"These brats are irritating," Salazar complained to Anguis.
Anguis slithered toward his master. Salazar bent to receive his pet and Anguis slid onto his shoulder like a scarf. Salazar scuttled from his dormitory on Durmstrang's third floor. His bags were packed and his mind was especially made up. The term of Durmstrang had just started and these pompous, entitled terrors had gotten on his nerves. He made his way up the stairs to the seventh floor where the headmaster's office was. The castle was old and the steps crumbled in some places but the upper levels were quite new, the seventh floor being the newest and most modern one.
Headmaster Durmstrang met him on the stairs. "Salazar, you look vexed," Durmstrang observed.
"These children annoy me. I cannot say how many times I have been treated as if I am here to serve these wealthy brats."
"We are here to teach them, Salazar. And yes they are wealthy and they are used to ordering others around but this should be no problem. I am not forcing you to teach mixed-breeds or Mudbloods am I?" Durmstrang asked. His gray hair shimmered in the candlelight, making him look all the wiser and, in this instance, all the more right.
"I suppose," Salazar said. He let his trunk fall beside him, as he had it hovering behind as he made the trek up stairs.
"And besides, I pay you a healthy sum to work here. Where else in this forsaken country can you teach young Wizards for pay?" Durmstrang further suggested. He clasped his younger friend on the shoulder and walked off down the stairs, no doubt to a class.
"Fine," Salazar said to no one in particular, perhaps to the snake around his neck. He slowly made his way back to his dormitory and sat on his bed, slightly defeated. He did love teaching, sure enough, but he was not to be treated as a second-class citizen just because he didn't have as much money as some of these children's fathers.
"What shall I do, Anguis?" Salazar asked. He lay back onto his bed and allowed the serpent to slither onto the floor. There was a pecking at the window of his room.
Salazar stood (with some difficulty as his back was not what it used to be when he was twenty years old) and waved his wand at the window. The glass disappeared and he allowed the owl in. It was a beautiful tawny owl, one he had seen before. He looked at the wax seal that appeared to be a badger. The letter read:
Salazar,
I am practically groveling for you to join me here. You are the best Transfigurer I have seen and I would not have anyone else teaching the pupils I plan on accepting into this school. Of course, since you will be a teacher you can partly choose who we let in, as I know you are quite weary off the spoiled children you teach. Please reconsider my offer to pay you TWICE what Aleksandar Durmstrang is paying you.
Yours truly,
Helga Hufflepuff
Salazar smiled at the offer. Talk about fate. He was entirely too excited to search for parchment so he took a quill and inkwell he kept by his bed, turned the parchment on it's back and wrote a large 'YES!' He didn't bother with the wax seal and he tied the letter back on the owl's leg with the same twine Helga used. He set the owl out of the window, conjured the glass back in place and ran from his room, in search of old Durmstrang again. And this time, he was actually going to quit.