"You are too impatient and noisy, Rowena," Lord Ravenclaw said, though his stern tone did not mask the smile in his eyes.
Salazar sniggered, leaning against a nearby shelf in the castle library, grinning at Rowena.
"But you promised!" she argued. "You said I can learn everything that Salazar learns, and it will not be fair if you take him into the forest to gather ingredients and see the bowtruckles, but leave me behind!"
Lord Ravenclaw sighed, grabbing his field journal and sliding it into a pocket in his thick robe. "Very well, but it is a rare occasion indeed for any scholar to take a seven year-old along when he wants to study a bowtruckle. If you scare any away, I will whip you.
Rowena stiffened very seriously and nodded her head in agreement.
"Do you have the fairy eggs, Salazar?" he questioned the boy, who looked tall for twelve, as he straightened up at Lord Ravenclaw's attention.
"Yes, Master Ravenclaw, in my pocket."
"Then what are we waiting for? The forest beckons..."
Lord Ravenclaw left the library, his robe hem scraping the stone floor as he walked. Salazar was still grinning at Rowena, who now finally dared to smile, showing a mouth that had recently lost two front teeth. He held out a hand to her and she took it gladly.
"You are a lucky girl, Rowena. Any other child who spoke so crossly to an adult would surely be beaten beyond their senses. Lord Ravenclaw spoils you..."
They walked out of the library together, and the corridors were dark and cool.
"I wish he was my father," Salazar added quietly.
Rowena hugged him instinctively, but did not respond with words. Times when Salazar spoke like that always made her feel uneasy for him.
"We should hurry to catch up," he suggested, lightening his tone. "Want to race me?"
He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out the tiny, pink and red fairy eggs. Pointing his wand at them, he performed a charm to make them unbreakable, and then slipped them back into his pocket.
"Clever," she commented.
"I know--even you could carry them now, and you always seem to break things."
"I do not!"
"Do, too!"
Salazar took off at a sprint through the castle corridors and Rowena was behind him instantly, running as fast as her much smaller legs could go. She followed him out of the dark castle into the brilliant summer sun, everything incredibly bright. They zoomed past Lord Ravenclaw, laughing and screaming, heading for the forest. Salazar slowed some to allow her to catch up, but kept her trotting all the way to the forest edge. Apparating to meet them there, Rowena's father appeared with a harsh face.
"The eggs?" he inquired, assuming Salazar had forgotten and squished them during the entire running.
Salazar flicked the brown hair from his eyes in a characteristic gesture, then reached into his pocket and pulled them out. "I put a charm on them," he explained.
"Infragilis?"
"Yes, Master Ravenclaw."
"Excellent thinking, Salazar. Now, can you make them soft again so that the bowtruckles can eat them?"
"I can!" Rowena shouted, and then clamped a hand over her own mouth, her eyes wide as she drew a fearsome gaze from her father.
"Since you still desire to pester us with your incessant impulsiveness," he spoke slowly to her, "then show us. If you do not perform the spell properly, you shall be sent home...and punished."
Rowena pulled out her wand, as Salazar lowered his hand full of fairy eggs. She collected herself, and then pointed the wand at the pink and red little spheres.
"Retexo Infragilis," she said clearly, and a white light sparked from her wand. Lord Ravenclaw picked up one of the eggs.
"Well done, Rowena."
She smiled proudly, and saw that Salazar was smiling, too.
Lord Ravenclaw beckoned for them to hurry along, and they went together into the forest. Salazar was the first to spot a bowtruckle, peering at them from an unusually large hornbeam tree, with dark and sinewy bark. The bowtruckle was almost indistinguishable except for its eyes, as it blinked curiously at the eggs in Salazar's hand. He progressed slowly toward the tree and Rowena held her breath, frozen in place. She wanted to squeal with delight at seeing such an unusual creature, but she knew better.
Once Salazar had the bowtruckle placated with fairy eggs, Lord Ravenclaw motioned them to scamper off to look for ingredients while he sketched the creature and made notations in his field journal.
The forest felt clean and cool, and the two children wandered all about for hours, collecting different mushrooms, flowers and bits of plants and bark. Tired, they paused to rest and soak their feet in a cold, little brook, where black water rushed over dark, mossy stones.
"I wish you didn't have to leave at the end of the summer," Rowena said, once they were both settled.
"Me, too. Next summer will be my last here, as well, for I will have learned to Apparate and can come at any time for my lessons."
"What do you do when you're in the Fen?" she asked. "Do you have friends? Do you have another teacher?"
"I learn my father's business," he answered. "I don't like it though...I want to be a scholar like Lord Ravenclaw. I think I would like to have my own pupils one day."
"You are a powerful wizard," Rowena told him. "Father says so all the time. I bet you will be a scholar."
"I can hope," he answered, somewhat solemnly.
Rowena studied him, as his brow furrowed slightly in his own thoughts. Salazar's face was pale and smooth, with cleanly sharp features, and it always seemed a mass of wavy, dark hair was falling into his eyes, which he would flick away every so often. Rowena had begun to feel small, as only that summer he had grown tremendously. He was taller, rangy and starting to have a hint of an emerging square-built form. If Rowena was one to think of such things, she would have regarded Salazar as a darkly handsome boy...but she did not. Rowena herself was very plain, and so she cared little for gazing at her reflection in mirrors and thought very little about others' looks. In her mind, beautiful people were those like her mother--vain and selfish, and not worthy of her care. She saw Salazar as just that--Salazar, a friend and one of two people in her life she loved dearly.
"Look, Rowena," he whispered, pointing downstream.
An adder, a yellowish brown, with a dark zigzag pattern down its back, gingerly moved towards the slowly trickling water as though it might want a drink. Orange eyes that seemed angry scanned the area as it stuck its head down to touch the water with a forked tongue.
"That's an adder," he said. "I thought they only lived in the drier areas, like the moors..."
He stood up slowly.
"What are you doing?" Rowena whispered nervously. "Adders are poisonous."
Salazar motioned toward the snake, and then the strangest thing happened. A foreign hissing noise escaped his lips, as he looked at the snake.
The slender reptile raised its head and looked at Salazar.
He turned back around to Rowena and his green eyes were surprised.
Rowena realized she was gaping and closed her mouth.
"I think..." he stammered. "I think it...talked...to me...but..."
"You were hissing," she squeaked.
"No, I wasn't. I just said hello, and told it I wasn't going to hurt it..."
"No, you hissed!" she said, still trying to whisper so as not to startle the adder. " I heard you. Say something else to it...ask it if it's a boy or a girl."
Salazar seemed terribly stunned and confused. He turned back to the snake that laid still, its head motionlessly pointed at the boy.
He began to hiss and sputter again, and Rowena watched, fascinated by the discovery.
"She's lost," he said, still in disbelief. "An eagle caught her in the open land, but dropped her over the forest. She wants to know the way back."
"You can talk to snakes..." Rowena gasped, excited and nervous. This was something she had not read about before, and until that moment, would not have thought it possible.
"Wait until father hears about this. I am quite sure he cannot talk to snakes! Tell her...tell her it's that way!"
She stood and pointed, wondering if the adder might understand her, too, but the snake kept its orange eyes fixed on Salazar.
Again he spoke to the snake, and Rowena was entranced with the eerie hissing sounds that came from his slowly moving mouth.
The snake flicked a forked tongue, then slithered across the brook and into the undergrowth, heading in the proper direction.
Salazar put his hands to the side of his head, as the realization of having an incredible power hit him. He cried out and laughed nervously.
"Am I dreaming?" he wondered aloud.
Rowena ran up to him, being careful not to let her bare feet slip on the mossy rocks. "I heard you!" she exclaimed excitedly. "You must be the most powerful wizard ever...besides father...but I don't think he can talk to snakes."
Salazar stood quietly then, gazing at the place where the snake was. "So you heard me, but I was hissing?"
"Yes...why, didn't you know you were hissing?"
"No. I was speaking in our language, or at least I thought I was."
"Do it again!" she pleaded. "Let me hear it again--it's so strange!"
"I...I don't think I can," Salazar replied, flicking his dark hair back that had fallen in his face. "I think I have to be looking at a snake..."
He grew quiet again, and without further word, sat back down and began to put on his shoes.
"Are we going already?" she asked him.
"Yes. I need to get back to the library and find out what this is."
"Can't you just ask father?"
"Yes," he answered. "Though I want to find out on my own. It's my power."
Rowena nodded, smiling at him because she understood how much Salazar was like her, was like Lord Ravenclaw. Salazar stood, his green eyes flashing brilliantly down at her, and after she gathered the basket of ingredients, she took his hand and walked him back through the forest.
From within a flat face, the wide eyes of a bowtruckle peered up at Rowena from a page in her father's field journal, having worked to conjure some unexpected memories. The little stickman held fast to a tree with his long, sharp fingers, and his bark-like skin seemed to blend in well with the trunk. Rowena sat with the journal open, feeling stiff as she always did when she handled it, as all the sacred feelings she held for the little leather-bound book had grown since her father's death. Not often did she pull it out from its safe resting place...tonight, she came closer to turning the page of the last entry--a fairy in a sea of bluebells--but her eyes had not gazed upon the sketch since she had drawn it five years before. She knew what she would feel, and that was a terrible guilt for being concerned with sketching wildflowers while her father was dueling for his life...and lost.
The image of the tree-dwelling creature on the page had brought forth the memory of the day Lord Ravenclaw had sketched it. That was the day Salazar had learned of his most unique ability--he could talk to snakes. She remembered how fervently he searched for information about "snake-speak" in the library, even shunning their usual playtime in order to find his answers. After several days, he had finally discovered that he was what was called a Parselmouth, or a wizard who could speak Pareseltongue, the snake language. Finally, he shared the discovery with Lord Ravenclaw, who was seriously interested, though Rowena recalled apprehension on her father's face. She would later learn that the gift of Parseltongue was looked upon as being Dark, or mysterious at the very least.
That day was during the second of three consecutive summers that Salazar had taken a residence with the Ravenclaws, before he learned to Apparate from his family home in the far away Fen. Though Salazar had come to study, he also spent nearly every free moment playing with Rowena. Like two wild things set loose, they covered loch and river, hill and glen in their daily adventures, always ending in the great oak tree, where Salazar would relate exciting tales of olden days. Having few friends, she became quite attached to him, and he to her, and they could not bear to be parted. Eventually, Lord Ravenclaw conceded to Rowena's pleas and let her join Salazar for his lessons. Lord Ravenclaw always accommodated his daughter, and she knew it was because he understood that even though Rowena was young, she had a wit and a desire for learning that was no less intense than his own; and he loved her more than she could ever hope to be loved again in her lifetime. Salazar had been right...she was spoiled.
Rowena thought back to the fun of those summers, and that strange day in the forest. Even now, nearly ten years later, she could remember the coolness of the forest and the way the shaded areas twinkled as the sunlight crept through the waving leaves of the trees. She remembered how Salazar had looked then when he was twelve, his green eyes intense and curious as he discovered something powerful about himself.
Rowena shuddered and felt dark as she thought about the change in his eyes the last time she saw Salazar Slytherin...the vibrant shine was gone. He had seen death--the death of her father at his own hands. Rowena shook her head as though to set free her grim thoughts and shut the field journal, bringing herself to the present. She reclined in a small cushioned nook of a window seat, overlooking the alley below, between the old Roman wall of Ludenwic and her uncle Edelbert's library and book shop. Above the shop, Rowena had a small apartment separate from her uncle's living quarters. It had not always been so, but Rowena had become quite skilled with Charms, especially where interiors were concerned. In fact, she had managed a particularly intricate spell to not only create a new section of the interior for herself, but to also make new rooms appear in her own apartment. She had been quite proud of herself for creating a shifting floor plan, but Uncle Edelbert, though he was a scholarly and well-read wizard, kept getting lost nevertheless, for he was very old and was having trouble keeping up with the constant changes. She had it in her mind to see if she could make the stairs shift as well, but that would probably assure Edelbert never saw his living quarters again.
They had led a quiet life there for nearly five years. Immediately after her father's death, Rowena had been sent to Ludenwic to live with Edelbert, Lord Ravenclaw's only brother. So, she had shown up practically an orphan on the doorstep of the seemingly tiny shop in Ludenwic, crammed in with all the other wooden houses and shops on Bishopsgate Street, just around from the stony St. Helen's Church, and across from the dusty Old Parrish Clerk's. Edelbert maintained a well-hidden wizard's resource in the growing city of Ludenwic. Talk had ensued of moving the shop near Ollivander's Wands and Gringott's Bank, freshly built and Charmed from the view of Muggles, but he and Rowena rather liked the dusty old feel of the northern edge of the textile district. A plain, small shop to Muggles, not really of any interest, it contained a special door on the inside which welcomed wizards in to a large library of over 1000 volumes of books and scrolls, as well as manuscripts, scrolls and spell books for sale. Much like Lord Ravenclaw's library, Edelbert's was a mess, with too much to shelve and never enough space, though Rowena was working on that. She had felt nearly at home when she stepped into her uncle's business and residence, and even though it was surely unlikely, the reclusive scholar took Rowena in and they soon became fast friends. The old wizard grew to love Rowena as a daughter, and he took up the responsibility of teaching her in the arts of witchcraft and wizardry. With lessons, keeping the shop tidy, and re-shelving books, Rowena found little time to dwell on the sad events that had forever altered her life. Only at night did she really let her mind go to those darker places...and she longed for days past, on those summer nights when she and Salazar would snuggle up together and sleep as inseparable friends.
Uncle Edelbert was caring, but Rowena learned what it truly was to be alone.
She often wondered what became of Salazar, but Edelbert had said he would tell her one day, that she was too young to understand such things.
Now, Rowena was sixteen and an accomplished witch already, and she wondered if Edelbert felt she was ready to know. Glancing down at the field journal that she still held, Rowena wondered if she ever would be ready to face the terrible facts. She wanted only her happy memories.
"Rowena," an aged voice spoke, out of breath. "I thought I would never find my way!"
Her uncle Edelbert stood hunched in the doorway, a tired smile spread across his very old, wrinkled face. He looked very much like her father, but much older.
"Welcome back, Uncle," she greeted, rushing over to plant a kiss on his cheek.
"Oh, well," he blushed. "I half expected to get an earful of your temper, my being three days late in returning."
He noticed then that she looked somber.
Rowena realized she would have normally been cross and spoken harshly out of turn, as had usually been a quality of her temperament...but for the past few weeks, running the shop and library alone, she had changed some.
"I've...been thinking about sad things," she answered.
"I was going to say that it seems these weeks of responsibility have tamed you."
She nodded. "You would be right, I think. Yet..."
Edelbert's eyes lighted in recognition. He knew what she wanted to ask, but he quickly changed the subject.
"I did get a chance to go to that place in Dacia where some wizards are studying dragons," he spoke almost too loud, "and I ran into an old friend of yours...Weasley...oh, bother what was his first name...red hair, eye for trouble..."
"Kay?"
"Yes, that's it!" Edelbert answered, laughing at his forgetfulness. "He wished to tell you hello, and to give his good friend a pair of brand new, dragon-hide gloves. I told him you had been studying Herbology lately and...well, here they are."
Edelbert handed her the pair of tough gloves. They were genuine and scaly, and were a lovely gift from Kay. Things had happened so fast, she had never had a chance to say goodbye to her mischievous friend.
"Kay was always interested in dragons...every cloud looked like a dragon to him when we daydreamed."
"Then you should be happy to know that he has followed his dreams. He's a little worse for wear, what with all the burns and scars, but he seems very happy."
"Good," she smiled. "Thank you, Uncle."
"Well, then," he muttered. "It is late and I'm quite tired. I think I shall retire for the evening."
"I'll open up tomorrow," Rowena suggested. "You get your rest."
Edelbert looked somewhat surprised. The Rowena he used to know would have dodged any duty in order to spend time reading or practicing her skills.
He smiled. "I think you have grown up some since I left."
"Perhaps," she answered, smiling in return.
"Goodnight, dear," he said, as she kissed his cheek.
"Goodnight, Uncle Edelbert," she replied.
After his leaving, Rowena put on a nightgown and looked at her reflection in the small, old mirror on the wall as she brushed her hair. Once like yellow straw, her hair had lightened to a fine gold, gradually adopting a gentle wave. Her freckles had faded some, and her face was fair. Even her form was starting to fill out from the wispy girl she was, to a more shapely form for a young lady. As much as she wanted to ignore it, a young woman very much like her mother was starting to gaze back at her from the looking glass. The most distinct difference though, was her eyes. They were blue, but dark as twilight, quite different from the icy blue gaze of Nathaira Ravenclaw. That was enough for Rowena not to detest looking at herself in the mirror. And though everyone had always said her mother was a rare beauty, Rowena could not ever think that about herself, even though she was lovelier than her wicked mother could have ever hoped to be.
Rowena finished brushing her hair with a yawn, then extinguished the candles lighting her room. A full moon was high in the sky, bringing a silvery light around all her books and possessions. Then, as she usually did, Rowena put off going to sleep to nestle back in the window and read for just a little while longer in the bright moonlight.