For Emily — Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy this fic even half as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Also written for Hogwarts' Writing Club: Amber's Attic - The Magician: Write about someone undergoing a positive transformation, Showtime - Bad Horse Chorus (reprise) - (situation) A threat, Count Your Buttons: (song) "Demons" by Imagine Dragons and Liza's Love: Write about a character who makes bad choices with good intentions.
Word count: 3783
innocence died screaming (ask me, honey, I should know)
He should leave — he doesn't belong here anymore, doesn't belong with these perfect, kind people. Dark magic has blackened his soul and even now, even after swearing to himself he would stop, he still craves it enough to know that this is a promise he will only ever be able to keep for a time.
But Helga bullies him into eating her new concoction — it's only marginally better than the last, which unfortunately just means that Salazar probably isn't going to collapse from food poisoning right instantly. But it doesn't need to be good, not when Helga's smile as she offers him a plate warms him so much more than any food ever could.
But Rowena snarks at him, insulting his intelligence as she rants, "You didn't have to do this, you stubborn, idiotic man, why wouldn't you just ask for help?" — and she may be yelling, but her eyes are filled with concern, and that, too, chases the cold from his soul.
But Godric — always Godric — holds out his hand and says, "Stay."
And so Salazar stays.
Merlin knows he's never been able to deny this man anything.
When his sister died — burned at the stakes while he wasn't there to save her (he didn't know, she was supposed to have been safe, to have been protected) — he had sworn he'd get revenge for her death.
He'd sworn he'd make sure no other child would go through what his sister had — what he himself had.
(She had burned in his dreams every night since then.
He saw her screaming, her face distorted with agony as fire melted her skin away. She reached out to him, always, her mouth open in a plea cut short as the heat stole her breath and seared her lungs.
He wished he could remember the good times instead, the happier moments, but he had never had such luck.
Sometimes, when he woke up, he could still taste the ashes. They were heavy on his tongue.)
He had studied all kinds of magics, and the Dark Arts had seduced him so very easily.
It's a delicate dance, not giving in to the maelstrom of hatred and rage they ask for — not letting himself be swept away by it.
Most of the time, he even manages to do it right.
And sometimes… Sometimes, he doesn't.
He had met Helga first. He remembers that so very clearly — this tiny slip of a woman, with a presence as big as the ideas she had, who offered him her hand and raised him from the darkness he'd fallen into.
She's the one who introduced him to the others, and Salazar has never regretted agreeing to her fool-hearted plan since.
He has never regretted knowing these people, even if their hearts can be frighteningly naïve at times.
It's so odd, how they can still see the best in people. How they can still think Muggles can have good in their hearts — that muggleborns should just be let in the same as everyone else, when one wrong word on their part could be the ruin of everything.
But then, Salazar supposes that for all their losses, they've never had one happen to someone as close to their heart as his sister was to his.
They can't understand him, and Salazar hopes they never do.
(Especially Godric, the infuriating man who had stolen his heart pretty much on the day they met.
Godric, whose rage burns bright and fierce and so differently to Salazar's own.
He thinks Godric would sooner burn himself out than understand Salazar's simmering pain.
He thinks it might destroy the other man to even try.)
And so he guards his pain jealously and hides it well, all the while making plan to protect the school they're building.
Someone will come. Someone always does — it's just a matter of time.
… And then someone does.
Just not someone any of them would have dared to expect.
There are rumors of a Dark Lord rising down in England. They wave off these rumors as baseless for their students' sakes, but the four of them know that they're not just whispers on the wind.
Salazar stopped counting the amount of times he caught Godric practicing his battle spells, and the crease above his eyebrows is practically etched on his forehead now.
It makes his heart ache to trace it, and yet he does it every night
He has to. He can't let himself forget what he's fighting for.
"He won't dare to come here," he whispers to Godric on more than one occasion, when his lover's fears start to make his hands shake. "Nobody's that stupid."
They're empty platitudes he's told his friends a million times, and they help a little less every time the words fall from his mouth.
But the way he slips his hand into Godric's, intertwining their fingers and holding tight, is different. It anchors them in those moments, until Godric can see a future after the battle he feels in his bones is coming.
And in return, Godric holds him close and doesn't mention the darkness he can see clinging to Salazar's soul like a cloak, only trusting that his presence helps chase away any lingering shadows.
He doesn't understand, Salazar knows, but that he stays anyway means everything.
"I know what you're doing," Rowena tells him one day. Her words are a harsh whisper; they ring through the room like a declaration of war.
Helga and Godric, who had been chatting, fall silent.
Salazar smiles wryly as he faces the black-haired witch. Her eyes are blazing with fire and her lips are pursed into a thin line, and Salazar feels a sharp pang of regret at knowing he put that there.
It's oddly ironic, that the one who claims to be in favor of the pursuit of all knowledge is the one who fails to understand him, whereas the moral one — the one who doesn't get Salazar's fascination with the Dark Arts and finds them repulsive — is the one who doesn't say a word against it.
Hadn't he known them better, he would have expected the situation to be reversed.
"And what am I doing, exactly?" he asks, keeping his voice steady and stilling the hands he wants to clench.
Rowena glares at him. "Dark magic, Salazar?" She says the words like they're a curse, like they're disgusting, and as she eyes him with disappointment, something in him wants to curl up and hide.
Rowena has always had the sharpest tongue after him, and light eyes that can see right through him.
It is quite something, for her to stare at you and to know that she's found you wanting.
Almost despite himself, Salazar's eyes drift to Godric, who stares back unblinkingly.
"Someone has to know," he replies smoothly, staring straight into Rowena's eyes. "Someone has to know what they're capable of, what to do if they're used against us."
Rowena's lips twist into a scowl. "Don't flatter yourself — we both know that's not why you're studying them."
Salazar doesn't let his flinch show, or his eyes drift to Godric, now shifting uneasily in his seat. "No," he admits, "it's not. At least," he adds, delighting in wiping Rowena's triumphant glare from his face, "it's not why I started. But what does that matter, now that these plans are as good as dust in the wind?"
"Are they?" Rowena asks, her eyes watching him like a hawk.
"I—" For an impossibly long moment, Salazar falters.
The truth is, he can't say he won't ever not use the Dark Arts. They're a part of him now, as much as everything else, and no matter what he says or does, that won't change. It can't.
He wanted revenge so badly at first that he would have done anything to get it — there is still much he would do today, but he also knows that there are lines he won't cross now that he would have then.
It had only gotten worse the deeper he had delved into the Dark Arts: if cheating death was possible, why couldn't he bring his sister back, erase all the hurt she'd been through?
Why shouldn't he?
And yet, somehow these goals had fallen to the wayside lately as he focused on more pressing things — like protecting the school against an attack.
He hadn't even noticed.
(How hadn't he noticed?)
It hurts, to let go of those plans fully. It's a horrible wrenching kind of pain, like he's ripping out a part of himself.
He doesn't let it show.
"Yes, they are," he says, and he stares Rowena down until she huffs and leaves, gathering scrolls and writing feathers messily in her arms.
With a kind smile, Helga follows her out, and finally, finally, Salazar lets himself look at Godric, stealing his heart for what he will see on this face he loves.
Godric's dark eyes stare at him with an intensity that makes Salazar shiver. Still, he stares back, baring his soul open for him in a way he does for no one else.
"Did you mean it?" Godric's words, carefully spoken with no intonation, seem to echo in the room.
Or maybe that's just Salazar's racing heart.
"I did," Salazar replies, licking his suddenly dry lips. He thinks of all the things he could say — 'This matter more,' or perhaps, 'You matter more, — but the words feel wrong on his tongue, and so he stays silent.
Somehow, Godric understands him anyway, his eyes warming and softening until they shine with the love Salazar is more familiar with.
"I'm glad," he breathes out in a sigh of relief, and Salazar's lips quirk up in answer.
"I know why you're doing it," he continues. "I know that part of you feel like you have to know these things so they can't be used against you. Or us," he corrects himself with a smile. "And I know that those weren't your reasons when you first started, but like you said, those don't really matter to me anymore.
"Not to me, at least," he adds with a kind smile that makes the skin around his eyes crinkle. "Even if I hope you'll share those reasons with me one day."
It occurs to him then that Godric understands him better than he'd thought — better than he'd dared to dream, in fact.
And somehow, the words burst out of his mouth.
"I had a sister."
Salazar sees the questions rising in Godric's eyes, the way they gather at the tip of his tongue — and stay there, as he solemnly nods at Salazar to go on.
(But Merlin, it hurts sometimes, how well this man knows him.)
"Her name was Selene," he starts, and he expects to choke up there. He hasn't said her name out loud in years after all, hasn't had anyone to share this with. But he doesn't. Instead, the words flow freely as he tells Godric everything he remembers about the girl who'd thought he could fetch her stars.
He doesn't even realize he's crying until Godric reaches out, his thumb dragging under Salazar's eyes. He leans forward into the gesture, heart twisting in his chest, and it feels so soft Salazar just wants to bask in this moment forever.
He keeps talking, and Godric keeps listening. Somewhere deep inside his chest, a wound starts healing.
(He imagines that out there, wherever she ended up, his sister is proud of him. Maybe this time, he hasn't let her down.)
The next day, Helga corners him in his classroom after the students have left. She stares at him for what seems like forever, and he feels sure that she could kill him if she felt she had to (not wanted to, because he can't imagine Helga ever wanting to kill anyone. It is the one mercy that saves them all).
"If you use what you know against our students…" She ends her sentence there, her silent threat hanging in the air between them.
"I would never," Salazar swears, offended that she thought she even had to ask.
Helga just stares at him for a moment longer, her dark eyes frightening pools of cold determination, before nodding.
"I believe you," she says, and just like that the old Helga is back, warm smiles and all.
"You do?" The words fall from his mouth before he can hold them back, half-dry surprise, half-disbelief.
Helga rolls her eyes at him and reaches out to squeeze his forearm gently, just once. "Of course I do," she says, giving him a pointed look. "I know you, Salazar."
He has to blink back the prickling in his eyes at that. "I... Thank you," he replies, because nothing else seems to fit for the way his chest feels too tight right now.
How does she do this every single time — find the perfect words to cut through the haze of his doubts? She had done this too back when she had first met him and told him about her dream of building a school — this school. Hogwarts.
"You're welcome."
The thing is, Salazar hates the Dark Arts as much as he loves them. There is a deadly kind of beauty in that magic and the way the spells are fueled by pure emotions instead of simpler logic.
Dark curses are intricate works of spellcraft that Salazar could spend his whole life studying, because each one is just a tiny bit different from the next and he can never predict how that difference will affect the result of the spell.
And, but if he could… If he could, he would be able to do anything. Just imagine it; a world where any spell could be fueled by emotions, would be made to be fueled by emotions instead of merely enhanced by them.
The kind of magic that would lead to makes Salazar's fingers ache for his wand.
Would people still call a protective spell Dark magic if it was powered by love or hope, or even fear?
Or would they only see the addictive nature of those spells, where your emotions fed into your magic and your magic fed into your emotions in one giant, endless loop, and declare them too dangerous to cast?
He doesn't know, but he yearns to — and that's why he sort of always assumed Rowena would be the one to understand him out of all his friends.
But he should have known that her morals would be stricter than his own — she hasn't known loss like he has. She doesn't know the way battle has burrowed itself beneath Godric's skin, and she might see the shadows in Helga's eyes sometimes, but she doesn't get them either.
It's easy to be moral and good when those are the only choices you have.
Salazar guesses he had forgotten not everyone knows that.
There comes a time around Yule where almost all of the students have left — and isn't it telling that all of these are muggleborns too afraid to go home? — and the castle feels so quiet it's almost like it's asleep.
It's not — Salazar can feel the wards buzzing beneath his skin, can taste the magic in the air. Yule is a powerful time for magic and he yearns to harness that power for his own rituals, for his own spells.
The things he could with the Dark Arts on Yule — the things he has done already…
And yet, something in him pauses. Not this year, a little voice whispers in his mind.
(Funny, how his conscience sounds like Godric these days.)
So instead of going down to his rooms — the ones the others pretend they don't know about, where he performs the magic they don't talk about — he wanders the empty halls, fingers trailing over cold stone.
Occasionally, he crosses path with one of his students. Some call out a tentative hello but most avoid him, flinching away from him or eyeing him with barely concealed suspicion.
He hadn't expected it to hurt, this fear in his students' eyes — he wants to reach out, to tell them that even if he dislikes them, they're all under his protection. It's the Muggles he hates. The muggleborns he fears for what they could bring down on them all, but he doesn't hate them.
He used to, he thinks, and the idea feels shameful now.
But how do you tell children that their parents, that their family might betray them and not have them hate you for saying so?
(You don't. You can't.)
"They wouldn't do that!" Godric used to protest whenever Salazar brought that point up, cheeks reddening with fierce passion.
"Yes, they would," Salazar would then answer, his voice heavy with a sadness that could only come from experience.
And that's usually when Godric, or someone else, retorts something to say that Salazar is being too paranoid.
But not this time.
This time, Godric pales and his retort dies on his lips as his eyes drift to Salazar. He looks almost sick, and Salazar just knows that he's remembering what Salazar told him about his sister.
How no one had protected her when it came down to it, how neighbors they had known their whole lives had come together to watch a little girl burn and how they had tried to do the same to Salazar when he had come back to gather his sister's ashes.
Rowena and Helga notice the difference too, of course they do. Their eyes flicker from Salazar to Godric in bemusement, and their discussion dries out, falling into silence until they change the subject awkwardly.
("You should tell them," Godric whispers into his skin.
"Maybe," Salazar hums back. It'd be a lie to say that he's never thought about it — he had even thought of telling Godric for years before he finally had — but… It's not as easy as that.
His sister is something personal, a part of him that he is always on his mind and yet that he hates to talk about — the secret closest to his heart. She deserves better than to be used as a point in some argument, and that's what she would be if Salazar talked about her now.
"They'd understand," Godric continues, and something in Salazar's chest tenses.
He knows they would, he realizes, and that's the problem.
Part of him just doesn't want to be understood — doesn't want to have to justify himself.)
In the end, the Dark Lord catches up to them when they least expect it.
Most rumors had seemed to hint at some kind of defeat having happened months ago and after a while, even Salazar started to believe it.
Of course, that's when the attack happens.
Of course.
It's over almost as quickly as it starts.
It was a scene out of a nightmare. Salazar would remember for the rest of his life.
The grounds were on fire as an army marched upon them, but Salazar only had eyes for his friends. Helga's face was grim, her eyes lit with cold determination as she headed for their Infirmary, and Rowena's lips were pursed as she stared at the enemy forces before them.
Godric's hand slipped in his, his body warm against the cold Salazar had felt permeating his bones and their eyes met for an impossibly long moment.
Salazar could see eternity in those eyes, and he wished they never had to part ways.
It was so very easy to lose himself in the rush of battle. Salazar tried to watch Godric's back as best as he could and he knew Godric wanted to do the same for him, but they quickly lost sight of each other in the confusion.
Salazar could only catch glimpses of red hair in the crowd or of sunlight reflected on his lover's sword as it arched high in the air.
The Dark Lord comes for him almost straight away, and he is good. Salazar can see why he terrorized so many before, why witches and wizards in England fear his name.
And this — all this — is his fault.
He should have known a Dark Lord wouldn't let his claim to power go, not when rumors spoke of another wizard stronger than him holed up in Hogwarts still ran wild.
If Salazar hadn't been there, this Dark Lord would never have come — would never have threatened all that they've built here.
The man, with dark hair and even darker eyes, would have been handsome in another life. In this one, however, the ugliness of his soul overshadows his physique as a demented rictus twists his face.
"Once I'm done with you," he promises with a mad laugh, "I'll burn this place to ashes."
But he won't. Even if by some twist of fate he did manage to kill Salazar, he's already lost — his army is falling apart around him, a combination of the wards around the school and Godric and Rowena's combined might in battle.
Salazar knows it, and his opponent does too — unfortunately, that fact only makes him angrier, which turns his spells more vicious.
And Salazar… Salazar slips. His own magic grows darker, his own spell more dangerous, until he reaches the point where he usually stops himself — the point he needs to take a step back or risk being swallowed up by the darkness and spat back out as someone (as something) different.
It's like being caught in a hurricane, and Salazar hangs onto his sanity by the skin of his teeth.
He wins, but victory tastes hollow.
This has cost them too much.
It has cost him too much.
Salazar can feel it, the darkness now nestled in his breast — it's different from before. He knows he won't get rid of it this time. He went too far.
How delightfully ironic that it happened as he was truly trying to do the right thing for once. That kindness and love are, ultimately, the things that doom him.
Emotions — he'd been warned. The Dark Arts are dangerous.
He should have listened.
(But would it really have changed anything?
Salazar likes to think that it wouldn't have — that he'd always have ended up here and now: lost and hurt and alone, until Godric, beautiful, golden Godric, reaches out and drags him out of the shadows and back into the light.
Godric saves him in the end.
Maybe Godric's been saving him all along.)