Salazar

Salazar spent many years evading capture from the men his father sent after him with the help of his friends, the serpents. The little snakes called him 'Master Speaker', despite his insistence that they were his equals, and helped him find food and shelter, warned him of trackers and hunters as they came through the woods, and even spied on the castle for him. It was the snakes that told him of his brother's continued existence, and of his apparent fall from grace in their father's eyes. After all, who could possibly survive the plague but a witch? Sal feared for Selenus, but Abelard Slytherin had no other heirs. He couldn't afford to have his younger son tried for treason.

But, for all that his serpents were able to inform and protect him from, they could not save him from humanity's oldest foe: illness.

Salazar spent long days on the floor of the forest fading in and out of consciousness in the summer of his thirteenth year. His friends slithered around him, drawn to and worried by the heat of his fever, trying to comfort the pained lad the best they knew how.

"Masssster isss ssso hot…."

"….ssssssoon join the ssssoil…."

"…..help we musssst…."

"Not ssspeakersss coming….. NOT SSSSPEAKERSSS COMING!"

That fervent cry broke through Salazar's feverish haze. Thoughts of his harsh father and his even harsher flame shot through Salazar's mind, waking him more fully. He thrashed about, struggling to get standing, to run, to hide. His friends tried to pull him back to the ground, insisting that any movement or struggle would only hasten his descent into the dirt. But, with thoughts of fire occupying his mind, he was unable to entertain thoughts of illness. So, he threw the serpents who had been so kind off of him and began to run as hard and fast as his weakened and scrawny body would aloe. He heard shouting and then someone like a great bear crashing through the undergrowth after him. But, his strength soon gave way and he stumbled, falling down… down…

"I've found it, pop! It's a… boy," a voice, sounding just shy of manhood itself, called out.

"Sssstay back! Come no clossser," Salazar hissed, unaware that he was still using the serpentine tongue he had become so used to over the last few years. He'd be hard pressed to even remember how to use the human tongue now.

"It is alright, little one," said the man-boy with hair so like the flames that Salazar feared. "I will not hurt you, I swear upon mine honor."

"Sssstay back," Salazar hissed again, and with a mighty shove that did not actually touch the man-boy, he sent the other flying into the undergrowth. The man-boy uttered a few choice curses that would have impressed Salazar once upon a time, when things were still the good days…

The man-boy grunted and stood again, staying further back from the now proven dangerous boy. But, Salazar's vision began to swim; the exertion of using his Gift had been too much for his illness-stricken body and he felt his knees give way from below him. As though from great distance, he only just heard the man-boy shouting excitedly.

"Pop! Pop! He is one of us! I think he has—"

And then everything faded to black.