Author's Note
Disclaimer: I have no rights to steal these characters for my own amusement, and I am not making any dough out of them. I have had this plot bunny bouncing around my head for a few years, and I hope that no one is offended (I especially hope that no one is offended enough to sue).
Summary: "During a time of despair when all hope seems to be lost for the Light, the four founders fall from the past right into the midst of the war. AU. Possible SLASH."
This much improved version is thanks to my Beta Adages. She managed to a proofred copy to me several months ago, but I have failed at preforming my duty as a f-fic writer and posting quickly.
In the corner, Fawkes shifted slightly on his perch where he slept with his head tucked under one wing. The scratching of a quill was the only audible sound other than his ruffling feathers in the Headmaster's cluttered office until Albus Dumbledore sighed and sat back in his ornate chair. A weary frown deepened the wrinkles on the old man's face, and if anyone had been present to witness the loss of his customary twinkle they would have seen how old and tired the wizard really was. That the war was not going well was a gross understatement. Voldemort's forces had grown, posing an immediate threat to the side of the Light. The Dark Lord was nearly prepared to face the side of the Light on the battlefield, and cease his guerrilla tactics. With every report that reached the headmaster's desk, the old man came a step closer to despair. There was no hope for the wizarding world. He was an old man and many years had passed since the time he had defeated Grindelwald, and Voldemort had more raw power than Gellert had ever claimed. No, Dumbledore had no chance of victory when set against such a powerful adversary. Despite the fact that Voldemort had been a shade at the time, the side of the Light had lost any chance of winning the day that Harry Potter, their professed savior, had disappeared fourteen years ago.
Dumbledore drew himself away from his melancholy pondering, forced himself to finish writing instructions to the Order, and ambled down to the Great Hall to dine. Supper was the same as it always was. The Gryffindors shot distrustful, wary glances at the green and silver table and the Slytherins sneered back. The Ravenclaws were all involved in intense discussions about the meaning of life, their Transfiguration homework, and one particularly interesting debate about draperies. The Hufflepuffs, trying not to attract attention from the Gryffindor pranksters or evil snakes, chatted quietly about classes and avoided mentioning anything that involved politics. Slowly the usual low thrum of noise in the large chamber trailed off as people turned to gaze in wonder at a dome of light that was slowly forming between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables, directly in middle of the Great Hall. The enchanted ceiling flickered above and the sky seemed to open up and spit out more flashing multicolored lights. The light show continued and students began to talk in hushed voices about what was causing such a bizarre, even for a magic school, occurrence. Most dismissed it as a simple prank, but others worried that You-Know-Who had infiltrated Hogwarts' wards and would kill them all.
All of the staff and many of the upperclassmen drew their wands and suspiciously watched as the light began to swirl and form four blurry figures, two female and two male shapes made entirely of swirling lights. Everyone present jumped, and two younger students fainted when a voice spoke as clearly as if the speaker was made of flesh and bone, not photons and twirling winds. "What magic is this? We 'twas two day's journey away, yet we have been inexplicably returned to our origin?" The soft feminine voice was puzzled, but held no panic.
"I knowest not Hel my dear, but perhaps Row doth. She hoards facts like a dragon hoards gold, but be careful or she may try to eat thee." This voice was like gravel, grating with controlled power and definitely male. He sounded fond of the first speaker, but slightly irked as if she always tried to have him answer all the abstract questions of existence.
A third voice chimed in, "Sal, must thou be sarcastic? It tis most unbecoming."
Low male laughter echoed across the Hall as the forth figure teased, "Since when have any of us had to worry about such trivialities? Sal is much more interested in his potions than any pretty face. He spends so many hours pondering whether to mix dragon claws and yarrow or if the dragon's scales would have better results he probable has no clue what a living dragon looks like."
"Woe unto me for not being so foolish as to face a dragon for sport. At least I know how to choose fights that I have a chance of winning, Ric. Even if I do spend more time than thee being productive," the second voice, Sal, replied, this time with a hard edge as if he had been offended more than the observers understood from the simple exchange.
"You need to learn how to take a joke when you are the butt of it Sal," scolded the one called Row. As they bantered, the shapes had slowly become more distinct. Four tall cloak-clad people were standing in the eye of a storm of magic. The owner of the first voice, Hel, had long brilliant red hair that glowed, and an hourglass figure that was defined by tight, tailored robes. She wore a black cloak with a brilliant canary yellow lining, and her posture indicated that she knew she looked good. Actually, all four of them stood that way. The other lady had jet black hair and wore a cloak of a deep brown with a startling blue lining. She too was pretty, but in a fiercer way. She looked like she was unapproachable, unattainable by any mere mortal. When she tilted her head in a certain way her face was almost hawk-like, very dissimilar to the redhead with the pretty heart-shaped face. The redhead man, Ric, was the tallest of the four, dressed in a garish red and gold cloak that made his hair appear to be on fire. Both men had a swimmer's build, and were well muscled. Sal, despite the fact that he was slightly shorter than Ric, was by no means short. He stood over six feet tall, wearing a deep emerald cloak that was so dark it almost appeared to be as black as his hair. He had an air of suppressed power like a panther possesses just an instant before it springs. The four made an impressive sight, all tall and lean with red and black hair and surrounded by a fading glow.
Suddenly the light fled upward into the ceiling and the chasm in the enchanted sky closed, abandoning the unexpected visitors to the awed stares of several hundred school children and staff. The Headmaster drew himself to his full height and heh-hemmed in a much more masculine manner than Dolores Umbridge ever had. When he had been granted the full attention of two of the four intruders (Row was slowly gauging the reactions of the students, and Sal was peering suspiciously at each teacher in turn), he arched one eyebrow in a silent query. Surprisingly, it was Sal, who had not yet glanced at Dumbledore, who answered the unasked question.
He gestured to the raven locked lady. "We art the Lady Rowena Ravenclaw, the Lord Godric Gryffindor, the Lady Helga Hufflepuff," he indicated both the redheads in turn and then placed his hand across his chest, "and I am Lord Salazar Slytherin. Who mayst thou be?"
Minerva McGonagall was the first to recover from the shock that this pronouncement caused. "I must inform you that the people that you are impersonating have been dead for over a thousand years. If this is your idea of a joke it is utterly idiotic."
Gryffindor bowed with a flourish of his cloak. "I assure thee, my good lady, thee art not the subject of a prank foul. My dear friend Salazar speaks naught but the truth; we art none other."
Severus Snape snorted. "You are claiming you four at a similar age to our older students, founded the greatest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. The four of you look no older than twenty, so your claim to be the founders is preposterous. Do not think that your shenanigans will go overlooked."
The lady who claimed to be Helga Hufflepuff laughed scornfully. "And pray tell me good sirrah, who art thou to judge us? Tis only manners to give thy name in return. Doth thou hold thyself in such importance that thou believes we should knowest thee on sight though, as the lady who sits near thee claims, we are ov'r a thousand years separated from our time? Doth thou truly posses such arrogance to disregard our appearance through wards so strong as mundane? If thy do, thou art a fool."
"Easy Hel, no need to go on the defensive. T'would seem we hath returned to our own time. Perchance, we can dredge up some of our twentieth century speech." Row soothed in a sotto voice.
"If thou believes that thee recalls more than street slang and profanity after thirteen years removed from this millennium, then thou possesses a better memory than I," Sal hissed back. "And I feel vulnerable. I hath somehow lost my wand. We hath been surrounded, and I doubt any of thee are in possession of any of thy weapons. I do pray that my spare Olivander's hath not been removed from my chamber."
"We all art feeling rather helpless, Sal. Perhaps that tis why Hellgirl hath been so reserved in her defense of our honor." Row replied, still in a low undertone that went unheard by the rest of the hall.
Dumbledore cleared his throat a second time to interrupt the students' shocked conversation at the nerve of the four claiming to be the great Hogwarts four. This time he did speak, "If you would follow me to my office I am certain that we can ascertain the truth."
So, all the professors, the headmaster, and the four alleged founders proceeded through Hogwarts. Dumbledore cheerfully said the password, Peppermint Toads, and led the group up his revolving staircase. Just as the heavy wooden door swung shut a voice called out from one of the shelves along the wall. "Gryffindor, you rogue! Turn me back into my true form this instant! You dog-faced, lying, traitorous, unchivalrous, womanizing, backstabbing, lewd, idiotic beast. If you do not revert me to my human form, magic help me, I will do everything in my power to make your life miserable."
Gryffindor appeared startled by the attack. "Master Ernest, I assure thee that I shall be quite glad to return thee to thy true form. It is only proper, however, to inform thee that thy proper form in this time tis a pile of dust and bones. If thee wishes for me to reverse the charm that I hath placed upon thee, I shall of course oblige thee."
"You-you are a foul and evil wizard! You ruined my life, you forced me into a stale existence, and you were fraternizing with my daughter!" shout out the Sorting Hat, for it had been from that moth eaten cloth that the outraged cry had originated.
"I did no such thing! Well, erm, I did transfigure thee into a hat, and coerce thee into helping the school, but I never touched thy daughter. In fact she was the one who pursued me. Even after ten centuries hath passed thy still will not listen to reason. How thou art still so stubborn I knowest not. Good day, sirrah."
"You protest too much. If you did not sully my Lark's virtue then how did she end up pregnant?"
"I assume, good sirrah, that she ended up pregnant by using the same temptress techniques she attempted to capture me with. I could not hath fathered her child for I still am pure myself. If thyst doth not believe me then ask any present to cast the necessary spells to test me. I will not be held accountable whilst I stand blameless."
"Cast the spell. Your lies will be revealed for all to see."
"Sal, would thou do me the favor of casting the chaste revelio spell?" Godric asked.
"Certainly, my dear Ric, what else is a recluse like me good for?" Slytherin gestured with his hand and a faint white glow surrounded Godric, proving his virginity.
Griffindor glared at the worn hat. "Doth that prove my claim? If thou had allowed me time to explain instead of attacking me thou fate would hath been different. That thou did not hath the intellect and restraint to allow me to prove thy accusation to be groundless doth sadden me."
After much very formal apologizing by both wronged parties, the Hogwarts staff recovered from their shock enough to begin hurling questions at the quartet. After a very long conversation where very little information of any importance was exchanged, it was agreed that the four would spend the evening at Hogwarts. In the morning a less overwhelmed group could converse and not get sidetracked with discussions about the improvements in Muggle sweets, the fact that broomsticks no longer doomed the family name by being so uncomfortable to sit upon, or how minuscule the advances in the past one thousand years were in both Potions and Spell-Casting. So the group split up and agreed to meet the next morning over breakfast.
Before Dumbledore could instruct various members of his staff to escort the young men and women to the rarely used guest rooms, the time travelers had disappeared.
Hogwarts Head Boy Draco Malfoy collapsed onto his large four-poster bed in the seventh year Slytherin dormitory. After the unearthly visitors' display in the Great Hall, the teachers had abandoned him and the Mudblood Head Girl, Hermione Granger, to sate the students' curiosity and send them off to bed. As soon as they had finally managed to rid themselves of the excited crowd he had patrol duties where he caught at least a dozen students sneaking out to spy on the quartet. Then all the six and seventh year students had cornered him and demanded he tell them who the visitors were. When he had finally escaped their questioning it was well past midnight, and for the first time since the odd display in the Great Hall he was able to ponder the appearance of the four people who claimed to be the founders of Hogwarts.
He saw no reason to believe the outlandish tale of time travel, other than the sheer intensity of the magic present during their appearance. All the hair on the back of his neck had prickled, and he knew that anything that could have affected the spells cast on the enchanted ceiling would have had to been powerful. He had done a report on the spells that created long lasting illusions, like in the Great Hall, and Malfoy knew that it took a lot of magic to create such intricate illusions or alter them in any way. It was a well known fact that the founders had all been very powerful mages. Yet, it was also a well known fact that Godric Griffindor and Salazar Slytherin got along as well as any of the members of the rival houses for the past thousand years, and he had just watched the alleged pair good humorously teasing each other, and Lord Slytherin had not been at all standoffish. Also, the four were so young. Just as Snape had pointed out, they could not have done any of the things that the founders accomplished and still be that young. Merlin, they looked as if they were the same age as the students in his year.
No, they could not be the famous four founders of Hogwarts, but they had been involved in some serious magic and that made them people to watch. Draco Malfoy sighed and sat up to write a letter to his father reporting the incident. His father would like to hear it from him, and not have to rely on another's report of the phenomena.
At the same time, in her room in Gryffindor tower, similar thoughts were whizzing through the head of one Hermione Granger. She was trying to determine how the visitors had arrived in the Great Hall. According to Hogwarts A History, Apparition was impossible inside of Hogwarts due to complex wards, so they had not Apparated in. They had slowly become visible, so spells of invisibility and the less spectacular disillusionment charm were out. Hermione considered the way the sky had seemed to open up and spit them out. That may have been caused by the reflective nature of the illusion, because the real sky had broken open and caused the enchanted ceiling to reflect it. Or the more likely scenario was that the ceiling itself had split open and the enchantment had broken and reformed around the fracture. Both would have taken tremendous amounts of power, and the magic discharge from the four had been downright terrifying. This indicated that the four held tremendous power and their support could possibly decide the outcome of the war.
Hermione knew that her and her parents' lives rested on the Light winning the conflict. If You-Know-Who won, her life and future plans were forfeit. However, the four may not have been as powerful as she had assumed. The one that claimed to be Helga Hufflepuff had called out, "What magic is this?" right before the figures had become visible, and the others had been unable to answer her. Hermione knew from her short use of a Time-Turner in her third year that jumps in time longer than a day were impossible for a witch or wizard to initiate, but had sometimes occurred spontaneously. One wizard had claimed to travel back to the sacking of Troy, but experts had dismissed it as him drinking too much of a newly distilled variation of fire-whiskey. Maybe this was a similar case and the four were victims of wild magic.
Whether or not the four had caused the magic phenomena in the Great Hall, the event had caused many students to attempt to spy on the newcomers. Hermione was exhausted from her duty as Head Girl. There was no time to begin working on her Arithmancy homework as she had planned, and as exhaustion overtook her she indulged herself with the hope that the four would become powerful allies for the Light.
Salazar Slytherin swept away from the meeting with a heavy scowl on his face. Bloody timing, bloody wild magic. He had thought that the first temporal rift had been unique. He and his self-made family had just finished creating a safe and respectable place for themselves in the war-strewn world they had landed in. Hogwarts had been open and acting as a school and haven, but they had not had any time to enjoy what they had worked so hard to create. Everything good in life had been stolen in one fell act of wild magic. Well, perhaps not everything, Sal decided, gazing in wonder at the stones that guarded their finest creation. The thought that Hogwarts had lasted almost unchanged for over a hundred decades caused his grim expression to completely relax.
As he walked toward his private room near the Slytherin common room, he thought back on the meeting earlier in the Headmaster's office. The four had manipulated the conversation away from personal questions - a tactic that had been successful many times prior during Wizard Council meetings and formal parties where the local witches and wizards were too curious. He made a note to himself to compliment Hel on her excellent diversionary technique of starting the old man talking about food, candy in particular. The fact that Hel could talk for hours about cuisine did not surprise him, as she had always been an avid culinary student, but her noticing the bowl of sherbet lemons and the fact that the best warded cabinet in the office was filled with other sweets did. As soon as he entered his quarters Slytherin opened up a hidden wall safe and drew out his spare wand. He relaxed for the first time since the wild magic had uprooted him, weaponless, from the past and deposited him in the middle of a large group of strange people.
When he finished taking stock of the condition of his room, his scowl returned. He would not sleep tonight. Some of his potion ingredients, even with the powerful preservation spells he had cast, were ruined. He would have to begin plotting the best way to discover the current political social situation and benefit from it. At least Ric's folly of turning Ernest into a hat had paid off. There had been no more questions about the validity of their identities after he had cussed at Ric. He did regret being unable to transfigure Ernest back into his human form back in the 990's, but the fact that they had still been working on a counter curse when the wild magic had deposited them in the year 1996 consoled him somewhat.