Author's Note: A lot of people like to assume Salazar Slytherin was "racist" about muggleborns. I have always contended that given the history at the time of Hogwarts founding, this was not the case. While recently rewriting my giant timeline where I take actual historical events and events from Harry Potter canon, I decided to explain, why after twenty-two years, Salazar broke with Hogwarts over muggleborns. Possibly, also because I'm annoyed at cowardly reviewers accusing me (a PoC) of glorifying racism, when I've worked hard in KIA to show that Slytherin doesn't have to equal purism, and in Milady that dark doesn't necessarily equal purist. Also, this will be Dramione, because I am a shipper who likes working through complicated feelings. Thus, I give you the first chapter of A Baleful Light.
Salazar started at the sound of a knock on his door. He quickly covered the eyes of the newly-hatched basilisk. "Come in."
"Good afternoon, min leof." The smiling woman said as she entered. "One of my brother's students is going to see his ill mother. He asked me to take the boy and see what I can do."
Salazar grunted slightly. "She has no healer of her own?"
"Just some muggle doctor." The woman replied, dismissively.
"One of his students you help teach to read, Herdís?" Salazar queried.
"Yes. I should be back before dinner." Herdís reassured him with a smile. "It sounds simple enough."
Salazar frowned. "Shall I check on the children?"
Herdís chuckled. "All of our fostered snakes are snug in the Common Room until dinner, and our own are with Harfang and Godric, spending time with their uncles." She leaned over the desk to peer at the snake whose tongue was flicking at Salazar's hand. "And how is our new arrival?"
"Your brothers are trying to poach our children for their house. As if House Gryffindor has not enough." Salazar said with annoyance. "But Ormfríðr is well."
Herdís flicked his shoulder. "I was long Herdís Gryffinsdottir before I was your wife, Salazar. Mind your tongue, min leof, else I remove it for you."
Salazar smirked at her, amused. "You would miss it, my sweetest sunbeam, light of my eyes."
Herdís leaned down and placed a kiss to his brow. "We shall take our brood to Asturias when the season ends."
Salazar smiled. "Unwise, lady-wife, when the tensions there are unsettled. We shall just have to be careful they don't gain their mother's healing claws." He took his free hand and raised his hand to her lips, kissing her fingers. "Now off with you, before I forbid you go."
Herdís snorted as she left, Salazar turning back to his careful recording of the baby basilisk's growth.
Herdís had removed most of her jewelry to go to the poor village where Aethelric was from. It was important to blend in as well as one could. Aethelric was a sweet boy, desperate to prove himself to his classmates and to Godric, as if to justify his Sorting. He threw himself into learning, but was rather slow, teaching him taught her more patience, or so she claimed.
The hut where his mother lived was clammy, but that was unsurprising in this weather. After closing the door, Herdís made quick work, stoking the fire magically in the fireplace to produce more heat, setting her basket on the table.
"Can you help, Lady Slytherin?" Aethelric asked, voice querulous. "My brothers and sisters need her. She's all we got left."
Herdís took a moment before she answered, waving her wand in a diagnostic charm over the coughing, shaking woman. "Aye, Aethelric, I can." The disease would have proven fatal for muggle medicine, but she wasn't going to let that happen. She quickly and efficiently wrapped the woman in conjured blankets to hold off the chill while she worked. Pressing a few potions to the muggle's lips, Herdís crooned an old lullaby that she used for her own children, well just her daughter now, as her sons were quite sure they were too old for such things. When the woman relaxed slightly, lulled to sleep by the potions, Herdís redrew her wand from her sleeve and began incanting, blending charms from Latin and Greek with the ones she had learned at her mother's knee.
When the door slammed open, Herdís had long ago lost track of how long she had been working, and rushed through the last incantation before turning, afraid of leaving it half-done.
"Witch!" The farmer at the door shouted, with a group of men behind him. "I knew someone had bewitched Gorm, I knew it!"
Herdís had not a moment to decide what to do, and quickly shot a disillusionment charm at Aethelric, so he would remain unnoticed, hoping that he would run to where she had left the Portkey and return with someone from the castle, or at the very least, escape himself. "Hogwarts." She hissed under her breath, towards him, unable to tell through the haze of the room if he had left.
"She speaks against us!" Some woman shrieked. Herdís turned her head toward the voice, hoping to recast the disillusionment spell on herself, but as she raised her it, someone knocked into her from the other side and someone pulled the willow wand from her grasp. She mentally cursed herself for not focusing more on wandless magic, instead of learning as much as she could about everything. A simple lumos or her blue-bell flames were not going to save her now. She tried to reach for her seax, but someone twisted her arm and she let out a howl as the bone crunched.
Just before she lost consciousness, she thought of her husband, and whispered to herself: "Ful oft wit beotedan þæt unc ne gedælde nemne deað ana, owiht elles."
Aethelric flew into the Great Hall at dinner, disillusioned, covered in mud, face streaked with tears. "They killed her!" He shouted, after holding it back so long.
The hall went silent, everyone searching for the source of the noise, but Rowena, with her eagle-sharp eyes seeing the ripple of magic first. She rose with the others at the head table, and released the disillusionment.
A gasp went through the hall at the sight the young wizard made. "They killed her." He sobbed.
Salazar was in front of the boy in a moment, lifting him to his eyeline. "Where. Is. My. Wife?" He demanded, before sinking wandlessly into the boy's mind.
It was only the amount of control he was using to do wandless legilimency and not to break down that kept him from tossing the boy aside instead of merely dropping him.
"This…" He hissed toward the other three, voice sharp and low. "Is what you get when you take in the muggle-get." He said angrily, bending the wards to his will in his anger, not caring that they were Rowena's, she could fix them later. "Watch the children for me, Godric. It is the very least you can do."
In the days that followed, the denizens of Hogwarts fell into a quiet sort of mourning. Herdís Slytherin had been loved by many, both for help with lessons, or if someone had some ill. The Slytherins who had been treated as her very own children and the group of muggleborns from other houses, with whom she had sat, teaching them to read so that they could catch up to their peers were the most changed outside of her family.
No one doubted that Salazar dealt with it the worst. When a small town burned, no one wondered why, and no one dared speak of it. He no longer laughed or joked with Godric at the table, or even spoke to him at all, and not even Rowena could trick him into conversation. After the first week, he resumed his classes, but he was no longer passionate about his subjects, teaching mechanically, keeping his children in his sight as much as possible.
Helga tried to reassure Godric that things would go back to normal eventually and that Salazar just needed time.
No one believed her, least of all Godric.
Godric found Salazar by the lake one evening after he had skipped yet another meal. He settled down beside his best friend, feeling as though he had lost his sister and the man he had been closer with than his actual brother. "You can't keep skipping meals." He admonished. "Where are Iria, Suero, and Cynesige?"
"Safe." Salazar said shortly. "In a secret place."
"Amice is missing them horribly." Godric tried. "Perhaps they could come to the tower for a visit in the morning."
"No." Salazar replied. "Not while you still let them there."
Godric sighed. Salazar had never liked the idea of muggleborns in the school. He had believed it to be too much of a security risk, even with all of Rowena's protections. He imagined some great horde of muggles attacking the castle for their lost children, or drawing on a group intent on slaughtering them all if a child was loose-lipped. He also saw it as a waste of time as most of the muggle children were illiterate and had to be tutored for over a year, sometimes two before they could start with the rest of the students. He had no problems with Helga, Godric and Rowena 'wasting their time,' but refused to take on any himself. Now his arguments had taken on a new bent.
"They're children, Salazar. None of my students would hurt them."
"One of them murdered their mother." Salazar said stubbornly. "After she went there to help his, on your request."
"There was nothing he could have done, Salazar." Godric argued.
"She told him to come back! He could have come for one of us, for you even, the great warrior, the great duellist." The scorn for his old friend was strong in Salazar's voice.
"I saw the memories too, brother." Godric said, voice raw. "There was no time."
"He could have tried." Salazar hissed. "Instead he followed as they dragged her off...!" His voice broke. "They can't be trusted, Godric. Half of them arrived terrified of their own magic, sure they are made of the devil's stuff and the other half will always choose their families. It's wrong to pull them into our world like this. It's not safe."
"Salazar, you're a teacher here, you can't talk like this." Godric replied, defensively. He had been accused of kidnapping more than once while rescuing magical children from muggle families where they had been shunned. "The students need your support, and not just yours, everyone is mourning. Herdís would not have wanted this."
"You don't get to speak her name!" Salazar snapped at him. "You asked her to go. She wanted another daughter, She wanted to go to Orkney, but was willing to go to Asturias for me. She wanted another flying horse. She didn't want to die at the hands of filthy muggles!"
"Salazar…" Godric started, only for his old friend to flip around in his face, eyes lit in such a way as to put Grendel himself to shame. It scared the strong man.
"If I can't speak the truth as a teacher here, I shall take my students and my children and leave." Salazar said decidedly. "We'll be gone by morning."
"You can't take students, Salazar!" Godric protested, hoping the reminder of his responsibility would stop such a rash action. "They were entrusted to the school, not to you, personally. For all that some call you father, they are not yours."
Salazar growled. "Fine, Godric." He hissed. "They shall stay, but I will tell them why I'm leaving. Do not expect them to take it peaceably." He closed his eyes and sighed, shoulders falling. "We were friends once, Godric, long before we were brothers, so I will tell you this: when the worst happens, when the monsters are at the gates and your students are moments from death, you'll be glad for my monster. When the time is right, the true Slytherin will return and get rid of the danger. This is my last gift to you, for Herdís sake."
"You will be always welcome to return, old friend." Godric assured him. "Perhaps when your grief has run dry and another maid lights your heart."
Salazar turned back to him with a sneer and a monstrous look on his face so twisted it startled Godric. "You said you watched the memories. Apparently you missed your sister's last words. 'Ful oft wit beotedan þæt unc ne gedælde nemne deað ana, owiht elles.'" Salazar turned his back and left.
Godric never saw his old friend again, but until the day he died, he swore he had never seen such a look in someone's eye, and that he would meet his old friend again. He wouldn't.
At least not in that life.
Historical Notes:
1. Godric is an Anglo-Saxon name, given the time period, I thought it appropriate that he be related to Vikings who settled Britain.
2. Salazar being a Portuguese name, I imagine his parents relocated from around Asturias, and relocated during the turmoil there to Ireland.
3. min leof - my love
4. While Harry's textbooks claim that witch hunts were pointless because of the flame-freezing charm, historically, most witches were hanged, strangled before burning, or burned with bags of gunpowder around their neck. Even if a witch was burned, we are shown in canon that wandless magic is difficult and rare, save for accidental magic in youth.
5. Ful oft wit beotedan þæt unc ne gedælde nemne deað ana, owiht elles - Very often we two vowed that we would not be parted except by death alone, nothing else. Old English vow, from The Wife's Lament.
6. I am not making excuses for Salazar. He is not a "good" person. He is simply a person. A person from an oppressed group who sees the other group as a danger, because people are dying and children are being abused. Look at how the Dursleys treated Harry. Much of society in Salazar's time was worse.