Schism

In addition to its greenhouses and vegetable patches, Hogwarts had an ancient walled herb garden, so old that many said the Founders themselves had planted it. No one knew whether this was true or not, but the plots were certainly arranged in the style horticulturalists of that age had deemed proper. Seasoning herbs -- savory, chive, basil -- lay near parsley and leeks for the kitchens. Several rows contained hollyhock, mallow, comfrey, feverfew and other medicinal plants. There was even a small section of madder and woad, though no dyes or paints had been made at the castle in at least a century.

At the rear of this enclosure, near the aromatic herbs, lay a door that no one now alive had ever seen; a door that only a few people had ever known about at all. It was a small door, made for the smaller witches and wizards of the past, and behind its curtain of clinging moss and twining vines, it blended into the surrounding wall without a trace. An anonymous door; an insignificant door.

And a door wholly unguarded by magic.

~~~

"Wake up, lazybones!"

The tip of a hard, sharp object - most likely a wand - prodded between two of Godric's ribs with uncanny precision. Growling in protest, he rolled away to avoid it, and tumbled off the stone bench he had been lying upon.

"The sun will be down soon," lectured the voice that had woken him. "At this rate, by the time you're well awake, everyone else will be in bed!"

"Mmph," said Godric, and turned over again, preparing to go back to sleep on the scraggly autumn grass. It prickled his face and made him itch, but he wouldn't notice that in a moment or two - if only the voice would hush.

"And also," continued Helga, to whom the voice belonged, "I think it's going to rain."

Brought fully awake by the prospect of getting wet, Godric scrambled to his feet and reached for the woven shoulder harness that held his sword and scabbard. Helga grinned up at him, showing a deep dimple in her left cheek and an oddly charming gap where she had lost two bottom teeth.

"Don't look at me as if your sloth is all my fault, my lord. If you had not been up arguing with my lord Slytherin till all hours last night, you wouldn't be lying here like a slug in my herb garden now!"

Since he could not deny the slug remark, Godric seized upon the first half of her statement instead.

"Slytherin and I were not arguing. We were having a ... a discussion."

Helga's smile faded a bit.

"On the same topic as always, I know. If he would only see reason --"

"I will convince him sooner or later," Godric said, fastening the last of his straps and re-sheathing the sword.

"I heard your method of convincing," said Helga. "Two corridors and a staircase away." She cast a sly sideways look toward him. "Perhaps you should present your arguments earlier in the evening, so we honest, hard-working folk can rest. Or consider using a Silencing Charm. I don't mind the shouting, but I can do without the moaning and groaning that comes after."

"I don't know what you mean," said Godric stiffly.

"You know exactly what I mean, my lord," said Helga. "I've nothing against it myself - men's private affairs are no concern of mine - but I would advise you not to let my lady Rowena overhear. A witch she may be, but the sisters who educated her taught some lessons she has yet to unlearn. She would not approve."

Seeing Godric's discomfort and growing anger, Helga smoothly changed the subject.

"Come now, that's enough of that. Now that you're awake, you can help me get these things in before the rain comes. I've picked apples, and I collected the honey from my hives earlier today. There'll be something sweet with supper."

"You treat me like a boy half my age, my lady," said Godric, smiling in spite of himself.

"Only when necessary," said Helga serenely.

~~~

Helga was correct: there were sweets at supper that night. What was not there, notably, was Slytherin. His absence quite spoiled her ability to enjoy the almond pastries and baked apples she had been looking forward to all evening.

Later in the year, it might not have been so obvious that Salazar was not in the hall. The four Founders sat with the students of their Houses at meals, instructing them in manners and making sure they didn't use their fledgling magic to kill each other. But only a handful of children had arrived at the castle so far - sons and daughters of craftsmen, who weren't needed at home to help bring in the harvest. The rest would trickle in over the next few weeks, arriving on rough broomsticks or tame hippogriffs if they were wizard-born, in carts or on foot if they were from Muggle families. Until they arrived, the long feasting tables were nearly empty, and one missing person made a great difference. Especially if that missing person was Salazar, and the one missing him was Godric.

Helga picked up a sticky tidbit of apple and nibbled, watching Godric all the while. The man was eating with his usual enormous appetite and talking across the table to old Aelfstan, who handled the hippogriff stables and gave the children their riding lessons, but Helga could see his eyes flicking to the hall doors every few seconds. Looking for Salazar; always looking for Salazar.

Sighing, she pushed the apple away and downed the last of her wine. The closeness between that pair was both asset and liability, she mused. Godric might grow weary of Salazar's long-winded discourses on history and bloodlines, but he cared about Salazar's opinions more than he did anyone else's. Troubles only arose when he thought Salazar's opinions were wrong.

"My lady?"

Startled, Helga glanced to the right and found a very young girl standing at her elbow.

"Yes, Gytha?"

"Can I - may I have another apple?" the girl asked, with an expression that said she expected Helga to refuse.

"Of course you may. Eat as much as you like; we never run short here."

"Really?"

"Truly," said Helga, and smiled as the girl snatched not one, but two more apples from the platter, then scurried back to her place on the bench. Some of the Muggle-born children were so used to being hungry that they could not believe the overflowing tables of Hogwarts were really for them. Many arrived with the crippling, bone-softening disease that afflicted undernourished people among their kind - the same disease Helga's colleague Rowena had suffered in childhood.

During a relentless series of famine years, Rowena's Muggle parents had given the best of their meager food to her brothers, until she had become too frail and sickly to do any physical labor. There had been nothing for it then but to give her to the sisters at the abbey, where she could be taught to make herself useful with quill and needle. By the time she had found her way into the wizarding world, it had been too late for her to be completely cured. Magic had arrested the progress of the disease, but it could not repair the old damage from ill-healed fractures. Even now, she walked with a pronounced limp. She was small, and thin, and not very strong, and Helga, who had never been anything but robustly healthy, worried about her a great deal. In fact, Rowena looked as if she could use a winter tonic already, before the leaves had even fallen.

Perhaps, Helga thought, I will brew one for her after the meal is over. And I will make her drink it whether she wants to or not!

Just as they were dismissing the children, the main doors of the hall opened, and Salazar slipped in, looking slightly out of breath. He went the long way round the perimeter of the room, painted wall hangings fluttering in his wake, until he reached his own House's table. There, he bent to speak to one of the eldest boys. The boy listened with a grave expression, nodded, clapped his hands once to get his fellow pupils' attention, then rose and herded them out of the hall.

Rather than watching them go, Salazar edged his way through the crowd of departing children to Godric's table, where his colleagues had gathered. He bowed to Helga, nodded at Rowena, and hesitated for a bare heartbeat before giving Godric a friendly slap on the shoulder.

"I am sorry," he said. "I lost track of the hour. They have not sent the other courses down to the village yet, have they?"

"Not yet," said Godric. After every meal, the leavings were Banished to the tavern in Hogsmeade, where the proprietor, Hengist, passed them out to poorer villagers. There were few hungry people now, with the grain just in and the gardens still bearing fruit, but in a few months, when winter's bite was at its cruelest, there would be many.

"The women are gossiping in the kitchens again, I'm sure," said Rowena, "or they would already have been here to do the job. I wish you would let us take Muggle servants, Salazar. They're far more diligent than witches."

Salazar's greying eyebrows drew together in a scowl. "And have them fainting with terror every time we cast simple spells, or sending their menfolk after us with flaming brands? I think not. Perhaps some of those creatures you saw, my lady -" He turned to Helga.

"Only if you've a sack full of gold to pay for them," she said. "That old man drove a hard bargain." She had met him over the summer at a fair; a shifty-looking wizard selling tiny creatures, brown as dried leaves, which he claimed to have bred himself.

"Love to work, they do," he had said, patting one of the creatures on its bald head. "Makes them happy as anything. This one built his own cage and thanked me for the opportunity afterward." Helga had thought the creature looked pitiful rather than happy, with its large ears drooping in the heat and its humanlike fingers clutching at the lashed-together bars of the cage, but she had dutifully reported the find when she returned to the castle.

"Perhaps we can trade for a pair of them," Godric suggested. "The man may have a child or grandchild who needs teaching." He had Summoned untouched platters from earlier courses to the Gryffindor table, and now he pushed a trencher heaped with stewed eels and chicken in wine sauce over to Salazar, who seated himself and dipped his fingers in a nearby bowl of water before beginning to eat.

Helga, still standing, had a rare chance to view Salazar from above rather than looking up to him. Though not excessively tall for a man - Godric stood a hand's breadth higher - he was much taller than she, and she usually found herself addressing comments to his chin. He looked more vulnerable from this vantage point, where she could see the spot of thinning hair at the crown of his head and the loose thread on his collar. And --

She frowned. There was dust all over the back of Salazar's robes; a coarse, gritty powder that she was sure she had seen somewhere before.

Stone dust. That was it. She should have recognized it straight away. They'd all lived in a cloud of it during the week when the castle was being built; Godric had joked if he breathed in one more speck, he would be too heavy to fly a broomstick. What in Merlin's name had Salazar been doing to cover himself in stone dust? He was a historian, not a stonemason or an artist.

She wanted to ask him, but he was talking to Godric, and Godric was responding with such warm relief that she couldn't bear to interrupt them. Perhaps she'd ask later, or mention it to Rowena when she brought her the tonic. Rowena always had logical explanations for things. Surely she would have one for something as simple as a bit of dust.

~~~

At the earliest opportunity, Helga excused herself from the hall and went to her own room to brew the drink she had in mind for Rowena. It was a long process that required much patience. First the wine must be simmered, slowly and gently, while she added the gingerroot and raspberry leaves and chamomile a bit at a time. Then the mixture must be covered and kept warm till the herbs had released every drop of their essence; then stirred and strained. At last, she poured the finished brew into one of her own cups, casting a sealing spell over the open top to prevent spills, and carried it off to Rowena's room.

The heavy, iron-studded door opened of its own accord at her knock, and she entered to discover Rowena sitting propped up on the bed, still dressed in the blue robes she had worn earlier.

"Are they bad tonight?" she asked, handing the cup to Rowena and gesturing at her friend's outstretched legs.

"Not so very bad," said Rowena. "But I should rest them - I am walking to Hogsmeade in the morning."

"You could fly," said Helga.

"No, I could not," said Rowena, laughing. "I would rather have aching legs from walking than sores from sitting on a broomstick!" Helga laughed too - she was none too fond of rickety, uncomfortable broomsticks herself. Climbing onto the high bed, she settled herself in the empty space on Rowena's other side with a rustling of straw.

"Why are you going to Hogsmeade?" she asked. "Drink that before it gets cold."

"I promised Hengist another reading lesson," said Rowena as she sniffed the cup's contents and raised it to her lips for a token sip. Though her voice was calm and even, Helga thought her face had turned ever so slightly pink. "His progress has been quite astonishing. I think he will be ready for real books soon."

"I see," said Helga. "Is he as easy to teach as the children, then?" One of Rowena's duties was teaching illiterate incoming students - at least half of the wizard-born and nearly all the Muggle-born - to read and write. She gathered them in the outer keep every afternoon, tiny children and gangly adolescents alike, and traced glowing letters in the air with her wand till they began to get the idea. Helga sometimes stopped to watch their lessons if she was passing by. The letters she knew, but the words they formed were beyond her; though Rowena had offered many times to teach her too, in private, she had always refused. She passed her knowledge on to her students the same way her mother and grandmother had passed theirs on to her: explaining and demonstrating, making them recite the properties of herbs and the ingredients of potions till they had them by memory. Books could be lost or burnt, but once you knew a thing you knew it forever, or so Helga's grandmother had said.

Still, she saw the merit of reading for those who wished to learn, and so, apparently, did Hengist of Woodcroft. He had been their neighbor for some years now, since he had come fleeing Muggle persecution, but had not got up the nerve to ask Rowena for lessons until the previous spring. Rowena had seemed at first to view the arrangement as one more task on her long list, but had lately been returning from each session with a look of happiness too profound to be explained by a student's "astonishing" progress. Helga wondered how Hengist had managed reconcile his dread of Muggles with Rowena's own Muggle origins, but wished them the best of luck if it was so.

"Oh yes," Rowena said in response to her question. "He learns so quickly I think he must be doing extra work between lessons. It's a shame he was not able to attend a school like ours when he was young." She unwound the tightly wrapped thread from the end of her plait and began teasing out the rippled brown strands. "I haven't told Godric and Salazar about it. They would expect free drinks at the tavern in return."

"Very likely," said Helga. "That reminds me - I wanted to ask you something about Salazar."

Rowena shook out the last of the plaiting and shot a wary glance over at Helga.

"What? It isn't another quarrel? He and Godric fall out over that foolishness of his every other night, it seems."

"Not tonight, I think," said Helga. "They were playing dragons' bones when I left them in the hall, and Salazar was winning. He'll be in too good a temper to begin with Godric. No, it was something I noticed when he came in late to dinner. There was dust on his robes. Stone dust."

"And?"

Helga shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. It seemed wrong somehow. We finished all the construction ages ago; there should not be a speck of stone dust anywhere in the castle. I saw to the cleaning spells myself."

"Perhaps Salazar has taken up sculpting," said Rowena dryly. "Do you remember the old tale I told you, about the man who fell in love with a statue? Salazar might be creating the ideal woman for himself - one without a trace of filthy blood to spoil her perfection."

"I doubt that," said Helga, who knew, as Rowena did not, that all Salazar's interest in women would have fit on the tip of a wand. "I think -"

"Yes?" Rowena was sitting up straighter now, her curiosity aroused by the possibility of a puzzle to solve.

"I think he might have been building something," Helga said. "But what it was, I cannot say."

There was a brief pause while Rowena took a meditative sip from her cup. In the fireplace, a burnt-through log collapsed with a soft whooshing sound.

"Does Godric know about this?" she asked at last.

"He's said nothing to me."

"He doesn't know, then," said Rowena. "The man is an open book, Lord love him. So if you are right, and Salazar is building on his own, he is doing it secretly. And I trust nothing Salazar does in secret." She drank again, more deeply this time. "What's more, he has no right to be building anything without my permission. I designed the castle's moving parts to my own specifications; if he meddles with them, he may bring the whole thing down on our heads."

"We cannot confront him," said Helga. "We have no more evidence than a scattering of dust."

"He would lie anyway," said Rowena. "Don't shake your head at me that way. You know it to be true."

"What can we do, then?"

"Let me think about it." Rowena finished the last of the tonic and set the cup aside. "Stay here, Helga. It's late. We can discuss this further in the morning." Bringing her wand out from beneath the pillow, she extinguished all the torches and candles with one sweep, plunging the room into darkness except for the low-burning fire.

"Very well," said Helga, and made herself comfortable beside Rowena. After a while, she grew drowsy and began to nod off. The last thing she saw was Rowena sitting upright in the gloom, still wide awake, her lips barely moving as she whispered her thoughts to herself like prayers.

~~~

Godric stirred the basket of dragon bones with the sheathed tip of his knife. Left alone, they were the same flat, dead ivory as other bones, but when disturbed they glimmered red and yellow and blue in the firelight. They reminded him of an opal necklace he had seen his mother wear when he was a very small boy.

"Your throw, Godric."

"Hmm? Oh." He picked a bone out of the basket and turned it over in his hand for a moment. "Shall we play for stakes?"

"I thought you would never ask."

"Gold or favors?"

"Both," said Salazar, and laid the two bones he held on the hearth for Godric. "When you run out of gold, we will move on to favors, and they will carry a much higher price."

"You talk as if you've already won."

"I have been winning," Salazar pointed out.

Godric tossed all three bones into the air and caught them deftly on the back of his right hand, which he then thrust under Salazar's nose. "Until now," he said.

"We shall see," said Salazar . "That's one point to you -" He scooped up the bones, and Godric yelped and jerked his hand away. Even with the fire's heat flushing his skin and bringing out fine droplets of sweat around his hairline, Salazar's fingers were icy.

"Damned cold blood," Godric complained, making an elaborate show of chafing warmth back into his hand. "Are you sure you only talk to snakes? Sometimes I think you are one yourself."

"I will warm up later," said Salazar. "My throw."

Godric swore foully as he watched Salazar throw and catch the three bones he had taken, plus one from the basket. Pulling a thin, irregular gold coin out of the air, he tossed it near Salazar's green-clad knee, where it clinked on the hearthstone.

"Double on the next round," he said.

He lost the next round too, and the next, and the next. They finished off the ale-barrel, put more logs on the fire, and kept playing while the night wore on and Godric's supply of coins dwindled to almost nothing. Sometimes he won on a single throw, but Salazar always came back and won twice in a row, canceling out his gain. Soon they would be on to favors, and while Godric hardly minded paying debts of that sort, he hated the idea of losing to anyone, even Salazar. But perhaps it wasn't too late to do something about it.

On the throw that would cost him his last coin, he waited till Salazar had the bones in hand, then asked abruptly "Why were you late to supper?"

Salazar did not miss a beat, or a game piece. He caught them all, then dropped them into his other palm and made a fist around them.

"I am impressed, my friend," he said, and smiled at Godric without a trace of ire. "Trying to distract me from the throw - very crafty indeed, and I never suspected it was coming. Perhaps you're finally learning to hide a few things behind that beard of yours."

Godric grinned back. Only Salazar would look so pleased about an attempt to cheat.

"Why were you, though?" he asked. "Were you really working on something?"

"Does it matter?" Salazar was looking directly at him, but his grey eyes held an unreadable expression, and Godric wondered briefly whether he really wanted an answer. Then he decided that he did.

"Yes, it does," he said. "I had thought we made amends for our quarrel last night, but if you were still angry - angry enough to stay away -"

"Then?"

"Then I would ask you what more I could do," said Godric, "and do it."

Pouring all the bones back into the basket, Salazar pushed it to one side of the hearth and turned back to face Godric.

"Even though you still disagree with me?"

"Even so," said Godric.

Salazar studied him intently, as if looking for signs of further deception. That strange look was still in his eyes, turning them opaque as smoked glass, so that Godric had not the slightest idea what was happening behind them. For the first time ever in Salazar's company, he found himself thinking that perhaps he ought to Summon his wand - or his sword.

But then the look disappeared, and Salazar's face softened into that of the man Godric knew.

"I was really working," he said. "And I am not angry. But I think I am finally warm." And when his hand slipped round the back of Godric's neck, Godric found that it was true.