The Founders
Helga was calmly watering the plants in her room, guiding the clay pot from plant to plant with delicate flicks of her wand, when she heard a familiar knock. "Come in, Godric," she said softly.
"Hello," came his sullen greeting.
"Hello. Would you like something to drink?"
Godric sighed and sank his lanky body into one of the overstuffed chairs by the fire. "We're getting nowhere, Helga. He won't listen to a word from either Rowena or I."
"Have you listened to a word that he has said?" she asked, tucking her wand into her sleeve.
He paused. Other than the repeated use of the word "pureblood", he couldn't recall anything specific that Salazar had said.
"I take your silence as an admission. Perhaps Salazar would be more inclined to listen to your wise words if he thought that his own words were not falling on deaf ears."
"Merlin's beard! I've been such a fool."
Helga squeezed his shoulder as she walked around him to sit in her own chair. "Don't swear, Godric. And yes, you've both been fools. If the two of you behaved any more like children, I'd send you back to class."
"Perhaps he would listen to you?"
"Don't be silly, my dear," she said, absently removing the tie from her long braid and working her fingers through it. "You know very well that he will not hear me. If you will but open your ears and hear what your friend is saying, he may return the favor."
"It's just his insistence on only teaching the purebloods, as if magic outside the blood of the magical families is some kind of slight to his pride."
Helga sighed, tossing her wavy auburn hair behind her. "Godric, you really have not heard a word that he has said. I have listened to the both of you fighting, and I can tell you that you have only caught one very small aspect of Salazar's argument."
"Helga, what are we to do? We have worked too hard for it all to come undone now. The castle is not even halfway to completion, we cannot settle on a name for our unfinished school, Rowena travels constantly in search of students to teach, Salazar and I can't stop fighting long enough to set a stone in the walls, and you…" he trailed off, averting his gaze from his perceptive friend.
"Go on, Godric."
Godric leaned forward in his chair and reached for her hand. She did not offer her hand, so he rested his on her knee. "You are perhaps the only one of us who has not lost sight of why we are doing this. Rowena wants her prodigies, Salazar wants his purebloods, I want my adventurers, and you, my dear? What do you want?"
Helga laid her hand over his. "I want to teach anyone who wants to learn."
They just sat that way, hand in hand before the fire, until it had died down to embers. When Godric reluctantly removed his hand from her knee to retrieve his wand and float another log to the fire, he heard Helga whisper. "Perhaps that is the solution."
"What did you say," he asked absently, setting the log on the coals and reigniting the fire with a flick of his wand.
"I said that perhaps I have the solution. You can each choose the students you want to teach, those who are best suited to each of you and your strengths and their strengths. I will teach the rest. I will take the half-bloods and the muggle-borns and the botanists and the healers. I will take any student not suited to the three of you."
"You will take seven for every ten who come to learn," Godric muttered, sheathing his wand in his robes.
"Oh, nonsense, Godric. Rowena and Salazar might be a little more selective, but I think between the two of us, we can evenly split the rest. Unless you really think it is so difficult to find bravery and courage and dedication." She reached out and gestured for him to return his hand to hers. "It certainly cannot be difficult to find the brash and foolhardy. Honestly, any Muggle-born willing to brave a castle full of apprentice wizards taught by Salazar Slytherin has got to have all the bravery you could ever want."
Godric smiled as he took her hand. "Helga, I am in awe."
"Don't be silly," she said for the second time that night. "If you and Salazar had ever managed to have a reasonable conversation, you might have come to the same conclusion."
"Will Rowena agree, do you think?"
"Rowena is clever. She will see the logic in this idea, if she has not had the idea since long before it came to me. You'll speak to Salazar, then?"
Godric moved to kneel beside her chair and gaze up at her. "In the morning?"
Helga smiled and ran a hand through his soft brown hair. "You only want to stay in my room because it is the only one of our rooms that is finished."
"You've found me out," he said. "If Salazar's room was this warm, I'd be telling him to choose a side of the bed."
"You can have the left," she said.
Godric moved up to sit on the arm of the chair. He ran the backs of his fingers tenderly across her cheek. "I thought perhaps we could share the middle."
"Godric, my dear, that is the second good idea you've had tonight."
"What was the first?"
"Coming to talk to me in the first place."
Godric laughed and they both stood and drifted toward the bed in the corner. "Perhaps we don't need to finish my rooms at all. We can just continue to share."
Helga leaned into him and stood up on her toes. "Don't be silly," she whispered in his ear.