Well, over the years I've had that first chapter up, I've received quite more attention with it than I ever thought a WIP should deserve. I'm absolutely flabbergasted and honoured each and every time someone new adds this story to their favourites, even knowing it may not be updated. I've decided to continue on with it. This story, which started after OOtP was pubished, was originally set in sixth year AU. Then HBP came out, and it was altered to be seventh year. Despite the fact that I never updated, I did work on this story, determined that when I updated it would be when I had a better idea of what I was actually going to go with this and writing a sizeable chunk of it. The simple idea of Salazar Slytherin's soul possessing Hermione Granger quickly spiralled out of control, and when DH was finally released, I honestly considered abandoning it altogether because suddenly my story seemed so meaningless and silly when compared to how the story actually ended. For all that I love alternate universes, I lost sight of the cardinal rule - don't compare it to how canon actually went.
It was actually my other Hermione & Salazar one-shot which finally convinced me to. There's more fics of this ship out there than when I first posted this one and Abyssus Abyssum Invocat, but still I think the ship deserves all the fanfiction it can get, and so I shall endeavour to not disappoint with Imperium.
The first chapter has only minor alterations in case you wish to reread it. I had forgotten how vexing FFnet's editor can be, so if there's any weird spacing issues, please forgive me (and point them out). I have never asked talked much about reviews before, but I will tell you all truthfully, thank you for your kind words and encouragement; they have inspired me to continue, and I dearly wish to read your reactions to this chapter.
Chapter 2 - Ad Idem
It took a long time for Salazar to come to his senses. A very long time. He first thought he was dead, before he remembered his final moments. When he realised what had happened, he reckoned he might as well have died for all that this served him.
He had transported his soul into his crystal ball – the very thing that most wizards would have done by dreadful error he had instead done deliberately. He was floating serenely, surrounded by silver and green mist, with no corporeal body, only the thrum of his magic and the sharpness of his mind, but lacking the ability to cast spells. His current condition was not one vastly superior to being dead, and he supposed it was the Redback venom coursing through his veins that had made his addled brain come to this conclusion.
Judith.
He knew, somehow, inherently, perhaps unreasonably, that she had been responsible for the Redback. They were native to Southwest Asia – her homeland – and as rare as they may be, he had no doubt that she had the ability to acquire one if she so desired.
Salazar had recognized the telltale jerkiness of the spider's movements as it had been released from what only could have been the Imperius Curse – a curse he had invented and only shared with a select few, knowledge which Judith was privy to and thus through deduction the most likely candidate. The spell had its uses, not all of Dark inclination, but Salazar did not relish the idea of his enemies with the knowledge of a spell that could control others utterly. So like Rowena's crystal ball, it had been a private affair, kept from the ears of those who would use it to harm him, or worse, the school. To even think that his three best friends might have done such a thing was a magnitude of betrayal that Salazar could not simply grasp, let alone could he consider any of them using a means of murder as sly as Imperius.
The only other option would be that some other Dark wizard or witch had also developed the curse; but the odds were so simply astronomical that Salazar did not even bear them consideration. Thus, with only four people in the entire world able to cast the curse, that left Judith as the culprit. Salazar certainly did not lack for enemies, but apparently, the one he had not known about had been his downfall.
But still, why? This he could not figure. Why would Judith, relatively soft-spoken and shy, suddenly desire his death? Did it have something to do with their unborn child? What did she gain from it? He had not left her any of his possessions – they would all be inherited by his child when it came of age. But had she even known this?
This questions drew him into deeper contemplation of their relationship over the years. Had it all been an act, a lie? Was she really the daughter of one of his enemies, sent to gain his heir for their own bloodline? She had made her intentions for him known early on, after all. The possibility existed, but somehow rang untrue to his mind, for as direct as she had been in her infatuation with him, she certainly had not been expedient about courting him or becoming with child.
Salazar brooded on this subject for what seemed an eternity, and upon coming to no conclusion, he figured her motives would never be known as long as he was trapped in his current state. Upon his release, he would find out for sure, but when would that be? He had no concept of time in the mist, but knew that anything from seconds to centuries could be passing in the outside world. Even if he was ever released – which was unfortunately unlikely, given the hidden location of crystal ball – he would probably be too late to ever know the reasons behind Judith's betrayal. He could only hope that his heir would not be raised up under its mother's tutelage – which Godric, Helga and Rowena should have taken care of, at any rate – and that they would someday read his scroll and come down to his lair. Hopefully, they would recognize the crystal ball for what it was, and release him.
Hopefully.
After time innumerable, magic awoke him.
Salazar Slytherin.
He had heard a murmur of voices from beyond the ether, but he had not been able to understand them – until those two words cleaved through planes of time and magic, beckoning him forth from his crystal prison – unleashing him into a frightening expanse. It was an enlightening moment – those words, they were his name, he knew – and yet it was as if they had never belonged to him. But when the voice freed him, it identified him, branding those words into the very fabric of his soul, bestowing the name upon him once again.
Salazar Slytherin. The words rebounded through him.
His mind and soul were free, yet caught in a terrible void. The whole of the Universe lay around him, within him, passing through him, intimate and alien. He could not fathom what he was experiencing, and so thus he looked away – in a sense – closing his mind off from what he could not comprehend, and instead trying to assess what he could.
Before him, six massive glowing orbs shone brightly, connected together by a plethora of bright, shimmering lines that were hopelessly tangled betwixt them in some odd tapestry of light and colour. And yet, as his gaze lingered on the lines, he could see them unravelling, as if they had never existed – or else they frayed, cut short – or even tightened inexplicitly, into a thicker band than the others present – or otherwise shifted into other countless patterns. But those patterns weren't real. What existed was only what was actually there, not what he could see...
Again, he shut himself off from his thoughts, from his experiences – he could never hope to decipher the transforming patterns, and the orbs themselves were another mystery. Occasionally, within their luminous depths he could see images shift in and out of focus. A fleeting glimpse of flesh and bone, a flash of an eye, parted lips, a hand reaching out towards darkness…
'Could it be?' Salazar had not enjoyed his time within the crystal, but this change in condition was staggering. Unwelcomed. He was loose, but he had no form nor substance nor motion. His existence was otherwise unchanged from what it had been inside his prison. Which could only mean that those orbs were…
Souls.
Six, presumably human, souls, one of which had called him out into this spiritual realm – and with a start, he found he could identify it. It was the largest soul, resonating powerfully with magic, and yet there was a tenebrous, sickly sliver clinging to it – a nebulous parasite, leeching from the magic inherent to the soul. Something was terribly familiar about the parasitic entity to Salazar, but that intuition also warned him against studying it too closely, for fear of arousing it to his presence. Salazar shied away from the tainted soul, trusting his instincts all the while wondering why.
Then he felt a gentle tugging on his essence, up away from the souls, pulling him towards darkness, towards the infinite abyss. He felt a presence behind him and turned. He looked up and beheld before him, a pale, white horse, with hooves of dark iron and eyes of smouldering coals. Upon its broad back sat a tall rider, robed in black tatters that barely concealed the greying flesh underneath, and though Salazar had no nose, he could almost smell a pungent stench of decay from the putrid man. One of the rider's bony hands held a glistening scythe, the other reached out towards him, beckoning. Neither the horse nor rider moved, but yet the hand crept closer and closer, its rotting skin barely clinging to the very bone. There was a hunger in those soulless eyes, madness in that skeletal grin, and Salazar felt a sickening horror rise up within him. This was finality, this was the unknown; this was Death itself.
Salazar wanted to escape the rider, but he did not know where to go or how even to propel himself through the abyss. The horizon stretched out forever, a vast emptiness, containing only himself, the rider, and the six souls. Though he had spent ages trapped in that crystal waiting - even hoping - for death, now that he was confronted before it, he understood the dread of the living. He had not the courage of Godric, nor the faith of Rowena or the amenability of Helga. He was not ready to die, and it was not his time. He had to take revenge against Judith, to seek his child or his child's child or whatever remained of his family. He had to find his friends, to apologize if they were alive, to take over the school if they were not. He had to live, had to have the chance…
He turned away from Death, loath to let it conquer and consume him, and let his fear overcome his actions. There was a moment of incomprehensible agony, then a bright flash and a loud whooshing sound. Salazar felt himself moving at an incredibly fast speed, but all he could sense was a blinding incandescence surrounding him. Then, an image rushed by, too quickly to distinguish – and then another with a great surge of sound and colour. Masses of brown hair – a cloudy ceiling - the innards of hundreds of tomes – a pair of strangely familiar, yellow eyes that stared out from a moment suspended in time.
He froze abruptly when he saw those hungry, slitted eyes and exhaustion swept over his mind. He could only feel relieved as the cold hand of Death slipped away from his back, thwarted, as he fell into darkness.
At first, he thought he was still in the crystal – but it was too dark, too quiescent. 'Am I dead, then?' The thought ran errant through his mind, giving him a great feeling of unease. Salazar was afraid to look around, to explore his surroundings, the image of the rotten man still fresh in his mind's eye.
But no, no, this could not be death, could it? It was peaceful, but –
There was a flicker of red in the far corner of his vision, and then his perception stretched and warped until suddenly he found himself crouched over, stalking slowly down a dimly-lit hallway. It was – it could only be, yes, he recognized the architecture – near the library and he was approaching an intersection of hallways. But upon the walls were dozens – hundreds – of paintings and portraits, much more than had ever adorned any hallway in Hogwarts, and certainly not this particular hall. With a start, he realized – the portraits were moving! But they looked at him nervously and were shuffling between their frames quietly, hushing each other at the slightest movement. The uneasy feeling in his stomach – he had a stomach! – only grew.
Behind him, he heard the shuffling and whimpering of another person, a girl, and against his volition, his teeth clenched and his lips curled, hissing a soft 'shh!' His head tilted, glancing quickly over his shoulder, and he saw a flash of black robes with the Ravenclaw crest before his attention focused back on the corner ahead. He was astounded – the girl behind him must be a half-giant, for he only came to her shoulder!
Or - he realized belatedly as a hand that was not his own raised into his vision – this was not his body. By the look of his hand, it seemed he was also a young girl, which explained why he felt crouched over; he was just short, rather. Within his – the girl's – hand was an object of metal and…glass? No, no, silver. It was a mirror! He could also discern, clutched tightly in the girl's other hand, a scrap of parchment.
He tried to stop, but it appeared that he was slave to the girl's movements, a mere spectator to some strange scene. What was this sorcery?
Salazar could hear a faint hissing sound from around the corner, and to his horror immediately recognized words spoken in Parseltongue. 'Kill…rip…blood…I smell them…BLOOD!'
He once again tried to halt the girl's forward pace. He did not expect her to understand Parseltongue, but could she not hear the hissing, at least? With growing dread, he watched helplessly as she extended the mirror so that she could see around the corner. He felt the Ravenclaw girl lean over his shoulder as his – her – his hand adjusted the mirror so that they could get a clear look.
And then there was a flash of – red hair? – and a pair of great yellow eyes, those same eyes that had seemed so eerily familiar in the void, stared viciously at him from within the mirror.
A basilisk.
In less than a fraction of a second he realized – 'Clever girl!' – that the girls were not dead, but Petrified. As clever as the mirror may have been, it would not stop the basilisk from continuing around the corner and devouring the poor immobilised students anyway.
'What is a basilisk doing roaming free within the hallowed halls of Hogwarts?'
It could not…it could not be his basilisk? No! He watched the basilisk slither forward in the mirror – this one was too large. It had to be hundreds of years old!
'Have I been trapped so long?'
He watched in horror as the basilisk rounded the corner on the girls and raised itself so high its feathered crimson plume brushed against the vaulted ceiling. It opened its mouth as if to devour the girls, but instead, a swarm of black creatures burst forth from the gaping maw! Some crawled down the basilisk's body; others poured from the giant snake's mouth, like a black, writhing waterfall, and advanced on the girls. They were…Redbacks. 'Redbacks!' He laughed in his mind as the arachnids continued to stream out of the basilisk's mouth and cover the floor in a seething mass of red and black. It was not his basilisk that was terrorizing Hogwarts. 'It's a dream; a night terror, but just a dream!'
And with those words, shouted out in relief, he found himself jerking awake.
Only to find that his hands once again moving against his accord, covering his face and pushing back his – long, bushy? – hair from his eyes. He waited in silence as a breath, obviously not his own, panted in the aftermath of the nightmare.
A moan, much higher in pitch than his voice, escaped his lips, and he flopped back on the bed to stare at the red canopy above.
"Not again," a girl's - a woman's – voice whispered. "I haven't had that nightmare in years." There was a pause. "But where did the spiders come from?"
The girl swung his – her – their legs out of the bed and stood shakily, shuffling across the room towards a darkened doorway. Salazar could not speak, dare not speak, for fear that the girl would hear him. Was he still dreaming? Was this death, living entrapped within the body of some stranger?
The girl pushed open the door, and as she entered the torches within flared to life, slowly casting a warm glow that brightened the dim room.
"Ugh," the girl said as she peered at herself in a mirror. "I think I may be spending a bit too much time in the Restricted Section." The girl cocked her head at her reflection, her bushy hair barely shifting at the movement. "Those were Persian Redbacks, I'm almost sure." She laughed nervously. "Hermione, you're only having nightmares about magical spiders that have been extinct for eight hundred years. It's nothing to worry about."
The torches had finally lit the room – a personal bath – revealing a fair girl of indeterminate race – not Celt nor English nor Roman - who could only be in her late teens with long, frizzy, brown hair and surprisingly alert brown eyes, given the dark shadows that hung under them. Her clothing was odd – loose, but extremely revealing for a girl that age – for a woman any age. It was certainly no style nor culture with which he was familiar. But then again, Salazar was not an expert on women's under things, and felt the need to divert his eyes from the sight to maintain her honour. If only he could.
"There, there, dearie," a new voice said, startling Salazar out of his mortification. "It was only a dream. Have some water and get back to bed. You desperately need your beauty rest!"
He could not figure out where the voice had come from, but the girl only glowered at her reflection. "I'm fine, thanks," the girl snapped. She turned a knob over the basin in front of her and splashed the cooled, clear liquid over her face. She stood, leaning over the basin with her arms straight and hands planted firmly on each edge, letting the water drip down from the tip of her nose. She closed her eyes, delving Salazar into darkness, and sighed deeply, only to snap them open, turn off the water and quickly turn from the small bathroom back into the bed chamber, the torches spluttering out as she left.
She crossed over to the canopied bed and reached under her pillow, grabbing a slim stick of wood. Salazar breathed a mental sigh of relief as he felt magic surge forth at the touch of the wand. Too long had his magic been confined within his soul – now, it was free, and he felt, despite his situation, at peace with the world as his magic flowed through him and out of the girl's wand. The girl gave a small gasp of surprise – no doubt she had never before felt such power to her wand - and Salazar quickly tried to rein back his magic. It retreated, much to his heart's disappointment in its absence, but at least he had had that one short moment for the first time in who knew how many years. Hundreds of years – at least eight, if he had understood the girl's comment on Redbacks correctly.
'Eight hundred years!'
The girl shook her head, muttering about the time, and raised her wand. He saw, felt, heard within his mind the girl think the spell 'Lumos' and then a great ball of blue light ignited on her wand's tip.
The girl pointed her wand at a pair of metal and glass discs on the wood-panelled wall near her bed. One had two rods of different lengths pointing in two different directions from its center towards what appeared to be a variation of Arabic numerals numbering one through twelve. The other had only one rod which pointed to a jumble of scribbles on the disc. At first, Salazar did not understand the squiggles, but as he gazed harder at them, a feeling of what he could only describe as enlightenment filled his mind – as if he had just unlocked a treasure trove of information.
The letters scrambled and shifted under his gaze, until he realized that he could read them. "Too early to justify getting up," one read and the rod was fast approaching another grouping of words which said, "Well, if you're up, you might as well work on your Arithmancy." He looked back to the other disc and realized the long rod was pointing to the eleven, and the short rod was approaching the five. Were these some sort of time-keeping devices?
The girl sighed as she read them. She looked down at her bed, back to the discs – the word 'clock' rose unbidden in his mind - and then turned her head to a desk that Salazar had not previously noticed on the far corner of the room, which was stacked high with books. Her gaze turned back to the bed.
"Well, maybe just this once," she said, and climbed back into the high bed, settling under the down-filled covers. Salazar was slightly mortified that he was in the body of a girl who was in her bed, a ridiculously soft one at that, and was not quite sure if he should be afraid that she was going to fall asleep and possibly take him back into her dreams. She extinguished her wand with a quick, nonverbal 'Nox,' and stuffed it back under her pillow.
The girl closed her eyes, dousing him in darkness, and he felt - much to his relief - her mind drift in a listless way down from his while he remained conscious. He could finally assess the situation, although he had already drawn what he felt was the correct conclusion.
Somehow, inexplicitly, he was over eight hundred years into the future, trapped within the body of a teenaged witch. He had, however, yet to decide on whether or not this was an improvement over the crystal ball. With another sigh, he turned his mind towards the girl - Hermione - and began to watch her dreams.
Thankfully, she slept soundly for the rest of the night, her dreams full of nothing more than fleeting nonsense that she would probably forget upon awaking. Salazar found that he could descend down into her dreams to watch and even participate in them, but the girl did not seem to pay him any more heed than a passing notice. No doubt she assumed him to be nothing more than any other spectre of her mind, if even her lucidity extended so far as to recognize another person in her thoughts.
He had not dwelt long in the confusion that was her dreams and instead spent the majority of his time experimenting with his capabilities while in her body. It had seemed from the earlier incident that she was able to call upon his magic – although he was able to withdraw it – which led him to believe that he could probably call forth hers…if he managed to gain control of her body, first.
He had managed to make her fingers wiggle and had begun to move her entire arm, but her rest had been disturbed by the movement. Salazar had stopped in fear of waking her; he was not quite ready to confront the girl about his presence. He reckoned that he had to eventually, but considering that even he did not know how his entrapment could have happened – he had never before heard of a whole human soul possessing another's body while its owner still lived – he was not quite sure how he would manage to convince the girl he was not a demon, or worse, a figment of her imagination.
Salazar had been surprised at how easy it had been to make her fingers move – he had expected it to take quite a bit of concentration, if not impossibly difficult. Instead, it felt as natural as his own body – the memory of which was fading faster than he would have liked – except for when she had rolled over at the disturbance. Though it was an unconscious movement on her part, he felt his dominion over her body violently stripped away as she moved. Obviously, controlling her without her accession would be out of the question, unless he found a way to keep her mind permanently unconscious. Perhaps a modified Imperius Curse -
Salazar quickly averting himself that line of thinking – when it came to the matter of the spirit, Dark magic was rarely the appropriate solution given its propensity to tarnish or fracture a soul, and he wondered even more for its consequences on not only his own soul, but hers as well. It would not bode well for him to doubt himself now, but the risks seemed all the more real with the memory of Death so fresh in his mind.
Nevertheless, his lack of control posed a great obstacle for him. He would have to befriend the girl so that she would let him have control over her body so that he may – may what? He wasn't entirely sure how he was going to get himself out of this situation if he knocked Dark magic out of the equation – and even with it he would not have many options. While he was certain he could transfer his soul much in the same manner he had placed it in the crystal ball, getting a body would be a problem.
The only method of body creation he knew of was used by those who had Horcruxes and needed new bodies. It was, as such, one of the Darkest of arts, its users those already in possession of damaged souls and thus unconcerned with any further negative side-effects. And over eight hundred years had passed! Even if he was willing to create a body in such a Dark manner, he wasn't even sure he could find the grave of his father – did his hometown even exist in this day? – let alone the fact that all of his enemies were undoubtedly long dead. He hoped. And he had no servants, at least not yet.
It was vexing, but surely there would be another solution. Rowena would know…
He stopped himself. No. No. Rowena was dead. Then it hit him.
They were all dead.
The thought sent him reeling and a heavy, horrible pain rose within him. Within the crystal ball, he had prepared himself, albeit abstractly, for the possibility that his friends may be dead by the time he was released. But they weren't just dead – everyone and everything he had ever known had been so long dead that their bodies would have long ago turned to dust, their gravestones would have worn smooth or even crumbled and the immortality possessed by the public memory of their lives would be threatened. And that struck him so profoundly, with such a terrifying grief, that he had not even known how much he had loved them until he was faced with the prospect of a life without them. They were not simply dead; they were gone.
For a moment, he regretted fleeing the rotten man. He should have gone willingly to death – he now existed on borrowed time, nothing more. Perhaps, if he had died as he should have, he would be with them now. Hopefully they would forgive him for delaying their reunion a while more.
And then he felt another alien pain deep within his – no, no, the girl's – chest and a tightening in her throat. The feelings startled him out of his misery, but as abruptly as he had noticed them, the strange sensations disappeared. It wasn't until he felt the slight dampness around her eyes that he realised what he'd done. Her body had reacted to his emotions and had begun to cry.
Salazar was mortified! He had never had such a loss of composure before. Perhaps it was just this body – yes, yes, that was it. Women were always sulking about the place, crying over the littlest thing. Perhaps their own bodies were culprit to such behaviour.
'Helga and Rowena were never such pitiful' – as the grief came back anew at the thought of them, he quickly closed off his emotions entirely, tucking them away into a corner of his mind. It was difficult, but he was not the most accomplished Occlumens in all of the known world for nothing. Despite the circumstances, and the understandable shock of the situation, the overabundance of despondent emotion he had been feeling was inexcusable. He had let his grief get away with him – even to think he should be dead! He sneered, his disgust in himself so pronounced that the girl's upper lip curled slightly in her sleep.
He forced himself to focus on the situation. Salazar could tell he would have a hard time adjusting to the girl's body. He just hoped she wouldn't be overly difficult to work with when he did finally choose to introduce himself. For now, however, he would just have to watch her and wait.
It was a long night.
A/N:
Esto Perpetue - May you live forever
Ad Idem - Of one mind
Again, as I mentioned in my notes in Abyssus Abyssum Invocat, titling things in Latin extends a sense of pedanticalness and a level of insight which I really should not lay claim to. But now I also realise it's kind of haughty and arrogant (and also presumptuous since I don't know one lick of Latin), but it's my style when dealing with Salazar now, so I'll at least have the decency to translate what the Internet tells me it means. :P
