Something Better Than This

Chapter 13: Hogwarts: Historical

Salazar roused them all before sunrise for a very quick breakfast involving some type of porridge and the remains of the vegetable soup. He finished eating and got up again before anyone else, gently pushing Jakinda back down when she started to get up as well and telling Harry (and presumably her too) that they should all finish eating and stay out of the way.

Harry thought he might recognize the wand motion from when Dumbledore and Slughorn had cleaned up the effects of Slughorn's attempt to pretend he had been attacked by Death Eaters. The effects weren't quite the same, however. For one thing, as the Slytherins' little cottage was relatively orderly to begin with, the results were necessarily less dramatic. Even so, the soup bowls that had been drying overnight stacked themselves neatly and put them away, things could be heard scraping across the floor and making flapping noises, and a cupboard opened up to allow several perishable potions ingredients to whisk themselves out and discard themselves variously out the window or into the fire. Even the rushes on the floor and the roof thatching rustled softly, straightening themselves as if brought to attention.

Salazar looked up at the roof and made a rueful comment, repeating it politely for Harry, that it was too bad they hadn't had any honeybees in the eaves this year. Jakinda said something Harry rather suspected of being cheeky, from the look her father gave her, particularly as he thought he heard the name "Helga" in it.

Last of all, the fire went out and the now-empty breakfast dishes cleaned themselves, by magic instead of water, and joined the soup bowls.

"That's a good spell," Hermione murmured, watching.

"That spell would almost make Aunt Petunia want to be able to do magic," Harry said. "I've seen one like it before. Dumbledore and Slughorn used it to clean up after Slughorn ransacked his own house."

"You needn't bother telling your Aunt Petunia, actually," Ron said. "It isn't easy, and it doesn't work very well for everyday, at least not all by itself. Kind of like how you can clean clothes by magic but if you don't use soap and water at least once in a while they start getting sour." His ears went a bit red at the look Hermione was giving him. "What? Mum taught us a lot of household spells even if we couldn't use them yet. I think she was convinced we'd all move out and learn the one about laundry the hard way."

The Slytherins went briefly into their respective rooms to emerge with small bags, perhaps large enough for a change of clothes apiece. Salazar led the way outside and then paused to look at them all thoughtfully. "Do you suppose," he said to Harry, "that you would know the spot I want to go if I described it to you?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "I don't know how much things have changed. And I thought we couldn't Apparate into Hogwarts?"

"No, but we can Apparate quite near to it. Whether I can still just walk in after that is another question, but it would probably be safer to wait at the gates."

"Are the statues of winged pigs there yet?" Harry asked.

Salazar laughed softly. "Everyone told us we'd succeed in building a school when pigs flew. Yes, they are."

A little more discussion allowed them to be sure that no one had actually moved the Hogwarts gates, or the path to them, and they settled on an Apparition point across the lake, although Salazar said there wasn't a dock there.

Harry tried very hard to picture the lakeshore without the dock and boats that the new first-years took across for their first approach to Hogwarts. He also tried to put out of his mind the crushing, wrenching sensation of his last Apparition, and pivoted into the usual darkness and intense pressure.

Light and air burst around him again, and he yelled, because his legs up to the knees were plunged into cold water with a splash. Looking around, he discovered that he, Ron, and Hermione had all arrived several feet offshore, thankfully in an area where the bottom of the lake sloped off fairly gradually. Salazar and Jakinda were looking at them from shore with expressions of surprise.

"I think the shoreline must have shifted," Hermione said rather breathlessly, and all three of them waded back up onto dry land.

It was cooler here, but even at dawn the day was still warm enough that their clothes had time to dry most of the way as they walked around the lake and up toward the school. Clouds scudded across the sky, but the sunlight that came through them was warm.

Hogwarts looked different. There was at least one tower missing, possibly a wing, and the stone walls were lighter in color. Harry thought the Forbidden Forest crowded closer on the other side, though he couldn't be sure. But the winged pigs stood tall... well, squat... and proud on either side of the gates.

Salazar walked up and pounded on the gate with his fist; Harry didn't expect this to be especially effective, but to his surprise, the metal rang like a gong.

Salazar waved the rest of them a few steps back, told them to keep still and not interfere, then folded his arms and waited.

After some time, the gates swung slowly open, revealing a wizard dressed in a red so dark it was nearly black, with grey hair that still had a few threads of brown. Harry felt certain that this must be Godric Gryffindor; the ruby-studded sword hilt at his waist only reinforced the impression. This new wizard looked over their party swiftly, with a gaze that Harry felt was drilling into him, then met Salazar's eyes.

"Salazar?"

"Godric."

They glared at each other.

Then, to Harry's shock, Gryffindor drew his sword. The blade flashed in a bright sweeping arc, too fast for Harry to think of doing anything, and ended with the tip a breath away from Salazar's throat.

Salazar hadn't moved or flinched. Now he arched an eyebrow, lifted a hand, and ran two fingers along the edge of the sword's blade, which remained perfectly steady. The sword looked sharp enough to Harry that this should have cut Salazar rather badly, as he applied enough pressure to dent the skin heavily inward, but he showed a bloodless hand, and Godric lowered the blade and sheathed it again. They spoke briefly -- Salazar stiffened at one point when Godric looked toward Jakinda, and Godric looked downright astonished at one point, but Harry couldn't decide what else their tones and expressions meant, except that they were more cordial or at least more polite than Snape had been when greeting him and Tonks at the gate. Then again, this wasn't difficult. That drill-bit gaze rested for a slightly longer time on Harry and each of his friends, and then Gryffindor turned and beckoned them all to follow him in.

Godric didn't start or even look around when Salazar turned to Harry and hissed, so Harry supposed that at least part of the conversation had involved the information that there was to be some necessary interpretation through Parseltongue.

"Don't look so shocked," Salazar said. "I suppose I should have warned you...."

"That Gryffindor was likely to draw his sword on you if you showed up again?"

"I did say I never intended to return to Hogwarts. I'd have been disappointed if he had not taken precautions -- I wouldn't move against the school, but someone might, perhaps, try to impersonate me." Salazar's eyes glinted. "I will tell you, though, I was tempted to twit him about lacking confidence in his Legilimency. It's not as if I even tried to block him."

"He's a Legilimens?" For some reason, this wasn't a talent he'd have expected of Godric Gryffindor.

"Of course he is. You didn't know that?"

Harry shook his head. "If he knew what you were thinking, why the sword? And why didn't it cut you?"

"As a second test. Has so much been forgotten? Godric's blade will only cut the wielder's true foes, and those it cuts deep -- I'm almost insulted that he stopped his strike." Salazar smirked. "And it's picky about its wielders. Perhaps it's been lost, in your time?"

"No," Harry said, "it's safe. It's in the Headmaster's office." A thought occurred to him. "But what if there were a reason you had to cut somebody who wasn't your enemy? Or yourself?" Blood on the stones at that cave of Voldemort's. "Like... er...." Some other reason. "Snakebite?"

Perhaps snakebite hadn't been the best suggestion, as Salazar didn't seem likely to have that particular problem. He gave Harry a puzzled look. "Leaving aside your wand," he said, "that would be one of the many reasons that most people also carry a knife."

They passed through the doors into the castle, and Harry was left blinking and trying to get his eyes to adjust to the sudden shadows. He looked back quickly to make sure Ron and Hermione were still there. Salazar had dropped back momentarily to take hold of Jakinda's hand, though she didn't really look to Harry as if she needed the guidance.

They passed by the doors to the sunlit Great Hall, climbed two flights of stairs, jumping over the thirteenth step on the second, and walked through what appeared to be a tapestry covering solid wall to reach a passageway. They passed no one along the way -- according to Salazar, they'd arrived in time for the students to be distracted by breakfast. They ended up in what Harry thought might be the staff room, eventually, and Godric left them there only to return after several minutes with two witches. One, presumably Rowena Ravenclaw, wore deep blue and looked as if she had probably, with no hint of inappropriate behavior, distracted generations of male students. The other wore simple black and had her sleeves pushed up; though considerably shorter and much less sullen, she nevertheless gave Harry the impression that she could have outwrestled Millicent Bulstrode. She went directly to Salazar, hugged him around the ribs, and then seized him by the upper arms and shook him.

There was some laughter at that and a short period of snappishness, which ended in Godric bowing to Jakinda and offering what Harry gathered was a formal apology, though Salazar still looked grumpy afterward. Then they settled into a very long discussion of which Harry understood very little. He supposed this must have been how Ron and Hermione felt during his Parseltongue conversations with Salazar, although now Hermione was watching and listening intently, and occasional flashes of comprehension crossed her face.

Harry was just beginning to wonder if Salazar had forgotten about them when he turned around to offer a summary. "If you're willing," Salazar said, "to stay here while we work on it, Rowena thinks it will be worth trying to create a spell that should return you to your own time. If we can be sure of the precise dates, it would help, but it seems likely that we should be able to land you either at the time you left, or with no greater interval than the amount of time you spend here."

"You think... you can do it?" Harry asked. "Just like that?"

"We couldn't have sent someone ahead on a whim, or only to try it. But with you here, with this as your past... which becomes stranger the more thought I give it... we have something to aim for." Salazar sighed. "And it seems to be important."

"It is," said Harry. "I did hate to tell you, though."

"Why? Because it was painful to hear, or in case I favored my descendant enough to overlook his methods... and his attacks on my school?"

His school? "Yes," Harry said honestly. "I wasn't planning to tell you too much in case you would be on his side, but since you weren't, I was sorry it was painful."

Salazar snorted. "You're too honest," he said, "particularly after the fact. But we would have found out eventually, so long as I brought you here, and I think I prefer to have known sooner than later."

At this point Godric interrupted them; the Hogwarts Four had work to do, or at least three of them did, so the meeting broke up for much of the rest of the day. Harry and his friends were sent to guest quarters, and Salazar vanished into the depths of the castle to prepare a place for the experiments.

Hermione had been given a separate room, but she quickly turned up in theirs. "I can't believe we're actually here," she said. "Hogwarts!"

"We've been here lots of times," Harry pointed out. "Six whole school years."

Hermione made a face at him. "But here! Now! When it's just beginning! Well, I suppose it's been Founded for quite some years now, but still... with the Founders still alive."

"Yeah," said Ron. "It's too bad the only one any of us can actually talk to is Slytherin."

"He's not so bad," Harry said. "I think he's even sort of made up with the rest of them, just now."

"Sure, but I'd rather be able to have a chat with Gryffindor. Or even Hufflepuff. And I bet Hermione would talk to Ravenclaw and forget to leave...." Ron laughed. "Maybe it's just as well, huh?"

Hermione looked prim. "You might want to be careful of how you talk about Helga Hufflepuff. She struck me as very formidable. And as a matter of fact, I think I just may be able to talk to them if I try hard enough... or at least write notes back and forth."

"I thought you said you couldn't carry on a conversation in Latin," Harry said.

"Well, no, not exactly. Definitely not right off. But designing a spell to send people forward in time by a thousand years can't be all that easy, so I imagine we'll have to stay here for some time. I don't know how long, really, but I'm certainly going to try to pay very close attention and work out as much of it as I can. And it's not all Latin; a great many of the texts in Ancient Runes are in Old English or are annotated in Old English. I think we can't have been getting the pronunciations right, and of course they speak much faster than we ever did in lessons, but I do think I was beginning to catch bits, here and there."

"Huh." Ron looked impressed. "Looks like Ancient Runes is good for something after all."

Hermione huffed. "I've been telling you that all along, you know. I wonder if Arithmancy is how they're going to design the spell? It's one of the methods--"

"I thought Arithmancy was the magical properties of arithmetic," Ron interrupted, grinning.

"Arithmetic is magical?" Harry asked dubiously. "They teach it in Muggle primary school, you know."

Hermione put a hand over her eyes. "Neither of you ever once listened when I told you about my Arithmancy lessons and what I was studying, did you?" When neither of them answered, she parted her fingers and peeked between them.

Harry and Ron were both shaking their heads.

Hermione took her hand down and sighed deeply. "You two.... It's only partly arithmetic. And some people think it's just Divination with numbers, but that's not true either... well," she admitted, sounding put out, "that is included. That's technically what the term means, in fact. But it's a misnomer really. It starts with the magical properties of numbers, and then you move on to more extensive and intensive analytical techniques in the advanced courses. And one of the things you can do with it is predict the results of a spell, but it's not Divination; it's more like... physics." At Ron's blank look and Harry's rather fuzzy one, she sighed again. "You work the spell out in numbers and equations instead of magic so that you can find out if it'll blow up or do something else disastrous without actually causing a disaster. Anyway, the second NEWT-level course actually does address Arithmantic spell design. I was really looking forward to that...."

"You didn't have to come with me and miss it, you know," Harry said.

"Oh, Harry -- I didn't mean -- you know I didn't -- this is much more important, I only--"

"It's all right!" he interrupted, trying to head off the tumble of apologies. "I can't see what's so great about it, but I knew you'd be looking forward to getting buried in homework again. You really didn't have to give it up. But I was glad to have you both with me, anyway." Harry paused to look around the room. "Of course, we weren't even supposed to be back at Hogwarts yet if things were normal. I'm pretty sure you didn't sign up for a trip back in time... this year. I know I didn't!"

Hermione laughed at that, if a bit reluctantly. "No... that really must have been a very potent spell on the locket."

"Salazar must have been really worried about his daughter," said Harry.

"When you said you thought he made up with the rest of them," Ron asked, "where are you getting that, exactly? I'm thinking if it ever said anything about that happening in Hogwarts: a History, Hermione would have told us about it around the time the Sorting Hat started telling us to make nice."

"I don't know what it says in Hogwarts: a History," Harry began.

Hermione broke in with, "You really ought to read it, you know!"

"Well, I'm not likely to find a really up-to-date copy here, am I? But the point is, I'm not talking about history books, I'm talking about what I saw. Godric Gryffindor apologized to Jakinda -- at least, I think he did. And they got down to business after that."

"I thought you reckoned Gryffindor wasn't really in the wrong," Ron objected.

Harry shrugged. "Maybe he said he didn't mean it the way it sounded. I couldn't understand that part, and Salazar didn't mention it afterward."

"That's definitely not in any of the history books," said Hermione. "As a matter of fact, I don't think any of them even mention Salazar as being in contact with the other three Founders after he left. He just... dropped off the face of the earth." She slid off the end of Ron's bed and went over to the wall, where she began drawing thin bright lines with her wand.

"What are you doing?" Ron hopped up as well and joined her, peering over her shoulder as she marked a colon and began writing in neat script.

"I'm going to review as much Latin and Old English as I can from memory, and any of the runes that I think might be useful here. I'll tell you all of them, if you like."

Hermione was still writing in blazing light when Helga Hufflepuff appeared, sometime around what might have been midday, and left them a light lunch of hard brown bread, very sharp cheese, a thin soup whose flavor Harry couldn't place, and ale. Hermione ate bread and cheese with considerable effort and little attention (or she might have noticed that Ron and Harry had an easier time after soaking their bread in the soup), and when Ron put a mug of ale into her hand, she took a gulp without paying attention and promptly choked, spraying half of it onto the wall.

She was also still writing, though her markings had dimmed to something a bit easier to read and she had cleaned up both the wall and herself, by the time Salazar came to their door again. Harry let him in, feeling rather relieved; he didn't mind one bit that Ron and Hermione were on good terms at the moment, but he didn't really feel like adopting Ron's method of making language lectures more interesting. It appeared to involve breathing down Hermione's neck. Hermione didn't seem to mind very much, but Harry rather thought a third would make things a bit too crowded. And no matter how useful it might be to take a crash course in current language, he couldn't seem to concentrate on this one.

Salazar gave the writing on the wall a long and questioning look before turning to Harry. "The chamber is ready," he said, "and we've put a dinner for you down there. It's a bit late, and we regret keeping you cooped up like this all day... though you do seem to have found a way to amuse yourselves... but we've not yet settled how to explain you to the students." He watched Ron and Hermione round a corner and begin a new column. "I suppose I should say they have not settled... I'm not sure they've settled how to explain me to the students yet, either. Perhaps I'll simply keep busy. Any renewed debates I might provoke can, I think, safely wait until we've sent you off."

"Isn't anyone likely to see us on the way to the chamber?" Harry asked.

Salazar grinned. "Oh, come now. Surely you've found some of the secret passages after a few years at Hogwarts... but you don't think you know all of them, do you?"

They left Hermione's vocabulary revisions sparkling on the walls and set out. Salazar took them into a strange round passage that seemed to wind ever and ever downward through a muffled sound of rushing water. The floor looked fairly clean, as far as Harry could tell in the dim light, but it was very slick.

"Where's this chamber we're going to, anyway?" Harry asked, trying to keep his feet from sliding out from under him or carrying him even faster down the tunnel than the rapid pace Salazar was setting. "It seems like we'd have to be really deep under the castle by now...."

"It's under the lake," Salazar said.

Harry stopped in his tracks at that, or tried to. His feet continued blithely down the slope without him, and he landed with a bump. Ron and Hermione started forward to try to help and managed to tumble over him and trip Salazar, who had not previously appeared to have any trouble with the footing.

They managed to pick themselves up and resume, if with a certain amount of swearing from some parties and glowering from Hermione. She even almost glowered at Salazar, even though he had politely confined himself to swearing in Parseltongue, which to anyone who wasn't a Parselmouth probably sounded about the same as not swearing in Parseltongue. By the time they were on their way again, Harry had almost convinced himself that "under the lake" could mean anything.

Then they reached the serpent-jeweled doors, which Salazar pushed instead of commanding to open, and walked into a large room where a basilisk, easily twelve feet long, reared up with its eyes shut and then hurled itself at Salazar, wrapping around his shoulders. Harry would have been more alarmed by this if not for two reasons: first, the basilisk's hissing translated to something along the lines of "You're home, you're home, hurrah!"; second, while the enormous statue of Salazar himself was missing, he had been here before.

"But this is the Chamber of Secrets!" he burst out, then looked at Salazar and the snake again and repeated it.

"Is that what they call it in your day?" Salazar asked with some interest, wrestling his basilisk into a sort of hug and scratching the top of its head.

"It's -- well, yes. Only everybody thought it was a legend for the longest time, and... you've got everybody down here!" Indeed, the other three Founders were gathered at one side of a round table with space for four more. There was food on the table, but it appeared untouched and had been pushed aside in favor of a large, thin slate.

Salazar looked at him oddly. "Yes...? It seemed like a good spot. Plenty of room -- this could be a bulky spellcasting, depending on what turns out to be required. And the students don't know about it. Why do you?"

"This is where you keep the basilisk...."

"Obviously," said Salazar. The basilisk flicked its tongue out in Harry's direction.

"It's where Voldemort... it's where we fought. The Horcrux that was using...."

"Ah." Salazar winced and let the basilisk down. "Well... allow me to introduce Urraca. I suppose she probably won't remember you when you meet again."

"Of course I will," said Urraca indignantly. "I have a good memory." She didn't really sound much older than Maeve. Perhaps she was just excited.

Salazar scratched her head again. "Sshh."

"Er, sorry," Harry said. He supposed this was another thing that there might not be a good way to change. "...Magpie? Why did I think you said magpie?"

"That's what Urraca means."

"You named a snake 'Magpie'?"

"When I've let her open her eyes, she always goes after anything shiny. She tried to eat the hilt of Godric's sword once."

Harry winced.

"It wasn't that bad," Salazar said, apparently oblivious to the real reason for Harry's expression. "It's not as if it was the blade."

"Right," Harry said faintly.

Salazar eyed him sharply and sighed. "I should probably not ask.... You've used the sword, haven't you."

"The Sorting Hat dropped it on my head."

"What in the world were you doing with the Sorting Hat down here? Not that it isn't a very useful item, but honestly, if I were going to fight a dangerous beast that wouldn't listen to me, the Sorting Hat would not be my first choice." Salazar paused to consider this. "Then again, I suppose that might change if I thought there was a sword in it."

"I didn't know there was a sword in it. Fawkes brought it."

"Who or what is a Fawkes?"

Harry swallowed against the ache in his throat. "That was the name of Dumbledore's phoenix."

"Hmm. Godric has a phoenix, occasionally. Or perhaps the phoenix has him. It's hard to tell sometimes."

Harry hesitated. "Does Urraca think the phoenix is something shiny to grab, too?"

"Not exactly. He sits on her head, and she holds very still."

"...Right." Harry decided not to ask if Urraca liked phoenix song. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. Maeve didn't really seem like a Dark Creature, for all her destructive potential.

Urraca, when Salazar dismissed her, went prowling around the chamber, muttering about wanting to go hunting. The humans in the room gathered around the table for dinner -- well, dinner for three of them anyway -- and a discussion of time travel made cumbersome by the need for interpretation. It didn't help that Hermione was, of Harry and his friends, the best equipped to understand the subject but not the language. Before the evening was out, she and Rowena were next to one another, communicating primarily by diagrams and numerals, although the other three Founders were still putting their oars in. Salazar usually remembered to tell Harry what was going on, and Harry tried his best to tell Ron -- though Ron moved in closer when the diagrams started including something remarkably like a cross between a chessboard and a game of cat's-cradle.

Rowena thought they would be working at the spell design for two weeks. This was very nearly accurate; it turned out to be little longer, in spite of a number of lessons having nothing to do with time travel.

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