Chapter Eleven: like Glitter and Gold
Godric was five years old the first time a sword was shoved into his hands.
Five and young, five and a child. Soft and bright and without strength to hold up the blade. He'd looked at the length of steel that made his arms tremble, the blunt edge that reflected faint sunlight, the hilt that chafed the tender skin of his palms. Shiny metal had looked back at him, a jagged mirror of blood-red hair and gold-flecked eyes. "That's what you are, now," someone had told him. He couldn't remember who; father, brother, trainer. An ageless voice that had given him a function and an identity in the same sentence. "You're a sword that fights, a sword that strikes and little else."
But he'd been a little boy who couldn't lift the sword he was supposed to be in a family that had no use in it for a child, a family that lived for war and needed a weapon. So he made himself learn to be someone else, to be something else. He became the burn of overworked muscles that got up from stone-hard grounds, the hiss of steel that slashed through fire-warm air, the grind of bone-white knuckles that punched and punched and punched.
He was eight years old when his mother died.
Eight and proud, eight and trying. Black and blue and heart-bruised. His father had been away fighting someone else's battles. Their house had been full of death. Full of life. Wails of a newborn sister, whispers of inquisitive brothers. He had taken his sword, no longer too heavy to bear, too rough to his skin, gone to his training field and raged. Grieved the only way he knew how, pushed everything that hurt and mattered into the blade and struck.
Someone had given him his mother's wand. He couldn't remember who, couldn't bring himself to care. "This is yours," they had told him. "And that's what you are now. A wand that destroys, a wand that curses and little else."
But he'd been a wizard who couldn't do magic in a family that no longer had a witch in it to teach him, a family that was different from what he was and needed a protector. So he became the heat of power that rushed through his veins, the spark of lightning that pooled under his ribs, the burst of spells that crushed and razed and shattered.
He was ten years old the first time he killed a man.
Ten and lonely, ten and angry. The back-alley had been dank, had reeked of stale water and alcohol. Mud sucking in his boots like slimy quicksands and darkness weighing on his shoulders like chain-mail made of lead. The man had been drunk, had had a knife in one hand and a girl in the other. Godric hadn't know him. He hadn't known the girl either. He hadn't even been on assignment, just wandering through the darkened cesspool of the city, letting his feet take him where they would. He'd seen the knife gleam silver in the night, the girl's eyes – green, like his mother's – slide shut in fright, and he'd just – reacted. Unsheathed his sword, the grind of metal familiar as his own voice now, dodged the first clumsy swing of the other's blade, the second, bent his knees, readied his stance and thrust.
It had been easy. His sword had slipped between two of the man's ribs, through soft flesh and yielding muscles, frail body weak against tempered steel, and the drunkard had choked, coughed up dark, dark blood, looked lost and surprised as life fled his eyes. Godric had watched him fall with his heart in his throat and his arms steady, horror growing in his chest as Death descended on the narrow street, cold and final.
This is what I am, he remembered thinking. Flesh and blood and steel. Death for a speck gold, fire for who can buy it. Little else.
Then he met Salazar.
He had been eleven. A bit broken at the seams, rough and unpolished at the edges. His father and older brothers had killed their way into nobility with dubious services to the crown while he watched from the sidelines, too young yet for his hands to be as bloodied as theirs, but far from innocent nonetheless. He'd watched and listened as they talked of murder and theft, felt terribly confused because they were family and yet it all felt so very wrong. Lacking any kind of moral compass, with few relatives and even fewer friends to turn to, he'd clung to that feeling with all he'd had, going with his guts because he hadn't had anything else to trust.
He'd been steel that shed blood and magic that slaughtered, the breath that caught in his enemy's throat in the heartbeat before death, the fright in their eyes before they knew nothing more. But he'd also cared, felt a warmth in his chest that pushed him to share food with other street rats, walk home old women, the divide between who he had been and what he had felt a gaping chasm, slowly crushing him from the inside.
Salazar had crashed into his life like a tidal wave, overwhelming, sweeping everything in its way and leaving a sharp tang of change in its wake, crisp as sea brine. He'd been a storm-eyed boy with a snake on his shoulders and shadows in his steps, silent as a ghost but riveting in the way of a tempest that gathered on the horizon, burdened the air and bruised the ocean. There had been something both utterly foreign and achingly familiar about him.
The two of them had collided with all the strength of racing warhorses, had dug their nails under each other's skin and not let go. It had hurt, this meeting, this shared life, had torn them both to pieces and glued them back together differently. It had hurt, and had been inevitable. Godric wasn't one to believe in fate or destiny, but he knew with absolute certainty that he and Salazar would have been drawn to each other's orbits, no matter how far life sought to separate them, how many obstacles pushed them away. They were polar opposites with striking alikeness, two entities that shouldn't coexists but lost meaning without the other. The sell-sword brat who posed as a squire and the beggar boy who hid the poise of a king.
They had become friends in a violent, all-encompassing relationship that had bared Godric's heart, had pulled him back from the abyss he'd been falling down to, and tamed the mad wilderness in Salazar's eyes to something softer, more caring. They met up in the dead of night and before daybreak, whenever Godric could escape his duties. He'd always gone with his sword, pushed the blade into Salazar's hands in an excuse to teach the other boy how to fight. "Look, Salazar," he had never said as his friend went through well-practised exercises. "That's what I am, and it's yours now."
For his part, Salazar went with whispered stories of faraway realms that didn't revolve around pain and grave-dirt. "Look what the world could be," he had seemed to reply, and Godric had been mesmerized. "Not everything is death and betrayal, my friend. Look all we could do together, look all we could be."
They had taught each other magic, had laughed and played and lived. Godric had given Salazar everything he had been, had let the boy see and do as he pleased, because it had felt right to trust him, to love him like he had never loved his own family. In return, Salazar had revealed himself in bits and pieces, keeping some parts hidden, but it hadn't mattered, it didn't matter still, because they had had each other it had been enough.
Godric had watched Salazar charm his way from the sludge of the streets to the polished halls of the royal court, from ragged vagabond to prodigal apprentice of the kingdom's most respected sorcerer, while he himself climbed up the army's ranks, his name and reputation recognized among his men.
They'd been fine, for a long while. If not happy, at least content, each pursuing his own ambitions with the other's help. Until a Norman warlock had stormed the city, nearly succeeded in assassinating the king, and the Purge began, vague suspicion and grudging acceptance towards their people turning into mindless hatred in the space of a single night. Soldiers, some of whom Godric had known since childhood, had ransacked the city in search of anyone with magic in their veins, ripping apart families and tearing homes to the ground. Blood had run down the streets, fire-smoke had choked up the air. Salazar had found him in this midst of screams and confusion, grim-faced and determined. "Come with me," he had said, and there had been soul-deep grief and age-old sorrow in his voice. "They've killed everyone, Godric. Everyone. They're all dead except us. So we have to live. We're the only ones that matter now." He'd taken Godric's hand and Godric had followed, left it all behind and not looked back.
It had been the two of them against the rest of the world. They'd gone far, far away, and it hadn't been easy but they had been free and together and life had been worth living. But now –
Now Salazar was locked up with an Obscurial, could be dead for all Godric knew, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Drawing breath was difficult but Godric managed it all the same, filling his lungs with a familiar fragrance of red apples and firewood that eased the hot irons constricting his chest.
The night was pitch-black outside the stained-glass windows of his tower, mist and shadows plunging the room in cushioned semi-darkness, the warm glow of a lonely candle bleeding crimson and gold against heavy drapes of soft bedsheets that rose and fell to the slow cadence of his son and daughter's respiration.
The two children were dead to the world, faces slack in sleep, and nothing short of a landslide would succeed in waking them before mid-morning. They had exhausted themselves waiting for him to return from the Forest, and had only gone to sleep after hearing a watered-down version of the truth.
He hadn't told them about Salazar. Salazar who was their Godfather, Salazar who they loved like family. Salazar who was arrogant enough to think he could toy with forces that were as old as time and was likely to die before sunrise.
Padding across the room with lithe steps that, out of habit more than necessity, didn't betray the slightest whisper of movement, Godric bit back a surge of magic that tingled his fingertips, body tight and thrumming with restlessness. He reached the end of his chambers and whirled around, fingers taping the empty air that should hold his sword hilt. The lack of weight at his side was unsettling, throwing off his balance like a missing limb, but Godric always left his weapons behind when he met with his children. War had sharpened him like a whetstone to a blade, had made him look at the world and see threats ready to pounce, had given him reflexes ingrained too deeply to be rooted out. And it was useful, had saved his life too many times to count, but he didn't want Alma and Meic to grow up looking behind their backs, thinking that hesitation could shove a knife between their ribs, that inattention could sneak up on them to cut their throats. It was selfish, perhaps, to want to protect them from the life he'd had, but Godric knew how dark a place it could be, and it was something he would shield them from to his dying breath.
Hogwarts hummed around him, wards groaning like a creaking ship, unease seeping in the back of his mind in a soft warning.
Fine, then. It wasn't as though he was going to sleep any time soon anyway.
Four long strides and Godric was out of his chambers, halfway down the stairs leading to his House's common room. It was silent at this hour, disturbed only by the crackle of burning logs. Firelight trembled across thick rugs, painting red and amber the round, cosy room, outlining squashy armchairs and wood tables. Godric weaved his way around forgotten bags slumped over the floor and abandoned books lying open, pages fluttering behind him. He went to the stone hole that served as an entrance to this hideout.
A thought had his sword fly to his hand, smacking against his palm just as his Great Aunt's portrait swung open, the old woman grumbling about inconsiderate relatives jostling her awake.
Hogwarts was dark and quiet, silver and night-blue, with nothing but swirling dust to break the perfect stillness of witching hour. Godric breathed in the smell of crushed stone and wet wood, the rush of air deafening in the thick quiet. He found it unnerving, this tomb-like silence. It grated on his nerves like blunt nails on dark slate, threw him in month-old memories, when success was but a faint, desperate hope in a corner of the Founders' minds, and uncertainty was scraping all four of them raw. He'd gotten used to clear laughs echoing down sun-bright corridors, to the chatter and chaos of his students. The contrast was all the more jarring tonight, with fear and restlessness thrumming just behind this illusion of calm.
A few shortcuts and cooperative staircases later, Godric glided around a suit of armour in an alcove near the Great Hall's doors. The entrance was grand and stately, majestic in its architecture, vaulting ceiling disappearing into high shadows and smooth marble gleaming ivory in the brilliance of the moon. Helga and the Potter boy were seated on the large staircase off to the side, unmoving as the statues surrounding them.
Helga's gaze zeroed in on him the moment he slipped closer, eyes alert and assertive, a hand flying to the handle of her wand.
Anything yet? Godric asked with a tilt of the head, stepping into a shaft of moonlight to see her shoulders ease in recognition.
Helga gave a tired smile, but the worry etched in the curve of her lips was enough of an answer. Forearms cramped from the tightness of his fists, Godric took a few careful breaths, clamping down the panic rising in his chest.
There was no reason to worry just yet. It had taken hours, last time. Hours of waiting, excruciating, for Salazar to get away from the little girl's bed. Hours for Godric to feel himself unravel with every passing heartbeat, worry thick and heavy in the pit of his stomach. It was Sila who had warned him of the danger. The grey snake had convulsed around his shoulders, a broken, furious hiss rolling off her forked tongue, and Godric hadn't cared that interrupting a ritual of this magnitude could level out the small village they'd been visiting, hadn't cared that it could kill him, because Salazar had been slumped on the floor, mouth and nose and ears gushing blood, eyes open and pupils blown wide as the Obscurus ate its way to his bones, power so dense in the air that it had hit Godric like a tangible thing. He had run a dagger through the girl's heart without a second thought while Sila sank fangs deep in her throat, and they'd fled, left the village as fast as they could, Salazar fading out of consciousness long before arrows started raining down on them.
Salazar hadn't talked for days afterwards, shutting himself off to the recesses of his mind, close enough to touch but miles away from Godric nonetheless. He'd dragged himself back from the depth of this torpor to say, "I misjudged the side-effects of the energy transference," like it was supposed to make sense, like it was enough of a justification for almost dying. Godric hadn't answered then, knowing better than to speak when fear for his friend turned to red-tinted rage that burned away in his guts. He'd bitten back the urge to yell, to grip Salazar's shoulders and shake off the glazed fascination in his eyes. His friend had always been like that, entranced by odd curses and obscure bits of magic, mesmerized to the point of obsession, dancing over the brink between dangerous and lethal without much of a care for the damages that ensued.
Today was no different. Godric wanted to punch something because he knew that saving the boy – Ignotus – was only one of the reasons why Salazar had locked himself up in the Infirmary, under wards too thick for Godric to go through. The Parselmouth had an experiment to finish, and curiosity was too beseeching for him to resist. And if he got killed in the process and left Godric alone, well –
There was a murmur of falling silk when Helga moved, half-rising to her feet, looking wary as she reached for him. Godric stepped back and shook his head. I'm fine, he lied with a smile, hands raised to tell Helga to sit back. She looked lovely in this wan, cloud-filtered light, golden hair spun with moonsilver and tan skin glowing in its shroud of darkness. Don't worry about me. I'll wait outside.
The woman didn't seem convinced, but she settled back on the stairs, motions slow and measured. Alright. Don't do anything rash, she said with a parting wave, and Godric shot a mischievous grin that had her smother a smile.
Potter didn't budge when Godric strode past him. The boy had his eyes closed, forehead resting against the staircase railings. His dark hair fell across his face, hiding his expression. He looked asleep but for the tight set of his shoulders, the white-knuckled fist on his lap. He whole body was coiled tight, tense in the focused way of a beast preparing to spring. Not for the first time, Godric wondered what kind of relationship tied him to Salazar, what earned this dedication, the way Salazar sometimes looked at him, as though he were an intricate spell for him to unravel.
Potter intrigued Godric, too, raised his hackles because something was different about this boy. There were hidden depth to him, things that were off, that didn't fit, from the disparities in his knowledge to the steel in his eyes. He knew things he shouldn't, didn't know things he should, and everything that he was screamed of troubled past, of jagged scars that weren't just skin-deep. Godric had met countless men like him before, death-stained and world-weary. They were the kind who he had seen raid villages for a handful of coin, kill and rape just because they could.
But –
But Godric had been trained since childhood, honed and sharpened into a perfect weapon. He could look at a man and tell if he was a threat by the shift in his eyes, by the way he held himself, and he could react accordingly, all in the half-instant after they met. And Harry –
Harry didn't register as a threat. He was lost and disoriented perhaps, but for all that his eyes sometimes hardened to uncut diamonds, he was kind. A hard-working student who threw all of himself in his classes, who was always there to offer his Housemates a helping hand. He had trudged through the filth of the world and come out unbroken if a little frayed, and that was something Godric could respect, if nothing else.
Another shadowy corridor and Godric vaulted over a windowsill, knees bent to smooth his landing. Torches flared to life around the courtyard, driving away the cover of night, scintillating off sword-steel and cobblestone. Cold air slid down his throat, crisp and bracing like melting ice.
The spell was quick and easy, something he had created in the lonely years following his mother's death, a hopeless cry for guidance; a sigh, a touch of will, and glittering rocks were rolling on the ground, assembling like a wind-shaped fog gleaming with moonlight. Quicksilver for the blade, shiny and lethal, coal-black for the face, changing and featureless, and eyes like forge-fires, intense and burning.
Godric drew out his sword, scabbard clattering out of sight, and bowed low to the coalesced shade. "Would you care for a dance?" he asked, and his creation bowed back, sword lifting in a graceful arch.
It was like fighting a warrior made of mist, fast and deadly, that skimmed just out of reach, twirled and danced like wildfire. Godric became flowing motions that blurred into one another, familiar as breathing, the sleek pull of his body that bent and twisted on a whim, the feel of air whistling against his sword like the softest music. He lost himself, let everything fall away, drown into the night cradling him until he was loose and breathless and he could feel himself settle back into his bones.
He could live without Salazar, even though sometimes it felt like he'd forgotten how to. He could live and be complete, no matter how much it'd hurt. He had followed this man to the end of the earth and back, would do it again without a heartbeat of hesitation, but for all that their lives were intertwined and better for it, who they were didn't stop where the other ended. Salazar was his best friend, cherished and precious beyond words, but Godric wasn't accountable for the choices he made. He could only accept and live with them, pick up the pieces afterwards and move on with what was left.
One last step, a downward slash that aimed true and Godric spun away, let the construct shatter on the ground, scatter like stardust and disappear.
"Good show, Gryffindor," a voice called from the darkness, soft and amused, and Godric didn't startle because he had felt her there, hidden in clouds and shadows, and he'd let her slid into place, welcomed in his solitude.
"Hello Ravenclaw," he said, half-turning to face the woman. She lingered in the doorway, opalescent in the starlight, eyes burning bright in the vastness of space, fey-like and beautiful. A cascade of night-black hair spilled freely over a deep-hooded winter cloak that fell over her thighs, leaving bare tight trousers and knee-high boots. "Out for a stroll?"
She gave a tight smile, stepped out into the courtyard. Torch fire washed over her, glimmering bronze on her skin. "Busy doing property damage?" she snapped back, because bantering was just about the only way they knew how to communicate.
Godric rolled his eyes. He resented that accusation. "Coming from the woman who nearly blew up the West Wing – "
"That was an accident and you know it, you obnoxious twat." But Rowena was smiling, swift and lovely.
Godric huffed a laugh. He set down his sword. "What are you doing up, then?"
It wasn't uncommon for Rowena to seek him out early in the morning or late at night, blade in hand, asking for a spar. Of the four of them, she was the only one who hadn't had combat training when they met. Both Godric and Salazar had had weapon masters teaching them since childhood, and Helga had grown up among Vikings, where they taught girls to defend themselves the way they did boys. But Rowena, heiress to an important Pictish clan, had never been allowed to wield a sword, or hold bow, as was proper to her people's customs. "Would you like to learn?" Godric had asked her on a clear summer night while they watched Helga give Salazar a run for his money with twin axes she swung around in a most frightening manner, and Rowena's eyes had shone brighter than the sky above their heads. She'd taken the blade he presented her, and never gave it back. What she lacked in years of experience she made up with dedication, devouring every bit of information Godric gave her, every single motion, never forgetting a thing and throwing it all back at him with precise ruthlessness.
But tonight was not a night to spar, with Rowena too weakened by her illness and Godric too frayed by Salazar's stubbornness.
Rowena moved, hands unwinding from behind her back. Dark lacquered wood glittered in the dark, the round, inviting shape of a large bottle. "Up for a drink, firehead?"
Godric blinked, a slow, delighted smile curling his lips. "I love you, you hag," he declared, and it was heartfelt.
Rowena rolled her eyes, hopped on a windowsill, back against Hogwarts' stone, a foot braced on the ground. Godric joined her moments later, a leg crossed under the other's thigh, their knees touching. Rowena wasn't one for physical affection, and Godric knew better than to impose on her space, had learned to reign in his own habit to reach and touch around her, but though she wasn't one to cling, she didn't flinch away from small contacts anymore, and genuine warmth danced in her eyes when Godric was done settling comfortably on the narrow strip of rock.
She handed him the bottle. Godric took a swing, liquid amber burning as it glided down his throat. The night was cold, rustled through dead leaves with its bone-dry fingers. Darkness was thick, held the world in a suspended breath as it bit through the layers of their clothes.
"There'll be snow soon," Rowena murmured, taking back the bottle. She drank. "Will your wife be back in time for winter? Won't be easy to travel once the roads freeze over."
"I don't know," Godric sighed. "The last letter came to me a month ago. She's headed into the desert."
He wasn't – worried, exactly. Marya was a capable witch, an admirable fighter, and her Company was one of the few Godric trusted. Falling behind the surface of the Earth for months at a time wasn't all that unusual for her. She was always moving, and Godric missed her. But he knew wanderlust sang to her the way it used to sing to him before he found a place worth calling home. He knew how tantalizing the cry of the unknown could be, how desperately alluring. So he never tried to make her stay. He knew he couldn't. She craved freedom, the endless burn of African deserts, the vertiginous infinity of rolling oceans, and these weren't entities Godric could hope to compete against. It didn't matter, though. He loved her. Had loved her since that first night in the heart an Iberian plain, when she had smiled at him under the stars, bright and impossibly beautiful as she took his hand, brought it to her hips, their clothes pooling at their feet. She always came back, and Godric always waited.
A piece of his heart travelled with her, this absence pulled at him like a hook in his gut, but it was a pain he was willing to bear, an ache he could live with, better than the alternative.
They had tried to settled down, once. When they were young and in love and foolish enough to believe they could twist both their natures into making their marriage work like any other. As though she could become insensitive to the pulse of adventure in her veins, as though he could ignore the claws Salazar had latched into his soul. It lasted a year. Before they were both nerve-frayed and miserable, shadows of who they were supposed to be. She had gone back into the wild, and Godric had watched her go with relief.
His only regret was their children. They had lived nomads' lives before Hogwarts, balanced between two parents that ran after dangerous dreams. Now that Godric had put an end to it, had built them a home and refused to force them back on the road, they rarely ever saw their mother. Only in short bursts, a few days here and there. She rushed into their lives smelling of ancient sands and foreign flowers, bringing strange gifts from faraway places. She loved them, but even they were not enough to hold her in place. She was less of a mother now, more of a crazy aunt whose visits were appreciated surprises.
Something must have shown on his face, because Rowena's foot nudged his side, merciless as her heel dug into his ribs.
"Ow!" Godric groaned in protest, rubbing at his abused flesh. He cast the woman a wounded glare. "Must you always be horrible to me?"
"Stop worrying, idiot," she growled, hitting him again. He grunted. "She'll be fine. She's a lot tougher than you."
Godric snatched the alcohol from her hands and organized a strategic retreat by means of a bottle-shaped shield. "I know she is," he grumbled, hugging the flagon closer to his chest. "Stop hitting me, woman! By the gods, did you come here only to torment me? Shouldn't you be in bed?"
Rowena scowled but relented, setting the talon she called foot across Godric's legs. "Helga wasn't there," she replied, tone short. "I'm sleeping with her."
And that was just too precious to let pass, wasn't it? Godric gave his brightest shit-eating grin. "Are you, now?" he purred, grin widening when her cheeks flamed up, becoming rouge visible even in the obscurity. Sweet was the taste of revenge. "My, my, Ravenclaw! And you didn't even tell your best fri – oof!" The pointy end of her boot found its way to his sternum. Choking for air, Godric continued, "You know I'll love you no matter wha – AH!" He ducked out of the way of a sickly-violet spell. It exploded against a wall. Solid stone fractured. "Dammit you old harpy, control your strength!"
Rowena smiled. It looked sinister. "I do," she replied in a sugar-coated tone that had had lesser men quaking in fear for their lives. Godric could feel cavities start forming at the sound. "Why aren't you the one battling an Obscurus? Salazar keeps much better company than you."
"Of course he bloody does," Godric muttered. The man charmed snakes with words alone. Sighing, he uncapped the bottle, which had miraculously survived Rowena's assault, and took another swing. "Seriously, though," he said, a little worried because Rowena's love for Helga was glaringly obvious to anyone who knew her, with the exception of the woman whom it concerned. "How are things?"
Rowena blinked with puzzled frown. "Fine – ?" she replied, a note of interrogation in her voice.
And it was good, would have fooled just about anyone, but Godric had lived with Salazar Slytherin since childhood, and Rowena's acting talents had nothing on the man's. Hints of tension knotted her shoulders, alarm darted in her eyes. "Suit yourself," Godric murmured, drinking again and handing her the bottle. He'd have to talk to Salazar. Godric was self-aware enough to know the other male could handle sentimental conundrums with a lot more tact than he himself was capable. And besides –
Rowena stiffened beside him, and his trains of thought shuddered to a stop at her sudden alertness.
"Ro – "
"Did you feel that?" she asked, gaze turned to the general direction of the Forest, hand a tight fist around her wand.
Godric scanned the darkness from his defensive crouch. He couldn't feel anything. Ear the distant sway of tall trees in the wind, smell rotting leaves at his feet, see shadows twist into the night. Nothing else. "Feel what?" he asked.
"I – just – " Rowena shook her head. "I'm not sure," she whispered. "Something that burnt cold? I – it's gone now." She sighed, head falling against the wall at her back. "Maybe I'm just tired."
"Right," Godric muttered. Rowena was the most magic-sensitive of the four of them. He grabbed his sword. "How about we head back? Helga will have my head if you're sicker tomorrow because of me."
His friend stood from their perch, and together they slipped back in the castle, unhurried.
"Shall we wait with Helga?" Rowena offered.
Godric nodded. The girls were terrifying in their own right, but he didn't feel like leaving them alone tonight. He was a guardian, a protector, and his every instincts rebelled against the thought. None of them was going to sleep anyway, not while Salazar was in danger.
They walked to the Entrance Hall, their footfalls rebounding lightly into the cushioned darkness around them. The deep, drowning blue of Hogwarts didn't feel as hostile with Rowena at his side, a serene presence that kept his worst instincts in check. She had that strange influence on him, on everyone she approached, an innate capacity to broaden minds with glances and whispers, to make people dream beyond their stark realities. She was much like wind descending from mountaintops that way, storming expectations in great chilly gusts and leaving upturned ground to build upon in her wake.
Potter and Helga had left the stairwell.
Something's happened, was Godric's first thought. Worry tightened his stomach, shivered along his limbs. He could perceive his surroundings in great details, the coarse friction of his clothes with each breaths, the cool caress of air on his face, the lazy dance of particles in the moonlight, and he knew his eyes had turned yellow, the lion in him surging to the surface at the threat on his pride, sleek and dangerous. If Salazar was hurt. If Salazar was dea –
Voices.
Godric whirled around, wand half-raised, and –
Froze.
Potter and Salazar stood alone at the end of a hallway, Ignotus' unconscious body floating on mist a few feet away. The two men faced each other, their skin glowing silver in the light spilling from a high window. They looked intangible like this, two timeless ghosts waking to dance together in the slow pulse of the night that cradled them. They seemed to have stopped their music-less waltz mid-beat, Harry's hand on Salazar's waist, Salazar's hand on Harry's shoulder, one looking up and the other down, twilight standing still over motionless features.
"Oh," Godric breathed, soft and surprised. Salazar was alive, he was well, and that was good, it was a crushing weight lifting from his chest. But the sweet, knee-melting relief that swelled in him to the beat of his heart wasn't what locked him in place, what kept him from running to his friend.
It was the wondrous smile curling Salazar's lips, the tenderness gleaming in his eyes.
Godric knew where Salazar's interests laid, had found enough naked, boneless men in the other's bed to understand all-too well.
He had been fourteen – fifteen? – the first time it had happened. He had kissed a few girls already, knew what having them against him felt like, the swell of their breasts, the softness of their skin, excitement sparkling in his veins. He had never seen Salazar with a girl, but hadn't asked about it. It had felt out of bounds, somehow, so he had kept his silence, vaguely intrigued but atypically respectful.
Then, one day, he had gone to their usual meeting place to find Salazar pressed against a wall, hands bunched up in the lapels of another man's jacket. Godric had almost killed that stranger on sight, blood boiling with rage because Salazar was his friend, and he'd gut that man for touching him, before he'd realised Salazar was pulling him close, not pushing him away, angling his head so that their lips could meet and merge.
"Are you mad at me?" Salazar had asked hours later, after sneaking into a deserted corner of the castle's rose garden to see him. Godric remembered the honeyed smell of the flowers from that spring day, the redness of Salazar's lips. "Of course not," he had answered, because Salazar was his, and he was Salazar's, so what did it matter who the other boy liked to kiss anyway? "Aren't you afraid, though?" And Salazar had laughed at him, quiet and mocking. "Why should I be?" he had replied. "I can't help who I like. And I'm already one thing that'd see me dead, what's another? It's either the stake or the stones for me. At least I have some choice." "Fair enough," Godric had told him after consideration, and there had been that.
For a while, anyway. There had been other boys afterwards, and Godric had watched from a distance, careful to step away when they made an appearance because his fingers always itched for his sword at the thought of them, these nameless men he didn't trust with his friend's heart. He'd made sure Salazar was safe, that no one could find him, because if Godric had a right to spend time with women, then surely Salazar had a right to this, too. He had erased a few memories, led astray a few guards, and everything had been fine.
But he'd wondered.
One night that Salazar's master had been out of town and the two of them could afford a whole evening together, talking about magic in that small room with curious herbs, creaking floorboards and floating candles, Godric had caught himself observing the play of light on the angles of Salazar's face, the slant of his cheekbones, the bow of his lips.
Salazar had closed his book, had set it aside and straightened from his slouch on the floor by Godric's legs. "You can kiss me, you know," he had said, and Godric remembered feeling his heart stutter, his stomach drop like he'd fallen from a tree. "You've been thinking about it all week." Salazar had slid into a sitting position, slow and languid, until he'd eased himself between Godric's knees as though he'd done it a hundred times before, a hand high on Godric's thigh. "Kiss me, Godric," he had ordered before fitting their mouths together, gentle and deliberate, the teasing sweep of his tongue against tingling flesh, the tantalizing scrap of his teeth with the barest suggestion of heat behind it.
Godric had kept his eyes open even as he kissed back, as a long-fingered hand carded through his hair and tilted his head to a side, a demanding strength in the motion that had been different from anything he had felt before, though not entirely unpleasant. He had kept his eyes open because it would have been easy – oh so easy – to close them and imagine softer lips against his own, fuller curves under his hands, and that wouldn't have been right towards his friend. It wouldn't have been fair. To Salazar, with his long hair, his careless disregard for gender expectation. Salazar who had lingered in that time between boy and man without all its awkward gawkiness. Who, before his shoulders broadened and his face hardened, had been all slender waist and lithe limbs, a kind of attractiveness that had toyed with what people called pretty.
It hadn't been right, or fair, or a good idea.
Salazar had smiled against his lips, spit-slick and amused. "There you go," he'd whispered, drawing back. "Glad we got that out of our systems."
They had gone on with their lives, but today still, Godric found himself asking what if? What if he hadn't drawn back, what if he'd wished to take Salazar to bed and Salazar had let him? What could they have been, as lovers? They already pulled each other apart as friends. Would it have built them back as better men? Would it have destroyed them both completely? Godric would never know. But now that he was watching this –
The way Salazar looked at Potter wasn't entirely unfamiliar, except that it was. New and unfamiliar and entirely unexpected. He had seen Salazar look at his lovers with affection, with lust, with passion, but never with this. This was intimacy. This was –
"Interesting, isn't it?" Rowena whispered beside him. Harry and Salazar started to walk away, arms intertwined, and the woman watched them go with pensive eyes. "Want to take bets, Gryffindor?"
Still reeling, Godric turned to her, mind elsewhere. "Sorry?" he mumbled.
"Bets," Rowena repeated with deliberate slowness, making known with her tone what she thought of his mental faculties. "About how long it's going to take Salazar to have Potter in his bed."
"What?" That was – Salazar was his friend and Harry was his student, he couldn't put a wager on their relationship.
"You heard me. I'm guessing before half of the next school year. And I want the dragonscaled cloak you bought two summers ago." Rowena shot him a smirk. "Unless you're too much of a chicken to want to play?"
Now, that was just laughable. "Are you crazy, woman?" Godric scoffed. "Harry is from his House. Won't happen before eight months into next year. You shall weep and give me the explosive tags you stole in China. All the explosive tags. Even the dragon you sneaked out when you thought Helga wasn't looking."
Rowena scowled at him. "You'll choke on your words, Gryffindor. Deal."
"May the best man win, then."
"May the – come back here you little shit!"
Godric laughed all the way back to his tower.
{. . .}
The common room was dim and quiet, silver lanterns burning low from the ceiling, dying embers ghostly in large hearths, shining faintly in the gloomy darkness. Windows cast a dark green watery glow to their surroundings, wavering over rug-covered stone floors and ornate blackwood tables. The Lake was sloshing gently against glass-panes, the sound comforting and familiar, a heavy shield from the night outside.
Harry set Ignotus down on a leather couch, Salazar on another, an arm sliding around the man's waist to help him sit. Worry nagged at him when the Founder did not protest at the motion. He hadn't talked all the way from the Great Hall to the Dungeons, lost deep in thought, away from Harry's reach for all that he'd been pressed against his side. Harry wondered if he should find Helga to make sure he was all right.
"Please don't," Salazar muttered, head falling back against the couch as he stretched, arms over his head, lazy and careful. His thoughts were a muted buzz in Harry's mind. "Let me escape this incident with some of my self-esteem intact."
"You won't need self-esteem if you're dead," Harry pointed out reasonably. He conjured a quilt with a flick of his wand and tucked the warm wool around Ignotus' shoulders. The child slept on, sighing in contentment as he burrowed deeper under his blanket. His face was no longer contorted in pain. Harry brushed a strand of dark hair away from his thin face, fingers skirting, delicate, over soft skin. He felt oddly protective of that boy. He had fought a monster for him, had almost lost Salazar for him. A bond existed between them, forged out of fear and blood and darkness, a strange sense of familiarity that shook Harry to his core. "What are you going to do with him?" he asked Salazar, voice quiet. "With his brothers?" He didn't want to see them being sent away.
"I won't send them away," Salazar answered. A pause. "I can't."
Harry frowned. He went to sit beside the Founder, kicking off his boots and crossing his legs. "You can't?" he repeated. "What d'you mean?" There was a flash inside his head, a glimpse of silver-cold steel biting into pale flesh, carving a precise curling rune despite pain shocking up his nerves, sharp but well-known. Blood, liquid blackness in the moonlight, welled up in graceful arches, encased the small bodies in front of him, sank down –
A breath, deep and startled, and Harry dragged himself free of Salazar's memories, vivid bursts part of him wanted to drown into, dive down and never come back for air. He shook his head. "Wait," he said, comprehension dawning on him in a sudden, dazing flare. "Wait, Salazar. Did you – Are you – "
"Don't say it," Salazar muttered, eyes closing as though he were in pain.
"Are you a dad?"
"Fuck you," the Founder growled. "I'm not. Their father was an abusive prick who deserved the sword Antioch shoved in his back. I just – "
"Blood-adopted them," Harry finished for him. "Oh God." One of these kids would father Voldemort's bloodline. Harry was reeling. He wasn't sure what to feel. "Can't say I was expecting that. You have children."
Salazar mouthed something in a foreign language, gaze going skyward. "I need a drink," he declared. His mind stirred with bone-deep exhaustion, and the faintest glimmer of uncertainty.
Oh, Harry thought, startled. For all that he'd come to understand that Salazar was very much human, to know that this poised, confidant man could feel something as mundane as doubt came as more of a surprise than it likely should. "Don't freak out," he ordered, thinking quickly. "It's not like they're babies. Antioch already thinks himself an adult. It can't be very different from what you're doing with the House. And you won't be alone. The others will help. I'll help, too." And he was not going to reflect on that spontaneous offer, thanks very much.
Salazar chuckled, soft and low, shadows shifting with the curl of his lips, accentuating the curves and slants of his face. His eyes were storm-black in the fuzzy gleam of the fireplace. Harry looked away. Algae were swaying with the swirls of black-green waters, shoals of fish swam by the widows, spectral shapes gliding out of sight.
"You should go to bed," he told the Founder, quiet.
A non-committal hum. Harry glanced sideways. Salazar had closed his eyes, head bent backwards to rest on the couch's padding, his hair a waterfall of dark strands on his shoulders. Harry went to touch his arm. Stopped.
"I can't sleep yet," Salazar murmured without opening his eyes. "Not with Ignotus still unstable. Tell me something, Harry. Anything. Keep me here."
"I – " Harry swallowed. The Founder was a tenuous caress in the back of his mind, evanescent, fading like a tide receding to distant shores, muted as sleep crept on him, heavy and inviting. Anything, he had said. What story could Harry share? He didn't know many fairytales, had never had anyone to read him bedtime stories. A story of his own, then? Samhain was thick, smelled of ripe apples and fresh pumpkins, just outside the sheltered circle of the common room, all grotesque smiles and black burning candles. Harry knew what to say. "Did I ever tell you about the time my friends and I took out a mountain troll?"
He wasn't used to telling stories. He was used to living them, to having them etched into his nights, into his every haunting nightmare, but the whole world seemed to know his life better than he knew it himself; he rarely needed to talk. Rarely wanted to as well, because once the words were out of his mouth, they belonged to everyone else to twist and slander as they pleased. But Salazar was a calm presence brushing against his consciousness, grounding and intrigued , and Harry found himself thinking that telling stories could be something to enjoy rather than fear. He spoke halting at first, slow and hesitant, before gaining confidence as Salazar's interest grew with each sentence, a little more awake with each word he uttered.
He told the man about Ron, his bright red hair and pale blue eyes and long freckled nose. His fear of spiders, his tactlessness, his will to step out of his brothers' shadows. How he joked, trumped Harry at chess, waited for him after detention. The unwavering support of his friendship when they were boys, his brash willingness to follow Harry in combat before their relationship crashed and burned.
He told Salazar about Hermione. Her bushy brown hair and shining brown eyes and large front teeth. The nervousness she shielded under piles of books, the know-it-all attitude that alienated her from the House. How she reasoned Harry down from his high horses, pushed him to do his homework, always knew when he wasn't feeling well and gave advice without his needing to ask for it. The level-headed brilliance of her that kept Harry from losing his mind, the loyalty to stuck by his side through grim and gore, to the very end.
"She was with me at Stonehenge," said Harry to Salazar, who was looking at him fixedly from his end of the couch. "She escaped before it went crazy." He closed his eyes, a shudder of apprehension lacing his spine. "I hope she's alright." That was his most fervent wish. Sometimes, fear for her fate, for Ron's, for the world he'd left behind, was so potent that Harry could not even breathe. Its choking hold on his throat kept him awake at night, drove him from his bed and towards his books, his sword, his wand.
"You love this woman," said Salazar, his tone soft, his face guarded.
Harry blinked. It didn't sound like a question, but he answered anyway. "Yeah, I do," he said, because it was true. "She's my best friend."
He told Salazar about their first months at Hogwarts, before they were friends, when everything was still new and confounding but already tasted of home. He talked about Ron's grumbling annoyance at the friendless girl who outsmarted him in Charms, about how he made her cry and miss the Hallowe'en Feast. The smell of caramelised sugar and candied squash had made them forget, until a bumbling fool of a teacher burst into the Hall, yelling about dungeons and mountain troll. Harry talked about taking Ron's hand and running through empty corridors echoing with the fading rumble of a hundred feet, their hearts loud in their ears, night-dimed candle flames lighting their way. The stinking grey-green mass of the troll, his smell of old socks and public toilet, Hermione trapped in a lavatory with that club-wielding terror. The rest had been broken porcelain, cutting screams, a yelled spell, and the start of a friendship that would survive pride and loss and war.
Salazar was silent after Harry's voice faded, his gaze calm and inscrutable. He pushed to his feet, went to check Ignotus' pulse, the state of his wounds. "You've had a movemented life, haven't you?" he said at length. "I wish I could ask about the stories you don't want me to know."
"I know you do."
Salazar smiled at him, wry with a bitter edge, a hand pressed to the youngest Peverell's forehead. "Yet you resent my lack of truthfulness," he said, detached, and the words, though devoid of hurtful intent, were like a blow to Harry's face. "You and I are more alike than you realise, Harry."
Harry closed his eyes in the pregnant silence that followed, the gurgle of lack water and Ignotus' deep breath the only noises he could hear. Salazar was right. He felt betrayed at all the things the Founder hid from him, at his unreadable eyes, at the disconcerting ambiguity of their relationship. But that was hypocritical of him, wasn't it? All Harry had been doing since being hurtled to Medieval times was lie. Lie and deceive and lie again. To his Housemates, to Salazar. Bits and pieces of his past regulated his every interactions with the man, kept him on edge despite how much Harry trusted him, tainted every word exchanged with the weight of all that was left unsaid. In retrospective, Salazar keeping his distance wasn't very surprising. How could Harry expect to be trusted with unimpeded honesty, if he didn't trust as well? It wasn't fair for any of them, but –
But what could he say? You're a monster in my time, Salazar. A scary story parents tell their children at night. The man who betrayed his friends, his school, for the sake of a bigoted ideology that's tearing our world apart. It all started with you, you know. The war and Voldemort and me. You made me, Salazar. Forged me out of fire and death. That why I don't trust you, not as much as I should. You hide because I do. But if what you hide are the seeds of what History has made of you, then you can never know. Who I am, what I am. Because you could destroy me, Salazar, if I gave you any more of myself. You could destroy me, and I can't let that happen, for the sake of the people I left behind. You are right, in a way. You and I are very much alike.
"I know we are," Harry whispered in a trembling breath. "I'm beginning to understand that." And it scares me out of my mind.
"Oh, Harry." Salazar stepped away from Ignotus, closer to him. His mouth opened, then closed again without a word rolling from his lips, the echoes of half-formed thoughts skimming the surface of Harry's mind.
Won't you talk for the both of us? But Harry knew the man would stay silent even as the sentence drifted between them, lost in the space that separated their bodies. Salazar shook his head in puzzlement or denial. Took another step. Harry could not remember getting on his feet until his head was tilted up to look at the Founder that stood just a breath away, sharing the same air, the few inches between them like a cliff plunging into the ocean, dizzying and vertiginous, its pull irresistible as a Siren's call. And Salazar nudged Harry closer to its brink when he raised a hand, slowly, deliberately, a question and the possibility to step back and away in his eyes. But Harry didn't move. Could never bring himself to move, shake his head and refuse, not when faced with risks and dangers that would reduce most men to tears, and not now.
Long fingers brushed his skin, threaded through his hair, traced the reliefs of his scar, lingered on the damaged flesh, delicate and impossibly soft, an air of utter concentration on Salazar's face, and Harry released a shuddering sigh he hadn't realised he had been holding, his heart a low, heady beat in his chest. It was all over between a breath and the next, ephemeral like a green flash of sunlight before nightfall, gone before Harry could start to comprehend what was happening. Salazar fell back, hand and warmth and thoughts, drew away in every way possible like nothing had transpired and left Harry to stumble at the loss, confused and unsteady in a way he hadn't been before.
"Go now," said Salazar.
And so he went.
A.N: omfg. Godric. You elusive bastard. Took me two weeks to figure him out. Two. And a half. Stuck on the first bloody paragraph. Which I then changed completely. And even after getting how I was going to write him, he kept digging in his heels and going, 'Nope. You got that wrong. Delete those last two pages and try again.' Nghgh.
Harry, on the other hand, pretty much wrote himself. That last scene? I hadn't planned it. Salazar told me to back the F down, and went to do this. He's a dad, now. He can do things. Jesus.
About lineage: The Gaunt family descends from Cadmus Peverell, and, as Voldemort is also linked to the Slytherin bloodline, Slytherin and Peverell had to be related. Salazar being very much gay, I had to get him to have kids to solve this plot hole. Hence fanon blood-adoption.
Also, I finally found the strength to go and have a look at the first chapters. I very firmly told myself I was just going to edit a few sentences, correct some mistakes. Which is, of course, the reason why I ended up re-writing the prologue, and chapters 1 and 2, and modifying chapters 4 and 5. Nothing has changed plot-wise, so you can go on without re-reading them, but there were some slight changes made to Harry and Salazar's first real conversation.
This chapter's title was inspired by Barns Courtney's Glitter and Gold song, which I think rather falls into Gryffindor House's aesthetics.