Like Pale Fire

An attempt at writing a successful and historically accurate Founders story (no, they did not speak Shakespearian English in the Dark Ages. London was not a metroplitan centre, and people didn't burn witches at the stake). There may be a second part, but I wouldn't bank on it. This piece is written to stand as both a part of a larger fic and as a full story in itself, so it can go either way. I'll mark it as 'complete' for now, as that is how it currently rests.

Rated for strong language, violence and some adult themes. The sex is non-explicit but still there, and it is both m/m and m/f. If you have a problem with that, please leave now.

1996 AD

It was cool in the hallway as he stared down at his shoes. Shadows whispered across the polished wooden floor, flickered over the verdant green plants, the tiny white and gold flowers, the glass paned windows. The scent of lavender polish and fresh pollen hung in the air, curling through the still room, notes of perfume rising from the mist.

He shifted one of his feet aside to look at one of the scratches in the floorboards. The voices on the other side of the white painted door briefly rose, then softened once more, indistinct and muffled. He didn't dare to move from his spot to listen, the overall impression one of a statue, dim and motionless in the dark hall.

Finally, there was a click as the door swung open, and the scent of freshly brewed tea and stale biscuits wafted out to meet his nose. The woman sniffed as she stepped over the threshold, resplendent in crisp blue, gold gleaming at her neck. A powdered hand gestured imperiously, and the boy shuffled out of the hall, frayed bag hanging from his hand as he slowly opened the front door and walked outside.

He paused before closing the door behind him, but the woman motioned again, impatiently, and he shut it with a click. It began to rain as he hurried away from the house, miserable little splotches of drizzle, splashing down into his hair. Freedom. Was this what it smelt like? Tiny flowers, wet grass, the freshness of spring.

He smiled for the first time and walked out of Privet Drive, savouring the scent.

Darkness. Harry Potter crouched down in the shadow of a towering oak tree, set his bag down, and wiped the rainwater from his face, shivering. He smiled grimly. So it had come to this, had it? The Dursleys had finally cast him from their door, at long last, and he found it difficult to care.

He opened the battered rucksack and rooted through the contents. They had permitted him two minutes to gather the necessities from his trunk. The rest had been burned, all but the Marauder's Map, his parents' photo album and the invisibility cloak. With a sigh, he looked at the space where his wand had lain. His uncle had splintered it with bare hands and a bleak grin.

Harry glanced at the rest of his meagre possessions. A bundle of hand-me-downs, an old blanket, a battered torch and a twenty-pound note. His aunt had assembled the collection for him, grimacing the entire time, with the stern instruction to wait until he had left Surrey before he starved or froze, preferably somewhere on the Northern side of Siberia.

Well, he intended to oblige her wishes. Harry had no desire to live out the remainder of his life anywhere near his estranged family. Dumbledore...he frowned. Dumbledore would cosset and baby him for as long as possible. He didn't hate the headmaster, or even particularly dislike him, but Harry had a keen sense of self-preservation. He knew that he desperately needed to earn some independence and practical experience before he went rushing after Voldemort again, a thing that Dumbledore would never allow.

That, and a powerful desire was stirring his bones, the urge to leave everywhere familiar, to find a new place and forge his own life. The wind tasted fresh and green in his mouth as he contemplated his next move.

The grove was cool and dark, full of rustling leaves and fresh clean soil as Harry stepped into it. Pale beams of sunlight dappled the canopy far above, the grass whispering beneath his feet. A tiny spring bubbled, clear and cold, ringed with iridescent green dragonflies, a soft breeze rippling the edge of the water. It felt...still. Peaceful.

He had no idea why he had come here.

It had been...an urge, an insistent little spasm in the corner of his brain that had murmured, listen, and he had heeded it. Now, he stood in the grove, feeling like a fool as he shifted from foot to foot and glanced around nervously. However, the sunlight and the rushing whisper of the spring calmed his nerves. It was a lovely day, and Harry slowly relaxed as he began to appreciate it fully.

He set down his bag and sat in the soil, fingers trailing in the brook or through the grass as he rested, leaning back against one of the shadowed trees. After a few moments, he noticed a tiny notch etched into one of the roots, too sharp and fine to have been carved by anything but a thin-bladed knife. Harry let his eyes drift over the dark, crumbling bark, and, unable to stay his hand, reached up to brush it.

A breath later, Harry Potter disappeared from the world.

991 AD

When Harry opened his eyes, it was to see another boy lying beside him, slumped on the hard packed dirt beneath their backs, dressed in grubby, torn clothing, face bloodied. He risked a glance upwards to see a pale sky through the fingers of dark, twisted trees, the scent of snow and mud thick in his mouth.

Groaning, Harry sat up slowly, realising with a jolt that he was still in the same clearing, no longer rich, verdant and shaded in warm green, but bleak and faded. It wasn't possible to imagine someone splashing in the blackened, ice-rimmed spring, or unpacking a picnic on the scorched, filthy earth... Scorched. It had been put to the torch. Glancing around, Harry could even see the remnants of tar-smeared brands and oil soaked rags scattered across the hard ground.

...The ache that clenched in his head was far too powerful for Harry to ponder such mysteries. Instead, he turned to the boy that lay beside him. Perhaps thirteen years old, hair a coppery tinged summer gold, stained with thick, slippery dark mud, the rough tunic he wore ripped. Blood was splashed across his pale face, and his breathing was shallow and slow.

Harry instinctively reached for his wand, shivering when his fingers wrapped around only air, and tore a strip from the bottom of his t-shirt. His backpack had disappeared. He wiped some of the blood away with the cloth, frowning when the older, drier patches wouldn't fade, and finally uncovered a long, jagged wound across the younger boy's forehead, as thick as his thumb, and reddened.

Swallowing hard, Harry sat back on his heels and tried to remember his aunt's first aid lectures to Dudley. He would need to clean and staunch it. He glanced at the cloudy spring with a dubious expression, sighed, and began to collect firewood. Boiling sterilised it, right?... He certainly hoped so.

Five minutes later, he gathered together his bare pile of thin sticks, and groaned when he realised that he had no idea how to light a fire without matches or a wand. Harry bit his lip and racked his thoughts. Eventually, the ancient memory of primary school lessons stirred, and he dimly recalled learning how to light a fire with flint. The teacher had been fined for health and safety after that, he remembered with a wince.

It took another ten minutes. He was faintly aware that he had probably broken about twenty medical do's and don't's, but Harry had little choice. He knew from his earlier trek that the clearing was at least two-hour's walk from the nearest road, and whilst he had grown somewhat, he definitely wasn't strong enough to carry another person that far, not even a child.

Fingers scraped raw and bleeding, scorched in places by hard sparks, Harry finally managed to nudge a tiny flicker into the sticks. Oh. He needed something to put the water in. A moment's search revealed a small scrap of bark with a hollow in the centre, and he was able to slop some of the icy spring water into it, spilling it several times. By the time he managed to wipe the rest of the blood away from the younger boy's head, Harry was sure that the St. John's Ambulance corps would set him alight for his messy, careless medical antics. He tied another strip of his t-shirt around his 'patient's' head and sat back to think.

The change in season had to be due to magic, he was certain, but why would a wizard or witch use tar and firebrands to burn this place, rather than a well-placed 'incendio' spell? Mm. Exhaustion, perhaps, or maybe they had lost their wand, yet it seemed unlikely. Someone who had gone to such lengths would not be so careless as to fall at the final hurdle, he was certain. And what had their aim been? To burn the boy beside him? Why not just use a curse or a knife?

Sighing, Harry pushed more sticks into the fire and waited.

The moon was pale and faint in the sky when his 'patient' woke. Harry, startled out of a restless slumber, sat up quickly and grabbed the boy's arm. The child, also shocked, shrieked a string of gabbled words and tried to yank his limb away. Surprised and a little hurt, Harry moved away, frowning as he realised that his patient had spoken in a different language. Now wouldn't that complicate matters.

A flicker of pale fire, cool and sharp and burning, whispered across his skin. Magic. Abruptly, the boy's words snapped into sudden focus.

"Get off me!"

Harry raised his hands and said slowly, in placating tones, "I'm sorry. Look, I let go of you."

The boy blinked and narrowed his eyes. "You're one of the Muggles, aren't you? I wouldn't let you burn me, so now you want to trick me." He snapped out his wand. "Well, no."

Clenching his jaw and cursing his uncle, Harry snapped, "I'm not a Muggle. I'm a wizard like you."

His patient glared, but there was a thread of uncertainty slipping through his voice. "How do I know that? You're probably lying."

"If I really did want to kill you, don't you think that I would have done it whilst you were unconscious rather than treating your wounds and leaving you your wand?"

Finally, the boy said, in a low voice, "Alright. I guess so." He pressed his fingers to his bandaged head, and winced slightly before ploughing on fiercely. "What's the incantation for... a summoning spell? Or for a darkness spell?"

"Accio and nox," Harry parroted obediently, gaze still upon the wand pointed towards his head. The stranger was no older or larger than a third year, but there was a certainty and a sharpness in his eyes, the blue of midnight skies, or the shadow of steel.

Apparently satisfied, the boy lowered his wand, and Harry was reminded that, for all his sureness and caution, the person facing him was still only thirteen. A lopsided smile on his face, the child said cheerfully, "The name's Godric. Godric Gryffindor."

Harry was unable to stop himself from snapping, "Excuse me? I bandage your wounds, sit through your interrogation, and now you give me a fake name?"

"Fake?" The boy's eyes hardened once again. "If you're going to take that tone, you can get out. Now."

Sighing, Harry tipped his chin up and replied, "Well, it's not exactly a common name, is it? There's only one wizard with that name."

"Yeah, me," the young Godric sniffed.

"I see. So you founded Hogwarts a thousand years ago and became a world famous wizard. Is that it?"

"Hogwarts? What a foolish name," the boy replied smartly. "Never heard of it."

"Wait a moment." Harry hesitated, mind grasping the idea, turning it over in his head, desiring to fling it away and ignore the world around him. "What year is this?"

"Well, I don't really know, but the grown-ups all say it's, uh- 991 years after the birth of our Lord."

He said it so plainly, like a child repeating a times table learned by rote, that for bare seconds Harry did not realise what he had said. "991 AD. I'm in 991 AD."

"Ye-es," Godric said after a moment, looking a little worried. "991 AD. You do remember, don't you?"

"Godric," Harry said slowly. "What would you say if I told you that, by some accident of magic, I have travelled back one thousand and five years in time?"

"Liar," the boy replied promptly.

"Yes," Harry sighed. "I had a feeling you might say that." That pale fire flickered, and it was as though someone had cast an imperius curse upon him, painless and far more potent that anything Voldemort had ever devised, as invisible threads moved his tongue and forced out his words. "I'm Salazar Slytherin, by the way."

"And you're quite sure that this is it?" Harry stared at the crumbled, hand-painted sign, wedged between a dusty clay pot and almost entirely shadowed by a large awning. Ollivander's Wands.

London had been a terrible shock. No longer a cosmopolitan scattering of sleek glass and metal, no longer a smoky, vast sprawl, but a low, huddled ruin, the fallen Troy, the fragment of the Roman occupation. Londinium was abandoned. Only a few huts and this shop remained.

Godric snorted impatiently and grabbed at his arm. "Come on, or the Muggles will see us."

He dragged Harry through the low, dingy doorway and into a shabby room, mud and wattle like all of the buildings, with a few boards of wood shoring up the walls. Inside stood a small, gaunt man dressed in a stained dark tunic and bent over a worktable. As they entered, Ollivander rose and flashed a bare grin at them.

"Good morning, gentlemen. Not another wand lost, I hope, master Godric?"

Godric blushed and shook his head quickly. "No. No. One for my friend, please."

The wand maker frowned and glanced at Harry, eyes narrowing. "No, I don't know you, sir. I don't have a habit of selling my wares to strangers."

Jaw dropping, Godric yelped, "But- but-"

"I gave my answer," Ollivander said calmly.

"Is there anything I can do?" Harry's head was numb, blood drumming in his chest. He wasn't sure if he could bear having to rely upon Godric for much longer. He needed his own wand.

Ollivander raised his eyebrows and looked at him with a serene expression. "Mm. Let me think." He began to murmur to himself. "Young, but powerful, mm, as much as Godric will be someday. Looks like a decent young man, but what are looks in this world, other than a tool, mm? Alright, I have a suggestion."

Both Harry and Godric nodded quickly, caught unawares by the sudden shift.

"I always need an apprentice. Someone to fetch the glue and watch the books, that sort of thing. Mm... you can read, can't you? Yes, a rare talent in this age. What do you say? You earn your keep, and by the end of six months, I'll see about that wand."

What choice did he have? Harry glanced towards Godric, who shrugged helplessly and nodded. "I'll do it."

993 AD

"Damn it!" Salazar set aside the small whittling knife and cursed, staring at his bloodied thumb in disbelief. He had even smeared some onto the fine chestnut wood that he had been carving. But two years of apprenticeship to Ollivander had taught him both patience and calmness. He wiped the cut off on one of the rags, waited until it stopped bleeding, and continued whittling.

There, nine inches. That felt about right for chestnut. Harry measured up the two halves, and then checked the boxes above his head. One, two, three, four. Unicorn hair. He plucked two from the wooden crate and measured them carefully, before slipping them into one of the halves and picking up the glue. It didn't take long for it to set. He put it into a box for enchantment, picked up his quill, and wrote in the book at his elbow, 'Wand number 217, nine inches, chestnut and unicorn hair, two strands, eight and a half inches long.'

His initially short apprenticeship had become rather longer. After Ollivander had helped him to make his own wand, the man had rather wistfully mentioned that it would be very hard without his assistant, and Salazar would be really be very good at this trade if he stayed for a little longer.

Salazar drew out his wand, and smiled. Willow and basilisk scale, ten inches, number 01. He had been proud to write that in the record book. Still smiling, he opened up the box of wands ready for enchantment, and began to cast. He had almost finished when there a creak, and Ollivander stepped into the doorway, face troubled.

"Salazar, I-I have something to tell you."

Worried now, Salazar lowered his wand and waited expectantly.

"You see, my son- I have mentioned him, haven't I?- well, he was always more interested in battle magic, but recently, he's decided that he fancies trying his hand at wand making, and he is rather good at it, and I'm very sorry but-"

"I need to leave," Salazar replied calmly. "It's alright, I was waiting for this anyway. Thank you, Ollivander, for everything." He smiled brightly. "And good luck."

Two hours later, he was on his way with his wand and a purpose. His apprenticeship had been good for him. He had finally learnt how to speak Anglo-Saxon without the help of magic, he had a new wand, a trade, and possessions. Now all he had to do was find Godric. The other boy had found work with another wizard, a swordsman who had been thrown out of the king's service when his 'talents' had been discovered.

His friend was waiting at the gates of the city for him, also wearing a wan smile as he leaned against a rotting wooden post. Godric raised his eyebrows as Salazar approached. "Let's trade sob stories. Selwyn said I'd been here too long, that I need some experience. In life, and all that."

"Ollivander's son wanted to move in. No space for me," Salazar replied glumly.

"Well," Godric said with painful brightness. "Let's take the high road."

Dawn broke cold and clear. Salazar shivered in his blankets and managed to sit up, grateful for his thick cloak as he pulled it on. Beside him, Godric groaned loudly and sank down further into his bedding. Snorting, the older boy cast a quick ice hex, and watched as his friend flung the blankets away with a shriek.

"Bastard!"

Rolling his eyes, Salazar rose and stretched, yawning in the chill air. A quick search through their packs revealed a chunk of bread and half an apple, bartered from a widow in return for mending her roof. He tore both into two pieces and began to eat his share as Godric moaned and winced and snarled threats.

It had been three months since he had left Ollivander, and they were yet to find another place to stay. They had been farmhands, mercenaries, odd-job men and criminals, but no one had wanted them for more than a few weeks, and their food supplies were running low. Salazar frowned as he finished his meal and handed his friend the other half of the food. There was another town up ahead. Perhaps they would find work there.

It was a futile hope, swiftly and suddenly crushed. The next town was a charred, shattered ruin, the raiders' footprints still pressed into the dirt. Nausea spread through Salazar like a sickness. Bloodied, twisted bodies were flung into the mud. They had taken the young men and women as slaves, and butchered the elderly and the children. Houses were scorched and blackened, smoke still curling into the still, stinking air, ugly rats squawking and screeching as they darted hither and thither.

Beside him, Godric moaned and vomited loudly. Salazar clenched back his own horror and revulsion as he slowly walked forward, ready to snatch his wand from his sleeve. There, the body of an elderly man, curled around two children and a baby. Here, a cooking pot, melted in the flames, still half-full of potage stew. Nothing stirred other than the rats and the flies.

Wait.

A flash of yellow.

Salazar walked forward silently, creeping around the curve of an untouched hut, hearing a soft voice sob. A girl, perhaps eleven years old, with curling corn blonde hair and wide blue eyes, flinching back from the large, brutal faced man who stood over her, a heavy, pitted sword in his hand.

Rainbows shattered along the blade as it rose in the sunlight. Salazar barely moved. "Avada kedavra."

The only thought that pierced the numb haze was that he'd never killed someone before. Wished it, wanted it, never done it. The girl's scream snapped through his terrified horror, and Salazar's gaze darted down to her. A bruise gleamed on her cheek, and blood clotted in her hair, but she was safe and whole otherwise.

Salazar slowly slipped the wand back into his sleeve and knelt down beside her, blinking back the tears. He had other things to think about. "It's alright, you're fine."

She stared at him, and finally smiled. Salazar could see the steel in those eyes beneath the desperation and the fear. "I know."

He felt the ghostly wings of her empathy shimmering across his mind, and nodded. "I'm Salazar."

"Helga Hufflepuff."

Salazar bit back his momentary horror and smiled. This was edging on surreal.

They left the bodies burning, a single cross marking the entrance. Godric took the dead raider's sword, Salazar the dagger. Helga simply spat on the body's groin and smiled grimly. Ghoul thieves.

997 AD

So this was Scotland. Salazar stared out at the desolate hills, the pale sky high above, the dark smudges of trees across the horizon. It would have been wild and wonderful had Godric and Helga not been chattering happily about the merits of badgers at his side. Rolling his eyes, he continued to walk.

Was there a real Salazar Slytherin out there? The thought both chilled and warmed him. He wasn't fit to be a founder of Hogwarts, and the notion of someone else lifting the burden from him was blissful, but what if the real man behind the name was furious that someone else had stolen his position?

"Snake!"

Salazar spun round to see Godric, pale and feverish, staring at an immense snake, black coils shimmering sapphire in the weak sunlight. It truly was beautiful, almost six feet long, and as sleek as spilled oil, with poisonous yellow eyes. It's tongue flickered out, almost in a smile, and it hissed languorously at Godric, 'Foo-ol. You are much too large for me-e to swallow whole.'

'Leave him alone. He's afraid of snakes.' Salazar had not intended to do anything, other than possibly grab the other two and run, but somehow, the slippery syllables were suddenly falling from his tongue, and he was still standing there in the road.

The serpent looked amused, grinning with a lipless mouth. 'Oooh. Speak to me, snake wizard. Speak.'

"Hey!" Abruptly, a figure broke the crest of the hill. A slim, dark haired girl of perhaps seventeen years, eyes as bright as witch hazel. She was breathing heavily when she stopped beside Salazar, a wand in her hand. She glowered at him. "Don't you hurt that snake!"

"Wasn't intending to," Salazar replied coolly, and turned back to the serpent. 'Do you have a name?'

'You may call me Amos', it said haughtily. 'Not, under any circumstances, Selwyn or Siaran, or any other names beginning with 's', or I'll bite your kneecaps off. Understand?'

Salazar nodded slowly. The strange girl at his side looked both intrigued and a little mad as she listened. Suddenly, she said, "I'm Rowena. Rowena Ravenclaw."

Pale fire. The final fragment.

1000 AD

"Mm, Sal-azar."

The wizard didn't look up from his book as he snapped, "What is it now, Helga?"

"We should do something, you know."

"What, breathe?"

"Sal! We should do something for the children, I meant. Wizarding children. It-" she shivered briefly and gazed at the sky. "It was so hard for us," she whispered. "We're here now, but it took so long and it hurt and- We should help the children to learn magic. No more hiding. No more scraping by. Not for them."

He had known this conversation would come, had felt it in his bone, in his heart. So why was it so difficult to find an answer? Finally, he said, "Ask the others."

"And if Godric and Rowena say yes?"

"...Then we'll do it."

1003 AD

Salazar stepped back and stared up at the castle. They had done it. They had built a Norman castle in the middle of Scotland, and laid it with enchantments of cloud and flame and snow and earth, grounded it in blood and bone and flesh. In just three years. He hadn't known he'd had that magic within him.

"What shall we call it?" That was Rowena.

"Hogwarts", Godric breathed, with a smile. "Let's call it Hogwarts."

1008 AD

It was cold in his house, cold in his head, cold in his heart. The final fragment of Harry Potter shattered as Salazar Slytherin closed his eyes. Beside him, Amos curled up in the bed, but remained silent. He had never hated Muggles, never that, never never never. But that woman... he had lain with her, loved her, known her, and she had slipped a knife between his ribs, hissing demon, witch, monster.

Could they truly blame him for gazing at every Muggle with barely buried anguish and fury? He didn't want to destroy the Muggleborns, never that, but their parents and brothers and sisters were in his mind already mixing the tar and lashing together the brands. Muggles had almost burned Godric alive when he was eleven, and only the man's instinctive magic had spared him.

They couldn't let the Muggleborns into the school. Couldn't. And he hadn't meant to leave the basilisk egg there, really, he hadn't, and oh god was Myrtle dead yet was she dead yet and he was a monster he knew the future knew the past and he had just killed a girl he was demon witch animal ghoul thief.

And now they had all left him. His house was colder than Hogwarts.

Godric, there, in the doorway. It had been two years- really, two years?- and there he was, copper tinged gold hair shining. There was a wan smile on his face.

"Come back."

Godric walked across and Salazar pulled him down, and they moved like pale fire.

1996 AD

Salazar groaned softly and blinked in the bright sunlight. Odd. His house wasn't that- oh. Oh. The clearing. Terror clenched at his heart. Now, when he had finally- Godric's arm was slung across his chest, and the other Founder was sleeping quietly, Amos curled around their feet. Godric's kneazle kitten was also tumbled in there. He couldn't have travelled forward in time, not with passengers. He smiled in relief, then gazed across to see a crumpled empty packet of Walkers' barbecue crisps and a crushed Hobgoblin bottle, and froze.

He whipped out his wand and muttered a quick tempus spell. 7:47 am, 31st July, 1996 AD. His sixteenth birthday, ten hours before his younger self reached this clearing. And suddenly, he knew what he had to do.

His path had been miserable, bleak and cold, full of guilt and unhappiness, but it had been necessary. Would Hogwarts have even been founded without him? Perhaps Godric would have been found by the Muggles, and killed. Perhaps the raider would have murdered or enslaved Helga. Perhaps Rowena would have sat in her house in Scotland with her books and, one day, gazed out over the pale lake and wondered why her life was empty.

It was with a sharp, cold ache of dull misery that Salazar drew his knife and carved a notch into one of the tree roots, and sealed his darkness once more

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