well have said let's have separate schools or girls and boys. Your mind is in the Dark Ages."

"I agree," Godric muttered, finally sitting down.

"I like the idea of giving the muggleborn students a way to learn about wizard cultures, but I don't think separate schools are a good idea. I mean, how will they see these cultures in practice if they don't mingle with pureblooded wizards," Helga said, trying to prevent hurt on both sides of the argument. She failed.

"Very well," Salazar hissed, standing up, "I will leave. You don't value my ideas so I am leaving to set up my own school for purebloods. Don't expect to hear from me." He stalked out of the room. Helga hurried out after him, wanting to say her final goodbye.

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Salazar was sat in his office brooding about his new school. Durmstrang Magical Institute was an exclusive school, only allowing those whose blood was pure. This argument had been the one that had finally resulted in Salazar leaving the school.

He missed Hogwarts. Durmstrang's castle was smaller and colder, and seemed less inviting. He could have still been sat in Hogwarts if Godric and Rowena had agreed with his ideas. But they had to be muggle loving fools, he thought. Well, good riddance to them both.

The only one of the people he'd left behind he missed was Helga. She had been funny and sweet and good company. Maybe he'd write to her to see how she was doing. He remembered all the good times- the times she had looked out for him, and all their little chats.

He realised he was dwelling on the past when he should have been thinking of the future. Away from the school and the woman he loved.

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Helga ran forward and hugged Rowena, then Godric. She took a step back and took hold of one of each of their hands.

"You'll never guess what's happened!" she said excitedly. When neither Rowena or Godric said anything, she continued. "I'm pregnant."

"Congratulations. Richard must be so happy," Godric commented as he hugged Helga again and kissed her on the cheek.

"Thanks," she muttered, pasting a smile on her face. Rowena seemed to notice that something was worrying her as she sent a look her way. Helga damned the woman under her breath for being so smart and observant.

Rowena grabbed her hand and pulled Helga into her private quarters. "We're just going to discuss this for a while. Hope you don't mind," she said over her shoulder to Godric. He nodded, smiled and headed off to do some work. Rowena led the pair to a sofa in front of the fire and sat them both down before even opening her mouth. "Right, what's the problem?" she asked, getting straight to the point.

Helga sighed. "I don't know if the baby is Richard's," she replied simply. Rather than the disgust or shock she expected to see on Rowena's face, she saw understanding.

"I had a feeling you had," she muttered. "He always seemed to get on more with you than he ever did with me or Godric."

"But what if this gets out? The scandal, everything," Helga worried.

"Both Salazar and Richard have dark hair, don't they?" Rowena asked. Helga nodded. "It can probably be covered up then. I had those same worries myself when I found out I was pregnant with Simon."

"What? You slept with Salazar? When?"

"No, not Salazar. Godric. Remember that party we threw a few years after Mildred left, when we got those excellent grades for the seventh year examinations?" Helga nodded, indicating for Rowena to continue. "Well, Charles was away a lot that year, so Godric and I decided to continue the party in my rooms. We drank a bit too much and, well... you know." She sighed. "We never mentioned it again, not even to each other. I still don't know who Simon's father is."

"Looking at him, you can see Godric. It's in his eyes, I think. The rest of his features are yours though," Helga muttered.

"How about you, when did it happen?" Rowena asked curiously.

"Remember the day Salazar decided to leave and how I followed him? Well I went to say goodbye to him and he broke down. I comforted him, told him how much I'd miss our conversations and he kissed me. Wow... I've never been kissed like that before. One thing led to another and we ended up.. you know... in his rooms."

Rowena stored this away before asking her final question. "Who do you think the father is?"

"Honestly? Salazar. Richard and I have been trying for a baby for years. Nothing has ever come of it. Yet after one time with Salazar, I fall pregnant. It could be a coincidence, I suppose, but I don't think so. I won't tell Richard that he might not be the father because the news that I'm pregnant will make him so happy. I'll just have to hope the baby looks nothing like Salazar."

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Well, there you have it. My first fanfic. So, what do you think? More coming up soon...