Salazar was born to a bewildered, but not unattractive, peasant girl in a remote village high up in the mountains that separated Afghanistan from its neighbour Pakistan. Indeed, her lack of ugliness could have been said to be the cause of her child-bound predicament. Her popularity with the young men of her village was destined to end in trouble. Not that her son ever knew this, of course. Salazar was taken, at the age of five, by the slave traders of the region, who carried him in a wooden cage across the mountains to the ancient city of Kabul. They treated him well, surprisingly, and he was fed and watered along with their animals. He did not know how much they had paid his mother for him, nor why his mother had been so quick to sell her only child. He could not have known that, despite her best efforts to integrate her child into the life of the village, and the hasty marriage to a young man in the opposite hut, it had been obvious from the start that he was not going to fit in.

For a start, there was his attraction to snakes. In normal circumstances, this would have been a good thing, given that snakes were sacred creatures in the religion to which he was born. But Salazar talked to the snakes, he spent time with them. The sight of a toddler babbling with snakes was enough to convince the superstitious villagers that he was Naga, the god of the snakes, and that he had come to punish them for their transgressions. In Salazar's second year, the crops failed totally. And the villagers looked to the child for answers. At first they feted him, but when an unfortunate incident arose with a Cobra and the village elder's granddaughter, something had to give. Salazar was decreed to be a liability and they called him Kaliya, the bringer of disaster. They could not harm him, for fear of inciting the gods to further retribution, but they quietly, and effectively, shunned his mother and her family. And the other problem was his volatility. This manifested itself in many ways. He had a remarkable capacity, even when he was as young as one year old, for wreaking havoc. Be it by causing the modest fire in the centre of his mother and step-father's hut to flare out of control and set light to the roof (by the time the slave trader bought him, they were on their fifth roof, so his quick sale could have been understandable to these subsistence farmers) or by wearing his mother down with his ability to cry for days on end. When normal babies would have been settled by their mother's milk or the gentle respite of sleep, Salazar seemed to lust after something else, something his frustrated baby-body could not articulate.

Even at this age, Salazar wanted power.

By the time the traders took him, he was well-advance in his belief that the world began and ended with him. The fact that the traders treated him with something bordering on respect furthered this notion in the young child's brain. He arrived in Kabul with a brain far advanced from that of a normal five-year-old; he seemed to understand much more about the world around him than an average village child, and this sometimes made his temporary owners nervous. Perhaps it was out of fear that they kept the boy fed and comfortable.

Kabul was a dusty, aromatic bustle of a city. Bazaars filled with spices and leatherwork, woven carpets and heavy pots and pans – a feast for any clamour-hungry shopper – vied with makeshift eating places for the attention of anyone with a few spare coins or something to barter. An oasis sat to the East of the centre of this impressive trading place, a shock of green against the saffron-coloured earth surrounding it. Salazar was excited beyond reason by all of this. The shouts of the traders traced a lively path above his head, and his dark eyes drank hungrily of the scenes before him. He could never have conceived that somewhere something so wonderfully exciting existed. His child's brain was growing by the second, absorbing all these new possibilities.

And then he saw the section of the market that was reserved for slave trading, and his tiny eyes narrowed. Big men and narrow women were all huddled together in cages much bigger than his own, shackles keeping them close to the bars. He looked at the dead faces of the people being sold, made the connection between their current homes and his, and suddenly, violently, he understood what his captors intended to do. They were going to put him with those people, those battered, half-people – and his small mind was made up. Salazar would not be a slave to anyone, not even as a child. His tiny hands would be put to use in some field of crops, or he would be used by one of the weavers; his thin, agile fingers a bonus for his owner. No, this was not what had been decided for him, of that he was sure.

He waited until they clattered him to the ground, dust rising as he made contact with the scorched earth. Looking around, he sought what he needed; in the corner, coiled around a large urn, was a Krait. This snake was not large, but in possession of sharp teeth and a quick body. He opened his mouth and began to call in a low voice, the hiss of Parseltongue rousing the creature from its slumber. Its eyes were barely discernable from the rest of its sleek head, but Salazar knew they were there, watching him, appraising him.

"Help me," he said, his mouth more at ease with this snake language than the Farsi that his own people spoke. "Help me be free like you."

The snake moved swiftly towards him. "Why should I help you?" it responded, slithering ever closer.

"Because I am a snake too," Salazar said. "but I didn't get your body."

The child's simple logic was not lost on the reptile, for it was clear that the boy did indeed speak the snake tongue.

"Very well," it hissed. "What would you have me do, snakechild?"

"Bite that." He pointed to the thick rope that kept the door of his cage tightly closed. With one eye on the men that had captured him he realised they would not be long with the drinks that they had purchased from the pretty, curly-locked young woman who was resting her arms, and her ample chest, on the table from which she served the ale.

With a flick of its tongue, the snake was instantly on the rope, its body blending with the dark-brown bond. To Salazar's relief, the act was accomplished very quickly, and with a hasty thank you to the snake, he pushed open the creaky wood and scurried off into the welcome cover of the bustling market, his short legs making progress slow.

Just as he rounded a particularly wide spice stall, he felt the back of his tattered tunic grabbed, and his legs were suddenly flailing in mid-air.

"Well," a voice said, and a large, ivory face came into view. "What do we have here? Are you lost, young man?"

Salazar registered a few things immediately: the man was draped in expensive silk, and the jewels that adorned his belt were real and of the finest quality – the same quality as the devotional items that were housed in his village's place of worship. The man also had one of the most powerful attitudes that he had ever seen, far more powerful than his foolish stepfather. And he was exotic too, with that blonde hair and penetrating blue eyes.

"Do you have a name?"

Salazar looked at him for a few seconds, and then his eyes dropped to see the Krait, which had apparently followed him, slither away through the stalls.

"Salazar, sire," he squeaked. And then, when he realised that the man expected a surname he made one up. "Salazar Slytherin, sire." Producing a perfectly-timed tear, he looked directly into the man's eyes. "And I am lost. My parents are dead, and some bad men took me from my village. Please help me, sire."

Three days later, Salazar found himself aboard a fine vessel, under the protection of the powerful man that had picked him up during his flight from the market. They were sailing, sailing for a place that Salazar had never even heard of.

Britannia.

He rolled the name across his tongue like a jewel as he stood at the prow of the ship, and knew that he would find what he was looking for on this far shore. He faced the salt spray with elation as his mother country fell behind him.

It was his time; it would be his time.