"Breakfast!" Helga called.
Rowena, who'd been up for about an hour, sat down at the table next to her. The men both flipped over and pulled their blankets over their heads. They were all in their room, since it was currently the only finished room in the castle, and Helga was setting plates of eggs on a small table.
"BOYS!" She shrieked, "I SAID BREAKFAST IS READY!"
Godric and Salazar bolted from bed and sat next to them immediately, still in their underwear.
"Why are we up so early?" Salazar asked irritably, glancing out the window. "The sun isn't even up yet."
"Don't you two know what today is?" Both girls asked in union.
Godric's eyes wondered over the calendar that hung by Helga's bed. "...Saturday?"
"No!" Helga said, seeming shocked.
"Well..." Rowena cut her off, "Yes, but that's not what we were looking for."
Salazar and Godric looked at each other for a moment, then Salazar shrugged, "We give up."
"It's the Autumnal Equinox!" Helga informed them. She seemed to expect them to have some idea of what that meant.
"It's the last day of the year that Gillyweed will grow." Rowena explained quickly, "So we—Helga and I, that is. You two have a lot of work to do around here—have to go out looking for it."
"Right." Salazar said, "Because if you don't find some today, we might have to do something dreadful like appareate down to Alexandria and buy some with a very small portion of one of our vast fortunes."
"Oh, Salazar, don't be silly! It's not about the Gillyweed! It's about the thrill of the chase!" Helga laughed.
"Flying around Scotland all day in search of plants is... thrilling?"
"Yes!" Helga snapped, "Now eat your eggs."
"Flying around Scotland for plants, huh?" Godric said as he stabbed at his own eggs. "I think I'll stick with Quidditch."
Salazar agreed and the women, who had of course never played, rolled their eyes.
"These are actually pretty good." Godric informed Helga, sounding surprised.
"Thank you, Godric." Helga said, batting her eyes, "I could cook for you more often, if you like...?"
Salazar snorted.
"Just like mum used to make, right Salazar?" Godric asked him, trying the turn the conversation around before someone got offended.
Salazar looked incensed, "Are you implying that my mother had to cook?! You spineless flobberworm fucker! My extended family has dozens of house elves! I'll have you know my mother never cooked a meal in her life!"
"What?!" Godric asked, "I was just wondering if—"
"You clearly stated the you thought that my mother had been forced to prepare meals like some common elf vermin!"
"Godric!" Rowena cut the man off before he could even begin to respond, "Just apologize!"
Godric sighed and mumbled a bit, "I'm sorry I said that your mother cooked breakfast."
"Very good." Rowena nodded. "And Salazar?"
Salazar thought for a moment, "I'm sorry I called you a spineless flubberworm fucker."
"No hard feelings?" Helga asked them both.
"No, ma'am." Both men answered.
"Lovely." Rowena began on her own breakfast, "Try not to kill each other while we're away."
"Yes, my lady." Both men replied.
"Do you really mean that?" Helga asked.
"Yes!" Godric insisted.
"Definitely." Salazar agreed.
"We'll be very nice to each other." Godric promised.
"Like best friends."
"Better than best friends!"
The two women finally stopped glaring, and the rest of the meal was uneventful.
Salazar watched as the brick floated slowly onto the stack, and cast the spell to stick it there without moving.
Both men were lying in the middle of rubble filled room, looking absolutely bored.
"You know," Godric said, becoming the first one to speak since they'd fallen into their brick laying order several hours ago, "Being your best friend is kind of lame."
"And being yours is absolutely terrible." Godric's brick found it's place on the wall, and Salazar stuck it in place.
"Are the women back yet?" Godric asked hopefully.
Salazar craned his neck up a bit. "I don't think so." He leaned back down and stuck yet another of Godric's bricks in place.
Godric's stomach growled.
"Salazar..." Godric started gently.
"Yes?"
"I know your mother never cooked but, hypothetically speaking, if the women weren't back in say... five minutes... could you cook? I'm just asking because I couldn't! And I though that maybe during some of your travels..."
"No."
"But surely you had to at least once—"
"No."
"Then how—"
"I brought my elf."
"Well, why didn't you bring her now?"
Salazar sat up and shrugged, "I thought it better to leave her with my daughter."
"Oh." Godric sighed. "So... What do we have to eat?"
Salazar thought for a moment, "Grapes, apples, and firewhiskey."
At two in the afternoon, a sweaty, exhausted, and annoyed Rowena walked into a peasant pub in Underground London. She normally avoided such common things as pubs, but she wasn't about to let the others know she had quit so soon, and she had to find shade. The weather in Scotland was absolutely freakish for September, probably due to the recent immigration of a large pack of dragons.
She looked around, trying to figure out just what one does in a place like this, and quickly decided it was drinking and talking. Never one to only half to do something, she sat down near a lone man and ordered the most expensive thing the bartender had, which wasn't very expensive at all considering Rowena was a noble in a peasant bar.
"Hello." She greeted the man next to her.
"Why hello there." The man smiled slyly. "What brings a woman like you ta a pub like this?"
"Well, when I first woke up this morning I had rather hoped to go out and find myself some gilly weed. Then Helga demanded that she get to search England, so I was stuck with Scotland. I flew around for hours looking, but the Scotts have already harvested all of it. Then I came here, and now I think that I should probably just go home so that I can at least make myself useful by cooking our men late lunches, since Merlin knows they can't do it themselves."
The man frowned, "Oh, you have men."
"Well yes. I mean, it took some doing to get Salazar to leave his fiancée to come help me, though Godric would do anything a girl asked him too, but you can't expect two women to build a castle all by themselves."
The man didn't ask exactly why they were building a castle. Instead, his eyes lit back up. "Oh, so these men aren't your husbands?"
"Of course not." Rowena laughed at the thought of being married to Salazar. She loved him like a brother, but she certainly wasn't about to marry him.
"So," Rowena said politely, "What of you and your day?"
The guy smirked and took another long drink of his firewhiskey before starting, "Well, I woke up this mornin' thinkin' that I wanted ta bang some chick... Then I came to this bar, and I looked around 'n' thought that maybe I would 'ave ta wait ta bang some chick... then you showed up, 'n' now I'm thinkin' that I really need ta bang some chick, and tha' it might be you."
Rowena stared back at him blankly. She took another small drink of her own firewhiskey, wondering what the Hell the man was talking about. Was it some weird man code? Or perhaps a peasant code? She'd certainly never heard Godric and Salazar talking about, to the best of her translating abilities, beating baby chickens. Was this what men came to pubs to do? And here she was just sitting around and drinking like an idiot...
The man's eyebrow crinkled when she didn't respond, "I don't suppose that you're naturally a blonde?"
Rowena shook her head, "Of course not." She'd heard about silly girls running around and changing their appearances with spells and herbs and potions, and she refused to have anything to do with it. Her students wouldn't either. "Why do you ask?"
The man shrugged, "Oh, no reason." He nodded downward, "And are they yours?"
"My clothes? I don't know who else you think they might belong to."
"No, not your clothes, your..." He rolled his eyes and didn't finish.
"My what?"
"Nothing, nothing. Why don't you finish off that Firewhiskey so that I can buy us both another."
Rowena took another drink, "Can't you buy yourself one without me?"
"Of course not." Rowena decided right then that peasant wizards were weird. "Ya see, if I bought me a drink 'n' didn' buy you one, wha' would people see? They'd see a man sittin' by a woman 'n' thinkin' only 'a 'imself. Then they'd think I'm some kinda inconsiderate jerk. We dun' wan' that, now do we?" Well, the answer made sense, she supposed. She downed her drink quickly.
"Hand me another!" Godric ordered, "Quick!"
Clumsily, Salazar obeyed.
"We dun want the girls ta... ta find out..."
Salazar nodded.
"So, how's your family?"
Salazar shrugged, "They hate me."
"Oh."
"Well, 'suppose that running off for five years 'll do that..."
The clock struck four, and both men cringed.
"Well, we can be your new family," Godric said, totally unaware that his sober brain would beat the fear of God into him for suggesting it. "I mean, Rowena can be the mum, Helga can be the sister, and I can be your little brother."
Salazar stared back blankly.
"Wha?"
Slytherin shook his head, "Oh...nothing... It's just that... well, my father's second son tried to poison my drink three times at dinner over the holidays... I think it would be ten years ago... Eventually I got bored of it and finished him off during the full moon...The bastard probably should have seen it coming. All it took was a few jugs of melted monkshood in his water bowl."
Godric nodded. It took an entire minute for what Salazar just to said to sink in. "Wait! I never knew you had a werewolf for a brother!"
Salazar rolled his eyes, "Well yes, father tended to get pissy whenever our other brother and I shouted it from the rooftops or wrote the town crier about it."
"What about this other brother then? You could think of me like him?"
Salazar shook his head. "We disowned him after his excommunication."
Godric's eyes got wide, "Excommunication? What'd he do?"
"Went off on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and converted to... to... Oh, I know this... Muslimity?"
"Oh." Godric nodded, "So, if we can't be brothers, what can we be?"
"We promised the girls we'd be best mates, didn't we?"
Godric nodded, "Better than best mates." He took another drink, "What do two men do when they're better than best mates?"
Salazar took another drink, but stopped halfway through and laughed, spitting most of it back into the bottle.
"What's so funny?"
"I know."
"What?"
"I know what men do when they're better than best mates."
Helga arrived back at eight that night. The castle was silent, save Rowena's giggling coming from their room. Helga dropped her bag of Gilly Weed, noting that Godric and Salazar had only gotten one or two rows of bricks layed, and wondering what they Hell they'd done all day.
Shrugging it off, she entered the room.
The first thing she noticed was firewhiskey bottles everywhere. On the table, on the floor, and one hovering oddly a few feet away from the wall clock.
The second thing she noticed was Rowena standing there, her clothes wrinkled, and untied in many places, and giggling like an idiot, struggling immensely to keep her balance.
The third thing she noticed was Godric and Salazar. Lying naked in bed. In the same bed.
"Should we wake them?" Rowena asked as Helga helped her over to her bed and began to undress her.
"I don't think so." She sighed, knowing that between the three of them she had a long morning in store for her tomorrow.