Foundation

This is it, Rowena told herself, staring out her bedroom at a group of students practicing Quidditch. How easily their lives went on, as if there were no cares, or betrayals.

No beasts attacking them in the night.

"This is it," she repeated out loud, and sighed, turning away from the cheery sight of the students.

Salazar had not stayed in the dining hall for long after he revealed that he knew what they were trying to do. In fact, he'd walked out with such an air of affront that for just a moment Rowena regretted they had done it all. Surely he could not be behind this?

She sighed again. No, there was no mistaking it. Salazar Slytherin had done it--the mere fact that he did not stay to answer their questions showed that much. For surely if he was innocent he would have proven it?

The diadem usually rested in the back of her wardrobe, hidden cleverly from those she did not wish to use it, but now it lay serenely on her nightstand. Rowena traced her fingers over the inscription. "'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.'" And there was no doubt she needed an extra dose of wit right about now.

Carefully, she placed the diadem atop her brown hair, and settled back against the bed, her mouth set in a grim line.

* * *

How dare they?

Betrayal! Outrage! He sought only to purify the blood of the race! It would be for their own good, in the end, even if none but him saw it now.

Salazar had considered setting the beast on his friends, but that would prove nothing but their own foolish weakness. No, he would spare them that fate. There would be no rest, he knew, as long as they all four remained there together.

He raged down the front lawn, anger potent to steam, outward appearances as cool as they ever were. Pointedly ignoring the students who laughed--what right did they have?--he skirted the edges of the lake and stared down into the water. Surely...surely there was some way he could continue to accomplish his goal without leaving the school? He knew without a doubt that his friends--he snarled at his reflection--would kick him out before the basilisk ever made it close to another victim.

Suddenly, his anger drained away. He sank to his knees and tore at his hair. He had been so sure...so sure that she would join him. And now?

He passed a long-fingered hand over his face, his ring cool against his skin. Now, she hated him.

* * *

Helga stared miserably into her goblet. It hadn't gone at all as planned. Many of the students were watching her curiously, for she could not help the silent tears that coursed down her round, rosy cheeks. Where had it all gone wrong? They had been so close...All four of them, for so long.

Where, along the way, had that shining friendship gone to ruin?

She worried about Rowena, and her child. If the brunette had her way, Salazar would never know that he had a daughter. Helga would not give away that secret. Indeed, it was not hers to tell. But how would Rowena feel, raising a child by herself, the child of a man who had set a lethal creature against children?

The goblet refilled itself with potent whisky; she threw her head back and took a long drink.

And Godric. It was his best friend! They had been friends for most of their lives; she had often envied Salazar his closeness with Godric, for he did not share things with her like he did with Salazar. At least, as he had before this.

At once she rose from the table and quit the room, taking the goblet with her. It would not do for the students to see her like this, for they had no other adults to look to for strength in this time when all were afraid to walk the halls.

But of course, Helga did not worry that she walked alone, for Salazar knew he was exposed, and would not dare.

She wandered for a few long moments before settling into a brilliant chair--made by Muggles; such splendor in so meek a people!--and stared morosely out the window, the goblet cradled in her lap, empty for the first time in an hour.

A distant figure paced along the lake, and approaching it swiftly from the other side came another, his stride purposeful. She watched tensely, the drink forgotten.

* * *

The bejeweled hilt of his sword glimmered innocently in the light of the afternoon sun. Though it was a glorious spring day, nothing about the castle and its occupants seemed to match its brilliance. Even the giant squid in his lake did not bask in the light; Godric could not see it through the murky depths of the water. He sensed it too--the coming war. The very air pressed upon him, and turned his features downward, so that as he approached his friend his face grew heavy and sad.

It seemed to have effected all save Salazar. Behind his eyes gleamed the knowledge that it had finally come down to this: this fight, this battle, this meeting of two men who had once been close, and now found themselves infinitely separated by something as small as a personal opinion and as large as the lives of hundreds.

Godric stopped many yards from Salazar Slytherin, and kept his hands carefully at his sides, taking in the angry posture of the other man. Though there was no way to tell for sure, Godric suspected that this anger was largely due to the fact that he had interrupted Salazar's inner fuming, and not that he had come here prepared for a fight--mental or physical, though he did not yet admit to himself that it would come to the latter.

"Godric," Salazar said tersely, turning away.

"What have you done?"

He turned back, a horrid grin across his face. "What have I done? You ask this of me, you who has been my closest friend for all these years? You have always known how I felt about this, Godric, you simply chose to ignore it."

Godric eyed him coldly. "Yes, I thought your character above such actions. Did you stop to think about what you did? Setting a beast upon a school full of half-trained wizards and witches?"

Salazar laughed, then, bitterly, but his voice was utterly calm when he spoke, a chill behind it that froze Godric where he stood. "Half-trained? Half-breed you mean. Many of these 'wizards and witches,' as you call them, do not possess the blood necessary to fully develop their skills. You think that the Mudbloods of this world are as clever--as powerful--as those of us who have come from long lines of magical blood?"

And now Godric found his temper rising, something it had always done that only served to infuriate him more, for he had always been jealous of Salazar's collected way of speaking, even in the most heated of arguments. "And is there any evidence to prove that they are NOT? How dare you say this, when you have seen for yourself that some of our students who are not pureblood are better even than some who are! Or have you chosen to ignore it, because your own eyes cannot possibly see anything other than the back of your own pompous lids?"

Salazar swept out his arms in an all-encompassing motion. "I see only what is pure and right, and that does not include children with the blood of Muggles." He began to turn away, but Godric, his sudden flare of temper taking over at last, drew his sword and leapt after.

* * *

One hand on her still-flat belly and the other resting calmly on the window sill, Rowena watched the men from her tower bedroom. The diadem still perched upon her brown hair.

Did they think that fighting would solve this? She stared down at their figures, so small all the way across the lawn, and could not help but think that there had been enough violence. She had seen the moment when Godric drew his sword and had known it was coming, but did not expect Salazar to fight back with such vengeance. Perhaps even he, as cold as he was, could rise to anger in the heat of the moment. He fought with his wand against Godric's ferocious swordplay. The two were evenly matched.

Even from her window she could hear Godric roar and bellow as Salazar thwarted his cuts again and again. Once, she might have tried to stop them. But now she knew that this needed to take place. These once friends had to have the resolution of a fight, and though females would never have done it so violently she expected nothing less from two males.

And it was not long before Helga hurried out, her frightened screams even louder than Godric. A group of students huddled near the castle's north side, watching, Rowena the only one who seemed to notice they were there. This bothered her more than anything, for the students should not have to watch their professors fight one another in what was clearly not a friendly duel.

Helga's screaming did nothing to stop the fight, even for a second, and she hovered out of their range, her yellow dress bright in the sun. Rowena could imagine perfectly her friend's caring face scrunched up and worried.

But from her window it was almost a beautiful thing to watch, for both Salazar and Godric were skilled duelers. Rowena clasped her hands in her lap. Was there anything that could be done to stop those two former friends?

Was there nothing that could repair their broken bonds?

* * *

"Stop!"

Helga's shrill scream went unheard--or perhaps ignored--and she pulled angrily at her hair. The curse of a woman was to always be shoved to the side.

But not Helga.

She marched forward, her face an angry shade of pink, and tapped the nearest dueling man on the shoulder with her wand, not even seeing for a moment that it was Salazar who found himself suddenly frozen. Godric swung his sword around once before realizing that his opponent no longer fought back, and with a forceful twist of his wrists pulled the blade away.

"What are you doing?" he demanded angrily, but the fire in his eyes was a smoldering heat compared to the raging flames in Helga's.

"You. You." She raised her wand, knuckles white from grasping it so tightly. "HOW DARE YOU! Merlin's beard, you dimwit, he's your BEST FRIEND!"

Godric started to speak but she cut him off, slapping him smartly across the cheek. "You say one more word, Godric Gryffindor, and so help me I will throw you into the lake and you can take your chances with the squid."

The click of his teeth as his mouth snapped shut satisfied her immensely. She turned to Salazar, whose eyes were the only part of him moving.

"As for you, well, I think I see someone who can deal with you better than I ever have been able to."

And with a decidedly smug air Helga took Godric by the arm and led him away. One of his hands was pressed against his cheek, but he attempted to fight anyway.

"Can't just interrupt a duel like--"

Her grasp tightened as she interrupted him. "A woman I am, and more sensible I will always be."

He took one look at the angry set of her mouth and could not help the affection that channeled itself into a slight smile. "Yes, my dear."

"You're not a fighter, Godric. Leave that to someone who can match wits with ease."

The man in red followed his lover's gaze to the grand front doors of the school, where a woman in a blue dress walked slowly forward, her own eyes fixed on the still-paralyzed form of their treacherous friend.

Helga led them right past, saying not a word.

"Should we not stay...?"

She shook her head firmly, her mood slightly better. "Though it pains me to walk away from what is surely going to be a most exciting conversation, I think that this once I can afford her some privacy."

But Godric could not help but glance over his shoulder.

For once he most ardently wished to know the words that his two friends spoke.

* * *

"Ah, Salazar," Rowena said, her voice quiet as she rounded his stiff figure and stood facing him. "It is a pity she is not of mixed blood. How ironic it would have been, as she has so easily defeated you."

She pulled her long, brown hair away from her face and buried her hands in the folds of her dress, watching him silently for a moment. His lean form had been frozen in mid strike, his wand arm outstretched.

Helga had always been good with these sorts of spells.

"If I release you, will you walk with me? I wish to speak to you, friend to friend."

Again she regarded him, and then inclined her head and released him from the spell.

He lowered his wand immediately, and when Rowena turned her back to him and began walking along the edge of the lake he followed.

"If she were of mixed blood that spell would not have been so potent."

She kept her eyes away from him, that he would not see how much it pained her that he spoke that way.

"When did you begin to believe this, Salazar? Where did it all go wrong?"

For a moment he faltered. She guessed he had not expected her to speak such blatant words. There was a long, pregnant pause before he answered.

"It is not wrong, it is the truth. I have always believed it."

Were they still intimate she would have, undoubtedly, tucked her arm with his. But she could not bring herself in that moment to display so obviously her past affections. After all, she did not see him the way she once had.

"You did not answer my question. I have known you for too long to think that you have simply been hiding it all this time."

She was conscious of his cold eyes upon her, and met them with strength. Though it pained her, his unkind words fueled the injustice that she felt, and she easily hid those more telling emotions.

"Godric knew."

After a time, she spoke again, ignoring his comment. "What I do not understand is your need to kill."

She wished that her voice could float away across the water, and crash into its ripples, never heard again; that the giant squid would swallow the words that she had finally put to voice. For saying them made them true, and oh, how she did not want them to be.

His silence this time was filled with a regret she knew he possessed and would never reveal.

And then, "I could say that I did not want to, but it would be a lie."

* * *

"Do you think he will ever repent?" Helga asked Godric, for though they did not linger to hear the conversation they could not stop themselves from watching from a high tower, the figures of their friends but specks of emerald and sapphire in the distance.

Godric tilted his head to one side, his expression serious. "Once I would have said yes. But he is not the man he used to be."

A silent tear slid down Helga's cheek, for her anger never lasted long. She rested against Godric's arm, and he put it around her waist, trying to comfort her the only way he could. What could he say when there seemed so little hope?

He had dueled his best friend in anger. He had drawn his sword thinking to inflict pain, and surely would have if Helga had not intervened.

Rowena was pregnant and did not plan to tell the father.

Helga had been drinking.

In so short a time so much had changed, and he looked back on their first days together, when the future had been so bright. Things had been better then. Happier.

Helga's tears dampened his shirt, and it seemed that at last the sunshine of his life had given way to storm.

* * *

There was no denying it.

He had tried, and pretended, but now it was a force that he could not ignore.

Salazar loved her.

Though much of that love had faded to despair, it was still there nonetheless. The way she looked at him then invoked such a bitter-sweet feeling that he strode away from her, stretching his long legs, thinking.

That glow that so entranced him seemed brighter, more compelling. Had she always been so radiant, or did he see her that way because at that moment he knew that she was lost to him forever? She had spoken the words, and with them shattered the notion that there was still hope.

He had known, really, that it was fruitless. Known it so deep down that it was easy to lock it away there and pretend that it did not exist.

She did not follow. Salazar caught a glimpse of her out the corner of his eye as she stood watching him, her lovely face pallid but somehow rosy. He could not ever recall such a vivid color to her cheeks, and wondered that it was there now.

The lake, in contrast, was dull and gray, and it soothed the sudden brilliant sensations that threatened to overwhelm him.

"Rowena." He sighed. "Rowena. It was not always about killing."

Still she did not move towards him, and he wondered if she heard him at all, for he had moved some distance in his pacing.

"It will be better this way. Imagine, a world with only pure blood. How powerful we could be! How we can dominate over those who are weaker!"

Now she moved forward, her eyes focused on the grass around his feet.

"Have you no regard for life?"

"If it is broken, why should it not be fixed?"

She shook her head sadly. "It is not broken. At least, it was not until now." Her eyes met his as she spoke, a soft accusation in them, and then she turned and walked away.

And because he believed that he was right, Salazar did not follow.