A/N: I just had to post this today, as it's the day after the solstice and it was too good to miss. It was even a full moon last night, as it (very nearly) was on the solstice in 1940. I don't know why, but that pleased me :) I'm afraid the pace of updates will be reverting to ~ weekly now, though, as I really can't keep up writing at this speed! I suppose you could say that this chapter marks the end of "Part One" of this story, so I'd love to hear your opinions so far, even if you've never reviewed before. I can't believe that I've already written something that's longer than the first Harry Potter book! I've never written anything at all before, so I'm really grateful to those of you that have been offering support and encouragement. Right, enough from me now…

~oOo~

"Salazar… I need to talk to you."

Merlin was ushered through the door and Morgana slipped in alongside him. The entrance porch opened onto a main hall with a large fireplace, and the men settled into carved wooden chairs in front of it. A house elf appeared with two wine glasses, and was waved away dismissively after setting them on a low table.

"Is something the matter?" Morgana paused for a moment in consideration of Merlin's answer, and the passage of time added a certain gravity, she thought.

"I've never told anyone what I'm about to tell you." Slytherin raised his eyebrows, and had the bearing of a man about to be told a particularly funny joke. He wasn't taking it seriously yet, but she had the confidence that he would fall for it.

"It's not about Helga's knickers again, is it? I don't want to hear it…." Merlin's boyish face went bright red, and Morgana rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to find out any more about that particular anecdote.

"No – no. It's about the Holy Grail." Slytherin, though his posture was already immaculate, sat up marginally straighter. When he spoke, the nonchalance of his tone was betrayed by the sharpness of his gaze.

"What about it?" She made Merlin remain silent for several beats, as if coming to a final decision whether to let the other man in on the secret.

"I know where it is, Salazar. I've been using it, for centuries, and I want you to join me." Slytherin burst out laughing.

"Is this one of your bizarre jokes, or are you merely delirious?"

"Neither – I swear it… Galahad found it, and brought it back to King Arthur at Camelot. We all used it, but being the only one at court with magic I was tasked to conceal it from our enemy, the sorceress Morgana... It has been in my care ever since." Slytherin made no move to interrupt such a ridiculous tale, and appeared to be assessing Merlin's words for ulterior motive. Morgana couldn't help but wonder at his conclusions, but didn't want to risk legilimency while maintaining the Imperius curse.

"The Grail must be used regularly to maintain the effect," continued Merlin. "We go every year at Midsummer, to the hiding place."

"You wish me to believe that, though I knew you as a boy of barely ten summers, you are in fact… about five hundred?"

"I know it sounds absurd, but you don't need to believe me. I can prove it." The older man was interested, thought Morgana, despite himself. He downed the remainder of his wine in one graceful motion.

"Please," he said, with exaggerated politeness, "Be my guest."

"Certainly. I will apparate us to the hiding place."

Morgana grasped the back of Merlin's robe, and Merlin took Slytherin's arm, and then the warmth of the hall was replaced by the cool damp of the Grail chamber. Slytherin's jaw dropped momentarily before he recovered himself – wherever he had expected to arrive, it hadn't been somewhere like this.

Merlin took the Grail to the water and filled it, and the older man received it but made no move to drink. She realised she was holding her breath, and released it.

"What will happen if I drink?" Asked Slytherin – he was suspicious, and reasonably so. She could think of only one way to answer that would avoid the need for further discussion, and it required all her willpower to suppress Merlin's natural instinct.

"Avada Kedavra!" A flash of green, and she smirked in satisfaction. It wasn't easy to convince someone to kill themselves, even under the Imperius curse – but Merlin was unquestionably dead.

It was the fastest trip to the Other Side she had ever made, and Merlin's body had barely hit the ground before he was struggling upright again; there was a priceless expression on the other man's face. She had been correct – her last moments on Earth were a joy.

"Drink! Drink, and join us who can cheat Death as we please," said Merlin.

There was an agonising moment where Morgana wondered if he would refuse the offer, but then he was raising the cup to his lips and draining the contents. There was a delicious rush of power filling the chamber, and then she emerged resplendent in front of her successor, who was trembling with the magical currents pouring into him. She remembered the feeling well. Showtime.

"Salazar Slytherin! I am the guardian of the Holy Grail. Do you seek life everlasting?" He had stopped shaking, and was standing up straight and defiant.

"I do."

"Then you must prove your worthiness." And before he had a chance to respond, she clicked her fingers and sent a slicing hex in his direction.

He spun to the side in time that it landed as a glancing blow, but it still caught his arm enough to tear fabric and send blood coursing down. His expression hardened, and then there was a giant snake towering over her with fangs glistening. How original. She vanished it with ease, and then they were trading curses and shields with satisfying speed, the air sparking with magic and bright colours bouncing off the dull stone walls.

She was goading him, of course; she could have defeated him in an instant, but instead she lead him onwards, sending darker and darker curses, until he responded in kind – until he came to understand that this was a fight for life, not merely for victory. On and on and on they went, and finally she spread her arms wide and said – slowly, carefully –

"Avad–"

"Avada Kedavra!"

She had time to laugh in delight as the green light sped straight towards her chest.

~oOo~

Given the swell of magic that had accompanied the appearance of the trapdoor, Tom had expected that holding the Grail would feel… special. If his look of horror was anything to go by, so did Dumbledore. It was more than disappointing, then, when nothing at all happened. He might as well have been holding a goblet of pumpkin juice at Hogwarts. Dumbledore recovered himself, and seemed to think that his previous expression had gone unnoticed. With a wave of the old man's hand, the cup sailed out of his grip and back into the sarcophagus and the lid shut with a horrendous grinding of stone on stone.

"I was under the impression that I had already warned you about stealing, Tom." He blinked, and considered his options, and decided that submitting was the only practical choice.

"Yes, Professor. Sorry, Professor. It won't happen again." Dumbledore always seemed to stare at him for several seconds after he spoke politely. Tom smiled inwardly; it evidently threw him off guard.

"Mrs Cole will be wanting you back. I must advise you against going wandering again – I should be most… displeased." Tom got the feeling that his Professor would actually be rather happy – to find a reason to expel him. But, since he didn't want that to happen, he had little choice but to nod in agreement. "Your arm, if you please, Tom."

Dumbledore gripped his arm firmly, and then there was a terrible squeezing sensation and he was stood in a darkened doorway just around the corner from the orphanage, trying to suppress the urge to be sick. Reading about apparition, apparently, was not similar to actually experiencing it; he concealed his unease with some difficulty, and then Dumbledore was motioning him out of the shadows and back to a summer of grey blankets and thin porridge.

~oOo~

"This morning, Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore discovered the tomb of Morgana."

"What?" He smiled, and reached unhurriedly for another sandwich, because it was quite fun to shock her and then observe her increasing impatience. Predictably, it was only several seconds before she broke.

"Why were Tom and Professor Dumbledore together? Where is it? Were they looking for it? What's in there?… Hang on. How do you know about it?" And there – she had hit on the right question. She knew it, too. He had been right, then, this morning. The beginning of the end. There could be no more evasion now. Her eyes narrowed. "I want the whole truth this time."

"Yes," he said, quickly, "Yes. You're going to get it, I promise." He tried to convey all his sincerity in his expression, though even after all these years it was not something he found came naturally. He looked out over the cherry tree and the roses he had planted, and at the high garden wall that he had built with his own hands as if it were some kind of Herculean penance. Things he had done for her – for his love for her – in a way he had never done anything for anyone else. "I'm going to tell you, and then you're going to understand why I wished to forget it. And shortly afterwards you will begin to despise me. But… I… Just so you know…. I regret all of it – all apart from the fact that it brought me to you." She laid her small hand on his, and he wondered if that were the last time he would see her expression free from condemnation.

"Tell me." He could no longer meet her gaze. The story was long, and embarking upon it was like walking to the gallows.

"Have you heard of the Holy Grail?" She obviously hadn't expected the story to begin this way.

"Er – yes – of course. Even muggles have. I thought it was a myth."

"Ah, yes… a myth. The most dangerous of realities. Unfortunately for me, the Holy Grail was a myth in much the same – exactly the same – sense that the Hallows are a myth." She digested this for a moment, appearing to concentrate hard.

"Oh… so you found it? What does Morgana have to do with – oh." She was quick to join the dots.

"Yes… Morgana invented the Grail myth. I'd heard of it, of course, but technically I wasn't the one who found it. I wasn't even looking for it. Though, to be fair, neither was Merlin, when he stumbled on it…"

"Merlin?" He chose to ignore her incredulous outburst.

"Merlin was too wise to drink from the Grail, of course. He could spot a trap – and a beautiful woman, offering eternal life? That's got trap written all over it. Ironic, in a way, that there actually was eternal life." He trailed off for a moment, lost in memory.

"Um. So where do you come into this?"

"What? Oh. Yes. Sorry." There was no putting it off. He marshalled his thoughts. "Death isn't allowed to force anyone to complete the task – they put that in the contract pretty early on, there was a bit of a to-do in the early years, but I digress – Morgana had to think of another plan… A way to ensure that a person of her choosing would drink from the Grail voluntarily…. Genius, really…

"Merlin showed up at the door. Midsummer night, actually, and I – I had been drinking. It was late. He said he wanted to speak to me. Of course, I let him in – he was my best friend. My only friend, really."

"When was this?"

"The year? 999. Anyway, he told me this ridiculous story… It's hazy to me now. But the gist of it was that he had been alive since the time of King Arthur. That he was kept young by the Holy Grail, and he had now decided to let me in on the secret."

"But Merlin was part of the court of King Arthur. That's what all the history books say." He chuckled darkly.

"A particularly ironic twist to the end of this tale, that Morgana's fiction should be preserved so. We wizards aren't very good at history, as it turns out – we tend to rely on stories passed down, so the modern version has it that Arthur lived in the tenth or eleventh century. Muggles get it right, of course, using their science. Arthur was born in the fifth century." There was a big pause.

"Oh. Actually, that makes a lot more sense…" He could foresee an impending discussion on some minor point of medieval history, which he really wasn't in the mood for, so he continued quickly.

"Well, I had known Merlin since he was a child, so it was hard to believe him, but I trusted him... I think I told you once before: people will believe anything if you appear to have the ultimate proof… And that night – that night – Merlin had the Ultimate proof. The Holy Grail."

"Wait a minute. Why would Merlin be saying all this, if he was your friend?" He smiled for a moment, despite himself.

"Lovely chap, Merlin. Magic like you've never seen… No discipline over the mind, though. Unfortunately for me. I expect he was a joy to Imperius." She gasped, and he felt his smile melt away again. "Yes – he was under the Imperius curse that night. Perhaps I would have noticed, if I hadn't been drinking, or perhaps I wouldn't have. Morgana did have an unnatural talent for it…

"Merlin took me to the chamber where the Grail was hidden. It is accessible just once a year, at Midsummer. I was intrigued, of course – who wouldn't be? But I was still unsure. Something seemed odd. Then he suddenly turned his wand on himself."

"Merlin killed himself?" He nodded.

"The killing curse. He fell to the floor, but before I could even go to him he was rising again."

"Morgana sent him back."

"Yes… yes, as I understood later. A simple trick."

"So you believed him unable to die… and you wanted that too." There was a big pause.

"Yes… though it is painful now to admit it. How infinitely foolish of me. But I was no longer young; I did not subscribe to religion; I feared death, I suppose. A mistake I was by no means the first or last to make."

A slight breeze whispered into the garden, rustling the leaves of the cherry tree and throwing some tendrils of hair across Hermione's face. Yesterday, he would have brushed them back tenderly, but today he forced himself to refrain. The beginning of the end.

"Since it was midsummer yesterday, I assume that Tom and Professor Dumbledore discovered the Grail chamber… but earlier you referred to it as Morgana's tomb." Like an avalanche accelerating down a mountainside, the tale was inching closer to its disastrous conclusion.

"Yes… She appeared, after I drank from the cup… I was entranced. She said… that she was the guardian of the Grail, and I had to prove myself worthy of its powers. She attacked me…" He swallowed hard and pressed on, resolutely.

"I killed her. There you have it. I killed her. I was stupid and drunk and provoked and I killed her so that I might live forever."

She was staring, somewhere between shock and horror, and he pressed on before she could voice her condemnation. The beginning of the end.

"I buried her there in the chamber, and sealed it with blood wards, and nobody ever opened it… until this morning."

He waited in sorrow for her to join the final, inevitable dots.

"But a blood ward could only be broken by a relative of yours. Tom, or Professor Dumbledore…?" He could not bring himself to answer, and she continued on as if she had not been expecting him to. "Everyone in this story – Morgana… Merlin… even Pythagoras and Nero – was… famous…." Her eyes snapped up to his, her voice flat. "Zorion isn't your real name, is it?"

Her expression was uncharacteristically guarded; she was readying herself for disappointment, and if only he did not have to give it to her. The beginning of the end. He took a deep breath – felt the rush of nervous terror flood into every cell of his body – and handed her the card he had pocketed in trepidation earlier. It was torn viciously down the centre.

Salazar Slytherin (c. 10th century) was one of the four founders of Hogwarts. A Parselmouth, his house emblem is a snake and he selected students who showed ambition and cunning. Slytherin left the school after a dispute over the teaching of muggle-born students.

~oOo~