Epilogue: Blood
The epilogue, hence the length of it. Thank you very much for reading and reviewing, and I'm sorry for the long wait.
She came from her man's bed with her hair unbound and they looked at her with disdain. Rowena sneered into the mirror. Her mood shifted a moment later, and she laughed quietly to herself. Such pleasure, this man gave her. Clever as the darkness, and lying beneath him as they moved together was like drinking down a deep bowl of lusty red wine, all richness and fullness and bright intoxication. It felt as though she danced with the devil. He had devil eyes, black as chaos, and she could read nothing in their depths. Perhaps Sal could.
Sal, Sal, Sal. So melancholy. She didn't know whether to mock him or weep for him. Never mind. They would return soon. She felt it in her soul. And she would find some other dark, bright, lusty man to dance with. Sal hadn't realised that yet, that in this world some things are always certain, and some things go round and round and round.
"'Tis called mortifying of a snake", she mouthed to herself. Oh, she loved these clever new books, but Rowena knew that it would go round.
She simply hoped that Sal's scheme worked. The audacity, oh, she adored the audacity, and the nerve it must have taken, to put his arms around the pale king's neck. Voldemort. Maybe in another life, Rowena would have wanted to bed him, but the coldness of power can strike as repulsive in some moods.
Perhaps Sal sought to lose everything. The gods only knew that he was an empty soul. Well, they would see whether this plot, this dark audacious trickery, would bring fulfilment or chaos.
Godric had been told to watch and wait, and so he would, but that didn't mean that he was constrained to like his task. Sal had walked into that house like a pale nightmare.
The most daring plan of all. To take a horcrux, a most precious thing indeed, and to cast spells of sun and moon and shadow and bloody murder upon it…that took bitter courage. And to have to walk into that hall and see whether it had worked in the moment that the lord of darkness and white smiles lifted his wand- Sal was nothing if not brave.
Sometimes, Godric wondered if there had been a mistake. Perhaps his lover had been the one apportioned courage and boldness by some kindly spirit, and he himself had received cunning and the ability to dissemble like a serpent by a capricious sprite of the air, seeing its cousin's deeds and seeking the full reversal of history.
Sal had never been one for subtlety. Which was probably why all of the windows had just shattered. Godric hissed out through his teeth, but he waited, just as his lover had bade.
Lover. It seemed a strange word to use. It had hurt to see Sal leave, but Godric still twisted with bitterness inside over the basilisk. The tempestuous Rowena was passionless in this matter, and Helga had the ruthlessness to allow history to pave its bloody course, but Godric found it hard, so hard.
The basilisk had been an act of pure brutality. Godric lived in a bleak world, but discovering Sal's secret had filled him with pained horror. The monstrous king of the serpents, eyes as yellow as sour poison, the great beast. He was terrified of snakes, and sometimes, in the throat of the night, he saw basilisks swimming under dark waters. In his foolishness, he imagined this girl, this Myrtle. Imagined her young and small and shy and wandering to find a star in her night. Maybe that was what she had been.
Godric was lonely. He had no kin, and the thought of living forever with Rowena's lustful, passionless charm and Helga's powerful, remorseless, laughing soul gnawed at him. They needed Sal like a square needed four sides, because a triangle was too intimate and frustrating.
The doors shook in their hinges and the walls groaned. Godric drew his wand and waited. There would be a body to burn. Whose, he didn't know yet.
Salazar's wand was in his hand as Narcissa opened the side door for him. Her face was bloodless and impassive. They moved swiftly through the cavernous halls. Snakes everywhere, snakes of flesh and stone and cloth and bone. Salazar was fond of snakes himself, but his fingers twitched as he followed his mute guide. Serpents woven into tapestries, painted onto canvas and pottery, carved into Doric pillars and columns, sleeping on every pedestal.
Bellatrix awaited him in the antechamber. Narcissa disappeared as soon as Salazar stepped inside.
"LeStrange."
"Lord Slytherin. Shall we?"
Like a courtly lady asking for his hand on the dance-floor. Salazar raised his wand.
"Certainly."
Oh, she was fast. Faster than a hawk, fast as the wind, and she had the impassioned weight of madness behind her wand. It seethed through her like a sickness, gleamed in her dark eyes, from her hollow shadowed face. Azkaban had ripped through her like a plague. Salazar did not pity her. He only found within her the pain that Sirius Black must have once felt.
He didn't really remember Sirius that well now. A vague impression of heavy black hair and a lazy grin was all that drifted to the surface. That and the old desire for vengeance that he had been too young, too weak to fulfil. Sirius had closed the spaces between his worlds. His godfather had been a bond to the back of time, a very real and powerful tie to his parents and his past and his happiness.
Salazar only faintly recalled Sirius Black, but he respected the man for what he had once done for him. That in itself merited revenge.
"Reducto!" A flick of Bellatrix's wand, and the windows shattered.
From his position on the floor, Salazar wondered faintly if she wished his destruction or that of the house. Certainly, the windows had been unattractive, but such force had been unnecessary. Insanity lent her a fresh and terrible strength, and he was swift to rise and create a shield.
"Serpensortia!"
As Bellatrix flinched and looked around for the conjured snake, Amos lunged from the ceiling.
'Take her eyes'.
'Gladly.'
And then, nothing remained but to step on her neck. The snap was loud and cruel.
'The dark and secret places where he got thee/ Cost him his eyes.'
'Hush, Amos.'
There was only a door remaining between him and the end of his world.
Salazar opened it slowly.
As Rowena brushed out her hair, she thought that she saw a shadow in her mirror. When she looked over her shoulder, it was nothing but a scarf on the coat-hook moving in the breeze, and on the floor, a pair of red marbles left by some errant friend, rolling across the wooden boards.
Below Helga's window, someone was screaming.
Voldemort sat upon his dark throne, and he and Salazar contemplated one another for a heartbeat or two.
"Lord Slytherin. We have fought before. Might we not find some peaceful settlement?"
"You already know my response."
"Very well. But tell me, if you can- or will. Why have you come here to kill me, when you could simply flee back to another era and neglect the future?"
"Any man of two worlds must by necessity have two souls. If I step back into one world and relinquish the other, I must leave one behind."
"Ah. You must lay Harry Potter's soul to rest, must you not?" Voldemort smiled thinly, but not unkindly. "Your vessel does not have the reach for two souls, and so, one shall depart. It cannot be Salazar that leaves, for you are inseparable from him, so it must be the old ghost, the spirit from the past, the lost boy that is discarded."
Discarded, as though he set aside a playing card. Salazar said calmly, "Yes."
"You seek to repudiate the past, but you will not be victorious, for you are without passion."
"And you have some measure of it, yourself?"
"That is the question. And now, my fine lord, we duel."
Helga looked at the bloodied body with disdain. A man, with pale hair and fine dark robes, hung from a pole by his wrists. What had once been diamonds spilled from his twisted hands.
"So, you are the man that Salazar watched so closely. The man who would have been Minister. And you bound yourself to your dark lord."
A groan. The man was too far gone to the shadowed border to respond.
"And I'll reckon that he got something from you first, heartless as he is. Directions, rumours? No matter." Her lip curled. "I've been left to clear away his mess, have I?"
The glitter of steel, and the man lay still. Helga gathered the diamonds from his hands and pockets before she burned him to ashes.
She later found Amira White's body underneath her bed, and cursed Godric for a grinning, jesting bastard without a soul.
Salazar clenched his teeth. Blood soaked his robes, and he was yet to know whether his plan had worked. He could not afford the luxury of uncertainty, not when his face was painted red and raw. Oh, he could turn a quick spell, no doubt, but he could not truly battle a man who had hidden his soul unless the locket had fulfilled its rightful purpose.
Voldemort bared his teeth in a grin. "Minuo!"
More blood, like a burning torrent. Salazar bit through his tongue as dizziness overwhelmed his senses for a breath, and felt a second curse wash through him. Fire, dark fire, and his spell of cloud and rain was only just swift enough.
He found a smile, somewhere. Voldemort was powerful and malevolent and strong, but he had one predictability. Vanity. Everything had to be subtle, clever, potent, bright, eye-catching. He played to an audience, captive or not, and demanded their ovation. And while Salazar had not given him the opportunity for witnesses, vanity would out.
He just had to wait. The Founder bit his tongue again as he cast a silent healing spell upon himself, and felt the red tide still. His wet robe slapped against his blood-stained legs, and the wand was slippery in his hand. Salazar paused whenever he could, waited for it, sensed the nuances in the air.
The past. He was stunned by how badly he wanted to go home. Maybe he would return to Hogwarts. Maybe he would taste freedom and spring in the green air as he walked the bounds of the earth. But go back he would. There was nothing for him here.
He sensed that Voldemort too wished for the past, for a time when everything was simple, and he had but to stretch out his hands for victory to tumble into his grasp. Now, things were unravelling, the path was twisting, and nothing was certain or right any more. The dark lord had allowed the first flush of wistful youth to slip away, the light of easy confidence and boldness, and now, only weary cunning remained. The castle had fallen, and its king fought for his life. Even if Salazar was killed here, things would not end in a clear and simple way.
It was time. Voldemort was distracted by thoughts of regret and longing, even if it only showed in his eyes. The dark lord's vanity drifted to the fore.
Oh, but it couldn't go any other way for you, could it?
Nagini rose like a miasma of smoke, with nothing but spite for Salazar. The Founder hissed, saw Amos streak out like black oil and grasp the other serpent in his mouth. He acted swiftly, in that frozen, uncertain moment, and the locket screamed at Voldemort's throat.
In his mind, Salazar heard the horcruxes shattering, felt Nagini dying, smiled grimly. And the seventh horcrux…yes. Yew and phoenix feather. Voldemort's wand splintered in his hand. The dark lord spat out blood and hatred as he knocked the Founder's wand, took it for his own.
"You will pay for this, my fine lord. Avada kedav-"
Too predictable. Salazar's hand closed around Voldemort's throat, clenched down hard and tight, fingers coiling. Twist, twist. Down, down, down, you go, down the stairway of the night. There's a river at the bottom. Do you have a boat to cross it, with sails made of skin?
Voldemort's nails sank into Salazar's arms as the Founder strangled him. Limpness. Salazar drew his sword and took his head, then his eyes. Amos curled up around his shoulders with a shiver of pain and satisfaction.
They burned Voldemort and Nagini together. Godric held him as they did it.
'The rest is silence.'
'Hush. I don't want to hear any voices now, Amos.'
'Prince Hamlet and King Lear and Lord Voldemort. In that phrase, he's the least of them all.'
'We are only what our creators choose us to be.'
Salazar did not return to the future again. Instead, he wandered through the green coppices and across the blue oceans of the past, and counted himself a fortunate man, for he had but one soul now.
Rowena waved her man of red wine and dark fire farewell and found lustier, blacker souls in the old world.
Godric learned to fear snakes anew, but found that Salazar was, perhaps, worth it all in the end, as they slept beneath the stars and laughed to think of their old castle.
Helga walked the halls of Hogwarts and smiled as she found herself marvellously, wonderfully alone. Well, only until summer ended, at least, but sometimes, the summer can be eternal.
They would come together again, down the years, but for now, they drifted in dark and secret places, and stole other men's eyes for want of a future. Happiness is fragmentary, and one takes it where one can find it, before it must be released. Freedom is something to hold onto, whatever the vicious price.
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