Trigger warning: Description of and refences to suicide

Salazar

"I was thinking," I said to Dumbledore over a mug of coffee one morning in his office.

"Oh dear," he replied, his eyes flicking over a copy of Crochet For Beginners.

"Very funny," I retorted, frowning. "Harry's turning eleven this year, isn't he."

Dumbledore hummed thoughtfully. "I suppose so."

"So," I began, "he'll be coming to Hogwarts. Which means we can't really keep him hidden anymore."

"Which means, I take it," Dumbledore continued, "that you think he might be in danger."

I shrugged, taking a sip of my coffee. "It's not an unreasonable assumption."

Dumbledore leaned forward, placing the book down. "What more do you want me to do? I've already got the Order following him every minute of the day. Half of the staff here are Order members. We've put every possible protective enchantment on both him and this castle. What more can I do?"

"It's not about what you can do," I replied. "It's about me. I think I should take on a closer position to Harry so I can protect him myself."

"You mean become a teacher?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

I shook my head. "No. I mean…" I hesitated. "Become a student."

I wasn't entirely sure Dumbledore's eyebrows could get any higher. "Be reborn?" he asked incredulously. "But I thought Voldemort no longer had the locket."

I shrugged again. "Be that as it may, the locket is still technically in Tom's possession. And with any luck, it being a horcrux shouldn't make a difference to the rebirth process. Probably."

Dumbledore folded his arms. "It's a bit of a gamble."

"I know, but…" I avoided Dumbledore's gaze. "I just have a feeling that it's time for me to be reborn once more."

Dumbledore was silent for a second. "Like a funny feeling, or a prophetic feeling?" he asked at last.

"Prophetic," I replied.

"Right," he said.

I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the desk. "It's not a coincidence that I already have a body lined up that's the right age. Nor is it a coincidence that I've been having dreams for years in which both that body and Harry appear. I know you don't like divination, but there is fate at work here. You just have to trust me on this."

Dumbledore sighed. "I'm not going to argue with you when it comes to Harry's protection. If you think he needs you there as a student, then I will do everything in my power to ensure that happens."

I grinned, clapping my hands. "Great! In that case, I'll just go and kill myself, and then we can go through the paperwork together." I stood up from my chair and prepared to leave.

"Wait, Salazar," Dumbledore interrupted, an expression of mild disbelief and horror on his face. "Did you just say you're going to kill yourself?"

"Well, I've got to die somehow, haven't I?" I replied. "Unless you'd rather kill me yourself."

"No, thank you…" he said, looking a bit ill. "If I may ask… how exactly are you going to kill yourself?"

I shrugged. "Not sure. I'll probably just stab myself or jump off a cliff."

Dumbledore blanched slightly. "How can you be so blasé about it?"

"Albus," I said patiently. "When you have died as many times as I have, doing it once more doesn't feel like a big deal. Besides, I know I'm going to wake up straight afterwards, so it doesn't really feel like actually dying."

I went back to the Cambridgeshire House to die. To my surprise, the sentient form of the house was waiting there to greet me. I hadn't seen her since that day when I arrived back to find out eighteen years had passed, but I had never forgotten that face. She looked exactly the same.

"Hello," I said.

"Hey Salazar," the house replied. "The knife is waiting for you in the main bathroom. I thought that would be the easiest place to clean up afterwards."

I didn't ask how it knew. "So thoughtful," I said instead, and breezed past her.

Sure enough, there was a knife by the sink in the bathroom. I picked it up, turning it over in my hand, and realised it was the same knife I'd used to stab Tom all those years ago. It felt oddly heavy in my hand.

I knew where I would go, once I died. I'd lied when I'd told Dumbledore I would wake up straight afterwards in a new body. In reality, I would go to the place in-between.

That was the best way to describe it. It always appeared the same to me, always offered me a choice. I could be reborn again, or move onwards into true death.

I had chosen rebirth every time without fail.

And so I would follow that little tether, the magic of the locket, back down to life.

I weighed the knife in my palm, testing the edge. It was razor-sharp, which was good. I wanted to die as quickly as possible. As much as I joked about it with Dumbledore, there was still something terrifying about dying. It was like a trust fall, like a jump across a ravine. There was always that nagging fear that I might not get to come back this time around.

But I had to. This time, more than ever. I had foreseen myself in a new body, so I would fulfil that destiny, even if it led to my final, permanent death. I knew better than to resist a prophecy.

I grasped the dagger tightly by the hilt, kneeling on the cold stone tiles of the bathroom floor, and turned the blade towards myself. Closing my eyes, my traitorous hands shaking, I thought of Tom, and how I had sunk this dagger into his flesh. I thought of how peaceful he had looked in sleep.

Then I took a deep breath, and stabbed myself.

I awoke in the place in-between. It was the crossroads near where I had grown up, as it always was, but quiet, and lit with a white glow. Perhaps the symbolism of it was a bit obvious, but it did the job. I was used to this place, so I though of clothes, and they appeared on me. I thought of sitting down, and a bench materialised. Now all I had to do was say I wanted to go back, and I would wake up in a new body.

I paused for a second, and wished for a mirror. One appeared. Cautiously, almost fearfully, I approached it and took in my appearance.

I was Salazar Slytherin again, young, slight and dark-haired. And male. I was perhaps in my twenties, around the age that I had met the other founders. It felt strange to be back in this skin, like an old item of clothing that I still owned but no longer wore.

"Hey, 'Zar," came a voice from behind me. I froze. There was never usually anyone else with me in this place, and yet somehow…

I turned, slowly, to see Godric Gryffindor standing there, his hands in his pockets, smiling faintly. The blood drained from my face.

"It's been a while," he said.

I couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't do anything but stare in shock.

"We all miss you," he continued, that faint smile playing on his lips. "Why haven't you come to join us yet?"

I remained silent, motionless.

He began to stroll towards me, stopping about an arm's length away. "What are you so afraid of? If you go back, all you'll find is pain." The kindness in his voice made my chest ache.

"Pain is all I deserve," I said quietly.

Sympathy pooled in his eyes, and he reached for my hand. I let him take it. "No one deserves pain, 'Zar," he said softly. "And you have had enough for a thousand lifetimes."

I blinked through a blur of tears. "One last body," I whispered. "One last life. Then I'll join you. I promise."

He nodded sadly before suddenly pulling me into a tight embrace. I buried my head in his shoulder, realising with a sharp stab of pain how much I'd missed him. "Then I shall wait for you," he replied as he and everything around us dissolved into mist.

There was a cold stone altar beneath me. I opened my eyes, and found myself in the cavern. So it had worked. One last body for one last life.

I swung my legs over the side of the altar and hopped down to the floor, wobbling a bit as I adjusted to my new form. Grasping the stone lip for support, I straightened, feeling younger, smaller, more full of energy.

I felt lighter, too. Not just physically, but also… emotionally. Inhabiting a new body always seemed to have that effect on me; the pain and heartache and worries of my previous lives appeared far away, almost alien. Like the fuzzy, half-forgotten memories of another person.

Feeling significantly more motivated than I had in a while, I didn't linger long in the cave, instead apparating back to the Cambridgeshire House. After all, there was the matter of my dead body to dispose of. I walked with no small amount of trepidation back into the bathroom, the notion of seeing my own corpse a touch unsettling.

There was an awful lot of blood. I mean, it made sense: I had died from bleeding out, but I just wasn't quite prepared for how much there was going to be in a grotesque puddle all over my nice bathroom tiles.

Evangeline Chambers was slumped, quite dead, at the centre of the crimson stain. I nudged her body dubiously with my toe, rolling her so she was on her back, her wide, unseeing green eyes staring quite unsettlingly at the ceiling. Her skin was deathly pale, leached of all colour except for the sticky patch of dried blood on one porcelain cheek. The same blood had seeped into her clothes and matted her hair to her skull. I found the whole sight extremely uncomfortable, and had to suppress an involuntary shudder.

It took barely a flick of my fingers to vanish the ghastly scarlet pool. Then I gingerly leaned over and prised the silver knife from her stomach, reasoning that it made no sense to waste a perfectly good blade. Crouching next to her face, I gently closed her eyes before apparating us both to the little plot of land where I had buried both Tom and my mother. There was the ancient oak tree, and to its left, the young rowan.

"I guess we're both dead now," I said to Tom, a little sadly. "And it won't be long before you, too, find a new body."

There was no response from Tom's grave, for which I was a touch disappointed. And then I felt ashamed for being disappointed.

I buried myself- or, rather, Evangeline- on the right of my mother. Over my grave I planted a silver birch, watching as it began to grow and twist towards the bleak sky. I stepped back, and looked at the three trees, the last remnants of my family. For a short while, I allowed myself a moment of nostalgia, of regret and heaviness and melancholy.

Then I turned away, towards the future, towards a new life of hope and opportunity. I could not change the past, however much it haunted me. I could only move forwards.

Dumbledore jumped a bit in his chair as I apparated into his office. It took me a second to realise that he wouldn't recognise me in this new form.

"Hello, Albus," I said cheerily, finding his expression a little funny.

"Salazar?" he asked dubiously.

"The very same," I replied, taking a seat. "although, thinking about it, I'm going to need a new name. Something that I can remember easily."

"Like what?" he said, still frowning a bit, as if he couldn't get his head around the fact that I was now an eleven-year old.

I thought about it for a second, my mind inexplicably drifting to my encounter with Godric in the place-in-between. Zar, he'd called me. They all had, back in my first life.

And if this was to be my final life, it seemed somewhat fitting to take that name again. With, of course, some slight alteration, given that I was female again, something that would undoubtedly come in handy when I inevitably went to visit Aristomache in the Chamber of Secrets.

"Zar…a?" I said aloud, looking to Dumbledore for approval.

He shrugged. "Zara what?"

I thought about the place where I had buried Tom, my mother and Evangeline. A little patch of land, next to some woods. Then I remembered how Tom had taken his pseudonym from a French phrase.

"Du bois," I said confidently. "Dubois."

"Well then, Zara Dubois," Dumbledore said mildly, "I suppose I'd better enrol you at Hogwarts."