Salazar Slytherin stood looming over a locket. His dark goatee, pointed over his round chin, sank into a frown. This was its usual pose when he was frustrated, his anger more a form of grief at his own ignorance.

The locket was small and green, a family heirloom of many generations. The Slytherin name was old, and with it kept many secrets, though this locket was not one of them. It was simply a gift from his father, one of many treasures he would in time inherit. Though ordinary in many ways, when he received the gift on his seventeenth birthday, some six years prior, he knew his father, Sadrabald, considered him a man. He was allowed to speak when his father was in session, and sometimes his father even heeded his words.

For the last three years, Salazar wanted to make the locket something more. In it was a small script, written by Merlin himself. A warning against death. Salazar sought to make the locket a source of life. Everlasting life, if that was possible. Merlin thought it was possible, though in the hundreds of years since Merlin's death, no witch or wizard or magical being otherwise had been able to figure out how it was done.

Merlin's failure would not be Salazar's. Salazar gazed at the locket, at the script written by Merlin, adamant that he would do more than be a student of Merlin's long lineage of tutelage. Salazar would at last find a way to best Death, to personally continue his teaching forever more. His name would stand even mightier than Merlin's, the founder of Modern Magic. Salazar would be master unlike any seen for a thousand years, a being like those that came even before Ancient Magic.

Simply staring at the locket would do no good. He raised his wand of Alder, twelve and three-quarters inches, rigid, with a core made from the tooth of an Oilliphéist—in fact, the Oilliphéist that lived in the lake near his family's manor in the southeastern shore of Ireland. He began a chant, swishing the wand back and forth in a long, easy figure eight. The tongue he used was ancient Celtic, old even by that time, as the old languages tended to produce more reliable magic than the newer ones. He had tried many incantations, some he had read, others he invented. The words he chose now were roughly "Hear me Spirit of Death and know my soul is in this locket, when you come for me, come for my locket and not my body." Perhaps Ancient Magic would be strong enough to trick the Spirit of Death, to send it on a wild goose chase for an object, all the while his soul would remain with him.

He repeated the chant again and again, trying various motions of his wand and substituting words here and there as he went. Of course, he could never be absolutely sure that the spell worked until the time of death came, which he hoped would not be for a long time yet, but he was fairly certain that this trial was not working. He knew the signs of Ancient Magic, he had been working with it for years now, a secret knowledge of the Slytherin family who had been tutors of their own line since a long-ago Slytherin ancestor was taught by Merlin himself. The most potent sign, a blue glow—not quite a flame, not quite a light, not quite water, and not quite air—would not hold onto the locket. As he chanted the words, the blue light would swirl around his wand, drawn from the air but not of the air. At the low points of the wand's arcs the light would droop down to the locket, hanging on and around it, but never quite going into it. When Salazar stopped chanting, the light would dissipate moments later.

Not all the day could be spent on the locket, however. There were matters of the moment to attend to, duties of a young lord that cannot be ignored. Salazar took his locket back from the stone pedestal he had placed it on. He turned and surveyed the room. It was a small dungeon—sub-dungeon, technically, as he built it—rather had it built by a few house elves whom he swore to secrecy—below the lowest dungeon of the manor. The newest feature of the manor, it already reeked with age: the stones were damp and mildewy, the floor unfinished and rocky, and the furniture was the oldest in the manor. In fact the furniture was not even supposed to be in the manor, it was part of an old set that Sadrabald had ordered thrown out, but Salazar intercepted a candelabra which he enchanted to float near the low ceiling, a sitting chair whose seat was half-busted and whose threads had been pulled out by innumerable house cats, an end table whose myriad stains were a more noticeable pattern than the wood grain, and a bookcase whose skewed and broken shelves held a handful of old books, journals, and trinkets. The stone pedestal he had taken from the garden, hidden in the girth of an overgrown shrub. He knew it would not be missed. It took three house elves to Apparate it into this dungeon, it was so heavy. Then he banned the house elves from ever returning, and set to enchanting the room so it would not be easily discovered. He was quite confident that even Sadrabald would not find it, as he knew his power now out rivaled his father's by quite a margin, though his father was far from incompetent. In fact, the only wizard he believed could possibly find this place was Godric, and so it was with Godric in mind that Salazar had cast his spells of secrecy. What went on here was a pursuit that even his best friend could not be privy to.

Salazar tapped his wand to the far wall in a special pattern across half a dozen bricks and the wall disappeared to reveal an even smaller chamber with a ladder, lit only by his wand light. He extinguished his wand and set up the ladder in the pitch darkness. While the ladder looked short, it was in fact quite a climb; the secret dungeon was very low in the ground and quite cold because of it. At the top of the ladder Salazar whispered a word of Ancient Celtic and a stone lowered to his hand. Though the prison cells in the lower dungeon were not used much anymore, he thought it wise to make the floor check that the coast was clear before he emerged from his secret chamber. If the stone did not lower, it was not yet safe to come out. Salazar pushed the stone back into place and, like the wall before the ladder, it disappeared briefly to let the young wizard out. He climbed the curved stone steps up to the upper dungeon, snagged a taste of lunch still cooking on the pot in the house elves' kitchen, then proceeded up the next set of spiral stone stairs to the ground floor of the manor.

Considered an accomplished wizard already, Salazar's main focus in magic outside his own practice and experiments was teaching. He tutored two young wizards from pure lines, and though they were still children, they could begin learning some basics now. Their parents sent them to stay with the Slytherins on their estate and paid handsomely for it. It was worth it to have their children learn from one of the brightest wizards of the last three hundred years, one who might teach them some of the secrets of Merlin. And everyone knew of the vast fortunes of the Peverells and the Weasleys, it would cost them relatively little for their children to learn under the man who could control snakes, who could make it rain fire. The only wizard who could best Godric Gryffindor in a duel.

The young pupils were waiting for him in the study, sitting on the wood-backed chairs that faced the fire place. Their feet dangled above the ground, their heads—one a mop of shoulder-length brown hair, the other a mop of orange hair just down to the top of the neck—did not yet peak over the top of the chairs. They were still in their first year of study, not even old enough to have their own wands. Most of the magic they did was by accident. Yet Salazar knew he could still teach them some things in these childhood years, methods to begin controlling their minds and thus their magic. And perhaps he could learn if they could see magic the way he did.

"Up, young Masters," Salazar said.

They bounced out of the chairs and stood at rigid attention in front of him. One boy reached for his nose to itch it.

"Attention, Master Weasley."

"But it itches!" Weasley cried.

"But it itches, Professor."

"But it itches Professor!" Weasley cried again, and Peverell could not hold back a giggle.

"You will train your minds, both of you," Salazar continued, "That means no sniggering, either. Your attention is your greatest tool to perform magic, greater even than a wand or a fancy potion. An itch should not take your focus away from the task at hand. Weasley, would you stop to itch your nose if a dragon was breathing fire at you? Or another wizard casting a spell in the middle of a duel?"

"No, Professor," the Weasley boy said.

"Quite the right answer. Now, let's take the lesson today outside while it is still warm," Salazar said.

Both the boys grinned, usually when lessons were outside they were short, and then the boys were allowed extra time to play.

They strolled through the garden together, Salazar in the lead and the boys behind him in line like little ducklings. Salazar continued his lecture on focus; his lectures were often rambling, but they covered every topic the boys could imagine. Some days they learned about spells, others about the magical properties of the plants in the gardens, and still others were history lessons. Today's lesson was uncharacteristically not rambling: Salazar was focused, his mind and his lesson congruous.

He stopped suddenly by a stone bench in the style of the Ancient Greeks, a favorite of his great grandfather whose name was etched into a small plaque beside it. Salazar turned and looked at his pupils, back and forth slowly he let his dark eyes gaze across the boys.

"Master Peverell, sit on the bench," Salazar ordered, his voice firm but attentive and with a hint even of affection, and the boy jumped onto the bench without hesitation. "Today we will put your minds to the test. It will be a hard test, and I do not expect either of you to succeed. The point is to learn, and to learn we must have experience. This will not be a very pleasant experience, but it will be a very important lesson. So do not feel bad at the end of it if you have failed."

Then Salazar did something the boys had never seen him do before. He knelt in front of Peverell. Salazar's dark eyes met the boy's and the boy blinked, afraid. Salazar focused on the boy's mind, letting Peverell's thoughts begin to wash over his, finding entrance. Then Salazar pushed, exploding open Peverell's mind like rushing water bursting through a dam. He could see all the boy's thoughts, his memories, though he chose not to look too deeply at any particular thing. He wanted to show the boy first, let him know what to expect. As quickly as he entered Peverell's mind, he blinked and disappeared from it.

"What was that, Professor? A staring contest of sorts?" Weasley asked.

"Yes, of sorts," Salazar said, turning to him. "You will find out soon enough what I've done. Master Peverell, don't ruin the surprise. Let Master Weasley onto the bench."

Silently, and shaking slightly, Peverell lowered himself from the bench and collapsed into a seat on the ground next to Salazar. Weasley hopped up onto the bench, confused at his friend's altered state but not quite afraid.

Salazar met the boy's light brown eyes and performed Legilimency on him as well. Again, he merely made a presence in the boy's mind, he did not pry. Then he had Weasley, too, take a seat on the floor, and he himself took the bench.

"Can either of you explain what I've just done?" Salazar asked.

"You—you read our minds, Professor," Peverell said, his voice weaker than usual, although he was not shaking anymore.

"Close. Master Weasley, any thoughts?"

"It was like our thoughts were in a room and you came in the room," he said.

"Very good. A stone for you!" Salazar said, and tossed a small, gravelly stone at the boy, who caught it with a smile and a notice of his peer's jealous glance. "I entered your minds. Your mind is like a big house for your thoughts. How well you can keep your attention in any one room of the house is the very same thing as your ability to focus. When I entered, you could tell there was someone in that house—your mind—who wasn't supposed to be there. When I enter again, I am going to play robber, and you are going to play secret-keeper. I will try to look for one of your secrets, and you must stop me. Now, how would you stop a robber Master Peverell?"

"I would lock a door so he couldn't even get in!" Peverell said, his voice now a little louder than usual to compensate for his falling behind in stones.

"Excellent! A stone for you, too," Salazar said and tossed him a stone. Peverell caught it and beamed, then tucked it into his robes. "We will practice, in a sense, locking the doors of the mind from prying eyes. In this case, my prying eyes. How to do that can only be learned through experience. When I was your age, Lord Slytherin gave me that experience. I intend to show you no more mercy than he showed me. Master Peverell, take my place here."

The two switched seating positions, Salazar again kneeling, and without warning the lesson began again. Although he said he would show no more mercy than his father had shown him, Salazar did not in fact make a mad dash for the child's secrets. He moved through the boy's mind at more of a directed saunter, giving Peverell plenty of time to lock up his mind—if only he'd known how. The boy could not figure out how to lock up his own mind, though, and within moments, even at a saunter, Salazar was looking at memories Peverell would have liked to hide away.

One memory was from a few days before. It was evening and the boys had just finished supper. Weasley had requested a game of Wizard's Chess with Salazar—Salazar rarely refused a chance to strengthen his pupil's minds and accepted. Peverell excused himself to bed and climbed the stairs to his and Weasley's room. Then he went to Weasley's bed and dug through it until he found a small sack. He opened the sack and removed a few of Weasley's stones, then replaced the sack, found his own sack, and added these stones to it.

Leaving the boy's mind, Salazar gave Peverell a stern look.

"You could not keep me out of your mind. Although I told you that I expected you to fail, there will still be a punishment. Would you like to tell Master Weasley what I saw, or should I?"

Knowing that whatever way his tutor told the story would be far worse for him than if he told it himself, Peverell piped up that he would, and he did.

"You will return the stones—there were four, I believe," Peverell nodded at this, terrified now that Salazar would intrude on his mind again to double-check, "and, of course, you will apologize now."

Peverell looked towards Weasley but could not meet his eyes.

"Sorry," he said, in a quiet voice again.

"Master Peverell, are you sorry for what you've done, or are you sorry that you were caught?"

"I'm sorry for what I've done," he said.

"Don't tell me, Master Peverell, tell your friend."

"I'm sorry Quinten for taking your stones," he said.

"Good. An apology is only as strong as the emotion behind it. I do hope you feel the remorse you are conveying, Master Peverell. Do you have anything to say, Master Weasley?"

Weasley, whose face had turned as red as his hair, wanted to shout, and, for a moment, he did.

"I can't believe you, Hywel! You sneak! Don't you ever touch my things again! And—"

He was cut off by Salazar, who held up a finger and said, "That's enough. Master Peverell apologized and meant it. He will return the stones. There is nothing more we can ask of him. Now we must do something even more difficult than apologizing, and that is accepting the apology." He gave Weasley a long look.

"I accept your apology, Hywel, even if you acted like a sneak."

"Good. Master Weasley, I hope you have also learned that if you have a secret, you best hide it well. We will practice that now. Up on the bench you go."

Salazar entered Weasley's mind and again sauntered towards a secret. He found one easily, though he could feel some resistance which he was impressed by. The memory was late at night. Weasley was looking out a window in they boys' room overlooking the garden. He had heard a strange sound. What he saw was even stranger. A group of very tall women with long, long silver hair, dressed in long, flowing robes of white. He could not tell quite what they were doing, maybe speaking to each other in whispers as they plucked some things from the garden. He did not know what they were, except that they were the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen, and even that information he did not yet know what to do with. All he knew was that he was seeing something he was sure he shouldn't be seeing, because all he wanted to do was watch, and watch he did until all he thought he was were a pair of eyes. Then the women flew away in a flash, and like a memory charm broken, he remembered he was more than a pair of eyes.

Then both Weasley and Salazar were in the garden again, their minds once more fully with their bodies. Salazar smiled.

"I will tell you one day what you saw, but for now you need not concern yourself with such creatures. Your punishment for failure will be fifty lines, stating that when you go to bed you stay in bed until morning."

"I don't get to hear what Quinten's memory was?" Peverell asked, his voice full of complaint at the unfairness of it all.

"No, his memory does not concern you the way yours did him," Salazar said, and Peverell pouted. Weasley made a face at Peverell behind Salazar's back. "Now, you two, go play. The lesson is over."

Drawing idly on the bench, Salazar listened to his pupils playing, their dispute, like all their others, dissolved away. His hand traced out the shape of the hydrangea across from him. His pupils reminded him a little of Godric and himself when they were younger. Perhaps all children played like that. Especially the only children who must find a sibling in their playmate. Though these two did not seem to have the gifts that Godric and he had, even at that age before they had their first wands.

A house-elf appeared before Salazar with a crack and bowed low, his long nose brushing the ground.

"Master, Lord Slytherin requests your presence in the parlor," he said, then with another crack he was gone.

Salazar packed up his quill and ink, slipping those and his piece of drawing parchment into a pouch in his robe. Then he set off for the parlor, letting his pupils play unsupervised—sometimes allowing them the freedom to get into a little trouble is good for them, he thought. Surely he and Godric had gotten into plenty of trouble themselves.

Lord Slytherin stood facing the large portrait of Merlin that hung in the parlor, the great wizard depicted in his famous purple robes with a gold trim that matched the heavy frame. The portrait was old, painted and enchanted by a contemporary of Merlin. It is said that three generations of wizards were taught in part by this painting, its original enchantment was so great and the memory of Merlin so well-preserved. Hundreds of years on, however, the enchantment and the paint had faded, so that Merlin could do little more than smile and wave, though that he did with a grace few men posses.

"My Lord," Salazar said, bowing low though his father was not facing him.

"Salazar, sit. You will come with me to speak with the Baron of Bannow when he arrives, but first we have something else to discuss," his father said.

The two sat in front of the portrait, looking out into the room.

"A very interesting proposition has come up. Two, in fact. One, that you should marry his daughter, Matilda. She will be sixteen soon, and the Baron intends that she is married before she gets much older. We are thinking at the end of summer next year, just after she turns seventeen. This will give us plenty of time to set the arrangements and provide a ceremony befitting your nobility. She shows talent as a witch, more I daresay than the Baron himself, but we do not have to tell him that. I believe our line will be all the stronger for her talents, not to mention the land you will inherit will strengthen our trade," Lord Slytherin said, his mouth turning upwards in a sly smile that Salazar knew well. His father did not always wear such an expression—he claimed control of his emotions and face was part of his knack for politics of the court—but when he did, not even his thick, graying beard could hide it.

"If that is your will, then I will follow it, father," Salazar said.

"You do not sound too pleased."

"I am not displeased. I simply do not know the girl well. I do not love her."

"Marriages of our nobility do not primarily concern love."

"You love mother."

"I learned to love your mother. I, too, did not know her nearly at all when we were married. We had met once, briefly."

"What if I do not learn to love her?"

"Then you will have to settle for loving your children, for I think you will find it difficult not to. Now, for the other proposition, one I believe will excite you more, but comes with some qualification.

As you know, our kind is still met with skepticism. Though we are allowed our titles, our Kings and Queens have been mistrustful of those who wield… different powers than them. Not since Merlin have they allowed a wizard as their counsel. King Edgar of England is different. He has heard of Godric's deeds fighting for his country and thinks it may be wise to have a wizard nearby. He sent a messenger to me some weeks back asking me to be this counsel. I replied that there were more powerful wizards in the country that would serve him better. In part, I said this because it is true; I am a skilled wizard, but I know I am not a great one. I also said this to ensure that we keep our trade, with you unmarried and not yet as expert in politics as you are in magic, I believe it is prudent for me to continue to oversee our wealth."

"So, father, are you sending me to England?"

"Yes, but you are not to simply have the role. It still must be earned, and your competition will not be easy. Whether he will summon all of them to his court, I know not, my word was only a recommendation. I told the King that he should consider Godric, as well as two witches whom I know to have great power. Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw."