"IT'S BEEN OVER FOUR HUNDRED YEARS"
"You mean it's been four hundred for you." Salazar smirked at Rowina, hiding it behind his teacup before she could see.
"That doesn't matter, you were the last of us to be locked down and it was 1657 that's still 336 years ago."
"Hold on, Tom Riddle never found you?" He looked contemplative before speaking.
"The last of my line to come here was a Nagendra Slytherin. I believe she married into the gaunt family. Was this Tom Riddle your ancestor?"
"Merlin no. We aren't related. He was your last descendant." Salazar raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down. "I'm not your descendant, I got your line through the right of conquest. He started school here in 1938. Went traveling for a bit, Then started a war, tried to kill an infant because of a stupid prophecy that wasn't even completely true, and got himself stuck in an incorporeal form." Salizar looked a little perplexed and like he was trying to shuffle around the information to make sense of that, before his mind settled on something.
"If you aren't one of my descendants, what line gave you parseltongue? The Slytherin line has the gift because it carries naga blood from over 50 generations before my time, and the other lines carrying naga blood were killed off during Uther Pendragon's reign in the early fifth century." Hadrian hesitated for a minute trying to find a way around this but other than walking out the door he couldn't think of anything.
"My mothers maiden name was Evans. Evans was the Emrys squib line. Making me Lord Emrys."
"And passing on the blessing of the last ancestral dragon." Salazar continued, Looking excited. "The book shelf over there, in the corner. Go to it." Hadrian stood for a second processing the topic shift but eventually did as he was told and was soon stood in front of the corner shelf of the bookcase. "You see the black book, top middle shelf, to the right. Take it down." Hadrian pulled the book out and noticed two gold lock clasps over the side, each holding a small onyx, but no visible way to open them. The book was bound in thick black leather, embossed all over with intertwining snake coils, with a large polished oval onyx embedded in the cover. He ran his thumb over it and jolted at the sharp pain. The onyx turned a deep red and the clasps snapped open. He looked to Salazar who gestured for him to open it. When he did, the book was hollowed out with a large gold key encrusted with diamonds and emeralds. Hadrian pulled it out and held it up to Salazar, one eyebrow raised in question.
"That's not important, flip to the back of the book. Oh and put that back it's completely useless and doesn't go to anything." Hadrian was flipping to the back of the book but turned to look at Salazar.
"Why do you have it if it doesn't go to anything?"
"Have you never heard of a decoy? The real one is at the back of the book." hadrian got to the back and found a rather small silver nondescript key. "Good. Now go to the back of the same shelf where you got that book and there you will find the keyhole." again he did as told and the bookshelf slid back and to the side to reveal another bookshelf just behind it. He looked at Salazar with the most deadpan expression he could. "Those, Hadrian, are the rarest books I have and probably the only copies in existence. Most are parselscript but the top shelf is the exciting bit." at this point Salazar was bouncing in his seat like a child. "They're all written in dragonscript. I wasn't able to read them, but I wanted to make sure they survived the ages, so I collected them. And I'm so glad I did. Read something. what do they say?" he had abandoned his chair and was as close to the frame as he could get. Rowena sat behind him graceful as ever, eyes glittering in amusement as she watched her friend act like a child. Hadrian looked to her for help, but she just smirked at him.
In the end he pulled the entire top shelf down which consisted of five grimoires and seven scrolls. skimming through them he found a few were books on basic magic that already existed in wizarding variants. The only upside to them would be that no one would know what you're casting, and that they would be harder or impossible to counter. However two of the books and four of the scrolls were more interesting.
"This." He held an intricately carved wood bound book up to Salazar. "Is a book on Draconic Runes and their sequencing. This." he held up another book bound in wood. It was bulkier and a little less delicate this time. "is a book on permanent transfiguration and duplication. These" he gestured to the scrolls. "Are specific chants. One of them has a load of different elemental chants." Hadrian was as excited as Salazar at this point and started reading through the permanent transfiguration and duplication text. He got to one of the duplication spells and had an idea. Last year he had noticed he couldn't take any of the books out of Slytherins quarters but he wondered if he used this he might be able to take the copy. He also wondered if he could bypass the anti-copy charms all modern books had with this. He pulled one of his textbooks, did the spell and It worked. He did the same to one of the books in Salazar's office and quickly ran out one of the passageways, returning a minute later sporting a cheshire grin.
It was 9pm when hadrian looked at the time. He had missed dinner, but he didnt care. He had spent the last few hours copying books and flooing them to his trunk to organize later. Mostly consisting of books on occlumency, potions theory, and anything written directly by the founders. Rowina, Salazar, and hadrian had continued their conversation while he worked. They wanted to know what was going on in the world and their school. After hadrian was finished they were both fuming for many reasons.
First being the view on Salazar and his beliefs. It turns out he had nothing against muggle borns, in fact, they had told him that Hogwarts was specifically built for them. During times when the muggles were becoming more and more hostile towards wixen, the founders decided to make a place muggle borns could run to if they needed protection, a place they could learn the culture and customs of the world they were now a part of, as well as learn to use and control their magic. The other wix heard about the sanctuary founded by four of the most notable scholars of the time, and many asked to help or learn. It became a place of magic whether you were a wix or part of the Seligen you were welcome. As time went on and the borders between magic and muggle were closed, the wixen population had their land to themselves and the sanctuary was slowly vacated. People still went there to learn and structures were put in place making it into a propper school.
The pure of blood concept that Salazar was known for had been miscommunicated somewhere, it had always been, those pure of magic. Salazar explained that his father had bypassed his two older brothers to give the Heirship to Salazar for his achievements. his eldest brother had used blackmagic, which was not the same as darkmagic, on their sister. It was supposed to steal her magic, but he altered it slightly so it stole her magic soul and life. She became ill and no one knew why. Salazar dedicated his time to experimenting with potions, and learning healing to try and cure her, but he was never able to and she died. Not long after his brother got sick and it looked the same. This time Salazar performed the diagnosis and detection spells a lot sooner resulting in him finding the magic residue and tracing it back to his eldest brother. He immediately went to his father and under truth oaths his brother was questioned and found guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison where he died, taking their other brother with him. His father, having already lost his wife, then daughter, sending his first born to prison for her murder, then losing his second son to the same blackmagic, killed himself. Salazar's family had been torn apart by blackmagic, all for the sake of his brother wanting to be Heir. Pure of magic, referred to those who were not tainted by blackmagic.
The next subject that they were not pleased about was the lack of the curriculum offered at Hogwarts nowadays. No alchemy, no warding, no spellcraft, no weapons training, no dueling, no languages, no enchanting, no invocation, no healing, no elemancy, and no wandcraft. Hadrian was pleased to note that all the books on these subjects were still in the founders library for him to learn what he wanted.
Another point of concern for them was the anti darkmagic mentality that was prevalent at the moment. When Hadrian had asked why they had pointed him to a set of books written by all four founders around the classification of magic, each type's importance to the nature of magic, and how removing one type could be detrimental to the prosperity of all magic. Now Hadrian was sat staring at the tempus he cast, reading 21:04 he was four minutes late for curfew. Wrapping the shadows around himself he moved to one of the shadows in the entrance hall just before the common room, checking he was alone before fully stepping through hoping no one noticed he was gone so long.