Special thanks go to bissek for suggesting today's disclaimer.

Disclaimer: Was Malfoy able to loudly and publicly call for the genocide of his fellow students without being punished? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

Chapter 25
The Heir of Slytherin

Walking up the pathway to the large cabin on the edge of the school grounds, Harry could not help but reconsider whether or not this was really a good plan. Yes, he had been shocked and dismayed at the emaciated condition of the horses – which were apparently properly named thestrals, according to the copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them he had purchased the previous year – that had drawn the school carriages, but after reading the extremely brief description, much of his anger at the school staff had burnt itself out. The book said that thestrals could turn invisible, which could explain why the groundskeeper or stable master or whoever had not noticed just how thin the creatures were. It didn't explain why no one else had noticed their state when he could, but that might just be yet another oddity of the magical world.

He shook his head now that he had reached his destination. No, he would not be as confrontational as he had thought off and on about being, but it was still a talk that needed to happen. He had learned from listening in to the rest of his housemates' conversations the year before that the gigantic man who led the first-years on their initial approach to the castle, Rubeus Hagrid, was also the groundskeeper, and while he did not know for a fact that this was who he needed to talk to about the thestrals, it was as good a starting point as any. Shaking his head, he gave the tall door two solid knocks.

Silence.

Just as he was raising his hand to knock again, a deep voice rumbled from behind him. "What are yeh doin' here?"

Harry did his best to keep the surprise from showing on his face and turned around. Sure enough, there was the very man he wanted to see, and in the light of the Saturday morning, he really was much larger than Harry had remembered. "Not often I get Slytherins comin' to see me," Hagrid said in the brief silence after his unexpected greeting. "What do yeh want?"

"Well, Mr. Hagrid—"

"Just Hagrid," the groundskeeper cut in, waving one hand dismissively. It would have been more effective if the motion had not reinforced the fact that this man's hands were as large as dustbins. "None o' tha' mister stuff fer me."

He blinked in surprise. "Okay, then. Hagrid. I wanted to talk to you about the thestrals. I noticed on the ride up to the castle that they didn't look… healthy."

"Yeh can see the thestrals?"

"Yes…" he said slowly. "I know they can be invisible, but surely it's not that surprising for someone to see them. Is it?"

"It's jus' not many can see 'em," Hagrid explained. "Takes a certain type o' person, it does. I guess it's not tha' much o' a surprise tha' yeh can, though…" the enormous wizard said, trailing off and eyeing Harry speculatively.

If this was going to be another instance of how he was 'obviously' a budding Dark wizard just because the Sorting Hat had sent him to Slytherin, he was going to scream. "And why isn't it a surprise that I can, then?"

"Yer parents." At Harry's blank look, Hagrid said in a gentle voice that was at odds with his sheer size, "If yeh want to see the thestrals, yeh have ter see someone die first."

Ah. Harry broke his brief staring contest with the man and looked into the trees. Even if that Halloween night had not been enough, there were always the slavers or the Parisian vampire he had set on fire. Quirrell, too, though he had not actually watched the man's final moments. That was… probably more death than the average eleven-year-old would be expected to deal with.

"Right, well," he began, forcing his thoughts from that dark path and back to the reason he was there in the first place. "Ignoring the whys of my being able to see the thestrals, I still wanted to talk to you about their health."

Instead of giving him a confused or angry expression at his interference, Hagrid just chuckled and nodded. "Cause they're all skin an' bones? They look like no one's takin' care o' 'em like they should?"

"More or less," he admitted slowly. Laughter was not the response he had expected, and now he was more glad than ever that he had started off being polite. Clearly he was missing something.

Hagrid nodded and waved a hand for him to follow along. "Come with me. It's a little early fer lunch fer 'em, but I don' think they'll mind too much." And then the gigantic wizard walked around the side of the cabin to a large box halfway buried in the ground that, once he pulled the lid open, was revealed to be full of butchered cows.

"They're… horses, aren't they?" he had to ask, his hand drifting absently to the pockets where he had stuffed a couple of apples.

"Yeah, but they're not picky about what yeh feed 'em like yeh'd think. They'll eat jus' about anythin'. Meat's jus' a lot easier ter feed 'em with than a bunch o' hay."

The pair walked toward a spot at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, a small gate blocking off a narrow path that meandered through the trees. At the end of that path, perhaps a ten-minute walk in total, they entered a clearing in the grove. The trees around the edges hemmed them in, and above their branches tangled together to block out nearly all the sunlight. The entire natural paddock was shrouded in shadows, and Harry's heart started racing as he noted all the places something could be hiding.

A loud, shrieking call came from next to him, and he jumped away from Hagrid. The oversized wizard smiled sheepishly while dropping half of a cow carcass on the ground. "Sorry about tha'. They like ter know it's me. And there's one now."

Harry whipped his head around to see the long, reptilian face poking out from the gloom. The thestral peered at him with wide, pearly eyes for a moment before it slipped between the trees. Its body was just as skeletal as the first time Harry had seen it, and it swished its long tail before trotting up to the side of beef and taking large bites. As if that were the signal the rest of the herd was waiting for, more thestrals ghosted into sight and made their way to the carcass.

"When I first started takin' care o' 'em, I was sure they was bein' starved," the man confessed. "Fed 'em five times a day, sometimes almost started shovin' food down their throats. Took me a while afore I realized tha's jus' how thestrals look. Never seen a fat thestral. And they'll let yeh know when they're sick, too. Turn a real pale grey an' don' want to walk around. Got ter feed 'em pig blood outta a bottle ter get 'em ter turn around. Still look like skeletons even then."

A soft clip-clop sounded from behind him, and Harry turned in time to see a foal, just as emaciated as its elders, approach and bend its head down to take deep sniffs of his pockets. A quiet chuckle slipped out as he pulled one of the apples out and held it up for the baby thestral to take a quick bite, half the fruit disappearing. With a happy nicker, it stuffed its mouth with the rest and made its way over to its parents.

Harry just laughed and wiped his hand on his robes to get rid of the slobber.

"Yeh like animals, Harry?" Hagrid asked. A smile peeked out from the thick beard, and he was leaning back against one of the broad trees making up the wall of the paddock.

He thought for a moment. He had never really considered if he was an animal person, mostly because he had never been allowed to have a pet and so had never had reason to think about it, but he had to admit that the thestrals were definitely gorgeous creatures. And the one trip he had gone on to the zoo following mucking about in the Dursleys' head had definitely been fun. "I guess. Yeah, I do. I don't have any pets of my own, though." The foal ran up to him again – or was this a different one? – and began smelling him again, only stopping when its nose found his other pocket and the second apple. "Then again, I don't think my relatives have the room to keep an invisible horse."

Hagrid laughed lightly. "Most likely not. I've always liked animals, too. More than people, sometimes," he admitted with a sad shake of his head. "They're a lot easier ter understand, an' they don' treat yeh different jus' 'cause yeh don' look like everybody else."

He nodded in complete agreement once his pockets were completely empty of food and his hands occupied by curious foal.

"Yeh have to pick yer extra classes this year, don' yeh?" the large wizard asked. When Harry nodded again, he continued, "If yeh like animals, yeh'll like Kettleburn's Care o' Magical Creatures class. He has a lot o' interestin' beasties."

Harry's petting of the baby thestral stilled. He had not thought much about what classes he would have to sign up for, mostly because he still was not sure that he would be returning for the next year. The nights of the previous week had been dedicated to finding useful spells in The Standard Book of Spells for the sixth and seventh years, a few copies of which were kept in the library, and though he had not yet tried any of them out, he soon would. If he could succeed in learning them entirely from a book, most of the reason for sticking around in Hogwarts rather than learning magic on his own after regular school would vanish; Snape, Quirrell, and Lockhart had already proved that it was possible for Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts, after all, and Transfiguration was unlikely to be any different from the other wanded disciplines. "I'll think about it," he said finally.

Despite the ambivalence of his response, Hagrid smiled happily and waved his hand over the paddock. "Yeh can come visit 'em after yer classes if yeh want. Real social beasts, thestrals, an' they always like havin' company. Gotta warn yeh, though. Brin' a couple o' turkey legs, an' yeh won' be able ter leave without a couple o' foals tryin' ter follow yeh out."

"That's… Thanks, Hagrid."

Hagrid just nodded and pushed himself to his feet. "I've still got things to do. Yeh can make it back to the school on yer own?"

"I should be able to," he agreed. "Same path we took before, right?"

"Tha's the one. Another good thin' about thestrals: they can be real territorial. Don' let anythin' get in their part o' the forest tha' they don' want in. So long as yeh stay on the path, yeh don' have ter worry about bein' in any danger. The rest o' the Forest isn' quite so safe."

"Thanks for the warning. I'll stay out of there," he promised.

"Good. It'll be different when yer a fully trained wizard, but right now it's too dangerous ter go wanderin' about." Hagrid stomped off, and Harry returned his attention back to the crowd of foals his presence had attracted.

He knew where he was going to spend some of his Saturdays now, that was for sure.

October came and went in a flurry of rain and thunder, and even now on Halloween night, a storm was still pelting the transparent ceiling with fat raindrops. Harry, however, did not have to worry about the cold or the rain at all, not when he was safe in the warm, dry Great Hall stuffing himself with the feast laid out before him. Finally, he leaned away from the last crumbs of treacle tart lying on his plate and watched the first few students leave the Hall. He would wait a few minutes before following, just to give his stomach a little bit of time to settle—

A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the room, and he leapt to his feet, all thoughts of taking his time forgotten. His eyes immediately shot to the Hufflepuff's table and fell on Sally-Anne, Hannah, and Susan. The three of them were safe. Good. That was one worry off his mind. By now more of the students had risen and were pouring out the door to see for themselves just what had caused the commotion, and he followed them to confirm his terrible suspicion. "This is the great danger Dobby warned me about, isn't it?"

"More likely than not," Lash agreed, her face fixed in a stern frown.

With a little bit of pushing and shoving and not a few instances of squeezing past people along the walls, Harry soon found just what had incited the panic now gripping the faces of the assembled students. From one of the torch brackets hung a lumpy, dust-colored thing, a puddle of bright red spreading out beneath it. A blink, and Harry realized what it was. "Filch's cat?" Looking next to Mrs. Norris, the bottom of his stomach fell out when he noticed the foot-tall words painted onto the wall in red that he hoped was paint but knew was truly the cat's blood.

TEETH GNASH IN DISGUST.
MOST WROTH, SLYTHERIN'S HEIR SHALT
RAZE THIS HOUSE OF FILTH.

Glancing over to his angel, he murmured, "Slytherin's heir? Did any of the books you read talk about Slytherin's family?"

"What?" Lash looked back at him, her eyes and attention no longer so piercingly focused on the words. "Oh, no. There was some information about Slytherin, but no mention of him having any children or naming any heirs."

"What's going on here?!" a loud voice demanded, and the sea of students parted to make way for Argus Filch. The unpleasant man's eyes immediately fell on the cat, and took a staggering step forwards. "Mrs. Norris? My cat!" Whirling around, his mud-colored gaze flickered around across everyone's face, his own expression frozen in a rictus of fury and hate. "Which one of you's done it?! Which of you little monsters murdered my cat?! I'll kill you! I'll—"

"Argus! What is the meaning—" Dumbledore's rebuke cut itself off when the headmaster, along with most of the rest of the staff, swept through the crowd to the scene of the crime. His eyes passed over the cat in favor of the words on the wall, and his blue gaze was bright with anger. After a moment, he looked instead at the teenaged spectators, almost as if he were daring one of them to be stupid enough to claim credit for this.

Harry, too, looked over his fellows, and what he saw disgusted him. Most of the school, thankfully, was in shock at the scene before them, but several of his own Housemates were watching with some sort of sick delight. Malfoy, in fact, was standing in the front of the crowd and eyeing everything with poorly disguised glee. He looked away and accidentally met eyes with Dumbledore. If he were worried that he would be blamed for this, it would have been for nothing; after a second, the headmaster looked away.

"We will find who is responsible for this," the elderly wizard warned them darkly. "If you were involved or know who was, it is in your best interest to come forward. I assure you, your punishment will be worlds worse if you try to hide." A moment passed in weighty silence. "Very well. If that is how you wish to do things, so be it. Prefects, take your students back to your common rooms. Anyone who is caught wandering the halls will wish they were merely receiving detention. Argus, come with me, that's a good man…"

The Slytherin prefects forced their way to the front and commanded, "You heard Dumbledore. Get going!"

"Five, seven, and five," Lash muttered as she trailed along beside him on the way back to the dungeons.

"What?"

"The number of syllables in each line of that 'declaration'. If I did not know better, I would think it a haiku. A form of Japanese poetry," she explained to his uncomprehending stare.

Her explanation really did not shed any light on the subject, though. "Why would someone write a warning as a Japanese poem?"

"That is just one aspect of this situation that makes absolutely no sense."

The Slytherins piled into the common room, and that was when the chattering began.

"… The Heir. He's finally here? …"

"… You know it's all nonsense. Just someone playing a prank …"

"… Can't say I mind someone finally getting rid of that damn cat …"

"… But who is this Heir person?"

The conversations slowed to a halt at that innocent question, and the first-year who had voiced it shrank back from the incredulous stares from what seemed to be the entire House. "Who is the Heir?" demanded an older student, striding forwards into the space that had cleared up around the girl. "How did you get into Slytherin without knowing the story of our founder and his promise to cleanse the school of all the undeserving filth that have infested it?!"

"My parents were both Ravenclaws," the first-year squeaked.

The older boy huffed in disgust. "Fine. Park it, girl. Does anyone else somehow not know this story?"

"Just tell it, Bert!" a voice yelled from the back. "Everyone knows you want to."

"Shut up, Marcus! If you already know all this, go away. The rest of you, stick around." No one moved, and with another loud sigh, Bert dropped into one of the overstuffed armchairs scattered around the room. "Bunch of idiots. Girl, here," he told the first-year, pointing to the floor next to his chair. "In fact, all of you firsties. Sit.

"All right. I'm going to assume that none of you know anything and start from the top," he continued, glaring at the assembled eleven-year-olds. "Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago by the four greatest wizards and witches of their day. Godric Gryffindor, a blustering fool; Helga Hufflepuff, who couldn't hear a sob story without being taken in; Rowena Ravenclaw, who was a bookworm if there ever was one but at least did know how to do what she set out to do; and Salazar Slytherin, who was the true driving force behind Hogwarts's creation. They built a school here in this valley so they could teach their students away from the superstitious Muggles, who were rightfully frightened of just what we could do to them if our tempers were roused and sought to be rid of us because they were too small-minded to recognize our superiority. For a few years, the four Founders worked together in relative piece, each teaching the students his or her area of expertise.

"Soon enough, however, Slytherin grew wise of the danger posed by the mudbloods Gryffindor and Hufflepuff insisted on bringing into Hogwarts. Unlike true wizards, mudbloods did not know the first thing about magic, and unable to keep up, they forced everyone else to learn at their own pace, which meant the students were leaving the school knowing less magic and being less capable than the year ahead of them. Rumors also sprang up that these mudbloods were actually stealing magic from real wizards, siphoning it off and implanting it into unremarkable Muggle children in order to increase their numbers and corrupt the Wizarding World from the inside out."

"Nonsense," Lash whispered into his ear. "Either someone is capable of channeling magic or she is not. There is no 'stealing' the ability to cast magic and gifting it to someone who lacks it. This is racist propaganda if I have ever heard it, and that is even with ignoring the epithets."

Bert continued, "None of the other Founders believed his warnings, however, and Gryffindor, who was a mudblood himself and likely had a hand in these thefts, refused to allow Slytherin to make his case for restricting the teaching of magic to families that were known to be untainted by the Muggle scourge. It eventually grew to the point that Gryffindor challenged Slytherin to a duel over the matter, and when Slytherin tried to restore peace between them, the Lions' Founder and his conspirators attacked him and drove him from the castle, all to the cheers of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

"Now knowing that he had truly been betrayed, Slytherin laid in wait and plotted his revenge. While Hogwarts was being built, Slytherin found an underground cave, and he had used this secret chamber to teach the greatest of his students the magics that the other Founders were too cowardly to attempt. During his period of exile, Slytherin searched for and bred together the most ferocious beasts in the world, and along with his grand monster, he snuck back into the castle. He forced the monster into the Chamber of Secrets, and then he sought out the most trustworthy of the students in the House that bore his name.

"Sadly, among those students he revealed himself to was the son of a mudblood, and this ungrateful Halfblood ran to Gryffindor and told him of Slytherin's plan. Furious that Slytherin had returned, Gryffindor followed the Halfblood into the Chamber and attacked Slytherin from the shadows. Because he did expect such treachery, Slytherin was unable to defend himself, but before Gryffindor slew him, he revealed that not all was lost. In those years of exile, he had not just bred a monster; he had also sired an heir, someone to whom he had told his entire plan and who was equally motivated to see Hogwarts purged of all those who were unworthy of magic. Gryffindor might have defeated him, but the Heir was also capable of unleashing the monster hidden within the Chamber, and when the time was right, Slytherin's line would have its revenge."

Looking at the wide-eyed first-years, Bert nodded. "It has been centuries since that time, and never has the Heir appeared. Some say that Gryffindor hunted him down and murdered him in cold blood to prevent the promised purification from taking place. Others think that the Heir, upon hearing of his father's defeat, threw away any plans to claim justice and hid himself away. Some," he added with a glare at several of the students, "even assume that this is just a fairy tale. But now we have proof that the legend is real. The Heir has returned and finally will carry out his righteous mission."

"How do you know that this is really the Heir?" an older girl challenged. "It was probably just someone who got detention with Filch and decided to make the bastard's life miserable."

"Because it was Filch who was punished first!" Bert declared. "Seven years I've been here, and never have I ever seen Filch cast magic. Has anyone else?" No one replied, so he continued, "It's obvious. Filch isn't a wizard. He's a Squib, and the only reason he's here at all is because Dumbledore is a disgusting Muggle-lover. No proper wizard would have anything to do with him. Even the mudbloods are better than him; at least they can cast spells." Leaning forward and smiling nastily, he concluded, "This is just the start. Now that the Squib has had his most precious thing taken from him, he'll scurry out of the school, and then the purge can finally begin."

The crowd slowly broke away, no one having anything to say after the seventh-year's dreadful prediction, and Harry slipped away to the second-years' rooms and into his dorm. "What do you think?" he asked once the door was locked and the wards were closed. "About the monster and the Heir and everything?"

"Truthfully, I find myself torn in regard to this monster." Pacing back and forth, the ex-angel explained, "On the one hand, if there were a beast as dangerous as the one he described, it would certainly qualify for the great danger Dobby was concerned about, but on the other, I have a hard time believing that an animal could have continued to live over the past millennium. Nor, if it were as crossbred as he implied, could it have procreated.

"The Heir, however, is a simpler situation. Perhaps it is actually someone in Slytherin's line who is doing this, but it is far more likely that someone unrelated has coopted the identity for his or her own purposes." She shrugged. "Considering the story's connection to this House, killing Filch's cat might very well have been the entire point of the exercise, and naming him- or herself as the Heir was just to throw suspicion onto the Slytherins. It would explain why the warning is a haiku when Slytherin was presumably of Basque descent considering his given name." A moment passed before Lash's hopeful expression faded. "However, that would require someone to be coincidentally masquerading herself as a dangerous threat within the same time period that a house-elf warned the students of Hogwarts would be in danger, so I fear that we might have to deem that possibility an overly optimistic one."

"So in summary, we have one definite racist who at least has no compunctions against killing people's pets, though their resolve to kill another human being is still up in the air," he counted off. "One possible monster, species unknown, maybe a crossbreed of different monsters. Hundreds of suspects, many of which live in close quarters with me and all of whom would see me as a viable target once their done with the Muggleborns." At least, that was what he assumed Bert had meant by 'mudblood'. "And as of now, zero leads. That's a great place to start."

"It could be worse."

"Don't jinx us," he told her. "I guess now would be a good time to start getting all those books together. If this winds up being as bad as Dobby claimed it would be, we make sure Sally-Anne, Hannah, and Susan tell their families and we get out of here while we still can."

"Assuming nothing happens between now and then that makes you take this personally," whispered Lash in an dark voice.

And the mystery of this year begins…

All glory goes to the Hagridizer! Without that handy tool, the first scene would have much more of a headache to write than it was.

While doing some research on exactly what language the name 'Salazar' comes from (Basque, as stated above, from which it was adopted into Spanish and Portuguese), I found an interesting reddit post that pulls in a number of cultural and historic details to propose that Salazar Slytherin was actually a Spanish Moor. I don't know that I believe it, but if you are interested, definitely Google it and give it a read.

Silently Watches out.