Harry Potter And The Orb Of Time.
The troubles started with the time traveler.
The year had been the most pleasant Scotland had ever seen, with a warm, drowsy summer. The scent of heather and clover filled the air, as did the sweet strains of Rowena's harp, and my violin.
Ah, Rowena.
To my dying day, I shall never forget her. The scent of her hair, the swish of her blue dress, her smile… but I digress. I was speaking of the time traveler.
Yes, the time traveler.
Hogwarts had received several time travelers in the past, giving us hints as to how we should arrange the school, architectural tips, and even suggestions for the Sorting Hat! Such a useful thing. And Godric claims all the glory, of course. That's all right. I don't want glory, anyway. What is glory, pray tell? Or this honor he prattles on about? The chance to stick your head on the block three seconds after you've taken it off of the aforementioned stone thingy? Silly stuff.
To return to time travelers in general, they have odd ideas about the school in general, and me in particular. They say I made the Chamber to kill all the Muggleborns in the school, so that Trueborns may rule the world. They say I was a murderer. They say I was Evil, even!
Lies.
I am, I admit freely, a Dark wizard.
But Dark is not Evil, I say.
Ah, you doubt me… you recall the propaganda that your 'Ministry' told you, that all Dark wizards wish to rule the world. Hah. They don't even know what Dark means.
In this day and age (and how old I feel saying that, how archaic) Dark is as respected as Light.
But, of course, you still don't know what Dark Magic is. Dark Magic is, as it sounds, the darker side of magic. It is powerful, chaotic, and aggressive. It contains killing spells, and curses, and hexes. But it can also heal, never forget that. It all lies in the intent. Besides, the line between Light spells and Dark spells is almost invisible. One can kill ones opponent with a well placed Tickling Charm, for example, or restart a heart with the Cruciatus Curse.
Should an evil wizard, a truly evil one, come into your house, kill your friends, ravish your woman, and steal your gold, would you not use Dark Magic in revenge? Would you not kill him? Would you not use a torture curse to make his last days on this blessed earth a warning to those who would dare to do such to innocent folk?
You would, and it would be no more than justice.
I say again, Dark is not evil, and neither am I.
Even my worst enemies would agree.
I am not evil.
I don't know much about how the people of the future think of me, to be honest. Just what astonished time traveling wizards gasped out before they got hold of their senses.
Since the traveler (no, I won't reveal his name yet, be patient!) has promised to take this account to his headmaster, (you, I presume?) I should set the records straight about me and mine before telling the tale. The boy wished me to make but a report on the training and philosophy I have taught him, but I wish some record of the truth of the beginning of your school, and its founders, to survive.
I should begin with myself, since that is what I know best. My clan, the Slytherins, were from Ireland. I can imagine your surprise, even across the unimaginable gulf of time that separates us. If any true record of me survives, you know that I am a cultured man, fond of fine wine and music, of good (if simple) clothes and elegant wit. How, you might be asking yourself at this very moment, does a poor Irishman gain such culture and sophistication?
Don't be a fool. The Irish have had a rich culture since long before the Sassenachs came to the Emerald Isle, and will long after the English have let their hubris bring them low. Godric is a perfect example of the English. The man thinks he's immortal. Bah!
My family were lords. We ruled over the Wizards and Muggles in our demesne. We were an ancient clan, and our magic was powerful. Most of the family shunned the new magic, wand magic, with it's Latin incantations. No, we used the old magics, no wand, and in our own tongue. We knew what each rhyme and chant meant, and they were music to our ears. Listen to these modern spells, the magic of Merlin's making. They are short and simple, easy for any man off the streets to use, and can do such harm so easily. They trivialize magic, turn it from an art into a skill, like reading or arithmetic or even snapping ones fingers. And they have no art, no polish, no soul. Oh, they are useful, and I love using a wand to add power to spells, but they have no art. They are only for the present, also. All flash and immediate effect. No lingering curses, no sending back ill treatment 'three times three.' All specific, here and now spells.
But, again, I digress. To finish this abbreviated autobiography, I grew up, learned magic, and played the violin, somehow managing to do all this simultaneously.
Life continued on for a time, slowly but surely. I must admit, I was shaped by my surroundings. The Slytherin lands were located in a place called the Fenlands, despite the clear lack of fens to be seen. I never knew the origins of the name, but I came to love those foggy mountains that were my home, often leaving home for days at a time, living in a small cave that had, at one time a century gone, housed a mad hermit. It is odd, considering my present love for civilization, but I also love the wild.
All this came to an end, however, due to my fool of a father.
I hated him. He was wildly unfaithful to my mother, cruel to me, and practiced evil magic, often raising power by torture sacrifices. His fatal mistake came when the fool was idiotic enough to summon the Queen of the Succubi for a one night stand, the result of which was slow, painful death for my father (and served him right, it did), and swift death for my mother, trampled beneath the panicked crowd of muggles, who were too ignorant to know that all the Succubus wanted was to kill my father. And you wonder why I hate muggles?
And I used to wonder where the rumors of the purpose of the Chamber arose. I shall settle this once and for all. The chamber is a defense. I built it to hold the Basilisk, whom I whimsically name Sally, so that my Heir could use it to defend Hogwarts after my end. I do not want to kill the Muggleborns and Halfborns, nor do I favor Trueborns in my teaching. I simply think the Muggles are ignorant, religiously fanatical fools who are best kept in the dark about us and out powers. It is too dangerous, else. Inevitably, their prejudices get in the way.
After my fathers unlamented death and my mothers much mourned one, I left the Fenlands for more clement climes, both climate-wise and politically. I journeyed to Greece, where I met Godric, and had the usual series of adventures until we met Rowena and Helga, and founded Hogwarts.
Which finally leads me to the stated purpose of this letter, the tale of your student Harry's arrival in our time, and the nearly catastrophic effect…
………………………………………………………………………………………
It was, as I said, summer. We had been sitting on the grass, out by the standing stones. Helga had been making small talk with her instinctive courtesy and diplomacy, I had been playing Trip to Skye on my violin, Rowena was plinking an entirely different but somehow appropriate song on her harp, and Godric had been retelling tales of our adventures, before we had met the others. It was the tale of the time when we had broken up a small contingent of Evil wizards who were planning to use Inferi to destroy a local Muggle village. True to Godric's nature, he exaggerated what was a small-scale conflict until it seemed to be a decisive battle in the eternal war between good and evil.
"For Morrigan's sake, Godders," I said, calling on one of the ancient gods of my people, the Tuatha De Dannan, in my irritation. "There's no need to exaggerate that much. We went in, we killed them, we left. Vini, Vidi, Vinci. It was a skirmish, not the battle of Moytura!"
"I know, I know," he replied in an aggrieved tone, arching one blond brow, "But there's no need for us to make the story boring, is there?"
I was surprised. This casual disregard for the truth was an attribute that I found in myself more often then I care to admit. To see it mirrored it Gryffindor was odd, to say the least. I must have rubbed off on him.
Godric continued with his tale, sticking closer to the truth than before. I returned to my playing, this time with Rowena and I both playing the instrumental portion of The Lakes Upon Chertrain.
Rowena began to sing the words, her musical voice rising and falling. It was so soothing that I almost forgot to keep playing.
"'Twas on one bright march morning,
That I bid Hogsmeade adieu,
And I took the road to Telvan town,
Me fortunes to renew.
A crystal, chilly morning,
And no gratis could I gain.
Which filled me heart with longing for
The lakes upon Chertrain."
This was living, to be sure. The music slipped from my fingers, and my violin felt alive beneath my hands. I had never had any formal teaching in the thing, astoundingly enough. It had belonged to an ancestor, who had apparently spelled it so that it could be played perfectly by anyone, regardless of training or skill, so long as they has music in their hearts and souls. Apparently this was rare enough in my family, and I had been the first in years to be able to play it.
The weather, which had been so clear but a moment ago, began to worsen. The few clouds on the horizon began to multiply faster than horklumps in winter, and turned dark and threatening.
"Time travel!" Godric shouted, recognizing the symptoms of a temporal transference.
As one, we four founders raised our wands, and cast the spells that we had discussed, the spells that we would use if another of those pesky time travelers disrupted the local weather.
Godric and Helga took the simpler spell, a warming circle. It typically snowed during time travel, due to temporal transference of inverse chrono… never mind. It gets cold during extreme time travel, or travel through a long amount time.
Rowena and I cast a circle of electrical untouchability and general healthy warding, also known by the handy acronym of EUGHW; which is about what the poor lightning thought, as it lanced down from the clouds to strike at the shields, and was trapped and used to power the shield further.
It was a handy little spell, something that Rowena had devised. She was quite a brainy woman, fond of intellectual exercises.
The snow rained down on our shield, and the lightning flashed. The thunder and lightning reached a thunderous climax, and then faded, leaving a very scruffy looking young wizard in it's wake.
I could only stare in shocked astonishment at the sight of the lad. He wore strange clothes: some form of tight breeches made of blue fabric, a light shirt that had sleeves which reached down to his mid arm only, and a robe that seemed ill-fitting. On the breast of the robe was, to my surprise, a red shield, with a golden lion in the center of it. He must be a student from the future, I thought, and in Godric's House, at that. Of course. Who else would be stupid enough to time jump in such foolish garb?
These trivial matters of outlandish raiment, however, were not what stayed my usual courteous greeting. The boy looked like me.
It was almost like looking into a mirror, and seeing my younger self, or even my son. His hair was the exact same shade of black as mine, although scruffier, and his pale skin was as similar to mine as if some divine artist had painted our flesh with the same pigment. His eyes were green, rather than my silver, but the expression in them mirrored that which I saw in myself every day.
Helga, with her usual tact, ushered him into the sunny climes of our enchanted circle, saying warmly, "Welcome to Hogwarts, traveler. You have journeyed far."
The boy did not respond. He gazed at me with a shocked expression on his face. "Creepy," he muttered.
"Pardon?" I replied with icy dignity, determined not to relax my guard in front of this stranger. Who knows what fool ideas he has about us? I thought to myself. I recalled one incident in particular, in which a time traveler had made an incredibly embarrassing mistake regarding Godric's orientation, and wound up propositioning him. I rarely use such crass words as 'yuck,' but that was indeed the word on my lips at the time.
"I said, it's creepy. You look just like me. Actually, you look even more like my dad."
"And just how far in the future are you from, pray tell?" I enquired, striving to remain polite. There was something in his attitude that I just didn't like, an instinctive resentment of me that I couldn't comprehend.
"A thousand years. The headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, sent me back here. He said that I needed to learn from…"
"Yes?" Rowena prodded, her innate curiosity overwhelming her carefully learned courtesy.
"Salazar Slytherin." Each of use raised our eyebrows in surprise, not only at the fact that they would send this young wizard to be trained in the past, not only that he would be sent to learn from someone with my less than sterling reputation in that time, but at the pure vitriolic hatred that entered his voice when he said the name 'Slytherin.'
"You sound displeased at that," I ventured.
"Yeah, no kidding. It's just the little matter of his house making my life hell for my entire stay at Hogwarts, and his Heir killing loads of people because their parents were muggles; oh, and let's not forget his Basilisk damn near killing me my second year, until I stopped it. It'll take more than Dumbledore saying that he's 'really just a misunderstood person' to make me forget all of that."
In a flash, the long sword I always wore at my waist was out, and at his throat.
"My Sally. What did you do to my Sally?!" I screamed.
"Salazar!" Rowena snapped, "What the hells do you think you're doing? Whatever he did, he hasn't done so yet! Put the sword away!"
I ignored her, and asked again, in a voice so cold that it almost frightened me, "What did you do to my Sally?"
The boy stammered and gasped before replying, "Voldemort… the Dark Lord, your heir, he had her try to kill me. I just defended myself."
"Not possible," I flatly contradicted. "She wouldn't obey someone as evil as this Voldemort you talked about. I take it from your words that this Dark Lord kills muggleborns?" He nodded. "No," I continue, sheathing my sword, "It can't have been her. Must have been another basilisk. Describe it."
"Um… I don't know, maybe thirty feet long, green, had a red mane-like… thing on it's head."
Rowena smiled gently at his ignorance. "That would be a male, then. Salazar's basilisk is a female, and a gentler basilisk I have never known. Not to mention that fact that she's albino."
"I can see," I add, after seeing his reaction, "That we have a lot of explaining to do."
"I wish to apologize for my overreaction, earlier. Sally is the only real pet that I've ever had, and she's as dear to me as Rowena or Helga, yes, and even Godric, blowhard though he is."
Potter and I walked through the castle, as I gave him an abbreviated tour. We walked past the Defense Class, where Professor Revan was giving yet another practical exam, to the delight of the students. They took an almost unholy glee in the prospect of hexing the living daylights out of their fellow classmates, and Revan was pleased to give them just such a chance.
"So, if the Chamber was meant to defend Hogwarts, then why the secrecy?"
"Do you really think that it would be wise to have everyone with the slightest bump of curiosity just walk into the secret weapon's den? No, it's better off hidden. Besides, Sally needs warning to put the Oculus Obscura spell on her eyes, otherwise she's lethal with a look, and that would be bad for the poor students who walked in on her, wouldn't you agree?"
"Yeah, no kidding," he agreed fervently.
"It's just in here," I explained, waving at the blank stretch of wall that concealed the door to the Come and Go Room. I thought very hard to myself, I need the entrance to Sally's chambers, I need the entrance to Sally's chambers, I need the entrance to Sally's chambers.
The wall shifted and morphed into a particularly old-fashioned door, heavy oak bound with black iron.