A/N: Thank you to those who reviewed the first chapter (made my day). Updates will be weekly.

Anything you recognize (characters, setting, etc.) belongs to J.K. Rowling. Everything else is mine.

Please read and review.

Chapter Two

The first thing Althea noticed about Salazar Slytherin's teaching method was that he reminded her a bit of Professor Potter. He was knowledgeable and confident, but patient enough to deal with the students who lagged behind the others. One of the Gryffindor students had set a wardrobe on fire while trying to disarm Waldo Pratt, and instead of giving out a detention (which were positively archaic in this time) Slytherin demonstrated what went wrong and assigned the student extra practice time. It was…enlightening to say the least.

Althea had found that attending each of the founder's classes taught her not only about them as professors but she also learned a great deal on their subjects. Rowena's lessons on Potions had put Professor Slughorn to shame, and Helga's Transfiguration lectures were things of beauty and terror. Althea was sure she was prepared to pass the Animagus test at the Ministry thanks to those lessons. Gryffindor's classes in Charms were interesting, and fairly useful. Due to the lack of Ministry interference many of the spells weren't taught anymore, and she had to disagree with the strict control of the future in some instances.

Especially, it seemed, when it came to Master Slytherin's Dark Arts lessons. It had still been Defense Against the Dark Arts when she'd gone to school, and most of that stemmed from Grindelwald and Voldemort's separate reigns of terror on Britain. She'd heard the wizarding education was more liberal in America, but that seemed a little hard to believe.

In just the first hour of class they'd discussed the morality of using spells against others, in what instances it was called for or not, and when a killing curse was warranted. She wouldn't have expected Slytherin to be so relaxed in his teachings, and figured that he would've favored harsher punishments for evil-doers.

The differences between future Slytherin and current Salazar were too various to list. The obvious appearance change that couldn't just be explained with age was the most obvious. Then there was the personality and methodologies too, because he wasn't a brooding muggle-born-hating man. She'd noticed the oddities during her earlier reports in his interactions with the other founders, particularly Gryffindor, but it was a different thing to see it in person and in his relationships with the students. This man was not the man the world thought he was…at least not yet.

Althea sat through all of his lessons, noting the way he treated the younger students versus the older ones, and how his passion for Dark Arts was evident in each spell he cast. Despite his clear knowledge of some of the darkest spells she'd never heard of, he didn't seem to be training an army of future evil. If anything he was preparing them for the worst while making them seek the best solutions. The way he spoke had her hanging on every word, and at one point she found herself actually taking notes on the lesson instead of on the person teaching. Sure, ancient teachings were just as highly valued in the vaults but an investigation into the founders was more important than that.

Slytherin didn't take his lunch in his private quarters like Rowena did, but instead ate in the Great Hall with Gryffindor and occasionally Helga. They ate bread, meats, and cheeses while the founders drank mead and talked about the nearby muggle raids. It was the first time that she'd been privy to one of these conversations so she moved closer. The students managed to talk louder than she could hear, and the risk of exposure was higher than Croaker would've liked, but it had to be done.

"Do you think they'll come here?" Slytherin said.

"The wards should divert them, but it could happen."

"What will we do? Surely we can't fight them…"

"Wouldn't be much of a battle in the first place, but we can try alternative methods. Perhaps a bridge or a moat? We could always tie up a dragon near the gate—they love those."

"And then they'll send warriors to defeat the dragon and we'll have well-trained fighters on our hands instead of farmers."

"They're just muggles."

"They're human, Godric."

It was historical gold. Salazar Slytherin defending muggles? Althea kept her notepad close by and her Quick Quotes Quill™ wrote down every word. She was so busy learning forward to listen that a lock of hair fell out of her hood and was briefly visible. As she pushed it back it seemed that Slytherin might have inclined his head in her direction, but she couldn't be sure. Either way her time was up and lunch was over.

The students went to their afternoon courses and she followed Slytherin up to the second floor, in the opposite direction she'd predicted he would go. They passed a few stragglers heading to Gryffindor's Charms lesson and, when the corridor was clear, Slytherin stepped into the girls' lavatory. Althea had studied the layout, visited it when she'd been a student at Hogwarts, but she knew that the modern Chamber had to be vastly different from the original. Still, she wasn't quite sure it was safe to follow him yet—not on the first day, not so early in its creation. He had to be on guard and her footsteps might echo on the stones. It would have to wait till later.

She sat in the second floor lavatory and worked on her notes, noticing that she'd written more questions than answers. Why the difference between current and future? How did he really feel about muggles? What created the divide between Gryffindor and Slytherin? Why did he leave? What was he working on in the Chamber? She organized the pages and tried to come up with a working theory. Slytherin and Gryffindor had been colleagues for a decade or so now and nothing in their history or interactions showed any friction.

If anything, the most friction between the founders was Helga and Gryffindor. The latter had tried to woo her on many occasions, and she'd responded by throwing down a battle challenge to see if he was worthy. Then she'd kicked his ass. They'd been playing this game for months and she never tired of it. Althea wondered how Auror Potter would feel if he knew his founder had been defeated by 'soft, kind-hearted' Hufflepuff. Not that she could tell him. This was a secret mission for the Department of Mysteries after all.

There was a rattle as the stairway from the Chamber appeared. Althea double-checked her Cloak and lack of visibility before standing and watching as Slytherin appeared and looked around. Finding nothing out of sorts, he left the room and she followed. He spent some time in his office grading papers, which was terribly boring to watch, and she spent that time looking around.

Most of his books were out of print in her day, some of them quite rare, and they were illuminated and handwritten. She wasn't sure if Slytherin himself had done the writing or if it had been done by magical monks. The candlelight he worked by wasn't quite adequate and she could feel her eyes straining. There wasn't a place to sit since everything was covered with parchment, quills, pots of ink, and various dark-looking objects. Luckily her trips up and down the stairs in the Ministry paid off with strong legs that could stand for hours. Physically she was ready for the boredom, but mentally? Not so much.

Even though historical analysis and investigation were fascinating, and she was lucky to even be doing this secretive work in the first place, there were dull moments. Moments where watching Slytherin give Waldo Pratt an E wasn't pertinent to her overall work. Some other Timekeepers wrote down the minutia of their assignments, but she wasn't one of them. Major questions needing answering and it would take time to get them, and they probably wouldn't be found in essays on the difference between hexes, jinxes, and curses.

There were only 28 days left and she planned to use every one of them.

Rule #2 of the Timekeeper's Code: Do not exceed the time limit allotted.

Slytherin, like all of the founders, had a routine that he kept to. He went to breakfast, taught lessons, had lunch, worked in the Chamber, graded papers, went to dinner, and spent his evenings with his House. After the first week, nothing of interest happened. She kept her notes organized, observed his patterns, and waited for a proper opportunity to follow him into the Chamber. It was part of the reason she'd saved him for last; Salazar Slytherin was the most unknown and mysterious of the founders.

And so, nine days into her assignment, she paused a moment after he went into the passageway, took a quiet breath, and followed him in. They walked through a corridor, the temperature dropping with every step, and paused in front of a large door. Intricately carved serpents moved as Slytherin spoke in Parseltongue and it opened. Out of suspicion or habit, Slytherin looked behind him, right through her, and stepped into the Chamber. She walked behind him and had to hold back a gasp at what she saw.

It was gorgeous. The walls glittered and shone in the light from sconces on the wall, and she could see that one of the walls looked into the depths of the lake. A mermaid swam by and waved at Slytherin before disappearing into the darkness. None of the reports she'd heard about the Chamber said anything about a wall connecting to the Lake. The founder stepped up onto a dais and stared up at a gigantic statue of a man who looked more like the Slytherin she knew than the one before her. The mystery deepened.

He stood like that for a few moments before checking on some cauldrons bubbling away, and sitting down at the desk to work. She moved closer, desperately making sure her steps didn't echo in any way, and looked at what he was writing. It seemed to be a draft or a proposal of some kind, but it wasn't related to muggles or muggleborns in any way. The title, or at the least the working one since the three above it were crossed out, was "The Benefits of Squib Education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

This was…unexpected. The parchment was full of scribbles and snippets of thoughts, and she wondered how long he'd been working on it. Since there wasn't a Ministry yet she wasn't sure who he was writing it to or for what purpose. Surely if Salazar Slytherin wanted educated squibs then it wouldn't be hard to speak with the other founders about it and make it happen. What was the hold up?

There was a noise from the other side of the Chamber and Althea held back a scream and stood absolutely still as a basilisk slid out of one of the pipes and slithered toward them. This was something she hadn't predicted. No one was quite sure when the basilisk entered the school, but the rumors were that Slytherin had brought it with him. Since she hadn't seen or heard of it in her months of observation she'd assumed that that was one rumor she could put aside. Apparently she was wrong, very, very wrong.

She kept her eyes down on the parchment, even as she heard it move closer. She could feel its weight on the stones nearby and estimated that it was about 130 kilos—not fully grown. Slytherin ignored the creature as he finished a paragraph before looking over at it and speaking in Parseltongue.

Several thoughts flew through Althea's mind in the span of a second. Slytherin could speak to the basilisk. The basilisk could smell Althea. Althea could be revealed at any moment. So, in the following second, she did one of the stupidest things she could think of. While Slytherin was looking at the basilisk she tipped over his ink, spilling it onto the corner of his parchment. He immediately stopped talking and started working on cleaning up the mess.

Althea used this distraction to quickly and somewhat quietly run out of the Chamber and into the corridor. Luckily, the basilisk didn't follow her and she managed to not have a heart attack. Croaker would have a field day if she died on assignment because of something as simple as a basilisk. All of her training to avoid anachronisms, to practice invisibility and how to be undetected, to learn the timeline of wizarding history by heart, and she'd die because she assumed that a rumor about a killer creature was false. How embarrassing.

Apparently her little distraction was enough to throw off Slytherin's schedule as he left the Chamber not too long after. Since he had, in fact, brought a basilisk into the school she wondered how much of history was set to happen in the month or so that she was present. There had only been two conversations about muggles, nothing about the sorting process and any problems with it, and no tension between Gryffindor and Slytherin that was anything other than day-to-day minor annoyances. She wasn't sure what she was waiting for, but it had to be big.

How else could she explain everything that wasn't adding up? It didn't make any sense.

Althea ran out of instant noodles on the fifteenth and was forced to set up a few traps to catch rabbits and other small creatures. She found a nearby blackberry bush and cleared it of its fruits in an evening. She'd used magic to clean herself more than she would've liked, but sneaking into the castle and using the baths while visible was too risky. Even though she would kill for some hot water.

She'd spent the morning watching Slytherin work on grading papers and hovering at the edges of the Chamber while keeping an eye on the basilisk. When it was clear that he wasn't going to do anything else she made her way back to camp to organize her notes and indulge in some actual cleanliness. There was a nearby hot springs that didn't exist in the future, and she intended to make full use of it. Grabbing her Cloak and wand, Althea made her way up the mountain. She could have just Apparated, but using any magic seemed risky to do in the proximity of four of the greatest magicians the universe had ever known.

She set her things down on a nearby rock, set up a few wards and alarms, and undressed. She put a toe into the water and almost moaned at how good it felt. Making sure her hair potions were nearby, she stepped in and immediately dunked her head under the water. Croaker and the other male Timekeepers might be able to go a month without proper bathing, but Althea definitely could not. Her three month field training had been long enough.

Leaning back against a rock, she stared up at the sunny sky and smiled. If she didn't think about it, it was easy to pretend that she was on vacation, relaxing at a spa somewhere, and not on assignment in the tenth century studying one of the most hated figures of history. Most people wouldn't want to, but—then again—most people didn't even know it was an option. The Department of Mystery didn't send out job offerings or put ads in the Daily Prophet. Instead, they recruited from the other departments, finding those with suitable N.E. scores and applicable talents.

Then there were tests. Althea's first job at the Ministry had been as an unpaid intern working with the Invisibility Task Force, and she'd wondered why Regina Watson started following her and asking seemingly inane questions. It turned out that she'd been put on a watch list from the moment she'd scored an O on her History of Magic test. Apparently few, if any, students took the exam in the first place.

After she'd been officially offered a temporary position within the Department there had been more tests. Each section of the Department of Mysteries had its own requirements and skills needed. Her lack of knowledge about astronomy disqualified her from working with the Astronauts, the high-security measures and general mental qualities of the Seers didn't fit well, and she wasn't willing to go through with the intense training to become a Heartkeeper. There had been two interviews between two sections of the Department before she'd finally chosen her position. The Thinkers had been interested in her philosophical wonderings about the power of the mind, about possible telekinesis in practice, and a few other things. But it was Saul Croaker and the Timekeepers who had given her the choice to observe history, travel through time, and research the truth of the world with her own eyes.

Who would turn that down?

Althea grabbed a nearby potion and smeared it over her head, wishing for the soft locks that she hadn't had for weeks. Magic could only do so much. A nice floral scent wafted out of the bottle and she sighed in appreciation. Ministry paychecks, especially from the Department of Ministry, paid for the nicest things. The days of muggle shampoos and conditioners were in her past. In fact, one of the first things she'd observed about the founders had been their devotion to cleanliness within the castle. The prefects' baths hadn't been added on quite yet, but there was still enough water for all the students and professors to remain clean.

A branch snapped nearby and Althea only had enough time to grab her nearby Cloak and use it to cover her chest before a figure stepped out of the trees. She felt for her wards and noticed that they hadn't been tripped and that the alarms were intact. Her hand clasped her wand and the person noticed her before she had time to go fully invisible. The only word she could say was a simple, "Fuck."