So, fun fact: Gryffindor and Ravenclaw common rooms are towers closest to each other, and Hufflepuff and Slytherin are underground. 'Bom chicka wow-wow', I believe is the verbiage for the implications. ...Yes, that's what's going on in my head when I write this. If you weren't before, you are now warned.
A mere six months. That was all it had taken, from conception to production. All four had worked tirelessly, day and night into day again. Salazar had taken to writing scores of letters to every magician he knew, great and small, and scoured old tomes he had never even heard of in the Ravenclaw library; Helga, unafraid as always to get her hands dirty, searched for days for the best sources of the best herbs and spices and roots and creatures; Godric insisted on taking the lion's share of work, and visited a massive list of people and places that only he truly knew the extent of. Even Helena begged to be included, with some task or another.
And Rowena had built the castle. Not in stone quite as yet, but every so often when she would emerge from her chambers, there would be several fresh stacks of architectural scrolls upon her desk, ink still wet. It hadn't taken her long at all to find a prime site, nor had it taken long to convince the others – her judgement was trusted implicitly. Her suggestion to have no one set of floorplans was likewise met with hearty agreement, if not delight.
She didn't see much of the sun, in those six months – did not, in fact, see much beyond the corridor just outside her chambers.
Her daughter visited, pleaded for her mother to please come and sit with her, as she once had. It took some explaining (and afterward, she was still not quite sure she had done it satisfactorily for the nine-year-old girl, who remained dour to a fault), but what Helena did eventually understand was that her mother's eyes were alive again. Still, when her mother had left her seat to search for a particular book, she had smudged some of the staircases and drawn in new ones, mindless of where they now reconnected. There was only the slightest amount of spite in the gesture, and she couldn't look anyone in the eye, feeling horrid for months to come.
Helga had delivered her meals (most of which had lain, largely untouched, into the small hours of the morning) and attempted to coax her into a walkabout in the forest, to no avail. When that inevitably failed, she paced the room animatedly, recounting tales she remembered from her own tutors, the scholars-before-scholars of old. Once, with a heavy wistful nostalgia, she had brought up how quaint it would be to place the kitchens within easy reach, so that she may cook at all hours of the day, and then went back to speaking of her own education.
Salazar took to bringing her tea, having deciphered the exact recipe she had used when they first met not so very long ago (not without a subtle glance of reproach, which she could only hope meant that he had excluded the valerian, or at least the monkshood), and would occasionally sit with her for several hours and devise some of the more fantastical and labyrinthine hallways. He mentioned, once or twice or every time, the convenience of an unexplored forest on the grounds, and was adamant on the use of layers of cloaking spells he was in the middle of inventing himself. He stressed privacy more times than even she could keep track of.
Godric, remarkably, kept himself scarce while she worked. For every ten times she saw the others, she saw him once, and briefly. He seemed hesitant, even, to enter her chambers, though when he did he would assess her work with a strange combination of grave seriousness and awestruck elation. His feedback was hardest to discern – perhaps a tower here, instead of the hall? or what shall we do with so much empty space? – and listened patiently as she explained her reasoning, nodding though she knew he would simply bring it up again next time he called upon her. Finally, when she announced she was this close to being done, he paused at the doorway, smiled over his shoulder and briefly suggested that he would like to see the grounds for himself.
She scolded herself inwardly. The conceptual planning had quite gotten the better of her, and it hadn't even occurred to her that the others couldn't possibly see what she was seeing. How could they, so unfamiliar with the land as they were?
One morning, Rowena rose from a barely-there nap, and for the first time in two months, truly sat and looked at the floorplans. Gently, she spread them across her floor, feet barely touching the ground as she tiptoed across them, envisioning everything as though she were there. With a soft smile, she gathered them into her arms and stepped out from her quarters.
"I think we should all go to see the site."
At her announcement, the activity in the kitchen bustled to a halt from the sheer shock of Rowena being up and moving, never mind that she was only in her dressing gown.
Helga, dusted head to toe with flour, her hair pulled back with a kerchief, glanced across the simmering pots and sizzling pans to Salazar, mid-reach within her herb cupboard, clearly in the middle of making her tea, and he in turn looked to Godric, seated at the small table, a mug of something steaming in his hand.
His expression was warm upon hers, and he rose to meet her, eyes flicking down to the parchment in her hands. A finger flipped through the top of the sheaf, and there was a pause, just a moment.
"I'm done," she explained, to none and to all. "We have our castle."
Green eyes burned into hers, and a great smile broke out onto his face. "Excellent. When do we leave?"
Salazar answered, steering Rowena to a seat at the table, where he promptly placed a mug identical to Godric's before her and rested a hand on the back of her chair. "This afternoon, of course." A snort. "Tomorrow, at latest. Nothing so pressing we cannot hold off until later this week," he added, nodding at Helga.
She inclined her head, wiping her hands on her apron as she removed it. "Priorities. We cannot teach anyone if we haven't a place in which to do so, can we?"
"Indeed no." Godric seated himself again, beaming at each of his friends in their turn, resting his gaze on Rowena as she brought the mug to her lips. She could see how much effort it took for him not to spread out the floorplans as she had, then and there. "So we are agreed? We leave this afternoon?"
"Tomorrow."
Salazar looked pained. "Helga."
Suppressing a small smile, she nodded at the table, where Rowena had slumped forward, snoring softly.
Without a word, Helga gently pried the empty mug from her friend's hands, handing the parchment to Salazar, who flipped through it eagerly while Godric carried the lady of the house back to bed, where she belonged.
The next morning, a light drizzle saturated the air, and Rowena felt pleased at their good fortune. With the horses packed and ready before dawn, and a kiss for a dead-on-her-feet Helena, she mounted and they were off. She found herself far too excited to participate in the chatter between the two men, or the song Helga initiated midmorning. Every so often, when the horse could pick his own path from memory, she would run a reassuring hand over the scrolls in her saddlebag; at these moments, she found Godric watching her, and a smile was shared between them.
She caught sight of their destination at noon, towering cliff peeking at her over the horizon, a welcome companion to the sound of waves breaking against stone. She stilled her horse just before breaking the line of trees, face flushed as she met her friends' eyes; all seemed to have the same jubilant, if disbelieving expression mirrored between them.
Silence descended on the four as they came to a halt, gazes unwavering even at the sound of gulls overhead.
A beat.
Two.
A cry whooped through the air, followed by the pounding of hooves, and it was only when she dismounted that Rowena realized the sounds had come from her; her fellows arrived in short order, giddy and out of breath as they swung from their saddles.
The air shivered and trembled about them, sunlight wavering off of empty stone and fresh moss.
"The stones already here," Rowena explained, dragging her wand behind her lazily, conjuring translucent light-structures as she walked, "are ruins of a fortress. They belonged to a Viking who called himself Hoggvi."
Godric bared that grin, placing a hand against an immense shimmering door. "Hoggvarvirki," he drawled, turning over a crumbling mast with his boot. His eyes appraised the area while she spoke, and all but drank in the sight of her illusion.
"Indeed so."
She danced about the site, going on at length exactly what she planned for where and why, the castle of her dreams trailing behind her. They followed, listened, absolutely rapt at the sensory experience – though they had all seen the castle in print, it was far different with even these insubstantial walls surrounding them.
After nigh on an hour, they reached the epicenter. "And this," she swished her wand extravagantly, "is to be the Great Hall."
So bright was the light, then, so great the glimmering columns that they could almost see children darting about them, through aisles of tables into the fading halls whence the four had come. After a moment, the hall, too, faded, leaving behind a massive moss clearing, peppered with stones and rubble.
Rowena's cheeks colored, happy to see her hard work come to almost-fruition, and glanced askance at the others. "What do you think?"
Before anyone could answer, Godric stepped forward, thumbing the broach free of his cloak. With great deliberation, he removed it from his shoulders and swirled it onto hers; finger by finger, he removed his gloves and handed them to Helga; and with the utmost care, he removed his swordbelt, placed it reverently into Salazar's hands. Meeting no one's eyes, unnervingly silent, he made his way through the fallen columns, trailing his fingers over a boulder as he passed it.
At last, he paused before a great stone, at least in girth what he was in height, and placed a hand on it. Then quite suddenly, he lunged for it, heaving it into his arms with a mighty bellow – alarmed, the others stepped forward, but he staved them off with a "Back!"
He stood quite still where he was, stone in his arms, allowing himself to adjust to the weight. And then he took a step back to them. Then another, and another – one halting step after the other, carefully, deliberately, huffing and puffing all the way.
He reached them again, his face blazing with exertion, but with that same deliberation, he very slowly bent to set the stone at their feet.
Godric rose to his full height then, and glowed with an intense pride. He met Rowena's eye, gave her that grin, and she felt the same pride well deeply in her chest.
"First stone is set."