If she was the sun then he was the moon, unable to gaze upon her but still glowing from her light.
If she was a rose in full bloom he was a weed growing in her garden, though he could do nothing to deflect from her beauty.
To his bitterness she was sweet. To his impatience she was kind. To his selfishness she was generous and forgiving.
For how long would he be forced to harbor these secrets affections for sweet Helga? How could someone so full of light feel anything but contempt for him?
Godric, with his pompous attitude always strutting around the place. Rowena and her books and lessons, only thinking of her knowledge and daughter.
But sweet Helga, her plump round face, her strawberry lips and hazel eyes. How he would long to bask in the glow of her skin, to take in the sight of her, the feel her in every way possible.
He'd grown darker in the pasts months, withdrawing to himself and impatient with his students. He hardly ate and was particularly cruel to those around him, to Helga, with her kind attempts to bring him out more.
It was her foolish ideals that brought them apart, he had tried to reason with her so many times, that a pure bloodline would ensure only the best young wizards and witches. That with pureblood came loyalty and allegiance to their own kind. That one day, when their numbers were greater, they would no longer be forced as outcasts from the world. How humiliating it was to him to hide from the muggles, their fear of magic and ignorance made him angry.
But she was too naive for it, she didn't care about blood. She didn't want a race of pureblood, she wanted to protect those of her own kind no matter what their heritage. She believed they could all exist, wizards and witches with their muggle counterparts, existing in separate worlds. But why should they bend to such an inferior race?
He had grown sick of arguing. If they wouldn't listen to him he would have to take matters into his own hands. It was haunting him day and night. If they caught him he'd be killed for it, and why shouldn't they kill him? They didn't see the beauty in his plan, they would see it as murder and nothing else. They didn't see that he was trying to help them, none of them saw it.
It drove him on through the nights, working on more powerful spells to keep others out. No, no one could know, not until he was ready, not until he was sure it would not fail.
Salazar worked in his office in the Slytherin tower, he worked alone and aided only by candle light as he poured over books with any reference to the great beast he needed to guard his chamber. It was then that her small round face poked through the door and he sighed angrily, closing his book and placing some parchment over it to hide. "What is it, Helga?" His voice was too harsh, too harsh for the glow he felt inside of him when he saw her.
"I'm worried about you, Salazar. You haven't been around and the students have been complaining-"
"Which students? What are they saying? They should know better than to-"
"Please, Salazar, calm down. They haven't said anything that should make you so angry, only that you've been very distracted lately. I only speak to you for their sake, to make sure you aren't in some distress," she said, her hazel eyes holding his gaze.
Salazar leaned into his chair and sighed, running his hand over his face and through his now coarse beard. "No, nothing distress's me. Only the anger of seeing students come from filthy muggle homes, who've never practiced magic in their life. Whose parents would hunt our kind and kill us, and yet we take them in."
"Don't you see? We need to take them in, to save them, where else would they go? Who else would they turn to?" Helga said, pleading with him, she was the only one who bothered to anymore.
"That's not the point, Helga! We can't have that kind of, of- filth! Filth in our school, with no allegiance to any of us, who would have hunted us had they not exposed their magic earlier," he said, his voice echoing the rage inside of him.
She shook her head sadly, almost in a way that look disappointed. "You are wrong, wrong because they wouldn't do that. They have come here and seen the truth, they know the truth about themselves and accept it. We did that for them, helped them to realize who they are. Who we are. You were once a man who believed in what this school stood for, and now I hardly recognize you at all."
"I haven't changed, it's you all who have forgotten what they did to us! To you! You have more right than any of us to be angry with the muggles, Helga, or have you forgotten your sister?"
"Stop it, Salazar. Stop it now," Helga said firmly.
"I was there, I saw what they did to her, what your own town did to her, and he would have done to you if I hadn't-"
"I said stop, Salazar. I am not a student that you can torture. Do you think I don't remember that night? But I do not let the past haunt me, and I do not punish children for those mistakes." Helga said, her posture shifted, like she was torn between standing there or running for the door. He didn't give her the chance, moving from behind his desk and getting closer to her.
"You say you remember it, then how can you protect these muggle children? They would have grown into the same people that cheered while your sister burned!" Salazar said raising his voice, nearly yelling.
They were frozen between each other, his sweet Helga red in the cheeks from her own anger and the sadness in her lovely eyes that he had put there. The sadness that he wanted to erase with a sweet, soft kiss. The sadness he wanted to forget, to take back his words and see her again with the kindness in her heart for him. "That is what divides you and I, I do not punish others for past mistakes. I believe in changing the world, to protect our kind so that nothing so awful would ever happen again. For you to use that against me to prove a point, well, it makes you just as despicable as them."
Salazar felt his own heart pulse, his usual cold eyes focussed in on hers, glimmering and ready to spill tears. How sweet she was, glowing because of the size of her heart ready to burst at any moment with love of those around her. But what did she see when she looked at him? A cold man, incapable of forgiveness or compassion. But that was not the truth, not the true him, not the man he could have been for her in another time perhaps. A man that would not have been so selfish, so arrogant or so cruel.
"Helga, I-" His hand had risen from his body and his fingers curled against the curve of her flush cheek, skin so soft under his own rough fingers.
She raised her own hand and pushed his arm away, "Do not touch me, Salazar, not ever again!"
He lowered his arm, afraid to break the gaze from her. "I'm not like them Helga, I'm sorry."
Helga blinked, and through her glistening eyes he could see a reflection of himself. He could see what she saw, a man full of regret longing for another chance. Did she feel it then too? Feel the need to have their skin in touch and feel the quickening of each other's pulse.
Before he could know for sure she turned away from him and left the room, he saw her wipe at her cheek. The room felt so bare and empty without her in it, her sweet smell and honey hair gone and only the stale oder of books and candle wax left of the room left. Salazar yelled in frustration, knocking the paper off his desk and the candles burning out. He was in the dark as smoke curled in the air, the light of the moon shining through the office. The sun was gone, only her pale reflection to reveal his true self in it.