She stops suddenly in the midst of her walk. The all too familiar smell of blood hits her nostrils. She pushes past tall hedges and Sara's rosebushes to the source. The sight that greets is… shocking. Salazar kneels by the bloody corpse that is Sara. Her head reels as long ago memories come up and threaten to engulf her.
"Salazar!" she gasps.
He raises his head and looks up at her, gaunt, haggard. The quiet confidence and the majesty are gone. He is pleading and broken, and ashamed? Afraid?
She looks at Sara's beautiful serene corpse, the bloodstains on Salazar's tunic, Rowena in the balcony, bow and quiver in hand. The arrow with an eagle feather sticking out of Sara's chest. The pieces click together easily in her mind. She is shocked, but not as much as she should be. The seer in her, perhaps her woman's intuition, something had hinted at this. She had seen them looking at each other. Sara at Slytherin with awe. Slytherin at Sara with love, Rowena with guilt. Rowena at both at both with hurt and rage.
Then the healer in her kicks in. With the calm stoniness typical of her, she too kneels by Sara's side and checks her heartbeat and pulse. Dead. Sara of Gryffindor was dead. She meets Slytherin's troubled eyes across her body.
"Well?" She prompts him. Do something, say something. Clear up this mess that you made, this dreadful tangle of heartbreak and lust and murder. The girl you caused to die, the woman you drove to commit murder. He gets up. Frantic and hunted, he looks around and sprints off into the forest. "Salazar!" she yells. "Stop."
She sighs, then squares her shoulders and takes charge. She had always been the one to clean up after others, take on their burdens. She takes Sara's body inside the castle, and owls Godric to tell him that his wife is dead and his friend has left, leaving out Rowena's part in the events completely.
He comes immediately, and storms and rages. He refuses to believe her cock- and- bull story, which admittedly even a small child could see through. But he can't be bothered to delve deeper into it. Perhaps it is kinder to let him think he believes her version of the events. Perhaps he knows what happened, and what she did too. Salazar's betrayal has wounded him more than Sara's death. He curses the pair and then breaks down and weeps. She comforts him as however she can.
She calms Rowena, holds her best friend's whimpering haunted form in her arms, and sits by her through the nightmares and mad ramblings.
She hides the tremors in her heart, her tears at his abandonment of them, grief at the broken quartet that wouldn't ever be the same again and rifts even the best healer couldn't heal. She hides her guilt for blaming one friend of a terrible deed to save another, guilt for lying to the man she loves. She hides her desperation and anguish before Godric's grief that festers into violent hatred, at Rowena's myriad insane outbursts. She arranges her face into a stoic mask for her friends, her students, and the whole damn universe. Staid, dependable, unshakable Helga.
And when Sara is interred, looking like a beautiful, sleeping angel in a cloud of filmy lace and white roses, she too buries her secret in the deep recesses of her mind.