To The Well-Organized Mind, Death Is But The Next Great Adventure
Rowena Ravenclaw died first.
At fifty-four-years-old, Rowena is frightfully young for a witch. Some would say at the height of power, just before aging tended to set in, and at a point were her magic is maturely developed, and yet to fade. But with a high fever, and being so tired, so emotionally wrought with the sudden illness that took the Castle... Even for its wisest member, it all became too much. It was not the fever that was taking her, she thought, but perhaps her own pride. Her own stubbornness and recklessness need to be in the thick of it. Some would say I have taken too many ques from Godric.
She had been feeling ill for the last few months(more tired than ill) but dismissed it in favor of teaching her potion and charms classes. Busy, Busy. Focusing on the state of the school and the children. Even her husband had made a note of it, mentioning how pale she was...
Ruaraidh new to the clan Ravenclaw -after twenty years he still felt new- is not as intelligent as his wife. He had long come to the conclusion that she was both more clever than him and beyond him. It is, however, what has brought him to love her in the first place, his fair witch from Glen. The intelligence of her mind, the curiosity that burned from her very soul. The fact that sometimes they could be in the same room and her mind would be racing and jumping to places where he could not follow. Marrying her only affirmed that his wife was the most intelligent woman to ever walk the earth.
However, it also affirmed the fact that she was completely mad, often completely single-mindedly focused on a specific task to the point of neglect to any other thing trying to grab her attention. As of late, she has looked beyond ragged- his fair witch's skin had turned sallow, her gait stiff and unpracticed. He had never seen her look like that save once.
When their daughter had run off. And even then, there had been a fragile strength to her, a stubbornness innate that could not be removed in grief. Now he felt that fading from his wife, and it alarmed him.
"Dearest," he said, watching as she viciously attacked the students' essays, quill poised to wreck lackluster efforts… Poor things, "You don't look well."
His wife paused, lifting tired gray eyes to him. She blinked heavily at him before she laid her quill into her inkwell. She carefully pushed away her brown hair and Ruaraidh marveled at the fact that she had so many silver hairs. He knew he never made note of it until Helena had gone missing. He shook his head and came to stand by her. She leaned into his hip, sighing. He placed a hand at the nape of her neck, massaging the delicate skin there.
"I know. I must finish theses essays and then I have to finish refining the curriculum concerning the Charm class- Oh, Salazar left such a m-"
"Mess. Yes… Isn't it time we find a replacement for him?"
It had been nearly a year, at this point, and Ruaraidh had become doubtful of his return come the changing of the leaves. She stiffened, and he sighed.
"Ruaraidh, of course not! If he would just see sense and come back-"
"He may not want that, Rowena… He and Godric got to the point of blows. I swear that Godric and Salazar would've have drawn blades if it hadn't been for Helga blasting the two apart."
Rowena made a noise at the back of her throat. It was something between a scoff and a noise of disgust.
"They were both being ridiculous. Honestly, the pair of them are worse than our youngest students. If they could both come to be more reasonable over the whole non-magic born students instead of screaming at each other-"
"It's a sensitive topic for both. You know that."
She just sighed, rubbed at her eyes, emphasizing how deep the bags beneath them are. Ruaraidh felt his heart twinge.
"Rowena, I beg you rest, please."
She smiled. It only just reached her usually expressive eyes. The lines that lined her mouth stretched her smile, made it look more exhausted.
"Is that worry, my love?"
He hummed.
"There is talk of illness near here, Rowena. Please do not overwork yourself and set yourself to attract it."
Rowena stiffened.
"How near?"
"A couple leagues, no more than ten."
She narrowed her eyes, stood suddenly, legs wobbling slightly from being in that position for too long.
"I must consult the school wards with Helga."
"That it is the very opposite of what I wish for you to do! Allow me to consult with them. Go. To bed."
Rowena only straightened, narrowed her large eyes and frowned at him.
"The Wards are attended best to those who created them, Ruaraidh. That was not you," she said simply before she gathered her outer robe and all but fled the room.
Rowena, laying in a starkly empty bed with no husband and no daughter at her side... Her breath is a loud rattle in her ears, her pale skin slicked with sweat as she wondered if she should have listened to her husband. But her mind is mostly set on the fact that she is not the only one stricken, that the Great Witch of Glen, of the Clan Ravenclaw, is one of many in the halls of Hogwarts that battles for life. She should have done more.
I should have been able to suppress this. I should have been able to prevent this-
Her mind, her greatest possession, faulters on that empty bed. It fails her in her last moments. It lingers on her latest failure, and spins and whirls like currents until it is solidly focused on her greatest failure of all.
"It's going to be alright," Helga's voice sounds queer, younger than it should, dips and twists until it isn't Helga at all to Rowena.
For Rowena is on her deathbed and her fevered mind called the one person she had failed the most.
"Helena," her voice is a whispered prayer, a desperate rattle of regret.
She is pleading for a daughter that would not come. Could never come. She doesn't care about the diadem. She just wanted her Helena by her side.
"Helena, my little bird, is that you?"
Tears mingle with sweat, desperation and confusion shifts to pure, unadulterated elation in Rowena, even as Helga above her is horror-stricken by the beatific look on her friend's face. Helena has been missing for years. Helga is nursing her as best she can, but even she knows that Rowena is dying. She can feel it in the fading weight in Rowena's grey eyes and her own eyes fill with tears at the state her friend is in. She cannot stop it.
"Come on, Row, dear," she begged, her softly, pressing a wet cloth against the sweating, swallow temple of her friend. She had tears in her eyes and could only just stop herself from shedding them, "You can't leave yet. Not me, here alone, please."
Helga has no idea what to do next. She was no great healer, had no great skill in potions or soothing charms for Rowena's comfort. Godric, the true Healer among them, had gone off galavanting as knights were prone to do. Salazar had fled just last spring and had yet to respond to any of her desperate letters. Ruaraidh was across the sea in the Continent gathering supplies for the illness that was threatening the frailer of the students and staff, and all Helga can hope is that he will receive the owl she had sent in time to return to his wife.
Rowena chuckled suddenly, a raspy sound that belayed her the state of her raw throat. Not the musical bells that had had first endeared Helga to her. Rowena reached over with a thin skeletal hand, pale, trembling and tugged at the curl of the woman she called sister. Only she reached not for her sister, but her daughter, for the one lost thing she would never find in this life again.
"I'm not leaving. Not without you, my Helena. Helena! Helena! Oh, forgive me."
Helga sighed, wiping at Rowena's brow again. She tried to ignore how her own fingertips trembled. She sang, softly, trying to ease her friend as she thrashed.
"Please, Row," she whispered, gripping her arm.
Gray eyes, vivid and hazy turned to Helga. Captured her in the sheer wrongness in those beloved eyes. For they had gone from the steel, Helga so knew well, to the wispy and mistiness of delusion. Of sickness and what she strongly suspected was Rowena's coming death.
"Oh, my little bird, have you come back?" she whispered, her thin, sickly hand coming to reach for her desperately.
Helga can not say a word as her friend continued to reach for someone that was gone. She only squeezed the frightfully thin hand back, heart in her throat.
"I knew the Baron would bring you back. Stupid odious man loves you know… Little bird, please, oh, your father will be so pleased..."
Rowena does not last the night.
OOOOOOO
Salazar Slytherin died second.
He dies at seventy-years-old. Neither young nor old for a wizard. Seven decades in his life have gone and he died for not his stubbornness, not his pride, but instead his for his ambitions. For his arrogance and possession of magic and his assuredness of being powerful and mighty because of his foray into the Dark Arts.
My Colleagues,
I wish to inquire whether or not the school and the staff are well. It would do me well to know that the school is in running order and I hope that this is the case. I have written to be informed after the policies that which were put in place at my departure, and whether or not they have been done in the best interest of our proud community-
"Bloody hell that makes me sound like a right idiot," muttered Salazar, before, not even caring for the expense, he seized his vellum and crumpled it into a tight little ball. He then tossed the ball with a slight growl over his shoulder.
Dozens of balls of parchment, only the finest, were all around him. Over the years, he had tried, again and again, to pen to his friends- former friends, he has to remind himself. To apologize, to stand his ground- for something. Anything. Any single word to return the dozens of dozens of letters sent to him without fail. He is angry and tired, he had not wanted his friends to stand against him, but despite his stubborn pride he had wished that he had not argued with Godric in the first place. But I am in the bloody, sarding right. He knew he was right- non-magics, foul and cruel and worse, ignorant, could not have their children going home with magic spells on their breath.
Children would, and were burning by allowing their ilk into Hogwarts. And he had pledged himself to their cause to save children and his people alike against the ignorant filths that were jealous and monstrously cruel to their fellow men. Their spawn with magic-despite being innocent and poor things, could not be saved. They could not be allowed without the risk of the boys and girls who had sought to hone their birthrights. Who deserved a haven above those infantile and weak magic that came from those of none magical blood.
Near twenty years have come and gone, and I still have not been able to convey the truth of the matter to them. I have not lifted my quill for any word to pass between us. Rowena is gone. And that is sorrow I will carry for not talking to them before, or after she passed. I was a fool and stubborn one at that.
Years had passed seemingly, with him in his study, every morning, quill poised over the parchment. With words and intent beneath his fingers. And every day it ended the same. It ended with Salazar leaving his study. Without a letter, without a word to respond to Helga, who had been the only one to continue to write to him, even when he had never sent word back. Loyalty, affection, strong and true. I do not think I have ever deserved it from you, dear Helga.
His stomach felt all wrong. Turned and pinching sensation that made him shift about uncomfortably in his chair. He made a mental note to advise his cook to ease up on those blasted spices. He was seventy not some young brute with a stomach of iron. He sighed, breath huffing as he dipped his quill into his fine ink again.
"Husband," said a voice and he turns, to his wife, beautiful despite their time together stood, leaning against the doorway. She is dressed finely and expensively and he notes with a slight approval that she is wearing the colors of his House. Emerald green and sliver samite, draped across a full form that had only been enhanced by the children she had borne.
Salazar frowned, sighed and gestured for her to speak. She is holding up one of the many attempts of his letter, crumpled in her hand, frowning.
"Do you really think you can convince them of anything?" she asked, shaking her dark hair in a dismissive way. It had yet to gray, like his had, despite the fact that she was only ten years his junior. Sometimes he suspected magic had a hand but knew she was not so vain for such a thing.
He had never liked dark hair. Always too similar to his. It is why Helga, he thrust the thought away.
"I can try, never mind that to you, wife," he said simply, feeling irritated. He violently thrust his quill into the ink well.
His wife narrowed her dark eyes, hands clasping tightly around the parchment.
"After all this time, do you believe they would be willing to accept even the owl from you?" she said softly, as she tossed the letter absently toward him.
Salazar flicked it away with a casual wave of his wand.
"Really Annabala? Throwing things like a common rabble? Most unbefitting," he said, tiredly, rubbing absently at his chest. It was a jest, a poor one, but it allowed for the briefest of smiles to cross both of their faces.
Then his wife sighed, a great big gust of air that was uncharacteristically rough of her.
"I really don't care, Salazar, if you wish to inquire for the past," she said as she drew herself up slightly, "But as your wife, I hope you will see fit to be logical. The strong-arm approach has never been your strength, husband."
Despite the prick of irritation at how true her words are, he finds himself softening. Affection is true between them, if chaste, and strongly hewn over the years. Annabala does indeed know him, for his regrets, for his faults and sharp tongue. She knew his dreams, his beliefs as well as any man or woman he had ever known. And there were moments when he felt his wife was the one person who knew him to the core, better than he knew himself. He smiled again, a rare expression that was mostly done in her presence.
"My dear, you-"
He paused, feeling the oddest tightness in his chest. He placed a hand on it again. He is blinking rapidly without the mean, measuring the strange twisting in his chest with some irritation. Annabala frowned, slightly, leaning forward with her dark eyes intent on his face.
"Salazar?"
He opened his mouth to respond, but gave a slight gasp as his heart constricts rapidly and most unnaturally. His breath, shortened as if his lungs had squeezed his heart into what seemed to be a stuttering mess. His stomach twisted. His hand gripped tightly into the silk of his robes, clawing at the material in an attempt to stop the strange palpitations of his heart.
"Salazar?" asked, Annabala, brow furrowing as she watched his strange expression.
"We need to fire our bloody coo-" Salazar does not finish his sentence, a soft moan escaping him as he pitched forward into the pile of parchment in front of him.
Curiously, he can only see black spots, impairing his vision of his wife's fine silk robes.
"Husband?" said Annabala, sounding distant and almost concerned.
I am well and truly in a bad way if she shows concern-
"Wife?" he asks, shakily, panic and something else seizing him as his heartbeat so unnaturally. He reached for her, trying to blink the bleedin' spots away.
Salazar's mind is a blur, as his wife heaved him onto her shoulders, screaming at servants to help and then his world is even more compressed and so painful. Vaguely, as the world grows darker, all Salazar can hear is his wife sobbing, begging for someone, to please allow this. He does not understand and then there is a pressure, a touch to his brow, the softness of lips and he can vaguely smell her perfume, some expensive thing that he hated but how could he not get it for her because at least she liked it. Then, someone is gripping his hand, tight and true and he knows that hand. They are calloused and scarred and so ridiculously large that it warrants mention.
"Godr-" Salazar's can only wheeze helpless, high sounds, unable to form words.
"Old friend, you've come home," and Godric's voice washed over him, deep and true. Salazar tried to respond to say something, anything but all he can do is wheeze and grip the hand in return.
"Oh Salazar, it's alright, we are here," it is Helga's voice and he can feel her hand on his opposite one.
His arms strain and he tried to speak. Nothing but garbled sounds escape his constricting throat. All he can do is squeeze the hands holding his weakly.
"Husband," whispered Annabala, near his ear, "Please, husband, do not strain yourself."
Salazar lived for a few more moments but with the certainty that he is forgiven.
OOOOOOO
Godric Gryffindor died third.
True to his reputation, it is a bombastic quest of chivalry and gallantry that claimed his life. His hubris, is his age, ninety, which is not terribly old but still up there in age, even for a wizard, to be going about like a young squire instead of an aged knight. Past his prime, past the age to do foolish things
But it was a fine day, that of his death, and his legs are only slightly sore when he dismounted from his large horse. He stretched, cracking his very stiff back and absently pated for his sword. It rested comfortably on his back and his wand he finds is still in its holster. It is a habit that carried over from the days before he had found the right sticking charm for the scabbards of his weaponry. To constantly check for them, to feel for the reassuring weight of his blade or spear or lance on his back.
"My dear Godric, where is your blade?"
Flushing, praying to the great Lord that Salazar's chest moving rapidly up and down in is some hysterical fit that would require medical attention, and not with suppressed laughter. The great arse, Godric fumbled to feel for his sword. Of course, the damn thing is not on his back. Rowena is pressing her lips together and Helga is just looking at him with a raised brow.
Feeling his face burn, Godric raised his wand and mutters, "Accio, sword and scabbard," in a quiet voice and caught his blade, scabbard and all, by the hilt.
Helga sighed.
"Is your holster worn again?"
"I did tangle with a Griffin the other day, must've caught the damn thing when it grabbed me."
He twisted it and saw that it was once again worn, too thin to cast a simple repairing charm upon. He sighed.
"Must you be so reckless, friend?" said Salazar, as he rolled his eyes.
Godric pursed his lips.
"It is not recklessness if it was in defense in of someone else, Sal. One of the students was almost mauled by the thing for antagonizing it."
"Do not call me Sal. I have a proper name and I endeavor you to use it Godric."
"Sal," said Helga with a slight smirk, "Do take care not to tease Godric too terribly."
Salazar flushed, darkly, his pale skin showing off the color well.
He sighed in relief at the fact that his sword is in place. He then froze as he spotted a figure, running for him, waving their arms rapidly in the air. Curious, and slightly alarmed he lifted his large sword, easily with just one arm, in his other, he let lose his wand, letting his sleeve cover it. He remounted his horse, easily maneuvering his reins into his teeth and urged it on towards the person. He is both alarmed and startled to see that it is a young woman, covered in burns and looking frightened beyond belief.
"Fair lady," he inquired, quickly, looking at her fine dress and jeweled necklace, "Whatever is the matter?"
"Dragon, Sirrah!" she cried helplessly, wincing at the burns, eyes wild as she tugged helplessly at his protective mail, "Please, sir knight, aid us!"
Godric nodded gripped the reins in his hand again.
"Take shelter, head for the cliffs by the great lake it is only a league or so, go," he told her sternly, gesturing behind him, urgently, before he took off at a gallop.
Part of him pondered the fact that he is ninety and off to slay a dragon. But, well, it is my duty or my failure to protect those who need me. Most of Godric is alarmed that one is so close to the school. Droves of frightened non-magical people are screaming and heading for him as he galloped in the direction of the nearest non-magical village. He screamed and instructed every one of them to head for the castle. It is only a few minutes before he spotted the great beast.
It is a sleek, large thing with rough, dark scales, ridges along its serpentine body and a spiked tail. What alarmed him the most is its great violet eyes, violently vivid and hissing as it spewed forth flame and rumbling roars that vibrate in his chest.
It is in a village, a nonmagical, the closest to the school. It is also in ruins, huts, and hatched torn apart by the roaring dragon. With vague alarm, he realized that it is preparing to nest, gathering materials and with a touch of disgust, bodies of livestock to feed as it prepared for its hatchlings. Godric's mind is spinning as he caught sight of a poor man that had been crushed by the great beast's claws, most likely unintentionally.
Hatchlings dragons are ravenous and will ruin the school in a matter of weeks.
"Expecto Patronum," he chanted softly, a cold sweat starting at his brow and back, "Helga, dragon, beyond the lake, three leagues or so, be quick for the love of the Lord."
His Patronus, large, looming and glowing, of course, attracted the attention of the dragon.
"Oh, Sard."
His Patronus is gone quickly with a flail of its many limbs. And all Godric can do is dismount, heart pounding as his horse flees for its life. Sword in one hand, wand in another, Godric muttered a quick prayer and lets out a large war cry that has served him well as he rushed the beast. He is casting spell after spell around it, changing the consistency of the ground to that of water, sinking the poor, crazed beast as it flailed and threw a plume of flames in his direction.
Godric is swift but old and his lunge to the side is not quick enough. His left leg is caught in the very edge of the violent flames. His clothing is charmed, of course, against such an attack, his sturdy boots, but even Rowena's old work can only do so much. He hissed at the ache returned to stand stubbornly on his feet. He has suffered worse, has battled his way through broken bones and with his limbs nearly hacked off.
A little dragon will not best him.
"You are not my first dragon!" he screamed, guttural and deep from his chest. He is lifting his great, glittering sword at it, making quick, precious strikes at its body. Never aim for the rear end or the front end of a dragon, always armed with something no matter the species.
He made the ground solidified under the dragon, which unfortunately it chose that moment to beat its great wings. Its panic, its fury a screech of protest.
Godric is thrown back tumbling like a rag doll, screaming and cursing as he slammed his sword into the ground for purchase. He is scrambling for purchase as the wings blow air and threaten to send him ass over kettle. I would never live that down. Quickly, he sends pieces of the village huts transfiguring iron and heavy weighted barrels atop the wings in hope of stopping it. It only partially succeeds and Godric rushes against both the wind and flames. He is wielding his blade and wand in unison as he yells at the poor nesting thing in fury and defiance.
"YOU WILL NOT ENDANGER MY STUDENTS!"
He ran, leaping over flames and teeth to bring down his silver goblin sword on its neck. He nearly wrenched his shoulder out of his socket as he is hacking and screaming to high heaven. Blood, hot and dark, spewed like a fountain across his face. It is in his rush and slight carelessness that he does not take into account of the great beast's tail.
Which in its final moments, whipped forward to catch him on his back. Godric loosed the grip on his sword, hand coming up curiously to notice that there is a spike through his chest falling forward slack as he began to cough up blood.
Godric lived long enough to wield his wand, finishing the job of taking the beast's head.
OOOOOOO
Helga Hufflepuff died last.
She is the oldest, nearly a hundred and twenty when she passed.
And she is sighing with the melancholy of all of her years, as she walked forward to her rooms. It had been a long day of delegating the running of the castle. She is Headmistress as she had been since they had officially opened the school, so long ago. She is not quite tired, it was more or less an average day at the castle, but she cannot help but feel the ache in her limbs, the slight hunch to her back. She had spent much of the day bent over a desk in an empty classroom, as she had never quite liked the grandiose room that Rowena and Godric had insisted for the Headmaster's room, scribbling away expenses and approving lesson plans left and right, or disapproving them.
She felt cold, quite normal as it was winter and the grounds were covered in snow and is gathering her thick outer robes close to her, even as she cast her next warming charm. Faintly, she missed the warm robes Rowena had made for her in her first unforgiving winter so high north- her homeland was cold as most of the Isle's were, but there was something of the high north that always chilled her straight to her bones. She had outgrown Rowena's hand stitched robes at sixty years old, her already full body rounding off even further the older she became. And she felt the cold keenly, as her current seamstress did not have the same talent as her late friend.
She tried not to think, as she passed three empty sets of rooms in the personal corridor of the Founders of Hogwarts. That she was the last to sleep in this corridor of the four who had set the stones and wards across the school grounds. Sometimes it startled her to think that Godric had died twenty-nine years passed- or even Salazar some forty-nine and Rowena sixty-five.
For it made her old heart ache keenly.
"My dear woman, you are always terribly late to come to bed," came a voice, as she tiptoed into her rooms.
Helga nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Helga, dear, you are just so late."
She smiled, sheepish, straightening up primly, and spoke with a sweetness, "My Auln, must you scare your dearest wife, to death?"
He laughed. In nearly eighty years of marriage, he had yet to lose the deepness of his voice. It made her shiver when she had first heard it, and rarely did it not have an effect on her. Now, his laugh bloomed in her chest, settled deeply in her ribs as warmth and familiar love affected her. His dear face had not been able to claim the same as his voice- for it was weathered and as lined as her own. Though he claimed constantly that her face had never changed, the flatter. He was dressed for bed, even had that silly and horrible cap she had knitted for him over sixty years ago. When she had yet to get the hang of it. Knitting, or looming for that matter, had been Rowena's art, not her's. But with practice, she had improved. But then again he always wore her creations, no matter how dreadful.
"If I must, and only if she keeps me waiting half the night."
She hummed, shedding her outer robe and dress over her head, tossing it in the vague direction of her changing screen. She shuffled forward in her thick winter shift, glad for the fact that a fire was roaring in her fireplace.
"Oh Auln, you know you do not have to wait for me," she said, softly, climbing into bed with some effort, wand flickering absently to let out the candles he had let burn.
"I will always wait, love."
She hummed, resting her head as she buried herself deep into their bed furs and sheets.
"You're like ice," he grumbled, but his arms came around her without much complaint otherwise.
She laughed.
"Then such a good thing you are so warm, my love."
He curled around her, still tall if not as broad as he had been, once, and she curled back into him, taking in how warm he was. He hummed deeply in his chest, a welcome habit she had picked up herself some ten years into their marriage.
"Alaw wishes to visit, come the Winter Solstice," he said, yawning.
"And what, our own wayward daughter needs a personal invitation to come? Nearly all of us already live in the castle who else will she spend it with?" she said back, yawning tiredly, eyes heavy.
"You cannot fault her being the only one to leave the nest, Helga."
Helga snorted.
"I have not faulted her for over sixty years. She wished to stand apart from my legacy. I have made peace with it."
"Indeed."
"Doubt in your voice, Alun? How vexing."
He laughed, deep and as rich as it had been when she first heard it.
"Someone has to be against you, love. If not your husband, who would be brave enough?"
She laughed, yawning.
"Have I exhausted you?"
"Not in fifty years, Alun."
He laughed again, tightening his still strong arms around her. He pressed a tender kiss on her brow.
"Cold, Helga, how utterly cold you are, allow me to continue to warm you."
"Why thank you Alun, good night."
She laughed again herself, interrupted by another yawn. He hummed, hummed and hummed, soothing her already heavy eyes to close. She hummed back, weakly, her voice never as strong or as sweet as her husband's. But he did always enjoy it.
Helga slept, content and warm, for the last time.
AN: I do not own Harry Potter nor its characters. All of its rights belong to its amazing author, it's publishing, and broadcasting companies.
This is me, making misshapen sand castles in its sandbox.
Edit: 6 March 2020
HOLY RESEARCH BATMAN!
Okay. I meant to knock out this chapter much sooner, but the more I wrote, the more I had to backtrack for historical accuracy. I won't claim that it's perfect, considering I'm using modern English versus, well, Latin and mixture of Galetic, Welsh, etc, that is due for the time period that these people lived... Well. Here we go. This, more or less, as far as I could gather is roughly in the high middle ages, which is the late 10th century to early eleventh century, which is what Harry Potter wiki, lexicon and Pottermore more or less say that the Founders were born and lived in. I love history, and I pride myself to be somewhat of an amateur historian, but the high medieval period is one I haven't really focused on, simply because I usually focus on the art side of history.
Any corrections, with proof, would welcome, as the amount of research I've done is some what extensive and I would hate to be wrong about something.
Notes:
Dark Magic: From what I can see, the darkest magic always, always has a price. Murder is a fracture of your soul, and a Horcrux is an extension/ritual involving it. I am confident in my assumption that other dark magic has its price, which is why we have Salazar dying via his experiments into dark magic. NO, before anyone asks, he did not make a Horcrux(The first to do so successfully was Harpo the Foul who is before Salazar's time, but I personally do not see it in Salazar's interest plus it would undermine the spell/ritual the founders performed to reincarnate). So Salazar dies of a heart attack because of his experiments! And before anyone starts to go on about how not all dark magic is evil, I want to reiterate the fact that in the Harry Potter Universe, magic is kinda black and white. You can make an argument for how magic is just magic and it's all about intent, yadda, but from what we get in the text? Black magic and White Magic are exclusive and have their claim and effects on its caster.
Swords:
Traditional swords of the period are rather titchy. Like, at most thirty or so inches (80 or so centimeters for all the non-Americans). Relatively small in comparison to late-period swords, which can extend more or less forty to seventy inches. So, yeah. I did some research(keyword there) and found that a sword at the time that is perfect is lo and behold, a Knightly sword(double-edged, straight sword, think of it as a precursor to the broadsword or the basket-hilted sword, which came into fashion about the 1500s). Made it a little bit of the bigger side to make up for Godric, who I always imagined as being relatively huge for the period. I peg his sword at about five feet or so, or about a meter and third in length.
Religion:
Godric is from an area of the British Isles from West Country in England, that was fairly religious. In fact, you can't find most places in the period that aren't religious. It was the high middle ages- it tends to be very religious. I debated this heavily with my sister(a Harry Potter fan with the knowledge that I miss and she's my sounding board and semi-editor) with research and in book text to get this right- and this seg-wayed very heavily into a conversation of the blood purity of the founders and how that reflects into their religious affinities. According to the three sites mentioned in 1*, all the founders are either half-bloods or purebloods- we didn't exactly follow that. Respectively, Helga is pureblood, Godric muggle-born, Rowena half-blood, and Salazar is a pureblood. Helga is a druid in accordance of Scots usually being that even if according to history they disappeared in the first and second century in Wales, Godric is from a landed family in difficult times of invasion and wars that decided to hone his gift for the sake of the family(they hired a wizard to teach him), Rowena is from Glen(Scotland) which was currently getting their kingdom settled and infusing religion right around the time she would have grown up and Salazar- is... Salazar is from Fen(Eastern England) which was religious but he's a pureblood yo.
Words:
So fuck is a relatively modern word that made its appearance around the 1500s. Sard, on the other hand, was the middle age equivalent of it.
I hope you liked the chapter! Please feel free to review, comment and ask questions!
~Happy Reading,
Moon Witch '96