Salazar Slytherin knelt over his dissertation, grey eyes straining in the weak candlelight. Lumos. The end of his wand, lying on the mahogany table, lit up with a silvery light. His pen scratched across the parchment, leaving rows of small, even letters.
"…And so I come to the conclusion," he wrote, "that there is only one consideration when choosing students for the proposed school, and that is a magical heritage, a pureblood heritage. Exceptions may be made for those of halfblooded descent who have been raised solely by their magical parent."
Slytherin paused, staring at the last sentence, and casually wiped it out with a simple spell. He then rewrote it, stared again for a long time, and let it be, remembering a long fight with Gryffindor.
"I admit that there may be undiscovered talent among the muggle masses, but let me repeat again, with great power comes great responsibility. These muggle-borns cannot truly comprehend the vast science that is magic. They, new to our world, will believe magic as some sort of sinecure to the world's problems. And, understanding solely the great potential of magic, they will underestimate its restrictions, and so corrupt the very nature of their search. They will strive for immortality, and they will fail, or find success… but at what cost? For their ignorance, they will be our greatest witches and wizards, pushing the boundaries of our magical law; they will achieve the impossible. And with that terrible knowledge in their ignoble hands, they will destroy us.
It is in Muggle nature to mistrust us, to fear us. They have been brought up to despise that which they do not understand, and we are the epitome of that misunderstanding. Perhaps most will become entranced with their newfound power and find useful lives within the magical community. But it only takes one child, angered because he believes we had the power to save his father, his brother, his friend from death - only one emotional, unhappy child who does not understand the limitations of magic, to destroy us. Our secrets, our lives, are worth more than the anger of one muggle child. I do not want to wait until we find that one child, a month, a year, or fifty years from now. And yet, I cannot condone the death – for we will have no other choice when he is found – of that one child either.
Please, let the muggle children live their own lives in peaceful ignorance, and let our superior children learn the art that is Magic. Do not force their worlds together, for only strife can result from such interaction."
The quill dropped from Salazar's long, shaking fingers; a flick of his wrist cleaned the desk of ink and parchment. Then the young man smiled with satisfaction, lay down on his cot, and was asleep within the minute. So many long hours of discussion had gone into that dissertation, and now it was finished. Complete. Perhaps the King would understand, perhaps he was a lesser man than Salazar had thought. The smile remained on Slytherin's face as he slept, just another innocent academic with ambitions for the future. There was no sign, then, of the disillusioned man who would create the Chamber of Secrets, the man who would condone not the death of one, but of thousands of muggle children, the man who would look back at those deaths and think he had done the right thing.