Chapter Fourteen
oooP1ooo
(Neville)
Godric slowly walked around the exterior balcony of the owlery. The smell of hundreds of birds and the horde of owl droppings with the bones and fur of their prey kept him from entering the actual room. Owls as messenger birds had always been an odd choice but subterfuge had been needed. Non-magicals couldn't see owls well at night and night had been the best time to send messages. So they had used owls whereas non-magicals had used ravens or pigeons.
You'd think someone would have thought of a better way to communicate by now, Godric thought with a wrinkle of his nose. A thousand years and they still used owls. But then, maybe non-magicals still used ravens and pigeons and messenger men.
A final turn around the balcony revealed what he was looking for—a door. The owlery was a tower but the owls only lived at the top. There had to be rooms beneath it.
The Gryffindor stalked over to the door and huffed at the rusted hinges. A week of searching as he was haunted by memories in the night, attempted to play the clumsy child, and avoided nosey redheaded twins and bushy-haired know-it-alls-with-good-intentions had not been fun. Godric fiddled with the door, pushed and yanked, and finally pulled out Sally's wand (pilfered for the afternoon). A weak bombarda forced the door open—and off its hinges. But he'd fix that later.
Spiral stairs led down into a large, empty stone room with wooden beams covered in cobwebs. Balistrarias now filled with stained glass allowed beams of golden light to filter through, illuminating the dust he had kicked up with the door. Another set of spiral stairs traveled down to the next floor, matching the floors of Hogwarts's keep.
It smelled of stale bird droppings and mildew. No one had been in for years and it was empty of anything flammable, besides the beams near the ceiling. If he could open a few of the thin windows, he'd be able to get airflow and both air the place out and keep himself from heating it up too much.
In other words, it was perfect.
He was being a little too optimistic under the circumstances, Godric decided as he traced the edge of one of the windows. It was sealed shut. They all were probably sealed against the weather. Still, it was the best room he had found so far. There was no point in hunting for something better.
Godric went back up the stairs and picked up the door. Pieces of wood fell off it but most of the door stayed together to prop against the entrance.
"Hogwarts?" he called after a moment of hesitation. Would the castle be particularly outraged at the damage? Godric grimaced when Hogwarts didn't materialize and guessed the answer was yes.
He tried to recall the House elf's name from the other day but came up blank.
The founder stalked back down into the room he claimed for his meditation and hesitantly called, "A...available House elf?" A thought had him add an uncertain, "Please?"
A pop-click rang through the room and a little House elf materialized. This one was considerably older than the House elf Sally called. It—he, Godric guessed—even had a tiny cane. The elf huffed an annoyed grumble as he took in the dusty room before flashing an accusative look at Godric.
"Masters keep finding all the places no one goes," groused the elf, "You could stay where all the children stay. You be playing at being children after all."
"Err…" Godric said while valiantly ignoring the burning sensation of a blush across his cheeks, "Sorry?"
"You be wanting it cleaned, yes?" the little elf asked rhetorically before he stabbed his cane down, causing a sharp ding against the stone floor.
Two younger House elves pop-clicked into the tower room. After a glance about, they sprang into action. Snapped fingers caused dusters and brooms to materialize and start cleaning on their own. One pop-clicked onto a ceiling beam to clean the cobwebs while the other pulled out some type of duster to take care of the crevices between things the magiced duster didn't reach.
The elder elf gave him a sharp look. "You be going now."
"Right." Godric agreed and slowly backed up. "I, uh...plan on using the room for meditation so...I don't need furniture added?"
The older elf bluntly ignored Godric and shuffled towards the stairs down.
One of the younger elves offered kindly, "Hogsie knows what you be using for meditation Master Rie."
"Yes, right. Of course…" Godric said to the younger elf before he hurriedly added, "I just need this room. You don't need to clean the rest."
"We be deciding otherwise," scoffed the elder elf with another disgruntled look at Godric. "We knows all the things Master Sally be getting into. Youse be just as bad, we knows it."
"That...sounds like Sally," Godric agreed and sprang on his chance to flee, "Where–"
"Library, second level," answered the elder elf before he vanished down the spiral stairs.
oooP2ooo
(Harry)
His head knocked back against the bookshelf behind him. Emerald green eyes stared unfocused at the bookshelf before him. The titles on the spines of books blurred in his sight as he lost himself in thought.
He had one more part of the wards to investigate and, since Godric was figuring things out well enough, he should continue to focus on the wards. Salazar didn't particularly want to focus on this part though. It was going to be a right pain. Last time he had placed the hearthstone, he had been an adult capable of higher magics. Now, he needed a simple solution.
Salazar focused on the books before him. Professor Sprout had said something about a plant that could work but she hadn't given much details on it. Godric would probably know the details. His fellow founder was busy learning about the modern world and his place in it, though. (It had nothing to do with Salazar avoiding hearing "I told you so" when Helga was actually the only one to tell him it was a terrible place for the hearthstone in the first place.)
He pulled out Magical Waterplants of the Mediterranean and flipped through it, skimming the back for the plant. This was the tenth book he had looked through.
"Sally."
Salazar slammed the book closed and yanked another book down to cover the title before he looked toward one end of the aisle. Godric poked his head around the bookshelf and smiled at spying Salazar. His brother wandered over, paid no mind to the books in Salazar's arms, and held a book up.
"What the bloody hell is this?" Godric asked, half amused, half horrified.
The book's cover had an image of a four-year-old boy with wild black hair and very green eyes glaring up at a vampire. Harry Potter and the Vampire Court glowed off the cover in bright purple ink. It was one of many children's adventure books Salazar had forgotten about. This one was not particularly good, either.
"It didn't actually happen–"
"I bloody well hope not!" Godric snapped, "If half these books actually happened, I'd have to tie you up and lock you in Rowena's study for the rest of your life. Messing with time, fighting trolls and vampires and werewolves, riding a drago–"
Salazar snorted. "That last one was your fault."
Godric dropped his arm holding the book up and gave Salazar a look. "You weren't supposed to be on the dragon, Sally–"
"Who in their right mind tickles a dragon!?" Salazar countered as he stalked from the aisle to his study area.
"I wasn't in my right mind, or do you forget Helena messed with the ale?" whined Godric, following him and paying no mind to the possible eavesdroppers. They had long gotten used to talking in forgotten tongues to avoid people understanding something they shouldn't.—Salazar had overheard enough children wondering how they could join his secret club to know they thought the languages were some type of childish code. He saw no reason to correct them.
Helena was not present (luckily in this case). She hadn't been at her seat since the argument about Eustace, which was disappointing but unsurprising. He would have to hunt his niece down and convince her to join in Samhain if only to see her parents again. Perhaps being able to talk with her parents would be the key to allowing Helena to move on.
In her absence, Hogwarts had claimed Helena's seat.
Salazar frowned at the little girl. "Is that my blue ink?"
She looked up with wide, innocent eyes. Hogwarts: A History 12th Edition sat open in front of her. Its page was covered in blue flowers, crossed-out sections, and tiny, surprisingly neat notes. He could spy part of one, '–admaster Gaunt, ordered with the updating of my loo, took it upon himself to expand the interior walls so self-sizing piping could be inserted in supposed forethought towards future clogging. He and the self-proclaimed board of governors had forgotten that Mama Wena's enchantments of said loo–'.
"It's the latest copy, Papa," Hogwarts said as a way of explanation.
"Looks wonderful," Godric offered before turning back to Salazar, "Why are there books about you? Adventure books? Fictional books?"
Hogwarts tilted her head, before she cut in, "But Papa, all the books about Papa Sally and you and Mama Wena and Mama Hellie are made up."
Godric frowned over at her. Salazar's eyes widened and he waved behind his brother's back in a cutting motion across his throat. Hogwarts's gray eyes flashed up at him and a sweet, innocent smile stretched across her face. The expression caused Godric to straighten and Salazar to groan.
It was entirely unfair that she had his smile. (It was far sweeter and more innocent on her face but still his smile.) Godric knew what that smile meant but it wasn't directed at Godric. It was directed at Salazar.
She lifted the book she was vandalizing, if a school could vandalize her own books, and said, "This entire book is full of fictional facts Papa. It says Papa Sally was evil and wanted children thrown out and left because of an argument between you both. It claims Mama Hellie was only good for making food. Claims Mama Wena built most of me. Makes you out as a glorified grunt. Says pipes were built when enchantments did the job instead. Has towers connected to me from the start. Forgets all about everything important until at least the 18th century!"
Salazar dropped his books onto his desk beside the cube carved with a half-completed illusion ward for the broken escape route—another thing he needed to have completed yesterday—and flopped into his seat, resigned to having this conversation with Godric. He had so hoped his brother would have regained his modern memories before learning about this. There would have been no need for such a conversation then.
Hogwart sweetly continued, ruining the rest of Salazar's day, "And that's just this book, and about Papa as Salazar Slytherin. There are loads of books about him as Harry Potter because of him surviving the killing curse. He's famous the world over for that—Surviving when no one else has and somehow vanquishing the dark lord."
Godric stared at Hogwarts for a long moment. Then he pivoted towards Salazar. "I think you skipped over the part about having vanquished a dark lord. Or being famous."
"I'm sure I said something about it," Salazar answered back, though Hogwarts's words rose over his own.
"Or being considered a terrible human being," added Hogwarts, her flyaway curls bristling with her aggravation at that fact. Salazar felt Hogwarts's magic wrap around him protectively, suffocatingly. The feeling lasted for a second before the personification of the castle looked back down at the book before her and beamed. "That's why I'm fixing history."
Godric slowly nodded and then got a chair for himself. Salazar slumped back and considered exactly how to explain this all without the library bursting up into flames. He stared at all the flammable material around them at that and said, "Maybe we should do this while sword training. You probably want to hit something once I'm done anyhow."
Salazar regretted that idea the next morning when he had to actually get up in time for class. It wasn't until the weekend after that he finally found the water plant he was looking for.
oooP3ooo
(Neville)
Godric pressed a hand against the new door of the tower room. Everything Salazar had explained the other day continued to tweak his nose when he had nothing to distract him. Salazar was thought evil or Merlin incarnate. Salazar had "left" Hogwart because of some bigotry Godric hadn't even known existed. (Godric was well aware of why people thought that Sally left...If only he had forced himself to admit Salazar's death out loud.)
All of those new facts teased with a sense of deja vu. He knew these facts already. It was all buried in his head waiting for him to remember.
He needed to remember.
Godric turned the door handle and stepped in.—The elves had replaced the one he had broken. This one was more metal than wood and didn't have rusted hinges.—The smell of lemons led him down into his meditation room. It had been cleaned spotless. Godric paused at the bottom step and stared.
A Hogwarts-themed pouf sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by candles in brass holders. A large metal bowl engraved with hunting lions sat before the pouf with a small bundle of herbs resting across its lip.
He stepped down into the room, causing a ding of metal to echo out. Godric snapped his head down and found a metal cup filled with charcoal sticks. The elves had thought of everything.—Or, perhaps he should assume Hogwarts had recalled everything and then added her own flare to it all.
The founder of Hogwarts took a charcoal stick and turned to the step he had just vacated. Squatting, he carefully drew out one of the few complex runic seals he had memorized. Slowly Godric traveled around the entire room, drawing a seal and connecting it to the previous one until he completed a full circle.
He moved the cup of charcoal up onto the second step. Then he pressed two fingers down onto the first seal drawn across the first step, careful to press the pads of his fingers on the two specific places they needed to be.
This was the first seal Salazar had crafted for him. It was the first seal Godric had pestered Sally into teaching him.—Godric would never be able to use runic magic in battle, to craft runic seals with just his magic (unlike a certain crazy ass brother who had stuck his nose in the air when told even the master runic mages had to lug around a buttload of parchment and ink to be effective), but he was damn good at writing up something with the proper material. After the literal years he spent traveling and living with Salazar, he would have had to be a bloody fool to not learn at least a little.
With a deep breath and a mental pull from his core, magic flared across the seal and swirled through the runic markings surrounding the room. Godric removed his fingers and stepped back before the magic completed the circle. His magic continued to swirl through the design with a fiery glow until it reached the beginning and a sharp sizzle filled the room. The smell of a campfire and ozone, the expected smells, allowed him to relax.
Not bad. Not bad at all. (Not incompetent. Not a squib.)
Godric shook his head and turned to the pouf and candles. He sniffed the herb bundle and found it to be simply sage. The boy twirled it in his hands as he considered the candles. Ten candles weren't normal. He had always used six for harmony.
Ten meant completeness and rebirth. It was the end and beginning of the base numbers. one and zero. The beginning and the end. A mark of the cyclical nature of the world, even of the soul it seemed. It was the representation of unity.
There was more, so much more to that, but Godric couldn't recall all the arithmancy behind ten. He might brush up on it since Hogwarts thought it could be useful. Unifying his memories of his past and present would be very helpful in fact.
Godric scratched his chin with the stem side of his sage bundle thoughtfully. Unity and completeness and rebirth. He huffed at himself and stepped up to the first candle, squatted, took its wick between his fingers, and lit it with a tug of magic. He went to each candle and tried not to think about how he had once been able to do all the candles at once.
The founder lit the herb bundle next and circled the room, cleansing it with the smell of sage. He set the smoldering bundle into the metal bowl and settled onto the colorful pouf. It was considerably more comfortable than his usual seat on the floor.
He shook his head and forced his gaze to focus on the candle directly before him. Godric had meditated to better control his magic and the elemental power he had inherited from his father and grandfather before him. He had never meditated to search for a forgotten memory or knowledge. The reincarnated-man-turned-child had no idea where to begin.
A normal meditation would do this time, he decided. He needed to grapple with control of his fire anyhow. If this didn't work, he'd think of something.
Godric took a deep, slow breath. After a conscious moment, he exhaled. The flame pulsed with his breath, though it was too far away to feel the displaced air. His eyes slowly fluttered shut as he fell into the familiar motions of mediation. The flame glowed through his eyelids as a faint orange haze.
His magic calmed as he came back each day, but no memories surfaced.
oooP4ooo
He turned the wand about between his fingers. A few blisters across his palms gleamed raw in the firelight as Godric leaned into the winged back chair by the fireplace in his common room. Sunlight streamed through the windows but the heat of the fire didn't bother him. It never had no matter how hot it was.
Godric was bored. All week after class Sally and he had trained and then bathed in the cleansing pool. He had meditated but seen no progress. Then he had done his homework to a level a slightly less incompetent child would do—probably.
He planned to slowly progress his work into competency to avoid as much scrutiny as he could. Professors Flitwick and Sprout were both watching him oddly already but he was pretty certain it was because of his accent and not something he'd done. The goal was to avoid any further scrutiny. (Somehow, he didn't think he was going to succeed on that.)
So homework was done rather quickly.
That left mediation. There was only so much meditation he could do. The impressions and whispers of memories never came during meditation. There was no rhyme nor reason for when the memories came. It wasn't intense emotions or specific, repeated actions that brought the memories forward. Books might have answers on what he was missing to regain his memories but he sort of doubted that.
He frowned at his wand. The common room's golden sun-painted ceiling seemed to glow behind his hands. The shade implied mid-morning. He had an entire day to be bored.
Salazar refused to be beaten up all day long every weekend. And he wasn't allowed to fight giant spiders. That left very little for him to do. Godric had already asked Professor Sprout if he could help in the greenhouse but she was busy with a club guest speaker. Salazar had vanished, probably doing something Godric couldn't help with.
So here he was: Dying of boredom.
The wand—his wand—was neither warm nor welcoming in his grip. Not once had it accepted any magic. Every spell he attempted failed him. Godric had not managed to improve his spell casting in any of the classes.—The only class he could have borrowed Sally's wand was transfiguration but Hermione was his deskmate. She knew what his wand looked like. That meant herbology was still his best class which boggled his mind.
There was something he was missing. It was something memories still stuffed in the back of his mind would answer if he could just reach them. So he was left wondering what could cause a wand to not work, not even a little, for its master.
The wand had chosen him.—why else would he possess it?—Why wouldn't it work for him?
"WAAHHhhh!" A wail echoed out into the Gryffindor common room and yanked Godric from his circular thoughts.
One of the female prefects nearly flew up the stairs to the girls' dorms. The founder stared at the stairs, antsy but not prepared to reveal the possible ability to walk up said stairs. (Would the ancient enchantments recognize him and let him into the ladies' side even though he hadn't been alive when it had been cast? Hogwarts knew him, so he imagined the enchantments would too.)
He relaxed as the wailing faded away.
"You're really quiet."
Godric forced his gaze away from the stairs. Seated across from him were the Weasley twins. Since the two had looked in on his training, they have appeared at random every day or so. Sally and he had spotted them in the background at the oddest moments. The boys appeared to be watching them. Salazar had finally informed Godric of the napping incident when Godric had pointed out their red-headed shadows the other day.
He should feel charmed at their concern, but it only irritated him. He should be able to protect himself. Godric didn't need children watching out for him.
At least the boys were content shadowing them and hadn't tried to keep Godric away from Salazar (more than a few Gryffindors had already tried). That didn't mean the boys weren't irritating. The two third-years knew something was off with his brother. Godric was certain they believed there was something off with himself, too. They just may believe Salazar was at fault for it, which was technically true.
"I never imagined you'd be so quiet," said the other twin, basically repeating his brother's words.
"Didn't think I'm that well known," he said in return.
They shifted and shared long looks with each other. It was fascinating to witness magical twins interact.
His bonds with Salazar were similar. The ancient brother bonds made them as close to natural, magical twins as possible but they had never completed a bond to tie their minds together. Neither of them had wanted to figure out the ramifications of hearing each other's thoughts. They probably would have finished each other's sentences or, worse, made it difficult for each to follow their own thought process and speak in complete sentences at all.
Of course, the best aspect of magical twins would always be the natural ability to complete magical harmonization and communion. With their ritual bond, they could do the same, though it had taken some training on their part. Godric's and Salazar's magic was so different from each other but they could hand it over, so to speak, and wield each other's magic as if it was their own. It had been a pain in the ass learning how to use Sally's magic properly (and Sally had certainly had his share of burns) but it had been well worth it. Especially when they realized that Salazar could give Godric access to the Mother's magic.
A sniffling Lavender Brown and the sixth-year female prefect, Melie if he recalled correctly, cut the red-headed twins off. The two boys frowned behind the girls but didn't complain.
With a firm nudge from the sixth year, Lavender mumbled out some nonsense about a toad and a cat. It took a few tries for the girl to finally speak coherently enough to understand that she was attempting to apologize for her cat. It had eaten his toad, or started to or had killed said toad to eat it but realized it might not be a good idea (the details were a little iffy).
Godric had had no idea he had a toad. He certainly had no idea it had been named Trevor. Godric didn't know how to react when she handed him the small box with the remains of said toad. All he could do was bow his head, leave the common room, and wonder how the poor creature had survived this long without being properly fed.—This explained the containers of bugs.
It also made him feel like he had failed Neville Longbottom. He could imagine Salazar's response to that.
oooP5ooo
(Harry)
Salazar stared down into the loch. He could really use a magic transfer or even a heating charm from Godric. It would have worked ten times better than his heating rune matrix—he had never altered the original matrix for individual use meaning it was still structured for a house (or part of a keep) but it would do, hopefully.—He just had to suck it up and remind himself to not skip over such useful rune alterations because a comrade had a ready-made solution handy. That was an issue for another time, though.
Now he just needed to convince himself to jump into the ice-cold loch, eat the weird plant thing he had found in the aquatic greenhouse (supposedly enchanted against children under thirteen from entering—someone needed to learn a more complex enchantment structure), and go check on the hearthstone.
He made a face at his boyish reflection in the water.
Soft ripples rolled across the surface of the water as it hit the piers of the boat house. The large cave that protected it all was lit with the late morning sun and multiple torches. Ivy hung like a curtain across the front but did little to obstruct the view.
He really should take a boat out and do some fishing soon. It would not be long before the winter cold would sink in and the air would become frigid with cold moisture. The smell of oncoming snow would settle like a blanket over the grounds and not let up until the end of spring's snow storms.
The founder pulled the grayish-green plant matter from his pocket. It was an oddly ball-like shape with many ridges that reminded him queasily of rat tails. The plant, gillyweed, looked slimy but had a more rubbery texture.
Salazar had acquired two of the moderate-size bundles from a plant marked for some special project about Mediterranean plants in the aquatic greenhouse. Hopefully, the project hadn't involved counting the number of bundles. He didn't want to see the extent Professor Sprout would go to find the culprit. Knowing his luck, Professor Snape would get involved too.
If only he hadn't needed to reach the hearthstone.
Helga had warned him that he was being far too clever, placing the hearthstone and its protective circle at the bottom of the loch. She had told him, very matter of factly, that he'd regret it.
But did he listen? No.
Did he regret it? Yes.—The thousand-year separation didn't seem to matter: He could imagine Helga's knowing look.
Salazar sighed, stuffed the gillyweed into his mouth, and chewed. Nausea crawled up his throat but he worked to ignore it. This was not a plant made to be chewed quickly. He grimaced as he worked down the rubbery, bitter plant into something he wouldn't choke on.
As he swallowed, the reincarnate jumped into the lake. Icy water swallowed him with eager, grasping claws and removed any thought of throwing up. For a startling moment, Salazar panicked. He had never panicked in water before.
The transformation by the gillyweed allowed him to 'breath' and that helped clear his head. Something felt terribly wrong but he couldn't put a finger on it. The situation reminded him of Godric's complaints about water. His brother didn't swim unless he had to.
Salazar focused on his breathing and slowly the panic ebbed away so he could focus back on the matter at hand.—He would deal with that odd moment of panic later.—He twisted his watch about so it would vibrate twenty minutes before the hour. Magical Waterplants of the Mediterranean had stated a bundle the size he had eaten should last an hour. It should only take about an hour to look over the hearthstone but he couldn't be certain how long it would take to reach it. That was why he had taken two.
He brushed a finger over one of the temples of his glasses and the world lit in the warm glow of sunlight. Even with the light, all he saw was water and the piers disappearing into the depths of the lake. The shadow and the silver flash of fish flickered around them. None of those fish bothered to investigate the lake's new occupant.
The boy headed down into the depths of the loch, making certain to swim in a slow circle downward to give his body time to adjust to the water pressure. Some odd BBC documentary echoed in the back of his mind about the importance of that, though for the life of him he couldn't recall the details. Gravity might have been involved. He had been too busy cooking dinner to have paid the show enough attention to recall more.
Eventually, he came across the first of the dungeon's windows. No one noticed him peek into each as he traveled. Most were unused classrooms.
He paused as he reached a veritable obstacle course of plumbing jutting out into the water. Worn cleansing runes glowed on the pipes. It was mildly disconcerting. Hopefully, these weren't sewage pipes, though the size of some of them seemed ridiculous for anything no matter the population size of the castle. The giant squid could nest in one of them.
Salazar distinctly recalled some truly complex enchantments created by Rowena (after considerable begging on everyone's part) that vanished such waste. He had replicated it on a minor scale with his tent's toilet and such. So there should have been no reason for these pipes. They hadn't built Hogwarts with any originally. (1)
He looked over it carefully, not wanting to get too close but knowing he really should figure out why they existed and what they did. The water looked clean enough, and now wasn't really the time, so he firmly placed it on the end of his list of things to deal with later. It wasn't like the pipes were harming anyone. Probably.—He imagined the fish would appreciate them removed if they really were sewage. (He very firmly pushed the possibility to the back of his mind even as his gaze flickered about at the matter floating in the water near him.)
With that decision made, Salazar continued downward and away from the pipping but, as he did, something silvery shot out of one of the pipes. Said silvery thing 'solidified' into a ghost of a young girl. She was wearing a Hogwarts uniform.
The ghost patted herself with a teary scowl, pulled out a pair of glasses, and finally noticed Salazar. Her face darkened with more silvery coloring and she fled back up the pipe she had shot out of.
Salazar frowned after her for a moment more before also adding that to his mental list. There had to be a very good reason a student had died on the grounds. If there wasn't, the teachers had better not have been present during her death.
He forced himself to focus on the matter at hand. Salazar had no desire to run out of time and drown. Godric would never forgive him for one thing. There was far too much to do, for another.
The murky waters lit with more windows as he traveled down. Fish floated about the glowing spot of light in the dark. He passed the Slytherin common room windows, firmly ignored the windows of the female dorms, and traveled on down into floating plant matter. The plant matter gave way to a forest of seaweed. Sound of the water currents faded, though the long spiny plants waved in the water.
Sickly green creatures ambushed Salazar as he entered a rocky clearing. Their sharp green teeth attempted to latch onto his tunic and skin. Some rammed sharp pointy horns at him. A few grabbed at his wrists and ankles with surprisingly strong and long fingers.
They all fled when Salazar activated a prepared runic matrix on one of his wooden coins. It was another illusionary one. This one didn't duplicate himself but gave him the appearance of a creature's instinctual predator. Useful against simple-minded creatures foolish enough to enter the matrix's sphere of influence.
Salazar flipped the glowing coin into the water in front of him and took a moment to mentally reach out to the wards anchored into his core and search for a strand that would lead him toward the hearthstone. He was close but now he needed better directions than old memories. Grasping the thickest strand, he opened his eyes, caught the coin, turned, and stilled.
Some type of particularly ugly mermaid stared at him from across the clearing. It was likely a selkie since they were in Scotland but Salazar didn't assume. Centaurs, dryads, and acromantulas were not native either.
The mermaid had the general appearance of a selkie, though. It had murky green skin with fine, almost invisible scales, fin-like hair tipped with silver, and a mostly silvery body and fishtail. The eyes were large, round, and yellow. A bone rose up between the eyes, reminiscent of a nose and the general shape of a fish head. That bone curved down like the gentle slope of a hill and into lips, so there were no nostrils or a sharp ridge to finish the shape of a nose. It was also both very long and female if the curves were any indications.
The still active runic matrix shifted its limited influence to the mermaid, but the matrix was unable to function properly. Its illusion failed as the more intelligent creature easily saw through the simple magic. A faint spark flashed across the wooden matrix as the embedded magic was released during the failure.
Salazar pressed his lips together as another creature came out of the seaweed forest. This one was similar in appearance to the mermaid but had less curves, so probably male, and armed.
Why did he keep underestimating the dangers and threats he might encounter? Salazar gave an internal sigh as he immediately answered his question.—This was his home, it was under his wards, his protection, there should be no threats or danger. Especially not to him.
Now, what to do?
The female selkie opened her mouth and began to sing.—And it was female, only females had this ability.
He could feel the immediate effects of her magic-infused song.
Obey whispered through his mind, Follow...obey.
It was a simple song with simple commands he could easily ignore.
Pain exploded across his forehead, causing Salazar to flinch and squeeze his eyes closed as the pain spread down into the back of his left eye. The song, the verbal formalization of some form of mind magic, had irritated the tiny thing in his scar. When he opened his eyes, it was in time to see the male selkie's trident's flat end as it was swung at him. Then the pain in his head doubled.
Salazar was vaguely aware of being tied up and dragged through the clinging seaweed forest. He couldn't hear anything. His ears were ringing (and sound traveled differently in water anyway). That made it impossible to hear the movement of the loch or creatures within it. He was unable to hear the mermaid's song either, not that he was all that certain she was still singing.
Eventually, he was secured to something. The thing in his scar settled back down. He slowly became aware of sounds. His eyes could focus again.
He had been brought to a square-like space in the middle of what could only be the selkie's village. A group of selkie were arguing some feet away. There were other selkies peering out the windows of their huts at him.
The water just above his eyes had a pink tint to it.
Salazar stared up at the pink water for a good long moment. Then he recalled his time limit. The reincarnate twisted around some type of rope-pole-thing in an attempt to see his watch.
He was unsuccessful—his body couldn't twist at the needed angle.—Salazar did find his original goal though.
The protective circle of stones and giant hearthstone sat a few feet from him. Some form of decorative pillars and walls had been erected around it. It looked like part of the selkies' village. The heavily decorated selkie standing in front of the main 'gate' gave Salazar a distinct impression of importance. It had been turned into some governmental or religious site for the creatures.
Salazar squinted at it all as he took in what he could. At least some of the runes were glowing. No plant grew within the circle. Neither did fish swim through the circle. Both were good signs. Nothing appeared broken from this distance. Not that that meant anything when most of the magic he needed to look at wasn't visible. Salazar needed to interact with the hearthstone to determine the damage.
He looked over the thing he was tied to. It was a thickly woven rope of seaweed that rose upward in an almost vertical line and swayed in the loch like a particularly thick piece of the seaweed forest. The top was tied to something, probably driftwood or some other more buoyant object. If he could cut through the rope, he'd be able to free himself easily enough.
The boy grasped the thick rope and slowly pulled himself down to the loch's floor. It took a few minutes and Salazar was painfully grateful for Godric's insane training sessions as his arms burned from the poor angle and tiny movement offered from his restraints. Finally, his toes pressed into some type of living plant matter.
Earth magic flowed into him at his call. Flowed freely up through his feet into his chest and arms, and back down into the earth. He considered the situation a moment more, hesitating.
Using the earth's magic wasn't his first choice. It was a difficult, wild power to attempt to control beyond ritual and simple commands. But he also didn't particularly want to strain his core to the point of exhaustion while in the lake. It was one thing against spiders while running to safety, it was entirely another straining it in a place he could drown if he fell unconscious in. The Mother's magic would be the better option, no matter how uncomfortable it would be to wield a power disinclined towards any structure.
He wrapped a hand around part of the seaweed rope. Cut. He thought intently, envisioning the seaweed sliced clean through.
With his intent envisioned, Salazar took a steadying breath and grasped the magic flowing through him. It bucked at the restraining of its movement. A burning sensation spread across his chest. He gritted his teeth and drew it down his arm. All the while, he mentally continued to think of his intent. Cut. Cut.
The water brightened with more golden light as the nature magic lit his runic tattoos for all to see. Salazar grimaced and softened his tight grip on the raw magic, letting it move quicker. He had forgotten that happened.
A cry of surprise rippled through the water. A selkie watching from her window had noticed his glowing tattoos.
Magic rushed the rest of the way up his arm and out of one of his hands. The rope sliced in half but pain gored across his hand and wrist. A hiss escaped him and he had a second to hope he hadn't cut anything major.
Selkies swam towards him.
He gritted his teeth, twisted his grip, and pushed the rope up just enough to free his tied hands—and realized he had cut his hands free in the process. Then he let go and kicked off the ground with a boost of magic, and shot off towards the hearthstone.
Something grabbed his foot. With a kick he pulsed magic out his feet, boosting his rush through the water and sending the creature back in the opposite direction.
Another selkie head-butted Salazar in the gut. Bubbles rushed out of his mouth as he was thrown sideways. The force sent Salazar crashing into the archway of the main 'gate' to his hearthstone.
His chest ached from the lack of air. A moment of panic spiked before he recalled the gillyweed still working. Then he sucked in air through the gills on either side of his neck. Irritation stabbed through his forehead, through him, and Salazar snapped his hands out.
Multiple selkies reached out to grab him.
A runic array flashed across his open palms, golden and vibrant with the wild earth magic, a match to the tattoos glowing across his forearms. Light flashed out from its center, blinding everyone.
Boom.
oooP6ooo
(Neville)
"Squib!"
Godric slowed, startled as hurt and acceptance and desperate need for something to not be true rushed through him. Three little Slytherins stepped in between him and the stairs down to the boathouse. Godric glanced behind him toward the courtyard with the greenhouses, there were a few children rushing off back to the keep. None had paused in response to the shout. He looked back at the children. They were looking directly at him.
With all the complicated emotions he had no context for, Godric also knew he was no squib.—Whatever a squib was.
He stepped to the side to let the three pass since they didn't look like they would line up and let him pass instead. Rude little boys but he didn't really want to deal with it now.
The blond stepped in front of him with a sneer. "You know your betters, don't you squib?"
"What?" Godric responded. He was definitely confused now. His "Neville" senses, for a lack of a better word to explain the instinctive knowledge, were very insistent that he was not a squib. Was Squib a surname?
"Squibs," said the blond as he got into Godric's face, "Don't belong here."
"I'm not a Squib. My name is Neville Longbottom," Godric answered slowly, more than a little bewildered. Part of him screamed to run and hide, that nothing good was going to happen and it was better to not be seen. Godric had never run from little boys before. It wasn't going to change today, no matter what his instincts seemed to be screaming at him to do. He shifted and clasped the box of his dead toad closer to his chest.
The blond's lips curled in disgust. "Amazing they've kept you. I don't imagine you'll have that name for long. Right?–" The boy looked at his two, larger companions for confirmation. One slowly nodded while the other gave a vague shrug. Neither looked like they wanted to give an opinion on that supposed fact. He turned back to Godric with a more determined than cruel expression. "–Father said it was a horrible thing, Pater Longbottom keeping you when it's obviously a kindness to set you aside. You'll never be a good Pater for the House and it's one of the Seven. It needs a proper Head."
"That," Godric finally said, ignoring his hundred and one questions for Salazar later, "Is not for you or your father to decide."
Gray eyes narrowed but the boy nodded. "No, but this is." The boy pulled his wand and pointed it at Godric's chest. "Father taught me a few spells for mudbloods and traitors. They'll do for squibs just as wel–"
"P–Put that away," ordered Godric, interrupting the boy, as he struggled with sudden panic. A flash of strangers with their wands pointed at him flicked through his mind. One fact rang, though he knew he could handle himself just fine. None of his experience seemed to matter. His shoulders shot up and he felt stuck where he stood.—Only pain ever followed a wand pointed at him by a stranger.
"Stay away from Potter," countered the blond, "He doesn't understand and won't listen but you know how your contamination can spread. It's your duty to stay away from proper wizards and witches."
Fury, entirely disproportional fury, rushed through Godric and washed away his panic. No one will ever separate Sally and him. (Harry was his first friend. His only friend.) "You have no right—no say in what I or Harry do!"
Hot air rippled from Godric. The wooden steps creaked. Godric sucked in a breath and focused on calm.
The sneer returned across the boy's pointy face. It was followed by the flick and swish of his wand, a wand Godric had entirely forgotten about in his outrage. It was a first-year twerp pointing it at him after all—no matter the fact that some instinct told him to flee from a stranger's wand point.
"Locomotor Mortis!"
Godric made a startled "Eep!" as his legs snapped together. Eyes widened in surprise.—He couldn't recall the last time a child had been foolish or daring enough to curse at him, let alone succeed.—He tittered on the step, on the verge of tipping down the flit of stairs.
"Stay away from Potter!" ordered the boy once more before he spun about, pleased as dandy, and strutted away towards the keep.
The founder stared after, a sudden memory of the long-dead Malfoy Pater came to mind. They sounded so similar and wasn't that a strange thing. He had gotten used to the idea that everything had changed and all the people he knew were dead, besides Sally. Now there was this boy that reminded him of a dead man so much Godric couldn't help but wonder if the prissy asshole had been reborn too.
Godric could do without Armand coming back. The Mother couldn't punish Sal and him with that man. Anything but that, he silently beseeched her.
The other two boys hesitated for a second, shared a look, and then split up. One followed their friend while the other steadied Godric on the step.
"Sorry 'bout that," muttered the boy as his dark gray eyes swept over him. "Draco...he's a bit...he wants Harry to hang out with us for once, even though we're supposed to ignore him." He hesitated and stepped back. "I uh...don't know the counter but someone should come by and help you out soon." With that, the boy rushed after his companions.
Godric found himself stuck on a random step but at least he had a view and there weren't any signs indicating oncoming storms. He shifted the box with his dead toad about and yanked out his useless wand. The spell Draco had cast was foreign but a general counter could probably undo it—if he could get his wand to work.
Sparks flew from his fingers as he tried to get the wand to accept his magic. After the third try, he stuffed his wand back into a pocket and sent a general 'why me' to the sky. Someone hated him. He was going to blame Odin this time around. Though Loki or some other god might be an even better option.
The boy leaned against the railing, stared out at the green and the loch, and wondered at what had just happened while considering which god to curse. He only needed to disrupt the magic binding his legs together but without a working wand, canceling the spell wasn't simple.
Wand-based spells required the tuning of the caster's magic by said wand. It could be recreated, Godric knew how, but it took practice to twist magic into a replication of a wand tuning and then guide it through the ritualistic movements for a wand-based spell. With the state of his core, he wasn't confident that he'd succeed.
His frown turned thoughtful. It couldn't be that difficult to undo without the normal counter. That he had never done it didn't mean it wasn't possible. Foci magic was often spells of finesse but also generic. Anyone could learn the specific ritualistic moves and words to accomplish the same result. It made wands particularly useful when one felt lazy because it rarely used much magic to accomplish otherwise complex results.
Magic wasn't made for structure though. It was more than rituals. Magic was life and life was not predictable.
Godric looked down at his legs and imagined the magic binding him. With enough will and effort, you could accomplish anything. Knowledge and skill just helped things along.
He shuffled the box to one hand, reached down, and pressed a faintly glowing hand against a leg.
oooP7ooo
(Harry)
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
He blinked bluringly. A dark, murky sky greeted him. There was something a little off with it. His head rang and he couldn't think well enough to figure out what.
A fish flew by overhead.
Beep.
Beep.
Salazar slowly lifted his arm and found his watch beeping. He glared at it, willing it to both stop and explain itself. He had set an alarm. Why had he set it again?
Beep.
Slowly he recalled why he felt like he was submerged in water. It took another minute for him to realize what the beeping was for. Salazar tried to sit up in a rush and thoroughly failed, in part because he wasn't lying down. He was floating. One of his feet had caught against a large stone.
He twisted his watch to stop the beeping. Then the reincarnate pulled out his second gillyweed and stuffed it into his mouth. He tried not to gag as he chewed.
The encounter with the selkie rushed back to him as he glared around and watched the murky water slowly clear. He shouldn't have done that; he couldn't even recall what his intent had been with the runic array...He had just wanted the damn creatures to leave him alone.
Whatever it had done, it was clear Salazar had given the magic too much freedom while twisting it to his desires. He glanced down at his throbbing hand and found more cuts decorating it. Pink water floated about it and Salazar imagined the various watery predators swimming this way. Exactly what he needed.
That had been his first mistake, letting the wild magic move more freely after giving it an intent beyond existing. His second had been letting his emotions direct magic, particularly that magic. Hopefully, he hadn't caused any deaths.
A vibration sang through the water and pulled his gaze up.
The water had cleared off most of the murk. He was still in the selkie village, just within the protective circle of his hearthstone where the others couldn't reach. Multiple selkies were floating limp and unmoving in the water, hopefully unconscious and not dead. Part of the decorative outer wall the selkie had put up around the hearthstone was shattered into pieces and spread across the village.
One of the males stared intently at him from just outside the protective circle, gaze hard and a trident in hand. The rest of the villagers were looking over their unconscious kin. None of the children or elderly had left their homes as far as he could tell. He couldn't even see them peeking out the windows anymore.
His shoulders slumped and he tried to speak, surprised when his voice vibrated out into coherent words, "I apologize...You aren't supposed to be here..." He rubbed a webbed hand across his face as the selkie male just stared at him. "Gods, there weren't selkie here a thousand years ago."
"A thousand years?" croaked a voice. It sounded like the creature wasn't built to speak English but it was possible, probable even, that they weren't speaking English right now. Gillyweed altered his ability to breathe, it wasn't a stretch that his voice box had been altered also.
Salazar grimaced into his palm but dropped his hand and looked over at the selkie once more. "We got off on the wrong….fin…" Salazar paused for a moment to stare across at the selkie to find the creature still just staring at him. They did have hands. He should have said hands. Salazar pressed his lips together and focused on the matter at hand instead of random, useless facts. "I did not mean any harm...though, I imagine you do not believe me on that."
The selkie regarded him coldly with its round fish-like eyes. "No."
"I truly am sorry. I had only come down here to look at this," Salazar offered, waving his hand out towards the hearthstone.
"You know," the selkie said slowly, his grip on his trident loosened slightly, "what that is?"
"A piece of Hogwarts," Salazar answered carefully, "Something hidden to keep safe."
The male shifted, gaze moved from Salazar to the hearthstone and back. "It vibrates sometimes."
"What?"
"Stories say it vibrates when danger comes on the land. Once it vibrated hard enough to crack," said the selkie in its slow croaking voice.
Salazar frowned but didn't turn to look at it properly. His gaze stayed on the selkie as it spoke. The only thing the Slytherin founder could think that could cause it to vibrate was a direct assault on the wards. He could probably safely assume the crack appeared when the cornerstone near Hogsmeade had been uncovered and ruined.
"You know why it vibrates," the selkie decided as it regarded Salazar, "why it cracked."
He turned and looked at the circle and hearthstone instead of answering. Salazar had already given more information than he should have.—But they were basically protecting the hearthstone. Perhaps he should give them more details. Something to think about after this mess.
There were a few cracks across some of the protective stones circling the hearthstone. Many of the visible runes on both the protective circle of stones and the hearthstone had worn to an indiscernible design. The hearthstone had cracked in nearly two.
Salazar swam to the center stone. It was warm to the touch. His fingers caught against the cracks before he traced a few runes, a couple still had their gold inlay (all of them should) and pushed a little of his magic into it. There was something off with the flow of all the magic.
Some of it felt sluggish and some of it rushed about too quickly. The movement was putting strain on the entire structure...There was also—Salazar's brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of it all.—A heavy weight was sitting on top of the wards. At the same time, something was propping it all up, keeping it from weighing down into the forest and castle.
Salazar pressed his lips thin as he stared down at his hand on the stone. The cornerstones guided the outer wards to their edge and stabilized the flow of magic, keeping the octagram pattern within the circular area of protection which aided the power of the cleansing ward in collecting the contaminated magics from the children's training.—The inner wall had worked in a similar fashion, being part of the octagram.—Each grove had been set up, experimentally, to hide but also to support the wards in their own way. The ward runic structures lived within the hearthstone, so one had to go to the hearthstone to make any true changes.
One cornerstone was all but destroyed, weakening the flow of magic. Two cornerstones were in unknown condition. The rest varied but could be serviceable for now.
The giant crack through the hearthstone made that a moot point. But, while it was clear he had to redo the wards, he needed to figure out how long he had before everything failed.
Salazar lifted his bloodied hand and regarded the cuts for a moment before pressing the hand against the stone, letting his blood meet the worn runic design. Blood was the key to the "doorway" he had built into his wards, only accessible at the hearthstone.
The world shifted. A door appeared in front of him. Salazar reached out; the door handle was solid for a mere second. Then the door faded.
Information flowed into him, rough and stuttering. It intensified the connection he had with his wards, but only on the surface of it all, making it impossible for him to control what was happening. Images swirled and rocked through him. Too many to make sense of it all.—Webs entangled the trees of a grove he had not reached. An older couple hiked past the graffitied cornerstone. Centaurs knelt to care for the grove they claimed. Dryads played in the water, dunking each other. Doxies and gnomes fought over fallen leaves. Omorose rose from her rest at the foot of an ancient oak, orange gaze staring right at him. Selkie males moved their wounded, gazes darting to his floating form and the glowing hearthstone.
A ripple effect of magic flashed an instance of time outside the pinpoints of concentrated wards magic. The wards covered so much land. Its magic was everywhere the wards covered.—Godric frowning down at his legs, hand glowing and slowly pulling another magic away. The giant squid waved a tentacle at Ronald and Justin and some other boy. Deer grazed in a clearing. An owl glared from a tree as if Salazar had woken it from slumber. A downtrodden wizard stumbled into a Hogsmeade building with a carved Hogs Head above the door. Rats scattered across an abandoned house, its walls covered in old scars. Children ran across the green and played a pickup game of quidditch.
The wards seeped into Salazar, offering up all this information, and wormed into his mind to rip him apart. On and on the snapshots of time came, rippling out from each grounding stone.
Panic gripped him.
He could not focus enough to fight against the surface connection. The psychic ward's last defense was attacking him. The reversal of a legilimency attack seared through him, giving him all the supposed knowledge a person seeking the hearthstone would have wanted while overstimulating their brain.
The Fat Friar knelt before windows with a rosary dancing between fingers and lips moving to some unknown prayer. A flock of birds flew through holly branches. A parent scolded a child for pushing another in a too-rough round of tag. Susan stole a bite of pudding from Leanne's plate. Hogwarts ran laughing down a hallway, Peeves and a House elf tag-teaming to catch her.
Blood was on his tongue.—His blood had failed him. His blood was Harry Potter's.
But Harry and he were one and the same.
A three-headed dog lifted two of its head from slumber, one snapped at him while the other growled in confusion. The herd of unicorns were grazing in a field. Children crowded a candy store decked out for Halloween.
Magic pulsed through his bonds with Hogwarts. His brother bonds twisted, yanking at his core. Fear and confusion sang through those bonds. His magic rose in response, colliding with the invading magic of the wards tearing at his mind.
The bonds with his wards shifted. Magic, searing through him, pulled back.
Salazar gasped. He blinked down at his hands on the hearthstone. The water in front of his eyes were tinted pink. Acid clawed at his throat.
He felt like an idiot. Of course, his physical body was different, his blood different, from his past form. The wards had recognized him when he passed through them on the train because of his magic and his soul, not his blood.
After all the various intelligent magical creatures he had come across, he should have prepared to meet something like the selkie. He certainly should have considered the consequences of his physical form in regard to his key to enter the hearthstone. He should have thought of that but all he had planned for was how to breathe in water and deal with little pests.
He kept running head-first into danger without properly thinking.
The boy sighed out bubbles and slumped against the hearthstone as he tried to think. It was so hard to think. He had to finish investigating. He had to because he didn't want to deal with the selkies for as long as possible.
How long had he been trapped within the psychic ward's grasp?
Salazar stared uncomprehendingly at his watch. When had he eaten that second gillyweed?
He flung his unharmed hand over his mouth and pressed his forehead against the stone, bile filling the back of his throat.—Shouldn't have thought about gillyweed.—The magic of the hearthstone thrummed against his head.
Godric pulled at the brother bonds. Salazar closed his eyes and forced himself to focus on the bonds to send reassurance back. The last thing he wanted was Godric to swim out to him. He had no idea what Hogwarts could do but he did know that Godric and water did not mix.
After a moment to swallow back the stomach acid and remains of gillyweed, he forced himself to focus. Either he did this now or he waited until he figured out how to deal with the selkie village.
It had to be now.
Salazar pushed off the stone and, with one hand, slowly shuffled down so his feet pressed into the ground. He needed to ground himself before he attempted to open the door with magic-saturated blood—that should work since it was his magic that the wards had recognized, at least in part.—Nature's magic flowed through his form, connecting him to the world.
He pressed both hands and his core magic into the stone.
With a blink, the hearthstone vanished and a door stood before him. Salazar pulled as much magic he was comfortable with around his bloodied hand and grasped the handle. There was minor resistance but it didn't fade this time. Inside was the warding scheme's heart and the central influx of magic, pulled from the leyline crossing.
Like a mindscape or a dream, a single action changed the world around him. He didn't physically step through. All that was needed was opening the door (which was considerably harder than he had expected).
The visual world shifted as the door opened.
Magic flowed around him in a swirling vortex of light. Thousands and thousands of runic marks gleamed and glowed about within the circulating magic. Lines and dots and marks, runes of power in every language he had learned in his past life whirled about, moving at many different paces and in eight different directions with a central vortex of magic.
Salazar glanced about before he took a step.
As he moved, the pattern shifted. Each step revealed another weaving of the wards. The first layer, for all that one could call it a layer when it was all intertwined and woven together, was copper. A step and it became tumbaga. The next step turned it gold. Then came bronze and electrum. He stopped on the fifth step. The deeper he went, the more the weave was of the inner wards. Beyond, on step six and seven, there should be pewter and silver but even on the fifth layer there were tears and breaks in the pattern. It was thin before him. Where another metallic shade should have continued, a riot of color danced, peaking through the empty layers.
The inner wards were no more. Those wards had been tied to the inner wall. They had shattered with its destruction.
The kaleidoscope of color must be the mass of magic he saw when activating his glasses magic sight. It was all the magic the children expelled into the world with each spell before the cleansing ward, with the help of the groves (and the entire forest, Salazar supposed) removed it. The magic that made up Hogwarts and whatever was used as protection on the broken wall and about Hogsmeade made up the rest. That he could see it was the result of the intertwining of the cleansing and psychic wards.
Salazar tilted his head thoughtfully. Emerald eyes flickered over the swirling silver mass, picking out and discerning each visible part of the various wards he had worked years to create. There were fraying and breaks in all of them in this layer alone. The pattern of damage hinted at some type of explosion of magic—probably the destruction of the inner wards.
He slowly turned about, gaze analyzing everything he could spy, then he took a step back the way he came. This continued until five steps were made. On the fifth step, he returned to the original copper layer. Here he could see burrows of foreign magic pressing through the weave, attempting to do something to his warding—and slowly succeeding.
The illusionary ward that protected Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and the land from non-magicals, and hid the tells of wards from magically sensitive beings and ward breakers alike, appeared whole. There was fraying within the psychic ward but Salazar wasn't certain what the deterioration was affecting.—It had worked well enough a moment ago, trapping Salazar into an all-consuming scrying of the grounds.—The cleansing ward seemed off. Whole runic sections were fading away, as if the very ward was undoing itself.
In turn, the sanctuary and creature wards were shredded in whole sections. If Salazar was reading it right, enemies of protected persons—which all students and staff of Hogwarts were—could enter without issue. Most of the dangerous creatures he had warded against could, potentially, see and enter the grounds. It explained the centaurs' presence and Salazar's inability to expel them.
He worked diligently, searching out what he could without wasting time analyzing what he saw. If he had the time, Salazar would have investigated the tears and breaks, the fadings and fraying of his schemes in detail. Salazar didn't know how much time he had and he wasn't mentally fit enough to make a good time of it either.
The parselmouth held up a hand, waiting for a section of the weave to flow past his fingers, and pressed a strand of his magic into a runic double-triangle pattern. His senses faded from the visual view as his magic was pulled with the pattern East and moved through the octagram of magic. He traveled with the cleansing ward slowly working his magic free of everything that made it Salazar—something it would take years to complete.
East, to the unicorn-claimed grove, was fine if not a little fuzzy. The ward magic swirled through the grove's cornerstone too quickly to tell if anything was off with it. Then it rushed back to the hearthstone. There, it veered off West to the spider-infested grove. He had the same experience with the West's stone as the East's.
From West and back to the hearthstone, his magic slowed to a crawl. It was as if he had hit rush hour traffic Uncle always complained about. Only a trickle of magic seemed to continue through the pattern. Salazar was tempted to push through but he should be headed Southeast. That was towards the cornerstone ripped from the ground. If he tried to force anything, he was likely to do more damage to it all.
Eventually, he was pushed toward the stone—Not pulled as the previous motion felt like. The path felt like it was a hair's width. All the pressure at the back was forcing his magic along the allotted path even though the cornerstone wasn't calling the magic to it. The wards, or something, seemed to remember the pattern it should move in and was continuing along without the aid of the stone. All the cornerstone seemed to do was accept the wards magic and "ping" when the magic reached its edge to let the ward know it needed to turn about.
His magic flowed through the Northwest and South cornerstones with little issues. Minor changes of motion hinted at the cracks and breaks he was aware of. None seemed to be causing any real issues. The fuzziness was larger in areas, enough so for Salazar to realize it was more a spread of the magic than any issue with the pattern per se. It was like the path widened at odd sections.
From South the magic flowed North, to the centaur-claimed grove. That was where things seemed to go from a little fuzzy at the edges of its octagram star shape and become more like a swamp. His magic still swirled about and moved in the right pattern back to the hearthstone but it was a broader motion and felt a little wild. It narrowed back into a stream of magic as it returned to the hearthstone and then headed Northeast, to his first grove.
The spreading of magic from its pattern happened again to Salazar's confusion. It was even wider and longer lived than the last. There was no issue with the Northeast grove. Why was this happening?
Salazar pulled away from the cleansing ward with a shake of his head. Another shake stopped him from wondering about what he had experienced. Now was not the time.
Instead, he turned and stared out toward the end of the outer wards. Where once the white of nothing had peaked through, now another but different kaleidoscope twirled into view through the openings of the weave. He should probably figure out what the heck that was. The inner part being filled with strange magic was expected. The outer should be near empty.
He searched out another part of the moving warding scheme and reached out to a more complex design than the last. Salazar twined his magic through it and connected to the psychic ward, willingly this time. Then he took another step.
Pressure slammed into him. He felt like he was being squeezed into the floor, into his outer wards. An explosion of sensory information smacked him in the face.
Salazar stumbled back. He blinked away tears from the pain. A stutter of fear snapped through him when his feet suddenly stepped on nothing.
As he flung his arms out at the sudden motion, he found the hearthstone glowing before him. Bubbles rushed about his vision as he gasped out air.
Heart racing, Salazar righted himself in the water. The aftertaste of ancient, old, and just aging magic coated his tongue. The founder watched a school of fish swim past one of the protection stones as he tried to place how he knew that was what he was tasting.—It was an aftertaste he got when he sensed some flavor to a magic he touched. A little like the smell of a gas station and the crisp air of a mountain peak with a touch of just-been-awake-a-little-too-long saliva.
It was because of whatever the hell was bearing down on his wards.
"You have returned."
Salazar jerked and turned about. The selkie stared back at him, still in the same place. Two others floated at his side. One of them was the older, decoratively dressed selkie Salazar had definitely knocked unconscious.
The older selkie regarded him for a long moment before he ordered, "Go."
The eleven-year-old offered as respectful a nod as he could while floating underwater, banged up, and having harmed multiple of the creatures—Salazar couldn't do anything else here anyway and he needed to leave. He'd been here as long as he dared.—Then he gently grasped some of the earth magic in case something attacked him again and headed out one of the smaller openings.
None of the merfolk followed.
oooP8ooo
Godric was seated beside his school clothes and shoes when he resurfaced from the loch. His brother rose and demanded with clenched fists, "What the fuck happened?"
Salazar grimaced as he tiredly treaded water. "D–" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and croaked out, "Don't want to talk about it."
His brother gave an unimpressed look down at him before he knelt and offered a hand. It took a few tries but the two got Salazar out of the lake and back onto the pier.
"You're bleeding," Godric stated as he looked him over.
Salazar glanced into the murky water. The runic scar on his head was open, bleeding, and inflamed. One side of his face was black and blue. His tunic and trousers were torn. And one hand was covered in cuts that already looked irritated from whatever was in the lake. At least there were no signs of blood from anywhere else. A mental attack like he had sustained often caused bleeding from all the orifices of the head—ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.
He looked like a mess. He felt like crap.
Salazar closed his eyes and focused on the little earth magic he still held in his grip, ready to use at a second's moment. He carefully released it and the magic swirled through his form unimpeded before floating away, back to the rest of the Mother's magic.
Godric caught him as he decided to turn into a noodle. His body throbbed, arms screamed from strain. He felt like he had caught a head cold. Salazar would not be surprised if he spent the rest of the day sleeping.
Hazel eyes swept over him. "Hospital?"
"Godsss no, if-if possible."
Godric nodded, guided Salazar down the pier to a step to sit on, closed his eyes, and, after a moment, flicked Salazar's yew wand out. Heat rushed over Salazar. Steam rose off him, fogging up his glasses for a moment. Then he was dry.
"Thanksss."
"I'd say any time but it might be a few years before we get there," Godric offered with a hint of irritation in his voice.
Salazar ducked his head so Godric couldn't see the grimace. There wasn't much he could do for his brother. Healing took time; adjusting to being reborn took time. He had had the luxury of time. Godric didn't, not really.
His brother needed to recall his memories as Neville so he could blend in amongst school children, friends, and family (perhaps they would even give him a boost in adjusting to the time period). Godric needed access to his original skills to keep himself sane and comfortable in the strange world he found himself in. He needed a working wand to adapt to the changes within popular, legal magic. They both had to gain allies for when they took on their headships.
It all would take time. But people watched and judged as Godric struggled to find his footing. People knew Godric, Neville Longbottom, was the heir apparent to the House of Longbottom. Every misstep, every failed spell marked against Godric's ability to have a strong, solid ground to work with when he entered the political arena.
All of it was an unpleasant combination that was only tempered by Godric's apparent youth.
Some people would wait for the Longbottom heir to come onto his own. A couple might even give a chance for Godric to prove himself a late bloomer. Most would not.
None of this should concern two apparent eleven-year-olds. Neither of them were fooled into thinking otherwise though. So many people looked at the political figures and saw assets, baggage, or threats instead of people.
"What's your House elf's name?" Godric asked, cutting Salazar's thoughts off.
A pop-click resound through the cave as Mipsy appeared. "Hogsie said you be needing something?" Her round eyes swiveled over Salazar and widened. "Oh.." Mipsy waved a finger at Salazar, "You not supposed to be getting hurt so much! Hogsie will be so sad!"
Salazar groaned at the thought. He did not need his school to mother him. Or become angry at him.
"Could you bring us some bandages or something?" Godric asked as he visibly tried to keep a grin off his face.
She gave a curt nod, glanced over at Salazar once more, and pop-clicked away. Almost instantaneously the House-elf was back with a basket overfilled with vials and things. Mipsy handed it over to Godric and pop-clicked away again, leaving them to figure out what she actually brought.
Godric pulled out the first vial and read its tag. "ANTI-CP?" He pulled out another. "BG-REPLN?" His brother looked helplessly over to Salazar after he looked at a jar of some type of paste. "Know what ABRA-RMVL is for?"
Salazar pulled out a vial himself. It had a tag with ESNC-DIT. "I think this one might be the essence of dittany."
Godric leaned over to look and scoffed. "You say that because of herbology but DIT could stand for anything!"
"Mipsy would have brought things that would help," Salazar grumbled out, "not harm."
His brother snorted. "You want to try it on your cuts then? I'd think we'd want to clean them before you close them up but you clearly know what you're doing."
"Fine," Salazar grumbled and pulled out another vial. "Oh thank the gods. It's Pepperup." He turned the vial to show Godric the tag before popping the lid and downing it. Steam rushed out of his ears but his head cleared of the headache and fogginess that reminded him vaguely of an oncoming cold.
Godric looked entirely unimpressed with him.
"Mipsy," Salazar called out, trying to ignore a flush that began to spread through him. He was starting to feel a little too warm. A shake ran across his unharmed hand. It spread up his arm. He stuffed it into a pocket. Maybe he shouldn't have taken the entire vial worth.
His House elf pop-clicked back into the area. "Master Sally?" She greeted him with a frown.
Salazar made a face as he admitted, "We've no idea what any of this is."
She blinked owlishly and looked down at the basket. Her head shot back up with a scowl. "You drank an entire vial!?"
He shifted, embarrassed but said nothing.
Mipsy narrowed her eyes at him before she turned to Godric and started to explain it all to his brother. The ANTIi-CP was a general antidote to common poisons. BG-REPLN was a blood-replenishment potion. ABRA-RMVL was an abrasion, primarily bruise, removal cream.
"Ha!" Salazar blurted out (and later blamed the pepperup for) when Mipsy stated ESNC-DIT was the essence of dittany.
Mipsy proceeded to dump another potion onto his hand. It burned. Actual sizzling sounds filled the area as the potion cleaned his cuts. Salazar jerked back in surprise and pain as Mipsy used a cloth and swiped more of it over his scar on his forehead.
Godric thankfully took over after that, with thanks to Mipsy for her help. The bruise cream was rubbed into his face and other visible spots with bruises. He then used a cloth to soak up the essence of dittany and dabbed it across Salazar's forehead before taking his cut-up hand.
"I had a toad."
Salazar startled, blinking his eyes open to look at his brother in confusion, "A toad?"
"Did you know?"
"No," Salazar said before he paused. There was actually something about a toad and Neville that seemed familiar but he couldn't place it. Maybe it had come up at some point. He looked Godric over as he decided not to expand his answer. Guilt glowed in hazel eyes. Salazar also quickly decided against asking what had happened to it. "Shall we give it a proper burial?"
Tension eased from his brother as he started to wrap the already healing cuts in bandages. "Yes. Bloody stupid but yes."
Salazar clasped his brother's shoulder with his free hand as he said in comfort, "It's not stupid. It was your pet, no matter that you have forgotten for a moment." He squeezed the shoulder before he added, "For all that we remember, we are but eleven. Our physical forms influence us...I'd...rather not give you an example, though."
Godric snorted at that and looked up at him as Salazar pushed himself up, using the blond as leverage. His brother gave a slight smirk as he said, "I'll not ask now. I'll wait for when we're pissed drunk in a few years...Or if another niece gets us high on accident." He tilted his head at Salazar. "Are you up for this?"
"Did you want the complicated version?" Salazar asked back in confusion.
A smile tugged at his brother's lips. "No...I've the feeling that Trevor was a simple creature, so simple will do."
His brother collected the remaining medical supplies, which were just some spare bandages and gauze, and scooped up a box he hadn't noticed until now. They ended up by one of the large pines at the loch's edge for the funeral. Simple druidic rites soon had the tree's roots cradling the small box within the earth. Nothing visible announced the grave. A tiny spark of Godric's and Salazar's magic sealed the box shut though. Anyone sensitive enough to sense it would have a hard time determining where it came from as it was so little, but it was enough of a marker for them.
oooPooo
is believed first created in Mesopotamia where clay pipes were used in 4000 bce. Romans had their piping and public baths that they brought to their various sections of the empire, including Britain as seen still in Bath. When the Western empire fell it is believed that it regressed, like everything else supposedly did, for about 1,000 years (the Dark Ages). Piping has not been a common find in British excavations of that time period, as far as I've found. So I assume piping was not commonly used in Britain during the founder's lives. The lack of sanitation is a contributing factor to the spread of plagues like the bubonic plague, so we can assume that any piping used was not sewage but a way to distribute water within a city area.
Of course, wizards have no need for piping. So it didn't exist and wasn't placed in the castle...until they decided it was needed. They didn't really need piping to be cleaner than most of Britain, between the use of magic to handle sewage and the bathing aspect of their culture.