By: CNJ
PG-13
9: The Slytherin Discovery
Lily:
"Astral projection..." Zara muttered as we leafed through a pile of books at the library later on the following week. We were trying to find out more about this ability I had, but so far hadn't had much luck. Zara dropped a wide book with a thunk. "You'd think since it's a supernatural ability, there'd be tons of stuff on astral projection, but so far I've only seen a few sketchy paragraphs."
"Me too," I agreed.
"Even those just scan over the physical basics," Amelia put in. "Mostly they just describe what happens, but doesn't go into the details of why or how it happens."
It was beginning to grow dark and we'd have to start our homework soon in addition to getting ready for dinner, so we started to gather the books together and put them on the return table.
So many of them were old and blew up dust. As I plopped the last book down, a stream of dust came back up in my face, making me cough. The cover flipped open and I saw the contents page.
"Hey, maybe we could write to the publisher and ask for more information on this!" I whispered, excited by my sudden inspiration. My friends leaned close and I hastily wrote down the address. Godric's Hollow was one of the addresses we wrote down as we copied more publishers' addresses down. That was in one of the more recent books.
"Most of these are right here in the magical world, so we could send an owl," Amelia put in as we put our notebooks away and headed to our dorms.
The corridor going toward the moving stairs was crowded with students heading back to the dorms also, so we headed around the long way and back up toward the narrow tall towers near the back of the castle. We heard voices near the top. Adult voices.
"...been well known that the Slytherin family wants this castle back under their ownership," a man was saying. "Salazar's descendant plans to put a claim in for this property."
"Salazar agreed to split this property between the four founders and it's in the will," Professor Pierce told him. "Once Salazar sold the three-quarters to the others, it was stipulated that it would become a school for all magical students."
We heard other voices and footsteps coming down. We ducked behind a knight's armor, so we could hear them without being seen. Professors Vester and Pierce came down with several others, seemingly visitors...from the Ministry? We wondered at the strangers as we heard them talk about a deed and how a distant descendant of Salazar was making a claim on this castle.
"...but Salazar Slytherin meant for this to be opened to other purebloods and relatives of his, not mixed bloods and muggle-borns..." one of the visitors was saying.
"Most of the Slytherin family members were always bigoted," Professor Vester put in.
"And the vote was fairly taken..." another official added. "Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, and Rowena Ravenclaw voted to allow a diversity of magical students in. I might add that's when Slytherin walked out in disgust and refused to have anything more to do with this school."
"Strange that Salazar wanted control of the building, yet didn't want to do any more of the work of running this place than contributing the castle," another official said primly. "Rowena was the master designer of the inside of the castle, including the enchanted ceiling; Godric recruited the students and teachers and came up with the idea of the Sorting Hat while Helga planned what classes would be taught and on many of the school's activities."
The voices trailed off, but bloody hell, had we learned quite a bit about the founders right there! Once they were gone, we booked upstairs and sat by the fireplace.
"Figured Slytherin was up to something," Zara's hazel eyes were bright. "And to think his great...nephew or grandkid or something is greedy and wants this school back in the Slytherins' clutches!"
"Oh, Merlin, I really hope the Slytherins don't take over the school," I said in worry. "I hope this descendant isn't as narrow-minded as Salazar." We thought about our classmates, most of whom are mixed blood, including Amelia..."half and half" as some people would say, then about the muggle-borns...like myself and about twenty percent of Hogwarts' population.
"Well, Lily, it looks like this gift of yours could come in handy," Amelia told me. I nodded.
"If I could just find out
where this...Slytherin relative is and figure out what they're up to,"
I said slowly. "Then we could come up with a plan to stop them."
We hoped.
Sorry this chapter is kind of short, but I've been busy; there'll be more longer chapters later!