A/N: Thanks for reading, everyone. My other stuff hasn't been updated in a while because of a severe case of writer's block. I wrote a whole bunch of this story before writer's block set in, so updates should be pretty consistent for a while. Caution: there is fluff in this chapter. You have been warned.
Quick note to Eswen: As of right now, I have no plans to make Lucius show up, but Draco will be playing a pretty big role. Is that satisfactory? ^_^
Oh, and I bet NONE of you have ever heard Minerva say sadistic bitch before! ^_^ (Well, read, but you know what I mean)
~~~
CHAPTER EIGHT: CONFESSIONS
~~~
"Do you have any fives?"
"Go fish."
Neville Longbottom reached out and picked up the top card on the deck sitting in the middle of the triangle formed by himself and two other individuals. Hogwarts's Head Boy looked at Godric Gryffindor and said, "Okay, now it's your turn."
"All right." Gryffindor cleared his throat and looked at Parvati Patil. "Do you have any fives?"
Parvati almost laughed. "No, I don't," she said. "I just told Neville that I didn't. One of the ideas of the game is to listen to what moves your opponents make and see if you have any of those cards. It's strategy."
Gryffindor cringed. "Oh, that's right." He looked at Neville and sighed. "It's no use, Neville. I'll never get the hang of this game."
"Yes, you will," Neville said. "Try again."
"Very well. Parvati, do you have any nines?"
"Go fish," Parvati answered.
Classes had been over for about an hour. In their house's common room, Neville and Parvati were trying to teach Gryffindor how to play Go Fish, and they were not having any luck. Even though he was trying, Gryffindor could not get things to work for himself.
Suddenly, the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open, and into the common room came Minerva McGonagall. "Hi, Professor McGonagall," Parvati said upon seeing the school's deputy headmistress.
"Hello Miss Patil, Mr. Longbottom," Minerva said. "Have you seen - oh, there you are."
"Me?" Gryffindor asked, pointing to himself.
She nodded. "Yes, you. Someone wants a word with you; several, in fact."
A hopeful look crossed his face. "Rowena?"
She smiled.
Gryffindor looked at Neville and Parvati. "Will you excuse me, please? I need to save my marriage."
"Go ahead," Neville said with a grin.
As Minerva and Gryffindor left, Parvati began gathering up the cards. She got a surprised look on her face when she saw Gryffindor's cards. "Uh, Neville?" she said. "Could you please explain to Lord Gryffindor that there are only four nines in the deck?"
"What, did he have all of them?" he asked.
Parvati nodded.
A worried look crossed his face. "And to think, we were sorted into this guy's house!"
She laughed. "That's almost scary."
~~~
Outside the entrance to the Gryffindor common room stood Albus Dumbledore and Rowena Ravenclaw, waiting for Minerva and Gryffindor to come out. Soon enough, the portrait swung open, and the two of them stepped out into the hall. Gryffindor dashed over to Rowena and tried to say five things at once. "I couldn't - I had to - I'm sorry - can you - I didn't mean-"
She cut him off by pressing her finger to his lips. "It's all right," she said. "It doesn't matter whether or not we think what happened was right or wrong because there's nothing we can do about it. What we can do, though, is embrace this second chance and try again. I love you, Godric Gryffindor, and I will never try to convince myself otherwise again."
There was no need for them to continue exchanging words. All that needed to be said had, so they put their lips to other uses. As they kissed each other, Dumbledore looked at Minerva and said, "What did you say to her?"
Minerva smiled and glanced at the floor before lifting her gaze to him. "I called her a hypocrite and was thinking sadistic bitch, but I didn't say that. I think she was thinking the same thing about me."
"Hypocrite or sadistic bitch?"
"Well, she called me a hypocrite, too, so sadistic bitch, I suppose." Minerva remembered her deal with Rowena, and knew there would be no backing out of it now, so she decided that she might as well get it over with. "Albus, there's something I have to tell you."
"How convenient," Dumbledore said. "There's something I have to tell you, too."
"You go first."
"You may go first if you like."
She shook her head. "No, that's quite all right. I think you should go first."
"All right, here's what we'll do," Dumbledore said. "On the count of three, we'll both say whatever it is we have to say at the same time. Does that sound good?"
Minerva nodded. "Sounds great."
"All right. One... two... three."
Right after he said "three", their two voices spoke three words in unison: "I love you."
Both of them were so surprised that they almost couldn't speak. "What did you say?" Dumbledore choked.
"I love you," she answered. "What did you say?"
"I love you," he said.
Gryffindor pulled away from Rowena long enough to say, "Then what are you waiting for?"
~~~
A few seconds later, the portrait swung open again, but Neville and Parvati didn't step into the hall when they saw the sight before them: Godric Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw kissing passionately, and next to them, Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall engaged in the same activity. For a few moments, they were too surprised to even breathe. After all, up until yesterday, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had been dead for centuries, and Dumbledore and Minerva were, well, Dumbledore and Minerva. If they caught a student doing what they were right now, the rebuke would be quite harsh.
Parvati looked at Neville. "Back to the common room?"
Neville nodded. "Yeah."
~~~
Voldemort suddenly became very, very interested in what Salazar Slytherin had to say. "You have a brother?" he said, trying not to sound as surprised as he felt.
Slytherin nodded. "Yes - well, half brother, but still my brother. He was killed by a Muggle-born wizard named Kedelor. A month later, I succeeded in tracking down Kedelor, and I killed him. Then I went to Hogwarts and built the Chamber of Secrets. Daniel and Helga didn't know about the Chamber, and they tried to convince me to stay, but I could not."
Voldemort figured Helga had to be Helga Hufflepuff, but he had never heard of anyone named Daniel before. "Who's Daniel?" he asked. "And where were Gryffindor and Ravenclaw during all this?"
"Daniel Flamel was Helga's husband," Slytherin answered. "Rowena died a week after my brother did, and Godric..." He couldn't continue.
"What about him?"
Slytherin took a deep breath to steady himself, and then said, "Godric Gryffindor is my brother."
Voldemort was very glad that he hadn't been eating anything when Slytherin spoke those words because he certainly would have started choking, and he doubted Slytherin knew the Heimlich maneuver. "Gryffindor?" he repeated. "The mudblood-lover Gryffindor is your brother?"
Slytherin picked up his staff and held it so the silver snake head at the end was under Voldemort's chin. "Never," he hissed, "refer to Godric Gryffindor that way again."
He didn't want to get on Slytherin's bad side, so he agreed. Slytherin may be a bleeding heart, but he had more power in his little finger than Voldemort could ever have.
Slytherin put his staff down and said, "Yes, Gryffindor is my brother. My mother married his father six years after my father died. I was ten when Godric was born. I loved my brother very much, and I would have done anything for him."
"So you left the school?" Voldemort asked.
"I had my reasons. Godric and I disagreed on who should be allowed to attend Hogwarts, but the reason I did not return the next year was because he was killed. By the time I found Rowena, she was dead, too. Helga and Daniel wanted me to stay, but in their hearts, I think they knew, as I did, that the deaths of my brother and sister-in-law had driven me mad."
Now Voldemort was confused. "Sister-in-law? Gryffindor was married?"
"Yes, to Rowena. I married them. It was a union of utmost secrecy, but since they're both dead now, I don't think there's any point to keeping it secret."
"No, I suppose not."
"I spent the rest of my life tracking down Kedelor's followers and killing them to avenge my brother," Slytherin continued. "Daniel and Helga assumed full control of the school. They did a good job, but they continued to uphold the belief that anyone who showed magical ability should be allowed to attend Hogwarts regardless of the society to which they were born."
"One more thing," Voldemort said. "If this Daniel Flamel was so involved with Hogwarts, then why did he not participate in its founding?"
"There are several reasons," Slytherin said. "The idea to start a school was Helga's. The five of us - Godric, Helga, Rowena, Daniel, and myself - were fairly well acquainted by this time, and we all had a good idea of each others' abilities. It was a mutual agreement that the four most powerful ones among us would be the ones to start the school. Daniel was by no means incompetant as a wizard, but his true strength lied elsewhere - alchemy. At the time of the founding, he was hard at work on his greatest discovery yet."
"The Philosopher's Stone," Voldemort realized, and Slytherin nodded. "So the philosopher was Daniel Flamel?"
Slytherin nodded again.
"Do you, by any chance, know how to make the Philosopher's Stone?" It was worth a shot.
"I'm sorry," Slytherin said with a shake of his head. "Daniel passed the knowledge on to only one person: his son Robert. We all knew terrible things could happen if the Stone fell into the wrong hands, so it was agreed upon that only the oldest son in every generation of Flamel's line would know how to make it." He paused, then asked, "Are the Flamels still a prominet wizarding family?"
"The only Flamel I know of is Nicolas, and he is over six hundred seventy years old. It is my understanding that he stopped making the Stone several years ago, though, so he and his wife must surely be dead by now."
Slytherin did some quick subtraction in his head. "Nicolas must have been Robert's son," he concluded. "Did he have any children?"
"To the best of my knowledge, no."
Slytherin sighed. It was depressing to know that a family he had once been so intimate with had died out, and such a powerful family at that. He glanced around the room, then let his eyes come to rest on the map on the table. "What exactly is it you want to do at Hogwarts?"
"There are two individuals who must be eliminated at once," Voldemort said. "They are the strongest of the Muggle supporters. Once they are gone, the school's defenses will be significantly lowered; enough for us to assume control."
"Who are those two?"
"Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter."
"Albus Dumbledore?" Slytherin repeated. "As in Emerius Dumbledore?"
"Who was Emerius Dumbledore?" Voldemort asked. He'd never heard that name before.
"My mentor," Slytherin said wistfully. So the Dumbledores were Muggle supporters now? What was the world coming to? "Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter... very well. We need a way to get inside the school and know everything that is going on."
"Reconnaissance, in other words?"
"Yes. Are you an Animagus?"
Voldemort frowned at the mention of one of the few abilities he had never been able to master. "No," he said. "Are you?"
"Yes, but my Animagus form is far too... conspicuous for our purposes."
"What is it?"
"Chimaera."
Voldemort agreed with him. If a Chimaera showed up at Hogwarts, they would definitely know something was up, and chaos would ensue.
"Is there someone you can trust at Hogwarts?" Slytherin asked. "Someone who shares our conviction that allowing Muggles to possess magical ability will destroy this world as it did mine?"
Voldemort spent the next few moments in deep thought. Severus Snape, who had once been one of his finest Death Eaters, betrayed him and joined Dumbledore, so he was definitely out. Peter Pettigrew and Bartemius Crouch Jr. were mindless zombies rotting away in Azkaban, as were most of his other Death Eaters. Lucius Malfoy was a possibility, but he had relied on Malfoy once before, five years ago, and that incident had not gone anywhere near as well as he'd hoped. He was beginning to question Malfoy's competence. Good help was so hard to find...
Suddenly, Voldemort had an idea. Lucius Malfoy wouldn't be able to get anywhere near Hogwarts without arousing suspicion, but he had a son... a son who happened to be a seventh-year Slytherin. Maybe, just maybe...
"Can you think of anyone?" Slytherin asked.
"Yes," Voldemort said. "A Hogwarts student, one of your house, a member of one of the oldest and most powerful wizarding families in the world."
"Excellent," Slytherin said. "The name?"
"Draco Malfoy."
Quick note to Eswen: As of right now, I have no plans to make Lucius show up, but Draco will be playing a pretty big role. Is that satisfactory? ^_^
Oh, and I bet NONE of you have ever heard Minerva say sadistic bitch before! ^_^ (Well, read, but you know what I mean)
~~~
CHAPTER EIGHT: CONFESSIONS
~~~
"Do you have any fives?"
"Go fish."
Neville Longbottom reached out and picked up the top card on the deck sitting in the middle of the triangle formed by himself and two other individuals. Hogwarts's Head Boy looked at Godric Gryffindor and said, "Okay, now it's your turn."
"All right." Gryffindor cleared his throat and looked at Parvati Patil. "Do you have any fives?"
Parvati almost laughed. "No, I don't," she said. "I just told Neville that I didn't. One of the ideas of the game is to listen to what moves your opponents make and see if you have any of those cards. It's strategy."
Gryffindor cringed. "Oh, that's right." He looked at Neville and sighed. "It's no use, Neville. I'll never get the hang of this game."
"Yes, you will," Neville said. "Try again."
"Very well. Parvati, do you have any nines?"
"Go fish," Parvati answered.
Classes had been over for about an hour. In their house's common room, Neville and Parvati were trying to teach Gryffindor how to play Go Fish, and they were not having any luck. Even though he was trying, Gryffindor could not get things to work for himself.
Suddenly, the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open, and into the common room came Minerva McGonagall. "Hi, Professor McGonagall," Parvati said upon seeing the school's deputy headmistress.
"Hello Miss Patil, Mr. Longbottom," Minerva said. "Have you seen - oh, there you are."
"Me?" Gryffindor asked, pointing to himself.
She nodded. "Yes, you. Someone wants a word with you; several, in fact."
A hopeful look crossed his face. "Rowena?"
She smiled.
Gryffindor looked at Neville and Parvati. "Will you excuse me, please? I need to save my marriage."
"Go ahead," Neville said with a grin.
As Minerva and Gryffindor left, Parvati began gathering up the cards. She got a surprised look on her face when she saw Gryffindor's cards. "Uh, Neville?" she said. "Could you please explain to Lord Gryffindor that there are only four nines in the deck?"
"What, did he have all of them?" he asked.
Parvati nodded.
A worried look crossed his face. "And to think, we were sorted into this guy's house!"
She laughed. "That's almost scary."
~~~
Outside the entrance to the Gryffindor common room stood Albus Dumbledore and Rowena Ravenclaw, waiting for Minerva and Gryffindor to come out. Soon enough, the portrait swung open, and the two of them stepped out into the hall. Gryffindor dashed over to Rowena and tried to say five things at once. "I couldn't - I had to - I'm sorry - can you - I didn't mean-"
She cut him off by pressing her finger to his lips. "It's all right," she said. "It doesn't matter whether or not we think what happened was right or wrong because there's nothing we can do about it. What we can do, though, is embrace this second chance and try again. I love you, Godric Gryffindor, and I will never try to convince myself otherwise again."
There was no need for them to continue exchanging words. All that needed to be said had, so they put their lips to other uses. As they kissed each other, Dumbledore looked at Minerva and said, "What did you say to her?"
Minerva smiled and glanced at the floor before lifting her gaze to him. "I called her a hypocrite and was thinking sadistic bitch, but I didn't say that. I think she was thinking the same thing about me."
"Hypocrite or sadistic bitch?"
"Well, she called me a hypocrite, too, so sadistic bitch, I suppose." Minerva remembered her deal with Rowena, and knew there would be no backing out of it now, so she decided that she might as well get it over with. "Albus, there's something I have to tell you."
"How convenient," Dumbledore said. "There's something I have to tell you, too."
"You go first."
"You may go first if you like."
She shook her head. "No, that's quite all right. I think you should go first."
"All right, here's what we'll do," Dumbledore said. "On the count of three, we'll both say whatever it is we have to say at the same time. Does that sound good?"
Minerva nodded. "Sounds great."
"All right. One... two... three."
Right after he said "three", their two voices spoke three words in unison: "I love you."
Both of them were so surprised that they almost couldn't speak. "What did you say?" Dumbledore choked.
"I love you," she answered. "What did you say?"
"I love you," he said.
Gryffindor pulled away from Rowena long enough to say, "Then what are you waiting for?"
~~~
A few seconds later, the portrait swung open again, but Neville and Parvati didn't step into the hall when they saw the sight before them: Godric Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw kissing passionately, and next to them, Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall engaged in the same activity. For a few moments, they were too surprised to even breathe. After all, up until yesterday, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had been dead for centuries, and Dumbledore and Minerva were, well, Dumbledore and Minerva. If they caught a student doing what they were right now, the rebuke would be quite harsh.
Parvati looked at Neville. "Back to the common room?"
Neville nodded. "Yeah."
~~~
Voldemort suddenly became very, very interested in what Salazar Slytherin had to say. "You have a brother?" he said, trying not to sound as surprised as he felt.
Slytherin nodded. "Yes - well, half brother, but still my brother. He was killed by a Muggle-born wizard named Kedelor. A month later, I succeeded in tracking down Kedelor, and I killed him. Then I went to Hogwarts and built the Chamber of Secrets. Daniel and Helga didn't know about the Chamber, and they tried to convince me to stay, but I could not."
Voldemort figured Helga had to be Helga Hufflepuff, but he had never heard of anyone named Daniel before. "Who's Daniel?" he asked. "And where were Gryffindor and Ravenclaw during all this?"
"Daniel Flamel was Helga's husband," Slytherin answered. "Rowena died a week after my brother did, and Godric..." He couldn't continue.
"What about him?"
Slytherin took a deep breath to steady himself, and then said, "Godric Gryffindor is my brother."
Voldemort was very glad that he hadn't been eating anything when Slytherin spoke those words because he certainly would have started choking, and he doubted Slytherin knew the Heimlich maneuver. "Gryffindor?" he repeated. "The mudblood-lover Gryffindor is your brother?"
Slytherin picked up his staff and held it so the silver snake head at the end was under Voldemort's chin. "Never," he hissed, "refer to Godric Gryffindor that way again."
He didn't want to get on Slytherin's bad side, so he agreed. Slytherin may be a bleeding heart, but he had more power in his little finger than Voldemort could ever have.
Slytherin put his staff down and said, "Yes, Gryffindor is my brother. My mother married his father six years after my father died. I was ten when Godric was born. I loved my brother very much, and I would have done anything for him."
"So you left the school?" Voldemort asked.
"I had my reasons. Godric and I disagreed on who should be allowed to attend Hogwarts, but the reason I did not return the next year was because he was killed. By the time I found Rowena, she was dead, too. Helga and Daniel wanted me to stay, but in their hearts, I think they knew, as I did, that the deaths of my brother and sister-in-law had driven me mad."
Now Voldemort was confused. "Sister-in-law? Gryffindor was married?"
"Yes, to Rowena. I married them. It was a union of utmost secrecy, but since they're both dead now, I don't think there's any point to keeping it secret."
"No, I suppose not."
"I spent the rest of my life tracking down Kedelor's followers and killing them to avenge my brother," Slytherin continued. "Daniel and Helga assumed full control of the school. They did a good job, but they continued to uphold the belief that anyone who showed magical ability should be allowed to attend Hogwarts regardless of the society to which they were born."
"One more thing," Voldemort said. "If this Daniel Flamel was so involved with Hogwarts, then why did he not participate in its founding?"
"There are several reasons," Slytherin said. "The idea to start a school was Helga's. The five of us - Godric, Helga, Rowena, Daniel, and myself - were fairly well acquainted by this time, and we all had a good idea of each others' abilities. It was a mutual agreement that the four most powerful ones among us would be the ones to start the school. Daniel was by no means incompetant as a wizard, but his true strength lied elsewhere - alchemy. At the time of the founding, he was hard at work on his greatest discovery yet."
"The Philosopher's Stone," Voldemort realized, and Slytherin nodded. "So the philosopher was Daniel Flamel?"
Slytherin nodded again.
"Do you, by any chance, know how to make the Philosopher's Stone?" It was worth a shot.
"I'm sorry," Slytherin said with a shake of his head. "Daniel passed the knowledge on to only one person: his son Robert. We all knew terrible things could happen if the Stone fell into the wrong hands, so it was agreed upon that only the oldest son in every generation of Flamel's line would know how to make it." He paused, then asked, "Are the Flamels still a prominet wizarding family?"
"The only Flamel I know of is Nicolas, and he is over six hundred seventy years old. It is my understanding that he stopped making the Stone several years ago, though, so he and his wife must surely be dead by now."
Slytherin did some quick subtraction in his head. "Nicolas must have been Robert's son," he concluded. "Did he have any children?"
"To the best of my knowledge, no."
Slytherin sighed. It was depressing to know that a family he had once been so intimate with had died out, and such a powerful family at that. He glanced around the room, then let his eyes come to rest on the map on the table. "What exactly is it you want to do at Hogwarts?"
"There are two individuals who must be eliminated at once," Voldemort said. "They are the strongest of the Muggle supporters. Once they are gone, the school's defenses will be significantly lowered; enough for us to assume control."
"Who are those two?"
"Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter."
"Albus Dumbledore?" Slytherin repeated. "As in Emerius Dumbledore?"
"Who was Emerius Dumbledore?" Voldemort asked. He'd never heard that name before.
"My mentor," Slytherin said wistfully. So the Dumbledores were Muggle supporters now? What was the world coming to? "Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter... very well. We need a way to get inside the school and know everything that is going on."
"Reconnaissance, in other words?"
"Yes. Are you an Animagus?"
Voldemort frowned at the mention of one of the few abilities he had never been able to master. "No," he said. "Are you?"
"Yes, but my Animagus form is far too... conspicuous for our purposes."
"What is it?"
"Chimaera."
Voldemort agreed with him. If a Chimaera showed up at Hogwarts, they would definitely know something was up, and chaos would ensue.
"Is there someone you can trust at Hogwarts?" Slytherin asked. "Someone who shares our conviction that allowing Muggles to possess magical ability will destroy this world as it did mine?"
Voldemort spent the next few moments in deep thought. Severus Snape, who had once been one of his finest Death Eaters, betrayed him and joined Dumbledore, so he was definitely out. Peter Pettigrew and Bartemius Crouch Jr. were mindless zombies rotting away in Azkaban, as were most of his other Death Eaters. Lucius Malfoy was a possibility, but he had relied on Malfoy once before, five years ago, and that incident had not gone anywhere near as well as he'd hoped. He was beginning to question Malfoy's competence. Good help was so hard to find...
Suddenly, Voldemort had an idea. Lucius Malfoy wouldn't be able to get anywhere near Hogwarts without arousing suspicion, but he had a son... a son who happened to be a seventh-year Slytherin. Maybe, just maybe...
"Can you think of anyone?" Slytherin asked.
"Yes," Voldemort said. "A Hogwarts student, one of your house, a member of one of the oldest and most powerful wizarding families in the world."
"Excellent," Slytherin said. "The name?"
"Draco Malfoy."